L’UE aura besoin de 500 milliards d’euros d’investissements dans le secteur de la défense au cours de la prochaine décennie, a indiqué la présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen, aux dirigeants de l’UE lors du sommet de jeudi (27 juin), alors que Bruxelles cherche des moyens d’augmenter le financement de celle qui est devenue sa nouvelle priorité.
La responsable politique allemande a confirmé que l’exécutif de l’UE avait estimé que l’industrie européenne de la défense nécessiterait environ 500 milliards d’euros d’investissements au cours de la prochaine décennie.
Il n’a toutefois pas été possible de savoir si ce montant incluait les sommes nécessaires pour continuer à fournir des armes à l’Ukraine, ou pour moderniser et construire son industrie de la défense.
Si le chiffre de 500 milliards d’euros avancé par Ursula von der Leyen semble élevé, il faut rappeler que les États membres de l’UE ont dépensé ensemble environ 240 milliards d’euros pour la défense en 2022. À titre de comparaison, la même année, les États-Unis en ont dépensé environ 718 milliards.
Les Européens ont augmenté leurs dépenses de défense ces deux dernières années, en raison des risques sécuritaires accrus découlant de l’invasion russe de l’Ukraine en février 2022.
Entre 1999 et 2021, les États membres de l’UE avaient augmenté leurs dépenses de défense de 20 %, la Chine de 600 % et la Russie de 300 %, aurait également noté la Commission, selon des personnes informées des discussions.
Options de financement
Désormais, reste à savoir comment financer ces 500 milliards d’euros, ont commenté des personnes au fait des discussions.
En effet, les Vingt-Sept cherchent à augmenter la production de l’industrie de défense de l’Union, mais n’ont jusqu’à présent pas été en mesure de s’accorder sur la manière de mobiliser les ressources financières nécessaires.
Lors du sommet européen de jeudi, la Commission était censée proposer des options de financement, mais Ursula von der Leyen, reconduite à la tête de l’exécutif par un vote des chefs d’État et de gouvernement, a finalement opté pour une mise à jour orale sur la situation.
Au début de l’année, la Commission a proposé le programme européen d’investissement dans le domaine de la défense (EDIP) afin de réorganiser l’industrie de la défense de l’Union, mais avec des fonds modestes, indiquant qu’un financement supplémentaire était nécessaire pour permettre à l’industrie de répondre aux besoins en temps de guerre.
Pour financer ce secteur, la France et l’Allemagne ont mené les discussions sur l’utilisation des « eurobonds » (euro-obligations), qui permettraient à Bruxelles d’emprunter de l’argent sur les marchés financiers.
Cette solution a toutefois été fortement critiquée par les États membres les plus frugaux, tels que les Pays-Bas, qui estiment qu’il existe d’autres options à explorer en premier lieu, comme des contributions nationales.
Plusieurs capitales font pression pour que tous les États membres de l’UE au sein de l’OTAN — à l’exception de l’Autriche, de l’Irlande et de Malte, qui sont neutres — atteignent l’objectif de dépenses de 2 % du PIB fixé par l’Alliance.
L’Allemagne s’oppose à l’idée de parler de financement européen de la défense, a déclaré à Euractiv un diplomate de l’UE au fait des discussions.
Let’s hope Gerasimov gives Kallas, Rutte and Barcelona bellboy Borrell no opportunity for an encore.
The purpose of this article is not so much to describe the formidable NATO armies currently pitting themselves against Russia but to look at the creeping Jesuses, who cheer on NATO’s aggression, when not bullying Russian musicians, attacking Russian embassies or denouncing Masha and the bear as the vilest of Russian propaganda.
With all that in mind, I am particularly grateful for Finian Cunnigham’s recent excellent article on how Dutch creepy crawly, Mark Rutte, has replaced that Norwegian Stoltenberg chap as NATO’s chief rubber stamp and for pointing out that Rutte and his bodyguards cycle to work, tokenistic cycling being something like a Masonic handshake with today’s current crop of eco friendly neo Nazis.
Callous Kallas
I had not previously paid much attention to Rutte, as my eyes were fixated on a number of other useful NAFO idiots, chief amongst them being Estonian war monger Kaja Kallas, whom I have previously happily sneered at here, here and here, and who has recently replaced Fawlty Towers waiter Josep Borrell as Europe’s top diplomat.
Not only does Kallas hail from a pipsqueak country with no strategic relevance, except as an American cat’s paw to be used against Belarus and Russia, but Kallas has a personal bee in her pretty bonnet about her family doing jail time during the Stalin years.
Sad as that is, American puppets holding personal grudges do not make good ambassadors, as ambassadors are supposed to practice European diplomacy, not American duplicity. That being so, Gerasimov rather than Lavrov will be her Russian medium and his message will come from the barrels of ten million guns, which will give both her and her Estonian spawning ground something to remember.
Kallas is nothing more than a jumped up NAFO loud mouth fixated on copying Jimmy Cagney in White Heat, and shouting to her departed mother Made it ma. Top of the world. The difference is that, though Cagney went out on his own in a blazing fire ball of glory, Kallas and the rest of the NAFO crew, even if they are too dumb to realise it, want to bring us all along to Hades with them.
Though critics could argue I am being a trifle unkind to Kallas, it is high time someone called this NAFO slapper and her clones out. The enemy here is not so much the NATO soldiers, who Kallas wants to merrily march off to their doom, but those like Kallas and a million others, who cynically cheer them on their way and who were long ago condemned by England’s Great War poets on the one side and, on the other, by the poignant German requiem that is Eriq Maria Remarque‘s All Quiet on the Western Front. Though much has changed since the 1918 Armistice, these cynical vultures have not. Because they are still fomenting war from their perches, these parrots must be put back in their cages.
Galloway-Morgan-Cross-Karganovic-Stuart
Consider this interview NAFO lackey Piers Morgan conducted with noted British politician George Galloway. Note that Galloway is seldom allowed say a full sentence without Morgan barging in to give his own tuppence worth on Srebrenica, Bucha and Putin, Putin, Putin. Galloway, by his own admission, is a political junkey and would be as much up to speed on Srebrenica and Bucha as are the best informed of his compatriots. In answering about Bucha, he rattles off evidence I barely recall and, even though his memory is also excellent on Srebrenica, our own Stephen Karganovic has given far fuller accounts than Galloway or, heaven help us, than Morgan could ever hope to give.
