Lask

@tanchitzmichaly @RWApodcast Implicitly admitting that Putin and siloviki regime have been systematically murdering oppositionaries for 20 years while simultaneously finding all possible ways to shift responsibility on external actors.

@RWApodcast You should never put yourself in a position where you are worth more to the US as a martyr. Think Nemtsov Think Jushchenko (yes he lived) Think Shchekochikhin Think Politkovskaya And many more and Navalny was only the latest. Thought they'd do Tikhanovskaya or hubby too.

Navalny's wife and allies all encouraged him to return to Russia, disregarding the criminal case opened against him. Why? Navalny's organization was pulling in millions of dollars, and they wanted to split it among themselves, hoping donations would surge after his arrest.

@SteffenJak14470 @s_watka @ricwe123 You post this highlighted text as if were something universally nefarious? Why wouldn't there be forces outside of Russia wanting a non-major conflict inducing regime change of Putin and siloviki who have unjustifiably initiated the largest war in Europe since WW2.

@s_watka @ricwe123 The regime change in Russia is a done deal in the EU-PACE, they don`t even hide it anymore..

While the EU President is spewing her usual bullshit crap about Russia keep in mind Alexei Navalny wanted to strip Chechens, Dargins, and all other nations in the Caucasus of their Russian citizenship and compared them to cockroaches and flies...

@panoptikumzwei @LeoBorchardR Can we get a citation for that?

@LeoBorchardR Even uncle Adolf said that Latvians were the worst of the Baltics and personally despised them more than he did Slavs, which was funny.

Russian crown spent so much time and attention trying to ensure that Baltic Germans will not have fun with Latvian and Estonians legs only to later see a large proportion of Cheka commissars 35 out of 70 come from ethnical Latvian backgrounds.

@ValtsDalbins Stulbums. Tu speciāli mēģini Latviešus popularizēt kā netolerantus sīknacionālus "fašistus"? No kā šim ir labums, ja neskaita FSB un krievu propogandas kanālus?

Es negribu Latvijā nevienu krievu, visus prom. Punkts.

@noriello @DrEkonReid @Incendies591432 Are there memoirs/documentation in relation to this observation?

@DrEkonReid @Incendies591432 The Red Army soldiers of more of the aristocratic, intelligentsia roots were disgusted by the thrall peasantry raping and marauding Berlin during victory over le nazis. I’ve read about it and my grandfather talked about it. They don’t change in generations.

Choose your trad wife wisely

@BSmildzina @cilveks444 Uz ko attiecībā ir šis? Vai runa ir par to ka individuāli krievi nepatīk tikai dēļ viņu etniskās izcelsmes dēļ, vai to ka monolingvāli krievu izcelsmes LV pilsoņi un ilgtermiņa rezidenti demonstratīvi nerunā valsts pamatvalodā un atbalsta autoritāras valsts vardarbīgu ekspansiju?

@cilveks444 Projekts anti-Krievija caur propagandu, ka krievi ir slikti, tiek realizēts jau gadiem. Kā to pārbaudīt? Dzīvo un skaties kā ir. Vai ārsts krievs ir slikts? Pārdevējs krievs? Meistars krievs? Ja nav, tad sāc domāt, kam ir izdevīgi tā melot un kāpēc. Es skatījos un ieraudzīju.

Dzirdēts, krievi kā uzņēmēji, kā biznesa veicēji ir prasmīgi, ka arī senākos laikos krievi tādi bijuši Latvijas Pirmās brīvvalsts laikā. Var jau teikt, ka šobrīd viss citādāki, bet jebkurā gadījumā viņi strādā un maksā nodokļus, gluži kā visi. Bet pretī saņem zaimus un kritiku.

@RnaudBertrand @kakajusaiyou Are you serious? None of this was state sanctioned and after full occupation having it's government and intelligentsia dismantled. Can you maybe give me a rundown of programs and killings of jews in the Baltics during the interwar period (1920-1940)?

Not so sure. They have a pretty horrid history. During WW2 they were so eager in their extermination of the Jews that even the SS were uncomfortable about the brutality. I'm not kidding, check this for instance: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaunas_po… The ended up killing more Jews than in Germany in both percentage and *absolute* terms, which is quite a feat...

