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Countdown to the European Collapse

By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 4, 2025

Finally, energy cooperation between Russia and Europe is (almost) completely over. After nearly three years of sanctions and sabotage, the bilateral Moscow-EU energy partnership suffered its greatest historical blow. Kiev fulfilled its promise not to extend its contract with Gazprom, which was allowing the arrival of Russian gas to Europe, then creating an extremely uncomfortable energy insecurity situation for its own “partners” in the European Union.

On the morning of the first day of 2025, the Russian Federation stopped supplying gas to European buyers via Ukraine. Even amidst the conflict, the Russian Gazprom and Ukrainian Naftogaz had kept in operation an energy transit agreement signed in 2020, which expired on the last day of 2024. Previously, Kiev had already announced it was unwilling to renew the contract with Gazprom, although some European countries repeatedly asked Ukraine to do so.

Despite the sanctions imposed on Russia since 2022, some European countries continued benefiting from the import of Russian gas, particularly Slovakia and Hungary – nations that refused to participate in the Western-sponsored anti-Russian boycott – as well as Austria, a country historically neutral in Europe’s geopolitical and military disputes. Other nations, even adhering to the sanctions, continued hypocritically receiving Russian gas, such as Italy, Poland, Romania, and Moldova. There were also cases of gas resale, with receiving nations re-exporting the commodity to countries seeking to bypass the sanctions.

With the end of the Ukrainian route, all these states lost any guarantee of a safe energy source – precisely during winter, the time of year when gas consumption in Europe is at its highest. Obviously, there are currently energy reserves that may be enough to cope with the challenges of the current season, but the situation will progressively become more critical over time. European nations will have to find new sources of gas or expand the use of the only two remaining routes for Russian gas (via Turkey and the Black Sea). Recent indicators show a substantial rise in gas prices among Asian exporters. Ankara is also expected to take the opportunity to gain more profits from its pipeline.

There is currently hope among Europeans for a cheap gas supply through the long-awaited Qatari-Turkish pipeline project via Syria. With the fall of Bashar al Assad’s legitimate government, energy giants from Turkey and the Gulf have revived the proposal, although they are waiting for domestic pacification in Syria by the Al-Qaeda junta to begin the construction. Some optimistic analysts in Europe believe this would be the antidote to Europe’s dependency on Russian gas – or Asian and American, as in the current circumstances.

The main problem with this hope is believing in the goodwill of the Western hawks to “pacify Syria.” Without Assad, Damascus became a “failed state,” with territory divided between different factions in constant hostilities. It is unlikely this will change – simply because, despite the tactical operators of the Syrian crisis (Turkey and Qatar) wanting pacification, the strategic mentors (Israel and the USA) are not interested. Tel Aviv prefers a polarized and war-torn Syria, unable to do anything to prevent territorial progress in the Golan and beyond. Washington, which is subservient to Israeli interests through the international Zionist lobby, is interested in the same – along with, of course, fostering Kurdish terrorists to worsen the internal Syrian situation even further.

In other words, Western analysts still do not understand that the decision-makers of the unipolar axis simply do not want to solve Europe’s problems. It is not in the US’ interest that its “partners” in Europe regain cheap energy and a strong industrial base. For Washington, the collapse of Europe is not a tragedy but a strategic goal, whose roots lie in the science of geopolitics itself. According to the fundamentals of Western geopolitics, Russian-European integration would be disastrous for the US-UK Atlantic axis. Therefore, in the face of Russia’s imminent military victory and Moscow’s rehabilitation as a Eurasian geopolitical power, the Americans and the British have adopted a “scorched earth” strategy in Europe.

Sanctions, the terrorist attack on Nord Stream, and the closure of the Ukrainian route to Europe are events that are part of the same strategic context: in all these cases, Anglo-American strategists want to provoke an energy collapse in Europe to enable deindustrialization and the subsequent economic and social crisis. The final goal is a ruined Europe, not only unwilling but also incapable of establishing any future strategic ties with Moscow.

