Europe has fallen! - Colonel Jacques Baud & Nathalie Yamb Sanctioned: EU Goes Soviet | Glenn Diesen (Video - 50mn)

   The European institutions are deeply broken but why would they change when they answer to no-one? 

  Now people are being punished without due legal process as explained below. This is one of the basic characteristics of dictatorial regimes.   

   As we discussed at length before. it will necessarily get worse before it gets better. The problem is that soon almost everyone will be the enemy. Russia for obvious reason will be the bogey man. China will become what Japan was in the 1970s, the commercial invader and destroyer of European industry. India, too close to Russia for comfort. Africa too close to China and America worst of all for stabbing Europe in the back.

   No middle ground will be possible, as George W Bush said during the Gulf War, "You are either with us or against us!"  Well guess what, the world will end up being against Europe. How could we know? In PPP, in 1990 Europe represented 27% of the world GNP. Today in 2025, only 9%! The world can live without Europe, but can Europe live without the world? Maybe, if you follow the Juche road of North Korea, but it is definitively not a golden brick road towards a gilded city on the hill. That's for sure! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-feCMFSpRw 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgTMbRrchsM

 

Europe Establishes Hague-Based Reparations Commission For Ukraine

Top European officials met on Tuesday in The Hague in order to establish an international commission to oversee eventual reparations to compensate Ukraine for Russia's military invasion. President Volodymyr Zelensky and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas were present for the high level talks in The Netherlands.

The International Claims Commission for Ukraine will assess and decide on claims for reparations, and will determine and discharge any amount to be paid out. This is likely to see hundreds of billions of dollars eventually flow to Ukraine for the sake of rebuilding and keeping the civic services sector afloat after nearly four years of war.

via European Union

The treaty to establish the commission has been signed by 35 countries at Tuesday's conference. It also has the involvement of Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, which is a 46-nation group protecting human rights on the continent. The new commission is going to be based in The Hague.

Zelensky welcomed the newly established mechanism, declaring that Russia "paying for its crimes" was "exactly where the real path to peace begins." He added: "This war and Russia’s responsibility for it must become a clear example so that others learn not to choose aggression," and followed with, "We must make Russia accept that there are rules in the world."

Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel agreed, explaining that "Without accountability, a conflict cannot be fully resolved. And part of that accountability is also paying damages that have been done."

All this comes as EU leadership is trying to push through a scheme not just to permanently freeze Russian assets held chiefly in Belgium, but to use the funds for Ukraine's long-term defense and reconstruction.

But Russia’s Central Bank has this week filed a lawsuit seeking 18.2 trillion rubles ($229 billion) in damages from Belgium-based Euroclear, which is meant as a loud shot across Brussels' bow.

The EU's Kallas has lately admitted that the issue of using Russian frozen assets had become "increasingly difficult" ahead of a summit of European leaders which is set for Thursday. The EU is seeking to bypass obvious objectors such as Hungary, and is seeking legal loopholes which would allow a plan to pass based on simple majority vote among EU members.

The World Bank has estimated the cost of reconstruction due to the war, only figuring in numbers up to December 2024, at $524 billion.

Euroclear: The Line Europe Can't Cross Without Breaking Global Trust

by Thomas Kolbe

Euroclear and the Looming Breach of Trust

The alliance financing the war in Ukraine is facing a new problem. Seven members of the European Union want to block the expropriation of the Russian central bank assets held at Euroclear. This puts the continuation of war financing at risk. At the same time, the specter of a financial crisis looms—one that would once again leave taxpayers footing the bill.

The negotiation marathon between representatives of Ukraine, the EU and the United Kingdom, with a US delegation acting as mediator, continues in Berlin. As usual, it is accompanied by familiar phrases about “progress” on the road to peace and assurances that roughly 90 percent of the target has already been reached.

