UKRAINE: BIDEN’S BLOODY OBSESSION

Half a million dead & wounded Ukrainians yet the war cry from the White House still sounds. There seems to be no limit to the amount of death & destruction that Joe Biden is willing to contemplate.

Ever since Biden was given the Ukraine portfolio as his responsibility by Barack Obama he has acted as if the nation was his personal fiefdom. We can see how this is playing out day by day now, catastrophically for the Ukrainian people. 

Not content with interfering in the internal politics of Ukraine, Biden managed to display the corrupt side of his nature just as clearly as well as his Machiavellian side. His thoroughly dissolute son was given a highly lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas production company by the name of Burisma. You can guess how much experience Hunter Biden had in this field. Nil.

More serious still than getting his sex and drug-addict son onto the board of Burisma was Biden’s boast about getting the prosecutor sacked who had been given the job of investigating the company for corruption. Since these early days of wheeler dealing, nepotism and pay-to-play Biden has sought to cover his tracks in Ukraine by acting in a way destined to completely destroy the country. The fatalities and grievous injuries over the last two years and more amount to some half a million.

Biden has played the most egregious part in promoting only more war as the “solution” to the conflict in Ukraine. Well known as a political thug down the years Biden appears to have no conscience whatsoever and is in fact completely uncaring regarding the gruesome fate to which is consigning the Ukrainian people. 

The Biden obsession with Ukraine is inextricably linked with his obsession regarding Vladimir Putin. These twin obsessions look certain to ensure that tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands die and are gruesomely injured in the days, weeks, months and quite possibly years ahead. He rejects the idea of peace talks as does his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. These two, along with the apparently now departed Victoria Nuland, are the chief architects of Ukraine’s demise as a tool of the West against Russia.

The painful truth is that Russia, after a near decade of attempting to find a peaceful solution to the problems encountered by the people of eastern Ukraine, once forced into this conflict, are now winning it hands down. Naturally this will be driving Biden even more berserk than he has shown himself previously on Ukraine. The more Russia is seen to win it is certain that Biden, obsessed as he is, will attempt to escalate further. All previous experience however, has shown that no matter how many so-called gamechanger weapons the West throws at Ukraine they never make the difference expected on the battlefield. Russia is winning and winning more and more obviously with each day that passes.

The increasingly brain-challenged Biden will be an ever uglier sight as his obsession, thwarted and rendered null and void as it will be cannot but present the world with the ugliest possible face of a president ever seen. Biden’s departure from power is sure to be ignominious and wrought through with a well deserved humiliation. He will, no doubt, go out ranting and raving, still vainly searching for the exit, hands even more bloody and brain as mindlessly obsessed as ever.

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE IN AN AMERICAN GULAG?

What is the USA fighting for? The aggressive stance it is taking is quite clear but what are the motivations involved and what might the ultimate outcome of America's various global wars be?

The aim of the leadership of the United States is to reverse the trend toward power being shared across our planet. The enemy this leadership fears is multipolarity. To understand what is going on certainly does not require a degree in rocket science, or the more appropriate qualification, a degree in great power politics. What is at stake and the motivations involved are quite clear.

The motivations referred to above that you will hear from North American leaders will involve such issues as the preservation of ‘western values’, the fight against repressive authoritarian regimes and the delivery of all the freedoms that come via democratic institutions. But when have you ever trusted what politicians say? I suspect you would agree that the word of snake oil salesmen is far more trustworthy.

So, what are the true motivations involved in U.S. foreign policy? One is certainly self-interest. Expanding the U.S. economy naturally makes U.S. politicians more popular, more jobs, a higher standard of living for all, and so on. Never forget Trump and his slogan “America First!” Not that he was the first American politician to use this slogan. It was in fact coined by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The phrase can be considered a call for the USA to withdraw from the world. However, this is not what we see happening currently.

The Biden administration is quite obviously acting as a wrecking ball across the planet destroying, or at least attempting to destroy, rivals and those it considers enemies. The aim is clear, to bolster U.S. power while weakening those who rival its power now or who may assist in rivalling its power later. This wrecking ball approach is however, creating as many new enemies fearing and loathing the USA as it does friends who see opportunities in siding with it.