With the fall of the Ukrainian gas route, it can be said that the US won an important battle in its economic war against Europe. The total collapse is merely a matter of time.

Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

January 5, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Uncle Sam and Banderite bandits destroy Europe while Euro lackeys hail liberation

Strategic Culture Foundation | January 3, 2025

This new year began with a new era that presages Europe sliding irrevocably into economic darkness and abject suzerainty under U.S. dominance.

Uncle Sam has won a decades-long ambition to dominate Europe entirely, thanks to the help from a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine and the pathetic European politicians who hail the slavery of Europe as some liberation.

The people of Europe are facing a foreboding period of economic hardship. We can confidently say that because the most fundamental of economic inputs – fuel energy – is about to become more expensive and precariously supplied for the European Union.

Russia’s decades-long energy relations with Europe are now severed. It seems an astounding final act of reckless self-harm. The European Union’s economies have been floundering from an energy crisis caused by EU leaders willfully cutting off supplies of Russian gas. Now, with the last major transit route shut down, Europe is heading toward economic, social, and political self-destruction.

On Wednesday, New Year’s Day, the Ukrainian regime cut off the last supply route of Russian gas to the European Union. This regime, which glorifies Stepan Bandera and other Nazi-era fascists, is, in effect, holding the entire European Union hostage with its Russophobia and relentless corruption.

The arrogance and audacity are astonishing. The Ukrainian regime does not have an elected leader (Zelensky canceled elections last year), it is not a member of the EU, it has milked European taxpayers of hundreds of billions of Euros, and now has unilaterally shut down the last gas pipeline from Russia to the EU.

Ironically, the pipeline was called the Brotherhood Pipeline. It was conceived in the 1970s and began operating in the 1980s, carrying natural gas from Russia’s Western Siberia to the EU. Ukraine received generous transit fees for the overland route. The decades-long era of transcontinental cooperation was killed on December 31 by a Banderite regime that has the cheek to claim its actions are virtuous to “stop Russian blood money”.

Incredibly, too, various European leaders also hailed the Ukrainian action as a liberation from Russian energy dependence. Some Western media even tried to cast Moscow as the villain that instigated the cut-off. The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, for example, inverted reality with the headline: “Russia ends exports of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine”.

To his credit, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico seems to be the only sane leader among the EU’s 27 member states. He condemned what he called Ukraine’s “sabotage” of Europe’s energy supply and its economies. Fico warned that the European Union is facing a full-blown economic disaster as a result.

The Ukraine transit route supplied Slovakia, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic. Now, those countries will have to find alternative supplies from international markets. The Ukrainian route also supplied Moldova, which is facing an immediate energy crisis. Russia claims that the Moldavian government owes outstanding bills for past gas supply.

The Brotherhood Pipeline harks back to an era of friendship and cooperation even though it was conceived during the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. The 4,500-kilometer pipeline was partly financed by German capital.

Another ambitious Cold War-era supply route was the Yamal Pipeline, which ran over 4,100 km from Siberia to Poland and Germany. Its operation was halted in 2022 by Poland following the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine.

The more recently constructed Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that ran 1,200 km under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany were blown up in 2022. That covert act of sabotage was no doubt carried out by the United States under the orders of President Joe Biden, according to the respected investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

The upshot is that all major Russian natural gas supply lines to Europe have now been terminated. The only one remaining is Turk Stream which runs under the Black Sea to Turkey. But it mainly supplies Balkan countries that are not in the EU.

In the space of two years, Russia has gone from being the major supplier of EU gas imports (over 40 percent) to being a minor source. The big winner of the phenomenal market disruption is the United States, whose exports of liquefied natural gas to the EU have tripled. Another winner is Norway, which is not an EU member. Other sources of gas for Europe are Azerbaijan and Algeria.

