Just Some Randomer
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Now that Trump has (if one can bring oneself to take recent events at face value) had enough of Netanyahu, and Israel in general, subverting US politics with their unique blend of bribery and blackmail, and is not afraid to highlight this publicly, there is for the first time an outside chance of the real meat of the Epstein material being released. I surmise that the reason it’s been impossible to release so far is that it would clearly show the extent to which Mossad has compromised the great and good in DC – and that’s always been a political 3rd rail. Let’s see.
If Trump really wanted to rip the band-aid off and give himself sufficient ammunition to fend off those who would leap to Israel’s defence and push back against an America First agenda, what could be better than unloading into the public domain a mountain of documented and filmed child abuse carried out at Mossad’s bidding for the specific purpose of generating blackmail material to control the US Govt?
Wishful thinking most likely, but we can dream.
Purchasing power parity – might bump up GDP in some poorer and somewhat lower cost southern countries but would significantly mark down Scandinavia etc where cost of living is fantastically high.
Fun fact: The US has lost more fighter aircraft in the last month than Russia, and the latter is fighting an actual real war, not just making very expensive holes in the sand dunes of the Middle East.
“Another navy plane fell off the boat.”
Been joking about unfortunate boating accidents with my stash of shiny metals for years, but it seems that the Navy is now genuinely using this as an (equally implausible) excuse for the loss of so much hardware.
I’m loving the spin about how the Houthis surrendered and agreed not to sink any more ships – seems like the truth is that the US Navy followed the time-honored approach, when engaging in foreign adventures, of (a) realising that they could not beat the opposition and then (b) declaring victory and running away. It seems clear that the Houthis will indeed stop trying to sink Navy vessels, but only because they’ll have sailed far, far away.
In a lot of the MSM press this is being sold as ‘Proof’ that Iran better watch out or they’re next to be beaten into surrender. It’s actually breathtaking to see the truth bent a full 180 degrees.
I hear that Starmer is inviting a Ukrainian contingent to celebrate VE day in London. Should be interesting to watch the faces of a group of Nazis being obliged to celebrate the defeat of the Nazis 80 years go. Must be a bit of a quandry for Zelensky & Co.
A random thought occurred to me today – bear with me. Many people misunderstand the tale of King Canute and his failure to command the tides – the story having been corrupted over time. The reality, as I understand it, is that Canute’s actions were explicitly to demonstrate to his followers (who were getting dangerously carried away with praising and generally overstating the capabilities of his kingship) that he did not have the untrammeled power they attributed to him.
Is there any parallel, I wonder, with the actions of the great and mighty President Trump in recent days? Seems like a lot back-pedaling and climbing-down from assorted boldly stated positions has been taking place. If he had set out to make the point that the US is not the globe-bestriding indispensable nation that many economic and military warhawks in Washington believe it to be, it’s hard to think of a better way to demonstrate the errors in their thinking.
A President who genuinely believes that the US needs to pull back from the excesses of its unipolar moment, close down some of those hundreds of overseas bases, become more self-reliant and autarkic and generally stop pouring the blood and treasure of the nation into a vain project to control the world and everything in it, could hardly construct a clearer demonstration, via the impact on Wall St, and specifically the USD and Treasuries, of what happens when the mark is overstepped.
As I say – just a random thought.
Ukraine ‘Victory Day’ celebrations. If I recall correctly they were fighting alongside (and indeed in many cases were) Nazis – so shouldn’t they be holding some kind of ‘Losers Day’ event?
@Zerosum – Call me skeptical, but I think we’ll see that $50trn debt waaaay sooner than 2034. So it’s currently increasing at ~ $3trn/year and I don’t think anything is going to lower that rate of increase, I think it’s safe, on that basis, to project a $50trn official debt figure by sometime in 2029 at the very latest. These numbers are fantasy-land stuff.
Looking at the dollar continuing to slump today, especially against the Euro. Tariffs aside, this simply has to feed into price inflation for American purchasers eventually. Stocks feel a lot less crashy this session so far, but I think the ongoing drop in the dollar is indicative of serious trouble still bubbling away behind the scenes, deep in the plumbing of the Treasury (and related derivatives) market. How bad do things have to be in the US for big money to be fleeing for the safety (Hahahaha!) of the EUR – a currency backed up at this point by nothing more than wishful thinking and inertia?
I don’t think the worst is over yet by a long shot, in terms of market turmoil. Enjoy the period of calm.
