Pepe's Excellent Piece.

The Saker posted Pepe Escobar's excellent piece with a symptomatic title: All the Way to Odessa. In it, Pepe notes:

In parallel, The Lords of (Proxy) War will continue with their own strategy, which is to pillage an enfeebled, fearful, Europe, then dressing it up as a perfumed colony to be ruthlessly exploited ad nauseam by the imperial oligarchy. Europe is now a runaway TGV – minus the requisite Hollywood production values. Assuming it does not veer off track – a dicey proposition – it may eventually arrive at a railway station called Agenda 2030, The Great Narrative, or some other NATO/Davos denomination du jour. As it stands, what’s remarkable is how the “marginal” Russian economy hardly broke a sweat to “end the abundance” of the wealthiest region on the planet. Moscow does not even entertain the notion of negotiating with Brussels because there’s nothing to negotiate – considering puny Eurocrats will only be hurled away from their zombified state when the dire socio-economic consequences of “the end of abundance” will finally translate into peasants with pitchforks roaming the continent.

Pepe was a herald of this unfolding European reality for a very long time, and here it is--being built in front of our own eyes. Read the whole thing at Saker's blog, it is excellent. In related news of Europe becoming poor (just a warmup):

German benchmark power prices for next year soared above €800 per megawatt hour on Friday, nearly 10 times higher than the same period last year, Bloomberg reports. Prices gained as much as 7.6% on Friday to reach €805.15 per megawatt hour on the European Energy Exchange, up 39% this week. Costs have been smashing records on an almost daily basis as the winter heating period approaches. The rally is being driven by growing concerns over Russian natural gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Berlin previously required gas operators to fill underground storage facilities while adhering to a strict schedule, to ensure the country has enough fuel to last the winter. The plan states that storage must be 85% full by October 1, and 95% full by November 1. Experts doubt the goal is achievable.

In Germany they begin to stop escalators in some department stores to "save energy". Right.