Economics/Statistics

Is Germany Heading for Dexit?

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by German Gorraiz Lopez

After Brexit, Germany’s hypothetical exit from the EU would provoke the liquidation of the Eurozone and lead to the gestation of a new European economic map with a return to national economic compartments.

The Doctrine of the “Debt Brake”

As Joel Kotkin points out in Forbes magazine, for decades “the countries of the North (Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Finland and the United Kingdom) have compensated for very low fertility rates and declining domestic demand by accepting immigrants and by creating highly productive export-oriented economies”. In line with this, Germany introduced in its Constitution in 2009 the doctrine of the ‘Schuldenbremse’ (debt brake) with the principal objective that “every generation should pay its expenses and not consume (in the form of debt) the taxes that their children will pay “.

Germany achieved successive economic surpluses in the last five years because the ECB’s zero or negative interest rates required less money to pay public debt and allowed Germany to accumulate reserves, which enabled them to address the social crisis of COVID-19 with a massive investment boost estimated at €20 billion to kick-start the economy. 

A traffic jam for the German locomotive

However, according to an analysis by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), at present Germany is burdened by the war in Ukraine and by the total cut off of the Russian gas supply, which has have already caused a contraction of about €100 billion (2.5% of GDP). This contraction cause collateral damage, pushing the economy into recession and raising the unemployment rate, combined with runaway inflation and the loss of trade surpluses.

Thus, according to euronews.com <http://euronews.com/> , the German locomotive lost steam in the fourth quarter of 2023 (negative growth of 0.3% of GDP) due to higher energy prices, reduced industrial production due to weak European demand, stagnating domestic consumption and the loss of competitiveness vis-à-vis the rest of the world — which has resulted in a severe decline of 1.2% in exports in 2023.

At the same time, ECB interest rates rose to 4.5%. That, combined with the rampant inflation of 5.9% in 2023, caused real wages to stagnate in Germany. Fiscal adjustments and cuts in agricultural subsidies have put the German countryside and the other trade unions on the warpath.

Charles Dumas (Lombard Street Research London) argues that “Returning to a cherished German mark would squeeze profits, increase productivity and raise consumers’ real incomes, because instead of lending savings surpluses to peripheral countries, Germans could enjoy better living standards in their country”.

Increase in social fracture

According to a recent EU report, 7.5 million Germans work in the low-income sector (mini-jobs), and according to the NGO Paritätischer Gesamtverband, 14% of the people in Germany (16.6% of the population) are at risk of poverty.

This, together with the high proportion of immigrants in Germany (almost 20%), will exacerbate xenophobic feelings in German society (especially among East Germans), due to the reduction in the labour supply, fierce competition for jobs, and the conversion of many outlying neighbourhoods into genuine ghettos of immigrants. Thus, a spectacular rise of ultra-right groups is foreseeable in the 2025 elections.

On the way to Dexit?

According to a survey conducted by TNS-Emnid for the weekly magazine Focus, 26% of Germans would consider supporting a party that wants to take Germany out of the euro. The rising star in the German political firmament, “Alternative for Germany” (AfD ), was initially formed by academics and businessmen but it has been radicalized. It has adopted clearly xenophobic postulates, such as the possible expulsion of millions of foreign citizens, and they are considering proposing a referendum on Germany’s exit from the Euro (Dexit).

This hypothetical exit of Germany from the Euro would mean the beginning of the end for the Eurozone and the formation of a new European economic map that will mean the return to the fixed economic compartments — and the triumph of the US in achieving the Balkanization of Europe.

Anglozionism

Here’s Why the ICJ Ruling on Genocide is a Crushing Defeat for Israel

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by Tarik Cyril Amar via RT

The Hague-based court has not called for a ceasefire and has no enforcement power, but its decision is resounding nonetheless

The United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled on the case that South Africa had brought against Israel. Those who mistake realism for simplistic materialism – the ‘it’s only there if I can touch it’ variety – may underestimate the significance of that ruling. In reality, it is historic. Here’s why.

First, and most importantly, the court has ruled against Israel. South Africa’s well-prepared brief was over 80 pages long, closely argued, and very detailed. But its gist was simple: It had applied to the ICJ – which only handles cases between countries, not individuals – to find that Israel is committing genocide in its attack on Gaza, thereby infringing on fundamental Palestinian rights as brutally as possible.

