René Magritte The Art of Conversation 1963
Sometimes you best fight fire with fire. This knowledge goes back to the advent of agriculture. Australian aboriginees have used it since as long as their stories of dream time can remember. For Native Americans it was an essential part of their lives. These days, we need Trump to fight the fire of an elite class world power that is a threat to all of us.
Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threatener and outface the brow
Of bragging horrorShapespeare: King John, 1595
Been greatly enjoying Donald Trump’s pair of interviews with the European press this weekend, in the shape of German scandal paper Bild’s chief, very-right Kai Diekmann, and disgraced Brexiteer Michael Gove for the Sunday Times. What a pair of choices, by the way, what’s next, a Russian interview conducted by Zhirinovsky?. Who picked those clowns? Let’s just hope it was the Trump campaign.
Enjoying it not in the least because Trump is right in just about everything he says. At least, as per what we at the Automatic Earth have been saying about some of the topics involved all along. And we’re not Trump fans, we just think the others are more wrong than he is, and that it’s high time to abolish the EU, and NATO, and sure, the CIA too.
Speaking of which: Chuck Shumer has made it all the way to Senate leader for the Democrats, right? And then he says about Trump’s criticism of US intel and the Steele ‘report’:
“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. For a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”
Want to take any of that back, Chuck? While you still can? Because, you know, threatening the president-elect with the might of the CIA, what does that say about your view of who actually rules the country, Charlie? That’s not a gaffe, that’s what would in America’s better days have been a career buster, buster. But your own rudderless party won’t call you on it, and Trump would love for you to keep your seat; one less worry. Still, c’mon, you just can’t say sh*t like that. It’s beyond any pale. Or, you know, it once was.
What did Trump get right? Here’s what. First, NATO should not exist anymore, since as we’ve said 1000 times, and Ron Paul said 10 times more, it’s merely a hammer looking for a nail, having turned for the purpose, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, from a defensive collaboration into the planet’s worst aggressor. The 1000s of additional US troops gathered at or close to the Russian border recently are more than plenty evidence of that.
Trump wants far fewer nukes on the planet, and proposes to negotiate a deal with Russia to achieve that goal. Ergo, 30 years after Reagan met Gorbachev in Reykjavik to accomplish just that, Trump must meet Putin in that same spot to do it all over again?! That’s the legacy of NATO. It would be mighty symbolic, though we might want to remember the 1972 Spasski-Bobby Fisher chess ‘world cup’ there, and the American’s paranoia at the time. Not a good example. But they’ll meet someplace, for sure.
Second, Trump likes Brexit. So do we. Beautiful Brexit. Because it is a preliminary step towards the dissolution of the EU, which, as Trump very correctly remarks, has degenerated into a “vehicle for Germany” to compete with the US as a global trading force.
And of course Germany would deny this. After all, didn’t the notorious FinMin Schäuble say -again- just a few days ago that Europe’s problem is not Germany’s surplus, but the weakness of other nations? This week, German foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer added:“For the German government, Europe has never been a means to an end, but a community of fate which, in times of collapsing old orders, is more important than ever.” A community of ‘fate’? An ‘old order’ vs a ‘new order’? Are we taking notes?
Anyway, this is cheap quatsch as long as a huge part of Germany’s surplus comes from its trade with co-EU nations. Because in that scenario, there’s only so much surplus to go around, and the rest will all of necessity run deficits. If that is hard to understand, let’s dive up these stats again, and close that discussion once and for all:
The EU very much IS a vehicle for Germany, and it eats people alive. That has nothing to do with Germany taking in immigrants, it has to do with economic and power policies, with the destruction of Greece and Italy. The structure of the EU makes it possible, inevitable even, that the strongest partner forces all the others to do its will. That really is all you need to know about why the EU is doomed to failure. All the rest is just about describing the process of how that failure unfolds.
Setting and keeping the euro at a rate that is beneficial to Germany condemns poorer EU nations to ever deeper poverty. That’s what those numbers say. And if anyone thinks Schäuble is not aware of either the numbers or the principle itself, get help. Merkel and Schäuble have been elected to represent Germans, but then they wind up making decisions for 400 million other people, who are the victims of the very policies that benefit Germany. There’s nothing difficult about it.
