For several years, Russia has been warning—consistently and clearly—that it intends to stop using Ukraine as a transit country for sending its energy to Western markets. If this happens, a major hole will open in the Ukrainian economy which Europe and the United States do not appear to be prepared to fill.

Consistently, I am amazed at analysts who produce pages of plans about how to reorient Ukraine’s geopolitical focus Westward and embed Ukraine in the security architecture of the Euro-Atlantic world, yet assume that Ukraine’s economic relationship with Russia will continue unabated. In the 1990s, this was not an unreasonable assumption, because Russia had no choice but to rely on existing Soviet-era infrastructure networks and had no wherewithal to construct alternatives. Thus, the economic-security balance that had emerged after the fall of the USSR—where Russia needed to sustain Ukraine (notably with below-market price energy) in order to guarantee that it could sell the rest at much higher prices to paying European customers—made sense.

It was not always going to be sustainable, and we saw how both Russia and the Baltic States, for their own security interests, moved to alter this implicit bargain: the Baltic States started by developing alternative sources of supply and taking the very painful short-term steps to reform their economies away from the narcotic of lower-cost Russian energy and raw materials. Russia, for its part, after it became clear that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia would enter both NATO and the EU, developing an entirely new northern export infrastructure based out of the St. Petersburg region that allowed Russia to stop its dependence on Baltic access. . . .

Ukraine . . . has dramatically demonstrated its ability to buy gas, oil and coal from non-Russian sources—with gas being shipped in from European partners to the West and a shipment of U.S.-produced coal arriving in country. But these alternatives are more expensive for a struggling economy—and the real shock will come when Russian transit fees cease. The Ukrainian state energy company will be left with a network of lines, storage depots and pumping stations which will need to find new customers. Perhaps some energy from the Caucasus could be sent via the Odessa-Brody route from the Caspian to Europe, but that will not produce enough replacement income.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/2019-could-be-very-bad-year-ukraine-22567?page=show

I regard it as a bit of a tragedy that Universalism is dead. More and more conservatives are saying this:

We reject your observations. We reject your logic. We reject your conclusions. And most importantly, we reject your demands. We have no common ground to build on. We have no common vision to work toward. No amount of shaming and pearl-clutching outrage will change my mind – you’ve exhausted your credibility. If you want cooperation, show me what is in it for me, my family, and my extended family.

“University professors earned their slavery.”

Camille Paglia on the insufferable cowardice of academia, and so much more…

“There’s nothing more dangerous than a weak man.”

Account of an acquaintance:

Mikheil Saakashvili had a rally here in Sumy today. It was very sad to hear what horrible shape this region is in. There is VERY high unemployment and many young people are going to Russia or elsewhere in order to find work.

Yanukovych closed many factories in this region because they would not support him in his race against Yulia and now Poroshenko is closing factories because they produce sugar and this is a source of competition for him. More proof that the President here couldn’t care less about his people.

He had a reasonably nice sized gathering considering the lousy weather. By the end of his talk, the feeling was that the Sumy Region’s future is extremely dismal.

Ukrainian border guards were kidnapped during consultation meeting, – Border Service Head Tsyhykal

The State Border Guard Service has decided to limit the number of border consultation meetings with Russia due to kidnapping of two border guards in the Sumy region.
This was announced by Head of the State Border Service Petro Tsyhykal, Censor.NET reports citing 112 Ukraine.

He said regular border consultation meetings between two neighboring countries is common practice around the world, but given Russia’s unpredictable behavior, the Border Service has decided to limit their number.

“We have decided to limit these meetings to the level of heads [of border guards serviced – ed.] in order to secure personnel who are less prepared,” the head of the agency said.

Tsyhykal said the two border guards from the Sumy unit were kidnapped by Russians during such a meeting. He says the Russians did not necessarily entered the Ukrainian territory but kidnapped the officers from the border. Source: https://en.censor.net.ua/n458692

https://en.censor.net.ua/news/458692/ukrainian_border_guards_were_kidnapped_during_consultation_meeting_border_service_head_tsyhykal

Before the camps, I regarded the existence of nationality as something that shouldn’t be noticed – nationality did not really exist, only humanity. But in the camps, one learns: if you belong to a successful nation, you are protected and you survive. If you are part of universal humanity, too bad for you.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years Together (2002)

The Frankfurt School Knew Trump Was Coming

In 1950, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno helped to assemble a volume titled “The Authoritarian Personality,” which constructed a psychological and sociological profile of the “potentially fascistic_ _individual.” The work was based on interviews with American subjects, and the steady accumulation of racist, antidemocratic, paranoid, and irrational sentiments in the case studies gave the German-speakers pause. Likewise, Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman’s 1949 book, “Prophets of Deceit,” studied the Father Coughlin type of rabble-rouser, contemplating the “possibility that a situation will arise in which large numbers of people would be susceptible to his psychological manipulation.”

