"I am very unhappy with the openly hostile policy of the USA toward my country."
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Russia’s space chief is “very unhappy” with “hostile” US policy
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Let's just say that the EU is at least considering a strategic realignment. When von der Leyen says:
"Some in Europe may not like this harsher, more transactional reality. But, dear Ambassadors, as I said at the start: Europe must deal with the world as we find it. And I am convinced that in this hot-headed world, Europe's best approach is to remain level-headed. It must make decisions not out of emotion or nostalgia for a world that once was. But rather out of calculated judgement about what is in our own interest in the world as it is today. Because foreign policy and diplomacy are not an end in themselves. We all know it. It is a way to deliver stability, security and prosperity for our citizens – and for our partners. That makes it all the more important that we stay true to who we are and what we believe in. The belief that every country must be free to choose its own destiny in a democratic way. That borders cannot be changed by force. That the UN Charter remains at the heart of our engagement. Our values do not change. They are enshrined in the marble and history of our declarations of rights, of our declarations of independence, of our Treaties. They are the living heritage of our tumultuous history. And they help to make us a reliable and strong partner.
But to advance these values, we need to change the way we act. We need to be bold. We need to be agile. We need to engage. We might have to engage in tough negotiations, even with long-time partners. And we might also have to work with countries that are not like-minded but do share some of our interests. Because the basic principle of diplomacy in this new world is to keep our eyes on the goal. That means, finding common ground with partners."
I think it's fairly clear what she is talking about.
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I saw this meme the other day that seemed apropos.
Next, Macron will say something true that he seemingly is unable or unwilling to move on. Lots of countries talking about needing to spend more, not a lot of planning about how exactly to spend it or how to raise funds. The UK MOD just lost a budget battle as well, I think.
Realistically, many governments have spent themselves into a corner over the post-Cold War years. High debt load and social spending don't leave a lot of budgetary room and social spending tends to be a third rail (Yes, the US too Medicaid and Medicare are huge - each alone about the size of the defence budget). There's some scope for increasing taxes, but IIRC, often not to the degree needed to make budgets work.
There are also diminishing marginal returns to taxation as a means of raising revenue* so, there are limits to how much more money can be raised. I guess we'll see if anyone is brave enough actually tackle non-defence spending and/or raise taxes to free up the funds necessary. (And hopefully organized enough to minimize the impact...)
Next, Macron will say something true that he seemingly is unable or unwilling to move on. Lots of countries talking about needing to spend more, not a lot of planning about how exactly to spend it or how to raise funds. The UK MOD just lost a budget battle as well, I think.
Realistically, many governments have spent themselves into a corner over the post-Cold War years. High debt load and social spending don't leave a lot of budgetary room and social spending tends to be a third rail (Yes, the US too Medicaid and Medicare are huge - each alone about the size of the defence budget). There's some scope for increasing taxes, but IIRC, often not to the degree needed to make budgets work.
There are also diminishing marginal returns to taxation as a means of raising revenue* so, there are limits to how much more money can be raised. I guess we'll see if anyone is brave enough actually tackle non-defence spending and/or raise taxes to free up the funds necessary. (And hopefully organized enough to minimize the impact...)
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Whatever they are considering, they had best demand a seat at the table for the Ukraine Russia peace talks Trump is trying to put together. (Even though it isn't "the first day", what a joke that was.) Since Russia in the past has made noises about not even Ukraine having a seat, and peace treaties with Russia aren't worth the paper they are printed on, and "next on the menu" for Russia after Ukraine are all EU countries, they had best start getting their ducks in a row, no matter what it costs them.
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
Gee, that's a great idea, and Russia could use it's vast rail network to get stuff from China to Europe, as they generate revenue from the shipping they could expand their capacity and become an economic powerhouse without being dependent on fossil fuel exports. Heck, if they had gone down this route 10-20 years ago they would have become so successful that they wouldn't have any reason at all to invade. It's almost like PEACE WAS ALWAYS AN OPTION.
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
Are you seriously suggesting that social spending on healthcare is a drain on the economies of countries that have national healthcare?
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And taken together would be enough money* to fund a Scandinavian-style universal healthcare for every American!
Yes, yes - I know the current dumpster fire of an Administration is burning up both decades worth of alliances and decades of organizational capability in a matter of months.
Maybe I can look forward to a "reverse Marshall Plan" where we get rebuilt on a more European model.
