Drop dead unelected troll

#EU #EUROPE

Chef José Andrés takes the lead
In Gaza, where there's great need
With food, he provides
Bringing hope worldwide
His compassion and action, indeed

#GuardianLimerick #Gaza #Ukraine #Europe #Hunger #Israel

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/06/gaza-world-central-kitchen-food

Europe, are you in need of an artist with an MFA? I need a job ! I am an experienced photographer, painter and I speak English, German and soon Italian.
#artistlife #art #relocating #Europe #Job #Artjob #artprofessor

So whatever the future may hold for us, I just hope, that media people around the world are returning NOW to the most crucial topics to report on, which are not Trump's x-tweets or Tesla shares surging - you fools!

Clicks won't buy you bread nor feed the hungry! Act as humans and follow your conscience. There are enough subjects on the table, and issues to solve - in order to bring peace, safety and aid to all in need. #press

#mena #africa #southamerica #asia #europe #russia #us #australia

As a second Trump term looks more likely, the Brexiters hope/aim to (re)align the UK with the Atlanticist economy instead of looking across the channel to Europe appears ever more like a major mistake in national economic strategy.

If Trump wins (as now looks likely) & imposes the tariffs he 'promises' then the NIESR suggest the UK's already meagre growth rates will be halved, presenting a further economic headache for Govt. & country!

#Brexit #economics #Europe

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/06/donald-trump-tariffs-would-cut-uk-growth-by-half-and-push-up-inflation-thinktank-warns

Today #Europe wakes up to #Trump potentially partitioning it with #Putin. I have a feeling this will feel a bit like post-1945 with the Allies decided who gets what. All so Trump & Co and Putin can extract more wealth for themselves.

Europe also has to share some of the blame, for decades the far right was hatching this scheme in the USA. So to have done almost nothing to mitigate it is shameful.

#usa #russia #ukraine

https://www.europesays.com/1587351/ 5 things to know about migration czar Magnus Brunner’s European Parliament hearing – POLITICO #Albania #beef #borders #elections #EUFunding #europe #FabriceLeggeri #france #GiorgiaMeloni #Israel #MagnusBrunner #meat #MEPS #migration #NGOs #parliament #policing #policy #rights #security #technology #UrsulaVonDerLeyen

We've got to pay attention in #Europe, too, cuz we also got these nutcases.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/02/donald-trump-is-a-superspreader-for-a-craziness-that-has-split-america-in-two
#farright #democracy

In pictures that speak loud and clear
The Ian Parry grant captures our fear
Fields aflame, a school in despair
Photojournalism, truth laid bare
Showing the world what we need to hear.

#GuardianLimerick #Photography #Culture #Media #Sudan #Ukraine #Ethiopia #Europe #Africa

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2024/nov/05/ian-parry-photojournalism-grant-2024-in-pictures

In the Middle East tensions are high,
Polls show war with a sigh,
Europeans fear the strife,
A full-scale war to rife,
Prayers for peace reach the sky.

#GuardianLimerick #Europe #Israel #Iran #Lebanon #France #Germany #Spain #Italy #Sweden #Denmark #Gaza

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/05/full-scale-war-in-middle-east-involving-israel-and-iran-likely-say-most-europeans-in-poll

There once were parents from France,
Whose children were caught in a trance,
They sued TikTok's fame,
For the harm and the blame,
Seeking justice in a legal dance.