How much weight this interim result actually deserves will become clear in the coming days. Expect a frantic ramp-up of the propaganda machine, drones over airports (and over Wolfram Weimer’s residence), and growing pressure on US President Donald Trump. The militarily precarious situation of Ukraine’s armed forces is now colliding with an almost equally dramatic financial situation among Kyiv’s creditors.

Everything points to mounting pressure to cut the Gordian knot—sooner rather than later—as war costs on both sides threaten to spiral out of control.

This brings the latest developments in the debate over the expropriation of the Russian central bank and its assets parked at Euroclear back into sharp focus.

A Critical Demarcation Line

Euroclear could turn into a personal Waterloo for EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. She is working at full throttle to convert the current crisis into a massive expansion of power for Brussels—and thus for her Commission.

Hungary, Slovakia and Belgium—already outspoken critics of expropriating Russian assets—are now joined by Italy, Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus. Resistance to Brussels’ escalation push is growing by the day.

Notably, this resistance coincides with a clear shift in timing. Since the United States effectively withdrew from financing Ukraine, Europe’s financial reality has come into view without cosmetic filters. Without access to roughly €210 billion in Russian assets—about €25 billion of which are spread across various EU states—continued financing of this war of attrition appears barely feasible.

All major creditors—Germany, France and the United Kingdom—have long overstretched their budgets and are running new debt levels between four and six percent. The Ukraine project is on the brink of fiscal collapse.

The Illusion of Expropriation as a Lifeline

What is being attempted is as simple as it is dangerous. These assets—partly government bonds, partly matured bond holdings in foreign currencies—are to be used as collateral for further loans. Europe is already trapped in a debt spiral and is tapping every remaining source of funding. Even the enemy is no longer off-limits for the London-Brussels tandem.

Observers with a sensitivity for political phraseology and grandiosity understood as early as April 2022 what was unfolding: in a state of euphoric overconfidence, decision-makers catastrophically miscalculated and constructed a scenario in which a defeated Russia would be forced to pay for the entire war. This would have allowed Europe to neatly extract its own banks—deeply entangled in Ukraine’s financing—from the equation.

History offers a familiar pattern: bankers and politicians working hand in hand, this time in Kyiv. Many were already anticipating the day of Putin’s submission, followed by regime change in Moscow and the launch of large-scale extraction of Russia’s immense raw-material wealth. Europe’s banking system would have been recapitalized to the rooftops, and the energy problem solved once and for all.

That calculation has clearly failed. Instead, the taxpayer will bear the losses.

Ukraine as a Systemic Risk

Without credit guarantees, Ukraine would already be insolvent. A disorderly collapse of the state would hit the European banking system like a nuclear detonation. There is no realistic way around the public sector eventually absorbing these massive loan liabilities.

This inevitably brings the debate over expanding Eurobonds—formally prohibited under EU law—back to center stage, potentially reintroduced outright as European war bonds.

With the “NextGenerationEU” program, this supposedly forbidden practice has already become de facto reality. Brussels has raised €800 billion on capital markets through this mechanism. These funds fuel the EU’s bloated subsidy machine and are now structurally embedded in its power architecture, always backstopped by the ECB.

Brussels is already acting as a sovereign bond issuer in its own right, further increasing member states’ liability exposure and debt levels. Europe has maneuvered itself into both a geopolitical and financial dead end—an outcome that has been foreseeable for years.

Euroclear and the Looming Breach of Trust

The chronic reality denial and embedded incompetence of EU and UK political leadership defy rational explanation. All the more notable is the emerging resistance around Euroclear—even as Brussels searches for ways to force the decision through by simple majority if necessary.

There is reason for cautious optimism that countries like Italy understand what expropriating Russian central bank assets at Euroclear would mean for the eurozone’s financial stability. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s initiative to discreetly safeguard Italy’s central-bank gold against potential ECB access underscores that Rome knows exactly what is at stake. Italy would be well positioned for a potential reboot of a sovereign currency.

