Blues for Europa

[blindpig]

Politico Helped Launder Ukraine’s Emerging Anti-Polish Propaganda Narratives



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 6, 2024

The combined effect is to prompt pro-Ukrainian protests inside Poland to pressure Prime Minister Tusk from the bottom-up into cracking down on the farmers’ protests in parallel with prompting the EU to do the same from the top-down.

Politico just published a piece claiming that “Putin the only winner as Poland’s Tusk flounders over Ukraine border fight”, which came after “Ukraine Tried To Discredit Poland By Hyping Up Its Import Of Russian Agricultural Products”. Prior to both information warfare provocations, Lvov’s mayor smeared the protesting Polish farmers as “pro-Russian provocateurs”, which was followed by Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency alleging that Russia is exploiting the protests to weaken support for Kiev.

Ukraine’s emerging anti-Polish propaganda campaign clearly aims to discredit the protesters as either “Russian agents” or that country’s “useful idiots” while questioning Warsaw’s commitment to Kiev by hyping up its import of Russia’s agricultural products. The combined effect is to prompt pro-Ukrainian protests inside Poland to pressure Prime Minister Tusk from the bottom-up into cracking down on the farmers’ protests in parallel with prompting the EU to do the same from the top-down.

Politico’s participation in this campaign internationalizes it and preconditions the Western audience to expect the aforementioned scenarios. Readers are left with the impression that President Putin is meddling in Poland via “agents of influence” and/or “useful idiots” as part of his supposedly long-running attempts to divide the West from within via information warfare. The truth, however, is that the preceding narrative is actually a form of information warfare that’s intended to manipulate Westerners.

For starters, the farmers’ protests are a legitimate grassroots movement that’s supported by a whopping 78% of Poles according to an Ipsos poll from late February. Neither the participants nor their sympathizers are operating under Russian influence or as agents of that country. It’s incredibly insulting to imply that either or both of them are, and this malicious smear – which is all the more disrespectful in the Polish context – can backfire by provoking Poles to double down on their support for this movement.

About that, the second point to make is that the farmers’ protesters could morph into a modern-day form of the Old Cold War-era Solidarity movement, which could further undermine Tusk’s rule. The totalitarian tactics that he’s employed to impose his liberal-globalist vision onto Poland has plunged the country into its worst political crisis since the 1980s. His foreign patrons think that forcefully dispersing the protests could nip this movement in the bud, but that could backfire by making them more popular.

And finally, the influx of cheap Ukrainian grain onto the Polish market has endangered farmers’ livelihoods, while the low-quality thereof has enraged society’s many health-conscious members. By comparison, Russian agricultural imports are approximately one-tenth of Ukrainian ones, and their quality is much higher since they have to meet EU standards unlike Kiev. These facts comprehensively discredit the most emotive part of Ukraine’s emerging anti-Polish propaganda campaign.

Nevertheless, Politico predictably omitted them from their report, which laundered these false claims in order to mislead their targeted Western audience about the situation. It remains unclear whether Tusk will capitulate to the forthcoming pressure, but there’s no doubt that Ukraine and the West will soon pressure him like never before. They should be careful what they wish for, however, since turning the farmers’ protests into a modern-day Solidarity movement could lead to unpredictable consequences.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/politico ... r-ukraines

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Latest European Propaganda: Russia Is Flooding Europe With Illegal Migrants

Robert Bridge

March 5, 2024

The threat of a right-wing takeover appears imminent, and Europe has only itself to blame for that, Robert Bridge writes.

Western media is in full-blown hysteria mode, asserting that Vladimir Putin is ‘weaponising’ the flow of migrants in an effort to destabilize upcoming European elections.

Right up there with ridiculous claims of “little green men” and “tractor protests from Moscow,” Europe is now accusing Russia of fielding paramilitary forces and private mercenaries for the purpose of directing waves of migrants from Africa across the Mediterranean Sea and into the heart of Europe, an apparent effort to ratchet up the spring fever just in time for general elections across the continent.

With no loss of irony, Western propagandists are disseminating allegations that the Kremlin is in the process of agitating those African nations that for so long suffered from European colonial rule, namely Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan, Ghana, Central African Republic and Libya, a formerly highly developed country that was destroyed by a U.S.-led attack in 2011.

The Telegraph would have its British readers believe it has “seen” intelligence documents detailing plans for “Russian agents” to create a “15,000-man strong border police force” comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants. Anyone hoping to review something like photographic evidence of this massive army would be advised not to hold their breath. Apparently, the thousands of Russian recruits are so technologically advanced they are invisible to spy satellites.

While it stands to reason that millions of desperate refugees from these turbulent nations would seek shelter in Europe, or possibly even in the United States, risking a trans-Atlantic journey to reach the wide-open U.S.-Mexican border, Brussels simply hopes to deflect attention away from its immigration failures onto Moscow, a sham that is transparent to anyone with even a half-functioning brain.

Let’s not forget that we’ve heard such allegations before.

Without so much as a single apprehended trespasser, Moscow was accused of trying to foment a refugee crisis by transferring asylum seekers to its border with Finland, thus prompting the new NATO lackey to close its land crossings with Russia in contravention of all diplomatic norms. The truth of the matter is that Helsinki was aggravating Russophobia to make the bitter pill of increased spending on Western-made (read: American) armaments go down smoother for Nordic voters.

Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, has also been accused – once again, without a shred of evidence – of sending immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa to its borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

The latest wave of Russophobia to strike the European capitals comes at a time when migration is set to be a key issue in general elections on the continent, as well as in the UK, where the drumbeat about Russian-sponsored migrant invasion parties resonates the loudest.

An unidentified security source reportedly told the Telegraph: “If you can control the migrant routes into Europe then you can effectively control elections, because you can restrict or flood a certain area with migrants in order to influence public opinion at a crucial time.”

“A failure to control the number of migrants coming to the UK is already seen as a major weakness for Rishi Sunak who is struggling to push through a scheme to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda to stop the flow of small boats across the Channel,” the British daily continued.

Sunak made “stopping the boats” one of his top priorities as Prime Minister, though a survey of British sentiment earlier this year showed that three-quarters of voters believe the pledge has not gone well.

Since June 2023, over 52,000 illegal migrants were recorded as entering the UK, up 17 percent on the previous year. Data released last month revealed that the number of illegal migrants granted asylum in the UK hit a record high in 2023 as border guards waved through thousands of applications “in an attempt to clear a huge post-pandemic backlog.” What is even more laughable, albeit totally predictable, is that the people doing the “waving through” were British border officials, not secret “Russian agents.”

With EU elections in June, the European parliament looks set to shift hard to the right, with migration already proving to be a key issue for voters. Who best to blame for this approaching debacle? Certainly not Angela Merkel, who is personally responsible for much of the mess. Once again, Russia serves as a convenient bogeyman for the blockheaded decision-making processes coming out of the EU, and we’ve heard such accusations before.

In February 2016, one year after Merkel opened the floodgates to some 2 million migrants, many of them Muslims from Syria, U.S. General Philip Breedlove, Head of NATO forces in Europe, blamed Russia for working to exacerbate the refugee flows in a dastardly ploy to destabilize and destroy the EU. In a testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, he said, “Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration from Syria. In an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.”

Nearly a decade later, the same reckless utterances are being made, although this time around the European public, more skeptical about ‘Russia the enemy’ narrative following the Nord Stream fallout, is prepared to express its anger at the ballot box come June during elections for European Parliament. Far-right populist parties are polling well in several EU countries, notably in Austria, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. This terrifies Brussels, as the threat of a right-wing takeover appears imminent, and Europe has only itself to blame for that.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... -migrants/

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SCOTT RITTER: The Minds of Desperate Men
March 5, 2024
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France’s Emmanuel Macron last week suggested the suicidal idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine to confront Russia militarily.


French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, in 2022. (NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

“O mischief, thou art swift, to enter in the thoughts of desperate men!”

—Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1

With these words, William Shakespeare, the immortal bard, captures the psychology of men who, believing they are confronted with a situation for which there is no hope of resolving, undertake actions that will inevitably lead to their death.

Although set in 14th century Mantua, Italy, Shakespeare’s tragedy could easily have been transported in time to present day France, where French President Emmanuel Macron, in the role of a modern Romeo, after learning of the demise of his true love, Ukraine, decides to commit suicide by encouraging the dispatch of NATO troops to Ukraine to confront Russia militarily.

Macron was hosting a crisis meeting last week, convened to discuss the deteriorating conditions on the battlefield in Ukraine following the Russian capture of the fortress city of Adviivka. The meeting was attended by senior representatives from NATO member states, including the U.S. and Canada.

“We should not exclude that there might be a need for security that then justifies some elements of deployment,” Macron said during a press conference convened after the meeting. “But I’ve told you very clearly what France maintains as its position, which is a strategic ambiguity that I stand by.”

The other participants of the meeting immediately rushed forward to announce that, from their perspective, there was no “strategic ambiguity” — the dispatch of NATO forces to Ukraine was not on the table.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended the Paris talks, rejected Macron’s proposal out of hand. “What was agreed from the beginning among ourselves and with each other also applies to the future,” Scholtz declared, “namely that there will be no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European states or NATO states.”

Scholz’s statement was echoed by other NATO leaders, leaving France standing alone to bear the consequences of Macron’s “strategic ambiguity.”

Even as NATO rushed forward to bring clarity to Macron’s stance, Russia made it quite clear what the consequences of any precipitous deployment of NATO forces to Ukraine would be. Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, declared that, in the event of any NATO deployment into Ukraine,

“we should not talk about the probability but about the inevitability [of a direct war with NATO]. That’s how we assess it.”

Peskov noted that most NATO nations participating in the Paris conference “maintain a fairly sober assessment of the potential dangers of such an action and the potential danger of being directly involved in a hot conflict, involving them on the battlefield.”

He also noted Macron’s stance regarding “the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” an objective shared by the U.S. and the NATO secretary general.

Putin Responds

In his annual address to the Russian Parliament, delivered a few days after Macron gave his press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin removed any ambiguity as to what the consequences of any NATO intervention in Ukraine would be.

“We remember the fate of those who once sent their contingents to the territory of our country,” Putin said, referring to the past invasions of Russia by Hitler and Napoleon. “But now the consequences for potential interventionists will be much more tragic.”

And, just to drive the point home, Putin went on to describe Russia’s most recent advances in the field of strategic nuclear weapons — a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik, which is in the final stages of development, and the deployment of Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles and Avangard hypersonic warheads that are immune to Western anti-missile defenses.

Putin pointed out that two of these new Russian weapons — the Zircon and Kinzhal —have seen combat duty in the Ukrainian conflict.

The NATO leaders “must grasp that we also have weapons capable of striking targets on their territory,” Putin said. “Everything they are inventing now, spooking the world with the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, which potentially means the end of civilization — don’t they realize this?”

The clearest evidence available that NATO leaders do not realize the consequences of their actions comes in the form of a transcript of a conversation, released by the editor-in-chief of RT, Margarita Simonyan, on her page on the VK social network, which has four senior German military officers discussing how they planned to implement instructions given to them by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius regarding the delivery of the Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine.


Putin presenting RT’s Simonyan with an award in May 2019. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

As the transcript shows, the assurances given by German Chancellor Scholz that Germany would not become directly involved in the Ukraine conflict were little more than a lie.

In addition to discussing the logistical issues involving the transfer of these weapons, the German officers discussed their possible employment, including how they could be used to attack the Crimea Bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula with southern Russia.

“The [Crimean] bridge in the east is hard to hit, as that’s quite a narrow target, but the Taurus can do that, and it can also hit ammo depots,” one of the German officers noted, prompting a reply by another, who declared that “there is an opinion that the Taurus will handle that (hit the Crimean Bridge) if the French Dassault Rafale fighter jet is used.”


The Crimean or Kerch Strait Bridge connecting the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar Krai in Russia with the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea. (Rosavtodor.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Scholz has been reticent about joining Britain and France, which have transferred Storm Shadow and Scalp long-range missiles, respectively, to Ukraine.

“What is being done in the way of target control and accompanying target control on the part of the British and the French can’t be done in Germany,” Scholz said after the Paris gathering, referring to the indirect role played by Britain and France in enabling Ukrainian pilots to launch the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles from modified SU-24 aircraft.

“Everyone who has dealt with this system knows that,” Scholz noted, implying the need for a direct role by German military personnel in the targeting and operation of the Taurus missile.

“German soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked to targets this (Taurus) system reaches,” Scholz said, adding “not in Germany either.”

Scholz, it appears, understands the potential consequences of German involvement in the targeting and operation of any Taurus missiles used by Ukraine against Russia.

“This clarity is necessary,” Scholz said. “I am surprised that this doesn’t move some people, that they don’t even think about whether, as it were, a participation in the war could emerge from what we do.”

Clearly there is a disconnect between the German chancellor and his defense minister.


NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Pistorius in June 2023. (NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In case the German officers and their minister failed to “realize” the potential consequences of their actions, the Russian military, a day after Putin’s address to the Russian Parliament, carried out what it called “a combat training launch of a mobile-based solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile PGRK Yars, equipped with multiple warheads.”

The Yars missile, launched from the Plesetsk test facility located south of Saint Petersburg, can carry between three and six independently targetable nuclear warheads.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, “The training warheads arrived at the designated area at the Kura training ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula” after flying a range of nearly 4,200 miles.

When I was a weapons inspector, back in 1988-1990, working at the Votkinsk missile production facility, we inspected the SS-25 “Topol” intercontinental ballistic missile, the predecessor of the “Yars” missile recently tested by Russia.

When the first three missiles inspected exited the factory, the U.S. inspectors took to naming them after American cities that could ostensibly be their targets — Pittsburgh, Des Moines and Chicago. The powers that be, back in Washington, D.C., quickly discouraged this practice, given the sensitivity that accrues to the issue of thermonuclear war.

One must wonder if the Russian soldiers responsible for launching the Yars missile took the time to name their warheads, and if they did, which cities would have been chosen to christen them.

There is no doubt that had the Russian soldiers turned to former President Dmitri Medvedev for advice after he received news about the intercepted conversation, the warheads would likely have been named after German cities — Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Nuremburg, Dusseldorf.

“The eternal enemies, the Germans, have become our archenemies again,” Medvedev fumed in a post on his Telegram channel.

The Germans would be well advised to reflect long and hard on their actions, actions which could precipitate a conflict that, as Putin has noted, “potentially means the end of civilization — don’t they realize this?”

Don’t they?

“O mischief, thou art swift, to enter in the thoughts of desperate men!”

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/03/05/s ... erate-men/

[blindpig]

Europe Is in Danger of Falling Asleep in Peace and Waking Up in War

Hugo Dionísio

March 7, 2024

We are governed by an aristocracy elected by supranational powers, which uses states as expanded territories of the central interests to which they answer.

Europeans, don’t be surprised if one day we wake up to the sound of news like “the war has begun”. This foreshadowing is anything but fanciful and should be taken very seriously. In my ignorance, I even think that in human history, after the Second World War and considering the experience of the Cold War, we are perhaps at the moment when the risk of military confrontation is highest. In the absence of a unifying world architecture, solid democracies and stable, credible communication channels… anything becomes possible.

As part of yet another adaptation of the century-old “sword and shield” strategic doctrine, enunciated in 1917 by General Pershing, when he explained to his troops that they were not in Europe to defend Europeans, but to defend Americans, since European countries are a shield and the U.S. is a sword, over the last 30 years, the White House has been building an aristocratic administrative elite, which responds first and foremost to the interests of the American “sword”.

In any closed group, its internal cohesion is based on feelings of belonging, which, in this case, lie in the values of exclusivity, individuality (it’s not for those who want it) and inaccessibility (it’s only for those who can) to ordinary mortals. The great aim and success of the American strategy lies in creating a feeling that each member of the group is part of a chosen structure, which only very special people can join. This feeling is worked out using a variety of communication, suggestion and persuasion strategies aimed at creating a group identity, even when the respective members come from different countries, realities and educational backgrounds.

Let’s take a look at some exemplary, but also paradigmatic cases. Emanuel Macron went through the Institute d’Etudes Politiques de Paris — IEP, which is the seal of trust, the premise, according to which the neoliberal system sees in Macron someone prepared to manage its interests. In addition to the selective character with which this exclusive private institution presents itself, the conventions it maintains with Columbia University in New York and with the always highly reputable London School of Economics, or the master’s course in English for young world promises, represent a powerful contribution of this institute to the neoliberal monopoly cause. It is there that the ideological foundations and propaganda teachings, that are later rooted in political discourse, are created.

For anyone who doubts this description, names like Alain Juppé, Lionel Jospin, Dominique de Villepin, Jacques Chirac, François Hollande and François Mitterrand, all went through the Sciences Po. school at the IED. We can even say that studying at the very select IED is halfway to world stardom and, more importantly, to the public affairs of one of the engines of the EU.

However, this exclusivity is not restricted to the highest representatives of the Western aristocracy. Even the most barbaric and obscure wannabes are obliged to present some kind of connection. Such is the case with Kaja Kallas, the Estonian prime minister, who applies for anything that will get her a job and belongs to any board that will accept her. Kallas went through the necessary Estonian Business School, because business schools here play a fundamental role in the ideological framework of the elected, but, among many other things, Kallas also belongs to the Global Young Leaders organization, a private organization related to universities such as Stanford, of the Ivy League, essentially aimed at STEM training.

Deeply linked to training programs for young people, selected through American structures within universities and schools all over the world, the “lucky” ones chosen from their programs are awarded a whole range of exceptional insignia such as “Innovative”, “Business” or “Leadership”. In programs that range from elementary schools to universities, the “students” learn to move around in the circles of power from a very young age, developing skills linked to the creation of NGOs, companies, parties, how to intervene in governments, the UN and other structures.

Think of it this way: in a public school that purposely doesn’t train students for political life, which is a huge mistake in a democracy, the same elites who deny it to the general population, prepare their offspring to succeed them directly — like a hidden hereditary monarchy — in the adults’ jobs. As they say, in a land of the blind, he who has an eye is king. And the oligarchic elites know this better than anyone.

Another case is that of Rishi Sunak, the Indian who feels more American than English. No wonder. In 2006, for example, Sunak re-qualified for an MBA at Stanford University (almost ubiquitous) as a Fullbright scholar. Fullbright is another one of those programs that develops courses for supposedly bright young people. There it is, the exploitation of individualism, self-centeredness, the feeling of exclusivity, as pillars for building a sense of belonging, through positive reinforcement as an exceptional being. Everyone feels exceptional. Hence, their arrogance, their detachment.

No wonder, then, that Ursula herself is so fervently anti-Russian and Atlanticist. Of course, between 1992 and 1996 she lived at Stanford (again Stanford) in California, where she studied economics. Poland’s own Donald Tusk was part of an Independent Students’ Association set up in 1980, financed by the same people as before, which aimed to subvert Poland’s then socialist regime from within the academy. Later, it was members of this truly “independent” “association” who, on the ground, supported the organization of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. In other words, what we see in Ukraine today is the result of a wide-ranging project to break up and submit Europe to the neoliberal, hegemonic and imperial interests of the USA.

This European “shield”, as we can see, is built by a group that functions almost like a secret society, endowed with deep internal cohesion, based on the narcissistic feeling of election, exclusivity and belonging to an elite group, trained to lead, trained to manage the supranational interests of the monopolist state par excellence, the USA.

Now, imagine yourself in a group of people who, in addition to the fact that many belong to the wealthiest classes or the political aristocracy, are also inculcated, through the countless institutional resources at their disposal, with the idea that they are part of a restricted group, placed above the common man, destined to decide on behalf of the monopoly interests that hire them. Imagine that, belonging to such an elite, the common mistake, which normally costs a career, honor and even life, for these people is nothing more than a setback on the way to the top. Put in a position like this, how would they behave? With a sense of responsibility? Or with a total sense of impunity? If you knew that your power, status and legitimacy emanated from supranational interests, to whom would it be natural to show your loyalty? To the people?

The way in which the U.S., and the monopoly interests that make up its system of power, have subverted any idea of strategic autonomy for the EU, throwing us all onto a front line that is not designed to protect our interests, but their own, has consisted of handing over high politics, not to the most experienced statesmen, the most emerging leaders of the masses, or the most capable and competent public officials, but instead to a socially isolated Spartan strain (only in terms of organization, not customs), made up of careerists, incapable of distinguishing between public and private, national or international interests. For them, the interests of public affairs are confused with their own, and their own with those of their sponsors. They are one and the same, in a vicious cycle in which who wins and who loses is determined from the outset.

And if the actions of this privileged, elitist, segregationist and exclusivist group in terms of the European economy have the results in plain sight, when it comes to foreign policy, their actions also show what project their loyalties are expressed for. Victoria Nuland came to Europe to demand a show of support and received it in the form of a Macron who, summoning all the European leaders to the Elysée Palace, tried to discuss the possibility of sending European troops to Ukraine. If it weren’t for Robert Fico, who apparently doesn’t see himself in this select group of yuppies, we wouldn’t know that the leaders in whom the people of Europe are supposed to trust are discussing, behind closed doors and behind the backs of the very democracy with which they fill their mouths, something like the fuse that could ignite a third world war. In other words, they are discussing among themselves the use of Europe as a shield for the American sword, with total contempt for those they claim to govern.

Coincidence or not, it was also after the visit of the incendiary Nuland that we all learned that three high-ranking German soldiers wanted to prepare an attack on the bridge across the Kerch Strait, using Taurus missiles supplied by their country. Of all the ways in which loyalty was shown, the most hilarious could only come from Zelensky, when he, like Christ raising the dead, managed to turn the hundreds of thousands of soldiers he himself sent to their deaths into just 31,000 dead. So where do more than 500,000 soldiers end up?

The unwary then say that the West lacks “statesmen”, which they repeat over and over again without realizing the paradox. For “statesmen” to exist, there would have to be states. If, in this new geographical construction that is the “collective West”, there is no longer the figure of the nation-state, but rather territories of strategic interest, then, within the framework of this mode of organization, what we can expect here are missionaries and plenipotentiary envoys who serve above all the monopolistic interests of American hegemony. A kind of consul for a supranational imperial power. Today, any reading we make of the current political reality has to take into account that Europe, Japan, South Korea or Australia are, now, not only the U.S.’s defense “shield”, but also its “living space”. A vital space which, added to its own, enables the U.S. to compete fiercely with the more populous, productive and motivated Russia, China and Iran axis. It’s no longer just a question of “keeping Europe in” or “Germany down”, as NATO was intended to do, it’s more a question of making NATO territory coincide with U.S. vital territory, which raises profound questions about the role of the European Union in such a framework.

So, if the reality we are analyzing is not made up of nation-states, but of a supranational common space, led by the USA, waiting for “statesmen” is not realistic in the slightest, because the “statesman” is concerned with the state, as a collective organization that constitutes the summit of a given socio-political existence. They care about the nation, the people, its economy, its traditions and its identity. Are these the values that drive an Emanuel Macron, an Ursula Von Der Leyen or a Donald Tusk? Neither their performance nor their curriculum vitae would indicate that.

Thus, under the cover of the impunity that only an exceptional, but above all supranational, status can bring, we are witnessing a discussion about the officialization of the presence of European forces in Ukraine, particularly those assigned to “states” that are concluding, behind the backs of their peoples and without sovereign discussion, bilateral security agreements that could force them into a war, just as the United Kingdom inaugurated the Second World War by signing a bilateral security treaty with Poland. If this isn’t an issue to be discussed in depth in a democracy by a people, then I don’t know what is more important! Mixed bathrooms? Same-sex marriage? Backtracking on abortion laws? Without detracting from these issues, of course!

We know that such a discussion, at this very moment, is the result of yet another contingent maneuver aimed at preventing what they promised from the start would never be possible: a Russian victory! Never retracting and proving that the impunity they feel is matched by the power that legitimizes them, the so-called dominant “media”, which should be informing, scrutinizing, questioning and criticizing, is keeping quiet and saying today what it vehemently denied yesterday. As if to prove that both emanate from the same source of power.

The fact is that tomorrow, we could wake up to NATO forces officially stationed along Ukraine’s northern border with Russia and Belarus, and to the south, in the Odessa region, trying to save the country’s one remaining link to the Black Sea. From that day on, Vladimir Putin, Minister Shoigu or Medvedev will no longer have to pretend that there are no NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep! They will be there for all to see. On that day, we’ll find out what the national flags of EU and NATO member states are still used for. They only serve to mask the presence of the alliance with its chosen enemy, or to mislead the people of Europe that it is not NATO that will be there, but its states. Affirming NATO’s presence on the one hand and hiding it on the other.

When this happens, we will confirm in practice everything I said earlier: we are governed by an aristocracy elected by supranational powers, which uses states as expanded territories of the central interests to which they answer, and the concepts of nation-state only to legitimize the actions they aim to carry out under their guise.

And that’s the only way we can go to sleep, one night, in peace, and wake up, the next day, in war!

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... up-in-war/

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Sabotage halts production at Tesla's German plant
Updated: 2024-03-07 09:19


Police officers work next to a damaged pylon after Tesla Gigafactory in Gruenheide near Berlin halted production and was left without power after suspected arson set an electricity pylon ablaze, near Steinfurt, Germany, March 5, 2024. [Photo/Agencies]

BERLIN/FRANKFURT — Tesla's European gigafactory near Berlin has halted work until further notice, after what CEO Elon Musk called an "extremely dumb" suspected arson attack nearby left it without power on Tuesday.