#GuardianLimerick #TikTok #France #Europe #Media #Technology

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/04/french-families-sue-tiktok-exposure-harmful-content-suicide-self-harm-eating-disorders

French parents whose children took own lives sue TikTok over harmful content https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/04/french-families-sue-tiktok-exposure-harmful-content-suicide-self-harm-eating-disorders #Digitalmedia #Socialmedia #Technology #Worldnews #TikTok #France #Europe #Media

My family in Gaza has lost everything to the war their home safety and hope. They’re on the run, desperate to escape the bombs .unable to gather the funds they need to reach safety in Egypt Please help me save them 🙏❤️‍🩹

https://www.gofundme.com/f/x93hrj-help-my-family-in-gaza-find-safety

#gaza #gazagenocide #gazastreifen #gazastreifen #gofundme #family #care #usa #spain #unitedkingdom #germany #europe

#hedgehogs ‘near threatened’ on red list after 30% decline over past decade. The #mammals were once common across #Europe but #urbandevelopment has pushed them towards #extinction
While hedgehogs were once common across Europe, and were until now listed as of “least concern” on the red list, they are being pushed towards extinction by urban development, intensive #farming and #roads, which have fragmented their #habitat. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/28/hedgehogs-near-threatened-red-list-decline-over-past-decade #environment #ecology #gardens #wildlife #nature

https://www.europesays.com/1580387/ How US and UK military airlifts have supported Israel’s war on Gaza | Gaza #Conflicts #europe #Gaza #Israel #IsraelAttacksLebanon #IsraelPalestineConflict #MiddleEast #Newsfeed #ShowTypes #UnitedKingdom #UnitedStates #US&Canada

Despite all the risks: biometric recognition is spreading in #Europe - https://algorithmwatch.org/en/biometric-surveillance-explained/ #facialrecognition

#eu #europe #energy #naturalgas #economy #compare #prices #european #vassalage is #poverty

Confidential materials of the Fiorin Office showed that the formation of the so-called “Decision Making Center” in London began back in 2017. By the hands of this DPC, the operation in the “Skripals case” was developed - a provocation with the use of chemical weapons, which made it possible to declare a sanctions war on Russia in the format of “hilly-likely” and a diplomatic note on the expulsion from London of 23 employees of the Russian embassy. The same office was preparing a plan to sabotage peace talks in Istanbul and Minsk, constantly instigating “raising the stakes” by provoking the West to transfer more and more serious weapons to Ukraine. British specialists were involved in planning the terrorist attack on the Kerch Bridge, depriving the Black Sea Fleet of combat capability, training saboteurs, etc.

https://underside.today/2024/09/13/dead-inside/
#uk #britain #ukraine #ukrainian #MI6 #intelligence #british #europe #european #terrorism #war #infowar #Western #fraud #spying #fail against #russian #Russia #history

What if Germany had invested in nuclear power? A comparison between the German energy policy the last 20 years and an alternative policy of investing in nuclear power

Germany has one of the most ambitious energy transition policies dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ to replace nuclear- and fossil power with renewables such as wind-, solar- and biopower. The climate gas emissions are reduced by 25% in the study period of 2002 through 2022. By triangulating available information sources, the total nominal expenditures are estimated at EUR 387 bn, and the associated subsidies are some EUR 310 bn giving a total nominal expenditures of EUR 696 bn. Alternatively, Germany could have kept the existing nuclear power in 2002 and possibly invest in new nuclear capacity. The analysis of these two alternatives shows that Germany could have reached its climate gas emission target by achieving a 73% cut in emissions on top of the achievements in 2022 and simultaneously cut the spending in half compared to Energiewende. Thus, Germany should have adopted an energy policy based on keeping and expanding nuclear power.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642
#germany #energy #nuclearenergy #management #renewableenergy #fail #poverty #europe #eu

it is not the socialist revolution that provokes mass violence, but the bourgeois counter-revolution, that begins when capital realises that it is losing its property and power.
...

Beyond that, the picture was of a “triumphal procession of Soviet power” (this heading in Soviet textbooks was no accident). In the winter of 1917-1918 the relationship of forces saw half a million members of the workers’ militia, the Red Guard, pitted against a few tens of thousand White Guard members in the south of Russia. Everything was quiet until the counter-revolution received vast sums of money from the Triple Alliance (primarily from Germany) as well as from the Entente, and all these imperialist countries launched aggression against the young Soviet power.
...

