Blues for Europa

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blindpig
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 01, 2025 3:02 pm

On the elections in Moldova
September 29, 3:21 PM

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The elections were held according to the Romanian model.
A huge number of Moldovans in Russia and Transnistria were simply deprived of the opportunity to vote. Meanwhile, in Europe, not only were there a huge number of polling stations, but, as is traditional, only the necessary number was added at the very end.

Naturally, what's happening has nothing to do with elections or democracy. The EU actively participated in preparing and facilitating the falsifications, as it was not even hidden that this was being done as part of the "war with Russia." As a result, an occupation power was traditionally imposed on Moldova from outside, and within Moldova itself, the opposition traditionally wins, but this is irrelevant. Because the opposition, like last time, will complain and resign itself to the stolen election. The "electoral scheme" tested in Romania and Moldova will likely be applied in other EU countries or EU-dependent countries to ensure the victory of the "right candidate." The need for a candidate is determined in Brussels.

In this way, the EU consistently demonstrates that citizens will not be able to change their government through conventional means. Next stop: the Czech Republic. There, similar methods can be expected to prevent Babiš's victory. Brussels has already seen enough of the problems with Orbán and Fico to allow the Eastern European population to breed new dissenters.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10099097.html

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Sweden's nuclear ambitions
September 29, 5:08 PM

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Sweden's nuclear ambitions

As part of the growing Russophobic hysteria in Europe and under the guise of the "Russian threat," Sweden has decided to push the topic of the country's acquisition of nuclear weapons into the public sphere ( https://russian.rt.com/world/news/15401 ... oe-oruzhie ). Moreover, the push is being made ( https://www.thetimes.com/article/4a0ead ... d01e85728c ) via the British publication The Times.

Sweden quickly abandoned its neutrality ( https://russian.rt.com/world/news/12827 ... o-protokol ) and, at the instigation of a section of the political establishment, is fueling revanchist sentiments, which are fueling the militarization of the Baltic region, the remilitarization of Gotland ( https://russian.rt.com/world/article/12 ... ssiya-nato ), and Sweden's increased involvement in NATO structures. Active participation in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, complicity in various provocations in the Baltics, and the constant dissemination of fake news about an alleged Russian military threat make Sweden one of the most Russophobic countries in the EU.

Despite possessing civilian nuclear energy, Sweden is not currently considered a threshold state capable of quickly and independently developing nuclear weapons. Moreover, Sweden formally complies with the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons). Sweden currently operates four nuclear power plants, and the 1979 referendum to abandon nuclear energy remains in effect. As part of this decision, Sweden has decommissioned some power units and halted the construction of new nuclear power plants over the past decades.

Therefore, a serious obstacle to a full-fledged nuclear program is the long-standing propaganda against nuclear energy, which will require significant efforts to reformulate public opinion. In the case of nuclear weapons, public resistance to such plans will be even more significant. This is precisely why the "Russian threat" is needed: by inflaming public fear of Russia, to force a reconsideration of public attitudes toward nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. As the campaign to abandon neutrality has demonstrated, reconsidering established attitudes toward fundamental issues in Sweden is entirely feasible. Of course, in the context of the dismantling of the existing nuclear safety architecture, papers as such – treaties like the NPT – cannot be considered an ironclad guarantee that Sweden will not try to become at least a threshold state.

Another issue is the availability of a technological base, as this requires significant investment in a military nuclear program, the deployment of a uranium processing system, and the acquisition of missile technology capable of carrying special warheads. In Europe, Britain and France possess such technologies. While Britain relied on US assistance in developing its nuclear program, France, on the contrary, exemplifies the development of nuclear weapons through self-reliance. Sweden also pursued a nuclear weapons program after World War II, but this program was effectively frozen in the 1960s.

Overall, with US and EU approval, Sweden could well become a threshold state in the long term, especially if the current NPT regime continues to be undermined by Western countries. It has the initial production capacity to produce weapons-grade plutonium, sufficient financial resources, and military-political incentives, fueled both internally and externally.

These threats to Russia should not be underestimated, as the expansion of the number of Western countries possessing nuclear weapons will create a disparity in the number of nuclear warheads and provoke a further nuclear arms race.

(c) specially for RT

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10099421.html

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EU Fast-Tracks Transformation into Military Bloc Under Von Der Leyen's Unaccountable Leadership
Simplicius
Sep 30, 2025

The Moldovan election has come and gone with the expected “democratic” results. Maia Sandu entrenches her power as another ex-banking head (“Sandu served as an adviser to the Executive Director at the World Bank.”) to lead a Western nation.

Now that the tentacles of control over Europe are falling into place for the cabal, they are ratcheting up the war machine to shoehorn the conflict into its next natural stage, which will necessarily include mass military ramp ups and provocations against Russia in order to force the EU vassals into a military ‘point-of-no-return’.

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The new directive taking root is that Europe is “already at war”, which meme’s purpose is to slowly transition the entire EU into a full-on military bloc. We’ve already commented last time on how Ursula von der Leyen’s rhetoric has shown that her only priorities as leader remain war and ‘global health’ crisis alarmism. Now, slowly but surely, these elites are trying to turn the EU into a kind of super-NATO, where the central authority actually has power to force these nations to militarize and go to war, as opposed to NATO’s looser, more ‘suggestive’ structure.

As per usual, the messaging is coordinated and precise:

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https://www.politico.eu/article/leaders ... ve-shadow/

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — a former German defense minister — has pushed for an unprecedented discussion at the summit of the EU’s military capabilities, moving far beyond the bloc’s traditional focus on trade, antitrust and economics. Among the options being touted is the creation of a “drone wall,” a system that would detect, track and shoot down drones, as well as projects to ensure planes intruding on European skies are quickly countered.

As seen above, the article notes that von der Leyen is surreptitiously pushing the bloc into a direction it was never designed for.

The article acknowledges that European leaders are privately exhibiting much trepidation about the direction of things:

And yet this more dangerous phase of European politics is strewn with potential disasters. Privately, government officials have expressed worries about the prospect of a “Franz Ferdinand moment,” where a sudden escalation threatens to drag the continent into conflict, like the 1914 assassination of the archduke that triggered World War I.

Polish PM Donald Tusk seconded the concerted information campaign, stating that whether anyone likes it or not, this war is “our war”: (Video at link.)

Europe is at war, and it’s a new type of war, Polish Prime Minister Tusk declared.

The biggest and most important task for our opinion leaders today is to make others, the entire Western transatlantic community, understand: this is war. We didn’t want this, it’s sometimes strange, a new type of war, but it’s still a war,” Tusk said.


He even uses a claimed-Thucydides quote in an attempt to excuse and normalize his own odious bloc’s nonstop warmongering:

“Peace is merely a brief incident in a natural state of conflict and wars.”

Tusk reads his script loud and clear:

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According to him, the most important thing for all European leaders to do—rather than governing their countries, solving their own people’s social ills, etc.—is to force down their citizens’ throats the “reality” that Europe is at war with Russia.

This is why psyop after psyop is conducted, to put on all the trappings of being at ‘war time’, like the latest news that Denmark has called up reservists after the ‘drone threats’.

The coordinated info campaign is amplified by all the establishment actors:

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https://news.sky.com/story/ex-mi5-chief ... t-13440392

It’s remarkable how similar the pre-scripted agitprop is. From the article above, note how the “MI5 chief” copies what Tusk said earlier about the “new kind of war” almost verbatim:

“It’s a different sort of war, but the hostility, the cyber attacks, the physical attacks, intelligence work, is extensive.”

These weird ‘slogans’ are coined up somewhere in the Brussels back halls and then fed to all sock-puppet apparatchiks to be parroted, as seen time and again when such memetic dreck is repeated on cue; the US too has its share, recall the earworm of Kamala’s “joy” campaign.

But it seems not everyone is buying it. Germany’s Berliner Zeitung stood against the grain to question the sense of these dubious new propaganda cues:

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https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik ... li.2359350

They even identified another of the bizarrely coordinated shibboleths spun alongside the earlier “new type of war”: hybrid war. It’s another term several EU officials have purely ‘coincidentally’ started chorusing in unison:

What do Poland, Estonia, and Denmark have in common? At first glance, not much. All three countries belong to the EU and NATO, but geographically and politically they are far apart. Nevertheless, they are often mentioned in the same breath these days—as examples of the “hybrid war” that Russia is waging against Europe.

Economist showcased all such hybrid-warfare attacks Russia is said to have carried out:

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Berliner calls it straight:

The West is succumbing to alarmism: danger of war!

If Putin is behind all this, for which there is no evidence so far, his “test” would have shown one thing above all: how helpless and hysterical the West is reacting. Instead of calmly checking the facts and examining the context, the media and politicians immediately assume the worst-case scenario—danger of war! This is disturbing.


As a brief aside, it should be mentioned Berliner Zeitung nailed another one with an article exposing how the EU cabal steals elections from its own ‘sovereign’ members:

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https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik ... li.2359926

Victor Orban has also lucidly seen the writing on the wall. In his latest speech, he called the European Union a war project and said that the EU has openly announced its main objective of the next decade is to see the defeat of Russia: (Video at link.)

In short, in accordance with what we said in the opening, the EU is slowly transforming into a purely military bloc whose sole operational orientation, principle, and goal revolves around the defeat of Russia. And not only the defeat, but also the total destruction thereof, given that EU heiress-apparent Kaja Kallas has recently openly expressed that Russia should be balkanized into many smaller, weaker statelets.

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Now there’s a lot of hubbub around Trump allegedly authorizing long-range strikes as well as planning to deliver Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. For now, I think most of this is bunk given that the long-range strikes bit was front-ran by notorious fabulist Keith Kellogg who likes to “interpret” Trump’s direction in his own neocon way, and has been proven wrong on virtually all his similar predictions in the past.

As for the Tomahawks, it seems more of the same nonsense given that Ukraine has no capability to launch them from air or sea, and ground-based launchers don’t even yet exist in full production variations. Typhon systems are said to be planned for delivery to Germany perhaps sometime in 2026, at which point Germany could “theoretically” give one or two such systems to Ukraine.

Given that Tomahawk missiles are nuclear-capable, of course, such an escalation would prove extremely dangerous to Russia, as Russia would always have to assume any such Western system fired at it is carrying nuclear warheads—and thus act accordingly, which is why the prospect of this actually happening is low.

Putin shares his thoughts: (Video at link.)

Dmitry Medvedev likewise tunes to the zeitgeist and adds his two kopecks:

There’s a constant drumbeat in Europe about war with Russia within the next five years.

That’s not going to happen.

Why?

Because it is against our national interests.

1. Russia doesn’t need a war with anyone, least of all the frigid old crone, Europe. There’s nothing in it for us. Europe’s economy is weak and dependent on the US, and its culture is degenerating into oblivion. Europe is losing its identity, dissolving in a flood of belligerent migrants.

2. The key priority for the Russian people is developing our own country, including rebuilding the territories that have returned to the fold. That’s neither easy nor cheap.

3. Russia has always come to Europe as a liberator, never as an invader.

Why won’t Europe start a war itself?

Here’s why:

1. European countries are vulnerable and divided amongst themselves. They can only pursue their own interests, struggling to stay afloat in today’s economic turmoil. They cannot afford a war with Russia.

2. European leaders are pathetic degenerates, unable to shoulder responsibility for any serious undertaking. They lack the strategic thinking, let alone the energy (in Russia it’s called passionarity), to make successful military decisions.

3. Most Europeans are soft and apathetic; they are unwilling to fight for any common ideals or even their own land.

Why is war still possible?

The chance of a tragic accident always exists. And hyperactive trigger-happy lunatics also remain a factor. This kind of conflict has a genuine risk of spiraling into a war with weapons of mass destruction.

So we must not let our guard down.


He accurately sums up the gist of the situation.

Meanwhile, Zelensky tries to stir the pot by claiming Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tankers are responsible for launching the drones which have been ‘terrorizing’ sallow Europe: (Video at link.)

The plan to kill two birds with one stone is clear: agitate for militarization while furthering the agenda to cripple Russia’s economy by framing its legal tankers for things they have nothing to do with.

(More at link. See Ukraine thread.)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/eu- ... ation-into

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House Negroes, White Supremacy And Mass Deportation
Nate Bear
Sep 30, 2025

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Last week the probable next prime minister of the UK, Nigel Farage, announced that if he wins power he will deport hundreds of thousands of people living legally in the UK.

In response the Labour government said the plans were “unworkable and unfunded” and that Farage was lying about how much money it would save.

None of the responses from the liberal political or media class labelled the plans a moral abomination, an afront to basic humanity or ideas of fairness. Instead they critiqued it in narrow, technocratic terms encased in the language of financialised neoliberalism.

Farage isn’t talking about deporting those without papers, so-called ‘illegal’ immigrants (a misnomer in itself, as no human being can be illegal on the Earth). He’s talking about deporting those who have done everything right, who are fully legal, who have all their papers, paid their taxes, and have made the UK their home. This is beyond the proto-fascism of Trump and moves squarely into the pure-fascist realm.

Keir Starmer responded by saying that he was going to stand up to the hate promoted by Farage. Yet just just a few days later, his government, I shit you not, announced that immigrants would be forced, like criminals, to do community service to prove their worth to society.

And who announced this plan? A brown woman called Shabana Mahmood, the much-vaunted first female Muslim home secretary of the UK, a twist that truly underscores the grotesquery and bankruptcy of liberal identity politics.

You could run an Earth simulation a thousand times and struggle to spit out a country as disgusting as the UK. In many ways Britain is the foundational evil, the colonial monster that dominated and subjugated a planet and in its dying years blamed the brown and black people it exploited for its own downfall.

A large proportion of British whites simultaneously revere the glory days of the British empire while raging with their tomato faces at all the black and brown people the age of empire left them with.

Which is to say, a large proportion of British whites are racists. They liked it when the UK could project power and dominance over the coloureds for their own profits and ends, and hate that the descendants of those blacks and browns have any claim at all to the country that tormented them.

And now Britain inevitably is tearing itself apart over immigration. 150,000 attended a far-right march in London the other week to demand Britain be more racist. They got their Brexit and made it so no one could come to the UK without a work visa, but it wasn’t enough. It will never be enough. Farage’s mass deportation won’t be enough. Every immigrant in the UK could tattoo their face with the Saint George’s Cross and crawl on their knees to Buckingham Palace while professing their undying loyalty to God and the crown and it wouldn’t be enough.

Because you cannot placate white supremacy.

You cannot appease fascists.

They want scapegoats. And if you’re not one of them, you’re the scapegoat. What you actually do or believe or even where you’re born doesn’t matter.

The only thing that matters is you aren’t one of them.

But this is nothing new.

White nationalist societies like Britain or the USA are schooled in mass deportation.

The UK has a long history of deporting non-whites who, once they had served their purpose, were treated like scum and discarded like rubbish. The most high-profile case in recent years was that of the so-called Windrush generation, people who arrived on boats from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1971 under a government scheme to plug labour shortages. Many of those people, having been inadequately documented when they arrived (despite arriving at the request of the British government), were subsequently targeted for deportation. Hundreds of people, despite living their whole lives in the UK, despite in some cases being born in the UK, were deported back to Caribbean countries they’d never lived in and had no connection to. This went on right up to the 2010s. An off-the-scale level of inhumanity. For the administrators of Britain, however, it was just another day of good old white supremacy.