Although I have not spoken to Karganovic about his work, I have spoken at length to Robert Stuart about how his excellent piece totally exposes NATO’s false flag chemical attacks in Syria. But NATO and their lapdogs are not interested in gleaning solid reports from Karganovic or Stuart. As Morgan and his NAFO clones show, all they can do is repeatedly roar out Putin’s name and condemn anyone out of hand, who is not ready to fly to Moscow at the drop of a hat and loaf Putin in the kisser, give him a Glasgow handshake and take their chances with Putin’s scary bodyguards.
Because that is the talk of either a child or a NAFO simpleton, that brings us to the strange case of Philip Cross, an extraordinarily prolific Wikipedia editor George Galloway unmasked as a vulnerable North London idiot being used by those riff raff we previously met in the battleground of Russian culture to defame anyone and everyone in NATO’s cross hairs.
Although Glen Black and Craig Murray both wrote forensically damning indictments of Cross and his Sunday Times and Jewish Chronicle handlers, Mossad outlet Haeretz summarily dismissed all their evidence as being, of all things, anti-Semitic hogwash. Although Galloway also regards MI6’s Hope not Hate as yet another NAFO operation designed to unseat characters like him, who think genocide is not quite kosher, Mi6 have armies of these NAFO characters on the payroll.
As regards yelling Putin’s name to all and sundry, that has replaced defaming Assad as NAFO’s trump card. Whenever Galloway or anyone else makes a valid point, just squawk Putin and NATO’s umpires will award you point, game, set and match. Stupid as all that sounds, that is how NAFO’s trolls, from Morgan on the top perch down to the floozys of North London on their no less lucrative ones, cackle out their scripted arguments.
Assange-Corbyn-Daly-Wallace
When Clare Daly lost her Euro seat, she gave a very curt interview to the NAFO media, which was little more than a one fingered salute to them for treating her so shabbily, something I have previously pointed out here and here, but which the Irish Times predictably denied in what they hope is her political obituary.
In concluding her hit piece on Daly, Justine McCarthy finished by noting Daly was wearing a Free Assange t shirt, and that “the imprisoned Julian Assange, co-founder of Wikileaks, is only one of 579 journalists currently being detained around the world, the second-highest number ever recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists”.
Although the inference here is that the journalists of the Irish Times and the Guardian are, like Assange, amongst the major victims of societal injustice, this searing piece by Jonathan Cook puts paid to that fairy story. Far from being victims, Cook spells out why NAFO outfits like the Guardian and the Irish Times are the vilest persecutors of freedom evangelists like Assange and, indeed, Jeremy Corbyn, who was amongst the very first of his supporters Assange thanked upon his Odysseus-like return to Australia.
As this English barrister shows, Corbyn and Galloway are not the only British politicians being pilloried as Putin puppets. If the media were to be believed, even Nigel Farage’s crew are on the Kremlin’s vast payroll as, apparently I am myself if Norma Costello, Ronan Tynan, Samara Levy and other NAFO gnats I have swatted are credible sources.
Sadly, they are not and nor are they really meant to be, because the bottom line is truth is not on the side of NATO’s bottom basement NAFO parrots. Once their funding dries up, those of them, who are still standing, will fly the coop to feast off their next free morsel. These monkeys should never be confused with even the humblest of organ grinders.
Kiev or Kyiv?
This is not to write these NAFO parrots off as being worthless. If they were, NATO would not fund their Easy Street existence. Their role is to amplify themes and motifs, to make it look like NATO’s war aims are the vox populi, the will of the people.
Let’s return to the banks of the Dnieper, where MI6’s BBC outlet tells us of all the brave Ukrainian LGBT units bravely fending off the homophobic Russkie hordes, and MI6’s Guardian outlet explains that we must call Kiev Kyiv to stick it to Putin, who hates such defiance.
Fair enough, but if Roma is Rome in English, Napoli is Naples, København is Copenhagen and Oporto is Porto, why should the capital of the rump Reich be treated any differently? The answer is, as I explained in my second article for this site, to submit to what passes itself off as the intellectual wing of the Azov Nazis, whose vision for the Ukrainian people remains the stagnant pool of blood it has always been. Call me queasy but appeasing Nazis always makes me see red and the Kiev/Kyiv question is central to it.
Wish as the Nazis will, the Ukrainian language has no commercial future, as Ukraine is a vassal state of NATO, where the lingua franca is (American) English. Zelensky only learned Ukrainian to keep his scam going and there is no way the Bidens and NATO’s other major money launderers are going to learn Ukrainian to keep their own scams going. When Ukraine throws in the towel, they will, true to form, be milking some other God forsaken people where Tagalog, Malay or some other Asian language is spoken.
So Kiev or NAFO’s Kviv is fine but make no mistake that Kviv is part of a much bigger NATO racket.
700,000 abducted children?
As is this business of Ukraine’s abducted children. Although NATO have used Russian claims that they evacuated almost 5 million Borderlands’ residents to safer areas within Russia to demand that Putin and some other Russians face war crimes’ charges for wantonly abducting children, that is only more NAFO hot air.
Although I previously debunked those charges, NAFO have no need to give up those smears, given how effective they are in their own parlour games. Quite simply, if these lies about kidnapped children help keep NATO’s war rackets humming, that is good and the more NAFO trolls there are, who spread that nonsense, the better as far as NATO is concerned. NATO is not concerned in the least with the welfare of Ukrainian or any other children, who are all just propaganda pieces in NAFO’s parlour room wars.
Hard War, Soft War, Live Children, Dead Children
Although I long ago also touched on the case of persecuted German peace activist Alina Lipp, who committed NATO’s cardinal crime of paying homage at the Alley of Angels shrine to the Borderlands’ children NATO massacred prior to Russia’s “unprovoked” intervention, NAFO continue to applaud NATO slaughtering children with internationally banned cluster bombs for the capital crime of playing with buckets and spades on Crimean beaches, a crime whose consequences were dealt with in this recent excellent editorial; and which was perpetrated, lest we forget, at the same time NATO proxies were slitting the throats of Orthodox priests on their high altars in Dagestan.
Although these crimes are hard to defend, NAFO’s job is to applaud those crimes, just as they applauded similar crimes in Libya, Syria and Iraq, the only difference being that they deflect by squawking about Putin, instead of Saddam, Assad or Gaddafi. All fair enough in love and war, except that the bombs, bullets and missiles invariably read US of A.