@ByronBishop, nah man – those Chinese fellas sneaked over under cover of night, took all the factories apart and smuggled them back home to China before anyone knew what was happening. That’s what I’m hearing anyway.
“However, some sources state that the campaign will need to last
three months. This is the amount of time election bodies will need to update voter rolls, as reported to parliament.”
I suspect the voter rolls are a LOT smaller than they were in 2022 and there will consequently be huge sensitivity around that given that the official Ukr losses of 50k or thereabouts are understated by a factor of at least 20. Never mind the millions that have fled abroad.
How can the government possibly produce an accurate voter roll without also admitting that they’ve killed a million men is pursuit of a lie?
“There are hardly any American cars in Europe. But the US is full of Mercs and Beamers. The issue is quite obvious.”
Indeed. That issue is that most American cars are completely unsuitable for European towns, roads and carparks, being too big and too thirsty, given European fuel prices.
On the flipside, one could argue that people might still buy them anyway if it weren’t for the huge taxes and duties applied to them by the EU – which I think is the point Trump is trying to make – but in all honesty I don’t think the taxes are the main issue. it’s more of a product-market fit problem.
I love the fact that ‘Socrates’ still apparently has graphics capabilities that would be embarrassed by an original Atari console . It’s like watching the original Star Wars films – if they have spaceships that can cross the universe at light speed, then why to their displays have pixels the size of sugarcubes?
I rather suspect that ‘Socrates’ is a figment of Armstrong’s imagination.
Rand Paul’s letter this week to Scott Bessent in which he requests permission to audit Fort Knox confirms they the gold is owned by the US Treasury and not the Fed.
https://mobile.x.com/SenRandPaul/status/1893039226666496502
See footnote #2.
Good to know.
“I think they will audit Ft. Knox and the re-re-rehypothecations of all those assets. If they do it first, then they can push the crash onto European banking, perhaps… Tom Luongo’s take.”
Exactly my view. Would explain why the LBMA’s vaults are being drained to the bottom and all the metal has been arriving in the US over the past month. When they paper fraud goes up in flames, whoever has physical possession of the actual metal will call the shots.
I’ve seen claims and counter-claims about who (Officially) owns the US gold reserves. Some say the Govt. some say the Fed. Difficult to know given the opacity of everything connected with the subject.
Yeah – Fort Knox. I agree with the good Doctor – there is no way on earth that Trump/Musk would contemplate a scenario where the doors are opened to reveal a big empty room where all the gold used to be. There are some questions that are never asked unless the answer is already known.
Now, of course, there’s no way for Joe public to know for sure who actually owns the bars, if they are in fact still there, and indeed how many hundreds of owners there are for each bar. I’m wondering if the plan isn’t for DOGE to ‘Discover’ in the paperwork that the gold has all been pledged many times over since 1971 to contain the price vs the USD and then declare that since this was never authorized by the government, all those claims are immediately null and void. “Sorry – too bad LBMA members, all the gold is ours, you shouldn’t have relied on a paper promise”.
Cue utter chaos in the murky world of the OTC gold market, potentially resulting in a dramatic price increase as everyone scrambles to get hold of the gold they only own on paper. How convenient would it be, in this scenario, if all the gold just happened to be flown from London to NY immediately before such a thing occurred so that claims on available physical gold by US institutions are met before those of foreigners? Well, by coincidence……
Lots of analysts out there saying that even if the rumors of the US revaluing the gold on the balance sheet to the current market price, just under $3k/oz, are true it wouldn’t make any difference. The $750bn bump to the US balance sheet doesn’t even cover six months of deficit spending.
Now, if the price was a lot higher than $3k/oz, and US reserves were revalued at a much higher level, maybe that would make it worthwhile.
Something’s afoot anyway. There’s a disturbance in the force that I’ve not felt in the metals markets in decades. It’ll be interesting to find out what it is. What a time to be alive.
Man, I am finding it so difficult to even look at the mainstream media over the past few days. With regards to both the Economy/DOGE etc and Ukraine, The absolute spew of lies and distractions is utterly nauseating, now that all the cherished hopes and dreams of the Globalists are being trashed wholesale.
Seems like they don’t know where to turn and have resorted to doubling down on their delusions and fantasies for lack of any clue what else to do. I have some sympathy for the many out there (my own family among them) who were fully subsumed into the media fairytale world – must feel a bit like the ending of the Truman show when it turns out that so much that appeared real and solid was all fake all along. All of it.