The truth is, in Britain, if you are non-native you are not safe.

And the Windrush generation proves that if you are born and bred British but non-white, you are still not safe.

Britain is the undiluted essence of white supremacy.

And in the US, Trump’s white supremacy is simply attempting to beat Obama’s white supremacy. Because yes, Obama was black, but he was a white nationalist who deported more people than Trump. He was what Malcolm X defined as the house negro. The black man who excuses, absorbs and finally embraces the mannerisms and politics of the master. The outsider who strives so hard to prove their worth to their adopted society that they emulate and reinforce the structures of that society.

In the UK, people like Shabana Mahmood are the equivalent of the American house negro. They are the non-whites who, so desperate to fit in and devoid of true self-respect, they come to espouse and embody the white nationalist politics of their masters.

In the end, very little separates centrists, or liberals, from the far-right. At least with the far-right you can fight them on honest grounds. White, brown and black liberals claiming to fight racism while being racist and embodying white nationalism will always fool decent people and inch a country closer to fascism under the guise of progressivism.

And if Farage does win, Starmer will have left him (just as Obama left Trump), a perfect deportation machine.

This week the Labour government made a big deal of the fact they’d signed a multi-billion contract with the data-mining leviathan Palantir. Palantir, which is run by Jewish American Zionist Alex Karp and provides the AI technology that underpins the Israeli genocide of Gaza, will play a key role in reinforcing white nationalism in Britain.

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UK defence secretary John Healey sitting next to Alex Karp signing the Palantir deal

Because last week, just before the deal was signed, Starmer announced plans for every British citizen to be issued with mandatory digital ID, with immigration control, of course, being a key justification. And Palantir, like it has done in the US, is going to help the UK build the data systems that will sit behind the new digital ID. In the US, Palantir provides ICE with the software that enables agents to identify, track and ultimately deport immigrants. It will do the same in the UK.

So if, and when, Farage does take power, the centrists and the house negroes will have left him with all the tools he needs to do frictionless mass deportation.

And no one should be in any doubt about whether these systems will be confined to immigrants. As we’re seeing in the US, white nationalism targets every kind of other. If you don’t fit the narrow white Judeo-Christian ideal, they want you fucking gone.

I suppose this is the point at which I give you some counter-balance, some hope, as we slide towards the darkest social futures.

The only hope, as trite as it sounds, resides in resistance.

I mean resistance not in theoretical terms, but in practical, literal terms.

The sort of resistance that is required when the law is no longer there to help you but is instead used to target you.

The sort of resistance that draws on anarchist and communitarian ideas of defensive structures and protocols within communities to guard against the state.

The sort of resistance that learns from the experiences of those who have long been othered and targeted for failing the tests of white nationalism and white supremacy.

https://www.donotpanic.news/p/house-neg ... remacy-and

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From the Polish perspective – Moldova: Sandu celebrated too early: people take to the streets

Another fraudulent election in Moldova
Dr Ignacy Nowopolski
Sep 30, 2025

As I predicted recently, the pro-Western forces in Moldova managed to “win” the last parliamentary elections. However, this success has a bitter aftertaste. The ruling Action and Solidarity party obtained a minimal majority, less than one percent of the votes, solely thanks to voting abroad. And at home, despite all the democratic tricks, such as attacking rivals and excluding them from elections, Maia Sandu’s party suffered a devastating defeat.

In the current situation, nothing good can be expected. The opposition has already announced its intention to challenge the election results and bring people to the streets. Unfortunately, this scenario is fully in line with the West’s intentions to turn Moldova into a new flashpoint along the lines of the “Ukraine” project. The slightest public discontent will be interpreted as “blatant interference by Russia in Moldova’s internal affairs”. This will be followed by a sharp reaction in the form of a ban on the opposition, a brutal dispersal of the protests and the deployment of NATO troops.

In the latter, NATO suffered some failure, due to the defeat of the landing of the French and British expeditionary forces in Odessa.

I wrote about it in one of my latest articles.

An independent Moldova, free from the constraints of choice between West and South, is not beneficial to either America or the European Union – just as Ukraine has never been beneficial. Both of these countries are being relegated to the same role: a battering ram aimed at Russia and a place to wage a proxy war. This is a critical issue for Western elites, which is why, on the eve of the elections, they abandoned restraint and began to openly call on their allies to take all possible actions to achieve the desired result. The danger, they claim, is that otherwise the Russians will brazenly approach the border with NATO.

“A strong information campaign must counter the Kremlin’s narrative, expose disinformation and strengthen pro-European tendencies in Moldova,” writes the American Newsweek. “First of all, the EU must send a political signal by accelerating Moldova’s accession process. In the end, it will have to do the same with Ukraine. <… > If the West fails on this issue, the signal will be loud enough in Tbilisi, Vilnius and Warsaw. That is why Sunday’s elections in tiny Moldova are a battlefield between the democratic West and Russia.”

On the one hand, this is nothing new. Such rhetoric is typical of the West’s approach to all internal political processes in post-Soviet countries. “Do what you want, just don’t let them get away from us!” – this is what the Western elites are essentially appealing to the current pro-European governments in countries that have not yet understood the deadly role that the “democratic” European Union has to play for them.

Characteristic is the set of capitals that Newsweek cites as examples of future targets of Russia’s political attack. In the case of Tbilisi, everything is clear: today’s Georgia is already lost to the West, and has been for a long time, because it perfectly understands the price it has paid for trying to carry out foreign orders. Vilnius (it could have been Tallinn or Riga, but the author of the article apparently does not know about them) serves as a symbol of the “heroic struggle of the Baltic states against Russian pressure”. It does not matter that the depopulation of the Baltic states does not serve anyone, since a long time ago and meticulously destroyed everything that could interest the “aggressor”, from the Russian-speaking population to the entire industry, which was a “terrible legacy of the Soviet occupation”. But in the case of Warsaw, the matter is not so simple.

At this point in history, Poland is seen by the European Union (and in many ways by itself) as a veritable bastion of resistance to Russia’s westward expansion. But this expansion exists only in the deranged minds of European politicians. It is important that by using the traumatic experiences of the last centuries, Poles have managed to assimilate a victim mentality in the face of Russian expansion. That is why no Polish politician, no matter how negative he or she is about Ukraine or pressure from the EU, will ever even mention the possibility of improving relations with Russia. And this is exactly what the West wants. They are based on the simple stupidity of ordinary citizens. Under the pressure of three decades of constant pro-Western and anti-Russian globalist propaganda, average bread eaters in Poland have already forgotten that Poland has always had two enemies: Germany and Russia. And the most horrendous crimes against Poles were recently committed by the Germans, not by the Soviets during World War II.

Now the EU and NATO are forcing Moldova to take the same position. They impose the same narratives on it about the Soviet occupation, the battlefield between democracy and tyranny, the burden of responsibility for choosing Europe, and so on. However, it is clear that this propaganda is not aimed at the Moldovans themselves: no one takes them into account, knowing what they have already seen through their eyes. After thirty years of “EU prosperity” just across the border, they know perfectly well that the EU is a repeat of the USSR, only in an even worse form. In order not to be outraged or ask stupid questions when European troops enter the territory of Moldova, they are treated to this propaganda.

“If a pro-Russian government is formed in the country, even more troops will be sent and Russia will complete the encirclement of Ukraine. Belarus is in the north, Donbas in the east, Crimea in the south, and Moldova in the west,” intelligently says Newsweek. “The Russians will also be right in front of Romania, separated from it by the Prut River. Just beyond this border is the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, NATO’s largest hub in Southeast Europe and an important supply hub for Ukraine. The prospect of legally stationing Russian troops just a few kilometers from such a military base clearly shows why Moldova is important.”

This is an honest admission that from NATO’s perspective, Moldova is not a “bastion of democracy”, but a critically important anti-Russian bastion. To this end, the West is ready to reject all restraint. It needs Ukraine’s successor, a new base for its military presence on the border with Russia – and it intends to seize this second chance. Therefore, he is ready to give up gradual steps, such as the annexation of Moldova by Romania, its incorporation into the EU or other similar tricks.

On the other hand, from the Polish point of view, pushing Moldova into a military conflict with Russia may postpone the moment when the globalist Warsaw regime receives an order to “march on the Kremlin”. This eventual act will mean the end of the State and the Polish Nation, just as we are now observing the end of Bandera’s state and society in Ukraine.

Thus, the development of the situation in Moldova is existentially important for Poland. And time is everything. Both the collapse of NATO and the EU can already be measured in months, not decades.

The forces opposing Russia – and this is absolutely clear to them today – no longer have time to prepare. The catastrophe in Ukraine has become absolutely inevitable, approaching every day. Diplomatic pressure on Moscow has failed: it is ready to talk about ending the conflict in Ukraine only if its demands are fully met. Provoking Russia’s economic and political collapse by prolonging the military stalemate in Ukraine has also failed. They must act quickly and decisively if the West still hopes to win this new criminal war. This is where Moldova appears as another sacrificial pawn in the fight for the triumph of European “democracy”.

The most likely scenario of the destruction of Moldova’s sovereignty in the interests of the EU and NATO is obvious. The first step was to ensure the desired outcome of the recent elections at all costs. Moreover, European planners needed exactly the minimum majority they envisioned. Why? A victory that was a blatant fraud – say, 60% of the vote for the ruling party – would not have caused discontent. Moldovan society has become so accustomed to government fraud over the past four years that it would give up and return to “normality.” But in this case, there seems to be glimpse of hope that widespread discontent, evidence of fraud and demands for a revision of the results will force the government to admit to the already routine swindler of the election rigging.

“Gagauzia and Transnistria have become pro-Russian, Eurosceptic regions, and therefore ‘threaten’ the Sandu government and its European partners,” writes the Chinese portal infoBRICS. “For this reason, the opposition’s fears have taken on an existential character: the real risk of internal conflict with at least two regions has increased if the ruling coalition achieves political hegemony throughout the country. Unfortunately, the probability that the Moldovan authorities will ultimately falsify the results of the parliamentary elections remains high. This process will certainly not be peaceful; It is very likely that it will mobilize the population to mass protests.”

This is what Maia Sandu and her EU and NATO principals are demanding. It will be the second act of the “Moldova este Europa” script. The protests of Moldovans under the flags of the opposition will be considered a conspiracy by Moscow. They will be called “disobedience to the state” or, worse, treason. And this, given that the parliament still remains under the total control of Sandu, will be the basis for declaring a state of emergency or even martial law. After that, official Chisinau will rush to the West’s feet, begging for “international forces to restore constitutional order in the face of active opposition from Russia.”

That’s all. This will be the third and final act of the script.

Will Russia cope with this challenge? No doubt. Will Moldova survive in the end? Unlikely. But its fate is the least of the problems of the West and Europe. They must teach a lesson to anyone who thinks that Western “democracy” has become too suffocating. From the perspective of Eurodemocrats, such thoughts should be eradicated immediately. Including by armed force.

https://drignacynowopolski.substack.com ... ve-moldova
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Sun Oct 05, 2025 8:07 pm

Izvestia: EU split grows over proposal to fund Ukrainian ‘reparations loan’ with frozen Russian assets
October 3, 2025
TASS, 10/2/25

The division within the European Union is intensifying over a new initiative to establish a reparations loan for Ukraine backed by Russian holdings. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has urged Brussels to abandon excessive bureaucracy, while French President Emmanuel Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever warn of breaches of international law. Yet, only days earlier, France and Germany, within the framework of the Weimar Triangle, had voiced support for the idea of employing Russian assets. Attempts to seize Russian property will trigger a painful mirror response, the Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia.

“Whichever option Brussels ultimately chooses, manipulating frozen sovereign assets without Russia’s consent constitutes a gross violation not only of international law, but also of contractual law. Russia has not authorized any such operations. Actions that involve altering the legal status of Russian assets will no longer mean a freeze, but rather the unauthorized management of foreign property – in other words, essentially theft,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia.

“The overwhelming majority of experts argue that the risks of outright confiscation for the dollar and euro systems are far greater than the potential benefits from employing these funds – primarily because of the precedent it would set and the erosion of trust in the financial jurisdiction of Western countries,” Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for International Studies of MGIMO, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egor Sergeyev told Izvestia.

“In the short term, no consensus on this matter can be reached, if only because none exists even within the European Union. And in the United States, even under the Biden administration, it has been concluded that from a legal standpoint, this scheme is extremely precarious,” a leading expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Pavel Zakharov told the newspaper.

According to Vladimir Vasiliev, Chief Research Fellow at the Institute for the US and Canadian Studies, Washington is unlikely to risk its reputation over $5 bln, but may well push Europe in that direction – in which case European capital will begin to flow into the United States.

“The initiators and participants of expropriation measures are guaranteed to face consequences. Moreover, in accordance with the principle of reciprocity, attempts to seize Russian property will provoke a painful retaliatory response. Russia has at its disposal a sufficient arsenal of countermeasures and the ability to deliver an appropriate political and economic answer,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia.

First, the measures could be legal in nature, since what is at stake is a violation of international law. Second, the response could be purely economic. Moscow has already developed a system of specific steps, such as temporary management of the property of companies from unfriendly states, or the transfer of such assets to state ownership or to the Central Bank as compensation for any seizures, the newspaper writes.

***

Russia Drafts Plan to Seize Assets If EU Acts on Funds (Excerpt)

Bloomberg, 10/2/25

Russia may nationalize and swiftly sell off foreign-owned assets under a new privatization mechanism in retaliation for any European moves to seize Russian holdings abroad, according to a person close to the government.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed an order allowing for fast-track sales of state-owned assets under a special procedure.

The decree is intended to speed up the sale of various companies, both Russian and foreign, the person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Should the European Union begin seizing Russian assets, Moscow may respond with symmetrical measures, the person said.

Hundreds of western companies working in sectors from banking to consumer goods still operate in Russia, including UniCredit SpA, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, PepsiCo Inc, and Mondelez International Inc.

Putin acted as EU leaders meeting in Denmark build momentum for a plan to provide Ukraine with €140 billion ($164 billion) in loans from immobilized Russian central bank assets, ahead of a formal summit at the end of this month….

***

Belgium Pours Cold Water on EU Plan to Use Russian Frozen Assets (Excerpt)

Bloomberg, 10/2/25

The European Union’s bid to unlock funding for Ukraine from frozen Russian central bank assets faced resistance as Belgium raised legal questions about the plan to raise financing from up to €185 billion ($217 billion) held on its territory.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever called the EU proposal to tap interest from the Russian assets a “big gamble” that required ironclad risk-sharing among EU member states. He signaled that the process would be time consuming, suggesting the bloc seek alternative financing for Kyiv.

“Every country will have to guarantee proportionally in the case that this goes wrong,” De Wever told reporters Thursday on the margins of a European Political Community summit in Copenhagen. The EU asset plan entails “huge amounts of money,” requiring guarantees for “a very long time,” he said.

EU leaders who gathered for a meeting Wednesday in the Danish capital offered a more upbeat assessment, saying that the bid to raise billions for war-battered Ukraine is gathering momentum and concerns would be allayed. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen assured that the risks tied to the plan would land on “broader shoulders.”…

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2025/10/izv ... an-assets/

Uriel Araujo: Nuclear Poland? Between proxy and atomic power
October 5, 2025
By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 9/26/25

Uriel Araujo is an Anthropology PhD, a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

Polish President Karol Nawrocki has recently stated on French channel LCI that “Poland should be part of the nuclear sharing program, it should have its own nuclear capabilities: energy and military”, as part of “Polish-French partnership.” Nawrocki added that, in the future, Warsaw could be “developing Poland’s own nukes” .

