Mar 122025
 


James Ensor The intrigue 1890

 

Ukraine Open To ‘Immediate’ 30-Day Ceasefire If Russia Agrees: State Dept (JTN)
30-Day Truce: US Lifts Pause On Intel & Military Aid To Ukraine (ZH)
What Should Trump Do? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Kremlin Warns Russians Not To See Trump Through ‘Rose-Colored Glasses’ (ZH)
Trump Moves To His Primordial Objective – The Global Reset (Alastair Crooke)
Ontario Caves to Trump on Tariffs (Margolis)
Musk: DOGE Will Cut $1 TRILLION in Spending ‘Unless We’re Stopped’ (Green)
USAID Staff Rush To Shred And Burn Documents (RT)
Brace Yourselves: The Next Media BIG LIE Is About to Drop (Green)
The Right is Being Shut Out of Government Across Europe (DS)
Europe Seizing Russian FX Reserves Would Reset Global Financial System (Every)
Macron’s Napoleon Cosplay Could Come At A Grave Cost (RT)
The French Despite Clear Warning Brought The Camp of the Saints to France (PCR)
Hungary Accuses Ukraine Of Threatening Its Sovereignty (RT)
Trump Finds an Epic Way to Repurpose Biden’s CBP One App for Ilegals (Margolis)
Judge Declines Bid to Force Federal Gov’t to Restore Foreign Aid Contracts (ET)
Moscow Reproaches Western Media For Silence Over Gonzalo Lira’s Death (RT)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1899243456800973262

Miller

 

 

 

 

Stew Peters

Alina

 

 

 

 

What Russia wants -at least- has been obvious forever. But Rubio has a meeting wih Ukraine and more or less tells Putin ‘take it or leave it’. Russia will not accept a short term or partial ceasefire that can be used to rearm Ukraine. Russia has the momentum. They will not squander it. Russian troops have died to achieve the present situation. Their memories will be honored.

Ukraine Open To ‘Immediate’ 30-Day Ceasefire If Russia Agrees: State Dept (JTN)

Ukrainian diplomats signaled their willingness to agree to a 30-day preliminary ceasefire with Russia as part of their negotiations with American officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. “Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation,” the State Department said in a joint statement with Ukrainian officials, according to CBS News. “The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace,” they said. The United States also announced it would end a pause on military aid and intelligence sharing as a result of the talks.

After the negotiations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the effort a “concrete step” from Ukraine and expressed “hope that the Russians will reciprocate.” The Russians have not agreed to a ceasefire as of press time. They are unlikely to do so, however, without significant concessions, as the Russian army is currently making significant gains in the Kursk region against Ukrainian troops that occupied the border area. In the meantime, Russian offensives in Zaporizhzhia and the Donbas have posted modest gains in recent days and a spring offensive in expected to materialize soon.

https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1899585186624675845

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All Ukraine troops must withdraw from Crimea and the four regions. There must be a signed (not by Zelensky!) document that says Ukraine will not be part of NATO. Only then can a truce maybe be considered.

30-Day Truce: US Lifts Pause On Intel & Military Aid To Ukraine (ZH)

An apparent breakthrough in Jedda talks between the US and Ukraine, as the United States has announced it “will immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and resume security assistance to Ukraine.” The Zelensky government has also “expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation,” the statement said.

“The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace,” it added. This comes after a reported over eight hour-long meeting between the US and Ukrainian delegations in the Saudi port city on Tuesday. No doubt, the Ukrainians came hat in hand, ready to please Trump after relations had fallen off a cliff with the Zelensky Oval Office confrontation earlier this month. Shortly before the announced US-Ukraine agreement for a 30-day ceasefire, a TASS headline said that the Kremlin has no information on any details coming out of the Jeddah meeting.

But will Putin agree? There’s as yet little incentive for him to enact a temporary ceasefire, given as Trump recently admitted… he has all the cards (and Zelensky doesn’t). By all accounts the Russians are fast taking back territory in Kursk and advancing along front lines in the Donbas. Likely Russia fears that Kiev could simply use this ceasefire as an opportunity to rearm, rest, resupply and regroup – especially given Washington just said the US arms and intel pipeline is back on. Moscow is likely to see this is simply a matter between Washington and Kiev, and it appears to be a version of Zelensky’s ‘partial ceasefire’ which demands a halt to all air assaults.

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“Trump should immediately remove all sanctions, not only against Russia but against every country. This will boost the dollar’s role as the international medium of exchange, save the basis of American power, and reassure the Kremlin that the Cold War is indeed over.”

What Should Trump Do? (Paul Craig Roberts)

Trump should end America’s unconditional support of Israel. To enable genoide with weapons, money, and diplomatic cover is not making America great. If under Trump Israel maintains or increases its determination of US policy at home and abroad, it is Israel, not America, that will be made great. Is that Trump’s role, to make Israel great? American Christian Zionists, none of whom are Christians as they worship Israel, not Christ, say yes. The position of Christian Zionists is that God’s purpose for America is to protect Israeli Zionism. As so many of these are MAGA Americans, who really rules America? Trump or Israel? What should Trump do about Ukraine? To end the conflict Trump doesn’t need to be holding meetings and talking about meetings with Putin, Zelensky, EU or anyone. It is extremely simple for Trump to end the conflict as far as the US is concerned.

All he has to do is to make the hold he has put on delivery of weapons permanent and withdraw all US operatives in the proxy conflict with Russia. Without the US supplying weapons, intelligence, targeting information and money to keep the conflict alive, the conflict will quickly end.This is what Trump needs to tell Putin: “I know Washington is responsible for this conflict. I am withdrawing Washington’s participation. The conflict would not have happened if the Democrats had not stolen the 2020 election. I am cancelling the sanctions. I will be accused by the Democrats and the presstitutes of selling out Ukraine to you. Your job is to be merciful to Ukraine. As the US is responsible for the conflict, the US will help you to rebuild a demilitarized Ukraine in which economic advancement takes precedent over war. You must not fail my good intentions, or the Cold War will resume.”

Can Trump do this? Or is Trump compelled by anti-Russian propaganda to force some form of submission from Putin as a demonstration of American power? If Trump can do what is required, Zelensky will then have to deal with Putin. After all, what has it to do with us? If the Europeans want to line up with a loser, let them. There is no reason for Trump, whom they hate, to rescue the Europeans. To demonstrate to Putin that the US proxy war with Russia, started by Zionist Neoconservatives, is over, Trump should immediately remove all sanctions, not only against Russia but against every country. This will boost the dollar’s role as the international medium of exchange, save the basis of American power, and reassure the Kremlin that the Cold War is indeed over.

Trump should get off China’s back. It is not China’s fault that Wall Street drove American manufacturing jobs offshore to China and to other parts of Asia and Mexico. This was the greed for profits by lowering labor costs by leaving the American manufacturing working class without remunerative employment and our former manufacturing cities without a tax base. This is what Wall Street and the corporations did to America. Is it Trump’s role to protect these American adversaries by blaming China? It has never been clear what Trump wants from China. He should tells us so that we can assess his intention. As China has jurisdiction over a large segment of US manufacturing which is situated in China, it makes little sense to provoke confrontation with China.

It is Wall Street and the greedy self-serving corporate executives and boards who received huge renumeration for offshoring the jobs of the working class. When the products of the offshored jobs come back to the US to be marketed, they come in as imports. It is the offshored production of American corporations that is the cause of the trade deficit with China. It is not the fault of China. Why is Trump picking on the wrong source of the problem? If people in the Trump administration are deceiving Trump about this, he had best replace them. Being great has moral meaning. It does not suffice to be successful in business, to make successful deals, to avoid wars. To be great you have to stand up for Truth. You have to stand up for Justice. You have to stand up for the US Constitution.

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“..Moscow is signaling it is not in a hurry – and won’t be rushing to the negotiating table just because Trump wants it.”

Kremlin Warns Russians Not To See Trump Through ‘Rose-Colored Glasses’ (ZH)

Earlier in the Trump presidency, and especially as his spat with Ukraine’s Zelensky played out more directly and out in the open, Russian media and Kremlin officials seemed almost gleeful. A slew of positive statements agreeing with Trump were issued from Moscow – for example enthusiastically backing Trump’s words that Zelensky is a “dictator without elections”. But it seems Russian leadership wants to pull in the reigns a bit on its generally positive Trump commentary, as intense negotiations for peace settlement in Ukraine are anticipated. On Tuesday the Kremlin warned the Russian public against viewing President Donald Trump and his recent actions related to Ukraine through “rose-tinted glasses”.

This is in most immediate reference to the drastic actions of Trump cutting off military aid to Kiev, as well as most intelligence-sharing, which shocked and angered Western allies. Peskov issued the caution about not getting overly excited in remarks given before an audience of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “Don’t rush to put on rose-tinted glasses,” Peskov said. “We always need to hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst. And we must always be ready to defend our interests.” He also referenced people getting too prematurely eager over this week’s reports that Elon Musk could cut off the Ukrainian military from his Starlink communications system. This was after a fierce online clash with Poland’s outspoken foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, which also drew in Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

But by the end of that brief online spat, Musk pledged, “To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals.””I am simply stating that, without Starlink, the Ukrainian lines would collapse, as the Russians can jam all other communications! We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip,” he explained. This was an example Peskov provided to his audience as to why caution is needed with the American side in any future negotiations to end the war. The Putin spokesman stressed that Russia will achieve its war aims no matter what Washington demands:

Peskov said Russia was achieving its aims on the battlefield in Ukraine, regardless of what decisions the U.S. was taking. He said the amount of weapons circulating in Ukraine was so large that Kyiv had enough to keep fighting for many months despite the suspension of U.S. deliveries. All of this seems like Moscow is signaling it is not in a hurry – and won’t be rushing to the negotiating table just because Trump wants it. Each side is of course trying to maintain as much leverage as possible before any talks begin in earnest. Thus clearly Russian officials don’t want appear too ‘enthused’ about Trump and the concessions he might press the Ukrainian government to make.

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“The Maga Right has none of the inhibitions of its predecessors. It is planning to leverage the power of a recaptured state to annihilate its enemies..”

Trump Moves To His Primordial Objective – The Global Reset (Alastair Crooke)

President Trump wants Ukraine settled, full stop. This is so that he can move ahead quickly – to normalise with Russia, and begin the ‘big picture’ project of setting a new World Order, one that will end wars and facilitate business ties. The point here – which Europe feigns to not understand – is that the end to the Ukraine conflict simply is Trump’s ‘gateway’ to the entire rationale and platform on which he stood: The Great Reset of the Geo-Political landscape. Ukraine, simply said, is the obstacle to Trump’s pursuit of his primordial objective: The Global Reset. Starmer, Macron and the eastern wing of the Euro-élites are blind to the sheer scale of the global vibe-shift towards traditionalist U.S. politics and ethics. They miss too, the barely concealed fury in the Trump world that exists behind this nascent revolution.