In war, innocent people always suffer
In war, innocent people always suffer. So said Yankee diplomat Raymond Seitz in reply to a query by Father John Metcalf as to why the Yankees’ Contra thugs were slaughtering his parishioners in northern Nicaragua. Harold Pinter, who was present at that exchange, included it in his superlative acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature.
In wars, innocent people always suffer. And Pinter makes clear in his speech that, in Nicaragua, as well as in “El Salvador Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile”, the cut throats of the US Defence Forces are the common denominator, just as they are now in Ukraine, Russia, Syria and a smorgasbord of other countries NATO feels are right for sundering.
Though Pinter put the case against American war crimes more eloquently than ever we could, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, is in a position to express himself far more forthrightly than Pinter ever could.. Along with Russia’s former defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, he stands accused of the apparent war crime of knocking out a couple of electrical transformers in Kiev (or is it Kyiv?).
By the time this war ends, NAFO’s ICC legions will probably accuse him of many more such crimes against Ukraine’s electricity grid. That is because, as Dr Gilbert Doctorow explains in this interview with Judge Napolitano, Gerasimov and his chums think that children on Crimean beaches should no more be what NAFO deem “legitimate NATO targets” than should children in north Nicaraguan playgrounds; Gerasimov and his troops are tasked to putting an end to all that with all appropriate means available to them and, if there is a holier task than his in today’s world, I have not heard of it.
According to Pinter, “the crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis”.
Although the eloquent Pinter goes on to congratulate the “brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless” US of A on how it hypnotises the world, the less eloquent Gerasimov is paid to be immune to all such wiles. And although Gerasimov, being Russian, is unlikely to win any Nobel Prizes soon, he does have his other strengths, one of which is to even the body bag count with NATO and their NAFO shoe shine boys and girls.
Gerasimov, Wikipedia tells us, was raised on tales of Russia’s Great Patriotic War where his uncle, a tank company commander, fought the usual suspects for their very existence and thereby set the marker Gerasimov and his comrades must be measured by.
And so it shall be. NATO and their NAFO choir boys have made a very dangerous enemy in Gerasimov and the 1.5 million men and women under his command. Having connived together to sow the wind, Gerasimov and his forces are going to make them reap the mother of all whirlwinds before other arenas like East Asia repeat the process, until NATO and their NAFO parrots stop committing their war crimes. At the heel of the hunt, things will go Gerasimov’s way, even if that means that Kallas and her cronies make the same, sorry Made it ma. Top of the world sort of exit the great Jimmy Cagney made in White Heat. And let’s hope Gerasimov gives Kallas, Rutte and Barcelona bellboy Borrell no opportunity for an encore.
It’s hard to predict that Le Pen will get the required 51% with another party, the conservatives, in a coalition.
An enormous amount of excitement is being created by the French parliamentary elections which had its first round firmly won outright by Marine Le Pen’s far-right party. This was nothing out of the ordinary and for once the polls were spot on in their predictions. But the second round will be a completely different game as traditionally, French voters often use the first vote as a protest vote against the main parties. It’s hard to predict that Le Pen will get the required 51% with another party, the conservatives, in a coalition. Her victory though might be just what France needs as she has a number of radical policies which she believes will shake up the economy.
But it’s not her domestic policies which the West should worry about. It’s her ideas about France’s role in the EU which should be a worry for Brussels as, if her party wins and holds a majority, it will be able to command a political dynamic which will eclipse Macron and cast a new dye for Paris’s relations with the European Union.
Although many in France believe that she might win an outright victory in the next round, analysts predict that she will be a contender in next Presidential elections in three years’ time. If either scenario gives her an edge in the decision-making in the Élysée, the European Union is in for a rough ride as her demands will lead to a crisis which will bring about two possibilities; one, that the EU is divided into two camps – a two-speed Europe – which would effectively scrap the present unanimity voting system which allows Hungary to veto the big issues; or secondly, it will lead to the demise of the EU as we know it, which, in a bid to survive, would streamline itself and give more power back to member states.
In either case, Le Pen will be gunning for more decision-making to be made in Paris and for a number of exemptions that only France could ask for and get away with being a founding member. If she doesn’t get her way, she will threaten a Brexit-like referendum which will likely result in France seeking to leave the EU altogether – or worse form its own shiny new version which it would invite a selective group to join. Brussels will cave in, which will lead to Germany and the Netherlands to demand the same exemptions, especially on immigration. Within no time the giants of the EU will have their own version of the 27-nation bloc which serves their interests better, while the rest can go to hell. In this scenario, a new voting system will be proposed, which will be about reaching a threshold number of points before a draft law can pass. The EU giants, say, might be given 50 points each with eastern European countries like Hungary given only 10 points.
But over all, it will be France who will take the helm of the EU as it was always intended. It will be Le Pen who will be the chief blackmailer who will reform the entire model in France’s favour and it will be the French veto which in the early days which will be the chief pressure point of the EU which will feel it the most as it fails to function on a day-to-day basis. France is about to have a mega tantrum and Le Pen, who was initially for the Republic pulling out years ago, will be its chief antagonist, both creating the crisis and also presenting herself as the only one with the fix. Sounds familiar?
Immigration and the EU’s reluctance to take it seriously, has driven this crisis and France’s wholesale rejection of Macron and his Renaissance party which got a massive thumping in the first round. Macron, like Sunak in the UK, has shown himself to be out of step with public opinion as the snap election idea only really worked in favour of the incumbents in the 1970s and surely he is feeling the pressure now of being a president with no party in the parliament with him as a support. Worse is to come. If Le Pen’s RN party finally win a majority, the first thing it will do is clip the wings of Macron in a number of key areas, but chiefly on big foreign policy decisions. There will be only one thing for Macron to do when he ultimately leaves office in three year’s time, which is to go for the only job in the world where he can hit Le Pen back: as European Commission president in 2029 – although the indications in more recent days, are that the EU elite no longer want him. Emmanuel Macron MEP?
Long-standing Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte is set to be NATO’s next secretary general. To win the role, he had to prove his alignment with Washington — and he did so by repeatedly misleading the public about Israel’s crimes.
Every Thursday, a group of Dutch civil servants sacrifices its lunch break to gather in front of the Foreign Ministry to protest the Netherlands’ stance on Israel. Civil servants are meant to follow through on elected politicians’ instructions — and thus rarely openly criticize political leaders.
