Mon coeur! I swoon. I don’t understand a word that Claude Malhuret is saying, but I am dizzy with adoration now.
His speech sounded so lovely, I had to look up a translation. It’s even better in English.
My dear colleagues,
Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is evading, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
Washington became the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester under ketamine in charge of the purification of the public service.
It’s a drama for the free world, but it’s first a drama for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, that he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and threaten you to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.
The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is on a flat stomach. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down in front of Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is undoubtedly accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a president of the United States capitulated to the enemy. No one has ever supported an aggressor against an ally. No one has ever trampled on the American Constitution, made so many illegal decrees, revoked the judges who could prevent it, dismissed the military staff at once, weakened all counter-powers and took control of social networks.
It is not an illiberal drift, it is a beginning of confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only a month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.
I have confidence in the strength of American democracy and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war against a dictator, we are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.
Eight days ago, at the very time that Trump passed his hand behind Macron’s back at the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against Europeans demanding the departure of Russian troops.
Two days later, in the oval office, the military service hide-and-seek gave moral and strategy lessons to the war hero Zelensky before dismissing him as a brother-in-law by ordering him to submit or resign.
That night, he took a step further into infamy by stopping the promised delivery of weapons. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.
And first don’t make a mistake. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltics, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is the return to Yalta where half of the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with the first principle of prohibiting the acquisition of territories by force.
This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the aggressor, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to the spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
To me Greenland, Panama and Canada, to you Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe, to him Taiwan and the China Sea.
This is called “diplomatic realism” in the evenings of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago.
So we are alone. But the speech that we cannot resist Putin is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is doing badly. In three years, the so-called second army in the world has only managed to grab crumbs from a country three times less populated.
Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, and demographic collapse show that it is on the edge of the abyss. The American boost to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made during a war.
The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans come out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American release, to make it hold, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.
It will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to bypass Moscow’s accomplices even within Europe by a coalition of only voluntary countries, with of course the United Kingdom.
Secondly, require that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what the agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we would have to build the neglected European defense, for the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and sunk since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. It is to recognize that France was right for decades in pleading for strategic autonomy.
It remains to build it. It will be necessary to invest massively, strengthen the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonize weapons and ammunition systems, accelerate Ukraine’s entry into the Union, which is today the first European army, rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence from French and British capacities, relaunch anti-missile and satellite shield programs.
The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And it will take much more.
Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be applied. For good.
But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
We must convince public opinion in the face of weariness and fear of war, and especially in the face of Putin’s companions, the extreme right and the extreme left.
They pleaded again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr. Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defense.
They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is the capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain in Putin’s boot.
The peace of the collaborators who have refused for three years any help to the Ukrainians.
Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days, Zelensky’s public humiliation and all the crazy decisions taken over the past month have ended up making Americans react.
Polls are falling. Republican elected officials are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News becomes critical.
The Trumpists are no longer in majesty. They control the executive, Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.
But in American history, the supporters of freedom have always won. They begin to raise their heads.
The fate of Ukraine is played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means of their common defense, and to make Europe the power it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of all sacrifices.
The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.
Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.
Can you repeat that in Italian now? In Spanish? German? It would sound terrific in any language, except maybe Russian.
Claude Malhuret take a bow.
Sounds a bit too much like chauvinistic sabre-rattling to me. I can’t say I’m impressed.
I’m impressed.
Finally, some one with a spine, gonads, and a brain faces reality and tells it like it is.
Not all heroes wear capes or speak English.
.1. The rest of the world needs to know that the USA has become a mindless giant that is an enemy to half its population at least, that would be 173 million people or more.
It’s also now the enemy of the Free World, which includes Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Latin America.
.2. The various countries of the rest of the world don’t have to deal with the mindless giant USA alone though.
They can coordinate, cooperate, and band together for safety and mutual advantage.
To take one example.
Canada could join the EU or at the least the EEA, European Economic Area like Iceland and Norway.
Canada could also form NAFTA 2.0, which is NAFTA minus the USA.
And tilt toward China which is starting to look like a more reliable trading partner than the USA.
.3. And don’t forget.
Half or more of the US population is…on the side of Europe, the EU, Canada, and Mexico.
Trump and the GOP didn’t even win a majority of the last presidential election.
It’s not the USA against the world.
It is the Red faction of Trump and Musk against half of the USA and the rest of the world.
He got that one right.
Russia is a basket case with 1/9th the GDP of the EU.
They aren’t all that competent or strong.
They aren’t anything like the old USSR, which we stared down and defeated.
And Trump laid right down in front of them and surrendered for nothing.
It takes a Frenchman to say what the Democratic leadership should be saying. It makes me wonder why they’re holding back. Fear of a tax audit? Withholding federal funds? Threats of violence against them and their families? Whatever the reason, it appears it’s now time for the people to take to the streets. The weather is warming up. Perhaps this will be resistance summer. Then we’ll see just how serious Trump is about calling the protests a national emergency. Will he order the military to open fire, as he suggested in the past? Will he revoke habeas corpus and lock people up without charges? So many questions.
