Sunday 22nd of December 2024

and allowing Hungary to continue purchasing Russian crude oil....

Hungary agreed not to veto the EU’s latest package of sanctions on Russia after pressuring the bloc to abandon “crazy ideas” such as blacklisting the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.

EU foreign ministers formally adopted the bloc’s 15th package of economic penalties on Russia at a meeting in Brussels on Monday. The latest tranche of sanctions blacklists 54 people and 30 entities, including Russian military commanders, oil tankers allegedly connected to Russia, Russian defense firms, and “various Chinese actors” accused of supplying electronic components to Russia.

Beijing has long maintained that it does not supply any military goods or components to Moscow.

The EU also sanctioned the defense minister and deputy chief of the general staff of North Korea, over claims that the country's troops are training in Russia and taking part in the conflict with Ukraine. Moscow and Pyongyang have neither confirmed nor denied these allegations. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that it is up to both nations to decide how to fulfil their commitments under a recently signed defense treaty.

At a press conference on Monday afternoon, Szijjarto said that he voted for the sanctions, but only after the EU agreed to extend an exemption allowing Hungarian energy giant MOL to continue purchasing Russian crude oil. Szijjarto added that he also convinced officials in Brussels to “weed out… crazy ideas” like sanctioning Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russia’s UN envoy, the Russian Olympic Committee, and “two Russian Premier League football teams.”

“We vetoed this,” he told reporters. “We simply said we will not support such sanctions.”

Patriarch Kirill has already been sanctioned by the UK for what the British Foreign Office called his “prominent support of Russian military aggression in Ukraine.” Several EU member states, including Lithuania, Estonia, and the Czech Republic, have also blacklisted the Orthodox leader.

”They’ve made the Patriarch persona non grata in Europe. Why? It’s because the Patriarch is spiritually leading the nation, leading the church that has taken a different civilizational path of development,” Kirill said during a service in Moscow earlier this year.

READ MORE: Why stealing Russia’s frozen assets will help neither Ukraine nor the West

In Brussels, Hungary and Slovakia also blocked proposed sanctions against top Georgian officials, pushed by new EU diplomatic chief Kaja Kallas, after Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze froze EU accession talks over what he termed the bloc’s “constant blackmail and manipulation.”

The EU’s previous package of sanctions on Russia was adopted in June. Each package can only be adopted after a unanimous vote. Moscow has long criticized the measures targeting its economy and trade, while many experts in both Russia and the West have said that unilateral sanctions do more harm to the countries that impose them than to Russia itself.

https://www.rt.com/news/609452-hungary-russia-sanctions-exemption/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.

 

SEE ALSO DELUSIONAL MS EU, VON DER LEYEN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEXC0l5foF0

cancelled....

 

The real reason for the annulment of the Romanian election

 

BY Hugo DIONÍSIO

 

If he were far right-wing, the West would happily work with him. That’s the best absorbent cotton test for determining whether or not a particular candidate is extreme right-wing. The West has always had a huge tolerance for right-wingers. From fanatic Islamists to neo-Nazis or Zionists, history is here to prove that.

The capitalist, imperialist, neo-liberal West has never had any problem working with fanatics of any kind, as can be seen in Syria today. What the West can’t stand, whoever they are, are leaders who don’t allow national independence and sovereignty, the common interest, and social welfare to be limited by private appropriation by the international economic and financial interests it protects.

The truth is that West has no problems working with Meloni in Italy, Milei in Argentina, the current South Korean president, or even the Saudi royal family. Even to name the ones who everyone assumes to be hard right-wingers. We must not forget that, nowadays, at the very heart of the Western political system, we have the most fanatic and extremist situationists, such as Von Der Leyen, Baerbock, Sholz, or Macron. They only differ from traditional far-right-wingers in two or three subjects like wokeísm, religiosity (not all of them), acceptance of Brussels’ central power, and their position towards war with Russia.

