War

Norm Macdonald - Scared of Germany
Fanatical Comedy

America and Israel attacked Iran, and Iran's response is to... attack everybody?
The Daily Show

The Newer World Order by Richard Fernandez

Stolen entire from Belmont Club: The Newer World Order by Richard Fernandez

Back in the bipolar world, it was easy for the public to take policy sides: it was their team versus our team. Later, when unipolarity was in vogue, things were even simpler. All a member of the public had to do was take cues from the international community. But things are harder to understand now. Are the EU and US even on the same side? What is the game? Who is on first? The average guy is confused.

In trying to make sense of international affairs, let's consider — without necessarily endorsing — what the declared goals of the Trump administration are. The obvious place to begin is the National Security Strategy document itself. Based on the Trump administration's official 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) and related policy statements as of early 2026, the principal geopolitical goal can be summarized as restoring and securing American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere under an "America First" framework.

The plan is to use the Western Hemisphere as a foundation, enabling the U.S. to project power globally from a position of domestic strength and regional dominance, while reducing overcommitments elsewhere through transactional diplomacy, economic nationalism, and peace through strength. This approach marks a deliberate shift away from post-Cold War multilateralism and global primacy, toward a more restrained, interest-based posture that emphasizes spheres of influence, burden-sharing with allies, and countering great-power rivals such as China primarily through economic competition rather than ideological confrontation.

The most radical implication of "America First" is that it necessarily implies a Britain First, France First, Germany First over the UN or EU First. The Trump administration asserts the primacy and fundamental importance of the nation-state as a universal principle. But it is not universally accepted. Other people believe a global world is a better world. None of the big multilateral agencies wants to go away; nor do the ambitious international big shots really want to go back to just being president, prime minister or taoiseach of their relatively small national stages. They want to be in the big leagues with the POTUS and the emperor of China.

This puts America First and its ideological allies (mainly the European populists) at daggers drawn with the internationalists who seek a 'balanced interdependence, green deals, and autonomy in tech/finance to avoid over-reliance on the U.S. or China, but most especially to remain relevant in a world that the giants otherwise dominate. In an America-First world, the internationalists would cease to be a world influence on par with China or the U.S. They would simply be second-rank nations, and that would be wrong in principle.

The MAGA critique of multilateralism as articulated in the National Security Strategy is worth exploring, whether you believe it or not. It has two parts. First, it asserts that Europe has declined to less than half of what it used to be in the 1990s. "Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness." The second, more serious charge is that multilateralism is promoting civilizational suicide, deliberately dissolving its constituent nation states using the solvent of mass immigration in order to produce some Frankenstein multicultural monster. The European Union and other transnational bodies have undermined political liberty and sovereignty; migration policies are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and the loss of national identities and self-confidence.

Whatever the merits of multilateralism in principle, it is suicide in fact. Should present trends continue, the NSS argues, the continent will be unrecognizable in twenty years or less. Few European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. "Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons."

Thus a line is drawn across the Western world. The nationals versus the internationals. The MAGA ideology has resonated, at least in part, with populist parties across Europe, as manifested by their considerable electoral gains. Even Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has articulated it, saying at Davos: “Instead of becoming a truly global power, Europe remains a beautiful but fragmented kaleidoscope of small and middle powers. Instead of taking the lead in defending freedom worldwide, especially when America’s focus shifts elsewhere, Europe looks lost, trying to convince the U.S. president to change. But he will not change.” In response, the media responded with gimmicks. It noted that Emmanuel Macron stole the show by wearing sunglasses. “When French President Emmanuel Macron strode to the stage in Davos wearing a pair of reflective aviator sunglasses, many thought he was sending a message: It was time for someone in Europe to stand up to President Trump.”

Was Macron evoking Tom Cruise’s cocky fighter pilot Maverick in “Top Gun,” signaling that he wouldn’t back down against Trump’s demands for control of Greenland? Others thought he might be throwing shade by wearing aviator-style sunglasses favored by former President Biden, the object of Trump’s constant derision.

But the hard reality is that if the internationalists want to emulate “Top Gun,” they must buy their own jet; they can't continue on the U.S. taxpayer dime. Painful as it is, they must ante up. Friedrich Merz, the chancellor of Germany, urged European leaders in Davos to strengthen their militaries and shed bureaucracy to survive in an international order whose “very foundations have been shaken” by Russia, China and the United States.

“This new world of great powers is being built on power, on strength, and when it comes to it, on force. It’s not a cozy place,” Mr. Merz said. “We do not have to accept this new reality as fate. We are not at the mercy of this new world order. We do have a choice. We can shape the future. To succeed, we must face harsh realities and chart our course with cleareyed realism.”