Such a finding always takes years. For now, at this preliminary stage, South Africa’s immediate request was for the judges to decide that there is, in essence, a high enough probability of this genocide taking place to do two things: First, continue the case (instead of dismissing it) and, secondly, issue an injunction (in this context called “preliminary measures”) ordering Israel to abstain from its genocidal actions so that the rights of its Palestinian victims receive due protection.

The court has done both, with a majority of 15 to 2. One of the two judges dissenting is from Israel. Those voting, in effect, against Tel Aviv included even the president of the court, from the US, and the judge from Germany, a country that has taken a self-damagingly pro-Israel line. As to the Israeli pseudo-argument claiming ‘self-defense,’ the court rightly ignored it. (Occupying powers simply do not have that right regarding occupied entities under international law. Period.)

This is a clear victory for South Africa – and for Palestine and Palestinians – and a crushing defeat for Israel, as even Kenneth Roth, head of thoroughly pro-Western Human Rights Watch recognizes with commendable clarity.

It is true that the ICJ has no power to enforce its rulings. That would have to come through the UN Security Council, where the US is protecting Israel, whatever it does, including genocide. Yet there are good reasons why representatives of Israel have reacted with statements so arrogant and aggressive that they only further damage Tel Aviv’s badly damaged international standing:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, has displayed his legal nihilism by dismissing as “outrageous” the closely reasoned finding of the court, at which Israel had every opportunity to argue its case. Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security, convicted racist and terrorist supporter Itamar Ben-Gvir, has derided the ruling with an X post simply saying: “Hague schmague.”

And, of course, as always, everyone not toeing Israel’s line is smeared as an “antisemite”: The ICJ is now joining the UN, the World Health Organization and, by now, almost everyone and everything outside the ideological bubble of Zionism on the list of those slandered in this manner. (One side effect of this rampant abuse of the accusation of antisemitism is, of course, that soon it won’t be taken seriously anymore, even when it should. And we will have Israel to thank for that.)

Notwithstanding the ICJ’s lack of an army to compel Tel Aviv to obey the law, these outbursts of rage betray great fear. You may ask why. After all, the one thing the ICJ did not do was order a ceasefire. Some commenters have focused on that fact, to argue – gleefully on the side of Israel and its allies, with great disappointment on the side of Israel’s victims, opponents, and critics – that this vitiates the ruling.

They are wrong. As, for instance, the Palestinian legal expert Nimer Sultany(based at the London School of Oriental and Asian Studies) has explained, a direct ceasefire order was always unlikely. There are several reasons for that: The ICJ cannot issue such an order to Hamas, so issuing one to Israel alone would have been difficult in principle and, by the way, would also have provided ammunition for Israeli propaganda. Since only the UN Security Council could give teeth to the ICJ’s ruling, trying to decree such a one-sided ceasefire would have made it easier for the US to sabotage the Council by discrediting the court’s ruling as biased. Although it was consistent for South Africa to ask for a ceasefire at the ICJ, the best institution to order one is still the Security Council. And it is plausible to interpret the specific demands that the ICJ has made of Israel as practicable only under an official or de-facto ceasefire. Indeed, Arab countries are now, it seems, gearing up to take that position and use the court’s ruling to demand a ceasefire at the Security Council. This may very well fail again, but even that failure will serve to weaken the position of the US, Israel’s vital sponsor.

Beyond the issue of the ceasefire, there are other – and, from an Israeli perspective, probably more frightening – factors. For even if the US keeps shielding Israel, this is a bigger world. Western governments and politicians that have supported Tel Aviv unconditionally – with arms, diplomatic and public-relations cover, and by repressing Israel’s critics – will feel a chill: The UN Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute don’t just condemn perpetrating a genocide but also not preventing or being complicit in one.

With the ICJ now having confirmed at the very least that genocide is probable enough to merit a case and require immediate action, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Annalena Baerbock, to name only a few, should start worrying: While the ICJ does not go after individuals, the International Criminal Court (ICC) does. Despite dragging its feet as much as it could, it is now especially likely to be compelled to open a full-fledged investigation.

