harlekin.me

US incre­a­sed mili­ta­ry sup­port spen­ding and is about to incre­a­se tro­ops sta­tio­ned in Nato mem­ber sta­tes, Gre­at Bri­tain and Poland are now incre­a­sing mili­ta­ry aid and poli­ti­cal sup­port by hol­ding smal­ler sum­mits as well - the Dut­ch Prime Minis­ter will visit Ukrai­ne tomor­row, and for­mer Prime Minis­ter of Swe­den, Carl Bildt, now co-chair of the Euro­pean Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­ti­ons (thats pos­si­ble?) is put­ting out “sca­re tac­tics” tal­king­points as well.

You know you have a genui­ne euro­pean effort going, when the US, Gre­at Bri­tain, Poland, and the Co Chair of the ECFR, are put­ting out the “we stand with Ukrai­ne” rhe­to­ric, and hol­ding spee­ches at sta­te visits in the Ukrai­ne cur­r­ent­ly, oh and dont for­get the Prime Minis­ter of the Nether­lands (It worked! -- on a more serious note: 

“The King­dom of the Nether­lands beca­me a foun­ding mem­ber of NATO in 1949 and its unaba­ted com­mit­ment to the inter­na­tio­nal legal order gave it a much lar­ger role in inter­na­tio­nal affairs than its size would nor­mal­ly jus­ti­fy. It also exp­lains why Dut­ch lea­ders let NATO mem­bers­hip, as well as its mem­bers­hip of the Euro­pean Uni­on and the United Nati­ons, shape a lar­ge part of the country’s for­eign poli­cy and why Atlan­ti­cism for­med a cor­ner­stone of its secu­ri­ty poli­cy during the ent­i­re Cold War period.”

src: click)!

The Ukrai­ne mean­while, has the best mas­ter­plan you could think of in this instance - incre­a­se armed for­ces capa­ci­ty by 100.000 units wit­hin three years.

Wait - wit­hin three years? For how long does the coali­ti­on of the wil­ling think this con­flict should be held acti­ve again? Rus­sia basi­cal­ly loo­ses advan­ta­ge in late febru­a­ry… And from then on their nego­tia­ting posi­ti­on gets suc­ces­si­ve­ly worse.

So in three years from now, when the Ukrai­ne final­ly has a stan­ding army of 100.000 units more, and an ener­gy depen­den­cy of about 70% on rus­si­an oil exports… Their eco­no­mic growth will streng­t­hen, so they can final­ly aim at poli­ti­cal or ener­gy inde­pen­dence? Oh no, I for­got, the US will invest hea­vi­ly in green ener­gy infra­st­ruc­tu­re in the Ukrai­ne, and then - they’ll do an infra­st­ruc­tu­re build up with oil and shale­gas ship­ped in from half around the glo­be, becau­se “the pro­spects of buil­ding green infra­st­ruc­tu­re in the Ukrai­ne” are out­right rosy - with them now having built up their army signi­fi­cant­ly, having suf­fe­red oca­tio­nal ener­gy outa­ges and sup­ply shocks (during the transition).

Someo­ne draw me the through­li­ne here again?

Some­thing might be mis­sing from this ana­ly­sis, like - rus­si­an gas on its way to euro­pe goes through which coun­tries (if we pre­su­me Nord Stream 2 stays inactive)?

edit: Oh, Brussels (as the home base of NATO) is ent­i­re­ly impar­ti­al as well, of cour­se - no con­flict of inte­rest whatsoever. (The peace move­ments, inter­view­ed here, his­to­ri­cal­ly are seen as aiding the rus­si­an sphe­re of influ­ence.)

