Cor Nouws ❌🌞🍀

🇳🇱🇺🇦🇷🇺 HIT THEM WHEN IT HURTS MOST "PM JETTEN: Russians are losing badly right now. They're losing enormous numbers of Russian troops on the front. Russian economy is in incredibly bad shape, and pressure in Russian society is increasing. This is the moment to provide Ukraine with extra financial and military support. To impose new sanctions on Russia. To ensure that we release 90 billion euros to Ukraine very quickly and speed up negotiations with Ukraine regarding their future in Europe. In the meantime, we're not going to let ourselves be intimidated by Russian threats. We're not going to let ourselves be blackmailed by Russia. In fact, we're looking at how Dutch and Ukrainian companies can cooperate better for security of Ukraine and security of Netherlands."- Jetten 🇳🇱 This is timing logic. When losses stack and the economy tightens, pressure has more impact. 90 billion euros fast-tracked isn’t just support, it’s acceleration. More ammo, more systems, more resilience on the Ukrainian side while Russia is already stretched. Sanctions layered on top hit revenue and supply at the same time the battlefield is draining manpower. That combination is what creates real strain. Ukraine doesn’t need a miracle shift. Just sustained pressure at the right moment so Russia can’t stabilize.

The “age verification app” the EU wants to impose on the world got hacked in 2 minutes. Step 1: Present a “privacy-respecting” but hackable solution. Step 2: Get hacked (you are here). Step 3: Remove privacy to "fix" it. Result: a surveillance tool sold as “privacy-respecting”.

The whole of India right now. 🙏

We are told that security in the Middle East requires defeating Iran, security in East Asia requires defeating China, and security in Europe requires defeating Russia. We never discuss security in terms of how to learn to live together by harmonising interests and managing competition. This is by design. This is hegemonic peace, in which security depends on defeating rivals rather than managing a balance of power. Subsequently, security relies solely on deterrence rather than reassurance; diplomacy is dismissed as appeasement; peace agreements are temporary and deceptive; and war is peace. Our rivals do not have legitimate security concerns, as their policies are allegedly always motivated by aggressive, irrational, or expansionist behaviour. We have convinced ourselves that our liberal hegemony is a force for good, and that our opponents oppose our dominance because they reject our benign values of freedom. Discussing the security concerns of adversaries is believed to “legitimise” their policies, which is treasonous. The world is divided into good guys (liberal democracies) and bad guys (autocracies). We should not ask how defeating Russia, as the world's largest nuclear power, is a rational security strategy, or why our governments refuse to even speak with Moscow to discuss the European security architecture and end the war. Our governments have relabelled nuclear deterrence as nuclear blackmail to signal that there can be no more constraints. All empires can become irrational during decline. Leaders take greater risks to avoid decline, legitimacy crises at home must be distracted with enemies abroad, outdated strategies from a bygone era of strength are still embraced, and there is a tendency to double down on narratives of being indispensable, representing universal values, and dismissing all opposition as illegitimate and dangerous. Are we the fanatics?