Lew Rockwell Institute

Lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas; lie down with neocons, you wake up with wars.
–Me

So goes President Trump’s 28 point peace plan to end the Russia/Ukraine war. Revealed at the end of last week, the plan initially received a cautious but cautiously optimistic reception in Moscow.

It was hardly a dramatic tilt toward the Russian position. Many of the plan’s points ranged from the implausible to the bizarre. For example the idea that President Trump would be crowned some sort of “peace czar” overseeing the deal, and that Russia would agree to use its seized assets to rebuild Ukraine. Then there is the one that Russia should accept a demilitarized “buffer” zone taking up a good chunk of Donetsk (which itself would be “de facto” part of Russia but not de jure – and thereby subject to the vicissitudes of Western electoral politics). And of course there was the part where the US would share the “profits” from Russia’s paid reconstruction of Ukraine.

Very Trumpian, very weird.

Nevertheless the flawed plan (in terms of Russian acceptance) dropped like an atom bomb on the US neocons and their European counterparts. Trump’s peace plan was “entirely dictated by Putin,” the UK Independent breathlessly tells us. Yes, that is how propagandistic the western mainstream media really is. And suddenly we are back to Russiagate and accusations the Trump is acting as Putin’s puppet – or at least stenographer.

At the political level, EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas pretty well summed up the level of delusion among the European elite: “We have not heard of any concessions from Russia. If Russia really wanted peace, it could have agreed to an unconditional ceasefire a long time ago.’”

Yes, Kaja “Sun Tzu” Kallas. Military history teaches us that every army making rapid gains on the battlefield periodically pauses to make concessions to the losing side. Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair and not everyone would get a trophy.

President Trump’s demand that Ukraine’s acting president, Zelensky, accept the terms by Thanksgiving or face a cut-off in US military and intelligence assistance put the Europeans and US hawks in panic mode. It appeared Trump was finally tired of playing Hamlet after the framework he presented in Alaska in August was agreed upon by Russia and then abandoned by Trump himself after receiving an earful from said Europeans and US neocons.

This time, by golly, Trump was finally going to step up and end a conflict nearly a year after he promised to end it 24 hours.

And then Rubio walked in.

The one lesson Trump 2.0 did not learn from Trump 1.0 is that the personnel is the policy, particularly with a president who appears uninterested in details and disengaged from complex processes. Trump 1.0 was dragged down by neocon albatrosses John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, among others.

Even a Col. Douglas Macgregor brought in in the 4th quarter at the two minute warning to throw a “Hail Mary” pass to get us out of Afghanistan was tackled behind the line of scrimmage by Robert O’Brien, Trump’s final National Security Advisor and neocon dead-ender.

Neocons are wreckers. That’s the one thing they are good at.

The inclusion of new blood in the person of Vice President Vance ally, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll – who supplanted terminally clueless Trump envoy Keith Kellogg – offered the promise that finally the realist faction in the shadows of the Trump Administration would have their shot.

Then the rug was pulled. Again.

Rubio jetted off to Geneva to help lick the wounds of the European “leaders” who are dedicated to fighting the Russians down to the last Ukrainian.

Politico lets us in on what happened next, in a piece titled, “Rubio changes the tack of Trump’s Ukraine negotiations after week of chaos.”

Before Rubio showed up in Switzerland, it largely felt like Vice President JD Vance, via his close friend Driscoll, was leading the process. By the end of the weekend, Rubio had taken the reins because the conversations became more flexible, the official said.

“Flexibility” means that we are back to square one, with a reversion to the Kellogg/Euro view that the side winning a war should unilaterally freeze military operations in favor of the losing side.

Politico continued:

Rubio’s participation in the talks produced much more American flexibility, the four people familiar with the discussions said. Rubio told reporters on Sunday night that the aim is simply to finalize discussions ‘as soon as possible,’ rather than by Thanksgiving.

That loss of momentum and destruction of the sense of urgency means we have returned to the endless bickering of the eternally deluded voices who even in the face of rapid recent Russian advances believe that Ukraine is winning – or could win with a few hundred billion more dollars – the war against Russia.

Never mind the golden toilets. Suddenly that’s out of the news.

At the end of the day, all the drama changes little. As President Putin himself said while meeting with his own national security council (h/t MoA):

Either Kiev’s leadership lacks objective reporting about the developments on the front, or, even if they receive such information, they are unable to assess it objectively. If Kiev refuses to discuss President Trump’s proposals and declines to engage in dialogue, then both they and their European instigators must understand that what happened in Kupyansk will inevitably occur in other key areas of the front. Perhaps not as quickly as we would prefer, but inevitably.

And overall, this development suits us, as it leads to achieving the goals of the special military operation by force, through armed confrontation.

In other words, Russia is happy to achieve its objectives through negotiation, which would save lives and infrastructure especially in Ukraine. But it is also willing to continue its accelerating push to achieve those objectives militarily. And no fever dreams of war with Russia from the likes of former NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen is going to change that.

Marco Rubio is a pretty bad Kissinger, and Kissinger was bad enough. At some point – and that point may have now passed – the Russians are going to rightly conclude that they have no negotiating partner in a US still dominated by people like the former Senator from Florida whose first love is regime change in Venezuela and Cuba.

Whatever the case, Trump should be pretty miffed that Marco threw a spanner in what would have been a world record, unprecedented, universally-praised, like-nothing-the-world-has-ever-seen, solving of NINE wars in just his first year in office!

This article was originally published on The Ron Paul Institute.

The post Rubio Neo-conned Trump’s Ukraine Peace Plan appeared first on LewRockwell.

As a national holiday, Thanksgiving originated as war propaganda.

It was Abe Lincoln in November 1863 who made Thanksgiving a national holiday.  The Union Army under Grant had finally won a battle at Shiloh, and the victory called for celebration.

American Indians, or native Americans as some prefer, give no thanks for the Europeans’ arrival or for Lincoln’s victory over the Confederacy.  No sooner than Sherman and Sheridan had raped and pillaged the Confederacy than they were sicced on the Plains Indians,  Ralph K. Andrist chronicles their extermination in his book, The Long Death:  The Last Days of the Plains Indian.

The invasion of the Confederate States of America by the Union has been incorrectly labeled a “civil war” by court historians.  It is completely clear that there was no civil war.  A civil war is when contesting sides fight for the control of the government.  The Confederacy had its own government in Richmond and no interest in the one in Washington.  It was the North that invaded the South by sending an army into Virginia where the Union army was defeated at the Battle of Bull Run.

I have often wondered how corrupt historians got away with calling a war that began with an invasion of one country by another a “civil war.”

I have also wondered how the same corrupt historians got away with falsely claiming that the war was fought for the purpose of freeing black people from slavery when Abe Lincoln made it completely clear that he initiated the war in order to preserve the union.

I have also wondered how the liberal/left and black studies departments in universities got away with demonizing white Americans for slavery when the greatest casualties in American history were the consequence of a four year war allegedly fought to free black slaves. Altogether 594,000 white men died in a war allegedly fought to free the slaves.  Where, then, does the charge of white racism come from?

I have also wondered why the Union preferred one people of color over another.  Allegedly, the Union suffered 642,427 dead and wounded in a four year effort to free the black slaves, and then immediately on the cessation of the war began with merciless attacks a war on the Plains Indians.

I have also wondered why Lincoln’s army was called the Union Army if it was not fighting to preserve the Union but to free the slaves.  Why wasn’t it called the Black Freedom Army?