edit2: Short state­ment by the Ukrai­ni­an Pre­si­dent: “We are loo­king for­ward to taking the Krim back [or other ter­ri­to­ries?], and that bila­te­ral tra­de bet­ween the UK and Ukrai­ne incre­a­sed by 60% over the last years is gre­at, and a gre­at suc­cess, and we should talk more about free tra­de [Wait what? So the bila­te­ral tra­de agree­ment beco­mes worth less?]. Dont quo­te me on that who­le com­plex, becau­se I havent sourced mul­ti­ple sources, but thats liter­al­ly what the trans­la­tor said. (Source is The Tele­graph.) Ah - the best of the best as heads of the sta­te again, I see…

Update: El Pais has acces­sed the some of the US and NATO nego­tia­ti­on docu­ments and is publi­shing details. Click and click.

edit: The US is cur­r­ent­ly signa­ling, that Ger­ma­ny is not depen­da­ble. Oh, so sad… did the litt­le trick of “spea­king for the who­le of euro­pe” Vic­to­ria Nuland pul­led off not work… *sniff* So sad. Second source: DW as par­ti­al as ever.

edit2: Whats this? The Ukrai­ne con­fir­ming, that the num­bers of rus­si­an troups near the bor­der are too small for a full sca­le inva­si­on - at this point? click How can that be pos­si­ble? The next step would be them ack­now­led­ging, that Kiev is not likely under risk of being taken by a par­ti­al inva­si­on. The insanity!

17.11.2021: Sky News UK talks to the ukrai­ni­an ambassa­dor to the United King­dom, Vadym Prystaiko:

At 7:30 in:

Vadym Prys­ta­iko: “What I’m here to say [is], that [the] ukra­ni­an pipe­line could pro­vi­de [the] euro­pean uni­on, all euro­pean nati­ons with the gas easi­ly. We have enough capa­ci­ty. For the rus­si­ans are doing this -- they [are] just rather wea­po­nizing the gas.”

Sky News: “But you think that this is the play by Rus­sia to get this pipe­line appro­ved, and then perhaps they’d back off?”

Vadym Prys­ta­iko: “Obvious­ly they will use this gas, they wont use [the] ukrai­ni­an pipe­line, which will untie their hands in Ukrai­ne, in the ukrai­ni­ni­an cam­pai­gn, which is yet ano­t­her risk [for] a real mili­ta­ry invasion.”

Sky­news: “Are you worried about the ger­man atti­tu­de to this, I mean the pipe­line, in the main will start sup­ply­ing ger­ma­ny. We hear that out­go­ing chan­cellor Ange­la Mer­kel has con­ti­nuing decent rela­ti­ons with the krem­lin and that in actu­al fact has over­rid­den pre­si­dent Biden in his oppo­si­ti­on to North Stream 2?”

Vadym Prys­ta­iko: “I am worry­ing, becau­se the ger­mans were not under­stan­ding, for all the­se years and years. They tried it [?] befo­re. I remem­ber the pre­de­ces­sor of mother Mer­kel who pro­mi­sed to help us with that, but then beca­me a depu­ty chief of gas­prom hims­elf. So when we are tal­king about ger­mans, we have to under­stand how clo­se­ly they are con­nec­ted eco­no­mi­c­al­ly to rus­si­ans, and how much of their own cal­cu­la­ti­ons of whats going on in their neigh­bor­hood actual­ly depends on rus­si­an gas, or some­thing else from the rus­si­an federation.”

src: click

72 days later:

28.01.2022: NPR talks to the spo­kes­man for the United Sta­tes Depart­ment of Sta­te, Ned Price:

“I want to be very clear: if Rus­sia inva­des Ukrai­ne one way or ano­t­her, Nord Stream 2 will not move for­ward,” Pri­ce told Natio­nal Public Radio. “I’m not going to get into the spe­ci­fics. We will work with Ger­ma­ny to ensu­re it does not move forward.”

src: click

Someo­ne paint me the through­li­ne here.

1. Did Rus­sia esca­la­te mili­ta­ry ten­si­ons to get North Stream 2 appro­ved? Ans­wer: [Implied: Yes - Then expli­ci­tly:] Well obvious­ly it redu­ces their invol­ve­ment in day to day poli­tics in the Ukrai­ne, which is ano­t­her risk for invasion.

