Tag: eu

ECB Partners With Big Tech to Launch Controversial Digital Euro Amid Privacy Concerns and US Opposition

The European Central Bank (ECB) – an institution of the European Union (EU) – is working to engineer the digital euro, the EU’s own central bank digital currency (CBDC).

In doing so, ECB is partnering with those skeptical observers might expect in this club: multinationals and multi-billion dollar companies, like Ireland-headquartered Accenture, and Germany’s largest semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies – but also 70 others from the financial, fintech, business, and payment services sectors.

This is happening via a project framed as as an “innovation platform” that was announced just this week, for the purpose of looking into the ways of introducing a centralized form of digital currency – which is merely a highly “controllable” version of fiat money, but also one with strong potential of facilitating “next level” mass surveillance of citizens.

Many things coming out of the EU these days seem like they are crafted not by leaders or even politicians, but by PR teams, for immediate “feelgood” impact, either to obscure the substance of various initiatives and policies – or to obscure the fact there is no substance to them.

Here, ECB has presented its project as an effort carried out by two groups: “Pioneers,” and “Visionaries.”

The first is supposed to deal with developing the technical infrastructure and doing the testing, whereas “Visionaries” are tasked with implementing – and promoting – those solutions.

Here’s an example of what that may involve: “(Exploring) enabling digital euro wallet access via post offices, potentially benefiting those without traditional bank accounts.”

The big picture, the sum total of CBDCs is the role of these currencies in the ongoing “war on cash” as a form of “disfavored” privacy and anonymity.

But naturally, the likes of Piero Cipollone, who sits on ECB’s Executive Board, will talk about the digital euro as “a potential catalyst for financial innovation” and other purely positive and difficult-to-contest goals.

Keep reading

European Union Continues Sabotaging Trump’s Ukraine Peace Efforts

The European Union at this point seems much more open about its willingness to sabotage Trump efforts toward achieving peace in Ukraine. 

The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas has told the Financial Times in a fresh interview this week that the bloc will not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea under any circumstances. Really, this should be the most obvious and ‘easiest’ concession to make, but alas Brussels is saying no!

The White House is seeking to pressure the Zelensky government to get to the negotiating table fast, and the quickest and easiest concession would be expected to center on letting go of Crimea, which Moscow declared part of the Russian Federation after a 2014 popular referendum.

“I can’t see that we are accepting these kind of things. But we can’t speak for America, of course, and what they will do,” Kallas said. “On the European side, we have said this over and over again… Crimea is Ukraine.”

“There are tools in the Americans’ hands that they can use to put the pressure on Russia to really stop this war,” Kallas continued. “President Trump has said that he wants the killing to stop. He should put the pressure on the one who is doing the killing.”

This has basically been the Ukrainian government’s position all along as well. For this reason, she said Brussels and other European capitals are still focused on “working with the Americans and trying to convince them why the outcome of this war is also in their interest, that Russia doesn’t really get everything that it wants.” But again, Crimea should be the easiest issue.

On the question of the scenario where Washington successfully resets relations with Moscow and eventually withdraws arms and intelligence support for Kiev, she said:

“It is clear that these types of discussions are going on in certain member states and maybe hopes that we don’t really have to support [Ukraine] any more,” said Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister. “But it’s also a false hope, because if you look at Russia, that is investing more than 9 per cent of its GDP on the military, they will want to use it again.”

Currently the US is reportedly seeking to convince Kiev and Europe of a de jure recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea and de facto recognition of Russian areas of control in eastern Ukraine, based on a ‘freeze’ of battle lines.

Trump presidential special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg told Fox News this week that Ukraine is ready to make territorial concessions, but wouldn’t consider any ceded territory as a permanent situation. 

“Not de jure forever, but de facto, because the Russians actually occupy that and they’ve agreed to that. They know that if they have a ceasefire in place, which means you sit on the ground that you currently hold, that’s what they’re willing to go to,” Kellog said. “You have your line set, and they’re willing to go there,” Kellogg emphasized. 