The motivation that lies at the heart of the clear urgency with which the USA and its allies are attempting to disrupt the advent of a multipolar world is the drive to maintain the power and dominance they believe is their birthright, a birthright they have held and nurtured for a century and more. Losing this entitlement to consider the planet rightfully theirs to administer as they please is an unconscionable thought to them. The motivation therefore to avoid this loss is enormously strong.

Currently the sorry land of Ukraine is the focus of this struggle by the western coalition of powers to maintain global manipulative power, the power which they conceive of as their by right and, if some Americans are to be believed, one given by God. With half a million Ukrainians dead or injured and a conflict obviously lost the West urges everyone on toward ever more death and destruction. The urgent necessity to win means that the clear fact of defeat cannot be acknowledged. The carnage must then go on, leading ultimately to the complete collapse of Ukraine.

That Ukraine must be sacrificed in the name of what Washington conceives of as the greater goal, western continued domination, appears to offer no great problem or qualm to U.S. planners. These, the Neocons, have never worried overmuch about the casualties of war or even of the destruction of entire nations. These fundamentalists, the true ‘American Firsters’ have the true supreme goal in mind at all times, one that surmounts all others, the USA as global guardian wielding the ultimate earthly weapon of ‘full spectrum dominance’.

Whether you wish to call it a prison planet or gulag the end result envisaged is the same, the USA having supreme and unassailable power, able to monitor each proxy carefully, pushing in this direction or that at will and sure at each step that its surveillance capacity will snare all incalcitrant entities. The global guardian will strike down at any who dare oppose it. Sweeping powers will enable the guardian of the gulag, the warden of the world, to detect the slightest deviation from the renewed ‘America First!’ policy and consign such deviants to their fate of re-education or worse.

So, how do you like it? If you believe you would then get behind the US/UK/EU push for victory in Ukraine against the Russians. If they are beaten you only have China to deal with and then you are virtually there…

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE IN AN AMERICAN GULAG?

EMBRACING LIES AT RISK OF CAREER DEATH: WITHIN THE WESTERN ELITE BELIEF BUBBLE

Where has objectivity gone regarding the Ukraine conflict within western political & media elites? How can anyone comprehend the conflict in its entirety when only one side is ever depicted by them?

So much of what is going on among the western political elites is strongly reminiscent of the story about the emperor’s new clothes that no one could see. 

From Wikipedia:

‘"The Emperor's New Clothes" is a literary folktale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, about a vain emperor who gets exposed before his subjects. The tale has been translated into over 100 languages.’

You will no doubt be familiar with this story but for those who are not here is a brief synopsis:

From Wikipedia:

‘There is an emperor who has an obsession with fancy new clothes, and spends lavishly on them, at the expense of state matters. One day two con-men visit the emperor's capital. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are incompetent or stupid. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and pretend to go to work. A succession of officials, starting with the emperor's wise and competent minister, and then ending with the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.

Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled. Although startled, the emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever.’

Within the western elite belief bubble there are certain narratives that cannot be contradicted. Anyone even mildly suggesting that these narratives may be wrong or who even gives the slightest impression that perhaps, just maybe they are not completely correct, will certainly be marked down as a danger to the unity considered essential on the issue in question.

Currently, and for over a decade now, the primary issue where absolute unity is demanded of all western elites, both political and media, is Ukraine. The narratives suiting western national interests were agreed long before the current crisis in Ukraine. These narratives will be defended to the end. Any contradictory facts will be kept outside of the belief bubble that every western official keeps in his or her head. Group thought discipline is maintained at all times on pain of if not death then career death at least. If an official in the West at any level mouths any fact not within the agreed narrative that official has no future within the western elite superstructure.

Add to this situation regarding the maintenance of certain “facts” as self-evident and beyond contradiction we have the ‘War Mode’ discipline which also has a history in the West going back to Vladimir Putin’s address in Munich in February of 2007. War Mode stipulates that ‘the enemy’ is to be attacked using every device possible, that nothing even remotely positive shall be said concerning the enemy and that he, she or it will be subject to a diplomacy-free exclusion until destroyed or defeated. The group thought agreement that prevails now in relation to all of the above is evident in every speech made in the West on Russia or Ukraine and in every article printed and published by western legacy media or broadcast via the major TV/video news broadcasters.