This rather underreported call for NATO’s nuclear-sharing program aligns, in a way, with US assurances to Poland and Estonia for bolstered Baltic defenses. Moreover, this development in fact signals a pivotal shift: Warsaw is no longer content with conventional arms but eyes atomic capabilities as a security cornerstone.

Back in June 2023 then Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was already expressing Warsaw’s interest in hosting NATO’s nuclear weapons under the Alliance’s nuclear sharing policy. And one may recall that early 2025 set the stage for today, with then-President Andrzej Duda urging US nuclear warheads on Polish soil to shift NATO eastward, while Prime Minister Donald Tusk told parliament Warsaw must “reach for opportunities related to nuclear weapons” in a “race for security.”

Amid doubts over transatlantic “friendship” in face of Donald Trump’s presidency in Washington, these statements reveal to what extent Poland seeks a deeper geopolitical play.

For years, Warsaw has chafed under Germany’s shadow, the EU’s economic heavyweight. As a matter of fact, tensions have flared into rivalry, as I’ve written, revealing cracks in Western unity. In 2023, Poland blocked Ukrainian grain imports, undercutting Berlin’s softer stance on Kyiv, while pouring billions into a military buildup to outpace Germany’s spending.

Warsaw’s accusations of German “hypocrisy” on energy and migration cemented its role as Europe’s anti-Russian bulwark. Poland’s elite thus sees nuclear options as a path to autonomy, thereby sidelining Berlin’s influence.

The US, ever the puppeteer, has fueled these ambitions quite skillfully, grooming Poland as a proxy to shoulder containment burdens. This allows Washington to pivot toward Asia (or toward a neo-Monroeist “America First” or what not) while Warsaw plays frontline enforcer. A nuclearized Poland would fit this script, be it through NATO’s sharing program or French deterrent talks.

Suffice to say, such moves skirt the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s spirit but align with America’s selective hypocrisy, as seen time and time again, with Pakistan’s arsenal and elsewhere.

The implications ripple beyond Warsaw. A nuclear-armed Poland would turbocharge its leadership bid, potentially tightening ties with Ukraine. One may recall 2022’s talks of a Ukrainian-Polish confederation amid anti-Russian fervor, a topic on which I also commented at the time.

By 2024, strains had emerged — for one thing, Polish farmers blockaded borders over Ukrainian grain, and far-right voices demanded repatriating draft-age Ukrainians, amid joint calls to end Ukrainian refugee benefits. Yet, 2024 security pacts allow for Poland to intercept Russian missiles and drones over Ukraine, albeit conditionally.

Underreported is how nuclear ambitions could revive such confederation ideas, with Poland eyeing a “Three Seas” bloc to counter Russia (and Germany, by the way), thus enhancing the spectre of EU fractures. The 3SI Warsaw summit has been seen by many as a potential platform to integrate nuclear energy projects, such as small modular reactors, and security pacts, reviving bloc ambitions under the guise of “united Europe” against Moscow.

From a Russian perspective, a nuclear Poland would be an existential red line, akin to Ukraine’s NATO bid. Russia sees Poland as a revanchist threat, with Warsaw’s 2023 moves in Ukraine’s west fueling encirclement concerns.

Polish facilities in such nuclear scenarios could thus be a major source of tension, to put it lightly. Poland’s elite calls this deterrence, but Russia’s arsenal dwarfs NATO’s European holdings, and any “win” invites mutual destruction at best.It is worth noting Moscow already lowered its nuclear threshold, in late 2024.

America’s drive to offload Ukraine’s “burden” onto Europe amplifies these dangers. Even as Trump now claims Ukraine could “regain” disputed territories, the fine print shows European taxpayers footing the arms bill, as I’ve recently noted. Meanwhile, Poland’s RARS agency is under EU scrutiny for 2024’s overpriced procurement.

At this point, Washington’s $283 billion in Kyiv aid arguably pales against EU commitments, yet Trump demands Europe pay more, echoing past “freeloader” gripes. So much for burden-sharing; Poland, the eager proxy, absorbs costs and risks. Tusk’s call for a 500,000-strong army and nuclear options, with only 10,000 US troops as a symbolic shield, lays it bare.

Today, Trump’s backing of Poland (and Estonia, by the way) is classic leverage to “bully” adversaries, using “allies” to prod Moscow — a hallmark of his brinkmanship, so to speak.

Provocative enough to thrill hawks, this courts disaster in many ways, a region primed for escalation. Poland’s nuclear path is no defensive reflex but a bid for great-power revival, egged on by a US keen to “delegate”. The allure — deterrence, German rivalry checked, Ukraine’s orbit tightened — is clear, from a Polish perspective.

Yet the perils — alliance cracks, and fiscal strain; not to mention “cornering” Moscow — make it a dangerous enough gamble. And History rarely forgives such bets. Poland’s “race for security” risks in fact the very war it supposedly aims to avert.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2025/10/uri ... mic-power/

******

Babiš won in the Czech Republic
October 5, 9:04

Image

In the Czech Republic, the Eurosceptic party led by former Prime Minister Babiš won a landslide victory in the elections.
Together with other right-wingers, he will be able to form a coalition and return to power.

During the elections, he was accused of being a "pro-Russian candidate," which is clearly not true.
Babiš is the Czech version of Fico or Orbán—a right-wing conservative rebel who wants greater autonomy for the Czech Republic from decisions in Brussels.
He opposes Ukraine's accelerated accession to the EU, increased defense spending, and the deployment of American bases in the Czech Republic.
He also advocates shifting responsibility for Ukraine's supplies to NATO and reviewing the "projectile initiative" to identify those "profiting from the war." Overall, his rhetoric is in keeping with the current governments in Hungary and Slovakia. This creates additional problems for Brussels, which, of course, benefits us.
However, it's unrealistic to expect the Czech Republic to completely abandon its Russophobic course.

* * *

Also yesterday, local elections were held in Georgia, where the Georgian Dream party won with a landslide. A quasi-Maidan protest, coordinated by the EU, arose in Tbilisi, but without significant results.
The Georgian authorities have already promised that everyone involved in yesterday's events will be held accountable and that foreign influence will be eliminated. Georgia clearly does not want to follow in Ukraine's footsteps.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10110027.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 06, 2025 2:40 pm

France’s New PM Lecornu Reveals New Cabinet … And Resigns

Note that these reports were posted just fourteen hours apart.

Macron Appoints French Cabinet, but Doubts Over Government’s Stability Persist (archived) – NY Times
There were significant holdovers from the previous cabinet, but President Emmanuel Macron also named several newcomers, including Bruno Le Maire, a veteran centrist politician, as defense minister.

Oct. 5, 2025, 2:04 p.m. ET
President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday appointed most of a new cabinet that left many holdovers in key positions, a semblance of stability that will do little to dispel persistent doubts over the French government’s ability to survive long enough to pass a budget this year.



French Prime Minister Resigns in Surprise Move (archived) – NY Times
Sébastien Lecornu stepped down less than 24 hours after he had formed his cabinet.

Oct. 6, 2025, 4:02 a.m. ET
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of France resigned on Monday less than 24 hours after forming his cabinet, a move that caught the nation by surprise and made his government one of the shortest-lived in modern French history.



Last year President Macron dissolved the parliament with the hope of gaining a new majority in support of his policies. It was a devastating miscalculation.

The people preferred the opposition on the far left and far right. Macron’s own center-right party was thoroughly diminished and landed in the third place. Without parliament support the government was unable to pass a budget.

The situation is unlikely to change until Macron accepts the will of the people and nominates a prime minister from one of the opposition parties. If he fails to do that he should resign.

Posted by b on October 6, 2025 at 09:17 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/10/f ... /#comments

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French Far Right and Left Push for Macron’s Ouster

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Sebastien Lecornu (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron (R). X/ @BarlamanToday

October 6, 2025 Hour: 8:25 am

He is accused of plunging the country into chaos as opposition calls for snap elections and impeachment proceedings.
On Monday, the resignation of Sebastien Lecornu as prime minister—just 13 hours after he unveiled his Cabinet and 27 days after his appointment—prompted the far right to demand early legislative elections and the left to immediately pursue the removal of President Emmanuel Macron.

Almost simultaneously with Lecornu’s resignation announcement, National Rally (RN) President Jordan Bardella urged Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call new snap legislative elections.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen insisted that Macron is the main culprit in the political crisis, calling for elections because, she said, in the current makeup of the lower house of Parliament, “there is no solution, and there won’t be one tomorrow.”

In remarks to reporters, Le Pen accused Macron of putting the country and his own party in an “incredibly complicated situation” by “irrationally resisting institutions.”

“Macronism is paralyzed. Macron must choose now: dissolution or resignation—and fast!,” RN stated and demanded that the French people be sent back to the polls.

“The disorder must end,” said RN spokesperson Sebastien Chenu, lamenting “a state in crisis, successive governments, paralyzed institutions and an abandoned French people.”

In the three and a half years of Macron’s second term, five governments have come and gone, with Lecornu’s setting the record for shortest-lived.

Meanwhile, Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the left-wing France Unbowed (LFI), called for the “immediate consideration” of the impeachment motion his party filed against Macron, backed by 104 of the National Assembly’s 577 deputies.

LFI proposed a meeting on Monday afternoon with all left-wing parties that make up the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition to consider every option available in what Melenchon described as an “unprecedented situation in French history.”


French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu resigned on Oct 6 just hours after unveiling his cabinet.

With the latest resignation, President Emmanuel Macron will now be on the lookout for his 5th Prime Minister in just over a year. #Watch#France #FrenchPM #SebastienLecornu… pic.twitter.com/eJUceOnudh

— CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18News) October 6, 2025
Macron Is the Source of Chaos

Marine Tondelier, leader of the Greens, said her party would meet with “all” its partners during the day but gave no further details. “Our political movement must rise to the occasion of history and the difficulties our country is facing. For the good of the French people, we will do everything in our power,” she said.

The Socialist Party remained silent on Melenchon’s invitation. However, Socialist leader Arthur Delaporte told BFMTV that LFI’s participation in any potential government “would mean its immediate censure.”

Socialist leader Olivier Faure praised Lecornu’s decision to resign with “dignity and honor,” while the party’s parliamentary leader, Boris Vallaud, said the only solution was “universal suffrage.”

Tensions Inside the Governing Coalition

François-Xavier Bellamy, vice president of the conservative Republicans (LR), said his party had nothing to fear from a dissolution, rejecting any responsibility if Macron were to call snap elections, citing their recent success in partial legislative contests.

The Republicans’ threat to withdraw from the newly formed government—set to take office Monday—because their demands were not met ultimately triggered Lecornu’s resignation. He blamed “partisan appetites” and “egos” as among the reasons he decided to step down.

From within the same ranks, Cannes Mayor David Lisnard urged Macron to schedule his own resignation. “France’s interests demand that Emmanuel Macron plan his resignation to preserve institutions and resolve a situation that has been inevitable since the absurd dissolution,” Lisnard said, adding that “he is the main culprit in this situation” and that the future of the Fifth Republic and the country “are at stake.”

https://www.telesurenglish.net/french-f ... ns-ouster/

Lithuania Launches Largest-Ever Mobilization System Exercise

Image
X/ @ceanglobal

October 6, 2025 Hour: 7:47 am

The drills involve all 60 municipalities along with 115 institutions and agencies.

On Monday, Lithuania launched Vycio Skliautas 2025, the country’s largest-ever exercise aimed at testing national defense and crisis response capabilities.

Running through Oct. 11, the drills involve all 60 municipalities along with 115 institutions and agencies, the Office of the Government said in a statement.

“In these challenging times, Lithuania’s institutions, NGOs and citizens are doing a great deal to prepare for emerging threats. This unity is our strength,” Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene said..

“Still, even the best plans must be tested in practice. This exercise is one of the most important readiness tests for the entire state and will only make us stronger,” he added.

Image

The exercise will test Lithuania’s response to air raid alerts, assessing the country’s ability to detect and neutralize aerial threats and the coordination between the Armed Forces, State Border Guard Service, Dignitary Protection Service, Police Department and other agencies.

Public alert systems will also be tested, with warning sirens, mobile alerts and media messages sent out to the population. Hospitals will train to switch to mobilization mode, ensuring continuity of care in a changing security situation.

The Office of the Government, ministries, security and defense agencies, the Supreme Court, the Bank of Lithuania and others will act as the State Mobilization Operations Center, which would coordinate essential state functions during mobilization. Four of the country’s major food retail chains will also participate in the exercise.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/lithuani ... -exercise/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 07, 2025 3:54 pm

Germany remains silent over mysterious deaths of NATO opponents
October 1, 2025 , 2:16 pm .

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Seven AfD candidates died in the last election, while the German government promises more weapons and millions to Ukraine (Photo: Markus Schreiber/AP)

In early September, it was reported that seven candidates from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party had died in the weeks leading up to the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia. This figure is part of a total of 16 deaths of candidates from various parties, which occurred in 14 municipalities across the state, according to the regional electoral commission.

Among the dead were figures such as Stefan Berendes (59, Bad Lippspringe), Ralf Lagne (67, Blomberg), Wolfgang Kliener (72, Schwerte) and Wolfgang Seitz (59, Rheinberg), all representatives of the AfD.

German authorities insisted there was no evidence of foul play in any of the cases. Police sources indicated that the deaths were due to natural causes or, in some cases, to circumstances such as prolonged illness or suicide.

Even so, formal investigations were opened in two cases, which— spokespeople explained —is standard procedure when the cause of death is not initially clear.

The official clarification sought to stem the growth of speculation circulating on social media, particularly amplified by AfD supporters. The party's co-chairwoman, Alice Weidel, even wrote on X that "four AfD candidates have died," echoing the opinion of a retired academic who called such coincidences "statistically almost impossible."

The electoral commission's immediate reaction was to emphasize that, with thousands of candidates running for some 20,000 local seats, the mortality rate recorded is not an unusual phenomenon.

However, the scale of the incident and the fact that it is linked to a single party, which is experiencing an electoral surge in the polls (with over 39% of voting intentions compared to 27% for the CDU, according to Bild ), have created fertile ground for distrust and the proliferation of alternative theories.

Even though the authorities and the mainstream press maintain the narrative of statistical normality, the succession of deaths within a single political bloc remains an uncomfortable fact for the German democratic process.

Institutional silencing and official narrative
The response from German institutions has been aimed at neutralizing any suspicion surrounding the deaths. Both the police and the regional electoral commission have reiterated that the deaths are due to natural causes and that there is no pattern of criminal activity. Monika Wiessmann, head of the electoral commission in North Rhine-Westphalia, was emphatic in stating that "there is no evidence of a significant increase in the number of deaths" and that the speculation spread online is unfounded.

The communications approach has focused on emphasizing the statistical normality, highlighting that among the 20,000 candidates, it was expected that some candidates would drop out due to age, illness, or accidents.

At the same time, the files opened in two cases have been explained as a simple routine procedure, with no criminal implications. This narrative has been reinforced by media outlets such as the public broadcaster ARD and the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , which even reported on the administrative difficulties caused by the deaths, which included having to reprint ballots and reorganize the electoral process in several municipalities.