In addition, cases can also be brought under national jurisdictions. All of this will take years. But it could end very badly for hubris-addled Western politicians who never imagined that such charges could escape their control (where they serve as politicized tools to go after African leaders and geopolitical opponents) and become their very own, potentially life-changing problem. In sum, the cost of siding with Israel has gone up. Not all but most politicians are solid opportunists. Tel Aviv will find it harder to mobilize its friends.

It is true that some Western governments and leaders, for instance, Canada or Rishi Sunak, have hurried to show their disdain for international law by attacking the ICJ’s ruling. But there’s an element of desperate bravado, of whistling in a darkening forest. And there’s a Catch-22 as well: Because, the more representatives of the West display their arrogance, the more they alienate the world. They may think that they are relieving Israel’s isolation. In reality, they are joining it on its downward trajectory: They are showing, once again, that their touted “rules-based order” is the opposite of the equal rule of international law for all.

Non-Western powers like China and Russia that have long resisted the hypocrisy of that ‘rules-based order’ and are not complicit in Israel’s atrocities, are earning global good will and geopolitical advantage. Hence, their positions and strategy will be confirmed by the ICJ ruling. This, as well, will weaken Israel further in the international arena.

If the world is bigger than the US or the West, it also contains much more than politics in the narrow sense of the term. In the realm of narratives, this is also a harsh setback for Israel and its supporters: Those who arrogantly dismissed the South African case as baseless or “a mockery,” for instance in The Economist, are now paying with their credibility. Their value as weapons in Israel’s struggle for global public opinion is reduced.

Last but not least, the domains of politics and narratives intersect, of course, with that of war: It is inevitable that those fighting Israel with arms will feel encouraged, and rightly so. For forces such as the Palestinian Resistance, the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement de facto ruling Yemen, Hezbollah, and Iran, this ICJ ruling coincides with Israel’s military failure in Gaza: For while its troops have massacred civilians (and obsessively recorded proud evidence of their crimes that is now coming to haunt them), they are far from either “eradicating Hamas”(the putative war aim) or freeing the hostages by force. Seeing that Israel’s international isolation is getting worse, its opponents will have ever less reason to give up.

This, in short, was a great setback for Israel. Its political model, combining apartheid, militarism, and a might-makes-right outlook, is not ‘working’ any longer, not even on its own terms. The future is not predictable. That Israel will be in worsening trouble is.

Saving Ukrainians from Themselves

Who Ordered the Shoot Down of IL76?

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by Sergey Markov

The order to kill Ukrainian prisoners was given not by Zelensky, but by Zaluzhny. Zelensky, on the contrary, wanted to make the most of the prisoner exchange on January 24 to celebrate his birthday on January 25. Make yourself the main hero of the military exchange and rescue. And use it to strengthen its declining popularity. Events have already been prepared there.

But Zaluzhny gave the order to shoot down the plane and thus broke this scenario for Zelensky.
This conspiracy theory is most widespread informally in Kyiv. Officially, of course, they say that Russia is to blame for everything, but unofficially they believe that this is a struggle between Zaluzhny and Zelensky.

Military Affairs

Is Putin’s decency inviting a world war? Comments on a new article by Paul Craig Roberts

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by Gilbert Doctorow via Gilbert Doctorow

Four years ago, I published an article in which I roundly criticized Vladimir Putin for being too gentlemanly, too civilized for his and our good, so that his every effort to avoid aggravating the stand-off between Russia and the United States was perversely enhancing the likelihood of a nuclear war.

See https://original.antiwar.com/gilbert_doctorow/2019/02/01/vladimir-putin-to-the-west-we-will-bury-you/

The position I set out in this piece ran against ‘group think’ among Putin and Russia cheerleaders on the one hand and Putin and Russia detractors, on the other hand. But it was obviously a position largely shared by the contrarian thinker Paul Craig Roberts. Over the years since 2019, Roberts has occasionally directed his large web readership to my articles, for which I am grateful. He has also published his own essays in which he makes similar points about the risks inherent in Putin’s throwing pearls to swine. The swine in question are, of course, the leaders of the United States and its European allies.

