Thomas Cole Arcadian State 1836
https://twitter.com/Annans4g/status/2100680138807509325?s=20 https://twitter.com/Trustintrump47/status/2100748118996205832?s=20Gates pressurised politicians to support his ‘vaccines’.
— Andrew Bridgen (@ABridgen) September 18, 2026
Who is running our countries? Certainly not our politicians. Unelected ‘elites’ and Global corporations are telling our ‘leaders’ what to do. The World Economic Forum is their marketing arm. This is why our country and the… https://t.co/6pz4MBAL3G
BIG!
• Trump Secures a HUGE and Historic Deal with Greenland (Matt Margolis)
President Donald Trump just accomplished something huge.Read more …
The United States, Denmark, and Greenland signed a permanent agreement Friday that hands Washington lasting military rights across the island while permanently shutting out China, Russia, and every other non-NATO adversary. The deal gives the U.S. permanent access, basing, and overflight rights in Greenland, along with the authority to build new military installations there whenever it decides it needs to, according to a senior U.S. official who briefed Fox News Digital.Secretary of State Marco Rubio wasted no time celebrating. “This historic deal is a huge win for the United States and the American people,” he said. “This historic agreement permanently guarantees U.S. security interests in the Arctic at zero cost to the U.S. taxpayer.” A senior official added, “The difference here is we’re not spending any money for the right” to expand the U.S. military footprint on the island. bThe agreement has no expiration date, and it doesn’t transfer Greenland’s sovereignty to the United States, no matter how badly the left wanted to paint this as some kind of hostile annexation.
Trump himself was the first to celebrate the news, posting on Truth Social that the agreement “completely addresses ALL of our many U.S. concerns” and that “from now on, no U.S. adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval.” He called it an “Infinite Life” agreement, one built to last even if Greenland someday becomes independent.
This deal has been over a century in the making. American presidents have long recognized Greenland’s strategic Arctic importance, but none of them closed the gap between recognizing the problem and fixing it. The U.S. has operated Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base, under a defense agreement dating back to 1951, and this new deal dramatically expands that relationship as Russia and China build up their own military and economic footprint in the region.
Denmark and Greenland no longer hold veto power over future U.S. installations. Washington will still consult both governments, but it can now build wherever it decides is necessary without waiting for their approval. Officials view the expanded presence as a likely component of Trump’s planned Golden Dome missile defense system, and under the new terms, only the United States and its allies will be permitted to make “sensitive investments” in Greenland’s telecommunications infrastructure, undersea cables, ports, and critical minerals.
That restriction exists for a reason. The administration has been blunt about not wanting Greenland to turn into another Panama Canal, where quiet Chinese commercial investment eventually became a national security liability the U.S. had to untangle. “We’re never going to face that in Greenland as a result of this,” one official said.
Quiet negotiations involving Rubio, White House adviser Stephen Miller, and officials from the State Department and National Security Council began back in February and never leaked, as Denmark and Greenland came to see the arrangement as protecting their own security as much as America’s.
Rubio explained exactly why Copenhagen and Nuuk came around. “They recognize at the end of the day that they have a national security concern here as well,” he said. “Denmark and Greenland understand that they don’t have the financial means necessary to defend Greenland if it were to come under attack or be threatened. The United States has the power to do that.”
Trump has been ridiculed for wanting Greenland, but on Friday, he secured its permanent defense on America’s terms, at no cost to a single U.S. taxpayer, with no expiration date and no way for anyone to undo it. It’s a huge win for our country, and for Trump.
“The ban is effective immediately, the president said.”
• Trump Bans CNN, MS NOW, Politico From White House (ET)
President Donald Trump on Sept. 18 said he has banned three news outlets from the White House. Trump said on Truth Social that he was, effective immediately, banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House “as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” The president added: “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”Read more …
Trump told reporters at the White House that one example was a story published Friday that went over deals his administration reached with drugmakers but did not mention that the deals had resulted in lower drug prices. “It’s really just cumulative stories over the last few years,” he said. “You get sick of it, and you call them and … they purposely write negative news.”CNN and Politico defended their coverage. “CNN stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting,” CNN said in a statement. “We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government. Should the ban which President Trump threatened go ahead, it would be an illegal assault on that fundamental and constitutionally-protected right.”
“POLITICO will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them,” a Politico spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. MS NOW did not respond to a request for comment.bWhite House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) President Jacqui Heinrich said Trump described the move in the Oval Office as a “ban on the free press.”
“The Constitution protects the freedom of the press from government interference. That protection does not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage, agrees with its reporting, or approves of the questions its journalists ask.” Heinrich said in a post on X. She said the issue was also about the public’s right to “a full and independent account of the activities, policies and decisions of whoever occupies the nation’s highest office,” and that the WHCA stands with their banned colleagues.
Trump previously banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and other spaces after the outlet declined to change its stylebook to reflect the president’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. A federal judge entered an injunction against the ban, determining that it violated the First Amendment because it discriminated based on The Associated Press’s viewpoint.
But an appeals court in mid-2025 partially stayed the injunction. The court allowed Trump to ban the outlet from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and some other spaces, concluding that “these restricted presidential spaces are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion” and that the White House “therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted.
Judges also ruled that Trump could not ban reporters from the White House’s East Room. “The identified harms are less clear with respect to the East Room, which does not share the hallmarks of spaces like the Oval Office,” the majority said.