Contrasting this official narrative is the AfD itself, which has publicly expressed its doubts. Weidel and other party figures have maintained that the concentration of deaths within their organization is anomalous. However, other leaders, such as Kai Gottschalk, the party's regional vice president, sided with the institutional version , stating that "there is no evidence that these are murders or anything similar," which leaves the door open to the official narrative.

The result is a situation in which public debate is stifled by the weight of the official narrative, while doubts circulate mainly in alternative forums and on social media. What is significant, beyond the substance of the matter, is the speed with which the authorities dismissed any critical hypothesis and the way the issue has been relegated from the media agenda, at a time when Germany appears increasingly involved in NATO's military dynamic against Russia.

Between external war and internal fracture
The background to the deaths of the seven AfD candidates cannot be separated from the larger picture of Germany: a country dragged into the forefront of the Atlantic strategy against Russia and, at the same time, gripped by political unrest expressed in the sustained rise of the nationalist opposition.

In the words of political analyst Andrew Korybko , "a ban on the AfD, more 'statistically striking' deaths of its candidates, and even a repeat of the Romanian scenario cannot be ruled out as the nationalist opposition continues to gain popularity." The so-called " Romanian scenario " refers to what happened in 2024, when the election results were annulled under the pretext of foreign interference.

The growth is reflected in polls that place the AfD in a technical tie with the CDU nationally, with 26% each, and with 14.5% in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it tripled its support in the last election.

For Korybko, this resistance is explained by the economic cost of German policy toward Russia: "Cutting off reliable access to cheap energy has raised prices across the board, reduced the competitiveness of German companies, and led to economic stagnation."

In this context, the AfD appears to be the only force proposing a compromise with Moscow and the resumption of energy imports, at a time when the German economy is showing negative numbers , especially in the manufacturing sector—once the most dynamic in Europe—in the face of an elite that "wants to perpetuate the war by proxy."

The paradox is evident. While the German government is committed to providing 9 billion euros to Ukraine by 2026, it is facing a structural deterioration internally that is eroding its legitimacy. The military agenda is expanding: Surgeon General Ralf Hoffmann acknowledged that the Armed Forces are already planning for the management of up to 1,000 wounded per day in the event of a major conflict with Russia.

At the same time, German diplomats and other European representatives have conveyed to Moscow NATO's willingness to shoot down Russian aircraft entering European airspace. The accumulation of these signals shows that Berlin is entering a phase of open confrontation, in which warlike rhetoric has replaced any consideration of internal stability.

In this context, the simultaneous deaths of seven candidates from the same party, although officially attributed to natural causes, take on another resonance: that of a symptom of political fragility in the midst of ongoing war.

For Korybko, the real dilemma is not only how to contain the AfD, but also how far the German elite is willing to go to manipulate political processes in order to maintain its war-mongering alignment.

This resistance to the "winds of change" reflects the contradiction of a country that, by sacrificing its internal stability for confrontation with Russia, risks deepening the very discontent it seeks to suppress. And this is a reflection of the abyss in which all of Europe finds itself under the aegis of NATO—ergo, the United States.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/al ... es-la-otan

Google Translator

*****

Germany: Elected Herdecke Mayor Critically Injured in Stabbing Outside Her Home

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Paramedics transport Iris Stalzer, Oct. 7, 2025. X/ @upuknews1

October 7, 2025 Hour: 9:29 am

Police investigate motive after Social Democrat Iris Stalzer suffers multiple knife wounds.
On Tuesday, the newly elected mayor of the German city of Herdecke, Social Democrat Iris Stalzer, was critically injured after being stabbed outside her home.

The secretary-general of the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) parliamentary group, Matthias Miersch, expressed deep shock over the attack, though he said he had no details about the motive.

Stalzer, 57, was found seriously injured by her son in her apartment, where she had dragged herself after sustaining several knife wounds to her abdomen and back, the daily Bild reported. The newspaper added that emergency doctors are fighting to save her life.

The politician reportedly told her son that several men had attacked her in the street. The online edition of the weekly Focus said she suffered 13 stab wounds to the abdomen and back.


Iris Stalzer, the Mayor of the German town of Herdecke, has been stabbed multiple times outside her house. Initial reports suggest a group of men are suspects – they are still on the run. She only just recently won the election for mayor as the Social Democrat candidate. Her… Image
— Trent Murray (@trent_murray) October 7, 2025


It remains unclear whether the attack was politically motivated, though personal reasons have not been ruled out.

In statements to *Focus*, the Herdecke branch of the SPD said it was unaware of any recent threats against the mayor. Herdecke, a city of about 22,500 residents, is located in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Stalzer, who is married and has two teenage children, had just won the runoff of the local elections on Sept. 28, defeating conservative candidate Fabian Haas with 52.8% of the vote. So far, police have only confirmed that an operation is underway at the scene.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/germany- ... -her-home/

Belgium Seeks to Send Foreign Criminals Off to Kosovo

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President Vjosa Osmani (R) X/ @VjosaOsmaniPRKS


October 7, 2025 Hour: 8:46 am

Talks aim to ease prison overcrowding as Belgium explores renting facilities abroad.

On Tuesday, the Koha news outlet reported that Kosovo and Belgium are negotiating a possible agreement to transfer inmates from Belgian prisons to Kosovo in an effort to ease overcrowding in Belgium’s correctional system.

Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani met on Tuesday in Pristina with Belgian Minister of Asylum and Migration Anneleen Van Bossuyt to discuss the potential deal.

Osmani’s press office said only that the meeting covered cooperation in the fields of justice, security, the rule of law, the process of integration into the European Union, and collaboration on security and defense.

The Belgian minister is in Pristina for a three-day working visit and will then travel to Albania to explore similar prisoner transfer agreements and strengthen cooperation in the fight against organized crime.


Belgium is reportedly considering renting or building prisons in other countries to house inmates who are not Belgian nationals.

“The discussions also include mechanisms for the distribution of seized assets, allowing a portion of criminal proceeds recovered in Kosovo or Albania through Belgium-led investigations to be returned to Belgium,” Koha reported.

In 2022, Kosovo signed an agreement with Denmark allowing the Scandinavian country to lease 300 cells in a prison in the Kosovar city of Gjilan starting in 2027 for a period of ten years, at a cost of 210 million euros. Prisoners transferred from Denmark to that facility will be foreign nationals convicted in Denmark, excluding those sentenced for terrorism, war crimes, or those with mental health issues.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/belgium- ... to-kosovo/

******

Czech election winner pledges to end Ukraine military aid

Populist politician Andrej Babis is expected to return as prime minister following his party's win in parliamentary elections

News Desk

OCT 6, 2025

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(Photo credit: David W Cerny, Reuters)

Billionaire politician Andrej Babis is set to become the Czech Republic's next prime minister following parliamentary elections, which concluded on 5 October, setting the stage for the country's next government to end weapons shipments to Ukraine.

The right-wing populist party created by Babis, the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO), won Sunday's election with 35 percent of the vote. The center-right Together Party (Spolu) came in second with 23 percent.

“It's for me the culmination of my political career,” said Babis, 71, who was a member of the Communist Party before the 1989 Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia.

The LA Times wrote on Monday that Babis is “expected to join the ranks of Viktor Orban of Hungary and Robert Fico of Slovakia, whose countries have refused to provide military aid to Ukraine, continue to import Russian oil and oppose sanctions on Russia.”

Babis said he was planning to end a Czech program for acquiring artillery shells for Ukraine on markets outside the EU. He also opposes a NATO initiative for member states to ramp up defense spending to five percent of GDP and has criticized a deal to purchase 24 US F-35 warplanes.

The ANO party leader said Ukraine was “not prepared for the EU” and that “we have to end the war” before allowing Kiev to join the bloc.

Babis is also expected to join Fico and Orban in opposing additional migration to the EU.

He first became prime minister after the 2017 election, forming a minority government with the Social Democrats. However, ANO was defeated in October 2021 by a coalition of pro-western political parties, forcing Babis from power.

Elections last week in Moldova saw a pro-EU party opposing closer relations with Russia win parliamentary elections.

The pro-European party of Moldovan President Maia Sandu, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), won 50 percent of the vote, compared to 24 percent for the pro-Russian Patriotic Electoral Bloc, Moldova's central electoral commission said.

The election “was marred by accusations of foul play by both sides up to and on the day of polling,” Reuters reported.

Sandu accused Russia of trying to sway the vote through “disinformation and vote-buying.”

Moscow has denied interfering in Moldova, which is divided between Russian and Romanian-speaking communities. Transnistria, a Russian-speaking autonomous region that broke away from Chisinau following a civil war in 1991, hosts Russian troops.

https://thecradle.co/articles/czech-ele ... litary-aid

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An Ethnic Ukrainian Lobby Might Soon Take Shape In The Polish Sejm
Andrew Korybko
Oct 07, 2025

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Poland’s territorial integrity and possibly even its statehood could be threatened if the authorities don’t thwart this scenario by at the very least amending the Citizenship Law and then “creatively coercing” most of this community into re-migrating to Ukraine.

“European Pravda” predicted in a recent article about “How Nawrocki wants to make life harder for Ukrainians in Poland” that “as early as 2027, Ukrainian migrants may have the chance to secure their own political representation in the Sejm.” This migrant community of two million people might not have the chance, however, if President Karol Nawrocki’s proposed amendment to the Citizenship Law passes and it then takes ten years instead of three years of residence with a long-term permit to apply for this.

Nawrocki’s move might be outwardly motivated by an attempt to tap into rising populist sentiment ahead of fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections that the conservative-nationalists who he represents hope will return them to power but there are arguably security dimensions to this too. This analysis here from last fall briefs the reader about the threat that ultra-nationalist Ukrainians could pose to Poland’s territorial integrity given that they consider today’s southeastern Poland to historically be theirs.

If a significant number of Poland’s two-million-strong Ukrainian migrant community speedily obtains citizenship through the current law, and especially if enough of them relocate to what they regard as their “ancestral lands”, then an ethno-separatist lobby could eventually form in the Sejm. This could in turn be exploited by their titular neighboring state as a means of meddling in Poland’s domestic affairs and even destabilizing the country if Warsaw doesn’t bend to Kiev’s future demands in that scenario.

Observers shouldn’t forget that former Polish President Andrzej Duda warned earlier in the year that “Ukraine’s Traumatized Troops Could Pose A Security Threat To All Of Europe” if there aren’t any restrictions on their entry into the EU. Some of them are highly trained, including when it comes to operating dangerous FPV drones, which raises the risk of “fifth column” terrorist-separatist attacks inside Poland if Ukraine one day weaponizes some of its veteran compatriots there to this end.

To make matters more worrisome, “The Ukrainian Ambassador To Poland Admitted That His Co-Ethnics Don’t Want To Assimilate”, which happened just last month. Between then and “European Pravda’s” recent prediction about “[Ukraine’s] own political representation in the Sejm”, the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland warned of “retaliatory measures” if Nawrocki’s proposal to criminalize Banderism passes. While likely nothing too ominous for now, it could in the future involve the abovementioned scenario.

Quite clearly, Poland’s two-million-strong Ukrainian migrant community poses a latent security threat, one that’ll become all the more acute than it already is with the increasingly bold ultra-nationalists who flooded into the country since 2022 if traumatized veterans follow them after the war ends. Leaving the Citizenship Law unchanged risks giving this group legal levers that might be exploited by Kiev for hybrid war purposes that essentially serve as a Damocles’ sword for subordinating Poland to Ukraine.

Poland’s territorial integrity and possibly even its statehood could therefore be threatened if the authorities don’t thwart this scenario by at the very least amending the Citizenship Law and then “creatively coercing” most of this community into re-migrating to Ukraine. Poland aspires to restore its Great Power status, which largely depends on subordinating Ukraine, but Ukraine might flip the tables and ultimately become a Great Power instead if it weaponizes its compatriots to subordinate Poland.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/an-ethni ... might-soon
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 09, 2025 2:59 pm

Polish imperialism rising?

Israel on the Vistula. Nordic runes and 155m shells. Military Keynesianism and fiscal issues. Berlin and Beijing. EU grants and Lockheed Martin.
Events in Ukraine
Oct 08, 2025

Will plucky Poland achieve the dream of any self-respecting east european nationalist — build Israel back home, but without the Jews? Much has been written about Russian military Keynesianism, but what about Moscow’s centuries-old rival?

Poland’s industrialization is, of course, inextricable from the broader European Union. But Warsaw is betting its economic prosperity on something rather divisive for Europe — the war in Ukraine.

It’s no secret that the European Union has long been torn apart by opposing tendencies. The ‘Old Europe’ of the west, primarily Germany and France, more open to economic cooperation with Russia, and sometimes prone to (rhetorical) opposition to US actions abroad. And against it, the ‘New Europe’ of the east, primarily the Baltic countries and Poland, fanatically anti-Russian and pro-NATO.

Nor is it controversial to state that the Ukraine war has united the EU under the banner of Atlanticist militarism, at least superficially. New Europe has won, for now. Former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski gleefully celebrated this victory when the hated Nord Stream II finally went the way of the buffalo:

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The war has rejuvenated the clanky EU, at least in the view of its rulers. All the old issues of the EU, like the poverty and fiscal issues of the southern states, can finally be forgotten in favor of combating the diabolical Russians.

While the Brussels bureaucracy may be happy with its newfound Civilizational purpose, how is this impacting the real economy of the country that has put itself forward as the militarist avant-garde of the European Union?

Is Poland succeeding in its ambitions of economic growth through massive military expansion? What kind of weapons is Poland producing, with what components, and in what quantities? Who is funding all of this? Can Polish strategy work in the face of broader European economic decline? And how does Poland’s militarized fiscal situation compare to Russia’s?

With the US calling on all its vassals to mimic Polish levels of military spending to GDP ratio, Poland and its future has relevance for all of Europe.

Berlin’s fall is Warsaw’s…
First, on Poland’s place in the broader European economy, and why it is important to focus on Warsaw’s economic strategy.

Germany’s deindustrialization, cut off from cheap Russian energy and, most probably, east asian industrialization, is at this point probably unstoppable. Its elites are clearly either too weak-willed and too obedient to resist.

While certainly part of ‘New Europe’, the so-called ‘Baltic Tigers’ (or chihuahuas) are already so small, depopulated, and irreverent towards domestic opinion that it’s is probably irrelevant to discuss the economic strategy of, say, the Lithuanian elites.

The Baltic states have little to lose by aggressively taking ‘Taiwan’s’ side against China, at least in the view of their atlanticist leaders. What do the financial costs matter? In any case, grants from Brussels, Washington, or even Taipei might even cover the losses.

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If citizens don’t like things at home, they are free to leave — Lithuania’s population fell from 3.7 million in 1991 to 2.9 million in 2024. 1.2 million emigrated over that period, and while there are only 22,000 births annually, there are 40,000 deaths.

Poland, in contrast, is quite a sizable country, with fierce domestic political competition. The Polish national elite also has a far longer history than those of the Baltics, which were largely constructed in the 20th century. And finally, the Poles are quite adamant that their country is a rising industrial power, set to overtake Germany as the continent’s main producer. Germany’s atlanticism has had deleterious effects for its export-based economy. What about Poland’s?