*Might need to include the military/Tricare .gov spending on medical as well. But literally - no more employer contributions, no more employee contributions. Just what the Feds already spend on medical care would be enough for a pretty lush Universal Healthcare.
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At this point i'd settle for starting with reinstating the advertisement ban on consumer facing drug adds. with a carve out for preventative care treatments and over the counter grade medicine
edit add
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That's another can of worms, another flashpoint: the Northern Sea Route. Will be ice-free soon, need less rail transport.
The idiot trump made the US' positition there more difficult - surely all that was needed was to negotiate an expanded military presence in Greenland. (As is happening in Iceland.) Given the situation there, I don't think Greenlanders would object.
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
Well that will be a win for Russian trolls, they will stop exposing themselves by remarking on "warm water" ports.
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It can be if they're funding it via debt to the point where interest payments are impacting their budgets. Canada will spend more servicing its debt this fiscal year than it spends on its military. Incidentally, so will the US.
If building up the military spending is actually as much of a priority that leaders keep insisting it is, then they're going to need to demonstrate actual plans on how to achieve those goals (instead of just shoveling money at random projects), but also to make the financial commitment, whether through taxes, borrowing, or reallocating funding. And in cases of countries like France, they already have a debt problem and more limited head room for additional taxation.
Meanwhile, Germany has been resisting borrowing (debt brake) even to fund needed infrastructure investments.
Unlike the US. The US should have lots of scope for additional taxation instead of borrowing, but we all know how Trump's going to approach that...
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David Mayer
Ars Centurion
Are you mistaking economy for national budget? Also there is nothing even resembling consensus among experts on the merits of Countries funding their budgets with large amounts of debt. Finally, your reasoning completely ignores all the economic benefits of social healthcare.
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Oh good...
I'm so glad the designers of the Sarcophagus overengineered that thing
@GuyElster said:
I'm so glad the designers of the Sarcophagus overengineered that thing
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Friday morning's missile/drone attack report from Ukraine:
- 133x Shahed aerial torpedoes & decoys (73 intercepted, 58 decoys crashed, damage caused)
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They also conveniently forget that tax breaks for the rich are extremely costly.
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The bad place has the best video of it already: a drone hit the radiation shelter over the Chernobyl reactor.
View: https://bsky.app/profile/noelreports.com/post/3li4poow3o22s
Nothing else known. Presumed to be Russian drone, as little is left of it other than a burned lawnmower engine.
View: https://bsky.app/profile/noelreports.com/post/3li4poow3o22s
Nothing else known. Presumed to be Russian drone, as little is left of it other than a burned lawnmower engine.
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Russian squealing about Ukrainians running a false flag op in 3 - 2 -
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I know that the US wants the Panama Canal back, but not sure if using the USS Harry S. Truman as a battering ram against their ships is the way to go.
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After the Helge Ingstad and the Naiguatá maybe Navantia should start offering ramming kits to international customers.
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Well Ukraine brought fire ships back in fashion (in the form of USVs) why not ram bows...
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When the FAB is on the other foot...
@GeneralStaffZSU said:
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I have to say, I am so fucking disappointed by how journalists as a whole are covering Trump, the war, and the entirety of the shit show. Vance bloviated in Europe about how the real danger is that everyone there isn't surrendering to King Musk - I mean Trump, and.... we get this:
View: https://bsky.app/profile/anderspucknielsen.dk/post/3li5wp7ydys2a
God. Fucking. Damn. Yes, not all journalists, etc., but holy shit. Journalism has to also answer for its total failure in handling the return of fascism and the creation of technofeudalism.
Edit: Also, thank you to whoever implemented the auto-embedding of BlueSky posts. It was the one thing I missed from the old Twitter.
View: https://bsky.app/profile/anderspucknielsen.dk/post/3li5wp7ydys2a
God. Fucking. Damn. Yes, not all journalists, etc., but holy shit. Journalism has to also answer for its total failure in handling the return of fascism and the creation of technofeudalism.
Edit: Also, thank you to whoever implemented the auto-embedding of BlueSky posts. It was the one thing I missed from the old Twitter.
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Yeah, the BBC runs an article headlined "Frank Gardner: The current world security order is at risk of crumbling" (actual headline on article seems to have changed) and fails to recognise that the old security order is already gone.
What they should be talking about is what will replace it - Trump wants the G7 to readmit Russia, but given how low America's reputation has fallen I'm not sure we wont end up with the G6 (sans USA) instead
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Speaking of Anders, he's just dropped a video. Some of his thoughts (not in the order presented)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWLqSk4ZlN0
- Trump is naive and has no plan, will bumble around with things that won't work for a few months. Question marks about what happens then.