Mea­ning - rus­sia esca­la­ted ten­si­ons, to get North Stream 2 appro­ved (wait what?!), so it can deco­u­p­le from Ukrai­ne eco­no­mi­c­al­ly, which incre­a­ses the risk of inva­si­on? So this isnt about Rus­sia wan­ting to pre­vent Ukrai­ne from beco­m­ing a Nato part­ner, becau­se Ukrai­ne wants Rus­sia invol­ved in their domestic poli­tics, which would pre­vent them from (most likely - ever) beco­m­ing a Nato mem­ber state?

Reflec­ting on the ECFRs posi­ti­on of “Euro­pe needs to deco­u­p­le from Rus­si­as ener­gy mar­kets long­term”, this means, what?

2. It’s bet­ter for lower mili­ta­ry ten­si­ons in the Ukrai­ne, to have Rus­sia invol­ved actively in their day to day poli­tics for as long as possible?

It’s bet­ter for lower poli­ti­cal ten­si­ons in the Ukrai­ne, to have Rus­sia invol­ved in their day to day poli­tics for as long as possible?

If Rus­sia inva­des in the Ukrai­ne, the US will make sure, that North Stream 2 never is ope­ned, so rus­si­an gas com­ing into the EU has to go through the ukrai­ni­an pipe­line, not redu­cing through­put - but incre­a­sing Ukrai­nes poli­ti­cal depen­den­cy on Rus­sia? Rus­si­as poli­ti­cal depen­den­cy on Ukrai­ne? Redu­cing the EUs poli­ti­cal depen­den­cy on Russia?

I thought Rus­sia esca­la­ted the con­flict to get Nord Stream 2 appro­ved? *sar­casm*

3. In actu­al fact, Ger­ma­ny has over­rid­den Bidens con­cerns (Wait, and Ted Cruz sent the memo?) on North Stream 2 to ensu­re, that it beco­mes active.

In actu­al fact, the United Sta­tes Depart­ment of Sta­te has over­rid­den Ger­ma­nys con­cerns on North Stream 2 to ensu­re, that it never beco­mes active.

Nach­trag: Tat­säch­lich. Das alles muss wohl so sein, denn die öster­rei­chi­sche Qua­li­täts­zei­tung der Stan­dard fin­det schon wie­der auf wun­der­sa­me Wei­se Kom­men­ta­to­ren (vom Insti­tu­te for Euro-Atlantic Coope­ra­ti­on) die dafür eine ganz ein­fa­che Erklä­rung haben:

Ent­ge­gen sei­nen Reden ficht Putin nicht die Nato-Erweiterung an, son­dern das Recht der Ukrai­ne, selbst­be­stimmt Ent­schei­dun­gen zu tref­fen und Bünd­nis­se zu schmie­den, die dem Land zu einem Auf­schwung verhelfen.

src: click

Alles klar jetzt?

Nach­trag 2: Es wird noch bes­ser - Nach­dem die US auf NPR ges­tern “ange­kün­digt” hat eine Red Line “North Stream 2 kommt nicht, wenn eine Inva­si­on der Ukrai­ne statt­fin­det” mit den euro­päi­schen Part­nern “zu ver­han­deln”, und zwar so - dass man sich sicher sein kann - dass das in der Form kommt und gilt, egal was die Euro­pä­er sagen - hat jetzt eine ehe­ma­li­ge Spre­che­rin des US Außen­mi­nis­te­ri­ums ange­kün­digt, dass dies eine gemein­sa­me Posi­ti­on der US und der EU sei.
(DW: “US and Ger­ma­ny step up pipe­line warnings to Rus­sia”)

