Europe is getting sick and tired (and hungry) of towing Biden’s anti-Russia hardline
The German AfD and the BSW (Sarah Wagenknecht Union), both are firmly against the EU’s anti-Russia policies. There is also strong resistance in France.
As I read the original of the text below, I couldn’t help but think of the German AfD and the BSW (Sarah Wagenknecht Union), both of which are firmly against the EU’s anti-Russia policies. There is also strong resistance to the EU's Russophobic policies in France.
They’re tired of being impoverished by US politics.
Germany is being de-industrialized by Biden’s destruction of Nord Stream and the rest of Europe is not eating well these days due to trade disruptions with Russia.
They’re also tired of seeing their hard-earned tax money being thrown into the Ukrainian black hole.
The resistance to Russophobia increases year after year.
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
The EU is on the verge of a split: a rebellion is growing against Brussels' Russophobic line
The EU is on the verge of splitting. A revolt against Brussels' Russophobic line is growing. Hungary is no longer alone in its position, noted Yuri Kot.
The EU policy towards Russia, Ukraine, and Russophobic sanctions is creating more and more misunderstandings within the union, noted political scientist Yuri Kot on the air of the program “Tsargrad The Main Thing”.
Many countries are extremely reluctant to join Kyiv’s financing. But it is still not possible to create a general centralized supply of money and weapons to Ukraine. Everything is still largely decided by bilateral contacts.
But do you remember how it all began? Like in the song... That is, Hungary was the first to be outraged by this EU course. It was alone in this for a long time, but at the same time it showed that it is actually possible to resist the general line of Brussels, you can work with Russia and at the same time feel good about yourself and even be a definite beneficiary in such a position, the expert pointed out.
Moreover, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban even met personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the European Union was unable to do anything about it.
As a result, Slovakia has now joined Budapest, which also took a rather tough position against the Russophobic policies of Brussels and began to block aid packages for Kyiv and new initiatives related to sanctions against Moscow.
Because everyone will trade with Russia anyway. They won't escape us. They can wander around, blow bubbles out their noses, but sooner or later they will come up with a scheme to buy our gas, oil or our firewood - whatever. Europe will not be able to cope without Russian energy resources. Particularly if it is trying to build at least some of its future as an industrial center, Tsargrad’s source believes.
Of course, individual EU countries and Ukraine have their own internal bilateral agreements, and funding continues, but these agreements are very fragile and do not fulfill the main task.
And the key goal is to drag everyone into this crucible of war against Russia. Draw in all of Europe through Ukraine, but not only the EU, because there are also other states that the United States is trying to control. Washington wants all its satellites to be an accomplice to their crime. Then they will be able to maintain this situation for as long as possible and avoid personal responsibility, Yuri Kot concluded.
**
Here’s your air strike update for Jan 24, 2024
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
Missile strikes on Ukraine. New tactics of the aerospace force against NATO strikes
The effectiveness of the aerospace strikes can be judged by the latest massive strike. It was a combination. Not only because, in addition to missiles, Geran-2 [Russian drone] was flying. The missiles themselves were different - guided missiles (Kh-31P and Kh-59), cruise (cruise missile and Kh22, Kh32) and ballistic (Iskander-M, hypersonic Kinzhals). They were also divided into combat and decoys (cruise missile Kh-101, also long-range), air- and sea-based.
[The Kh-31 has a flight speed of Mach 3.5 but some reports put it at 4. This speed makes it very hard to intercept, esp since it is anti-radiation; the Kh-59 is very slow at only 370-620 mph. I suspect it may used as a decoy; the Kh-32 has a flight speed of Mach 4.1 and is almost impossible to intercept. The Kh-22 has a flight speed of 4.1 Mach, nearly impossible to intercept. The Kh-101 is also slow at Mach 0.58-0.78 but evades interception by traveling at low altitude beneath IR and radar.]
The strike was highly accurate - the Kinzhals (Daggers) hit exactly where they were aimed. The blow was irresistible. Kinzhals are currently impervious to Western air defenses. Of the ballistic missiles (6 Kinzhals and 6 Iskanders) and Kh-31P, not a single one was shot down. One aircraft missile (out of 7) and 7 cruise mssiles (out of 18) were shot down.