- Ukraine is its own master, Russia is weakened. Ukraine can fight on with weapons they make themselves and just European support.
- Since the failed counterattack of Summer '23 the West have had poorly defined goals for their support and thus no real strategy to achieve them. By contrast the Russians have a clear vision of what they want (to take it all). So the West has to tighten up its vision, with or without the US.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWLqSk4ZlN0
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Well, trying to take a positive spin on this, it may have just been a journalist doing some leg work on a dubious claim. It probably seemed completely obvious in the other direction, but double checking is what professional journalists do. As long as he/she didn't go on to actually print a story that Vance's nonsense is valid I don't have a problem with them asking an expert for more information.
As to why news coverage is such crap now, there are two major reasons.
The first is that the internet completely broke the business model for print journalism and hobbled it for broadcast journalism. Newspapers and magazines lost their (near) monopoly on advertising, and for the former, especially local advertising, and that made the price of their product at the existing quality level unaffordable. In response they lowered both the quantity and quality of reporting that people were able or willing to buy. We are almost at the end of that death spiral and that industry almost doesn't exist anymore. That is why a major city newspaper Sunday edition of 30 years ago was packed with information and may have been an inch thick, while the Sunday edition now only has a few dozen articles and is no more than 1/4 as thick. Smaller newspapers, have been reduced to the point of irrelevance, consisting of mostly of AP stories (ie, somebody else's content) and perhaps a few local interest stories. Many local newspapers operate together now, producing essentially the same content in all their markets, with just tweaks for local interest.
The second is the rise of fake journalism, which started, in my mind at least, with talk radio, and then reached stratospheric levels with Fox News, which produced a product masquerading as a news organization but with a journalism quality and content level consistent with a propaganda outlet in the RT mold. And it was only downhill from there, with News Max and the like. Then we have feeds like X or Instagram where news (and content in general) is of dubious provenance, veracity, and quality.
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Or he is just gaslighting us. Or both.
The claim that Putin wants the killing on the battlefield to stop is ridiculous on its face, since he is personally responsible for the slaughter, and could end it any time. Albeit not likely in a way that would allow him to remain in power. Or alive.
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I spotted that, with disgust. The majority of UK citizens wouldn't know how wrong the headline is.
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Saturday morning's missile/drone attack report from Ukraine:
- 70x Shahed aerial torpedoes & decoys (33 intercepted, 37 decoys crashed)
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Zelensky's messaging team earning their money again
@haynesdeborah said:
(emphasis mine)@nickschifrin said:
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As usual, he's right. If the attitude doesn't change, Europe & UK are fucked, because the usa will withdraw - or even actively assist putin. trump is that much of a svoloch'.
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I think there's at least one additional reason why 'traditional media' is failing: they ate up the "both sides" approach and are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to not seem to take a side, even when the sides are 'common sense and sane' and 'fascist evil monkeys hellbent on destroying the country' they really want to present both as valid POVs. This is what I think has lead to them losing all credibility with the public and drove most people to 'independent journalism' (youtube, tiktok, other social media) by random people, some of whom are cheap and easy to buy by monied interests.
tldr: media has dug their own grave, and somehow they're still digging today, I mean how can CNN and CBS still kiss the ring even after 4 years of the orange turd, where he labelled them 'enemy of the people' and put them behind fences at his rallies to be mocked by his supporters, and still pretend to have a monopoly on "journalistic integrity"
LOL
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I don't disagree. They seem awfully willing to drop the ball when the interviewee spews utter nonsense, or outright lies. It will go something like this (completely made up ridiculous example):
Interviewer: What do you think accounts for the rise in inflation during your tenure?
Interviewee: It is due entirely to the consumption of beans by the Democrats, especially the brown Democrats.
Interviewer: Do you have any evidence to support that statement?
Interviewee: It is common sense.
Interviewer: Moving on to our next topic...
Ideally the next interviewer response would have been at least:
Interviewer: Sir/Madam, that is not evidence. Are you admitting that you have no evidence to support your statement?
Personally I think any Journalist who accepts "common sense" as a response needs to be in another line of work. That's just common sense! /s
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Often, it’s not even presented as common sense, but rather “everyone knows”. That presents it as something that doesn’t even require thinking about. It’s not “if you think about it you’ll see”, but rather “we all already know the answer, so why are you questioning it?”