Euro­news hat das aktu­ell mit “Washing­ton droht Mos­kau mit dem Ende der Gas-Pipeline” im Ticker. Es gibt bis jetzt noch kein State­ment eines Regie­rungs­ver­ant­wort­li­chen in Deutsch­land, oder auf EU Ebe­ne dazu. DW über­nimmt es, ohne Quel­len im Euro­päi­schen oder Deut­schen Raum zu nen­nen, und schal­tet anstatt des­sen zu einem Kor­re­spon­den­ten in Kiev, und die tat­säch­li­che Ände­rung der Posi­ti­on ent­spricht der Grö­ßen­ord­nung von “vor eini­gen Tagen spricht Biden noch von Unter­schie­den zwi­schen einer klei­nen und einer grö­ße­ren Inva­si­on”, und “Deutsch­lands Posi­ti­on bis dato war, dass es sich bei Nord Stream 2 um ein Wirt­schafts­pro­jekt hand­le, und es nicht von poli­ti­schen Sank­tio­nen betrof­fen sein würde”.

Was hat die­se Posi­ti­on geän­dert? Mora­li­sche Argu­men­te? Dürf­te die die Euro­päi­sche Bevöl­ke­rung auch mal hören, oder…

Nein? Ok - dann halt nicht. Eine ehe­ma­li­ge Spre­che­rin des US Außen­mi­nis­te­ri­ums reicht ja völ­lig… (DW dazu: “A clea­rer pic­tu­re is emer­ging.” Deus Ex machi­na. Nie­mand wars. Plötz­lich wars da. Es gebiert sich sozu­sa­gen aus dem Schau­me der Bran­dung selbst.) Nach­fra­gen wie sie denn dazu kommt das anzu­neh­men von US Repor­ter­kol­le­gen wur­den abge­schmet­tert. Sie­he Link.

Nach­trag 3: BBC to the res­cue:

“Ques­ti­ons remain over how the US could stop it (‘it’ being NS2 in Under Secreta­ry of Sta­te for Poli­ti­cal Affairs, Vic­to­ria Nulands state­ment that “If Rus­sia inva­des in Ukrai­ne, one way or ano­t­her, Nord Stream 2 will not move for­ward”, and that being a joint posi­ti­on of the US and the EU) but its the kind of bul­lish talk one nort­hern euro­pean Nato ally thinks is their best bet at stop­ping an attack.”

What a nice SNAFU… US tal­ked to one nort­hern euro­pean nati­on (won­der which one), then went in front of the press and announ­ced, that this would be “the joint euro­pean posi­ti­on”, when it was­n’t. One nati­on, the EU - what does it mat­ter, right?

Nach­trag 4: Die offi­zi­el­le Posi­ti­on Deutsch­lands ver­bleibt aktu­ell beim State­ment von Baer­bock von vor zwei Tagen, dass die Zukunft von Nord Stream 2 ein Teil einer brei­ten Rei­he an Sank­tio­nen auf Rus­si­sche Aggres­sio­nen sein könn­te. Sie­he: click

Stan­dard mal wie­der… Arti­kel bezahlt mit EU-Fördermitteln, aber in der redak­tio­nel­len Ver­ant­wor­tung des Stan­dard (Kate­go­rie: “Ich nehm das Geld schon, sags auch dem Redak­teur von wem er bezahlt wird, aber der schreibt dann unbefangen.”).

Euro­ba­ro­me­ter: Jun­ge Euro­pä­er sehen Kli­ma­wan­del als wich­tigs­te Herausforderung

[…]

In der Grup­pe der 15- bis 24-Jährigen glau­ben sat­te 91 Pro­zent, die Ein­däm­mung des Kli­ma­wan­dels kön­ne zur Ver­bes­se­rung ihrer Gesund­heit eben­so bei­tra­gen wie zu ihrem Wohlergehen.

src: click

Dazu klimafakten.de (bezug­neh­mend auf Her­man Lotze-Campen und das Potsdam-Institut für Kli­ma­fol­gen­for­schung (PIK) (*hust*)):

Kli­ma­wan­del und Gesund­heit - bringt die Ver­bin­dung zusätz­li­che Aufmerksamkeit?