[Occasionally the lying Ukronazis claim they have shot down Kinzhals, but no one believes this. In fact, the head of the Ukrainian air force admitted they can’t shoot down Kinzhals. On one occasion, they claimed to have shot down a high number of them, but the Russian MoD later stated that this number exceeded the number fired]
In practice, it looked like this: the Kh-101 long-range cruise missiles were the first to be launched. They flew across all of Ukraine, periodically changing course, so that the trajectory of their movement was a broken curved line starting in the southeast, passing to the northern regions of Ukraine, turning towards the center and then bypassing the western regions. Along the route of travel, all air defense systems that responded to their passage were detected. [They would have responded by firing intercept missiles]
Next, the targets were destroyed: aircraft missiles (Kh-31) flew to the radar, and Kinzhals were loaded onto the launchers. Judging by the Ministry of Defense report, the remaining targets were military-industrial complex enterprises producing shells, gunpowder, and drones. Other missiles and Gerans flew towards them.
In Kyiv, essentially the last factories producing drones, artillery shells [were targeted].
And there are also Kh-32 high-speed cruise missiles with modern defense systems. This is an anti-ship missile, like the X-22, successfully used against ground targets. According to the Welt TV channel (Germany), they are delighted with this rocket. The most modern air defenses have not yet been able to shoot down any of them. So, in addition to our ballistic missiles, the Westerners have no antidote against such a cruise missile as the Kh-32.
After the aerospace strike in January 2024, the West called the Ukrainian air defense system LEAKY.
In 2024 Western and Ukrainian experts drew attention to the fact that the air defense systems transferred by the West do not detect the approach of Russian missiles and attack drones almost until the last moment. The tactics of using A-50U aircraft are called the “flying mushroom” tactics - due to the shape of the huge radar installed on the aircraft body and similar to a mushroom cap [AWACS]. It turned out that these aircraft can not only perform reconnaissance flights, but also control missiles and drones.
To achieve invisibility, active navigation equipment on missiles is removed or disabled. Passive signals are received by the missiles from A-50U aircraft, which can see far and can send guidance signals at the very last moment.
Kh-31PM missile – Gonchaya (Hound), aka Ten’ (Shadow):
This is the most modern version of the Kh-31 missile, which entered the arsenal in the late 80s. At the same time, the range has increased from 170 to 300 km. Approaches the target without emitting a single signal. That's why its second name is "Shadow".
**
Our thanks to JS for this:
RE:
Some people might assume that NATO and the US armed forces started out with the mission of defending their respective territories and then experienced mission drift and began focusing on tightening their grip on hegemony, or world domination.
Actually, though, if we look back at the statements of the founders of these organizations, we are surprised to find that hegemony was always their focus.
SEE:
The Reckoning That Wasn’t
Why America Remains Trapped by False Dreams of Hegemony
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2023
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/andrew-bacevich-the-reckoning-that-wasnt-america-hegemony
EXCERPT:
The most authoritative expression of the postwar worldview—the Rosetta stone of American statecraft in the Cold War—is NSC-68, a highly classified document drafted in 1950 by the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, led at the time by Paul Nitze. Testifying to “the marvelous diversity, the deep tolerance, the lawfulness of the free society,” this ideologically charged document established the parameters of U.S. policy throughout the Cold War. Juxtaposed against that free society was “the slave society” of the Soviet Union, which demanded “total power over all men within the Soviet state without a single exception” along with “total power over all Communist Parties and all states under Soviet domination.”
With compelling clarity, NSC-68 made a case for American hegemony. It drew bright lines and erased ambiguities. “In a shrinking world,” the document asserted, “the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable.” This fact imposed on the United States “the responsibility of world leadership” along with an obligation “to bring about order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy.” Merely containing the Soviet threat would not suffice. Nor would feeding the world’s hungry or succoring the afflicted. What the United States needed was the capacity and willingness to coerce. With that in mind, Washington committed itself to establishing a dominant military configured as a global police force. Statecraft became an adjunct of military might.
Undiminished by the passage of time, the Manichaean outlook woven into NSC-68 persists today, decades after the Cold War that inspired it. Biden’s frequent insistence that the fate of humankind hinges on the outcome of a cosmic struggle between democracy and autocracy updates Nitze’s central theme. The necessity of U.S. military supremacy—whether measured by Pentagon spending, the number of bases abroad, or a propensity to use force—has become an article of faith. As the world continues to “shrink” thanks to globalization and technological progress (and also to expand into space and cyberspace), the reach of U.S. military forces grows accordingly, a process that stirs little controversy.
But if the aim of U.S. hegemony has been to establish global order and justice through the prudent use of hard power, the results have been mixed at best. Since 1950, people in the English-speaking world and those living in some proximity to Paris and Tokyo have fared relatively well. By comparison, the benefits accruing to the billions living in the global South have been spotty; only occasionally has the opportunity to live longer and healthier lives translated into personal freedom and security. Government respect for individual rights and adherence to the rule of law remains more hope than reality.