The temptation to engage and try to inject a little truth into the discussions is strong, but for my own peace of mind I think it’s much better to sit back and watch from a safe distance. As Mark Twain reportedly wrote – ‘It’s easier to fool a man than to convince him that he’s been fooled’. There is significant mental pain in admitting to oneself that one has been completely and comprehensively fooled.
I hope Trump’s security team is on top of their game. He’s playing for all the marbles now, with trillions of dollars and control of ‘The West’ at stake.
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Something really peculiar happened to me this morning, Through sheer dumb luck, stubbornness and an innate disinclination to cheat people, I accidentally became rich.”Congratulations! Enjoy the sublime sensation of freedom from financial obligation.
“$2900 at $50 a day and no news, no interest. And that’s in USD, not Canadian, etc.”
I guess there’s still enough cash backlogged in the USAID pipeline to buy the silence of the press for a while longer.
“The claimants alleged that Trump lacks the powers to dissolve USAID due to it being established under a 1998 law passed by Congress.”
DOGE: Excellent! Let’s have a vote in congress but in the meantime we’ll publicly release all the details of every scam and kickback that benefitted each and every congressman. What? You don’t want us to do that? Let’s just forget about that vote then shall we?
Hoist. Petard. Etc.
Interesting commentary on some of the fallout from Trump’s halting of overseas aid:
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/halt-of-usaid-exposes-malign-foreign-influence.html#more
This is exactly why, some years ago and to a loud wailing and gnashing of teeth in the western press, Putin kicked foreign NGOs out of Russia. With Washington, Soros and sundry other ne’er do wells funding similar ‘Independent’ media and fake-charity astroturfing operations around the world it’s no wonder that most people have no idea what’s really going on in their own countries.
@WES “Examples: 100 days target, pushing draft age down to 18, Nato saying Ukraine is not in strong enough position to negotiate, etc.”
I have been considering the thought that Trump is using the reduction in Draft age as a club to beat Z over the head with. Such a move will be extremely difficult, if not impossible for Ukraine to implement. It seems to be a political and social third rail in Ukieland – even if it can be forced/bribed through the legislature it seems certain that Ukrainians will simply refuse to hand over their children – they know perfectly well that the war is lost.
Trump can then point at this failure as a reason to discontinue US support and even bring the Neocon Deep Staters with him as they also would then have a plausible out and a scapegoat (Z) on whom to blame the total failure of Project Ukraine. ‘If they can’t keep their end of the bargain, why should we?’ he will say.
I’m no structural engineer, but I doubt that slicing through 80% of the depth of those floor joists is going to do much for the strength of the structure.
@Oroboros – Finding myself to be possessed of a pronounced predisposition toward becoming periodically overwhelmed by the verisimilitude of my own verbosity, it is a source of significant disillusionment for me to ascertain from your post the revelation that this is indicative, indeed strongly suggestive of, my having succumbed to the ignominy of white supremacy.
“Gaza cease-fire deal at ‘closest point’, mediator says”
Based on past episodes, it seems that the probability of a Gaza ceasefire actually being agreed, as opposed to simply discussed, is an asymptotic function, one that can be plotted on a graph getting infinitely close to realisation without actually ever getting there.
“daylight savings time
the nations children standing in the dark waiting for school buses”Could be worse. They could be standing in the dark in the UK.
“Some of us even think race is a fake, unscientific construction.”
True, but whether it is or isn’t fake, that’s irrelevant in the case of Jewishness (or Islam for that matter) since neither of them is a race.
“I don’t think that the USA needs to invade Canada in order to bring Canukistan into the Union as the 51st state. All that it has to do is appoint a couple of carefully selected Senators and a handful of Representatives, and Bingo!, you’ve got it done.”
Well it certainly worked for Soros. Turns out that buying your own country is a lot cheaper than people might have expected.
Oxy – the majority of abuse reported in the UK is perpetrated by white people, because the country is, despite what the media would have a casual viewer of TV believe still mostly white.
Some interesting statistics here (yeah, yeah, it’s ZH I know, but the stats are the stats)
I will guarantee that if a mass rape culture had developed where white perpetrators were organised into gangs luring in thousands of girls and sharing them around like playthings for horrific abuse, with the full knowledge of the police and social services, there would have been no memos from Government calling for the whole thing to be ignored in case it upsets ‘Community relations’ – and that, I think is the main point.