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A first clue as to why Warsaw feels less worried than Berlin about staking its fortunes purely on NATO might come from comparing the export profiles of Germany and Poland.

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What seems most important to me is that China doesn’t even figure among Poland’s top 10 export destinations, though it is one of the most important for Germany. Poland probably believes it can afford to spurn the Global South. Indeed, only €25 billion euros worth of Chinese goods enter the EU through Poland, out of a total of €732 billion.

Besides that, Germany trades much more with ‘Old Europe’, while Poland gains significant export revenue from poor eastern countries like the Slovak Republic and Ukraine. The Polish elite has always been enamored with the idea of a return to the 17th century, with the dominance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth over its eastern colonies (Ukraine, Belarus, part of contemporary Russia).

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This very concept has also long been popular among western atlanticist circles. Today, the Washington foreign policy elite promotes the idea of an ‘Intermarium’ — a united, militaristically anti-Russian eastern Europe under Polish leadership. Ukrainian nationalists also love the idea, though they persist in the illusion that Ukraine would have a deciding role in such an alliance.

In reality, this only requires Ukraine as both a ever-suffering military buffer and an economic colony for Poland. Kyiv has long suffered a massive trade deficit with Warsaw due to prohibitive EU tariffs on Ukrainian exports. And it was Poland that lobbied for the return of tariffs on Ukrainian goods to the EU this year, much to the dismay of the Ukrainians. Kyiv’s officials wailed that a return of the usual tariffs is set to cost up to 3.5 billion euros annually in lost revenues.

As Ukraine deindustrialized under the terms of its unequal trade agreement with the EU, Poland grew. Ukraine’s ‘donation’ of millions of economic migrants to Poland contributed 11% to Polish GDP growth from 2014-19, according to the latter’s national bank. Poland will continue to rely on its Ukrainians ever more in the future, given that it has some of the lowest birth rates in Europe.

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This obviously means that Poland would not look kindly on any Ukrainian economic recovery that would succeed in attracting the diaspora back home.

(Paywall with free option.)

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/ ... ism-rising

******

The Netherlands & Belgium Will Play Crucial Roles In Containing Russia

Andrew Korybko
Oct 08, 2025

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The “race of logistics” between Russia and NATO, which is presently unfolding in the context of their proxy war in Ukraine, will continue even after the conflict ends.

Britain, France, Germany, and Poland are usually the first countries to come to mind among those who discuss NATO’s containment of Russia, but the Netherlands and Belgium are quickly becoming important too. Rotterdam Port’s chief executive told the Financial Times in mid-summer that space will be reserved for ships carrying military supplies at NATO’s request and that one or more ships “would be docked at the quay for several weeks, four or five times a year.” This will also be coordinated with Antwerp Port.

Rotterdam and Antwerp are Europe’s two largest ports so this isn’t an insignificant move. Moreover, the Netherlands is a founding member of the “military Schengen” that was agreed to with Germany and Poland in early 2024 for facilitating the movement of troops and equipment. Therefore, these moves are very clearly meant to facilitate the movement of US troops and equipment to Russia’s borders in the event of a crisis, thus leading to the Netherlands and Belgium playing crucial roles in containing it.

It was assessed in early July that “Peace In Ukraine Won’t End The West’s Hybrid War On Russia”, with one of the three cited reasons being that the earlier mentioned four European countries are carving out spheres of influence along its borders as part of the US’ “Lead From Behind” containment efforts. Their armed forces, as well as the experience and overall quality thereof, are dwarfed by the US’ though so that’s why they’d still need US aid in the event of a crisis with Russia, let alone a hot conflict with it.

Seeing as how the US won’t hang Europe out to dry and cede the continent to Russia, it accordingly makes sense that plans are now underway for incorporating Rotterdam and Antwerp Ports into the “military Schengen” for facilitating the movement of US troops and equipment in such scenarios. The aforesaid can only realistically be sent to Europe at scale through naval means, thus explaining why those two ports are so important. The US couldn’t reliably contain and “deter” Russia without them.

In terms of the bigger picture, the associated countries – the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and likely also France – are naturally expected to more closely coordinate their military policies, thus leading to a US-led and fiercely anti-Russian “coalition of the willing” within NATO. Poland, the Baltic States, and Finland are correspondingly predicted to host more of the bloc’s troops and supplies while the rest will play supplementary logistical and financial roles in this containment policy.

The only exception is Turkiye, whose newfound rapid expansion of influence eastward could lead to NATO containing Russia along its entire southern periphery if successful as explained here, but infamously independent Erdogan won’t subordinate his country to the US like the others will. It’s for this reason that the abovementioned collection of countries can be described as US proxies for containing Russia while Turkiye should instead be seen as a semi-equal US partner, not a proxy, in this scheme.

The takeaway from this news about Rotterdam and Antwerp Ports is that the “race of logistics” between Russia and NATO, which is presently unfolding in the context of their proxy war in Ukraine, will continue even after the conflict ends and lead to a more robust US-led containment of Russia. This doesn’t automatically mean that they’ll gain an edge over Russia, just that tensions will persist even after their proxy hostilities cease, and this will in turn keep the European front of the New Cold War active.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-neth ... lgium-will

Why Does Poland Refuse To Hand Over A Nord Stream Bombing Suspect To Germany?
Andrew Korybko
Oct 09, 2025

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Tusk would defy public opinion, doom the ruling liberal-globalist coalition’s already dismal prospects of remaining in power after fall 2027’s next parliamentary election, and risk facilitating a German show trial that could implicate Poland in this attack for covering up the US’ actual involvement.

Germany is bound to be displeased with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s refusal to hand over a Nord Stream bombing suspect. The individual was recently detained near Warsaw under a European arrest warrant but Tusk just said that “He was detained because this is the procedure, but the position of the Polish government has not changed. It is certainly not in the interest of Poland or in the interest of a simple sense of decency and justice to accuse or hand over this citizen to another state.”

The German government was convinced by US media reports about a team of Ukrainian divers’ alleged involvement in this terrorist attack into blaming them instead of the US government like Seymour Hersh first revealed in February 2023 was responsible and who Russia has always suspected to be guilty of this. According to him, the aforementioned narrative blaming Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Poland from whose coast their ship was allegedly launched, is part of a CIA plot to cover up what really happened.

His suspicions were lent credence by incumbent Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, who was out of government at the time but had also served in this role under Tusk’s earlier government, after he posted “Thank you, USA” in a now-deleted tweet right after the terrorist attack. Poland opposed the Nord Stream pipelines due to its fear that they represented a new Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact for jointly ruling Central Europe so it’s natural that he’d celebrate their destruction. Here are some background briefings:

* 9 March 2023: “The US’ Latest Disinfo Campaign About The Nord Stream Terrorist Attacks Was Preplanned”

* 11 June 2023: “The Latest Twist In Germany’s Nord Stream II Investigation Puts More Pressure On Poland”

* 9 January 2024: “Contextualizing The Media’s Claim Of Possible Polish Complicity In The Nord Stream Attacks”

Circling back to the present, it’s now much easier to understand why Poland refuses to hand over that Nord Stream bombing suspect to Germany. Most Poles support the terrorist attack that damaged three of those four pipelines, so it would be very unpopular to do anything that could lead to anyone involved in this (even if only implausibly) getting punished. Doing so could also doom the ruling liberal-globalist coalition’s already dismal prospects of remaining in power after fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections.

Moreover, the conservative-nationalist opposition’s “grey cardinal” Jaroslaw Kaczynski accused Tusk of being a “German agent” almost two years ago during comments in parliament, which would appear more believable than ever to Poles if he defied public opinion to hand that suspect over to Germany. In that scenario, Germany could stage a show trial for partially implicating Poland per the CIA’s cover-up story, which would impugn its reputation right as it’s finally reviving its long-lost Great Power status.

Reports that Sikorski is considering granting asylum to the suspect and Tusk’s recent tweet that “The problem with North Stream 2 is not that it was blown up. The problem is that it was built” do make Poland look guilty in some’s eyes but they’re arguably meant to troll Germany. Poland and Russia rarely agree on anything nowadays, but they’ve interestingly found common ground in opposing Germany’s CIA-influenced belief that Ukrainian divers carried out this attack, each for their own reasons of course.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/why-does ... -hand-over

******

How to get rid of Macron
October 8, 6:59 PM

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The French parliament today debated the removal of dictator Macron from power.
Initially, there were few options.

1. Leave things as they are, appoint a new Macron government, and in about 1-3 months it will fall and the cycle will start all over again.
2. Force Macron to create governments led by either the right or the left, which is unlikely. Both sides are antagonistic toward Macron personally and his policies.
3. Macron could dissolve parliament, go to the polls, and further exhaust his power, as Macron's party is not expected to achieve any electoral success.
4. Macron could resign and stop tormenting France. He is already being offered employment in Gaza to replace the declared war criminal Tony Blair.
5. They could try to force Macron to resign, but there aren't enough votes for that.

Overall, all these options clearly illustrate the depth of the political crisis to which Macron has led France, having failed miserably in both domestic and foreign policy. Playing with globalism comes at a high price.

Meanwhile, when the parliament considered the matter, they predictably failed to remove Macron due to a simple lack of votes.
Meanwhile, the French government remains in limbo, with no clear plan for a prime minister who could serve for at least a year. A

parliamentary dissolution and early elections remain a significant possibility, but it's also understood that elections will be ineffective, as Macron will be unable to secure a parliament sufficient to ensure the smooth functioning of his appointed government.

Ultimately, all of this seriously weakens France's claims to "European leadership." Plans for European hegemony, a unified European army under French leadership, and the like must be forgotten. Dictator Macron must go. France will be free.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10117134.html

Party trends in Europe
October 9, 1:03 PM

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2025 marks a turning point in European voter preferences. The right is gaining ground, amid the decline of liberals, social democrats, and traditional centrist conservatives. Communists and socialists, mired in "Eurocommunism" and "green socialism," have largely decayed and are eking out a miserable existence. Somewhere out there, the once-popular "Greens" are lurking, simply irrelevant amid militarization.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/10118451.html

Google Translator

******

Nationwide campaign against Elbit Systems launches in Romania

Activists in Romania launched the “Elbit Out!” campaign with a protest in Bucharest, vowing to challenge the Israeli arms company’s operations in the country and Romania’s complicity in genocide.

October 08, 2025 by Oana Uiorean

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Palestine protest in Bucharest, Romania kicks off nationwide campaign against Elbit Systems. Photo: Solidaritate România-Palestina

The Romania-focused “Elbit Out!” campaign launched on October 5 in Bucharest, with a public discussion on the government’s continued complicity with the genocide in Palestine, followed by a march through the capital.

The campaign seeks to highlight the government’s obligation to uphold international law and stop Israel’s crimes against humanity, joining a wave of worker-led and grassroots actions pushing European governments to act against the genocide and protect the kidnapped volunteers of the Global Sumud Flotilla.

Military trade expands during genocide
As the world marks 2-years since the beginning of the latest phase of genocide against the Palestinians, an ample coalition of local and regional Palestine solidarity movements have decided to focus their efforts on expelling Elbit from Romania. The country is a strategic hub for Elbit Systems, and these factories are a pillar of the company’s expansion in Europe.

Elbit Systems, the main private supplier of weapons to the Israeli army and provider of technologies tested on Palestinians, has three subsidiaries and five factories in Bacău, Măgurele, and Brașov. In 2024, the turnover of these subsidiaries exceeded 800 million lei (around EUR 160 million), accounting for approximately 30% of the total turnover of Elbit’s subsidiaries in Europe – making this the second largest market after Israel.

Romania is an attractive location for weapons manufacturers: labor costs are low, workers are feebly unionized and worker protections are weak. Foreign investors also enjoy advantageous tax regimes.

But welcoming Elbit is not the only way in which the Romanian government supports the Israeli economy and, by extension, the genocide in Palestine. It also continues to sell and buy military equipment from Israel, among other types of trade, and offers diplomatic support for the interests of Israel in international fora, such as the Council of the European Union and the United Nations.

Military trade between Romania and Israel exploded in the midst of the Gaza genocide. According to the data analyzed by the “Elbit Out!” campaign, in the last two years Romania exported military equipment worth approximately EUR 80 million to Israel, including bombs, armored vehicle components, targeting systems, and radar equipment. In 2024 alone, Romanian military exports to Israel doubled compared to 2023, reaching a historic record of over EUR 55 million. At the same time, imports of Israeli military technology increased, reaching over EUR 35 million in the same year.

“We can stop the complicity”
The “Elbit Out!” campaign is supported and endorsed by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) coalition, Stop ReArm Europe, the International Peoples’ Assembly, and other international organizations. The launch event in Bucharest welcomed keynote speakers Giorgia Gusciglio, co-coordinator of BDS Europe, and Dr. Shahd Hammouri of Law for Palestine. During her speech, Gusciglio talked about the successes and challenges the BDS campaign faces in its far-reaching work and welcomed the collaboration with the Romanian coalition in its efforts to push Elbit Systems out of the country. Additionally, Hammouri outlined the legal measures that can be taken against governments aiding genocide and offered assistance to Romanian legal experts who may decide to build a case against the Romanian government.

They were joined on the panel by members of the organizing coalition, who spoke about the connection between Europe’s militarization and the erasure of Palestine to make way for colonizers and real estate developers, the successes of popular pressure for Palestine, the vital cooperation with trade unions, how mobilization is unfolding across Europe, and the goals and strategies of the “Elbit Out!” campaign.

Vlad Muresan, coordinator of the “Elbit Out!” campaign on behalf of Palestine Solidarity Cluj, remarked: “In 2025, the genocide in Gaza was finally called by its name in Romania in the mainstream. We saw letters and public statements, but also a lot of resignation, people convinced that nothing could be done. Our campaign comes as an answer to this: we are not powerless. Romania plays a direct role in the genocide, through arms exports and through Elbit’s factories here, which produce weapons tested on Palestinians. We can stop this complicity if we unite our voices and actions and demand that the Romanian state follows the example of Spain or Slovenia and imposes a military embargo on Israel. We are not far from the problem, it is right here, in Romania.”

Co-organizer of the campaign from the group Moldova for Palestine, Alexandra Gheorghe, emphasized the campaign’s regional significance in the context of dual citizenship. “Our responsibility is to demand that the Romanian government respect international law and not make our country complicit in the genocide in Gaza.”

Eniko Vincze of Căși Sociale ACUM added that ”the criminal military industry that extracts profit from the Palestinian genocide and the real estate industry engaged in postwar reconstruction, which expropriates land for the Gaza Riviera project, have in common the fact that they are both financialized, dominated by financial actors and markets. Profit is fabricated through financial channels, and are intrinsic drivers of capitalism and imperialism.”

Appetite for action against complicity in genocide
During the discussion, there were many expressions of hope and solidarity with the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Especially the youth declared their conviction that a better world is possible with and only with a free Palestine. One participant said: “It is essential we start reaching out to workers sooner rather than later. They hold the key to the success of this campaign.”

The crowd then spilled onto the streets of Bucharest, building a 1200-strong march for Palestine. Organizers and supporters from across Romania and neighboring countries held speeches. The atmosphere was effervescent and characterized by a clear appetite for action: against the genocide in Palestine and against a complicit neoliberal government.