Keep reading

Radio Liberty Let The Cat Out Of The Bag Regarding The EU’s Game Plan For Ukraine

Russia can expect nothing in return from the EU if Putin concedes to allow their troops and aircraft to deploy in and patrol over Western Ukraine…

Russia has long warned that any unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine of the 30-day sort that Zelensky has proposed could create an opening for NATO to expand its military influence in that country. Hitherto dismissed as a conspiracy theory by the West, Radio Liberty just let the cat out of the bag. The unnamed officials who they cited in their recent article confirmed that they envisage this “buy[ing] the Europeans time to assemble a ‘reassurance force’ in the Western part of Ukraine” and organize “air patrols” there.

Their reported game plan is “keeping the Americans onboard” the peace process, “sequencing” the conflict by clinching a ceasefire that’ll later lead to a lasting peace, and using the aforesaid interim period to carry out the abovementioned military moves for pressuring Russia into more concessions. 

What’s omitted from Radio Liberty’s article is that Russia has threatened to target Western troops in Ukraine, who Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier said wouldn’t enjoy Article 5 guarantees from the US.

Even if Putin agrees to this concession that’s assessed to be among one of the five significant differences between him and Trump that prompted Trump’s angry post against Putin, Radio Liberty reported that this still wouldn’t lead to de jure European recognition of Russia’s territorial gains. 

The same goes for them lifting sanctions or returning any of its €200 billion of seized assets. More sanctions might even soon be imposed and the windfall profits from those assets will “bankroll Ukraine’s military needs”.

Given what Radio Liberty revealed, Russia can therefore expect nothing in return from the EU if Putin concedes to allow their troops and aircraft to deploy in and patrol over Western Ukraine. Any hopes of restoring Ukraine’s antebellum buffer state status would be crushed, and it can’t be ruled out that the EU’s zone of military activity could later expand to the Dnieper or beyond. One of the special operation’s goals was to prevent the West’s eastward military expansion so that would be another major concession.

Putin’s decades-long close friend and influential senior aide Nikolay Patrushev just told TASS earlier this week that “For the second year in a row, NATO is holding the largest exercises in decades near our borders, where it is practicing scenarios of offensive actions over a large area – from Vilnius to Odessa, the seizure of the Kaliningrad region, the blocking of shipping in the Baltic and Black Seas, and preventive strikes on the permanent bases of Russian nuclear deterrent forces.”

Keep reading

Europe Just Proved Trump Right About NATO

In a shocking-not-shocking exclusive report in The (UK) Times, Europe “would struggle to put 25,000 troops on the ground in Ukraine” as part of a postwar peacekeeping force. Defense Editor Larisa Brown “was given a rare insight into conversations between Europe’s defence ministers and military chiefs as they thrashed out plans for a ‘coalition of the willing’ force,” and the results are as disappointing as they are sobering. 

And you know how much I hate sobering.

British defense chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin asked European defense ministers “if they could put together a 64,000-strong force to send to [Ukraine] in the event of a peace deal.” Britain offered up to 10,000 personnel, but even then, “defence ministers across Europe said there was ‘no chance’ they could reach that number and that even 25,000 would ‘be a push for a joint effort.'”

This is not your father’s NATO.

During the Cold War, the British Army of the Rhine stood watch in West Germany for half a century with a force of 50,000 men — and the promise of swift reinforcements almost as quickly as the balloon went up.

Today, all of European NATO couldn’t put a peacekeeping force in Ukraine of half that size without wheezing like an asthmatic with a sinus infection hiking up Kilimanjaro.

NATO was always a little fractured and weaker than it should have been. Unlike the Warsaw Pact on the other side of the Iron Curtain, NATO members were independent nations, each with its own priorities and needs.

Paris could complain about American “hyperpower” all it liked, but we didn’t send in the tanks — like Moscow would have — when France withdrew its forces from NATO command and ordered NATO troops out of France in 1966. We just made do. 