In Syria, for example, they have joined hands with groups formed from Al-Qaeda, linked to the Islamic Brotherhood, one theological school that also feeds Hamas, overthrowing a secular government that defends gender equality, but also national sovereignty, particularly in terms of ownership of strategic sectors, like energy. It won’t be long before the mainstream press is crying hard over the oppression of Syrian women. For starters, I saw no feminine presence in the press conferences that new Syrian leaders provided. The U.S. and Israel don’t seem to have had any problems dealing with conservative authoritarian Erdogan, as an operative in the upheaval, or with “moderate radicals” that came from known terrorist organizations. If someone can explain to me what is a “moderate radical”, be my guest. A semiotic upgrade made from the ancient paradox concept of “moderate rebels”.

So there would be nothing to stop the West from working with Calin Georgescu too. If he is, like mainstream media assumes, a far-right winger, what would stop them? Don’t they do it with Zelensky and the supporters of Bandera’s ideology? After all, what does Georgescu stand for that the West has so vehemently used its lawfare machine to try to end his more than predictable election? Between Tik-Tok algorithm manipulation and “Russian interference” Western powers and their judicial agents found the justification to destroy a democratic election.

So, in one fell swoop, the powers that dominate Romania today, and through which an oligarchic elite clings to power, annulled the election, trying to buy time so that, either through a scheme to prevent the candidate in question from standing for election, or perhaps through the repetition of as many election procedures as necessary until the results are right, as was done in the failed referendums on the European constitution in France and Ireland, the U.S. can rest and build its powerful military base for attacking the Russian Federation.

This brutal course of action, incomparable and unthinkable a few years ago, is in itself indicative of the state of desperation in which the powers that dominate Romania find themselves. The construction of NATO’s largest European military base and the use of this country as a springboard for a nuclear war, which is on the horizon, make Romania a key country for the whole strategy of dominating Europe and the Russian Federation. These elections in Romania could therefore very well end with a formal or informal military dictatorship, in the name of a supposedly existent “Russian interference”.

Today, “Russian interference” is to NATO countries what the “communist bogeyman” was to Western fascists. The pretext for extinguishing what little democracy remains. To that end, freedom will go too. We can say that, as things go, the U.S. and NATO are prisoners of democracy itself. Their candidate can’t win, and the ones who can, don’t work for U.S. and NATO intents. From personal candidature denial to martial law, supported by a need to prevent a “Russian political takeover”, as it goes, Romania can provide us with a practical guide that shows, step by step what the West could do when European peoples start to take back their countries.

A starting point to this anticipative coup d’état can be stated when Calin Georgescu, at the beginning of this year, when asked by a journalist what he thought of the upcoming election year, replied, “This year will be the year of changing the system”. Now, that a far right-winger guy talks about “changing the system”… At least, is suspicious. As a right-winger, he should have been talking about “cleaning up the system” but never about “changing it”.

But Georgescu went further, saying that Ukraine is a Western proxy so that the U.S. can get its hands on Russia’s wealth, which, according to him, amounts to “80 trillion euros”, “the entire world debt”. This set the tone for Washington’s preferred narrative, that of the “Kremlin agent”. He also said that we are governed by “psychopaths” and that these psychopaths, “like those who govern Ukraine”, “never asked the Ukrainian people” if they wanted this war. For him, the Ukrainian people are, above all, the “victims” of this situation.

Still full of breath, Georgescu said that “We are living through the end of the Western imperial and colonial era”. Far-right? Do you know of any European far-right party that recognizes that the USA is an empire and that the domination of the USA and NATO over other countries is of an imperial and colonial nature? I don’t!

Georgescu went on to accuse the Romanian government and politicians of being “footman of the outside world”, and of “Romania being a zero diplomatically speaking”. In other words, Georgescu doesn’t seem to be half-hearted about Romania’s loss of sovereignty and national independence (if the man were in Portugal…). One more thing that doesn’t fit into the characterization of today’s “far-right”, because if there’s one thing that characterizes this “new right”, it’s its alignment with NATO, the EU, and especially the U.S. and what they consider to be the “West” and its “values”.

