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Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
U.S. omnipresent in all major EU defense and strategic projects
Von der Leyen not only guarantees the continuation of the risks she feeds with his extremism. She also guarantees that these risks are the ideal pretext for denying the next European generations a future.
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And suddenly, the mainstream media seems to have woken up and finally realized that the European Commission, headed by Ursula von der Leyen, when it refers to the European “values”, is actually talking about the values it benevolently attributes to European billionaire families. The Guardian says that its “investigation” has revealed that 17 billionaires, listed by Forbes, are listed as the final beneficiaries of projects worth 3.3 billion euros.
It’s a mystery why it’s taken so long for The Guardian to see a reality that has been repeated uninterruptedly for dozens of years. A reality that is unfolding at the same time as homelessness, the housing, health and education crisis, war and social instability are on the increase. But even more inexplicable is the confinement of this “investigation” to the agricultural sector and projects linked to the Policy for European Agriculture. After all, while it’s bad, given that small farmers are going through an unprecedented crisis, we’re still talking about money to produce food. However, there are far more damaging and obvious cases to which, as we shall see, The Guardian and the mainstream media turn a blind eye.
In fact, the large corporations that own the mainstream media, social networks and financial resources, financing the electoral campaigns that follow one another within the framework of an absolutely fallacious democratic process, of which the upcoming elections in the U.S. are the latest paradigm, not only manage to get governments, which are always domesticated, to lower their taxes, but they also manage to obtain more tax breaks, tax exemptions and access to public funds for investment. A kind of “socialism of the rich”, in which the state socializes the costs and risks and privatizes the profits.
The European Investment Bank, in its latest “Investment Survey 2004”, shows how an important part of this transfer is taking place. Between the 1st quarter of 2020 and the 1st quarter of 2024, corporate investment only grew positively in one quarter (the 3rd quarter of 2023); in all the other quarters, there was only positive growth in the quarters in which investment by the state and households increased. Despite the hundreds of billions of euros that the EU allocates to private company projects, in the 1st quarter of 2024, corporate investment evolved negatively. In other words, the money we “invest” in these privileged beings is not leveraging investment, but rather accumulation.
And if you look at the accumulation side, you’ll find many of the answers, namely the way in which a foreign country sucks up many of the resources we produce. The war in Ukraine plays an absolutely fundamental role here, as a catalyst for the growth of public investment and the transfer of income to large corporations and, through them, to the richest families. That’s why the Western oligarchic elites feel a brutal desperation in the need to maintain the conflict in Ukraine. Even the U.S., as we see, will take their share, even in the case of the investment is supported by the EU.
Take, for example, the European Defense Fund, which is an invaluable source of money for the biggest corporations and multi-billionaires in the West. Take the case of Germany’s RHEINMETALL WAFFE MUNITION GMBH, which grew and grew fat during the Second World War at the expense of the destruction of Europe and the world, and is preparing to do the same again in the 21st century. But this time, it’s sharing the cake with the usual suspects.
RHEINMETALL WAFFE MUNITION GMBH is the coordinator and beneficiary of 6 major “investment” programs in installed military capacity (gunpowder, propellants, 155mm ammunition, camouflage, armored transport, infrastructure protection). In the project to increase production of 155mm cartridges alone, this company is guaranteeing €20,560,755.45). In other words, we Europeans pay for the machines and they get the profits from selling the ammunition. In the end, more Russians and Ukrainians die and we all become poorer and risk third world war.
A simple glance at RHEINMETALL’s capital structure reveals that Blackrock, UBS, Fidelity and Goldman Sachs all eat the cake, guaranteeing the political and financial conditions for leveraging profits and concentrating wealth. The conclusion can only be one: they are everywhere and the whole economy flows like a big siphon into the pockets of a handful of privileged people, for whom we all have to suffer.
Another of the great diners at this huge banquet of EU funds for companies is Germany’s OHB SYSTEM AG, which received €90,000,000.00 to build a missile attack warning system from space. If we can see why the never-confirmed warning was issued that Russia was developing missile systems in space, the truth is that the message was received by the right people and, not long afterwards, Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission was doing what was expected of it, approving whatever needed to be approved.