This is bigger than most people realize: Lithuania's Prime Minister now officially admits it was a huge "strategic mistake" (like "jumping in front of a train") to be the first and only EU country to open a "Taiwanese" representative office in 2021. lrt.lt/en/news-in-eng… She says Lithuania has started the "very complicated process" of "turning the clock back" in order to normalize relations with China, as the "ties were completely cut" as a result of Lithuania's actions. What does this signify? It was, of course, always painfully obvious that Lithuania couldn't take on China by itself: they're a tiny country of less than 3 million people, about 1/10th the size of some Chinese cities... As deluded as they were, I can't believe that they thought they could. Lithuania's bet, doubtlessly, was it'd be a "first mover" of a broader Western decoupling from China and reap strategic benefits from this. It's like at work: if you're a small intern, you stand out in the eyes of the boss by being extra eager on initiatives dear to him. Plus, at the time, Lithuania was actually already relatively decoupled from China: it was the country in Europe least dependent on China which accounted in 2020 for only 0.7% of its exports and 3.7% of its imports (gssc.lt/wp-content/upl…). Basically the thinking must have been: "for a very low cost we can become the boss's new favorite." And, on top of that, there was a genuine expectation of economic payoff from Taiwan who committed to invest hundreds of million in the country (bbc.com/news/business-…). They, however, miscalculated in 3 ways: - The cost, it turns out, was not small. China didn't limit itself to completely stop direct imports from Lithuania. In a pretty shrewd move, they also blocked exports from other EU companies when they contained components of Lithuanian origin, something Lithuania's Foreign Minister said was completely unexpected (lrt.lt/en/news-in-eng…) and actually very damaging (80 to 90 percent of Lithuanian exports are to other EU countries). - The move turned out to be extremely unpopular with the Lithuanian people, with only 13% of the population supporting it (lrt.lt/en/news-in-eng…). Why? Because it was painfully obvious that Lithuania was the "aggressor" here, as it were: they went out of their way to provoke China on its red line, an issue that had nothing to do with Lithuanian interests. The Lithuanian public, unlike their government, had the common sense to ask "why are we meddling in this"? - Last but not least, they completely misread the room. The broader Western decoupling from China didn't materialize and Lithuania found itself the only country in the West with completely severed economic ties with China. Far from being the intern who impressed the boss and rode a company-wide trend, everyone was like - much like the Lithuanian public - "why would you do that to yourself?" All the more these days given the transatlantic tensions: Lithuania severed ties with China to prove its loyalty to a US-led order that is itself now disappearing. Hard to imagine a worse-timed bet. Long story short: they're now doing a 180 degree turn, the current government's primary foreign policy priority is to restore relations with Beijing. Which means that, in some way, they are ending up being a "first mover", except not in the way they intended: they thought they'd prove being the most fervent disciple of anti-China zealotry would pay off. Instead they're the one coming back and telling everyone: "nope, not worth it."

@KuittinenPetri @philippilk Please elucidate us, what should they have learnt?

@philippilk Poland has a lot of hard-working and intelligent individuals, but you can hear really bad geopolitical take after another from Poland as well. It is no surprise Poland got wrecked so bad in WW2 and it seem they didn't learn a thing! Same for the Baltic countries of course.

Tusk: “The world is changing we must fully understand the new dynamics.” # Reads stale, warmed-over globalist slop that is 25 years out of date # I can’t say I’m bullish on Poland. It looks like it’s going down the toilet with the Baltics. 🇵🇱📉

@SealOfTheEnd @oteycoueye @LatvianD @GazeWindward Lol, rabid? Why do you despise Balts so much? These are some bizarre conversational threads. Meanwhile Russia is spending hundreds of billions of $ to engage in the largest European war since WW2 for the 4th year due to non-defense related reasons and that's somehow not rabid.

@oteycoueye @LatvianD @GazeWindward Hmm.. so the current rabid state of the Balts isn't unprecedented ?

English lord outted as heterosexual, resigns in disgrace.

@NunoGonzalez11 @kamilkazani Could you give more info/citations on that?

@kamilkazani China has effectively blocked (or severely restricted) the direct shipment of drones and critical parts to Ukraine in recent times (2024-2025), while the flow to Russia persists.