“The Maga Right has none of the inhibitions of its predecessors. It is planning to leverage the power of a recaptured state to annihilate its enemies”, Allister Heath writes. The European Ruling Class is in desperate trouble and increasingly isolated, in a world shifting ‘Rightward’ at breakneck speed. “The U.S. is now the enemy of the West”, the FT proclaims. European leaders wantonly won’t understand. The reality is that the U.S. is engaged now in rolling up Europe’s foreign policy. And, is about to start exporting U.S. traditional Republican values to roll up the European wokeist belief-system. The European Ruling strata – far removed from its base – has failed to grasp the threat to its own interests (a scenario outlined here). The Trump administration is trying to rebuild the ailing Republic, and Americans in this new era do not care for the European obsession with ancient feuds and their entailing wars.

Trump reportedly views with utter disdain the UK and European boast that should the U.S. not do it, then Europe will. The Brussels class claims to be able still – after three years of losing in Ukraine – to be able to inflict a humiliating defeat on President Putin. More profoundly, however, Team Trump – committed to the task of taking down the American Deep State as the ‘inexorable enemy’ – perceives (rightly) the British security state to be co-joined at the hip with their American counterparts, as a part of its global meta-structure. And its oldest and deepest component has always been the destruction of Russia, and its dismemberment. So when Macron, in an address to the nation this week, rejected a ceasefire in Ukraine and declared that “peace in Europe is only possible with a weakened Russia”, calling the country a direct threat to France and the continent, many in ‘Trump world’ will interpret this defiant declaration (that ‘Ukraine defeating Russia is preferable to ‘peace’’) is nothing more than Macron and Starmer ventriloquising the aims of the Meta Deep State.

This notion is lent substance by the sudden plethora of articles appearing in the European-(managed) MSM to the effect that Russia’s economy is much weaker than it appears and might collapse in the next year. Of course it is nonsense. This is about managing the European public to believe that keeping the war going in Ukraine is a ‘good idea’. The absurdity of the European position was perhaps best captured, as Wolfgang Münchau notes, in its full hubris last year by the historian and writer Anne Applebaum when she won a prestigious German peace prize. During her acceptance speech, she maintained that victory was more important than peace, asserting that the West’s ultimate goal should be regime change in Russia: “We must help Ukrainians achieve victory, and not only for the sake of Ukraine,” she said.

Zelensky and his European fans want ‘to negotiate’ – though later, rather than sooner (perhaps in a year, as one European Foreign Minister reportedly told Marco Rubio privately). “This”, Münchau writes, “is what the very public disagreement in the Oval Office [last week] was all about. Peace through untrammelled victory — essentially the Second World War model — as the lens through which virtually all European leaders, and most commentators view the Russia-Ukraine conflict”. America sees things differently: It views almost certainly the European Deep State to be putting a spoke into Trump’s ‘normalisation with Russia’ wheel – a normalisation to which they are viscerally opposed.

Or, at the very least, as the Europeans chasing a “mirage that no longer exists, stubbornly hiking ‘tax and spend’, whilst doubling down on mass immigration and overpriced energy, oblivious to the flashing red lights in the [financial markets] as government debt yields rocket to their highest levels since 1998”, as Allister Heath outlines. In other words, the suggestion is that Friedrich Merz, Macron and Starmer are talking about how they are going to turn around their countries – via a massive infusion of debt – into defence superstates. Yet, at some level of consciousness, they must realise that it is not doable, so they settle instead for presenting themselves as ‘world leaders on the international stage’.

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“Also, Canada must immediately drop their Anti-American Farmer Tariff of 250% to 390% on various U.S. dairy products..”

Ontario Caves to Trump on Tariffs (Margolis)

Let me tell you what winning looks like. While the liberal media was busy predicting economic catastrophe from President Trump’s latest tariff moves, Canada just blinked — and blinked hard. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who thought he could play hardball with America by slapping a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to Michigan, New York, and Minnesota, just got a swift lesson in real negotiation. “Canada is a Tariff abuser, and always has been, but the United States is not going to be subsidizing Canada any longer,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social Monday evening. “We don’t need your Cars, we don’t need your Lumber, we don’t [need] your Energy, and very soon, you will find that out. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” And then, Ontario responded by placing a 25% tariff on electricity coming into the United States, but Trump didn’t blink:

“I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. This will go into effect TOMORROW MORNING, March 12th. Also, Canada must immediately drop their Anti-American Farmer Tariff of 250% to 390% on various U.S. dairy products, which has long been considered outrageous. I will shortly be declaring a National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area. This will allow the U.S to quickly do what has to be done to alleviate this abusive threat from Canada. If other egregious, long time Tariffs are not likewise dropped by Canada, I will substantially increase, on April 2nd, the Tariffs on Cars coming into the U.S. which will, essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.”

After Trump threatened to double existing tariffs on Canadian goods and announced a new 25% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum, Ford’s tough-guy act fell faster than Joe Biden on the steps to Air Force One. “Today, United States Secretary of Commerce [Howard Lutnick] and Premier of Ontario Doug Ford had a productive conversation about the economic relationship between the United States and Canada,” the pair said in a joint statement Ford shared on X. Secretary Lutnick agreed to officially meet with Premier Ford in Washington on Thursday, March 13 alongside the United States Trade Representative to discuss a renewed USMCA ahead of the April 2 reciprocal tariff deadline. In response, Ontario agreed to suspend its 25 per cent surcharge on exports of electricity to Michigan, New York and Minnesota.

The lesson here is simple: America First works. While Biden spent years letting everyone walk all over us, Trump is back to showing the world what real leadership looks like. Canada’s quick surrender proves what conservatives have always known — strength gets respect, and respect gets results. Whether Canada will budge on tariffs remains to be seen, but Trump showed who has the upper hand in these negotiations because Ontario quickly caved. The economic relationship between the U.S. and Canada might be facing a test, but with Trump at the helm, there’s no doubt who’s going to come out on top. That’s what making America great again looks like in real time, folks.

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“If Musk and the DOGE boys can cut a trillion dollars of funny money out of 2025 spending, they’ll gut most of the inflation, too.”

Musk: DOGE Will Cut $1 TRILLION in Spending ‘Unless We’re Stopped’ (Green)

Earlier today I had to share the bad news about the economy. Now it’s time for the good news. Savings generated by DOGE during the first two months of Trump 47 “exceed $4 billion per day,” Musk told Fox News on Monday afternoon. He also said he and his team will achieve $1 TRILLION in savings “unless we’re stopped.” Hang on to that last line for a moment while I tell you why that big number is a very big deal. Aside, of course, from the outrageous bigness of a one followed by 12 zeroes. Going into this DOGE thing shortly after Trump’s re-inauguration, Musk laid out just how much work there was to do and how difficult it would be to achieve his goal of cutting our [dr_evil_voice] TWO TRILLION DOLLAR [/dr_evil_voice] deficit in half. “Reducing the federal deficit from $2T to $1T in FY2026,” Musk explained back in January, “requires cutting an average of ~$4B/day in projected 2026 spending from now to Sept 30.”

In the last seven-plus weeks, DOGE has exceeded its seemingly impossible goal, though only barely. This is maybe the best news you’ll read all week, even though the legacy dinosaur media insists that it’s all doom and gloom and starving uneducated children who can no longer get their nads hacked off at taxpayer expense. Not to get too deep into the weeds, but cutting [dr_evil_voice] ONE TRILLION DOLLARS [/dr_evil_voice] wasn’t some nice-sounding number picked at random. I’ll keep this as brief and light as I know how. Prices rise and fall all the time according to changing market conditions. But inflation is special. It’s when the government prints additional dollars faster than the economy grows extra value. More dollar bills chasing around the same amount of goods and services causes a rapid and general increase in the price of everything, AKA inflation.

So far, so good? Barring a recession, the economy is expected to grow by about 2.2% this year — a roughly $638 billion increase in the size of the economy. Barring DOGE cuts, Washington is expected to borrow [dr_evil_voice] TWO TRILLION DOLLARS [/dr_evil_voice]. That’s inflationary funny money printed up out of nowhere. Again, roughly speaking, the difference between those two yuge figures is the inflation we’ll suffer. If Musk and the DOGE boys can cut a trillion dollars of funny money out of 2025 spending, they’ll gut most of the inflation, too. They might even get us under the 2% inflation that the Fed targets because the Powers That Be — the ones who politically benefit from spending money we don’t have — long ago decided that 2% annual inflation is good for us, ackshully. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Back to today’s news: DOGE cutting $4 billion a day “would still result in a ~$1T deficit,” Musk said several weeks ago, “but economic growth should be able to match that number, which would mean no inflation in 2026.” A trillion dollars in growth looks unlikely this year but that’s something I’d dearly love to be wrong about. The point is that there is a trillion dollars at stake, “unless we’re stopped,” as Musk put it Monday, and people have been murdered for a lot less than a trillion dollars.

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“The acting executive secretary of the US Agency for International Development”.. should do some stiff jail time.

USAID Staff Rush To Shred And Burn Documents (RT)

The acting executive secretary of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Erica Carr, has directed remaining staff to destroy sensitive documents stored at the agency’s former headquarters in Washington, DC, according to an internal email. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who leads the recently established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have repeatedly accused USAID – the primary US agency for funding political projects abroad – of misusing taxpayer money and fostering corruption. As part of broader efforts to cut federal spending, the agency was forced to lay off 2,000 employees and place most of the remaining staff on leave. In an email first obtained by ProPublica,

Carr instructed the remaining staff to convene on Tuesday for an “all-day” effort to clear out classified safes and personnel documents at the Ronald Reagan Building. She advised employees to prioritize shredding documents and to use burn bags sparingly. “Shred as many documents as possible first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” the email read. “The only labeling required on the burn bags is the phrase ‘SECRET’ and ‘USAID/(B/IO)’ in dark Sharpie if possible. If you need additional burn bags or Sharpie markers, please let me or the SEC InfoSec team know.”

The email did not specify a reason for the destruction of the documents. However, the building is being vacated following mass layoffs, as US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recently rented 390,000 square feet of office space in the facility. The directive has raised concerns among former USAID staff and legal experts, who argue that it could violate federal record-keeping laws and potentially hinder ongoing lawsuits challenging the agency’s restructuring. “Destruction of evidence is a crime,” Musk wrote on X in response to reports of the latest document purge. The billionaire previously called USAID a “criminal organization,” while Trump has claimed it was mismanaged by “radical lunatics.”

The handling of documents at USAID has already been under scrutiny. Last month, two of the agency’s security officials were placed on administrative leave after allegedly refusing to grant a team of DOGE auditors access to classified materials. The Trump administration plans to eliminate 90% of USAID contracts, amounting to $54 billion, AP reported last month, citing an internal White House memo and court filings. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has also had its government funding frozen. Although officially a US State Department-funded nonprofit that distributes grants to pro-democracy initiatives abroad, the NED has long faced allegations of acting as a CIA front for regime change operations.

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“All of our “growth” for the last five years is due to unsustainable deficits that will haunt generations of Americans yet to be born..”

Brace Yourselves: The Next Media BIG LIE Is About to Drop (Green)

Before I tell you about the legacy dinosaur media’s next BIG LIE, I need to show you how they’ll sell it. It starts, as these things always do, with the Left attempting to control the language to alter your perceptions about how the economy performed under Presidentish Joe Biden and will perform under President Donald Trump. We might be done with Biden but he isn’t done with us, as you’re about to see. There was a recession in late 2021/early 2022, commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage. Except the “non-partisan” National Bureau of Economic Research decided to change the commonly understood definition. In 2022, wouldn’t you know, it turned out that “many factors go into that calculation,” and that the Biden recession wasn’t a recession at all when you looked at the “many factors” that nobody had ever looked at before.