The America Firsters understand, perhaps cynically, the human urge of the twilight leaders to keep wearing sunglasses, and so, to gratify this longing, Trump created these bizarre sinecures such as the Gaza Board of Peace, and probably something similar for a Ukraine peace settlement. This performs the dual role of outflanking the UN — which honestly has disqualified itself by its inutility — and co-option, providing a pasture where the old internationalist bulls can graze.

That is the state of the geopolitical argument. Only history can tell whether Washington is right or committing a monumental mistake. But there is no question that it is the Trump administration, not the men in the sunglasses, who have made the big play. Time alone can determine the result, but Washington has made its move, Will it inaugurate disaster or a better world? Theodore Roosevelt once observed there's no way to know but find out. He wrote:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Tulsi Versus the War Mongers

Tulsi Gabbard at her January Senate confirmation hearing (Kevin Dietsch/ Getty Images via NPR) 

Great story on ZeroHedge:

'A Lie And Propaganda': Gabbard Fact-Checks Reuters' Russia Scaremongering In Real Time

I suspect the military industrial complex of fomenting this scaremongering so they can sell more weapons and so feather their own nests with more gold than you or I can imagine. They don't care about peace, or freedom, or doing what's right, all they care about is getting a bigger slice of the pie for themselves, and they don't care if their actions kill a zillions peasants.

Peace through having a bigger hammer

 Aerial Refueling the B-52 by Senior Airman Jessica Do

The above image headlined this announcement:

Valdai Club to Discuss the Results of 2025 in the Area of International Security

I found the combination a little unsettling. I shouldn't, but I did.

Nord Stream Sabotage & the War in Ukraine

Nord Stream

From The Valdai Discussion Club:

‘Eurasia’s Geoeconomic Reshuffling’: The Multipolar Effect of the Nord Stream Explosion by Valdir da Silva Bezerra

Since the mid-20th century, Russia and Europe have established a complementary and mutually beneficial relationship in the energy sector. Now, very few people remember, but when Putin came to power in 2000, one of the new president’s ideas was to strengthen Europe’s political independence by combining the continent’s technological and industrial capabilities with Russia’s abundance of natural resources. For Putin, a united Europe was paramount to establishing continental peace, based on a fair relationship between the West and Russia. Nevertheless, in order to achieve this unity, both sides had to abandon the past stereotypes of the Cold War era; otherwise, there could be no ‘Greater Europe’, much less a united one. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, politicians in Washington were also aware of these talks about combining Russian energy assets with Europe’s industrial might.

That’s why, starting in the early 2000s, United States policymakers began to raise concerns about Europe’s “dependence on Russian energy” during official talks with their Atlantic partners, instilling fears that the continent was about to become hostage to Moscow’s ‘geopolitical ambitions’. Taking things a step further, after the Ukrainian crisis of 2014, Washington began threatening European companies with sanctions for their involvement in geoeconomic and geostrategic projects, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was slated to connect Germany and Russia via the Baltic Sea.

Finally, following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the world witnessed the most consequential act of infrastructure sabotage in European history, with the Nord Stream explosions of September 2022. In fact, the Nord Stream blast seemed to follow one of the most critical tenets of 20th-century British politics, formulated by the geographer Halford Mackinder, who advised against an alliance between Germany and Russia, as this would enable the Eurasian landmass to grow stronger than Great Britain’s sea power. Within that context, the cutting of Russia’s ‘umbilical cord’ to Europe represented the materialisation of Mackinder’s very advice, but at the cost of European taxpayers.

Before the blasts, Nord Stream 1 alone supplied about 55 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year, covering roughly 15% of all European gas consumption. The sudden loss of this infrastructure contributed to the surge in energy prices across the continent: by late 2022, wholesale natural gas prices in Europe had spiked to more than €300 per megawatt-hour—over 10 times higher than the average between 2016 and 2020. Industries dependent on cheap gas, especially in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, saw production slowdowns and temporary shutdowns, with German chemical output falling by roughly 10% in 2022. Households also faced soaring heating and electricity bills, prompting EU governments to spend over €600 billion in subsidies and emergency measures to cushion the impact. Beyond the economic shock, the explosions increased Europe’s vulnerability by forcing rapid diversification toward costlier liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and exposing the strategic risks of critical infrastructure sabotage.

