China has become a superpower surpassing the US and sells Russia an abundance of inexpensive high-quality goods and exchanges high-quality military technology. This allows Russia to fight with higher tech weapons in greater quantaties on their doorstep. The EU thought it was going to be another Iraq/Afghanistan where the US would do the heavy lifting, waltz in and then the EU would chime in by patrolling areas.

So dumb people who can’t do multiplications, but can count months, won’t panic.

On a more serious not, most people skim the headline, read “three times” and think
“Wow! There’s some work to do!” instead of
“Twelve times!? Then Russia is winning. Wait, Russia is winning?
Why is this newspaper not stating that Russia is winning?
There’s no way Ukraine can win with one bullet versus twelve.
Shouldn’t this be a giant issue?
Why is there no giant debate on this?
Why is my newspaper demanding a debate on this?
Should Ukraine even continue to risk sending its soldiers to fight a war
where the enemy has twelve times the amount of ammo?”

US/UK/EU/AU/NZ Media:

“Taiwan is freedom and democracy.”
“China is authoritarian. (Shows footage of police retaliating against ultra-aggressive Hong Kong rioters or journalists doing reporting on the middle of a busy road or someone’s garden before being ushered away by traffic cops or security)”

Done.

I wonder if Zelensky signed that deal knowing this would happen.

Rutte is a Dutch lib.
US leftists are irrelevant unless they reform or topple their regime,
with the former being the more unrealistic option.

You made it sound like anything changed.

I remember it and it’s still the same with the only two differences now being that for one the
voices of the democratic socialists are slowly going back to their roots,
becoming more and more anti-NATO.
And two, the fearmongering is now geared towards Russia.
Rutte’s bootlicking and increasing EU’s military budget while buying US equipment is not just what Trump wanted,
but the Euro libs as well.

I’ve had him as prime minister of my country for many years, so this is no surprise.

Rutte is trans-atlanticist. These people will do anything to keep the peace with the US.
They’re Joshua Wongers with diplomatic talent.

What else would or should Rutte have done?

His allegiance is with the liberal party,
without the progressive party and without the social liberal party.
There’s some people flocking to his party these days thinking that liberal party
must mean left-wing through US cultural osmosis, but they remain pro-atlanticist and right-wing.

Don’t know about any of it, but I’ve had Rutte as my prime minister.
This reads like the way he talks and thinks.
The biggest strength of Rutte is that he’s a chameleon.

Why would this not be real?
It looks legit to me.
It’s got all the little idiosyncracy hallmarks Rutte has.
I don’t think Trump could make this up.

Really?
I’d say it hits it completely on point the way Rutte is, an anglophile that doesn’t want to rustle too many feathers unless it’s against leaders of countries outside of NATO.

His party is super-pro-Israel and super-anti-Russia.
What’s he gonna complain about?

If you know Mark Rutte long enough, then you know it’s his style of flattering a person by mimicking him, mixed in with his own style of speech.

I can tell you as a Dutchman, reading this I could hear Mark Rutte’s voice and it aligns with his anglophile suck-up character.
I couldn’t see him writing it any other way.

It’s Mark Rutte. He certainly would write it like this.

If you know Mark Rutte long enough, you can tell the difference.

This is Mark Rutte.
He would totally say “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way” to flatter Trump.
Incessant comma splices is I guess typically Dutch and indicative to the way Rutte talks. I sometimes do it too.
He’s a liberal, making him almost as right-wing as Ursula von der Leyen, not a social democrat
or a democratic socialist or left of that.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
Liberals are right-wing. Always have been, always will be.

Dutch liberals are not under the progressive umbrella,
so while the Dutch progressive party is advocating to stop the war,
Dutch liberals are in full support of it.

I hope Afghanistan will stabilize soon.

They’ve been thrown out since 2020.

Why go through so many countries to reach Iran instead of going through Afghanistan?