Europe Prepares for War as the Democratic Deficit Grows Wider
Is a Color Revolution Underway in Serbia?
There are huge demonstrations taking place in Serbia against pro-Russian President Alexsandar Vucic. His government has been accused of corruption and cost cutting after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad.
.Another Candidate Has Been Barred from Standing in the Romanian Election.
Diana Iovanovici-Sosoaca is, besides being a Presidential contender, an MEP in the European Parliament. She is claiming that the EU commission was behind the decision to bar her from running in the Romanian Presidential election. The reasons given, so far, for banning her was because her anti-Semitic and anti-Western public statements, along with proposing closer relations with Moscow, meant she was a danger to democracy and the country’s position in the European Union and NATO. Last week her opponent, and leading contender in the race, Calin Georgescu, was banned from running for alledgedly lying about campaign contributions. There will, of course, be an investigation after the EU’s choice has been safely elected.
Romanian ‘far-right’ party leader George Simion, who had dropped out of the race in order to support Georgescu, is being allowed to contest the election. He came fourth in the first round with only 13.9% of the vote. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Simion called Russian president Vladimir Putin a war criminal and said that international sanctions against Russia “were not enough”, so he is more acceptable to the EU and NATO. He is currently the vice-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party.
The most likely winner of the Romanian election is going to be Marcel Ciolacu, who is currently the Prime Minister. He got 19.15% in the cancelled first round of the election behind Georgescu (22.94%) and Elena Lasconi (19.18%); but he is acceptable to the EU, because of his pro-war and anti-Russia views, and so he will benefit from positive press coverage from the European Media.
The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Romania as a “flawed democracy” in 2023. As of 2025, it was classified as a hybrid regime behind a constitutional façade. According to the Copenhagen Criteria, Romania should never have been allowed to join the EU in the first place.
Italy Is One of the Reasons for the “Democratic Recession” in Europe.
According to the Civil Liberties Union for Europe (funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation), Italy was one of five “democracy dismantlers” – along with Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovakia – that “intentionally undermine the rule of law in nearly all aspects”. Hungary was also mentioned as a persistant offender in their report; however, France and German were held up as “role-model democracies”.
Starmer Is Attacking Labour’s Core Voters
If there is one group of people that are consistent Labour voters, it is people in the creative industry. So, it doesn’t behoove a Labour Prime Minister to annoy them, but Kier Starmer has blundered his way into an almighty row with them by blithely proposing to hand over their work, free of charge, to AI companies. Moreover, it could be costly for the economy.
Statistics from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) confirmed that the creative industries generated £119.6billion in gross added value (GAV) to the economy in 2023, accounting for 5.2% of all UK GVA. In 2022 the creative industries grew twice as fast as the UK economy as a whole. IT, software and computer services were the biggest sub-sector, generating £55.4billion GVA, followed by Film, TV, video, radio and photography with £20.8 billion. In March 2024 there were 268,080 creative businesses, representing almost 10% of all UK registered business. The vast majority (93%) of these companies were micro businesses, employing less than ten people.
I hate to break the 4th wall but I must declare an interest here. I published 3 English Grammar textbooks, in the UK, on the areas where people have the most difficulty with the language; namely, verbs, prepositions and how and when to use ‘the’. They are textbooks with cross referencing so they are exactly the type of “data” the AI developers want. They took a long time to write; so, why should they just be handed over by ministerial fiat?
A legal opinion from top copyright lawyer Nicholas Caddick KC says that Sir Keir’s plan may break the Berne Convention – which established that creators’ work is protected the moment it is written or recorded. Mr Caddick believes Labour’s proposal contravenes at least two, if not all three of the conditions pertaining to granting an exception, which are: the exception must apply only in specific, special cases, the use must not deprive the rights holders of income and it must not harm the copyright owner’s interest.
A Government spokesman managed to make matters worse by saying: “The Berne Convention does not make any specific provisions for the interaction of copyright law and artificial intelligence. The Government will continue to consider all international legal commitments and obligations… and any eventual solution will take all of these into account.”
Britain has some of the best out of copyright material, especially books, available and they’re all downloadable at no cost from the Project Gutenberg website.
The Kursk Pocket Is Deflating
The Kiev regime’s hope, that the incursion by the Ukrainian army into the Kursk region of Russia would provide leverage during peace negotiations, has just been dashed. The Ukraine Army is surrounded there and Trump begged Putin to spare their lives after his call for a ceasefire was rebuffed by Moscow.