The facts are so clear and simple.  Yet they are denied.  Slavery existed for thousands of years prior to the colonization of the New World.  The South did not create slavery.  The South inherited slavery as the agricultural labor force.  The black slaves in America were enslaved by the black king of Dahomey who sold the excess as slaves.  It was the main business of his kingdom.

All races and ethnicities suffered enslavement.  It was President Thomas Jefferson who had to send the US Marines to the Shores of Tripoli in order to stop North Africans from enslaving US citizens.

When one looks at the total mess historians have made of the War of Northern Invasion and slavery, one cannot help being sympathetic with Henry Ford’s dictum that “history is bunk.”

The post Thanksgiving’s Origin as a National Holiday appeared first on LewRockwell.

Given the high visibility of the Israeli genocide being carried out in Gaza, for the first time many among the American general public are beginning to ask why a rich country like Israel should be getting billions of dollars from the United States taxpayer to pay for waging its war when many Americans are struggling. Inevitably, of course, the press coverage of the questions being asked about the cash flow and what is playing out in Gaza have failed to discuss the real magnitude of the “aid,” which go far beyond the $3.8 billion a year that President Barack Obama committed to America’s “best friend and closest ally.” In fact, over the past two years, Washington has given Israel more than $21 billion in weapons and cash and just last week the 1,000th US transport plane filled with weapons landed in Israel. On top of all that, there are trade concessions, co-production “defense partnership” projects and dicey charitable contributions from Zionist billionaires that our federal and many state governments shower on the Jewish state, easily exceeding $10 billion in a “normal” year without Israel claiming having “greater need” as it goes about violating ceasefires and killing Gazans, Lebanese and Iranians.

The fact that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have enabled Israel’s slaughter without so much as the slightest hesitation should in itself be damnable, but the average American is fed a steady diet of propaganda favoring Israel through the devastatingly effective Jewish media control that prevails nationwide. Interestingly, however, as the American public is beginning to tire of the Israeli lies, the Israel Lobby in the US is following the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu, who has declared that his country will be fighting eight wars – seven against all of its neighbors and one to control the United States’ increasingly negative opinion of what Israel represents. As a result, laws like the Antisemitism Awareness Act are being passed to silence “freedom of speech” critics of the Jewish state and criminalize what they are saying.

During his 2016 campaign Donald Trump swore that he would be the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House, a pledge that some viewed skeptically as Trump was also committed to bringing the troops home from “useless wars” in Asia, most of whom were in the Middle East supporting Israeli interests. More recently Trump admitted that America was in the Middle East to “protect Israel” and he has indeed proven to be the great benefactor he promised to be in responding fully to Netanyahu’s wish list. In his first term in office, Trump increased tension dramatically with Iran, moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights, and basically gave Israel the green light to do whatever it wants on the Palestinian West Bank, including getting rid of the Palestinians.

And currently as all that has already played out the Israelis have attacked and killed thousands of civilians in Gaza, Syria and the West Bank with impunity, protected by the US veto in the UN Security Council against any consequences for their actions while a subservient Congress gives Netanyahu fifty-six standing ovations and bleats that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Trump has made the United States completely complicit in Israeli war crimes and has added a few unique touches of its own to include the widely condemned assassination of the senior Iranian official Qassem Soleimani while on a peace mission in Baghdad in January 2020.

Israel more-or-less openly admits that it controls the actions of the United States in its region, Netanyahu having boasted how the US federal government is “easily moved” when it comes up against the Israeli Lobby. Nor is there any real secret to how the Lobby uses money to buy access and then exploits that access to obtain real power, which is then used to employ all the resources of the US government in support of the Jewish state. The top donor to the Democratic Party, Israeli-American Haim Saban has stated that he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel. This single-minded focus to promote Israel’s interests at the expense of those of the United States makes the Israel Lobby the most formidable foreign policy lobby in Washington.

One of the tools used by Trump to facilitate the virtual slavery under the Israeli yoke is the appointment of passionately Zionist US Ambassadors to Israel, where they often behave as if they are there to represent Jewish interests rather that those of the United States. Trump’s first term appointment David Friedman was a personal lawyer with no diplomatic or international experience, so he inevitably endorsed with some enthusiasm every extreme proposal coming from Netanyahu, which he then went on to sell to Trump. Friedman, now retired, has a home in Jerusalem and has reportedly opted to spend much of his time in Israel.

Friedman was, however, somewhat of a gem compared to the current ambassador Mike Huckabee, an Israel-Firster Baptist preacher from Arkansas, who repeatedly expresses his love for the Jewish state and white-washes whatever it does. For what it’s worth, on October 13th, 2025, Friedman and Huckabee performed a rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s hit song Sweet Home Alabama in Jerusalem but with altered lyrics that promoted Zionism and the city of Jerusalem itself. Friedman played guitar while Huckabee played bass. Trump, of course, is similar in his overweening embrace of Israel, whether it be because he is being blackmailed, or honestly believes in what he is saying, or even because he has converted to Judaism in 2017, as some believe. In any event, the theatrical duet performance by the two Israel-loving ambassadors failed to provide any benefit to the United States of America.

The complete contempt that the Israelis and Israeli supporters in the US – to include the Ambassador Huckabee – have for other Americans and their interests has been on full display recently and it involves the most significant espionage operation that Israel has ever “run” inside the United States. Jonathan Pollard, the most damaging spy in American history, stole for Israel the keys to accessing US communications and information gathering systems, which gave the Jewish state access to all US intelligence as it was being collected. He was Jewish and a US citizen, his father a professor at Notre Dame University. As a student at Stanford, where he completed a degree in 1976, Pollard’s penchant for dissimulation was already noted by other students. He is remembered for having boasted that he was a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, claiming to have worked for Mossad, to having attained the rank of Colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (even sending himself a telegram addressed to “Colonel Pollard”), and to having killed an Arab while on guard duty at a kibbutz. All the claims were lies.

Physically Pollard was also unappealing, overweight and balding, seemingly an unlikely candidate to become a US Navy intelligence analyst which he accomplished after having failed a polygraph test when trying to join CIA. One review board determined that he had been hired in the first place under pressure from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to an intelligence agency after-the fact-damage assessment “Pollard’s operation has few parallels among known US espionage cases…. his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January [1984] and consisted of five suitcases-full of classified material.”

Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote a forty-six page review of the Pollard case that remains largely classified and redacted to this day, detailing what incredible damage Pollard had done. Part of the document states: “In this case, the defendant has admitted passing to his Israeli contacts an incredibly large quantity of classified information. At the outset I must state that the defendant’s disclosures far exceed the limits of any official exchange of intelligence information with Israel. That being the case, the damage to national security was complete the moment the classified information was given over. Ideally, I would detail…all the information passed by the defendant to his Israeli contacts: unfortunately, the volume of .data we know to have been passed is too great to permit that. · Moreover, the defendant admits to having passed to his Israeli handlers a quantity of documents great enough to occupy a space six feet by ten feet… The defendant has substantially harmed the United States, and in my view, his crimes demand severe punishment… My foregoing comments will, I hope, dispel any presumption that disclosures to an ally are insignificant; to the contrary, substantial and irrevocable damage has been done to this nation. Punishment, of course, must be appropriate to the crime, and in my opinion, no crime is more deserving of severe punishment than conducting espionage activities against one’s own country.”