An economic reshuffling also took place in Eurasia, while the amount of Russian gas flowing to Europe dropped to a minimum. Until 2021, Russia’s share in Europe’s total imports of natural gas was 43%. In 2023, this figure was down to only 14%. In Europe, the response to the Nord Stream explosion, as mentioned earlier, was marked by a diversification of gas suppliers and a change in gas logistics. If, in 2013, 82% of European gas imports came via pipelines (234 bcm) and only 18% (51 bcm) in liquefied form (LNG), by 2023, the situation had drastically reversed. LNG now represents approximately 60% of all gas imports (169 bcm) in Europe, while pipeline imports have fallen to 40% (111 bcm). That marks a 331% increase in LNG purchases by Europe over the course of a single decade! In this new scenario, the United States emerged as the leading supplier of LNG to Europe. Now, the North Americans account for approximately 45% of Europe’s LNG imports, followed by Qatar, which contributes 12% (on the other hand, Norway established itself as the largest pipeline gas supplier, accounting for about 33% of Europe’s total imports). As a result, Europe has increased its dependence on the United States, both politically and economically.

 

The European Union Is Going to War

Excerpt from The European Union Is Going to War by Misa Djurkovic:

But Brussels has also become the bearer of neo-interventionism, that is, those trends that seek to maintain the hegemony of the Western world even at the cost of new cold and real wars, wherever possible in the world. Essentially, Brussels, as the simultaneous headquarters of NATO and the EU, with the inevitable help of London and the exiled American deep state, has become a symbol for what James Jatras beautifully defined when he said that transatlanticism now goes inevitably with transgenderism.

I thought I put up another post about transatlanticism, but I cannot find it.

Update later this morning. Found my post about atlanticism.

Screw You, Screwworm

Screwworm Fly

The Village Hemorrhoid is talking about the screwworm making inroads into Mexico. Wasn't supposed to get this far north. Something needs to be done. I expect the gummint is doing something. Let's hope it's effective.

Mexico seems to be a bit of a mess. I was thinking we could solve that problem by making them the 52nd state, after we annex Canada. We do that and the USA would cover the entire North American continent. Wait, isn't that common thing in science fiction novels? The Noram Complex? Maybe, I'm pretty sure I remember reading it somewhere, but Google isn't helping.

Of course, since Mexico is such a mess maybe we don't want it as a state, but it might work well as a colony. Of course any number of people would object, but even if we treated Mexico like white men have always treated colonies of colored people, could it be any worse than it is now? Besides, in this 'enlightened' age we might treat them considerably better. I don't see much chance of the USA taking over Mexico in the next ten years or so, but who knows? There could be some major upheaval next week in lower Elbonia that will turn the world on it's head.

Previous post on the subject here.

WW3?

Vladimir Zelensky and Joe Biden. ©  Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Brothers in Grifterism

Stolen entire from RT.

Here’s why the West has so far failed to start World War III by Tarik Cyril Amar

The New York Times “exposé” on the US-Ukraine partnership contains no surprises, but the underlying revelation is stunning.

Under the title 'The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine', The New York Times has published a long expose that has made a splash. It is a long article advertised – with a lumbering clunkiness that betrays cramping politics – as the “untold story of America’s hidden role in Ukrainian military operations against Russia’s invading armies.”

And it clearly aspires to be sensational: a revelation with a whiff of the famous Pentagon Papers that, when leaked to that same New York Times and the Washington Post in 1971, revealed what a mass-murderous fiasco America’s Vietnam War really was.

Yet, in reality, this time the New York Times is offering something less impressive by magnitudes. And the issue is not that the Pentagon Papers were longer. What really makes “The Partnership” so underwhelming are two features: It is embarrassingly conformist, reading like a long exercise in rooting for the home team, the US, by access journalism: Based on hundreds of interviews with movers and shakers, this is really the kind of “investigation” that boils down to giving everyone interviewed a platform for justifying themselves as good as they can and as much as they like.

With important exceptions. For the key strategy of exculpation is simple. Once you see through the rather silly group-therapy jargon of a tragic erosion of “trust” and sad misunderstandings, it is the Ukrainians that get the blame for the US not winning its war against Russia, in their country and over their dead bodies.

Because one fundamental conceit of “The Partnership” is that the war could have been won by the West, through Ukraine. What seems to never even have entered the author’s mind is the simple fact that this was always an absurd undertaking. Accordingly, the other thing that hardly makes it onto his radar screen is the crucial importance of Russia’s political and military actions and reactions.


This, hence, is an article that, in effect, explains losing a war against Russia without ever noticing that this may have happened because the Russians were winning it. In that sense, it stands in a long tradition: Regarding Napoleon’s failed campaign of 1812 and Hitler’s crash between 1941 and 1945, all too many contemporary and later Western observers have made the same mistake: For them it’s always the weather, the roads (or their absence), the timing, and the mistakes of Russia’s opponents. Yet it’s never – the Russians. This reflects old, persistent, and massive prejudices about Russia that the West cannot let go of. And, in the end, it is always the West which ends up suffering from them the most.

In the case of the Ukraine War, the main scapegoats, in the version of “The Partnership,” are now Vladimir Zelensky and his protégé and commander-in-chief General Aleksandr Syrsky, but there is room for devastating side swipes at Syrsky’s old rival Valery Zaluzhny and a few lesser lights as well.