Those who attempt to point out the situation above, if identified, will find themselves talked of in the most pejorative terms as the puppets of ‘the enemy’, as the spreaders of misinformation and fake news. Such people or organisations, if their profile reaches a certain level will be subject to attacks attempting to shut them up or at least degrade their ability to reach a wider audience. If the person or organisation becomes so popular that western state officials feel there is a tangible threat to their narratives then an extra level of attack will be mounted incorporating western intelligence agencies using PsyOps (Psychological Operations).

These ‘emperors’ speak of a fixed “reality”, one that they repeat at regular intervals in the hope of making an indelible impression in the minds of their ‘subjects’. In these “realities” emerging directly from within the western elite ‘belief bubble’ Russia made a wholly unprovoked attack upon Ukraine negating all evidence to the contrary stretching back to at least 2014. For them NATO is a wholly benign defensive organisation that wouldn’t hurt a fly, totally ignoring the violence perpetrated by NATO on Serbia and Libya and its use as the primary western weapon against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. They will state unequivocally and quite shamefacedly that Ukraine is a democratic state while maintaining blinkers firmly in place regarding the acts of despotism and dictatorship that have characterised the Ukrainian state in recent times.

Unfortunately for the ‘emperors’ of the West the populace who they look to for support in promulgating the ‘facts’ within the western belief bubble on Ukraine are, in increasing numbers, unconvinced. They smell a rat. Too many actual facts have leaked out from Ukraine over the last two years and more. Too many expert analysts have found ways to contradict and expose the agreed upon narrative fabrications of western state officials. These analysts have no dog in the race except to provide an accurate assessment regarding the genesis of the conflict in Ukraine and the situation there as it continues to unfold. They are far more likely to be trusted than the western officials and the various media productions that maintain an unchanging prejudice regarding one side and a ceaselessly positive treatment of the other.

EMBRACING LIES AT RISK OF CAREER DEATH: WITHIN THE WESTERN ELITE BELIEF BUBBLE

HOW MANY UKRAINIAN LIVES MUST BE LOST IN AN ATTEMPT TO SAVE WESTERN POLITICAL REPUTATIONS?

Russia was never going to be defeated as the western powers hoped, not since it survived the onslaught of western sanctions. From that point of realisation the West ought to have sued for peace.

The current figure for Ukrainian army losses since the outbreak of violent confrontation in February 2022 stands at just over half a million. Another thousand or so are added to that figure each day. These losses were brought about by the complete absence of anything approaching diplomacy regarding Russia’s concerns over its security. 

The violence began much earlier of course, in the first few months of 2014. It was then that the Ukrainian army arrived in eastern Ukraine and began their campaign of terror against the civilian population there. You can be forgiven for not knowing anything about this campaign as western mainstream/legacy media maintained a vow of silence concerning it for an entire decade. Even now it will not be spoken of by any mainstream media news outlet across the western world.

There were reports from eastern Ukraine but they were composed of an inference that every wrong occurring there was the result of Russian influence. This was a crime of omission by all western mainstream news media editors. The deaths were reported but not those who were responsible. They were silent on this point. It was left to the biased slant implying Russian wrong-doing to give the impression to readers and viewers alike that it had been the Russians who had caused these deaths.

In fact it was the Ukrainian armed forces and neo-Nazi militias who had committed these crimes against humanity. By setting up their mortars and sending random shells into the villages, towns and cities of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions it cannot possibly be more obvious to news editors in the West who is responsible. Yet not a word was spoken clarifying this clear fact. The Ukrainian army laid siege to these regions and began a slaughter in 2014 that continues to this day.

Even now you will not hear the fact of the continuing Ukrainian army crimes against humanity, against innocent civilians, that go on day after day. It simply doesn’t suit the common elite western interest to relate this fact. The civilian population of these regions are already dead to the cold, calculating minds of western politicians, news editors and commentators. They have been rendered null and void ever since they stood up to be counted against the west-assisted insurrectionists who stole their democracy on Kiev’s Maidan Square in 2014.

