Open Thread.

 Go at it. 

Totally Agree ...

 ... which is strange because it is from The Telegraph))

The EU’s top diplomat is a gift to the Kremlin. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, knows all too well that nothing is more fatal for the future of Ukraine than disunity among Kyiv’s Western allies. “Russia wants to see the US and Europe divided,” she warned back in March. “Let’s not give them that.” Yet now, as the grim process of thrashing out a real peace deal gets under way, the US and Europe could hardly be further apart. And it’s Europe’s refusal to face reality that is to blame. While Kallas and other European leaders talk among themselves, stripping out all the most painful bits of Trump’s 28 point peace plan, the real negotiations are taking place between Moscow, Washington and Beijing. Europe is not at the table even as the future security architecture of the Continent is being hammered out. Rather than engaging with the ugly reality of talking to the Russians, Kallas and her fellow European leaders have chosen ideological purity over practical diplomacy.

Hey, hey, hey, The Telegraph, stop making sense all of a sudden. Your rag was at the forefront of anti-Russia hysteria and then suddenly something changed? Oh, we know what changed. You lost the war while Russians are very good at keeping records. And now, with Russia's funds (which most likely are already not there) the final blow to NATO and EU is coming ... from the United States itself. 

Read Larry's excellent piece on new National Security Strategy properly titled: Trump files for divorce from NATO over Ukraine The new US National Security Strategy signals a massive foreign policy shift; it remains to be seen if Washington is serious about it.  It is an excellent piece, which really comes well together with Dmitry Orlov's overview of this whole clustercoitus with Russia's funds. Here is the summary:

1. Ukraine is on its last legs, guaranteed to lose the war, its army melting away and its government mired in corruption scandals. Throwing more money at the Ukrainian financial black hole would be simply a waste.

2. Frozen Russian sovereign funds held by Euroclear are in the form of eurobonds. If the EU stole this money, it would simply be refusing to pay back $300 billion of its own debt. This would not give it any money (it has already spent the Russian money which was used to buy these bonds) but it would certainly hurt its financial position and complicate further borrowing and deficit financing.

3. The EU would gain nothing, but it would lose actual, real money and brick and mortar assets it had built up in Russia, including any future profits from them and any future role in the Russian economy.

Perhaps the brain trust of the EU that has hatched this very interesting plan to steal Russia's money consists of Russian agents. Or perhaps they are just a bunch of idiots. You be the judge.

Really difficult to add anything other than to agree with The Telegraph that people like Kallas (a majority of Euro elites) is a gift which keeps on giving and Russians love it--keeps the circus alive for longer while Europe descends into complete irrelevance:

MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev agrees with Elon Musk that the European Union should be abolished in order to return sovereignty to its member countries. "Exactly," the Russian politician wrote in a comment to Musk's corresponding publication in X. Earlier, Musk wrote that "the EU should be abolished, and individual countries should be returned sovereignty so that states can better represent their people."

The experiment failed, because it was built around mythical idea of globalism and inability to learn from the history. Europe failed to learn anything from WW II. Time to pay the bills. More than six years ago while commenting on Irina Alksnis excellent piece I wrote:

I always said--genuine superpowers move in their own world and they have their very own, unique, complexes and "disabilities" only other superpowers can understand, even when being enemies. Irina Alksnis completely and masterfully conveyed this in her article.    

EU is not superpower, the US and Russia are, make your own conclusions. 

Initial View ...

 ... of new National Security Strategy. 

Garland and Me ...

 ... live in 30 minutes. 

Correct ...

 ... that's the name of the game for this crowd which finally recognized what I was talking about for 11 years. 

More than five years ago I wrote:

Economic self-sufficiency which is also a foundation of REAL national security starts from industry. No industry--no American nation. Simple as that. Modern generation of American "elites" has no idea, or, possibly, doesn't even care about what happens when the attempts to re-industrialize fail precisely because no one knows how to do it for real, not by doing what they got used to do--"printing" money which only accelerates a decline, towards eventual disintegration. So, here it is--no real recovery without real industries, which translate into real employment, this means reorienting production for the internal market and.... here we pause, because this seemingly simple scenario requires a long and substantive debate because this is where the issue of trade comes in and 99.99% of the American "elite" are a free trade neo-liberal fundamentalists who have neither knowledge nor skills to avert what is already not just on the horizon but knocking on the door. If you think otherwise, just take a look at the graphs above, especially a 10 year one. Things just got worse, not better since 2010. I am sure vast number of events coordinators, DJs and shopping assistants will have to rethink seriously their career choices if they even want any shot at any vacancy in a dramatically shrinking America's basis, before collapsing superstructure buries them.   

Capital also loves victors. Here "isolated" Putin is greeted (in a pleasant violation of protocol) by his buddy Modi. 

If rumors about new lease of a nuclear sub to India are correct, something tells me that Russia may provide Indian Navy with the very first hull of project 885 SSGN Severodvinsk. She can carry 3M22 Zircon but her main load is P-800 Oniks, which, of course, India has and it is called Brahmos. This is a transfer of an enormously powerful technology. But again, the production of Sukhoi 100 at HAL facilities for India's market has been already discussed, I am positive it is greenlighted now. 

Nima And Me ...

 ... live in 35 minutes. 

Everybody Knows ...

 ... how huge it is. In India they know. 

Andrei Belousov is already in India.