StephenKMackSD's Blog

Political Observer: Free Speech used to be a Constitututional Guarantee, indeed a Right?

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Mar 15, 2025

I’ve been a regular suscriber of the Manhattan Institute’s newsletter for some time, yet nothing quite preparred me for this collectively hysterical post. The soft-sell of Eric Adams has been abandoned as not quite enough?

Yet the reader might consult Heinrich Meier’s book demonstrates a certain political prorpinqiuty between these two thinkers:

The ‘Crimes of Mahmoud Khalil’ are enumerated and then expanded upon by the cadre of paid propagandists! Reader note that this attack on free speech and political action can be traced, in it’s Television Iteration, to the re-write of Phillip Roth’s ‘Plot Against America’ that debuted as a Television Series, written David Simon and Ed Burns under the supervision of Roth!

Reader prepare yourself to the toxic marriage of Judaism and Zionism as a political/moral singularity!

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/ March 13, 2025

Good morning,

On Saturday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, the lead negotiator for students during the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the university’s campus last year. President Trump praised the arrest Monday and said Khalil is the “first arrest of many to come” among those “who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.” He is accused of harassing Jewish-American students on campus and distributing pro-Hamas propaganda.

The arrest is a direct consequence of President Trump’s January 29 Executive Order combatting antisemitism on university and college campuses. Khalil, who has described himself as a Palestinian refugee born in Syria and is a legal resident of the U.S., is serving as a Rorschach test for American lawmakers and the national media on the Trump administration’s willingness to combat antisemitism and impose order on elite American campuses.

Hannah E. Meyers, MI’s director of policing and public safety, writes in City Journal that Khalil’s detention is not only justified, it is a necessary signal that anonymous violence is unacceptable.

And adjunct fellow Tal Fortang warns in City Journal that “civil terrorism is a dangerous manifestation of a simmering battle for the West.” Masked criminals who subject law-abiding Americans to harassment and an unending flow of physical and economic danger are trying to destroy America and the West, not save it.

At the Manhattan Institute, our scholars have long sounded the alarm on the rise of antisemitism on campuses across the country and the network of progressive and anti-American organizations sowing civil disorder. This newsletter highlights some of our recent work on the issue, especially Hannah E. Meyers, Ilya Shapiro, and Tim Rosenberger’s model legislation to ban masking for the sake of intimidation.

In other news, senior fellow Roland Fryer writes in the Wall Street Journal that MEI—“merit, excellence, and intelligence”—is the latest hiring trend among American corporations, sidelining DEI. Thank goodness for that. But, in UnHerd, Paulson policy analyst Neetu Arnold warns opponents of DEI that, as they roll back racialist programs, they must remember that there is a difference between regulating conduct and regulating speech, with the latter protected by the First Amendment.

This week we launched a video series to promote the work of MI scholars in a new and sharable format. The first installment features Leor Sapir, director of MI’s Gender Identity Initiative, who reveals how interventions like mastectomies and gender transition surgery on minors are based on ideology—not science.

Finally, MI scholars published two new research papers this week. Senior fellow Eric Kober evaluates the mass of contradictions that make up the Midtown South Mixed-Use Plan recently proposed by the NYC Department of City Planning. He also offers recommendations for improvement. And MI’s director of Cities, John Ketcham, co-authored a report with Jack Santucci proposing a new set of electoral reforms for big cities. They explain how party-list proportional representation, which is neither inherently conservative nor inherently liberal, could end the era of one-party domination and open up space for local coalitions to focus on issues that do not track with national politics.

Continue reading for all these insights and more.

Kelsey Bloom
Editorial Director

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Political Observer

Old Socialist confronts the revelatory Cast of Characters! But the full scale Anti-Russian near hysteria is really the central attraction!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 14, 2025

Editor: The Reader has to wonder at the employment of the use of ‘peaceniks vs. hawks’ in the the year 2025? The desperation for a compact solution, for a title that won’t eat up too much space?