The White House got into the game, too, with the White House Council of Economic Advisors citing a “holistic look at the data,” instead of playing by the established rules. The press played along and pretended the recession never happened. Convenient, eh? I’d also add that if you take away Biden’s monstrous budget deficits, any economic growth that happened on his watch was an illusion. We entered a government-engineered recession during the lockdowns of 2020 and, thanks to epic economic mismanagement under Biden, we never left it. Budget deficits are a drag on future growth and should be subtracted from our GDP figures. But the same government that spends more than it takes in — currently by trillions of dollars — pretends that deficits are growth and, again, the press plays along. So convenient.

Private sector jobs and wages stagnated under Biden because everything was driven by Big Government and sold to you by Big Media. It was a helluva party that Biden threw for his well-connected buddies. Now comes the hangover, and some on the Left already have a word for the recession that hasn’t happened yet: Trumpcession. Assuming we do end up with a recession, they’ll probably call it the Trump Depression or something along those lines. I might be exaggerating but not by much. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton claimed that President George H.W. Bush gave us “the worst economy since the Great Depression,” even though the 1991 recession was mild, short-lived, and over for a year before Clinton won the Democrat nomination.

The press helped him get away with it, too. The conveniences keep piling up. Here are the facts, as dreadful as they are. All of our “growth” for the last five years is due to unsustainable deficits that will haunt generations of Americans yet to be born. Economic decisions are increasingly driven by growth-killing mandates and regulations imposed by Biden and the Democrats during 2021-2022. Consumer spending is driven in large part by cheap imports from a country that hates us.

Getting over our addiction to new debt will be painful. Undoing the Biden regulatory binge comes with political risks that some so-called Republicans in Congress refuse to take. Homeshoring — or at least friendshoring — comes with the shock and pain of tariffs. The last time a new president faced an economic crisis like this one was Ronald Reagan in 1981. The recession he engineered with Fed Chair Paul Volcker that year genuinely was one of the worst since the Great Depression, but it was the price that had to be paid to wring Johnson/Nixon/Carter stagflation out of the system. It was a helluva risk they took but it paid off with 20 years of almost uninterrupted and unprecedented growth. So hang on tight because the so-called Trumpcession is in reality the final price to be paid for four years of Joe Biden.

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“Right” has become the equivalent of “far right” and “extreme right”. Simply a convenient -because often legal- way to get rid of normal right wing opposition. Incoming train wreck.

The Right is Being Shut Out of Government Across Europe (DS)

Right-wing politicians are being shut out of Government across Europe, says Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator, as so-called ‘progressive’ elites in politics and the judiciary effectively rig what are supposed to be democratic elections. Here’s an excerpt. “Alarm grew as opinion polls indicated [Calin] Georgescu would win the second round [of Romania’s Presidential election]. Something had to be done, and it was. A couple of days before the decisive vote, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round because of alleged Russian interference. The court had perused some declassified intelligence documents that claimed 800 TikTok accounts had been activated shortly before polls opened. There was no evidence of voting irregularities in the election itself but the fact Russia had been active on social media was enough for the court to intervene.

At the time, Georgescu likened himself to Donald Trump: an anti-system candidate who was the target of Establishment ‘lawfare’. The Trump administration has subsequently cited Georgescu as an example of the EU’s creeping illiberalism. In a speech at last month’s Munich Security Conference, Vice-President J.D. Vance expressed his astonishment “that a former European Commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian Government had just annulled an entire election… these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears”. The Commissioner in question was Frenchman Thierry Breton, who in a television interview in January boasted that “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it in Germany if necessary”. He was referring to the upcoming German election and the possibility that the Right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) might win.

As it turned out, simply annulling Romania’s Presidential election didn’t derail the Georgescu bandwagon. Quite the opposite. He picked up momentum and polls showed that he would romp to victory in May’s re-run election. As I predicted in January, Romania’s elite wouldn’t allow this to happen. And they haven’t. At the end of February, Georgescu was detained by police as he drove through Bucharest to file his candidacy in the election. He was indicted on six counts, among them false funding sources and false information in his last campaign. He was also barred from leaving the country and creating any new social media accounts. Now he is barred from standing for President, a decision he has called a “direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide”.

It’s part of a disturbing illiberal pattern, says Gavin. In Germany, the AfD came second on 20% of the vote but has been shut out of Government in favour of the Left-wing Social Democrats, despite having had their worst performance since 1945. In Austria, the anti-immigration Freedom Party won the election last October but still finds itself shunned by the other parties who have colluded to keep it side-lined. And in France on March 31st a court will rule whether Marine Le Pen will be barred from office for five years over a charge of “misusing EU funds”. This doesn’t end well. The issues that these politicians represent – and simmering public anger about them – obviously aren’t going away, least of all while Left-wing parties cling to power despite losing elections and refuse to address them.

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“An economy that ‘must’ grow at 5%, and via more supply, not demand, necessarily makes too much, exports it, and… dominates global supply chains..”

Europe Seizing Russian FX Reserves Would Reset Global Financial System (Every)

Yesterday saw the Nikkei -2.2%, the Dax -1.7%, the S&P -2.7%, and the Nasdaq –3.8%, while the US Treasury 10-year yield the White House is now focused on was -5bp to 4.16%. As the headlines put it, markets were “swooning”, first on China drifting back to deflation, then on President Trump’s comments that refused to rule out a US recession. Frankly, that commentary managed to be both very shallow and deeply myopic at the same time. China is “struggling” with deflation due to mercantilism. An economy that ‘must’ grow at 5%, and via more supply, not demand, necessarily makes too much, exports it, and… dominates global supply chains. Many Western economies could do with that right now – as Trump implied.

He made clear he wants to reset the US, and by extension, global economy: “I hate to predict things like [a recession]. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of – it takes a little time… But I think it should be great for us… What I have to do is build a strong country… You can’t really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We go by quarters. And you can’t go by that. You have to do what’s right.” Vice-President Vance put the same thing another way: “President Trump’s economic policies are simple: if you invest in and create jobs in America, you’ll be rewarded. We’ll lower regulations and reduce taxes. But if you build outside of the US, you’re on your own.”

Markets, which presumed Trump 2 would retain Trump 1’s monomania for stocks, just want what’s right for them. However, anyone who thought shifting the US to production-based mercantilism from asset-based financialisation via economic statecraft over economic policy could be done without assets falling didn’t understand either ‘ism’, or statecraft. Hence the sell-off. Of course, this attempted US reset could go horribly wrong; or right. Either way, markets will be dragged along behind it. We are also seeing a matching US global foreign policy reset via political statecraft:

The US and Ukraine are to meet in Saudi Arabia today to discuss ending that war, as Senator Graham threatens to sanction Russia aggressively if they don’t come to the table; the US wants a deal, not war between Israel and Hamas, and it, not Israel, is now seen in charge of hostage negotiations and the end game; the US is also getting tougher on Iranian oil, as the Houthis reportedly get ready to attack things again; Trump seems set for a June ‘two birthdays’ summit with China’s Xi despite the escalating trade war; and the FT’s Gideon Rachman claims Trump is “Making Europe Great Again” after decrying all the actions that led to that outcome.

Again, this attempted US reset could go horribly wrong; or right. Either way, markets will be dragged along behind it. So, do try to keep up. Moscow is now blaming the UK for instigating global wars – a Russian obsession and a good way not to blame the US, helping build détente, perhaps. However, that flatters the UK as much as recent comparisons between PM Starmer and Churchill. The looming UK Strategic Defence Review (SDR) reportedly states the military is so weak after 25 years of hollowing out that it will take ten years to become “match fit”, and require “much more” investment, and “industrial policy” to onshore production, tech, and jobs, as well as a recommendation this is done without the US. Oddly for military thinkers, the SDR seems to assume an economics-style static backdrop when it will be dynamic and antagonistic.

What if Russia, China, or even the US make the UK’s “industrial policy” or military decoupling more difficult and expensive via grey-zone sabotage, supply chain ‘shocks’, or economic statecraft countermeasures? At the very least, anyone thinking “much more” investment was covered by the recent policy shift away from foreign aid to defence spending, or that this is going to take only ten years, or that the government has a shovel-ready plan for military protectionism to allow it to happen is likely mistaken. The same applies to Europe: will the new “four-year” loosening of the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact, or the 1.5 percentage points of GDP, be all we get as it rearms? Half a Euro tank or a Euro combat aircraft to replace US systems like the F-35 for fear of built-in ‘kill switches’ –so requiring even more complex new supply chains to be built from scratch, and economies of scale, i.e., larger orders, to make it affordable– is no use to Europe at all.

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“France has been eyeing a defense spending boost for a while now – because nothing says sophisticated economic strategy like just cranking out piles of missiles..”

Macron’s Napoleon Cosplay Could Come At A Grave Cost (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron is currently completely absorbed in cosplaying Napoleon, leading the charge to put French and European boots on the ground on Ukraine’s side against the Russians. His costume needs to be taken in for resizing – downward. Sharing the stage with “Dollar General Napoleon” is British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the role of “Wish Wellington.” This sweatshop mail order version of the legendary British Duke of Wellington and military strategist sounds like he was knocked around and damaged during the shipping process, and has been keen to use his predecessor’s Iraq War tagline of a “coalition of the willing” for marketing purposes. Because that worked out so great the first time that reminding people of it will surely make them want to have yet another go. This time against Russia.

“Wish Wellington” seems rather keen to repeat the logistic challenges of the actual Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular War of 1807 to 1814 in Spain and Portugal. Only this time the modern-day Napoleon knock-off would be fighting beside him rather than against him. Good luck stretching your logistics to Ukraine for battle when your stated opponent only has to travel from right next door.Macron doesn’t want to go in right away though, he says. He needs for everyone to stop fighting for a bit first – a month to be precise – so the French and Brits and their posse can safely get to the VIP room with the bar service without having to worry about getting mixed up with guys throwing punches in Club Ukraine. Macron has since explained that the French wouldn’t be on the front line, but would be hanging out to guarantee “peace” – by repeating the same NATO troop presence that sparked the conflict’s escalation in the first place.

So there’s no way they could possibly ever find themselves in the middle of punch-ups because Macron envisions that velvet rope separating his fantasy stage play from any real-life consequences remaining intact. A modern-day Maginot Line. In the meantime, he’s been taking to TV to tell French citizens, “Who can believe today that Russia would stop at Ukraine?” Well, the French, for one – 65% of whom currently oppose French troops in Ukraine, according to a new CSA Institute poll. Guess they don’t really see it as the pressing issue that Macron portrays. Neither do other EU members, apparently – contrary to their own hyperventilation on the issue. Why else would they have held their Ukraine defense summit in London and not ensured that the Baltics were there, if they were really that concerned about the EU’s frontline countries.