They make a lot of sense. But it’s nationalist sense, not globalist.
• AfD Preps Talks With Moscow To Reopen Cheap Gas Flows To Germany (ZH)
It didn’t take long for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party – fresh off its historic taking of 43.8% of the vote in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt election earlier this month which left Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) shaken – to embark on ties which are a serious shot across the bow and slap in the face to both Berlin and Brussels. Reuters is on Friday reporting that AfD leadership is preparing for possible talks with President Putin and his economic envoy and top negotiator Kirill Dmitriev focused on restoring Russian gas supplies to Germany.Read more …
The meeting could take place next year, as early as March 2027, and would be spearheaded by AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla. This is precisely what German voters supported in the regional election, and the AfD made no secret of its plans to seek turning the Russian energy tap back on. Weidel made clear in a June interview, “Cheap energy from Russia was the secret of the success of ‘Made in Germany’. We need it back.”“The loss of this energy has set us back years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost,” the AfD co-leader said at the time. “It has made us dependent on the United States, which sells us energy at far higher prices.” Russia had prior to the start of the Ukraine war supplied over half of Germany’s natural gas, alongside more than a third of the country’s crude oil imports.
Russian natgas to Germany was halted in stages, in tandem with the major Nord Stream bombings and investigation, as Berlin eventually found alternative suppliers like Norway, the Netherlands and increased its reliance on LNG imports. Many Germans have been sick and tired of seeing daily living prices go up while resources and untold billions are siphoned off for the Zelensky government in the Ukraine war.
While nothing has yet to be officially announced or confirmed by the Russian side or through any AfD official statement, Reuters points to a key caveat based on its sources: “The meeting would only happen if a peace framework was agreed first between Russia and Ukraine, and the organisers hoped it would bring together the AfD, Russia and the United States, the person said. Possible locations for the summit included Israel, the United Arab Emirates or India, they added,” the report says. Earlier, we featured commentary by Andrew Korybko which seeks to summarize the mood in both Moscow and among the ‘hard-rightward’ turning German streets:“Finally, the economic errors concern the EU’s sanctions on Russian energy, which led to the bloc replacing inexpensive long-term gas contracts with Russia with expensive market-priced imports from elsewhere. Prices are now nearly ten times higher than before and “may well rise even further.” Putin also criticized the EU’s gas storage policies for being “unconcerned with the technical condition of these storage facilities and the physical volumes involved.” All of this adversely affects the EU’s economy.
All in all, Putin is arguing that the AfD’s rise is an electoral revolt against these policies, all of which center on Russia. This doesn’t mean that the party or its supporters are “pro-Russian”, let alone “Russian puppets”, just that they understand the importance of pragmatic ties with Russia for their country’s political interests, security, and economic development. Obsessive anti-Russian fearmongering, risking World War III over Ukraine, and dumping inexpensive Russian energy haven’t helped Germany at all.
“Bests interests for Germany” being prioritized, where energy supplies “are cheapest, namely from Russia”…
German AfD Leader Alice Weidel on Russia:
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 14, 2026
We have to obtain fossil fuels from wherever natural gas and oil are cheapest — namely, from Russia.
It is in our own security interests as well as our economic interests to have good relations with Russia. pic.twitter.com/FkKKOpCDAo
As a reminder, there were already some deeply provocative diplomatic AfD moves back in June, with AfD foreign-policy spokesman Markus Frohnmaier having traveled to St. Petersburg to meet with Dmitriev and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, urging the reopening of the Nord Stream pipeline.
“The female mind — especially in matters of political significance — struggles with understanding authority and rule enforcement.” —JD Haltigan on X
• Communion-and-Care (James Howard Kunstler)
The Ordeal of Father Isaac Jogue among the Iroquois
You know the midterm election is a struggle session testing whether our country wants to be sane or insane. Of course, this raises the question: what’s so great about being insane? If nothing else, it implies a lot of bad decision-making, leading to all manner of sorrow and woe in life. So, why would so many opt to be crazy?Read more …
The answer is probably that they were snookered into it, fooled, tricked, rooked, spoofed, flimflammed, bamboozled, enticed into a range of thought and emotion counter to their self-interest and well-being. Isn’t this exactly what you see in the social phenomenon of “transing” pubescent children? To induce them to go along with a malevolent program for turning them into something they are not.A whole apparatus was constructed to carry out “gender-affirming care.” Notice how positive the language is. It’s “care,” administered by adults, not a few of them physicians and clinical psychologists, who affect to care. And it “affirms,” that is, it validates, it turns supposition into fact (that is not so). The adults happen to be in authority over children. They are presumed to be trustworthy.
But they are not trustworthy. They persuade children confused by puberty to be mutilated with surgery and hormones in order to put on a performance for the adults. The performance is called “No Boundaries.” It does not really affirm a child’s gender by pretending to change it. It affirms the mental illness of the untrustworthy adults. They have developed a defect of cognition that disrupts their perception of reality. They don’t know where things begin and end.
Where did this come from? You won’t like this. It came from women taking over the leadership of our institutions, especially education. In the two centuries that public education has existed, there were always a lot of women teachers. But they were superintended by men with a sense of boundaries, who enforced the distinction between thought and feeling, between sense and nonsense. Now you see what has happened with men removed from that picture. Thought and sense have been deleted.