During the battle of Ilovaisk, back in 2014, the Ukrainian Army was surrounded and Angela Merkel begged for a ceasefire, which Putin achieved over the objections of the Donbass militias doing the actual fighting. The Ukraine army was able to remain intact and so it could be rebuilt.
The ceasefire led to the sham Minsk agreements, which the two main Western guarantors (Germany and France) had no intention of abiding by. This was confirmed by Hollande (French President) and Merkel (German Chancellor) later.
One of the main reasons for the collapse of the Kursk pocket in 4 pictures:
When the Ukraine army stormed into Kursk the pipeline was blown up.
Russian soldiers spent 4 days underground and then crawled 15 Kilometers through the pipeline into the heart of the Ukrainian defense stronghold in Sudzha.
Once the 800 Russian soldiers had crawled through the pipeline the attack begins.
The army groups taking part were: Akhmat (Chechens) special forces, Marines, 11th Airborne Brigade and the 30th Motorized Rifle Regiment “veterans” unit (who led the assault). Contrary to Western Media reports there were no North Koreans involved in the attack.
There are DPRK soldiers in Russia’s Far East where they are currently undergoing training and their fitness levels are being brought up to an acceptable standard.
You can watch details of the attack here.
Germans Helped to Liberate Syria
According to the MSM the Syrians rose up and liberated the country; however, according to reality the ‘liberators’ were a group of Jihadis, under the control of Turiye and paid for by the USA (thanks Mike Pompeo). A significant number of these mercenaries are from Germany something that the Jerusalem Post was warning about back in 2013. They even set up their own townships in North West Syria/Southern Turkey, like the one they had in Pakistan. And these were not all swarthy looking men. For example, here is a pale skinned German Islamist in Syria saying Shia Muslims must convert or be killed, hinting at how many victims there are likely to be.
The Fog of War Gets Murkier
Macron is determined to commit troops to Ukraine, even though the French people are not happy about it. Demonstrations are taking place in Paris with protestors chanting “We will not die for Ukraine”. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, said that sending NATO peace-keeps to Ukraine will heighten tensions.
Macron, together with Keir Starmer, was defiant saying that they didn’t need permission from Russia to deploy their troops. President Putin has said that if EU peacekeepers are deployed in Ukraine, it would be viewed as an act of war. President Donald Trump, however, has said that Russia would allow NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine after the SMO is over, but Russia disputed his claim.
Europe Is Coming after its Citizens’ Savings
The EU currently does not have enough cash to restart their moribund collective economy. But Christine Largarde, the President of the European Central Bank has a plan. She intends to liberate the €33.5 trillion in household (i.e. private) savings – more than double the collective EU GDP – that is ‘stuck in banks’ because households prefer cash over market investments.
This push to divert private citizens’ savings into EU ‘investment’ has been brewing since early in 2024 when former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta said that the EU’s fragmented capital markets have created a big opportunity to spark growth and future investment in the 27-country single market, by taking people’s savings. This will help the EU put its citizens’ finances to work in the context of the need to find an extra trillion euros a year to fund the digital and green transitions and to meet defense needs. Managing climate change alone calls for finding 2.6 percent of GDP per year.
Countries in Europe have been scrambling to find extra sources of finance in order to boost defense spending towards the €800 Billion that Ursula von der Leyen has called for. The new German Government is being applauded for its plan to lift the debt brake to boost defense spending, even though it increased the country’s borrowing costs, with 30 year bonds rising 25 points to 3.08%, the highest since the fiscal crisis in 1998.
The UK has a different approach to the same problem. Tony Blair, fresh from his ‘success’ as the erstwhile Middle East Peace Envoy has another plan. He wants to ‘unlock’ Britain’s private pension funds by taking them away from professional actuaries and turning them into giant superfunds, no doubt controlled by his namesake institute. He said that the root cause of the problems associated with the pension crisis in 2022 (when Truss was, briefly, the Prime Minister) can be traced to accounting and regulatory changes to the UK’s tax and pension systems in the early 2000s. In other words, he caused the problem, as he was the Prime Minster when these changes occurred, but he and his team are just the people needed to fix it.