However, the unprecedented extra costs to Europe for this enormous rearrangement in its energy trade are encumbering the EU economies, industries and households with crippling burdens. New pipelines have to be built, as well as new terminals to receive the shipped gas. U.S. exports cost 30 to 40 percent more than the Russian product.

The slump in the German economy from higher energy costs is directly caused by the cutting off of abundant and affordable Russian gas. And it is going to get even worse. The grim fate of Germany heralds the economic misery that the whole EU is sliding headlong into.

The history of Europe’s economic demise is as obvious as it is blatant.

Of course, it is all about the United States using and abusing its Western “allies” for its own interests. For Western imperialists, there is no such thing as allies, only interests. And the Americans are exacting that maxim to the hilt.

For decades, the U.S. has vehemently opposed the energy trade between the EU and Russia. Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s administration tried its best to block the development of the Brotherhood Pipeline with threats of economic sanctions. The Americans openly said they didn’t want to see Europe and the Soviet Union developing cooperative relations.

At least in earlier times, the European governments appeared to have more independence and backbone. Germany, France, Italy and others rebuffed Washington’s demands to shut down the gas projects.

The long-running strategic aim of the U.S. to displace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe has now been realized. It’s a sign of the desperate times and lawlessness that American military operatives attack European infrastructure.

The blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines and the proxy war in Ukraine have secured the strategic aim of the U.S. and its NATO proxy – keeping the Germans (Europeans) down, the Americans in, and the Russians out.

So much for the free-market capitalism and rules-based order that American and European elites preach. The practice is brute economic competition and dominance down the barrel of a gun. Millions of lives have been destroyed in this “great game” of American imperialist chicanery, and the proxy war in Ukraine is risking the escalation to a nuclear Third World War.

The Banderite regime – an echo of the Nazi past – has enabled the United States to enslave Europe to Washington’s imperialist desires.

Tragically, a coterie of elitist European political leaders are so obsessed with Russophobia and servility to their American overlord that they are crowing with delight at cutting off Russia.

Russia will not suffer. Its vast energy resources are finding alternative lucrative global markets. The victims are the European citizens who are being plunged into wretched economic hardship due to the machinations of American capital, its Banderite tools, and Euro fools.

January 4, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

German MP calls for NordStream to be reactivated

RT | January 3, 2025

Germany should respond to the rising energy prices caused by Ukraine’s halting of Russian gas transit by repairing and reactivating the Nord Stream pipelines, leftist German MP Sevim Dagdelen has said.

Ukraine refused to extend its transit contract with Russia’s Gazprom beyond the end of 2024, effectively cutting off the flow of natural gas to some EU countries as of Wednesday. Under the old contract, Ukraine moved gas through its own pipeline network and into Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, and then on to Austria and Italy.

Ukraine’s decision caused EU gas prices to spike to €50 per megawatt hour, a figure unseen since October 2023.

“Ukraine drives the energy price up further by stopping the transit of Russian gas in Europe,” Dagdelen wrote on X on Thursday, complaining that “the German government and the EU are happily watching the destruction of European industry due to high energy prices.”

Energy costs soared in Germany after the government renounced Russian oil and gas imports in 2022. Whereas the country once relied on Russia for around 55% of its natural gas supply, it has struggled to make up the shortfall, and its leading manufacturers – including Volkswagen, Bosch, and BASF – have all announced layoffs and plant closures.

Prior to the start of the Ukraine conflict, Germany received gas from Russia via the Nord Stream 1 pipelines, while Nord Stream 2 was due to come online in 2022. Berlin revoked the certification for Nord Stream 2 several days before Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began, and both sets of lines were destroyed in an act of sabotage in September of that year.

While German investigators have reportedly settled on the theory that the pipelines were destroyed by Ukrainian saboteurs, American journalist Seymour Hersh maintains that they were blown up by the CIA and US Navy. The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has blamed “professional saboteurs from the Anglo-American special services,” referring to the US and UK.

In her post, Dagdelen called for the pipelines to “finally be put into operation,” and for the German government to “stop giving money to Kiev!”

