Following up on tips that Justice Amy Coney Barrett was in communication with leadership at the number one human trafficking organization in the world, Catholic Charities, an organization that relied on billions from USAID.

According to Forbes, Catholic Charities USA was the… https://t.co/6W36w0dbOW pic.twitter.com/LyQ6MoYEYa

— Tony Seruga (@TonySeruga) March 6, 2025

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West Headed Down ‘Road of the Roman Empire’ as Debt Comes Due: Alex Krainer

Dom, 09/03/2025 - 09:53

Writes Mark Murrah:

Clearing house of US treasuries from Libr -to- Sofr?

The post West Headed Down ‘Road of the Roman Empire’ as Debt Comes Due: Alex Krainer appeared first on LewRockwell.

USAID Funded Corporate Takeover of Ukraine Agriculture

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 10:27

Writes Gail Appel:

Add Brzezinski and Rockefeller to the mix.

See here.

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Books LRC Readers Bought This Week

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

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Saying Goodbye to Benjamin Netanyahu Is Long Overdue

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

President Donald Trump’s address to Congress and the nation on Tuesday night was remarkably devoid of any mention of why the United States continues to both enable and be complicit in the Ukrainian conflict with Russia as well as with the war crimes that are being committed by the state of Israel against nearly all its neighbors on a daily basis. The most recent abomination committed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs is the cutting off of food, medicine and temporary housing to the Gazans who were bold enough to return to their ruined homes due to a ceasefire negotiated successfully by US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in January. Now that Netanyahu has decided to come up with some false assertions to break the agreement, allowing him to continue his extermination of the Palestinian people, Trump as peace maker seems to have disappeared without a trace even though the US was in a sense a guarantor of the phased disengagement. Instead, Trump has doubled down on the side of Israel, issuing a “last warning” to Hamas during direct negotiations with the group to release all of the hostages in Gaza immediately. Per Trump in a posting on Truth Social on Wednesday: “Release all of the hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you.” Trump wrote that he would send Israel “everything it needs to finish the job,” and warned that “Not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say.” It should also be noted that Israel holds thousands of Palestinian prisoners whose fate is evidently of no concern to Donald Trump while the Israeli “world’s most moral army” has continued to kill numerous Palestinians even while the ceasefire was allegedly in place without a squeak coming out of Washington just as it has also been killing Lebanese and Syrians.

I still recall with some fondness the Monty Python movie entitled “The Meaning of Life,” in part because the United States has, since 9/11, been on a berserker course to teach the rest of the world about the “meaning of death.” Some observers maintain that the imperative to deliver millions of dead has been necessary to maintain US dominance in an unstable world, which is a “good thing” for everyone who survives the carnage as they will live by the “rule of international law” as laid down by Washington. But I have something like a different theory, i.e. that much of that kind of thinking derives from the neoconservatives, largely a Jewish-led and funded movement which has come to dominate the foreign policy and national security thinking of both major American political parties. Going back to the first Gulf War, the neocons have believed that US dominance has been good for Israel, particularly as they subsequently perceived that 9/11 was a gift from Jehovah that enabled the full might of the United States military to be used against Israel’s enemies starting with Iraq. Indeed, the Baathist regime was attacked and destroyed based on a series of lies and false intelligence concocted by monsters like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith at the Pentagon plus Scooter Libby in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Israeli intelligence officers from the Embassy in Washington had full and free access to the Wolfowitz Pentagon office while the process was playing out. President George W. Bush was clearly too stupid to realize that he was being conned.

But getting back to President Trump’s evident reluctance to discuss the one remaining war that he could stop in a heartbeat by cutting off all aid and political support, there is the question that is unanswered about why the US should become an accomplice to mass murder in a slaughter where there is no conceivable American national interest. Indeed, one might reasonably argue that the involvement with Israel and its human rights disaster has already done considerable damage to both the reputation and the economy of the United States. Some observers oddly continue to believe that it is the United States that exploits Israel to further its own imperial ambitions but nothing could be further from the truth as even a cursory examination of the one sidedness of the relationship reveals that it is Israel often acting through its US domestic lobby that is actually running the show.

So if the negatives about Israel are even partly true why is the leadership of the US from both principal parties reluctant to cut the tie that binds Washington to the criminal apartheid enterprise that has illegally occupied and now hides in a place once called Palestine? I personally have long believed that the history of Jewish perfidy directed at corrupting and gaining influence over the United States goes back more than a hundred years with the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 and the gaining control of many major newspapers at around the same time. As Nathan Mayer Rothschild put it in 1815, “Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.” And then there are the descendants of Adolph Ochs, who have exercised majority control over the New York Times since Ochs bought the paper in 1896. The Times self-describes as America’s “newspaper of record” with its lies and distortions, particularly when it is Israel that is under discussion.

Not surprisingly, much of the corruption of American institutions by Israel has to do with Jewish money which has influenced the shift of foreign policy views of both major US political parties. In the recent election, Jewish casino billionaire Mirian Adelson reportedly gave Trump $100 million and in exchange he promised to permit Israeli annexation of the Palestinian West Bank, which is currently proceeding. Beyond that buying of favors and the accompanying semi-overt takeover of the United States, there should be serious suspicions about possible hidden “covert actions” undertaken by Israel and its agents. One might cite the assassination of John F. Kennedy just as he was about to force the Israel lobby groups to register while also shutting down Israel’s secret and illegal nuclear weapons program. And then there is 9/11 itself’s possible ties to Israel’s massive spying program in the US at that time to include the “dancing Shlomos” on the day of the attack, and the systematic corruption of congress and the American political system through the “buying of politicians” by Jewish billionaire oligarchs acting on behalf of Israel.

I was pleased last Tuesday when my favorite foreign policy analyst Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, my alma mater, responded to a question from Judge Andrew Napolitano, who had asked why Israel is able to get away with so much that does damage to the United States, to include manipulation of a run of presidents including both Joe Biden and now Donald Trump who dare not challenge a vicious creature like Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Barack Obama, who disliked Netanyahu intensely, knew he had to play the game to placate the Democratic Party’s Jewish donors.

Mearsheimer explained that there are potentially and actually very severe consequences for any politician who steps out of line as the Israeli Lobby in the United States wields immense largely extralegal power. Bingo, Professor Mearsheimer! It is what many of us have long believed and are even beginning to speak about and it is perhaps time for the country as a whole to begin to take notice before the government moves definitively to ban all criticism of the Jewish state. For starters, the Attorney General might just begin to enforce the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) legislation that President Kennedy was trying to enforce vis-à-vis one of the first Israel lobbying groups in the US, the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs, which is today renamed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Unfortunately, the current Attorney General Pam Bondi has gone the other way, making it harder for prosecutors to initiate action based on FARA, a deliberate move to protect the Israel Lobby.

The JFK attempted US crackdown headed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who also was subsequently assassinated, coincided with development of investigative evidence demonstrating that Israel had stolen both enriched uranium and nuclear triggers to develop its own secret nuke arsenal. That development, plus the significant evidence that Israel has committed a host of humanitarian crimes, has since made it illegal for the US provide aid to the offending country under the Leahy Law and associated legislation, but Israel has never been held accountable for anything due to the strength of its Lobby and the accommodating media. Israel’s immunity from US laws and regulations is referred to by cognoscenti as the “Israeli Exemption.”