Europe | Rearm fast!

Europe’s other front: peaceniks vs hawks

Not all voters favour rearming. Hardly any like paying for it

https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/03/13/europes-other-front-peaceniks-vs-hawks

Editor: the cast of characters is a place to start the inquirery into this 1050 word monstrocity?

Wendela de Vries, The ReArm Europe, NATO, Mette Frederiksen, Mette Frederiksen, Donald Tusk, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Pal Jonson, Pauli Aalto-Sepala, The Left party, AfD, Social Democrats (SPD), Friedrich Merz, Ralf Stegner, Geert Wilders, Emmanuel Macron, National Assembly, Five Star Movement, far-left groups , Alessandro Marrone, the Institute of International Affairs, Giorgia Meloni, YouGov!

Editor: the final paragraph of this Propaganda:

That will leave politicians scratching their heads. And spending money is only part of what European countries must do to defend themselves. They must also recruit soldiers—and in most countries few young people are interested. (The Nordics are in better shape: they conscript.) Countries must consolidate their fragmented defence industries, though perhaps not too much: research in Romania by Eoin Power of the University of Texas at Austin shows that voters are more likely to support defence spending that creates jobs in their own country. Above all, they have to convince their citizens they need stronger armed forces. Many Europeans accept that message; fewer are willing to pay for it.

Editor: The Reader might contemplate what the possible final disposition of this manucatured war in Ukraine might be? A possible denoument of this political melodrama might be: the dissapearnce of Zelenskyy from the center of contoversy, as he and his minions decamp?

Old Socialist

Newspaper Reader confronts his short, willful, erratic, & heedless final paragraphs!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 12, 2025

….

What team Trump has achieved is the opposite: A Russia that sees even less reason to settle, a Europe that sees more reason to go its own way, a China that believes America will eventually fold and a once-again betrayed Ukraine that will have even less reason to trust international guarantees of its security.

There’s more of this: Sunday’s arrest and threatened deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder and pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia, may even get pro-Israel civil libertarians to defend his rights while making a martyr of him on the far-left. But the pattern is clear. Ignoring the political corollary to Newton’s Third Law of Motion — that every action has an equal and opposite reaction — the administration will now reap precisely what it should avoid.

Trump’s critics are always quick to see the sinister sides of his actions and declarations. An even greater danger may lie in the shambolic nature of his policymaking. Democracy may die in darkness. It may die in despotism. Under Trump, it’s just as liable to die in dumbness.

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader: please note my highlights:

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 12, 2025

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The discovery that Trump is electoral halitosis isn’t the only thing diminishing his golden facade. Shortly before the president’s inauguration, George Osborne spoke of the mood among Democrats he encountered in Silicon Valley: “There is a real feeling, and it’s quite a contrast to what’s happening in Europe and in the UK, that the animal spirits of capitalism have been fired up, that deregulation is coming, that further growth is coming, that this is, as he himself describes it, a new golden age for America.”

How, you might ask, is that working out? Since Trump entered office, US economic growth forecasts have been slashed (Goldman Sachs projects growth of just 1.7 per cent this year, down from 2.4 per cent) and stock markets have plummeted. The tech billionaires who attended Trump’s inauguration have collectively lost $209bn since his second term began. A majority of the US public (52 per cent) now disapprove of his performance to date – always an uncomfortable position for a populist to be in.

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Editor: For those who cant resist the New Statesman’s Neo-Liberalism, offered as ‘New Times, New Thinking’, there is so much more to chew on! George’s Oxbridger Education reveals itself in the first quoted sentence, followed by the Osborne’s comment.