Dagdelen is a member of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a leftist political faction that supports rapprochement with Russia and shares the right-wing Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) anti-immigration stance. The party’s leader, Sahra Wagenknecht, recently blamed the Ukraine conflict on the failure of the US to acknowledge Russia’s “red lines.”

Back in September, Wagenknecht declared that “if Ukraine is responsible for the terrorist act against the German energy supply, the arms deliveries must end immediately and the question of compensation must be put on the table.”

Dagdelen is not the first German MP to demand that Nord Stream be reopened. In September, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla called the undersea pipes “a lifeline of German industry,” and declared that “Nord Stream must be repaired, opened, and secured.”

January 3, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Bernie Sanders confronts Musk on Indian immigrants

RT | January 3, 2025

US Senator Bernie Sanders has taken a swipe at Elon Musk over his defense of the H-1B immigration program, arguing that it only helps enrich billionaires who rely on cheap foreign labor while undermining ordinary Americans.

The H-1B visa program allows US companies to employ foreign workers in fields requiring advanced skills in fields such as technology, engineering, and medicine. It has been described as the only significant channel for foreign graduates to enter the US workforce, with the vast majority of approved petitions going to Indian nationals in recent years.

Both Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who US President-elect Donald Trump picked to lead his proposed ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ initiative (DOGE), have spoken out in support of the program. Musk, reportedly a former H-1B recipient, suggested that this type of visa “made America strong” by attracting foreign talent, while vowing to “go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

Musk’s critics say the H-1B program has been of great benefit to his own companies – Tesla and SpaceX – as well as other big US corporations.

Writing on X on Thursday, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, joined the critics.

“Elon Musk is wrong. The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make,” he wrote.

Sanders noted that from 2022 to 2023, the top 30 largest US companies using the program hired over 34,000 new employees under H-1B, while laying off at least 85,000 American workers.

“The H-1B program must be ended. Bottom line. It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker,” he said.

In 2016, Trump, who is known for his hardline stance on immigration, called the scheme “very unfair” to American workers and said it should be ended.

In late December, however, Trump appeared to have changed his mind and expressed support for the program.

“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he said. Asked about the apparent flip-flop, Trump denied that he ever changed his mind, the New York Times reported.

Some of Trump’s biggest supporters, however, are critical of H-1B. Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist under Trump, called the program a “scam” that benefits “Silicon Valley’s sociopathic overlords.”

“It’s disgusting to talk about ‘high-skilled foreign workers’ while bringing in slave labor,” he said.

January 3, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | | Leave a comment

H-1B Visas: A Lesson from Canada

By Laura Rosen Cohen | Brownstone Institute | January 2, 2025

President Trump has been very busy lately, driving leftist and Liberal Canadians utterly out of their minds by wickedly and hilariously trolling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while simultaneously threatening a massive 25% tariff on the Canadian auto industry. With a solitary few taps of fingers on his phone, Trump cornered Canada by brewing an artisan Trumpian “threat to start some conversation” online. It went something like this: “Nice auto industry you got there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it!”

This “conversation starter,” which could also be rightly characterized as an existential death blow to the Canadian auto industry, forced Prime Minister Trudeau to hastily jet down to Mar-a-Lago. There, he unceremoniously flopped in his mission to mitigate damages, which has since been followed by the pilgrimage of several other notable Trudeau lightweights to continue the conversation. Maybe Mr. Wonderful will have better luck. 

You could be forgiven if you thought the main lessons learned from this episode are that Canadians have a very fragile sense of humor, and that they bristle at being reminded how fully dependent the Canadian economy is on America. All of that is, of course, true. But if you thought that was the main event, you’d be wrong. The two main takeaways are that any industry that is being protected will, at some point, have an economic and policy moment of reckoning, along the lines of Herbert Stein: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. And the second lesson is that it will likely play out in part, in real time on X. The Trump-Trudeau show, however, is just a shiny bauble. The real policy landmine in America is immigration, both legal and illegal.

