The EU should focus on diplomacy and cooperation instead of confrontation
How the refusal of diplomacy is driving Europe into a downward spiral of militarism, economic decline and political chaos. (...)
It
is remarkable that the EU, of all places, which could be completely
devastated by a possible escalation of the war in Ukraine, not only does
nothing to avert this danger and stop the killing, but also undermines
the diplomatic attempts of a member state. (...)
Moreover, the armament will continue at the expense of social cohesion and political stability. Instead
of investing appropriately in the broken education and healthcare
systems and making public transport fit for the future, more money is
being pumped into the most destructive and climate-damaging of all
economic sectors every year: armaments. However,
if the political system no longer offers citizens any prospects for the
future, but only social cuts and war rhetoric, trust in political
institutions will continue to erode and right-wing nationalist forces
will gain even more support.
Ukraine war: Selensky changes the narrative in dire straits
The “hot phase” of the war could be over before the end of the year, said Selenskyj. It is also no longer necessary to recapture all occupied territories militarily. “The power of diplomacy” could help.
To
this end, Zelenskyi wants to convene a new “peace summit” before the US
presidential election - and even invite Russia this time. He has apparently sent his Foreign Minister Kuleba to China to prepare.
According to Selenskyj, the signals from Beijing are positive. China recognizes the territorial integrity. However, so far there is no sign that China is backing away from Russia. Selensky's new narrative is probably more of a smokescreen.
Source: Lost in Europe
Authoritarian phalanx: Trump, Vance and the tech elite around PayPal billionaire Thiel
[This article
posted on 7/28.2024 is translated from the German on the Internet,
https://www.telepolis.de/features/Autoritaere-Phalanx-Trump-Vance-und-die-Tech-Elite-um-Paypal-Milliardaer-Thiel-9815678.html?seite=all.]
Silicon Valley tycoons have thrown their weight behind Trump's revolutionary project. They have a common goal. And a strategy to come to power.
When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump appointed J.D. Vance as his running mate on July 16, it was more than a personnel decision for a rather symbolic office. It
is an expression of a political project of the Make-America-Great-Again
Republicans under Trump, which aims to transform the USA into an
authoritarian oligarchic state.
Thiel paves the way for Vance with millions
In
a way, the 39-year-old senator from Ohio embodies the confluence of
various forces that want to initiate a conservative to far-right
revolution from above. When Vance was studying at Yale Law School in 2011, he attended a lecture by Peter Thiel, the conservative tech billionaire and co-founder of PayPal.
Although Vance did not know the German-born Thiel at the time, he became Thiel's collaborator and friend over the next decade. He received generous donations from him. Thiel's millions paved the way for Vance to become a senator.
Starting
in 2015, Vance worked at Thiel's investment firm Mithril Capital and
rose to national prominence a year later after writing the memoir
“Hillbilly Elegy,” about growing up in a broken, working-class family in
Appalachia. The book, praised for how it gives insight into Trump-land of the disconnected, was later made into a movie.
Vance then joined
the venture capital firm Revolution, founded by former AOL CEO Steve
Case, and launched his own venture capital firm Narya Capital in 2020,
funded by Thiel and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
From Silicon Valley to politics
The stated aim of Vance's company is to invest in start-ups that have tended to be overlooked by Silicon Valley. Since then, he has been firmly embedded in the tech venture capital world.
And
this world formed the springboard for the newcomer into politics:
without Thiel, without years of support from parts of Silicon Valley,
Vance would not have succeeded in being nominated as Trump's potential
running mate at the Republican nominating convention. His political rise is ultimately the product of an investment decision by the tech industry in the USA.
When Vance ran for senator in Ohio in 2022, Thiel invested the staggering sum of 15 million US dollars in his protégé's campaign and , according to the Washington Post, helped win Trump's support, which led to Vance winning a hard-fought Republican primary race and then the Senate election.
Thiel himself had already heavily supported Trump financially during the 2016 campaign and gave a speech at the Republican Party convention at the time to signal which side he was on and which president he wanted.
