Ursula von der Leyen has stated that sanctions on Russia will remain in place until its economy is ‘torn apart’ - adding Europe’s solidarity with Kiev is unshakable at a time to show determination.
2023 will be the year politicians learn they are not so untouchable after all. Discontent is growing already in Europe, and it’s not even winter yet.
Lukewarm measurements will be implemented to keep shit from hitting the fan soon. So far they seem to have a small effect on the price, but they don’t sit right with me at all. A lot of focus is on green energy and a part of the profit from gas companies will be taken. But I’m sure there will be ways for them to get out.
Some experts predicted a decrease of 1250 euro’s a year in the advantage of the people. Which means 100 euro’s a month. Which does nothing is your bill is now 500-600 euro’s. We will see what happens.
I honestly don’t see what they can do at this point. Around 60% of energy that Europe was getting from Russia has no replacement. Other countries simply can’t crank up their output by needed amount, and even if that was possible there aren’t enough LNG terminals in Europe to offload it. Europe is going to crash hard this winter.
Seizing profits from companies is an option, but that won’t fully happen of course.
Stopping the sanctions but with all the talk from the EU that will never be an option.
Or just implement clever tricks in accounting combined with lowering taxes and budget cuts in other sectors.
Right now they are going after a small part of the profits and the other shortages will be covered by the governments. Which is a very short term solution that has consequences for the future, possibly bad consequences as well.
To add to this: a price cap gets implemented as well but as far as I can tell it will mainly be for green energy and green electricity. There’s no clear vision for gas, which is the number one problem.
Either way marxist parties must be prepared. If the EU goes with a seizing of profits or cutting sanctions we can have a ‘told you so’ moment and build further.
If they don’t and shit hit the fan even more, we should take direct action to convince people to join
I just watched this statement by Yanis Varoufakis https://youtu.be/NicE0-N9ux0?t=130
The price caps implemented in Greece are being used as the model for the EU-wide price caps. This model ends up paying the energy suppliers out of state pockets instead of just lowering the prices of energy to their real value (he even offers a 5% profit, it would still be 50% cheaper than current prices). It’s a massive scam on the public.
Cheers I’ll have a look today. Energyprices are one of my main topics within the party right now so I hope to have a more clear view soon
Story as old as capitalism. After every crisis, capitalist end up being richer than before. It’s literally why bourgeois state exists, its primary function. Covid crisis was an arena for the biggest transfer of wealth up in the history. And this now will be more serious than Covid, it’s base necessities crisis. It will be tragedy for billions, but a boon for the few.
Yeah, obvious solutions exist but they’re not politically viable. And honestly at this point it’s not even clear that Russia would resume energy sales to Europe. They’re doing fine selling to Asia and don’t have to put up with any drama. I think Europe managed to burn a lot of bridges by outright declaring war on Russia.
One of the smaller things that pisses me off about westerners is how they keep calling themselves Europe.
Russia is a part of Europe using your own definition. A third of Europe in fact. Just because they switched sides last century doesn’t mean you get to switch it up all of a sudden.
I swear the arrogance of these mf westerners gets me so worked up. We’re just gonna take the entire continent for ourselves and you don’t count. You’re Asians or Mongols or Jews or whatever despite the fact that Russians constitute the largest European nation.
Europe as a national construct, such as with the EU, seeks to eliminate those they view as illegitimate custodians of the nation’s lands. Their own definition is in fact part of why this shit continued after the Cold War.
Yeah. They don’t count as European anymore because they aren’t white anymore.
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Triumph in what? Rising prices?
In licking the US boot lol
They’re gonna triumph in becoming bigger cucks for the U.S.
I saw that headline on a coworkers shared screen during a meeting and had to stifle a laugh.
Translation: MUH BLONDE-HAIRED ARYAN SUPERMEN WILL TRIUMPH OVER ASIATIC BARBARIANS WITH THE POWER OF ANCIENT WHITE-RACE SPACE MAGIC
For some reason this reminded me of that one american politician who literally said the fires in california were caused by a “giant jewish space laser”
Thankfully, Flintenuschi isn’t known for her competency.
Russia really needs to understand I think Europe won’t fold easily. They need to expand the SMO and take Kiev, put Zelenski and the other fascist war criminals of his regime on trial for crimes against humanity and make it clear that the fascist puppet Ukraine they said they’d support until the end doesn’t exist and never will again if Russia can help it. Start negotiations from there.
Because European liberals seem even more delusional and fanatical than the ones in the US in their willingness to commit suicide for the US and I think there is the possibility too many here and possibly in Moscow underestimate the amount of pain enough of the European population will suffer.