Congress and the White House run in fear of the wrath of Zion, so it would appear, and no one is willing to do anything about it even when the depth and intensity of Israeli spying against the United States becomes evident, as has taken place with Jonathan Pollard in the 1980s and Jeffrey Epstein more recently, with the Epstein papers still being covered up! Pollard, who now lives in Israel where he is idolized, was the most damaging spy in US history. And then when one considers US government cover-ups, the ultimate has to also be all about Israel, when its warplanes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty intelligence ship in international waters in the Mediterranean on June 8, 1967, killing 34 crewmen and wounding 170 more. The White House of Lyndon B. Johnson called back fighter planes launched from a US aircraft carrier to assist the Liberty and later engaged in a massive cover-up to absolve Israel from any blame as a case of “mistaken identity.” There exist, however, recordings that indicate that the Israeli pilots knew exactly whom they were attacking.

In my humble opinion Israel should be treated as an enemy or at a minimum as a state that is dangerous to have any association with. That is because it uses its immense power inside the United States establishment as well as with many other nations in Europe, Oceania and North America to incite for wars that bring no benefit to any country that allows them to influence or distort policy. The ongoing attempts by Israel to entice the United States into a war with Iran is only one example of what goes on and there are reports that US bombers have been taking up position in the Persian Gulf for a possible attack. And there are always the unspeakable things about Israel and how it does things. The Palestinian extermination is based on a perception among many Israeli Jews that both Christian and Muslim neighbors are not only “terrorists”, they are subhuman and fit only to work as slaves of Jews or to flee the country or die. Prominent St. Louis rabbi Jeffrey Abraham recently wrote that there are “no ‘innocent civilians’ in Gaza,” and endorsed the belief that Palestinians are “animals.” The lack of any discomfort in the local Jewish community demonstrates how widely accepted these views are. And, one might add, even American presidents are little more that ignorant goyim to be used and discarded or even subtly threatened. On Netanyahu’s recent visit to the White House, he presented Trump with a mounted Golden Pager, reminiscent perhaps of the exploding pagers used recently by Israel in Lebanon to kill and maim at random Lebanese civilians. It was a sick joke or perhaps even intended as a warning and it clearly was the product of the twisted mind of Netanyahu.

Far from being anyone’s “best friend” or “greatest ally” or being a democracy as the US media and congress constantly claim, Israel’s government does not even appear to value the lives of some Jews. The recent admission by the former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant that he had ordered the army to use the Hannibal Directive to kill Israeli civilians and soldiers during and after the Hamas attack on 7 October 7th 2023 confirms eye witness accounts of events that day. Israeli security policy includes the option of killing potential Jewish hostages so they do not become a need-to-use-negotiations obstacle hindering the options available in Israel’s use of force against whomever it is attacking. And don’t forget the Samson Option, the Armageddon-esque plan to use Israel’s secret nuclear weapons to take down both enemies and friends if the Jewish state is ever seriously threatened with destruction. There should be no doubt that the plan, like the Hannibal Directive, is for real and representative of Israeli government thinking and there is no reason to presume that the United States would not be included among those targeted. It is something to think about for every American who valued our country and the freedoms it provided before our politicians surrendered to Zion and allowed an “immensely powerful” largely domestic “fifth column” to obtain significant control for a foreign country over the national security policy of the United States of America.

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

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The Stoicism of the Caregiver

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

These are difficult realities without Hollywood cliche answers.

Caregivers and the costs of caregiving don’t get much attention. They’re not part of the news flow, and the day-to-day grind of caregiving doesn’t lend itself to the self-promotional zeitgeist of social media. Look at me, helping Mom on her walker is not going to score big numbers online.

The burdens in human and financial terms are often crushing. These realities are generally obscured by taboos and Hollywood cliches: it’s considered bad form to describe the burdens of caregiving, and anyone who dares to do so is quickly chided: “You’re lucky your parent is still alive so you can spend quality time together.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world, 4 in 10 family caregivers rarely or never feel relaxed, according to a 2023 AARP survey, as an integral part of caregiving is being on constant alert for something untoward happening to the elderly person in one’s care.

The demographics are sobering: we’re living longer, often much longer, than previous generations, and in greater numbers. This means 65-year olds are caring for 85-year olds and 70-year olds are caring for 90+-year olds. I’ve logged 8+ years of caregiving (5+ years here at home) from age 63 to 70 caring for my mom-in-law, so I have personal experience of being old enough to “retire” but retirement is a fantasy for caregivers. Our neighbors are 80+ years of age and they’re caring for her 102-year old Mom. What’s this retirement thing people talk about so cheerily?

All these realities are abstractions until they happen to you.

These burdens are seeping down to Gen X and the Millennial generation. ‘It’s a job, and a tough one’: the pain and privilege of being a millennial caregiver.

The financial costs of care are staggering. A bed in private assisted living is around $75,000 and up a year, a private room in a nursing home is around $150,000 a year, and round-the-clock care at home costs from $150,000 to $250,000+ annually.

The Crushing Financial Burden of Aging at Home (WSJ.com)

“Christine Salhany spends about $240,000 a year for 24-hour in-home care for her husband who has Alzheimer’s. In Illinois, Carolyn Brugioni’s dad exhausted his savings and took out a home-equity line-of-credit to pay for home healthcare.”

More than 11,000 people in the U.S. are turning 65 every day and the vast majority–77% of Americans age 50 and older according to an AARP survey–want to live as long as possible in their current home. At some point, many will need help. About one-fourth of those 65 and older will eventually require significant support and services for more than three years, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

About one-third of retirees don’t have resources to afford even a year of minimal care, according to the Boston College center.

“The new inheritance is not having enough money to give to kids but to have enough money to cover long-term care costs, says Liz O’Donnell, the Boston-based founder of Working Daughter, an online community of caregivers.

The costs of home care are so high that not just inheritances are exhausted; the home equity is also drained. $350,000 sounds like a lot of money but that might cover two years in a nursing home but not be enough to cover two years of round-the-clock care at home.

The cost of maintaining the home doesn’t go away: property taxes, insurance and maintenance expenses must be paid, too.

Those without monumental financial resources make do by doing everything themselves. Depending on the resources available in the community, there may be some minimal assistance such as weekly visits by a nurse, meals delivered, and adult day-care facilities, but there are no guarantees any of these are available or that the family qualifies.

In other words, the idea that the retired generation will leave ample inheritances is increasingly detached from reality. As noted, the new inheritance is to get through the years of caregiving without acquiring debt.

The human costs are high, too. In the Hollywood cliche, everyone adapts and makes the best of it, and there’s plenty of Hallmark moments that make it all worthwhile. Yes, there are Hallmark moments, but the elderly person misses their independence and may feel resentment that they no longer control how things are done. The caregivers are often exhausted–especially if they’re 65 or older–and despite their best efforts may feel resentment at ending their careers early and sacrificing their own last best years caring for a decidedly unstellar parent who doesn’t seem to appreciate the immense sacrifices being made on their behalf.