The damage caused by expropriating Russian assets would be maximal: a financial super-GAU, a total loss of credibility and of the merchant-law principles indispensable to banking and international transactions. The entire global financial system—transaction settlement and custodial asset holding—rests on trust: on the absolute stability of its core pillars.

Institutions like Euroclear are among those pillars. They do not merely safeguard international transaction flows—they make them possible in the first place. Once this foundation is damaged, far more than a political signal is at risk. The stability of the entire system is on the line.

Privacy For The Powerful, Surveillance For The Rest: EU's Proposed Tech Regulation Goes Too Far

  "Tis for tee and not for me!" is the best possible subtitle for European legislation. From their impregnable (by mere elections) castle in Brussels, the Euro elites legiferate for the pleb, laws which of course do not apply to themselves. 

  How comfortable! Power without justification. Spend money freely and let "local" governments deal with the angry crowds. If such government did not exist, bureaucrats would be busy inventing it. Fortunately in Europe, they have. Now they only need to solidify the structure and give it more power over time which is exactly what they are currently doing.

 

  Will the Europeans wake up and realize the scale of the monster they are nurturing before it's too late?   

by Elen Irazabal Arana and Nikolai G. Wenzel via TheDailyEconomy.org,

Last month, we lamented California’s Frontier AI Act of 2025. The Act favors compliance over risk management, while shielding bureaucrats and lawmakers from responsibility. Mostly, it imposes top-down regulatory norms, instead of letting civil society and industry experts experiment and develop ethical standards from the bottom up.

Perhaps we could dismiss the Act as just another example of California’s interventionist penchant. But some American politicians and regulators are already calling for the Act to be a “template for harmonizing federal and state oversight.” The other source for that template would be the European Union (EU), so it’s worth keeping an eye on the regulations spewed out of Brussels.

The EU is already way ahead of California in imposing troubling, top-down regulation. Indeed, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act of 2024 follows the EU’s overall precautionary principle. As the EU Parliament’s internal think tank explains, “the precautionary principle enables decision-makers to adopt precautionary measures when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is uncertain and the stakes are high.” The precautionary principle gives immense power to the EU when it comes to regulating in the face of uncertainty — rather than allowing for experimentation with the guardrails of fines and tort law (as in the US). It stifles ethical learning and innovation. Because of the precautionary principle and associated regulation, the EU economy suffers from greater market concentration, higher regulatory compliance costs, and diminished innovation — compared to an environment that allows for experimentation and sensible risk management. It is small wonder that only four of the world’s top 50 tech companies are European.

From Stifled Innovation to Stifled Privacy

Along with the precautionary principle, the second driving force behind EU regulation is the advancement of rights — but cherry-picking from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights of rights that often conflict with others. For example, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of 2016 was imposed with the idea of protecting a fundamental right to personal data protection (this is technically separate from the right to privacy, and gives the EU much more power to intervene — but that is the stuff of academic journals). The GDPR ended up curtailing the right to economic freedom.

This time, fundamental rights are being deployed to justify the EU’s fight against child sexual abuse. We all love fundamental rights, and we all hate child abuse. But, over the years, fundamental rights have been deployed as a blunt and powerful weapon to expand the EU’s regulatory powers. The proposed Child Sex Abuse regulation (CSA) is no exception. What is exceptional, is the extent of the intrusion: the EU is proposing to monitor communications among European citizens, lumping them all together as potential threats rather than as protected speech that enjoys a prima facie right to privacy.

As of 26 November 2025, the EU bureaucratic machine has been negotiating the details of the CSA. In the latest draft, mandatory scanning of private communications has thankfully been removed, at least formally. But there is a catch. Providers of hosting and interpersonal communication services must identify, analyze, and assess how their services might be used for online child sexual abuse, and then take “all reasonable mitigation measures.” Faced with such an open-ended mandate and the threat of liability, many providers may conclude that the safest — and most legally prudent — way to show they have complied with the EU directive is to deploy large-scale scanning of private communications.