The attack southeast of the German capital set an electricity pylon close to the site ablaze, but the fire did not spread to the Tesla facility, which is the US electric carmaker's first manufacturing plant in Europe.

It has however shuttered production at least until early next week, the company said.

The outage will cost Tesla estimated losses in millions of euros, with 1,000 vehicles left unfinished on Tuesday alone.

A company official was noncommittal on whether this would affect plans to double capacity at the site, but condemned what he saw as negative sentiment toward it.

Emergency services have extinguished the blaze, and power to the surrounding communities has mostly been restored.

Joerg Steinbach, economy minister of Brandenburg state, where Tesla's plant is based, condemned the suspected attack as having "terrorist markings", and hitting tens of thousands of people.

"This includes hospitals, homes for the elderly, where people may also be dependent on oxygen supply or similar, which is electricity based," he said.

The Tesla site, which employs about 12,500 people, was evacuated and most employees sent home.

Local media published a letter purportedly from a far-left activist organization called the Volcano Group that claimed responsibility for the incident, in a 2,500-word attack on Tesla and its billionaire CEO.

Police said they were aware of the letter, which was signed "Agua De Pau", the name of a volcanic mountain in the Azores, and said they were checking its authenticity.

"These are either the dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth or they're puppets of those who don't have good environmental goals," Musk said on X.

"Stopping production of electric vehicles, rather than fossil fuel vehicles, ist extrem dumm," he said, using the German words for "extremely dumb".

The attack was the latest setback for Tesla, which has had a bumpy ride in Europe of late, facing union pressure for collective bargaining agreements in the Nordics and supply disruptions as a result of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20240 ... bb1ec.html

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UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Potential Conflicts of Interest Are By Now Too Big to Ignore
Posted on March 8, 2024 by Nick Corbishley

Sunak’s father-in-law’s company, Indian tech giant (and digital identity developer) Infosys, has been doing a roaring business with UK government departments since his son-in-law became chancellor and then PM.

The Indian tech company Infosys, co-founded by Rishi Sunak’s father-in-law, N R Narayana Murthy, has seen its contracts with the UK government mushroom since Sunak became chancellor of the exchequer in 2020. Per Wikipedia, Murthy is not just one of the company’s seven co-founders; he served as its CEO for 21 years (1980-2001), its president for nine years (2002-11), and its “chief mentor” before retiring under the title “chairman emeritus”. His daughter, Akshata Murthy, who married Sunak in 2009, holds a 0.94% stake in the firm, worth some £600 million, while the Murthy family as a whole owns around 3%.

Over the past ten years, UK government contracts have earned the company some £65 million, around £47 million of which has poured in since 2020, when Sunak was appointed chancellor of the exchequer. A report by Peter Geoghegan, author of the book Democracy for Sale who runs a Substack by the same name, suggests the money flowing between Sunak’s government and his father-in-law’s company could soon accelerate:


Infosys has been listed as a supplier on a series of major public contracts that have a combined value of more than £750 million.

These ‘framework agreements’ – which have not been reported before – are by some distance the largest public contracts that Infosys has been involved with in the UK…

Infosys is one of 62 suppliers on a £562.5m contract for IT services published by the Financial Conduct Authority in October, according to the government’s Contracts Finder website.

The firm is also one of 25 suppliers on a £250m contract published by NHS Shared Business Services last month for “intelligent automation”…

These framework agreements let public bodies directly award contracts without further tendering. No awards have yet been made, but Infosys may be in line for millions in taxpayers’ money.

The contract up for grabs with the NHS is noteworthy given Infosys’ ties to Palantir, the US spyware company that recently picked up a £360 million contract to operate NHS England’s Federated Data Platform. Palantir is one of roughly 200 international companies Infosys has struck a partnership with over the years. As we reported just last week, almost three-quarters of the text of Palantir’s NHS contract, including, ironically, almost entire sections relating to patient privacy and protection of their data, has been redacted.

What Does Infosys Do?

Infosys describes itself as a “global leader in next generation digital services and consulting, enabling clients in more than 56 countries to navigate their digital transformation” powered by cloud and AI. It provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. As NC reader Paul Art points out below, “Infosys was one of the earliest ‘Body Shoppers’ – a term of art in the 1980s for companies in India which shipped programmers to the USA. They also ‘in-sourced’ plenty of work from the USA and other parts of the globe leaving behind devastated armies of unemployed American and British Programmers.”

Today, Infosys is a global powerhouse with a huge roster of corporate clients and partner companies. It is not just a partner but a “strategic partner” of the World Economic Forum, which has spent decades promoting its own corporate-designed model of digital transformation globally. In 2005, Murthy himself co-chaired the WEF’s 2005 annual meeting in Davos.

Infosys has played a central role in developing and implementing India’s Aadhaar system, the world’s largest digital identity program. By 2021, the Indian government’s Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) had issued 1.3 billion unique identity numbers (UIDs) covering roughly 92% of the country’s population. Aadhaar’s chief architect is Nandan Nilekani, another co-founder and nonexecutive chairman of Infosys, who was a few years ago lauded by Bill Gates as one of his so-called “heroes of the field” for having made the world’s “invisible people, visible.”

While celebrated and even emulated by Silicon Valley billionaires, Aadhaar has major security flaws. In early November, the system suffered its largest ever breech, resulting in the personal data of hundreds of millions of Indians being put up for sale on the dark web, for as little as $80,000. Besides the vulnerability of its data storage, India’s Aadhaar system has many other downsides, as I note in my book Scanned:

It tracks users’ movements between cities, their employment status and purchasing records. It is a de facto social credit system that serves as the key entry point for accessing services in India. While the system has helped to speed and clean up India’s bureaucracy, it has also massively increased the Indian government’s surveillance powers and excluded over 100 million people from welfare programs as well as basic services.

But the system is also being extolled by prominent global technocrats, including Gates and the WEF’s President Borge Brende, as the main driver of India’s rapid economic growth in recent years. The goal is to export the model as far and wide as quickly as possibly, particularly to Africa, with the help of the World Bank and the United Nations.

Facilitating “A Bigger Infosys Presence in the UK”

Back in the UK, the Sunak government is determined to introduce its ‘One Login’ digital identity system despite broad public opposition. Coincidentally or not, it is also looking to strengthen its commercial ties with Infosys. In April last year, the UK’s Trade Minister Dominic Johnson (no relation to Boris) told senior representatives of Infosys, whose names were redacted in the government’s public records, that “he was keen to see a bigger Infosys presence in the UK and would be happy to do what he could to facilitate that.”

Johnson has his own conflict of interest. Before becoming trade minister, he ran an investment fund with fellow Tory politician Jacob Rees Mogg. That fund, Somerset Capital Management LLP, holds a significant stake in Infosys. Shortly after his meeting with the Infosys executives, the fund increased that stake by around £18m, to £105m, according to a report in the Sunday Mirror. The department for business came up with the lamest of defences: Lord Johnson, it said, had resigned from Somerset Capital before becoming a minister and “has had no contact with the business since.”

Meanwhile, the ethics adviser in parliament has ruled that Sunak is not required to declare his wife’s interest in Infosys in the register of interests. But as Geoghegan notes in an interview on the Politics JOE channel, everybody knows it’s there, and there’s a strong argument for declaring these things. After all, he said, if you were on the board of a company, “these are the kinds of things you would have to declare, not as live conflicts of interest per se but as potential conflicts of interest so that they can be managed better.”

In the interview, Geoghegan is at pains to stress nothing illegal has happened here, but “the opaqueness of how these decisions are made, the opaqueness of relations between people” is troubling. “Unfortunately, we have had a rather bad track record in this area in the past few years.”

Even more worrisome are the financial interests Infosys has in Israel, which is currently committing genocide in Gaza with the unwavering support of Sunak’s government. From Declassified UK’s November article, No Outcry Over Rishi Sunak’s Family Investments in Israel:

Until April this year, the Infosys board of directors included Uri Levine, an Israeli entrepreneur known for creating the popular Waze traffic navigation app.

Levine is a veteran of Unit 8200, an elite Israeli army cyber warfare division that spies on the country’s adversaries.

He served with Unit 8200 during a five year spell in Israel’s military in the 1980s. Levine was appointed to the Infosys board in 2020.

Infosys was already operating in Israel before hiring Levine. In 2012, it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Office of the Chief Scientist of Israel, to collaborate on research and development (R&D).

This has led some to speculate that Infosys supplies technology to Israel’s security apparatus. Declassified could not find direct evidence of this and Infosys did not respond to a request for comment…

The company’s investment in Israel deepened in 2015 when it acquired Panaya, a local tech firm, for around $200m, although Murthy was critical of the deal. Last year, Panaya hired Tal Arnon as its vice president of R&D.

As the article concludes, if Sunak’s wife and in-laws “were making money from businesses managed in part by former Russian or Chinese spies, then there might be more of an outcry.” While Infosys’ continued operations in Russia despite US-EU-UK sanctions have drawn scrutiny and criticism in the British press, its connections with Israel are unlikely to cause Sunak any problems since Israel is a British ally.

Moderna Money

Sunak’s potential conflicts of interest are not only family-related. Since becoming chancellor in 2020, he has faced allegations that he profited, or one day will profit, from the massive growth in sales, revenues and share price of Moderna. Thelene, a Cayman Islands-based hedge fund he helped set up, began investing in the US-based mRNA vaccine maker in 2011. By late 2020 it was Moderna’s largest hedge fund investor. Sunak had left the company seven years earlier to pursue a political career. For the past four years he has refused to confirm whether or not he stands to benefit personally from the huge returns Theleme has earned on its investment.

Today, 34% of Theleme’s funds, reported to be valued at $710m, are invested in Moderna, according to the Good Law Project. Sunak insists his investments are in a ‘blind trust’, which is supposed to protect politicians against conflicts of interest by preventing them from knowing what they are invested in. However, as an article in The Guardian suggested last year, blind trusts are more likely being used to blind the public rather than the beneficiary:

The list of ministers’ interests does not explicitly state whether Sunak, Cameron and the other ministers have handed over their assets to trustees, formally moving the legal ownership of the shares. There is no formal legal definition of a blind trust or exactly what constitutes a sufficiently independent third party to act as a trustee.

A Spotlight on Corruption report said blind trusts were “a tool to encourage the public perception that steps have been taken to manage conflicts of interests”.

The ambiguous disclosures leave open the possibility ministers are simply using a “blind management arrangement”, where they may have an informal agreement with their fund managers not to consult them on their present holdings or make decisions on the purchase and sale of assets. Neither system has any formal oversight.

Sunak, who is reported to be the richest ever occupant of 10 Downing Street, only released his tax details for the first time last year. Even then, they were somewhat short on detail. The documents showed that the PM pocketed nearly £5 million over the past three years, thanks mainly to dividends.

If, as seems likely, Sunak stands to profit from Theleme’s significant investments in Moderna, it calls into question not just the millions of Moderna vaccines his and the Boris Johnson government have purchased but also the £1bn, 10-year deal the UK government signed with the company in June 2022 to build the UK’s first manufacturing center for messenger RNA vaccines for COVID-19 and other diseases. For Moderna, it was an exceedingly generous offer: set up operations in the UK, conduct clinical trials there (testing its latest, experimental mRNA products) and as a sweetener, the government would throw in £1bn.

Although Boris Johnson was still prime minister at the time, it was Sunak, as chancellor, who had to sign off on the deal. And yet the British public still didn’t know whether he holds a financial stake in the firm’s biggest backer. And to all intents and purposes, they still don’t. To cap it all off, when the Covid inquiry requested access to his WhatsApp messages from his time as chancellor, he failed to hand them over, claiming he had changed his phone several times and failed to back them up.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/03 ... gnore.html

[blindpig]

Macron Irresponsibly Increases Tensions Between Europe and Russia

Lucas Leiroz

March 9, 2024

Macron’s statements show that rationality and strategy are not relevant in Western foreign policy.

Apparently, Europe will continue to engage in its anti-Russian crusade, even knowing that the consequences of such irresponsibility could be catastrophic. In a recent statement, French President Emmanuel Macron warned Europeans not to be “cowards” in the face of the supposed “Russian threat”. According to him, if Europe remains inert, Russia will become “unstoppable”, which is why measures should be taken to dissuade Moscow.

Macron ‘s words were delivered during a visit to the Czech Republic, where the French leader met with local officials to discuss an action plan to increase military support for Ukraine. The Czechs propose a project for the simultaneous purchase of military material in several countries around the world to overcome European difficulties in producing weapons. Thus, it is expected to reach a satisfactory number of equipment to enable Kiev to continue facing the Russians, while the European defense industry recovers from two years of systematic weapons production.

Macron absolutely endorses the Czech project and is willing to take tough measures to pressure Russia militarily. According to him, there is now a war on European soil that could reach the EU countries at any moment, which is why the bloc should come together in a common plan to “stop” Russia. The narrative endorses the myth of the “Russian plan to invade Europe” and legitimizes the upsurge of European military actions – not only to support Ukraine, but to act directly against the Russian Federation, if “necessary”.

Macron is evidently acting irresponsibly. By taking such an aggressive and warmongering stance against Moscow, the French president puts all European security at risk, as he is mobilizing the entire continent in a true coalition against Russia. At a time of imminent Ukrainian defeat, Macron’s words become particularly worrying, as Europe will apparently feel “threatened” from the moment Kiev is neutralized and becomes unable to combat Moscow.

Recently, several European leaders have embraced open war rhetoric, calling on their citizens to prepare for martial regime given the alleged imminence of hostilities with Russia. Some States are beginning to implement warmongering policies, increasing their defense budget and investing increasingly more in improving the armed forces. Macron has already said that, for now, there are no plans to send NATO troops to help Ukraine, but his call against “European cowardice” appears to be a sign that he will begin to endorse the implementation of a broad military readiness regime in the entire continent.

It is necessary to analyze the case taking into account the political nature of Emmanuel Macron . The French president has always seemed to want to be a kind of “leader of all of Europe”, being an EU enthusiast and a key public figure in continental geopolitics. At some times, Macron even tried to alienate Europe and the U.S., promoting an agenda to strengthen the continent, including the creation of a European army and rapprochement with China. These projects, however, failed, mainly due to the worsening of the conflict in Ukraine, which irrationally led all of Europe to unrestrictedly support the use of Kiev as a proxy by NATO.

In this sense, Macron’s international relevance was diminished by the conflict, proving himself incompetent to guide Europe along a path of sovereignty, development and independence. So, one of the explanations for the fact that Macron is now endorsing the anti-Russian bellicose narrative is his possible intention to launch himself internationally as a “European leader”. Macron is taking advantage of the moment to improve his political image – his aim is to be seen as a key figure in continental politics, increasing his chances of obtaining a role in EU offices in the future.

It remains to be seen whether he will actually dare to take any harsh measures against Russia. Despite his public pronouncements, Macron is obviously aware of the catastrophic situation of European economies and knows that the EU is not in a position to choose to engage in a military campaign with Russia. It is possible that he maintains an ambiguous stance – speaking aggressively but avoiding real action. However, unfortunately, it is not possible to rule out the prospect that Macron and other European politicians will actually take direct military measures, as rationality and strategy are no longer part of the EU’s foreign policy guidelines.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... nd-russia/

What the Western Press Didn’t Say About the Leaked Luftwaffe Conversation

Eduardo Vasco

March 8, 2024

What if a conversation between Russian officials discussing the explosion of a bridge in Germany had been revealed? Would Western press coverage also treat the leak as something more serious than threats of military attack?

On March 1, the editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya group, journalist Margarita Simonyan, revealed, on her Telegram channel, a 38-minute audio in which officers from the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) discussed the possibility of sending missiles long-range Taurus to Ukraine and whether they would be able to reach the Crimean bridge in the Kerch Strait, which connects the peninsula to the mainland and is Russian territory.

The Russian press, naturally, made much of the revelation. This forced the mainstream Western media – especially German ones – to report the leak. But whoever thought that a miracle would happen, that is, that the Western press would finally raise the issue of NATO’s military threats against Russia… well, those people are simply very naive.

The Western mass media, as always, tried to manipulate the news and hide the main issue.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, BBC, The Guardian, Die Welt and Der Spiegel published 39 articles on the topic on their respective websites between the time the news was revealed and the evening of March 6th (when I write these lines).

The two North American newspapers did not want to highlight the matter. The Post published two reports and the Times only one. The three expressed concern about the fragility of German intelligence security systems in the face of Russian espionage.

The Europeans, as has been the case for some time, carried much more propaganda against Russia. The BBC published four articles, all referring to the failure to protect Luftwaffe communications. The Guardian published five articles. The majority warns of the Germans’ failure and treats the Russians as great, threatening villains. However, it is necessary to make an honorable mention of Simon Jenkins’ column, the only one who was allowed to say that the leaked conversations demonstrate that NATO is threatening Russia with an escalation in the conflict.

As we all know, this drop of water in the middle of the ocean has no chance of counterbalancing the flood of war propaganda and fake news from the British press against Russia. Newspaper owners only allow freedom of expression when it is harmless – and try to isolate minimally independent opinions.

Now let’s talk about German newspaper coverage. Die Welt published 18 pieces about the leak scandal, and treated it as such. Of course, the main reason for the scandal was – for German war propagandists – the interception and dissemination of the conversation, not its content.

The entire repercussion of Die Welt revolves around failures in the security system of the German armed forces and Russian espionage. The possibility of Olaf Scholz sending the Taurus to Zelensky is briefly discussed and it is even stated that Germany is putting its Western allies in danger by allowing the interception of conversations that may mention confidential and compromising information – such as the participation of British soldiers in Ukraine, as mentioned in the conversation in question.

A single Die Welt report presents a “dissident” opinion, which is not “Russian propaganda”: the brief speech of a member of the AfD – who, however, is branded a Russian agent by the German state and its agents, such as the press.

Article signed by Pavel Lokshin has the following title: “Kremlin is using Taurus leaks to threaten war against Germany”. Of course, it was the Russians who considered blowing up a bridge in German territory, right?

In turn, Der Spiegel, in its nine articles on the case, reproduces the same speech as Die Welt about the failures in German security and the danger of Russian espionage. It also disqualifies the Kremlin’s claims that the conversation is clear proof of NATO’s direct involvement in the war in Ukraine and how much this threatens Russian national security.

Christina Hebel’s analysis is the only piece in these two German outlets that takes the accusations of the Russian government and German involvement in the war more seriously, but it would be an exaggeration to say that this publication would be in the sphere of journalism.

In short, the coverage of these newspapers – and the coverage of other mass media outlets in the West is no different – is absolutely biased and manipulated. In fact, as always happens, they reverse roles: Germany, which threatened to blow up a bridge in Russia, is the victim, while Russia is the villain!

If at least one of these newspapers really were a journalistic tool, and not a propaganda tool, it should publish an article with a title like “German officers considered blowing up bridge in Russia” or “Audios reveal discussion of attack on Russia with German weapons”.

After all, which is more serious: the leak of the audio by Russian intelligence or the discussion among senior German officials about a military attack on Russia? No honest person would choose the first option. But we are not dealing with honest people when we talk about “journalism” in Europe and the United States.

I can’t help but wonder: what if it were the other way around? What if a conversation between Russian officials discussing the explosion of a bridge in Germany had been revealed? Would Western press coverage also treat the leak as something more serious than threats of military attack?

Of course not! If it were Russia considering attacking Germany, there would not be 39 articles in these vehicles, but rather 3,900. Russia would be portrayed as a threat to human civilization (more so than it is portrayed today), chaos would be wreaked in German and Western society, and the drums of war against Russia would be beaten at the top of their lungs. Meetings would be urgently called at the UN Security Council, unilateral sanctions would increase absurdly, all the lackey governments of the USA and the European Union would speak out publicly condemning Vladimir Putin’s madness.

They are real hypocrites. Against Russia, anything goes.

And, although the majority of these media outlets are private, they all act as government bodies, under the strict control of their respective States, as true spokespeople for those in power. But Russia is the one who controls the press, Russia is the one spreading propaganda and Russia is the one disinforming, right?

The leaked audio proves that the war in Ukraine is not a war between Russia and Ukraine, but rather a war between Russia and NATO. The Western press strengthens this claim by propagandizing war against Russia and encouraging attacks against Russia.

The press, according to Western discourse, would be a protector of the public interest against the discretion of those in power. That’s idle talk. The press, in fact, even private companies, are tools of these same rulers to control and oppress the governed.

A growing number of Germans oppose the shipment of weapons to Ukraine and Germany’s participation in a war against Russia, but they are systematically deceived and betrayed by their government and the mass media.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... versation/

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Tamas Sulyok takes office as Hungary's new president

Xinhua | Updated: 2024-03-11 04:27


Hungary's new President Tamas Sulyok arrives to attend his inauguration ceremony, in Budapest, Hungary, March 10, 2024. [Photo/Agencies]

BUDAPEST -- The inauguration ceremony of Hungary's new President Tamas Sulyok was held here Sunday in front of the Sandor Palace, the Hungarian President's residence.

The ceremony opened with a military salute, followed by a procession of historical flags and performances.

In his inaugural speech, broadcast live on Hungary's public television channel, Sulyok said, "My task and service from now on are different from what I have done before, but the core values remain the same as those to which I have always adhered firmly and faithfully."

"As President of the Republic, the Fundamental Law is the cornerstone, framework, and measure of my work," he added.

Hungarian lawmakers elected Sulyok, then head of the Constitutional Court, as the country's new president on Feb. 26 after his predecessor Katalin Novak stepped down on Feb. 10 following a child abuse pardon scandal.

Born on March 24, 1956 in Kiskunfelegyhaza in southern Hungary, Sulyok boasts a distinguished career in both law and academia. He was elected president of the Constitutional Court in 2016.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20240 ... bbb86.html

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February 2024 overview: the Polish Egg and Chicken War
Views on the trade war from liberal and Keynesian experts, deep dive into the composition of Polish-Ukrainian trade, demands to limit agricultural production and return to neocolonial tariffs

EVENTS IN UKRAINE
MAR 9, 2024

With February over, it’s time for a dive into recent events in Ukraine. The western media is, as always, fairly saturated with Ukraine coverage, but there’s always something important that slips under the radar.

first of all, the front - the western one. There is no more hope that Poland’s new liberal, pro-western government will put an end to the farmer-led blockade of Ukraine’s agricultural exports.

Attempts by both governments to solve the situation so far appear fruitless. Polish leadership cautioned Ukrainian politicians against ‘emotional outbursts’ and reminded them that ‘both Ukrainian soldiers and Polish farmers are in a struggle for survival’. Naturally, this last statement was hardly reassuring to Ukrainian public opinion.

Zelensky’s appeals to meet at the border were even rebuffed by Polish leadership openly, who stated that this would be ‘unsafe’. Prime Minister Shmyhal’s expedition to the Polish border left him empty-handed, with his Polish counterparts refusing to come. They advised meeting instead in Poland’s capital. Such a recommendation seems to undercut the intention of Shmyhal’s statement, which claimed that meeting at the border would underscore Poland and Ukraine’s status as ‘equal partners and allies’.

The reality of the situation is quite serious. On February 22, Ukrainian transport officials stated that the border situation was leading to delays on the train network. By February 25, Ukrainian border officials stated that 2400 Ukrainian trucks were stuck at the border crossings with Poland. At certain border crossings, truckers reported that they had been stuck for up to 230 hours. There has been at least one case of a Ukrainian trucker dying in his car while waiting to cross.

February 21 saw the third case of Polish attacks on Ukrainian transport within Poland. According to the Ukrainian border service, by the morning of February 22, 600 trucks were stuck at the Yagodin-Dorokhusk border crossing, with not a single truck being able to cross the border in the past day. Only 313 out of 4400 trucks had been able to cross the Krakovets-Korchova crossing, and only 50 out of 600 were able to cross at Rava-Ruskaya-Khrebene. At the current speed of the Shehyni-Medyka crossing, trucks will have to wait 26 days to cross.



This is a much more serious situation than the blockade of the previous year. Last year, only trucks were blocked, but now passenger buses and light transport is also unable to move. There have even been cases where humanitarian shipments were blocked. Last year’s blockade also did not witness the dramatic actions of recent days

The blockade is set to accelerate. ‘Solidarnost’, the Polish trade union of cold-war fame, announced that it planned to block train and sea routes in March.

But what actually drives this entire crisis? According to one particularly self-assured Ukrainian ‘expert’ interviewed by Yuri Romanenko, the problem is that Poland’s farmers are incompetent, their existence propped up by the EU nanny state. Needless to say, this attempt to ‘explain the situation’ was not greeted positively in the comments by Poles, who accused said gentleman of being paid off by Ukraine’s titanic agroholdings. Unfortunately, the video seems to have been deleted now.

Aleksey Kusch, the lone Keynesian voice in the whirlwind of Ukrainian libertarianism, has a more interesting analysis. According to him, Ukraine’s totally liberalized agriculture makes it quite unsuitable for the EU. Ukraine has some of the biggest industrial agriculture and animal farms in the world, putting latin american latifundistas to shame. The EU’s pampered individual farmers can’t compete. Of course, such a ‘success’ has come at the cost of Ukraine’s own, hardly pampered peasantry, who essentially no longer exist. The EU, whose whole raison d’etre is to protect the sensitive European market from the big mean world, is of course hardly interested in allowing Ukraine in.