The indignities of extreme old age weigh on the elderly, and the 65+ caregivers worry that they can’t pick Mom or Dad up now that they’re so old that they have their own infirmities.

The responsible parent frets at the expense and feels bad they won’t be able to pass on much to their grandkids. They may express guilt at being a burden, though that is beyond their control. The responsible adult child is burning out trying to juggle three generations and keep themselves glued together enough to keep functioning. They can’t help but want their own life back, but to say this out loud is taboo because if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. In other words, tell us a happy story, repeat an acceptable cliche or say nothing.

Nobody wants to hear any of this, and so the caregiver develops a self-contained stoicism. Everyone with no experience of caregiving wants to hear the Hollywood version, and so conversations with other caregivers are the only moments where the truth can be expressed and heard. In the rest of “normal life,” the caregiver quickly learns to say what’s expected: “We’re managing. Life’s good.”

Read the Whole Article

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Dems and Blob Together

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

If the Jacobins of Paris, 1794, had not been bum-rushed to the “national razor,” perhaps they would have acted-out as clownishly in defeat as America’s Democratic Party does right now after their election debacle of 2024. Imagine Robespierre in Harlequin drag riding backwards on a goat over the Pont Neuf to do handsprings and a juggling act in the Parvis de Notre-Dame. Alas, foiled by the guillotine. . . .

Now imagine Rep. Al Green (9th Texas Dist) shaking his cane and hollering curses at the rostrum in Tuesday night’s joint session of Congress. Two days later, he carried on again in the well of Congress as Speaker Johnson read out his bill of censure and a motley mob of Mr. Green’s fellow Dems gathered ‘round to sing We Shall Overcome — the once stately Civil Rights movement reduced to abject farce. Such things are really happening.

The Dems’ game has been revealed. The revenue stream for their national wrecking operations is suddenly cut off and it’s game-over. Everybody can see how this worked now. You funnel vast amounts of US taxpayer dollars into Non-Governmental Organizations, NGOs, spin off more NGOs below them, and add extra layers of subsidiary NGOs, and all of them pay their staffs of Dem Party foot-soldiers for do-nothing jobs — leaving plenty of time for riots and real-estate investing — a splendid racket that worked for years to support the insane antics of the Woke-Jacobin revolution. (And you paid for it.)

The catch is: an org that gets government money is hardly non-governmental. Wouldn’t you think there’s some law against that? Thus, Exhibit A: in September 2022, Dem luminary John Podesta was put in-charge of a $369-billion fund out of “Joe Biden’s” so-called Inflation Reduction Act, tagged for climate change action. Conceptualize further: that’s three-hundred-seventy-nine-thousand-million dollars (!), a lot of millions, disbursed among tens of thousands of NGOs and their contractors. It boggles the mind that the government could even manage to cream-off such a fortune out our nation’s alleged aggregate productivity.

It was, in reality, money conjured out of thin air: debt. Before long, you are going to find out where it all went, and the picture will not be a pretty one: Into the NGO laundromat and straight out to Democratic Party members’ bank accounts, one of the greatest grifts in our history. Of course, your grandchildren are on the hook for all the debt behind it. Do you think our DC Federal District judges would serve better presiding over these matters than spending years hunting down J-6 “paraders”?

Without that bonanza of conjured money for laying trips on the rest of us, the Democratic Party has nothing, not a single credible idea, not any plausible leadership, really no reason to exist. It has been for years nothing more than a gigantic grift engine extracting the remaining wealth out of our republic. So, what you are seeing acted out on the DC streets and the well of Congress and on the angst-filled cable news networks is the kind of ghost-dance that attends the death of a great political machine. Buh-bye. . . .

The symbiote of that parasitical organism is the “blob” of war profiteers, pharma profiteers, seditionists, traitors, lunatic ideologues and assorted criminals lodged in the DC bureaucracy and Congress. For instance, former CIA Director John Brennan (appointed by Barack Obama), a veritable US Communist Party activist in his youth and all the above in age. After 2020, Mr. Brennan might have thought all he had to do was kick back in a comfortable retirement, make a little extra “walking-around money” doing hits on MSNBC, and enjoying the esteem of his former colleagues as a legendary blob poobah. Likewise, Mr. Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff, Chair of the Hillary Clinton 2016 election campaign, and many other distinguished perches. Likewise, Senator John Warner, RussiaGate promoter as Vice-Chairman of the Senate Intel Committee; and likewise, Senator Adam Schiff, chief engineer of Trump Impeachment No. 1; and likewise, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, rumored to have enabled the J-6 riot by denying National Guard reinforcements for the Capitol Police; and likewise, former AG Merrick Garland, the Torquemada of lawfare, and likewise, FBI Director Christopher Wray for concealing the far-ranging criminality of his Bureau in a long list of hoaxes and ops against the public, and likewise, Gina Haspel, who ran the CIA through the high times or RussiaGate hoaxdom; and likewise, “Biden,” Blinken, and Sullivan in Ukraine and the fate of $300-billion-plus in purloined aid — all these people just a small sample of the depraved officials who operated with such gross impunity against the citizens of this land, soon to collide with the wheels of justice.

The Democratic Party is no longer in a position to defend them, and conversely the blob actors are in no position anymore to protect their allies in the Dem Party. It is a mutual aid society suddenly turned into a suicide pact. The real action hasn’t quite commenced yet as a new officialdom warily finds its place — Bondi, Patel, Kennedy, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Musk — to address a complex agenda of reform for that matrix of appalling agency corruption. We await a flood-tide of greatly disturbing revelation and concrete actionable allegation.

Between all that and the cascade of truth finally emerging about Covid-19 and its dastardly vaccine program, America’s elite managerial class — Dems and blob together — find themselves like Pharoah’s Army of old, trapped by an onrushing flood of destruction. All they have left is making faces and screeching like ghouls.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

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There Are no Free Marketers in a Recession

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

Peter went live on X Spaces on Tuesday to comment on President Trump’s address to congress and take questions from his followers. Peter offers his thoughts on ongoing economic instability, gold’s long-awaited rise, and mounting inflationary pressures. He also comments on the recent Trump-Zelenskyy debacle and Trump’s renewed tariff pressure.

Peter opens the conversation reflecting on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, framing it as a senseless geopolitical quagmire reminiscent of Vietnam:

But I remember when the war first started, I predicted when everybody thought it was going to be over quick, I said, no, this is going to be another Vietnam, this will be like a quagmire. It’s never going to end based on what we’re doing. And now that Trump is here, we finally have a chance, a real chance for peace, which is one of the reasons that I recommended voting for him. The Democrats, unfortunately, are the warmongers and the Republicans don’t like people dying needlessly on both sides.

He then shifts to the domestic economic landscape, predicting significant challenges ahead for stocks and highlighting the unfortunate position of the dollar:

Not only could we easily be in a recession during the first half of Trump’s first year, but we could be in a bear market in stocks, you know, the Russell 2000 at the low this morning was already down 17% from its peak. So it’s close to a bear market, but you know, the NASDAQ was down about 10%, maybe halfway there, but we could easily be in a bear market in stocks.