One look at the shareholder structure of OHB, a multibillion-dollar aerospace company, and you can see why it’s so easy to hand over your money. For The Guardian, which was so concerned about funding for agriculture, it’s hard to understand how it missed this: 65.4% of OHB belongs to the Fuchs family, one of the richest families in Germany and the world. Once again, like a mafia organization, the usual friends get their share, through a fund based in Luxembourg (Orchid Lux HoldCo S.a. r.l.), but which turns out to be a front for North American interests, but with a contact address in New York.
As for Italy, Von Der Leyen’s commission has funded a project linked to “propulsion systems for the air domain”, awarding €56,202,596.26 to GE AVIO SRL, a private company, known as AVIO AERO, linked to the aerospace sector, but part of the General Electric Company group, in its aerospace division.
Even the mostly state-owned AIRBU.S. DEFENCE AND SPACE SAS is no exception. Another regular recipient of EU funds for war and research, it is developing 134 projects that speak for themselves, funded by billions of euros through EU investment. From research to digital, defense, atomic energy and space, the taxes of European workers are the main feeders of this corporate giant. A look at the EU Funding & Tenders portal is enough to disillusion many of the believers in the capacity for innovation of large Western corporations. Thank goodness it’s public and its profits are less tax than we pay. But, there’s always a “but”.
AIRBU.S., the public part of which is still considerable, nevertheless has private investors such as Vanguard, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, UBS and a variety of trusts owned by American companies and others. In other words, AIRBU.S. remains public, by allowing the oligarchy, especially the U.S. oligarchy, to suck up the profits.
I know that these are investments to be made in the European area, creating jobs and skills for European workers. However, I can’t help but identify a set of standard circumstances that make the whole thing extremely suspicious.
Without doing an exhaustive search, in all the major projects I consulted, I found U.S. capital involved in some way, which begs the question: why do major European public investments always involve U.S. capital in some way, directly or indirectly?
Another question that arises as a result of this is the following: to what extent do the risks identified by the U.S. (the risk of a “Russian invasion”; the risk of an “attack in outer space by Russia”; the risk related to trade relations with the People’s Republic of China) influence: firstly, the creation of public investment needs and the creation of business structures to respond; secondly, the susceptibility of the European Commission to approve these projects.
Finally, if the answer to the presence of U.S. capital throughout the European Union’s defense industry – and strategic industry – is that the market is free and, as such, Wall Street capital has the right to enter the capital structures of European corporations, then, where is the independence and autonomy that Mario Draghi and Ursula von der Leyen advocated for Europe?
We can’t help but think that it will be very difficult for the European Union – and its member states – to achieve such strategic independence and autonomy, with its military-industrial complex and strategic industrial complex so supported or influenced by foreign capital.
What’s more, in a pure “deRisking” logic, so often used as a pretext for decoupling from the Chinese economy, von der Leyen’s EU doesn’t see any risk in the corporate characteristics of the European industrial complex, especially those that have to do with strategic aspects of defense, surveillance and response capacity.
In addition to the mafia-like smell that such influence brings with it, indicating the existence of a logic that points to the development of certain ventures in Europe only because the U.S. eats part of it, or indicating that the political benevolence of European funding is very much linked to this double characteristic, the presence of American capital and projects that respond to risks identified by the White House, this reality also demonstrates the lack of any trace of seriousness in the current power structure in the EU.
So, in the midst of so much risk, does the EU not see any risk for European companies in the use by the U.S. of laws such as the “Trade with the enemy act”, “Chps Act” or “Patriot Act”? Wouldn’t the case of ASML, a manufacturer of EUV and DUV semiconductor printers, which was prevented from selling a large part of its production to China, by order of the U.S., suffice? Therefore, creating serious problems for the Dutch economy? All because they have capital and industrial property relations with ASML, a company that is what it is today, essentially on the back of EU funds?
And that’s how you catch lies and fallacies. So, in this case, is there no longer a risk of dependence and strategic submission to foreign interests? In this case, does Ursula von Der Leyen already think that dependence is okay? Is that so, or is it because the responses that Ursula von Der Leyen is creating in Europe are aimed, not at responding to the needs of the European peoples, but to the needs of the U.S., in a total, dependent, strategic and criminal alignment with the policies of the White House?
Today, von der Leyen not only guarantees the continuation of the risks she feeds with his extremism. She also guarantees that these risks are the ideal pretext for denying the next European generations a future. Why hasn’t the mainstream press seen any of this?
Look at their capital structure, and then we’ll talk. Like any gangster, if you don’t pay well, someone will make you pay badly. Von der Leyen is here to guarantee it.
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