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader comments.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 10, 2025

Leaders | The death of giving

The demise of foreign aid offers an opportunity

Donors should focus on what works. Much aid currently does not

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/03/06/the-demise-of-foreign-aid-offers-an-opportunity?utm_source=twitter&utm_content=discovery.content&utm_medium=social-media.content.np&utm_campaign=editorial-social

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What does Russia want? Some reports in recent days have suggested that Mr Putin may be open to a truce under certain conditions. But the game unfolding may well be more sophisticated and cynical than that. A highly-placed source close to the Kremlin suggests Russia intends to demand a Ukrainian declaration of neutrality, and that foreign peacekeepers be ruled out. It is probably impossible for Ukraine to even consider such conditions—at least not before real negotiations have even begun. Kurt Volker, who served as Special Representative to Ukraine in Mr Trump’s first administration, says Russia will twist any truce proposal. “They’ll say: we can’t agree to that, but let’s do something else. Putin is smart enough not to just say no.” A former Ukrainian diplomat says American and Russia have been mirroring each others’ tactics, “salami-slicing” concessions from Ukraine before substantial negotiations begin. Any subsequent talks will seek to move further into Ukrainian red lines. The American end game has become a moving target, he says.

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Any successful and enduring peace deal would require America to put pressure on the Kremlin to comply and then continue to do so. On March 7th Mr Trump did threaten to impose major sanctions on Russia. But most of the evidence suggests that he is sympathetic to Mr Putin. Hours later Mr Trump said “I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine…In terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia.” Mr Volker says that “Trump is trying to keep Ukraine on a short leash because he wants them to accept whatever peace he can get…the Ukrainians are the obstacle because they’re not surrendering.”

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A senior Ukrainian security official says he has seen no evidence that the Americans are contemplating a complete exit from Ukraine, yet, let alone Europe. “The hope is that as soon as we have a truce, we’ll be on a more rational track again,” he says.

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Others are less sanguine. The dangerous prospect looms for Ukraine that failed talks could trigger even more pressure from America. Another Ukrainian official warns that America’s approach, if it continues, could leave Ukraine in a “grey zone”. That would force it to use more vicious military tactics for its survival. Already, he says, strong personalities dominate the negotiations, adding a Ukrainian proverb: “Yake yikhalo, take y zdybalo” (like attracts like). The stakes of Tuesday’s talks could not be higher. If they collapse, Ukraine is unlikely to get another chance: “The Americans will double down on instructional mode, and force whatever they and Russia decide on us.” ■

Editor : Reader please note that actors in this portion of this ‘Economist Report’, are Vladimir Putin, Kurt Volker, Donald Trump and ‘and various unidentified Ukanian officials’ ! and a Ukrainian proverb: “Yake yikhalo, take y zdybalo” (like attracts like).

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Editor’s note (March 10th 2025): This story was amended in order to make clearer that Ukraine occupies only a part of the Kursk region.

To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader on Mrs. Thatcher’s brat, with an Anglican turn!

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Mar 09, 2025

Mr. Colvile is/was a child of wealth and priveledge, he is not quite as obnoxious as Jacob Rees-Mogg, but he is close!The first paragraph of Mr. Colvile’s essay offer a mild scolding:

With defence spending rising, growth weakening and headroom shrinking, Rachel Reeves is having to wield the axe. Her chosen target? The welfare bill, which reportedly faces cuts of at least £5 billion. Already, this plan is hugely controversial. And rightly so. Because it falls laughably short of what is needed.

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Editor: in seconds Mr. Colvile is at full gallop:

That may sound harsh, or exaggerated. But there is a compelling — and appalling — case that incapacity and disability has become Britain’s biggest growth industry.

Let’s look at the facts. Today, 9.3 million people of working age are economically inactive. Of those, 2.8 million are inactive through illness — up from two million before the pandemic. The proportion of the working-age population who say they have a disability has risen to an extraordinary 23 per cent.

The human impact of this is dreadful. But so is the financial impact. Over the past decade, spending on incapacity and disability benefits has increased by 40 per cent above inflation. By 2029-30, the Office for Budget Responsibility expects this bill to rise even further, from £64.7 billion to £100.7 billion. The overall welfare bill, including pensions, will swell to £378 billion. To put it another way, the rumoured £5 billion cut would represent just one sixteenth of the expected increase.