Peter forecasts movement in the mining sector, emphasizing that the upcoming surge in mining stocks and silver will catch many investors unprepared:

When these stocks start to move, when the mining stocks in particular, and also silver, when they start to move, it’s going to be a very rapid move, and I think the people who, you know, are not in the market are going to have all the money that they get are going to have a hard time getting in because it’s going to be scary to buy.

He expresses frustration at economic policymakers’ reluctance to face economic downturns without government interference, pointing out the incentives that even pro-freedom politicians face in a crisis:

There’s an expression– there are no atheists in foxholes, right? Because once you’re in a foxhole, you’re praying to God that you don’t die, right? There’s no free market economists in a recession. They’re all Keynesians. Nobody is willing to say, do nothing and let the recession run its course. Everybody now wants the government to do something.

Turning to inflation, Peter illustrates the dollar’s decline by tracing gold’s price trajectory over the last 6 decades:

Gold was $35 an ounce in the late 1960s and it’s now a hundred times that almost, and that just means the dollar has lost almost 99% of its value. And the sad thing is it’s going to lose another 99% of its value from here. And it could do it in a much shorter period of time. And that’s why gold is going to be a lot more expensive. It’s not that gold’s going up. It says the value of the dollar’s going down.

He also warns of a looming crisis in the gold market caused by futures traders over-leveraging:

Eventually it’s going to be a problem. I mean, it’s not a problem if you’re long gold, there’s going to be a problem if you’re short, but there could be a lot of paper gold trading. So long as nobody who’s long wants the gold, right? At some point, the people who actually want gold are going to start buying the contracts because the physical supply is just not there.

Finally, Schiff criticizes the unpredictability surrounding Trump’s tariff policies, arguing that economic uncertainty is inherently harmful to investment:

Trump could put a tariff in now and he could, you know, change his mind in six months, in six days, you know, who knows? I mean, Trump is, you know, he puts them on one day and takes them off the next. I mean, I have no idea what’s going on. It’s just anybody’s guess, but a lot of economic decisions are going to be impacted by the tariffs.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post There Are no Free Marketers in a Recession appeared first on LewRockwell.

De-Dollarization Was Always More of a Political Slogan Than a Pecuniary Fact

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

Any breakthrough in Russian-US relations would inevitably disappoint those multipolar enthusiasts who bought into the most ideologically dogmatic narratives of the New Cold War and consequently believed that Russia would forever eschew the dollar out of principle.

The three-year-long NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine contributed to the belief that the international community had bifurcated into the West and the World Majority respectively, with the outcome of the aforesaid conflict determining which camp will most powerfully shape the global systemic transition. This paradigm predisposed observers to imagine that BRICS, which represents the World Majority, is actively coordinating de-dollarization policies in order to decouple themselves from the West’s financial clutches.

That perception persists to this day despite last October’s BRICS Summit achieving nothing of tangible significance at all, including on the de-dollarization front, and leading members like India and Russia subsequently confirming in response to Trump’s tariff threats that they’re not creating a new currency. As it turns out, even before Trump initiated the nascent Russian–US “New Détente”, the international community wasn’t as divided over the past three years as many multipolar enthusiasts thought.

Complex interdependencies kept most of the main players together, including Russia and the West after Russia continued selling oil, gas, and critical minerals like uranium to the West in spite of their proxy war. Similar interdependencies account for why Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar declared in mid-November that “India has never been for de-dollarization” and then reaffirmed this position last week when he said that “we have absolutely no interest in undermining the dollar at all.”

He also said that “I don’t think there is a unified BRICS position on [de-dollarization]. I think BRICS members, and now that we have more members, have very diverse positions on this matter. So, the suggestion or the assumption that somewhere there is a united BRICS position against the dollar, I think, is not borne out by facts.” The reason why it’s important to draw attention to his latest words is because of the global context within which they were shared as regards the nascent Russian-US “New Détente”.

Putin’s recent invitation to American companies to cooperate with Russia on strategic resources, including energy in the Arctic and even rare earth minerals in Donbass, will lead to Russia using more dollars in international trade if anything comes of this. That would in turn discredit the perception shared earlier in this analysis of Russia actively de-dollarizing, which Putin himself always said that it was forced by sanctions into doing and thus wouldn’t have ordinarily happened on its own.

A thaw in their tensions brought about by the US brokering an end to their proxy war in a way that meets most of Russia’s interests would therefore naturally see Russia using the dollar yet again. To be sure, it’ll still support the creation of platforms like BRICS Bridge, BRICS Clear, and BRICS Pay, but these would be aimed at preventing dependence on the dollar more so than advancing de-dollarization per se. The ruble will also continue to be used as Russia’s preferred currency in conducting international trade.

Nevertheless, any breakthrough in Russian-US relations would inevitably disappoint those multipolar enthusiasts who bought into the most ideologically dogmatic narratives of the New Cold War and consequently believed that Russia would forever eschew the dollar out of principle. Those who previously criticized India’s pragmatic approach towards this currency, particularly Jaishankar’s comments from mid-November, would then eat crow if Russia ultimately ends up following its lead.

Even if Russia is just partially returned to the dollar’s global ecosystem through the lifting of US sanctions on that currency’s use for facilitating the strategic resource deals that Putin just proposed, then it would likely result in the rest of BRICS moderating their de-dollarization policies as well, if they even had them. China alone might continue making the most progress in this regard, but even it too has been hesitant to go all-out, also due to its complex interdependencies with the West (including its US Treasury holdings).

These observations about Russia, India, and China’s diverse views towards the dollar show that de-dollarization was always more of a political slogan than a pecuniary fact, one that only Russia made tangible progress on but only because it was forced to, though it might soon rebalance as explained. They collectively form RIC, the core of BRICS, so whatever they say or do will influence comparatively smaller countries. There’s nothing wrong with that though, neither in general nor in this context.

Comparatively smaller countries can’t make major impacts on the global economic or financial systems on their own, and in this particular context, almost all of them with few exceptions still have close trading ties with the US that necessitate them remaining within the dollar’s global ecosystem. They couldn’t realistically de-dollarize in the way that the most dogmatic ideologues imagined without immense cost to themselves or replacing their dependence on the US/dollar with China/the yuan.

The most pragmatic approach has always been the one pioneered by India whereby countries strive to use their national currencies more in trade while diversifying their foreign currency baskets in order to avert dependence on any single one. This enables them to strengthen their sovereignty in a meaningful and realistic way without risking the ire of major players by actively dropping their currency and/or actively adopting their rival’s. It’s this balance that will come to define financial multipolarity processes.

This originally appeared on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

The post De-Dollarization Was Always More of a Political Slogan Than a Pecuniary Fact appeared first on LewRockwell.

Every Vote for a Democrat Is an Attack on America

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

America has only one enemy–the Democrat Party, an anti-American party, an anti-white party, a party of national destruction and replacement of America with a Tower of Babel, a party committed to the destruction of normality and its replacement with Sodom and Gomorrah perversity, an ideological party alienated from the country it is destroying.