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/ ... the-polish

(More at paywall...)

******

I Elaborate...

... on this issue in my upcoming video.


Paris and Warsaw have no right to speak for all NATO members when it comes to troop deployment into Ukraine, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told La Stampa newspaper in an interview published on Sunday. Such a move would only lead to escalation and hurt any potential diplomatic efforts to end hostilities between Moscow and Kiev, he added. The minister was commenting on recent statements by French President Emmanuel Macron and by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, each of whom has entertained the possibility of sending the US-led bloc’s troops to aid Kiev.

No, it will not "hurt any potential diplomatic efforts", it will hurt France and Poland, and hurt badly. For starters, once and if (highly UNlikely) French "troops" officially are in Russia, as uniformed French government representatives, Russia may introduce Russia's uniformed Russian government representatives such as 3M14M and Kh-101 to some of France's Air Force bases, or even naval bases. And we all know that Macron knows this--he, being a teller boy, simply shakes air trying to pretend that France matters. She does not. Per Sikorski, well, that's in my video. Normal people do not marry Anne Applebaum--a psychotic neocon.

Meanwhile, Patriot PAC3 AD systems have a very bad time in 404. Well, any other NATO weapon system for that matter. Evidently VSU ran another Challenger into the mud and sunk it. I talk about this in my new video which should be up fairly soon.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/03 ... orate.html

******

Master Donosov
March 10, 10:51 am



Master Donosov

The story of a young man from the German city of Gräfenhainichen, who calls himself a “master of denunciations,” was told by the German publication Bild.
Niklas Mattei patrols the city on a bicycle in a bright, reflective suit, looking for those who break parking rules. He takes a photo with his smartphone and reports the violators to the police. Thus, he “framed” 8% of the residents of a small town. BILD surveyed local residents about their views on such an initiative, and local residents harshly criticized Niklas. But he claims that he is “alien to fear.”

Over the past year, Mattei wrote 4,227 reports of illegal parking, the total amount of fines amounted to 140,000 euros. The brave young man does not let officials and even the police off the hook: he recently published a photo in which he recorded that the license plate on the police car was dirty.

The publication reports that Niklas's activity extends to other cities in Germany. Recently in Chemnitz he reported on the famous rapper Finch.



The mayor of Gräfenhainichen, Enrico Schilling, is extremely dissatisfied with the guy. At the annual carnival, he wrote a poster ridiculing the informer: “The artist has a paste / And [Grafen]hainichen has an informer-hauptmeister!” According to the official, Mattei's thousands of complaints are paralyzing police work. In addition, he sows discord among the townspeople.

Several of them have already filed retaliatory complaints against the young man. “Such antics cannot be tolerated. We are considering all legal measures,” the mayor told BILD. “I dream that his special talent will find another area of ​​application.”

BILD journalist Laura Meinfelder learned some details about the “master of denunciations.” It turned out that the young man was filing complaints against his fellow countrymen not only because of illegal parking, but also for other “violations.”

“One day he called the fire department because there was a tree limb lying on the street,” mayor Enrico Schilling told BILD. “On the spot it turned out that there was a branch that the firefighters were able to kick out of the way.”

Another time, Mattei called the police because a neighbor was vacuuming during the day during rest hours.

He then reported a "massive breach of peace" to the police as a family next door were barbecuing in their garden and turned on the radio.

Recently, the "master of denunciations" reported an alarming signal from a smoke detector. Two fire brigades arrived at the scene. It turned out that it was a destroyed house to be demolished; there was no fire.

“One day Niklas rode his bike around a roundabout for a few laps,” Schilling said. “Just to wait for the driver to let him through so he could report it.”

In Germany, giving way to a driver on the right is a violation of the rules.

https://mixnews.lv/v-mire/2024/03/09/18 ... trafov-na- 140-tysyach-evro/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9015645.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Poland Might Be Seeking American Approval To Conventionally Intervene In Ukraine



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 13, 2024

So long as World War III doesn’t occur by miscalculation, then rump Ukraine would remain formally under its representatives’ political control regardless of whoever they may be by then, while the western part that used to be part of Poland would fall under its “sphere of economic influence”. Formal reincorporation is unlikely though for socio-economic reasons, let alone the lack of public support, though a confederation of some kind could eventually take shape at a later time.

Polish President Duda and Prime Minister Tusk met with Biden in DC to commemorate their country’s quarter-century in NATO, during which time these fierce political rivals lobbied for more Ukraine aid in what Politico described as an “absolutely unique sign of political unity”. Although Deputy Defense Minister Wziatek recently contradicted Foreign Minister Sikorski’s implied support of French President Macron’s proposal for NATO to conventionally intervene in Ukraine, this scenario still can’t be ruled out.

President Putin just warned in an interview that aired the day after those leaders met that:

“If, let's say, Polish troops enter the Ukrainian territory to - as it is said - protect the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, for example, or in some other places in order to free up Ukrainian military contingents to participate in hostilities on the line of contact, then I think that Polish troops will never leave. Well, it seems so to me.

Because they will want to return... they are dreaming, they want to return those lands that they consider historically theirs, and which were taken away from them by the Father of Nations, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, and transferred to Ukraine. Of course, they want them back. And if official Polish units enter there, they are unlikely to leave.”

His assessment will now be analyzed in light of recent developments in order to appraise its accuracy.

It was explained last July “How Poland Is Slyly Taking Control Of Western Ukraine” through economic means instead of military ones because the former are considered to be much more cost-effective and less risky. Meanwhile, this piece here from January explained why Hungarian and Romanian populists’ plans to reincorporate the lands that their nations lost to Ukraine is unlikely due to the difficulty posed by their totally different post-World War II demographics, which is also relevant for Poland.

By mid-February, however, the military-strategic calculations drastically changed after Russia’s victory in Avdeevka made it more likely than ever that it might achieve a breakthrough across the Line of Contact (LOC) by sometime later this year. It was this development that prompted Macron to publicly propose a conventional NATO intervention in Ukraine’s support in order to prevent that country’s collapse and draw a red line in the sand as far east as possible to stop the Russian steamroller in that scenario.

Most Western leaders reacted coolly to his suggest with the notable exception of the Baltic States and Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski, though the latter’s implied support of this proposal came after a week after Tusk said that this isn’t in the cards and was then contradicted by the Deputy Defense Minister. Nevertheless, this analysis here argued that Tusk’s reluctance is due to the fear that Poland could be hung out to dry by NATO if its forces clashed with Russia, hence the need to secure American approval.

Absent that, Poland might feel more confident participating in this mission together with at least nuclear-armed France and the UK, who could resort to nuclear brinksmanship in the event that the US advises NATO as a whole not to consider extending Article 5 over members’ troops in a third country. The best-case scenario from Poland’s perspective, however, is that American approves this mission and agrees to the aforementioned legally dubious interpretation in order to have its back if that happens.

Poland’s bipartisan pathological fear of Russia is why Duda and Tusk might take their “absolutely unique sign of political unity” to the next level by agreeing to conventionally intervene in Ukraine to stop the Russian steamroller should the frontlines collapse in the coming future. Formally reincorporating the erstwhile Second Polish Republic’s lands that it lost to Ukraine after 1939 might not be feasible for socio-economic reasons and a lack of public support, however, but a prolonged military presence is possible.

To explain, the Polish economy sharply slowed last year and the European Council on Foreign Relations’ poll from January showed that 40% of Poles regard Ukrainians as a threat, which is the highest anywhere among the 12 European countries that they surveyed and beats Kiev-skeptic Hungary by 3%. The formal reincorporation of what are nowadays the Ukrainian Oblasts of Lvov, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopol, Volyn, and Rivne would bring over 6 million Ukrainians into Poland per their total estimated 2022 populations.

In a country of approximately 37 million people that’s been ethno-religiously homogenous since World War II, that would increase the population to around 43 million and lead to over 1/8 of its citizens being minorities, whose socio-economic security would be provided for by pre-“reunification” taxpayers. Socio-economic development in post-1945 Poland would almost certainly be neglected in favor of rebuilding these “recovered territories” and helping their people meet Poland’s associated standards.

It's therefore easy to see why this wouldn’t be popular with the masses, 40% of whom already view Ukrainians as a threat, not to mention Poland’s beloved farmers who are already blockading the border in order to prevent the influx of cheap Ukrainian agricultural products from destroying their livelihoods. For that reason, it’s unlikely that either Duda or Tusk would move forward with such plans, but a prolonged military presence there is an altogether different matter that they’d likely agree to.

What President Putin said about Polish troops “protect[ing] the Ukrainian-Belarusian border, for example, or in some other places in order to free up Ukrainian military contingents to participate in hostilities on the line of contact” is credible due to that being in Poland’s military-strategic interests. They could also help maintain law and order should the state collapse if Russia achieves a breakthrough across the LOC, which could prevent an influx of Ukrainian migrants/refugees and stop arms smuggling.

Just as importantly, these Polish troops could secure their country’s envisaged “sphere of economic influence” in Western Ukraine from encroachment by the G7 ahead of that bloc’s reported plans to appoint a special envoy there that would likely be tasked with divvying up spheres between them. Not only that, but Duda and Tusk might have promised Biden that approval of a conventional Polish intervention in Ukraine could see Warsaw use some of its profits from there to purchase more US arms.

France, Germany, and the UK have their own arms industries and are thus unlikely to reinvest a portion of their Ukrainian-derived profits in the US’, so Washington has a natural financial incentive to support Warsaw defending its own envisaged “sphere” there by approving its conventional intervention. If that’s indeed what Duda and Tusk sought during their meeting with Biden and the US agrees to not to hang Poland out to dry, then this dangerous scenario might materialize sooner than later.

So long as World War III doesn’t occur by miscalculation, then rump Ukraine would remain formally under its representatives’ political control regardless of whoever they may be by then, while the western part that used to be part of Poland would fall under its “sphere of economic influence”. Formal reincorporation is unlikely though for the socio-economic reasons that were explained, let alone the lack of public support, though a confederation of some kind could eventually take shape at a later time.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/poland-m ... g-american

Romania Revealed The Legal Means Through Which NATO States Might Intervene In Ukraine



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 14, 2024

While it’s debatable whether Article 5 would extend to members’ troops in third countries like Ukraine, it would be a moot question in the scenario that nuclear-armed France and/or the UK participate in a “coalition of the willing” there since that's enough to lead to nuclear brinksmanship if they clash with Russia.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said that neither NATO as a whole nor his country in particular will intervene in Ukraine but left open the possibility of others doing so on their own. According to him, “Troops cannot be sent to Ukraine under NATO’s mandate because Ukraine is not a NATO ally. But in general, if Ukraine has bilateral agreements with a certain state in any sphere, these issues are a matter of bilateral relations. Romania will not send soldiers to Ukraine.”

It's these legal means through which a “coalition of the willing” could be assembled to this end, possibly led by France whose president was the first to publicly propose this and including Germany and the UK, whose countries have also signed “security guarantees” with Ukraine. The Baltic States would also likely participate after they supported the French leader’s suggestion, while Poland might get involved too if it receives American approval for this mission like its President and Prime Minister seem to be seeking.

While it’s debatable whether Article 5 would extend to members’ troops in third countries like Ukraine, it would be a moot question in that scenario since the participation of nuclear-armed France and/or the UK is enough to lead to nuclear brinksmanship if they clash with Russia there. This is all the more so if America approves of their intervention or at least doesn’t try to stop it, in which case it might back them up, possibly even to the point of threatening to use its own nukes if the fighting doesn’t stop.

The pretext upon which Biden could do so would be the one that he once again referenced on Tuesday about how “Russia won't stop at Ukraine. Putin will keep going, putting Europe, the United States and the entire free world at risk”, but which the Office of the Director of National Intelligence refuted. This Cabinet-level position that oversees the US’ Intelligence Community published a report last month that was only just publicly released this week assessing that Russia has no intent to go to war with NATO.

Unless he goes back on his repeated pledge that American troops won’t fight on the ground in Ukraine, which he’s unlikely to do because of how sensitive this issue is during the presidential election season, then participating in nuclear brinksmanship to support NATO allies in Ukraine would be very polarizing. The risk of sparking World War III by miscalculation just to support the Brits, French, Poles, and whoever else could turn the public against him and therefore return Trump to the White House next year.

From Biden’s self-interested political perspective, it would be better to force Ukraine to accept its de facto Korean-like partition along whatever the Line of Contact (LOC) between NATO and Russian forces might be by then, after which he could campaign on having “averted World War III” instead of risked it. That could also take away the appeal of Trump’s pro-peace platform since the hot phase of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, which is really an undeclared but limited hot war, might end by November.

For this sequence of events to happen, he first needs to approve the incipient “coalition of the willing’s” intervention in order to give them the confidence to get openly involved, and then Russia would have to break through the LOC to set the most kinetic phase of their plan into motion. Seeing as how the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee already warned that the LOC could collapse, all of this might happen sooner than later, which would briefly spike the risk of World War III but then reduce it afterwards.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/romania- ... egal-means

Poland’s Subordination To Germany Now Includes Educational, Judicial, & Diplomatic Dimensions



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 14, 2024

The latest phase of Poland’s political crisis might lead to Tusk manipulating Duda’s nationalist views and shared pathological fear of Russia into having him sign off on a conventional intervention in Ukraine in order to distract from domestic turmoil.

One of the most profound developments in Europe over the past three months apart from the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine is Poland’s comprehensive subordination to Germany since the return of Berlin-backed Donald Tusk to that country’s premiership in December. Since then, he withdrew Poland’s German reparations claims, agreed to its “military Schengen” proposal, and began to reconsider a connectivity megaproject, thus representing political, military, and economic subordination.

This fealty to his patron’s interests has since expanded to include educational, judicial, and diplomatic dimensions. The first refers to the removal of some key historical figures and events from the school curriculum per Tusk’s plan to slash it all by 20%, the second concerns his government’s reversal of their predecessors’ judicial reforms that strengthened Poland’s autonomy vis-à-vis the German-led EU, and the third involves replacing 50 ambassadors. The last one’s justification says a lot about Tusk’s worldview.

In his words, “we need to build and improve a team that is loyal to the Polish state”, which implies that his liberal-globalist government’s comprehensive subordination of Poland to Germany is patriotic. By default, this in turn implies that his conservative-nationalist predecessors’ comprehensive efforts to strengthen Poland’s independence vis-à-vis Germany was treasonous. In particular, Tusk is suggesting that the ambassadors that they appointed serve partisan interests and not Polish ones, which isn’t true.

For as imperfect as their policies were, the conservative-nationalists sincerely believed that they were putting Polish interests above all others, while the liberal-globalists prioritize Germany’s out of ideological solidarity with the EU’s de facto leader. To that end, they’re systematically dismantling their predecessors’ pro-independence moves in the political, military, economic, educational, judicial, and diplomatic spheres, which they justify on the false pretext of repairing traitorous damage to the state.

In their minds, conservative-nationalists are “racists”, “fascists”, and “xenophobes” who exploit democratic mandates to impose de facto dictatorships, ergo why “the ends justify the means” in the sense that even legally dubious policies are acceptable for “restoring democracy”. Tusk and his ilk regard Germany as the continent’s “democratic fountainhead” whose leadership must be maintained at all costs for the “greater good”, which is why they’re voluntarily crushing Polish independence for its benefit.

Instead of continuing their predecessors’ policies of trying to restore Poland’s Great Power status, they prefer to revert it back to being a German puppet state so as to restore that country’s superpower trajectory. It was earlier explained here and here how this trend is aimed at having Germany lead the EU’s containment of Russia at America’s behest after the Ukrainian Conflict ends in order free up some of the US’ troops for redeployment from there to Asia for more muscularly containing China.

The liberal-globalists believe that anything that stands in the way of this “greater good”, such as the conservative-nationalists’ plans to block the expansion of German influence in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) by restoring Poland’s long-lost status as a Great Power, must be fervently opposed. This explains the six primary moves that Tusk made thus far for subordinating Poland to Germany, the grand strategic importance of which will now be briefly reviewed in the order that they mentioned in this piece.

Withdrawing Poland’s German reparations claims was meant to show Poles that it’s no longer acceptable to hold a grudge against that country and to subsequently precondition the public for their own country following its political lead in the coming future. Shortly thereafter, Poland agreed to allow German troops and equipment to freely transit across its territory, with Foreign Minister Sikorski even supporting the idea of permanently hosting German forces on Polish soil for the first time since World War II.

This was followed by Tusk beginning to reconsider his predecessors’ CPK connectivity megaproject that would enable Poland to compete with Germany as a major CEE logistical hub if it enters into fruition, thus undercutting his own country in order to continue giving its neighbor an edge. After that, he moved to slash the curriculum by 20%, with the removal of some key historical figures and events serving to reduce patriotic sentiment among the next generation as well as reshaping how they view Germany.

His reversal of the former government’s judicial reforms was then approved by the EU, which rewarded him by unfreezing nearly $150 billion worth of funds that were withheld from his predecessors as punishment for strengthening Poland’s autonomy vis-à-vis that German-led bloc. This money could then be creatively reinvested in ways that boost his appeal among the public and help keep the conservative-nationalists out of power during the next elections.

The last move regarding his planned purge of a whopping 50 ambassadors shows that he doesn’t trust them to execute his pro-German foreign policy at the expense of Poland’s objective national interests due to their diametrically opposite worldview, which he falsely implied is treasonous. To be sure, diplomatic officials are obligated to follow orders, but this commitment becomes legally dubious if they sincerely believe that what they’re being tasked to do is genuinely treasonous.

Whereas Trump’s diplomats undercut him at every opportunity on false Russiagate-connected claims that his envisaged policies were treasonous, those diplomats appointed under the previous government arguably have legitimate reasons to do the same when it comes to Tusk’s policies as explained. The only way to ensure compliance with his demands is to remove them power, but President Duda – who’s a conservative-nationalist that’ll remain in office till his term expires in August 2025 – has to approve this.

He already said that he won’t, however, which could lead to yet another constitutional crisis on top of the others that Tusk has provoked since January. Poland is therefore expected to plunge further into what’s already its worst political crisis since the 1980s, and there’s a chance that its popular farmers protests could morph into a modern-day Solidarity movement, hence the need for a major distraction. If Tusk becomes desperate enough, then this could take the form of conventionally intervening in Ukraine.

Although he and his Defense Minister refuted French President Macron’s suggestion that this is in the cards, his Foreign Minister – who’s married to neoconservative warmonger Anne Applebaum and brags about having a son in the US military – insisted that this can’t be ruled out. Duda would have to order any such move since he’s the Commander-in-Chief, but seeing as how Sikorski said that NATO troops are already there but wouldn’t say whose, it’s possible that Duda already secretly signed off on this in part.

After all, Duda and Tusk came together in what Politico described as an “absolutely unique sign of political unity” to lobby for more US aid to Ukraine during their trip to DC this week to commemorate their country’s 25 years in NATO, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they were on the same page about that. This analysis here argues that they might have actually sought American approval for openly intervening in Ukraine, possibly alongside France and/or the UK, in order to prevent the front lines from collapsing.

Poland’s bipartisan pathological fear of Russia accounts for why they came together over Ukraine even though Polish attitudes towards that country are souring as proven by a top EU think tank’s recent poll. Nevertheless, as long as Western Ukraine isn’t “annexed”/“reunited” with Poland and its 6 million people who live on the land that Warsaw used to control for four centuries (which is longer than Russia controlled most of its own land) aren’t subsidized by taxpayers, the public might not revolt to stop it.

It's therefore possible that the latest phase of Poland’s political crisis might lead to Tusk manipulating Duda’s nationalist views and shared pathological fear of Russia into having him sign off on a conventional intervention in Ukraine in order to distract from domestic turmoil. That could complicate Germany’s interests but help save Tusk’s political skin, thus ironically being the “greater good” that Berlin might have to accept after ordering Poland to sacrifice its own interests in six spheres since December on similar grounds.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/polands- ... to-germany

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NATO Access a Strategic Suicide for Sweden

Lucas Leiroz

March 13, 2024

Historically neutral, Sweden is now taking part in a possible global conflict, supporting NATO against the Russian Federation.

After almost two years, Sweden’s admission process to NATO has finally been completed. Now, the country is formally part of the Western military alliance, submitted to the bloc’s obligations and in theory protected by its defense umbrella. Some analysts mistakenly claim that Sweden’s admission was a kind of “victory” for the West against Russia, but, investigating the case in depth, it is possible to conclude that such an analysis is biased, since for Moscow this move has no relevance – in addition to looking like a true “strategic suicide” for the Swedes themselves.

Sweden’s admission had been discussed since 2022. After the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Sweden and Finland, held U.S.-fomented fear and anti-Russian paranoia, requested to join the military alliance. Finland was quickly accepted, but Sweden faced several obstacles, such as Turkish and later Hungarian opposition. After several negotiations, Turkey allowed Swedish access, just as the Hungarians were forced to withdraw their objections after suffering direct economic coercion from European partners. Now, with no internal opposition in the bloc, Sweden has finally become a member of NATO – but that doesn’t seem to be any real reason to celebrate.

First of all, Sweden is joining NATO at the worst possible time. The alliance’s member countries are at their most provocative moment against Russia, with Moscow-West relations on the verge of resulting in open conflict. All experts agree that a war between NATO and Russia, if it did not result in a global nuclear conflict, would at least result in an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, with many human losses on the battlefield. In this sense, Sweden is simply voluntarily placing itself in the position of a legitimate target if such a war actually occurs – which makes the country’s decision to join NATO a true strategic suicide.

Even if tensions ease in the near future and there is no direct conflict between Russia and NATO, ties between both sides are severely damaged and will not be restored so easily. Russia has already made it clear that it understands the current conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war waged by NATO, therefore considering all members of the alliance as co-authors of the aggression. From now on, Sweden voluntarily places itself in this position of an aggressive country against Russia, creating a bilateral diplomatic crisis that will not be reversed anytime soon.

Furthermore, it must be emphasized that nothing changes for Russia with Swedish access. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it does not consider Sweden’s entry into NATO a red line in relations with the West. Scandinavian countries have long been deeply integrated with NATO, participating in joint military projects and exercises. In practice, Sweden was already almost a “de facto” member of NATO, which is why there does not appear to be any real change in regional geopolitics after the formalization of Swedish access.

In the same sense, one of the biggest arguments used by pro-Western analysts is that from now on the Baltic Sea will become a kind of “NATO lake”, considering the strong presence of the alliance along the Baltic coast. Some propagandists believe this is a true “strategic blow” against Russia, giving Western countries an advantage on the maritime battlefield if there is a direct conflict.

However, this argument is also fallacious. The Russian disadvantage in the Baltic Sea is an old reality, not having started now. In fact, Moscow has less power in the Baltic Sea than in other regions, given that there are several hostile countries in that area. However, this does not represent any “major blow” against Russia. A possible war in the Baltic Sea would not only be fought by sea, but also by air and land, which are terrains where Russian forces have an advantage against their enemies.

Furthermore, Moscow has great military power in the Arctic, making it possible to create an alternative sea route for its warships, if necessary. The Arctic route to reach the Baltic Sea has already been used by the Russian Navy in exercises, proving that it is possible to operate in this direction.

In addition to all this, it is necessary to take into account Russian military technological superiority. Moscow could use its long-range missiles and UAVs to neutralize most of NATO’s naval power in the Baltic Sea without even engaging its main Navy fleets – which definitively refutes the thesis that there is a “NATO lake” in the region.

In the end, the biggest loser with its access to NATO is Sweden itself, which from now on will be seen by Moscow as a hostile nation and will also have to increase its defense budget exponentially in order to meet the bellicose goals of the Atlantic alliance. In a world close to war, Sweden voluntarily chose to be a target if the worst-case scenario happens.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... or-sweden/

European Powers Stab Each Other in the Back Over Ukraine Proxy War Defeat

Finian Cunningham

March 13, 2024

The failure of being vassals for the American empire and the impending disaster of defeat for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine is weighing heavily.

Europe is rife with treachery in the age-old fashion of imperial rivalry. It’s pathetic to watch, but highly instructive about who the real villains of the piece are.

The failure of being abject vassals for the American empire and the impending disaster of defeat for the NATO proxy war in Ukraine is weighing heavily.

Each European power is pushing the other over the abyss to save its own political skin.

France’s Emmanuel Macron has emerged to be a little king rat. He has taken to talking up deploying NATO troops to Ukraine to salvage the proxy war against Russia. Macron struts around like a rat in jackboots too big for his feet calling on other European leaders not to be cowards.

The former Rothschild banker Macron then turns around and cancels yet another trip to the Ukrainian capital Kiev. Maybe the French leader got scared by the Russian air strike on Odessa last week when the Greek premier was touring the city along with Ukraine’s puppet president Zelensky.

Macron sent his Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné to Lithuania last Friday to discuss with the rabid Russophobic Baltic states the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine. Given the history of the Baltic states aiding and abetting the Third Reich’s invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa in 1941, we can safely posit the same states are an open door for such French-inspired madness.

However, with classic elite cowardice, Macron obviously doesn’t want to be anywhere near the front line when the action gets hot. Better to hunker down on a comfy armchair in Elysée Palace and bark out your angry poodle orders from there.