I offer today some thoughts on Roberts’ latest essay in this vein published online two days ago:

For those unfamiliar with Roberts, you will find most everything you need to know in his Wikipedia entry. His university degrees were earned in economics and this was the realm of his government service. Under Ronald Reagan, Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. His academic career before and after serving in the federal government was also made in this discipline.

As you see, Paul Craig Roberts is not a professional Russia expert. However, I contend that his understanding of Russian society is more profound than most academics and journalists who are considered to be experts, including, if I may shock politically correct critics of America’s Russia policies, my once friend and admired comrade in arms on the peace front, Professor Steve Cohen (RIP).

I will expand on the last point in a moment, but first things first.

Paul Craig Roberts faults Putin for being much too cautious today as he was for the eight years when the Minsk Accords were patently being ignored, when 15,000 Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas were being murdered by indiscriminate artillery fire from Ukrainian army units across the line of demarcation; when Kiev was being armed and prepared for NATO entry. As he sees it, Putin was ‘taken for a ride.’ Now the situation is repeating itself. Putin stands by and does virtually nothing while the Israel-Hamas war threatens at any moment to precipitate a regional war that in turn could become a world war in an instant.

I share Roberts’ disappointment with Russia’s tolerating the Ukrainian atrocities in Donbas for so long. However, there are others who question why Russians ever entered into the Minsk Accords to begin with, saying that they should have struck Kiev hard in 2014, while the Ukrainian military was in total disarray. They should not only have seized the Donbas then but overthrown the neo-Nazi regime that the United States had installed in Kiev.

Regrettably all of these criticisms of Russian restraint in 2014 to 2022 fail to consider what must have been crystal clear to Vladimir Putin: namely that until 2022 Russia did not have the economic strength to resist the kind of ‘sanctions from hell’ that Washington eventually imposed after the start of the Special Military Operation but could have just as easily imposed in 2014 or at any later date of its choosing. Russia also did not begin to have the strategic superiority that it reached only in 2018 when its new, world-beating armaments were tested and ready for serial production. In a word, it was not only Ukraine and its Western backers who bought time thanks to the Minsk Accords, but Putin’s Russia as well.

As regards the present situation in the Middle East and what Russia can and should do to prevent its spinning out of control, Paul Craig Roberts notes that there are reports in the Indian press that Russian-Iranian relations are being codified in an enhanced but unspecified military cooperation. Yet, there is no declaration of a mutual defense pact which alone could stop further adventurism in the region by the United States. Here I agree completely with Paul Craig Roberts. I remind readers that panelists and the presenter of Russia’s leading talk show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov have for more than a couple of weeks insisted that a mutual defense pact between Russia, Iran, North Korea and China should be rolled out here and now to stop further U.S. and Western aggression in the several global hot spots of the moment. To be sure, Xi is at least as hesitant to confront the USA directly with threats as Putin is, but that is no problem for Iran and North Korea, so the three should not wait any longer in declaring “one for all and all for one.”

Roberts also points to other current contradictions in Russia’s policies that look like weakness to Western officialdom. He mentions Russia’s failure to protect Syria against Israeli air and missile attacks.

Yes, these failures are hard to fathom and do point to excessive caution by Putin and his immediate entourage, including and especially in the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Sergei Lavrov may be a scholar and a gentleman, but he is not a street brawler, which is the quality Russia needs most right now. His ministry is itself full of contradictions. Lavrov’s press spokeswoman Maria Zakharova exemplifies precisely the ‘softly, softly’ approach that Roberts is criticizing. After every humiliation that Washington has imposed on Russia, Zakharova just whines and asks rhetorically: “Can you imagine..?”

In the month before Trump’s inauguration in 2016, Russian consular property in the States was seized by the feds, and all we heard from Zakharova was “Can you imagine?” In the spring of 2022, Belgium, acting in cahoots with the USA, froze 285 billion dollars of Russian state assets on deposit there. All we have heard from Russian officials since then is “Can you imagine…?”

Yes, we can imagine that the bastards are true to form and we ask where is the Russian response, preferably the symmetrical one, the old ‘eye for an eye.’