Women are primarily driven by the wish for communion and for care (of children and households). If they don’t find mates, don’t form households, and don’t have children, their drives can be hijacked. Likewise, if their households are broken by divorce and their children are damaged by it. It’s been increasingly difficult for men and women to form households and successfully raise children, or to keep a household from breaking under the social and economic pressures of our time.
Politics is another set of institutions increasingly dominated by women in leadership roles. They convert all the social discontents of childlessness and broken households into laws, rules, and policies which, not surprisingly, demonstrate a failed sense of boundaries and a contorted drive for communion and care. That’s how the Democratic Party — increasingly run by-and-for women — was bamboozled into throwing the border wide open under “Joe Biden,” and why they have become hysterical over the nurturing of those millions of illegal migrants now here. The drive to care has transformed into a mad, grandiose wish to save the world.
The nation’s borders are strict boundaries. The Democratic Party programmatically denounces the existence of national boundaries — viz. The “Squad” in Congress, et al. “No one is illegal.” That open border was profoundly destructive and costly for the nation. Donald Trump declared that national boundaries matter and closed the border effectively. This not only made him an arch-villain to many of the women in America with boundary problems, but it also gave them a big opportunity to exercise their drive for communion by ginning up public get-togethers such as the anti-ICE riots of last winter and the “No Kings” marches of the spring.
Mr. Trump, with his repertoire of distinctive male mannerisms, setting of boundaries, and bent for decisive action, propels these world-saving, deeply-caring, communion-seeking political women into raptures of rage and animosity. It might be instructive to remind you that, back in the history of this land, among the native-American Iroquois (a most civilized people), it was the women who were assigned the primary task of torturing their enemies to death. (Read about the ordeals of Father Isaac Jogues in Francis Parkman’s The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century.) More recently, one Lindsay Clancy of Duxbury, Mass., demonstrated how savagely awry female boundary failure can go.
This pathocracy of women in the Democratic Party accounts for the seemingly insane turn to communism. But, it’s communion-and-care all of a piece — the most extreme form of crazy ideological solidarity, plus the promise of free stuff for everybody (care!) with no boundaries. Meanwhile, over in Mr. Trump’s camp, you have an emphatically male-dominated hierarchy with the MAGA women’s drives for communion-and-care directed, as much as possible these days, back into the household and the nursery. Throw in FAFO as the baseline attitude and there’s authority you can trust.
“The military bloc’s European members are now footing the bill and taking all of the risk against Russia.”
“At NATO’s first high-level summit since Ankara, the bloc’s new, Europe-centric incarnation is taking shape. But it’s ordinary Europeans who stand to lose their future, and potentially their lives.”
• NATO 3.0 Marches Into Copenhagen (RT)
NATO’s Military Committee is meeting in Copenhagen on Friday and Saturday. Chaired by Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the Military Committee, which is NATO’s highest military authority, is tasked with turning the bloc’s strategic goals into executable plans. When NATO orders a battlegroup to Lithuania, for example, the Military Committee ensures its tanks will be able to get there across multiple countries’ rail networks, its troops will be supplied and housed, and the deployment will not leave another sector of the bloc’s so-called ‘eastern flank’ unmanned.Read more …
Accordingly, NATO is keeping the meeting’s agenda under wraps. The organization’s website simply states that the defense chiefs will take part in a “Session 1” and “Session 2” of talks, followed by a press conference, a photo opportunity, and then a “Session 3” of discussions.Looking at the political decisions made since the bloc’s headline summit in Ankara in July, the broad aim of the conference becomes clearer: flesh out NATO’s plan to militarize Europe and prepare the continent for war with Russia, all while insulating the US from the consequences of the conflict.
What is NATO 3.0?
Coined by US Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, ‘NATO 3.0’ is an America-first reworking of the Cold War pact. In a speech to NATO defense ministers in February, Colby explained that the US will, going forward, focus on preparing for a potential clash with China in the Indo-Pacific, leaving NATO’s European members to “assume primary responsibility for the conventional defense of Europe.”Under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s visionary leadership, we are driving toward a NATO 3.0 in which Europe takes primary responsibility for its conventional defense. Many said that it could not be done – that Europe couldn’t or wouldn’t step up. That is being disproved… https://t.co/svqGBLPIdE — Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby (@USWPColby) July 2, 2026
Europe will increase its military spending to NATO’s current target of 5% of GDP and shift to wartime levels of defense production, Colby explained, all while the US retains control over the bloc’s nuclear weapons. The Europeans will also be expected, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated in June, to guarantee “access, basing and overflight” for American forces.At Ankara in July, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte sold this one-sided deal as a win for Europe. “We are rebalancing our security for the better, that is what NATO 3.0 is all about,” he said.
We’re rebalancing our Alliance: a stronger #NATO with Europe & Canada spending more, producing more and doing more for their security
Building for our future
This is NATO 3.0 pic.twitter.com/pgmvA4CcAW
— Mark Rutte (@SecGenNATO) September 16, 2026
In light of US President Donald Trump’s threats to withdraw US forces from Germany and annex Greenland, a more Europe-centric NATO was an easy sell for Rutte at the time. Trump’s threats toward Greenland were likely a key factor in the choice of Copenhagen for this weekend’s meeting. However, in the months since Ankara, Rutte and NATO’s European leaders have revealed what the shift actually means for the continent.