@2: “Sounds a bit too much like chauvinistic sabre-rattling to me. I can’t say I’m impressed.”
That sounds like the words of a sniveling coward to me. I can’t say I’m impressed.
If you stand up to Trump, a lot of the time he will back down.
He put 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico a few days ago. Again.
And is already walking them back.
Autos are one of the largest imports from Canada and Mexico because there is no American auto industry. It’s all integrated as the North American auto industry.
The USA can’t put tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico, and the EU and wreck their economies without also wrecking the US economy.
Doesn’t mean he won’t do it but it isn’t a done deal either.
The rest of the world is figuring this out.
The Canadians, the Mexicans, the Chinese, and now the French are calling his bluff.
What other choice do they have anyway?
Related: Cologne, carnival 2025
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1AKYnR7pEh/
Granted, this is what the dictators want — a bunch of otherwise unnecessary military spending, making people’s lives worse as budgets shift from helping people to building armies. Same thing the terrorists did to us with 9/11 (not that America in my lifetime has ever been shy about military spending). But I don’t see any other way out of it for them. Our country is not a trustworthy ally. They have to look out for themselves.
I’m now beginning to believe that Putin actually does have something on him. The Deutsche Bank loans actually were Russian Mafia money laundering? It was a sort of a joke previously. Now I’m not laughing it off so easily.
Dump is either Putin’s paid or compelled agent, or a useful idiot as they are known in the trade. He’s gone from being an insurrectionist to an actual traitor. Not only in Malhuret’s sense of traitor to our allies, but traitor to the United States.
there are hints in this of xenophobia against the colonized, of a perspective where the big evil is not that there are shitty empires but that there aren’t enough seats and egalité at the imperial banquet. hints, we don’t get full understanding from outside the language. i agree europe has to unite militarily against the US now, which is the ludicrous situation of things, would support this policy politically, but i don’t think it’s wrong to look sideways at the motive for it.
Ed Seedhouse, #6
Because inflaming international tensions by sending armies across the continent has worked so well in the past, clearly. Very few problems can be solved by the application of military force and the militarisation of society. We need cooler heads and more diplomacy, not jingo, tubthumping and this guy’s appeals to mindless aggression.
@Cartomancer
If the UK and France had rattled their sabers loudly when the guy with the toothbrush moustache was rearming Germany and occupying the Rheinland in violation of the Versailles Treaty, believe me, that would have taken a big damper on ol’ Addy H’s plans because it would have made him look weak and he was deathly afraid of just that. Bullies tend to be big cowards otherwise they wouldn’t be bullies in the first place. Letting him get away with that only emboldened him to go even further.
You know, just like Putin went further and further when the West just let him do what he wanted.
The way you deal with populists is to never let them have even small Ws. Feed them Ls until they can no longer show their face in public. If you don’t, if you are so afraid of small confrontations you’ll only invite bigger ones in the future.
tytalus@9,
It may be that European military spending doesn’t actually need to be increased, because a lot of what is currently being spent is wasteful. In the case of the UK, for example, the Trident nuclear weapons programme, which was always an exercise in willie-waving, has now become completely pointless because it depends on American cooperation to be workable (the missiles are made and maintained in the USA). Similarly, it is absolutely pointless for the UK to build aircraft carriers, particularly as we don’t have usable planes to put on them, but they are likely obsolete anyway in the era of drones and anti-ship missiles. What we do need to be doing is building factories to produce the stocks of ammunition, air defences and military transport vehicles that have been depleted by sending them to Ukraine. And pushing ahead with drone technology. On the other hand, decoupling European arms production from that of the USA may mean a real increase is required. But what’s neccessary first is for European leaders – including Zelensky, Starmer and Macron – to stop pretending to themselves and others that Trump is anything other than an enemy, who must be resisted, not placated.
cartomancer@2, 12
If you haven’t noticed by now that agreements negotiated with Putin are as much use as those negotiated with Hitler in the 1930s, I can only conclude you’re had your head stuck up your fundament for the past quarter-century.
Riddle of the day:
What’s the difference between Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and Donald Trump?
Answer: The first two were not self inflicted.
I had to look up a translation. It’s even better in English.
It would read even better if translated by a human. Since when, f’rinstance, has a shield “evaded”?
…a bunch of otherwise unnecessary military spending, making people’s lives worse as budgets shift from helping people to building armies.
Actually, military spending is often beneficial to the people, both by creating jobs in the defense industry, and by recruiting working-age people into the armed services, and thus decreasing the supply of civilian workers and hopefully increasing their wages. Also, young people who join the military come out with more skills that enable them to be more productive in whatever civilian jobs they take after their service.
I’m not saying military buildups are the best, let alone only, way to improve people’s lives; but it can play a big role, so we shouldn’t be too squeamish about it when it becomes necessary — as it is for Europe today.
KG @14:
F-35s have been operating from the two carriers for a few years, including anti-ISIS strikes in 2021. Whether carriers are obsolete I’ll leave to the experts.
KG #14 — I’ll hope for the best as to their military spending, I don’t wish the UK or EU ill generally and they’ll need their strength, cash included. I do agree that they need to treat the US differently and yeah, our gov’t is basically an enemy now. Sad to say being subject to it but oh well. We’re past asking if we’re the baddies.
