🇫🇷 Marine Le Pen has the power to bring the Eurozone into a crisis worse than the one from 2009

Marine Le Pen could be about to trigger a Greece-style eurozone crisis as she decides whether to bring down France’s fledging government.

As the European Union faces up to political and economic turmoil — with Romania's national election giving a hard-right Russia fan the highest vote share; Germany battered by a string of massive job losses; and leaders flailing over how to deal with another Donald Trump presidency — the French firebrand might be about to set the whole thing alight.

The far-right politician and her National Rally party are weighing whether to vote against Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s budget, which would not only pull the plug on his fragile coalition government that has been in place less than three months, but also terrify financial markets and send shock waves around Europe.

“If the budget remains as it is, we’ll vote for no confidence,” Le Pen said after meeting Barnier for more than an hour Monday morning. “If the government collapses, the president of the Republic will have to choose a new prime minister.”

Barnier’s centrist-conservative minority government, formed after President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly called an election in June that fractured parliament into three left-wing, centrist and far-right blocs, has prioritized sorting out the country’s disastrous public finances. Years of lavish spending have brought France’s deficit — that is, the difference between how much it spends and how much it receives in taxes — to more than 6 percent of the entire economy, twice as much as is permitted by EU rules.

So far, Le Pen has resisted torpedoing the coalition. But she has always said she would vote down the budget if she didn’t like it. And she hates it. So does her rival left-wing group.

A decade ago, huge public debt in Greece almost toppled the single-currency eurozone. It exposed how crises couldn’t be contained in a single country, and how it didn’t take much for the economies and banking systems of Portugal, Ireland and Spain to start teetering. Even big nations like France and Italy, so important to the health of the bloc, felt the heat.

But back then, Germany was strong under its chancellor, Angela Merkel. It could afford to bail out struggling allies and had the political capital to steady the ship. That’s now no longer the case, with the German economy in disarray and its government beleaguered.

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-eurozone-greece-russia-germany-donald-trump-presidency-france-deficit-left-wing/

🇩🇪 German steelmaker, ThyssenKrupp says it will have to cut 11k jobs or 40% of its workforce by 2030

The company said Monday that it is aiming to cut around 5,000 roles by 2030, through reducing production and streamlining administration. A further 6,000 jobs will be transferred to external service providers or shed through the sale of business units.

“Increasingly, (global) overcapacity and the resulting rise in cheap imports, particularly from Asia, are placing a considerable strain on competitiveness,” Thyssenkrupp Steel said in a statement.

The news is the latest blow to Europe’s biggest economy, where storied manufacturers face a perfect storm of competition from Chinese rivals, traditional disadvantages such as steep labor costs and high taxes, and energy costs driven higher by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

🔗 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/25/business/thyssenkrupp-steel-germany-layoffs/index.html

🇪🇺 Lack of growth threatens revival of eurozone debt crisis, ECB warns

Higher interest rates mean higher debt repayment costs as European Union countries stare down the barrel of a trade war.

A weak growth outlook and looming U.S. tariffs on European imports threaten to reignite concerns over debt sustainability in the eurozone, the European Central Bank warned on Wednesday.

“Elevated debt levels and high budget deficits, coupled with weak long-term growth- potential and policy uncertainty, increase the risk that fiscal slippage will reignite market concerns over sovereign debt sustainability,” the Bank said in a semi-annual Financial Stability Review.

Low growth is a particularly thorny issue for countries, like France and Italy, where public finances are already stretched. With market interest rates having settled into a higher range than before the pandemic, overall debt servicing costs are rising: the bonds that countries issued at dirt-cheap levels in the 2010s are maturing every year, and have to be replaced with new ones paying much higher rates. That means that governments either have to raise taxes or find economies elsewhere to pay the rising interest bill.

The result of the U.S. elections has complicated an already-bleak outlook for the European economy, which policymakers see growing a meager 0.8 percent this year and 1.3 percent next year. The Bank will revise its forecast at its next monetary policy meeting in December.

📝: In other words, the EU is headed straight for a worse economic crisis than seen in 2009 and France's political instability can make that crisis arrive in an instant.

🔗 https://www.politico.eu/article/eurozone-lack-of-growth-threatens-financial-stability-ecb-warns/

Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s nominee for director for counterterrorism, says Trump has said privately his plan to end the Ukraine War will be to threaten the "thug" Putin with flooding Ukraine with so much armed support it will make previous aid "look like peanuts"

📎 Keith Woods

🇨🇦 PM Trudeau tells reporters re: phone call with incoming U.S. President Donald Trump after threat to impose 25% tariffs on products from Canada & Mexico: "It was a good call. This is something that we can do, laying out the facts, moving forward in constructive ways."

📎 CPAC

📝 José Díaz Briseño on X: "Mexico’s Sheinbaum responds publicly to Trump’s tariff threat with letter catering mostly to a domestic audience while Canada’s Trudeau makes a private call to Trump.

What will prove more effective?"

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj6kj2752jlo

🇮🇱🇱🇧 Israeli cabinet approves cease-fire with Hezbollah

Guns on the Israel-Lebanon border would go silent on Wednesday under the deal, Reuters reported. Under the agreement, fighting would stop for 60 days, two Israeli officials told Reuters, allowing time for Israel to gradually withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon while Hezbollah moves its forces farther from Israel's border.

