Western Elites Exploit Ukraine Conflict To Lower Standard Of Living

Western elites are exploiting the Ukraine conflict to lower the standard of living

RT

It’s impossible to escape the constant undertone of the need to sacrifice for the greater global good or else be viewed as selfish. And now, you risk even worse branding by the thought police if you don’t fall in line with this new outlook: That of a Putin-enabler. 

 Since Russia launched its military campaign in Ukraine, Western elites have been arguing that we all must collectively and senselessly concede to lowering our basic standards of living in order to hit back at President Vladimir Putin. In reality, all it does is allow them to continue to profit from our increasingly lowered expectations while all we get in return is the satisfaction of our own virtue signaling. 

French Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire called on all the French to “make an effort” on their energy consumption to cope with the rising prices. People should “realize that we’re entering into a new world” amid the conflict in Ukraine, in which we “must accelerate our independence vis-à-vis fossil fuel,” he said in an interview with the news channel BFMTV earlier in March.  

Meanwhile, France’s ecological transition minister, Barbara Pompili, announced that public institutions would be asked to “reduce by one degree” their heating in response to the spike in energy prices since the onset of the conflict. 

Le Maire let the cat out of the bag in evoking a “new world” – a phrase which seems to be on the lips of top western officials these days, including US President Joe Biden earlier this week at a business round table. “Now is a time when things are shifting and there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it,” Biden said. “We’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.”

And chief EU diplomat Josep Borrell has also asked Europeans to “cut the umbilical cord that connects with Russia,”by using less heating, apparently unaware that it could potentially be redirected to other markets while Europeans sit around waiting for their newfound beaming virtue to generate heat. 

There has long been American pressure on Europe to cut itself off from Russian gas. The hostility towards the needs of the average citizen living within the European Union has been framed as looking out for their best interests against Russia. The “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act of 2019” was designed to sanction corporations involved in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline construction to “address Russian pipeline projects that create risks to U.S. national security, threaten Europe’s energy security, and consequently, endanger Europe’s political and economic welfare.” 

More....