Perhaps the only Ukrainian officer who looks consistently good in “The Partnership” is Mikhail Zabrodsky, that is, the one – surprise, surprise – who worked most closely with the Americans and even had a knack of flatteringly imitating their Civil War maneuvers. Another, less prominent recipient of condescending praise is General Yury Sodol. He is singled out as an “eager consumer” of American advice who, of course, ends up succeeding where less compliant pupils fail.

Zabrodsky and Sodol may very well be decent officers who do not deserve this offensively patronizing praise. Zelensky, Syrsky, and Zaluzhny certainly deserve plenty of very harsh criticism. Indeed, they deserve being tried. But constructing a stab-in-the-back legend around them, in which Ukrainians get blamed the most for making the US lose a war that the West provoked is perverse. As perverse as the latest attempts by Washington to turn Ukraine into a raw materials colony, as a reward for being such an obedient proxy.

With all its fundamental flaws, there are intriguing details in “The Partnership.” They include, for instance, a European intelligence chief openly acknowledging – as early as spring 2022 – that NATO officers had become “part of the kill chain,” that is, of killing Russians who they were not, actually, officially at war with.

Or that, contrary to what some believe, Westerners did not overestimate but underestimate Russian abilities from the beginning of the war: In the spring of 2022, Russia rapidly surged “additional forces east and south” in less than three weeks, while American officers had assumed they would need months. In a similar spirit of blinding arrogance, General Christopher Cavoli – in essence, Washington’s military viceroy in Europe and a key figure in boosting the war against Russia – felt that Ukrainian troops did not have to be as good as the British and Americans, just better than Russians. Those daft, self-damaging prejudices again.

The New York Times’s “untold story” is also extremely predictable. Despite all the detail, nothing in “The Partnership” is surprising, at least nothing important. What this sensationally unsensational investigation really does is confirm what everyone not fully sedated by Western information warfare already knew: In the Ukraine War, Russia has not merely – if that is the word – been fighting Ukraine supported by the West but Ukraine and the West.

Some may think the above is a distinction that doesn’t make a difference. But that would be a mistake. Indeed, it’s the kind of distinction that can make a to-be-or-not-to-be difference, even on a planetary scale.

That’s because Moscow fighting Ukraine, while the latter is receiving Western support, means Russia having to overcome a Western attempt to defeat it by proxy war. But fighting Ukraine and the West means Russia has been at war with an international coalition, whose members have all attacked it directly. And the logical and legitimate response to that would have been to attack them all in return. That scenario would have been called World War Three.

“The Partnership” shows in detail that the West did not merely support Ukraine indirectly. Instead, again and again, it helped not only with intelligence Ukraine could not have gathered on its own but with direct involvement in not only supplying arms but planning campaigns and firing weapons that produced massive Russian casualties. Again, Moscow has said this was the case for a long time. And Moscow was right.

This is why, by the way, the British Telegraph has definitely gotten one thing very wrong in its coverage of “The Partnership”: The details of American involvement now revealed are not, actually, “likely to anger the Kremlin.” At least, they are not going to make it angrier than before, because Russia is certain to have long known about just how much the US and others – first of all Britain, France, Poland, and the Baltics – have contributed, directly and hands-on, to killing Russians.

Indeed, if there is one most important take-away point from the New York Times proud expose of the extremely unsurprising, then it is that the term “proxy war” is both fundamentally correct and insufficient. On one side, it perfectly fits the relationship between Ukraine and its Western “supporters”: The Zelensky regime has sold the country as a whole and hundreds of thousands, if not more, Ukrainian lives to the West. The West has used them to wage war on Russia in pursuit of one overarching geopolitical aim of its own: to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia, that is, a permanent demotion to second-rate, de facto non-sovereign status.

The above is not news, except perhaps for the many brainwashed by Western information warriors from historian-turned-war-apostle Tim Snyder to lowlier X agitators with Ukrainian flags and sunflowers in their profiles.

What is also less than stunning but a little more interesting is that, on the other side, the term “proxy war” is still misleadingly benign. The key criterion for a war being by proxy – and not its opposite, which is, of course, direct – is, after all, that major powers using proxies limit themselves to indirect support. It is true that in theory and historical practice that does not entirely rule out adding some limited direct action as well.

And yet: In the case of the ongoing Ukraine War, the US and other Western nations – and don’t overlook that “The Partnership” hardly addresses all the black ops also conducted by them and their mercenaries – have clearly, blatantly gone beyond proxy war. In reality, the West has been waging war on Russia for years now.

That means that two things are true: The West has almost started World War III. And the reason it has not – not yet, at least – is Moscow’s unusual restraint, which, believe it or not, has actually saved the world.