But this time, they don’t have much of a choice. As government officials, they have pledged an oath to the constitution — a document that clearly states that the Netherlands “promotes the international legal order.” Thus, many civil servants reason, it’s their duty to resist the government’s pro-Israel line.
Yet promoting the international legal order is not the Dutch government’s objective. In response to the Hamas-led attacks last October 7, Prime Minister Mark Rutte immediately declared “unconditional support” for Israel and “its right to defend itself.” Many critics pointed out that this basically gave carte blanche to Israel’s response. But Rutte was long unwilling to call for restraint.
More than that, the Netherlands actively contributes to Israel’s war. It manufactures several necessary parts to build F-35 fighter jets that are then shipped to Israel. It continued to do so even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague stated that it was “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide. Even when a Dutch court blocked these exports, the government not only appealed the court’s ruling but also started to explore ways in which they could still export F-35 parts to Israel by other means, like first shipping them to the United States.
Overturning the Dutch Self-Image
Together with Germany and Great Britain, the Netherlands has been among Israel’s biggest supporters in Western Europe. Rutte has visited Israel twice to express support over the past year and has been in contact with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than once a month. He claimed that a ground attack on Rafah would be a “game changer,” but when Israel, after seven months of massacring Palestinians, actually commenced the ground attack, he stated that “no red line was crossed.” Although the Netherlands has historically been a persistent ally of Israel, it also considers itself to be among the strongest diplomatic defenders of human rights since World War II.
The Netherlands used to side with the Nordic countries by speaking out for international law, especially when its representatives visited countries with oppressive governments. Faced with events such as the Olympic Games or FIFA World Cup, ministers often spoke out against human rights violations in host nations, or even mounted boycotts. The Netherlands prides itself — as does Rutte personally — on seventeenth-century Dutch theorist Hugo Grotius, who laid the foundations for international law. Moreover, The Hague is home to the ICJ and the International Criminal Court. Hence the Dutch self-image has long been built on proper judgement and moral righteousness.
Although the Netherlands has historically been a persistent ally of Israel, it also considers itself to be among the strongest diplomatic defenders of human rights since World War II.
This image began to change in the 2000s, with several reports that the Netherlands bore co-responsibility for the genocide against the Bosnian Muslim population at Srebrenica in 1995. It deteriorated further when the Netherlands politically supported the US invasion of Iraq — later it also sent in eleven hundred troops — based on false information, while also ignoring internal reports by civil servants. (According to Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state at that time, this also helped with the nomination of the last Dutch NATO secretary general in 2003.)
Rutte, who was elected as an MP two months before the Iraq invasion, supported the 2003 invasion. He soon would become a junior minister and then leader of the free-market conservative party (VVD) in 2007. Three years later, in 2010, he became prime minister in the most right-wing Dutch government since 1945 that was supported by Wilders’s Freedom Party and hailed a milestone in further mainstreaming the far right.
Aligning with the US
In his early years as prime minister it was often argued that Rutte lacked vision. He was variously praised or criticized for his rhetorical skills as well as for laughing away serious societal problems — thereby variably being called “Teflon-Mark,” a “political Houdini” or “as slippery as an eel.” Before entering politics he was a boss at a peanut butter factory and his style of politics was more managerially pragmatic than morally principled.
To the ridicule of many, Rutte himself appropriated his reputation as a “man without vision” — infamously stating that “vision is an elephant that obstructs the view.” Yet despite his presumed lack of vision, Rutte stayed on as the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history. But by the time of October 7 and the start of Israel’s wildly disproportionate response, he had already indicated that he would resign once a new cabinet could form.
But that was not all. By the end of October, Rutte openly expressed his interest in succeeding Jens Stoltenberg as NATO’s new secretary-general. Yet to win this NATO role, Rutte believed he needed to prove himself capable of steering it in the direction desired by its most powerful member. To convince the United States, he used his leverage to align the Dutch government’s position with the Biden administration’s as much as possible. For instance, Rutte only called for “an immediate cessation of violence” after the UN Security Council approved a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire on March 25, 2024 (with the United States abstaining).
Two months earlier, the Netherlands was the only EU member state that joined the United States and the UK in attacking the Houthi rebels that hijacked Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, the ICJ ruling in the South Africa vs. Israel genocide case in The Hague — which actually took place just a stone’s throw from Rutte’s office — did not gain as much attention as elsewhere and had little effect on the Dutch government’s line.
Deceiving the Public
The Rutte administration’s position did, however, result in several conflicts with officials from the Foreign Ministry — many of whom make a sincere effort to better the circumstances for Palestinian people and ensure international law prevails. Calls to avoid complicity in genocide were ignored by ministers — but triggered responses by several government parties, insisting that civil servants should resign rather than criticize policy.
Rutte’s government is well aware that the Israel Defense Forces ‘intends to deliberately cause massive destruction to infrastructure and civilian centers.’
In November 2023, an internal memo from the Dutch embassy in Israel was leaked to the press, confirming that Rutte’s government is well aware that the Israel Defense Forces “intends to deliberately cause massive destruction to infrastructure and civilian centers.” According to the memo, this would explain the “high death count in Gaza” and “violates international treaties and laws of war.” It also stated that Netanyahu’s goal to eliminate Hamas is “a military objective that is virtually impossible to achieve.”
In December 2023, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. Civil servants advised the Netherlands to support the resolution along with the overwhelming majority of other countries including Western ones like France, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Nordic countries. Yet, just before the vote, Rutte and his direct subordinates intervened to overrule the Foreign Ministry. The Netherlands, like Germany, Britain, and Italy, abstained.
This was later revealed in a letter, anonymously sent by a group of senior officials from the Foreign Ministry, calling for a ban on arms exports to Israel. The civil servants expressed a general frustration with the fact that, all of a sudden, not their minister but Rutte determined the line on Israel. The letter paraphrased an internal request of Rutte’s subordinates to the Foreign Ministry asking: “What can we say to make it seem like Israel is not committing war crimes?”
A Boring Boris Johnson
This attempt to deceive the public fits a pattern of efforts to withhold information that increasingly determined Rutte’s domestic reputation in recent years. If Rutte, a self-declared Anglophile, could in his early years be described as a somewhat lighthearted version of David Cameron, he later turned into more of a boring Boris Johnson: giving parliament vague information and claiming to have no memory of anything. Yet in the Dutch case, the controversy wasn’t just about Rutte’s personal antics.