Obviously this is about something else. And one of those other things is trying to literally scare up as much taxpayer cash by fear-bombing their electorate, using the “Russian threat,” to boost their own industrial base. Germany’s economy has been in the dumps since 2022, but there’s nothing that now can’t be fixed with a trillion-euro blank check from the German taxpayer, as the top establishment parties on both the right and left now want – and a good excuse to have to transfer a big chunk of that cash to the country’s defense industry. Some analysts are saying that the plan could boost the country’s GDP by 2% – in the long run. And well, hey, even if it doesn’t, those responsible probably won’t be around when accountability comes knocking, anyway.

Meanwhile, France has been eyeing a defense spending boost for a while now – because nothing says sophisticated economic strategy like just cranking out piles of missiles. With French manufacturing about as sturdy as a baguette left out in the rain – declining output, sluggish new orders, and job cuts since 2023 – Reuters points to skyrocketing energy prices, fuel costs, and raw materials as the culprits. But hey, at least sticking it to Putin by messing with those things has totally, definitely worked… right? So who’s going to actually pay for all this? Sounds like the French government spokesperson already has an idea: dipping into the interest on French citizens’ savings. Pretty sure that people invest in savings so they can buy themselves nice things – not so Brigitte Macron’s former junior high school drama student can gear up for his “little emperor” era.

All this talk of war with Russia for peace has already sent European defense stocks through the roof. According to the Financial Times, Germany’s Rheinmetall is up 14%. A boost of 15% for France’s Thales and Italy’s Leonardo. BAE systems – 14%. Saab – 11%. Because nothing says ‘safety and security’ like a bunch of investors and establishment cronies getting rich off the backs of the average working stiff.

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“Why are Americans supporting an alien culture in Europe to the point of possibly having nuclear war with Russia, a law abiding Christian nation that protects its citizens?

The French Despite Clear Warning Brought The Camp of the Saints to France (PCR)

France is dying. It is a piecemeal death. One business district at a time. One neighborhood at a time. A restaurant, a business, a theater, a hotel here and there. Each death so sad but survivable. But as the piecemeal deaths mount, they become an aggregate, and now France is dying. Jean Raspail warned the French in clear language in 1973 that the open borders acceptance of immigrant-invaders meant the death of France. Enoch Powell warned the British. It proved to be impossible to warn insouciant moronic populations imbued with racist guilt from decades of propagandistic indoctrination. Enoch Powell was denounced and Jean Raspail ignored. Marine Le Pen, the only politician in France who stands for the French people, seems headed to prison for stranding up for French ethnics against the immigrant-invaders.

The same destruction of nation is happening all over Europe, especially in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the UK, countries in which the white ethnic female population has no protection against gang rape by immigrant invaders. White women are discouraged from reporting their gang rapes, because it is considered racist for a white to initiate action against a black. This is Europe today. A cultural dead zone or a rising new culture based on African and Muslim mores. All of my European and English friends tell me: “Don’t come back. It will break your heart. It is not like you remember it.” But still the tourists go. They are shown around the still safe areas and kept from seeing the encroaching barbarity. It is like a sponsored trip to Israel. You are not shown the bad stuff, only the good stuff. Trump is right. Europe is a basket case.

Why are Americans supporting an alien culture in Europe to the point of possibly having nuclear war with Russia, a law abiding Christian nation that protects its citizens? The United States should align with the rising powers–Russia and China–not with the decadent and declining countries, none of which are any longer ethnic nations, in Europe. European governments, who refuse to protect their women from immigrant-invaders, want instead to go to war with Russia. Well, Trump should let them. The war won’t last long, and we will be rid of Europe. Europe is dead just like the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico or is it the Gulf of America where the Mississippi River dumps the chemical fertilizer runoff from commercial agribusiness and other pollutants. The United States has the same anti-Western intellectual class as Europe. How can Trump address our vulnerability from our internal enemies, which is where our vulnerability lies?

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“..an overnight drone strike on the Druzhba oil pipeline..”

Hungary Accuses Ukraine Of Threatening Its Sovereignty (RT)

Hungary has accused Ukraine of threatening its sovereignty after Kiev launched an overnight drone strike on the Druzhba oil pipeline on Tuesday. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said shipments of Russian crude via the pipeline have been temporarily halted following the attack on a metering station. In a video posted on Facebook, Szijjarto stressed that the Druzhba pipeline is a critical component of Hungary’s energy infrastructure, pointing out that if it ceases to function, oil deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia would be “physically impossible.” “We consider these attacks against our energy infrastructure targeting Hungary to be unacceptable,” the foreign minister said. “Hungary’s energy supply is a matter of sovereignty and we expect everyone to respect this,” he added. Szijjarto noted that he had spoken to Russia’s deputy energy minister, who has assured him that crude oil deliveries will likely be resumed within the next 24 hours.

The diplomat recalled that Budapest had repeatedly raised the issue of the safety of its energy infrastructure multiple times in Brussels, and had been given assurances by the European Commission that there would be no attacks on such facilities. “Unfortunately, this is already the umpteenth time when the EC’s guarantee is violated,” Szijjarto pointed out. According to media reports, three Ukrainian fixed-wing drones attacked the Druzhba terminal in Bryansk Region on Tuesday night. No injuries were reported. The attack was part of a larger raid on Russia, which reportedly involved more than 340 UAVs, nearly a hundred of which were brought down near Moscow. The falling debris from the destroyed drones near the capital reportedly caused the death of at least three people, while over 20 civilians have been injured.

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“The CBP Home App gives aliens the option to leave now and self-deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream.”

Trump Finds an Epic Way to Repurpose Biden’s CBP One App for Ilegals (Margolis)

The days of using government technology to roll out the welcome mat for illegal aliens are officially over. The Trump administration has just launched the CBP Home app, replacing Biden’s disastrous CBP One system that essentially served as a concierge service for illegal immigration. Remember how Biden used CBP One to usher in over a million illegal aliens? Those days are done. The new app has one crystal-clear message: It’s time to go home. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem didn’t mince words about the change. “The Biden Administration exploited the CBP One App to allow more than 1 million aliens to illegally enter the United States,” she declared. “With the launching of the CBP Home App, we are restoring integrity to our immigration system.”

The app’s primary feature is a “Submit Intent to Depart” function, which lets illegal aliens report their planned departure. It’s like an RSVP system for self-deportation. How sweet is that? It can also allow users to verify that they have left the United States. According to Fox News Digital, this feature is “limited to those who were paroled into the U.S.” Noem laid out the options in terms nobody can misunderstand: “The CBP Home App gives aliens the option to leave now and self-deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream. If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.” The Trump administration isn’t just talking tough; it’s backing it up with action. On day one, Trump killed the parole function that Biden abused.

ICE has now expanded its authority to cancel existing parole statuses, and those previously cherished TPS extensions? Gone for many nationalities. Even domestic travel is getting a reality check. The CBP One system will now only help facilitate one kind of journey — the one that leads out of the country. Since Trump has taken office, border crossings have plummeted. Essentially, he secured the border in a matter of weeks. As President Trump told Congress with his characteristic directness, “The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation. ‘We must have legislation to secure the border.’ But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.” This is a complete reversal of Biden’s open-borders disaster. While the Biden administration used technology to welcome illegal immigration, Trump is using it to restore law and order.

The automatic update of all existing CBP One apps to the new CBP Home version sends an unmistakable message: the Biden-era immigration free-for-all is over. The choice for illegal aliens is simple — leave voluntarily now and preserve the possibility of legal return or be deported and face permanent exclusion. This is what actual border security looks like. No endless processing of bogus asylum claims, no more humanitarian parole abuse, just straightforward enforcement of our immigration laws. It’s amazing what can happen when an administration actually wants to solve the border crisis instead of enabling it.

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Judges seeking to make policy; it is a peculiar sign of our times. Luckily, it’s not all of them.

Judge Declines Bid to Force Federal Gov’t to Restore Foreign Aid Contracts (ET)

A federal judge on March 10 declined to compel President Donald Trump’s administration to restore foreign assistance contracts that it had canceled. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali said that Trump’s administration must spend money allocated by Congress on foreign aid, but that it is up to the Executive Branch as to which projects it funds with the money. “The separation of powers dictates only that the Executive follow Congress’s decision to spend funds, and both the Constitution and Congress’s laws have traditionally afforded the Executive discretion on how to spend within the constraints set by Congress,” Ali said in a 48-page ruling. “The appropriate remedy is accordingly to order Defendants to ’make available for obligation the full amount of funds Congress appropriated’ under the relevant laws.”

Officials have canceled about 9,900 of the 13,100 USAID and State Department agreements, according to court filings. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media this week that the canceled contracts “did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.” The ruling came in response to a lawsuit from organizations that had agreements with the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) when Trump paused foreign aid spending to let the State Department review agreements to make sure they furthered his agenda. After Ali previously ruled that USAID and the State Department must fund contracts that predated the Trump administration but were paused under the freeze, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the judge to clarify which obligations the government must meet to comply with his order.

Ali set a March 10 deadline to issue payments to the organizations, while promising further instructions concerning groups that are not parties in the case. In the new ruling, Ali said that the Executive Branch unlawfully impounded congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds and ordered the Trump administration to pay committed funds for work completed before Feb. 13. The administration must pay nearly $2 billion in total, issuing around 300 payments a day until the organizations that had agreements with the government are recompensed for their work, the judge said.

Ali said that he concluded that government lawyers defending the withholding of foreign assistance funds, which were allocated by Congress, “offer an unbridled view of Executive power that the Supreme Court has consistently rejected—a view that flouts multiple statutes whose constitutionality is not in question.” However, he also said that courts are restrained in the relief they can offer in such disputes. “The Court must be careful that any relief it grants does not itself intrude on the prerogative of a coordinate branch,” he said. “The Court accordingly denies Plaintiffs’ proposed relief that would unnecessarily entangle the Court in supervision of discrete or ongoing Executive decisions, as well as relief that goes beyond what their claims allow.”

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“Has anyone else talked about Gonzalo Lira? An American journalist, He had a US passport. Has anyone talked about him besides Russia? Try to remember. Nobody did,”

Moscow Reproaches Western Media For Silence Over Gonzalo Lira’s Death (RT)

The fact that only Moscow cared about the fate of US blogger Gonzalo Lira, who died in a Ukrainian prison last year, is a sign of the “deepest crisis” affecting the international bodies that are supposed to protect journalists, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. Lira, a Chilean-American citizen, passed away behind bars in Ukraine in January 2024, while awaiting trial for “systematically justifying the Russian aggression.” Zakharova recalled the ordeal of the US journalist during a conference on the development of modern media at the Moscow School of Economics (MSE) on Tuesday. “Has anyone else talked about Gonzalo Lira? An American journalist, He had a US passport. Has anyone talked about him besides Russia? Try to remember. Nobody did,” she insisted.

When asked about Lira’s incarceration, the White House and the US State Department replied with “strategic silence, generously paid for by USAID, an American agency that supposedly promotes international development. It is ridiculous,” the spokeswoman stressed.The international institutions that are supposed to protect journalists are currently in “the deepest crisis,” Zakharov said. “Waiting for them to resuscitate or for them to be resuscitated by someone else is unnecessary and useless” as Russia, which has “an amazing and diverse” journalistic community, has the potential to correct the situation on its own, she noted. Lira, who was married to a Ukrainian woman and had resided in the city of Kharkov since 2010, got in trouble with the Kiev authorities for his coverage of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine on YouTube, which was critical of the government of Vladimir Zelensky.

