Europe Sold Out By Own Elites

Sacrificed in U.S. contest with Asia

Nov 10, 2024

∙ Paid

Who needs a bogeyman - climate or banker - when Europe's owners are fickle
Elites tried to grab Ukraine's resources; to the cost of the population at home
To pay for the war, Germany will be picked at by vulture funds, as history echoes
Germany's next government will ally with Greens; degrowth continues
Trump's import tariffs combined with energy revival may lure European industry
For all his demonising of 'Chyna' he divvies up world trade between two rivals
Germany's coalition bans criticism of Israel - a precedent useful to governments
Clash of Civilisations pits ethnicities against each other - timely distraction
Censorship prepares for the next phase of de-growth and demographic games

(2,700 words or 14 minutes of your company)

Nov 10, 2024

There are few grown up discussions about why Europe is imploding. The concept of degrowth was considered niche even while its effects could be seen: from the great shutdown of energy, to less obvious goals like reduced working hours. [1]

Now we have the example of Germany's Green coalition imploding. We'll be told, like communism, they never tried the real thing. But, like communism, the Greens aren't going away. Their policies like shutting down energy generation have been future proofed. And given the "centrist" parties fear of populists, it's likely they'll be part of the next coalition.

The media focuses on the so-called Clash of Civilisations, mostly pitting migrant against native, one ethnic group against another.

It disguises a more substantial clash - once you look away from the videos of soccer hooligans and, sometimes suspect, migrant-on-native stabbings that lead to choreographed riots.

The man in the street did not cause the de-industrialisation of Western countries or the impoverishment of its people.

Why would the Netherlands declare war on its farmers, through forced sales, rewilding and dubious nitrogen edicts? Why would the British do likewise, paying farmers not to grow food, and impose inheritance taxes with the effect of forced sale? Why would Germany curtail the life of its nuclear power stations even after the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline? Why would its politicians collude in the closure of vehicle and chemicals plants and the export of jobs?

Is the U.S. military relationship with Europe establishing peace through security or helping to plunder the continent?

European bazaar

The European Union increasingly acts as a kindergarten for future NATO members, and is so closely aligned that the EU could not leave if it chose to.

Meanwhile NATO obliges European countries to buy a lot of American-made weaponry and kit, and to increase their military spending even as the EU stumbles under the weight of debt and its dysfunctional currency.

The answer is to lock the EU into a single debt market, spending money it doesn't have (buying technology it doesn't have) on artificial intelligence and bio-digital identity to lock its populations into cybernetic slavery.

Faced with an energy crisis of their own making, Europe's politicians, in thrall to the U.S., choose to force down wages or replace their populations with cheaper labour via open borders.

Green policies help achieve that by starving industries of energy - which in any case will be leaving for American or Asian shores.

This achieves the same goal of cutting wages as do those other tools of inflation and austerity.

Workers are blamed for earning too much, while at the same time governments complain they're not paying enough tax.

The answer from neo-liberals is that wages must fall, public services be cut back, assets privatised and the people mined for data to sell.

The real Clash of Civilisations is between a footloose cosmopolitan class that dreams of neo feudalism, and the attempt to build networks of mutual gain. It is between a mercantilist system that uses war to enforce monetary and economic dominance through control of trade routes and pipelines, so that it can funnel the proceeds back home -- compared to another that is win-win, even if the greater gains still go to the bigger partners in the BRICS.

Deutschland geshrinkt

Germany's ruling coalition has collapsed with ominous timing, just as Donald Trump is incoming.

Its economy has been shrinking for two years -ever since the detonation of the Nord Stream pipeline which carried gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia. It's biggest names - Volkswagen, Siemens and BASF -- have indicated they will place future investments not in Germany but abroad.

See BRICS Play Many Tunes; West Marches To One - If music be the food of thought (Oct 24, 2024)

Trump's import tariffs combined with plans to revive the U.S. energy sector may lure away European industry.

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