At the same time, within the Russian Foreign Ministry there are tough chaps like Deputy Minister Sergey Ryabkov, who came to our attention back in December 2021 when he said in essence to NATO: either withdraw to your 1996 borders or we will push you back to them. As we know, the Special Military Operation followed less than a month later. This is the fellow whom Russia needs at the helm of its foreign policy if not as Putin’s successor. I say this not for Russia’s sake but for ours; it is only this kind of shock therapy that can puncture the bubble in Washington and bring American political elites to their senses lest we stumble into a nuclear Armageddon.

Of course, among Kremlin insiders a hard and realistic line towards the West is now being pronounced by former president and current deputy head of the Russian Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev. However, in the West Medvedev made a name for himself as a patsy during his presidency. Today he is viewed as just a loose cannon on the deck and no one takes him seriously.

Paul Craig Roberts has tucked into the middle of his essay the following paragraph which merits repetition here:

From my experience with the liberal Russian intelligentsia, I would say that their program is surrender to Washington. They would rather be invited as visiting professors to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, and to serve as consultants to American corporations than to be in conflict with the West. As Putin seems to believe toleration of subversion is a sign of democracy, he could have been prevented from required action by pressure to prove that he is not, as the entirety of the West proclaims, a dictator. Putin would have saved many lives by ignoring the propaganda of his enemies and being more forceful in Russia’s defense.

The lives that could have been saved are not just the 400,000 Ukrainians towards whom Putin bears no responsibility but the 50,000 Russians who are estimated to have lost their lives in action since February 2022. That corresponds to a lot of widows and it cannot be compensated by showing on state television how the president takes his New Year’s Day dinner with widows and orphans.

I remind readers that Paul Craig Roberts is a dyed in the wool conservative. His understanding of the pernicious influence of the ‘liberal Russian intelligentsia’ is entirely correct from my experience. Their influence on Putin goes back a long way, to his first years in government when he was a deputy to mayor of St Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak responsible for attracting foreign investment to the city. These liberals were present in large numbers in Putin’s presidential administration until the start of the Ukraine war, when many packed their bags and left the country.

Of course these liberal Russian intelligenty have always been treated with great indulgence by American experts on Russia, and not only by those experts who are viscerally anti-Putin. They were the friends and sources of information for otherwise Russia-friendly Steve Cohen, for example. But then again, almost none of our experts could be considered to be conservative on a par with Paul Craig Roberts in the traditional sense, without a ‘neo’ prefix.

Military Affairs

“Are they not idiots?” Ukraine Demands Russia Disarms Voluntarily

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via RT

As President Vladimir Zelensky pushes forward with his so-called “peace formula,” which has been dismissed by the Kremlin as “absurd,” Ukrainian officials continue to propose additional terms and conditions.

The conflict in Ukraine can only end with a “complete liberation” and “restoration of its 1991 borders,” Kiev’s deputy defense minister Ivan Gavrilyuk told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel last week. Only then can Moscow and the pro-Kiev “coalition” sign a document to “create preventive mechanisms so that Russia will never think about another war against Ukraine or any country in the future.”

“This document must include Russia’s renunciation of nuclear weapons, because it poses a threat to the world,” Gavrilyuk claimed.

A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, voiced a similar idea, claiming that the negotiation should take place only when Moscow “suffers a global defeat,” or at the very least a series of “tactical defeats,” and “internal riots” that would threaten political stability in Russia and force it to “voluntarily give up nuclear weapons.”

“What is a global defeat? The Russian Federation will no longer be able to dominate… will not be able to use its veto right in the UN Security Council,”Podoliak explained. “Then conditions are possible for nuclear weapons, and for the number of carriers of nuclear weapons, including missiles of a certain range, and for cross-border buffer zones, etc.”

During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelensky once again attempted to promote his so-called ‘peace formula’, which among other things proposes that Russia pay reparations, surrender its officials to face war crimes tribunals, and restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders. It has previously been rejected by the Kremlin as “absurd,” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov referring to it as a publicity stunt and “a figment of a sick imagination.”

“Are they not idiots?” Putin asked, adding that if Ukraine had simply ignored Johnson, then the violence could be long over by now. “This just proves yet again that they are not independent people.”