Pollard was detected and arrested in 1985, convicted in 1987, and imprisoned. The case sent shockwaves through both Washington and Tel Aviv at the time of the conviction. Pollard pled guilty, confessing to selling the thousands of pages of secret documents to the Israelis for cash, vacations to Europe, and promised future payments to be wired to a Swiss bank account. A federal judge correctly dismissed pleas for clemency.

In 2015 Pollard was released from prison under parole which required him to remain in the United States. But in January 2021 Pollard was released from the parole conditions and was allowed to fly “home,” meeting Netanyahu as he disembarked from a private plane that had departed from Newark New Jersey before being given a hero’s welcome. The Pollard trip to his “home” occurred because Donald Trump had obligingly lifted the travel restrictions on him the week before, one more favor to Israel, which apparently came about when Huckabee pleaded with Trump to show “mercy.” At the airport, Pollard and his wife knelt to kiss the Israeli soil before Netanyahu handed him an Israeli citizen ID and welcomed him. The 737 luxury-fitted executive jet Pollard and his wife flew on belonged to Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, then the chief donor to the Republicans and to Donald Trump. Adelson was married to an Israeli, Miriam Adelson, who now survives him and continues the donations to the Republicans. Sheldon famously once said that he regretted having worn a US Army uniform when he was drafted in World War 2, much preferring instead that he might have done military service in the Israel Defense Forces.

But the Pollard story does not end there. In July Jonathan Pollard was a guest at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, where he met with Ambassador Mike Huckabee. The meeting was his first with US officials since his release and immigration to Israel. It was a break with precedent and the move by Huckabee, even all these years after the crime, still alarmed American intelligence officials even though, as it was Israel, media coverage in the US was minimal. John Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, has argued that Pollard should have been detained by the Marine guards at the American Embassy in Jerusalem and should not have been allowed to meet with the ambassador. “[Pollard] has called for Jewish Americans who have security clearances… to begin spying for Israel, just like he did… So for him to be welcomed into the American Embassy is a bridge too far. If anything, he should have been snatched when he entered the American embassy.” Kiriakou also cited an interview Pollard gave to Israeli media while Joe Biden was still in office, urging Israel to “nuke” the United States if Biden were to make any attempt to force Israel to mitigate its slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza. Biden, of course, did no such thing.

The Trump administration was apparently not consulted regarding the planned get-together between Pollard and Huckabee. “The White House was not aware of that meeting,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed. It was reportedly left off the public schedule of the ambassador, suggesting at a minimum that it was a terrible decision by Huckabee acting on his own which he made some attempt to conceal. And yet, when the story broke the Trump administration still condoned the actions of the ambassador, who reportedly had a friendly chat with the spy who had done most grave damage ever to the United States. “The president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee,” Leavitt added, “and all that he’s doing for the United States and Israel.” She did not elaborate on what he has been doing for the United States.

After the story broke, Pollard accused “anti-Israel and isolationist elements within the US government of leaking that he met off-the-books with US Ambassador Huckabee in a bid to discredit and oust the pro-Israel envoy.” He claimed that “The New York Times story was part, or is part, of an effort to discredit the ambassador and have him removed. I think the people behind this are anti-Israel elements within the Trump administration, the neo-isolationists… and others, perhaps pro-Saudi, pro-Qatari elements within the administration that would like to see a person like Ambassador Huckabee sent home.” Pollard later gave an interview in which he named Steven Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as likely culprits “representing Saudi and Qatari rather than US interests” in brokering the Gaza ceasefire, and he added that he “despises them” for daring to “carry on with terrorists.” Pollard added his view that the 20-point ceasefire plan, leaving the door open to the possibility for Palestinian statehood, threatens Israel’s security and “undermines our independence,” and the October 9th truce-hostage deal that is based on that plan would have been worthwhile only had Israel “unleashed… hell on Hamas” following the October 13th release of the last 20 living hostages from Gaza.

Pollard described his meeting with Huckabee as “personal” and “friendly” and confirmed that it was his first meeting with a US government official after his release by Trump from travel restrictions. He concluded that “A lot of people seem to think that I harbor an anger toward the United States, which I don’t. There were specific people that lied about me, that lied about Israel, that tried to use me as a weapon to undermine the US-Israel special relationship, and those are the people I have problems with but certainly people like Ambassador Huckabee, and others, I have absolutely no problem talking to. If I could guess, I would say it’s that community, particularly the CIA station in the embassy, that probably was the one that initiated this whole effort to discredit the ambassador.”

Pollard clearly is promoting a false narrative that makes himself look like some kind of honorable and valiant defender of Israel when in reality he did what he did for the most base of reasons, i.e. for money. Money is indeed how the Israeli boosters in the United States have been able to flat out corrupt America’s political process to attain the dominance that has enabled them to promote the Israeli agenda. They have bought or intimidated every politician that matters to include presidents, congressmen and even those in state and local governments. Anyone who criticizes Israel or Jewish collective behavior in support of the Israeli state is subject to character assassination and blacklisting a la Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tom Massie. Those who persist are denounced as anti-Semites, a label that is used liberally by Zionist groups. Now Pollard is portraying himself as some kind of Israeli hero. The end result is that when Israel kills civilians in violation of a ceasefire in Gaza and is allowing rampaging armed settlers to destroy Palestinian livelihoods the United States government chooses to look the other way and instead showers the rogue state with money so it can continue to do its dirty work. Providing that political cover for Israel is in part the real dark side of Huckabee’s job as he sees it, not to engage over real American interests.

And then there are the hot buttons a-la the lies about Israel being advanced by Pollard and his ilk which, if the US actually had a functional government that is responsive to the people, should have been pushed long ago. “Best friend” Israel is ranked by the FBI as the number one “friendly” country in terms of its spying against the United States. Pollard is an exception who was actually punished since his crime was so dramatic and damaging, but Israeli spies are routinely slapped on the wrist when caught and never face prosecution for that crime, as one might note in the current “investigation” of Jeffrey Epstein, which was undoubtedly a major MOSSAD intelligence operation.

And there are also the MOSSAD agents who were the “Dancing Shlomos,” celebrating while the twin towers went down on 9/11, who were allowed to go home and various assassinations including JFK and even Charlie Kirk that have an Israeli back story. And Israel has never truly paid any price for the horrific bombing and torpedoing of the USS Liberty fifty-eight years ago, which killed 34 Americans and injured over one hundred and seventy more. The completely unprovoked attack took place in international waters and was later covered-up by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Congress. May they burn in hell. The few remaining surviving crew members are still waiting for justice.

Good riddance to scum like Jonathan Pollard and the Israel-Firsters who enable him. It is reported in Israel that Pollard is now preparing to run for the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, which explains his demeanor and phony narrative. It also all means that it is past time to get rid of folks like Ambassador Mike Huckabee who prefer to advance Israeli interests rather than those of his own country because, he believes, God is telling him to do so. More generally speaking, it is well past time to get rid of the special relationship with Israel, sanctified in the halls of Congress and by a Jewish dominated media, which does nothing good for the United States and for the American people. Israel’s constant interference in the US political system and economy comes at a huge cost, both in dollars and in terms of actual American interests.

