Europe Is Burning

 

 The failure of the over-regulated, immigrant friendly, CO2 obsessed, anti-Russian Euro-policy.

 Did I forget something? Does it matter at this stage?

Authored by Joel Kotkin via The American Mind,

The only lessons the Old World offers to America these days are cautionary.

Ever since the earliest days of the Republic, American intellectuals, artists, and statesmen looked to Europe for models. Conservatives felt attracted to the continent’s sense of continuity and tradition, and as the base for Christianity. More recently, progressives saw in European social democracy and globalist pacifism a role model to be embraced.

Yet today Europe seems not much of a model for much of anything outside of museums, charming cathedral towns, and terrific food. The notion that Europe represents the future, nurtured by the likes of Mitterrand advisor Jacques Attali, Jeremy Rifkind’s utopian European Dream, and the American journalist T.R. Reid’s 2005 The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy, seem utterly delusional.

A common theme in the early years of the millennium was that Europe was on the verge of global resurgence while America was in decline. Europe’s eventual stagnation, as many conservatives point out, can be in part traced to an ever expanding high-tax welfare state that generally absorbs roughly ten more percentage points of GDP than in the U.S. But this is not the only explanation. Some of the moderately better off European economies, like Denmark and Sweden, are welfare states but manage to outperform the rest.

The real problem is civilizational. Europeans are unwilling to preserve their industrial base and control their borders, leaving the continent increasingly weak and largely defenseless. The leaderless American empire may be creaking, but Europe is in worse shape, hemmed in by dismal demographics, high taxes, suffocating regulation, and an entrenched bureaucracy that makes California seem like a libertarian paradise.

Europe’s decline can be seen in its rapidly shrinking portion of the global economy. It is hard to find any indicator that the continent is gaining global market share as money continues to pour into the U.S. For the last 15 years, European wages have fallen while those in the U.S. have continued to rise; the eurozone economy grew about six percent, measured in dollars, compared with 82 percent for the U.S., according to International Monetary Fund data.

European quality of life is dropping, its industrial base eroding, and there seems little promise of future improvement. Europe now lags in virtually every major advanced industry, from software and space to automobiles. Of the top 50 tech firms only three are located in Europe; the list is dominated largely by the United States with China second. Foreign investment has plummeted and by 2022 accounted for $100 billion less than the U.S.

Much of this decline is self-inflicted, which suggests some valuable lessons for us. A critical problem lies in E.U. climate policy, which has tended to be more extreme, and widely implemented, than in a more divided, decentralized United States. These policies are already eroding food production and sparking higher prices. Developing nations need more food production from exporters, but by Europe’s banning or restricting critical fertilizers, or the enforced culling of herds, they will have to get it elsewhere. This comes at a time when Europe’s old African and South American colonies are losing interest in ties with France and Britain and increasingly look elsewhere, notably China and Russia, for capital, goods, and natural resource development.

Climate catastrophism has also cripped Europe’s energy supply. To meet utopian “net zero” standards, Europe seems, as one observer put it recently, on course for “energy suicide.” The effect of the Ukrainian war has already affected European natural gas prices, but the current conflict is adding more pain. The U.S. is now the world’s biggest liquid natural gas (LNG) exporter while green policies leave Europe ever more exposed. Since October 6, prices at the benchmark TTF gas hub in Holland have soared, selling for about $51 per million Btu. That same quantity of gas at Henry Hub in Louisiana sells for about $2.90. Where will Europe have to turn for future gas supplies? Some Europeans may prefer kowtowing to Qatar, the ally of Iran and Hamas, then bending down to unruly Texans.

The great bastion of European competence, Germany, is clearly unraveling. Germany’s strategy of dependence on U.S. military, Russian energy, and Chinese customers has blown up in their faces, as the U.S. faces defense overstretch, Russian gas heads to China and other more dynamic markets, and the Chinese, once seen as ideal customers for high-end German engineered products, are becoming both reluctant customers and stronger competitors. Germany is now on the verge of losing much of its industrial base, notably in chemicals and autos, including its vaunted mittlestand, in large part due to high energy prices and a diminishing workforce.

