Von der Leyen's (US steered) Plan Will Wreak Havoc on EU Economy, Security and Welfare

Peter Klevius wonders why EU is led by a fifth columnist* whose actions point to more war, less security, less high tech, protectionism against what EU needs the most, and licking a dangerous and desperate* rogue state** that EU needs the least!

* von der Leyen is a German but acts precisely against the interest of German companies and people.

** Precisely because of China's success, US now tries to stop it because US stolen dollar hegemony is otherwise slipping away. von der Leyen's strange actions can therefore only be explained as her being US fifth columnist within EU.

von der Leyen wants to assist the world's worst financial criminal*, $-freeloader US (since 1971) while blocking EU con sumers and EU companioes from accessing the world's leading science and technology from China. 

* 1971 US stole the world dollar by violating the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944. This has made it possible for US - as the only country in the world - to prosper (by money printing the rest of the world pays for) while having constant trade deficit.

von der Leyen: The Clean Energy Incentives Dialogue will become a part of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council where it will also facilitate information-sharing on non-market policies and practices of third parties—such as those employed by the People's Republic of China (PRC)—to serve as the basis for joint or parallel action and coordinated advocacy on these issues in multilateral or other fora. 

Peter Klevius: Every parameter points to Chinese leadership in R&D, science, technology and alternative tech etc. Against this background and added by the understandable desperation US feels for losing its stolen hegemony - which hangs on an extremely thin thread called trust - it's evident that von der Leyen acts opposite to the best interest of people in EU.

Moreover, in an authoritarian manner von der Leyen wants to "shield away" that part of "democracy" that doesn't fit her and her coterie's US steered agenda.

If Peter Klevius tries to read her as positively he can, it could simply be that she's really so delusional that she doesn't understand US dangerous and desperate situation nor that China is accelerating its progress on precisely those areas EU would benefit from. Moreover, even in defense spending EU will lose heavily by sticking to soon outdated Western military tech.

West lives in a delusion founded on what it copied (from China) and stole (from weaker people/countries) in its internal and external colonialism. China is today pushing US to judgement via people's inevitable upcoming abandoning of trust in US financial hegemony. Moreover, consumers around the world have already started to notice Chinese manufacturing and quality superiority. And no, China isn't Japan because it's not occupied by US and it's more than 10 times bigger.

Europe shouldn't be afraid of Chinese electric cars, says Mercedes-Benz CEO

George Glover

Mar 12, 2024, 7:18 AM PDT

The Mercedes-Benz concept CLA model at CES 2024

The Mercedes-Benz concept CLA could go on sale next year. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images

    The CEO of Mercedes-Benz called on the European Union to cut tariffs on Chinese electric cars.

    "That is the market economy. Let competition play out," he told the Financial Times.

    The trading bloc doesn't want Chinese EV makers like BYD to undercut European manufacturers.

The boss of Mercedes-Benz wants the European Union to cut tariffs on Chinese electric cars, which he argues will force European companies to make better vehicles.

In an interview with the Financial Times published on Tuesday, Ola Källenius rallied against protectionism and said lawmakers in Brussels should reduce, not raise, duties on Chinese EV makers such as BYD.

Chinese cars face 10% tariffs in Europe, which is lower than the 15% levy imposed on European cars sold in China.

"Don't raise tariffs," he told the FT. "I'm a contrarian, I think go the other way around: take the tariffs that we have and reduce them … that is the market economy. Let competition play out."

"It has been opening up markets that has led to wealth growth, especially in the economic wonder of China, that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty," Källenius added. "If we believe protectionism is the thing that gives us long-term success, I believe history tells us that is not the case."

BYD's cheaper, smaller (and with much more tech and better quality and safety - Peter Klevius comment) cars helped it overtake Tesla as the world's top EV seller in 2023 — and it's announced plans to build a production plant in Hungary as part of a bid to ramp up its expansion into Europe.

France's Renault and Jeep owner Stellantis have previously called for the EU to take steps to prevent the continent's carmakers being wiped out by their Chinese rivals.

"The Chinese offensive is possibly the biggest risk that companies like Tesla and ourselves are facing right now,'' Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said last month. "We have to work very, very hard to make sure that we bring out consumers better offerings than the Chinese."

However, German carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen have pushed back against the EU's ongoing probe. China accounts for over a third of Mercedes-Benz's worldwide sales, while it also signed a deal with BYD last year to use the Chinese company's LFP Blade batteries in its own EVs.

Reports last September suggested Mercedes-Benz is planning a 2025 launch for the CLA sedan that will use BYD's LFP batteries and have a range of more than 450 miles.

Daimler, the owner of Mercedes-Benz, and BYD have also worked together in the past, setting up an EV joint venture in China as long ago as 2010, per Electrek.

Von der Leyen proposes vaccines for minds and a 'shield for democracy

Anonymous

27 May 2024, 04:13 GMT+10

The European Commission president's campaign features an unprecedented preventive crackdown on wrongthink

One of the hallmarks of the European Union is that if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. In fact, it often means the exact opposite.

