“Every time Trump or members of his administration have lashed out at Europe, including Ukraine, Europeans have absorbed the blow with a forced smile and bent over backwards to flatter the White House.” (…)
“While a systemic answer to Europe’s security conundrum is not in sight, Europeans do have the levers to prevent Ukraine’s capitulation and create the conditions for a just peace.”
Does the US realise Europe is farkin massive group of countries and they’re a rapidly diminishing batshit fiefdom of suck?
FESTUNG EUROPA! FESTUNG DEMOKRATIE UND FREIHEIT!
We shall become the arsenal of democracy!
arsenal of democracy
And a democracy with arsenals.
Democratic arsenal
Arsenal Democracy
Festung Europa would actually be a sick slogan if it weren’t for that one historical precedent. I think we can find something else.
Well time to give it new meaning!
did anyone think we could rely on a treacherous country such as the US?
I’ve said this before, but please read American Kompromat by Craig Unger. It details the string of circumstantial evidence that Trump has been a Russian asset since 1986 at least.
Trump, the most USian man doing most USian things, is russian. Because only Russians can be evil!
Leave it to the .ml to rush to Russia’s defense because the Kremlin can do no wrong. Sad.
Leave it to a lib to rush to US defense because Washington can do no wrong
CNN Portugal tonight was already distorting the current situation, claiming that Costa’s recent statements about Europeans not being subject to US interference were due to Trump saying that Europe would collapse civilizationally in 20 years because of its immigration policies, which is false or at least not the whole truth. Costa said what he said because the USA now considers the dismantling of the EU and support for Eurosceptic parties a priority in its defense strategy.
Europe, betrayed, is under attack.
The media are not up to task for this…it’s all a reality show to them.
I would also like to point out that Europe’s migrant crisis is largely a result of ISIS and Iraq. Guess who helped cause that clusterfuck? The same country which endless meddled in South America, which has resulted in a lot of migration to said country.
But hey, the US has always been good at sniffing its own farts and avoiding history books. What else is new?
TIL about Craig Unger goodreads has some nice reviews:
“One of the things I found valuable about House of Trump, House of Putin is that Unger makes clear—if such a thing can be made clear—what a strange, amorphous organism Russian/Ukrainian organized crime can be: equal parts legitimate business and human trafficking, government influence and illegal money laundering, threats of blackmail whispered in darkness and bold murder on the daytime streets.”
I think many (should) know most of the story though. But like you say it’s circumstancial. You know what I’ve been thinking lately; what if it was FSB who ordered to off Epstein, afraid he might blow the whistle on this scandals? Wouldn’t be entirely wild anymore.
My bet is it was Trump himself who ordered Epstein to be killed. In the mid-November email leak, Epstein talked about having a “silver bullet” that could take down Trump. Nine months later, dude was dead.
Could be FSB though. We might never know.
We might never know
It’s the interests of US democracy and western democracies to find out though. I hope someone like a journalist finds out. Trump must go.
Maybe the EU should offer reparations, that’d really stick it to all those nasty other imperialists which it is definitely not aligned with ideologically.
That is really complex. The imperialism of France is very different to that of Slovakia for example and the EU has members with everything in between.
In the article, it is highlighted the situation with Ukraine.
It is not clear if there are other countries other than the EU that can influence the situation(aside the US and Russia).
However, it is also time the EU becomes a bit egoistic not because it is necessary, but it will help in the future to determine what countries are willing to cooperate in the same manner.
They arent alone, eu, uk, the nordics. canada, australia, japan, taiwan, and a bunch of other nations all have common cause
And even the EU alone does not need to hide from the US. Including the other countries shifts it even more.
It is the US that is becoming more and more alone, especially if we finally do our homework and realise our potential.
They arent alone
Yes agreed , it’s been imo dramatically portrayed as we have been overly dependant on the US to take the lead after WWII. They were able to cut through most internal divisions, and now its enterily up to us.
Time to feel more confident and step out in the World, not as post-WWII Europe or an infant sucking at anyone’s tits, but as self conscious and aware Union with it’s own character, values and way of life.
How about falling to fascism and alignment with Russia or the USA, one country at a time? The process of undermining European democracy internally is already well underway.
How about falling to fascism
That would stop in the moment the other party (parties) would start to be a responsible party and not a driven_by_the_ideology_of_ the_day party.
What you call fascist in reality is mostly the right that started to talk about real problems that the left choose to ignore (if not making them worst) and then get elected.
True, there are some real fascists here and there and they are extremist but overall they are a minority of the right (and, tbh, these extremist are present also on the left and everything in between).How about falling
Yeah how about that? The rise of Facism is most certainly not uniquely a European problem for starters, they are growing roots everywhere There is a whole worldwide culture war going on.
The undermining of Europe has existed for a long while now actually; let’s say since after the construction of the Berlin wall. The difference now is that’s concentrated in the resurgence of the extreme right, also it seems more widespread , and the last years the efforts by US and or RF and CCP have intensified.
In a very weird way Europe should really thank the UK for the Brexit. If that event hadn’t shook Europe to it’s core, the anti-EU lobby would now have had a much stronger grip.
What about Africa? There’s a lot to gain in Africa. It’s not all war and corruption, there’s plenty of oppertunity to grow business relations. With Europe’s declining worker population and Africa’s growing population, it might be a good idea to look at emigration or outsourcing opportunities there.
Taking in Africans is political poison right now in Europe, and outsourcing local industries has never been super popular even if it makes sense.
I’m sure it will happen, Africa will develop and start taking on lots of low-end manufacturing and similar, and Europe will probably be a very good customer. But, in terms of a strategic alliance for the EU, most African nations are not a contender. South Africa maybe.