"Experts say that without Chinese supplies, Russia’s military-industrial complex would not be able to sustain the current pace of the war" Yeah, but neither would Ukrainian. Who do you think is making all these FPVs etc (Do not trust everything you read online)

@IskoLat Don't make me tap the sign again 👇 x.com/Lasker451/stat…

And how is that working out? Selling out your children’s future and committing demographic seppuku just to spite the communists. Turning a once bustling tech hub and a tourist hotspot into a wasteland and a glorified military outpost for the US. Slavery disguised as "freedom".

@teortaxesTex Dude, it wasn't an existential threat to begin with.

A thing that's lost on Russian boomers is that if NATO fails and Americans with their nukes are out, we don't *need* to prevent Ukraine from the association with Europe. The EU security architecture is unlikely to be an existential threat to Russia. Sadly they just want clay.

@DeluxeMarc @PalmerLuckey Given that revanchist sentiment in Russian leadership simply took a tactical retreat, it could only continue working well if there were no alternate markets for Russia. With global trend of increasing market share of Chinese and Indian economies, it was only a matter of time.

The european model is to establish peace by becoming business partners. Base idea of the EU. You don’t fight if you’re interdependant. It basically worked to tie together a region that started 2 World Wars. Tying in russia by buying natgas and export cars, food etc… it worked well for some time.

More than a "mistake". Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder killed nuclear, approved Nord Stream, then left to be chairman of Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft three weeks later. The Ukraine war is effectively a proxy war with Germany, which has sent far more money to Russia than Ukraine.

@teortaxesTex No, after the annexation of Crimea, Europe should have immediately pursued their own pan-euro nuclear fuel enrichment programme and elimination of regulatory bloat.

Man how I'd like to see Rosatom reactors all over Europe OK fine, the French can have half

@lemberger_28 @therion_5 @ulrichspeck If that's the case then we are screwed. Baltics require fully commited Poland+Nordics at bare minimum. Even access to industrial capacity of UK+FR+DE would get us barely above the waterline.

If Nato breaks over the dispute about Greenland, it is not the US but Europe that will be without protection --against a Russia that is eager to reconquer the territory the Soviet Union once has controlled.

@teortaxesTex @SpicyGaullism Unironically. Diplomacy with Putin was already tried in 2001-2005, it was pointless because any grovelling or concessions short of putting us on the path of Belarus would be met with stonewalling attitude. And our "racism" is mostly asserting basic survival of our identity