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine the US fighting Canada and Mexico (and maybe Greenland) and learning that Russian officers are crucial in firing devastating mass-casualty strikes at its troops. What do you think would happen? Exactly. And that it has not happened during the Ukraine War is due to Moscow being the adult in the room. This should make you think.

I've linked to several other stories by Tarik Cyril Amar. Today I thought I'd just steal the whole thing.

Convergence Calling by James Howard Kunstler is another well written post that talks about The New York Times story.

Springtime for Trump

Damaged Military Vehicle

Great summary of what's happening in Washington D. C. and Western Europe:

Convergence Calling by James Howard Kunstler

This excellent paragraph is talking about Ukraine:

And also hence, the synchronized idiocy on display in France, Germany, and the UK. They were all-in on the neo-con scheme that is now falling apart and its failure has driven them plumb crazy. As the US drops out of the stupid proxy war, they declare their intention to take it from here and go beat-up Russia. Their war-drums are teaspoons beating on so many quiches.

Life in these United States

Four well written stories:

The Turnaround - Robert Gore

America As Republic, Not As Empire – Europe's 'Sound And Fury' After Jaw-Dropping Pivots In US Policy - Alastair Crooke

“Taking Away Everything We Have”: Democrats and Unions Launch an Existential Fight Over Buyouts - Jonathan Turley

The Press Falls To Another Record Low In Public Trust - Jonathan Turley

Jonathan Turley has appeared here and here.

P. S. Amusing rant about the NSA:

Our Intelligence Community Has Been Run By Delusion-Riddled Deviants - Andrew Klavan

Andrew Klavan has appeared here before. 

Papua New Guinea

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Pallavia Rao, locates the known overseas bases of the American military, categorized by who controls the base.*

Graphics from a story in Zerohedge about U. S. Military Bases Worldwide. There is also a list of all the bases. I'm reading through the list (my copy here) and I notice that we now have six bases in New Guinea. Really? When did that happen? I know we were there fighting the Japanese during WW2, but after that? There are always stories in the news about U. S. Military Bases in some furrin country, but I don't recall hearing anything about any in New Guinea, so I ask our friend Google, who turned up a couple of stories. One was about WW2 and the other, widely reported, was from 2023, where the U. S. is granted six bases in Papua New Guinea (PNG). I guess it didn't cause much of a stir, or if it did the stinkers were suppressed.

All this got my attention because I just finished reading Lucky 666. a story about an aerial reconnaissance crew flying a B-17 out of New Guinea during WW2.

* Methinks the map is trying to convey too much information. Europe, for instance, has a bunch of military bases. Each military base is individually marked, but if you zoom in far enough to be able to distinguish one from you can only get a vague idea of their location because the borders have been pixelated.

Let's Talk About Ukraine

Meeting at Diriyah Palace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday Feb. 18, 2025

Looks like Zelensky, the grifter / puppet, has been sidelined. Lots of people talking about this meeting, but identification was neglected, so I decided to investigate. Note that the three countries represented at this meeting are the world's largest energy producers.

Participants, left to right:

• U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff
• U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio
• U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz
• Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud,
• Saudi National Security Advisor Mosaad bin Mohammad Al-Aiban
• Russian foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

• 

  Diriyah Palace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Nothing like a European palace, but then Saudi Arabia is an alien land.

Trump, Putin & Ukraine

A wonderful take on Ukraine from RT:

Trump ejects from the Ukraine joyride, leaving the EU screaming in the backseat by Rachel Marsden

Western European leaders are having a meltdown because shutting them out from talks is the only way to peace

The European Union was never in the driver’s seat on the Ukraine conflict. And now that same toddler sitting in the back with the plastic Fisher-Price steering wheel is throwing the kind of full-blown crimson-faced meltdown that makes adults chuckle.

How many times was the EU told, including by its own citizens with sledgehammer subtlety at the ballot box, to stop kissing Uncle Sam’s butt and start covering its own? Instead, its leaders cribbed America’s talking points, completely oblivious as they indulged in economic seppuku.

The EU’s entire economy-wrecking “strategy” over Ukraine was based on the fantasy that they were America’s little bro, not being used as naive pawns in a grand game that would knock them right off the chessboard. If Washington had picked peace over profit from the start, the closest thing that the Euroclowns would have seen to a military confrontation with Russia in Ukraine would have been playing Sergeant Savoir-Faire back home, armed with a map of the nearest coffee shops and a five-course lunch.

And now the previously unthinkable has happened. The jig is up on Biden’s ridiculous scam of vowing to do “whatever it takes” for Ukraine to beat Russia on the battlefield – mainly by dumping cash into US weapons which miraculously get lost en route to the frontlines after the cheque clears.