Meanwhile, that other bastion of European civility (meaning treacherous deception) the good old British are cajoling Germany to send long-range missiles to Ukraine to strike deep into Russia.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is balking at supplying the Taurus cruise missiles to the Ukrainian regime. The German-made weapon has a range of 500 kilometers. Given the unhinged NeoNazis in Kiev (headed up by a Jewish puppet Zelensky) it is a certainty that the Taurus missiles would be fired at Moscow to kill “Untermenschen Russians”.

That’s why Scholz is worried. His top Luftwaffe commanders have already been caught red-handed planning how the Taurus “super tools” would be used to hit deep Russian targets.

Enter the ever-so-polite British with a helping hand to the Germans. Britain’s Foreign Secretary “Lord” David Cameron visited Berlin last week urging the Germans to supply the Taurus missile to Ukraine.

Cameron said London was ready to help Germany “solve the problem” of its reluctance to provide the long-range weapon.

The British top diplomat offered a swap arrangement whereby London would buy Taurus missiles from Germany while supplying more of its Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine. In that way, Berlin would not be implicated in attacking Russia, according to Cameron.

Laughably, the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she considered the British offer to be viable.

Her nominal boss, Chancellor Scholz, has officially remained reluctant to the idea of sending Taurus missiles.

Germany would do well to treat any British proposal with deep suspicion. After all, it was the British that inveigled Germany into two world wars. The first one was with the objective of destroying an imperial rival, while the second one was engineered to unleash Hitler’s war machine on the Soviet Union.

The cold facts are that the United States and its European NATO vassals embarked on a proxy war against Russia using Ukraine as the battleground. That war was at least 10 years in the making from the CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev in 2014 which brought to power the present NeoNazi regime.

The two-year proxy war has turned out to be a colossal failure for the American empire and its European satellites. The Kyiv regime is collapsing from overwhelmingly superior Russian firepower. The wasting of the Ukrainian military – as many as 500,000 men – as well as up to $200 billion in financial and military aid paid for ultimately by Western taxpayers will rebound with massive political repercussions for the warmongering Western elites.

Each one of these imperialist criminal powers wants to save their own necks as the noose of public anger inevitably tightens.

The French cock-turned-rat Macron would no doubt like to muddy the battlefield with NATO troops – while avoiding any muck splashing on his dainty little boots of course.

The Americans are beginning to realize they can’t win and are finally cutting off the money, leaving the Europeans high and dry to deal with a continental-sized mess. Joe Biden can’t even remember if it was Ukraine or Iraq that he made a fatal mistake in.

Britain, ever the arch Machiavellian maggot, would like to throw Germany into the frontline against Russia. No doubt the City of London could pick up some much-needed capitalist business from war reconstruction contracts.

The proxy war in Ukraine is over and the Western rats are scurrying off the ship.

The Western public needs to hold each one of them to account and not let them blow up a bigger war with Russia as a way to distract from their culpability.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... ar-defeat/

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Drumbeat for Scholz to send Ukraine Taurus missiles

Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have been attacking Russian refineries – and, reportedly, a nuclear power plant

By STEPHEN BRYEN
MARCH 14, 2024


German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Image: KOHA

The German government is under heavy pressure to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine. To be more precise, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is the one being pushed by his own defense and foreign ministers – with Annalena Baerbock, his foreign minister, giving speeches pushing for the Taurus missiles to go there.


Annalena Baerbock speaking in the Bundestag, October 30, 2020. Photo: Olaf Kosinsky / Wikimedia Commons.

The Taurus cruise missile is a long-range weapon that would need to be mounted on a Ukrainian fighter jet – most likely one of Ukraine’s Su-24 planes, currently equipped with the British Storm Shadow cruise missile. It’s likely that appropriate interfaces would need to be installed on the Ukrainian jets.

How can a government survive when it is completely fractured? Why would a chancellor allow this kind of opposition in his governing ranks?

Part of it is because Germany is led by a coalition government that is wobbling badly. His fellow senior officials know that Scholz is a pushover: All you have to do is provide some political cover for him. He resisted sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine until the US “persuaded” him by agreeing to send Abrams M-1 tanks along with the Leopards.

David Cameron, once Britain’s prime minister and now foreign minister, proposed a solution. Britain would send more Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine and Germany would supply Taurus missiles to replace them in the UK. This scheme sounded promising, but Scholz did not like it. His foreign minister, on the other hand, endorsed Cameron’s proposal.

A vexing question is just how many of the Taurus missiles actually are in working condition. Reliable numbers are hard to come by, but some reckon that Germany has 600 Taurus cruise missiles (in different models) in its inventory. Only 150 or so are certified operational, although that number may be an exaggeration. Germany may be asked to send between 30 and 50 Taurus missiles to Ukraine, significantly depleting the working inventory.

One presumes that Germany needs Taurus missiles for its own national security, although how many is not clear. Those boosting sending them to Ukraine, like the Green Party, are all-in on sending these weapons to Ukraine – but are far less committed to defense spending in Germany. Annalena Baerbock is a leading Green party member. She favors a European defense scheme under the supervision of the European parliament.

Scholz says that a key reason he opposes sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine, even though he trusts the Ukrainians, is that German soldiers would have to operate them. This, Scholz suggests, makes Germany a combatant against Russia, a result he does not support.

Leaving aside the obvious target of the Kerch Strait mega bridge – at which, according to the leak of a tape of German military officers, 20 Taurus missiles would be aimed – no one doubts that sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine would aid and abet Ukraine’s attacks on Russian territory.

Such attacks have escalated in the past couple of weeks. On March 12th alone, Ukraine sent 58 kamikaze drones aimed at six locations.The Ukrainians have been aiming at Russian oil refineries. Two of them were hit on March 12.

There reportedly was an attempted strike on a nuclear power plant in Rostov. The Rostov plant includes three power units and generates 3.1 gw (gigawatts) of electricity.


Rostov Nuclear Power Plant’s Reactors. Photo: ioes.ru

An attack on a nuclear power plant is extraordinarily reckless and has repercussions that could escalate the war with new terror weapons, including nuclear weapons. Scholz’s statement that he trusts the Ukrainians would seem misplaced.

Ukraine’s attacks grow out of desperation, as Ukraine’s military is steadily eroding and the Russians are thought to be on the verge of a major offensive. The Ukrainians are urgently building new defenses consisting of trenches, pill boxes and obstacles, but if the Russians actually do move a large force, the new defense works will be either bypassed or destroyed.


Ukraine defense works construction. Photo: Screengrab

Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly warned the West about nuclear weapons. Putin conflated nuclear weapons with the possible introduction of US troops in Ukraine, saying that the West should be aware that Russia is “technically ready for nuclear war” and that if the US sent troops to Ukraine, it would be considered “a significant escalation of the conflict.” Putin’s statement came before the reported attack in Rostov. It isn’t known how Russia will respond to that.

There will be a vote in the German Bundestag, staged by the opposition, on the Taurus question. Previously the Bundestag voted against sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. How such a vote will turn out this time, given the fissures in the German government, is not clear.

UPDATE MARCH 14, 2023: The Associated Press reports that the Bundestag has rejected the proposal.

https://asiatimes.com/2024/03/drumbeat- ... -missiles/

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Austrian communists make a breakthrough in Salzburg municipal polls

With a surge in their popularity in cities like Graz and Salzburg, communists hope to enter the parliament in the elections this year

March 13, 2024 by Peoples Dispatch


Kay-Michael Dankl (left) during the election campaign.

On Sunday, March 10, in the municipal elections held in the Austrian federal state of Salzburg, the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) made significant gains in the Salzburg city council by securing 10 seats, a jump from just one seat it had previously. The KPÖ are close behind the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) which secured 11 seats.

At the same time, Bernhard Auinger from SPÖ and Kay-Michael Dankl from KPÖ have secured 29.4% and 28% votes respectively, in the first round of mayoral election in Salzburg city and qualified for the runoff scheduled for March 24.

Meanwhile, the ruling Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) has slid to third position in Salzburg city while retaining the majority of municipal councils and mayorships in the state.

The communists also made gains elsewhere in the Salzburg state, having secured three seats in Wals-Siezenheim and Hallein.

Salzburg is the fourth largest city in the country and communists under the leadership of Kay-Michael Dankle have managed to increase their strength multifold in the city within a short period. The party campaigned on issues such as the housing crisis and the cost of living crisis, that the major parties failed to tackle yet.

Earlier, in the elections to the regional assembly (Landtag) of Salzburg held in 2023, the KPÖ+ coalition registered a significant victory by winning four seats and 11.7% of the total votes polled.

The second-largest city in Austria, Graz, has a communist mayor, Elke Kahr, since November 2021. With the latest victory in Salzburg city, Austrian communists are in an upbeat mood and hope to enter the Austrian National Council in the parliamentary elections this year.

Meanwhile, the loss of mayorship in Salzburg proved disheartening for the ÖVP-Green coalition that leads the federal government headed by chancellor Karl Nehammer, before the general elections.

Following the declaration of the election results in Salzburg, the Young Left group affiliated with the KPÖ stated that “this election success in Salzburg did not fall from the sky, but is the result of consistent work by KPÖ Plus in recent years … The upward trend of the communist movement continues.”

The Communist Youth of Austria (KJO) stated that “the election result makes it clear that the people are in support of pro-worker policies, that do not bow to banks and corporations, and also reach the people! The time is up for a communist alternative!”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/03/13/ ... pal-polls/

[blindpig]

MARCH 14, 2024 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR

France all dressed up and nowhere to go


French President Emmanuel Macron at a conference (file photo)

Ever since its ignominious defeat in the Napoleonic wars, France is entrapped in the predicament of countries that get sandwiched between great powers. Following World War II, France addressed this predicament by forging an axis with Germany in Europe.

Caught up in a similar predicament, Britain adapted itself to a subaltern role tapping into the American power globally but France never gave up its quest to regain glory as a global power. And it continues to be a work in progress.

The angst in the French mind is understandable as the five centuries of western dominance of the world order is drawing to a close. This predicament condemns France to a diplomacy that is constantly in a state of suspended animation interspersed with sudden bouts of activism.

But, for activism to be result-oriented, there are prerequisites needed such as the profiling of like-minded activist groups, leadership and associates and supporters and sympathisers — and, most important, sustainment and logistics. Or else, activism comes to resemble epileptic fits, an incurable affliction of the nervous system.

The French President Emmanuel Macron’s halcyon days in international diplomacy ended with the recent dissolution of the Franco-German axis in Europe, which dated back to the Treaties of Rome in 1957. As Berlin sharply swerved to trans-atlanticism as its foreign-policy dogma, France’s clout diminished in European affairs.

The stakes are high in the reconciliation meeting on Friday as Macron travels to Berlin to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who not only snubbed him by ruling out the use of ground troops from European countries in the Ukraine war, but also digging in on Taurus missile issue arguing that it would entail assigning German staff in support to Ukraine, which, he announced on Wednesday in the Bundestag, is simply “out of the question” while he remained the chancellor.

Of course, this is not to decry Macron’s formidable intellect — such as when he declared in a blunt interview in late 2019 with the Economist magazine that Europe stood on “the edge of a precipice” and needed to start thinking of itself strategically as a geopolitical power lest it will “no longer be in control of our destiny.” Macron’s prescient remark preceded the war in Ukraine by 3 years.

According to the newspaper Marianne, which interviewed several French soldiers, the military reportedly estimates that the Ukraine war is irretrievably lost already. Marianne quoted a senior French officer saying derisively, “We must make no mistake facing the Russians; we are an army of cheerleaders” and sending French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable” . At the Élysée, an unnamed advisor argued that Macron “wanted to send a strong signal… (in) milli-metered and calibrated words”.

Marianne’s editor Natacha Polony wrote: “It is no longer about Emmanuel Macron or his postures as a virile little leader. It is no longer even about France or its weakening by blind and irresponsible elites. It is a question of whether we will collectively agree to sleepwalk into war. A war that no one can claim will be controlled or contained. It’s a question of whether we agree to send our children to die because the United States insisted on setting up bases on Russia’s borders.”

The big question is why Macron is doing this nonetheless — going to the extent of cobbling together a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Europe. A range of explanations is possible starting with Macron posturing and trying to earn political points at minimal cost, motivated by personal ambitions and intra-European friction with Berlin.

But then, until fairly recently, Macron was a supporter of dialogue with Moscow. The perception in most European capitals, including Moscow, is that Macron is making an attempt to bring the Ukrainian crisis to a new level by announcing western combat deployment against Russia publicly as an obvious political manipulation.

The geopolitical salience is that Macron who once not too long ago called for dialogue with Moscow and offered his mediation in it, who made the famous declaration of a “Greater Europe” in 2019 and maintained contacts with Russian President Vladimir Putin thereof; who as of February last year, while speaking about Russia’s “certain defeat” in Ukraine, called for avoiding Moscow’s “humiliation”; who repeatedly underscored his commitment to the matrix of diplomacy attributed to Charles de Gaulle, which assigned France the role of a “bridge between East and West” — has now swung to the other extreme of harsh Euro-Atlantic rhetoric.

This appalling inconsistency can only be seen as stemming out of the unfavourable development of events in the scenario of the Ukrainian crisis with the prospect of a Russian defeat in the war no longer in the cards even remotely and replaced by the growing possibility that peace will ultimately be attainable only on Russia’s terms. Put differently, the power dynamic in Europe is shifting dramatically, which, of course, impacts Macron’s own ambitions to “lead Europe.”

Meanwhile, Russian-French relations have also been undergoing a stage of fierce competition and rivalry — even confrontation — in a number of areas. For a start, French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejournet said in an interview with Le Parisien in January that Russia’s victory in Ukraine would lead to 30% of world wheat exports being controlled by Moscow. For Paris, this is a question of the sustainability of one of the key sectors of French national economy.

French agriculture is marked by its history that had its beginning with the Gaulois in 2000 BC. It needs to be understood that In modern history, French Revolution of 1789, which altered every part of the French social order and led to the abolition of privileges for upper classes, was also an Agricultural Revolution, which allowed a broad land redistribution. Suffice to say, the bond of French people to their agriculture is very strong.

As it is, African states are changing the structure of grain imports due to the technical regulations introduced by the European Union as part of its green agenda and French farmers consequently face rising costs, and over and above that, there is now also the looming loss of regional market share to Russia.

This is on top of the inroads Russia is making in arms exports to the African continent lately. In politico-military terms too, France has lost ground to Russia in the resource-rich Sahel region, its ex-colonies and playpen traditionally. The fact of the matter is that the birds are coming to roost over France’s neo-colonial strategies in Africa, but Paris prefers to put the blame on Russia’s Wagner group which has moved in to fill the security vacuum in Sahel region, as anti-French forces have come to power in several countries at once — Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, CAR.

In the best traditions of geopolitics, France has begun retaliating in regions sensitive to Russian interests — Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine where Russian military presence is in French crosshairs. Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is the most strategic turf where Macron hopes to achieve a bigger French presence.

Through that, Macron hopes to advance his leadership ambitions in Europe as the navigator of the EU’s foreign policy strategy in a wide arc from the African continent across the Mediterranean to Transcaucasia — and potentially all the way to Afghanistan.

All this is unfolding against the historic backdrop of an inevitable US retrenchment in Europe as Indo-Pacific hots up and the simmering rivalry with China becomes an all-consuming passion for Washington. Indeed, alongside, the towering presence of Russia across Europe is beginning to be felt intensely as it surges as the number one military and economic power in the strategic space between Vancouver and Vladivostok.

Today, the paradox is, then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev had proposed way back in 2008 a legally binding pan-European security treaty, which would develop a new security architecture in Europe, involving the reshaping of existing, and creating new institutions and norms regulating security relations in Europe in a wider geopolitical space stretching east “from Vancouver to Vladivostok.” But, alas, the US encouraged the Europeans to see the so-called ‘Medvedev Initiative’ as a trap to enfeeble NATO, the OSCE, the EU and other European bodies, and reject that wonderful idea which would have anchored the post-cold war era firmly on a binding security architecture.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/france- ... ere-to-go/

******

France sees no red lines in what it does to Russia: there will be consequences…
March 17, 2024

For more than a week now, the president of the Russian Union of Journalists, Vladimir Solovyov has been asking all French viewers tuned in to his television talk show which city they are prepared to see the Russians raze to the ground first: Lyon, Toulouse or Paris…?

The question is posed in the context of increasing discussion among Kremlin leaders of possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in the European theater. In his latest interview with Yevgeni Kiselyov, head of the state television news department, Vladimir Putin hinted strongly at using nuclear weapons to destroy any grouping of an ‘interventionist’ force from NATO member countries arriving in Ukraine to fight the Russians. This was in direct response to the recent public announcement by French President Emmanuel Macron that France does not recognize any ‘red lines’ posted by the Russians. Macron is offering to send French ground troops to Ukraine and is calling upon other NATO countries to join him in forming a military contingent of the willing to ensure that Ukraine does not lose its war with Russia.

In one sense the nervous, one might say hysterical speeches by Macron demonstrate that even the densest minds in the West have taken in the possibility, nay, the probability of an imminent collapse of the Ukrainian war effort and Kiev’s raising the white flag, as the Pope called upon them to do this past week.

It also should be mentioned here that in his latest interview with Kiselyov Putin said that the number of NATO country military men who have been killed in Ukraine over the past two years, approximately 5000, widely exceeds the 3500 NATO military who died in the 20 year long Afghanistan occupation by NATO. The numbers have been set out country by country, with the United States at the head of the list with approximately 1500 deaths. We may assume that these are mostly officers and highly trained operators of advanced equipment supplied to Ukraine like the Patriot air defense.

****

Though Putin’s transparent threats are deadly serious, Russian elites find it hard to take Macron and his associates at face value.

Despite what Western publics think, Russians are very tolerant of gays. It is no secret that a large swathe of cultural life in Russia is dominated by gays. Not just ballet, but in other performing and plastic arts as well.

However, when it comes to war making, the explicit Russian logic is that war is a man’s profession. It is for Alpha males. Yes, there are super star female jet pilots, such as Putin visited a week ago at their training center. But in the main, Russians see women in the armed forces as nurses and doctors, not as killers.

Therefore, the fact that the wimpish Macron has recently appointed as his Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Séjourné, ex-husband (or was it wife?) of his Prime Minister Gabral Attal, and that they all are saber rattling in direction of Moscow elicits raucous laughter in Moscow and points east.

The threats of Kremlin insiders like Solovyov to raze to the ground Lyon, Toulouse or Paris with unstoppable Russian hypersonic missiles should encourage sobriety in Paris, if the ordinary citizenry value their lives.

*****

Today, Sunday, is the third and final day of balloting at Russian polling stations around the world and at 9.30 am I arrived at the Russian embassy in Brussels to accompany a friend to vote.

There was a Belgian police car stationed at the gates to the embassy compound to ensure order. Across the street someone had thoughtfully erected a one and a half meter high photo of Alexei Navalny to remind all comers of who the real Opposition to Putin was. But inside the gates, it was a different world, calm, gracious I might say. The embassy staff checked passports of everyone entering. Their demeanor was very friendly and welcoming.

On this score, please note that this pleasant atmosphere stands in stark contrast to the bad old days of the Soviet Union and even to the Yeltsin years, when diplomatic staff, like most all other Russian state employees were paid almost nothing and were always vexed and churlish.

Ambassador Tokovinin has put together a very good team of employees and their friendly disposition attests to their being properly taken care of and well managed.

Russians are late risers, especially on Sundays, and we were well rewarded for our early arrival at the embassy, because the line inside to register and then vote was only 20 minutes long. As we left, the throngs began to arrive.

Who came? A very mixed collection of people by age, though mostly in their middle years, with an admixture of the young generation. Not many oldsters. One celebrity stood out: Anastasia Popova, Brussels bureau chief of Russian State Television, came with several kids.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/03/17/ ... sequences/

******

Collapse on the EU Home Front
Posted on March 17, 2024 by Conor Gallagher

The German military’s recklessness has been getting a lot of attention recently due to the leaked audio of German military officers casually discussing attacks on Russia.

You can draw a direct line from the foolishness of attacking Russia with a total of 100 Taurus missiles to the ongoing rapid economic decline at home. The incompetence evident in both continues to be on display as decisions in Berlin only make matters worse, and Germany’s insistence on austerity for the rest of Europe are helping to ensure the rest of the EU will be dragged further down as well.

The ramifications of such policies are likely to be substantial as Europe’s working class is increasingly opposed to the conflict with Russia and are becoming increasingly hostile to the EU, and in response elites are cracking down on democratic rights, threatening to ban parties and limiting speech.


The ineptitude – from Berlin to Brussels and across most European capitals – is so pervasive it’s enough to leave one wondering whether it’s intentional as part of some sort of targeted demolition with an ulterior motivel.

“Dramatically Bad”

The economic growth forecast for Germany was recently slashed down to 0.2 percent in 2024, plunging from the previous projection of 1.3 percent. Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck is now complaining about Germany’s elevated energy prices that are driving companies in Germany to move production out of the country. He recently said the country is performing “dramatically bad.” Habeck, from the Greens, has been economy minister since 2021. And one doesn’t need to look much further than him and his team for why the situation is as it is.

Germany’s economic slump is now widely seen as structural rather than temporary, as the country is struggling with higher energy prices following the loss of cheap and reliable Russian energy. Habeck and the Greens were some of the staunchest supporters of the conflict with Russia and getting rid of Russian fossil fuels, as well as Germany’s nuclear power, so they must be ramping up clean energy, right?

Not exactly. According to a report released March 7 by the German Federal Court of Auditors. It found that the expansion of renewable energies and the electricity grid is way behind schedule, and that there isn’t enough generation capacity to meet demand.

Habeck, who is also the federal minister of climate action, dismissed the report, saying it “does not reflect reality.”

The reality is inflation continues to be problematic, the economy is contracting as industry shrinks, exports to China are declining and there is constant pressure from Atlanticists to self-impose a further reduction, living standards are declining, social spending is being scaled back in favor of more military spending, wealth inequality grows, and industry continues to leave the country.

Meanwhile, Berlin recently approved a 2024 subsidy plan worth 5.5 billion euros to help soften the blow of rising electricity prices. The government can’t do much more without continuing to take away from other German social spending. Germany’s Finance Minister Christian Lindner is opposed to any suspension of the country’s debt brake and instead wants to slash corporate tax rates, which would be financed with expenditure cuts.

Germany’s corporate tax rate is higher than global competitors, but there’s reason to believe lowering them while cutting public spending would not lead to economic growth and would likely make Germany’s economic situation even worse.

Economist Philip Heimberger, author of a 2022 study that shows there is little empirical evidence for positive growth effects from corporate tax cuts, believes Lindner’s plan is misguided:

Especially if government spending is cut elsewhere at the time of the corporate tax cut, weaker growth effects are to be expected. In view of the problems associated with complying with the debt brake and the resulting prospect of government spending cuts, caution is therefore required, especially as a corporate tax cut would lead to a (continued) decline in government revenue.

A loss of tax revenue in turn reduces the provision of public goods such as infrastructure and education. However, the quality of the location for companies and their business prospects are dependent on high-quality public goods.

For German companies to invest more again and for the economy to grow more strongly, the business case for investment must be right. The government would have to make it easier for decision-makers in companies to plan by combining a clear industrial policy strategy with public investment in order to attract further private investment. The turbulence within the federal government surrounding compliance with the debt brake and uncertainties as to whether even long-announced fiscal policy measures in favor of companies can be financed are counterproductive.

Germany’s corporate taxation is no longer competitive internationally, it is claimed. Positive effects from across-the-board profit tax cuts are mainly achieved, if at all, by companies relocating to Germany at the expense of other countries. Despite its current weak growth, Germany is Europe’s most powerful country both politically and economically. As such, its government should not promote a race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation that does little for growth.

What does all this mean for Germans? For one, this year’s budget, which includes the highest military expenditure since the end of WWII (much of it for Ukraine) and massive cuts in the areas of healthcare, education, and social welfare, could be just a preview of what’s to come.

And it’s a model that is being forced on the rest of Europe.

Making a Bad Situation Worse

Germany also continues to insist on stricter fiscal rules for Europe, which will likely only worsen the economic pain already being felt by millions across the bloc largely due to the economic war against Russia.

In February, a last-minute agreement between the European Commission and Parliament will force EU member states to slash debt ratios and deficits while maintaining investment in “strategic areas such as digital, green, social or defense.”

At the same time, according to Bloomberg, EU officials and investors are using the fiscal rules to push for an EU-wide bond program that would bring the investors bigtime profits while allowing the bloc to ramp up military spending without individual nations incurring more debt.

After years of using the escape clause in order to deal with the economic fallout of the pandemic, the return of fiscal rules in the form of the new “economic governance” framework might help the EU get its coveted war bonds, it will also mean more austerity. – especially for those nations with high public debt ratios, such as Italy, Spain and France.



Let’s not forget that the EU is pushing this despite its own polling of bloc citizens showing that nearly 80 percent favor stronger social policies and more social spending.

The Potential Consequences

The piling of crisis upon crisis – all of which reduce the standard of living of the majority of Europeans – has predictable consequences. A paper last year titled The Political Costs of Austerity details what’s already happening:

Fiscal consolidations lead to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout, and a rise in political fragmentation. We highlight the close relationship between detrimental economic developments and voters’ support for extreme parties by showing that austerity induces severe economic costs through lowering GDP, employment, private investment, and wages. Austerity-driven recessions amplify the political costs of economic downturns considerably by increasing distrust in the political environment.