The current UK Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, backs Blair’s ideas about pension reform, superfunds and the need to ‘unlock’ Britain’s pensions, which she outlined during her Mansion House Speech. She also said she was aiming to direct pension savings into higher risk, higher growth UK companies. Much of this investment will actually be earmarked for the defense industry.
The EU can’t follow the Blair Institute’s lead because some of them have already taken their private pensions to fund budget shortfalls.
Unsurprisingly European defense firms’ share prices have been rocketing during the Ukraine SMO and will soar further on the news.
If there is any topic you’d like to see covered or have any suggestions then please leave a comment below.
Major General Butler is surely rolling over in his grave.
Thanks for the report. The latest Alastair Crooke column–now available in full–is not so much about Europe as about the conflict between Israel’s original Europen founders and the newer residents who want a theocracy and possibly no democracy.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/03/17/kingdom-of-judea-vs-state-of-israel/
Crooke says Trump is mistaken if he thinks the present government–which will fall without the theocratic branch–wants some kind of “art of the deal” and that an apocalyptic war may be their goal as the only way of achieving “Greater Israel.” While the entire column is worth a here’s the wind up in full.
We hear a lot about Christian Nationalists but there’s at least one country where–right now–religion is threatening to take over completely. At least so says Alastair.
Alistair may be right, but he’s getting his religions mixed up. Revelation (Apocalypse of John) is a Christian document, written in what passes for Greek. And while many of their Christian supporters are Darby-ite premillennialists, I don’t think the Israeli religious right shares that eschatology popular among some of MAGA’s Left Behind readers. I know nothing about what the Talmudic or Midrash traditions have to say about the Last Things, but the Hebrew bible doesn’t talk about a universal catastrophe befalling the world–remember the promise to Noah. Instead, calamity befalls the enemies of Judah or Israel in the prophecies of the prophets, against Tyre or Sidon or Babylon. Such prophecies might include fire raining down from heaven as in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s more than a bit frightening what Bibi’s “partners” might have in mind.
I trust Crooke on this one. He knows Israel very well.
Just searching Jewish messiah brings up this for instance on eschatology, which indeed would explain a lot of their homocidal/suicidal behavior
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_eschatology
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_in_Judaism
I believe I heard on “The Bible Geek” of Robert M. Price about a theory that Revelation was originally a Jewish apocalyptic writing, but was subsequent ally edited for Christians. The imagery was Jewish, but the 666 bit was for contemporary readers (666 or 616 = Nero).
I defer to your expertise. And I would even say that one is allowed to be a bit skeptical re the religious excuses of colonialists in general. Of course our Southern planters once thought that the Bible gives slavery a thumbs up.
But the antebellum South might be an instructive comparison because the planters too thought their vicitms might rise up and kill them if given any freedom and they too were defending a lifestyle as well as a religion. Being reasonable was never part of it.
“Israel is shredding itself on the blade of this debate.”
“‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. “
Has Italy been misbehaving? Cited for “heavy intolerance to media criticism”, attempting to give ““open-ended powers” to the justice ministry”. Call me when their wine sucks.
I’m guessing Simion does’t have a chance which I wager is what the NATO masters want.
“Democratic recession”, lol, democracy, long weary of circling the drain begs for someone/anyone to pull the chain.
mrsyk:
Either the Guardian did some heavy editing, or the original report is that addled. To wit: “In Italy, researchers highlighted how Giorgia Meloni’s government had drafted proposals to give “open-ended powers” to the justice ministry over prosecutors, which would increase political control over the judiciary. The Italian contributors also flagged “unprecedented levels of interference in public service media”, such as the cancellation of the author Antonio Scurati’s “anti-fascist manifesto” and the disciplinary case opened against the host of the talkshow in which the speech was to have been performed.”
–First, there are definite concerns about attack on the judiciary, but “open-ended powers” misstates the problem. Italy has a unified magistracy, with prosecutors and judges in one system. The government of conservatives wants to separate the careers, which would tend to politicize prosecutors. The government has also managed to abolish the crime of abuse of office — now that’s a weird kind of dismantling.
–Scurati’s appearance was canceled, and what followed was not edifying, with everyone blaming everyone for the cancellation. I followed the story fairly closely, and I still can’t figure out who pulled his invitation.
–Italy’s media problem is fairly acute, that is, concentration in ownership of media. Berlusconi and heirs own Mediaset, the main private TV group, as well as Mondadori, one of the country’s largest publishers. La Stampa, the main newspaper of the Chocolate City, is still quite obviously the mouthpiece of the alta borghesia — the first twenty or so pages of each day’s edition is a tightly controlled swamp of warmongering, virtue-signalling well-placed ladies, genocide-abetting fantasy, and neoliberal catechism-a-ganza.