German industry must now cope with tech products and electric vehicles built in the world’s leading GHG producer. The power of technology to transform an economy—or leave it behind—also is apparent when comparing the trajectories of Germany and the U.S. over the past 15 years. During that period, the U.S. economy, driven by a boom in Silicon Valley, expanded by 76 percent to $25.5 trillion. Germany’s economy grew by 19 percent to $4.1 trillion. In dollar terms, the U.S. added the equivalent of nearly three Germanys to its economy over that period.

Yet perhaps even more troubling may prove Europe’s experience with immigration. Europe, like the U.S., is swamped with refugees, mainly from destitute countries. Opposition to this unregulated tide—what Le Figaro calls “Le menace islamiste”—is widely dismissed as racist and even criminal. Even before the outbreaks of pro-Hamas sentiment roiled Paris this month, violent protests already had become common and increasingly hostile to the secular state. It is now clear that some of these newcomers have brought with them a strain of Islamic fundamentalism and antisemitism that is far more threatening than anything experienced here.

In the short run, opposition to Israel from the Left, from neo-Marxists to Greens, seems likely to boost the political power of Islamism across Europe, notably in France, while further weakening national as well as European institutions. Across the continent, one sees the growth of ghettos that now contain a permanent underclass who embrace lawless nihilism, compounded by Islamist ideology. European cities were once largely safe and clean but are now dirty and graffiti-scarred, although still less lethally dangerous than their American counterparts. Some cities, like Marseilles, are now better known for random crime and decay than for their Mediterranean charm.

To a long-civilized people used to a degree of civility and respect for law, scenes of French off-duty cops being assaulted are an affront. The increased dominance of large cities by often violent, perennially angry youths, largely from Muslim countries, has the whole continent on edge. Even Sweden, long the Valhalla of progressive fantasies, has been forced to call out the army to tamp down violence in immigrant-dominated areas, where native Swedes are essentially barred.

The opposition to unrestrained immigration has terrible implications for the center-left, whose multicultural ideology in unraveling. The postwar dream that immigrants would relieve the continent of its labor shortages while gradually assimilating to local culture has not panned out. Immigrant workers either lack the skills or cannot penetrate the continent’s often difficult regulatory environment. Even famously liberal countries like Denmark are mandating integration, and openly seek to break up immigrant-dominated clusters by bulldozing social housing.

Immigration is also sparking a powerful right-wing resurgence. Victor Orban, the bete noire of progressive Europe, now has company in the form of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and perhaps a future President Marine Le Pen. It has also nurtured an upsurge of far-right sentiment in Germany, where refugee populations are soaring.

The rise of the nationalist Right is widely denounced in the media, but it largely represents less  expansive chauvinism than a last desperate attempt to restore a semblance of traditional values, notably belief in the past and religion. As the Guardian noted five years ago, a majority of young adults in 12 European countries have no faith; one scholar noted that many young Europeans “will have been baptized and then never darken the door of a church again. Cultural religious identities just aren’t being passed on from parents to children. It just washes straight off them.” According to Pew, for example, Christianity will be the minority faith across Britain and in some other European countries by 2050.

Far more than the U.S., Europe is ill-suited for diversity, as these countries are closely tied to their indigenous population and tradition. The “melting pot,” also under assault in the U.S, never really worked in Europe since the growth of Middle Eastern Muslim immigration. And with extraordinarily low birthrates among indigenous Europeans, these unintegrated populations—the drivers of the current upsurge in antisemitism—will surely grow as a percentage of the population.

If there’s hope it lies in resurgent pushback, both on climate policies in many countries and on unrestricted immigration, both in Germany and on the eastern frontier of the E.U.