It uses the taxpayers’ money to attack America. A $375 Billion EPA slush fund handled by John Podesta gave billions of dollars to “charities” founded to collect the money and use it to undermine the United States.

The way Democrat grift works is first appropriate money for some cause; then create a bunch of “charities” to receive the money. The “charities” pay high salaries to the Democrats and their families and friends who created the “charities,” and they use the taxpayers’ money to advance woke issues such as transgender advocacy and operations, drag queen shows for school kids, early sexualization of children, teaching white kids they are racists, and to support media lie machines. Corrupt Democrat judges are rushing to prevent Trump from ending the use of taxpayers’ money to attack taxpayers’ beliefs, values, and lives.

NY Post reports that Democrat John Podesta handed out $375 billion in this way. Trump’s efforts to stop this blatant robbery of the US taxpayer is what Democrat judges like Amir Ali, a last minute Biden DEI appointee and a dual citizen, are issuing injunctions to kill.

When we have judges who are dual citizens, whose legal system are they representing? Dual citizenship judges and government officials erode national sovereignty. Under Democrat misrule, what sense does it make to have a military to protect the borders when they are kept wide open for immigrant-invaders? Under the corrupt anti-American Biden regime our country was overrun by millions of invaders while taxpayers were forced to spend trillions of dollars on “national defense” that was used to protect the borders of Ukraine and to expand the borders of Israel. See here.

Everywhere in the Western world governments are not only equating illegal immigrants with citizens but also elevating immigrant-invaders above citizens. For example, a Chinese Immigrant-invader became mayor of Boston, Massachusetts. She now tells illegals that Boston is your home. “You belong here.”

And still American citizens vote for Democrats. How can a population this stupid be made great again?

Boston Mayor tells illegals: “You belong here. This is your home.“pic.twitter.com/2SlhNed7G9

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) March 5, 2025

The Starmer government in the UK is hatching laws that punish immigrant-invaders with lighter sentences than given to white British citizens, thereby creating privileges for immigrant-invaders in place of equality under law. Skin color trumps equality under law. How can white British citizens accept such insults from “their” government? Clearly, it is not their government. It is their enemy.

BREAKING

Now in the UK, it is becoming law that Muslims and minorities are to be given lesser prison sentences than white British people.

You can’t make this up. That is what they are doing. Here it is in parliament today. pic.twitter.com/WtncuKGTGw

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) March 5, 2025

‘Anti-white and anti-Christian’ sentencing changes to face bombshell legal challenge | Politics | News

In the UK there is the scandal of both Labour and Conservative governments refusing for 30 years to stop the gang rape of white British children by immigrant invaders. In Sweden, Norway, Germany women are not safe from rapists, and the governments do nothing about it because it would be “racist” to hold immigrant-invaders accountable to law. In no European country other than Hungary does the government represent the people. The EU is a joke. NATO is a joke. Whatever is being protected, it is not the ethnic citizenships of the countries. The EU and NATO are in fact enemies of the ethnic populations that comprise Europeans.

The facts are hidden by governments and media. As George Orwell said, the purpose of the media is “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Western governments have spent decades creating The Camp of the Saints. And their insouciant populations have voted for them. How can a mess this large be cleaned up?

The post Every Vote for a Democrat Is an Attack on America appeared first on LewRockwell.

Astroturf Activism: How the US Government and NGOs Created ‘Gay Pride’ From Thin Air

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

Growing up in America through the 1980s and 1990s there was a general sense of “live and let live” among Gen X and Gen Y that truly defined the era and our notions of what a society should look like. We all knew gay people were a permanent fixture in society. For the most part nobody bothered them and they kept their gayness to themselves (and far away from children). Frankly, it was working just fine.

There were some protests and marches, but the only “individual right” straight people had that they didn’t was the right to legal marriage. Most people figured that once that changed there wouldn’t be anything left to protest. What we didn’t understand at the time was that the seemingly harmless rise of “Gay Pride” in the 90s and early 2000s would become a primer for the woke madness that spread like wildfire from 2014 onward.

As we now know, a lot of that insanity was rooted in programs funded through the US government. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that the government is a tool, not the hand holding the tool. Elitist interests through NGO’s and think tanks like the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation were the real impetus for the creation of the woke movement. They spent decades building the revolving door dynamic that cycled taxpayer cash through agencies like USAID and into the pockets of NGOs.

In other words, it’s a mistake to think of the federal government as the mastermind. Rather, the government and the politicians within it are paid (or blackmailed) by wealthy globalists to support legislation that funds and empowers globalist projects.

The international spread of “queer activism” or “pride activism” has been a goal of the elites since the days of the Kinsey Institute, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and became the source for the invasion of LGBT ideology into modern academia starting in 1947. The Rockefeller Foundation still brags to this day about funding the rise of the “sexual revolution” and the notion of “non-binary sexuality”.

The transgender movement is largely tied to the intellectually dishonest and disturbed studies of John Money conducted in the 1950-1960s. His experiments were bankrolled through the Johns Hopkins School, which was founded and largely funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Once these ideologies, posing as social science, infected the halls of higher academia, students were turned into adherents of the cult. They then spread like a plague into politics and federal bureaucracy. They would go on to grow the unaccountable bureaucratic system that now cycles taxpayer cash from federal agencies into the coffers of NGOs. The great scam was set in motion – Using American money to fund the demise of western civilization.

A large part of this agenda relies on the mafia-like enforcement of LGBT normalization in every facet of society, even in public schools where teachers now hang pride flags and expose children to gender fluid theories with no basis in scientific fact.

On the international front, a little known agency called “USAID” was launched in 1961 for the purposes of providing material support to foreign populations in dire need (and to combat the threat of communism). However, from the 1990s onward the organization was increasingly involved in leftist propaganda with a specific interest in DEI. The apparatus that was built to stop communism was retooled to promote communism.

Fast forward to the 2020s and what we have today is a hostile takeover, a government and NGO funded color revolution that desires to annihilate western values, Christian morals and the general American regard for freedom of speech and freedom of thought. The woke movement is not just Cultural Marxism (that’s part of it), it’s a massively well-funded ideological machine. A new religion, of sorts, that seeks to wipe out the fundamental principles that hold our society together.

For the western world the pendulum swings from left to right, but noticeably more and more to the left and less and less to the right over time. Some call this the “Overton Window”. In other words, conservative or traditionalist ideas and values that were acceptable 20 years ago are slowly and incrementally suffocated by artificial social and legal pressures until they’re no longer present in the next generation.

The woke ideas and values the establishment WANTS the public to adopt are promoted widely, but this requires extensive monetary backing. Social engineering campaigns are expensive and take many years to achieve results.

With the revelations surrounding USAID (and at least a dozen other institutions), it appears that the agency was a key driver behind the rapid spread of DEI into every corner of our nation, not to mention many other nations. Their LGBT operations are particularly interesting and I would assert that it was USAID that specifically injected woke cultism into the public school system.

They were the organization that encouraged school officials and teachers to indoctrinate children with woke ethics and transgender politics, and they also actively encouraged teachers to hide these activities from parents.