So, let’s all resolve for 2026 to do whatever we can to pull the plug on Israel. Let Israel, which is now seeking a 20 year commitment of even more cash annually from the US taxpayer, pay its own bills and take care of its own defense. American citizens who prefer the Jewish ethno-religious state to our constitutional republic should feel free to emigrate. In fact, they should be encouraged to leave. Lacking Washington’s backing, Israel will also be free to commit atrocities and war crimes against all of its neighbors but without the US United Nations veto it will have to begin facing the consequences for its actions. But most of all, as Americans, we will no longer have to continue to carry the burden of a country that manipulates and uses us and also has a certain contempt for us while doing so, witness how Trump’s kid-glove handling of Jonathan Pollard has played out. And maybe just maybe freeing the United States from Israel could lead to an end to all the wars in the Middle East that Washington has been waging in spite of the fact that we Americans are threatened by no one in the region and have no real interest whatsoever in prolonging the agony of staying engaged there.

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

The post Ambassador Mike Huckabee Secretly Meets Top Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard appeared first on LewRockwell.

Looking back on the the Schleswig-Holstein wars in the mid 19th century, Lord Palmerston quipped:

The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third and I have forgotten all about it.

Palmerston was making a joke of the fact that in many of Europe’s conflicts, the belligerents don’t understand what they are fighting about.

Britain, France, and Germany have never understood Russia, and their policies towards Russia have always been bloody-minded, murderous, and stupid. Consider that the rationale for the Crimean War (1853-56) was to reduce Russia’s growing influence within a region that had long been controlled by the Ottoman Empire. In other words, the geniuses in London preferred the weak rule of Ottoman slave traders in the Black Sea to that of the Christian Czar Nicholas I.

In 1812, Napoleon’s advisor, Armand-Augustin-Louis de Caulaincourt, as well as his ex-wife Josephine (whose counsel he had usually valued) begged him not to invade Russia, but he refused to listen to them.

Because of his obstinate pride, he failed to recognize the obvious trap that Russian commander General Mikhail Kutuzov set for him—namely, that of strategic retreat deep into Russia with winter setting in, thereby overextending the French supply lines and letting the Russian winter do most of the grim work on French soldiers.

After declaring war on Russia in August 1914, Germany and Austro-Hungary established the Eastern Front in the Austrian territorial possession of Galicia, which is now part of western Ukraine. In June 1916, the Russian Army launched the Brusilov offensive, inflicting approximately one million casualties on the German and Austrian armies. I suspect that few if any members of the E.U. Parliament even know about the Brusilov offensive.

In 1941, intoxicated by his easy victory in France, Hitler decided to launch Operation Barbarossa, thereby committing the German Army to the same misery the French had suffered in 1812. German Chief of Staff, Franz Halder, strongly advised him against it, but the “Little Corporal from Austria” refused to listen to him.

Now we come to Ursula von der Leyen’s Nov. 25, 2025 speech before the EU Parliament in Strasbourg, which may be the most nonsensical address ever uttered in the history of Europe.

Ursula’s paternal line is from the Electorate of Hanover, whose House of Hanover produced Mad King George III and his imbecilic sons George IV and “Silly Billy” King William IV.

Ursula is able to persist in making ruinous decisions for Europe because she is never held accountable for any of them. During the pandemic she had private discussions by text message with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla (see Did Ursula von der Leyen & Albert Bourla Mix Business with Pleasure?) to poison all of Europe with his mRNA shot. To this day, she has never been compelled to disclose these messages to the public. She also recently Likened Free Speech to an Infectious Disease.

Now she wants to keep the war going in Ukraine and to continue sending EU taxpayer money to the corrupt, larcenist, money-laundering dictatorship in Kiev.

President Trump should tell her that it is simply not in the interest of the United States to keep this war going with Russia, and that he and he alone is going to negotiate with the Russians to end it.

While he’s at it, he should remind dunderhead Chancellor Merz that the U.S. still has 35,000 armed men stationed in Germany to prevent its government from doing stupid things like starting another war with Russia.

Increasingly, it seems to me that Europe’s “leaders”—Starmer, Macron, Merz, and von der Leyen—perceive that they need to keep the war with Russia going for their own political survival.

I wonder if they are afraid that—if the Zelensky regime collapses and Zelensky is obliged to join his “wallet,” Timur Mindich, in fleeing to Israel—the precise mechanics of their participation in this monstrously corrupt enterprise will be revealed.

The reality of the war in Ukraine is that Russia was deliberately and systematically baited into launching its military operation. The purpose of this Russian Bear Baiting was to bleed Russia and to provide Western “leaders” with a pretext for:

1). Diverting attention from the COVID-19 fiasco that they themselves created.

2). Destroying the Nord Stream Pipeline to promote the U.S. LNG industry.

3). Looting their treasuries and enriching their cronies in the military-industrial complex.

4). Destroying Russia, whose increasing power as an independent nation state has long been a matter of sore resentment for the Satanic globalists who wish to acquire dominion over the entire earth.

5). Seizing Russian mineral assets to collateralize another round of enormous credit expansion in the West, whose governments are now insolvent.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

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For those of us who have lived through past recessions, this latest development comes as no surprise: as the US economy worsens, we’re now being told that consumers are hurting the economy because they are saving too much money.

This is a pretty common trope among the regime economists whose job it is—apparently—to incessantly harangue the American consumer into spending every last dime he has on corporate America’s trinkets. After all, if the consumer saves “too much” money this will send the US economy into a liquidity trap. At least, that’s how the official narrative goes.

Regular readers of mises.org won’t be shocked to hear that the alleged liquidity trap isn’t real, and it’s not at all a problem if consumers save money rather than spend it. After all, real economic progress depends on a sustainable foundation of saving and investment, and not on consumers frittering away their retirements on another round of luxury cars and Caribbean cruises.

Back in 2001 in the days of the dot-com bust, then-vice president Dick Cheney said that Americans who were falling on hard times ought to “support the troops”—remember that worthless propaganda phrase?—by spending more money on retail goods. If you saved your money, then the terrorists won.

As the 2008 recession got underway the story was the same, but with less jingoism. Paul Krugman, for example, promulgated the usual Keynesian gospel with an article titled “When Consumers Capitulate“ and explained how saving is a bad thing because “individual virtue can be public vice” and “attempts by consumers to do the right thing by saving more can leave everyone worse off.”

In other words, saving money will backfire so you’re hurting America by spending less.

So, just as we might look for daffodils to emerge from the snow as a sign of the coming spring, we look for signs of a worsening economy in the form of patronizing columns telling consumers that they’re not spending enough money.

Perhaps the earliest sign of this phenomenon in the current cycle was April’s Wall Street Journal article—titled “Your New Lunch Habit Is Hurting the Economy“—lecturing consumers for brown-bagging their lunches. But it certainly didn’t end there. In a Sunday column for CNBC, Kevin Williams trots out the creaky old Krugmanian “arguments” and wrings his hands over the fact that Americans aren’t spending as much money on smartphones, and that it’s “costing the economy.” He writes:

If you are holding onto your aging printer or cracked smartphone longer than you had planned, you are not alone. …

The average American now holds onto their [sic] smartphone for 29 months … and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016.

While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run…

How exactly is it “costing” the economy? Well, it seems that if you’re not spending every last nickel on a new iPhone—remember, they don’t make pennies anymore, thanks to inflation—then you are losing milliseconds of lost “productivity.” The solution? Go further into debt for a $900 phone so that you can more quickly stay up to date on AI-created cat videos.

The economics “experts” tell us that if you’re saving your money instead of buying more “efficient” tech, then you’re not an optimal cog in the machine of the corporate tax farm we call “the United States.”