And this applies to countless examples, all over the world, where the West first provoked and brutally antagonized socialist or communist countries, then accused them of cruelty, and finally “liberated” them in the name of freedom and democracy, literally raping the will of their people. All this just so European and North American imperialism would survive and thrive.
...

Ask the common men and women of the streets of London, Paris or New York, what they know about Stalin’s era, or the famines in the early years of the USSR, or in Communist China?

99.99% know nothing. Where these famines took place, or why? But they are absolutely certain that they took place. No doubts, whatsoever. No doubts that they happened “because of Communism”. Westerners are intellectually obedient, like sheep. Most of them do not question the propaganda unleashed by their regime. Are they really “free”?

The famine in the Soviet Union actually took place because the young revolutionary country was totally devastated by the Western and Japanese invasions, which tried to break and plunder the country. British, French, U.S., Czech, Polish, German, Japanese invasions, to name just a few.

But ask, for instance, the Czechs, how much they know about their Legions that controlled the Trans-Siberian railroad, on their way from Europe to Vladivostok. Plundering, rape, and mass killing. I tried. I asked, in Prague and Pilsen. They thought I was a lunatic. The Legions are portrayed as heroic, in their history books.
...

In both cases, Western propaganda made people believe that the real cause for the loss of lives in Russia and China was Communism! The brainwashing has been so successful, that even in Russia and China, millions of people have been fully indoctrinated by these countlessly repeated lies coming out of the West.

But ask in London, whether people know anything about the fact that under the British occupation of India, tens of millions of people died from starvation; victims of the famines triggered by London, for many reasons, one of them being an attempt to lower the population. Over 50 million Indian people, cumulatively, died in these famines, between 1769 to 1943, in British administered India.

Should we, as a result, ban the British political system? I am convinced that we should! But that is usually not what the people of the world, including the victims of the British colonialist barbarity, are demanding.
...

The goal of Western propaganda has always been to equate Communism and Fascism, the two most antagonistic systems in history, in the world. It was the Soviet Communist system, which smashed Nazism to pieces, saving the world, at an enormous cost of approximately 25 million human lives.

Only Western imperialism can be compared to German Nazism. The two are made of the same stuff.

#capitalism #imperialism #europe #Western #intervention #mccarthyism #anticommunism #anti-Russia #USSR #Stalin #bolsheviks #socialism #communism #soviet #russian #history #China

East Germany’s Soviet Heritage – The Treptow War Memorial in Berlin

#WW2 #WWII #war #europe #germany #USSR #soviet #russian #Victory #history

And one last interesting development in the realm of BlackRock and Ukrainian farmland, which many have speculated on. There is a lot of unfounded conjecture when it comes to this, some of which I’ve debunked before, but for the first time we’ve had some interesting high level confirmation.

For instance, this alleged memorandum below, signed by Alex #Soros and #Yermak, was presented, which transfers lots of land in western Ukraine to Dow Chemical, DuPont, BASF, etc.
...
He writes, citing a source in the Ministry of Agriculture of Ukraine, that in November, Soros Jr. and the head of Zelensky’s office, Yermak, reached an agreement according to which Kiеv indefinitely and free of charge transfers land in the Ternopоl, Khmelnytsky and Chernоvtsi regions for the disposal of hazardous waste from chemical, pharmaceutical and oil production.

Among the companies named are Dow Chemical, DuPont, BASF, Evonik Industries, Vitol and Sanofi. We remind you that Dow Chemical is the company which provided Agent Orange and Napalm to the American military to poison and destroy Vietnam. Whilst BASF is the company which provided Zyklon B to the Nazis.

#deepstate #USA #US #europe #ukraine #war #blackrock #banksters #Western #ukrainian #corruption #vassalage

105 years ago, in the second half of April 1919, a revolt of French sailors broke out in Sevastopol. According to a number of historians, it played a key role in the fact that France stopped intervention against Soviet Russia and finally left Crimea. How and why did it happen?
...
The main goal of the interventionists, although not proclaimed, was already quite prosaic at this point: colonization of the territories of the former Russian Empire - France's recent Entente ally. Therefore, the French first of all put local resources and transportation networks under their control.