Quite frankly the US and Europe are determined to make Ukraine a quagmire. Russia cannot simply achieve peace and independence for the breakaway republics as the Ukrainians will never stop getting arms from NATO and will never stop attacking so long as they have men and women to throw as fodder at the Russians. It is time for a decapitating blow of the fascist government. Otherwise this is just going to be a problem for Russia.
Yes, it hurts Europe in the short-term but I do think there is a serious risk that Europe builds out enough green energy, efficiency, etc that aside from people suffering in cold homes every winter they may be able to weather this situation with Russia and just lock in a new cold war with Ukraine as an eternal front. If Russia pulls out they overrun and massacre and then attack Russia. If Russia stays they attack them there. They have to bring the Ukraine government down and the more time they waste waiting for Europeans to buckle the worse it is going to be for them. Because despite the reactionary and leftist discontent with the situation Europe is not a democracy, it is a US puppet and I have doubts for the Europeans being able to overcome gladio and other elements meant to prevent any populist anti-US, anti-NATO reaction from gaining the ability to exercise power.
Russia really needs to understand I think Europe won’t fold easily.
They already do, that’s why they keep it at SMO.
You need to understand that they have time on their side.
Russia’s current goal isn’t to get Zelensky on his knees, but to get the US on it’s knees.And how do you think Europe is building out it’s green energy?
Those windmills and solar panels don’t pop out of the ground
and with Europe and the US de-industrializing, who do you think is building them?And how do you think Europe is building out it’s green energy?
I think a lot of it will be extreme efficiency mandates, cut-backs, rationing, etc. Which will admittedly cause issues but I think no populists will gain power to change that, the minority of people who take to the streets will be put down with violence and they’ll largely take it and blame Russia as desired.
As to China benefiting I don’t think this is a problem in their eyes to their plan. They don’t care about China making solar or batteries, they still want and will continue to enact their high technology blockade on China against chips, networking equipment, phones, smart infrastructure, etc as they’ve decided that a partial blockade is preferable to decoupling.
Right now as I see it they have several things going:
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High tech blockade and embargo on China to try and prevent development as well as to choke off their ability to sell their stuff to anyone via ridiculous “spyware, hacking” claims. The US doesn’t care about China continuing to have them on manufacturing Walmart goods because they don’t want that kind of stuff back, they just want to command the latest tech and leave China a decade behind. They also understand that China cannot just cut the US off in this area without hurting its own economy and people, both sides are bound to each other.
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Attempts to compromise Russia to bring it into the anti-China alliance. Via fragmenting them with ethnic tensions, this Ukraine deal and probably behind the scenes attempts to get compromised oligarchs, military and intelligence people to kill Putin and take power and act as a modern Yeltsin by doing the west’s bidding in exchange for a cut of the loot.
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Putting Europe on a tighter leash. By cutting off the ability to use cheap Russian gas, addicting them to expensive American gas and heightening the threat of military conflict to draw them in closer to NATO. As well as deindustrializing them such that industry either moves to China or the US, they want the high tech, white collar, bleeding edge engineering stuff in their country both to profit and control it and to deny it to China.
3.5. New gladio. In case the above should fail and just as a general failsafe for capitalism in crisis they are engineering a new gladio. Flooding Europe with lost heavy weaponry that may have never even reached Ukraine, creating and dispersing fascist militants in Ukraine, and normalizing fascism and getting liberals to support it.
I still think Russia has done fairly well so far with all this and the rewards will be worth the effort. I just think there has been some stumbling here and I worry where it could lead. I hate to see fascists triumphing because it emboldens them everywhere and makes them even bigger heroes to liberals.
What I meant by that question is that China builds EU’s solar panels and wind mills.
How is the EU going to get it’s solar panels and wind mills with an embargo on China?Fair and I think they’ll have to not deploy such an embargo. As mentioned I don’t see it as being crucial to the US strategy of containing China and keeping them down. Solar panels are manufacturing after all and while complex aren’t exactly cutting edge and tied to bleeding edge tech, they’ve been around in some form or another for half a century.
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And how do you think Europe is building out it’s green energy?
Also, if they somehow manage to do it, it will still be a positive thing. Because it will make them less prone to bootlicking USA, not to mention climate will feel it too.
Unfortunately, it seems as for now, the only thing that will happen will be austerity and probable crash even bigger than Great Crisis.
I would say it’s even more than that, far more than what Ursula says.
Putin isn’t just failing, he isn’t even trying to destroy it’s own economy or to lick US boots.
But Europe will triumph so much, it will go down in history books*.
* Legendary bootlicking included
Is this the lady who said she’ll stand with Ukraine no matter what her voters think?
So much stupidity would be funny if people’s lives weren’t at stake.
No, that was German Foreign Minister Baerbock.
That was a different lady. The one in the picture wasn’t even elected to her position.
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