Of course, one may ask, how do the “experts” know if I’m better off buying a new phone, or if I’m better off saving that money for other priorities? How do they know if it’s more “efficient” for me to spend my money on a phone now, rather than on, say, tuition for my child’s education? The answer is they don’t have a clue what makes any consumer better off.  The usual media-quoted economists only claim to know these things because they have been trained to mindlessly come up with new reasons as to why it’s always better for regular people to spend as much money as possible, at all times.

Again, this new call to buy newer smart phones is just the first sign of what is to come, as it becomes increasingly clear that consumers are tapped out. The early signs are there, such as rising delinquency rates for automobiles and credit cards. Hiring is essentially flat, and the unemployment rate is rising, even as immigrants self-deport by the hundreds of thousands. October foreclosures were up, year over year, by 32 percent.

We can expect more articles like this CNBC column moving foreword, with “warnings” about how consumers should spend more or else fall prey to the savings-induced evils of “inefficiency” or even outright recession.

Now is a good time to remind ourselves, though, of why these calls for maximum and immediate spending get it wrong. They key to economic growth has never been spending as much money as possible on existing products and services right now. Rather, a vibrant economy can come from saving and investment which will turn become essential capital that is transformed into productive enterprises in the future.  

That is, a better economy in the future requires saving and investment now. There is no need to worry about the consumers saving their money “too much.” Bob Murphy explains:

[I]t will be useful to spell out exactly what happens in a market economy when consumers decide to save more of their income. The first thing to realize is that people do not decide to “spend” or not; rather, they decide whether to spend in the present versus in the future. For example, imagine that thousands of couples in a large city one day decide to skip their weekly restaurant outings in order to save up for a summer cruise. At first, it seems that this would hurt the economy. After all, local restaurants see their sales drop, and so they buy fewer items from their suppliers and lay off some workers. The suppliers and workers in turn have less income to spend, and so sales are hurt elsewhere too.

However, so long as the entrepreneurs involved in the cruise industry anticipate the eventual increase in demand for their services, they will exactly offset the above effects when they hire more workers and other items in preparation for the busy summer months. The new savings (which were previously spent on restaurants) drives down interest rates, perhaps allowing the cruise operators to borrow money and pay for an additional liner. Thus the decision to save more doesn’t reduce total income or employment, once everyone adjusts to the new spending patterns. It is really no different from a scenario where thousands of people become health conscious and decide to spend their money on vegetables rather than fast food.

CNBC would have you believe “the economy” suffers when we don’t buy more new phones. In reality, it’s just iPhone sellers who suffer. The economy and Apple are not the same thing.

In any case, no consumers should ever allow himself to be convinced that he hurts either himself of “the economy” by saving money. Lew Rockwell notes:

But this also defies everything we know about family finance. The path to a secure prosperity is delaying consumption. One should spend as little as possible and save as much as possible for the future, and let that money be used in the service of investments that yield a solid rate of return. Those who have chosen a different path now see the folly: they are being burned in the soft housing market, for example.

The lesson is also true for the nation at large, because the logic doesn’t magically change when moving from the family budget to the national stage. Just because something involves “macroeconomics” doesn’t mean that we should throw out all good sense. But that is precisely what people have done with regard to the economy, since J.M. Keynes somehow convinced the world that up is down and left is right.

In a recession or a crisis, the right approach for individuals is to save. So too for the national economy. A looming recession will prompt a pullback in consumer spending as a rational response to the perception of economic troubles. This action does not cause the economy to fall into recession any more than more spending can save it from recession. The downturn is a fact that cannot be avoided. We don’t blame umbrellas for floods, and, in the same way, we shouldn’t blame tightfisted consumers for recessions.

So, there is no liquidity trap and saving doesn’t cause recessions and we can safely ignore all the future media articles about how saving money is bad news for the economy.

The post We’re Approaching the ‘Blame the Consumer’ Stage of the Boom-Bust Cycle appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

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Writes Eric Zuesse:

The economic genius Yanis Varoufakis tallies it all up in this extraordinary 27-minute talk:

The post The $10 Trillion-Plus Costs of Trump’s Imperialism appeared first on LewRockwell.

John Leo Keenan wrote:

I felt the doctor was too strong in this title, that it’s not so for Mises, whom Dr. Njoya quotes to back this title up.  In the quote she gives of him, it’s implicit that Mises grants History is a science in its own right.  Her Mises quote says the following, and I highlight the implied definition of history as being a science:

“This is not a field for understanding. It is a task to be accomplished by the employment of the tools provided by all nonhistorical sciences. The phenomena are gathered by cautious critical observation of the records available.… What a historian asserts is either correct or contrary to fact, is either proved or disproved by the documents available, or vague because the sources do not provide us with sufficient information. The experts may disagree, but only on the ground of a reasonable interpretation of the evidence available.”

If history weren’t a science to him, he would have written “by all sciences,” “the sciences” or something like that.  He implies there that history is a science to him.  It’s something to improve on that she doesn’t see the fact in the quote.  Without critical thinking we’re done for (as simple as that in my opinion).  She should check Google AI for this.  (It knows more than Njoya about Mises.)  I asked it, “did Ludwig von Mises think history is a science too and do we have a quote about it?”  It answered what I remembered about Mises (not as categorically), that he believed it’s “one of the two sciences of human action.”  She should not have used him to back up her title because it’s not so.  The correctness of AI Overview’s answer is also history and science, and in the last quote it gives at the end, the point of history being a science of human action is implied more heavily than in her quote.  Google’s AI Overview (copied and pasted):

“Ludwig von Mises did not consider history to be a science in the same way that he defined the theoretical, a priori science of human action, praxeology. Mises viewed history as one of the two sciences of human action, but he drew a sharp distinction in their logical character and methods. 

Mises’s View of History and Science

• History as a Science of the Past: Mises defined history as an empirical science of the past, dealing with unique, unrepeatable events and their concrete causes and effects. Its purpose is to understand the specific meaning and motivations behind individual human actions in a given context (a task Mises associated with a branch of history he called “thymology”).
• Praxeology as the A Priori Science: In contrast, Mises developed praxeology (of which economics is a part) as a theoretical, a priori science that uses deductive reasoning from the fundamental axiom of human action. Praxeology aims to discover universally valid laws and principles that are not derived from or falsifiable by historical experience.
• Distinction from the Natural Sciences: Mises argued that the methods of the natural sciences (like laboratory experiments and induction to find general laws) cannot be applied to human behavior because human action involves conscious choice and meaning, which are not present in the physical world. 

Relevant Quote

While Mises did not provide a single, widely circulated quote that “history is a science,” he made numerous statements highlighting the limitations of history in generating universal laws, contrasting it with praxeology. 

A key quote from his work Theory and History that encapsulates his view on what history can and cannot teach us is:

“If historical experience could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.” 

However, a more direct quote regarding the methodological limitations of history in a scientific context is:

“History cannot teach us any general rule, principle, or law”.

He further clarified the nature of praxeology (and thus, how it differs from history) with this quote: 

“Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts.” 

The post Re: “History Is Not a Science” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Wayne Goodfellow.

KW News

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Thanks, John Smith.

Antiwar.com

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Thanks, John Smith.

The Intercept

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Thanks, John Smith.

Middle East Eye

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George Giles wrote:

In Hong Kong there is a high rise building on fire for many hours and has not fallen down.