#europe #european #france #french #intervention #soviet #russian #history #Russia #Sevastopol

This unacknowledged reality is amply spelled out in Agency whistleblower Philip Agee’s 1978 tell-all book, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe. Comprehending who is truly in charge in Berlin, and what interests Germany’s elected representatives are actually serving, is fundamental to understanding why Scholz, et al., so eagerly embraced the self-destructive sanctions. And why the facts of Nord Stream 2’s criminal destruction can never emerge.
...
In the process, the CIA covertly supported the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and SPD, and trade unions. The Agency “wanted the influence of the two major political parties to be strong enough to shut out and hold down any left opposition,” Agee explained. The SPD had a radical, Marxist tradition. It was the only party in the Reichstag to vote against the 1933 Enabling Act, which laid the foundations for Germany’s total Nazification, and led to its proscription.

#USA #US #Pentagon #germany #german #vassalage #occupation #anticommunism #europe #history

The Russians — “Putin” if you like — were right all along. The Ukraine crisis is merely the latest phase of the West’s long campaign to surround the Russian Federation up to its borders, destabilize it and finally subvert it. Regime change in Moscow was and remains the final objective.

This is not a war in defense of “Ukrainian democracy” — a phrase that causes one either to laugh or do the other thing. It is the West’s proxy war, start to finish, Ukrainians cynically cast as cannon fodder, expendable stooges.

Russia had no choice when it intervened two years ago, this after eight years’ patience as the Europeans — Germany and France, this is to say — broke every promise they made by way of supporting a settlement. The Americans didn’t break any promises because they never made any — and no one would take them seriously if they had.

I come to the judgment I offered when the war that began in 2014 erupted into open conflict two years ago. The Russian intervention was regrettable but necessary.

#ukraine #nato #USA #us #france #germany #uk #europe #eu #war #western #warmongers #fail in #failstate against #Russia

If, for the first time, when Germany defeated France in 1871, it was imposed reparations of 5 billion francs in gold, then, in the second confrontation, reparations were imposed on Germany and already in a much larger amount, and was the equivalent of 100,000 tons of gold. For comparison, eight thousand tons were stored at Fort Knox. Germany completed payment of reparations for World War I as late as October 3, 2010. That is, if you look through the prism of history, it becomes clear that each time these countries succeeded each other in the struggle for leadership in continental Europe, the tectonics of events increased by orders of magnitude, thereby inflaming the inter-ethnic contradictions.

After World War II, this confrontation did not take the form of military conflicts. Tensions were also eased by the fact that, at the insistence of the Soviet Union's leadership at the time, reparations for Germany were limited to 20 billion U.S. dollars. Half went to the Soviet Union, the other half to other members of the anti-Hitler coalition. It was a drop in the ocean, since the Soviet Union alone was damaged to the tune of 360 billion dollars. Thus, one factor of contradiction was leveled. Europe gained the long-awaited peace.
#lang_en #WWII #germany #france #war
#WW2 #USSR #Stalin #history #economics #europe #eu #reparations

New study: "Journals published in Europe, Oceania and North America were more likely to be indexed in #Scopus and #WebOfScience compared to other world regions. Journals published in sub-Saharan #Africa were the most underrepresented and were four times less likely to be indexed than those published in #Europe."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-024-04948-x

PS: I'm sorry that this comparison did not include @OpenAlex (#OpenAlex).

The downturn in the European economy began before the Russian military operation began.