@SpicyGaullism Yes. Mandatory

Are Americans really so retarded as to not understand what this is about? Let me spell it out, in a heavily narrativized but directionally true form. There are different interests in Europe, and different interest groups. Many countries are deeply – existentially – invested in the NATO, mainly states bordering Russia. Speaking as a Russian: if there were *no* NATO, or if the US pulled out of NATO *today*, we would TOTALLY try to gobble them up. We might even retreat from Ukraine to concentrate on this. Baltics are first on the list, to secure sea access in Kaliningrad which they already threaten. Poland, Finland? They can fight well, and they're not so retarded and racist as to be incapable of diplomacy (unlike Balts) so *probably* not, but they are totally prudent to consider NATO an issue of survival. So these voices, influential thanks to the usual skin-in-the-game mechanics, American «microlateralism» doctrine, and high-ranking agents like Kallas, are dead set on preserving the alliance even at unlimited cost to other members (like Denmark, which they lowkey resent for their blissful secure affluence anyway). Next, there's the entire nervous system of Atlanticist apparatchiks embedded in EU institutions, many educated or elevated in the US and UK, who don't care much for the continental Europe in the first place, starting with von der Leyen herself and going down; you see them and batallions of their think tankists kvetching here, minimizing and excusing American behavior, calling for accommodation and concern trolling about foolishness of resistance. Those are just enemies or at best patsies. And there's the general «shared Western civilization» goodwill, if fraying at the seams due to Trump and trade/tech/culture wars. But the ruling political and cultural class in Europe, all these social democrats, is kin to the American Blue Tribe, and it sincerely hopes and believes that once the horrible Orange Hitler is out, the ties will be mended, apologies made, and the Enlightened Hajnali Race will focus anew on the Real Avenger Level Threats — like economic growth, free speech and capitalism, to name a few. But there are also a few who feel differently. These are the nativist right-wingers (except ones captured by American brainworms to the point of assuming that shared Darwinian values imply shared interests, rather than more intense zero-sum competition for the same assets; an unfortunately common failure of the political mind), who don't want demographic replacement within and ALSO don't want the vassal condition for their people between nations. And there are the French, who have always chafed under the Anglo hegemony. And in the militaries and security apparatuses (relatively weak, sure, but still able to weigh in on the decisionmaking) there are, I'm sure, people with enough exposure to the American elite zeitgeist and loyal to their own nations, unironic realists. Now, the real big shift that is happening is that the realists have started to wise up - still murkily, half-disbelieving – to what America is doing here, what it openly claims, and why. America is gathering resources. To fully deplete them. While the infrastructure in the imperial core is lacking and it cannot utilize everything, trade is possible, to ameliorate financial imbalances; but the longer-term objective is to end even the trade. America is growing weary of «strategically indispensable allies in the region» when said region is hard to secure or just a mere patch of dirt or sand. Baltic defense is uninteresting. Ukraine is a tedious bloody steppe, might as well let Russia have it. But a rumor of Ukraine having RARE EARTHS (even though «not rare at all») in Carpathian Mountains? Now we're talking! 300 billion barrels of oil (crappy and hard to get out, maybe non-existent) in Venezuela? Delta Force go go go! Something something HREEs in Kvanefjeld, Greenland?! Trump is clearly confused about details, completion timelines and real limiting factors, jumps the gun and stumbles, but the underlying logic of the faction he represents is consistent like an ice breaker's route. Not even TSMC is seen as valuable enough to renege on trade bullying. TSMC Taiwan is a depreciating asset; to be extracted at warp speed using stick, not carrot, the risk of accelerating the Chinese takeover be damned. Now, why does this happen in this exact form? To be blunt: we are IN THE ENDGAME. THIS IS LATE ANTHROPOCENE. WE WILL HAVE FULL HUMAN LABOR AUTOMATION WITHIN AT MOST A SINGLE GENERATION IF NOT A FEW YEARS. WE ARE NOW COMPETING NOT FOR MONEY OR HANDS, NOT FOR LANDS, AND CERTAINLY NOT FOR HEARTS AND MINDS, BUT FOR THE STERADIANS OF THE LIGHT CONE OF THE UNIVERSE, AND THEREFORE FOR JOULES AND ATOMS NECESSARY TO BOOTSTRAP THE LARGEST POSSIBLE SEED OF A SPACEFARING CIVILIZATION THAT WILL CONSUME ALL THE NEGENTROPY WITHIN THE COSMIC EVENT HORIZON OF EARTH. Thank you for your attention to this matter. This is what the Americans believe. The smart ones, like Musk, Thiel, Karp and Jason Gaverick Matheny. They think about this stuff a lot, no kidding. Even their gfs believe. This is what the Chinese believe too, if implicitly, for their civilization has such innate understanding of performance and infrastructure that it doesn't need this kind of stuff spelled out. Still, they literally think about this as they plan their permanent underground Moon bases and orbital power generation. Did you think it's about vibes, papers, essays, «science» anon? It's not science, it's science fiction, which always has been an unsubtle political aspiration. Qian Xuesen didn't design rockets only to make the Communist Party secure. Neither did von Braun aspire to merely beat the Soviets to the Moon. That's just not how such minds work, anon. The Chinese have a well-oiled industrial machine at home that produces maybe 50% of All The Stuff in the world (if you're not in a bubble, you should have noted the pattern of «China makes more $stuff than The Rest Of Humanity Combined» for