Nice racket. Too bad it’s getting people killed – something Trump’s made it clear he’s not exactly a fan of. Looks like he’s finally asked himself if there’s a way for the US to keep feasting on cash without a body count in Ukraine. Spoiler alert: he found a way, apparently. Several, in fact.

Cutting to the chase through all this messy death and destruction stuff, Trump just wants to wrap up the fighting and have Ukraine hand over its resources to cover US spending — most of which has already gone straight into the pockets of American weapons industries. And can he keep the weapon sales flowing, even without active conflict? Absolutely. Just tell NATO countries to cough up some cash for the sake of “preventive defense,” like he’s been doing relentlessly. A solid 90% of EU-bought weapons are already American, according to last year’s EU competitiveness report. And that’s not changing anytime soon – unless the EU’s itching for a tariff-spanking.

A group of European foreign ministers have issued a statement insisting that Ukraine and the EU must be at the table for any peace talks. Yeah, they’re at the table alright – the bib-wearing kiddie table, along with Ukraine. And while they’re busy twisting balloon animals and tossing around buzzwords like ‘enhancing support for Ukraine,’ totally immersed in their ‘choose your own adventure’ game where they’re obviously ‘winning,’ it turns out that Russia and the US – Putin and Trump – did something totally wild. They picked up a phone. Probably even a landline, like something out of a history book. All while the EU was bravely ‘sticking it to Putin’ by flaming him on social media while wiping croissant crumbs off their keyboard between sips of overpriced lattes.

In the wake of that call, Trump announced the start of immediate negotiations for peace. And now the EU is acting like it’s just been dumped by Uncle Sam, who’s committing the added insult of hanging around with the guy on whom they’ve been obsessively hating. “If there is agreement made behind our backs it will simply not work because you need for any kind of deal, any kind of agreement, you need Europeans to implement this deal. You need the Ukrainians to implement this deal,” said the bloc’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas. 

The agreement is actually being made right in front of your face and ours, for once – unlike the back-room shenanigans between bloc officials and the Biden administration, which ultimately lured the EU economy off straight a cliff with EU “leaders” serving as willing lemmings, sanctioning their own Russian supplies of virtually everything critical to their economy.

Now the German defense minister is yelling from the kiddie table over to the adult table, trying to tell Trump and Putin how they should be conducting their negotiations. “From my point of view, it would have been better to talk about Ukraine’s possible membership of NATO or the country’s loss of territory only at the negotiating table and not take it off the table beforehand,” said Boris Pistorius. Everyone’s really keen to hear advice for peace from folks whose strategy so far has resulted in perpetual war. That’s barely a step above Elon Musk’s toddler, X – the one who was chiseling away at Mount Nostrildamus for the cameras while standing beside his dad and Trump in the Oval Office the other day – offering Trump and Putin his take on negotiated peace in Ukraine.

Sounds like Western European leaders are currently experiencing all five states of grief at once, while frantically refreshing their inboxes to see if either the US or Russia have noticed their total meltdowns and slid into their DMs – and not just taken their freakouts as confirmation that ghosting them entirely was maybe the best way to handle the situation when they’re sounding like they’re on the verge of throwing every dish in the cupboard straight across the room right now.

“All we need is peace. A JUST PEACE. Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. TOGETHER,” insisted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on social media. ”Russia has to be forced to peace,” said Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze. No, dear, YOU have to be forced to peace. Now, please just go back to the kiddie table and wipe the spaghetti off your face.

European ministers and delegations had been meeting in Paris earlier this week for what they thought was an important strategy session – only to realize that they were basically just holding the equivalent of a corporate teambuilding exercise. While they were making all kinds of grand public proclamations in their echo chamber, like they were all jockeying for roles they could play in any eventual peace negotiations, it turns out that Trump and Putin were already finalizing the casting, and were even talking about bringing the curtain up. And they were suggesting that would be a two-man show, not an ensemble slapstick comedy featuring the EU big top circus troupe.

European diplomats are now telling the Financial Times that they figure they’ll be expected to foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction – because Trump will insist on it – and also send troops to enforce a deal they had zero say in while the US refuses military involvement. Which is like getting handed a massive dinner check for a meal you didn’t even get to touch. Just picture it: EU soldiers walking around Ukraine at EU taxpayer expense to protect American resource ventures while US troops stay home, as Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has already stipulated, by adding that the EU needs to honor its commitments.

And Vice President J.D. Vance joined in the Trump administration’s stereoscopic spanking of the EU during their visit to the bloc by telling Europeans repeatedly – both during an artificial intelligence summit in Paris and before the Munich Security Conference – to stop censoring information and views they don’t like under the guise of it somehow being a peril to democracy.