This doctor, who worked at the National Center for Sustainable Development (NCSD), an NGO, consulting on environmental issues, was a founding member and executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Development Projects (IPID), which included leading figures from the Romanian scientific and academic communities, as well as civil society. Together with leading representatives of business associations, trade unions, the academic community, and civil society, he founded the Alliance of Professionals for Progress (APP), which had the mission of “promoting the definition of precise strategic objectives in the short, medium and long term and mobilizing the real skills that exist in Romania”. The Alliance organized, in cooperation with the Romanian Academy, two public debates on “State Reform” and “Responsible Social Development”, worked as a researcher for the Club of Rome, and much more, which makes him someone who knows, like no one else, the system and how it works so unfairly.

An environmentalist, an agronomist and a profound critic of the EU’s agricultural and environmental policies, a specialist in sustainable development, a former UN official, a writer on Romanian development issues, and a social progress supporter, Georgescu, it’s good to see, has a profile that matches a lot of things, but never a “populist, extremist, fanatical” leader like those on the far-right.

Georgescu bases his entire speech on the idea of progress and social justice, on science, on knowledge, never using fake news and made-up ideas. Georgescu, on the other hand, clearly explains his thinking, basing it on science and experience. What does this have to do with the “far-right”?

If these ideas alone would be enough for his critics to try to catalog and condition him as “a Kremlin agent”, a “Pro Russian”, or a “Putin agent”, what about the programmatic objectives that we find on his Telegram channels and online in general?

Let’s take a look at this excerpt from a channel of the “Food, Water, Energy” movement: “Mr. Calin Georgescu’s national project “Food, Water, Energy” is based on Distributism”. To this end, a Distributist League website has been set up, which advocates a real program of cooperation, distribution, social justice, and peace.

One of the texts even says “This is the moment when we must draw a line and mobilize for the development of this country, for the recovery of state assets through selective nationalization, where gross thefts have been committed against Romanians.” Development, recovery of state assets, nationalization. Those are Far-right objectives?

Or again: “Globalization and the detour of attention, as a technique for enslaving the mind, must stop in every country in the world”. And here the whole doctrine of the World Economic Forum and the great reset is rejected, with an Internationalist twist, not at all to Uncle Sam’s taste.

But goes further: “We are witnessing an aggressive campaign to confiscate the sovereignty of states, by international corporations that feed on conflicts and crises, that create false scenarios within the nations of the world, while financing secret services, terrorist groups and organizations capable of destabilizing nations.” Sovereignty, international corporations. Aiming at super rich, at multinationals, and not to migrants, gypsies, or leftists.

Or: “All the current parties are controlled by the secret services and only follow the pocketing of public money, the transfer of state assets to private ownership.” What kind of “extreme right” is this, that talks against private appropriation of public assets (even Public Private Partnerships) and pocketing of public money?

Advocating cooperation, the distribution of wealth, and the nationalization of strategic assets that can be used by the state to raise people’s living conditions, Georgescu’s project is anything, anything, anything to do with far right-wing political views. Is it anti-liberal? Yes! Is it supported by Orthodox Christian people? Maybe! Does it strive for national sovereignty and identity? Yes, but not in a purely nationalist sense, more in a patriotic sense, concerned with the lives and well-being of his people.

Nothing this gentleman stands for, and the way he does it, is far right-wing. Here are some of Georgescu’s major concerns: infant mortality has risen in Romania over the last 15 years; the falling birth rate, the loss of young people to emigration, population reduction due to an aging population, and the quality of education. What is “far-right” here?

This attack on Georgescu raises several suspicions and gives us several clues about what is happening in Eastern Europe, in a real battle, “without metaphors”, as Georgescu says, “of light against darkness”:

  • Knowing full well that the Georgescu project is a project of social, democratic, and grassroots progress, the U.S. can’t let it succeed because, being inspiring and revolutionary, it could “infect” the countries of Eastern Europe, to whom the EU and the U.S. have promised a lot and let down a lot;
  • A character like Georgescu, like the movement he supports, is similar to the kind of social emancipation movements seen all over the world, but especially after the Second World War in Eastern Europe and in many parts of Latin America, right up to the present day, which resist to the submission to globalism, neoliberalism, the U.S. and what they stand for;
  • A population inspired by the ideals of social emancipation and wealth distribution that Georgescu defends has enormous power, so the U.S. must stop this movement at once because its affirmation will jeopardize the strategy of dominating Eastern Europe, encircling Russia, and even containing China.