This reputation change began in 2017 when he leveraged all his political capital to push for the abolition of a tax on dividends for shareholders, hoping to persuade Unilever to (re)locate its headquarters from London to Rotterdam. Since this policy appeared in none of the party platforms, the opposition wondered where it came from — and whether the plan was pushed by lobbyists. At first Rutte denied that there had been any such memos. But thanks to an information-access request, it soon turned out that there had been several of them. Rutte weakly claimed he could not remember the memos — but managed to rally his coalition partners behind him.
A year later, doubts rose again when it was revealed that the cabinet had failed to inform parliament about seventy civilians that were killed by Dutch forces in Iraq during an attempted air strike on the so-called Islamic State back in 2015. Neither the Defense Ministry, nor the prime minister had informed parliament. Many opposition parties found it implausible that Rutte would not have been informed on so many deadly casualties, but he kept repeating that he had no memory of this. Since it was impossible to prove otherwise, he stayed on.
The “Rutte Doctrine”
Much more salient than the deadly air raid was the so-called childcare benefits scandal, in which thousands of families were falsely accused of fraud and had to pay sky-high fines, often pushing them deep into debt. In the official efforts to prove wrongdoing, they faced a very suspicious tax authority that was unwilling to disclose information on their decisions. When, after years of denial, it came out that the fraud allegations were false, victims were asked to submit endless paperwork to get compensation.
Many opposition parties found it implausible that Rutte would not have been informed on so many deadly casualties, but he kept repeating that he had no memory of this.
Rutte himself had made strict anti-fraud measures a political focus, and even chaired a committee that made policy recommendations. When the scandal came out, documents by those committees were released and Rutte was called in for a parliamentary hearing. MPs were surprised to find that so few documents existed, and it became clear that Rutte made deliberate efforts to minimize all traces of the decision-making process. The practice of writing down as little as possible of what is spoken behind closed doors was labeled the “Rutte Doctrine” by civil servants. The line was soon taken up by journalists and MPs, frustrated by his seeming evasiveness.
Lack of Opposition
Although Rutte promised to increase transparency, there are few signs that he did. Soon it was revealed that, also after making this promise, he erased most of his text messages. He defended himself by claiming that there was no space on his phone — until last year he had relied on an old Nokia 301. Yet it also meant that crucial information on government decisions during the COVID-19 lockdowns will never be publicly available.
We could wonder why Rutte stayed on so long despite his convenient amnesia or outright lies. One explanation is that he always faced a chummy opposition and hardly upstanding coalition partners. His lies are not pathological but simply opportunistic; in this sense, his motives are not very different from other leaders who, lacking strong principled positions, can easily empathize with Rutte.
The same holds for the media. When, in March 2021, another lie came out that almost sealed Rutte’s fate, one of the leading political commentators of the public broadcaster tweeted: “The actual problem, of course, is not that he violates the truth. What politician doesn’t? . . . His problem is that he no longer managed to conceal it.” Mainstream Dutch political analysts are not interested in uncovering the truth, but in the theater of whether politicians get away with hiding it.
Implications for NATO
Many would argue that NATO should have been dissolved decades ago, along with the Warsaw Pact, in the spirit of ending the Cold War and improving relations with Russia in order to build a new international settlement. Still, this no longer seems a viable option in the short run. Today NATO is redefining its role and is thereby also one of the most important players in shaping a different world order. Whether there will be peace between Russia and Ukraine by and large depends on the stance and support of NATO toward Ukraine.
Rutte’s reputation as a deceitful politician won’t exactly do wonders for NATO’s reputation.
It’s not expected that Rutte will deviate much from the political line of his predecessor Stoltenberg. But he has proven extremely obedient to the United States and willing to flexibly adjust when holding on to his position requires so. Equally worrisome is that over the past years, Rutte has especially courted the far right. He visited Giorgia Meloni during his last political campaign in March 2023 and earlier proved surprisingly friendly with Donald Trump — earning him an international reputation as a Trump-whisperer while he domestically pleaded “to regard Trump as an opportunity.”
His deference to the far right translated into policy, too. Rutte is considered one of the architects of the agreements between the EU and Turkey (in 2016) and that of the EU and Tunisia (in 2023) to transfer refugees there. The reliance on these states to limit refugee movements to Europe resulted in numerous human rights violations — something that EU members were well aware would happen when signing the agreements. In this regard, Rutte’s leadership is particularly concerning, given NATO’s increased presence in the Mediterranean to monitor refugee flows from Turkey to Greece.
More generally, Rutte’s NATO leadership is neither in the interest of its member countries, nor that of a safe international order. Rutte’s reputation as a deceitful politician won’t exactly do wonders for NATO’s own reputation. But more importantly, in building an international peace order we should be wary of a leader that nihilistically directs all his efforts to catering to the most powerful interests, just to safeguard his own position. Still, we may draw hope from the fact that his political longevity in the Netherlands owed to a lack of fierce or persistent opposition. This might change now that he is leading on the global stage; at the very least, such opposition is badly needed.
*Jouke Huijzer is a PhD candidate in political science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and an associate editor of Jacobin Netherlands .
PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI (R) AND IRAN’S PRESIDENT LATE IBRAHIM RAISI AT THE BRICS SUMMIT, JOHANNESBURG, AUGUST 18, 2023
TEHRAN — There is enormous appreciation among Iranian intellectuals, diplomats and politicians regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stellar support for their country’s membership of the BRICS grouping. Modi played a key role to navigate Iran’s membership purposively at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg last August.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t be present at Johannesburg. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the summit in person, rubbishing the malicious rumours and canards to the contrary orchestrated by the western media. The Anglo-Saxon game plan was to somehow get Iran’s membership question deferred to an indefinite future.
The defining moment was a phone call from the Iranian President late Ibrahim Raisi to Modi in the week before the summit meeting. However, the ground for the last-minute flurry of diplomatic activity was prepared in the preceding weeks by the National Security Advisor Ajit Doval when he attended the meeting of BRICS national security advisors in Johannesburg in late July, just weeks prior to the summit to review security and economic cooperation.