The current Romanian government implements harsh austerity measures that bring key sectors of society, such as education, health and infrastructure, under attack, while spending billions of public money on weapons, including from Israel. Members of the campaign co-organizers Colectiva Urzica observed: “Palestine and the remilitarization of Europe are intimately linked. Manufacturers test their weapons by killing children in Gaza, then advertise them as tested-in-battle to European governments willing to destroy their societies so the war industry can profit.”

The “Elbit Out!” campaign represents a first in Romania and is a very important development in the regional struggle for peace and against genocide. It brings together a previously disorganized movement, converging it around a central cause – the liberation of Palestine. It also aims to deepen relations with trade unions in the military manufacturing and transport sectors, helping to politicize a new anti-war generation.

The campaign will continue with a range of public talks, a petition, open letters to officials, a possible lawsuit against the Romanian state for failing to prevent crimes against humanity. It will also include a large international conference in mid-May 2026 in Bucharest, as a counterpoint to the Black Sea Defense, Aerospace and Security exhibition, a military industry trade fair. The conference will bring together international figures of the struggle for a free Palestine, including workers, trade unionists, legal scholars, journalists and militants.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/08/ ... n-romania/

*****

Europe's Walls Tremble as Political Crises Multiply

Simplicius
Oct 08, 2025

Europe’s decline is accelerating at such breakneck speeds it would give Oswald Spengler whiplash. Each week brings new lows of stagnation, deterioration, and political collapse.

In France, after the resignation of French PM Lecornu, the Minister of the Armed Forces Bruno Lemaire followed suit:

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https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/frenc ... -dangerous

A bit ironic, considering he was once famed for predicting Russia’s collapse—ignoring his own country’s long-evident downward spiral:

On 1 March 2022, Le Maire warned that the EU “will bring about the collapse” of the Russian economy. He said France rejected Russia’s demand that foreign buyers must pay in rubles for Russian gas from 1 April, adding that “we are preparing” for a “situation tomorrow in which ... there is no longer any Russian gas.”

Macron’s situation is worsening by the day as calls for him to likewise resign grow louder. Of course, the European Deep State would not allow that, as a crack in the foundation of this magnitude would risk a collapse cascade across the entire fabric of their simulated farce-“democracy”.

Bloomberg spells out the options:

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The Times highlights the point-of-no-return careening toward Macron’s face like an open-hand rap from “Brigitte”:

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https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/a ... -7nqhgct90

France is facing a crisis of democracy not seen since Charles de Gaulle. The need for a strong head of state with a mandate has seldom been greater

The article concludes that not only is Macron a lame duck, but he is risking the stability of the entire nation, which has slowly become disillusioned with democracy as a whole due to the incessant political betrayals of his rotten regime:

In practice, the centrist is an enfeebled leader unable to impose his policies on a fractured and fractious parliament. He is a lame duck hobbling towards the end of his scheduled term of office in 2027, and not even sure of getting that far.

The dangers are acute in a nation that throughout its history has been tempted to pull itself apart without a powerful leader to hold it together.

There is already a growing sense of disaffection with democracy. Many voters who backed the National Rally last year believe they were cheated out of victory when all the other parties joined forces against it.


It highlights the modern phenomenon which has seen every major Western nation reach a kind of political deadend, from which there is no escape. The ideas which powered the ‘engines’ of their so-called democracies have completely run dry; no one any longer believes the children’s fairytales of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, which—cast against the backdrop of modernity’s decadence—seem as ancient and make-believe as fanciful tales of Hercules and other Greek myths.

In Germany, the situation in many ways feels even more dire. This week was fraught with one catastrophic announcement after the another:

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In Germany, there is a proposal to raise the retirement age to 73 due to a lack of funds, defense spending, and Ukraine.

The Scientific Advisory Board at the German Ministry of Economics has suggested increasing the retirement age to 73 to prevent the collapse of the pension system.

The authors of the report state that there is almost no time left for reforms. In their opinion, Germany’s economy has been stagnating for years, and the demographic situation is worsening.

As an example, the experts cite Denmark, where the retirement age has been regularly adjusted since 2006 based on demographic indicators. By 2040, it will rise to 70 years there, and by 2060 it could reach 73 years.


Behold the juxtaposition of German madness:

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Germans are saving on themselves to pay for someone else’s war

The government announced the largest cut in social spending since Schröder’s reforms — up to 100 billion euros by 2030.

Main cuts:

Bürgergeld (unemployment benefits) — –5 billion € per year

Housing and utility compensations — –3 billion € per year

Social subsidies outside insurance contributions — –9.6 billion € (2022–2027)

Non-indexation of payments — –2 billion € annually

Total: ≈20 billion € savings per year.

At the same time, according to BILD, since 2022 Germany has already allocated 50.5 billion euros to Ukraine and is preparing a new package — another 9 billion euros.


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Straight from the craven coryphaeus’s mouth comes Merz’s explanation that the volk will have to heft even more of the burden of his disastrous economic betrayals: (Video at link.)

Earlier Baerbock had blamed everything on Putin, openly admitting that funding Ukraine had to come at the cost of massive cuts to German social spending: (Video at link.)

Now, Czech populist Babis has won his parliamentary election, steering the country toward the pro-Russian bloc with an immediate announcement of the cessation of funding for Ukraine. At the same time Japan’s “conservative” leader Sanae Takaichi pulled out a shock election win to likely become the first female prime minister in Japan’s history. Populist and far-right candidates are sweeping through the ‘West’ at record pace, with only artificial suppression momentarily stemming the tidal pressure from exploding into a critical mass like a brittle cork stopper wedged into the leaking hull of a sinking ship. Imagine what the momentum of this populist conflagration would now look like if Romania and Moldova’s recent elections had not been openly stolen?

Even Orban has escalated his rhetoric, gaining boldness with each new populist advance, as he recognizes that the power of Von der Leyen’s decaying regime is in its past-due waning phase. Before, where he might have laundered his language, been more circumspect in overstepping, he now loudly proclaims the EU is undergoing veritable disintegration:

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(Video at link.)

The recent fevered urgency has culminated in the most grandiose convulsions from the bloc’s whey-faced mandarins. Rather than drilling down to first principles and root social causes of the Regime’s terminal dystrophy, desperate Europeans instead turn to the forlorn icons and eidolons of the past, rummaging through the musty mausoleums of dead heritage in search of a Messiah who might by some miracle rebate the sins of their manic misrule:

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/ ... ainian-pm/

The laureled Lilliputians of this degenerate age can only stare with antsy eyes at the distantly dimming reflections of their forebearers, chittering like rodents as the Hammer of Redemption lays final claim upon the jaundiced ruins of their ivory pantheon.

(Paywall with free option.)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/eur ... -political
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 10, 2025 2:35 pm

The second coming of Jeremy Corbyn

Can the clown car be kept on the road for long enough to fulfil its function?
Proletarian writers

Wednesday 1 October 2025

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Looking at the public antics of the various factions struggling for control of the new organisation, even before it has any members or branches, one can’t help but wonder whether it really is possible to be this incompetent by accident.
We reported in the last issue of our paper on the proposed launch of a new ‘left-wing’ parliamentary party, called (for the time being at least) ‘Your Party’ and immediately jumped on by much of the Trotskyite and social-democratic ‘left’ as a heaven-sent solution to the many and pressing problems now facing the British working class.

Since we last wrote on the topic, the whole project has been enmeshed in a series of somewhat farcical controversies that our readers will either have been following avidly or will be completely oblivious to, depending on the extent of their exposure to the left-social-democratic twittersphere in which much of the drama has been unfolding.

The aim of this article is not to go into the ins and outs of the internecine warfare between the camps of ex-Labour MPs and proposed leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, but to examine some of the more obvious contradictions of this new Corbyn project.

The waxing and waning of social democracy in Britain
In many ways, of course, this could be considered an entirely redundant exercise, since the main issues with Corbyn’s new enterprise are exactly the same as those of Corbyn Project 1.0 – and, indeed, of all previous attempts by the British left to resuscitate social democracy since 1976.

First off, it has to be pointed out that when people talk about ‘postwar social democracy’, what they are really referring to is welfare capitalism – ie, a capitalist society in which a raft of significant concessions have been made that temporarily raise the living standards of the working class and narrow the inequality gap that is inherent to all capitalist economies.

The closest than Britain has come to a workers’ revolution was in 1919-20, during the communist-led Hands off Russia campaign. This mass campaign of non-cooperation with the British war effort in Russia successfully forced the ruling class to back out of the effort it was leading to crush the newly established Soviet Republic of Russia.

Although the events and lessons of that time have largely and shamefully been forgotten by the labour movement, they have never been forgotten by our ruling class, which successfully applied the experience it gained during that struggle to defeat the general strike of 1926. And it has been using the same formula of bribes and coercion combined to beat back workers in struggle ever since.

By the middle of the second world war, it had become apparent to the ruling class that the experience of war, the power of the labour movement and the widespread admiration for the Soviet Union and its leader Josef Stalin had radicalised British workers and brought them to a fuller appreciation of their class power. With British capital seriously battered by the great depression and two world wars, it was obvious to the more intelligent members of the ruling class that a return to prewar conditions would be asking for trouble.

To address this situation, the government commissioned Liberal peer Lord Beveridge to produce a report. The result was 1942’s Social Insurance and Allied Services, which outlined the shape of postwar British society. The report was widely read and discussed by the British people, in particular soldiers serving overseas – probably the only government report to have become a best seller!

A watered-down version of the Beveridge report went on to become the basis of the 1945 Labour government’s social policy and the Britain of council housing, free education and healthcare, pensions for all, full employment, rights at work and so on that many of us were born into was born. But once the welfare state had been established, the labour movement became depoliticised.

By the early 1950s, the British Communist party (the old CPGB) had declared unconditional surrender with the issuing of its British Road to Socialism programme, which predicted a peaceful and parliamentary development towards social and economic transformation. The labour aristocracy grew fat on the crumbs from their masters’ table, and the destruction of any working-class organisation capable of meaningfully challenging the capitalist system entered a new stage with the defeat of the miners’ strike in 1985.

Postwar gains destroyed and workers seized by the throat
Since that defeat (and in even more so since the fall of the USSR in 1991), we have seen the relentless clawing back of the modest gains of the postwar settlement, a steady fall in real wages, and an assault on workers’ rights and civil liberties. And, notably, this inexorable prosection of the class war was not interrupted or modified in any way during the 13 years of Labour government (1997-2010) under the premierships of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

As the decay of the British industry continued, workers in Britain were faced with hyperexploitative conditions at work and found themselves part of an increasingly parasitic economy. A century-long process of deindustrialisation was accelerated in the wake of the miners’ defeat, and the remnants of the welfare state were restructured into a vast money-laundering system whose primary purpose now is not the delivery of public services but the transformation of public money into private profit.

In this brave new world, the vultures of finance capital have their beaks thrust deep into the public purse, with one claw in our pockets and the other around our throats.

The accelerating fall in the living standards of millions of workers and their families has naturally led to a growing and increasingly urgent demand for change: for a better and more dignified life. It is in this context that we first saw the rise of an obscure backbench leftist MP to the leadership of the Labour party, accompanied by crowds of hopeful followers singing Hallelujah and broadcasting the good news that hope had returned to our unhappy land.

But that hope was short lived, as Saint Jeremy rapidly proved to be … well, hopeless. Whatever the intentions of Corbyn himself, the main effect of the 2015-19 Corbyn project was to direct the energy of a newly activated layer of workers who wanted real social and political change into a doomed attempt to reanimate the corpse of 1945-ist social democracy.

At a time when all the conditions that brought about the postwar consensus (a strong and militant working-class movement, the victory of the USSR in WW2, the need for postwar reconstruction of the economy) had vanished and British capital was facing a dire economic crisis, even Corbyn’s mildly social-democratic platform was considered ‘extreme’ by the City of London financier elite. As was his tepid rejection of zionist excesses in Palestine.

The project’s inevitable failure led only to widespread disillusionment and cynicism amongst those who had joined it with such high hopes. (For a more detailed analysis of the rise and fall of the Corbyn project, see our party pamphlet.)

‘Hope’ is not a programme or an organising principle
Turning our attention to the second coming of Corbyn, what can be said about and his attempt to rebuild the Labour broad church after Sir ‘Keith’ Starmer KC burned it down because he didn’t like the hymns the choir was singing?

“We are building a movement of hope,” declared Saint Jeremy in flat-toned earnestness. “Can we eat hope?” came a voice from the back of the broad church’s temporary tent. “Homemade jam tomorrow, brothers, sisters and others,” homespun wisdom today.

Indeed, the inchoate message of ‘hope’ is unlikely to be met with the same enthusiasm the second time around, and many things about Your Party’s debut on the British political theatre seem a little odd, to say the least.

Why, for example, was the initial announcement of the new party made by Zarah Sultana and not by Corbyn himself, given that the ‘party’ would be perceived as a revival and continuation of the Corbyn project? Why was his disapproval of Zarah’s move leaked to the press until he eventually gave his blessing? And why was this blessing bestowed in the form of a brain-numbingly dull interview with the odious Owen Jones – surely the kiss of death to any claim to be really ‘anti-establishment’?

Why was the founding conference hastily arranged before memberships or local organisations could be established, leading to the farcical situation where it was proposed that delegates should be chosen by drawing lots? This absurd process has been dubbed ‘sortition’, presumably to make random chance sound scientific and definitely not like chaotic buffoonery, but the first question that springs to mind is: Is it really possible to be this incompetent by accident?

Many parties of the self-identifying ‘left’ flocked to the newly-raised (if somewhat moth-eaten) banner, including every shade of Trotskyite scoundrel from the SWP, the SP, the RCP and Workers Liberty, along with the temporarily reanimated corpse of the revisionist CPB (whose leaders will no doubt be misquoting Lenin again to justify their opportunistic revisionism). Even ‘gorgeous’ George Galloway was sniffing around hoping to be invited to the ball. A recipe for disaster, such an unpalatable hash will surely be followed by just deserts.

As this article was being written, out of nowhere Corbyn’s clowns decided to set fire to the circus tent while they were still inside it. Could this be the end of the *insert name here* party before it has even got going? After all, as was (almost) said by Abraham Lincoln: “A circus tent divided against itself cannot stand.”

Aside from public spats over the control of finances and the make-up of the executive body of this new (and definitely very democratic) organisation, there appear to be some key differences in approach between the party’s two leaders and their respective advisory cabals. Corbyn, an experienced slippery operator of many decades’ standing, has been careful to say only nice things and allow his more ardent and uncritical fans to fill in the gaps and hear what they want to from his various vague pronouncements about the importance of hope, change, niceness, world peace and so on.

Ms Sultana, playing to her younger and more strident base, has been more categorical. On the one hand, she announced to the world that anyone who doesn’t accept transgender ideology will not be welcome in Your Party (an interesting approach to policy-making). On the other, she has declared herself to be a “proud anti-zionist”. But when Mr Corbyn was asked if he was also an anti-zionist, the questioner was shoved aside by aides and Corbyn ran away without answering.

In fact, the answer is clear: despite decades of ineffectual bleating about “Palestinian rights”, Corbyn was and remains a liberal zionist. Despite everything that has happened since the Oslo accords were so comprehensively torn up and spat upon by the imperialist-zionist side, Corbyn still insists on supporting the patently unworkable two-state ‘solution’.