CBS News

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Writes Bill Madden:

I’m currently reading about Singapore’s health system.  They always rate in the top five of all countries in the world for health care excellence and the cost of the system is about 30% of ours.

The man running the country after it received independence was committed to helping the people so we will probably never have a similar system without a revolution.  Their system uses competition and other incentives to optimize the factors of cost and quality.  In our country, “profit” is not a dirty word for Corporate America, “competition” is.

Good, old Charlie agreed.

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Thanks, Ginny Garner.

Need to Know News

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Click Here:

Palestinewillbefree.substack.com

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Negotiations between the US, Ukraine and Europe over the 28-point proposed framework reportedly has produced agreement on 19-points, which will be presented at sometime in the near future to the Russians. However, despite a ton of positive spin coming out of Geneva (where the talks were held) the actual substance of the supposed agreement is a dumpster fire.

The first point of confusion is the authorship of the 28-point plan. The Washington Post reported on Monday that:

Rubio “made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) said during the Halifax International Security Forum. “It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.”

Rubio denied the senators’ statements hours later, writing on X: “The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations.”

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott called the senators’ comments “blatantly false.” In separate statements, Pigott and the White House said the plan “was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians.”

Here is one problem: the “Russian input” did not come from any Russian official… It was reportedly provided by Kiril Dimitriev, who is an informal advisor to Vladimir Putin but holds no weight within the Russian Foreign Ministry nor in the Russian National Security Council. Moreover, as I reported in my previous analysis of the 28-point document, there is very little in that purported peace plan that actually reflects Russia’s stated positions on a variety of issues.

Yuri Ushakov, a top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin’s foreign policy advisor, commented on the proposed US peace plan for Ukraine during an interview today (Monday, 24 November) with the state news agency TASS. Ushakov, who coordinates Russia’s international relations and has been involved in key diplomatic efforts (including the 2022 Istanbul talks), described the plan as partially aligned with Moscow’s interests, but emphasized that no formal negotiations have occurred. So far, the only document that Russia has reviewed was the one presented at the meeting in August at the Anchorage, Alaska meeting between Trump and Putin.

According to Ushakov, Russia is familiar with an original version of the US peace plan (stemming from the August 2025 Alaska summit between Putin and President Trump), but “no specific negotiations” have taken place on it. He noted multiple versions are now circulating, but his comments focused on the one reviewed by the Kremlin. Ushakov added that the Kremlin views the EU’s alternative peace framework as “completely unconstructive” and unsuitable, as it fails to meet Russia’s core interests, such as weakening NATO’s posture in Eastern Europe.

Donald Trump is too weak politically to secure a deal that will be acceptable to Russia without igniting a firestorm among Republican and Democrat legislators, not to mention the strong opposition from the Europeans and Ukrainian officials. Here’s just a sample of the pushback:

U.S. lawmakers worried the initial proposal would further destabilize global security by rewarding Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine — raising questions over why Trump needs the deal signed so urgently, even if it comes at the expense of American and Ukrainian interests.

“Some people better get fired on Monday for the gross buffoonery we just witnessed over the last four days,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) posted on X on Saturday. “This hurt our country and undermined our alliances, and encouraged our adversaries.”. . .

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the former majority leader, on Sunday cautioned against the Trump administration “pressuring the victim and appeasing the aggressor” as a way to bring about peace. He questioned “which difficult concessions” the U.S. had asked of Russia.

“Allies and adversaries are watching: Will America hold firm against aggression or will we reward it?” McConnell wrote on X.

Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) sharply criticized the early plan, telling ABC on Sunday morning that “Neville Chamberlain’s giving in to Hitler [before] World War II looks strong in comparison” and that the plan resembles a set of “Russian talking points.”

An overwhelming majority Washington politicians and European leaders are still in denial about the dire situation confronting Ukraine… They genuinely believe that Russia is under great pressure from a supposedly failing economy and staggering losses on the battlefield. Both are lies. Russia is wasting no time in continuing to attack and destroy Ukrainian fortifications and electrical infrastructure all along the line of contact. Putin, along with Kremlin spokesman Peskov and Ushakov, continue to feign interest in a diplomatic solution, but understand that Trump will fail to produce a proposed deal that Russia would find acceptable.

If Ukraine was winning on the battlefield and Russia was failing economically and militarily, we would not be seeing the panicked effort by the US and Europe to secure an agreement with Moscow that would end the fighting… Hell, the West, along with Zelensky, would be popping champagne corks and celebrating.

Once Rubia comes up with a proposal that satisfies Ukraine and placates Europe, it will be presented to Putin’s Foreign Ministry, who will make all of the appropriate diplomatic gestures, carefully read the document, and then politely reject it or call for a meeting between Trump and Putin. All of this will take time, and Russia is in no hurry to secure an agreement because of its accelerating success on the battlefield.

Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.

The post Trump Administration Is Letting Europe Kill Its Proposed Russia/Ukrainian Peace Plan appeared first on LewRockwell.

The court historians, who insist that they have the only “correct” view of history, like to claim that theirs is the only true version of history because it is based on primary sources. But they fail to distinguish between what the primary sources state, and their own interpretation of the significance to be attached to those sources. Moreover, their selection of which historical sources are to be given paramount importance, and which may safely be ignored, is often selected to fit within their own preferred theory.

In understanding the War Between the States, we are given to understand that the writings of John C. Calhoun, Alexander Stephens, and Jefferson Davis are “biased,” and the truth is to be found in the speeches of Abraham Lincoln which are not biased at all. The only speech of Alexander Stephens we are to study is the so-called Cornerstone Speech—which is so named because we are to focus on the paragraph where he calls racial inequality the cornerstone of the Confederate constitution, and we are to ignore everything else he said about the Confederate constitution because that is not important. This is all presented as the “truth” based on a scientific—or at least science-like—study of the evidence by the trained experts. The implication is that you should no more dismiss the establishment view of history than you would dismiss the report of an engineer on the structural integrity of a bridge.

In his book Theory and History Ludwig von Mises skewered the sham “scientism” adopted by such historians, who depict their collectivist methodology, largely based on studying groups and group activity, as akin to the study of physics or chemistry. For example, the historian Samuel H. Beer in his essay “Political Science and History” argued that the social sciences and the study of history can yield principles that are universally true, based on descriptions across time and place. He called this “the doctrine of universality,” arguing that it can be used to derive theories explaining “the essential nature of law, science, and causal explanation.”

He was even “ready to accept as lawlike and explanatory propositions which do not hold in all contexts.” Part of the reason why social scientists prefer a collectivist approach to the study of history is that they seek, as far as possible, to imitate the methodology of the natural sciences by quantifying and measuring group activity, deriving general theories that would describe and explain the actions of specified groups of people and provide a foundation for making predictions of how people are likely to act in future. The actions of individuals are deemed to be irrelevant to this “study of mass phenomena.” As Mises explains,

While the study of individual traits is of no special interest to them, they hope study of the behavior of social aggregates will reveal information of a really scientific character. For these people the chief defect of the traditional methods of historical research is that they deal with individuals. They esteem statistics precisely because, as they think, it observes and records the behavior of social groups.