Doval held separate “working meetings” with his Russian and Iranian counterparts — Nikolai Patrushev and Ali-Akbar Ahmadian respectively. The NSAs discussed Iran’s BRICS membership issue as a core vector of the Johannesburg summit.
Ahmadian and Doval’s talking points covered the whole spectrum of Iran-India relations and an ambitious agenda to deepen the ties across the board in fields ranging from transportation, energy and banking to counter-terrorism.
The two NSAs agreed that the Chabahar Port project, which is the anchor sheet of Modi’s hugely ambitious vision for India’s regional policies, stands to gain from Iran’s BRICS membership, even as the Moscow-led International North-South Transportation Corridor is steadily coming into operation.
Tehran visualises that in the downstream of Chabahar Port, Indian trade and industry can and should enter the hinterland in a big way via trade, investments and project exports. The Iranian side feels that Chabahar has the potential to elevate India’s partnership with Iran to an altogether higher strategic level.
Significantly, the makeover in India-Iran ties also dovetails into a paradigm shift under way in the two countries’ respective relations with Russia. Iran and Russia signed a memorandum this week in Tehran to turn Iran into “a regional gas hub.” Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller personally attended the signing ceremony, testifying to the highest importance the Kremlin attaches to the futuristic project.
The Russian intention is to enter the Iranian market in the northern Caspian region through Soviet era pipelines from the Caucasus and Central Asia and to participate in the development of the Iranian gas industry, the construction of gas pipelines, LNG projects and mining projects. Gazprom is interested in organising swap supplies to third countries and a number of LNG projects in the south of Iran are being considered, according to a report in Kommersant newspaper, for tapping the South Asian market.
Now, the big picture is not complete without factoring in that Moscow and Tehran are also in the cusp of a historic transformative breakthrough in their relationship with the Russia-Iran comprehensive cooperation treaty that has been under negotiation since 2022 ready for signature no sooner than the new government in Tehran settles down. Setting aside protocol, Putin had a telephone conversation on Wednesday with Iran’s Acting President Mohammad Mokhber — their second such conversation in the past fortnight. (here and here)
At any rate, Doval at his meeting with his Iranian counterpart at Johannesburg assured him that Iran’s accession to BRICSwould expand the grouping’s economic and political capacities. Doval was quoted as saying that New Delhi would use “every means and opportunity at its disposal to facilitate Iran’s accession” to the BRICS grouping.
The Indian readout of the phone conversation between Modi and Raisi just four days before the Johannesburg summit highlighted that “The two leaders reiterated their commitment to further strengthen bilateral cooperation including to realise the full potential of Chabahar Port as a connectivity hub. The two leaders also discussed cooperation at multilateral forums including expansion of BRICS and looked forward to their meeting on the margins of forthcoming BRICS summit in South Africa.”
How far these positive impulses will be carried forward at Modi’s one-on-one discussions with Putin during his forthcoming two-day visit to Moscow on July 8 remains to be seen. Russia and Iran together own more than 60 percent of global gas reserves, and the expectation in Tehran is that the two countries’ energy deal in the making will facilitate the formation of “an energy balance in the region” — as Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji put it. Without doubt, Russia and Iran can be the most reliable suppliers of natural gas for the Indian market over the next several decades and strengthen India’s energy security through this century.
A holistic picture will be incomplete without casting an eye on the upcoming BRICS Summit as well. After all, Russia and Iran are under US sanctions. The crux of the matter is that the BRICS Summit in October in Kazan under Putin’s chairmanship will be focused on the creation of a new payment system for the member countries. Different variants are under consideration — the use of stablecoins (cryptocurrency tokens pegged to assets like gold), a platform to link the central banks’ digital currency systems, and the integration of national systems for financial messaging.
At a media briefing in Moscow on Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said BRICS countries are “actively and evenly pursuing initiatives” in all the 3 above-mentioned areas. Ryabkov said the political momentum is “crucial here,” and added, “Perhaps there won’t be any decisions (at the Kazan summit) that completely revolutionise everything, and that may not be necessary in such a sensitive area where gradual progress is often best. However, there will be tangible outcomes and I’m pleased that all member states, including those who recently joined on January 1 share our common understanding and vision of the steps needed to move forward.”
Modi had built a good rapport with Raisi who was due to visit India later this year. The importance of picking up the threads with Raisi’s successor cannot but be stressed. Perhaps, an early visit by Doval to Tehran is timely.
By the way, Afghan situation is also causing concern to Iran and Russia as there are growing signs of a consolidation of Islamic State-Khorasan in the northern regions of Afghanistan with the active support of the CIA. In response, Moscow intends to remove the Taliban from its list of terrorist organisations and strengthen cooperation in counter-terrorism with the authorities in Kabul.
Guess they’ll have to release all those former US presidents who’ve been imprisoned for their war crimes and crimes against humanity now. Thanks a lot, Supreme Court.
Everyone’s acting shocked and outraged at the Supreme Court ruling that Donald Trump and other former presidents are largely immune from criminal prosecution, as though presidents getting prosecuted for their crimes is something that’s been happening this entire time.
It’s like oh wow you’re saying powerful people won’t have to abide by the same rules as normal people in America anymore?
Guess they’ll have to release all those former US presidents who’ve been imprisoned for their war crimes and crimes against humanity now. Thanks a lot, Supreme Court.
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Those obvious dementia symptoms are not dementia symptoms.
That obvious genocide is not genocide.
Those obvious war crimes are not war crimes.
Those obvious NATO provocations are not provocations.
This obvious dystopia is not a dystopia.
This obvious propaganda is not propaganda.
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It’s hilarious how the liberal commentariat is freaking out not because their president is a dementia patient but because they’re not sure if a dementia patient can win an election.
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I’m still getting liberals doing the “ARE YOU A DOCTOR??” thing when I make the observation that Biden plainly has dementia. No I’m not a doctor, I’m just not blind. That thing we’re all seeing when we look at Joe Biden, that’s what normal people mean when they use the word dementia.
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Person who lives in the hub of the US empire while it murders, starves and abuses people all around the world: “If Donald Trump wins, America might become a tyrannical force for evil!”
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Zionists in the 19th and 20th century: Yeeehaw! We’re gonna colonize Palestine just like the colonialists in Australia and the Americas!
Zionists today: It’s antisemitic to call Israel a colonialist project; it’s actually ANTI-colonialist because Jews are indigenous to Israel.