As Nixon found out to his cost, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
@tboc – I am quite familiar with what my late teenage daughter and her friends consider mainstream and I have to be honest that while access to iPhones and TikTok etc have definitely changed things since back in my day, there’s nothing there that concerns me particularly. They’re all pretty well grounded, deadly serious/competitive when it comes to their education and career minded in the longer term. The main concern that I have on their behalf is the leftist/woke garbage they are being indoctrinated with in school. I try my best to offer a counterpoint, but what teenager ever takes their Dad seriously? I think reality will make itself felt as they mature and experience real life.
To answer your question directly, no I don’t know many 20-25 yo women, and maybe these girls are not typical, but hopefully there isn’t too much depravity lurking in their future over the coming few years.
@ Oroboros – They’re there alright – out there in plain sight.
I think normal people just cannot comprehend that there are people capable of engaging in such depravity and then facing the cameras with a smile as if nothing at all had happened. Being unable to conceive of acting in such a manner themselves, they conclude that nobody could, and therefore nobody is – no matter what countervailing evidence is presented to them.
For any who have not seen it – here is an official transcript of one of the UK Rape Gang court cases in which the actions for which sentencing is being made are detailed (very graphically).
I have absolutely no idea how anyone could implicate themselves in covering up this incomprehensibly evil activity which they knew to be ongoing over decades.
Wishing you a Merry Christmas, Raúl, and heartfelt thanks for all you do here every day without fail.
@Oroboros – I’m seeing a striking resemblance to Jar-Jar Binks – the not remotely irritating CGI character so beloved of Star Wars fandom.
@ Dr D.
““The war is over and it is safe for Syrian refugees to return home.”
Huh? Sure, now that it’s HEADED BY ISIS.”I know – if it wasn’t so tragic it’d be hilarious. First we are told that we have to accept a wave of refugees from Afghanistan and other places where ISIS and their friends have taken over because to do otherwise would be to leave those poor people in the hands of inhumanly cruel Islamist head-choppers.
These days we are told that it’s essential we send the Syrians home because now that their country has been overrun by ISIS and their fellow Islamist head-choppers everything is just hunky-dory now and it’s perfectly safe there.
The hypocrisy is making my head hurt.
After Syria fell, why would anyone listen to Moscow?
Oh I don’t know. The US Military got its ass run out of Afghanistan in the most humiliating way imaginable only a few years ago, but apparently we’re still expected to listen to them for some reason.
“I don’t know if that last sentence is necessarily true…”
Well unless the Pentagon is hiding some top-secret Oreshnik type weaponry that actually works (a possibility, I suppose) then I can’t conceive of how, and with what weapons, the West could conduct an effective pre-emptive attack on Russia that doesn’t involve mushroom clouds.
Any attempt to marshal a large invasion force of infantry, tanks and what have you in Europe would (literally) be visible from space months in advance and thus could not be pre-emptive. Russia would probably just sink all of the handful of troop transports the US is capable of deploying as they cross the Atlantic.
Hiring Tom Cruise to fly some super-stealthy mission in his F18 to drop conventional bombs on Moscow is hardly likely to do more than bring down a few buildings and thus would not be effective at achieving anything strategically significant.
Maybe they could drop some Tomahawks on a Nuclear plant somewhere in Russia – that would be effective, but mostly in the sense of provoking a hypersonic nuclear response.
Seems to me there’s a huge gap in the escalation ladder between the highest rung of what the West can do with our outdated, and hardly plentiful, conventional forces and the very top (nuclear) rung. We’ve tried everything and have now reached the point where there’s literally only that one rung left. It’s a big jump to reach it, but it looks like we have just the kind of lunatics in charge that are prepared to give it a try. A number of them have said so, publicly, on TV in the past week.
Remember the point JFK made in his speech on June 10th 1963 at American University about the absolute necessity of never putting a nuclear capable power in a position where it has to choose between a humiliating defeat and nuclear war? Well guess what? We’ve done exactly that – to ourselves.
@ Dr D: Pretty sure Russia would have pointed out Stormshadow (what a preposterously pretentious name) vs ATACMS. Their S400 radar would be able to identify which it was based on the very different flight profiles.
Notwithstanding the incomprehensibly aggressive attitude of the chihuahua UK, I don’t think we can let Blinken and Sullivan off the hook for giving the OK for US involvement. Not sure how they got around the Pentagon this time though. Maybe they found and exploited the traitors within the Military.