In 2016, Vance compared Trump to Hitler
And
it was the co-founder of software giant Palantir, Thiel, who finally
brought Vance to a first meeting with Trump during a secret meeting in
Mar-a-Lago in February 2021, as reported by the New York Times. Other
members of the so-called “PayPal mafia”, including Elon Musk and David
Sacks - a well-known venture capitalist who gave a speech at the
Republican Party convention - also lobbied hard to get Vance in with Trump.
When they succeeded, Sacks and Musk celebrated this as a “victory” on the social media channel X (formerly Twitter). Thiel in particular had succeeded in smoothing over Vance - a self-declared “Never-Trumper” who had previously railed against Trump, called him an “idiot” and even compared him to Adolf Hitler in 2016 - his relationship with the Republican ex-president and new presidential candidate.
Many representatives of the influential and wealthy tech elite and venture capitalists backing Vance now appear ready to support the Trump campaign. Investors
like Musk, Marc Andreessen, another venture capitalist, and Joe
Lonsdale, Thiel's co-founder of Palantir, are reportedly planning to donate large sums of money to help Trump and Vance's campaign move forward.
Read also:
The sympathy factor: how Nato is winning the minds and hearts of Europeans
Telepolis
The
deepening alliance between parts of Silicon Valley, i.e. Big Tech, Big
Data and venture capital, and the Maga movement around Trump with its
authoritarian, neo-fascist project, has triggered fears in the USA. It is seen as a fatal collaboration of forces that want to overcome democracy.
Trump and Thiel united by anti-democracy
Trump declared that he would be a “dictator” on “day one”. In
his authoritarian rhetoric, he announced that he would exact revenge
and retribution as the new president, while outlining an agenda for his
second term that is characterized by an unprecedented expansion of
executive power, far-reaching interference in the justice system and a
massive purge of the civil service.
And
all of this against the backdrop of the ruling by the Supreme Court,
which Trump filled with extreme judges during his term in office, to grant the president criminal immunity for official acts.
Thiel,
who has close ties to NatCon - a New Right organization whose
supporters believe that the establishment must be destroyed - declared in 2009 that democracy is incompatible with freedom. He had “little hope that voting will make things better”.
As a member of Trump's transition team for the presidency in 2016, the Silicon Valley major investor suggested that a leading climate change skeptic, William Happer, should be appointed White House science adviser. He
also pushed for a libertarian Bitcoin entrepreneur who doesn't believe
in drug testing to become head of the Food and Drug Administration.
Thiel believes that liberal democracy has failed. It
is heading towards a “mindless world government”, while he speaks of
the “madness of the masses” and the “totalitarian lie” of democracy,
which can only be given a “decisive corrective” through right-wing
nationalism.
Big data wants to wage war and monitor citizens
Thiel was already able to influence the government during Trump's term as president. The
Pentagon's relationship with Anduril Industries, a company financed by
Thiel, was expanded, supported by staff appointments from Thiel's circle
of friends.
The defense contractor Anduril is now building a “virtual border wall” to Mexico for the US government. Trump,
who has long advocated the construction of a complete physical barrier
on the US-Mexico border, is no longer pursuing this project and now
supports the solution Anduril is selling.
The company also plays an important role in the use of unmanned drones in Ukrainian military operations. Other
Thiel-funded companies such as Palantir (a CIA contractor) and
Clearview AI, which mainly uses photos posted on Facebook (another
Thiel-backed company) to develop a facial recognition surveillance
database, are also involved.
Beyond
Ukraine, the network of Thiel-funded defense contractors is
transforming warfare, slowly but surely replacing human decision-making
with artificial intelligence. Thiel is also the architect of a modern surveillance state.
He founded Palantir, a company based on the idea of the failed surveillance program Total Information Awareness (TIA). Palantir has close ties to the CIA and plays a key role in surveillance and data collection for the US government.
Trump-Vance-Thiel as a perfect storm
Investigative US journalist Whitney Webb warns on the online magazine unlimitedhangout.com
that Thiel's influence on US politics and his efforts to establish a
comprehensive surveillance system pose a threat to democracy.
While
the connections are troubling in themselves, Thiel's potential
influence on a possible Trump administration should worry every
American, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum. For
Thiel's efforts to revive and advance some of the intelligence
community's Orwellian and unconstitutional efforts to combat dissent in
the U.S. are troubling.