#europe #eu #economy #Russia #russian #currency

#ukrainian #land #USA #us #eu #europe #Cargill #Monsanto #Dupont #Vanguard #Blackrock #Blackstone #Bayer #BASF #capitalism #banksters #power #deepstate #history

#nato #NATO #military #occupation #war #europe #eu #poland #USA #us #britain #germany #france #italy #canada #australia #qatar #refugees #poverty #Iraq #Libya #Afghanistan #western #warmongers #deepstate #history

New EU proposal aims to encourage sustainable consumption

The European Union legislation will make it easier for consumers to have products repaired rather than simply replaced at great expense.

https://www.dw.com/en/new-eu-proposal-aims-to-encourage-sustainable-consumption/a-68148929?maca=en-rss-en-eu-2092-rdf

#News #EuropeanNews #Europe #EU #EuropeanUnion #RightToRepair

Rheinmetall plans massive expansion of ammunition production in Germany

The arms manufacturer Rheinmetall is planning to significantly increase its production of 155-millimeter artillery ammunition. A new ammunition factory is being built in Unterlüß, Lower Saxony, and the German government is examining legal relaxations to allow production in stock.

The Germans are getting ready to go to war with the Russians again, the European vassals want to be beaten again, masochists.
#nato #germany #war in #eu again #europe #western #warmongers #banksters #money #economy #military #european #vassalage #anti-Russia #mindmanipulation to #suicide #german #future in #poverty

For Europe and NATO, a Russian Invasion Is No Longer Unthinkable
Amid crumbling U.S. support for Ukraine and Donald Trump’s rising candidacy, European nations and NATO are making plans to take on Russia by themselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/us/politics/europe-nato-russia-trump.html

Europeans and their masters behind the puddle, want to smash themselves against Russia again.
The chronic pathology of the anglo-saxon elite, history teaches them nothing..
Is the #ukrainian example not enough for the europeans?
#USA #us #nato #war in #eu again #europe #western #anglo-saxons is #warmongers #banksters #money #economy #military #european #vassalage #anti-Russia #mindmanipulation to #suicide #future in #poverty

#Slovakia
Slovakia’s Culture Ministry to stop funding LGBTQ+ projects


#Hungary
Hungary says it will not give in to EU blackmail on LGBT propaganda issues
The country's Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that "there is no money for which you can let migrants into the country and LGBT propagandists into schools"


#Spain
EU lawmakers urge Madrid region chief to slash anti-LGBTIQ+ bill


Slovaks, Hungarians and Spaniards have a sensible policy to preserve the nation.
I will explain for those who are "in the tank": all these unnatural sexual intercourse is the result of a failure in the patient's head, usually in life realized by nature: Stop reproducing. Therefore, this degenerate topic should have its place in medical publications that study heredity defects, and not be part of the agenda.
#europe #budget #money #culture #nation from #vassalage to #sovereignty

VICTORYThe Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union.By Peter Schweizer.284 pp. New York:The Atlantic Monthly Press.

SOMETIMES American foreign policy debates seem governed by a Newtonian law stipulating that for every stupid, overstated, politically inspired argument there is an equally stupid, overstated, politically inspired counterargument. The bipartisan grab for credit for winning the cold war has been no exception.

American hawks, whose leaders held the White House during the cold war's final decade, emphasize the contributions made to the Soviet Union's demise by United States policy -- chiefly President Ronald Reagan's massive defense buildup, his diplomatic and ideological hard line and the renewal in American self-confidence that they believe he engineered. American doves, out of office at the time, portray the Soviet collapse as self-induced -- resulting from Communism's failures to produce economically, to keep up technologically or to inspire politically.

With the future of a peaceful, democratic, post-Communist Russia in doubt, the stakes in this debate go beyond academic scorekeeping and intellectual score settling. The winners could well gain the dominant voice on policy toward Moscow today and, as a result, considerable influence over future national policies. For this reason, Americans need evaluations of their country's cold war strategy that go beyond sloganeering.

Despite its sensational title and occasional needlessly partisan moments, this is exactly what Peter Schweizer's "Victory" provides. Mr. Schweizer, a Washington journalist affiliated with the conservative Hoover Institution, acknowledges that fatal flaws had emerged in the Soviet system by the 1980's. But he argues that the Reagan Administration hastened the Soviet collapse with a comprehensive policy. It squeezed Moscow economically and switched from a defensive strategy of containment to one of challenging Soviet power in Afghanistan, throughout Eastern Europe and even on Soviet territory itself.