EDIT: That is, which wording is more likely to result in sage nods from the true-believers:
- “It’s common sense that Jews use Christian blood to bake Matzah.”
Or
- “We all know Jews use Christian blood to bake Matzah.”
The first one actually invites people to consider whether the blood libel even makes sense. The second one just presents it as a given, inviting no thought about whether it should be a given and encouraging people to think that they are in the minority if they don’t believe it’s true.
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More peculiar (as in, change from before) things happening in the Pokrovsk area.
Zero advance (well, maybe a kilometer somewhere) around Pokrovsk for the last two weeks.
https://deepstatemap.live/#10/48.1848589/36.7108154
Local Russian soldiers complaining about a total inability to do anything in the area, thanks to Ukrainian drones and artillery. Yes, Russian soldiers complaining is nothing new, but.... it also normally doesn't come with a static front line.
And then we get to today, where apparently, Russians decided to double the combat engagements across the entire front, with a particular focus on Pokrovsk:
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/02/15/7498545/
Engagements were up to 250 before the night was over, so the total may beat the highs reached in December, when Russia was gaining the most territory since the initial invasion. Big question: what's the result? Gonna check numbers again in the next few days, and see if that correlates with any change at the front.
If Russians are back to crawling forward over the corpses of their cripples... well, back to status quo. If the front is still static..... we may just be seeing the beginning of the Russian offensive stalling out. That last part is a wildly optimistic statement, but at this point, a bit of hope is nice.
Zero advance (well, maybe a kilometer somewhere) around Pokrovsk for the last two weeks.
https://deepstatemap.live/#10/48.1848589/36.7108154
Local Russian soldiers complaining about a total inability to do anything in the area, thanks to Ukrainian drones and artillery. Yes, Russian soldiers complaining is nothing new, but.... it also normally doesn't come with a static front line.
And then we get to today, where apparently, Russians decided to double the combat engagements across the entire front, with a particular focus on Pokrovsk:
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/02/15/7498545/
Engagements were up to 250 before the night was over, so the total may beat the highs reached in December, when Russia was gaining the most territory since the initial invasion. Big question: what's the result? Gonna check numbers again in the next few days, and see if that correlates with any change at the front.
If Russians are back to crawling forward over the corpses of their cripples... well, back to status quo. If the front is still static..... we may just be seeing the beginning of the Russian offensive stalling out. That last part is a wildly optimistic statement, but at this point, a bit of hope is nice.
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Remember how we were talking about how we should see new security blocks forming in Europe? Looks like exactly that is happening. Nordic/Baltic 8 (3 Baltic states, 5 Nordic states including Iceland) being represented by Denmark in the negotiations on Monday with France, Germany, Poland, and whoever else was invited.
https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/731mKK/...l-aa-vaere-en-del-av-fredssamtalene-om-ukrina
There's an additional nugget at the end of the article: China starting to have opinions on the war that go beyond "Russia and Ukraine should make peace". Landsbergis (ex FM of Latvia) is proposing (correctly, in my opinion) that if the US does pull out of being the guarantor of EU security, China could very well assume that mantle by first starting with Ukraine, and then expanding its influence westward.
All this is in the context of the latest NATO summit stinking up the place like a month old beached whale. Landsbergis offered his thoughts, and they're pretty gloomy:
View: https://bsky.app/profile/glandsbergis.bsky.social/post/3liajmbsrzk24
See the bottom of the thread for how he thinks China could replace the US.
On the upside: Trump may kickstart the forming of serious EU-specific defense coalitions. On the downside: China may replace the US in any larger agreements.
https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/731mKK/...l-aa-vaere-en-del-av-fredssamtalene-om-ukrina
There's an additional nugget at the end of the article: China starting to have opinions on the war that go beyond "Russia and Ukraine should make peace". Landsbergis (ex FM of Latvia) is proposing (correctly, in my opinion) that if the US does pull out of being the guarantor of EU security, China could very well assume that mantle by first starting with Ukraine, and then expanding its influence westward.
All this is in the context of the latest NATO summit stinking up the place like a month old beached whale. Landsbergis offered his thoughts, and they're pretty gloomy:
View: https://bsky.app/profile/glandsbergis.bsky.social/post/3liajmbsrzk24
See the bottom of the thread for how he thinks China could replace the US.
On the upside: Trump may kickstart the forming of serious EU-specific defense coalitions. On the downside: China may replace the US in any larger agreements.
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