The draft CSA insists that mitigation measures should, where possible, be limited to specific parts of the service or specific groups of users. But the incentive structure points in one direction. Widespread monitoring may end up as the only viable option for regulatory compliance. What is presented as voluntary today risks becoming a de facto obligation tomorrow.

In the words of Peter Hummelgaard, the Danish Minister of Justice: “Every year, millions of files are shared that depict the sexual abuse of children. And behind every single image and video, there is a child who has been subjected to the most horrific and terrible abuse. This is completely unacceptable.” No one disputes the gravity or turpitude of the problem. And yet, under this narrative, the telecommunications industry and European citizens are expected to absorb dangerous risk-mitigation measures that are likely to involve lost privacy for citizens and widespread monitoring powers for the state.

The cost, we are told, is nothing compared to the benefit.

After all, who wouldn’t want to fight child sexual abuse? It’s high time to take a deep breath. Child abusers should be punished severely. This does not dispense a free society from respecting other core values.

But, wait. There’s more…

Widespread Monitoring? Well, Not Completely Widespread

Despite the moral imperative of protecting children — a moral imperative so compelling that the EU is willing to violate other core values to advance it — the proposed CSA act introduces a convenient exception. Anything falling under national security, and any electronic communication service that is not publicly available (i.e. available only to elected officials and bureaucrats) would remain entirely untouched. Private chats among citizens require scrutiny — but the conversations of those who claim to protect us are off limits.

As the good minister said, “behind every single image and video there is a child who has been subjected to the most horrific and terrible abuse.” If that is indeed true of every “single image and video,” why would it not also be true of the messages shielded by the CSA’s national security and non-public exceptions? Does the horror somehow dissipate when the users are politicians or bureaucrats? Is the unacceptable suddenly made acceptable when it concerns those who write the rules?

In the EU’s hierarchy of rights, protecting children trumps privacy. But protecting Eurocrats trumps protecting children. In the end, modern technology gives politicians unprecedented opportunities to monitor citizens, while exempting themselves from scrutiny.

There is no chatter yet — that we know of — about imposing similar measures in the US. But, from the wealth tax to AI regulation — and the very origins of the American administrative state — bad ideas from Europe have a nasty way of making their way across the Pond. 

Aristocracy, Meritocracy, Technocracy, And Revolution (Must Read)

  Here below is the amazing evolution of ideas in Western societies from Aristocracy to Meritocracy to Technocracy and DEI, simplified most certainly but still very accurate. 

  As we stand facing the precipice of this 4th turning, the question becomes: What comes next? 

  Will AI cement the control of the aristocracy thanks to the surveillance society Silicon Valley is building as we speak or will the apple cart be overturned?   

  This to my opinion is unknowable and the reason why the coming few years will be so "interesting". We may see more changes in the next 5 years than there as been in the last 50!   

by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

All human societies have informal social classes or formal social castes that separate groups of people within the same community.  Generally speaking, notions of aristocracy and hereditary nobility started on the battlefield.  Warrior chiefs of clans became minor kings after killing more rivals without dying themselves.  Rather than remaining in a constant state of tribal conflict, the chiefs of other clans bent the knee and became lesser lords.  Because kings and lords prefer their heirs to be kings and lords, too, bloodlines afforded children the social status that their ancestors had earned on the battlefield.

A ruling king who provided security and stability earned deference from those under his protection.  Over time, tribes combined to become nations.  Chieftains cooperated to form royal courts.  And the heirs of warrior chiefs adopted customs and traditions that symbolically separated those who rule from those who are ruled.

During social upheavals, the ruling aristocracy is often overthrown.  This provides hereditary nobles an incentive not only to quell rebellions quickly but also to find ways to keep the interests of non-nobles aligned with the aristocratic class.  Gifts of land, titles, and property buy a certain amount of loyalty.  The creation of minor offices apportions power to those deemed “worthy” of holding it.  The historic growth of administrative bureaucracies creates a path for non-nobles to exercise their talents in the service of those who rule.