Brussels has managed to keep a lid on anti-EU parties across the bloc despite their increasing vote share. The Chega Party in Portugal is just the latest “far-right” winner from voters’ disgruntlement with the erosion of their economic standing and democracy. Case in point, plans were immediately implemented to freeze Chega out of any coalition.

In Europe’s second-largest economy, the presidential election isn’t until 2027, but Marine Le Pen is already making herself more acceptable to the transatlantic permanent state:

The Melonisation — i.e., self-domestication — of Le Pen proceeds apace. After giving up on her anti-euro platform, she’s now appeasing NATO and Washington. She’s almost ripe for being allowed to govern. pic.twitter.com/efTTROq3wp

— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) March 14, 2024

While this tweet refers to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s abandonment of her and her party’s past positions on NATO and the EU, the case of Europe’s second largest industrial economy, Italy, is instructive in many other ways, as it is a harbinger of what’s to come for other EU nations like Germany. Three points there:

1. Italy is reeling from the energy crisis, but it has been reeling for more than two decades with declining living standards since its joining of the single currency:

Annual net income of the Italian household, which was €27,499 (at constant 2010 prices) in 1991, declined to €23,277 in 2016—a drop in median living standards of 15%. Mean net household income fell by €3,108 between 1991 and 2016 or by about 10%. Italy is the only major Eurozone country that, in the past 27 years, suffered not stagnation but decline.

2. Then the economic war against Russia made things worse as energy prices surged more than 50 percent in 2022 and have yet to decline. Inflation, real wages, and industrial activity are all heading in the wrong direction.

In January, an Italian court allowed energy companies to cut off gas supplies to steel company Acciaierie d’Italia (ADI), majority owned by multinational steel giant ArcelorMittal, over mounting debts.This is the company’s main plant, which is in the southern Italian city of Taranto and is one of the largest in Europe. It employs about 8,200 people and many other jobs depend on the plant.

The response from Italian and Brussels elites is always the same: more wage suppressions, more market-friendly reforms, more social spending cuts, and more privatization. It was only a few months ago that the New York-based private equity firm KKR, which includes former CIA director David Petraeus as a partner, reached a controversial agreement to buy the fixed-line network of Telecom Italia. Now the Italian daily La Repubblica is declaring that “Italy Is For Sale,” in which it describes plans for 20 billion euros worth of privatizations, including more of the state rail company Ferrovie dello Stato, Poste Italiane, Monte dei Paschi bank and energy giant Eni. The plan is reportedly necessitated by the country’s tax cuts. The roughly 100 billion euros Rome has burned through in order to address the energy crisis surely hasn’t helped either. And this was happening with the suspension of the EU debt brake.

3. Now, according to Breugel, the new EU fiscal rules will for Italy translate into a structural primary balance requirement of over 4 percent of GDP. That will mean ongoing public service cuts and the privatization of just about whatever hasn’t been strip mined yet. And it will mean that Brussels’ neoliberal austerity policies will continue to increase the gap between rich and poor.

How does all the economic carnage translate at the political level? At the end of 2022, voters already went with the candidate (Meloni) who fashioned herself as an EU- and NATO-skeptic. She turned out to be neither.

Where do voters turn to now? As of now, one third of Italian voters rate the economy as their top concern, and most have nowhere to go:



This helps explain why the turnout in Italy’s 2022 election was the lowest since WWII. Similar low levels are being seen in France, Germany, and elsewhere. This is probably the way Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission like it, but for how long can it last?

Working class Europeans are increasingly waking up to the fact that the EU is a project of class warfare on labor. Trust in EU institutions continues to decline while 66 percent of the EU working class feel their quality of life is getting worse. In short, Brussels’ policies are creating a groundswell of opposition to the EU.

As is the case across much of Europe, support for the EU in Italy is already largely divided along class lines:

Recent survey evidence suggests that support for the euro has a clear income and class bias. The perception of having benefited from the euro grows with income and is highest among self-employed professionals and large employers, technical (semi-)professionals, and associate managers, while production and service workers and small business owners are much less likely to report that they have benefited from the euro. In brief, in Italy support for the euro is concentrated among the economically better off and, with regard to partisan choice, among voters of the centre-left. In turn, the more a person has benefited from the euro, the more likely she/he is to report that she/he would vote to remain in the euro in a hypothetical referendum. Importantly, the majority of Italian voters report that they have not benefited from the euro, which makes support for the single currency rather fragile.

While there is ongoing escalation against Russia and China abroad, so too we’re seeing escalation at home. While the likes of von der Leyen lecture countries on the dangers of electing anyone they consider a threat to what they call the “liberal consensus,” they increasingly use warnings of “tools,” threats to ban parties, crackdowns on speech to arrive at that consensus.

There is more pushback – whether farmers’ protests, political parties calling for new direction, or simply individuals or groups airing unwanted viewpoints. As of now, they are smeared as far right or as personifications of Russian propaganda, but at what point does the number of those being smeared reach critical mass?

Or to put it another way: As capital continues to gobble up the European welfare states and living standards decline, citizens are asked to sacrifice even more for the wealthy’s economic wars, which they are told are fights over democratic values. Meanwhile, those values are increasingly trampled at home in order to silence opposition to said economic wars. That does not seem like a sustainable model.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/03 ... front.html

[blindpig]

The EU’s Approach Towards Ukrainian & Russian Agricultural Imports Harms Polish Farmers



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 21, 2024

It’s very likely that their protests will keep growing and could continue morphing into a new Solidarity movement that poses a serious challenge to the government.

An estimated 70,000 protesters blockaded around 570 locations in Poland this week in the largest demonstrations thus far in support of their farmers, whose livelihoods are on the brink of ruin due to the continued influx of cheap and low-quality Ukrainian grain into the domestic market. The EU’s provisional decision to cap some Ukrainian grain at the average 2022-2023 volume levels importantly excluded wheat and barley, and tariff exemptions on all imports will remain in place for another year.

Bloomberg then reported the day after that “Europe’s Support for Ukrainian Wheat Gets Farmers Even Angrier” since this preliminary measure doesn’t address their concerns. EU Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski also said last week that Polish agriculture is losing on trade with Ukraine. He’s Polish and a member of the former conservative-nationalist government that imposed restrictions on Ukrainian imports but has come under pressure from the new liberal-globalist government to resign.

Regarding the incumbent authorities, they’re now trying to distract the protesters by pushing through an EU proposal to tariff Russian agricultural imports in response to a Ukrainian influence operation falsely alleging that these low-level imports are responsible for the farmers’ plight. This analysis here covers the various dimensions of their anti-Polish information warfare campaign since the protests resumed in January for those who are interested in learning more about this meddling.

The importance in referencing this is to inform the reader of why Poland supports a proposal that even Politico admitted is “more of a distraction than a real solution to the difficult economic situation facing European farmers, given the relatively low share of the EU market accounted for by (Russian) imports.” Ukraine’s APK-Inform Analytic and Information Agency also boasted that “Tariffs for Russian grain to boost Ukrainian wheat competitiveness in EU market”.

The EU’s impending Russian agricultural distraction is therefore a sly way to expand Ukraine’s share of the bloc’s market, which will only worsen the problems for Polish farmers, thus risking the scenario of their protests morphing into a modern-day form of the Old Cold War-era Solidarity movement. It was assessed earlier this month here that Poland’s new liberal-globalist government might then feel pressured to conventionally intervene in Ukraine as the ultimate distraction from these protests.

To be sure, the decision to do so wouldn’t be entirely driven by domestic matters, but they’d likely play an outsized role in convincing policymakers in the scenario of a new Solidarity movement rising. On-the-ground developments in the NATO-Russian proxy war would be much more influential such as the possibility of France preemptively trying to seize control of Odessa before a Russian breakthrough. Nevertheless, the point is that potential Polish participation could serve to distract from these protests.

Since the EU’s approach towards Russian and Ukrainian agricultural imports won’t help Polish farmers but will actually worsen their plight, it’s very likely that their protests will keep growing and could continue morphing into a new Solidarity movement. In that event, martial law could be imposed on the pretext of conventionally intervening in Ukraine and naturally needing to clear all blockades impeding the movement of troops there, thus killing two birds with one stone.

The aforementioned policy could backfire if the protesters refuse to comply and instead end up clashing with the armed forces, however, which could complicate this campaign at its most sensitive stage. Its success couldn’t be taken for granted then due to complexity theory teaching that initial conditions disproportionately shape the outcome of complex processes such as this one. The liberal-globalist government’s possible solution to the protests might therefore spark Poland’s worst-ever national crisis.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-eus- ... -ukrainian

The Czecho-Slovak Split Over Ukraine Symbolizes The Spread Of New Cold War Divisions



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 21, 2024

What’s so symbolic about this dynamic is that Czechs and Slovaks are fraternal people, yet they’re embracing diametrically opposite views on the New Cold War.

The New Cold War is conceptualized differently by many but can objectively be described as the division between those who want to retain the US-led West’s unipolar hegemony, with all that it entails for countries’ domestic affairs, and those who want to accelerate multipolar processes across the world. These divisions have already penetrated the West after Hungary sought to lead that bloc’s conservative counterrevolution but have now spread deeper into Central Europe with the Czecho-Slovak split.

The Washington Post drew attention to this development in their piece about “How the war in Ukraine has split the Czechs and Slovaks”, which casts aspersions on Prime Minister Fico, who’s now serving his fourth term in office following his return last year after time in opposition. His campaign was opposed by America, which Russia accused of meddling in the run-up to the vote, but he still won due to how much his conservative-nationalist promises resonated with his people after they soured on liberal-globalism.

He then reaffirmed his pragmatic approach towards the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, which earned him the hatred of the Western elite and especially those Czech members with whom his country was previously united after World War I till their “Velvet Divorce” in 1993. Around the same time, Poland’s conservative-nationalist government was replaced by a German-backed liberal-globalist one, which had the effect of restoring Germany’s superpower trajectory and reshaping European geopolitics.

These respective domestic political reversals were inextricably connected to the previously described New Cold War division between unipolar and multipolar supporters. Fico returned to office despite American meddling because his conservative-nationalist vision promised to remove Slovakia from the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, which is the most geostategically significant conflict since World War II. By contrast, Poland’s previous government remained committed to it in spite of the growing costs.

Whereas Fico was therefore able to consolidate and expand his base, the latter of which was due to him promising to extricate Slovakia from this conflict and therefore reduce the costs that it’s experienced as a result, his Polish conservative-nationalist counterpart split his base and accordingly lost re-election. The domestic political dynamics are altogether different in Czechia, however, since that country’s population is mostly in favor of unipolarity and its liberal-globalist domestic model although some opposition exists.

Furthermore, unlike the Polish and Slovak states, the Czech one actually profits from this proxy war due to what a boon it’s been for that country’s military-industrial complex. That said, second and third order costs are indeed piling up and will inevitably become more obvious, but they haven’t yet been felt as much as in its two neighbors and that explains why a former NATO general won the presidency in March 2023. Until then, however, Czecho-Slovak differences will continue widening for the foreseeable future.

The consequence of this rift is that mutual perceptions at the political and civil society levels might worsen, which could harm efforts to retain cordial relations after their “Velvet Divorce” three decades ago. If this trend spirals out of control, then Czechia might start meddling in Slovak affairs once more, and this could toxify their ties and thus further weaken the Visegrad Group within which they, Hungary, and Poland all participate.

As time goes on, Czechia might also subordinate itself to Germany just like Poland has done in solidarity with the EU’s de facto leader, who envisages itself leading the bloc’s containment of Russia despite newfound competition from France. To that end, Prague could become a party to the “military Schengen” that was signed last month between Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands, which would facilitate the movement of its troops and equipment to the Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian borders.

By contrast, Slovakia is expected to retain its principled stance of no longer involving itself in this conflict, which could exacerbate the New Cold War divisions between them and in turn worsen their ties at all levels. What’s so symbolic about this dynamic is that Czechs and Slovaks are fraternal people, yet they’re embracing diametrically opposite views on the New Cold War. This shows that the ideational divisions brought about by the global systemic transition transcend even the closest historical ties.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-czec ... er-ukraine

[blindpig]

A Religious Dispute Is Brewing In Romanian-Ukrainian Relations



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 24, 2024

From Kiev’s perspective, the creation of a separate Orthodox church for one of their country’s many ethnic minorities could be regarded as a latent threat to national unity since it might embolden others to follow suit if the authorities approve this one, hence why it might be rejected for political reasons.

Balkan Insight (BI), which is a pro-Western regional media platform, surprised observers by publishing a critical piece about how “Religious Rivalry Threatens Romania-Ukraine’s Close Partnership”. They drew attention to how the Romanian Orthodox Church’s (BOR) support last month for the creation of a separate church for ethnic Romanians in Ukraine could cause problems in their ties. According to BI, there aren’t any anti-Ukrainian intentions behind this move, though Kiev might not see it that way.

Most of this former Soviet Republic’s estimated 400,000 Romanian speakers belong to the formerly Russian-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which doesn’t recognize the “Orthodox Church in Ukraine” (OCU) that received “self-governing status” in a controversial move half a decade ago. The BOR doesn’t fully recognize the OCU and is worried that Kiev’s crackdown on the UOC to which most Romanian speakers in that country belong can cause problems for its co-ethnics.

BI reported that “the clampdown has been widened to include searches of UOC premises in a diocese in the Chernivtsi region in the west of the country, where most of Ukraine’s Romanian religious community live, with a Romanian-speaking metropolitan now facing trial for alleged ‘incitement to religious hatred’”. Ethnic Romanians “have (also) been complaining about several recent ‘suspicious’ incidents, with unidentified perpetrators burning down several churches or threatening members of the clergy.”

Seeing as how the Mainstream Media hasn’t reported on these incidents, it should be taken for granted that there isn’t even the flimsiest evidence connecting them to Russia, which thus by default suggests that the culprits are likely ultra-nationalist Ukrainians. Ethnic Romanians are probably collateral damage of these extremists’ attacks against that formerly Russian-linked institution, which is probably why the BOR believes that they should have their own church so as to differentiate themselves for safety.

To that end, they’ll have to register their parishes as religious organizations, but an expert that BI cited speculated that Kiev might reject their request for political reasons. He didn’t elaborate on the possible pretexts behind that scenario and only reaffirmed how sure he is that any dispute would be amicable resolved, but if that happens, then it’ll almost likely be due to the authorities wanting to pressure ethnic Romanians into joining their regime’s OCU instead, which has almost identical rites as the UOC.

The precedent that BI shared at the end of their article regarding the BOR’s efforts to encourage defections from the Russian-linked Moldovan Orthodox Church (MOC) to their own autonomous local diocese there known as the Metropolis of Bessarabia adds more context to why Kiev might reject this request. They informed their audience that “the Romanian Orthodox Church also supported this decision by offering generous salaries and other benefits to the deserting priests.”

In other words, they were bribed for ethno-political reasons related to Romania’s desire to bring more of its co-ethnics in that neighboring country under its church’s religious influence, and this approach could foreseeably be emulated in Ukraine in the coming future as well. The BOR doesn’t fully recognize the OCU and already had success “spiritually poaching” some of Moldova’s faithful from the Russian-linked MOC so it naturally follows that they might at the very least cautiously attempt this in Ukraine too.

From Kiev’s perspective, the creation of a separate Orthodox church for one of their country’s many ethnic minorities could be regarded as a latent threat to national unity since it might embolden others to follow suit if the authorities approve this one, hence why it might be rejected for political reasons. If that happens and “suspicious incidents” continue targeting ethnic Romanians, let alone increase in frequency and possibly also intensity, then this might be followed by the outbreak of genuinely grassroots unrest.

Should the regime respond with the disproportionate use of force and footage of their crackdown circulates across social media, then it might contribute to worsening Romanians’ perceptions of Ukraine. The European Council on Foreign Relations’ (ECFR) poll of their views that was conducted in January and then published a month later shared some surprising findings about their attitudes towards that neighboring country.

More than two times as many Romanians think that the conflict will end with Russia’s victory instead of Ukraine’s at 18% and 9% respectively, while 37% expect a compromise. Exactly half of those surveyed also said that the EU should push Ukraine to negotiate with Russia while just 21% said that they should support them in reconquering their lost territories. Meanwhile, 35% of Romanians told the ECRF that they considered Ukrainians a threat to their country compared to 13% who see them as an opportunity.

Another interesting statistical tidbit is that 44% Romanians would favor their country curtailing aid to Ukraine if the US were the first to do so under a second Trump presidency while just 12% think that the EU should replace the US’ potentially lost aid and only 15% think that it should stay the same in that case. Lastly, 39% of them think that the EU has played a negative role in the conflict over the past two years compared to 28% who believe that it’s been positive.

These attitudes are important since Romania facilitates the dispatch of Western arms to Ukraine via the Ukrainian-Greek corridor that runs through that country and Bulgaria. It also hosts French troops and could thus be a launchpad for Paris to conventionally intervene in the conflict to seize control of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast for example. The possibility of Polish-inspired protesters blocking the border in response to an anti-Romanian crackdown in Ukraine could therefore reshape the conflict’s dynamics.

For that reason, observers should continue monitoring the religious dispute that’s brewing in Romanian-Ukrainian relations, especially since pro-Western BI of all outlets is already very concerned about this. They wouldn’t have raised awareness of this subject unless they seriously thought that it could lead to something bigger since simply talking about it could lead to them being accused of pushing propaganda. Knowing Kiev, an anti-Romanian crackdown can’t be ruled out, though it’s unclear when it might happen.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/a-religi ... brewing-in

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Western Peoples Are Going Into Battle Blindfolded!

Hugo Dionísio

March 23, 2024

If NATO’s whole “anti-election campaign” didn’t work, neither did the intimidation, the strategy of spreading fear, doubt and confusion among the Russian people.

The recent Russian elections represented a whole new level of aggression against the concept of “journalism” and the right to information of Western peoples. If anyone thought that by now the mainstream media monopolies — still disguised as “media” services — had reached their lowest point… These elections threaten to become known as the deadliest ever!

The days, weeks, leading up to the three-day election acted as a warm-up for what was to come. Macron — L’imitation de Napoléon — took up the baton and, like a general in trousers, started threatening Russia that his France, that military portent, could send troops to Ukraine. Not happy with the threat, he went on to say that there were no limits and no red lines in the first place.

After specifying that this would only happen if the Russian forces tried to approach from the direction of Kiev or Odessa (did he “offer” everything in between?), in an act that led many people to think — myself included — that Macron had put the brakes on, pulling back several lines of defense, the fact is that he then signed an agreement with Moldova, in what is a clear provocation to the executive presided over by Vladimir Putin, and met with his cronies from Germany and Poland to ensure cohesion in the aggression.

Through the back door, someone must have given to the press the idea that the nano-Napoleon was furious at Scholz’s supposed cowardice, specifically with regard to the German vegan sausage’s resistance to sending Taurus missiles, so that the Kiev regime could continue to kill civilians in the Donbass, Kursk or Belgorod. As for killing Russian military personnel, it’s getting harder than ever.

It seems to me that all this fuss about l’enfant terrible was aimed, among other things, at putting pressure on Vladimir Putin, just before the election, and at the same time trying to test the resolve of the Russian people to support their leader. The idea, in my view, was to subject the Russian people to a threat of escalation by putting the emphasis on the actions of their president, while at the same time implying that the chances of NATO intervening on Ukrainian territory depend exclusively on the presence of what this bureaucratic and servile army considers to be the only threat responsible for the confrontation between the two blocs: Vladimir Putin. It was a kind of subliminal blackmail of the Russian people: elect the “autocrat”, the “tyrant”, the “dictator” and risk a direct confrontation between your country and Europe, read “NATO”.

While the only question raised by the media monopolies was the possibility that Macron would do this for reasons related to his own election propaganda for the European parliament, the truth is that the existing barometers on the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine, in particular the poll carried out by BFM TV, say that 57% of French people think that Macron is wrong in this regard.

Now, if the French people reject the possibility, it makes no sense that it was for internal electoral reasons that the threat was made. And in this respect, I agree with Macron’s defense that none of this had anything to do with any electoral impetus…. Internally! In other words, L’imitation de Napoléon partially lied. The electioneering impetus was related to an attempt to interfere in the Russian elections. Something that Russia is condemned for allegedly trying to do on west side.

Before that, the whole Navalny affair had been a kind of illusionist spectacle aimed at creating the illusion that the opposition to Vladimir Putin was greater than it actually is. Considering that his death was part of the show, given the results obtained, I regret to inform those who saw some kind of liberating image in a corrupt racist, that Navalny died in vain. In fact, this is one of those cartoonish cases in which the illusionist, in order to perform his act successfully, ends up killing his assistant. Sad.

In an attempt to give some credibility to the threats of both confrontation and sedition, in the week leading up to the start of the elections, a media operation was mounted, with military overtones, in which supposed groups called “The Freedom of Russia Legion (FRL)” and the “Siberian Battalion (SB)” crossed the border and claimed occupation of two villages. Many photos with flags and videos later, images emerged confirming the slaughter of a large part of the mercenaries — with whom the Kiev regime claims to have nothing to do — and their combat vehicles. What I call Operation Kamikaze went on for days, losing well over a thousand soldiers in this military marketing operation.

What we can characterize as NATO’s campaign strategy for the Russian elections will be known as the deadliest, most ruinous and failed political propaganda operation. The main figures and “activists” have almost all died! At this rate and at the rate Putin wins elections, I don’t know how many more Navalnys or kamikaze battalions the CIA will have to invent. No wonder the New York Times is belatedly confirming what we’ve known for a long time: Ukrainian villages are already undermanned, and Lindsay Graham is now telling Zelensky that it’s time to send the youngest to the front line!

However, there’s one thing we have to face: it’s really dangerous to run an (anti-) election campaign against Vladimir Putin…. It’s deadly! A considerable number of propagandists have died at the hands of the CIA and the Kiev regime. And for what? In the end, voter turnout was a record for years and the Russian president obtained his highest result ever.

If NATO’s whole “anti-election campaign” didn’t work, neither did the intimidation, the strategy of spreading fear, doubt and confusion among the Russian people, which could even be said to have had the opposite effect. The Russian people gave a lesson in citizenship, responsibility, courage and resistance that would make any citizen of any country proud if they saw their own people behaving in this way. Regardless of the direction of the vote, a people mobilized in this way will not fail to take their future into their own hands.

Over here, it was an anti-pedagogical circus. In three days, everything and its opposite was said about the Russian elections. Despite the fact that 1,125 independent observers from 129 countries were present, it was said on television that the election was not being monitored by international observers. As if there was any monitoring in the West, and as if the West, which is sliding towards neo-fascism, was itself in a position to give democratic lessons to any country. Anyone who supports fascist and Nazi regimes, like the one in Kiev, or xenophobic regimes, like those in the Baltic countries, loses all credibility to give any kind of lesson.

Accusations of repression poured in and it was even claimed that voting in Russia is compulsory. After all, we had to justify the “Stockholm syndrome” of 77% of voters who, despite the “warnings”, still wanted to say “yes”. And while in the previous days, “warnings” had rained down from Western embassies, alerting their citizens to the danger of terrorist attacks in Russia and advising them to avoid crowds. As if, if there were attacks, they wouldn’t be perpetrated by themselves.

Navalny’s own ghost has resurfaced… The wear and tear they put this figure through! Navalny had promised to destabilize the election with operation “twelve noon”. Reuters even took pictures of the huge queues to vote and said that these were peaceful protests by the Russian “opposition”. “Thousands”! Reuters said. As if in a country with more than a hundred million voters, a few thousand were representative of anything. In embassies across Europe, despite boycott operations such as the expulsion of diplomats, the queues were felt and, in many cases, reported as if they were disconnected from the will to vote.

Liquids spilled on ballot boxes, the bombing of civilians by the Kiev regime, acts of subversion at polling stations — all of this has been overlooked by the objective analysis of the so-called news services of the Western democracies. One thing is certain: if the Russian people’s support for the elections was a cry for affirmation of their identity and a real act of struggle and offense against continued aggression that is contrary to their interests, the less attentive Western peoples did not hear that cry. But they will feel the effects of the offensive.

As with the “news” coverage of the information monopolies, the Western peoples will suffer the effects of Russia’s popular offensive in various areas of their lives: in their living conditions, victims of the detour of funds from public services to the arms industries; in the repression of their rights, through the intensification of operations to censor information that is not in line with the western single truth; in the acceleration of the promotion of neo-fascism, the only mechanism available to imperialism to guarantee governance through hatred and xenophobia against the Russian people; in the promotion of diversionary strategies that divert western peoples from their real anxieties: the right to peace, food, education, health and housing!

The Russian people have emerged victorious from western aggression, perpetrating a resounding counterattack against NATO’s subliminal offensive, while the Western peoples, if they don’t wake up to reality, will be in such a situation that they won’t even be able to identify where the attacks they feel are coming from!

If anything proves everything I’ve said about this aggression against truth, it’s that Western peoples are being led blindfolded into a deadly confrontation!

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... indfolded/

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A chat with Sputnik Globe on war hysteria in Western Europe
March 24, 2024

I am pleased to share with readers the following link to a just published interview with the Russian online periodical Sputnik.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240323/full- ... 95611.html

Note that the war hysteria is a top down phenomenon led by Emmanuel Macron of France, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and several of their peers with the enthusiastic support of major media for whom every allegation of the threat from Russian is newsworthy. At the street level, here in Brussels I see no angst in the folks around me: aside from the still shocking price inflation you find at every visit to the supermarket, the good times roll on.