–Meddling in the media, for various reasons, goes on quite a bit in Italy, much like every other paragon of democracy. Compared to the mainstream media in lockstep in the Anglosphere and in Germany (Putin = evil, neoliberalism = The One Way, Biden = a genius in our time), Italy’s outlets still have plenty of debate, some of which gets rather salty.
The civil-liberties hero Scurati also made a series of warmongering statements the other day that rather, errrrr, tarnished his reputation as national hero, ne. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Thanks, that almost sounds pleasantly navigable compared to what’s going on here in the US.
BTW, is the chocolate on par with the wine?
Vucic is straddling two chairs and crying “It’s a color revolution!” to the Russians, and “It’s a Russian plot!” to the Europeans. In fact it’s neither, it’s Serbians being thoroughly and authentically fed up with the corruption of his government, with the 14 killed by the falling, newly renovated bus station overhang as the catalyst for the protests.
Besides, the EU and the US have no reason to replace Vucic – he’s been thoroughly cooperative in serving their interests in regards to the Rio Tinto lithiuconcessions, which has also mobilized huge resistance. In fact, the US ambassador’s statements re the concessions and in support of Vucic’s cooperation have enraged even the Servian liberals, who view the ambassador’s words and deeds as an American betrayal.
Yep. The protest is about canopy collapse as much as WWI was about teenager shooting a guy with a big moustache. As I wrote the other day, he is pro-Russian as much as Pashinyan is (except that Pashinyan dares to meet Putin).
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/03/links-3-15-2025.html#comment-4189848
Well, Vucic digging in his heels to play it strong backfired bigly on him. Why, pray tell, does the EU need to go to all the trouble and complications to light fire under his chair? As I said, the canopy collapse only added to the anger he brought upon himself by lifting the mining prohibition for lithium to serve the EU’s resource needs. It comes at a pretty steep to many Serbians in a very fertile region and the resistance to it was nationwide even before Novi Sad, so it really is far simpler than the elaborate and messy alternative you offer.
I wrote “yep”, and you think that I am contradicting you? I do not offer elaborate and messy alternative, or any alternative. Situation is way too complicated to be put in a “comment on the Internet”, and lithium (and canopy) is just the tip of the iceberg.
“If there is any topic you’d like to see covered or have any suggestions then please leave a comment below.”
Requesting assignments? Wow, that’s a 180. Alrighty then, there was an NC link from Nature Communications some time ago that I’d love to see discussed by those more well informed on the topic than I.
Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy
It would seem that insofar as Global North workers are to some degree beneficiaries of the inequality described, their material incentives would be to support hegemonic policies and projects. If so, this does not bode well for anti-imperialist movements within the hegemon. This is a troublesome line of thinking for me.
Maybe something for BRICS to address? Multipolar world and all…
In related news, a European monarch’s decapitated head turns up – https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/irish-rap-trio-deliver-insane-melbourne-show-display-decapitated-king-george-vs-head/news-story/f5718ebf11d261a78951f2241b0e0781
I find all of this, especially the crowd size, encouraging!
And I expect Kneecap to be declared a terrorist organization tout de suite, as they say in the land of the guillotine.
I am a bit jubilant about Bulgaria being bestowed with the dubious honor of being included in the “democracy dismantler” club. One of the reasons for the inclusion is a corrupt and ecologically disastrous scheme to build the largest waste incinerator in Europe in my hometown. I’ve played a role in the successful (so far) local resistance to the scheme, which garnered national attention for being both large and fiercely independent of any of the usual political party scheming.
Still, the report doesn’t quite do justice to the role played in the scheme by some of the “role-model democracies” like Germany, Switzerland and Austria in terms of providing financing, technology and know-how. It would have turned my region into what Chris Hedges calls ‘sacrifice zone’: Europe exports its trash to Bulgaria to be burned to provide electricity for the melting of the high-quality basalt that the area is rich in, with the produced rock wool exported to Europe to create more energy efficient buildings. Thus Europe will bask in its “green credentials,” while my region would have paid the environmental bills for it. All of this enabled by and itself enabling the corruption Bulgaria is known for.