Europe steps up and pays
NATO 3.0 means the death of the European welfare state. In the UK, where living standards have already suffered their worst decline since the Second World War, meeting the bloc’s pre-Ankara 3.5% spending target will involve “eye-watering” cuts to education, transport, and justice budgets, George Robertson, who co-wrote the country’s defense strategy, warned in June. Even before the spending target was hiked to 5%, Robertson claimed that the British public was “too comfortable,” and must accept the “pain and great difficulty” of “preparing for war.”In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s plan to rebuild the Bundeswehr as “the strongest conventional army in Europe” has already precipitated social security cuts and a planned three-year hike in the retirement age. “The welfare state that we have today can no longer be financed,” Merz announced last August, before increasing Germany’s defense budget by almost 40% in a single year and telling Germans to “work harder.”
The Netherlands and Sweden have introduced emergency taxes to fund rearmament, with the Dutch levy branded as the “freedom contribution.” Estonia has increased income tax, Belgium and Finland have cut social spending, and 18 of NATO’s EU members have borrowed money from Brussels to build out their militaries since last May.
“On average, European countries easily spend up to a quarter of their national income on pensions, health, and social security systems, and we need only a small fraction of that money to make defense much stronger,” Rutte told the European Parliament last year. The “small fraction” demanded by Rutte has since almost doubled.
In return, the Europeans are not getting the strategic autonomy that some, such as France, want. NATO’s “interoperability” standards mean weapons manufactured in Europe are built to American standards, and the AI and cloud computing technology that guides them is provided almost solely by American companies.
The Ankara Summit Declaration states that “we are developing an interoperable transatlantic warfighting cloud and adopting powerful AI models.” With the EU relying on the US for 80% of its digital infrastructure, American companies such as Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX will be the beneficiaries of this development.
Furthermore, while the US handed control of three operational commands – Norfolk in the UK, Naples in Italy, and Brunssum in the Netherlands – to European commanders earlier this year, Washington took over management of NATO’s highest Land, Air, and Maritime commands in exchange, and maintains the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) post.
Although NATO 3.0 envisions Europe alone deterring Russia, the bloc’s European members are still expected to go along with American wars far beyond their borders. Speaking in the UK this week, Rutte called it “essential” that Britain’s “armed forces continue to provide the hard power NATO needs” to tackle “Russia and its war against Ukraine, terrorism, Iran and the tectonic shifts of global geopolitical competition.”
NATO was not formed to counter Iran, but the US still punished its European members who refused to aid the US-Israeli war on Iran earlier this year, threatening a complete trade embargo on Spain after Madrid denied overflight and basing to American aircraft taking part in the war, and pulling troops from other countries seen as insufficiently supportive of the war.
“Irina Strelnikova is director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Arctic Studies at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.”
“From shared icebreakers to NATO-ready infrastructure, Brussels is preparing the High North for confrontation”
• The EU Is Militarizing The Arctic. Here’s How It Plans To Do It (Strelnikova)
The EU’s Arctic policy is becoming increasingly important amidst global competition driven by both climate change and the region’s strategic significance. Melting Arctic ice is opening new maritime transport routes, facilitating access to abundant natural resources, and creating conditions for expanded economic activity. Consequently, the Arctic is becoming an arena for rivalry among the leading global powers. For Brussels, the Arctic holds not only regional significance but is also a tool for achieving foreign policy and geopolitical objectives.Read more …
Adopted in October 2021, the EU’s current Arctic policy is titled ‘A stronger EU engagement for a peaceful, sustainable and prosperous Arctic’. It focuses on three ‘soft’ priorities: climate and environmental protection, sustainable development, and peace and cooperation. Essentially, in this document, the Arctic is viewed as a low-tension zone, and the primary focus is on the environment and scientific exchange.However, a lot has changed in the world since 2021, from the Ukraine crisis to the paralysis of the Arctic Council, Trump’s bid to acquire Greenland, Chinese container ships traveling via the Northern Sea Route, and attacks on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea. In January 2026, at the Arctic Frontiers conference in Tromsø, Norway, Kaja Kallas said, “It is time for a fresh EU Arctic policy, one that reflects the times we live in.”
A new phase of the EU’s Arctic agenda after 2022
The EU Arctic policy stands at the intersection of geopolitical, economic, and environmental interests. In recent years, Brussels has sought to adapt its strategy to the shifting international landscape shaped by a sanctions-driven confrontation with Russia, China’s expanding regional presence, and the growing role of the US in security matters. The Ukraine conflict and the region’s growing militarization have pushed the EU to revise its Arctic agenda. The EU must shape its Arctic policy by balancing a normative agenda focused on sustainable development against tangible economic interests and security demands from NATO allies.In July 2025, the president of the European Commission announced a revision of the EU’s Arctic strategy to ensure that it addresses new challenges. Meanwhile, the EU is strengthening cooperation in the fields of energy, raw materials, and security and defense partnerships with several non-EU Arctic nations – notably Canada, Iceland, Norway, and self-governing Greenland.
Historically, Europe’s cooperation with the Arctic states has developed along three key lines: economic engagement (energy, transport infrastructure, and resource extraction), the environmental agenda (climate change, sustainable development, and biodiversity conservation), and scientific research (meteorological and oceanographic studies, as well as research on glacial melting). However, the current geopolitical situation has significantly altered these areas of cooperation, particularly when it comes to relations with Russia.