To the consternation of Europe’s aristocratic class, the Great War ushered in a popular revolution against the hereditary order.  Several centuries of a growing middle class, increased literacy, industrial innovation, entrepreneurialism, and more widespread property ownership helped to create the social conditions for broad swaths of Europe’s populations to question why bloodlines should matter more than intelligence, talent, and hard work.  Many European families who lost fathers and sons during the First World War blamed European nobles for the calamity.

By the time the Second World War had provided an extra helping of self-destructive ruin, many of Europe’s noble houses were no more.  Those that had survived were acutely wary of suffering the fates of so many cousins who had been hanged, burned, or shot.  For the surviving members of Europe’s aristocracy to endure, they had no choice but to hand considerable political powers to the common people.  The twentieth century shepherded government reforms, suffrage for men and women without property, public welfare statutes, and expanded opportunities for common people to become part of the State’s governing bureaucracy.

While these reforms were celebrated as triumphs for “democracy,” it is important to understand that they did not completely supplant the vestiges of European aristocracy.  In the United Kingdom, the House of Lords still recognized the inherent right to rule of certain families.  Men with noble titles still ran central banks, trading houses, and clandestine agencies.  The attachés of those administrative lords still came from the “best families” and attended the “finest schools.”  Increasingly, however, the children of middle class families competed for and secured positions within the larger bureaucratic staff.

This twentieth century transition — in which citizens from low social classes were more broadly included in the functions of government — marked the social pivot to what Westerners call “meritocracy.”  

No longer would a person’s bloodline serve as the limits of what that person might achieve in this life.  Instead, natural intelligence, hard work, and determination could provide a person of any means the opportunity to rise as high as he might wish.

“Meritocracy” was an alluring idea to sell to the common people who had already destroyed so much of the aristocrats’ cherished social order in the first half of the twentieth century.  

Out with the nobles!  In with the people who deserve to have power!  From the point of view of someone in the lower or middle classes, a system that rewards skill, smarts, and determination sounds much fairer.

However, “meritocracy” provides an ancillary benefit to a ruling class seeking to maintain control: It keeps the most ambitious members of the non-noble classes competing against each other for a small number of powerful positions and reinforces the legitimacy of the governing system as a whole.  People who study, sacrifice, and struggle to obtain a little power within a governing bureaucracy are not inclined to question, criticize, or delegitimize that system once vested with a modicum of authority inside of it.

With the rise of the “meritocracy,” residual ruling class families found endless opportunities to keep unsuspecting commoners chasing their tails.  

A hundred years ago, “gentlemen” in positions of power had, at most, a college education.  The transition toward “meritocracy” convinced members of the lower classes that they needed all kinds of postgraduate degrees to prove their “expertise.”  

Just keep studying, kids, and you might finally have the right credentials to do the same job as a bunch of lords once did before they had reached the age of twenty-two! 

 In the meantime, stay poor, follow the rules, question nothing, and the ruling class might find a position for you once you’ve begged long enough.

In pursuit of “meritocracy,” commoners have been conditioned to believe that you cannot be successful without at least a college education.  In turn, the remnants of the noble ruling class have turned colleges into indoctrination laboratories that reinforce the ideologies of the ruling system.  Members of the Old Guard, in other words, have found the perfect mechanism through which to subordinate the very people otherwise inclined to overthrow them.  

Say ‘Hello’ to the new nobility; it looks just like the old one!

Unfortunately for the powers that be, there are widening cracks now in the “meritocracy” illusion.  Those cracks began with “affirmative action” programs in the United States that perpetuated racial discrimination, and they have continued to expand this century with the broad initiatives across the West in support of so-called “diversity, inclusion, and equity.”  Preferential admissions and hiring decisions in favor of special classes of people identified by their skin color, ethnicity, sexual disposition, disability, or perceived “victimhood” have blown up the perception that “meritocracy” exists at all.