Given the struggles in Europe with the consequences of contemporary progressivism, Americans should think twice about adopting their current “solutions.” Without some radical readjustment, Europeans face a dismal future, one that we should not want to replicate on this side of the Atlantic.

 

The extraordinary Tucker Carlson interview of Martin Shkreli (Video 50')

  If you haven't met a bright guy yet, here's one.

  This stunning interview is well worth your time if you want to understand how politics works.

 And as often happens with great material, the interview was erased from YouTube. 

 I wonder which rule was breached.

 Telling the truth?

IT’S OVER! This Vaccine Lawsuit Changes EVERYTHING (Video - 21')

  Russell Brand in his usual style! 

  Still, this is indeed a landmark as the Corona Vaccines are now officially questioned and their relationship with sudden cardiac arrest is confirmed. 

  So in the end statistics were reliable? There was in fact a correlation between vaccine and heart attacks and it was meaningful? Now causation will have to be proved but at least the questions are being asked. (And scientists, not politicians will have to answer!)

  Now about the lock-downs, the masks... (See, that the problem with questions: The more you ask, the more answers you get!)

 

Economist Fact-Checks Zeihan's China Collapse Story (Video - 25')

  This is a very interesting video about China but more importantly about how we thing and arrive to conclusions. 

  I sometimes listen to Peter Zeihan who looks carefully at the data and analyses deep trends such as population and resources which few other economists do, and usually arrives to surprising conclusions which somehow are always aligned with what his neo-cons sponsors expect.  

 So how is it possible to be knowledgeable, highly intelligent... and wrong?

 I remember listening to one of his presentations about Russia a couple of years ago, just after the start of the Ukraine war where he predicted that Russia would fail and the post-SSSR republic was going to explode sooner than later, offering the opportunity to Western powers to feed off the carcass. The Neo-cons must have been salivating on these conclusions ever since but must now be wondering about the timing! 

 So here's a great deconstruction of his arguments about China. 

 I also believe that China will soon face major obstacles and may well follow the path of Japan to relative economic decline. But a complete implosion of the country? Some people around K street are probably dreaming about it but the reality is more prosaic. The infrastructure exists. The buildings may be empty but they too are here to stay. Likewise the Chinese population is graying but it is also more educated than in Western countries. Here are the details.

 

"Israel is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is done" - Fmr. U.S. Marine Scott Ritter | Redacted News (Video - 21')

  The criminal behavior of the Netanyahu Government is sealing the fate of Israel, not that of the Palestinians. 

  They are focusing the attention of the World by their deliberate application of antique style massacres to a civilian population which as Scott Ritter explains is creating a global revulsion of the Zionist movement.

  They are opposed to a much weaker enemy which is fighting their army to a standstill and will eventually win by just not losing the war and surviving longer than the rest of the World will let the Israelis fight.

  But more ominously, they are exposing the hypocrisy and weakness of the West.  

  Hopefully, the Jews will understand that letting extremists loose is not helping their cause and represents a bigger risk for the existence of Israel that a few Hamas fighters. 

  The Israelis fell into a Hamas trap due to their hatred and disdain of the Palestinians. What is their plan, now? Destroy Hamas, then Hezbollah, then Syria, Iran, Turkiye, Pakistan (and its nuclear weapons) Indonesia... They would have to erase 1.5 billion people from the face of the Earth. This is not going to happen, even with the help of the US. The sooner they understand this and start negotiating, the brighter their future will be.    

  Pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula as Netanyahu would like to do is not possible. Israel already has the World against itself for killing 10,000+ people. Let's give it another month but it is unlikely that Netanyahu will still be there by the end of the year unless of course he manages to ignite a World War... 

 

The Globalist Vision: "15 Minute" Prison Cities And The End Of Private Property

  While your attention is being focused by war in the East and war in the South, the Globalists are advancing their agenda. A human crime hiding a social crime! 

  Some people believe that the elites are sold out to the dark side. I am not so sure but you can certainly ask the question. 