This brings us to the H-1B visa issue in America, which is currently being “debated,” right in front of our eyes on X. On the surface, it seems to be a relatively simple philosophical debate; are you in favor of bringing in foreign workers for the jobs that Americans allegedly cannot do? Or do you favor policies that incentivize hiring Americans? Battle lines are even being drawn among conservative thought leaders and MAGA-adjacent personalities like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and others.

The public divide seems to be about being in favour of skilled immigration, or being anti-immigrant. But this framing is a distraction. The real issue, of course, is how writer Lee Smith puts it, which is that “… H-1B matters because it’s an effect of the core issue — indeed the reason DJT is POTUS — a political and corporate establishment that has waged a half-century long campaign to destroy the American middle class.”

Bingo. And this is where it behooves the Trump administration to learn from the failed Canadian experience with our H-1B visa equivalent: the Temporary Resident Permit or TRP.

Officially, the TRP gives status to non-citizens or permanent residents (the last step before citizenship) to be legally in Canada for a temporary purpose. This can include international students, tourists, or foreign workers. (The TRP does not apply to visa-exempt countries.)

Unofficially, the TRP is a literal cash cow for Canadian universities, and a veritable backdoor to get into Canada via an increasingly shifty diploma mill industry which contains a possible human trafficking element. There are also endless social media accounts that shamelessly explain how to game the system and remain in Canada. Plenty of Canadian corporations have benefitted from the influx of cheap labour, so much so that the Trudeau government has been forced to eat its hat on the TPR program and put new limitations in place, and not just on the TPR program but immigration in general. But the “temporary” population of Canada is now close to 10% of the Canadian population, and Canada has no real plan to get TPR permit holders to go home or to dissuade them from seeking asylum.  Unsurprisingly, the temporary population simply doesn’t want to leave.

The final, glaring issue with both the H-1B and TRP is the undeniable fact that they are gateways to North America’s robust anchor baby (“birth tourism”) industry. In Canada, birth tourism, aided and abetted by almost nonexistent enforcement has added extra layers of stress to Canada’s already fiscally unsustainable socialized medical system.

“Temporary” programs in both Canada and America rarely benefit their existing populaces. More often than not, they habitually displace and punish the middle class. That’s a feature and not a bug. The H-1B acts in a similar fashion for skilled, white-collar workers. Moreover, as Milton Friedman famously said, “There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.” Here’s hoping the incoming Trump administration takes heed of Canada’s abject failure to rein in its permanent “temporary” population and reigns in the policies that more often than not, discriminate, decimate, and impoverish the native citizenry.

January 2, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , | Leave a comment

Salvini’s Lega slams ‘attack on democracy’ after Brussels permanently denies Hungary over €1 billion owed

By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | January 2, 2025

Italy’s co-governing Lega party has rallied behind Viktor Orbán’s administration in Budapest after the European Union announced it was denying over €1 billion in EU funds earmarked for Hungary due to what it described as “violations of the rule of law.”

The funds, originally allocated to support structurally weak regions, were withheld following the EU Commission’s conclusion that Hungary had failed to adhere to several EU standards and fundamental values.

Following infringement proceedings issued against Hungary back in 2022, a larger sum was initially frozen with Brussels demanding that Budapest undertake several reforms to appease the European Commission in order to unlock the funds.

However, the Commission said on Tuesday that the timeframe to provide satisfactory reforms expired at the end of 2024, and because the suspension had not been lifted, the funds are now lost.

“This loss is irrevocable, and Budapest has no right to appeal,” confirmed Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, a spokesperson for the European Commission.

Hungary’s Europe Minister János Bóka expressed outrage over the decision, asserting on Facebook that the Hungarian government had met all the necessary requirements.

“Brussels wants to withdraw the funds that Hungary and the Hungarian people are entitled to for political reasons,” he said.

Coming to the aid of Budapest, Italy’s right-wing Lega party, which rules in coalition with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) sharply criticized the action taken by Brussels.