Instead, what is increasingly obvious is that the same aristocrats who have always made the rules are once again decreeing which classes of commoners will be allowed to mingle among their ranks.  

Out with the meritocratic!  In with the multi-racial trans-furries who have trouble doing math!  As institutions in the West expose themselves as part of an unjust and prejudicial political system, the legitimacy of the ruling class is increasingly under attack.

For the first time in many decades, Westerners have begun to notice that much of the old aristocracy supposedly supplanted by the “meritocracy” remains nonetheless in charge.  Surprise!  A century after the supposed end of hereditary rule, men and women with feudal titles still control the European Council, transnational governing bodies, international treaty organizations, and all the central banks.  In other words, the illusion of “meritocracy” gave the ruling class just enough camouflage to survive several more generations.

What happens now?  

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, says that artificial intelligence will soon replace most human jobs.  

He insists that there will be a universal high income that every common peasant receives.  He says people will want for nothing…except purpose.

Perhaps Musk is right.  

Perhaps the lower classes will consent to a small number of elites ruling over them in perpetuity.  

Perhaps they will consent to mass surveillance, censorship, and State-sponsored “truths.”  

Perhaps they will agree to let the families of billionaires behave as entourages within royal courts in support of a coterie of technocratic kings.

Or perhaps we are destined for social upheaval.  

Perhaps what started on the battlefield will return to it. 

 Perhaps the ruling aristocracy will finally be overthrown.  

Regardless, the future will be interesting.

Germany's Municipal Financial Crisis: The Green Transformation Backfires

   Germany is bankrupting itself with its green policies, and so does Europe of course. It was of course predictable although it took time for the symptoms of the green disease to appear. Don't get me wrong, there nothing wrong to be "green", quite to opposite, but it should be done intelligently no ideologically and by diktat as was the case in Europe. Soon the bill will come due and the price of stupidity will become obvious, but too late?  

Germany's Municipal Financial Crisis: The Green Transformation Backfires

By Thomas Kolbe

For years, politicians managed to hide the damage caused by the green transformation. Now, deep cracks are appearing in municipal finances amid the severe economic crisis gripping the country. Cities like Stuttgart serve as showcases for the future of the republic.

For a long time, Stuttgart’s city treasurer was more than just a steward of solid numbers. He was regarded as the uncrowned king of fiscal policy in the region—and held a position envied by many colleagues. The robust foundation of the automotive industry and its extensive supplier network funneled generous tax revenues into the city’s coffers for years, particularly from trade taxes.

As recently as 2023, Stuttgart recorded a record 1.6 billion euros in trade tax revenue—a sum that gave the city extraordinary financial leeway. Social projects, infrastructure initiatives, municipal ambitions—the local government could spend freely.

Cracks in the Model Municipality

Then came 2024. Early cracks in Germany’s economic foundation, building up over years, began to appear in Stuttgart as well. By the end of the fiscal year, the city faced a deficit of 6.8 million euros—a first warning that things might be spiraling out of control.

In green-led Baden-Württemberg, officials explained the shortfall with one-off effects and general problems in the German economy—problems they firmly believed could be managed under the state’s green transformation.

Then 2025 arrived—and with it, shock. Trade tax revenues collapsed, expected to bring only around 850 million euros into the city’s coffers for the year. The supplementary budget shows Stuttgart now faces a deficit of 890 million euros—a fiscal hammer blow, reflecting the massive collapse of Germany’s core industries, including automotive, machinery, and chemicals.

The Moment of Truth

The picture is the same across the country. For 2025, the German County Association forecasts a cumulative municipal deficit of around 35 billion euros—a historic figure unseen since World War II, and notably, for Germany, once considered a model of fiscal prudence.

The moment of truth has arrived. Ideologues have run their course. What follows are retreating maneuvers, frantic repair attempts, and the reflex to stabilize past policies artificially with ever-larger debt programs. The house of cards is stacked higher before it inevitably collapses.