Which means he insists on the existence of a ‘jewish state’ in the middle east – a state that everybody with eyes to see now understands could only be a racist, supremacist and genocidal tool of imperialism with which no sovereign Arab state will ever be able to live in peace. This is a ‘solution’ that the Palestinian and wider Arab masses long ago ditched and now resolutely oppose.

Given Sultana’s own rabid support for other imperialist-backed projects like the anti-Chinese Uyghur muslim terrorists and the anti-Syrian Isis terrorists, it is hard to take her ‘bold’ statement against imperialist-backed zionist terrorism at face value. But she was certainly expressing the attitude of a large section of the activist base from which the party hopes to draw – activists who are outraged by the crimes of zionism and increasingly intolerant of any of the stock excuses that the liberal left have been making for Israeli crimes for decades.

For Corbyn and the decidedly suspect ‘advisors’ he keeps around him, only a top-down party will be manageable, while the membership are all too likely to continue to demand the “full democracy” that he and Ms Sultana pretend to be in favour of.

Having glimpsed the ignominious end of their careers, Jeremy and Zarah have reconciled for now, the wheels have been put back on to the clown car and it seems it will chug on for a little while longer. Whether it is able to stay on the road long enough to help the ruling class achieve its twin aims of demolishing the Labour vote at the next election and saving social democracy in general, it is impossible at this point to predict.

https://thecommunists.org/2025/10/01/ne ... nd-coming/

******

Die Welt, Germany. Trump did not expect this. The Nobel Prize went to Merz.

Author: Karl Sack- Reis
Dr Ignacy Nowopolski
Oct 10, 2025

The Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Friedrich Merz, writes Die Welt. In his satirical article, the author lists the Chancellor’s outstanding achievements in the field of fantasy poetry, and also draws attention to his extraordinary talent for composing fairy tales.

Karl Sack-Reis

Berlin celebrates: this year’s prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature will go to Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The jury appreciated his work, including “Autumn of Reforms”.

It was expected quietly, but now it’s official: for the first time since Herta Müller won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, the prize will return to Germany. Its new laureate is none other than German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

According to reports, the selection committee voted unanimously for the writer from Sauerland. The jury noted the “intense poetic character” of his fantasy work, which regularly captivated an audience of 83 million.

Cool stories about the economy and the Alternative for Germany

“Whether it’s its unwavering commitment to debt suppression, Germany’s economic recovery, or the disappearance of the Alternative for Germany from the political scene – no one tells a better story than this year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature,” the jury said in a statement.

Merz has also received praise for linguistically rich works such as “The Autumn of Reforms”. This text is reminiscent of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, but in its bold realism it is much more fantastic and bold. The Committee expressed its appreciation.

Merz was filled with joy and pride.

Moreover, as noted in Stockholm, the impressive early works of the 69-year-old laureate were included in his literary evaluation. It was unanimously recognized that “Tax Declaration on Beer Coasters” and “Through Brilon on a Personalized Moped” (referring to the allegedly crazy youth of the Chancellor, which he suddenly decided to share in an interview, although his old acquaintances could not recall anything rebellious in the exemplary young Merz) were masterpieces of poetic fantasy.

According to Merz, the recent Nobel Prize winner, who is currently working on a story about anti-drone systems and guaranteed pensions, was delighted when he learned of his award: he was overjoyed that he had managed to defeat his eternal rival. In fact, aspiring writer Angela Merkel’s monologue “Freedom” was until recently considered a favorite of bookmakers due to its “epoch-making effect on the autonomic nervous system.”

https://drignacynowopolski.substack.com ... not-expect

Google Translator

*****

Humanitarian aid from Serbia was transferred to children from the Kursk region

The Serbian association “People’s Diplomacy” and the Russian House in Belgrade successfully conducted another humanitarian action: winter clothes, toys, etc. will be given to children from the Kursk region.

The campaign was implemented with donations collected at the charity concert “Peaceful Sky for a Child’s Smile – 6”, which was organized by the People’s Diplomacy association in the Russian House on October 11.

The organizers express their sincere gratitude to the participants of this musical evening – Milica Doskovic, Branka Zechevich, Maria Sandic, Vera Stolich, Daria Isakovich, the “Rossiya” group, the “Eternity Trio” ensemble, Helena Payic and Helena Milevich, as well as to all the concert audience.

The Russian Embassy in Serbia, the Russian House in Belgrade, the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus, the International Foundation for the Unity of Orthodox Peoples, the Russian Humanitarian Mission, the Serbian-Russian Center “Mayak”, KSORS of Serbia and the company “MBR Security” supported the event.

https://rs.gov.ru/en/news/humanitarian- ... sk-region/

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 13, 2025 2:11 pm

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DDR: What was the German Democratic Republic?
Originally published: In Defense of Communism on October 7, 2025 (more by In Defense of Communism) | (Posted Oct 13, 2025)

October 7 was for four decades the “Republic Day,” the national holiday of the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). The date refers to the official founding moment of the GDR, based on the adoption of its constitution on October 7, 1949.
On the occasion of this day, we present an article by Tibor Zenker , chairman of the Party of Labour of Austria (PdA), who examines the essence of the GDR:

On October 7, 1949, the German Democratic Republic was founded. The first attempt in the German-speaking world to establish a socialist community lasted forty years, before falling victim to counterrevolution three decades ago.

The constitution of the GDR was a response to the conditions and problems of its time and prehistory: German fascism, in the service of monopoly and finance capital, had shattered the workers’ movement in Germany, dismantled bourgeois democracy, and established an overt dictatorship together with a system of terror.

The Nazis launched an imperialist war of conquest and destruction, which laid waste to much of Europe, murdered tens of millions of people, and carried out multiple genocides. It was not the German people who needed new living space, but capital that needed room to expand–raw materials, resources, cheap labor, spheres of influence, geostrategic footholds and access points–in order to re-emerge as a contender in the struggle for imperialist hegemony. In passing, the aim was to destroy the USSR, the first socialist state.

But things turned out differently: the peoples of the Soviet Union, the Red Army, the political and military leadership of the USSR, anti-fascist resistance groups and partisans throughout Europe overcame the fascist beast at immense losses. The murder squads of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS and their allies were driven out of the USSR, pursued into Germany, and brought to trial in Berlin–it is the indelible merit of the USSR and the communist movement to have freed the greater part of Europe from fascism and defeated the Nazis.

But if one truly wants to overcome and keep fascism at bay, one must eliminate its roots–and these lie directly in capitalism and imperialism. When, after the Second World War, it became clear that the Western Allies would create an anti-socialist front state with the FRG, rearm it, reinstate many fascist elites, and station NATO atomic weapons and forces aimed eastward, it was evident that the ruling elites in Washington and London had definitively abandoned their “purpose alliance” with Moscow, the Anti-Hitler coalition, and had again made socialism their principal enemy.

That was hardly surprising–fascism and world war had discredited capitalism in its entirety, including American and British capitalism. The peoples wanted peace, security, and a dignified life–things capitalism might temporarily feign but can never sustainably provide for all. That in countries of Eastern and Southeastern Europe–and also in China–“people’s democratic” states were established and socialist transformations carried out was the only correct and necessary response. The question was posed more clearly than ever: socialism or (a relapse into fascist) barbarism. The GDR was the clear socialist and antifascist answer, as far as was possible in the Soviet zone of Germany.

It promised peace, social security, equality and justice, work and housing for all, and state guarantees in education, health, and pensions as a matter of course. But it promised nothing impossible. This is the mistaken yardstick often applied to the GDR and other socialist countries: soon after capitalism had laid Europe in ruins, one provocatively expected socialism–which actually had to rise from the ruins–to deliver an earthly paradise, a realization of some utopia in which everyone would instantly be perfectly happy. But socialism is not that and cannot be that. Nor is socialism a fool’s paradise in which everyone can do exactly as they please–such a kind of individualism has nothing to do with freedom. The socialist revolution is no magic trick that solves all the world’s problems in the blink of an eye–it only creates the possibility, the conditions, for doing so.

Socialism, to be consciously built, shaped, and realized, arises on the foundation inherited from capitalism; it means transformation and rebuilding within the realm of the possible. And part of the “possible” is determined by the adversary–in the case of the GDR, a powerful, heavily armed imperialist bloc, which endeavored to strangle socialism in its infancy, continuously threatening it via military alliances such as NATO, with thousands of nuclear warheads and hundreds of thousands of troops on its borders, with economic blockades, sabotage, and hostile propaganda–for that was the content of the continued class struggle, of the counterrevolutionary efforts by the capitalist West. Under these difficult conditions the GDR was founded and socialism was built in the eastern part of Germany.

Peace and existential security, technological and social progress, new human and production relations without exploitation, dismantling discrimination based on gender, language, etc., a socialist cultural life, art and leisure, and last but not least unconditional antifascism as a state raison d’être are among the great achievements of the GDR–a society and an economy in which people are central, not the profits of banks, corporations, and enterprises, not the expansion of militarism and imperialism. This is only possible on the basis of public ownership of the means of production and the political power of the organized working class, mediated through its highest class organs and organizations–not least the Marxist-Leninist Party, in the case of the GDR the SED. And such a state necessarily requires protection in the existential struggle via legislation, legal institutions, policing, the military, and intelligence services–against imperialist states and their counterrevolutionary machinations, against paid or misled insurgents, hostile agents, terrorists, and saboteurs–a self-evident necessity for any bourgeois-capitalist state, yet from socialism it is twisted into a moral noose.

Of course, the GDR was not “perfect”–it could not be. It certainly had mistakes, difficulties, and problems–after all, socialism is itself only a transitional society. The goal of the Marxist workers’ movement is a classless society of full communism, which no society has yet achieved. The perfidious opponents of socialism–including the particularly clever social democrats–however only “accept” a socialism that is perfect, a fairytale land in which everything dissolves into bliss as if by magic and the proletarian state and order power caress every counterrevolutionary “dissident,” every subversive clown or class and state enemy with velvet gloves–if that does not exist, one may as well stay with capitalism.

These are boldly high standards to justify a system of exploitation and oppression, which has been responsible for two catastrophic world wars, colonialism, fascism, the Holocaust, the use of atomic weapons, the condemnation of entire regions to poverty, hunger and death–so that in the more advanced countries a minimal reproduction level of labor power is secured and the working class does not revolt. And should they revolt, one resorts–when in doubt–to repression, emergency laws, coups, military intervention and fascism. To put it bluntly: even the “worst” socialism–and the GDR was by no means that–is better than the “best” capitalism. And the social-democratic or left-opportunist pony-farm “socialism” is in any case a naïve illusion, somewhere beyond the rainbow and common sense.

Since the so-called “reunification” of Germany–which was really more the annexation of the GDR by the still-existing FRG–this has been confirmed in every respect: Kohl’s “flourishing landscapes” in the new federal states are full of industrial ruins and “market-regulated” unemployed, deserted and decaying villages with large numbers of people who are no longer sufficiently profitable to even be exploited by capitalism–they receive minimal education and state alms at the lowest possible levels, from which one cannot even properly feed oneself: at McDonald’s you get a burger for 1 euro, a can of Dutch beer is 89 cents at the finally fully stocked supermarket (and a banana 20 cents–but who wants that?)–and the daily budget for food is already used up.

The understandable despair and justified outrage of people in eastern Germany is steered into the politically extreme right spectrum, for this is an ally–indeed an immanent part of capitalism–and remains its strategic reserve in terms of an authoritarian to fascist state orientation. But socialism–and especially that of the GDR–must continue to be fought with all means: with defamation, distortions of historical truth, ridicule and derision, with mockery and scorn, with lying campaigns promoted by the media, “educational institutions” and “science,” with the constant repetition of alleged crimes and injustices up to the particularly brazen and disgusting equation with fascism. All of this must be deployed against the GDR and its memory, the entire arsenal of anti-communist propaganda. In the case of socialism in Germany–unlike in the USSR, Eastern Europe, Cuba or China–simple racism of the usual Western anti-communism does not carry the same weight, even with all the Ossi and Saxony jokes.

Well, the capitalists and imperialists may rejoice at their provisional victory–it will not last. Everywhere–even in the FRG–capitalism has cracks and fractures. It is not peaceable and neither willing nor able to guarantee all people a secure existence, work, housing, and fair prosperity within the realm of the possible. Real capitalism wages war, it oppresses humanity and exploits it–this holds for the FRG as well. With its labored references to its transparent pseudo-democracy and staged elections, to its poorly disguised arbitrary and class justice, with its celebrated “freedom” that only signifies freedom for limitless profiteering, with the pitting of ordinary people against each other, with its lying campaigns in schools and media–the FRG can only maintain its façade for a limited time. The ruling elites know this–and they fear it tremendously. Because the truth will sooner or later prevail.

The final historical verdict on the GDR will be delivered not by the old or new FRG, but by the working class and the peoples who make their own history. They will prevail, even in Germany. As a result, the GDR–the best German state that ever existed–will not be resurrected, but a socialist Germany still better may come about, and it will honor the memory of the great efforts, experiences and achievements of the men and women who built the GDR.

https://mronline.org/2025/10/13/ddr-wha ... -republic/
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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 14, 2025 12:55 pm

Mahbubani on Europe’s Strategic Disease

Kishore Mahbubani is a Singaporean diplomat who has served for ten years as as ambassador to the United Nations. His talks about global policies and their development are always of interest.

His most recent one under the question “What will geopolitics look like in the next ten years?” is no exception (video).

The most important part starts at 22:54 min. Here I am mostly interested in what Mahbubani has to say about Europe (edited machine transcript):

I want to emphasize that the in current situation the key word you got to understand is complexity. [The world] is extremely complex because there are a lot of moving parts all the time. So for a start clearly and at the at the highest strategic level as you know in the cold war was bipolar the cold war ended and it became unipolar. And now we have what you have a strange combination of both a bipolar and multipolar world.
[…]
But there are also other powers [besides the U.S., China and India] that are clearly changing the situation.

Again, clearly Russia matters, right? And the biggest strategic mistake that the Europeans made in dealing with Russia is that they only look at the size of its economy and didn’t look at the overall national strength and their military capability.

So the Ukraine war could have been avoided if the Europeans had just shown some degree of respect for Russia’s own long-term strategic interests. And the tragedy of the Europeans trying to punish the rest of the world for buying Russian oil is that they could have avoided this war with Russia if they had shown some strategic common sense in dealing with Russia.


He later blames the mistake on the serious lack of abilities of the current crop of European leaders:

So all that is what I mean with complexity. It is not a simple black and white chessboard, you know, it’s extremely complex and you got to watch all the moving parts.

The people who can get the big picture are the ones who will succeed and thrive and those who don’t, like the Europeans, sadly .. .

The Europeans live in a delusionary world, and I mean that quite seriously because they, you know if you just look at the photograph of the European leaders sitting on sofas in front of the school teacher Donald Trump at his desk lecturing these European leaders. They look like school children. I mean the optics itself captured what had happened.

And for a respected prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, whom I met, who is a very thoughtful intelligent guy by the way, for him to call Trump daddy? I mean it shows you that something has gone wrong.

So this actually I must tell you: In my last conversation with Kissinger he told me candidly that the quality of mind of these Europeans has gone down so much they don’t understand how much the world has changed. So this is an example of where – if you understand the world you can navigate through it, but if you don’t understand the world, like the Europeans, they seem to be in trouble.