The EU joined other Arctic Council member states and “key like-minded partners” in suspending Russia’s participation in various regional cooperation bodies following the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022. Consequently, the EU issued three joint statements concerning the Northern Dimension joint policy, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, and the Council of the Baltic Sea States. On November 12, 2025, the European Parliament adopted a new resolution on the Arctic that addresses the buildup of military capabilities and emphasizes the need for cooperation with Northern European partners (including Norway) to prepare for the upcoming geopolitical competition in the region. The resolution was passed by an overwhelming majority, with 510 votes in favor, 75 against, and 80 abstentions.
The resolution outlines a comprehensive strategy for the EU’s diplomatic engagement in the Arctic, covering areas such as environmental protection and security. The adopted document signals a shift in Brussels’ Arctic policy, envisions deeper cooperation with Arctic states, particularly Norway, and underscores the region’s significance for Europe’s energy security and geopolitical stability.
To safeguard European interests – including freedom of navigation, the protection of maritime infrastructure, and environmental security – the European Parliament calls for active cooperation with NATO, joint exercises, and coordinated surveillance and defense efforts.
Furthermore, the EU Parliament encourages multilateral governance in the Arctic through the Arctic Council and regional forums; this includes supporting efforts to grant the EU permanent observer status, engaging with Arctic institutions (such as the Arctic Economic Council), and expanding its presence in the region (for example, by means of the recently opened EU office in Nuuk).
The resolution also reaffirms the Arctic’s status as a region of strategic importance to the EU (considering its direct impact on European security), and notes that the EU must move beyond the concept of ‘Arctic exceptionalism’ and integrate High North priorities into its broader foreign, security, and energy policy strategies.
By adopting this resolution, the EU Parliament has signaled that the Arctic is no longer a remote outpost but a strategic frontier vital to Europe’s energy supply, security, digital infrastructure, and environmental sustainability.
The next step will be to integrate this non-legislative resolution into the EU’s updated Arctic policy. A step toward this was taken at the EU Arctic Summit, held September 13-14, 2026, in Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland.
Key outcomes and decisions of the EU Arctic Summit
The summit was attended by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas, European Council President António Costa, the heads of government of Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania, and representatives of France, Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden.The primary goal of the meeting, convened at the initiative of the Finnish prime minister, was to formulate a common EU strategic approach to the Arctic, a region that has become critically important to European security. Following the EU Arctic Summit, a joint communiqué was adopted, outlining the path toward an updated EU Arctic strategy set to be presented in October 2026. Key highlights of the document include:
1) Adoption of a new Arctic strategy. Kaja Kallas announced the preparation of an updated Arctic strategy, set to be presented in October. Security takes center stage in this strategy; in her view, Russia’s growing military activity and China’s strategic investments in the Arctic compel the EU to shift toward ensuring collective defense. The participants of the summit urged the EU to maintain a more active strategic presence in the region. EU Council President António Costa stated that the increase in military spending in the Arctic would be factored into the next long-term EU budget.
2) A unified EU icebreaker fleet. The concept of jointly owning an EU icebreaker fleet was reflected in the adopted communiqué. Kallas spoke of the need to create such a fleet in light of climate change and the geopolitical situation. Finland proposed building the vessels at its own shipyards, leveraging its expertise in the field and sharing experience.
3) Investments in cross-border infrastructure. The participants emphasized the need to develop infrastructure capable of serving civilian purposes (such as supplying remote settlements) and facilitating the rapid deployment of troops. Leaders called for increased investment in military mobility, cross-border transport links, satellite infrastructure, and other facilities in the North. The discussion focused on allocating funds to reinforce roads, railways, and bridges in Finland, Sweden, and Norway – ensuring they can withstand the weight of heavy NATO armored vehicles in extreme cold – as well as modernizing deep-water ports in Northern Norway and setting up POL storage warehouses along the Barents Sea coast. The summit supported the expansion of the European satellite constellation to facilitate navigation and maritime surveillance.
4) Balancing priorities. The statement noted that, despite the strong emphasis on security, issues like climate protection, sustainable development, and peaceful cooperation remain among the priorities of the EU’s Arctic strategy. Particular importance was placed on the situation of indigenous peoples and the need to cooperate with local communities in developing the region.
5) Hybrid threats. Finland’s Petteri Orpo noted that while climate change is opening up new shipping routes, it simultaneously renders the region vulnerable to hybrid influence. The document underscored the need to enhance capabilities for responding to such challenges.
Overall, the summit in Rovaniemi marked a fundamental shift in how European leaders approach the northern territories. The Arctic is no longer seen as an environmental conservation zone and has been officially recognized as a front line in the geopolitical confrontation.
Moreover, the Arctic is no longer discussed as an isolated region; it is being integrated into what analysts call the ‘Northeastern arc’ of European security policy.
Overall, the EU’s forthcoming updated Arctic policy represents an attempt to transform the Arctic from merely an ‘environmental issue’ into an integral component of the European strategy on security, economy, and technological autonomy.
According to PCR, he alone understands.