That’s quite the democratic role-modeling, ain’t it…
Good luck. NYC used to send boatloads of garbage to landfills in lower SC and the Barnwell nuclear reprocessing plant may still be operating. I’ll have to look it up.
Meanwhile in my upstate I was just inspecting our new ballpark to host a Texas Rangers farm team starting April 15. This part of the state is booming and we now have our firecracker Senator Lindsey to defend us from those Yankee despoilers /s
Time was the Southern economy was mostly military with bases like Fort Jackson (think you know that one). Even my nearby state park and “natural area” was once a WW2 military base.
I get protecting copyright for some period of time in a creator’s life, but the current regime needs a serious re-work toward that end. What is a reasonable protection period from your perspective ?
Well Jesus Christ had a brother named Jimmy Christ and his descendants are trying to get the copyright for the Bible right now.
Observation by Branko Milanovic. I think he is fundamentally right and describes a very general problem in “democratic” regimes (defined broadly).
https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/the-break-down-of-the-representative
The incumbent government, in most countries, are “unpopular” in some form or another. However, many if not most survive in power because no alternative can be formed to supplant it. Sometimes, the problem is sociological–the society is itself so fractured that forming a cohesive movement that can actually contest elections in a meaningful way and form a government is exceedingly difficult. Often, the problem is institutional: there are legal and bureaucratic barriers that make organizing an opposition movement that can contest elections (and meaningfully offer to take power) seriously and credibly is difficult. In cases of practically every alleged and actual “democratic” governments, both exist, even if some are higher than others and drawing a clear boundary where a government ceases to be “democratic,” I think everyone can agree, is a difficult chore.
What the “opposition” in Serbia seems to be doing, per Brankovic’s description, seems to be the a sort of “anonymous Trump (or AFD or Brexit or whatever),” something that draws on the rather inchoate dissatisfcation with the status quo and all its components (including the so-called established opposition) without any association with the status quo. But this carries the danger that, once you give the status quo the middle finger, you still need to get a government and that goverment will need to have a face and a program–which, inevitably, will offend large swaths of people, or, in other words, even if you vote for an anonymous Trump or Obama, you still wind up with someone in charge. This spectre, in turn, can be conjured up by the governing regime practiclaly at will and used to justify its hold on power via increasingly dubious means (which, of course, is what Brankovic is getting at). Funny thing is that, as I was reading his post, I kept thinking about the collective Biden and the continued invocation of the TDS. This, tbh, seems to be the best reason, despite all the warts, you need an occasional Trump voted into office, if only to smash up or at least throw into chaos the networks of insiders. Jefferson thought a revolution or two every now and then is a good thing. I believe that a madman or two elected to high office is a better alternative that, hopefully, achieves the same goal.
(I suppose this is where I get to express my frustration at the fascination with sortition that many people seem to have. One advantage of sortition, I suppose, is that it places “somebody” (or a group of them) “in charge” somehow that are probably not members of the widely unpopular ruling clique. But you, the voters, don’t get a choice over who that will be. Even if it works as expected, it’ll be a completely random draw, of a collection of people who don’t have any good reason to cooperate with one another (or have any incentive to listen to anyone else). This seems to be one heck of way to ensure that the government drowns in a bathtub.)
I find that when trying to explain what DOGE is (Pronounced “Doggie”) it helps to substitute “The Party” for “DOGE” and “Political Commissar” for “DOGE Team Leader”.
Has anyone pointed out to our beloved elites that screwing over veterans might be unwise?
Quite a few of them took their oath to “Defend the Constitution against all enemies Foreign and Domestic” seriously.
There are a lot of them and they have Guns.
>>>Has anyone pointed out to our beloved elites that screwing over veterans might be unwise?
Aside from common sense, reading a little history would do, but I think they think they are like gods upon the earth, having no need to think about the mass of disposables. But hey, pride does go before the fall, and if we weren’t all under the shadows of the collapse, I would happily keep a bowl of popcorn and some beers for the event.
Everybody in the US has guns. I think I am considered left-ish and I have five of them. I just sold three guns. I am getting rid of possessions so in the event of my death (not imminent), my wife has less to clean up after me.
Gilbert Doctorow has some interesting thoughts today. He suggests the Trumpies may be preparing to accept Putin’s terms rather than vice versa.
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/03/17/deputy-foreign-minister-alexander-grushko-and-russias-terms-for-a-cease-fire/