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Is the EU Breaking Up? Sanctions Against Russia Are Extended.
Eric Zuesse
Not only is there dissension within the European Union on account of the Polish President of the European Commission’s having rammed through on December 21st an extension of economic sanctions against Russia, but on the same day, the person who (though only until the end of this year) speaks for the Presidency of the European Union, who is Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, said that Poland’s new far-right government is going too far to change Poland’s own Constitution in order to enable that government to do what it wants to do. He says: if that Polish Party carries it out, Poland’s voting rights in the EU should be suspended.
German Economic News (GEN) reports that Asselborn “said that the government of Poland’s nationalist conservative party Law and Justice (PiS) of Jaroslaw Kaczynski kicks fundamental European principles ‘underfoot,’” and engages in “Night and Fog actions” against its nation’s Constitution and journalists, which actions remind Asselborn of “the Soviet Union.” Even that right-wing Polish Party’s own founder, Lech Walesa, now criticizes his Party’s actions.
GEN says that this far-right Polish Party, “with 38 percent of the vote, has become the strongest force in the parliamentary elections in October and had won an absolute majority of seats. Since taking office, the government of Prime Minister Beata Szydlo tries to get the Constitutional Court and unfavorable news media under its control. On Saturday, the second weekend in a row, thousands of protesters were demonstrating in the streets against the new government.”
By comparison, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party had imposed German dictatorship after winning 43% of the votes (5% more than PiS did).
A week before this anti-PiS statement from Asselborn, on December 14th, the Guardian had reported that the EU “Parliament’s German president, Martin Schulz, likens events in Poland to ‘coup d’etat’ after new rightwing government altered make-up of constitutional court.” Schultz told German Radio that, “What is happening in Poland has the character of a coup d’etat and is dramatic. I assume that this week or in January at the latest we will have to discuss this extensively in the European parliament.” Poland’s new Foreign Minister called Schultz’s statement “unfounded” and “irresponsible”; and Poland’s new Prime Minister called Schultz’s statement “unacceptable.” Both demanded an apology, which Schultz refused. Poland’s Foreign Minister went on to say that, “as in many other democratic countries, we are simply having a normal political debate about institutional solutions.”
The Guardian’s report also noted that, “In November Schulz criticized Poland’s government, which is anti-immigrant, for what he called a lack of solidarity in dealing with the refugee crisis. The interior minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, reacted by calling Schulz’s words ‘scandalous’ and ‘another example of German arrogance’.”
This far-right Polish Party had won because of a voter-backlash against the flood of refugees pouring into Europe to escape the jihadists that the U.S. and its Saudi and other fundamentalist-Sunni allies had produced by importing and weaponizing jihadists into Syria, and ultimately into Libya after the U.S. and its allies had bombed away the prior, Russian-friendly, non-sectarian government of Muammar Gaddafi there. Also, the U.S. had overthrown in February 2014 Ukraine’s Russia-friendly government and weaponized them to perpetrate ethnic cleansing of the region of Ukraine that had voted 90%+ for him, and which refused to accept the coup-imposed government.
As a consequence of America’s actions (assisted by the Sunni Arab aristocracies), the EU has developed grave splits, which increasingly threaten to break up that governmental organization, and to return Europe to its independent nations, not all of whom will continue to accept their existing subordination to America’s aristocracy.
Another source of those splits has been Ukraine. Back in February 2014 the U.S. — in a carefully planned and executed coup pretending to be a spontaneous “Maidan revolution for democracy,” in order to overthrow Ukraine’s Democratically elected Russia-friendly President — hired organizers and gunmen from one of Ukraine’s two racist-fascist or ideologically nazi Parties, “Right Sector,” who carried out this coup, in which the U.S. State Department instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine whom to appoint to run Ukraine after the coup would be completed. She chose Arseniy Yatsenyuk on 4 February 2014, and he became installed 22 days later, and he in turn installed top members of Ukraine’s two nazi Parties to run the internal security and the military, as well as the Ukrainian central bank, and he replaced the existing top generals with ones that wanted to exterminate and drive out the residents in the areas that had voted more than 75% for the man whom the U.S. had overthrown (including both Crimea and Donbass). (Eliminating those voters would make Obama’s nazi government of Ukraine virtually permanent.)
Obama’s Ukrainian nazis massacred at least dozens of Crimeans who were fleeing from their coup in Kiev (Ukraine’s capital), and this “Pogrom of Korsun” became a rallying cry for Crimeans to call for Russia’s protection, since the residents of Crimea have always been far more pro-Russian than pro-Ukrainian and they loathe the U.S. But Obama and his European stooges imposed economic sanctions against Russia for having done what it could to protect the Crimeans, and the people in Donbass. Even though Russia refused to accept the urgings of Donbassers to be accepted into Russia as Crimenans had been, Obama and his stooges claimed that the ethnic cleansing in Donbass was somehow due to Russia, and slapped economic sanctions against Russia. Obama and his stooges are still backing Ukraine’s ethnic-cleansing program and want it to continue; and they blame Russia for ‘violations of the peace process’ whenever people in Donbass fire back against invading Ukrainian troops.
Though some EU nations were strongly against anti-Russia sanctions, all of the European Commissioners voted to continue them. Unanimity in these things is required, and it was achieved. On 8 October 2014, the Economist Intelligence Unit predicted, “we think that EU sanctions against Russia will be eased substantially when they come up for renewal in mid-2015, owing to the need for unanimity among the 28 member states, which will be harder to reach after another year of weak or negative growth for many.” This “weak or negative growth for many” has continued, and the Economist’s prediction noted that, “Unanimity is a difficult threshold to reach in the EU at the best of times; the 28 members did well to reach it once in order to impose sanctions.” But despite those things, unanimity is being repeated, yet again. Even countries such as Italy (which had passionately protested) voted for them at the European Commission.
Clearly, the entire West gets in line, whenever President Obama says: Line up!
But how long can this slavishness continue, until one EU member-nation quits? And what will then happen after? Will the EU (and perhaps NATO too) end up ultimately consisting only of former Eastern-Bloc EU members? Maybe that’s all the United States needs, in order to be able to place its nuclear weapons right on Russia’s doorstep (which seems to be America’s supreme objective here — capitulation by Russia).
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Is the EU Breaking Up? Sanctions Against Russia Are Extended. was originally published on Washington's Blog
Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/eu-breaking-sanctions-russia-extended.html