‘Community of Fate’.. Let’s just hope something was lost in translation there. Point is, Trump is right on the money, and he’s about the first person to put it as simply and poignantly as that. The EU is a vehicle for trade domination. It’s a means for Germany and Holland to acquire access to a huge market for their products, free of just about any trade restrictions. Promoted with the flogged dead horse of the ‘tide that lifts all boats’. It does no such thing.
Other than times of open warfare, for countries like Greece and Italy the EU is the worst thing that ever happened to them in a long time. Brussels stands for economic warfare labeled as a unifying force for peace. It’s a blatant lie wrapped in sheep’s clothing. And of course more nations will want to get out, they’d be crazy not to.
Which is what’s so painfully missing from all the Brexit talk in the UK: everyone goes with the idea that the EU will continue to exist as is, just without Britain. The chance of others leaving, and the effect that will have on the ‘Union’, is never discussed. Though it might put the exit from it in a whole different light, politically and especially economically.
German Vice-Chancellor en Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel puts his foot in his mouth in much the same way Schumer does, in a reaction to Trump’s interviews. As Tyler Durden describes Gabriel’s ‘Trump shock’:
Responding to Trump’s comments that Merkel had made an “utterly catastrophic mistake by letting all these illegals into the country”, Gabriel said the increase in the number of people fleeing the Middle East to seek asylum in Europe had partially been a result of US-led wars destabilising the region.
Slamming US foreign policy – and thus the Obama regime, not to mention Angela Merkel’s close friend Hillary Clinton – as a culprit for the European refugee crisis, Gabriel said that “there is a link between America’s flawed interventionist policy, especially the Iraq war, and the refugee crisis, that’s why my advice would be that we shouldn’t tell each other what we have done right or wrong, but that we look into establishing peace in that region and do everything to make sure people can find a home there again,” Gabriel said.
First, if you are against America’s deeply flawed and ‘deeply deadly’ regime change policies of the last few decades, as Gabriel pretends to be, you should be pro-Trump, because the man who will be the next US president a little over 50 hours from now is not only of the same opinion, he will be in a position to do something about it. And while you’re at it, why not tell us of all the heroics Merkel has performed over the past decade of her reign, to make it stop?
And do yourself one better: describe in detail the role your EU partners France and Britain have played in these failures. In which untold trillions were spent and untold millions of lives lost, but in which the arms industries of these nations, and certainly Germany’s too, have made mind-boggling profits. Once you’ve done all that, Mr. Gabriel, feel free to criticize the 45th president of the United States.
“In that area Germany and Europe are already making enormous achievements – and that’s why I also thought it wasn’t right to talk about defence spending, where Mr Trump says we are spending too little to finance Nato. We are making gigantic financial contributions to refugee shelters in the region, and these are also the results of US interventionist policy.” Gabriel, who will likely run as the centre-left candidate against Merkel in Germany’s federal elections in September, said Trump’s election should encourage Europeans to stand up for themselves.
Here is where Gabriel’s foot enters his mouth:
“On the one hand, Trump is an elected president. When he is in office, we will have to work with him and his government – respect for a democratic election alone demands that,” Gabriel said. “On the other hand, you need to have enough self-confidence. This isn’t about making ourselves submissive.
What he says about trade issues, how he might treat German carmakers, the question about Nato, his view on the European Union – all these require a self-confident position, not just on behalf of us Germans but all Europeans. We are not inferior to him, we have something to bring to the table too. “Especially in this phase in which Europe is rather weak, we will have to pull ourselves together and act with self-confidence and stand up for our own interests.”
If that is your idea of exuding confidence, of being and/or appearing strong, Trump will have you for breakfast. “in this phase in which Europe is rather weak, we will have to pull ourselves together” , “you need to have enough self-confidence. This isn’t about making ourselves submissive.” Or how about some genuine pouting: “We are not inferior to him, we have something to bring to the table too.”
No, Mr. Gabriel is not the horse you want to place your bets on. He’s a left wing leader sitting in a government with right wing Merkel, in the kind of flawed consensus model that haunts both the EU and its member states, leaving large groups of people without anyone addressing their issues. This is where ‘populists’ are born. In the US, it gave us Trump.
Gabriel is just one of many who are all wedded to the broken Obama/Merkel/Hillary ideal, financed by a deep state class that profits greatly from the fake notion that what is good for the rich is also good for the poor. Should have given them bread and circuses, guys.