Things could have been worse, of course. Imagine, for example, if during the Cold War, the United States had used any of the thousands of nuclear weapons it had acquired at enormous cost. Yet what actually did occur was bad enough. To reflect on the conduct and the consequences of American wars (and sundry covert interventions) since 1950 is to confront an appalling record of recklessness, malfeasance, and waste.
**
US is a co-belligerent in the genocide in Gaza
**
Our thanks to CM
No, propaganda can be truthful. To use it as a synonym for "lying" is to misuse it. Nor is there a government on Earth that doesn't use it.
Just FYI.
…
I replied with one word:
Example?
My problem with this view is that if we accept that propaganda can be truthful, then we can keep up the WESTERN propaganda that Russia is using propaganda against us.
Any excuse to badmouth Russia will do if you’re a Russophobe Neocon. No thanks.
This is precisely why I do not accept top-down (prescriptive) definitions of words. They only give unmerited power to the elites who try to control us.
**
MC again:
Campaigns to get people to wear their seatbelts, or not to smoke, are propaganda; Hamas' output is propaganda no less than the IDF's. Whether it's accurate is another matter. Russia certainly uses propaganda. Not to do so would be suicidal.
Read Edward Bernays' classic Propaganda (1928).
…
Me
Yes, I agree with what you say. The problem is, almost no one says “such and such is just American propaganda.” The average American doesn’t read Bernay, and that is our problem. We do not believe in nuance. Joe (or Josephine) Sixpack doesn’t believe there is such a thing as “American propaganda”. These benighted creatures think in black and white. America good, Russia bad.
Thus when the average American hears or reads the term “Russian propaganda,” he/she is not thinking that Russia may be telling the truth. In other words, the people, like it or not, assign their own meanings to words like propaganda. They DO think Russia lies while the US is the repository of Truth.
Again, let me repeat: words don’t have the meanings assigned to them by the textbooks or Wikipedia. Those meanings are the prescriptively defined ones. The ones that count are the ones assigned to them by us, the grassroots, ie, the descriptively defined meanings, and we are not deep thinkers.
In the western mindset, which I call West-think, we ONLY think of Russian propaganda as lies. If we were academics, we would think more deeply.
But if the grassroots were academics, we would be smart enough to realize that all US wars are based on lies. US lies.
Our world would be a paradise.
We’ve got a LONG way to go.
Our thanks to JS for this:
…
MC 3rd comment
Actually a lot of people—more and more—do recognize that the US spouts endless propaganda. You won't find that recognition among the true believers, but that community is inexorably shrinking.
…
Me
A massive problem that no one seems to acknowledge is that, while circumstances do gradually change our minds, matters that Americans see as related to religion are very much less affected by facts.
Christian Zionism is one such thing. Older Evangelicals are stuck in the past on this. They will continue mouthing the words “I stand with Israel,” firmly believing that this attitude pleases God. What they really mean is “I stand with the genocide.”
Nothing can change their minds. They are impervious to reason.
**
As I read the text below, I couldn’t help but think of the German AfD and the BSW (Sarah Wagenknecht Union), both of which are firmly against the EU’s anti-Russia policies. There is also strong resistance to the EU's Russophobic policies in France.
Translation with my notes in bold and in [brackets]
The EU is on the verge of a split: a rebellion is growing against Brussels' Russophobic line
The EU is on the verge of splitting. A revolt against Brussels' Russophobic line is growing. Hungary is no longer alone in its position, noted Yuri Kot.
The EU policy towards Russia, Ukraine, and Russophobic sanctions is creating more and more misunderstandings within the union, noted political scientist Yuri Kot on the air of the program “Tsargrad. The Main Thing”.
Many countries are extremely reluctant to join Kyiv’s financing. But it is still not possible to create a general centralized supply of money and weapons to Ukraine. Everything is still largely decided by bilateral contacts.
But do you remember how it all began? Like in the song... That is, Hungary was the first to be outraged by this EU course. It was alone in this for a long time, but at the same time it showed that it is actually possible to resist the general line of Brussels, you can work with Russia and at the same time feel good about yourself and even be a definite beneficiary in such a position, the expert pointed out.
Moreover, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban even met personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the European Union was unable to do anything about it.
As a result, Slovakia has now joined Budapest, which also took a rather tough position against the Russophobic policies of Brussels and began to block aid packages for Kyiv and new initiatives related to sanctions against Moscow.