"In full coordination with the United States, we retain complete military freedom of action," Netanyahu said. "Should Hezbollah violate the agreement or attempt to rearm, we will strike decisively."

Israeli approval would pave the way for a cease-fire declaration by President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron, according to four senior Lebanese sources who spoke to Reuters on Monday.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/11/26/israel-hezbollah-lebanon-ceasefire/76561160007/

🇬🇧 Uberboyo on X:

"The UK is a bizzare tyranny:

- Wealthy are leaving in droves
- Healthy natives are crushed (self hate, prison, death tax)
- Pushing for war with Russia
- Killing innovation
- Great replacement

The state is like a parasite killing its host with no long term plan"

https://vxtwitter.com/uberboyo/status/1861389090890928340

🇺🇸🚢 "Here are the top 10+ reasons why US Navy ships look like rusting pieces of scrapyard junk:

•They aren’t allowed to use old, toxic-but-effective paint.
•They aren’t allowed to use new, eco-friendly-but-effective paint.
•They aren’t allowed to send people over the side on ropes.
•They aren’t allowed to violate even a single one of the myriad idiotic Navy safety rules.
•They aren’t allowed to use chemicals like Ospho.
•They don’t allow shipyards to work quickly to strip and immediately paint hulls.
•They aren’t allowed to use “dangerous” equipment like the most powerful hydroblasters.
•They don’t allow shipyards to bypass overly restrictive state and local laws in places like California.
•They aren’t allowed to update requirements to reflect the latest application science.
•They aren’t allowed to let shipyards complete the work without bureaucratic entanglements and armies of clipboard carriers.
•They aren’t allowed to let captains overrule workplace safety regulations.
•They aren’t allowed to spy on other nations, like South Korea and China, to learn why they do a better job at preventing rust.
•They aren’t allowed to send uniformed officers to commercial shipping conferences like SMM to learn about the latest paint technologies.
•They aren’t allowed to purchase paint and equipment that actually works.
•They aren’t allowed to admit the US Merchant Marine does certain things better than the Navy.
•They aren’t allowed to turn off mandated DEI computer training long enough to get painting done.
•They aren’t allowed to ask the USCG how they manage to keep their cutters white.
•They aren’t allowed to fire any of the 83,000 people who work for the Navy’s shipbuilding and repair arm, NAVSEA.
•They never fire the Admirals or SES officials responsible for the problem."

https://fxtwitter.com/johnkonrad/status/1861417625957360026

There were 1,449 persecutions & 98 convictions for internet speech in Russia 2008-2017. By contrast, there were 1,696 persecutions & 1,399 convictions for internet speech in UK in 2016 *alone* - despite having a population half that of Russia.

📎 Nemets

https://www.thetimes.com/article/police-arresting-nine-people-a-day-in-fight-against-web-trolls-b8nkpgp2d

https://meduza.io/static/0001/Agora_Internet_Freedom_2017_RU.pdf

🇫🇰 Oil field under Falkland Islands even bigger than first thought

A giant oil discovery in the Falkland Islands is even bigger than originally thought, it has emerged.

An independent report into the North Falkland Basin has upgraded estimates of recoverable oil resources from 791m barrels to 917m – twice the annual output of the entire North Sea.

Rockhopper Exploration, the company planning to drill in the field, said it planned to extract 532m barrels, up from a previous estimate of 312m. Most of the remainder could be recovered under further plans.

The government of the Falkland Islands has approved production despite Labour blocking new oil and gas licences shortly after coming into office, risking an embarrassment for Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary.

The ban does not apply to the territory, which governs itself apart from foreign affairs and defence, which the British Government handles.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/oil-field-under-falkland-islands-173431035.html

🇮🇱🇱🇧 Israeli soldiers defile church in southern Lebanon, video shows

The video captured soldiers shouting and joking, staging a mock wedding between two of their peers who embraced afterward. Other soldiers wrestled on the church floor while their comrades laughed loudly.

The video has sparked outrage across Lebanon and among Christians in Israel, KAN said.

An Israeli military statement called the incident a “serious act,” saying an investigation was underway into the behavior and vowed a disciplinary action against perpetrators.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-soldiers-defile-church-in-southern-lebanon-video-shows/3405244

🇷🇺🇸🇾❌🇸🇾🇸🇾 — Al-Fath Al-Mubin Operations Room (HTS, the National Liberation Front, and other factions) began a battle in what they referred to as preemptive operation since the morning on the axes of the western Aleppo countryside.

➡️Russian aircraft, SAA warplanes, helicopters, and rocket launchers are now extensively bombing areas of the Idlib and Aleppo countrysides (Taftanaz, Idlib city, Darat Izza, Al-Atarib, and others).

➡️The direct participation of Russian aircraft and the return of SAA warplanes to bomb the area is likely to escalate significantly in the coming hours.
Most likely, the fighting axes will not be limited to the western Aleppo countryside.

🇩🇪German leaders settle on Feb. 23 snap election

The leaders of Germany’s major parties have agreed to hold a federal election on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2025, following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s troubled three-party coalition last week.

Scholz is now expected to hold a vote of confidence on Dec. 16 paving the way for the February election. For days, there has been speculation and debate on the timing of the vote.

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-federal-snap-election-take-place-feb-23-2025/

https://archive.ph/kZN5A

🇸🇾 - Turkish claimed "operational area" for the HTS offensive.