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/03/24/ ... rn-europe/

[blindpig]

Sikorski’s Quip About Poland & Ukraine Being One Country For 400 Years Is Misleading



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 25, 2024

All these lands constituted the territory of the loose Polish-Lithuanian Union after Krewo in 1385 and the tighter Commonwealth after Lublin in 1569, but Warsaw only had direct rule over Eastern Ukraine for less than a century, parts of Western Ukraine for 230-360 years, and Eastern Galicia for over 420 years.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski recently told German press agency dpa that “Ukraine and Poland have been one country for 400 years. [Conventionally intervening in Ukraine] would provide fodder for Russian propaganda. Therefore, we should be the last ones to do so.” His quip about those two’s history is misleading, however, since both the length of time that they were together as well as the nature of their relations are disputable.

Regarding the first, the Union of Krewo in 1385 led to the creation of the loose Polish-Lithuanian Union, which was the precursor of the tighter Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that emerged from the 1569 Union of Lublin. For the nearly two centuries between those two unions, the vast majority of modern-day Ukraine was under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s control with the exception of Eastern Galicia and Western Podolia, within which are the well-known city of Lwow and town of Kamieniec Podolski.

The Crown Kingdom of Poland only took control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s modern-day Ukrainian regions after the Commonwealth’s creation, thus meaning that the majority of what’s nowadays known as Ukraine was part of Poland itself for less than 230 years, not 400. Less than a century later, the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo, which ended the Polish-Russian War that was sparked by the Khmelnitsky Uprising a few years prior, saw St. Petersburg wrest control of Kiev and most of Eastern Ukraine from Warsaw.

Poland then lost Polish-majority Western Galicia (with the exception of Krakow) and Ukrainian-majority Eastern Galicia to Austria a little over 100 years after that during the first partition in 1772. Western Podolia and most of the Ukraine’s remaining western regions then followed slightly more than two decades later after the second partition of 1793 gave them to Russia. The third partition just two years later in 1795 then saw Russia take the rest of Poland’s majority-Ukrainian-inhabited lands.

Eastern Galicia’s Lwow was part of the Polish Crown since 1349, Western Podolia’s Kamieniec Podolski officially joined in 1430 but switched hands with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for decades before that since the mid-14th century, while the rest of Ukraine’s western regions came under its control in 1569. Accordingly, the first was part of Poland for over 420 years, the second for at least 360 years though possibly longer depending on how one measures it, and the last for less than 230 years.

It should also be mentioned that the never-implemented Treaty of Hadiach from 1658 would have trifurcated the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by carving out a “Ruthenian” (old-style term for what are nowadays Ukrainians) Duchy from most of Poland’s formerly Lithuanian lands apart from Volhynia. This is relevant in the context of Sikorski’s quip since it shows that some of those Ukrainian elites that remained under Warsaw’s control after the Khmelnitsky Uprising wanted a separate political identity.

The purpose in sharing these facts is to show that Polish-Ukrainian history isn’t as simple as he portrayed it as being at the geopolitical level, not to mention the local one as proven by the 1648-1657 Khmelnitsky Uprising and the 1468-1769 “Koliivshchyna”, both of which were anti-Polish bloodbaths. Sikorski wanted to signal support for Ukraine, but in doing so, he might have ruffled some folks’ feathers with his misleading claim that overlooks Lithuania’s historical autonomy from 1385 onwards.

The Grand Duchy was an equal member of the Commonwealth alongside the Polish Crown, not a province or vassal of the latter like casual outside observers oftentimes assume. While each were technically part of the same country, they also de facto functioned as their own states due to the wide autonomy that they preserved to administer their internal affairs, which is why the notion that Lithuanian-controlled modern-day Ukraine was “part” of Poland isn’t what most folks might imagine.

All these lands constituted the territory of the loose Polish-Lithuanian Union after Krewo in 1385 and the tighter Commonwealth after Lublin in 1569, but Warsaw only had direct rule over Eastern Ukraine for less than a century, parts of Western Ukraine for 230-360 years, and Eastern Galicia for over 420 years. Throughout that entire time, a separate Ukrainian identity was forming, and its roots laid the basis for the fascist interpretation thereof that arose during the interwar years and was revived after 2014.

Oversimplifying the geopolitical dimension of Polish-Ukrainian history like Sikorski did by claiming that they’ve “been one country for 400 years” overlooks the key facts touched upon in this piece that account for the present state of socio-political affairs in this former Soviet Republic. It misleads casual outside observers into thinking that bilateral ties are much better than they presently are due to their shared history, which is actually more complicated than he let on and seen very differently by both.

It's important to dispel the illusion that Sikorski reinforced since it distracts from Ukraine’s three-month-long anti-Polish infowar campaign that was detailed here in mid-March. To be sure, there’s no longer any crisis in bilateral ties like they briefly experienced late last year under Poland’s former conservative-nationalist government, but trouble is still brewing. Upon becoming aware that their history isn’t as simple as he made it seem, casual outside observers can better these dynamics as they unfold.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/sikorski ... nd-ukraine

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Let's Not Forget...

... 25 years ago a gang-rape of Yugoslavia.


NATO bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999. Of course, the US played the key role in the operation, but a total of 13 countries were involved in it. The Alliance did not plan to conduct a ground operation, but made extensive use of its air force and cruise missiles to attack the country. The forces were incomparable: NATO utilized over 1,000 planes and helicopters, mainly from military bases in Italy and the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. The KLA had several thousand fighters, but the combat capability of these units was quite low.

That was a critical event which spurred the removal of alcoholic Yeltsin and emergence of Vladimir Putin and the group of "siloviki"--people from intelligence and military circle who understood everything already then, that Russia and the West went separate ways and the conflict was inevitable. Yugoslavia was a warning. In very many respects it was a watershed moment. Let's remember those innocent civilians who have been "democratically bombed" by NATO cowards.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/03 ... orget.html

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Macron’s Psycho-Play to Keep Aloft the Punctured Balloon of a ‘Geo-Political EU’

Alastair Crooke

March 25, 2024

It seems that Marcon imagines he is playing some complicated game of psycho-deterrence with Moscow – one characterized by radical ambiguity.

Charles Michel, the European Council President, has called on Europe to switch to a ‘war economy’. He justifies this call partly as urgent support for Ukraine, but more pertinently, as the need for relaunching the (beached) European economy by focusing on the defense industry.

Calls ring out across Europe: ‘We are in a pre-war era’, Polish PM Donald Tusk says. Macron, after mooting the possibility ambiguously several times, says, “Maybe at some point – I don’t want it – we will have to have operations [French troops in Ukraine], on the ground, to counter the Russian forces”.

What has spooked the Europeans so? We know the French Intelligence briefing reaching Macron in recent days was dire; it seems to have triggered his initial sally into direct French military intervention in Ukraine. French classified Intelligence warned that the collapse of the Contact Line, and the disintegration of the AFU as a functioning military force, might be imminent.

Macron played coy: Might he send troops? At one time seemingly ‘yes’; but then frustratingly the prospect was uncertain, yet still possibly on the table. Confusion reigned. Nobody knew for sure, as the President is nothing if not volatile, and General De Gaulle bequeathed to his successors, quasi-regal powers. So yes, constitutionally he could do it.

The general view in Europe was that Macron was playing complex mind-games, firstly with the French people, and secondly with Russia. Nevertheless, it seems that there could be some substance to Macron’s sabre-rattling: The French Chief of Army Staff said he has 20,000 troops ready to be inserted in 30 days. And the Head of Russia’s SVR Intelligence Agency, Naryshkin, more modestly assessed that France seemingly is preparing a military contingent for sending to Ukraine, which at the initial stage, will be about two thousand people.

Just to be clear however, even a 20,000-man division by standards of classical military theory is supposed to be able to hold at maximum, a 10km-front. An insertion of two or twenty thousand French troops would change nothing strategically; it would not halt the vastly larger Russian steamroller, grinding on westwards. So what is Macron playing at?

Is this all bluff, then?

Likely, it is part ‘grandstanding’ by Macron, pre-occupied to present himself as ‘Mr Strongman Europe’ – particularly toward his French constituency.

His posturing comes however, at a more significant conjunction of events for the so-called ‘Geo-political EU’:

Clarity: Light has pierced, and has illuminated a space hitherto occupied by shadows. It is now as clear as it can be – after Putin’s overwhelming win in elections on a record turnout – that President Putin is here to stay. All the western shadow-play of ‘régime change’ in Moscow simply shrunk to naught in the bright light of events.

Snorts of anger can be heard from some quarters in Europe. Yet they will subside. There is no choice. The reality, as Marianne newspaper, quoting a senior French officer, derisively noting in respect to Macron’s Ukraine’s posturing: “We must make no mistake, facing the Russians; we are an army of cheerleaders” and sending French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “not reasonable”.

At the Élysée, an unnamed advisor argued that Macron “wanted to send a strong signal … (in) milli-metered and calibrated words”.

What pains the EU ‘neocon ever-hopefuls’ more is that Putin’s clear electoral victory coincides, almost precisely, with an EU (and NATO) humiliation in Ukraine. It is not just that the AFU appears to be in a cascading implosion, but that the retreat is accelerating, as Ukraine tries to retreat into unprepared and near indefensible terrain.

Into this grim EU prospect is that second shaft of clarifying light: The U.S. is slowly but surely turning its back on the financing and arming of Kiev, leaving Europe’s impotence exposed for all the world to see.

The EU simply cannot substitute for the U.S. pivot. Yet more hurtful for some is that a U.S. retreat represents a ‘punch in the guts’ for much of the Brussels leadership, who had fallen on the Biden Administration with almost indecent glee, upon Trump’s leaving of office. They used the moment to proclaim the cementing of a pro-Atlanticist, pro-NATO EU.

Now, as former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar perfectly defines it, “France [is] all dressed up – with nowhere to go”:

“Ever since its ignominious defeat in the Napoleonic wars, France is entrapped in the predicament of countries that get sandwiched between great powers. Following World War II, France addressed this predicament by forging an axis with Germany in Europe”.

“Caught up in a similar predicament, Britain adapted itself to a subaltern role tapping into the American power globally but France never gave up its quest to regain glory as a global power. And it continues to be a work in progress”.

“The angst in the French mind is understandable as the five centuries of western dominance of the world order is drawing to a close. This predicament condemns France to a diplomacy that is constantly in a state of suspended animation, interspersed with sudden bouts of activism”.

The problems here for the exalted aspiration for the EU qua global power are three-fold: Firstly, the Franco-German Axis has dissolved, as Germany swerved towards the U.S. as its new foreign-policy dogma. Secondly, France’s clout is diminished further in European affairs as Scholtz has embraced Poland (not France) as its like-minded, ‘best friend forever’; and thirdly, Macron’s personal relations with Chancellor Scholz are on a dive.

The other plane to the EU geo-political project is that the embrace of Washington’s financial wars on Russia and China has resulted in “the U.S. has dramatically outgrowing the EU and the United Kingdom combined – over the last 15 years. In 2008, the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s … America’s economy is now however, nearly one-third bigger. [And] it is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK”.

In other words, being America’s ally, in its ill-judged Ukraine-proxy war, has – and is – costing Europe dearly. Eurointelligence reports that a survey amongst small and medium-sized companies in Germany has registered an extreme shift in sentiment against the EU. Of the sample of 1,000 small and medium sized companies, 90% were unhappy with the EU to varying degrees, driving many to re-locate from Europe to the U.S.

Put plainly, the effort to inflate and hold aloft the notion of a ‘geo-political Europe’ is ending in débacle. Living standards are sinking and Brussel’s regulatory promiscuity and high energy costs are resulting in the de-industrialisation and impoverishment of Europe.

Macron, in a blunt interview in late 2019 with The Economist magazine, declared that Europe stood on “the edge of a precipice” and needed to start thinking of itself strategically as a geo-political power, lest we will “no longer be in control of our destiny.” (Macron’s remark preceded the war in Ukraine by 3 years).

Today, Macron’s fears are reality.

So, to turn to what the EU plans to do about this crisis, EC President Michel says he wants to buy twice as many weapons from European producers by 2030; to use the profits from Russian frozen assets to finance weapons purchases for Ukraine; to facilitate financial access for the European defence industry, including by issuing a European defence bond and getting the European Investment Bank to add defence purposes to its lending criteria.

Michel sells it to the public as a way to create jobs and growth. In reality, however, the EU is looking to create a new slush fund to replace the QE purchases by the ECB of EU states’ sovereign bonds, which the interest rate spike in the U.S. effectively killed.

The defence industry ploy is a means to create more cash flows: The EU’s various mooted ‘transitions’ (Climate, Greening and Tech) clearly required mammoth money-printing. This was just about manageable when the project could be financed at zero cost interest rates. Now the EU states’ debt explosion to fund the pandemic and ‘transitions’ threatens to take the entire geo-political ‘revolution’ into financial crisis. There is a financing crisis underway.

Defence, Michael hopes, may be saleable to the public as the new ‘transition’ to be financed by unorthodox means. Wolfgang Münchau at EuroIntellignce however, writes on ‘Michel’s rosy war economy’ – that he wants a geo-political Europe, and so concludes his letter with the familiar cold war adage – that ‘if you want peace you need to prepare for war’”.

“Are those weapons in Michel’s war economy to speak for our failures in diplomacy? What is our historic contribution to this conflict? Should we not start from there?”

“The language Michel uses is dramatic and dangerous. Some of our older citizens still remember what it means to live in a war economy. Michel’s loose talk is disrespectful”.

Eurointelligence is not alone in its criticism. Macron’s gambit has divided Europe, with a majority firmly opposed to inserting troops into Ukraine – sleep-walking into war. Marianne’s editor Natacha Polony has written:

“It is no longer about Emmanuel Macron or his postures as a virile little leader. It is no longer even about France or its weakening by blind and irresponsible élites. It is a question of whether we will collectively agree to sleepwalk into war. A war that no one can claim will be controlled or contained. It’s a question of whether we agree to send our children to die because the United States insisted on setting up bases on Russia’s borders”.

The bigger question concerns the whole ‘Von der Leyen-Macron’ geo-political gambit of the EU needing to think of itself as a geo-political power. It is the pursuit of this geo-political ‘chimaera’ (in no little part, an ego-project) that paradoxically, has brought the EU exactly to the brink of crisis.

Do a majority of Europeans truly wish to be a geo-political power, if that requires relinquishing what remains of their national sovereignty and autonomy (and parliamentary oversight) to the supra-national plane; to the Brussels technocrats? Maybe Europeans are content for the EU to remain as a trade bloc.

So why is Macron nonetheless doing this? No one is sure, but it seems that he imagines he is playing some complicated game of psycho-deterrence with Moscow – one characterised by radical ambiguity.

His is just another psy-ops, in other words.

It is possible nonetheless, that he thinks his ambiguous on/off threat of an European deployment into Ukraine might just give Kiev enough negotiating ‘leverage’ to bluff Russia into agreeing to ‘rump Ukraine’ remaining in the western (and even NATO) sphere, in which case Macron will claim have been Ukraine’s ‘saviour’.

If this is the case, it is pie in the sky. President Putin, armed with his recent electoral victory, simply swept Macron’s psy-op off the table: ‘Any insertion of French troops would be ‘invaders’ and a legitimate target for our forces’, Putin made explicit.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... itical-eu/

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Taurus and the bullfighters: Berlin Bulletin No. 221, March 23, 2024
By Victor Grossman (Posted Mar 25, 2024)

Watching genteel Bundestag ladies and gentlemen speechifying, often with forceful words and gestures but mostly polite, it is hard to imagine that their topic is war or peace, possibly world war or peace, even atomic war or peace. A key word was Taurus, Latin for “bull.” But they weren’t arguing about Zodiac astrology or the myth about the god Jupiter, cheating on wife Juno by taking on the shape of a bull to abduct a princess. Nor about the starry constellation named for his disguise. The name of that princess was Europa, and the continent bearing her name was indeed involved in the subject of debate: steel-covered missiles called Taurus, weighing 1000 lbs., 17 foot long, which, if fired from a plane well inside Ukraine can reach and pierce the walls of the Kremlin or destroy concrete bunkers as deep or deeper than Moscow’s subway system.

Of course, Volodymir Zelenskiy wants them and any weapons or aid in a war now looking less and less like the triumph he predicted a year ago. Should his wishes, which often sounded more like demands, be fulfilled?

That mythical Jupiter fathered three sons with Europa (I hope he was back in the body of Jupiter by then). Three sons of modern Europa met in a hastily arranged “Paris-Berlin-Warsaw” summit in early March to reach an agreement about Ukraine, especially about Taurus. Poland’s Tusk, only four months into his top job, is seen as more moderate than his predecessor. But he seems no less eager to supply anything if it damages the hereditary Russian enemy and solidifies Poland’s role as main USA outpost in Eastern Europe. However, he soon had to hurry home to mollify farm tractor drivers blockading borders to protest cheap Ukrainian grain imports.

Macron, who had spoken boldly of sending in “European” troops to oppose the Russians, toned that down with the words: “Maybe at some point—I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative—we will have to have operations on the ground…to counter the Russian forces… France’s strength is that we can do it.”

Evidently Scholz had stepped on the brakes with Tusk and Macron: “To say it sharp and clear: as German chancellor, I will send no Bundeswehr soldiers into Ukraine!” So, at least for now—no Taurus!

Was his seemingly bold front a façade for a general German downward skid in Europe? There was a decline of the economy in 2023. A predicted puny plus of 0.2% for 2024 could mean that Germany is already in a recession, for only the second time since 1945. Economy Minister Habeck warned: “We cannot continue this way!” One expert’s brief analysis: “Germany has lost cheap energy from Russia, flourishing trade markets in China and an almost cost-free guarantee of security from the USA.”

Olaf Scholz’s three-party government has rapidly declined in popularity. The Greens, who promised a “green economic miracle” a year ago, have made one ecology compromise after another, like their go-ahead for big docks for liquid gas from US frackers to replace the Russian gas-oil cut by war, politics and that suspicious explosion of the Baltic pipeline. The new docks threaten both major bird emigration stopovers and some of Germany’s most idyllic beach resorts (once peopled, back in GDR days, by happy, mostly nudist bathers).

Ecology disputes turned dramatic with Elon Musk’s Tesla gigafactory on Berlin’s outskirts, his first and largest in all Europe and now capable of turning out 500,000 E-cars a year, beating out VW. That meant chopping down 740 acres of the protective forest ring around Berlin and draining into crucial aquifers. But Musk now aims at a million cars—costing 420 more forest acres and drying-up ponds and creeks. The village hit hardest voted “No!” and one group plans to defy a planned police onslaught in tree houses and platforms. On March 5th a secret, more extremist group set fire to a high-voltage power pylon, cutting local electricity for a few hours and shutting down production for a few days. Such disputes are getting hotter.

Rounding out the picture, Germany has been facing its biggest strike wave in years: railroad engineers, bus and tram drivers, airport personnel, public service workers, kindergarten teachers, even clinic doctors. Their demands are mostly for enough pay to catch up with inflation and frightening rent increases but also—for many—for a 35-hour work week with no cut in pay.

While the compromising Greens strain to hold onto their dwindling professional college-graduate base and the Social Democrats struggle to win back working-class support, the weakest of the three partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), closest to big-biz, keep flirting with the Christian Democrats across the aisle, blackmailing attempts by the other two to seem socially conscious by resisting remaining environmental restrictions, preventing rules against child labor on products from abroad, limiting aid for the many poverty-ridden children in Germany, reducing assistance for the elderly and, above all, insisting on keeping or lowering low taxes on the super-wealthy, using the old trickle-down argument. More and more, the coalition is coming to resemble a free-for-all wrestling match.

But they agreed on one main issue: in Ukraine, keep that war going! Till victory! The Greens, always most valiant with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock hoping to see Russia “ruined,” are being overtaken as word and banner bearers by the Free Democrats, who now boast a “Defense Committee” spokesperson who is formidable in word, appearance, personality and even name: Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. Her imperative calls for more weapons until total victory over the Russians rouse up TV viewers almost every single evening. And even when a majority in the Bundestag ended the Taurus debate by voting “Nein” to a Christian Democratic bill to give Kyiv the missiles, she broke the ranks of coalition party discipline and voted “Ja” with the opposition.

Somehow I haven’t yet heard anyone remark that Düsseldorf, which she represents, is also home to Rheinmetall, Germany’s leading armaments manufacturer since 1889. After great sales records in World War I it had giant success in World War II, largely by working thousands of miserable POWs and forced laborers to the bone. Now super-good times are back again thanks to its Panther tanks and all kinds of weapons and explosive ammo. Company boss Armin Papperger, who took home a tidy € 3,587,000 in 2022 (about $3.9 m) and expects this year’s company earnings to finally top its € 10 billion goal made a happy prediction of “a continuing strong growth increase in sales and earnings.” But who could dare to suspect any connection between Rheinmetall and its Düsseldorf neighbor, Frau Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann. (BTW, big hunks of those handsome sums also go to Blackrock in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards and other solid Transatlantic benefactors.)

But in his crumbling coalition Olaf Scholz’s leading Social Democratic Party has also been vigorously supporting the Ukrainian cause! It was he who dramatically called for a “Zeitenwende” an “historic turning point”—with an extra fund of € 100 billion for a major military build up—in Ukraine, Germany, the European Union and NATO, with drones, jets, artillery, ammo, tanks, missiles (but at least not yet the Taurus for Kyiv.

But his Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democrat) is never sated; for him the Bundeswehr is always far too weak.

It must be made fit for the challenges ahead. Germany needs a Bundeswehr that can fight, one which is operational and sustainable. Germany must defend itself, because ‘war is back in Europe.’ The Bundeswehr must become fit for war again. I know that sounds harsh… But I am concerned with nothing other than preventing war. That is why credible deterrence is the motto of the hour—to be able to fight in order not to have to fight. An important signal in this context is the formation of the brigade in Lithuania.

Despite all disavowals, some beans have recently been spilled about NATO military experts secretly helping Kyiv ever since 2014. A mysteriously leaked report on a meeting of top German brass revealed plans for helping Ukraine use the Taurus to destroy the Russian bridge to Crimea. The whole atmosphere in Germany is becoming frighteningly “kriegstüchtig,” to use Pistorius’ word—“ready for war.” He also raised the question of renewing the military draft whose last vestiges were ended thirteen years ago—this time perhaps including women. The proposal was a trial balloon—and soon dropped, at least for this pre-election season. Another trial balloon came from the Education Minister, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, who called for air raid drills in schools, with renovated or new shelter rooms in the cellars and more visits by officers to prepare children for the worst—or recruit them. When protests against this proposal grew too strong she modified it a bit—to stress, aside from war, readiness for possible floods or other climate catastrophes.

Weapons, weapons, weapons—the more the better! With ever louder talk about “the foe” and “protective measures”, as if Putin were amassing troops or maneuvering warships along German borders—instead of just the opposite taking place in the Baltic and Lithuania—and no longer so secretly in Ukraine. The blitzkrieg-laden spirit of 1941 Germany is all over the media, with no audible recollections of Stalingrad in 1943 or a wrecked and wretched Berlin (and Dresden, Hamburg and all the others) in 1945.

The reports on Gaza since October contrasted markedly with the anger over the Russian attack on Ukraine; they almost never mentioned Hamas without the prefaced adjective “terrorist” but showed few pictures of devastated Gaza which, for me, bitterly recalled those German cities I saw a few years after the war, like Dresden. Over and over we were shown Israeli soldiers bravely firing away; at what? Or digging in wrecked hospitals; for what? Or showing those “compassionate” parachute drops, a sad joke when small crowds of Israelis were somehow permitted to block hundreds of truckloads of really tangible assistance—and while Germany joined the USA in sending weapons to Netanyahu while stymying UNO efforts to end the slaughter.

But the heart-wrenching pictures of weeping fathers and dead or maimed children in Gaza could not be ignored. Demonstrations, led by Arabs in Germany but including many other, also Jewish Germans, grew larger, despite all attempts to prevent, limit or sideline them. Their calls for negotiations and peace sometimes included the war in Ukraine—and a rejection of SPD-FDP-Green-CDU-CSU militarist unity. But then came the giant rallies against the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the past often harassed or at best ignored, they were now amazingly well-organized and coordinated, clearly promoted from above and blessed in the media. I suspect they were consciously aimed at deflecting a progressive, pro-peace trend born of horror at the hugely disproportionate Israeli response to October 7th, misusing a popular anti-AfD cause for the purpose, together with an increased stress on opposing anti-Semitism, while equating it with any criticism of Israeli repression and extreme brutality. It was good that the rallies opposed racism and fascists, but they were no longer leaning toward united left opposition.

Is there now any opposition to top level policies? Yes, of a sort. Or rather of approximately four sorts.