Because everyone will trade with Russia anyway. They won't get away from us. They can wander around, blow bubbles out their noses, but sooner or later they will come up with a scheme to buy our gas, oil or our firewood - whatever. Europe will not be able to cope without Russian energy resources. Moreover, if it is trying to build at least some of its future as an industrial center, Constantinople’s source believes.
Of course, individual EU countries and Ukraine have their own internal bilateral agreements, and funding continues, but these agreements are very fragile and do not fulfill the main task.
And the key goal is to drag everyone into this crucible of war against Russia. Draw in all of Europe through Ukraine, but not only the EU, because there are also other states that the United States is trying to control. Washington wants all its satellites to be accomplices in their crime. Then they will be able to maintain this situation for as long as possible and avoid personal responsibility, Yuri Kot concluded.
**
RE:
Some people might assume that NATO and the US armed forces started out with the mission of defending their respective territories and then experienced mission drift and began focusing on tightening their grip on hegemony, or world domination.
Actually, though, if we look back at the statements of the founders of these organizations, we are surprised to find that hegemony was always their focus.
SEE:
The Reckoning That Wasn’t
Why America Remains Trapped by False Dreams of Hegemony
By Andrew J. Bacevich, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2023
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/andrew-bacevich-the-reckoning-that-wasnt-america-hegemony
EXCERPT:
The most authoritative expression of the postwar worldview—the Rosetta stone of American statecraft in the Cold War—is NSC-68, a highly classified document drafted in 1950 by the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, led at the time by Paul Nitze. Testifying to “the marvelous diversity, the deep tolerance, the lawfulness of the free society,” this ideologically charged document established the parameters of U.S. policy throughout the Cold War. Juxtaposed against that free society was “the slave society” of the Soviet Union, which demanded “total power over all men within the Soviet state without a single exception” along with “total power over all Communist Parties and all states under Soviet domination.”
With compelling clarity, NSC-68 made a case for American hegemony. It drew bright lines and erased ambiguities. “In a shrinking world,” the document asserted, “the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable.” This fact imposed on the United States “the responsibility of world leadership” along with an obligation “to bring about order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy.” Merely containing the Soviet threat would not suffice. Nor would feeding the world’s hungry or succoring the afflicted. What the United States needed was the capacity and willingness to coerce. With that in mind, Washington committed itself to establishing a dominant military configured as a global police force. Statecraft became an adjunct of military might.
Undiminished by the passage of time, the Manichaean outlook woven into NSC-68 persists today, decades after the Cold War that inspired it. Biden’s frequent insistence that the fate of humankind hinges on the outcome of a cosmic struggle between democracy and autocracy updates Nitze’s central theme. The necessity of U.S. military supremacy—whether measured by Pentagon spending, the number of bases abroad, or a propensity to use force—has become an article of faith. As the world continues to “shrink” thanks to globalization and technological progress (and also to expand into space and cyberspace), the reach of U.S. military forces grows accordingly, a process that stirs little controversy.
But if the aim of U.S. hegemony has been to establish global order and justice through the prudent use of hard power, the results have been mixed at best. Since 1950, people in the English-speaking world and those living in some proximity to Paris and Tokyo have fared relatively well. By comparison, the benefits accruing to the billions living in the global South have been spotty; only occasionally has the opportunity to live longer and healthier lives translated into personal freedom and security. Government respect for individual rights and adherence to the rule of law remains more hope than reality.
Things could have been worse, of course. Imagine, for example, if during the Cold War, the United States had used any of the thousands of nuclear weapons it had acquired at enormous cost. Yet what actually did occur was bad enough. To reflect on the conduct and the consequences of American wars (and sundry covert interventions) since 1950 is to confront an appalling record of recklessness, malfeasance, and waste.
**
Palestine must be remembered. It was their land, now occupied. Many Arabs still call it occupied Palestine, not “Israel.”
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**
If America had been allowed to know the truth, there would be no “Israel” today.
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**
Holocaust survivor: I know exactly what the Gazans are going through
https://www.instagram.com/palestinemuseum.us/reel/C2YFrSsx5fF/
**
I was really inspired by the latest piece by my fellow Substack colleague Ricky and would like to share it with you. If you are allergic to the F word, you can just cross it out and pencil in a word less offensive, like, say sh*t or even just omit it. But Ricky’s is the voice of reason. Yes, folks, the imbeciles who are calling for a world war with Russia are dangerous and should all be locked up for their own sake. And ours.
Here’s Ricky:
**
EIR News, Jan 23, 2024
EIR Daily News • Tuesday, January 23, 2024
War against the elites heating up.