All this contingent action, based on tactical shelters that don’t resolve the main contradiction, will ultimately prove to be limited. There are some reasons to believe this:

  • At the end of 1991, the main lure used by the West to bring Eastern countries into the fold was based on the idea that joining the European Union meant receiving endless EU funds and access to a higher level of development;
  • After the Cold War, the European Union began to sell itself as an area of “peace” and stability, presenting itself as a construction that would prevent war in Europe.

More than thirty years passed, and after a 2008 crisis that has not ended and is about to worsen, the EU is now selling the war against Russia as an element of cohesion. It’s one thing to sell peace, but it’s quite another to sell war. Nobody wants to die, least of all for causes that are not their own, such as the U.S./NATO offensive against the Russian Federation.

On the other hand, the successive detour of funds to 1. the construction of a military-industrial complex and the purchase of arms; 2. the creation of accumulation cycles that increasingly widen the gap between rich and poor; brings with it a whole reality in which the EU’s infrastructural and economic development stagnates.

The golden age presented by the EU in the nineties coincided with strong public ownership, which guaranteed cheap energy, telecommunications, and logistics, all of which were privatized, and coincided with times of very strong economic growth, the capacity for public investment in grandiose infrastructures, growth also resulting from the ability to manipulate the monetary exchange rate, the interest rate, etc… First the Washington consensus, then the European stability pact, then the Euro and all that it brought, were deadly stabs at the ability of European states to create development projects. The surplus value that had developed Europe began to accumulate in capital funds in the tax havens created for this purpose.

You wouldn’t expect anything other than disappointment at the promises made and not kept.

Even in Lithuania, we have a party (now in the center-left coalition) called “Dawn of Nemunas”, whose defense of national sovereignty, public ownership of certain economic sectors, criticism of Zionism, closeness to the countryside and national identity, whom the mainstream press also labels as “far right”, demonstrate that other forms of democratic and progressive popular power may be re-emerging, now that the elites, once defeated by the movement towards socialism, and later elevated again by Western capitalism, are failing once again.

And no wonder these parties present themselves as being “anti-system”. The “system” that is now spread across a broad center of power determines as “left” those who are “woke, anti-fossil, animalist or fully concerned climate change”, as “center” those who are liberal and neoliberal, and as “right” those who are “conservative and reactionary”. There is no place for the revolutionary left, the left concerned with real social progress and workers’ emancipation, the left that comes from work, and class struggle, aligned with small farmers of the countryside, crafted in the humanist era.

I’m not implying that Georgescu’s movement resumes itself as to come from that kind of leftism, but when a left-wing democratic and popular movement arrives, it is so difficult to catalog for the superficial and disturbed minds of the globalist era, the very ones that are the direct result of regression in social consciousness and the subjective state of the productive forces, that they can only compare it to the worst they know to operate inside the “system”. It´s unthinkable for those minds to classify something that doesn’t fit the neoliberal standards. It all has to do with the inability to dream with which the minds of the 21st century have been imprinted. This inability to dream is itself a brake on social emancipation. So, the unknown, the emancipatory and defying experiences are compared to the dark far right, to influence the people through fear. But this happens only in appearance, as with everything sold in this simplistic age that rejects complex thinking.

If a party is “Euroceptic” because identify the actual EU with multinational interests, if it is against NATO, because sees NATO as a pro-war alliance, if it is not exclusively concerned with “wokeism” or has a vision where environmental sustainability must be matched and balanced with social progress, therefore is “far-right”.

Georgescu’s Romania is proof of this. If this social, progressive, humanist movement discourse were the same as the “far right”, the one with which they want to label it, the U.S. would already be working with it!

As they did and do with all the dictators, more or less outspoken, that they support!

But the U.S. is in panic mode, risking to discredit the very “democratic” system they helped to create in Romania, the one that doesn’t seem to fit anymore. And that says a lot about why this election was erased from the 2024 election map.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/12/14/real-reason-for-annulment-of-romanian-election/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.