Editor: Mr. Colvile asks aquestion, while The Reader tries to regaine her equlibrian:

What is going on? To simplify greatly, the non-pensions welfare bill is being driven by the incapacity bill — and the incapacity bill is being driven by the mental health bill.

Editor : In sum Mr. Colvile attacks what is left of Clemet Atlee’s Welfare State and its NHS. The grifters who remaine on the dole. The Growth Rate of Britain was 1% when last I inquired. And that utterly anemic 1% Growth Rate has become the political property of Keir Starmer’s New Labour! After 14 years of Tory incompetence!

Editor: a collection of “Colviles Laws’

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Yet in a recent report on the alarming rise in spending, the House of Lords economic affairs committee stated that it had “received no convincing evidence that the main driver of the rise in these benefits is deteriorating health or high NHS waiting lists”. Similarly, the OBR judges that “only a minority of the recent rise in incapacity benefits onflows reflects a higher number of people initiating claims”.

The Lords and the OBR, in other words, think that the rise has more to do with the nature of the benefits system itself. And they’re almost certainly right.

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A recent freedom of information request from my colleagues at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank showed that in the year to November 2024, just 10 per cent of work assessments and 5 per cent of disability assessments were done face to face.

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And the Times columnist Fraser Nelson, who has campaigned tirelessly on this issue, points out that even if those on disability benefit want to go back to work — as hundreds of thousands do — they risk either cutting their income (or at least believing that they will do so) or jeopardising their disability benefits.

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And, of course, the judges are only too willing to stick their oar in: in January the High Court struck down Tory measures that would have cut £2 billion from the disability benefits bill because the (eight-week) consultation process was “rushed” and “unfair”, and ministers had focused more on cost-cutting than the impact on the vulnerable.

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Editor: Here is where Mr. Colvile proves to the reader that he is Mrs. Thatcher’s brat, with an Anglican turn!

There will always be many, many people in this country who need our collective help. But there are many, many more who would best be helped by moving off welfare and into work — not least because active, engaged, fulfilling employment is central to mental and physical wellbeing. Instead, we are not just paying these people off but writing them off, creating a cycle of dependency that afflicts generation after generation.

Newspaper Reader.

Newspaper Reader comments.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 09, 2025

Headline: France, seen as the spearhead of European defense, worries Russia

Sub-headline :Macron and Putin on Friday engaged in a long-distance sparring match about Napoleon and imperialism.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/03/08/france-seen-as-the-spearhead-of-european-defense-worries-russia_6738934_4.html?lmd_medium=email&lmd_campaign=trf_newsletters_lmie&lmd_creation=lemonde_in_english_NY&lmd_send_date=20250308&lmd_link=headlines_titre_1&M_BT=123617693181350

As soon as the European Council ended, Vladimir Putin and Emmanuel Macron launched into history lessons from a distance. “There are still people who want to return to the times of Napoleon, forgetting how it ended,” said the Kremlin chief. Without naming him, he targeted the French president, who, after the green light from the 27 member states to beef up their defense and support Ukraine, repeated in Brussels on Thursday, March 6, that “Russia is an existential threat to us. Not just to Ukraine, not just to its neighbors, but to all of Europe.” On Russian social media in Moscow, Macron was quickly mocked as a powerless Napoleon. And, on television, Putin responded by reminding him of the catastrophic outcome of the Russian campaign in 1812.

“All the mistakes of our enemies and adversaries began in the same way: with a profound underestimation of the Russian character,” said Putin. A history buff like the master of the Kremlin, Macron was quick to respond: “Napoleon carried out conquests. The only imperial power I see today in Europe is Russia,” said the French president. He accused Putin of making “a historical misreading” by comparing him to Napoleon, and described him as a “revisionist imperialist of history and the identity of peoples.”