“The cut in European funding for Hungary is a shameful attack on rights, freedom, solidarity, and democracy,” said Paolo Borchia, the Lega’s leader in the European Parliament.

Lega, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, called for protests through the “Patriots for Europe” group in the European Parliament of which both the Italian party and Hungary’s ruling Fidesz are members.

The party emphasized its solidarity with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and accused EU elites of targeting a democratically elected government that does not align with their political priorities.

The move represents the first time a member state has permanently lost funding owed to it by Brussels under the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation; this was introduced at the start of the decade and effectively gives the European Commission the power to withhold monies owed to countries Brussels rules are not complying with EU values.

January 2, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Asian LNG prices to rise because of Ukraine – Bloomberg

RT | January 2, 2025

The cessation of natural gas flows from Russia to European consumers following Kiev’s decision to stop transit via Ukrainian territory is expected to boost competition for alternatives between Europe and Asia, increasing prices for liquified natural gas (LNG), Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing an energy expert.

Russia officially suspended gas transit to the EU through Ukraine on January 1 after months of negotiations between Russian energy giant Gazprom and Ukrainian companies Naftogaz and the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine ended without an agreement to extend the contract.

“This is going to further tighten the LNG market,” Scott Darling, a managing director at Haitong International Securities, told Bloomberg. “Supply, particularly for LNG, is tight, and we see more upside risk to spot LNG prices this year and next.”

While the stoppage was expected after months of political wrangling, European consumers still have to replace around 5% of their gas and may rely more heavily on storage, the news outlet noted, adding that the gas repository had recently fallen below average levels for the current time of year.

In anticipation of the reduction of supply, prices for natural gas surged with Europe’s gas benchmark ending the year up more than 50%, Bloomberg reported, emphasizing that the growth hadn’t yet been reflected in the cost of the normally more-expensive LNG.

Ukraine’s transit network is connected to the pipeline systems of Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, and then extends to Austria and Italy.

Slovakia is seen as one of the countries hardest-hit by the latest halt, as the nation covers nearly 60% of its demand with Russian supplies running through Ukraine. Moldova could also be significantly impacted by the drastic move, as the former Soviet republic generates much of its electricity at a power station fueled by Russian gas.

Russia is still able to provide European consumers with gas supplies through the TurkStream pipeline, as well as to send shipments by the sea in the form of LNG.

TurkStream runs from Russia to Türkiye via the Black Sea, and then continues to the border with EU member state Greece. It has two lines, one for the Turkish domestic market and the other for central European customers including Hungary and Serbia.

January 2, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Bitter Pill of Decisive Strategic Defeat

By William Schryver – imetatronink – February 28, 2024

The last two years have produced what is, for most people around the world who ponder such things, one of the most unanticipated and yet astounding geopolitical turnarounds in modern history.

The heretofore reigning global hegemon designed to inflict upon Russia — its long-time nemesis — a decisive strategic defeat that would deliver the greatest spoil ever taken, and thereby consolidate its power base into the foreseeable future and beyond.

The empire imagined Russia to be at its civilizational nadir: weak, vulnerable, and finally ripe for the picking.

Notwithstanding the now proverbial failures of the empires that preceded it, the current masters of the Anglo-American empire, in tandem with its European vassal states and a willing proxy force in Ukraine, believed “things are different this time”. They convinced themselves that the power differential between the latest iteration of western empire and its putative Russian adversary was so pronounced as to assure victory over “the gas station masquerading as a country”.

Having previously fashioned for themselves a logically fallacious metric they named “Gross Domestic Product” in order to measure the relative strength of nations, they deluded themselves into believing their imaginary superior “wealth” would guarantee invincibility in all the realms of endeavor that, in aggregate, constitute real power.

If the current war has done nothing else, it ought to have once and for all disabused the shallow minds of the western intelligentsia that an economy based on the financialization of EVERYTHING is not stronger than an economy based on actual production of stuff.