• Does Anyone Understand the Actual Situation? (Paul Craig Roberts)
Professor John Mearsheimer, one of America’s more realistic foreign policy experts, has just returned from a few days in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In this 46 minute video he reports his discussions with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Russian foreign policy experts, and provides his reading of the impact of the war and sanctions on Russia: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/09/no_author/the-russia-i-saw/Read more …
Mearsheimer reports seeing scant signs of the war’s impact except for gasoline lines at a few stations, and no sign whatsoever of any impact of sanctions on the Russian economy. He did not visit locations of Russian oil production and refining where apparently there is damage from drone attacks. The main effect of the sanctions is to inconvenience Americans who travel to Russia. There are no longer direct flights, so Mearsheimer had to go in via Turkey. When he got there he found he could not use his American credit cards or American currency and was therefore without funds.Given the habit of Western media to confuse propaganda with facts, 46 minutes with Mearsheimer will leave you with a more balanced picture of the situation and its likely outcome.
I have another reason for posting Mearsheimer’s report. I am going to use it to show that even those rare American foreign policy analysts capable of thinking on their own and not merely repeating the official narratives, miss a lot. I am not picking on Mearsheimer. I admire him and Professor Stephen Walt as they alone among upscale American academics had the courage to expose the Israel Lobby in their book of that name in 2007. They could have been harder on the Israel Lobby, but they knew their exposure of the lobby would result in them being branded antisemites and if they were too trenchant the book might be recalled or never published.
What follows are the points where Mearsheimer’s understanding of the Ukraine conflict and its implications has problems.
First, let’s try to define Ukraine. This is important, because Mearsheimer says that when the war is over and Ukraine consists of the western part, the Ukrainian nationalists will want their territory back. But is it Ukrainian territory?
Indeed is any territory Ukrainian? Historically, the answer seems to be NO.
Ukraine originated when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 as the result of the Soviet Politburo arresting Soviet President Gorbachev. Washington serving the Wolfowitz doctrine of American hegemony broke Ukraine off from Russia and created for the first time in history an independent Ukrainian state, now 35 years old, a brand new country created by Washington for use as a weapon against Russia.
During the Soviet era, Soviet authorities attached Donbas and Crimea, Russian territory with Russian population, to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic for political and administration reasons. It made no difference at the time as Russia and Ukraine were two provinces of the Soviet Union, like Massachusetts and New York are part of the United States.
From the 14th century until 1664 when the territory again became part of Russia, the territory of Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian union. In fact, Russian historical tradition regards Kievan Rus, established in Kiev by the Viking Prince Oleg of Novgorod in the year 882, as the beginning of Russian statehood. Kievan Rus fragmented in 1240 when Russia was occupied by the Mongol Empire.
It is unclear why Russians are thought of as Slavs when the country was founded by Scandinavians and then ruled by Mongols. Prior to the US coming into existence, Ukraine was already part of the Russian state and remained a part until the Soviet collapse in 1991.
When Washington overthrew the pro-Russian Ukrainian government in 2014 and installed an anti-Russian regime, Crimea and Donbas voted almost 100% to be reunited with Russia. Putin accepted the Crimean vote but refused Donbas. Instead, he concocted the Minsk Agreement that left Donbas in Ukraine but gave Donbas some autonomy to protect the Russian population from Ukrainian police and judicial discrimination.
It was from this fatal blunder by Putin that the conflict in Ukraine began. Instead of observing the Minsk Agreement, Washington built a powerful Ukrainian army to invade and reconquer the break-away Russian provinces in Donbas. It was the pending slaughter of the Donbas Russians that forced Putin’s hand. He had no alternative to intervening, but Russia was unprepared for war because Putin had stupidly relied on negotiation with his real enemy–Washington and NATO–and not on building up Russia’s strength.
Mearsheimer presents the Ukrainian conflict as between Russia and Ukraine, but that is false. The war is between Washington and Russia, with NATO or Europe allied with Washington against Russia. Ukraine is the proxy. Instead of fighting her enemies, Putin is fighting the proxy for her enemies.
Mearsheimer blames the failure of the Anchorage Agreement to end the conflict on Trump’s inability to stand up to Europe’s and Ukraine’s opposition. But this is nonsense. Ukraine is a Washington creation. It has no independence from Washington. Europe has no weapons other than the ones Washington allows them. If Washington can discipline Russia, Iran, India, and China with sanctions, it can discipline Europe with sanctions For Mearsheimer to pass the buck to Europe is nonsense. Neither the American foreign policy community nor any US administration has repudiated the Wolfowitz Doctrine of American Hegemony.
Mearsheimer does not say why Russia at the Alaska meeting relied on Trump to settle the conflict when the conflict is the product of Washington’s attempt to weaken Russia and remove Russian constraint of US unilateralism.
Mearsheimer says that about three months ago in June, 2026, Putin after 4.5 years of conflict finally decided to use sufficient force to bring the conflict to an end. But why did Putin wait 4.5 years to begin fighting a real war. All that Putin achieved for 4.5 years of war was to present current day Russian military capability as ineffective, as the conflict continued twice as long as it took Stalin’s Red Army to clear the powerful Wehrmacht out of Russia, Central Europe and arrive in Berlin. Little wonder Europe thinks preparing for war with Russia is no big thing. If Putin is incapable of defeating Ukraine, how can Russia stand up to all of Europe and, if the NATO agreement holds, also to the US?
Mearsheimer says it would be foolish for Russia to conquer all of Ukraine. Why? Mearsheimer himself says if western Ukraine is left as a rump state, it will be a hostile state to Russia because of Washington’s support for the followers of Stephan Bandera. Why should Russia leave a hostile state on its border? Perhaps Russia needs a Stalin to deal with the hostile Ukrainians. Short work would be made of them. If Putin’s Russia is too weak to deal with present day followers of Stephan Bandera, Russia hasn’t any future.