One document that outlines the basic agenda is USAID’s ‘Integrating LGBTQI+ Considerations Into Education Programming’. The PDF was drafted and provided to field employees and workers in their Inclusive Development Hub and Center for Education. It explains how to inject DEI and LGBT propaganda into various public education institutions, using teachers and school officials as “advocates”.

Researching back through some of USAID’s activities from 2014 onward there was a clear spike in funding surrounding LGBT programs for teachers and administrators. Because of the recent shutdown and audits you have to use the Wayback Machine website to view a lot of this stuff, but it’s still there.

The document states:

“The purpose of this document is to support USAID’s staff working in the education sector to integrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI+1) considerations into programming and across the Program Cycle…”

USAID’s mission statement uses the same justification as most DEI promoters: They claim that educational environments around the world are “not safe” for LGBT students and teachers. Their solution? To use overwhelming funding power to incentivize (bribe) governments and educational institutions to inject gay propaganda into the curriculum.

That is to say, they sought to evangelize education organizations with the woke belief system in the name of “saving lives”. USAID head Samantha Power directly links the wokification of culture to the “fight for democracy”, creating a progressive crusade. Meaning, the elites frame LGBT indoctrination as an existential imperative to save the planet (skip to 24:40 in video).

It reminds me a bit of the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”; aliens slowly and strategically taking over the world by hijacking each person and absorbing them into the collective. You might think it’s paranoid exaggeration to claim that USAID wanted to turn everyone gay, but you would be wrong. Consider for a moment the prevailing argument in favor of gays in the 1990s:

“They were born that way and they can’t change it, just like a person can’t change their ethnicity. So leave them alone…”

What’s the prevailing argument now? (The same argument presented within USAID’s own documentation.)

“Gender and sexuality are completely fluid and any person, including children ages 3-5, can change their preferences at any moment for any reason. Straight people only exist because they are forced to be that way through social constructs…”

In other words, the gay movement now agrees with its old Christian adversaries – Gayness is a personal lifestyle choice, not a permanent condition you are born with. When the movement for gay rights morphed into the “Pride Movement”, the goal was no longer equal rights but the erasure of biological and objective reality.

As USAID notes:

“The development and realization of one’s sexual orientation and gender identity is a process, rather than a singular event. This implies that self-identification of sexual orientation and gender identity may change over time and may not be congruent, and young people may need varying levels of support, space, and attention during this process…”

USAID has maintained a laser focus on schools, education and children. They admit that they targeted 120 school principles in Kosovo for “LBGT inclusion training”. They “sensitized” educators in Honduras on LGBT inclusion. They developed university programs in Jamaica on LGBT discrimination, etc.

In the UK, a group called Stonewall is warning it might have to shut down after losing funding funneled through USAID. Stonewall is notorious for targeting children with trans propaganda in schools and funding pride propaganda across the UK and in other countries.

Not only did USAID (along with other agencies and NGOs) invade schools with LGBT cultism, polling indicates they’ve been rather successful. Various public surveys show that Gen Z, the most targeted generation, identifies as LGBT at a rate of 7% to 28% depending on which poll you look at. A generational increase from 2% to 28% is scientifically impossible. It can only be accomplished through social engineering.

It’s not that these kids are actually gay. It’s not that it’s now more acceptable to be open about it (polls were always anonymous anyway). It’s not even that being gay is considered trendy for Gen Z. Rather, they have been brainwashed to believe that being straight is a form of social oppression.

They have been taught through USAID and NGO funded programming to accept gender relativism as socially conscious and morally superior. They will never be gender fluid or feel attraction to the same sex, but they want to be on the right side of history. So, they identify as LGBT to feel like they are good people. Identifying gay is not about sexual preference, it’s a virtue signal.

One can theorize about the deeper motives behind USAID’s efforts – There’s the theory that the pride movement is designed to reduce population growth for the sake of reaching “net zero” carbon goals (gays usually don’t have children and trans kids are often sterilized by hormone therapy).

Then there’s the theory that pride is a precursor to the normalization of child grooming and the legalization of pedophiles as a “marginalized group” (the globalist Epstein Island crowd would love that). It’s a big reason why a lot of gay people oppose the trans agenda – They don’t want to be associated with the obvious groomer undertones of transgender activism.

And let’s not forget about the connection between LGBT indoctrination and progressive political organizations looking to create a permanent voting block. Leftist political parties use social pressure to trap “marginalized groups” in voter plantations. You’re not allowed to be gay and vote against the Democrats, for example. If you do, you’re considered a traitor and a heretic.

I think the evidence supports all of these to some degree. My personal theory is that “Pride” and the woke movement in general are the precursors to a new secularist religion of self worship and the worship of government. A globalist theology in which the greatest virtue is to deny objective reality and embrace relativism in everything from biological sex to moral compass.

Was there EVER a real “Pride Movement”? Was it all just establishment financed astroturf from the very beginning? It sure looks that way.

As DOGE cuts continue to run their course and many of these agencies and NGOs are eventually defunded, I predict we will see a rapid decline in younger people identifying as LGBT. I also predict that most of the pride parade activity seen every June will fade and that trans activism will mostly vanish outside of a handful of crazies. The Pride movement was never grassroots. It was a fabrication; an illusion conjured into existence through the sheer power of government cash and NGO manipulation.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

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Europe Wants War So It Can Sell Bonds

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

After the Austrian Archduke and heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the Austrian court felt compelled to strike a blow against Serbia and its encouragement of nationalism in the Balkans. And so, the Austrian court issued an ultimatum to the Serbian government.

Everyone with any brains in Europe understood there was no way Serbian Regent Crown Prince Alexander could accept the ultimatum, because doing so amounted to ceding Serbian sovereignty to the Austrians.

The trouble for the Austrians was twofold:

1). The Serbs enjoyed strong backing from Russia, though it would take a while for the Russians to mobilize.

2). The Austrians didn’t have enough money in the treasury to mobilize a large army on the frontier—without committing to war—for very long.

This created an urgency for the Austrians to commence hostilities with the logic that once hostilities began and Austrian soldiers were in harm’s way, the court could sell war bonds to the people, who would be exhorted to buy them out of patriotic duty.

An old Austrian lady told me about her grandfather’s experience being mobilized against Serbia in 1914. He told shocking stories of how poorly prepared and equipped the Austrian army was for the invasion, which proved to be a total disaster for the Austrians.

Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, and Ursula von der Leyen are now apparently determined to make the exact same mistake the Austrians made in 1914. It seems they want to put Europe on the warpath, and it’s likely that one of their greatest motives is the need for financing.

British debt has been out of control since 2008. All of the British government’s mind-boggling stupid policies and debt gorging when interest rates were low have placed it in a financially untenable situation.

The same is true of France and Germany. The latter country sacrificed its splendid manufacturing economy—giving millions of young men skilled labor jobs—on the alter of the fantastically irrational religion of Green Energy and other follies.

Throughout history, when profligate governments have faced insolvency, they have resorted to the emergency of war to justify creating yet more debt.