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

As a general rule I find that whenever the public scrutinizes any particular agenda being promoted by governments and globalists their first response is to act indignant, much like a narcissist would do when they are up to no good and they get caught.

“How dare you” question their intentions and suggest they might be nefarious.

How dare you suggest they are anything other than loving and benevolent.

Our “leaders” have only ever wanted the best for us, right?

They only want our lives to become safer, more comfortable and more convenient – This is what truly motivates your average elitist, right?

Obviously history tells us a far different story, and it boggles my mind when anyone tries to argue that things are different today compared to 100 years ago, 300 years ago, or 1000 years ago. There is nothing new under the sun. There will always be tyrants attempting to gain more and more power and those tyrants will always lie to the public, claiming they are good people with our best interests at heart.

When that doesn’t work and the citizenry remains skeptical, the tyrants go on the attack, accusing the public of “conspiracy theory.” This is meant to mock and shame free thinkers into silence – You don’t want to stand out, right? Why risk being ostracized from society? Why risk becoming a meme?

This tactic is rooted in the notion that the corporate media and government officials represent the mainstream, and therefore they represent the majority, and the majority represents reality.  None of this is true or relevant, of course. Only facts matter. Sophistry is meaningless. Opinions are meaningless. The truth should be the goal, and if it’s not someone’s goal then they must be a purveyor of lies and should not be taken seriously. There are only two paths to take, there is no in-between.

I will admit there is some value to the “conspiracy theory” accusation because whenever the establishment uses it, it’s a sure sign that you are too close to the target and they are getting nervous. They could simply try to outline any evidence they might have to prove that your position is wrong, but they don’t really do that. Instead of debating your arguments and evidence, they try to undermine you as a valid critic and inoculate the public against your ideas before people ever get a chance to hear them. This is the behavior of villains, not benevolent and caring leaders.

I mention this dynamic because there is one agenda above all others that is aggressively defended by the establishment media, and anyone who remotely questions it is automatically persecuted as a “conspiracy nut” or “denier.” I am of course talking about the climate change agenda.

I have thoroughly debunked the idea of man-made climate change in previous articles and I won’t be spending time on that here.

Instead, I want to examine the end goal of climate change policies – The ultimate solution, which is NOT to save the planet, but to dominate the populace.

The names used for the climate change “reset” vary, but it is often referred to by globalists and the UN as Agenda 2030 or Sustainable Development Goals.  These programs wear a facade of environmentalism but they are ALL rooted in economics.  That is to say, all climate change efforts exist to destroy industry and trade and establish a government/corporate partnership to dominate production.  Climate change is a Trojan Horse to introduce authoritarianism.

I believe one of the most important aspects of Agenda 2030 for globalists is something called the “15 Minute City”; a project which involves hundreds of city mayors from across the US, Europe and Asia working closely with groups like the World Economic Forum. Any mention of this idea in a negative light and the media erupts with anger as well as mockery as if it’s not a real issue worthy of debate.

The establishment paints an interesting picture of 15 Minute Cities – A Utopian future in which everything you need is only a short walk away and private transportation is superfluous (or banned). You might even live in mega-complex, much like a giant mall where you also work. You could spend months within one square mile of space, never having to leave for anything.

It’s no mistake that this idea was pushed hard during the pandemic lockdowns. The public was awash in fear propaganda over a virus with a 99.8% survival rate and that fear made the unthinkable idea of staying at home all the time suddenly thinkable. Media pundits continue to call the connection between covid lockdowns and climate lockdowns a conspiracy theory, but the idea is openly admitted in UN and WEF white papers.

Some people argue that most cities are already “15 Minute Cities” with necessities all within walking distance of their homes. These folks don’t understand what a 15 Minute City really is. As numerous establishment descriptions of the project note, it’s not just about convenience or close access, it’s about changing every aspect of our current philosophy of living. It’s not about gaining amenities, it’s about making an array of sacrifices in order to appease the gods of carbon emissions.

