Just Some Randomer
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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.
So I see Ukraine is claiming that Russia has hit Dnipro with an RS-26 ICBM. Both Wagner-affiliated telegram channels and US Officials are denying.
What a time to be alive.
“Tell you what: if it’s good for Europe then fair’s fair. We put a 100% Tariff on EUROPEAN cars, and also match tariffs on whatever China has, probably 100% tariff on us as well. We lower when they lower. Goose. Gander. Show me.”
No need. There’s a reason Ford has manufacturing plants in Europe and conversely BMW and Mercedes make cars for the US market in, er, the US. Businesses aren’t stupid, they’ll work around the tariffs in the most efficient manner. Net net, Europe gains some jobs making cars for US corporations and the US gains some jobs making cars for European manufacturers.
“Stavridis, a retired admiral who often appears on TV to share his insight on international affairs, told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday that Ukraine might also join the EU. “Putin will hate that part of it…”
I very much doubt Putin will hate that part of it – EU membership was offered to Zelensky as part the Istanbul agreement – which he rejected. NATO membership is what’s of concern to Russia, they don’t give a damn about Ukraine joining the failed, powerless and collapsing EU. Why would they? Membership would pretty much oblige the EU to foot the bill for keeping Ukraine limping along.
Pogrom against poor innocent Israeli football fans in Amsterdam? Not quite.
“Israeli football hooligans tore down Palestine flags as they marched through Amsterdam in a Wednesday night of chaos ahead of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s visit to Ajax.
Videos show dozens of hooded figures dressed fully in black cheering and chanting ‘f*** you Palestine’ and ‘ole’ as one climbed halfway up the front of a building and removed a flag on the Rokin, a major street.
Footage also shows one thug thumping a taxi with crowbar before the driver takes off, while there have been reported clashes between the visiting hooligans and cabbies.
Meanwhile, clips shared by a prominent pro-hooligan page depict bust-ups purported to be between Maccabi fans and a group of Moroccan Ajax supporters.”I see the ‘Woman hating misogynist’ Trump has appointed the first female Whitehouse head of staff in history. Clearly, he’s toying with us – messing with our minds…..
“The investigation of election fraud, in and of itself, is *not* dangerous, as long as it is rooted in *truth* “
I can certainly see how some people might consider it extremely dangerous indeed – due to their being the parties perpetrating the aforementioned fraud….
Truth is the mortal enemy of ‘The Narrative’.
@Dr D: “Point: If Britain of all people can function with nearly no bureaucracy, get all that done up to 1901, then maybe we can do with 90% less and STILL have 4 Times the bureaucracy they did in their heyday?”
Quite so. At the height of Empire, the jewel in the crown (India, with its population in the hundreds of millions) was run by a Civil Service staff of no more than 1,200 mostly British administrators. I’ve worked for companies that had more people than that in their HR department.
“One unnamed “long-term Trump adviser” told the Financial Times on Monday that the Republican candidate could resolve the conflict with “a reimagining of the failed Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015,” under which Kiev agreed to grant some autonomy to the majority Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. This time around, the adviser said, the deal would be enforced by EU peacekeepers.”
Someone needs to tell this bozo that Donetsk and Lugansk are Russia now. Kiev will not be ‘Granting’ them anything, and Trump has precisely zero leverage over what the final settlement in Ukraine will be (hint: Moscow will dictate terms of surrender). I do not believe that Russia will ever again fall for the Western ‘Let’s all sign a treaty that we will break the moment it suits us’ gambit.
I appreciate Trump’s position on ending the conflict in Ukraine, but really, all he can do is stop sending weapons and money. Everything thereafter is out of his hands.
@DBS: “The correct strategy is to wear them down to nothing (literally!) by manipulating them into CONTINUING to waste their resources in a fruitless effort to maintain their hegemonic thirst for empire.”
Quite so. You might recall that this is exactly the strategy adopted by Osama Bin Laden.
In his media appearances and addresses throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Bin Laden carefully laid out the strategy by which he would antagonise and provoke the West, through the use of escalating terrorist attacks, into “bleeding wars.” It was by these wars that Bin Laden stated that he would exhaust and bankrupt the United States and its Western allies.