Following the announcement of Macron’s plans to strengthen European defense, reactions in Moscow oscillated between irony and skepticism: He is suspected of trying to frighten the French by stirring up the Russian threat to better divert attention from domestic problems. “In Moscow, however, there is a palpable touch of anxiety about this new, more war-mongering Europe, at a time when the Russians were hoping to get out of it thanks to Donald Trump in the US,” according to Tatiana Kastouéva-Jean, director of the Russia-Eurasia Center at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris.

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Editor: Reader, compare and contrast this Macron commentary from Benjamin Quénelle, with this Duran commentary by Alexander Mercouris and Alex Cristoforou. To put it mildly Benjamin Quénelle writes a kind of political apologetic, where Mercouris and Cristoforou offer a realistic appraisal of Macron and Macronism. My thought is that Macron, and his politics have proved that Neo-Liberlism in its French iteration has been toxic and that Macron himself is an abject failure on all counts !

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/E978tjlv72g?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Editor: Benjamin Quénelle fires to final salvo!

Putin’s loyal foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, described as “absurd” and “delirious” accusations of Moscow wanting to attack Europe and said that Macron’s comments on the possibility of Europe being protected by the French nuclear umbrella amounted to a “threat.” In three years of war in Ukraine, however, the Kremlin has never ceased to wave the threat of nuclear blackmail.

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Newspaper Reader:

As I approach my 80th Year, I grow weary of the journalistc hacks of the The Political Present, who act ‘as if’ the Cold War of The Post War Era, does not supply stunning object lessons for the political present! Allied to its toxic & malicious attacks on Dissenters of all stripes and hues: Quénelle contiues this malign tradition!

Newspaper Reader comments.

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 07, 2025

Europe | The old world wakes up

The dangerous tension in Europe’s response to Trump

By trying to stop the rift, Europe may hasten it

https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/03/05/the-dangerous-tension-in-europes-response-to-trump?utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_content=discovery.content&utm_medium=social-media.content.np&utm_source=twitter

Editor: in three paragraphs ZMB presents her case for Zelensky , that loses it’s political energy as the sentences unfold.

Four days after being accused of rejecting peace with Russia and thrown out of the White House, Volodymyr Zelensky bent the knee before Donald Trump on March 4th with a mollifying letter: “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”

The Ukrainian president’s genuflection brought him no respite. Mr Trump did not restart deliveries of weapons, halted on March 3rd. Instead he intensified the punishment. American battlefield intelligence stopped reaching Ukraine around 2pm local time on March 5th. “If Mr Trump wants a thank-you, we will be writing it on the gravestones of dead Ukrainian soldiers,” seethed one Ukrainian officer.

Such brutal coercion in wartime is a warning that America may abandon Ukraine permanently and, more broadly, undo the decades-old NATO alliance. Shocked European allies are scrambling to help Ukraine on their own, strengthen their defences and present America with a peace plan that, unlike Mr Trump’s, avoids capitulation to Russia.

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Editor: Even ‘Time Magazine’ presents Zelensky is a Yousuf Karsh pose: April 28, 2022 6:00 AM EDT

Paragraph 4:

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The interruption of intelligence has more immediate and serious consequences. Ukrainian sources say America has stopped an intelligence link used to communicate alerts about suspicious Russian activity as well as targeting data for HIMARS rockets and real-time information for long-range drones. Other feeds controlled by NATO remain operative, at least for now. Ukraine is presumably still able to hit large static Russian targets, such as oil refineries. But finding and destroying fleeting “dynamic” targets, such as mobile air-defence systems, may prove more difficult.

Paragraph 5 :

Mike Waltz, America’s national security adviser, said America was “pausing and reviewing all aspects of this relationship”.

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Paragraph 6:

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There was no invitation for Mr Zelensky or anyone else to conclude a framework deal with America to extract Ukraine’s rare-earth and other minerals, which was supposed to have been signed at the ill-starred White House meeting.

