Deterioration of Europe: Update

Assalamu alaikum. Warahmatullahi wa barakatu, everyone. Here's another update on the deteriorating situation in Europe. As I said yesterday, gas shipments from Russia to Europe have been completely halted indefinitely through the Nord Stream pipeline. Now, again, officially, this is for technical reasons, but it probably isn't.

And it really doesn't matter anyway because European countries have said that they are going to set a price cap on Russian gas, and Russia has said that they will simply not sell to any country that places a price cap on their gas. So even if Nord Stream is reactivated, it will only be until the December when the price caps take effect. Now you should know that European countries have a stock of natural gas, and their stocks are somewhere between 80% in most of the European countries. Now if their stocks remain as they are now and they don't get increased between now and November, those stocks will be completely depleted by January or 2023. So, basically, in the middle of winter, they will have no more gas.

Now, of course, a number of things are happening as a result of energy inflation across Europe. For example, household incomes in The UK are expected to be slashed by around 10%, which is going to send about 3,000,000 people into poverty. But perhaps more alarming for The UK is that six out of 10 British factories are at risk of shutting down because of high cost of energy. And according to Rishi Sunak, Britons should be prepared for blackouts this winter. If you were prime minister, would you plan for blackouts?

Would it be right to have some kind of rationing to try to stop that happening? Well, what I've said is that we shouldn't rule anything out. In Germany, the producer of AdBlue is shutting down. Now it already shut down in Slovakia earlier this year, and now it's going to shut down in Germany. So what is AdBlue?

Well, AdBlue is a fluid that is added to diesel powered vehicles to reduce carbon emissions. So what happens if your car or your truck or whatever runs out of AdBlue? Your car stops moving. Between 30 to 40% of all cars on the roads in Europe are diesel powered vehicles, and around 99% of heavy duty trucks and transport vehicles are powered by diesel. So, obviously, if these trucks shut down, if these transport vehicles shut down, that's going to cause severe disruption to the supply chain within Europe for the transport of food and other products and goods, and potentially will put thousands of truckers out of work.

Now in Sweden, because of the high energy costs, the Swedish government is going to lend 250,000,000,000 krona to the electricity companies in Sweden to prevent them from going bankrupt by Monday. So again, as you can expect, public discontent is spreading across Europe, and it's being met with a few different responses. As I've talked about before, in Germany, there are plans for mass demonstrations by both the far right nationalist groups as well as leftist groups. And now also labor unions are planning to, engage in mass demonstrations and potentially go on strike. In response to this, Germany has announced that they will be deploying the army to support law enforcement and police on the streets to clamp down on protesters.

But the government is also going to spend, €65,000,000,000 in an aid package, what they call a cost of living aid package to the population, which is basically just a bribe to get them to comply with the impoverishment program of the government. Basically, it's a capitulation money. And, of course, it is highly unlikely to prevent anyone from demonstrating or protesting. Now a number of people have asked me about how all of this will impact Muslims in Europe. In other words, Muslims are going to obviously suffer the same economic hardships as everyone else, but is there going to be an extra hardship on Muslims in terms of being targeted by right wing nationalist groups or really any extremist political groups on on on any side of the political spectrum?

And I would have to say that the answer is yes, most likely. Just over the weekend, a masjid was burned down in France and it is believed to have been a deliberate arson, a deliberate attack. And attacking Muslims, demonizing Muslims is something that everyone pretty much agrees on across the political spectrum in Europe. It works for everybody. It's a useful tactic for any and every political faction.

Everyone is happy to have a community to persecute, particularly when their own lives are becoming increasingly miserable. Now let me reiterate, you have to understand that what's happening in Europe is a proxy war by The US against Europe. And by US, I don't mean the American government or the American people or American policymakers. I'm talking about owners and controllers of global financialized capital. These people are a national.

They don't belong to any nation. They don't belong to any country, but The United States is their most powerful instrument. So you have to understand that what's happening in Europe right now is manufactured with the goals of destabilization and disruption. Now some of that disruption will be organic as people naturally react to the, worsening conditions of their lives, But some of that disruption and violence will be organized and coordinated for the particular purpose of spreading strife to distract the population from the neoliberal power and cash grab that is underway across Europe. So Muslims in Europe have to be very cautious and very careful, and you should have a very limited expectation that your rights and your safety will be protected by the state.