And while Washington was correct to ask for more “burden-sharing” from our allies during the Cold War, it wasn’t as though they didn’t take the Soviet threat seriously. The West German Bundeswehr consisted of 10 battle-ready heavy Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions, plus another division each of airborne and mountain forces — for a total of 38 combat brigades. That was just the Field Army. The Territorial forces consisted of reserve troops — older men called up to defend their cities, towns, and homes — amounting to another 450,000 soldiers. 

But here’s the rub.

West Germany raised those forces from a population of 60 million with a GDP of $1.6 trillion in today’s dollars. Unified Germany has 80 million people, a GDP of $4.7 trillion, and a military of three divisions that are understaffed, under-trained, and unfit for combat.

The balloon went up more than three years ago in Ukraine, and yet the only substantial-sized NATO member seriously rearming is Poland.

Keep reading

WEF Launches Connected Future Initiative to Promote Global Digital Public Infrastructure with Backing from UN, EU, and Bill Gates

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has announced the launch of the Connected Future Initiative, the latest among its efforts to promote what is known as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).

The global scheme, aiming to introduce digital IDs, digital payments, and data exchange platforms by 2030, counts the UN, the EU, and Bill Gates among its major supporters.

The WEF presents its new initiative as a way to establish the parameters for public-private cooperation, and “unlock the full potential of globally scaled, interoperable and future-ready digital public infrastructure.”

Those behind the initiative suggest their goal is to essentially strengthen DPI by incorporating technologies like extended reality (XR) and quantum computing, in addition to AI and biometrics, while pushing for global standards and DPI interoperability.

WEF also promises that the new initiative is supposed to secure “ethical and responsible” innovation, and lumps in issues like governance, data privacy concerns (as the second on the list), and equitable access while deploying “next-gen DPI.”

Keep reading

Western Europe waging ‘quiet war’ against Trump – ex-Russian president

Western European leaders are waging a “quiet war” against US President Donald Trump, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed.

Washington’s current tariffs standoff and disagreements on NATO spending with the EU and UK is not only an economic but also an ideological conflict, Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said on Tuesday.

“I have no doubt that [Western] Europe will be put in its place [by the US], but at the same time the Europeans will continue their quiet war against Trump. They will try to wage a war against him on all possible fronts, observing the rules of decency on the outside. What will come of it – we will see,” he stated.

The tensions between Washington on one side and the EU and UK on the other are explained by the fact that “in [Western] Europe, neo-globalist forces are still in power, trying to pursue the previous course, including the course against our country… But in the US, other forces have taken the reins. These are conservative, more traditionalist forces that want to calm the situation and, in a certain sense, achieve reconciliation with Russia,” the former president said at the ‘Knowledge. First’ educational event in Moscow.

Keep reading

Europe’s Anti-American Shift: Now Globalists Are The Saviors Of The West?

Nationalism is villainous and globalists are the heroes? It’s a propaganda message that has been building since the end of World War II and the creation of globalist institutions like the UN, the IMF, World Banks, etc. By the 1970s there was a concerted and dangerous agenda to acclimate the western world to interdependency; not just dependency on imports and exports, but dependency of currency trading, treasury purchases and interbank wealth transfer systems like SWIFT.

This was the era when corporations began outsourcing western manufacturing to third world countries. This is when the dollar was fully decoupled from gold. When the IMF introduced the SDR basket system. When the decade long stagflationary crisis began.

This was when the World Economic Forum was founded. The Club of Rome and their climate change agenda. When numerous globalists started talking within elitist publications and white papers talking about a one world economy and a one world government (under their control, of course). By the 1990s everything was essentially out in the open and the plan was clear:

Their intention was to destroy national sovereignty and bring in an age of total global centralization. One of the most revealing quotes on the plan comes from Clinton Administration Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, who stated in Time magazine in 1992 that:

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority… National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

He adds in the same article:

“…The free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states’ willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.”

The globalists use international trade controls as a way to ensnare competing economies, forcing them to become homogeneous. They take away the self reliance of nations and pressure them to conform to global trade standards. It’s important to understand that they view centralized dominance of trade as a primary tool for eventually obtaining their new world order.