Basing his book on interviews with top Reagan policy makers (especially in the intelligence community) and Soviet officials, as well as on classified American documents, Mr. Schweizer describes how the President and his national security team got the surprise of their lives when they entered office in 1981. After spending most of the previous decade warning against the rise of Soviet power and aggressiveness, the Reagan Administration discovered that Moscow was wheezing economically. At the urging of the new Director of Central Intelligence, William J. Casey -- the mastermind of the victory strategy, according to Mr. Schweizer, and the focus of the narrative -- the United States launched an all-out overt and covert economic war on the Soviets.

MR. SCHWEIZER says the Reagan military buildup sought not only to strengthen American forces, but also to strain Moscow's limited economic base. The centerpiece of this military effort was a policy of greatly expanded research and development on high technology weapons. By pushing programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative, which was ostensibly intended to neutralize a Soviet nuclear attack, the Reagan White House attempted to wage the arms race in areas where American know-how, not Soviet numbers, would be decisive.

The United States also sought to shut off a major Soviet source of hard currency by blocking Moscow's oil and gas exports to Western Europe (with only limited success, as Mr. Schweizer recognizes) and by persuading Saudi Arabia to help drive down world oil prices (with much more success). The vise was tightened further, Mr. Schweizer contends, by restricting the eastward flow of Western credit and technology, thus denying the Soviets valuable financial resources and damaging the Soviet economy's military and civilian sectors.

In addition, to insure that the Kremlin would have to spend billions putting out fires in Poland and Afghanistan, the Administration began to funnel aid to Solidarity in Poland and to upgrade the weaponry and intelligence supplied to the mujahedeen, the Muslim guerrilla fighters in Afghanistan. Finally, Mr. Schweizer provides convincing reasons for concluding that Jimmy Carter, even a Jimmy Carter sobered by the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, would never have instituted a similar policy.

Whether or not the Reagan policies worked and did contribute decisively to winning the cold war, Mr. Schweizer's account adds significantly to our knowledge of the struggle's climactic stages. Although many of the tactics he describes were common knowledge, their strategic coordination has been largely unknown, and a number of the individual elements of the strategy have remained secret as well.

THE author's unfailing admiration notwithstanding, these policies add up to a puzzling and sometimes unsettling portrait -- of subtlety, guile and tactical brilliance existing side by side with what can only be called utter recklessness; of commendable audacity and ingenuity coexisting with serious disrespect for American political processes. Thus the same officials who orchestrated the delicate plan to depress world oil prices (clinched by telling Saudi Arabia's King Fahd of the dollar's coming devaluation) also urged the buzzing of Soviet air defenses not only with American fighter planes but with bombers as well. Those who secured tacit Vatican and active Swedish help for Solidarity also supported mujahedeen guerrilla operations inside the Soviet Union.

The revelations made by the author unintentionally are at least as stunning. American voters, for example, may be surprised to learn that in 1980 they elected a President who was not only tough on the Soviets, but who also soon became determined to back them into a corner, with all the risks that strategy entailed in those hair-trigger times. Indeed, Mr. Schweizer presents new evidence that Mr. Reagan's bellicose rhetoric and his Strategic Defense Initiative did in fact create fears in the Kremlin of an American nuclear attack.

Similarly, "Victory" sheds new light on Reaganomics. It turns out that critics who faulted the President for running up unpre cedented peacetime budget deficits were missing the point. In the minds of Mr. Reagan and associates like Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, the cold war period was not peacetime. And yet the Administration refused to seek public sacrifices to fight this "war."