Indeed,
it is no exaggeration to recognize in the Trump-Vance-Thiel triangle a
perfect storm from which an authoritarian oligarch state could emerge. Such a state would act as an unrestrained agent of the super-rich and business elite (see Trump's 1.5 trillion dollar gift
to this class in his first term), coupled with high-tech surveillance
for population control (big tech, big data) and driven by a conservatism
that is as repressive as it is egomaniacal (including right-wing terror
against minorities and dissenters).
On the hunt for workers' votes
Vance
is the perfect link for the authoritarian alliance, closing a gap to
make the party electable for broad sections of the population. At the Republican party convention, it was clear that they want to present themselves as pro-labor. They even invited a labor leader to speak there.
The problem is that for decades, Republican policies have been clearly against the interests of workers and in line with the needs of the business elite. You simply cannot make politically credible offers to large sections of the working population or point to past merits.
As president, Trump has not brought back coal and industrial jobs as promised. He
was only successful in continuing to fill the suitcases of the wealthy
and ultra-rich with tax breaks, while he stood idly by and watched the
social decline.
The Republicans around Trump therefore cannot score points with concrete proposals. They have to try in other ways to create the impression that they will pursue a caretaker policy for the “little people”.
Vance is perfectly suited to this “blue collar” campaign task. In
his personal history, he already embodies America's disconnected
hinterland with its working-class families, from which he emerged in a
kind of American Dream.
The economic populism of Vance
In
the past, before his swing towards Trump, he also presented himself as
an advocate for workers who would ensure that the days of Wall Street
were over.
He criticized
the neoliberal free trade agreement Nafta, denounced “unlimited global
trade”, praised social security, used the term “big business”
pejoratively and declared that Trump “serves Wall Street”. “We will stand up for the working man,” he added.
Read also:
Immunity for Trump: US presidents have always been able to do what they want
Telepolis
The Trump administration can now build on this image and benefit from it. However, the project is on shaky ground. This is because Vance's “economic populism” has virtually no grounding. It consists merely of empty words, as co-editor and co-founder of The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner, emphasizes:
He is a very dangerous fraud. And
his whole history, from writing Hillbilly Elegy to doing a 180-degree
turn from a critic to a loyalist of Trump to pretending to stand up for
working Americans when he's actually always voted against them, shows
he's a fake. And he's an attractive fake. He's personally likable.
Vance has done nothing to support union causes. All
of the policy reforms demanded by unions and put in place by the Biden
administration - making it easier for workers to organize, requiring
government contractors to pay a living wage, or addressing unfair labor
practices, among others - have been fought by Republicans one-by-one, either in court, by law, by vote, or by Republican representatives on regulatory commissions.
Towards an authoritarian oligarchic state
Much
of the authoritarian project of the Trump-Vance-Thiel phalanx is
reminiscent of fascist strategies that were molded into totalitarian
policies by the Nazi regime in the 1930s: Stimulating
xenophobic alienation hysteria (then mainly concerning Jews, today
propagated as a dark-skinned “invasion of migrants” from the South who
bring in crime and steal Americans' jobs), incitement against and
repression of social opposition, conservative culture war for a cleansed
homeland and economic populism for the people.
If
the Trump-Vance team, with the tech elite around billionaire Thiel as
the driving force in the background, is able to prevail in November, the
United States will very likely move towards an authoritarian oligarchic
state, with all the consequences that entails.
Certainly, even under Democratic presidents, big money rules in US politics. For example, the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, is closely linked to the Clinton family.
However,
it is doubtful that central institutions of US democracy will survive a
second, radicalized Trump term in office unscathed, given the agenda of
the forces gathered around Trump-Vance and the Maga movement.
Trump has just told his supporters at an election rally that they will no longer have to vote in the future: “It will all be taken care of then!”
NATO perspectives
by Erhard Crome
[This
article posted on 7/29/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/07/nato-perspektiven-69506.html.]