The EU media has already suggested that it looks like the EU’s role is basically to shut up and accept the result of negotiations – like it has been kicked right out of the group chat before it even had a chance to log on, and still has to comply with the outcome of the meeting. Basically, at this point, Trump sees Europe as an ATM. Putin sees Europe as background noise. And Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky probably just sees his gravy train’s looming derailment.

Trump and Putin are already debating between caviar and steak for their peace talks while the EU stands outside like a rejected clubber, begging the bouncer to “check again, bro” – meanwhile, Zelensky is eyeing that tablecloth like a pyromaniac.

Rachel Marsden has appeared here before.

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump

US President Donald Trump. ©  David Becker/Getty Images

Seems like the news is all about Trump, all the time. Or maybe that's just the stream I am tuned into. 

Interesting take on Trump from Russia, which is one of the big promoters of a multi-polar world order. Here's the introduction:

Fyodor Lukyanov: How Trump’s bluntness shatters the liberal world order by Fyodor Lukyanov

US President Donald Trump’s return to the center stage of world politics has once again ignited discussions about his peculiar political behavior. While the subject may feel numbing to some, Trump continues to dictate the global information agenda, underscoring two key realities about the modern world. First, the United States’ central role remains undeniable, no matter how much others might wish for a multipolar order. Second, Trump’s approach – pushing boundaries both literally and figuratively – has proven to be an effective way of achieving goals in today’s climate. 

At the core of Trump’s political behavior is a rejection of hypocrisy and duplicity, replaced instead with bluntness and rudeness. He insists on getting what he wants and disregards counterarguments, often repeating the same demands relentlessly. Trump does not pretend to treat other nations as equals to the United States, nor does he hide this belief. In his worldview, international equality does not exist. The situation with China is slightly different because of the sheer size of its economy and trade volume, but even there, Trump’s mercantilist instincts dominate.

Trump’s approach aligns with the 2018 US National Security Strategy, adopted during his first term, which officially recognized modern international relations as a competition between great powers. This acknowledgment, in effect, elevates certain nations above others – a concept that had previously been acknowledged informally but rarely stated outright.

I have quoted Fyodor before.

The Proxy War in Ukraine

I could be completely wrong, but I don't think Russia is bent on world domination, they just want a secure place in the world. The war mongers in the White House seem to think that Russia must be destroyed and if we destroy Western Europe along the way, well, that's just too bad.

Deception, manipulation, sabotage: What the UK does to keep the Ukraine war going by Tarik Cyril Amar

Leaked papers expose a secret military operation that includes planning attacks, suppressing media and brainwashing the British public

A couple of excerpts:

[Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland] – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.

. . .  

Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.

People mentioned here: 

• Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland - British Army
• Kit Klarenberg - Investigative reporter
• Kaja Kallas - Prime Minister of Estonia
• Annalena Baerbock - Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany
• Tarik Youssef Cyril Amar - Historian

Now it may be that the gangsters in the White House are right to be afraid of Russia. If Russia gets their act together and can get other 'enemies of the West' to cooperate with them, in five or ten years they might be able to bring serious pressure to bear on the USA. 

I don't think we should be wasting our resources on screwing over the rest of the world, we should be working to make the USA as strong and powerful as possible. Of course, when you are a gangster, you don't really know how to bring out the best in people, all you can do is frighten them into submission.

P. S. It seems like I am seeing more stories critical of Biden and his minions lately. Has Trump's victory caused the more people to stand in the light, or has it just improved my outlook?

The Rise and Fall of US Steel

How Stubbornness Killed US Steel
The Hustle

I like the graphs that show the evolution of steel making technology. Also interesting: the sheet metal is the most profitable steel product. Guess I shouldn't be surprised since that's what cars are made of. Used to be body panels but now it's the unibody structures since there is so much plastic on the outside.

P. S. Could you have a more attractive and wholesome video host? 

Economic Protectionism versus the State of the World

If Hezbollah Collapses, It Opens The Curtains On Israel Vs. Iran By Michael Every of Rabobank

September 25, 2024

Opening paragraphs:

"Is our presidents and economists learning?"

President George W. Bush once bewailed: “Rarely is the question asked: ‘Is our children learning?’” With radical ideas thrown around by Harris and Trump pre-election, economists are asking the same about presidents. However, presidents can rightly ask it about economists.

Trump just underlined his protectionist plans for "ultra-low taxes and regulations" zones, appointing a "manufacturing ambassador” to persuade firms to relocate to the US, and that “American workers will no longer be worried about losing your jobs to foreign nations. Instead, foreign nations will be worried about losing their jobs to America.” Economists are appalled. Yet they have no problems when an emerging market sets up low-tax and regulation zones and lobbies Western firms to close factories and move production there, with a loss of jobs. This is celebrated as “FDI”. Of course, economists say one case involves higher prices, and the other lower prices. In short, the morality of targeting other states’ industries and jobs revolves around price, not value (or values). That’s cold, hard realpolitik logic for the liberal humanist West, which never applies it to how one treats one’s own family: politically, the issue is then how one defines ‘family’.