Despite the horrors perpetrated upon the Russian-speaking civilian population of the Donbass regions Vladimir Putin went every extra mile to gain them the level of autonomy that could bring peace about. He was thwarted by notorious trickery by the western elites, people like Angela Merkel and Francoise Hollande who never had any intention of moving the situation toward a peaceful outcome, there goal was to give the Ukrainian regime time to rearm and bring its army up to NATO specifications. They conspired in essence to move an already bad situation toward an even worse one of all out war. 

The absolutely horrendous toll of lost Ukrainian troops which heads this commentary grows each day. The hands of Merkel and Hollande run bloody as they are directly responsible. And even now, we see not a single leading western politician in the USA, UK or EU calling for negotiations that could lead to peace. No diplomacy is advocated, all that you hear are calls for more war, more weapons and more munitions for Ukraine. War, war and ever more war. A thousand are lost to the Ukrainian army per day yet no one among the western political elites or those who run mainstream media news call for an end to this bloodbath.

The western political elites must know that their long planned undermining of Russia and regime change there has failed. As soon as it became clear that Russia was not going to be brought to catastrophic ruin through the West’s sanctions after being goaded and pressured to start its operation in Ukraine. The Russian economy was meant to collapse. It didn’t. The Russian population was supposed to rise up and sweep away the present Russian hierarchy. It didn’t happen. Yet still the western elites press on in the knowledge that the gambit to bring down Russia is causing thousands of lives to be lost to no purpose save one, a vain attempt to somehow, some way to save their reputations,

Fantasy, wishful thinking and barefaced lies are in epidemic proportions across all western elites who have any connection to the situation in Ukraine. The uniformity of the delusion they suffer under is both striking and frightening. They desperately seek to guard their reputations at the expense of immense Ukrainian suffering. What won’t such people do in support of their impossible aim of bringing Russia down? What atrocities are such people willing to contemplate? How many hundreds of thousands of partially trained, Ukrainian cannon-fodder are they willing to see die or be horrendously injured just to save what is overwhelmingly vital for all of them, their oh-so-important reputations?

THE CRUSADER STATE IS PLAYING ALL ITS USUAL GAMES

* Crusader State is the description given to the U.S.A. by Professor John J. Mearsheimer.

Despite all its rhetoric about all the rogue states it projects onto the world there is in reality only one primary rogue state on the planet, that is the crusader state of the USA.

The Biden administration has finally decided upon the fate of Ukraine. It has recognised that Russia cannot now be stopped from taking all territory to the Dnieper river in Ukraine. The acknowledgement that this will occur has crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s on future policy for their proxies in Kiev. With Russia at the Dnieper the regime will then attack Russia using long-range missiles. This will be the semi-frozen conflict that suits Washington’s purposes. Russia will be required to use further revenues to fight with the regime on a continuing basis, those areas Russia has incorporated into the Russian Federation will continue to be disputed as part of Ukraine and Washington can now turn its attention toward China.

Blinken has just returned from China where the first part of the USA’s game plan for the immediate future was initiated. This comprised the gambit of a spurious warning to Beijing that if it didn’t stop supporting Russia in Ukraine there would be consequences. Of course there was no expectation that China would ever abandon Russia as an ally and the consequences are already prepared and were always intended to be set in motion with the justification that Beijing didn’t do what it was told.

The biggest lie Blinken told in Beijing was that China played a crucial part in assisting Russia in Ukraine, that Russia couldn’t do what it is doing there without China’s crucial assistance in supplying military equipment and parts. This lie was necessary to make China’s part in the conflict appear a major factor, something truly objectionable, objectionable enough for the ‘consequences’ lined up to be fully justifiable. The rhetoric will be along the lines of China being a fundamental threat to European democracy and quite possibly will include the resurrection of the old standby. ‘Evil Empire’.

Blinken made the claim that Russia could hardly do a thing in Ukraine without China’s help just as Russia finds that its military capacity is in fact greater than required and that an excess of weaponry and munitions will now be stockpiled. To assert that Russia needs China to continue fighting in Ukraine is blatant hogwash. A necessary hogwash however, required to give a patina of surface credibility to the financial and economic attacks that the USA has long planned for China. For China was always to be the main target for the crusader state. The original plan for dissolving and reconstitution the Russian state via conflict with Ukraine was meant to be accomplished over a very short time period as Russia disintegrated due to the financial and economic sanctions applied to it. This having failed a new game plan (detailed at the head of this commentary) has been agreed.

