“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.”
We are not alone, we have 26 others. That’s what the EU is. Not being alone, but being stronger, together.
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
Not necessarily FC Arsenal I assume.
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 has been a Russian asset since 1986 at least.
Why have the US intelligence agencies done nothing? At least Trump is a double agent, or tripple.
There must be a story of complicated alliances of which we know almost nothing. I am just sure that American billionaires have not handed over the keys to the US to Russia.
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.
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
They’re both doing lots of wrong though…
I’m not even a liberal you dunce, find a better word to describe people who think differently than you do lmao
I’m well aware and pissed off at of how fucked up America is and the awful things they’ve done and continue to do, that does not make it any more okay for Russia to do the same awful things. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and I can and will criticize both. Whether it be genocide, imperialism, attacks on its own people, or any other harm they cause.
Go away, russian troll. You are not welcome here.
Does the US realise Europe is farkin massive group of countries and they’re a rapidly diminishing batshit fiefdom of suck?
I think we’re gonna have another situation like WW2 where Europeans are caught with their pants down and it takes them awhile to realize the gravity of the situation.
I feel bad for all the poor people caught in the crossfire. The rich people will be safe, of course.
Another situation where a dictator believes his own propaganda, thinks European democracies and their citizens are weak and decadent, only to come to the belated conclusion that people are people, that people can become monstrous when faced with any kind of hardship, and you really shouldn’t underestimate the descendants of people who collectively killed millions upon millions.
It would be funny if the entirely predictable result wasn’t unimaginable suffering.
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.
It really isn’t, are there any states within the EU that do not benefit from the concentration of wealth that colonialism has generated?
Since the question is clearly meant to be rethorical, but it seems none obvious to me:
- How does Slovakia, which was part of Austria.Hungary, which did not hold land outside Europe, benefit as much from colonialism as France, which had massive pieces of land?
- The Irish claim that British rule over Ireland was a form of colonialism. So how did they benefit from that as much as the Dutch did from controlling Indonsia?
- Why is there no difference between the size and time countries had colonial Empires at all? Germany had one for 30years or so, but Spain for centuries.
It wasn’t rhetorical, it was meant to encourage you to question the current conditions the EU exists under because imperialism never ended despite the European assertion that everything is fine now because they feel bad about it. Yes, colonised people are part of the EU as they are part of ever fucking nation on this planet because of the scope of effect that trajectory of colonialism achieved. You’ll notice that Irish people are far more vocally decolonial than French or German people, how curious.
I do not care who was the naughtiest imperialist in the past – though that history teaches us a lot about how this system developed – because the EU is still fundamentally a colonial system. The dissonance many Europeans on these threads express is that their understanding of colonialism is conveniently drawn at the borders and exists on the scale of severity you described above. Notice how this understanding also positions the violence in the past, as though it functions to obscure the continuance of that violence. EU states invest in colonialism directly and foster corporations – which are also conveniently imagined as separate from formal organising despite neoliberal policies – that engage in colonialism. Pick any commodity around your house, and look up who owns the resources that built it. Where does your phone battery come from, the fish you eat, the oil that fuels your cities.
The world extends beyond your doorstep.
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).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
Good point and very likely too. The moderate and left parties need to reinvent and redefine themselves better.
But imo simply talking about " the real issues " will not help us, and most solutions the (more) rightwinged parties offer are just false. The worries people have are real but comsider that this fear is also used for fear mongering and are often fed by propaganda.
But imo simply talking about " the real issues " will not help us,
Probably it will not help to solve the problem, but at least it is a start. True, you need then to act on the issues…
and most solutions the (more) rightwinged parties offer are just false.
… and you are right here. The rightwinged often offer solutions that are doomed to fail but at least they try.
More importantly, if you talk and act on these, you don’t leave the scene to just one side.
The worries people have are real but comsider that this fear is also used for fear mongering and are often fed by propaganda.
That’s the point, but let’s be honest: if we ignore the extremists on both sides, the right began to win exactly when the left decide to commit suicide following ideas and objectives which, while obviously deserving, are not what people were asking to act about.
That’s the point, but let’s be honest: if we ignore the extremists on both sides…
Ok , needed to read that sentence 3 times.
