Why EU voters are rebelling against the establishment
An anti-establishment surge in the European parliamentary elections sparked French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a double-or-nothing national election whose first round alone saw the establishment of the country synonymous with revolution dumped into the historical compost bin like a stale entrecôte.
Sounds like dangerous times in the EU for anyone who happens to be known as “Queen Ursula,” or her Praetorian Guard – the battalion of paper-cut Purple Heart desk-jockeys of the European bureaucracy.
Even German Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded in a recent interview that the latest European election results reflect people’s disagreement with the anti-Russian sanctions and support for Ukraine. So it’s starting to become glaringly obvious that the EU has an entire agenda to ram through before it becomes way too evident that they don’t actually give a damn about democracy if it doesn’t align with their interests. And time is rapidly running out. So the EU clown car has put the pedal to the metal, careening down the Highway of Asininity at warp speed.
At the top of their agenda is a mass transfer of taxpayer cash into special interest coffers while Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is still able to pass as a convenient carnival barker for the cause.
One of those big special interests is the Western military-industrial complex. So Team Brussels has announced a transfer of another €1.4 billion from its 'Ukraine Peace Facility' into weapons-making. Because nothing says “peace” like cranking out weapons for a war. But perhaps if they called it the much more apt 'Ukrainian War Facility', any voters who still aren’t awake might actually clue in. And the EU already has more than enough dialed-in voters giving it grief for its scams. Like, for instance, their idea of replacing the 'Peace Facility' cash that it dumps on itself to make more Western weapons for Russia to blow up in Ukraine by just stealing the interest on the $260 billion in Russian assets frozen in the West.
Even European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has said that this big-brained move of trying to get Russia to pay for both sides of the Ukraine conflict is legally dodgy, and sets a bad precedent for those who might still want to consider the EU a trustworthy place to do foreign business. But she obviously missed the memo where Brussels and Washington dictate that international order is whatever they decide they want it to be, at any given time.
Hungary objected to the laundering of taxpayer cash into war profits. Big mystery as to why. It’s not like an American-made missile recently killed and injured a bunch of civilians on a beach in Crimea. Or that some European leaders, like Macron, have been recklessly escalating the conflict into a potential future Third World War by shooting off their big mouths about sending troops to Ukraine. It’s no wonder that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban wanted to veto any further moves.
Thankfully, one of the benefits of European Union diversity is that it’s made up of 27 different countries that can each do their own research and bring their arguments or any dissent to the table in the interest of avoiding disaster. And that every one of them has veto power. Hungary was one of those dissenting countries on military cash laundering “for Ukraine.”
The last time that Orban dissented in the face of pressure from Brussels was when he opposed the bloc starting EU accession talks for Ukraine last December. So German Chancellor Olaf Scholz talked him into dipping out into the hallway so they could all just pretend that they had the required unanimity to ram it through. But would they be able to get him to take another well-timed bathroom break so they could have another unanimous vote? It might have been tricky. So what did the EU brass do? They just came up with a legal argument to totally ignore both bloc treaty provisions and Hungary’s vote, with chief diplomat Josep Borrell saying of the excuse of Hungary not having voted previously on the issue was legally sophisticated but, eh, “it flies.”
The EU brass are in a big hurry to get this tax cash unlocked for the one manufacturing industry that they don’t seem to have totally dismantled yet before the music stops with those same ripped off taxpayers democratically voting for anti-establishment parties across Europe in a desperate attempt to end this whole Ukraine funding charade that’s effectively carpet bombing their pocketbooks.
Europeans also didn’t vote for their elected leaders to use EU tax cash for European banks to bail out Ukraine’s debt. But since taxpayers and entire nations are already paying for this Ukraine quagmire, why not toss EU banks into the sinking ship, too?
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced earlier this month in Berlin that European banks would be able to get “budget support” totaling €1.4 billion from European taxpayers when they invest in equity funds active in Ukraine, so that the risks are removed for the banks. And by risks being removed, she means transferred. To the European taxpayer.
Meanwhile, Kiev has been promoting the need for more foreign cash for “reconstruction.” These jokers probably think that the general public would hear the word “reconstruction” and get all warm and fuzzy and not realize that the cash is also being used to reconstruct a $20 billion spending hole that Team Zelensky has dug – what do you expect from a guy who shows up at world summits dressed like he literally digs holes professionally and whose international bond repayments to Western countries are coming due this summer. So EU debt would effectively be paying for Ukrainian debt, which would repay bonds from the US and the 22-nation Paris Club, who are in debt. It’s like the movie Inception, but with debt: Debtception.
And what better way to help shakedown the taxpayers than for Ukraine, one of the black sheep of the global corruption index, to promote the need to raise money for reconstruction in the middle of a war. So people can pay to build stuff that gets blown up? Minor detail after all the requisite special interest pockets have been stuffed, I guess.
The EU can totally trust Kiev, though. It’s not like Brussels didn’t just introduce laws on June 6th to slap import tariffs on certain Ukrainian farming products coming into the bloc (like sugar and eggs, not even the Ukrainian grain meant for Africa that the EU spilled all over itself) if Kiev’s exports went above a certain volume – only to see Kiev blow past the set limit within days. The move was made in the first place, back in March, in response to requests by Poland, whose farmers bore the brunt of the Ukrainian import tsunami, being right on the border. Also, France, whose President Macron fled from angry farmers at the Paris International Agricultural Fair earlier this year while riot cops blasted climate change criminal cows with tear gas.
So the EU basically sold out their own farmers to toss Ukraine a lifeline. But the thing about lifelines is that you don’t let the drowning dude cling to you if he’s going to pull you down with him – which is what Kiev wasted absolutely no time in doing. So either Kiev is clueless or reckless. Take your pick. Hey, sounds like a great time to formally approve negotiations to integrate Ukraine into the EU so it doesn’t have to deal with any tariffs at all! And so those radical “far-right” farmers can’t say that they’re being flooded with cheap, dodgy, foreign farming products! And that’s exactly what the bloc’s leadership just did last Friday, voting to officially start those talks on Ukraine’s bloc accession, even as Kiev has been busy openly sounding like a total economic basket case on the world stage.
Brussels keeps looking for the Russian or “far-right” bogeymen whenever the people democratically oppose them. It should be pretty clear right now that the only ones opposing the democratic will of voters is the EU officials. And it seems that they’re doing everything in their power right now to ensure that whatever happens, their special interests find life rafts and don’t go down with the sinking establishment ship.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