The 15 Minute City is more like a recipe, containing every single ingredient of the climate change and covid lockdown agendas in a single comprehensive Orwellian vision. It includes removing motor vehicles, removing private transportation and roads, smart city and AI monitoring of each person’s electricity usage, monitoring of product consumption and “carbon footprint”, biometric surveillance within a compact and stacked urban landscape, the cashless society concept, equity and inclusion cultism, population control, etc.

It is the culmination, the end game; a massive prison with no bars. A place where you are conditioned to grow accustomed to artificial limitations on privacy, no civil liberties, no private property, and no work options or mobility. You are tied to the land and the land is owned by the state (or corporation). If you want a historic comparison, the closest I can find is the feudal system of Medieval Europe.

Within these cities you are a labor mechanism, nothing more. You will never be allowed to own your own property and thus own your own labor. Everything you have is given to you by the state and can be taken away by the state if you defy them. You might be able to leave the village or community you are tied to for a time, but this will change with increasing restrictions on the public’s movement according to the dictates of climate ideology.

As long as you are productive and submissive you will be give the things you need to survive, but never to thrive. In the case of a technocratic feudal system you would not have any guarantees that the state would need your services. At least in feudal Europe a peasant was seen as valuable resource because of limited population.  In a world where many people are considered “population excess”, you could easily be replaced and booted out of the city to starve and die.

In 2016 the World Economic Forum published a document titled ‘Welcome To 2030. I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy, And Life Has Never Been Better.’ The article was meant to promote a concept called the “sharing economy” which was first publicly fielded to the press at Davos.  The article describes a “hypothetical” future in which a communistic system has ended all private property in the name of saving the planet from climate change. The benefits? Well, like all communistic systems, the big lie is that you will get to work less and most things will be free. This is how collectivist ideals have been sold to the populace for generations and it NEVER works the way the establishment claims.

The WEF has been promoting the sharing economy for years, but when it went mainstream and was widely criticized as dystopian, the media once again flipped the “conspiracy theory” switch and attacked anyone exposing the implications.

Multiple platforms published the article in 2016 but many have since taken it down (Forbes appears to have erased their published copy, for example). They are pretending as if the agenda never existed, probably because the article contains some revealing admissions, including a hint at the 15 Minute City concept. From the article:

“My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me”

In other words, the globalists imagine a future were the malcontent free thinkers and people replaced by AI are outcasts, scratching and scraping out a meaningless existence in the wastelands of the old world. To stay in the bosom of the new world you will be required to give up all freedom, even freedom of thought. Keep in mind, this article is supposed to be a “positive” promotion of the shared economy and 15 Minute-related cities. Yet, this excerpt sounds more like a threat.

It’s important to understand that these compact cities will not be designed for your comfort.  They will not be designed so that you can have all the amenities you have today closer to your fingertips while also providing “sustainability.” That’s how the globalists try to sell it, but that’s not what it will be. Rather, these cities will be designed to better CONTROL you, so that you can be forced to make the sacrifices they say are necessary for sustainability to be possible.

They are erroneously billed as “decentralized communities,” but they are the exact opposite – They are utterly centralized, like a hamster cage where you are the pet.  The core philosophy behind them is dependency.  If you live in a place which is specifically constructed to eliminate your ability to provide for yourself, then you are a slave.  Though, to be sure, even slavery can be made to look noble if people are convinced that their chains are necessary for the good of the planet.

Douglas Macgregor: "US Diplomats Are Idiots! Israel Will Fail Miserably" (Video - 25')

  Probably the best high level analysis available right now.

  If what Douglas Macgregor says is right, that Netanyahu controls the "Hill" and is trying to leverage the US military to once an for all settle scores with surrounding Arab nations, then clearly we're heading strait into troubled waters.

 

No MORE Cash in Europe! The Digital Wallet is almost here | Redacted with Clayton Morris (Video - 15')

  The beginning of the end for privacy!

  Will people revolt? Some say they will. Most won't.