The financial logic of war has always been the same—namely, put young men in harm’s way, and when they start dying, the people back home will be roused to go along with the war instead of realizing that the true enemy consists of their only profligate, ruthless, and immoral leaders.

Our Founding Fathers understood this perfectly and strongly desired for the new American republic to avoid playing this corrupt game. The trouble for them was and remains the obstinacy of human nature, which, under the spell of propaganda, always falls for the war trick.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

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Eurotard Hysteria Achieves New Heights

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

For three years we have had war in Ukraine, masterminded on the NATO side by senile warmonger-in-chief Joe Biden. This war included bizarre moments, like direct attacks on German energy infrastructure, and also escalatory brinksmanship, as when Biden authorised long-range missile strikes within Russian territory, and the Russians responded with a not-so-subtle threat of nuclear retaliation. Throughout all of this madness, the Europeans slept, sparing hardly a single thought for their defence. Now that Donald Trump hopes to end the war in Ukraine, however, Continental political leaders are losing their minds. War: not scary at all. Peace: an existential threat.

The first way our leaders hope to dispel the disturbing spectre of peace, is via Ursula von der Leyen’s “ReArm Europe” initiative, which will permit member states to take on billions debt to fund their rearmament. In this way, the clueless histrionic Brussels juggernaut hopes (in the words of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk) to “join and win the arms race” with Russia, even if (in the words of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung – h/t the incomparable Roger Köppel) we must “avoid for the moment a confrontation with the new Washington.” Becoming a global superpower with a view towards confronting the hated Americans is all about spending and time, you don’t need strategy or a plan or anything like that.

Those of you wondering whether it might be a better idea to rearm first and then set about alienating our powerful geopolitical partners simply lack the Eurotardian vision. These are such serious people, that in the space of a few days they spun up this remarkable logo for their spending programme …

… which obviously portrays the EU member states smearing yellow warpaint on themselves and in no way evokes the most notorious obscene internet image of all time. Nations just do stuff, but the Eurotards cannot even take a shit without bizarre hamfisted branding campaigns.

As I said, these are deeply serious people, and they also speak very seriously, in declarative sentences that don’t mean anything. In a publicity statement, von der Leyen said that these are “extraordinary times” which are a “watershed moment” for Europe and also a “watershed moment” for the Ukraine.” Such extraordinary watersheds require “special measures,” such as “peace through strength” and “defence” through “investment.” Top EU diplomat and leading Estonian crazy person Kaja Kallas for her part noted that “We have initiative on the table” and that she’s “looking forward to seeing Europe show unity and resolve.” Perhaps there will also be money in the ReArm Europe programme to outfit Brussels with an arsenal of thesauruses so we do not have to hear the same words all the time.

The European defence-spending orgy was inspired partly by our deeply spooked and unstable soon-to-be Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, whose spirit animal is a pigeon.

Merz spent the entire campaign assuring CDU voters that he would never, ever, under any circumstances at all, in any conceivable universe, agree to lifting the German debt brake. Campaign Merz was the Pigeon of Fiscal Responsibility, and he even had his stalwart opposition to deficit spending in excess of 0.35% of GDP inscribed into his party’s election programme. Merz rhapsodised on the wonders of the debt brake at every opportunity He said strict deficit spending rules are necessary to “protect the money and tax burdens of the younger generation” and that “we collect one trillion Euros in taxes a year,” and he asked, “shouldn’t we be able to make do with that?”

Merz no longer believes we should be able to make do with that, and the story of his turnabout is so farcical, I can hardly believe it. Last Tuesday, all of the Eurotards managed to terrify themselves that Donald Trump would announce the withdrawal of the United States from NATO in his pending congressional address. I said in my last post that this was not going to happen, but none of our Eurotard ruling class have any good lines of communication to the Trump administration or any understanding of American intentions at all. Thus Merz apparently believed these crazy rumours, and in a fit of panic he decided that Germany should abolish the debt brake after all. Overnight, he announced plans to reform the German constitution to exempt much defence spending from debt limits entirely, and also to establish a 500 billion-Euro “special fund” for infrastructure spending. (In German politics, “special fund” is a euphemism for “great big wad of debt.”)

Altogether, Merz’s proposed spending spree will reach something approaching 20% of German GDP. To piss away all of this money, Merz will need a two-thirds vote of the parliament, and so he’ll have to force his plan through in the last days of the present Bundestag, as the establishment parties will no longer have the necessary votes when the new Bundestag sits at the end of the month (the AfD and the Left Party will be too powerful then). Democracy!

Obviously it would be a good idea for Germany specifically and Europe in general to begin funding their own defence, but three things dampen my enthusiasm for the present hysteria. First, there is the hysteria part: If Covid has taught us anything, it is that little good can come from these self-reinforcing spirals of childish hyperventilation. The second is the imprudent undertone of isolationist Amerophobia and the total lack of any coherent plan beyond “we must spend a bunch of money immediately.” The third, which proceeds from the second, is the absence of any talk whatsoever about serious institutional reform. Pouring money into our existing defence bureaucracies is not going to yield shiny new powerful armies, it is just going to get us more bureaucrats and a few ridiculous, deeply expensive and impossible-to-maintain pieces of military hardware.

Don’t believe me? Consider what happened under Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, when our Bundeswehr attempted to procure updated Puma infantry fighting vehicles for German soldiers. In the insane upside-down world of the Federal Republic, not even the military is exempt from our complex workplace health and safety regulations. Thus the new Pumas had to provide such optimal interior climactic conditions “that they could transport heavily pregnant female soldiers during combat missions.” Specifically, the vehicles had to be built such that munitions fumes would not threaten “amniotic fluid damage among female crew.” These and other bizarre requirements drove the cost and complexity of manufacture so high, that the notoriously incompetent procurement authority in Koblenz never succeeded in replacing our outmoded 1970s-era Marders, hundreds of which remain in service. Original plans to buy 1,000 Pumas had to be scaled back to a mere 350 – still the number that remains in service today. These overwrought machines are prone to maintenance problems and probably at best half of them are operational. In the end, the Pumas ended up ranking among the most expensive infantry fighting vehicles in the entire world, costing between €7 and €10 million Euros per vehicle.

Merz hopes to spend at least 400 billion Euros on expanding the Bundeswehr, and this money will either be poured into disgraceful boondoggles like the Puma, or go straight to the Americans – our newfound geopolitical rivals! – because at least their stuff kind of works. And what is not wasted on unworkable albatross projects will be absorbed by bureaucrats, planners, consultants and other official layabouts. The wide-ranging, fundamental reforms have to come first, but all the present German and European leadership can imagine doing is spending money. I fear that we will not emerge from the present panic stronger or more secure; we will just end up poorer, more geopolitically isolated and vastly more bureaucratised than we already are.

This originally appeared on Eugyppius.

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Paralyzed by Acute Dementia, Europe Declares War on Russia All Over Again

Sab, 08/03/2025 - 05:01

The SMO will keep rollin’ on. And as the Europeans want it, to the last Ukrainian.

Let’s start with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Road to Damascus moment:

“Frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers, the United States helping Ukraine and Russia, and it needs to come to an end”.