One-two-three, time runs at a whirl; we run with it,” Wilhelm Busch once rhymed. When
the NATO summit in Washington - marking the 75th anniversary of the
founding of the pact there - ended on July 11, 2024, it seemed as if an
important event had to be summed up immediately. All
in all, US President Joe Biden had presided in a dignified manner, even
if he had some lapses again: he had confused Ukraine's President
Zelensky with Russia's Putin, and elsewhere he had forgotten the name of
his Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, instead referring to him as the
“bogeyman”. Nevertheless,
Biden was considered the Democratic presidential candidate and
everything seemed to be heading towards another election campaign
between Biden and Donald Trump.
Since then, a lot has happened in a very short space of time that overshadows the images from the summit. On
July 13, in the town of Butler in Pennsylvania, an assassin shot at
Trump from a rooftop and hit him in the ear; one bystander was shot dead
and two seriously injured. The perpetrator was killed by security forces. The
FBI later discovered that he had researched on the internet a few days
earlier how far away the assassin of John F. Kennedy in 1963 was from
his victim. The
Republican Party convention in Milwaukee (July 15-18), which elected
Trump as presidential candidate with great pomp, celebrated his survival
as a “divine miracle”.
According to polls at the time, Trump would win re-election, while the frail Biden was unlikely to do so. In
this situation, pressure grew from within the Democratic Party, most
recently from a number of dignitaries such as Mr. and Mrs. Clinton and
former President Obama, for Biden to withdraw his candidacy. He
initially rejected this resolutely, but then seemed to come to his
senses and declared his withdrawal from the race for the presidency on
July 21. Three
days later, he gave a speech to the nation from the White House in
which he said that the November elections were about the fate of
democracy in the USA. The Frankfurter Rundschau asked whether this was a “eulogy” or whether Biden was talking about his “legacy”. In
any case, it now seems to be heading towards a candidacy for the
current Vice President, Kamala Harris, who until recently was generally
regarded as politically inept and unattractive to voters. However, at 59, she is significantly younger and now Trump is the older one at 78. For all those who have developed great fears of another Trump presidency, there seems to be new hope.
After
the immediate observations on the NATO summit were mainly focused on
the figure of Biden, we can now turn our attention to the apparent
results. First of all, the actors lined up in the auditorium where the NATO treaty was signed 75 years ago. An
old documentary film of the act was shown, a military band created a
pathetic atmosphere and the outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens
Stoltenberg cheered that NATO was “the most successful alliance in
history” and now also “the one that has lasted the longest”. Biden
read his speech from the teleprompter, which he managed to do without
any slips of the tongue or slip-ups, and then hung the “Presidential
Medal of Freedom”, one of the highest civilian awards in the USA, around
Stoltenberg's neck, which also went off without a hitch. The
question of what it means in terms of symbolic politics when the
Secretary General of such an organization of 32 states is commended in
this way by the US President was neither asked nor answered in the major
media.
In military terms, the focus was once again on the war in Ukraine. The
previously agreed 40 billion euros in military aid for the coming year
was confirmed at the summit; F-16 fighter jets and additional air
defense systems will now also be delivered. The summit did not follow the Kiev government's request to actually come closer to joining NATO. It
was evasively stated that the path to NATO membership was
“irreversible” and that the current aid measures would “form a bridge”
to later membership - whenever that should take place. In
future, there will be a NATO facility in Wiesbaden, Germany, to
coordinate support for Ukraine; until now, this has been carried out by
the USA.
Ostensibly, the aim is to make NATO support “Trump-proof”. In
reality, it is the next step towards the “Europeanization” of the
Ukraine war - in the event of an imminent defeat of Ukraine, aid would
have to be increased in order to avert defeat. The Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat said: “The crucial question has been left out”. A few fighter planes and a few pilots with fast courses would “not be able to decide the war or stop Putin”. The war would be decided at the front with artillery, ammunition and soldiers. "And
that is precisely the question that NATO and its member states do not
want to answer: When has the point come when the West would be forced to
send its own troops to war?" But perhaps this is also the point that the majority of NATO states do not want to reach. From the Romanian perspective, it was criticized that there are no clear assurances for Moldova. Apparently, the Ukraine front is already overwhelming NATO.