 

China And India Challenge EU Over New Carbon Tax

  How dare China and India interfere with the death wish of Europe?

Authored by Metal Miner via OilPrice.com,

• The EU's carbon tax is criticized by China and India, who believe it acts as a new trade barrier and doesn't account for varying developmental phases.

• China's steel association and India's commerce minister have both spoken out against the tax, with India suggesting it may implement a domestic equivalent to fund green energy transitions.

• Both countries are taking steps to mitigate the potential impacts of the EU tax, including improved emissions reporting in China and a possible challenge to the WTO by India.

Both India and China continue to denigrate the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), or “carbon tax” as it has come to be known, proposed by the European Union. Meanwhile, the EU claims the new scheme is integral to its plan to achieve zero emissions across six earmarked industries.

The new tax regime recently moved into what some experts dub the “transition phase.” Starting on October 1, importers of commodities, including steel, into the EU need to report the carbon emissions of those products. Beginning in 2026, those importers will also be subject to fees. The EU aims to impose the new tax on countries with significant carbon emissions. And while the carbon tax’s stated aim is to put EU producers on an even keel with their counterparts elsewhere, it will also add to the cost of steel, aluminum, and other goods. 

China’s View On the New Tax Remains Unchanged

China has been speaking out against the EU’s carbon tax for some time now. However, several days ago, the country’s state-backed steel association went so far as to dub the tax “a new trade barrier.” Meanwhile, news agency Reuters reported that the China Iron And Steel Association (CISA) wanted more talks with the EU on the issue.

According to the representative body, the new tax fails to take into account the different phases of development in different countries. It went on to say that the levy was against the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Indeed, some analysts predict that the carbon tax could raise the cost of steel products costs by anywhere from 4 to 6 %, if not more. This would be sufficient enough to render Chinese exports nonviable. 

India Also Disapproves of the Carbon Tax

Like its neighbor, India also disapproves of the new EU tax, claiming that it would hurt its exports. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently stated that the tax was “ill-conceived,” adding that the EU would realize this in the coming days and have to drop the idea entirely. Already, there have been meetings between the various trade bodies, manufacturers, and the government regarding the tax. As with China, India also pointed out how the CBAM fails to allot different values for different stages of production occurring in separate countries.

The Indian minister also stated that the government would find a solution, most likely a domestic tax equivalent to the European tax. They could then use this new revenue for the green energy transition. He pointed out that this solution would indirectly help Indian companies who export bring down their carbon footprint as they move on to cleaner energy production. Eventually, there would be no need for a CBAM.

While India may be mulling a domestic tax to get around the problem, China continues to hint at imposing similar trade protection measures to safeguard the interests of its own domestic producers. Either way, the new regime will likely usher in a new period of uncertainty, friction, and risks across the sector. 

India and China Alternating Between Proactive and Reactive Measures

Both countries hope that the EU will re-visit the tax and possibly do away with it entirely. At the very least, they hope the organization will carefully reconsider the costs and operational challenges for downstream consumers due to the change in the import structure. At one point, India even threatened to move the World Trade Organization over the carbon tax. 

That said, China’s environment ministry recently directed its large industrial polluters to step up on their emissions reporting. According to Bloomberg, this was to prepare the industry for the carbon tax. To remain compliant, producers across seven sectors, including steel and aluminum, that release over 26,000 tons of CO2 annually have to verify their 2022 data by December this year. 

Conversely, India continues to question the logic of pricing carbon at the same level in India as in Europe. However, the government remains hopeful that if they can tax locally and put that revenue toward the green energy transition, they can negate any noncompetitive edge in Indian exports to Europe.

Interview of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (the full truth about Corona Virus) - video 1h

 What really happened in 2020 with Corona virus?

 The full understanding of this artificial crisis should be a scandal.

 Interview of Prof Michel Chossudovsky

 Listen carefully. This is important for the future of our society and it has nothing to do with the virus.

 In 2020 the lie became the truth and since we have lived in an upside down world.