And of course we fell for it because the prospect of a forever war to feed the MIC was too tempting to pass up.
I certainly don’t expect the election to be fair, scrupulously or even approximately. I would further add that while I have zero expectation of it being legal in every case, we must also consider that some parts of the country have been specifically legislating to permit blatantly irregular activities – making them ‘Legal’ but not fair.
I am genuinely of the opinion that no matter what the announced results of the voting or, more precisely, of the vote counting are, a very large part of the population will not accept them. There’s a lot of hyperbole out there on the interwebs about the possibility of civil war/conflict/whatever post election, and it’s not easy to dismiss the thought of a ‘Fiery but definitely not mostly peaceful’ scenario out of hand.
@ Dr. Day Kyle Young, Waging “Weather Warfare” and “Plunder Capitalism” on the good folk of the US
As I understand it, the current mass media position on this is that people who believe that the government can control the weather are nut-job conspiraholics, whereas people who believe that the government can control the climate are totally correct and just following ‘The Science’.
Further to the psychopathic ravings of Matthew Brodsky yesterday, it appears that the IDF have decided to follow his advice and open fire on UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon. It would appear that Netanyahoo has resolved to double-down on his mission to make Israel even more of a global pariah state than it already is. When peacekeepers from Ireland etc. start coming home in bodybags things might get a little ugly.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/10/israel-iran-war-hezbollah-lebanon-latest-news1/
Two United Nations peacekeepers were wounded on Thursday morning when an Israeli tank fired toward an observation tower at their headquarters in Naqoura, reports Ben Farmer from Beirut.
“The injuries are fortunately, this time, not serious, but they remain in hospital,” a source told the Telegraph.
The attack has caused diplomatic consternation, with Italy, which leads the UN mission, summoning the Israeli ambassador on Thursday afternoon while Ireland has called the incident ‘intolerable.’
Israeli soldiers also fired on a UN position in Ras Naqoura, the source said, “hitting the entrance to the bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, and damaging vehicles and a communications system”.
The source said the headquarters of the peacekeeping mission, called UNIFIL, and nearby positions have been “repeatedly hit”.
In a later statement, the UN accused Israel of deliberately firing at security cameras on the perimeter of one of its positions.
The United Nations has around 10,000 troops in the country from 50 nations, including several hundred soldiers from Ireland, as they monitor the ‘Blue Line’ between Lebanon and Israel.
@Dr D. “Looks like yet another reason why Americans are so retarded, the effect of lead on the brains of children is well known. Lead with your American beer, yikes.”
And Fluoride of course. Lead, Fluoride and Beer – the drink of champions. Explains a lot when you think about it.
“How Russian Buying Could Help Drive Silver to $50 and Beyond”
Hmm. Have the Russian Central Bank staff been taking Metals trading lessons from Gordon Brown and announcing their intentions to the world so we can all front-run them?
@RIM ‘Easy. Step 1: you step down.’
He can’t though, can he – no longer having an official position from which to step down?
@WES – I’d wager that the main reason 50%+ of the populations of the towns and cities Russia has been taking control of recently haven’t departed is simply that they would prefer to live in the part of former Ukraine that will be run by Russia from now on. These are, after all the Russian speaking and historically Russian Oblasts.
Even if we leave aside cultural and historical affiliations, from a purely pragmatic perspective, whatever is left of rump Ukraine west of the Dnieper after the dust settles, will be an immiserated wreck governed by whichever corrupt gang-boss happens to be top dog on any particular day. Not many people would be making a beeline towards that given the alternative of simply staying put. Similarly, the EU countries had best be making plans for the permanent settlement of the millions of Ukrainians that they are currently hosting, as I doubt there will be anything at all that would convince those people to return to their former homeland and a life of poverty.
“The Subsidy Effect: If you “give” some people $25,000 to buy a house, the cost of all houses will immediately rise $25,000.”
Which is exactly what happened in the UK when the government introduced the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme under which the Government would lend first time buyers up to 40% of the value of a property (interest free over 5 years) for use as a deposit on purchase. Naturally, since this did nothing to increase the supply of properties in high demand areas, prices were driven even higher as the property developers cashed in. They’ve closed this economically illiterate scheme down now, as I understand it.