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Paragraph 7:

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In his address to Congress on March 4th Mr Trump declared that Russia had sent “strong signals that they are ready for peace”, but offered no evidence.

Paragraph 7:

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At the same time they have to hedge against the prospect that America will stop underwriting European security or, worse, become a hostile power.

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Paragraph 8:

“We must recognise it: we are entering a new era,” declared Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in a televised address on March 5th.

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Paragraph 9:

Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, rejected accusations that America had become an unreliable ally. He has spoken with Mr Trump repeatedly, seeking to bridge the divide with Ukraine.

Paragraph:10:

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Britain and France, Europe’s biggest military powers, have hosted separate European summits to draw up a coherent response, but their efforts do not always seem fully joined up.

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Paragraph 11 :

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Britain says the “reassurance” force—a coalition of the willing expected to number 20,000-30,000 troops behind Ukrainian front-line units—would need a strong American “backstop” to deter Russia. Mr Trump has demurred.

Paragraph 12 :

After his address Mr Macron hosted Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and a staunch Russian ally, to urge him not to block moves by a European summit the following day to boost European defence, not least by setting up a €150bn facility to help buy weapons.

Paragraph 13:

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The expected fiscal boost pushed up the DAX index by 3.4% and the shares of Rheinmetall, a defence firm, by 7.2%. German ten-year bond yields jumped by 0.3 percentage points in expectation of higher borrowing.

Editor: here is the point at which ZMB becomes……….?

Paragraph14:

Yet there is a dangerous tension in Europe’s response. It seeks to show it is pulling its weight by strengthening Ukraine and keeping it fighting if necessary, whereas Mr Trump wants to bend it to his will and end the war. In trying to stop the rift with America, Europe may hasten it.

Newspaper Reader.

The Economist and it’s AfD problem!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 05, 2025

Editor: Reader look at the numbers in the German Election:

With vote counting finished, preliminary results show the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led by chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz and its sister Christian Social Union (CSU) won the election with 28.6% of the vote.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) , which has been designated in parts as extremist, came in second with 20.8%.

https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-results-explained-in-graphics/a-71724186

The Economist sings parises for Friedrich Merz! It readership and its writer/editors need a coaching to realize what? Is it possible that the Economist writers and editors of this newspaper, ignore the fact that 28.06% of the vote compared to 20.8 % of the vote represent less than a stunning victory for Friedrich Merz.

Leaders | Well done, Mr Merz

A fantastic start for Friedrich Merz

The incoming chancellor signals massive increases in defence and infrastructure spending

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/03/05/a-fantastic-start-for-friedrich-merz

FOR YEARS Germany’s aversion to debt has been a millstone, leading to crippling underinvestment in defence and infrastructure and weighing down both the domestic economy and that of Europe as a whole. But, although he will not become chancellor for some weeks, Friedrich Merz, who won Germany’s election on February 23rd, has just transformed his country with a stroke of commendable boldness.

On March 4th Mr Merz revealed plans for two changes to the debt brake, a constitutional provision in place since 2009 that lets the government run only minuscule structural deficits. Next week parliament will be recalled to vote on them. In a sign that change is genuinely under way, long-term German bond yields leapt, as hard-nosed investors began to price in higher borrowing.

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Editor: The Reader might think that Mario Buatta,The Prince of Chintz, had returned in a political guise! Such are the decorative floriches and faux imbroidery of its political enthusiasms!

Paragraph 1:

The first reform will establish a brake-exempted infrastructure fund of €500bn ($535bn) over ten years, a boost worth around 1% of GDP each year. This should get the economy moving, and not before time. Germany has been in recession for the past two years, and is bumping along with roughly zero growth this year, too.

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Paragraph 2 :

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It is to exempt any defence spending beyond 1% of GDP from the debt brake altogether. This opens the way for Germany to do what it should have done a long time ago. It can now start to rearm to a level where it can play the full part in the changed landscape of European defence that its size and geographical position demands.