Recent experiences with Berlin’s debt policies allow a fairly precise prediction of what comes next. Parts of the so-called “special fund”—new federal debt taken on outside the regular budget—will likely be repackaged into municipal aid packages to plug ever-growing budget holes.

If municipal finances worsen, the next escalation stage is already prepared: a consolidation of debt across the states, accompanied by the issuance of so-called special bonds. Initially through the federal states, guaranteed by the federal government, possibly involving the KfW Bank, labeled as infrastructure investments. Political imagination knows almost no bounds—at least until the bond market puts its foot down and abruptly ends the spree.

Germany has become, as a result of prolonged, fatal political mismanagement, a fiscal parasite. The attempt to pull tomorrow’s purchasing power into the present through debt is fundamentally flawed. It generates growing mountains of debt, forces higher levies, and gradually erodes citizens’ purchasing power through rising inflation.

Predictable Reaction

Many municipalities respond predictably. Across the board, trade tax rates are being drastically increased. The Rhineland-Palatinate capital of Mainz, for example, raised its rate from 310 to 440 percent—a significant burden for local businesses.

Other municipalities, like Wörth with a 65-point increase or Bad Dürkheim with 45 points, illustrate the strategy: higher levies amid declining economic performance—a death spiral for the local economy and, in the medium term, for tax revenue itself.

At the same time, massive austerity programs are being implemented. Germany faces a redefinition of public services. Municipally run, loss-making swimming pools, sports facilities, and recreational centers are now on the chopping block. Put simply: after years of delay, the manic cult of green transformation is now presenting its bill.

And it comes unexpectedly high for many, because people believed the promises of green central planners, who claimed that the complex, finely tuned network of domestic industry could be replaced by a centrally planned green fantasy. A historic error and a regression into the disastrous world of socialist feasibility illusions.

The Green Dream Is Being Lied Into Existence

A quick glance at state-funded media is enough to see how politics and state-aligned outlets attempt to deceive the public about the true state of the German economy. Single, typically heavily subsidized green projects are celebrated, while the real world suffers—with around 24,000 corporate insolvencies and hundreds of thousands of job losses this year alone.

During prime-time broadcasts, this dramatic decline is systematically overshadowed by other topics. The media effort by the green power complex to maintain the illusion of a climate-socialist Elysium reaches grotesque extremes.

Ironically, we see the same process on a geopolitical level, with attempts to turn the Russian central bank’s assets at Euroclear into a system of credit collateral. Essentially, everyone is bankrupt, and the EU staggers in panic mode toward a geopolitical catastrophe.

Every new deficit—whether at the federal level, in social funds, or in municipalities—fails to precisely measure a country’s loss of prosperity, which now reflexively flees into a debt crisis. In Berlin, officials seriously believe they can offset declining economic output with money printing. But as the saying goes: if wealth could be printed, one could also award degrees without merit.

Germany is now attempting to do both simultaneously. In the end, the country will experience its green miracle.

Ukraine is winning the war!

  Go to YouTube and type: "Ukraine is winning the war". You will be stunned as you get a biblical deluge of whatever can be scrapped from the Internet of mostly fake but also old videos. Propaganda on steroid.

  No wonder the European leaders are lost in delusion. If this is what you watch from dawn to dusk, in the end how can you not believe that David is slaying Goliath in real time? Maps showing the relentless advance of the Russian army? Just show the retreat without context from the Kiev, Kharkov and Kherson areas at the beginning of 2022 and suddenly the current "fall back" of the Ukrainian army looks less ominous. Explosions in Kiev? Likewise, highlight a big fire at a Russian oil refinery to show that Ukraine is indeed weakening the Russian juggernaut preventing a full scale attack on Europe. And on, and on without respite.