many values of important $stuff). Enough STEM talent to complete all remaining supply chains. A self-replicating energy infrastructure that grows exponentially. And auxiliary resource bases throughout the developing world, which could be militarized. In principle, the exponential growth factor matters more than the starting point, but in their case both are terrifyingly high and at this rate they look fit to inherit like half of the effective universe. Their economy, even as it still runs on human labor, is already entering a takeoff phase that could replicate the Great Divergence – a trend obscured by gormless «capital efficiency» or «debt» doomposting, a trend that accelerates by a tick as each technology get crossed out of the 35 Chokepoints List, as overcapacity cycles in synergistic industries phase-lock and tun into smooth capacity expansion… While on Earth, they do not expect to directly acquire much more land (though they opportunistically exploit whatever they can, and aim to monopolize much of the South China Sea), but they feel reasonably secure in their odds, relying on the gravity of their nascent industrial singularity to sway those fence-sitters who may be of help. They might be wrong to feel this way, but that is how they feel. It's a cultural thing. They are unbearably arrogant in thinking they can do everything by themselves. In a world where Americans don't exist, they would be undeniably correct. Americans are swindlers, pirates and conquerors, expansionists by virtue of their selection and path dependency, driven by Manifest Destiny, Messianic even in their pacifist eras (nevermind Imperial ones), dreamers and innovators and sci-fi writers. They are vastly more aware of the stakes, they have thought about all of this in far greater resolution and on a higher strategic level, from reusable space launch and all the way to nanotechnology and Von Neumann probes. Soviets came up with the Kardashev scale as they tried to keep up, but it's the richest man in the world – obviously American – who's taking this idea most seriously of all. And they are panicking. Because they realize their hand is shit. Decayed industry, too few able bodies and brains, corrupt governance, misaligned capital allocation… But they believe that AI-driven automation can make up for the current industrial weakness, magnify their growth factor, get them back in the lead, and possibly entitle them to the entirety of the pie; and they would rather risk it all in a gamble than give up the hope of leaving nothing on the table. For now, they're scrambling to acquire raw inputs in perpetuity. It doesn't matter that most of Greenland is covered by an ice shield a mile thick. Where they see themselves going, it's no great obstacle. Maybe they are deluded to have such priorities at this stage. They had already shot themselves in the foot with the compute blockade premised on singularity by ≈2025 – both ineptly executed, full of holes, and too early to really rug pull the Chinese. Maybe they are feeling too close to the prize again, because it's an old dream and waking up is painful. But that is how they feel, for they are who they are. Europeans are not thinking about this much if at all – to them «science fiction» reads like escapism at best and fascist ideation at worst. They were broken by two world wars and one cold one, their spirit sundered and ambitions cauterized, they got locked into an emasculating alliance with the strong, and then developed political systems more pathological than a third world kleptocracy, symbolically ruled by the weakest of the weak. Etc etc., Americans dunk on them incessantly. Nonetheless, the best of them are not *too stupid to get this*. If not the full stakes, then the mundane reality of what America is doing. It's not just trying to deny Greenland and Venezuela to China or (lmao) Russia. It's trying to deny their resources *to Venezuelans and Danes*, and eventually the same is to be done to Canadians and more peoples within reach, as per the Donroe Doctrine. That's why every effort to satisfy demands while saving face is dismissed with mockery, why no air base is good enough, no show of «Arctic resolve» passes the muster. You see, formalities actually matter. A legible and «legal» position is harder to rally up a coalition against, within and between states — that's why China fights so fiercely for non-recognition of Taiwan. So long as the legal owner can demand you vacate the premises, your own claim to squatting, backed by force alone, may be compromised, may come at a steeper cost. That's too bad. The US wants full ownership because it wants to strip assets of value all the way to the mantle. But those smart Europeans cannot really compel their compatriots to act on this grim realization. Can't even loudly talk of it. They are few and the cope is too strong. What could their pitch even be, realistically? Maybe something like: «The US is acting on a totally different theory of history. They are executing a coherent predatory Paperclip Maximizer logic and there is no bottom to what they might do. It is pointless to call them out on their bullshit, they are no longer sensitive to human speech. We need to drag out the inevitable loss of Greenland while assisting Americans to get bogged down in whatever can overstetch them from Israel to the Indo-Pacific to domestic unrest, curtail democracy, slash welfare, expel Atlanticist agents of influence, brutalize or deport non-assimilating immigrants, bump our defense and R&D spending to 15-20%, fortify remaining vulnerable outposts, coerce Ukraine into whatever peace is possible, reopen energy imports from Russia, have Rosatom build 50 nuclear reactors and France 5000 more nuclear warheads, generally put the French in charge instead of retarded Germanic cuckolds and schoolmarms, maximize tech transfer and capital goods imports from China even if we have to sell out ASML wholesale… and hope that the Western Civilization, of which only we remain true heirs and not obscene