Mises argued that the methodology of the natural sciences cannot appropriately be applied to understanding human action, and that history cannot be fully understood without studying individuals. In Human Action, he explains the methodology of the historian as having two components, the first of which is based on examination of primary sources such as historical documents—the aim being to ascertain what the documents say or depict. On this component, any honest historian can be treated as reliable:

Those facts which can be established in an unquestionable way on the ground of the source material available must be established as the preliminary work of the historian. This is not a field for understanding. It is a task to be accomplished by the employment of the tools provided by all nonhistorical sciences. The phenomena are gathered by cautious critical observation of the records available.… What a historian asserts is either correct or contrary to fact, is either proved or disproved by the documents available, or vague because the sources do not provide us with sufficient information. The experts may disagree, but only on the ground of a reasonable interpretation of the evidence available.

On that point, the word of the court historians is no more or less reliable than that of anyone else examining the same documents armed with nothing more than ability to read and basic reading comprehension ability. Good old common sense. Problems arise in relation to the second component, which involves “application of the nonhistorical sciences to the subject matter of history.” Here historians will debate “the effects and the intensity of the effects brought about by an action…the relevance of each motive and each action.” They are not disagreeing about the evidence, but about the significance or implications of that evidence and how that evidence is to be deployed in an explanatory “theory” about history. The theories they derive about history, the narratives they spin and the stories they tell, are neither universal nor scientific. They cannot be “tested” like theories in the field of physics or chemistry, because “there necessarily enters into understanding an element of subjectivity. The understanding of the historian is always tinged with the marks of his personality. It reflects the mind of its author.”

At this level, historians are not disputing the veracity of the facts, but the importance or relevance to be attached to the selected facts, or the value judgments that went into their decision to highlight certain facts and brush others aside. Hence Mises argues that, “Historical understanding can never produce results which must be accepted by all men.” By contrast, scientific principles in the natural sciences are generally or universally true. When we describe gravity as scientific, we do not simply mean that most scientists “agree” with it, nor do we mean that it is a matter of opinion whether one regards gravity as significant or not.

In defending his argument that history can yield universal principles, Beer gave the example of the statement “all apples in basket b at time t are red” as one sense in which we may describe a statement as universal—he saw that as “universal in logical form” because it does not apply to just one apple in the basket or a few apples in the basket, but rather to all apples in the basket. But as Beer goes on to note, this is not, of course, what is meant by saying that scientific principles are universal. As Mises explains it, the principle that “man acts” is scientific and universal because to be human is to act. It does not merely mean that “all men in a specific place p at time t act.” A historian who sets out to describe all apples in a basket, or even all apples in multiple sets of baskets across time and location, is not involved in scientific endeavor, but is merely engaged in gathering the evidence. The evidence is not transformed into a universal scientific principle merely because it happens to apply to all the groups studied by that historian. Beer argued that this weakness—limitation to the particular time and place of the evidence actually studied—could be corrected by ensuring that the statement reflects what he calls “nomological universality”:

…to be a law, a statement must not only be universal in logical form, but also free of such local reference. Or to put the matter more positively, all predicates, it is said, must be “purely qualitative.”

Thus, he regards history as a “science,” or at least science-like, when, to use his example, he examines apples in baskets multiple times and places to derive principles that are generally true about apples. Thus, for example, if we derived a statement such as “there are red apples in different continents around the globe, and such apples are found to subsist across several different centuries” that would be “qualitative”—it describes apples without confining the observation to time and place, and “could be corroborated in a very wide variety of space-time contexts.” It is certainly true that the red apple is ubiquitous. But that is still a descriptive point concerning the available evidence. The fact that red apples are ubiquitous is interesting information and a potentially comforting thing to know—if you go on a global tour you can reasonably expect to be able to find apples wherever you are—but that does not make it a scientific principle comparable to Newton’s laws of motion.

Historians can certainly shed light on human nature by describing events that apply generally to groups of people, or mass phenomena, across time and place, what Beer called “the analytic and generalizing historian,” but this does not mean historical conclusions derived in that way are scientifically and objectively true. The evidence still requires to be put into the context of other explanatory factors. Observing human action at the level of groups obscures a wide range of human activity which does not fit within the group trait under observation. As the distinguished historian Clyde Wilson has argued, “History is not a mathematical calculation or scientific experiment but a vast drama of which there is always more to be learned.”

The post History Is Not a Science appeared first on LewRockwell.

The EU/NATO combo cannot but play the role of pathetic yapping chihuahuas. That’s the price you pay for a matrioshka of supreme stupidity.

No one ever lost money betting on the politically suicidal instincts of post-Orwellian EU – that acronym for a virtual Europe.

Call them juvenile bipolar psychos or a bunch of yapping chihuahuas: no Jupiterian or Mercurial voice of reason has been capable to impart to the “leadership” in Brussels and their vassals in most European capitals – yes, there are healthy exceptions – that losers in wars do not dictate terms.

And still those War Council luminaries – with a special starring role for the toxic Pfizer Medusa and her Estonian sidekick unable to even manage a herring stall in the Baltics – insist that essentially the mega-corrupt gang in Kiev must prevail, to the last Ukrainian dead, and on top of it dictate the final terms of their non-surrender.

Reality begs to differ. Plan A was never to talk, much less negotiate with Russia. And still there’s no Plan B.

So after the 28-pointer Theater of the Absurd – which is not even Trump’s plan, but a mish mash concocted by the Witkoff-Dmitriev duo plus “insights” from neo-con Rubio and toxic Zionist asset Jared Kushner – the cross-yapping went ballistic, leading to an emergency “counter-plan” that is, what else, a Loser’s Manifesto.

Even Rubio allowed himself a shining moment: “What plan?” Might as well call it The Euro-kiss of Death.

Russia, meanwhile, behaves like Lao Tzu surrounded by rabid stray dogs. The conditions for a negotiation have been set in detail by Putin since June 2024. These are non-negotiable, and would allow the negotiation to start: Kiev withdraws from the four regions and formally pledges to never enter NATO.

One of the EU’s “counter-plan” points is a 30-day ceasefire, with all territorial disputes to be debated afterwards. So that means everything frozen on the current front line, and no Ukraine withdrawal from the parts of Donbass they still occupy.

None of that – and much more – is remotely acceptable to the actual winner of the war, Russia. It would not be acceptable even if NATO troops were entering Moscow tomorrow.

So the “counter-plan”, elaborated in conjunction with the unimaginably corrupt Kiev combo, is essentially a sabotage op to buy some extra time and buy some $6 trillion in – American – weapons – for their amply avowed Forever War. Fine with Moscow – as the SMO will keep going on, rolling thunder mode.

Losers bombing a peace plan

The EU’s 24-point counter-plan contains nuggets such as Ukraine

receiving legally binding security guarantees from the Empire of Chaos and its vassals: a de facto NATO Article 5 scam with different terminology.

Plus no restrictions on Ukraine’s armed forces and defense industry; control of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (with the Empire of Chaos in the mix) and the Kakhovka Dam; unhindered access to the Dnieper River and control of the Kinburn Spit.

And the killer: Ukraine “financially compensated” – including through the stolen, so far, Russian sovereign assets, which will remain stolen until Moscow pays compensation.

As for sanctions, they “may” – that’s the operative word – be “partially” – another operative word – eased only after a “sustainable peace”, with automatic snap-back if the deal is violated. Translation: the West can sanction Russia again anytime they see fit. No word on provocations by the EU/NATO using Ukraine – the actual set up that led to the SMO.

So what the “counter-plan” proposes – obviously redacted by a bunch of Eurocrats who cannot even fire a pistol properly – is a replica of the exact blueprint that led to the battlefield opened in February 2022.