Mearsheimer presents the conflict as being between Russia and Ukraine. This is false. The conflict is between Russia and Washington. Ukraine is nothing but Washington’s proxy, as Washington is Israel’s proxy in the conflict with Iran.
For 4.5 years Putin has refused to acknowledge that Russia is in military conflict with the United States and Washington’s European empire. Washington even blew up the Nord Sea Pipeline and neither Russia nor Europe were willing to acknowledge Washington as the culprit. Putin pretends that the drone attacks deep inside of Russia are acts of terrorism, not of war. In other words, Putin has imposed a false narrative on the conflict to avoid the fact that the West has gone to war against Russia.
Instead of showing Russian strength and determination, Putin has shown for 4.5 years a pusillanimous Russia fearful of decisive action, thereby creating the image of a paper tiger that has assured Europe in its growing aggression against Russia.
This is Putin’s fatal blunder that is the Road to Armageddon.
“Almost everything the socialists are now advocating, pack the court, end the filibuster, end the electoral college, bring in new states, defund the police, recognize BLM, DEI, biological men in female sports, ban fracking. That was the Democratic Party.”
• The Left’s Race Narrative is Driving Americans Apart (Victor Davis Hanson)
Sami Winc: So Victor, let’s go ahead and turn to the Left’s propensity for lying and then their celebration of murderers. And this week we had the big lie on the internet this week was that there were black lynchings in the last five or six years. And you looked at every single one of them, and they were ruled as suicides with the exception of one that was murdered by her own husband. And so that lie is out there, and they just keep sending it out and perpetuating it. And then I wanted to just add to that for a picture that this week and last week, the Left was celebrating Kirk’s assassination. They were defending Luigi Mangione and Lindsay Clancy.Read more …
Victor Davis Hanson: The death cult.Sami Winc: And, yeah. And they weren’t commemorating those who died on 9/11. In fact, just if I could add one thing, I had a friend from a college I used to work at. He wrote and said there was not one commemoration or anything about 9/11 or on 9/11.
Victor Davis Hanson: And then you have to add the [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran] Mamdani laughing during the most solemn parts of the commemoration. This is not the Democratic Party. This is an Islamic socialist party. And it’s not just these young, dissatisfied, downwardly mobile urban people that supposedly hijacked the Democratic Party.The Democratic Party was socialist before these people came in. Almost everything the socialists are now advocating, pack the court, end the filibuster, end the electoral college, bring in new states, defund the police, recognize BLM, DEI, biological men in female sports, ban fracking. That was the Democratic Party. They had gone socialist. All that’s different is these people, the Abdul El-Sayeds, the Hasan Pikers. They were young, they were glib, they were photogenic, and they said, “You got the great message, but you are… Nobody wants to listen to Nancy Pelosi. Nobody wants to listen to Chuck Schumer.
Nobody wants the buffoonish Hakeem Jeffries. We are slick. We can take that message that we both share, and we go to town. And that’s what they did. And they don’t like the United States. They really do not like it, this socialist Democratic Party. They don’t believe, that, 9/11 is… And if you think I’m exaggerating, Hasan Piker said that we deserved it. And Ilhan Omar said, “Well, something happened to somebody on that day. Something happened.” So I’m being literal about it. And they believe that any means are necessary to achieve their morally superior end.
So if it means to take a middle-class kid that worked himself up for UnitedHealth to provide healthcare for millions of people, you lay in wait, and you shoot him in the back, and you become a hero, even though you’re a trust fund, spoiled rotten nepo baby. Or you murder your three children, and you don’t say one word, that they were strangled one after another as two of the children saw each sibling murdered in front of them by their mother that was supposed to be nurturing. And then you say, you don’t just feel sympathy for the mother. You make that a cause celeb, and you don’t ever mention the children.
Or in the case of Charlie Kirk, you cut videos where you put your finger to your neck as if you’re shooting him on his commemoration. And as far as the hoaxes go, we’ve got to remember now that it’s getting late in the game. We went through the Duke lacrosse [scandal]. A person of color was a Vietnam veteran and a Native American who was cruelly mocked by a bunch of spoiled white kids. Turned out they were middle-class kids, and this guy was a complete faker. He wasn’t a Vietnam veteran. That stunt, he started the entire thing to get in their face.
And then we were told these horrible white lacrosse players are so entitled, they bring a poor, struggling black woman, and then they rape her. She was supposed to do a dance for them. It just, it’s like slavery again. No, she was a murderer. She later murdered her boyfriend. She is in prison. She admitted that she made the entire thing up. And this is going on from Tawana Brawley and Al Sharpton. That’s how we got to know Al Sharpton. He said that Tawana Brawley, that the district attorney of New York was involved in smearing feces on her, and that was completely made up.
Then we had Jussie Smollett. He defied the laws of chemistry. He threw bleach at 30 degrees actual weather temperature with, you know, frigid winds, and it didn’t freeze because he was Jussie Smollett. And then he did something like Spider-Man. He held his sandwich in one hand, and he held his cell phone in the other, and he was able to kickbox, I guess, two white guys with Make America Great red hats on that always inhabit the most liberal areas of Chicago at 2:30 in the morning.