  As always, in such circumstances, the fog of war is thick and propaganda is rife. Each side will necessarily present the interpretation of reality which serves its interest best and to some extent confirms what they want to believe. Fair enough. 

  But when high command starts believing its own propaganda and losing touch with reality, defeat inevitably looms over the horizon. Cherry picking feats of heroism in the mist of destruction is not a long term viable strategy. And as people realize that what they've been shown was not accurate, instead of changing their opinion, they invent bigger lies and their anger instead of being rightly directed at their own credulity focus on the dissonant messages they can neither process nor accept. Think Berlin 1945.

  The question nowadays, not only for Russia but for the rest of the world is how to manage this anger without generating a conflagration from which absolutely nobody can win.     

  This is in fact what we saw when Xi Jinping met Macron in Beijing last week or earlier when Putin met with Trump. Exploration of elusive off-ramps for intractable conflicts, more to avoid escalation than to solve "problems with no easy solutions". (The words of Trump which actually mean Europe and his own deep state are dead against the compromises he is proposing.)    

  In the end, the war in Ukraine can only conclude not with the total military defeat of Ukraine, which is a done deal, but because Europe is fully invested in the war, the financial failure of Europe as well. This is why the stakes are so high. Defeat is not something that any country can contemplate lightly. The first world war lasted 5 years from 1914 to 1918 as this was the time necessary to defeat Germany economically. The second world war likewise lasted 5 years in Europe and 4 years in the Pacific. Again, as this was the time necessary to exhaust both Japan and Germany's military and industrial machines thoroughly.

  Based on these precedents, without the participation of the US, it will probably take another year at most for Europe to give up financially. As we approach defeat, the stakes will rise and tensions likewise. But in the end, the outcome is painted starkly on the wall: Europe played for broke and lost. The world "casino" will not extend credit. Out in the depth of the night, under the rain and destitute. The morning after will be hard for Europe!

  Their last hope is a Pearl Harbor moment. Provocations upon provocations until Russia over-reacts and Trump is finally forced against his better judgement to do "something". Not to lose on this political front, Russia will have to thread a fine line between effective dissuasion (Not so easy when the other party is desperate.) and avoiding being pulled in a spiral of retaliations. The coming months will be fraught with risks.      

The Truth about AI (Well, just one example in fact but funny and worth reading.)

  The example of the introduction of AI in the corporate environment below is fascinating because behind the jargon, you'll find the reality of what AI really is for most people: Nothing much!  

  On average, it takes about a year to understand what AI really can do for you. It is a difficult path full of trial and error until you finally figure out that AI right now is little more than a demultiplicator of your competence. Input rich ideas and the AI will help you focus and refine them. Input junk and the AI likewise will demultiply your junk until your incompetence becomes glaringly obvious to every one around. 

   Input nothing much as in the example below and you'll get nothing at all as in so many legacy companies which are focused on their own process to the exclusion of why they exist in the first place. This in the end may be the safest attitude: No risk, no reward but no downside either. Until of course the competition takes off with a killer idea. But then there is always time to catch up, right?    

Post by Peter Girnus

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it “digital transformation.”

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would “10x productivity.”

That’s not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we’d measure the 10x.

I said we’d “leverage analytics dashboards.”

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a “pilot success.”

Success means the pilot didn’t visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured “AI enablement.”

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We’re “AI-enabled” now.

I don’t know what that means.

But it’s in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn’t use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed “enterprise-grade security.”

He asked what that meant.

I said “compliance.”

He asked which compliance.

I said “all of them.”

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a “career development conversation.”

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we “saved 40,000 hours.”

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn’t verify it.

They never do.

Now we’re on Microsoft’s website.

“Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot.”

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He’s never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

“Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction.”

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I’m requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven’t used the first 4,000.

But this time we’ll “drive adoption.”

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I’ll be SVP by Q3.

I still don’t know what Copilot does.

But I know what it’s for.

It’s for showing we’re “investing in AI.”

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we’re serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.