The blogger, writer and filmmaker, who had Hollywood experience, was first detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in early 2022, but released after a week without any charges being pressed against him. Lira was arrested again in May 2023 and released on bail three months later; he claimed he’d been subjected to torture while in prison. He ended up in custody again in late July that year after jumping bail and attempting to flee the country to seek asylum in Hungary. At that time, his father, Gonzalo Lira Sr., suggested that the administration of then-President Joe Biden gave “at least tacit approval of Gonzalo’s arrest.” The journalist’s family later blamed Kiev for his death in prison. In February, US President Donald Trump’s close ally Elon Musk also claimed that Zelensky had “killed” the American journalist. When asked about Lira during a press conference last month, the Ukrainian leader replied: “I do not know this man. I never knew him.”

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Home Forums Debt Rattle March 12 2025

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 51 total)
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  • #184025

    James Ensor The intrigue 1890   • Ukraine Open To ‘Immediate’ 30-Day Ceasefire If Russia Agrees: State Dept (JTN) • 30-Day Truce: US Lifts Pause
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 12 2025]

    #184027
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Well hot god f*cking damn, Elon found himself a selfless billionaire……
    …..and it’s him.

    Rest assured.
    We’re safe now.

    In his own words I suppose:

      “Dramatically increasing my risk of being assassinated and engaging in politics are not what I want to do. I do not have a death wish but the stakes are so high that I really feel I have no choice but to do it.”

    I betcha Elongated Musk girded his loins first, you know, before making His Selflessness Pronouncement.

    JD “ever the Appalachian’ responded:

      Git ‘er done! Yee haw!
    #184029
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Remember Pi Day, Friday:

    Canada caves 4 hours after throwing down the gauntlet. Like last time, with Trudeau, this is exactly as if it was all pre-written and engineered. Maximum Effort. It has to be over-over the top attack then an over-over the top surrender to cut through the noise. Even so, barely does.

    I guess we’ll see. I wonder what Canadians think of it, self-hating and burning their own flags until 5 minutes ago, suddenly, when Trump speaks, they snap to attention! Why I say, sir! It’s embarrassing. Be your own nation, ignore this joker. If you’d been doing what you ought – and what most Canadians have wanted all along – you wouldn’t be in this mess.

    “The Right Is Being Shut Out Of Government Across Europe

    Again, this is what they want and engineer. They FORCE the Right to become something they don’t want to be. Then pirate and ride that ship instead. This seems to have derailed here in the U.S. as our “Right” is “Leave me alone” party and not an authoritative one. We’re on the third axis of Liberty, and apparently that runs straight through the population despite everything they tried for 30 years. Even now, still at it, “Patriot Front” everyone laughs at them instantly. Calls them Feds, Instantly. Hates the KKK and other groups which should get some spillover, instantly, instinctively. It’s just not there.

    That’s largely true of, say, UK, with Sargon, etc being really the same Liberal Values guys the Americans are. Except if the King would support that, he’d have no trouble supporting the King.

    “Department of Education To Cut Half Its Workforce

    Good, as maybe children can get an education now, but really there’s no money to be saved there. It’s just mopping up work, as most of our domestic spending is. It’s all in Pentagon and Interest payments.

    Who else is sad USAID wasn’t shut off BEFORE 10,000 Syrians were murdered and left in the street by ISIS? Thanks, Joe. “I Did That!”

    “FBI Redactions On Seth Rich Index Leave No Answers

    Really? How about the question why he FBI is involved in a local robbery? Do you always have a thousand federal pages on a street mugging?

    “House Passes Full-Year Stopgap As Democrat Crosses Party Lines, Massie Votes ‘No’

    Trump then primaries Massey, the MAGA base fall into like by telling him, “GFY, we like Massey”. Ah, a cult to the end. Always rejecting their leader and everything he says, endlessly arguing amongst themselves. And also mocking Vance.

    On that, question comes up, “Is the ENTIRE last 10 years of raw insanity due to having nothing but women in media?” How? Like, this Vance Meme thing – which keeps expanding! — has a “Atlantic” story (I think) that is about how “MAGA is turning on and mocking their own,” etc. Huh? Like, you actually THOUGHT that…wait. It was suspected the original Vance meme was him sitting on the couch, and they keep making him fatter and rounder. Like “Ha ha”, bullying him, “Boy will he be sorry now! Everyone in math class will hate him!” Instead, all the BOYS, the MEN, are like “That’s hilarious, do it more.” Like women think this is bullying, deadly, social opprobation, tantamount to banishment, a real hit, an honest, earnest attack. Men are like ribbing each other, not only does every attack make them stronger, THEY DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE. …No wonder the women are all so pissed off all the time. They’re like roundhousing him in their parlance, and he didn’t even notice they exist. They’re mosquitoes, non-entities.

    And this isn’t out here, in honest comments, meme-land, but way up at all layers of media. All 100% feminized, not a pair of balls from here to the shores of the Potomac. …I found out this is true of all male reading. There is like ONE publishing house in the country that prints any books men might read – and hardly that since they publish other stuff too. Like Comics, D&D it’s a 99% hostile, genocidal takeover, like when Pharaohs take over Egypt and expunge former leaders from the record: all books, writings, accounting ledgers, statues, everything. Erased in a violent pyre to the gods of intolerance and hate. That’s the publishing industry right now.

    Want more? Know what they replaced it with? Porn. …But you see, this is Gurl-Porn so it’s alright then. Book shops are now like, “Not only are 90% of what I can get graphic slop fantasy erotica, but they are ALSO done up in Young Adult covers and themes so this porn is constantly handed to children.” Of course. These are not “Books” in the normal sense. They’re Modern Harlequin that would make 100 years of bodice rippers blush. Explicit, endless, female fantasy raw sex, taking up huge pages, fan fiction.

    There is a rumor that men were authors once. But it’s only a rumor. Your odds of getting published are now statistically ZERO. Even if you’re a man writing on gay feminist transgender vegan mystery novels. Now why don’t men read? Why kain’t my boy read?

    “Judge Halts Deportation Of Columbia University Pro-Palestinian Protest Leader

    As expected but not caught til now, the RIGHT is now lying and omitting pivotal facts as a general thing. This guy is MARRIED to a U.S. citizen. Yeah, that changes it some. Another one I caught? Apparently that Fent Lab in Canada was caught in October, long before Trump’s pressure.

    “Former Philippines President Duterte ‘Forcibly Taken’ On Plane Bound For The Hague

    And yet George Bush roams free.

    Tucker: Huh? Elon is South African. Even Americans no longer know simple branches of government (clearly) and where SS Fund fits in. (It sort of does, he’s somewhat wrong on this, because: lying). Why can he “message”? Huh? “He’s in charge of everything?” Huh? He wants the SAME THING as usual? With the SAME people, Paulson, who HID everything for his OWN company? Then by hiding it, it all got swept, contained, and not addressed?

    I hear this a lot. Uhhh, folks, for 100 years, One hunnnned, they have TRIED the nice way, with the scalpel, and buppkis, zero, nada. Nothing moves, not a single change. THAT’S HOW WE GOT HERE, with $36 Trillion and $1 Trillion every 100 – probably every 60 days by now.

    The constant round is: Well, he found some waste, BUT! But I don’t like the way he’s doing it, why does he have to tell everyone, etc. W. T. F. ???? Again and ALWAYS not mad at the waste, not stopping that, ALWAYS stopping the messenger and the fix.

    That was Elon himself, yesterday, saying “You don’t like it, DOGE, what exact PART do you take issue with?” They have a case of the feelz when they see his face is the part they have issue with, every specific act is both legal and irrefutable. Or they would do that.

    What a heap of nonsense. You are not a serious country. You are not a serious people. You’re going to lose your nation, hand it to evil, not even notice then say “Duh, whut?” This is exactly what Globalists were telling you, TO YOUR FACE. You shake your fist at them, then sign the first contract they put down.

    “Stephen Miller on the stock market dip”

    Everything’s too complicated for me even to take a pitch at. So: sorry. But Stocks down, prices down = Dollar UP. All these things have a denominator. Cutting off money printing = Dollar UP. Great. We call that DEFLATION. Whoops, not great. But the alternative is INFLATION. Also not Great. See what’s going on here? Trump is bad either way, m’kay! Up, down or center = Trump R Bad.

    Essentially they front-load the pain, drop the markets that so desperately need it, and hope you have some economic motion and hope by the midterms. This should monkey-hammer Europe and elsewhere at the same time.

    …Don’t worry, when they start proceedings for Epstein, everyone here will find some new reason to Black Pill and surrender. It’s always time to surrender. We shall surrender on the beaches, be glum, and always, always surrender. Never take a W when you can take an L.

    I’m just sad it’s been so long they can’t arrest them all. Because that would be “Everyone”. There’d be like 20 guys left in government.

    “• Ukraine Open To ‘Immediate’ 30-Day Ceasefire If Russia Agrees: State Dept (JTN)

    On what terms? You want that so you don’t take a hit from Kursk catastrophe (again) and can rearm? Didn’t we do this in Minsk?

    WHYYYYY do we need a ceasefire? Why?

    What do I mean? Putin already said there’s a ceasefire. All Ukraine has to do is STOP INVADING RUSSIA. …Because those 5 oblasts are Constitutionally Russia and that’s where the fighting is. If they withdrew past the Dniper, there’d be nothing for Russia to shoot at, would there? Demonstrates Every. Single. Word. By the Combined West. Is a lie.

    “document that says Ukraine will not be part of NATO. Only then can a truce maybe be considered.”

    Terms. The terms are: your unconditional surrender.

    “Trump should end America’s unconditional support of Israel. To enable genoide with weapons, money, and diplomatic cover is not making America great.”

    Why can’t Trump fix everything, everywhere at once in eight weeks? I don’t understand, and I want a pony. That poops skittles.

    ““The Maga Right has none of the inhibitions of its predecessors. It is planning to leverage the power of a recaptured state to annihilate its enemies..”

    Are they though? Strange way to do it. Court calls almost certain unconstitutional decisions and Trump says, “Aw shucks.” What a terrible dictator, power-mad, annihilating his enemies…by meekly acquiescing to them. …As Dictators do, of course.

    “Trump reportedly views with utter disdain the UK and European boast that should the U.S. not do it, then Europe will.”

    I don’t know if “Disdain”. That’s an emotion. That emotion could be captured and leveraged. My read is, he shrugs and disagrees, leaving them to it. IDGAF. Go ahead, and go ahead and buy our weapons (at the moment) for it. We can’t have Disdain for you, because we Americans don’t think of you at all. Not as real creatures anyway.

    “• USAID Staff Rush To Shred And Burn Documents (RT)

    I’m lost: doesn’t Rubio already run this? Great headlines, though. Nothing says “Innocents, persecuted” like scrambling to shred everything.

    “it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.” This is a complete reversal of Biden’s open-borders disaster”

    Not really. Almost no one’s left yet. Because doing that is pretty hard and costs money.