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Palestinian mother: [watches her entire family killed by US-supplied bombs and starved by a US-backed blockade]
Western liberals: Ma’am what you fail to understand is that what you are seeing is actually a lot more complicated than it looks. Stop crying, do you want Trump to win?
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Israel is a material manifestation of an argument the west has been having with itself for generations, between its older genocidal settler-colonialist values and its purported values of modern times. Between the values of justice and egalitarianism we’re taught to value in school, and the fact that the west is still a savage and murderous civilization that hasn’t transcended its barbarity in the way it thinks it has.
The reason Israel has remained in this half-in, half-out state of ethnic cleansing with regard to the Palestinians is largely because the western backers upon whom Israel’s existence depends won’t fully get behind a 19th century-style extermination program to purge the land of an inconvenient population. Because the west remains a psychopathic and bloodthirsty civilization it still supports mountains of Israeli depravity, but because of the values it claims to uphold it also lacks the public consensus to go all-in on a final solution to the Palestinian question.
So until now Israel has remained in a kind of stasis, with Palestinians existing in this odd half-purged condition and continuing to resist as any population would under such circumstances. And now we’re at the point where the west is basically being told, “Either shit or get off the pot.” Either commit to the full-blown elimination of the Palestinians via genocide or ethnic cleansing, or change course and actually start standing by the values you claim to stand by for the first time in your miserable existence. Either commit to the savagery of your genocidal past, or commit to a real civilizational transformation.
Gaza is asking us a very important question about ourselves. Our answer will set the course for the future of our entire world.
«After the country-wide paralysis of electricity and water supplies in Serbia, NATO threatened the Belgrade regime with further attacks on central energy plants.» 2/ pic.twitter.com/H0CyuwGXqs— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo)
On April 12, 1999 — the second day of Easter — around 11:40 a.m., NATO bombers fired rockets and burned international passenger train 393 on the route Belgrade – Nis – Skopje, full of passengers, in the Grdelica Gorge, while it was crossing the Bistrica Bridge. In the horrific crime, from the explosion and the fire it caused, at least 15 people died, including children, while dozens of people were seriously injured. The exact number of victims has never been established.
This is not the first time that an invalid has occupied the Oval Office. After apparently exhausting himself in behalf of the “War to Make the World Safe for Democracy” and orchestrating the “peace conference” at Versailles that guaranteed the carnage of WWII, Woodrow Wilson succumbed to a nearly fatal stroke in October 1919 while barnstorming the nation in behalf of the League of Nations Treaty.
As it happened, America was than blessed with a perfectly serviceable Vice-President, Thomas R. Marshall, who had been a famous Midwestern lawyer, governor of Indiana, outspoken “progressive” and contender for the Democrat nomination in 1912.
Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot but only after his advisers secretly promised Marshall the vice presidency in a very smoked-filled room in the wee hours of the Dem convention.Trump’s War on C…Stockman, DavidBest Price: $13.07Buy New $17.39(as of 05:37 UTC — Details)
Perhaps that is why Marshall’s most famous quote is known to almost everyone more than 100 years later. Thus, observed America’s #2 leader—
“What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”
Notwithstanding Marshall’s status as a second term almost-president, Edith Wilson was having none of a succession plan. And that’s despite the fact she did not have a degree in “education” nor did she answer to the “Dr. Edith” title.
But she had proven herself around Washington as no mean hostess when she slipped into the First Lady role during and/0r after (it’s disputed!) the illness and death of Wilson’s first wife in 1915. Either way, Edith Wilson was not about to disembark from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue solely because her husband was virtually paralyzed on the entire left side of his body.
Indeed, the extent of her intrigues and deceptions designed to hang on to power are now legendary. As medical historian, Howard Markel, has told,
Everything changed on the morning of Oct. 2, 1919. According to some accounts, the president awoke to find his left hand numb to sensation before falling into unconsciousness. In other versions, Wilson had his stroke on the way to the bathroom and fell to the floor with Edith dragging him back into bed. However those events transpired, immediately after the president’s collapse, Mrs. Wilson discretely phoned down to the White House chief usher, Ike Hoover and told him to “please get Dr. Grayson, the president is very sick.”
Grayson quickly arrived. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the presidential bedroom and the doctor’s diagnosis was terrible: “My God, the president is paralyzed,” Grayson declared.
What would surprise most Americans today is how the entire affair, including Wilson’s extended illness and long-term disability, was shrouded in secrecy. In recent years, the discovery of the presidential physicians’ clinical notes at the time of the illness confirm that the president’s stroke left him severely paralyzed on his left side and partially blind in his right eye, along with the emotional maelstroms that accompany any serious, life-threatening illness, but especially one that attacks the brain. Only a few weeks after his stroke, Wilson suffered a urinary tract infection that threatened to kill him. Fortunately, the president’s body was strong enough to fight that infection off but he also experienced another attack of influenza in January of 1920, which further damaged his health.
Protective of both her husband’s reputation and power, Edith shielded Woodrow from interlopers and embarked on a bedside government that essentially excluded Wilson’s staff, the Cabinet and the Congress. During a perfunctory meeting the president held with Sen. Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Neb.) and Albert Fall (R-N.M.) on Dec. 5, Grayson and Edith even tried to hide the extent of Wilson’s paralysis by keeping his left side covered with a blanket.
As it turned out, the immobilization of the presidency during the last 18 months of Wilson’s term was one of history’s great serendipity’s. Absent Wilson’s tireless promotion, the abominable League of Nations Treaty died aborning. America was thus given one more chance to return to its ways as a peaceful Republic untroubled by the petty intrigues of nations beyond the great Atlantic and Pacific Ocean moats.
Needless to say, that reprieve has long since been kicked away. America is now a dangerous Empire and its president is virtually the helmsman of the planet. So the fact that Jill Biden has apparently read and copied the entirety of professor Markel’s account of America’s first Spousal Regency is troubling indeed.
It was evident beyond a shadow of a doubt last Thursday night that a second Spousal Regency is now underway. “Joe Biden” would have received his gold watch from Washington’s grateful ruling apparatchiks long ago, save for the obvious fact that Jill Biden has said that absolutely “nyet means nyet”.
At this point, of course, it would be helpful if Jill did speak a bit of Russian because the minions helping her conduct this unauthorized, unlawful and constitutionally- repugnant Regency have gotten her marooned in what amounts to an helacious Moscow Winter. Alas, however, it appears that her second language lies elsewhere.