A two-year-long high-intensity conflict has revealed in unmistakable terms that deindustrialized nations are utterly incapable of prosecuting modern industrial warfare.

Of course, the deindustrialization of the so-called “western democracies” took place over the course of several decades, leaving only the myth of “The Arsenal of Democracy” instead of its material substance. It produced immense profits for a steadily diminishing few even as it hollowed out a prosperous and socially stable middle class and inaugurated an oppressive neo-feudalism that is now well on its way to deconstructing all of western culture.

In entirely unforeseen ways, the increasingly evident failure of the empire’s ill-conceived plan to divide and conquer vast Russia has brought into stark relief the internal contradictions, ideological incoherence, and vast endemic corruption of a capitalist civilization gone irredeemably awry.

In its hubris-fueled determination to prove it could do what no western hegemon had been able to accomplish over the past five centuries, the rapidly eroding Anglo-American empire will now be compelled to swallow the bitter pill of decisive strategic defeat on the same eastern European steppes where its predecessors were served their own banquet of consequences.

And the Russians, as is their wont, will pass down new hymns of victory to their children’s children’s children, for generations to come.

January 2, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

2025 Looks Bleak For Germany… Energy The Most Expensive In Europe … Growing Speech Tyranny

2025 in Germany will be a year of more energy inflation and loss of free speech rights

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | January 1, 2025

Effective today, Germany’s CO2 surcharge will rise from 45 euros a tonne to 55 euros, which will further fan inflation and social discontent.

Already Germany’s electricity prices are among the highest in the world, and the most expensive in Europe:

Chart: strom-report.com/ 

Germany clamps down on dissenters, free speech

2025 will not be an easy year for dissenters and critics of the government, as this is increasingly being criminalized in Germany thanks to recently passed laws and acts that aim to suppress free speech in Germany.

The former head Germany’s Constitution Protection Authority (Bundesverfassungsschutz), Thomas Haldenwang (CDU Party), suggested last February when presenting measures to fight right-wing extremism, that human thoughts and speech patterns need to be under surveillance and become the business of the government: “It’s also about shifting verbal and mental boundaries. We have to be careful that thought and language patterns don’t become embedded in our language.”

Mocking the state now verboten

Haldenwang’s boss, Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD Party), wants to treat vocal conservative protesters in the same way as organized crime groups: “Those who mock the state must deal with a strong state.”

“We want to take account of the fact that hate on the internet also occurs below the threshold of criminal liability,”said Federal Minister for Family Affairs Lisa Paus (Greens) at her press conference on February 13 on the topic of ‘Hate on the Internet’.“Many enemies of democracy know exactly what falls under freedom of expression on social media platforms,”

Meant by “enemies of democracy” here are opposition forces, even when democratically elected.

Unwanted election results may be annulled

In response to comments in favor of the conservatives made by Elon Musk, German President Frank Walter Steinmeier hinted he would annul the results of the upcoming February 23 national elections if he doesn’t like the results.

So in Germany, it’s watch what you say and, if the old parties don’t like the election results, then they might just annul them. Germany is slipping back quickly to darker times.

January 1, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Polish FM slammed for celebrating gas cutoff

RT | January 1, 2025

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has celebrated Ukraine’s decision to halt the flow of Russian gas to the EU as a victory for the West, despite the cutoff leading to higher prices and shortages in some countries.

Russia stopped gas transit through Ukraine early on Wednesday morning, after Kiev refused to extend an agreement under which it collected transit fees to move the gas through its own pipeline network and into Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, and then on to Austria and Italy.

Sikorski took to X to celebrate. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin spent billions building Nordstream to circumvent Ukraine and blackmail Eastern Europe with the threat of cutting off gas supplies,” he wrote, referring to two pipelines that linked Russia with Germany until they were destroyed in an act of sabotage in 2022.

“Today Ukraine cut off his ability to export gas direct to the EU,” Sikorski continued, hailing the decision as “another victory after the enlargement of NATO by Finland and Sweden.”