Within the ranks of the Social Democrats, while many admire dynamic (and ambitious?) Minister Pistorius, some others may be coming to their senses. Most courageous recently was Rolf Mützenich, chair of the SPD caucus in the Bundestag and long known as a rare opponent of militarism. During the Taurus debate he asked the Bundestag delegates: “Isn’t it time not only to speak about waging a war but to start thinking about how we can freeze a war and then end it as well?“ He had hardly finished his brief remarks with question when the counterattack began, from fellow politicians and from most of the mass media. Two nasty words recurred shamelessly: “Appeasement” and “Cowardice”. Unlike Pope Francis, who dared to voice similar sentiments, Mützenich had no shred of any “infallibility” status, and the truly vicious attacks forced him to stage a partial retreat to save his neck. But the words had been uttered and some may have listened. As for appeasement, Neville Chamberlain and Daladier let Hitler expand in Spain, then tolerated his expansion eastward to Austria and Czechoslovakia because it meant closing in on the hated USSR. His all-European attack in June 1941 was more analogous to EU-NATO eastward-aimed unanimity than the reverse!

Olaf Scholz often vacillates. But at times, unlike some ministers, he seems to listen to and echo people like Mützenich. “German soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked to targets this Taurus system reaches…Not in Germany either…This clarity is necessary. I am surprised that this doesn’t move some people, that they don’t even think about whether … a participation in the war could emerge from what we do.”

But then, Scholz certainly learned arithmetic at school. The European elections are due this June, Bundestag elections next year, with key state elections in between. In the polls his Social Democratic party is stuck at about a weak 15%, half its traditional Christian rivals and even behind the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Opinions change frequently but 80% now favor diplomatic negotiations for Ukraine and 41% want less weapons sent there. Scholz—or Germany—cannot really change course in such basic matters. But he may think that dragging his feet rather ambiguously might win back more voters.

A second group demanding negotiations and an end to the Ukraine war, perhaps very surprisingly, is the AfD. Although it supports big business, NATO, the draft and German rearmament enthusiastically, it calls nevertheless for negotiations, peace and a resumption of normal trade relations. It is possible that the AfD simply wants only to further increase its popularity , especially in eastern Germany, where there is the least military enthusiasm—and it is already amazingly strong (and dangerous) position, at about30%. Of course they are called “Putin-lovers.” Who knows, perhaps they are. But their top woman in leadership, Alice Weidel, is intelligent, shrewd, a skilled speaker, and made an eloquent plea for peace, while thanking Mützenich and congratulating Scholz for not sending Taurus to Kyiv. Thus creating a difficult complication.

And then there is the Linke party, which has seen itself from birth as the ”party of peace”. Indeed, over the years it has opposed every deployment of German troops or ships outside its borders, it has opposed the payment of giant sums to Rheinmetall and its siblings at home or abroad, it has opposed the export of German weapons to nearly every oppressive government that could be found, it has opposed every form of militarization. A brave and exemplary record, alongside its fight for a higher minimum wage, more money for seniors, for child care and women’s rights. Its stand also forced Social Democrats and Greens to take better positions, if only to avoid a drift of their voters to the small yet potentially growing Linke.

Perhaps it was its successes which became its weak point. Not only the delegates who got elected on the national, state or local level but also their staffs and assistants had good jobs. Some tended, too often, to become a part of the mistrusted “establishment” in the eyes of dissatisfied and disappointed voters—or then non-voters. Their increasingly respectable status led to interest in “identity rights”, immigrant rights, gender rights, but too often to a growing distance from neglected, underpaid, overburdened working people, including temps and the jobless. Some leaders, hoping to crown state cabinet posts with those in a national coalition, watered down their rejection of NATO and its relentless eastward moves and threats. Their rejection of even meager approval of the giant peace demonstration led by Sahra Wagenknecht last year on flimsy grounds borrowed from the mass media proved the last straw for many members and led to the formation of a breakaway party, called (temporarily it is hoped) Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht.

Some in the Linke, convinced Marxists, think it was a mistake to split and leave the party instead of fighting it out, even though they were outvoted by conformist, status quo leaders who now want to force them out just as they did to Sahra Wagenknecht and her adherents. And some believe that if the Linke again becomes more militant in something whose name is hardly even whispered these days (class conflict) then it can be rescued from menacing-oblivion. It is already in great trouble, nationally down to 3%, which would bar it from the next Bundestag.

As for Sahra’s BSW, it stands full square for negotiations and peace, like no other, and certainly for working people’s rights and needs. But much of its program remains vague as yet and seems to be turning out to be less militant than expected. It polls 5 to 7% nationally, not bad for a newbie with rudimentary state structures but less than some had expected in view of Sahra’s popularity. The European Union elections in June and the state elections in September will show how the two stand, now as rivals in a divided Left.

As for the bellicose forces, some pro-American “Atlanticists” are worried about being cast adrift after November 5th by that unpredictable man from Mar-a-Lago, or they are studying geriatric tables. Others, the Germanic wing, who reject American infiltration, from music styles to dirty slang, are scheming and dreaming of the good old days of smart uniforms, clicking heels, Iron Crosses and people knowing their proper place. But they all join Rheinmetall, Lockhead and the others in hoping the warring may last until they get new chances to win out in broad Eurasian expanses, re-establish Germany’s proper position in the world and perhaps for some, a hope to avenge that disaster for their grandfathers back in 1945. More and more, we are engulfed by all their war talk—and preparatory action.

What is desperately needed, not only in Germany but especially in Germany, is a new consolidation of all those in any party, or no party, who still have unaddled brains in their heads and a heart in their chests for an end to the killing and starving of Ukrainians, Russians, the Palestinians and the still as yet far too small number of brave Jewish Israelis (like the “refuseniks”) to build up a dynamic peace movement like that against the Vietnam war, or against missiles in West Germany in the 1980s, or the marches to prevent the Iraq war or, I recent months, to rescue the tortured million and more innocent people of Gaza—yes, and those 100 hostages as well. Such a movement is desperately necessary; the clock is ticking away. Can the Jupiters of the world be dethroned? For Europa and for the world. Is that possible?

P.S. Four addenda after completing that long Bulletin:

1)The Easter weekend will again be marked by four days of Peace Marches, no big central rally but in varied forms in many towns and cities all over Germany, east and west. Despite unhappy divisions and disputes, also in the peace movement, it could again shake boats, even iron-clad ones and is more urgently needed this year than ever; I hope many thousands will join in. (I will too, at least at the start).

2)Both Bundestag and Bundesrat have passed an extremely controversial cannabis law. People over 18 can legally carry 25 grams outside their homes and 50 grams plus three female plants at home. Smoking near schools is prohibited, sales of small amounts to adults permitted. All to beat out the black market. Some states urge angrily that President Steinmeier refuse to sign it into law.

3)German soccer profis will in future wear NIKE outfits (from the USA) instead of Adidas (from Germany). “Unpatriotic!” decry some.

4)Sorrow and sympathy for those who were killed in Krasnogorsk tragedy, an aftermath of past and present wars and an omen of what will trouble the world for years as a result of present wars.

https://mronline.org/2024/03/25/taurus- ... h-23-2024/

[blindpig]

KIT KLARENBERG: COLLAPSING EMPIRE: ‘HOW US BROKE KOSOVO’
MARCH 25, 2024 NATYLIESB
By Kit Klarenberg, Substack, 2/28/24

In an extraordinary testament to the sheer pace and scale of the US Empire’s collapse, on February 15th Politico published a remarkable investigation, How the US broke Kosovo and what that means for Ukraine. In unprecedentedly forensic, candid detail, it documents how NATO violently “wrenched” the province from Yugoslavia’s grasp, then forged a politically and economically dysfunctional, unsustainable “American protectorate” in Belgrade’s place, while US officials and corporations corruptly profited every step of the way.

The relevance of Kosovo’s fate to what will inevitably befall whatever territory comprises Ukraine once Russia has completed its Special Military Operation couldn’t be starker. Whenever that day comes, Kiev will be wholly reliant on US support to keep its literal lights on, reconstruct whatever isn’t irrecoverable, and pay salaries of state employees and government officials. Washington already pumps tens of billions into the country for the latter purpose alone.

While there is a growing sense among Ukrainians within and without the country they have been abandoned and betrayed by their American “friends”, officials in Kiev continue to talk up their alliance with Washington, while routinely pleading publicly for short- and long-term financial assistance from the Empire. Yet, as Politico observes:

“For Ukraine, the task of fixing its shattered infrastructure will represent a daunting, generational challenge. For corporate America, it will be just another business opportunity. And if Kosovo is any guide, the Ukrainians should be careful what they wish for.”

‘Serious Reservations’

The “liberation” of Kosovo Albanians, and creation of an “independent” state in the province – long-considered “the cradle of Serb civilisation” and “Serbia’s Jerusalem” – began as a deeply personal pet project of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and longtime deep state operatives and notorious warmongers like Madeleine Albright. Their crusade was then adopted by subsequent US administrations. Accordingly, Kosovo today is laden with monuments, avenues and squares dedicated to these individuals, including Wesley Clark, who as US Supreme Allied Commander Europe oversaw NATO’s criminal bombing of Yugoslavia.


Bill Clinton gives a speech next to his statue in Pristina, Kosovo

Such is the affinity of Kosovo Albanians for the States, star spangled banners and garish posters proclaiming, “Thank You USA!” can be found in profusion throughout Pristina. As Politico notes too, “at one point, local authorities seriously contemplated naming a lake after Donald Trump” – and “the affection is mutual.” Entire generations of US officials “carry Kosovo around with pride,” a Washington diplomatic source boasted to the outlet. “But should they?” Politico bluntly enquires.

The answer, unambiguously, is absolutely not. Once Pristina unilaterally declared independence in 2008 – a highly controversial move unrecognised by much of the international community, and Serbia, its constitution still categorising the province as Belgrade’s sovereign territory – “American fortune hunters” started moving in en masse, employing “prominent former officials from the Clinton administration who’d had a hand in helping Kosovo liberate itself” to “grease the skids.” In other words, secure lucrative contracts via dubious if not outright criminal means, for personal enrichment.

An early entrant in this imperial feeding frenzy was US government-tied construction giant Bechtel, “a major player in the reconstruction of Iraq’s energy sector” following the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion. Its mission in Kosovo – building two highways – was much more modest. Nonetheless, US officials first had to convince authorities in Kosovo, “which had a poverty rate of about 60 percent at the time,” the roads were a vital necessity.

In order to bolster its sales pitch, Bechtel recruited Mark Tavlarides, a member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council during the Kosovo War, and then-US Ambassador to Priistina Christopher Dell, to assist. Despite “serious reservations about the project’s economic viability on the part of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” authorities greenlit the proposal in 2010, while refusing to publish the full contract, “despite pressure from civil society groups.” It was nonetheless revealed the effort’s final cost wasn’t capped.

Initially, the highways were to span just over 100 kilometres, and cost €400 million. By the time of their completion two years later, they had been shrunk to just 77 kilometres, at a cost of €1 billion. Undeterred, in 2014 Pristina handed Bechtel another major highway contract. Completed five years later at a cost of €600 million, multiple Kosovo officials involved in the deal were recently jailed for secretly overpaying the company to the tune of €53 million.

‘Kosovo’s Saviors’

Politico’s investigation highlights a spectacularly egregious aspect of US “nation building” in Kosovo, largely unacknowledged or outright ignored in the mainstream over the past two-and-a-half decades. Namely, the very same officials intimately involved in Yugoslavia’s destruction profited – or, at least, sought to profit – from their actions subsequently. The same is true of every other target of imperial intervention since.


Statue of Madeleine Albright, Madeleine Albright Square, Pristina

Politico dubs Madeleine Albright “one of the icons of Kosovo’s fight for freedom.” As US Secretary of State 1997 – 2001, she aggressively tubthumped for NATO “intervention” in Yugoslavia, and resultant privatisation of the country’s industry and resources, which at the time of the bombing was overwhelmingly worker-owned. The 78-day-long aerial onslaught destroyed just 14 Yugoslav tanks, while decimating 372 industrial facilities, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. The military alliance took direction from US corporations on what sites to target.

Subsequently, Albright – via her personal investment firm Albright Capital Management – sought to make a mint from the wreckage. She gradually began buying up Kosovo’s newly-privatised telecommunications sector, and in 2013 was on the verge of seizing a 75% stake in the formerly state-owned PTK, the province’s postal and telecommunications authority. Major controversy over the deal at home and abroad eventually forced her to back out. Local celebrity not dimmed, six years later a statue of Albright was unveiled in a Pristina square named after her.

Politico records how Albright’s “family and colleagues remain active” in Kosovo, including her daughter Alice, who as chief executive of US government aid agency Millennium Challenge Corporation, “issues development grants” to Pristina, which then get handed back to US corporations via government contracts. Meanwhile, Wesley Clark has been attempting to profiteer in the would-be country for over a decade. He is reportedly “unapologetic about his efforts to reap financial benefit from his reputation as one of Kosovo’s saviors.”


NATO’s criminal bombing of Belgrade, 1999

Despite that “reputation”, Clark has been unsuccessful. In 2012, as chair of Canada-based Envidity Energy, he began vying for rights to Kosovo’s copious lignite coal reserves, the fifth largest in the world, promising an investment of $8 billion. The next year, Pristina conveniently tore up laws “designed to prevent foreign investors from exploiting the country’s mineral wealth in a way that didn’t serve Kosovo’s interests,” granting Envidity a licence to dig for coal throughout the province, without public tender.

A scathing 2016 UN Development Program report put an end to Clark’s “Kosovo dream”. It expressed concern Envidity’s project would’ve been completely illegal were it not for the scrapped legislation, there was a high risk of bribery and corruption if it went ahead, and Kosovo “would be stripped of its resources with the profits going into the pockets of foreign investors.” Negative comparisons were also drawn with Bechtel’s grossly exorbitant highway construction. Subsequently, Kosovo’s parliament withdrew Envidity’s licence. However, Clark was undiscouraged:

“The former general is now concentrating on renewable energy projects. He has met with Prime Minister Kurti and other top Kosovo officials to discuss his plan to reimagine the country’s energy infrastructure.”

‘Forgotten Battalion’

Politico observes that the “failure of US nation-building” in Kosovo is particularly conspicuous, given the province is “tiny, roughly one-third the size of Belgium, with a population of 1.8 million,” with a GDP of just $10 billion – “less than one-quarter the size of Vermont’s, the smallest US state in terms of economic activity.” As such, “making a difference there would not require the US to invest the trillions poured into Afghanistan and Iraq.” Furthermore, “the population loves the US.”

The outlet acknowledges the Empire “threw plenty of money” at Pristina post-1999, but “Washington’s priorities were informed more by short-term American business interests than providing the country what it really needed to develop.” Kosovo may have “been a good bet” for “the American businesses active” in the province, but not the local population. This more widely reflects how “political will in Washington to remain engaged in foreign countries typically fades once big business has squeezed what it can out of America’s presence.”

While these revelations are apparently surprising to Politico, and may well be news to many of its Western readers, it is a major, long-apparent structural flaw in the Empire’s foundations, which will be Washington’s ultimate undoing in many parts of the world. This is particularly the case throughout the former Yugoslavia. Today, the entire Balkans cries out for new infrastructure, and much else besides.

Yet, Western investment to rebuild what was destroyed – in several cases by NATO bombing – and renew roads and other logistics structures and facilities has been almost entirely unforthcoming in the decades since. A chronic lack of employment opportunities and derisory incomes has moreover precipitated a grave, region-wide population collapse. In “American protectorate” Kosovo, these issues are particularly pronounced, with the highest unemployment and poverty rate in Europe by some margin.

The wars also created, or exacerbated, a host of social and political problems with no simple resolution, which Western powers still struggle to comprehend, let alone settle. In closing, Politico notes that on top of a failure to invest in Kosovo for the benefit of its population, “Washington and Brussels have utterly failed” to end the conflict between Belgrade and Pristina on the future of Kosovo’s remaining Serb population. The outlet expresses disbelief that:

“Despite a quarter century of trying, the US, the most powerful country in the world, has been incapable of resolving what amounts to a border dispute involving a population the size of a small American town.”

Of course, the US is no longer the world’s most powerful country. The military, diplomatic, and economic clout it exerted during Yugoslavia’s destruction has been lost, and will not be returning. This decline is writ large in Kosovo, which is home to Camp Bondsteel, the largest and most expensive foreign military base built by the US in Europe since the Vietnam War. Covering almost 1,000 acres, it was meant to house 7,000 troops, although typically just 1,000 are stationed there.

Bondsteel, Politico reports, has been nicknamed the “Forgotten Battalion” in Washington as a result. Despite its manpower shortages, “the troops there are nearly the only thing standing between Kosovo and Serbia.” The long-term viability of the base, and the corrupt, collapsing protectorate posing as a state it supports, is an open question.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2024/03/kit ... ke-kosovo/

******

NATO Has Never Been So United (and You Are Not Reading Right Now)
by GORDONHAHN
March 25, 2024

We are persistently told by a host of NATO promoters, often called ‘democracy promoters’ for PR purposes, that “NATO has never been more united.” From Joe Biden to the Pentagon to the NATO GenSec Jan Stoltenberg the message is the same: the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War is strengthening NATO to a level never known: politically, militarily, organisationally, etc. As usual, reality diverges substantially from the message.

Fears are growing in Europe that the US is incapable of leading anymore and that Washington will depart from the organisation or drastically restructure its relationship. These fears are driven by the prospect of Biden’s defeat in the November U.S. presidential elections. The expected winner, now Donald Trump, has steadily opposed the war, promised to end it if elected (unrealistically ‘within 24 hours of taking office’) and is very likely to seek a radical transformation of the US role in NATO if he does not decide to withdraw the US from the military alliance altogether. Thus, Biden’s defeat, in turn, is being driven in part by NATO’s failed war effort win Ukraine: the inability to save Ukraine from a conflict into which Washington drove it, the lack of capacity to continue arming Ukraine, the lack of political will to maintain financing it, and the plethora of lies the U.S. government has deployed about the conflict, all being exposed outside the dinosaur media.

Faith in NATO’s effectiveness in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West has been shaken by the Ukraine debacle. Thus, the effort to expand NATO to Ukraine by way of nurturing pro-NATO elements and backing an illegal overthrow of a constitutionally elected Ukrainian government and covering up the violent Maidan-led snipers’ massacre of 20 February 2014, along with other catastrophic policy choices in Ukraine has led to a threat to NATO as a viable security organisation.

Viability is being further undermined by political and economic infighting among NATO’s European members. As Europe flails about in the absence of American leadership, diplomacy, indeed simple sanity to end the war, the Continent’s hapless, childish leaders are eating themselves up. The popularity of their governments is collapsing for the same reasons Biden is about to lose the American presidency: the failed Ukraine war and popular opposition to its continuation and/or specific policy choices forced by the war. The key German government is experiencing rapidly declining popularity as a result of an economic recession sparked by the war. It is badly divided over whether or not to send Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev. Those divisions were put on public, too public a display, creating greater schism. First, German Chancellor Olaf Sholz stated that he opposed sending the Taurus systems because it would require sending German officers to Ukraine to assist in their operation ‘just as the British and French are doing.’ Then, a tapped telephone call involving Germany’s top generals discussing the Taurus question was published in which it was confirmed that British and French officers were helping Ukrainians operate those countries’ missile systems sent to Ukraine. This set off mutual recriminations between the Germans, on one hand, and the Brits and French, on the other.

More fundamentally, the bloc is divided over whether or not to make war or peace. The Viktor Orban government in Hungary and the new Robert Fico government in Slovakia have come out against massive military and other support to Ukraine and for negotiating with Moscow to end the war. Serbia has been less vocal but also prefers peace rather than war with its brotherly Slavic and Eastern Orthodox nation, with which it has a long history of close relations.

On the other hand, French President Emmanuel Macron has been calling for ignoring Russian red lines and sending Western troops to Ukraine, though not under NATO aegis. Macron has shocked the world by claiming he would send, then that he would not send, then that he would send, then that he would not send troops to either Odessa, Ukraine’s northern border, Moldova, depending on which version is in his head on any given day. The Czech President backed Macron’s erasing of red lines.

As a result the Czech and Slovak governments exchanged nasty words. On March 9, 2024, Fico accused the Czech government of jeopardizing the two Slavic countries’ relations over the situation in Ukraine: “We take note that the leaders of the Czech government decided to jeopardize their [relations] only because they are interested in supporting the war in Ukraine, while the Slovak government openly talks about peace.” The two countries managed a peaceful, painless divorce at the end of the Cold War, but now are at odds over the West’s failure to negotiate a post-Cold War order. Lithuania and Estonia have backed the confused French initiative, with Macron courting the latter to also send troops. The rest of Europe, led by Germany, has opposed these reckless ideas but have not joined Hungary and Slovakia in a call for pursuing peace talks.

In sum, we have a broad and divided Western political spectrum over the war. Listing them from the pro-war to the pro-peace ends of the spectrum, we have: France, the Baltic states, and Czech Republic close to which stand the US and UK — the rest of the European continent’s NATO members, except for the pro-peace parties — and the pro-peace bloc of Hungary, Slovakia, and Serbia. This spectrum is over the fundamental issue of war and peace. This is not unity; it is division.

In sum, NATO is experiencing severe fissures for the first time since the end of the Cold War and the beginning of NATO expansion, when some cleavages emerged over whether or not to expand without Russia. This earlier dispute, ironically was sparked by disagreement over whether NATO expansion would spark anti-Western sentiment in Russia, de-democratization in Russia, and ultimately new tensions and conflict with Russia. All of these present fissures are products of NATO expansion and the resulting NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. NATO has shot itself in the foot, weakening itself while wakening a giant, Russia, to greater security vigilance and its military potential. Thus, a politically divided NATO and West, with depleted arms stores and economies faces off an energised, united, and passionate Russia supported by most of the rest of the world in its resistance to American hegemony.

https://gordonhahn.com/2024/03/25/nato- ... right-now/

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What Do The Latest Surveys Say About Poles’ Attitudes Towards Ukraine & The Farmers’ Protests?



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 27, 2024

Considering that the latest surveys revealed overwhelming opposition to a conventional Polish intervention in Ukraine and overwhelming support for the farmers’ protests, Tusk would be making an epic mistake if convinced Duda to order a conventional intervention as a distraction from the nationwide protests.

Poland’s RMF 24 radio station published the results of their latest poll about Ukraine on Monday that was conducted by United Surveys from 8-10 March with a sample of 1,000 people. It found the following percentage of support for each form of aid to that country: 75% for humanitarian aid; 67.6% for ammo and shells; 54.1% for heavy equipment like tanks; 46.8% for accepting refugees; 41.1% for financial aid; 27.1% for letting Poles fight in Ukraine; and 9.4% for a conventional military intervention there.

The radio station noted that “acceptance for sending the Polish Army was zero, and support for allowing Polish citizens to fight was at the level of 3.4%” during last year’s survey, having risen to 9.4% and 27.1% respectively since then, which they editorialized could be due to “the Macron effect”. The European Council on Foreign Relations’ (ECFR) poll from January that was released last month and analyzed here was done before his speculation about a conventional intervention but still helps paint a fuller picture:

“When asked what’s the most likely outcome of the Ukrainian Conflict, 17% of Poles said that it’ll end in Ukrainian victory, 14% said that it’ll end in Russia’s, while 27% said that it’ll end in compromise. To the question of what Europe should do, 47% favored supporting Ukraine until it reconquered all its lost lands compared to 23% who said that it should push Kiev to negotiate peace with Moscow. About the Ukrainians themselves, 40% see them as a threat versus 27% who see them as an opportunity.

Only 16% of Poles would be very or fairly pleased if Trump returns to power while 41% would be very or fairly displeased by that scenario. If he limits support for Ukraine, 31% of Poles want the EU to replace lost aid as much as possible so that Kiev can keep fighting, 25% want EU aid to remain unchanged, and 19% want them to follow in the US’ footsteps by scaling back aid and promoting peace. As a whole, 34% of Poles think that the EU played a positive role so far compared to 31% who think it’s been negative.”

Generally speaking, while “the Macron effect” saw an increase in support for an indirect intervention via mercenaries by around 9x and a conventional Polish one by almost 10x according to the latest survey, most Poles are still against both and instead favor only humanitarian and armed (ammo, shells, and tanks) aid. Furthermore, it’s unlikely that their pessimism from January about victory on Ukraine’s terms changed much if at all, nor their attitudes towards the other questions asked in the ECFR’s poll.

Of partial relevance to the subject of Poles’ attitudes towards Ukraine is the minimal change in support for the farmers’ protests, which dropped from 78% in Oko.press’ Ipsos poll in February to 72% in Rzeczpospolita’s IBRis one this month. The population samples that were surveyed might account for this or it could be the clashes that took place in Warsaw between the farmers and police in early March. Whatever it may be, the change was minimal and confirms overwhelming support for this movement.

These protests are connected to the influx of cheap and low-quality Ukrainian grain onto the domestic Polish market as well as the agricultural restrictions imposed by Brussels’ so-called “European Green Deal”. This analysis here from late March assessed that the continued farmers’ protests could morph into a modern-day Solidarity movement that poses a threat to German-backed Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s rule and might then prompt him to launch a conventional intervention in Ukraine as a distraction.

It was warned that this “could backfire if the protesters refuse to comply and instead end up clashing with the armed forces, however, which could complicate this campaign at its most sensitive stage. Its success couldn’t be taken for granted then due to complexity theory teaching that initial conditions disproportionately shape the outcome of complex processes such as this one. The liberal-globalist government’s possible solution to the protests might therefore spark Poland’s worst-ever national crisis.”