That is to say, Jill Jacobs Giacoppo’s tribal ferocity did not originate from the bucolic hills of Willow Grove Pennsylvania or the classrooms of Upper Moreland High School or even the instructors at Brandywine Junior College. Her father’s family had emigrated from the Sicilian village of Gesso, losing the “Giacoppo” part within days of passing Lady Liberty, but hanging on to the blood loyalty part even unto the present fraught hour.
That is to say, Edith Wilson Biden is a clear and present danger to the American Republic. She has spent the last 47 years marinating in the self-righteous hypocrisies, follies and evil-doings of the Washington ruling class—without ever once have been called to accountability by any kind of electorate at all.Rich Man Poor Bank: Wh…Quann, Mark JBest Price: $12.49Buy New $16.95(as of 03:07 UTC — Details)
Like Edith Wilson, she was apparently an able spouse and hostess—who taught classes at Northern Virginia Community College on the side and was pleased to call herself “doctor” owing to a quasi-honorary degree from the Biden family’s political sinecure at the University of Delaware.
And yet and yet. Jill Giacoppo is an utterly unqualified usurper, who has even less excuse for her blatant power grab than did Edith Wilson back in the day. At least in Edith’s time there was no 25th Amendment to regularize, organize and legitimize the transfer of power to the constitutionally prescribed role of Vice President.
To be specific, section 4 of the 25th Amendment addresses the precise case of a President unable to fulfill his constitutional role but who cannot or will not step aside.
In that event, it provides both a decision-maker and a procedure. The deciding group is the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet. If this group declares a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately becomes Acting President; and he remains so unless a two-thirds majority of both chamber reinstate the former president.
So why was “Joe Biden” still in the Oval Office last Thursday night making a spectacle of his very disabled self before a global audience of 51 million?
France was the last European nation to lose its sovereignty, and France might be the first to recover its sovereignty. In the 1960s France was still a nation of ethnic French as contrasted with the tower of babel and a geographical entity that it is today.
During the ten-year presidency of Charles De Gaulle (1959-69) France’s policy was one of national independence. DeGaulle refused to join NATO, and he opposed a supranational Europe in which nations would subordinate themselves to a European Union.THE ROAD AHEAD America…FLYNN, JOHN T.Best Price: $16.70(as of 03:47 UTC — Details)
French independence could be on the point of return judging from the success of Marine Le Pen’s party yesterday in the current French elections. Her nationalist party has in the first round of the parliamentary elections taken 34% of the votes with President Macron’s centrist coalition receiving only 21% support. If the second round produces similar results, a restoration of French independence is possible.
For many years European governments have worked consistently to overwhelm their ethnic populations with third world immigrant-invaders. It has reached the point where ethnic European women raped by immigrant-invaders fear to report the crime as it can result in a charge of racism or worse against the victim. For example, in response to a gang-rape of an ethnic German female, a 20-year old ethnic German female citizen called one of the gang rapists a “disgraceful rapist pig.” The German citizen was sentenced to jail for defaming an immigrant-invader, a protected species under German law, while the rapist was given a suspended sentence and served no jail time.
For many years the European working class has experienced their living standards reduced in the name of economy. Not long ago the French were protesting the rise in the retirement age, which forces them to work longer for their pension. The French have noticed that economy measures only apply to their living standards and not to the vast sums that Macron pours into the West’s war against Russia in Ukraine. Now all of Europe hears continually that they must prepare, and cough up money for, war with Russia.
The French don’t want war with Russia. Nor do the Germans, or the Italians. Only “their” governments do, and war is what Washington’s puppets have put on the agenda.
Europeans don’t want the high energy cost and lost profit and employment opportunities imposed on them by Washington’s “Russian sanctions.” It seems to Europeans that the purpose of Washington’s sanctions is to make Europe more dependent on Washington, essentially reducing them to serfs.The Death of the West:…Patrick J. BuchananBest Price: $2.12Buy New $12.46(as of 06:40 UTC — Details)
Finally, after suffering decades of abuse, insult, and total disregard by their leaders, Europeans protested in the recent European Union parliamentary elections. The ruling parties were repudiated across the board. The Belgian prime minister had to resign. The French president had to call national elections. I wrote that if the repudiation carries over into the national elections, we could see the unravelling of NATO, the European Union, and a return of sovereign European nations.
World War II gave control of Europe to the US instead of to Germany. The Soviet collapse gave Washington control over the Warsaw Pact, placing NATO on Russia’s border. Washington’s policy was to de-Germanize Germany and to destroy a national awareness. Washington controlled German education and indoctrinated Germans that nationalism was racist, produced Hitler and the Holocaust. Legislation was passed essentially criminalizing a positive attitude toward German nationalism. It meant that you were a Nazi. It still does. It is unclear if a German state can ever be resurrected.
Rid of the Germans, Washington turned its efforts on France. De Gaulle’s departure weakened France. It took time, but eventually Washington controlled who the French president would be. With France, Germany, and the British in Washington’s pocket, the rest of Europe went along.
Today European nations that shared the rule of the world are puppets of a criminal regime in Washington. The notion that there is any military power in these puppet states is laughable.
The self-confidence that made the British the ruler of the world has long departed. It was destroyed at Oxford and Cambridge. No Western country has a positive opinion of itself. All are being keyed for war with Russia, China, Iran, while they themselves are being overrun by immigrant-invaders who are paid tribute for their support and permitted to rape European women as a form of restitution.
The Kremlin does not understand the hollowed out, empty, West where there is no support for any government. Western peoples are brainwashed into impotence and cannot even protect their constitutional rights. Why would anyone fight for these governments, and if forced, with what spirit?
Putin sits there in his legalistic way accepting insult after insult, provocation after provocation, as his way of avoiding war with the West. It is not only Western provocations that are widening the Ukraine conflict into World War III. Putin has permitted the conflict to go on and on and on, and this has enabled Washington to get more and more and more involved, thus widening the conflict.
If Putin does not immediately use sufficient force to terminate the conflict, World War Three seems certain.
There is hope that if Le Pen wins France and does not sell out to Washington, the unravelling of NATO and resurrection of European independence will begin. But this can be a slow process, while the developments in Ukraine toward wider war are accelerating. The time is rapidly ending during which Putin can use sufficient force to end the conflict before it results in World War Three.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Visit his website.
Der Friedensstifter 