monsters, can secure a meagre stake in the future of Cosmos». Nah. That's not going to fly. It sounds deranged, there will be negative political will for it, and worst of all, it puts France in the limelight. A petty European peasant would rather eat shit than let the French become Main Characters of his continent's history. Europeans are very meticulous in cutting tall poppies around them. A fat, mockable, «cultureless», guns-n-bible overseas Hegemon is more tolerable than the insufferable, preening one next door. Except the hegemon is no longer fat since he went on the Danish Ozempic and Chinese peptides, and he's mortally dangerous. But they don't see it yet. No, no. So they are forced to frame the response in terms aligned with the cope. We've just seen a rhetorical oscillation happen, from hints at actual European defense to… this. «We must demonstrate to our cherished, understandably worried partners that Europe is strong and can defend Greenland from Chyna&Russia! We'd whoop the asses of those bugs and orcs! It's not just dog sleds, we have real military and we totally can deploy it to the island!» This feels like Doing Something. This feels reassuring and non-scary. This can be done. Militarily, it's hopeless of course. However, it's not doomed. They assume – correctly – that America is made of many different interest groups also. And that the group represented by Mr. Trump needs wider buy-in for his special-grade Based actions, and likely will need far more after the midterms. So the obvious plan emerges: smile and wave, play for time, concede on non-vital issues, insist on this already disingenuous pretense of alliance, position at least some real forces, and give globalists and sincerely clueless China&Russia hawks in Washington a leg to stand on when they hamper Trump's effort to destroy NATO in the short term. Be so annoyingly nice and obliging as to make «the hard way» unpalatable to all but the most desperate cannibals. And diversify. Russia is suddenly a European country. China gets favorable trade deals and cooperation in the space program. Canada is scambling to act the same way, as Americans are botting up the pretext for «operation Alberta Freedom Eagle Burger» or whatever the fuck they'll call it. They may lose Alberta, but they want to keep something of a nation. That's what countries are, they are not economic platforms or random patches of land, but superorganisms with a telos, trying to survive in a condition of opportunistic anarchy that is the real world. Sun Yat-Sen had written once, in 1917: «存者，不亡之谓也。从无有而使之有，则为异：不使从有而之无有，则存，故不可亡而后能存。一国所以异所以亡者，或以一种手段，为其直接原因，可以指数。至于存在之根源，无不在於国家及其国民不挠独立之精神，其国不可以利诱，不可以势劫，而后可以自存於世界，即令暂败，旋可复立。不然者，虽号独立，其亡可指日而待也。此非徒肆理论也，凡其国民有独立不挠之精神者，人以尊重其独立为有利。即从国际利害打算，亦必不敢轻犯其独立。此可从历史证明之，亦可从现代事实归纳得之。 比利时之敌德国，可谓不支矣。今之比利时政府乃在哈佛，比之国土，仅馀弹丸黑子之域。然而非特协商国之存在，无人敢谓比国可亡，即中立国亦无不对于比国有特殊之尊敬。所以然者，比国独立不挠之精神，先已证明比国为不可亡之国。即使今日比境全失，比军悉数成擒，吾等亦可决中立诸国不因此致疑于比国之存在。何则，比之人民领土主权，立于此独立不挠之精神之下，其断绝者形式，其不断绝者在精神，比境虽亡犹不亡，其民虽殇犹不殇也。盖比利时尝一被人强迫，并入荷兰矣。而其国民能具坚确不挠之志，故卒得恢复其自由而成一独立之国。夫其民性如此，故人终不能服之，虽一时屈于兵力，不足以使其国亡也。» It's somewhat complex to translate, but here goes V3.2 Speciale: > Survival means not perishing. To bring something from nothingness into existence is an extraordinary matter; to prevent existence from turning into nothingness is to survive. Therefore, only that which cannot perish can survive. The direct causes for a nation’s extinction may be enumerated, often involving specific means. As for the root of survival, it lies nowhere but in the unyielding and independent spirit of the nation and its people. If a nation cannot be lured by profit nor coerced by force, then it can survive in the world. Even if temporarily defeated, it can quickly rise again. Otherwise, though it may be called independent, its extinction is imminent. This is not mere theory. Whenever a nation’s people possess an unyielding and independent spirit, others find it beneficial to respect its independence. Even from calculations of international interest, they would not dare to lightly violate its independence. This can be proven by history and induced from contemporary facts. > Belgium, pitted against Germany, can be said to be unable to hold out. Today the Belgian government is in Le Havre, and Belgian territory is reduced to a mere speck. However, not only does no one among the Allied Powers dare to say that Belgium can perish; even the neutral countries all hold a special respect for Belgium. The reason is that Belgium’s unyielding independent spirit has already proven it to be an indestructible nation. Even if today Belgium were to lose all its territory and its entire army captured, we can be certain that neutral countries would not thereby doubt Belgium’s existence. Why? Because Belgium’s people, territory, and sovereignty are founded upon this unyielding independent spirit; what is severed is form, what is unsevered is spirit. Even if Belgian territory perishes, it is as if it does not perish; even if its people die, it is as if they do not die. For Belgium was once forcibly annexed into Holland. But its people held a firm and unyielding determination, and thus ultimately regained their freedom and became an independent nation. Since the national character is such, others ultimately cannot subdue them; even if temporarily forced to yield by military might, it is insufficient to cause the nation’s extinction. This had been said of the gentle Belgium, the seat of authority in our misbegotten European Union today. Americans have done well to remind the rest of «the West» that they too are nations — in theory at least. Now the question is whether they can exist as nations in practice; whether they can find the will to be imperishable again. Otherwise, their condition is tantamount to extinction, just suspended — like death sentences of so many Chinese officials who had crossed the only power that matters in their world. What powers will matter in the world to come? Some Europeans hope to get a vote on this. For now, this is the best they can do.