Die übli­chen Öko-Kampagnen zum Kli­ma­schutz errei­chen vie­le Men­schen nicht oder nur wenig. Eine Alter­na­ti­ve wäre, ande­re Aspek­te des Kli­ma­wan­dels stär­ker zu the­ma­ti­sie­ren, etwa sei­ne Fol­gen für die mensch­li­che Gesund­heit. Diver­se Stu­di­en deu­ten dar­auf hin, dass dies funk­tio­nie­ren könnte

src: click

Nicht, dass es rele­vant, oder ein wesent­li­cher Aspekt wäre - nein, bit­te exakt lesen - Stu­di­en dazu, dass es funk­tio­nie­ren könn­te. (Ande­re Argu­men­ta­ti­ons­ebe­ne (die persuasive).)

klimafakten.de, das muss man wis­sen, wird von der sel­ben Per­son betrie­ben, die auch Clean Ener­gy News Wire betreibt (sie­he: click), und die dann in Alp­bach von als “Mode­ra­to­ren” bezahl­ten Standard-Redakteuren, öffent­lich in nem Dialog-Event dazu befragt wird, wel­che PR denn die Bes­te wäre um sei­ne Fami­lie (die des Jour­na­lis­ten und aller Zuhö­rer) von der Rele­vanz des Kli­ma­the­mas zu über­zeu­gen, aber mehr so auf der inter­per­so­nel­len Ebe­ne, wor­auf dann ein fünf Punk­te Plan folgt, und der Jour­na­list sich dann artig für die PR (den Akti­ons­plan) bedankt. Auf einen Kom­men­tar im Chat, dan­ke für soviel PR, von einem Ver­tre­ter des Jour­na­lis­mus - zuckt dann noch mal kurz was im Gesicht des Stan­dard­jour­na­lis­ten (könn­te schlech­tes Gewis­sen gewe­sen sein, aber viel­leicht auch Abscheu) - und das wars dann.

Sor­ry für den Exkurs, schnell wie­der zurück zum The­ma. Na wie sol­lens die 15- bis 24-Jährigen denn wis­sen, dass das pri­mär Framing ist (in Mit­tel­eu­ro­pa, für sie ihre Kin­der und ihre Enkel), wenns ihnen selbst die Qua­li­täts­me­di­en nicht sagen?

Im Arti­kel zur Euro­ba­ro­me­ter Umfra­ge ist das dann natür­lich kein Wort wert, denn da gehts erneut dar­um Effek­te die PR gene­riert hat, so umzu­deu­ten, alls sei­en Sie gesell­schaft­lich all­ge­mein aner­kannt und ‘wenns die Jugend­li­chen mei­nen - die Zukunft Euro­pas’. Das ist manu­fac­tu­ring con­sent nach Chom­sky (Pro­pa­gan­da Model).

Wer noch mehr Mate­ri­al braucht:

Im Fly­er klimabündnis.at ist Gesund­heit ein non sequi­tur und Füllwort.

So sieht das Messaging beim PIK aus. (dh. das ist die Logik­fol­ge um das Framing argu­men­tie­ren zu kön­nen - dar­in ein­fach mal nach Mit­tel­eu­ro­pa suchen) Gelis­tet in der Rubrik ‘For­schung > Kli­ma­re­si­li­enz > Arbeits­grup­pen’. Die Wir­kungs­stu­di­en die sie fah­ren, gibts dann etwas weni­ger pro­mi­nent - auf klimafakten.de.