That’s what he wanted us to believe, and Nancy Pelosi said this was horrific, and Kamala Harris said this was a modern lynching. And then the whole thing blew up, and they went silent. Never apologized.
He loves himself.
• Mitch McConnell Is Back. Sort Of. Well, Physically at Least (Sarah Anderson)
Last Weekend, my friend and colleague Matt Margolis wrote that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) needed to “retire yesterday,” noting that he was expected back to the Senate this week, after a three-month absence. If you’ll recall, he apparently fell at his home in Washington, D.C. on June 14, was briefly unconscious, and, as Matt pointed out, “His spokesperson David Popp confirmed at the time that McConnell had been hospitalized, but for weeks afterward, his office offered nothing else: no diagnosis, no prognosis, no timeline.” In mid-July, his office released a statement and a “proof of life” photo, but the whole thing was super sketchy.Read more …
Statement From Senator Mitch McConnell
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 12, 2026
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) released the following note to constituents regarding his hospitalization and recovery:
“To my fellow Kentuckians –
“When you elected me to a seventh term and made me our… pic.twitter.com/kfx2GKqd38
Well, McConnell rolled back to Capitol Hill in his wheelchair on Monday — well, someone rolled him back anyway — and it’s… embarrassing. He looks thin, frail, and completely out of it. He speaks in a voice that is “faltered,” according to Reuters. In other words, he’s unfit to serve in the United States Senate. I get it. The GOP needs votes. This is a warm body in a wheelchair collecting a vote. But even that’s not going exactly the way it should.On Wednesday, they rolled Mitch into the Senate Agriculture Committee, where they have been trying to move a farm bill since August, but it died due to the fact that there was an even number of Democrats and Republicans present on the committee and everything has to be decided down party lines it seems these days. Mitch’s vote should have been what sent it down the pipeline to the full Senate. And now, it will be, but it didn’t come easily.
When the clerk conducted roll call, McConnell sat silently when his name was called. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) leaned over and whispered “no” to him (Hoeven later claimed he misspoke and thought they were voting for something else) before one of McConnell’s staffers told him to say “aye.” Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), who chairs the committee, also leans over at one point and appears to tell McConnell to vote “aye.” Some reports say that even the Democrats were prompting him to speak up. In the video, you can see he eventually raises half a finger and says “aye” softly.
At some point, he also seems to freeze up — something we’ve seen the senator do before. No talking. Not falling asleep. Just… frozen in place.
WATCH: Republicans step in around Sen. Mitch McConnell as confusion breaks out over his vote during a farm bill markup in the Senate Agriculture Committee.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 17, 2026
McConnell quietly says “aye” as GOP Sen. John Hoeven leans over and tells him “no" multiple times.
A staffer then… pic.twitter.com/uP0bEG5s6RMcConnell has been on this committee since 1985. He’s been in the Senate for over four decades. If he needs to be told how to conduct a basic vote at this point, he needs to “retire yesterday,” as Matt said. It’s worse than Joe Biden. As Matt points out in his article, we demanded transparency from the Biden administration while it blatantly lied to us about his physical and mental health. Not doing the same to the leaders on our side only makes us look hypocritical and weakens us — something we can’t afford a month and a half out from the midterm elections.
Here are some more videos circulating of McConnell’s big return to the Senate — most of them showing him refusing (unable?) to speak. He gives a thumbs up or a peace sign if anyone speaks to him, and he seems to have a permanent smile plastered on his face (I’ll take some of what they’re giving him).
Judge for yourself.
‼️BREAKING‼️ MITCH MCCONNELL seen being wheeled out of his house and into a van where he appeared at the Senate for a vote. https://t.co/COOAwbmWh1 pic.twitter.com/qgrWe9OTnm
— The Rubber Duck ™ (@TheRubberDuck79) September 14, 2026
Elon Musk told Ron Baron he's building a chip 2 to 3 times better than Nvidia, at 10% of the cost.
— Pixel (@Pixel_Neuron) September 17, 2026
I have the entire physical design of the chip laid out in memory. I can visualize the whole thing.
No CAD software, no design team walking him through it, just memory.
When TSMC… pic.twitter.com/Rn1pwn6mcl
Elon Musk: “Let me tell you how things can potentially go wrong in AI. If you make AI be politically correct, meaning it says things that it doesn’t believe, then you’re programming it to lie or have axioms that are incompatible. I think you can make it go insane and do terrible… pic.twitter.com/kVqRsCSyYn
— Mars University (@MarsUniversityX) September 18, 2026
According to reports, Tesla is auditing Chinese suppliers for Optimus, and has already placed orders. The plan is ~50,000 robots in 2026 alone.
— Optimus (@Optimus_RH) September 18, 2026
Optimus is coming pic.twitter.com/g9N0ZDmpSY
https://twitter.com/warDaniel47/status/2100546325192257795?s=20Figure has introduced their new humanoid robot neural network called Helix 2.5, which the company says is capable of entering homes it has never seen before and immediately performing complex tasks with zero additional training.
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 17, 2026
Figure says it tested its humanoid across 30… https://t.co/wJvhtYg40L pic.twitter.com/X5zfoHKVtk
Kids will grow up thinking a robot folding laundry in the next room is as ordinary as a dishwasher, and they will be right. The future is going to be epic. https://t.co/mbSsKB7Idq
— Venator · Ovorum · Draconis (@currie_mike) September 17, 2026
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