Kiev’s decision caused EU gas prices to spike to €50 per megawatt hour, a figure unseen since October 2023. Slovakia, which relied heavily on Russian gas imports via Ukraine, will be severely affected, as will EU candidate state Moldova, which used Russian gas to generate much of its electricity.

Sikorski should be “locked up in a mental institution” for “celebrating cutting Europe off gas in the middle of winter,” wrote journalist Thomas Fazi responding to Sikorski’s post.

“Russia was clearly trying to blackmail Europe by supplying even more gas to them. Thankfully, Ukraine heroically ‘saved’ Europe by cutting off the gas,” another commenter wrote. “The absurdity of this logic is mind-blowing.”

“People like Sikorski who want to destroy European economies by cutting them off from global resources and markets should not be allowed to live in Europe,” another comment read. “Go to the USA where your loyalties lie.”

Sikorski was similarly ridiculed back in 2022, when he responded to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by posting – and then deleting – an image of the blast site along with the caption: “Thank you, USA.” While German investigators have reportedly settled on the theory that the pipelines were destroyed by Ukrainian saboteurs, American journalist Seymour Hersh maintains that they were blown up by the CIA and US Navy.

The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has blamed “professional saboteurs from the Anglo-American security services,” referring to the US and UK.

January 1, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Why China is winning the chips race: materials, markets, money, and Moore’s Law

Inside China Business | December 31, 2024

Huawei and SMIC are quickly catching up to global rivals in advanced semiconductor manufacturing, which is surprising to many industry analysts. Chinese tech firms enjoy access to China’s enormous supply chain advantages, such as in refined silicon, and in wafer manufacturing. Chinese companies are also the biggest buyers of semiconductor chips. China is simply too big a market for Western companies to lose, and so they are strongly motivated to go around the export bans, or even set up manufacturing and distribution plants in-country and be outside of US and European oversight. The Chinese central government, a host of local governments, and Chinese companies themselves have invested far over $100 billion in their semiconductor industry in recent years, which is much more than investments made by other countries. But another feature of today’s chip industry is that Moore’s Law is reaching the limits of what semiconductor companies can do. Massive investments in capital and time are required to build the next generation of ever-smaller chips. So companies have turned to “chip packaging” to achieve high productivity gains, using existing chips. Chip Packaging is an area where Chinese companies are already strong, and allows them to employ economies of scale. This plays directly into their industrial strengths. The timing of the semiconductor chips war, therefore, has been beneficial to China. It has allowed Chinese firms to catch up, and fast.

Resources and links:

Substack, for video transcript and direct links https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/why…

Nikkei, The great nanometer chip race https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The…

Nikkei Exclusive: Inside Huawei’s mission to boost China’s tech prowess https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech…

Bloomberg, China Creates $47.5 Billion Chip Fund to Back Nation’s Firms https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…

South China Morning Post, Tech war: Beijing sets up US$1.2 billion semiconductor fund as China splurges on chips https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/ar…

SCMP, Tech war: Shanghai injects US$1 billion into chip fund as China strives for self-reliance https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/ar…

The Diplomat, China’s Big Fund 3.0: Xi’s Boldest Gamble Yet for Chip Supremacy https://thediplomat.com/2024/06/china… Substack, The Semiconductor Trade War https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-semico…

China remains crucial for U.S. chipmakers amid rising tensions between the world’s top two economies https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/12/china…

Semiconductor supply chain: Political and physical challenges in 2024 and beyond https://www.spglobal.com/market-intel…

Bloomberg, US Asks South Korea to Toughen Export Curbs on China Chips https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…

Wafer Pro, China’s Dominance in the Global Silicon Supply https://waferpro.com/chinas-dominance…

Inside China Business, Chinese companies are going around US semiconductor export bans. So are American companies.    • Chinese companies are going around US…  

December 31, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Video | , , | Leave a comment