Final­ly the necessa­ry infor­ma­ti­on reached the poli­ti­cal level. First step defi­an­ce. Soon to be fol­lo­wed by anger, reco­gni­ti­on, accep­t­ance, … What hits me, deeply - is the obvious natu­re of the poli­ti­cal lie on dis­play here. So you are suck­ling on the tit of inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment funds (coi­ned ‘intel­li­gent money’) to put in invest­ments, that you and your deve­lo­p­ment banks need to leverage to gene­ra­te even clo­se to enough inte­rest (six­ty­six bil­li­on to tril­li­ons, and then to the moon!), inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment groups are open­ly sta­ting that they are wai­t­ing for regu­la­ti­on to beco­me law faci­li­ta­ting invest­ment pro­tec­tions, befo­re they’ll con­si­der fun­ne­ling funds into anything coi­ned sus­tainab­le, so cur­r­ent­ly you are depen­ding on your own public to absorb risk, and act as ear­ly sta­ge inves­tors to get the who­le thing jump­star­ted, which accord­ing to our finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons they arent doing on a broad enough basis, so now you are crea­ting nud­ging laws (EU laws tar­ge­ting ‘finan­cial insti­tu­tes and invest­ment advice’) and finan­ce PR initia­ti­ves, becau­se as sta­tes you maneu­ve­r­ed yourself into the posi­ti­on, whe­re actu­al Moonshot pro­grams (lar­ge sta­te invest­ment initia­ti­ves), arent rea­liz­ab­le any­mo­re. Then you look at the inves­tors who are deman­ding invest­ment pro­tec­tion, and see pri­va­te US funds just wai­t­ing for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy out deve­lo­p­ments that achie­ve mar­ket matu­ri­ty, car­ry­ing none of the risk - to be cer­tain, that none of it gets manu­fac­tu­red in Euro­pe, which is about the worst place on earth to mass pro­du­ce goods at this point in time, so this beco­mes ano­t­her play bene­fi­cial for a high tech indus­tri­al sec­tor, which you then sell to voters as the pro­gress they were aching for. Becau­se as a for­mer SPD minis­ter you sud­den­ly belie­ve in trick­le down on the inter­na­tio­nal poli­ti­cal stage.
But you will pro­ve the cri­tics wrong, dear Olaf - sin­gle­han­ded­ly, with a speech in Davos, by men­tio­ning none of that. Bra­vo. And thanks to all the mouth­pie­ces, that see­ded, “if we arent doing this right now - the US will sur­pass euro­pe on its tra­jec­to­ry of beco­m­ing a first mover”. Oh, I’m tremb­ling, shi­vering - at this very minu­te, wai­t­ing for anything even clo­se to that to materialize.

Loo­king for­ward to watching the spee­ches of UvdL and the talk on res­to­ring trust in glo­bal tra­de and sup­ply chains. Wait, isnt that against trend? Oh no it isn’t, of cour­se they are the ones first impac­ted by cli­ma­te shocks, so now we have to put more money and good­will towards making glo­ba­lists more resi­li­ent, that by ever­yo­nes accounts fai­led at giving a fly­ing H-E-double hockey­sticks about what hap­pen­ed to our socie­ties the past years - what joy, that they also are inves­ted hea­vi­ly in the cli­ma­te move­ment. But on a posi­ti­ve note, its real­ly a neces­si­ty for the indus­tri­al power­house, that fai­led to invest at sug­gested ECB levels for the past ten years, that is germany…

When does socie­ty have enough of tho­se lies? I know that I am tired of hea­ring them.

“We have a chan­ce of a new renais­sance, if we do this responsibly.”

edit: Accord­ing to the intro­duc­tion por­ti­on of the UvdL talk, the­re is ‘a new euro­pean spi­rit’ that she mana­ged to crea­te wit­hin the past two years. Oh eff me, I’m going to bed for today.

edit2: FRIGGGING UvdL goes on a SALES TOUR GRANDIOSO in the video lin­ked abo­ve, to talk up the very FRACKING inves­tor gua­ran­tees descri­bed abo­ve. In the most des­pi­ca­ble man­ner ima­gin­ab­le. What a hap­py coincidence. 

Gre­at. Now I cant sleep.

Con­text: click
Back­ground: click

Nurn Link: click

Nach­trag: Und wie­viel Zeit­wohl­stand hast du so?