Now that’s a howler. Jeffrey Sachs to the rescue. Of course, the correct formulation would be “proxy war launched by the United States”. But still: Hallelujah! Such illumination – by proxy – from Heavens Above could never had hit the previous American Secretary of Genocide.

Now cut to panic. Total European panic.

Le Petit Roi, as popular in France as nighttime mosquitoes in a five-star beach resort, has declared that peace in Europe is only possible with a “tamed” Russia – and that Russia is a direct threat to France and Europe.

On Ukraine, he pontificated that peace simply cannot take place under Russian terms or via the – inevitable – Ukrainian surrender.

Le breathless Petit Roi literally went nuclear. He stressed that France possesses a nuclear deterrent – and offered it to the rest of Europe, while insisting that Europe’s future should not be dictated by Moscow or Washington.

Le Petit Roi napoleonically all but declared war on Russia. Well, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of France would gladly agree that mini-Napoleon should be dispatched to the battlefields in the black soil of Novorossiya right away – where he would surrender in less than 5 minutes, waving a rainbow flag, as he realizes he’s about to be turned into an instant steak tartare.

Now couple this Moliere farce with the fate of the much larger, fatter, pan-European New Model Woke Army regimented by the Fuhrerin SS von der Lugen out of Brussels, allegedly to be financed to the tune of 800 billion euros – money that no one has, and would have to be loaned then repaid with sky-high extorsion interest rates to the usual international financial system vultures.

SS von der Lugen insists Europe is in danger, so the solution is a massive expansion of the military-industrial complex – in practice, buying more overpriced American weapons – and “rearmament”.

Talk about Gotterdammerung on crack.

Were the New Model Woke Army ever come to light, surrender would also be a matter of less than 5 minutes – brandishing rainbow flags – as its woke warriors would face the dire prospect of being Oreshniked to a pile of charcoal grilled burgers.

Add to it the Return of the Nord Stream Saga – with a new plot twist. Sy Hersh conclusively proved that the Nord Streams were bombed under orders of the previous Crash Test Dummy regime in Washington. Now Nord Stream 2, at least, could be back in business via a not-so-secret U.S.-Russia deal involving Gazprom and American oligarchs.

All that while fanatics in Berlin assure right and left they want to explore every possible way to prevent (italics mine) the Nord Stream system from being repaired – because after all no one, especially the new BlackRock chancellor, can deviate from the official policy of destroying the German economy by all means necessary.

Compounding the Kafkaesque scenario, the Prime Minister of Denmark – which is on the brink of losing Greenland “one way or another” to Trump 2.0 – immortalized the words, “peace in Ukraine will be more dangerous than war.” The Polish Prime Minister did not miss a beat, adding that “Europe is stronger than Russia and capable of winning in any military, financial, or economic confrontation.” Europe is in such a “winning” streak now – as the record shows.

All this discombobulated Tower of Babel proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that Europe is geopolitically – and geoeconomically – dead and buried. No Teutonic Gods – complete with fat lady singin’ – will be able to resurrect it.

Flirting with a one-way ticket back to the Stone Age

The notion that Europe is able to pose a military threat to Russia does not even qualify as trashy propaganda for sub-zero IQs. It would take at least a decade to re-militarize Germany as its economy is moribund, serially stabbed by unmanageable energy costs. Russia for its part is protected from a possible nuclear attack by Le Petit Roi’s puny “umbrella” arsenal by the most sophisticated missile defenses in the world.

The Aegis defensive missiles in Poland are relatively worthless – even if their prime danger to Russia remains that the system can be converted to handle offensive missiles. As a whole, the Aegis, Patriot, THAAD-PAC-3, SBIR-HIGH Ground Based Infrared Systems are all relatively useless.

Other than the U.S., NATO simply has no military worth. And Washington under Trump 2.0 simply will not be involved in the next European War.

The U.S. has satellite systems for targeting but no one else in NATO has them. With the U.S. pulling out, and in the event of a hypothetical von der Lugen-led New Woke Army attack against Russia, Russian missiles can knock out all European ports, airports and manufacturing and energy systems in a day max – instantly returning Europe to the stone age.

This applies to England, France, Germany, not to mention assorted chihuahuas: all of NATO. Russia can knock out all British power systems with Zircons launched from a conventional submarine. Stone Age, here we come. Russian hypersonic missiles cannot be intercepted.

Meanwhile, President Putin insists on talking sense to lunatics. At the Collegia of the FSB on February 27, he noted how, “some Western elites are still determined to maintain instability in the world, and these forces will try to disrupt and compromise the dialogue [with the U.S.] that has begun. We see this. We need to take this into account and use all the possibilities of diplomacy and special services to disrupt such attempts.”

As Andrei Martyanov has noted, superpowers have “only two options in the 21st century: either start WWIII which will end with nuclear exchange or find a modus vivendi.” That’s a conversation for adults that automatically excludes the European hospice and the childish tantrums of the cracked actor in Kiev.

The cracked actor never had any (italics mine) cards. He now cuts a pathetic figure, doing somersaults to cling to power, propped by (former) collective West money, weapons and massive propaganda. Now the 404 nation he “created” is losing not only the war but the P.R. war as well.

The former adviser to the head of Zelensky’s office, Oleksiy Arestovych, as slimy as they come, but always with his pulse on reliable info, is convinced that the Ukrainian Army, blind and cross-eyed, can hold out at best for another one and a half to two months without all those American goodies. Without intel data, Kiev’s forces cannot prepare strikes against the Russian federation or conduct reconnaissance and cyber ops.

Country 404 as a whole is now entering Walking Dead territory. Europe, with or without its SS von der Lugen Invincible Armada, does not have the industrial capacity, the financial might, and the military capability to stop the debacle. Russia has already stated that any European “peacekeeping” troops will immediately become legitimate targets.

The spectacular failure of Project Ukraine is a sight to behold. It’s no wonder the current, tawdry, ghastly political “elites” are in total panic. Without Project Ukraine, and without the Mafia protection of His Master’s Voice, they are just, geopolitically, an irrelevant, post-colonial small peninsula on the western borders of fast-integrating Eurasia.

As for Trump 2.0 and the Kremlin already having hit some sort of pre-deal – even before the start of serious negotiations – there’s no evidence yet to corroborate it. According to Russian intel sources, what has been struck is a general agreement on the framework of discussions, and what can be achieved in practice. This initial stage will last at least a few months.

Themes on the table range from lifting sanctions on Russian banks and the use of MIR cards to restoring direct flights and curbing the militarization of the Arctic.

Everything essentially hinges on whether Trump wants – and is able to ensure – a fast endgame in Ukraine while disengaging, slowly but surely, from NATO.

Considering what seems to be his strategic direction, Trump wants to make sure he won’t have to offer Mafia protection to European NATO members if they insist on keep going with their Forever War against Russia. It’s clear that shutting off Starlink and shutting off satellite ISR would lead to a much faster endgame in the battlefield.

The SMO, meanwhile, will keep rollin’ on. And as the Europeans want it, to the last Ukrainian.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

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