    “• Moscow Reproaches Western Media For Silence Over Gonzalo Lira’s Death (RT)

    I hear Russia is extraditing Scott Ritter and Tusli Gabbard for premeditated murder. They flew over and did him in the Study with the Candlestick. On Elon’s private jet.

    #184030
    WES
    Participant

    TCS – Trump Confusion Syndrome :

    Wall Street’s financialization of everything world looks like it Is suffering from a bad case of TCS!
    So it is being introduced to short term pain, for long term gain reality.
    Naturally the market doesn’t like this one bit and was staging a pullback to get it’s way with Trump.
    Trump just threw some sand in their faces, by saying he isn’t paying any attention to the market’s tandem.

    Even gold looks confused by Trump’s actions.
    Trump knows what he wants to do.
    He will try to kill or tame the inflation monster that has hurt ordinary people.
    The Globalist inflation monster Biden delibrately released on the very first day of his presidency.

    Trump needs to tackle the debt’s huge interest expense by lowering interest rates.
    So Financial assets need to see some deflation in their prices.
    Gold has been returning stateside to shore up US bank balance sheets.
    The pain part to change the inflation mindsets, like in 1981.
    Gold will measure Trump’s success in this battle, just like it did in 1981.

    It won’t be a linear battle.
    The battle will ebb back and forth.
    Everything will be as clear as mud!

    #184031
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Justin in time X-reality check by Stew Peters above, that some are, sadly, aware of all along.

    Thomas Massie.
    What a great name for a President.

    #184032
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Why Epstein documents only?
    What about videos?
    I mean, Alan Dershowitz in shorts and poor girl throwing up at the site what she’s looking at.

    #184033
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview to the US bloggers
    Mario Nawfal, Larry C.Johnson and Andrew Napolitano,
    Moscow, March 12, 2025

    #184034
    kultsommer
    Participant

    This is what Wall Street and the corporations did to America. Is it Trump’s role to protect these American adversaries by blaming China?

    That’s an easy job for Trump, since half of America blames Commies for doing that and, see, there is an “obvious connection” to CP of China.

    It is Wall Street and the greedy self-serving corporate executives and boards who received huge renumeration for offshoring the jobs of the working class.

    Your face can go blue repeating that. It doesn’t matter.

    #184035
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Gee, we only discovered like a trillion dollars a year going to Commies illegally, so people a bit upset by commies must be fools, absolute fools!

    And all those trust fund babies who grew up, went to college, were browbeaten that socialism is the very bestest, and then used all their various positions they got slotted into accordingly, that means they are capitalists — while they do all they do from a collective, corporative structure, top-down.

    WEF – Globalists

    We now know for a fact Globalist = Internationalist

    Just like we know Wokeist = Communist

    Wokeists = Globalists

    Internationalist Communists. Spewing the exact same message from top-down and astroturf.

    What a surprise, they’re all marxists!!! Whoda thunk. All the academic marxism from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s from marxist sociologist professors who hate you and want you to die — all pushed into the mainstream by billions – nay, TRILLIONS of dollars of government spending and “leveraging” using control of corporations.

    Corporations ending up blaring brand-destructive talking points from marxist academia and marxists online, who presumably should be able to recognize it when they hear it say “onoz, you blind people, it’s the Wall Streetz”

    Stick in spoke. Shake fist at sky. Damn you capitalism. The answer is more socialism amirite?

    #184036

    Haven’t watched/listened to the Lavrov/US bloggers video yet, but the first thing I think is ‘he gets it’. He knows that is where media have moved. It’s not NBC, it’s X. His schedule is insane, but he makes the time. Try that with any of the EU ‘leaders’. For them, Nap and Larry are threats they must stay away from. Imagine Macron, Ursula or Kallas sitting in Lavrov’s chair. “Ask me whatever you want”.

    #184037
    poppie
    Participant

    Just a rehash of what many here have said in past. Shredding and burning has a limited impact. All of the paper is a print out of something on a computer. The computers have backups. The backups are designed to make access non-anonymous. Even the paper is multiple copies. The only real benefit is that its not found “on your desk”. And as you go higher in classification, paper is discouraged then prohibited. Pencils are confiscated. Your pockets are confirmed to be empty. You work on line with a guard watching a few people in a mini panopticon. At least thats the rumors I hear.

    #184038
    zerosum
    Participant

    You and TAE are part of the “influencer” that are trying to fix/righten/stabilize our economic/social structures.
    Peace
    Reflect/reality check on these points of view.

    ————-
    https://x.com/realstewpeters/status/1899648879563337982?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1899648879563337982%7Ctwgr%5E3a452c11c136c2ffe32e56586d4fc966f791eb8a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theautomaticearth.com%2F2025%2F03%2Fdebt-rattle-march-12-2025%2F
    ———–

    30 day cease fire.
    But will Putin agree?

    All Ukraine troops must withdraw from Crimea and the four regions.
    There must be a signed (not by Zelensky!) document that says Ukraine will not be part of NATO.
    Only then can a truce maybe be considered.

    • 30-Day Truce: US Lifts Pause On Intel & Military Aid To Ukraine (ZH)

    There’s as yet little incentive for him to enact a temporary ceasefire, given as Trump recently admitted… he has all the cards (and Zelensky doesn’t).
    By all accounts the Russians are fast taking back territory in Kursk and advancing along front lines in the Donbas.
    Likely Russia fears that Kiev could simply use this ceasefire as an opportunity to rearm, rest, resupply and regroup
    – especially given Washington just said the US arms and intel pipeline is back on.

    Moscow is likely to see this is simply a matter between Washington and Kiev, and it appears to be a version of Zelensky’s ‘partial ceasefire’ which demands a halt to all air assaults.

    “Trump should immediately remove all sanctions, not only against Russia but against every country.
    This will boost the dollar’s role as the international medium of exchange, save the basis of American power, and reassure the Kremlin that the Cold War is indeed over.”

    • What Should Trump Do? (Paul Craig Roberts)
    ————-
    The Europeans chasing a “mirage that no longer exists, stubbornly hiking ‘tax and spend’, whilst doubling down on mass immigration and overpriced energy, oblivious to the flashing red lights in the [financial markets] as government debt yields rocket to their highest levels since 1998”, as Allister Heath outlines.
    In other words, the suggestion is that Friedrich Merz, Macron and Starmer are talking about how they are going to turn around their countries – via a massive infusion of debt – into defence superstates.
    Yet, at some level of consciousness, they must realise that it is not doable, so they settle instead for presenting themselves as ‘world leaders on the international stage’.
    ———-
    Tariff War.
    Who will pay/collect the tariffs?
    Who/where will the income go?
    Who will gain/suffer win/lose?
    Must meet/discuss a renewed USMCA relationship.
    ————-
    If Musk and the DOGE boys can cut a trillion dollars of funny money out of 2025 spending, they’ll gut most of the inflation, too.
    They might even get us under the 2% inflation that the Fed targets because the Powers That Be — the ones who politically benefit from spending money we don’t have — long ago decided that 2% annual inflation is good for us, actually.
    But that’s a discussion for another day.

    https://x.com/AutismCapital/status/1899207851824066919?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1899254896081469715%7Ctwgr%5E3a452c11c136c2ffe32e56586d4fc966f791eb8a%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theautomaticearth.com%2F2025%2F03%2Fdebt-rattle-march-12-2025%2F
    ELON MUSK: “I’m just here trying to make government more efficient and eliminate waste and fraud. So far our savings at this point exceed $4B a day. Unless we’re stopped, we’ll get to a trillion dollars in savings.”
    ————
    DO NOT PAS GO. GO TO JAIL

    • USAID Staff Rush To Shred And Burn Documents (RT)
    “Destruction of evidence is a crime,”

    The acting executive secretary of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Erica Carr, has directed remaining staff to destroy sensitive documents stored at the agency’s former headquarters in Washington, DC, according to an internal email.
    ————
    “All of our “growth” for the last five years is due to unsustainable deficits that will haunt generations of Americans yet to be born..”

    • Brace Yourselves: The Next Media BIG LIE Is About to Drop (Green)

    Before I tell you about the legacy dinosaur media’s next BIG LIE, I need to show you how they’ll sell it.
    It starts, as these things always do, with the Left attempting to control the language to alter your perceptions about how the economy performed under Presidentish Joe Biden and will perform under President Donald Trump.
    We might be done with Biden but he isn’t done with us, as you’re about to see.
    ————-
    What motivates you. What you think. What you see. is being manipulated.

    #184039
    zerosum
    Participant

    The Bank of Canada has cut its overnight lending rate by 25 basis points to 2.75 per cent, it announced on Wednesday, as an ongoing trade war with the U.S. begins to strain the Canadian economy.

    #184040
    Germ
    Participant

    The judges were Satan, Hitler and Stalin …

    Pfizer – “Proud to be named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for the 4th year running.”

    Total Clown World!

    https://x.com/pfizer/status/1899490576770171033

    TVASSF – still are.

    #184041
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Kagu birds.
    Many traditional dances throughout the World have elements of that posture while neither side is a “plagiarist”.

    #184042
    kultsommer
    Participant

    The same goes with the wid cats and the “territorial dispute”.

    #184043
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Marxist definition of Pragmatism™ — anything at all that advances Marxism. (anything that doesn’t is superflous or “counter-productive” therefore)

    This is EXACTLY LIKE RELIGION.

    It makes people into nasty, miserable shits.

    Take Medieval Catholicism. Normally, humans, even humans from cultures totally alien to each other, might STILL be able to come to agreements by swearing on the thing they find most sacred. You’re alien, you’re hostile, I don’t like you, you’ve done things I don’t like. HOW can I come to any agreement with you if I cannot trust you? Oh I know, I’ll swear to God. I’ll swear on the Bible.

    But maybe you’re fighting infidels. Maybe your’e fighting heretics. Or maybe you just didn’t intend to ever be honest and you like using trickery. How do you get out of the bind of the thing you hold sacred? You don’t want to be FORESWORN, you know. You shouldn’t WANT to be foresworn if you are in any way an ok human being, but even if you aren’t, you don’t want to go to hell, do you?

    But the Pope just says yeah, you can break your word anytime, you can break your oath to god anytime. Go right ahead. It’s for the cause — it is Pragmatic™

    So miserable shits go around oath-taking and betraying until nobody trusts nor remotely respects your religion.

    Do you feel NO embarrassment at the similarity?

    Democrats – taken over by Socialists.

    Socialists, after the fall of the USSR, didn’t say hey, we killed 23x as many as Hitler, we enslaved tens of millions – the biggest slavery operation ever – we terrified millions into running away from us – wait, all those walls and machine guns were to keep people IN, from fleeing us! COULD WE PERHAPS HAVE BEEN WRONG? Should we come up with new, better ideas?

    But the conclusions in the wake of abject failure were “We were not ruthless enough. We were not underhanded enough. We did not destroy enough things, we did not do it insidiously nor deeply nor insistently enough. And we need to invent more double and triple meanings for words so we can get REALLY dishonest.”

    “Democrats” meatsuited, now socialists, with current year Marxism as their creed (check with 70’s-90’s academic marxism and just read what they say, it’s what “Democrats” say now) got defeated in 2016 and 2024 — but WILL NOT say “Do we maybe have bad ideas? Do we need to consider what we did wrong, what we believe wrong?” Nope nope nope.

