The French and Germans don't seem best pleased about what she's done, and we can see why. There might be several theses or lines of thought on this.
- It's easy to portray it as craven, but it's solid realpolitik, and shows the EC** in a good light: their strategic priorities (bind USA into European defence / maintain support for Ukraine / stay on reasonable talking terms with Trump) were clear and they did the necessary in a decisive & fairly expeditious way.
- It's an existential triumph for the EC qua bureaucracy-priesthood, not only on the basis of 1 above, but because von der Leyen's people roundly ignored the national governments and have got clean away with it. German & French vetoes? They're history.
- It's a tactical triumph for those wily EC negotiators: their preferred stratagem is to grind down the other side by dragging negotiations out into endless detail / prevarication / cherry-picking / make-believe governance issues (see Brexit); but when faced with an emergency, they still came up with the goods. Knowing that Trump just lurves Big Numbers and of course Done Deals, they've "committed" to bizarre amounts of imports from the USA, and there isn't a cat's chance in Hell that these commitments can be honoured. But the Dumb Donald goes home with his triumph (his own people certainly ain't gonna tell him he's been suckered - and maybe he knows it anyway but just loves the immediate optics) and life carries on.
- It suits DE and FR to bellyache and blame von der Leyen, but they know there was little alternative, and have let her do the deed - & front for it. (But where, ultimately, does 'strategic bellyaching' lead? Surely, only an ever-growing Euroscepticism across the whole continent?)
ND
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** I.e. the very real Brussels priesthood, not the abstract political entity known as the EU
23 comments:
If some effing effer starts a nuclear war none of it will matter anyway. I only hope Ukraine surrenders before we reach that point. Come to that, I hope Ukraine surrenders before there are no Ukrainian adult males left.
Only 170 weeks, 1 day, 14 hours, 18 minutes to next US election. Eat an elephant one bite at a time (and hope it does not go rotten).
I'm reckoning the US will get rid of Donald. He's not doing them any good, his nastiness seems running out of steam.
The Democrats are still in sleepy land. There is yet hope the Dems will wake up or a successful rooftop voter gets to vote or the Dems get to take a red hot poker where they deserve.
Brussels knows how to handle idiots, they have plenty of their own and nearby.
They buckled when it came to the USA imposing tariffs on the EU and gave Trump what he wanted because they can only come out on top in negotiations when the other side is even weaker (see May on Brexit for example).
I don't think the 15% was desired, especially as it looks like the UK got a better deal, but it keeps the US in the EU's garden, and when the US sends in a more pliable kid it'll be resurrected.
Everyone seems to be figuring out Trump now, plenty of jam tomorrow promised with no intention of delivering. Given our politicians have been doing that for years to their electorates, it's hardly arduous doing the same to their fellow leader.
dearieme - well according to Trump's social media, Russian losses are 14 times those of Ukraine.
"Trump declared, without specifying the source of the data, that “almost 20,000 Russian soldiers died this month in the ridiculous war with Ukraine”. “Russia has lost 112,500 soldiers since the beginning of the year. That is a lot of unnecessary DEATH!” he emphasised, without clarifying whether the figure refers only to those killed or also includes the wounded. Trump also shared his data on Ukrainian losses, which he said amount to “approximately 8,000 soldiers since 1 January 2025, and that number does not include their missing”."
If these figures are from the CIA, either the CIA are useless, or they are lying to Trump, or Russia are losing big time.
"they are lying to Trump" is probably axiomatic. It's probably a holding action while they work out how to carry out the assassination that the Secret Service and FBI botched last year.
reading the entertaining tale of Bernard Looney, who bonked his way through the staff as he climbed the greasy pole from drilling engineer to the top of BP.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/13/bernard-looney-bp-board-faces-questions-over-ex-ceos-personal-relations-with-colleagues
"“The thinking was that he needed to settle down, and not shag around quite so much,” the source said. Looney married life coach Jacqueline Hurst in 2017, but the pair were separated by 2018 and the divorce was finalised the following year, three months before he was appointed BP’s chief executive. After the divorce Hurst wrote a self-published book in which she recounts the “bitter experience” of her divorce, understood to refer to the end of her marriage to Looney, which the book says ended “suddenly and without warning via a WhatsApp message”. She wrote: “I learned later that he had only married me because he wanted to get to the next level of seniority in the company he worked for and he had to be seen to be married in order to be given the promotion. Unbelievable I know, but that was the case.”"
Ms Hurst is quite entertaining herself, with her degree from Bennett Stellar University and Greg Wallace among her clients.
Looney ... nomen, omen, as we sa in Latin. Nomen, omen or I'll tuogh you up in brake.
He went for green energy at the top of the market, AND had to sell their Russian interests to Rosneft. Still, he should be able to devote more time to his hobbies now, although will conquests be as easy when he's no longer the, er, coming man?
A far cry from his illustrious predecessor John Browne (whose proclivities are quite the other way) ...
... who bought Amoco, Arco and Burmah Castrol at $10 per barrel !!! Thus almost doubling the size of BP at the absolute bottom of the market (though at the time, the self-vaunted Economist was saying it could go as low as $6)
"I'll tuogh you up in brake" Disc or drum?
Slipped disc or burst eardrum. Or both. Depends how mean I'm feeling.