Mahbubani diagnosis of Europe’s disease is in my view correct. But what might be the best therapy to correct this situation?

Posted by b at 13:51 utc | Comments (184)

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Re: Blues for Europa

Post by blindpig » Thu Oct 16, 2025 1:44 pm

Jonathan Cook: Freedoms We Took for Granted in Britain
October 15, 2025

Now that we have proved to be too defiant and rebellious, Keir Starmer’s government is ripping up the rulebook on protest to protect Israel.

Image
London police arresting a woman during a demonstration against the proscription of Palestine Action, Sept. 6, 2025. (Alisdaire Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net

In interviews and a comment article over the weekend, the U.K. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson made clear she plans to exploit the pause in the Gaza genocide to snuff out criticism of Israel’s criminal actions — and, of course, her own government’s collusion in that criminality.

Naturally, the British establishment media have been keen to amplify her message that there will be painful consequences both for individuals who continue protesting against Israeli atrocities and for institutions, such as universities, that mistakenly assume they have a duty to uphold centuries-old freedoms by tolerating such protests.

These protests, let us remember, are fully in line with a ruling last year from the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, which declared:

a) Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territory and enforcing a system of apartheid rule over the Palestinian populations there — and has been doing so for decades.

b) Western governments are obligated to do what they can to bring that illegal occupation and Israel’s apartheid system to an end as quickly as possible.

Instead, those same governments are violating the ruling, and international law, both by continuing to support Israel’s criminality and by preventing their own citizens from putting pressure on them to end their support.

The government of Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, has even categorised protest against genocide as “support for terrorism.”

For the first time in British history, a direct-action group, Palestine Action, has been banned as a terrorist organisation — in its case, for targeting weapons factories in Britain arming Israel’s genocide. It is now illegal to express any support for the group.

Image
London’s Parliament Square on Sept. 6, during the mass arrest of protesters, many of them elderly and carrying hand-made cardboard signs, against the proscription of the direct-action group Palestine Action. (Alisdaire Hickson, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

In a commentary in the Sunday Express, Phillipson said she wanted the government’s campaign against free speech to go even further to protect Israel. She intends to import to our shores Donald Trump’s full-frontal assault on academic freedom.

She has written to vice-chancellors warning them that their universities face fines and public funding cuts should they allow students to protest on campus against Israeli genocide and apartheid.

She added:

“I’m clear the buck stops with universities when it comes to ridding their campuses of hate. Institutions have my full backing to use their powers to do so and keep their students safe.”

But as the rest of the article made clear, the universities don’t just have her “backing” to act against the protesters. They will be compelled to crack down on protests against Israeli apartheid and genocide — what she calls “hate” — or face stiff financial penalties.

This comes in the wake, as Phillipson notes, of separate plans announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to give the police further powers to outlaw protests that have a “cumulative impact.”

In other words, the police will be empowered to crush the very kind of protests that discomfit governments the most — those that are repeated because there is a strength of popular feeling to which the government is utterly unresponsive.

It should hardly need pointing out that Western governments are most likely to be unresponsive when it is their own criminal behaviours that are the target of protest, whether it is their collusion in Israel’s genocide or their collusion with corporations to gut meaningful action to halt climate breakdown.

Though you would not know it from the media’s cheering, what the British government is doing is stripping out the last vestiges of the right to protest, a right that has been under relentless assault in the U.K. for the past 40 years.

Phillipson’s Sunday interview with Trevor Philips on Sky was illustrative. He pushed the education secretary to be even more draconian in hollowing out speech and protest rights, as well as academic freedom.

Image

In turn, Phillipson sought once again to rationalise the government’s demolition of the last pillars of a free society on familiar grounds: as a supposed fight against antisemitism.

After conversations with Jewish students and their parents, Phillipson said she had come to appreciate that they are “worried about what it is to be a young Jewish person on campus at the moment in the U.K., and we can’t tolerate that”.

The reality is that the police already have plenty of powers to deal with what she called antisemitic “harassment and intimidation.” Forces have the government’s backing and wide social support to tackle real race hate.

Uncomfortable About Protests Against Genocide

So why are the police not cracking down on these antisemites supposedly roaming our university campuses?

The answer — the one Phillipson wants to conceal from us — is that, in the overwhelming majority of cases she’s referring to, Jewish students are not the victims of an attack or even of personal criticism.

They have simply been made uncomfortable by the presence of other students exercising a basic democratic right to protest in the public space of a campus — in this case, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and our own government’s material, diplomatic and financial support for it.

Image
Refaat Alareer banner on the gates of the Radcliffe Camera during the University of Oxford pro-Palestinian campus occupations, May 2024. (Kiri of Karitane, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

Any discomfort felt by some Jewish students flows not from the actual protests but from the fact that these students have been raised as Zionists. They have been raised with a political ideology that makes them identify with Israel.

They have chosen to associate their Jewish identity with a state the World Court has declared is both illegally occupying Palestinian territory and enforcing a system of apartheid rule over the Palestinian population.

It is not the protesters making an association between Jews and Israel. It is the Zionist Jewish families Phillipson has spoken to — and non-Jews such as Phillipson and Sky’s Philips who think like them.

There is a quick fix to this “problem,” one that does not involve shredding the right to protest and freedom of speech, or fining universities who allow students to protest.

And that is for the British government, and the British media, to stop treating Israel like it is a normal member of the community of nations — after it has just committed genocide and, on a very best-case scenario, is about to return to a status quo in which Palestinians are brutally abused under systems of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and siege.

It is for the British government and media to make clear to Zionist Jewish families, and those non-Jews who think like them, that it is not okay to identify with a criminal state, or to expect any special privilege — protection from being offended — when others want to criticise that criminal state for its criminal actions.

There are plenty of British Jews who do not identify with Israel. In fact, many are repulsed by its actions and take part in anti-genocide demonstrations like the one at the weekend in London.

Anyone offended by the protests needs to engage in some serious soul-searching. Their offence signals not just an identification with Israel, but an endorsement of its actions, including its genocide and apartheid rule over Palestinians.

So why is the government getting this issue so wrong?

Here we get to the nub of the matter. The British establishment, including the government and media, are not a disinterested party simply concerned with protecting Jews.

Rather, they are an elite desperately trying to protect their own interests in a system of U.S.-driven military supremacy that confers on Western powers a sense of their complete entitlement to control over the world’s material resources, most especially in the oil-rich Middle East.

Israel is a central pillar of this criminal, militarised enterprise, which is why it needs to be protected at all costs.

That cost has included hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed and maimed in Gaza over the past two years. But it also includes the freedoms and rights we once took for granted.

Now we see that these freedoms were only ever on licence from the ruling class — a licence that is being revoked now that we have proved too unruly, too defiant, too rebellious.

https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/15/j ... n-britain/

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Why western sanctions have failed and become self-defeating

Ian Proud

October 15, 2025

Sanctions will not stop the war. And the longer they go on, more Ukrainians will die.

I recently participated in a debate in London about the effectiveness of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy. I argued that they have proven ineffective as a tool of foreign policy, and kept my remarks focussed on Russia, which is the most sanctioned country on the planet, with over 20,000 sanctions imposed so far.

For good or ill, I argued that sanctions were ineffective from a position of having authorised around half of the UK sanctions against Russia after war broke out in 2022. I take no great pride in that, but that was my job at the time and I eventually left my career as a British diplomat in 2023, largely out of a sense that UK foreign policy was failing in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, it worries me that so few people appear focused on what we in the UK want the sanctions to achieve, to the point where they have become an end in themselves. Yet, look at the legislation, specifically the Russia Sanctions Regulations of 2019, and the purpose is quiet clear:

Encourage Russia to cease actions destablising Ukraine or undermining or threatening the sovereignty or independence of Ukraine.

More than eleven years since the onset of the Ukraine crisis and not far from four years since war broke out, the UK and its allies have manifestly failed to deliver upon that goal.

We have been through eleven years of gradually ramping up sanctions against Russia only to see Russia increase its resistance, and then to launch its so-called Special Military Operation in 2022.

Sanctions did not prevent that. One might argue that they helped to precipitate it.

Ukraine is bankrupt, its cities broken, its energy infrastructure once again subject to nightly bombardment as the winter approaches and people wonder whether they’ll be able to heat their homes.

Sanctions are not preventing this.

Yet at the debate, my opponents somehow advanced the argument that sanctions remain an effective tool of foreign policy, from the comfort of a grand hall, two thousand miles away from the frontline, even further from responsibility, and completely detached from reality.

In my mind, there are two clear reasons why sanctions policy has failed.

Firstly, because even if people in the west consider them to be justified, the Russian State considers them to be unjust.

Ever since the Minsk II peace deal was subordinated to sanctions in March 2015, President Putin has become increasingly convinced that western nations would sanction Russia come what May.

And that has proved to be the case.

Every time an inevitable new package of sanctions is imposed by the UK, Europe or others, it also convinces ordinary Russian people that this is true.

People in the west might hate Putin, but he is far more popular in Russia than Keir Starmer is in Britain, or than Friedrich Merz is in Berlin, or than Emmanuel Macron is in France.

So the idea that sanctions undermine support in Russia for President Putin is deeply misguided.

Likewise, sanctioning British-based Russian billionaires who took their assets out of Russia might play well in the Financial Times but is a meaningless gesture; these figures have no real power in Russia.

The idea that if we sanction Roman Abramovich he might some how rise up and try to unseat Putin together with other oligarchs is a fantasy.

The Russian oligarch Oleg Tinkoff who took to Instagram after the war started to criticise the Russian army, was forced to sell his eponymous bank and yet the UK still sanctioned him.

Why would any wealthy Russian on that basis stand up rise up against President Putin on the west’s behalf only to get sanctioned by us anyway?

Yet, we have sanctioned 2000 individuals and entities, banning them from travel to the UK, even though 92% of them never had before the war started. These, I’m afraid, are empty gestures.

Sanctions will not stop the war.

And the longer they go on, more Ukrainians will die.

Despite Russia having done everything to adjust to sanctions since 2014, commentators in the west nevertheless try to tell you that, well, maybe we should have imposed more sanctions at the start for a bigger effect.

But on my second point, that denies the political reality of how sanctions are imposed.

While the combined economies of NATO are 27 times bigger than Russia, 32 states cannot coordinate policy quickly enough to take decisive action.

This results in waging war by committee.

Imagine, if you will, a chessboard with President Putin staring across at a team of thirty-two people on the other side, squabbling loudly among themselves for months on end before deciding not to make the best move.

If you believe that Europe is about to become a rapid decision-making body now at a time when its member states are increasingly turning to nationalist political parties who resent the war policy in Brussels, then my message to you is, good luck waiting for that.

Europe has now been debating for over a year whether to expropriate 200 billion in Russian assets housed in Belgium.

Yet that has not been agreed precisely because the Belgian government has blocked it consistently out of a not illegitimate fear that it will shred that’s country’s reputation among international investors at a time when new financial architecture is being constructed in the developing world.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign exchange reserves have continued to grow and now stand at over $700 billion for the first time. So even at this late stage if Europe chose to expropriate the assets, Russia could live without them.

Rather than being forced to the negotiating table – the complete fantasy that proponents of this hair-brained idea would tell you – Russia would be so enraged by what it sees as theft that it would keep on fighting.

And more Ukrainians would die.

President Putin is not hemmed in by the need to consult, and western indecision gives him time to adapt.

Since 2014, Russia’s economy has reoriented away from its dependence on the west, precisely to limit the impact of sanctions.

When war broke out in 2022, Russia had been adapting to sanctions for 8 years already.

Even though the scale was unprecedented, Russia had already prepared itself for the onslaught when it happened and has adapted better.

In 2022, with everyone crowing about the crashing rouble, Russia pulled in its biggest ever current account surplus of over $230 billion which, by the way, is bigger than Ukraine’s whole economy.

Despite cutting off gas supplies and bearing down on shadow tankers, Russia to this day continues to pull in hefty trade surpluses each year. It has not been in deficit since 1998.

Lots of people argued that if we had gone all in 2014, then that might have made a difference. But believe we, that was debated in Europe, and no one could agree to it.

And I wonder whether, had it been agreed, Europe would simply have faced the political and economic turmoil it is currently going now, ten years earlier.

So let’s stop talking about what ifs.

The ugly truth is that sanctions have become an end in themselves. They are not a strategy, but a fig leaf covering the embarrassing fact that the west does not have a strategy.

They are a weak alternative to war or peace that serve no purpose other than to prolong the war in Ukraine.

Western nations have shown themselves unwilling to contemplate diplomacy. Taking to Putin is dismissed as a prize that will take him out of international isolation; even though he only appears isolated by western nations. Yet diplomacy isn’t about talking to your friends, despite the never ending round of backslapping summits our leaders attend. Diplomacy is about talking to the people with whom you most disagree. We have refused to talk to Russia and continue to avoid diplomacy at all costs to this day.

Neither do we want war, Britain’s army today has 73,000 soldiers, 2,000 fewer than 2 years ago. Russia has 600,000 troops in Ukraine, apparently. We couldn’t even agree to send 10,000 troops as part of a so-called reassurance force although, to be honest, that idea didn’t reassure me at all.

Russia is outstripping us in the production of munitions, tanks and naval warships. And it has 6000 nuclear warheads.

So I’m glad we don’t want war either.

But as we continue to pursue ever diminishing packages of sanctions, Ukraine will remain stuck in the middle, devastated and depopulated, as Europe deindustrialises and falls into the embrace of nationalism at an accelerating rate.

Meanwhile, despite obvious headwinds, Russia’s economy appears in better shape that ours. It would be impossible to claim that there had been no economic impacts on the Russian economy from sanctions. Yet with economic link to the western now all but destroyed, sanctions relief is less important to Russia than it is to Europe.

In Budapest recently I got talking to a member of the House of Lords and former Diplomatic Service colleague who is a close friend of Boris Johnson. During his speech he remarked that sanctions on Russia have had no impact at all.

Later over drinks we discussed this and he agreed with the arguments that I have put forward today. But then he paused, and said ‘ah, but you just can’t say that in Britain though’.

It’s time to wake up and realise the terrible mess we have got ourselves into through sanctions. Sanctions have failed to the great detriment of Ukraine. It’s time, finally, to get back diplomacy.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... defeating/

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Lithuania Urges Strengthening EU Air Defense

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A flag of the European Union. X/ @Big5Mediagroup

October 16, 2025 Hour: 9:33 am

Some countries are currently skeptical of the ‘Drone Wall’ initiative.
On Thursday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys said that ensuring the security of the European Union’s (EU) borders and airspace is a shared interest of all member states, as some European countries are skeptical of the bloc’s “drone wall” initiative.

Budrys made the remarks after meeting with Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze in Vilnius, according to the Baltic News Service (BNS).

The EU aims to have a new system of anti-drone defenses partly operational by the end of 2026 and fully functional in 2027.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s initial “drone wall” proposal was met with some skepticism from countries such as Germany, which fear the bloc may be encroaching on NATO’s role.


Germany and France are reluctant for the EU executive to take too central a role in military planning, which is a matter for national governments.

Countries in the south of the bloc have also called for the drone initiative to cover not only the EU’s eastern nations.

Concerns about counter-drone measures have intensified after Russian aircraft allegedly violated the airspace of NATO members Poland, Estonia, and Romania in recent months, according to BNS.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/lithuani ... r-defense/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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