    Just coincidentally, a “Democrat” party taken over by Socialists acts just like Socialists in the face of failure! That must be totally random, bro! GOT to be! xyz thing wasn’t really tried, I am guessing.

    You miserable shits. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS and rejoin civil society. TRY being decent humans, you might even like it. TRY actual new ideas. No, thinking of new ways to be killjoy miserable shits is NOT new thinking. NO, your current 1866 thinking is not new thinking.

    #184044
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Well you’re not wrong there, Americans still think Russia is communist, and they’re not even called the “CCP”. So they’ll totally believe it’s China’s fault. …But we clearly have a lot of ire for Wall St and our own corporations. That’s why we’re going to nationalize and collectivize them, so we won’t be like China! (Not kidding, as there is nothing resembling rational thought here. The others all have false definitions, where Socialism = Capitalism; Democracy = Repression)

    So my bet blame China about 50:50. If our corporations scrub and reform themselves, who know how little they can take blame, depends on what they do. When they shouldn’t, since they sold us and destroyed the country for 30 years, sending us to the brink of ruin.

    #184045
    jb-hb
    Participant

    I often wonder why Socialists don’t just pool some money – plenty of socialist trust fund babies with money – and get 40 acres somewhere, do socialist things, show how awesome socialism is, how great it works, how wonderful and likeable socialists are, and just watch everyone joyfully join you in your success.

    Instead, all your efforts go towards fighting for access to capitalism and capitalists.

    But then, Socialists had the biggest resource-laden country in the world – plus a lot else going for them. And created an abject failure. WHY?

    The most common explanation I see online from Socialists, for their collapse, was because of sabotage.

    …so you lifted the Nationalist Socialist explanation for Germany’s WW1 collapse and, essentially without even any real modification, bolted it onto your own Inter-Nationalist Socialism?

    Stabbed in the back.

    Are you not embarrassed yet? Seriously.

    #184046

    People who don’t like government don’t like to get into government, leaving the people who love government to run things.
    So when those who love government meet someone who doesn’t, they gang up on him when he says “I’m going to get rid of your job.” Surprise!

    #184047

    “Instead, all your efforts go towards fighting for access to capitalism and capitalists.”
    And now we see how much they really really really love access to and accumulation of capital.

    #184048
    kultsommer
    Participant

    In that Pfizer X-chest-thumping:
    “Breakthroughs that change patients’ lives”.
    No doubt!

    #184049
    kultsommer
    Participant

    All cut-and-paste direct text lines by the socialist Paul Craig Roberts.

    Level of madness is out of control.

    #184050
    those darned kids
    Participant

    on today’s pages:

    trump = 119
    zelensky = 15
    doge = 15
    israel = 12
    peace = 12
    war = 17
    europe = 48
    secretary of hhs rescinding prep act liability protection for covid13 rat poison = 0

    #184051

    I’m halfway through Spartacus and Claude, and I keep wondering “what happened to ethical behavior?”
    Why would people work on this?
    When the list of awful things that could happen in the future are rattled off (Claude speaks in bullet points), it sure seems like many of them are going on right now.

    #184052
    poppie
    Participant

    I followed the art link for Ensor. That was very interesting.

    #184053
    John Day
    Participant

    Diddy Rape Accuser Alleges Coverup Involving Maui Police Chief Linked To Las Vegas Shooting https://www.zerohedge.com/political/diddy-rape-accuser-alleges-coverup-involving-maui-police-chief-linked-las-vegas-shooting

    #184059
    zerosum
    Participant

    Face the truth!
    Canada has budget deficits. Canada needs more income to balance their budget/spending.
    How can Canada get more money/taxes from you?

    reciprocal tariffs Cheer, clap,clap,clap

    Canada tariffs news: Trump’s levies arrive, Ottawa responds

    CTV News
    https://www.ctvnews.ca › world › trumps-tariffs › article
    Canada, following a dollar-for-dollar approach, is levelling retaliatory reciprocal tariffs on the United States, worth $29.8 billion.

    #184060
    jb-hb
    Participant

    The “Ukraine agrees to ceasefire” reminds me of when Axl Rose was still working on the new GnR album (Chinese Democracy) with Buckethead as his main guitarist.

    Buckethead went awol, just abandoned the project without warning, not answering any calls etc.

    Months later, decided he wanted to work on the GnR album after all, started talking to people at parties about how excited he was to be working on it, having conversations with industry professionals about it – STILL no call with Axl, still no scheduled studio time.

    #184062
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Von Hofmeister said to be writing with “poetic aplomb”. The next thing theyll say is JD Vance bloviates with poetic statesmanship. Wait! D already thinks the latter.

    “Clausewitzian sense”…..oh my f*cking god. And the dude gets paid for this by the gram.

    Here it is, poetic aplomb. Christ, even the hagiographers are waxing psychopathic these days. Destabilizing behavior will do that.

      The logic of necropolitics, as theorized by the Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe (b. 1957), is laid bare in the choreography of these negotiations. It is not just about war but about the management of death itself, the strategic control of who is allowed to live and who is left to perish. For Ukraine, existence is contingent upon its usefulness to larger powers, a pawn whose suffering is not a tragedy but a calculated necessity. The withholding of arms, the rationing of intelligence, the offering of a ceasefire not as salvation but as a way to prolong a limbo state between survival and destruction — this is necropolitics in action. The U.S. does not need Ukraine to win. It only needs Ukraine not to die too quickly. The real horror is that the decision-makers have already accepted Ukraine’s eventual demise. What is being negotiated is the tempo of its death. This is not war in the Clausewitzian sense of two sovereign actors vying for victory.
    #184063
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    “limbo state between survival and destruction”

    and never will the author dwell there, dwell as in live there, but he writes about it.

    #184064
    Dora
    Participant

    Flu shots.

    #184067
    John Day
    Participant

    Tentative Disagreements https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/tentative-disagreements

    I will hazard some thoughts about the peace deal being worked out between Russia and Ukraine/USA, which Steve Witkoff has been traveling to Moscow before negotiations, to facilitate. He was in Moscow again before the US and Ukrainian teams, including him, met in Riyadh yesterday. Ukraine stepped down from the demand that Russia capitulate, and went into negotiations with the French/British position of a 30 day air and sea partial ceasefire, which would well-serve Ukrainian war efforts. During negotiations, which lasted 6-8 hours, with a US break in the middle, with happy body language of the American team going into the break, the Ukrainian team agreed to a complete 30 day ceasefire, and to giving up all lands that the Russian army now holds, and to begin substantive negotiations immediately.
    This falls short of the Russian claim to the remnants of the four oblasts which are not completely taken yet, but are claimed as part of Russia. It seems to me that the withdrawal of troops from these areas, followed by a jointly supervised vote of residents, as to which country they would be part of, would serve all purposes, and nobody would lose face.
    Russia has already said that the $300 billion in Russian assets, confiscated by western banking (mostly Europeans) could be used to reconstruct Ukraine directly. This weakens the positions of European banks, who really want to keep it. Russia is the logical and best source to rebuild Ukrainian infrastructure, and Russia has insisted that the rebuilding include the areas of former Ukraine which are now joined to Russia, also. The Russian funds would largely go to Russian industry, and to Ukrainian and Russian work teams in this scenario.
    We shall see what gets worked out. European banks are going to get cut out of this deal. That’s for sure.

    Gilbert Doctorow, Further thoughts on the Ukraine cease fire
    ​ I must admit that there are likely aspects to the agreement reached in Jedda between Team Trump headed by Marco Rubio and the Ukrainian delegation which we simply do not know and, not knowing them it is truly difficult to make sense of what is happening.
    ​ Last evening I remarked that Rubio was clearly satisfied with what was agreed in Jedda. The immediate U.S. decision to restore Ukrainian access to U.S. intelligence and to restart deliveries of arms to Ukraine seemed to confirm this. Of course, this very decision makes the U.S. bid to play the role of honest broker all the more problematic. American assistance to Kiev in these matters makes it a co-belligerent and that normally excludes claims to be a neutral observer.
    ​ Why did it take 6 hours of negotiations to end up with what Western media said was the end result of the meeting in Jedda?​ … On reconsideration, I believe there must be more to what was agreed than was stated publicly.
    ​ The first hint is in the statement that was kept from view in most Western reporting: that during the cease fire there would be an immediate start to negotiations over a durable peace.
    ​ This by itself also would not make much sense as an incentive to bring in the Russians. We must assume that some discussions took place over what concessions the Ukrainians are prepared to make to arrive at a peace with Russia, and that these concessions represent a big step forward from all the nonsensical ‘peace plans’ put forward by Zelensky over the past couple of years, all of which amounted to Russian capitulation.​..
    ..The problem in Moscow now is that for Putin to agree to a cease fire after having repeatedly excluded this step without Ukrainian withdrawal from the 4 oblasts of Donbas-Novaya Rossiya that are now part of the Russian Federation would be very hard for him to explain to his own hardliners among Russian patriots…
    ..At the same time, the Kremlin is facing another dilemma. The massive Ukrainian drone attack on Russia, including more than 100 drones against residential targets in Moscow and the Moscow oblast which was made on the eve of the Jedda talks, enraged Russian elites and there were calls for an immediate attack on Kiev using the unstoppable Oreshnik hypersonic missiles. A motion to this effect was tabled in the State Duma. But if Russia does make such a revenge counter-attack, that will put in danger anything that may have been achieved at the negotiating table in Jedda yesterday.​ https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2025/03/12/further-thoughts-on-the-ukraine-cease-fire/

    Largest Ever Ukrainian Drone Attack On Moscow Kills Three Civilians, Injures 9​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/largest-ever-ukrainian-drone-attack-moscow-kills-three-civilians-injures-9

    ​ Ukraine Has Agreed To Enter Truce Negotiations With Moscow: Rubio
    ​ Coming out of the Jeddah talks with the Ukrainian delegation, which lasted over eight hours, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued a statement hailing that Kiev has agreed to enter negotiations with Russia to end the war.
    ​ “Today, we’ve made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that’s enduring and sustainable,” Rubio stated.
    ​ The 30-Day ceasefire aspect which was announced earlier appears designed to jump-start direct talks – with the intent that the guns would go silent to allow for talks to begin in earnest. It appears akin to a ‘freeze’ of the front lines of the conflict (something which Putin is likely to reject, seeing in in a possible ploy for Ukraine to rearm and regroup).​ https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-immediately-lifts-pause-intel-military-aid-ukraine-30-day-truce-plan-agreed-upon

    ​ Text of Joint Statement by US & Ukraine, Several Parts of which are Likely to be Unacceptable to Russia: “Repatriation of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children”
    ​ Whether it was ignorance on the part of the US delegation or a deliberate provocation towards Russia remains to be seen, but the wording about the “return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children” in the joint statement is likely to trigger head shaking in Russia at best, and anger at worst.
    ​ The stories of children allegedly forcibly abducted from Ukraine to Russia are a propaganda tale of the Biden administration. On February 14, 2023, a study titled ” Russia’s Systematic Program to Re-educate and Adopt Ukrainian Children ” was published in the United States. It accused Russia of maintaining a “network of camps and other facilities holding at least 6,000 children from Ukraine in Russian-occupied Crimea and Russia.”​ https://anti–spiegel-ru.translate.goog/2025/der-text-der-gemeinsamen-erklaerung-der-usa-und-der-ukraine-was-er-bedeutet-und-was-fuer-russland-warum-inakzeptabel-ist/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