@GhostCoase @AngelicaOung @AdamBlazowski Nordstream 2 should have never taken off ground after annexation of Crimea. The insane levels of deference by the German political class towards Putin is mind boggling. Obama era warnings were ignored and now Europe in aggregate continues to fund Russian war machine.

“The West overwhelmingly "punishes" Russians who leave, complicating any attempts to make settlement permanent, whereas the rational policy would be to aggressively drain Russia demographically.” Yeah this never made sense to me either. And it probably accounts partially for the fact that Russians were AGAINST the war in the beginning when Putin invaded and are for it now.

@PauloGuerran @leonidragozin What is your evidence of Navalny being an intelligence agency asset?

@leonidragozin And yes, Navalny began his political career as a nationalist who threatened immigrants. Before being recruited by Western intelligence. Is that a lie?

A frequent contributor for Atlantic Council and CEPA has never heard of Russian protests and Navalny’s sacrifice. Back in 2017, he didn’t deny that protests in Russia were taking place, but in this AC piece, complete with Navalny’s picture, he falsely claimed that all members of the Russian opposition subscribed to imperialist agenda. atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainea… Why prominent US defence industry’s propaganda machine has been pushing disinfo about anti-Putin opposition all those years, is a billion-dollar question, perhaps literally. Is that because Putin is an okay partner in sharing war spoils while authors of groundbreaking anti-corruption investigations feel too dangerous for international crooks and thieves?

@27khv Hello Pot... meet Kettle.

Russian MP Svetlana Zhurova (pro-Putin United Russia) has criticised Washington’s demand that Venezuela “cut all ties with Russia,” calling it an example of economic pressure rather than democracy. She told Lenta that Moscow does not extract Venezuelan oil and maintains “friendly relations,” and warned that such ultimatums could be “dangerous for global stability.”

@OleksandrM28727 @SevaUT How is China supposed to "balance out Putin" in Europe? Why would they be motivated to do that? EU still appears fragmented.

@SevaUT I just don't think it adds up. Even if he cuts a deal with Trump, EUR are now wise to the game, and there is China too. The latter two will balance Putin in Europe.

The best objection I’ve seen to the tripartite “sphere of influence” thesis is “What influence? Russia is too weak to control Ukraine, let alone Europe!” I agree that Russia is weak, but that doesn’t mean Putin isn’t trying to establish a sphere of influence. Quick thread 1/5