The
description of the world situation was further intensified with the
official summit declaration, and the hostility towards China was further
intensified. Russia remains the “greatest and direct threat” to NATO's security. China
is now not only accused of being a “systemic challenge” to the West,
but above all of being the decisive supporter of Russia in the Ukraine
war. Belarus, North Korea and Iran are also named in this grouping.
Some
time ago, especially in view of US geopolitics under Donald Trump, it
was still assumed that in the triangular relationship between the US,
China and Russia, the latter would be drawn to the side of the US. Now
retired General Harald Kujat assumes that the USA sees China as its
only competitor and intends to use the Ukraine war “to weaken Russia,
the second geopolitical rival, politically, economically and militarily
to such an extent that it can concentrate on the conflict with China”. (Nachdenkseiten, 23.07.2024)
With
this in mind, the NATO summit was attended by the heads of state or
government of the member states and Ukraine as well as those of Japan,
South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The
European NATO states are to be integrated into the Indo-Pacific
structure envisaged by the USA in order to be deployed there, as in
Europe against Russia, against China. This is likely to be a constant of US geopolitics, whatever the next president is called. However, the forces of the global West of values will probably no longer be sufficient for such a global confrontation. Even if there is a growing danger that the Ukraine war will turn into a European war.
New Babelonian linguistic confusion
The essence of language is
in the naming; for only the name says
that a being has been recognized and
has become real.
Günter Kunert
by Jürgen Brauerhoch
[This
article posted on 7/29/2024 is translated from the German on the
Internet,
https://das-blaettchen.de/2024/07/neue-babbelonische-sprachverwirrung-69459.html.]
The
myth of Babylon (Babel) is about the exciting story of how God used a
trick to prevent a tower from being built above the clouds in his heaven
- language. He
caused the legendary Babylonian language confusion among the many
hundreds of construction workers, which made it impossible to continue
building the tower. “They no longer understood the word,” says the Bible.
Nowadays,
our bureaucratic society creates linguistic confusion in its diffuse
refugee policy without God and despite the Geneva Refugee Convention. Since 1951, it has stated that refugees enjoy protection. The Convention contains a number of rights and also emphasizes the obligations of refugees towards their host country. The cornerstone is the principle of non-refoulement contained in Article 33. According
to this principle, a refugee may not be sent back to a country where
his or her life or freedom is seriously threatened. However, this protection cannot be claimed by refugees who pose a danger or have committed a serious crime.
The legend of Babylon could actually be an indication of how to deal with linguistic confusion in general. Triggered
by the reckless invasion of uncontrolled streams of refugees in 2015,
the political, official, humanitarian and sociological world is
constantly debating what sounds better and is ultimately better: refugees or fugitives. Refugee
experts such as Pro Asyl criticize the fact that terms such as refugee
wave or refugee flood discriminate against all those seeking protection
as a threatening mass and possibly equate them with natural disasters
from a different perspective. They
believe that the suffix “-ling” has a trivializing character and that
the gendering of “refugee” is difficult because there is no explicitly
feminine form of the term. In
contrast to refugees, fugitives also have the advantage that “the
derivation from the past participle already integrates a potential end
to the flight”. No one wants to be a refugee in the long term, it says succinctly.
At
the same time, however, the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR does not believe in
replacing the word “refugees” with the term “fugitives”. “We consider the word ‘refugees’ to be derogatory and do not use it,” said UNHCR spokesperson Chris Melzer in Germany. The German name of the UN refugee agency will not be changed either. “Refugee”, on the other hand, is “virtually a protected term”. “It
has been firmly defined by the Geneva Refugee Convention for more than
70 years and has a sharpness and strength that protects people.”
“Refugee” is too banal, as “we have all fled from something at some
point”.
This does not prevent the SPD from advocating a solidarity-based migration and refugee policythat combines humanity and order, as stated in the election manifesto. It does not shy away from the linguistic monstrosity of refugee policy, but it does shy away from so-called far-right ideas. In
its election manifesto, the AfD sees “the effective protection of
external borders against illegal immigration” as one of Europe's main
tasks. The
immigration of people of Muslim faith from “the states of the Islamic
cultural sphere” is considered to be a particular problem, which the CDU
does not seem to fear. And the Greens certainly don't.
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