The game plan for Russia has very little likelihood of success however. Russia, having arrived at the Dnieper will continue to have overwhelming superiority of both offence and defence. Russia’s air defence systems will repel all but a very few Ukrainian missiles. It will also down any F16s or other aircraft the West supplies the Kiev regime. Russia’s own air force will have air superiority across all that is left of Ukraine while Russia’s satellites, having far less territory for their surveillance range will allow accurate targeting for missile systems brought up to the new battle lines by the Dnieper. Russia will still hold all the cards in terms of resources, manpower, munitions supply and weaponry. Rump Ukraine will not be any better off and in fact will be much easier to induce into agreeing to negotiations leading to a final settlement.

Sooner or later there will have to be elections in Ukraine. Either that or a permanent dictatorship will be installed with Zelensky as the 'Great Leader’ continuing his already draconian rule of repression and security apparatus intimidation. However, should elections take place there can be little doubt that the Ukrainian people, given the chance, will run Zelensky and his minions out of office with alacrity. The new president and government of Ukraine will then without doubt reflect the by now long determined and fervent wish for peace with Russia. Washington’s plans will then lie in ruins with no possible way forward in their scheme to achieve regime change in Russia and the dismantlement of the Russian state and break up of the nation into manageable parts.

Yet still the machinations of the American political elites will continue. Plan after plan will be agreed and initiated for there is clearly no retreating for the crusader state. Always another crusade will be required, another overseas enterprise that can feed its military industrial complex and in so doing guarantee its supply of contributions to their electoral campaign coffers. The deadly game plan for others will continue. Yet Russia will be out of their grasp and Ukraine also. The focus on China and their determination to make it the mother of all crusades will become their final, last gasp attempt to shore up their fast ending dominance over others. De-dollarization by the time this point is reached will have reached a peak and finally, sometime in the following years the crusaders will finally find they have undeniably lost every last one of their iniquitous crusades. 

OLD, AMATEUR, SICK & UNTRAINED - THE UKRAINIAN ARMY NOW

As the conflict in Ukraine grinds on myths that were spread in the West regarding a noble struggle by a heroic Ukraine against an evil Russia are being exploded by the day. A tragedy is being exposed.

The Ukrainian army was sent to eastern Ukraine to assert the authority of the illegal Ukrainian government that took over after the Maidan coup in 2014. It was an army that had suffered underinvestment of all kinds in the years preceding this time. Subsequently its cack-handed approach to the civilian population in eastern Ukraine was unsurprising. Violence soon broke out as resistance to this armed force was inevitable. Diplomacy ought to have been the way forward but after the ultraviolence seen in the insurrection that brought the new regime into being (backed by the USA, UK and EU) diplomacy had been all but abandoned in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian army sent to discipline the rebellious majority in eastern Ukraine, after stirring up the resentment and opposition that led inevitably to violence were however, not strongly motivated enough for the regime and so the most extreme of the ultranationalists who had played a decisive part in the Maidan coup were used for this purpose. Given mortars and shells they set up outside Donbass villages, towns and cities and fired at random into them. They were unconcerned where these shells fell or who they killed or maimed as a consequence. The most radical of those who arrived hated ALL those who spoke Russian rather than Ukrainian they called ‘Moskals’. Those they considered to be Russian no matter that they lived in Ukraine. They spoke Russian and that was enough for these extremists. Whether the elderly, women, children, it didn’t matter to them. they were all Moskals, Russians. The structures most commonly hit were the Soviet era residential blocks but also hit were hospitals, school buildings and government offices.  

The radicals off the Maidan were eventually incorporated officially into the Ukrainian national guard and it remains the case that these are the ideologically-motivated forces that continue to fight in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict today. Their numbers however are much reduced by this point due to the Russian military tactic of attrition. The numbers too of the NATO-trained troops have been very much reduced also. And the Ukrainian army that first arrived in the Donbass to discipline the civilian population there is all but gone, wiped out by the overwhelming advantage the Russian army has had over the last two years. 