Paragraph 3:

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Currently Germany spends only a bare 2% of GDP on defence, just about meeting a target that NATO first set in 2014, but one that the government did not take seriously before Russia launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Paragraph 4:

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Under Donald Trump, America no longer appears to be a dependable ally; so Europe must look to its own defences. That will need Germany to spend a lot more cash—and to spend it effectively, which has not been the case in the past.

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Paragraph 5: The Oxbridger Faux Chintz has lost its power to beguile the Reader, as it faces the fact of AfT !

Because the debt brake is a constitutional provision, amending it requires a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag. Hence the urgency. The hard-right Alternative for Germany party opposes any change to the rules, and the radical-left Die Linke opposes any extra defence spending. Both did well in the election; together they will have over a third of the seats in the new Bundestag, a blocking minority.

Paragraph 6: Faux Chintz fades into the shopworn: ‘Germany was a slumbering giant. Mr Merz is waking it up’.

And there may be more to come. The potential new coalition is also talking about further reforms to the debt brake, which implies yet more spending on other underfunded areas. Germany was a slumbering giant. Mr Merz is waking it up.

Newspaper Reader.

Political Observer defends Historical Memory!

stephenkmacksd.com/

Mar 05, 2025

The present day Apologists for the 2014 Ukraian Coup have elided from History this document authored by Neo-Con Timothy Snyder, and his fellow travelers, named in the section named ‘Locations’!

Ukraine: Thinking Together Kyiv, 15-19 May Manifesto

Click to access Programme_Public_EN.pdf

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Locations:

The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is located in the Podil’ neighborhood, on Kontraktova Square; the entrance to the Center for Polish and European Studies is on Voloska Street 8/5; the Culture and Arts Centre is on Illinska Street 9. The Diplomatic Academy is in central Kyiv, at Velyka Zhytomyrska Street 2. The Hotel Ukraine is on Instytutska Street 4. The InterContinental Hotel is on Velyka Zhytomyrs’ka Street 2A. Practical solidarity: This gathering was the initiative of Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic and Timothy Snyder of Yale University and was made possible by the willingness of colleagues to heed their call and agree to participate in great haste, and by the creativity and hard work of Tatiana Zhurzhenko and Oksana Forostyna. A number of partner institutions helped transform an idea into an event: the Batory Foundation, the Embassy of Canada, the Embassy of France, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, the Embassy of the United States of America, the European Endowment for Democracy, the European Forum for Ukraine, the Network of European Cultural Journals Eurozine, the Goethe-Institut, the Institut Français d’Ukraine, the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), the International Renaissance Foundation, the Ukrainian cultural journal Krytyka, the National University “Kyiv Mohyla Academy,” the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, the National Endowment for Democracy, The New Republic, the Open Ukraine Foundation, the PinchukArtCentre, the Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies “Tkuma,” the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, and the Visual Culture Research Center.

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Editor: Reader here is the latest iteration of Neo-Con Propaganda

EUROZINE

Making Putin happy again

Mykola Riabchuk 24 February 2025

https://www.eurozine.com/making-putin-happy-again/?pdf

Since Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin on 12 February and a series of other diplomatic moves aimed at kicking off Russia–Ukraine peace talks, the war in Ukraine has returned to the top of the international media agenda. For outsiders, observing the war from a safe distance like an increasingly monotonous TV series, the plot has acquired finally a new turn, reviving flagging interest and sparking intense debate. But for Ukrainians, Trump’s ‘peacemaking’ initiatives are just another reminder of their subaltern, ‘pawn’ role on the geopolitical chessboard. The writing was already on the wall after Trump suggested that Ukraine ‘may be Russian someday’ (a reason to exploit Ukrainian rare earth minerals in advance); after vice president JD Vance insisted that ‘this war is between Russia and Ukraine’ (and that US military interference would not ‘advance American interests and security’); and after defence secretary Pete Hegseth stated that Ukraine should abandon its push to reclaim all Russian-occupied territory and forget about joining NATO. To add insult to injury, the US responded to Volodymyr Zelensky’s earlier offer of privileged access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in return for support with a virtually colonial demand for almost everything for almost nothing in return. The Daily Telegraph, which obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract, called it ‘a new Versailles’: ‘If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty.’ Volodymyr Zelensky in Munich, February 14, 2025. Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett. Source: Wikimedia Commons Normally, the paper pointed out, such terms are imposed on aggressor states defeated in war. But Trump ‘seems willing to let Russia of the hook entirely’. Besides the purely economic issues, there was also the moral question whether it would be ‘honourable to treat a victim nation in this fashion after it has held the battle line for the liberal democracies at enormous sacrifice for three years. Who really has a debt to whom, may one ask?’