Considering that the latest surveys revealed overwhelming opposition to a conventional Polish intervention in Ukraine and overwhelming support for the farmers’ protests, Tusk would be making an epic mistake if convinced President Andrzej Duda to order a conventional intervention as a distraction. It’s therefore best for him to comply with the farmers’ demands to ban all Ukrainian grain from Poland and rubbish all thoughts of a conventional intervention there lest he plunge Poland into pandemonium.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/what-do- ... -say-about

The Russian Ambassador Gave Poland A Dose Of Its Own Diplomatic Medicine By Snubbing His Hosts



ANDREW KORYBKO
MAR 27, 2024

Regardless of whatever one might think about who’s right and who’s wrong in these cases, the fact is that Russia isn’t letting the EU and especially Poland get away with disrespecting it anymore, and it’ll likely always respond in a tit-for-tat fashion from here on out.

Poland is furious after Russian Ambassador Sergey Andreev refused a summons by his hosts to discuss the recent allegation that a Russian missile briefly passed into Polish airspace from Ukraine. He explained his decision afterwards by the fact that “Since I understood from the response of my Polish colleagues that there would be no evidence this time as well, I decided that in this situation the meeting would be pointless and declined the invitation.”

Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Szejna reacted by accusing Ambassador Andreev of “deserting his diplomatic post”, which he described as “a violation of international law” and “a cause of concern for our allies.” This harsh rhetoric suggests that hawkish factions in Warsaw might be plotting to exploit this development as the pretext for further worsening diplomatic relations with Moscow, to say nothing of this becoming the basis upon which another round of anti-Russian information warfare could be waged.

What neither Szejna nor his Mainstream Media allies mentioned, however, is that Ambassador Andreev simply gave Poland a dose of its own diplomatic medicine after that country’s ambassador to Russia and his fellow EU counterparts refused a summons by their hosts to discuss pre-election meddling. The EU Mission in the country justified this decision as being due to those diplomats not wanting to be “lectured” by Russia, which is essentially the same reasoning that Ambassador Andreev just gave too.

Just like former President and incumbent Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev demanded that Russia’s ties with the EU be demoted in response, so too will his hawkish Polish counterparts likely demand the same, though it can’t be taken for granted that either side will do so. The preceding hyperlinked analysis explains some of the reasons why Moscow didn’t follow Medvedev’s advice, which are also relevant with respect to Warsaw as well.

Speculation about the future of their ties aside, what’s most important about this latest development is that it proves Russia’s willingness to diplomatically respond in a tit-for-tat fashion to disrespect from its Western counterparts, especially those from Poland. Russia just designated a partially government-financed “NGO” as “undesirable” less than two weeks after the latest presidential elections in a move likely connected to its alleged meddling in the run-up to those polls.

That “NGO” could have been discussed during the Russian Foreign Ministry’s summoning of the European Ambassadors in Moscow earlier in the month but none of them showed up, including the Polish one, thus leaving the state with no choice but to restrict its activities since it wouldn’t stop meddling. It therefore makes sense that Poland would be the first country where Russia gives the EU a dose of its own medicine, both due to Polish meddling via that “NGO” and the recent missile incident.

Had it not been for the Polish Ambassador earlier snubbing his Russian hosts, then the Russian one might not have snubbed his Polish hosts, and he could have instead attended the meeting in spite of the lecture that he would have predictably heard. Regardless of whatever one might think about who’s right and who’s wrong in these cases, the fact is that Russia isn’t letting the EU and especially Poland get away with disrespecting it anymore, and it’ll likely always respond in a tit-for-tat fashion from here on out.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-russ ... ave-poland

[blindpig]

Why Europe Sacrificed Ukraine
Arta Moeini
March 25, 2024

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The West’s Ukraine policy appears to have reached an inflection point. Washington and Brussels have now spent more than $200 billion on the war—a figure that, adjusted for inflation, far exceeds the entire cost of the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe in the wake of World War II. After the failure of last year’s much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive, leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have found allocating new money to the war effort an increasingly daunting task. The European Union finally pushed through a €50 billion ($54 billion) funding package for Ukraine last month, but this came after months of pushback from Hungary. Meanwhile, war-skeptical parties are surging in the polls in several countries, propelled by voters reeling from the severe cost-of-living crisis the war and Western sanctions have unleashed.

The Ukraine war has also been a strategic disaster for the Continent, quashing any lingering aspirations for Europe to achieve genuine strategic autonomy, vassalizing Europe to the United States and leaving it at its weakest since the end of World War II. Regardless of how the Ukraine conflict eventually turns out, Europe—especially Western Europe—has lost.

So why do European leaders remain so hostile to diplomatic efforts to end the war? In recent weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron went so far as to suggest European or NATO troops could be deployed to Ukraine, then doubled down when his remarks drew criticism, insisting that the war is “existential” for Europe and nothing should be “off the table.” Such claims aren’t based on reality, however. European security isn’t “at stake”: Russia is unable to conquer and hold even half of Ukraine, let alone expand beyond it. And the common myth in the West that Putin aims to restore the Soviet empire is just that: hyperbolic mythology detached from reality.

Still, EU elites’ commitment to Ukraine, no matter the costs, is too deliberate and systematic to be dismissed as madness or sheer incompetence. Lurking beneath the clamor for European unity is a political struggle to establish supranational EU sovereignty—a project that trumps all other considerations, including Europe’s own strategic autonomy. Macron’s worry that the Russian victory in Ukraine (a non-EU state) would obliterate Europe’s “credibility” makes sense when we recognize that he and other leaders are engaged in a comprehensive project of top-down state-building in which Ukrainian plight plays a foundational role.

Ukraine has become central to the agenda of transforming the European Union from a regional and institutional association of multiple nations into a sovereign administrative superstate—a “United States of Europe.” The European establishment has an ontological attachment to Ukraine: In the minds of many European technocrats, “Europe” always included Eastern Europe but excluded Russia. The conflict in Ukraine thus reaffirms the conceptual territorial boundaries of their imagined continental state. But more importantly, the narrative built around Ukraine’s tragic situation is instrumental to the European Union’s statist ambitions and pursuit of political legitimacy.

Given the prevalence of the nation-state model and belief in popular sovereignty as the basis for state legitimacy, all modern states—even ostensibly transnational and imperial ones—must legitimize themselves through establishing identity with a people. The modern Leviathan is a parasite that feeds on the mythos of the demos. It can’t exist without a host to live off of and eventually subsume.

In the modern era, when sovereignty and political legitimacy hinge on “identity,” the who-ness of the ruled, rather than the specific qualities of the rulers, justifies power. The invasive, ever-growing tentacles of the modern state are nestled behind a hypostatized, self-legitimizing “We” (the people), a constructed or projected monolith that the ruling class ritualistically and routinely adulates to greenlight every overreach. Modern states are thus not only impersonal and faceless, but formed atop a web of myths and stories about the people.

Yet not only is there no historical European “people” for a projected United States of Europe to embody, EU technocrats viscerally despise the romantic idea of nationhood that forged modern states out of the pre-existing traditions and cultures of 19th-century Europe. Instead, the late-modern attempt at European nation-building hinges on constructing a common civic identity. In other words, to establish its legitimacy, the new superstate’s aspiring ruling class must harness and socially engineer a pseudo-mythical, abstract, and ahistorical demos based on liberal cosmopolitan values, those into which they have been socialized postwar.

Recognizing the emotive power of Ukraine’s struggle against Russian dominance, European elites have appropriated this struggle to preach the ideological precepts that for them signify “European-ness” and, indeed, civilization itself. Seemingly overnight, Ukraine came to stand for enlightened “European values”—freedom, democracy, tolerance, good governance, and so on—with Russia transformed into civilized Europe’s opposite, the barbarian horde at the gate. As the sociologist and Compact contributor Frank Furedi has written, Ukraine is now a wellspring of moral authority and a source of collective redemption whereby “faith in the ‘West’ is validated by the ‘heroes in Ukraine.’”

The deeper source of the European establishment’s fixation on Ukraine is precisely its position as a victim of “aggression” by a larger and more powerful enemy. As Nietzsche was the first to grasp, modernity is an epoch in which the world is experienced primarily through the lens of oppression and identities are formed out of the “ethic of ressentiment”: The downtrodden are deemed inherently righteous and accorded the ultimate moral value. Under this dispensation, the defense of “the oppressed” becomes the basic ideology for statecraft, serving as a vehicle for the ruling class to gain and consolidate power, sanctifying their supremacy and planting the seed for their future power as the great liberators.

This “victimism” has provided the organizing principle behind much of the European Union’s sociopolitical agenda: Its promotion of multiculturalism, diversity, and LGBTQ rights, its policies on hate speech, immigration, and education all pivot on identifying scapegoats and sacralizing a socially vulnerable and “unprivileged” minority. Saving the virtuous victim generates moral currency and serves as a legitimation mechanism for Brussels, ensuring its continued institutional and bureaucratic empowerment. Ukrainian suffering offers a new opportunity to expand the victimist narrative that already drives EU policymaking. “Ukraine” (as mythology) comes to play a major role in the scheme to settle the boundaries of the new Europe to the exclusion of Russia; and in identity formation—the basis on which Europe’s neo-feudal elites seek to forge their new, cosmopolitan European burghers.

The will to invent and manufacture such a demos requires demoting, leveling, and ultimately re-socializing the real historical peoples that already inhabit Europe but whose complicated histories and regular insistence on difference and particularity make them unsavory, uncouth, and outdated in the minds of an EU establishment that prefers a more isomorphic and homogeneous Europe. Their imagined polity is an abstract, transnational, and legalistic “nation-state” whose citizens are primarily bound to universal values, and animated by global social justice and the utopian quest to eliminate oppression as such.

With the historical memory of Nazi atrocities that originally inspired a cosmopolitan union in Europe fading, the emotive image of defenseless Ukrainians fighting valiantly for their agency and freedom against fascistic oppressors is in many ways the ideal founding myth for an aspiring imperial nation hoping to baptize its new demos in the cleansing waters of human suffering. As the downtrodden victims to be saved by the enlightened humanitarianism of the ascendant empire’s “good Europeans,” Ukrainians are the perfect subject for this tragic mythopoesis and contrived unity.

The European commitment to Ukraine is a colossal strategic mistake that European elites defend out of a conviction that the ongoing tragedy there can be exploited to advance their enduring political aspirations for a federal European state and engineer a “European” polity from the top down—the most ambitious and absolutist exercise in ersatz nation-building and identity-formation ever attempted. Yet the cost for achieving such unquestioned political sovereignty in Europe seems to be the surrendering of Europe’s other long-term objective: geopolitical independence from Washington.

The narrative of “Western unity” on Ukraine was always a mirage, a “noble lie” designed to hide the imperial nature of the US alliance system, its embedded imbalances tipped against Europe, and its demands on European economies. The European statist project is therefore paradoxical on its face: No modern state can claim to be truly sovereign while being subservient to another—even if that other state has similarly developed in a propositional, imperial, and ideological fashion. For now, however, ambitious EU leaders seem prepared for that sacrifice, believing that creating a solid foundation for their new continental “nation”-state is worth becoming a de facto protectorate of Washington for a decade or two, until such time that they gain the basic capabilities to chart their own course.

Ultimately, the European Union’s ruling elites seek to centralize power in Brussels and disenfranchise member states. If the pursuit of this bureaucratic and totalistic ambition for political sovereignty comes at the expense of economic prosperity and strategic autonomy, this is apparently a price they are willing to pay. In this internal contest, Ukraine is merely a pawn: Ukrainians may be motivated by the defense of their own national sovereignty, but in reality, they are being sacrificed to elevate the new lords of Europe and further their quixotic dreams of a European superstate.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/why- ... d-ukraine/

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Cancer Incidence, Mortality After NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia Still on Rise – Serbian Health Minister
MARCH 28, 2024


A police barracks in central Pristina the morning after a direct hit during a NATO bombing raid, Sunday night March 28, 1999. Photo: AP/APTV/STAR.

Cancer incidence and mortality rates after the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia are increasing even now, Serbian Health Minister Danica Grujicic has said in an interview with Sputnik.

Grujicic is a renowned neurosurgeon who served as director of the Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia before being appointed health minister in 2022. Approximately 40,000 people in Serbia are diagnosed with cancer every year, and the Serbian Ministry of Health is currently working on software to more quickly and automatically register new patients, according to medics.

“We and our neighbors — the Croats and the Hungarians — have been rotating for years at the top of mortality rates of oncological diseases in Europe. Thus, according to ECIS [European Cancer Information System] data for 2020, Serbia was in first place with an index of 150.6 per 100,000, while the European average was 108.7 points. We have tumors of respiratory systems (lungs), mammary glands, central nervous systems, thyroids, circulatory and digestive systems leading in terms of mortality,” the health minister has said.

He added that together with several Serbian doctors he authored a book titled “The truth about the aftermath of the 1999 bombing of Serbia” that compiles all available facts and statistics on the issue.

“This is about genocide, ecocide and a cruel experiment on us, all incidence rates are still going strictly upward, as literally seen in the number of new cases and deaths from cancer on a straight upward graph from 1999 to 2018,” the minister said.

Grujicic added that Russia’s progress in cancer treatment and nuclear medicine could help Serbia.

“The combination of biological therapy and isotopes, which gives the greatest hope for the long life of our patients, has been the biggest discovery. I sincerely hope that as Russia is more advanced in this compared to other countries, we will have the opportunity to work closely with [Russian state nuclear corporation] Rosatom and learn from them,” the minister added.

On March 24, an official ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was held in the southern Serbian city of Prokuplje. Top officials participated in the ceremony including Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik, Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije, members of the governments and parliaments from Serbia and Republika Srpska, and representatives of the clergy, army and police, numerous citizens.

In 1999, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Serbian army and police led to the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces, which started on March 24 and lasted for over two months. The Serbian authorities say that about 2,500 people, including 89 children, were killed and about 12,500 people were injured in the bombings. Vucic said that the use of depleted uranium weapons caused an increase in the number of cancer patients in the country.

https://orinocotribune.com/cancer-incid ... -minister/

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Germany as Collateral Damage in America’s New Cold War
By Michael Friday, March 29, 2024



As published in Berliner Zeitung.

The dismantling of German industry since 2022 is collateral damage in America’s geopolitical war to isolate China, Russia and allied countries whose rising prosperity and self-sufficiency is viewed as an unacceptable challenge to U.S. hegemony. To prepare for what promises to be a long and costly fight, U.S. strategists made a pre-emptive move in 2022 to turn Europe away from its trade and investment relations with Russia. In effect, they asked Germany to commit industrial suicide and become a U.S. dependency. That made Germany the first and most immediate target in America’s New Cold War.

Upon taking office in January 2021, Joe Biden and his national-security staff declared China to be America’s number one enemy, viewing its economic success as an existential threat to U.S. hegemony. To prevent its market opportunities from attracting European participation as it built up its own military defense, the Biden team sought to lock Europe into the U.S. economic orbit as part of its drive to isolate China and its supporters, hoping that this would disrupt their economies, creating popular pressure to surrender their hopes for a new multiipolar economic order.

This strategy required European trade sanctions against Russia, and similar moves to block trade with China in order to prevent Europe from being swept into the emerging China-centered mutual prosperity sphere. To prepare for its U.S.-China war, U.S. strategists sought to block China’s ability to receive Russian military support. The plan was to drain Russia’s military power by arming Ukraine to draw Russia into a bloody fight that might bring about a regime change. The unrealistic hope was that voters would resent war, just as they had resented the war in Afghanistan that had helped end the Soviet Union. In this case they might replace Putin with oligarchic leaders willing to pursue neoliberal pro-U.S. policies akin to those of the Yeltsin regime. The effect has been just the opposite. Russian voters have done what any population under attack would do: They have rallied around Putin. And the Western sanctions have obliged Russia and China to become more self-sufficient.

This U.S. plan for an extended global New Cold War had a problem. The German economy was enjoying prosperity by exporting industrial products to Russia and investing in post-Soviet markets, while importing Russian gas and other raw materials at relatively low international prices. It is axiomatic that under normal conditions international diplomacy follows national self-interest. The problem for U.S. Cold Warriors was how to persuade Germany’s leaders to make an uneconomic choice to abandon its profitable commerce with Russia. The solution was to foment the war with Russia in Ukraine and Russia and incite Russophobia to justify imposing a vast array of sanctions blocking European commerce with Russia.

The result has been to lock Germany, France and other countries into a dependency relationship on the United States. As the Americans euphemistically describe these NATO-sponsored trade and financial sanctions in Orwellian doublespeak, Europe has “freed itself” from dependency on Russian gas by importing U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) at prices three to four times higher, and divesting itself of its business linkages with Russia, and moving some of its major industrial companies to the United States (or even China) to obtain the gas needed to produce their manufactures and chemicals.

Joining the war in Ukraine has also led Europe to deplete its military stocks. It is now being pressured to turn to U.S. suppliers to rearm – with equipment that has not performed well in Ukraine. U.S. officials are promoting the fantasy that Russia may invade Western Europe. The hope is not only to rearm Europe with U.S. weapons but that Russia will exhaust itself as it increases its own military spending in response to that of NATO. There is general refusal to see Russia’s policy as defensive against NATO’s threat to perpetuate and even escalate attacks to grab Russia’s Crimea naval base in pursuit of the dream of breaking up Russia.

The reality is that Russia has decided to turn eastward as a long-term policy. The world economy is fracturing into two opposing systems that leaves Germans caught in the middle, with their government having decided to lock the nation into the unipolar U.S. system. The price of its choice to live in the American dream of maintaining a U.S.-centered hegemony is to suffer industrial depression. What Americans call “dependency” on Russia has been replaced by a dependency on more expensive U.S. suppliers while Germany has lost its Russian and Asian markets. The cost of this choice is enormous. It has ended German industrial employment and production. That has long been a major buttress of the eurozone’s exchange rate. The future for the EU looks like a long-term downward drift.
So far, the loser in the U.S. New Cold War has been Germany and the rest of Europe. Is economic vassalage to the United States worth forfeiting the opportunity for mutual prosperity with the fastest growing world markets?

Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

https://michael-hudson.com/2024/03/germ ... -cold-war/

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Uncle Sam heads for the exit in Ukraine leaving Europe in a panic

While Macron threatens boots on the ground to shore up a failing Ukraine, German generals’ leaked audio proves that European forces are already there.


Emmanuel Macron’s repeated assertions that France wants to lead an ‘expeditionary force’ into Ukraine to help back up the Ukronazis’ flagging frontline forces is one of many signs of the deep panic that is spreading through European capitals. Junior imperialist powers including Britain, France and Germany have sacrificed their economies and used up their arsenals in the US-led proxy war against Russia only to find that the instigators of all the trouble, understanding that defeat is imminent, are preparing to pack up and head home.

Proletarian writers

Friday 29 March 2024

French president Emmanuel Macron’s showy diplomatic efforts to whip the rest of Europe into line against Russia have so far only succeeded in emphasising the divisions within the western camp and by contrast the steady progress Russian forces are making towards their stated objectives in Ukraine.

The French president’s complaints about other (non-specific) European Union members being “cowards” for being lukewarm in their support for the US-backed junta in Kiev, coupled with broad hints that French troops could end up with their boots on the ground in Ukraine, have succeeded only in annoying France’s allies and revealing President Macron’s vaunted policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ to be so much hot air.

Macron went on French television to claim that France was a “force for peace” standing behind Ukraine, and to warn: “If we let Ukraine lose this war, then for sure Russia will threaten Moldova, Romania and Poland.”

Invited by a French newspaper to explain his Ukraine policy, Macron wound up contradicting himself, by turns threatening and placating Russia and finally lapsing into complete incoherence. “Maybe at some point – I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative – we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces. France’s strength is that we can do it.”

So that’s clear then: he doesn’t want to send French troops into Ukraine, but there will have to be operations on the ground at some point, but Macron won’t take the initiative, but France is strong enough to send troops, or maybe not …

Moscow’s response to this tedious rigmarole is unambiguous: if French troops enter Ukraine, under whatever pretext, they will be recognised as invaders and destroyed.

German generals spill the beans
Meanwhile, whilst Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz may bridle at the suggestion of French boots on the ground, fearing that this will bounce the rest of Europe into an unwelcome face-off with Russia, it turns out that his own generals are merrily chatting on an insecure line about how many missiles it would take to blow up the Kerch bridge to Crimea and how many British troops are already on the ground in Ukraine.

“Released on Friday by the editor of the Kremlin-controlled news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, the audio recording – confirmed as authentic by Germany – captures Luftwaffe officers discussing how Berlin’s Taurus missiles could be used to try to blow up the Kerch Bridge connecting Russia with occupied Crimea.

“During the conversation, Lt Gen Ingo Gerhartz, the head of the Luftwaffe, describes how Britain works with Ukraine on deploying Storm Shadow missiles against targets up to 150 miles behind Russian lines.

“‘When it comes to mission planning,’ the German commander says, ‘I know how the English do it, they do it completely in reachback. They also have a few people on the ground, they do that, the French don’t.’

“Reachback is a military term to describe how intelligence, equipment and support from the rear is brought forward to units deployed on the front, but Gerhartz suggests the British approach is deeper, involving support on site.” British soldiers ‘on the ground’ in Ukraine, says German military leak by Dan Sabbagh and Kate Connolly, The Guardian, 4 March 2024)

Chancellor Scholz has excused his reluctance to furnish Kiev with long-range German-made Taurus missiles by arguing that this cannot happen without German boots on the ground, which is a red line that cannot be breached. But the garrulous Luftwaffe know different: “the French don’t” have people on the ground.

Europe in a panic as the USA heads for the exit
The EU accomplices in this American war were happy to swear allegiance to Ukraine so long as the USA had their backs and the dollars and the weapons kept on flowing. Even when the sanctions war against Russia blew up in their faces, the gutless EU still kowtowed to Washington, preferring to empty their arsenals of weapons and deindustrialise their economies sooner than consult their own national interests.

But now that it becomes clear that the USA is racing ahead of Europe when it comes to disengaging from the Ukraine war, Europe is beginning to wake up to the catastrophic mess it has helped to create.

US president Joe Biden may still believe that Ukraine is winning the war and the moon is made of green cheese, but far better indices of the national mood in the USA are the blocking by Congress of the $60bn US military aid package for Ukraine and the sacking of the foremost architect of the failed Ukraine war, Victoria Nuland.

Her last job was as acting deputy secretary of state covering the recently retired Wendy Sherman. Nuland looked set to take on the post permanently, but was pipped at the post by Kurt Campbell. Campbell, who was the architect of President Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ is still dining out on the book he wrote about the rationale for that shift back in 2016.

The message coming from Washington to its European allies is clear: you sort out the mess on your continent whilst we pursue our interests elsewhere.

Russia’s plain-speaking foreign office spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was in no doubt as to the significance of Ms Nuland’s departure.

“It is simple – the failure of the anti-Russian course of the Biden administration. Russophobia, proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main foreign policy concept of the United States, is dragging the Democrats to the bottom like a stone.”

And it is not only the russophobe administration of Joe Biden that is sinking like a stone, but the whole prestige of the USA is sinking with them, as the world looks on aghast at the barbarism of America’s proxy war, fought indeed to the last drop of Ukrainian blood.

Desperation in Kiev
Reports coming out of Ukraine reveal the blind panic of the Kiev junta as the realisation dawns that they are simply running out of bodies and are reduced to sending press gangs on to the street to snatch reluctant recruits.

According to the Washington Post: “President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top military commanders have failed so far to come up with a clear plan to conscript or recruit many thousands of new soldiers critically needed to defend against Russia’s continuing attacks.

“Zelensky’s inability to forge a political consensus on a mobilisation strategy – despite months of warnings about a severe shortage of qualified troops on the front – has fuelled deep divisions in Ukraine’s parliament and more broadly in Ukrainian society.

“It has left the military relying on a hodgepodge of recruiting efforts and sown panic among fighting-age men, some of whom have gone into hiding, worried that they will be drafted into an ill-equipped army and sent to certain death given that aid for Ukraine remains stalled in Washington.

“The quandary over how to fill the ranks has confronted Zelensky with perhaps the greatest challenge to his leadership since the start of the February 2022 invasion. The lack of a clear mobilisation strategy – or even agreement on how many more troops Ukraine needs – factored into Zelensky’s dismissal of his top general in February, but the new commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, so far has brought no new clarity.

“Syrskyi has been tasked with auditing the existing armed forces to find more combat-eligible troops, after Zelensky’s office recently announced that of the one million people who have been mobilised, only about 300,000 have fought at the front lines.

“But nearly a month after his promotion, no one in the military leadership or the presidential administration has explained where those 700,000 are – or what they have been doing.” Zelensky in bind over how to draft more troops as Russian forces advance by Siobhán O’Grady and Serhii Korolchuk, 4 March 2024)

And while the Ukrainians count the cost in lives, German workers count the cost in redundancies and lay-offs. According to Bloomberg, Germany is in recession and the Bundesbank says Germany is in a six-month slump. (Germany is in recession due to first-quarter slump, survey shows, Bloomberg, 18 March 2024)

Other Bloomberg headlines are uncompromising: “German factory orders slump in new sign of economic slowdown” and “Germany’s days as an industrial superpower are coming to an end”.

As Germany waves farewell to cheap gas from Russia and easy access to an expanding Chinese market, the full damage done to the economy by setting Germany’s national interest in second place to her shield duty for Uncle Sam is becoming clear.

https://thecommunists.org/2024/03/29/ne ... ope-panic/