Keep reading

European Leaders Reject US Proposal of Russian Sovereignty Over Crimea Despite Russia Controlling the Region for the Last 10 Years

More insanity from the globalist Western European elites.

According to news reports last week, the Trump Administration suggested it was prepared to recognize Russian control over Crimea. This is part of a broader peace agreement that the US has facilitated between Ukraine and Russia.

If elected, President Trump promised to bring peace to Ukraine, but he did not understand that illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky and the globalist Western warmongers would be his main obstacles to peace in the region.

Crimea is a peninsula off Ukraine in the Black Sea. In 2014, Russia took control of the region and its ports during the Obama presidency, over ten years ago now. For much of its history Russia has controlled Crimea. Crimea was passed from the Soviet Union to Ukraine in 1994, not that long ago.

According to RT.com and others, the Europeans have rejected this idea.

They did nothing about Crimea for over ten years but suddenly this is a peace deal game-stopper.

How do they think this will play out if they insist on Russia returning Crimea to Ukraine.

RT reported:

European leaders have rejected a US proposal to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea as part of a draft peace deal on the Ukraine conflict, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. European officials told the outlet that such a move could cause a rift within NATO and force Kiev’s backers to choose between sticking with Ukraine or siding with Washington.

According to the report, US President Donald Trump’s team has presented Ukraine with a take-it-or-leave-it deal that includes Washington formally recognizing Crimea as Russian territory. US Vice President J.D. Vance has also suggested freezing the conflict along the current lines of control.

A senior European diplomat told the FT that it would be “impossible” to accept the US proposal, while one EU official claimed that “Crimea and future NATO membership aspirations are red lines for us.”

Keep reading

Back With A Vengeance: Nina Jankowicz Calls On Europeans To Oppose The US

Nina Jankowicz, the former head of Biden’s infamous Disinformation Governance Board, was “back with a vengeance.” 

After the outcry over the board led to its elimination, Jankowicz did what many of the displaced disinformation experts have done: she peddled her dubious skills to Europeans and others like a wandering rōnin without a master. 

Now, Jankowicz has appeared before one of the most anti-free speech bodies in the world — the European Union — to call upon those 27 countries to fight against the United States, which she called a world threat.

How the “Mary Poppins of disinformation” came to alight upon Europe is a familiar tale. 

The European Union has become the global hub for censorship efforts and, after she departed from the government, Jankowicz made a beeline for Europe.

I have been a long critic of Jankowicz, who became an instant Internet sensation due to a musical number in which she sang “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” in a TikTok parody of the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” 

After the Biden Administration reluctantly disbanded her board, she later moved to join a European group as a foreign agent to continue her work to block views that she considers disinformation.

The false portrayal of the United States as a lawless, autocratic nation no doubt thrilled the Europeans. 

In announcing her heading a private disinformation group called the American Sunlight Project, Jankowicz used the same hysteria to attract donors, insisting that “Disinformation knows no political party. Its ultimate victim is our democracy.”

Of course, Jankowicz herself has been accused of disinformation that served one particular party. 

She was previously criticized for allegedly spreading disinformation and advocating censorship.

The ultimate irony is that Jankowicz knows that she can count on many of us in the free speech community to support her right to spread such sensational and inflammatory information. 

Keep reading

‘Euro-Nazism’ is being revived – Moscow

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that the EU’s attempts to pressure candidate states not to attend the 80th anniversary of victory in World War II in Moscow are tantamount to a revival of Nazism.

On Monday, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, warned the leaders of EU members and candidate states against taking part in the event in the Russian capital on May 9. British daily The Telegraph later wrote that candidate states such as Serbia could be barred from joining the bloc if their leaders attend the Victory Day celebrations.

“If this is true, then Euro-Nazism is being reborn before our eyes,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram, citing the article.

“This is how the fascists 80 years ago forced those they considered ‘second-class people’ to renounce their homeland, ethnicity, and faith,” the spokeswoman added.

The Telegraph wrote that EU officials warned Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who has indicated that he would attend the May 9 parade, that the visit would derail his country’s accession to the bloc.

Keep reading