Russia once again is playing it with boundless patience. The Trump plan which is not really Trump’s is diplomatically regarded as a “good foundation” for further serious negotiations – with the yapping crowd having no access to the table. That’s it – at best.

After all Russia is enjoying a series of overlapping asymmetric advantages in the battlefield: systemic and tactical adaptation; enormous advantage in drone operations (FPV drones with fiber-optics); use of long-range glide bombs.

The chihuahua “counter-plan” essentially calls for a frozen war; a remilitarized Ukraine; a remilitarized NATO; and ultimately a perennial Forever War against Russia. It has already bombed, metaphorically, the original Trump plan that is not exactly Trump’s.

The “counter-plan” should also be seen as a diversionist tactic now that the dark pit of corruption in Kiev starts to be pried upon by the NABU investigation – even as Russian UN representative Nebenzya had been warning the UN Security Council since forever that “you were dealing with a corrupt gang that is profiting from the war”.

Nebenzya also correctly observed that not a single Western country has said a word about the corruption scandal in Kiev. Of course: because a proper investigation will inevitably follow the corruption chain of command all the way to decision making circles in Washington and in Brussels.

The metaphysical void of EU “elites”

Emmanuel Todd, in his ground-breaking The Defeat of the West, published in France early last year (the first review in English is here) was the first European analyst to get deeper into the EU malaise, side by side with his comprehensive analysis of the proxy war in Ukraine.

Recently, in an outstanding lecture in Hiroshima,

Todd made a startling correlation between Russophobia and Protestantism. Certain passages are worth quoting at length:

“What we have seen appear recently in Europe is a specifically European Russophobia, a specifically European warmongering, centered on Northern Europe, on Protestant Europe. Protestant Europe is the United Kingdom, it’s the majority of Germany, it’s Scandinavia, it’s two out of three Baltic countries.”

At the same time, Todd has observed that “Spain, Italy, Catholic countries in general, are neither Russophobic nor hawkish.”

Todd’s key argument is that protestantism “is more dangerous in its zero state than Catholicism”: “Protestantism is more capable of leaving behind a nihilistic society. Protestantism, and the same could be said of Judaism, was a very demanding religion. There was God, there was the faithful, and the world was secondary. The beauty of the world in particular was rejected with, among other things, a refusal of images, a refusal of the visual arts. When such religions, obsessed with transcendence, disappear, nothing remains. The world itself is not interesting, empty. This intense void opens up a particular possibility of nihilism. Catholicism is a less demanding, more humane religion that can accept the idea that the world is, in itself, beautiful. The images have not been rejected in the Catholic world, and the Catholic world is filled with artistic wonders. In a Catholic country, if you lose God, you are left with the feeling of this beauty of the world. If you are French, you still have the feeling that you live — an illusion no doubt — in the most beautiful country in the world.”

Well, it’s slightly more nuanced. What about the – vicious – Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition? Germany was in fact forced by a massive P.R. campaign to become Russophobic, unlike the Baltic chihuahuas. Most of Protestant Europe is in fact atheistic – and the next step from atheism is nihilism. Romania is mostly Christian Orthodox – where hatred of Russia is like a national sport. And Protestantism was essentially Christianity turbo-charged to the Age of Capital. So the main conflict is in fact Western turbo-Neoliberalism v. Christian Orthodox Russia.

Back to the basics. Everyone with an IQ over room temperature knows that the NATO regime in Kiev runs on theft and outright plunder. The lights are now off. Heating is mostly off. The army is steadily collapsing all along the 1,200+ km frontline.

Yet the EU elites – the set up in Brussels just follows their orders –

have invested no holds barred in the inevitable (in their dreams) collapse and looting of Russia. That’s why there was never a Plan B.

If the EU folds now, if they admit they are the irretrievable losers in this absurdist adventure, the economic collapse will be epic. The EU/NATO combo cannot but play the role of pathetic yapping chihuahuas. That’s the price you pay for a matryoshka of supreme stupidity: to provoke and threaten a superpower with the most advanced nuclear and hypersonic arsenal on the planet. Their current “victory” is to bomb Trump’s already shaky “peace” plan.

So many horrors, so little time. On a more auspicious note, let’s give Todd the last word:

“If you are Italian, you actually live in the country in the world where there are the most beautiful things, since Italy itself has become an object of art. In such contexts, the fear of the metaphysical void is less intense, and therefore the risk of nihilism less. In my opinion, the country in Europe least threatened by nihilism is Italy, because in Italy everything is beautiful”.

So shed your metaphysical void, dump those chihuahuas of war, and embrace the beauty of Italy as a living work of art. That’s exactly what I’m doing next.

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

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President Trump correctly called out the TV networks for their fake news and said they should be broken up.  He is correct.  It was President Clinton who apparently was paid by the Jews to let them monopolize 90% of the American media in 6 hands.  

Trump should include National Public Radio in the breakup.  I came to this conclusion today when listening to a NPR host decry making the large number of childhood vaccinations voluntary.  She struck me as a well paid shill of Big Pharma.  She completely ignored, as if the conclusive evidence did not exist, the connection between widespread childhood illnesses, illnesses that did not exist in the population when I was a child, and the numerous vaccinations, some beginning 24 hours after birth, that Big Pharma has succeeded in having mandated if a child is permitted to attend school.  

The Big Pharma shill went on at length about the horror of states passing a law that doctors had to treat an unvaccinated child.  Apparently, the NPR host thought that an unvaccinated child should be permitted to die as punishment to the parents for not having the child vaccinated until its health is ruined and the child becomes a lifetime purchaser of Big Pharma’s medicines to combat the illnesses Big Pharma’s vaccines gave him.

The Big Pharma NPR shill, of course, pulled out the standard denunciation of parents who wanted to send their unvaccinated kids to school so they could infect who?  The vaccinated ones?  If the vaccines work, what does it matter if unvaccinated kids are present?

When I was a child there were no mandatory vaccines. We had no vaccinations against measles, mumps, chicken pox or any of the normal childhood diseases that built our immune systems.  They wanted us to be vaccinated for smallpox, a killer.  It was voluntary and people cooperated.  If kids went barefoot in summer and swam in creeks or lakes in which cows might defacate, there was a danger of  tetanus or typhoid.  So when summer arrived parents were encouraged to have kids given shots in the arm to protect against lockjaw and typhoid fever. If kids were not subject to the risk of a rusty nail through a bare foot or swallowing contaminated water, there was no need of vaccination.

Later we were encouraged to take a sugar cube with a polio vaccine on it, which again was voluntary and most everyone complied.

The only time in my life when I had a mandatory vaccination was when I gradated from Georgia Tech and was selected to be a member of the US Department of State US/USSR student exchange program with the Soviet Union.  As the scheduled itinerary included the Central Asian provinces of the Soviet Union, the Department of State required that I be vaccinated as a protection against yellow flavor.  

The same with pets.  At six months dogs were vaccinated for rabies once for life.  There were no further vaccinations.  Cats were not vaccinated.

Big Pharma using the power of money has managed to get legislated in every state that dogs and cats have to be vaccinated endlessly throughout a life shortened by the vaccination or they cannot be treated by a vet.  

Vets are brainwashed in veterinary schools, as doctors and nurses are in medical schools, into the vaccination narrative.  Consequently, vaccinated cats live 10 years.  Unvaccinated ones live 20 years.  

Big Pharma grows its profits by infusing illness and death into the human and animal populations.  The program  I listened to on NPR was doing Big Pharma’s work.

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