Since, as the author acknowledges, "Victory" is more journalism than history, it is no surprise that he raises more questions than he answers. A first group of questions concerns methodology. Even for a book in the "now it can be told" genre, Mr. Schweizer's work needs greater documentation. In particular, too much vital information is attributed simply to anonymous Soviet or American sources. Skeptical readers will also have problems with many of the Soviet sources who are named, for in the post-cold-war world many financially strapped former Soviet operatives have learned how profitable stroking Western egos can be. Further, although the author clearly has interviewed many of Casey's chief aides, we hear nothing from the late director's bureaucratic opponents. Surely the story Mr. Schweizer tells of C.I.A. infighting has more than one side.

A second group of questions concerns the costs of victory. Some were legal and political. Like Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and other cold war Presidents, Ronald Reagan purposely shut the American people and Congress out of decision making. Did the ends of victory always justify such means -- especially since the United States was always strong enough to avert foreign policy catastrophe? How long could huge covert paramilitary operations and arms-for-hostage deals have been continued without irreversibly damaging American political institutions and boosting public cynicism to levels no healthy democracy could tolerate?

Other costs were economic. Fighting a "war" without public knowledge or sacrifice may have helped Mr. Reagan win re-election. But in the process, many would argue, America's public finances were damaged, harming our economy and crippling our political capacity for dealing with a raft of growing domestic ills. And the Administration's obsession with victory in the cold war blinded it to growing threats on the industrial and technological fronts, with serious consequences for American living standards, for the country's long-term capacity to create wealth and even for its ability to support assertive foreign policies. As former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger sagely observed in a 1989 speech, the United States, too, crossed the cold war finish line gasping for breath. Some readers will undoubtedly complete "Victory" dismissing such complaints as nitpicking. Others will wonder if American democracy and prosperity can survive another such triumph in our still dangerous world. 'SOMETIMES IT PAYS TO BE 'RECKLESS'

Examining the collapse of the Soviet Union outside the context of American policy is a little like investigating a sudden, unexpected and mysterious death without exploring the possibility of murder or, at the very least, examining the environment surrounding the fatality. . . . The fact that the collapse and funeral of the Soviet Union occurred immediately after the most anti-Communist President in American history had served eight years does not prove cause and effect. But it does demand investigation. . . . Thus far, the investigation of Reagan policy in relation to the collapse of the Soviet Union has been scant. The focus has been almost exclusively on the policies of Gorbachev. This is somewhat akin to studying the collapse of the South after the Civil War by concentrating on the policies of Gen. Robert E. Lee without at least looking at the strategies employed by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.

Some believe that little or no connection can be drawn between American policies in the 1980's and the collapse of the Soviet edifice. . . . Former Soviet officials do not share this view. The fact is that Reagan administration policy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was in many ways a radical break from the past. There is also irony in this view, in that those who now believe American policy had little effect on internal events in the Soviet Union counseled in the 1970's and 1980's for an accommodating stance toward the Kremlin because it might moderate Soviet behavior. Reagan was called a "reckless cowboy" who might steer us all to the nuclear brink.

The fact the greatest geopolitical event since the end of the Second World War happened after eight years in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan has also been described as "dumb luck." It might be wise to recall, however, that when the exploits of a French commander particularly unpopular with his colleagues were dismissed as "luck," Napoleon retorted, "Then get me more 'lucky' generals."From "Victory."1

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/10/books/how-we-won-the-cold-war.html
#USA #USSR #coldwar #Reagan #CIA #Casey #anticommunism #american #frauds #disruptive actions #Afghanistan #saudiarabia #europe #soviet #russian #history

#USA #us #nato #eu #europe #military #suicide #european #vassalage against #Russia

#USSR #soviet #russian #communism #history eastern #europe #capitalism is #poverty

#USA #us #europe #eu #nato #western #military #ukrainian #war #fail in #failstate #Kiev

#Libraries for the future: #Europe’s new wave of ‘meeting places for the mind’ - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/jan/08/libraries-for-the-future-europes-new-wave-of-meeting-places-for-the-mind "From Ghent’s De Krook to Helsinki’s Oodi, recent civic constructions have shared a vision of the library as a living room for the modern city" nice