Since when, f’rinstance, has a shield “evaded”?
I would have translated that as “slipped”
He was using very practical and down-to-Earth French. That was also well done, it’s not his job to try to make Churchillian flourishes. When the French let rip at that level, it is glorious.
@ Marcus R: yes, when they really want to impress and delve deep in the dictionary it gets really spectacular. Good for yer French comprehension, but it’s hard work following!
But anyway, he nails it right in the first sentence:
“…un empereur incendiaire, des courtisans soumis et un bouffon sous ketamine…” -> “an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester under ketamine”.
The translation miss some subtleties: “jester” sounds nicer than “buffoon” for example, which I would say is the meaning here.
So if this whole mess is very very visible an ocean away, how come so many Americans cannot see it yet?
They do. Thing is, they like it. They feel good about it.
(That’s why they voted him in)
outis @21: For bouffon, I think the closest translation here is ‘grotesque clown’.
Further to #23: The English ‘buffoon’, obviously cognate with ‘bouffon’, has connotations of harmlessness and humour.
Gross.
More Cold Warrioring, more militarization, more warmongering, the specter of a rearmed axis in Europe — which the whole 20th century was a warning against.
You think it sounds lovely, PZ? It sounds like my nightmares of World War 3.
I’m guessing that the translator AI means “draft dodger”?
Also not sure if “dismissing him as a brother-in-law” is a French colloquialism or AI badly-translated French.
@4 More like fainting ass-skyward on command in front of Putin.
@7 The problem is that approximately 2/3 of the planet’s economies are so tightly intertwined with the US’s that if we go down, they go down too. So, worldwide recession/depression & stagflation are real possibilities, unfortunately.
At least until the rest of the world gets tired of dealing with the Cheetolini’s economic schizophrenia and decides to take their business elsewhere. Which will hurt the US badly. It will hurt the rest of the world too, at least until they establish new trading partners and treaties.
I can’t tell if Cheetolini is just toying with tariffs because it’s his new fun game (of which he has no understanding) or if he’s doing it to distract the Pekingese of the press from the real stories, which is the dismantling of democracy in favor of kleptocracy and kakistocracy. Face it, if there is another major brush fire, hurricane or tornado, the victims are SOL because orange dipshidiot already fired & dismantled the agencies that warn/prevent/fight those things. Like unadulterated food? Don’t get used to it, those inspectors are getting fired right and left. The Forestry Service and the Parks & Wildlife Service have been gutted, so if get lost or hurt on a beach or park, you are on your own. Remember to bring a knife so you can cut your arm free like Aron Ralston, otherwise you will have to chew it off.
This was orange dipshidiot’s go-to move the last time he was in office; wave ridiculous shiny media stories in front of the media while destroying the US. And the media and the American people fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
I’m also wondering how long it will take for the US’s trading partners to decide the signed treaties have already been broken, no need to keep up their end of the bargain.
beholder @25: Please share your thoughts about how to deal with Putin.
Why is that piece of filth beholder still allowed to post here?
@21 Slightly less than half of voting Americans did see it coming, which is why they voted for the smart black lady.
Unfortunately, slightly more than half of voting Americans would rather punch down on the disenfranchised than vote in their own best interests. Sure, Covid 19 thinned out the red hats at a rate of 2:1 and measles, TB & other preventable diseases will undoubtedly thin the herd further but we still have most of 4 years before we can get rid of the dumpster fire. If we can get rid of the dumpster fire. Still have the disquieting feeling that I may have voted in the last election in my lifetime. Unless either the Big Macs or the avian flu finally kick in and do their thing to Cheetolini.
Keep in mind that the red hats have zero concept of “actions have consequences” and are fervent Cinemax subscribers in the Cinemax Theory of Racism.
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/11/10/the-cinemax-theory-of-racism/
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2020/09/30/a-white-supremacist-for-white-supremacists-counting-on-white-supremacists/
Red hats would rather punch down on the disenfranchised, even if it means worse outcomes for themselves than vote for anything resembling a rising tide that lifts all boats. Then they whine and sulk about how they can never get ahead and how unfairly the world is treating them. Self awareness and the ability to put 2 and 2 together and come up with 4 are not their strong suits.
All of which you helped bring about, because you were too simon-pure to vote for a better but imperfect candidate.
Proud of yourself?
Kindly fuck off and take your hypocritical virtue-signaling and posturing with you.
…“jester” sounds nicer than “buffoon” for example, which I would say is the meaning here.
I think Musk is both of those things: a buffoon, AND a court jester whose job is to entertain and distract.
Oh, and beholder isn’t just an asshole, he’s an asshole parroting a VERY old Soviet/Russian shrieking-point about NATO being “a rearmed axis in Europe.”
The original job of a jester was to tell truth to power. So not matching Trump at all.
@21 This lady explains it perfectly. Right around the 7:11 mark
Honestly, the Democrats should have run HER.
Ah, beholder again outed themselves as outright fascism enabler.