Yet protectionism was staggeringly successful for the US in the past; and Germany; and Europe; Japan; South Korea; and China - all of them used it to climb the development ladder. To presume all you get from tariffs is inflation is to argue the US should today be solely the seller of commodities it was in the 18th century; Europe should be buying British goods and selling them food as the UK industrialised first; and Japan, South Korea, and China should be specialists in rice, not tech. You can see how ridiculous these arguments are, and we are all better off that they aren’t, even if via protectionism. Yes, tariffs can be a “tax on consumers” if you assume nothing changes but price. However, if they generate higher or better-paid employment, and increase production to attain economies of scale, tariffs can be moderately inflationary and a major stimulus to industrial growth.

He used several terms I wasn't familiar with so I looked them up:

• FDI - Foreign Direct Investment
• SME - Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
• Diocletian - Roman emperor (284-305)
• Edict of Diocletian - denounces greed and sets maximum prices and wages for all important articles and services.
• Vegetius - 4th century AD Roman writer
• PBOC - People's Bank of China
• RRR - Required Rate of Return
• bps - basis points. One basis point is equal to 1/100th of 1%, or 0.01%.

Links

Canadian David Warren of Essays in Idleness writes about the devil and government misinformation.

Russian Dmitry Suslov writes about the future of BRICS expansion for the Valdai Discussion Club.

BRICS is an intergovernmental organization originally comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The Valdai Discussion Club takes its name from a lake of the same name that is located approximately halfway between Moscow and St. Petersburg (formerly known as Leningrad).

Iceberg in Sight! Full Speed Ahead!

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

My news feed is full of blather about the debate. I didn't watch it. If it didn't bore me, I am sure I would have found it irritating. I like Ms. Zakharova's take:

 Harris and Trump debating on Titanic – Moscow

The US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris lacked substance and was largely irrelevant considering that their country is going full speed ahead towards disaster, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has argued.

Speaking on Radio Sputnik on Wednesday, she said she did not consider it a high-profile event. It mattered as much as the outcome of a hypothetical wrestling match on board the ill-fated Titanic during its trip across the Atlantic Ocean, she claimed.

”Who do you think won? Why would that matter? The iceberg is 15 minutes away,” she said.

Extending the metaphor, she said neither Trump nor Harris intended to get to the wheel to change the course of the ship. America is on its way to a “total, global disaster” and the rest of the world is trying to prepare for it, she suggested.

The debate itself, according to Zakharova, was a mixture of “fantasizing about the future” and citing some facts about the past, with the candidates failing to agree on what those facts were.

”We were given the latest show by people who apparently never ever take any responsibility for what they say,” the Russian official said.

International audiences paid attention to what happened in Philadelphia on Tuesday night because they want to know which nations “will get punished and how much” during the next US presidential term, Zakharova stated.

According to the media, neither candidate had a decisive advantage over the other in the debate, which could be the only one between Trump and Harris before the November election. In a CNN focus group of 13 undecided voters from Pennsylvania, eight said the Democratic candidate won. Meanwhile six out of 10 undecided voters interviewed by Reuters said they were siding with the Republican after the face off.

Clown World

Trump and the bullet

First we have:

'. . . FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress on Wednesday that “there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel.”' - The Daily Wire

Why would you say something like that? I mean, does it make any difference? There was a man firing a gun at people at a public gathering. Why would you care whether it was shrapnel or a bullet? Oh, right, it's because they are clowns. Now it makes perfect sense. Muder truckers.

RAF RC-135W Rivet Joint

Then there is this from RT:

British spy planes ramped up their activity in the Black Sea in June 2021, just days before a Royal Navy frigate attempted to sail past Crimea in Russian territorial wars. According to the government in London, the HMS Defender was on a “freedom of navigation patrol” from Odessa to Batumi in Georgia.

The Russian navy had fired warning shots at the British frigate and dropped bombs from an airplane in its path. London initially denied that this happened, until Moscow released videos proving its case.

Four days after the incident, classified documents discovered at a bus stop in Kent showed that the Royal Navy deliberately sent the Defender into Russian waters to provoke a reaction. 

'Classified documents discovered at a bus stop'. Seems like I've heard that one before. It could have been that a harried civil servant inadvertently dropped a folder while waiting for a bus, but my suspicious mind says someone was tired of the bullshit and decided to leave that folder where they knew it would be discovered by a reporter.

Yes, London and Washington D. C. are two different cities in two different countries, but the USA barks and western Europe leaps to obey, so their governments are all part of the same circus.