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Editor under the rubric of : ‘A new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact’, at the least ‘The Munich Agreement’ as so often used by Neo-Cons of the ‘West’ is absent! Mykola Riabchuk essay lends a more nuanced Historical tone?

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s ‘peacemaking’ initiatives were met in Ukraine with a mixture of anger, despair and black humour. Zelensky cancelled his visit to Saudi Arabia, scheduled for 20 February, two days after the Rubio–Lavrov meeting in Riyadh. He stated openly that he did not want to legitimize that meeting and its ‘decisions’. The fact that he was not invited to these talks, nor even consulted by the American partners beforehand, does not bode well for Ukraine’s eventual role in ‘big boys’ conversation. As an old saying goes, ‘if you are not at the table then you are on the menu’. While Zelensky tries to keep a brave face in bad game, Ukrainian media are overwhelmed with sarcasm, metaphors (the copulation of a frog with a snake might be the most graphic) and caustic cartoons. One of them – featuring Trump as a bride and Putin as a groom – bore a striking resemblance to cartoons showing a newly-wed Hitler and Stalin in 1939. As a Ukrainian publicist put it succinctly: ‘It’s not Munich 2.0. It’s more like a new Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.’ ‘We are entering a difficult, surreal state’, declared Olga Rudenko, the editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independent. ‘Our key ally, led by Donald Trump’s new administration, is turning against us and siding with our enemy.’ But the danger of Trump’s reckless cowboy diplomacy goes far beyond the fate of just Ukraine. His susceptibility to Putin’s arguments (partly because of ignorance, partly because of affinity) threaten the whole European continent if not the global order as a whole. After Vance’s speech in Munich and Trump’s arrogant and nonsensical statements the day after, Europeans can no longer neglect a responsibility that they have habitually outsourced to American partners. How far and how effectively this motley crew of thirtyplus nations will move remains to be seen. But at least it gives Ukraine a chance to survive in the new environment, even though it would require even more painful efforts – both diplomatic and military. So far, the Ukrainians have not blinked – as both Zelensky’s and society’s reaction to the mounting challenges indicate

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Editor: The final paragraph of Mykola Riabchuk essay is a daming repudiation of ‘Western Values’! Is there a possible cutural, political affinity between Mykola Riabchuk and Aleksandr Dugin?

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/au3EFwF7ZIM?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

“The Globalists are the Racists:” Russian Analyst Aleksandr Dugin on the Loss of Cultural Identities”

Ignorance about Ukraine and the region in general is something that Trump shares with most international politicians and intellectuals educated in the framework of Russian ‘imperial knowledge’, which is normalized in both international academia and popular culture. A much bigger problem, however, is Trump’s mindset, which has little to do with rule of law and liberal democracy and a lot with the realpolitik favoured by dictators confident that might makes right, and that international politics is primarily about accumulation of power and wealth. Ignorance can be enlightened and mitigated, but cynical authoritarianism is very unlikely to change. This means that moralistic discussions with Trump and his lieutenants will not help Volodymyr Zelensky and his European partners. Instead, they must speak from a position of strength. This is perhaps the only point on which they fully agree with the American president.

Political Observer.