Tbh, I dont think I’m not actually ignoring them, though yes, they both get under my skin. I do believe that polarisation is a big issue, that’s apart from the question who is actually right or wrong. I also think that sofar, I haven’t seen any good or “easy” solution. Our isues are unique and complex, and sometimes solutions take time. So I guess we probably have to be confident we as a society will somehow find a way, without shutting eachother out. That means understanding. Fear for change or fear for too little change, for one could be a commonality. For now, in these trying times, maybe having a Government that mostly sort of works might be a great miracle already. I’m just saying…how do we even measure or compare it all? I don’t know.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, there’s estimates going both ways for conditions of ordinary people in the European Medieval period. There’s probably more than one truth - it was non-uniform and lasted a millennium. It was also a pretty poor region after the collapse of Rome, so even the rich could only be so rich. Stone age hunter-gatherers would have a pretty much perfect Gini for the same reason.
For richer premodern regions like the India and China estimates are much higher (here’s a really recent analysis on some of them). Ditto for societies before the Medieval period, although usually they just go off of house sizes for that and the results can be so high they seem impossible. It’s also worth mentioning Gini has some problems for this kind of thing - the paper I link emphasises other metrics more as a result.
Looking at modern dictatorships, Russia is said to have most of the world’s billionaires, and their official 2021 value is up at 0.880. Unofficially it’s probably worse. Other dictatorships report lower values, but anyone connected to the third world knows they’re bullshit and the elites own absolutely everything. The US is also an outlier; Canada is 0.726, Iceland is down at 0.649.
There was only more inequality after the renaissance. Much of that time was democratic.
No? The first modern thing that people will even claim as democracy is the US at the the end of the 18th century, and it was very rich, male and whites-only. Before that you had the age of absolutism, and before that you had various republics like Florence or classical Athens, but imagine voting bodies at least as exclusive as the early US and pretty unstable, with periods of effective dictatorship. Ordinary male citizens gradually got rights over the 19th century, and the first unrestricted, universal suffrage appeared in New Zealand in 1893.
TBF inequality kept increasing in the democratic US, but then it went down in the postwar era, which is unprecedented in history. Being equal before the law doesn’t mean equal in practice, but it’s just kind of common sense that it would be closer.
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. 😊
See, that just seems like “it’s ideology, but also billionaires are there”. European businesses don’t want tariffs, but there’s still European tariffs. The simplest explanation would just be that it wasn’t their call.
It feels like you’re starting with your conclusion and then building a story about it to end at whichever facts are appropriate for the instance. It’d be more convincing if you could put it in a form agnostic of where and when it’s being applied. Like, when do billionaires want tariffs, and when don’t they? Then, does it actually predict policy decision?
It feels like you’re starting with your conclusion and then building a story about it to end at whichever facts are appropriate for the region.
It’s an essay format, not a deductive argument so the thesis is stated, then it’s given support. Not saying you should be convinced, just explaining why it seems like this. It’s also a light year away from an exhaustive analysis. I can’t do that here and now. It takes books to do this.
European businesses don’t want tariffs, but there’s still European tariffs. The simplest explanation would just be that it wasn’t their call.
To this point, I’ll restate that there is competition for profit (not in a single market but profit making overall) and therefore state control between billionaires since state control modulates profits. What tariffs are good for some are bad for others. E.g. lumber tariffs are great for the lumber industry billionaires but bad for the construction ones due to increased cost of lumber. They both compete for making profit because if say lumber makes a lot more than construction for a while, they could buy construction. Cross-industry consolidation happens all the time. So when a billionaire doesn’t want tariffs but there are tariffs anyway - then it probably wasn’t their call. Instead it’s either the call of another, or an uninfluenced politician. I think the latter is an endangered species given how much billionaires spend on lobbying and I don’t think it’s a more complicated explanation. In fact given how capital-intensive political campaigns are, the existence of an uninfluenced politician that rose to a position of power where they got to set industry tariffs might be more complex. Obviously there are regional differences, e.g. US vs Canada vs EU. I think the tendencies are the same but the degree is different at any point in time.
To be clear I am not excluding ideology entirely, I think the owner class is a much bigger driver, including significantly driving the ideology of the day at a given place and time.
E: In the hypothetical where the tariff-profiting lumber billionaire buys construction, their attitude towards tatiffs may change depending on how the profit maximization formula works now that they own both lumber and construction. It may turn out that getting rid of the lumber tariffs yields higher profits overall, in which case that billionaire and the politicians who represent them would become anti-tariff.