    #184068
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Zelensky went to Riyadh, but was not part of the negotiating team. He just repudiated the deal. It’s Ukraine’s fault again. Russia advances relentlessly. ‘Ukraine Will Not Recognize Any Territory Occupied By Russia’: Zelensky
    The Kremlin says it is “studying” statements issued by the US and Ukrainian delegations following yesterday’s talks in Jeddah, and further describes Russian officials are waiting for a fuller briefing from the US on the proposal. The 30-day ceasefire plan calls for a halt to all the fighting on land, sea and in the air – which can be extended by mutual agreement, with a hoped-for path to a permanent truce based on negotiations in the interim. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/moscow-studying-30-day-truce-plan-while-making-steady-battlefield-gains-meantime

    Recall that the US is moving 30,000 troops from Germany to Hungary. Ukraine Drone Attack Halts Hungarian Oil Flow from Russia
    “Russian oil has stopped flowing to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline. The reason is an attack by a Ukrainian drone on a measuring station.
    Hungary regards the Ukrainian attack as an attack on its sovereignty.” — Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjarto​ https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/news-selections/world-news/ukraine-drone-attack-halts-hungarian-oil-flow-from-russia

    ​Celia Farber, EU Discontent Spreads: Anti EU, Anti-NATO Protests In Paris: “Ursula, Give Back Our Money” “Zelensky, Give Back Our Money” https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/eu-discontent-spreads-anti-eu-anti

    Martin Armstrong, Donald Tusk Prepares Poland for War
    Prime Minister Donald Tusk is preparing a 500,000-troop army for Poland to protect against Russian aggression. “We will try to have a model ready by the end of the year so that every adult male in Poland is trained for war,” Tusk announced…
    ..“Every adult male” in the nation must undergo military training. Women, for now, are permitted to join on a voluntary basis but many EU nations are forcing women to undergo some form of training as well. Poland is one of the 11 EU nations that will place women in the frontline of fire.​..
    ​..Poland is preparing for war. Leaders use the rhetoric of the past to claim that their nation could be invaded yet again and claimed by a foreign actor. The only actor who is stirring the pot is Zelensky, who, per instructions, has been encouraging his EU allies to fight Russia head-on. The majority of fighting-aged men in Poland DO NOT WANT WAR, nor do they deserve to die in these neocon war games.​ https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/donald-tusk-prepares-poland-for-war/

    ​ The Honest Sorcerer looks at the instability caused by usury, known forever, and again in evidence. Until Debt Tear Us Apart
    Debt, the rise of oligarchs and the decline of capitalism​ https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/until-debt-tear-us-apart

    #184069
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Dima at Military Summary has the afternoon update. Russia does not yet have documents about a ceasefire or peace proposal from the US , but is studying public comments, and will study the offer and listen to reports from the US team when they are provided.
    Russian FM Lavrov has repeatedly stated that the main Russian goal is a comprehensive security framework for Russia and Europe, which recognizes and adequately addresses the security needs of all countries.
    It seems that Russia may show a lot of public interest in moving to ceasefire and negotiations, but there will be many preliminary prerequisites to address and agree upon in a joint statement, such as Ukrainian war crimes against civilians, the children that Russia saved from Ukrainian slave and organ farms, and the ownership claims upon lands already occupied by Russia. This might take awhile. When will spring mud season start? Russia is advancing to fully retake Kursk.
    ​ Only A Few Kilometers Left​, A Treacherous Ceasefire​, Military Summary For 2025.03.12​ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWsBzGDdrRE

    ​ Israeli torture: Urinating on Palestinian prisoners, burying them alive and beating the sick
    Freed Palestinian prisoners recount to MEE how Israeli jailers ‘treated them like animals’ and ‘brutally tortured’ some to death​ https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-torture-urinating-palestinian-prisoners-burying-them-alive-and-beating-sick

    Israel escalates violations of female Palestinian prisoners during Ramadan​ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250311-israel-escalates-violations-of-female-palestinian-prisoners-during-ramadan/

    ​ Blocking aid from Egypt: Israeli troops remain in Philadelphi Corridor in breach of deal — Hamas
    Hamas described Israel’s actions as a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire deal https://tass.com/world/1925239

    ​ Israel minister says expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza is a ‘realistic’ solution
    ​ Israeli Minister Idit Silman, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, stated that the “only solution for the Gaza Strip is to remove its Palestinian population,” calling the idea “realistic.”
    ​ Speaking to Reshet Bet public radio, Environmental Protection Minister Silman asserted that Netanyahu’s government is committed to promoting Palestinian expulsion from Gaza. She further claimed that “God has sent us the US administration,” interpreting this as a signal that Israel should “inherit the land.”​ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250311-israel-minister-says-expulsion-of-palestinians-from-gaza-is-a-realistic-solution/

    #184070
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ 9 in 10 People in Gaza Have No Safe Water Access After Israel’s Power Cut
    Israel once again cut electricity to Gaza on Sunday, taking offline a desalination plant that provided water to 600,000.​ https://truthout.org/articles/9-in-10-people-in-gaza-have-no-safe-water-access-after-israels-power-cut/

    Israel’s halt to food and aid deliveries worsens Gaza conditions​ https://www.arabnews.com/node/2593163/middle-east

    ​ Bakeries go dark in Gaza as Israel cuts off fuel to 2.1 million people
    As prices soar and essential goods disappear, famine conditions threaten to return to Gaza following Israel’s closure of the border and the suspension of the delivery of fuel and aid.​ https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/bakeries-go-dark-in-gaza-as-israel-cuts-off-fuel-to-2-1-million-people/

    US fast-tracks $295m arms deal to Israel, bypassing congressional review​ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250310-us-fast-tracks-295m-arms-deal-to-israel-bypassing-congressional-review/

    Yemen rebels say will resume attacks on Israeli shipping over blocked Gaza aid​ https://www.arabnews.com/node/2593290/middle-east

    #184071
    John Day
    Participant

    Israeli forces arrest 762 Palestinians in February, including 90 kids
    According to a report, “the occupation army continued its arrest campaigns in the West Bank, reaching a total of 762 Palestinians in February, with the highest number recorded in Jenin and its refugee camp.”​ https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/israeli-forces-arrest-762-palestinians-in-february–includin

    West Bank Bedouin community says Israeli settlers stole hundreds of sheep​ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250311-west-bank-bedouin-community-says-israeli-settlers-stole-hundreds-of-sheep/

    ​ Illegal Israeli settlers attack Palestinian village in occupied West Bank, burn vehicles
    Settler raid targets village of Umm Safa in Ramallah where several vehicles burnt​ https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/illegal-israeli-settlers-attack-palestinian-village-in-occupied-west-bank-burn-vehicles/3506079

    ​ Celia Farber, Syrian Population Protest In The Streets Against The Massacres Of Alawites And Christians; Evangelical Syrian Church Leader Interviewed, Some Media Blackouts, Some Coverage https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/syrian-population-protest-in-the

    Utter desperation: Alawites ask Israel for protection amid ongoing clashes in Syria — media
    Referring to Israelis as “sons of David” and “respected brothers,” the Alawites assured that they look forward to seeing them in Syria”​ https://tass.com/world/1925229

    #184072
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Syria’s interim president signs deal with Kurdish-led SDF to merge forces
    Deal aims to integrate SDF-controlled entities into Syrian state institutions
    ​ Deal does not set out details for how SDF will be merged
    SDF sees deal as safeguard against potential U.S. withdrawal, analyst says​ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/syria-reaches-deal-integrate-sdf-within-state-institutions-presidency-says-2025-03-10/

    ​ Iran holds consultations with Russia, China on its nuclear program — foreign minister
    Abbas Araghchi reiterated that Tehran “will not negotiate under pressure or in a situation where it faces intimidation”​ https://tass.com/world/1925011

    ​ Trump picks anti-Israel Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan as ambassador to Kuwait
    Ghalib, an immigrant from Yemen, became the city’s first Muslim mayor when he was elected in 2021….
    ​ Ghalib has been a vocal critic of Israel over its war in Gaza, and the Hamtramck City Council had passed a resolution to divest from Israel and to not support companies associated with the country….
    After expressing frustration with the Biden and Harris administration, Ghalib said he believed Trump could help reach a ceasefire. https://jihadwatch.org/2025/03/trump-picks-anti-israel-muslim-mayor-of-hamtramck-michigan-as-ambassador-to-kuwait

    ​ When speaking up for Palestine becomes a crime
    The fight to free Mahmoud Khalil is not merely about preserving First Amendment rights, it is about whether we will allow our government to criminalize resistance to its complicity in human rights abuses and genocide.​ https://mondoweiss.net/2025/03/when-speaking-up-for-palestine-becomes-a-crime/

    ‘Pro-Hamas​’ Columbia Student’s Arrest First of ‘Continuous and Ongoing Effort,’ White House Official Says​ https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/11/pro-hamas-columbia-students-arrest-first-continuous-ongoing-effort-white-house-official-says/

    #184073
    John Day
    Participant

    Glenn Greenwald: Defunding Universities Over Speech is a Major 1A Violation​ https://scheerpost.com/2025/03/10/glenn-greenwald-defunding-universities-over-speech-is-a-major-1a-violation/

    ‘Weaponising anti-Semitism’? US Targets 60 universities with funding cuts amid campus crackdown​ https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250311-weaponising-anti-semitism-us-targets-60-universities-with-funding-cuts-amid-campus-crackdown/

    ​Celia Farber, InfoWars Reporter Jamie White Shot And Killed In Texas​, Was On Ukrainian/Zelensky Kill List https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/infowars-reporter-jamie-white-shot

    Infowars Reporter Jamie White Shot and Killed Outside His Apartment by ‘Possible Car Burglars’ https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64873

    FBI Due to Release List of Seth Rich Files Monday https://consortiumnews.com/2025/03/09/fbi-due-to-release-list-of-seth-rich-files-monday/

    #184074
    John Day
    Participant

    Yet again… FBI Redactions On Seth Rich Index Leave No Answers https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-redactions-seth-rich-index-leave-no-answers

    “Shred And Burn All Documents”: USAID Staff Ordered To Destroy Evidence On Tuesday https://www.zerohedge.com/political/shred-and-burn-all-documents-usaid-staff-ordered-destroy-evidence-tuesday

    Meryl Nass MD on the “We checked; it’s ok” clause: HHS: Starting to close the loopholes that allow Big Food to put whatever they like into our comestibles, This is one crazy loophole and hopefully FDA gets this done expeditiously https://merylnass.substack.com/p/hhs-starting-to-close-the-loopholes

    Utah Set to Become First State to Ban Water Fluoridation
    Governor Spencer Cox confirms he will sign HB 81 in a landmark move to improve the water supply and protect public health. https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/utah-set-to-become-first-state-to

    Kyle Young, 1,770 – The latest MMR vaccine death count from VAERS, Attn: RFK Jr – this is what radical transparency looks like https://secularheretic.substack.com/p/1770-the-latest-mmr-vaccine-death

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