Now the Ukrainian regime is scrambling to take whoever it can get into its now much reduced army. For some time now it has been incorporating increasingly older men and at times women into its forces. It began many months ago to violently take men off the street, bundling them into cars, giving them a week or two of training (if that) before sending them off to be cannon-fodder on the front lines. The average age of a Ukrainian trooper now stands at 43 years of age. Even a disabled, Downs Syndrome man has been seen in uniform at the front. Those being sent there include the increasingly young and always the partially trained. They then find themselves in a meat-grinder where they never even see a Russia but are only pummelled day and night by Russian artillery fire.

Yet even while the above goes on relentlessly day by day with a toll of some 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers being lost to the battlefield and Russia taking ever more territory the western political elites refuse to contemplate peace negotiations. Their goal was always to weaken Russia and initiate regime change there and this goal remains in place. The hapless and largely incapable Ukrainian troops, the majority of whom by now never wished to be there, are mere tools for the West and expendable tools at that. The cynicism involved is off the scale. Only the ideologically motivated neo-Nazi forces such as the AZOV and Right Sector monsters fight on enthusiastically. There can be no question and increasingly so, that all other Ukrainians who have been sent into the eastern meatgrinder simply wish to go home to their families.

There is no shining white innocent Ukraine fighting the evil black-hearted Russians. That myth is long exploded as more and more look deeper into the West-generated origins of this tragic war that Russia never wanted and tried (for almost a decade) to prevent. The Ukrainians who have been led to the slaughter by the West, apart from the most extreme nationalists are hapless and helpless victims of the Kiev regime led by Zelensky and his western masters. They are ultimately the most intolerably and cynically abused victims in this entire tragic scenario, along with the entire nation of Ukraine. mere pawns in the western ambition to undermine Russia. They deserve our sympathy as they die in ever-increasing numbers. The old, amateur, sick and untrained.

IS VON DER LEYEN’S WARMONGERING BUREAUCRACY ABOUT TO FALL

 

Narratives on Russia and Ukraine by Europe's political elites are totally out of synch with popular opinion. The disconnect between its elites and Europe's population now awaits an opportunity for expression.

Viktor Orban of Hungary is leading the charge, however Robert Fico of Slovakia cannot be far behind. The EU, led by the much hated Ursula von der Leyen, could be facing another kind of revolt, from the European populace. The signs are all there when you know where to look. Sentiment on the war policies exhibited by the vast majority of western leaders including those who head the EU is clear. The man and women on the street don’t buy the narratives on Ukraine broadcast constantly by their political elites. As the conflict in Ukraine has gone on people have gradually become more curious as to its origins and find that their leaders are, to put it baldly, lying through their teeth on the subject.

Western leaders have got themselves into a real mess over Ukraine and rather than attempt to extricate themselves from that mess by facing reality they have instead chosen to get themselves even deeper into the mire by continuing to spread their fantasies. This of course would not matter all that much except for one fact. Hundreds of thousands have died as a result. up to half a million in fact. By relentlessly pushing for ever more war rather than accepting the offers for a negotiated peace by Russia the Europeans have slavishly followed the lead of the USA with disastrous consequences for the Ukrainians.

The equanimity with which the European political elites have, through following the North American lead, brought half a million Ukrainians to their death and blithely contemplated the destruction of Ukraine in order to weaken Russia is an unconscionable stain on Europe. Using NATO to pressure Russia into its special military operation through the sham process of Minsk is well known to Europeans. Merkel, Hollande and later, Macron used near criminal deception to avoid the peaceful outcome Russia sought. The majority of Europeans can surely not have missed the many articles describing this shameful process.

With elections coming ever closer across Europe the likelihood is strong that a great many of those who have promoted war with Russia through both Ukraine and NATO will be swept from power. This sea change in European politics cannot come soon enough. As we have seen in both Hungary and Slovakia the urgency among the general population for change in Europe is there. Soon its voice is likely to be heard all across the European continent and the sound of that common voice is almost certainly going to be resoundingly loud.