OT - mooted Russia/US deal over Ukraine. Korea model
- Ceasefire, not peace, between Russia and Ukraine
- De facto but not de jure recognition of Russia’s territorial gains
- Most anti-Russian sanctions lifted
- Long-term return to Russian oil & gas imports
- No guarantees on NATO non-expansion
- No promise to halt Western military aid to Ukraine
Can't see it happening myself, if only because the European political class (including UK), facing permanently falling living standards* (for their people, naturally not for them) and unrest, desperately need a foreign bogey-man, more perhaps than they've ever needed one.
So I could easily see NS2 repaired but not opened, UK refineries shut while we import Russian diesel from Turkey or India as at present.
* big fall in Tesla sales (take that, Musk!), big rise in BYD sales...
We already have plenty of foreign boogeymen, we just place them in hotels and HMOs, and then watch the politicians scratch their head at why Reform ride high in the polls.
Both Ukraine and Russia need a peace deal, for Ukraine the front line is in danger of collapsing, for Russia, economic gravity is beginning to reassert itself.
Putin seems not to grasp that, in the belief he just tells people and it magically gets done, so he's probably going to agree to all manner of things, promptly renege on them, and carry on regardless.
If so, we'll see how Trump responds to Putin playing Lucy to his Charlie Brown yet again.
It's amazing how much insight people have into Russian politics. I trust you have a similar ouija board when it comes to British politics. If you haven't noticed, there's a gulf a mile wide between the political elites, for whole boat people as "foreign bogeyman" is racist stereotyping of the worst kind, and Joe Public.
"Putin playing Lucy to his Charlie Brown yet again"
Russia's aims were pretty moderate right up to Boris Johnson playing Lucy to Putin's Charlie Brown at Istanbul. Unsurprisingly, views and policies have hardened since then.
"for whole boat people" = "for whom boat people"
Our political class imprison people for suggesting killing boat people (or indeed the Israeli military), but they support and fund the killing of Russian military ( plus a few hapless and unwitting lorry drivers) and destruction of Russian infrastructure. I think I know which is the bogey man our rulers want us to fear.
The phrase "word salad" in Russian is commonly translated as:
"словесный салат" (slovésnyy salát)
This phrase is used in the same figurative sense as in English—to describe speech or writing that is confused, nonsensical, or incoherent, often due to a mental disorder or just poor articulation.
In clinical or psychological contexts, it might also be rendered as:
"речевая абракадабра" – meaning "speech abracadabra" (informal/slang)
"речевая мешанина" – meaning "speech jumble" or "verbal jumble"
But "словесный салат" is the closest and most direct equivalent.
Fascinating word salad indeed - I'd have called it "making smoke", but it doesn't alter the fact that the boat people aren't the bogeymen that our rulers either want or need - whereas Putin's Brutal Hordes are.
Donald Tusk of Poland is talking about a freeze in the war after a meeting with Zelensky, so there seems to be something real in the air apart from drones. But could Zelensky give up the chunks of the four oblasts that he's still in control of? Would the Azov/Nazi types swallow that pill?
Vlad?…Are we the baddies?
You can tell who's losing the argument here.
OT, but this certainly chimes with my experiences, where I saw older, better-paid UK staff given impossible workloads, then poor reviews for not hitting them, which put them under tremendous stress, at least one resigned which was a big win for the bad guys. I was a contractor observing all this ... similar reports from the States in that once you have an Indian manager, the whole team ends up Indian. And having worked alongside them for a few years, they're not by any means code gods, but they are cheap. My company would ship in people for six month tours, another bunch six months later, then they'd rotate.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/03/tata-redundancies-uk-tribunal
Beer, a former partner hired by TCS in February 2019, claims that the company “targeted for redundancy an age mature, predominantly non-Indian national group of employees” who worked in the consulting services and integration (CS&I) division. He said TCS “deliberately orchestrated” its redundancy process to ensure these employees were singled out for redundancy, while younger, Indian nationals were spared. He said this was achieved via a “tickbox” consultancy process whose outcome had already been decided. In his claim, Beer said TCS had deployed a “bait-and-switch” practice to attract potential clients around the world, incorporating “local” staff into its sales proposals, before substituting them with Indian staff once the contract was secured. This was done, he claimed, because non-Indian staff, including many who worked in CS&I, were perceived internally as “more costly and less culturally ‘malleable and compliant’”. This, he said, meant that keeping those staff on the contracts could lower TCS’s profit margins and affect performance metrics that influenced bonuses. He said TCS sometimes understated its likely costs in order to win contracts, which made it even more likely that more “seasoned” but more expensive CS&I staff would be replaced on the contracts.
" Knowing that Trump just lurves Big Numbers and of course Done Deals, they've "committed" to bizarre amounts of imports from the USA, and there isn't a cat's chance in Hell that these commitments can be honoured. But the Dumb Donald goes home with his triumph (his own people certainly ain't gonna tell him he's been suckered - and maybe he knows it anyway but just loves the immediate optics) and life carries on."
Or Trump knows full well Europe can't make good on its promises and he (or his successor who very may well be his VP) will be able to extract even more from them once they've failed to do what they said they'd do.
Making promises you know you can't keep is not a very good strategy if your only way of avoiding having your feet held to the fire is to hope the other side change their minds later on. If they don't you're screwed.
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