Take, for instance, the idea that Ursula Von der Leyen, the European Commission president, is running for re-election when in reality she's just publicly squabbling with a few other establishment hacks to be handpicked and confirmed by the establishment itself, not by popular vote. But that hasn't stopped her from cosplaying as an actual democratic candidate. It's not like she didn't have the opportunity to actually be one rather than just play one, but when her German colleagues asked her to run for an elected EU seat in Germany to establish some democratic credibility, she reportedly declined the inconvenience.

But that hasn't stopped her from posting "campaign" ads on social media, as though she's actually trying to appeal to voters. In one such video, she promises that if she's re-coronated, er, "re-elected," she'll defend Europe with a "Democracy Shield." The whole idea, she says, is to "detect disinformation and malign interference... remove content, including [artificial intelligence] deepfakes, [and] to make our societies more resilient." Nothing about defending Europe's democracy from unelected bureaucrats wielding excessive power though, I guess?

Ever since billionaire tech entrepreneur, Elon Musk, took over Twitter, renamed the social media platform 'X', and publicly shamed all the Western government authorities that tried to exploit the platform directly for their own propaganda purposes, his "community notes" feature has allowed users to react directly and in real time to content, including deep fake videos, and has proven that the antidote to inaccuracy is more free and democratic speech, not less.

"Democracy," in the case of this "Democracy Shield" is really just a euphemism for censorship. Because what does this "shield" really protect Europe from, that more free speech can't achieve, other than inconvenient facts? Or from Queen Ursula and the rest of the European establishment having to defend their own ideological lunacy and explain to citizens why the narratives they peddle often don't jibe with reality.

Apparently, they figure that democracy would be better off if everything and everyone that didn't fit their top agenda narratives could just be whacked over the head and dragged off into the shadows by the online Gestapo serving von der Leyen's online "Democracy Shield."

But maybe characterizing the Democracy Shield as little more than a "propaganda shield" is unfair. After all, it's not like the EU or Ursula actually say that they're interested in doing propaganda. No, instead she says that she just wants to do a little "pre-bunking," which totally doesn't sound like propaganda at all.

Speaking at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit earlier this month, von der Leyen explained that "research has shown that pre-bunking is more successful than de-bunking. Pre-bunking is the opposite of de-bunking. In short, prevention is preferable to cure. Think of information manipulation as a virus. Instead of treating an infection once it has taken hold, that's the de-bunking, it is better to vaccinate, so that our body is inoculated. Pre-bunking is the same approach."

Yeah, folks, just think of free debate and discussion as a nasty virus that could get really messy. May provoke verbal diarrhea. Ugly stuff. Wouldn't it just be better if the EU could inject its narratives like a vaccine straight into the minds of citizens to eliminate any risk of messy opposing views or information?

What if the pre-bunk narrative IS the disinformation, though? Of course that never happens, right? Everything that the EU and Western governments say is always the total and complete objective truth and anyone questioning it is some kind of foreign agent.

By the way, von der Leyen's "societal resilience" here really just means compliance - that everyone piles into the clown car on command so these bozos can take everyone on a joyride down Dystopian Highway towards wherever fresh Hell their hidden special interests dictate at any given time.

But perhaps Queen Ursula should be given the benefit of the doubt here, though. Maybe she really does just want to deploy her Democracy Shield against armies of annoying online bots and not on the political playing field to quash dissent?

"It's not just fakes or fabricated content," von der Leyen argued in announcing the Shield. "It's also buying influence and causing chaos. We have seen far-right politicians and lead candidates from AfD in Germany in the pockets of Russia. They are selling their souls on Russian propaganda outlets and videos."

Well, if she puts it that way... doubt benefit erased.

Want to smear a political opponent because they happen to enjoy free speech on a variety of platforms? Sounds like a job for Queen Ursula's Democracy Shield, which, like NATO, is totally defensive and does not ever do offensive operations and actively snuff out opponents on the political landscape. The EU already tried to pick off entire media outlets that it didn't like, censoring Russian platforms like RT and Sputnik at the supranational level and imposing that ban on all member states of the entire bloc in the absence of sovereign and democratic due process. The justification? That they were spreading "distortion of facts" that threatened the EU democratic order. Nothing better for credible journalism than governments arguing that they're the ultimate arbiters of truthful information.

It turns out that blanket censorship didn't quite knock everyone into line, so von der Leyen says in her ad that the Democracy Shield will "track down information manipulation and coordinate with national agencies." Hunting down wrong-speakers on the informational landscape? Sounds super democratic. So does the idea of "national agencies" deciding what qualifies as news.

Is this authoritarian Democracy Shield going to require any independent oversight? Because von der Leyen, back when she was German defense minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel, wasn't really into that kind of thing. Western press reports were rife with details of her underwhelming performance, with the Washington Post, for instance, citing a shortage of military equipment and promises to rectify the situation that were never fulfilled. They also said that the troops used broomsticks instead of machine guns for NATO exercises. Guess she had lots of those at her disposal.

We know from her stonewalling of the committee demanding to see her text messages with Pfizer brass over her vaccine deals that Queen Ursula really isn't into transparency, either. Who needs actual democratic values though, when you have a Democracy Shield? Maybe we can see it deployed in real time in a sort of test. If it was truly doing its job of shielding democracy, it would mow down von der Leyen's propaganda first, then just blow itself up.