Due to the colonial history most of Africa isn’t particularly fond of Europe. And modern France being insensitive on the issue certainly didn’t help this lately.
What European countries should do is to make a big noise about how the Russia is a colonial empire. There are tens and tens of cultures living under the Russia’s fist, without rights to rule their lands and with all their natural resources extracted for the colonizing country’s use, leaving almost nothing in the colony itself.
The Russia is just the same as France used to be, and what France still partially is. It is ridiculous that anti-colonialists in Africa end up supporting the only colonial empire that has never done the least to free its colonies even to a small extent.
Very few in Africa are under any sort of illusions about Russia. They just play both sides for their own benefit.
And it is anyways China that has a much bigger influence these days in many African countries.
Very few what in Africa are under any sort of illusions about the Russia?
I would say that regarding the people ruling those countries you are either correct or mostly correct, but regarding the general public… I would be surprised if things were as you say. Europe has done nothing about it, the Russia has done a lot about it. How could they have a realistic view of the Russia when nobody is doing anything whatsoever to counter the Russian propaganda anywhere on the whole continent?
And with a “friend” like today’s usa we don’t need enemies
Yet what they all have in common primarily is that their population is majorily made up by morons. And so they all happily vote for right-wing populists preaching “nationalist interests” and “souvereignity” over common cause and blaming someone else for the problems they actively cause to enrich themselves.
European fascists aren’t alone, though, and that’s the issue.
It’s really becoming a “ideological worldwar” or something. Supposedly there a three geospheres and the main topic is democracy versus autocracy.
Which democracy is not a masked autocracy where the rich control politics?
For one thing, inequality is still way lower than it was before democracy.
We found that between 1327 and 1332, the Gini index of overall English wealth inequality was 0.725, growing to 0.756 by 1524-25. In the same period, the wealth share of the richest five per cent increased from 46 to 50 per cent (or from 22 to 25 percent if we consider the richest one per cent). These levels of wealth inequality are broadly comparable with other European countries, such as Italy and Germany. For a modern comparison, the share of wealth owned by the richest five and one per cent of U.K. households in 2020, is estimated at 43 and 23 per cent,
https://ehs.org.uk/wealth-inequality-in-preindustrial-england/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_wealth_inequality
The gini index of the USA is at 0.850.
There was only more inequality after the renaissance. Much of that time was democratic.
I’ll take a EU-style “masked autocracy” over an overt autocracy like Russia any day.
or whatever disgusting mess the US is sleepwalking into…
I believe that’s going to be an overt autocracy like Russia.
What is the EU-style “masked autocracy”? Can we be sure that it exists? If the EU does what the US wants there is not much EU in that autocracy.
No, “they” are not alone because those “Europeans” discussed here are not on Europe’s side but exclusively their own.
Just like the <1% everywhere else they will simply throw the population under the bus to be on the authoritarians good side as one of them.
Are we -the European populations- alone? Yes, very much so. But that’s okay because propaganda-induced brain-damage is for a long time preventing us from even recognizing reality. So we will happily keep voting people into power that are only there to enrich themselves and their buddies while blaming imaginary scape goats… immigrants in most cases still, then LGBTQ+ -as we can see in those countries without relevant immigration already-, probably followed by everyone with another political opinion (if history is any indication), then intellectuals in general because people still thinking on their own -even if they keep quiet- are a risk. And once we reached the “random people have to be the scape goat today”-stage they will all cry out and ask how it could have come that far.
Yup. This idea of geographical, ideological alignments or lack thereof between blocs or countries entirely misses what’s actually going on. It’s why it’s rarely revealing and it fails to create useful predictions. Instead I find that looking at the owner class as acting against the working classes domestically and internationaly provides a much better picture of the world.
Wouldn’t the US working in ever deeper cooperation with both China and the EU be better for business? Billionaires move pretty easily between all three anyway.
By all appearances they’ve never fully committed with China because of the ideological gap, and are cutting out the EU now do to new, emerging ideological differences.
Lots of US and EU billionaires are working in deep cooperation with China. Tesla’s, Apple’s, NVIDIA’s (until they got cut off recently), Ford’s, VW’s, and many many others. Heck, Taiwan’s billionaires are all-in with China. There is however an intra-class competition for profits. If Elon was able to buy up all the major American and Chinese companies and collect profits from them, he would. Their current owners wouldn’t like that. My claim is that this is the major driver behind what sometimes appears as ideological or geographical misalignment. Depending on who’s billionaire political reps get in power, there’s a “shift in ideology” which serves to legitimize the state promoting that billionaire’s interests.
“EU is too far left. It’s overregulating AI and not paying its fair share for NATO” - an ideologically structured message that translates to Big Tech and the American MIC currently own this government. They want access to the EU market for cloud services and they want the EU to buy more weapons. If you pay close attention you could even catch how the ideological disagreements change depending on the state of negotiations.
At the same time this class works to reduce the share of profits labour gets among other class war fights anywhere they operate since that’s a common interest. Another common interest is not paying taxes. Or offloading negative externalities on the working class.
I recall recently when the EU decided to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs, VW started lobbying against the tariffs. I was initially baffled. VW said that the tariffs, protecting EU workers, many of which VW workers, would hurt VW’s bottom line because of expected losses in China, due to likely counter-tariffs. Think about that. There’s no Western values VW cares about. They’re ready to throw out meausres that would save their European factories in order to keep their Chinese factories running and selling product. They act internationally and prioritize cooperation with whichever jurisdicrion yields the highest profits. In this case cooperating with China and their Chinese competitors.
This is why leftists and unionists say that labour organization has to work internationally to be truly effective. Because the owner class cooperates across borders.
For me, this theory of the world has given me explanations with fewer contradictions and significantly better predictions. That’s a sign of a good theory and I’m sticking with it until it breaks. 😊