Adorno believed that the greatest danger to American democracy lay in the mass-culture apparatus of film, radio, and television. Indeed, in his view, this apparatus operates in dictatorial fashion even when no dictatorship is in place: it enforces conformity, quiets dissent, mutes thought. Nazi Germany was merely the most extreme case of a late-capitalist condition in which people surrender real intellectual freedom in favor of a sham paradise of personal liberation and comfort. Watching wartime newsreels, Adorno concluded that the “culture industry,” as he and Horkheimer called it, was replicating fascist methods of mass hypnosis.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-frankfurt-school-knew-trump-was-coming

The world needs constant reminding that communism is a hell hole.

The workers were likely no fans of communist dictator Nicole Ceausescu, who seemed determined to starve the people into submission. Though Romania had been a breadbasket of Europe before World War One, food had become as rare as honest economist statistics.

Children could not get milk without a doctor’s prescription. It was forbidden for foreigners to send food to Romanians. The government responded to food shortages with a publicity campaign on the danger of overeating. The government also revved up advertising in western nations touting Romania’s “world famous” weight-loss clinics.

The communists destroyed hundreds of square miles of prime farmland to erect factories and open pit mines. Hundreds of villages were razed and the residents corralled into cities and conscripted to work in factories. The government put almost all investments into heavy industry – the ultimate source of bragging rights for communist leaders. But roughly half of Romania’s output was so shoddy that it was ready for the junk heap moments after it rolled off the assembly line. Romanian industry was also extremely inefficient, consuming up to five times as much energy per unit of output as western factories. The government compensated by cutting off electricity to people’s homes for up to six hours during the winter, and permitting only one 25-watt light bulb per room.

The health system was collapsing, and the infant mortality rate was so high the government refused to register children as being born until they survived their first month. The government also routinely cut off power to hospitals, causing a thousand deaths the previous winter.

Yet, some western experts hailed Ceausescu as a path-breaking visionary. A 1979 World Bank report, the “Importance of Centralized Economic Control,” praised the Romanian regime for pursuing “policies to make better use of the population as a factor of production” [italics added] by “stimulating an increase in birth rates.”

And how did the benevolent ruler do this? By prohibiting distribution of contraceptives and banning abortions. Because the Plan called for higher birth rates, every female forfeited the right to control her body or life. Ceausescu proclaimed in 1985: “The fetus is the socialist property of the whole society… Those who refuse to have children are deserters.” The government forced all women between the age of 18 and 40 to have a monthly gynecological exam to assure that no one robbed the State by having a secret abortion. These policies turned Romania into the World Capital of abandoned babies.

. . . .

The World Bank also praised the Romanian regime for its ability to “mobilize the resources” required to boost economic growth. In reality, the government was brutalizing its subjects to squeeze out “surpluses” to lavish funds on World Bank-approved industrial enterprises – the same tactic Stalin used to finance his Five-Year Plans.

The Romanian regime also “mobilized resources” by pawning its ethnic German and Jewish inhabitants. West Germany paid roughly $20,000 for each German exported, and Israel paid a similar amount for each Romanian Jew released. There were international agreements banning slave trading in the nineteenth century, but selling human beings in the twentieth century was acceptable if the receipts went for progressive purposes.

. . . .

Roughly 1 in 15 Romanians was working as a government informant.

In a comprehensive report released October 3, Poland’s Ordo Iuris Institute presented its evidence that the country’s marginal feminist movement has received “enormous funding from abroad.” It traced most of the money to organizations funded directly or indirectly by Hungarian-American financier George Soros. Poland’s pro-abortion groups received about one million Polish zloty to block the Polish government’s 2016 attempt to completely ban abortion.

Ordo Iuris says Poland’s public universities, which were supposed to be neutral, were also actively involved in the pro-abortion protests.

The Global Fund for Women (GFW) is a partner and legatee of George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The organization, which promotes access to abortion worldwide, boasts on its official website that it funded Poland’s so-called “black protests”.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/soros-pours-financial-support-into-polish-abortion-movement-polish-institut