For someone who is constantly harping on "the Jews!", you have a huge blind spot about the "gold standard" and how that came about. Basing a nation's currency on a very sparse metal, the value of which is easily controlled by a small group of people in The City of London and NYC, isn't in any way populist. Look into the gold business a little deeper, it has long been a controlled monopoly. It isn't just the little goy prospector hitting it big (hardly ever happens).
Silver has made a strong move recently too. The Swift System is rapidly getting kicked to the curb. Trump's move on Venezuela is an act of desperation.
the US dollar remains the dominant fiat currency, accounting for 89% of global transactions and holding 57% of global reserves. The money supply has tightened by over 2 trillion dollars but now the Fed has started quantitative easing, pumping about 40 billion a month into the system. Inflation is at 4% tops. Fiat currencies may fall relative to gold but all currencies trade against one another. The US dollar remains king of the hill.
Your statement is a non statement and on top of it not true.
4% inflation means nothing without mention the former number.
Statistics is a bitch: it's from->of->at. Let alone that the 4% is a political lie to begin with, it is on itself already a 100% over their self declared goal of 2% (what is stupid to start with anyway).
To let the purchase power fall out of this equation is the top of false information. In the end it only counts what I am able to buy with my money and wages have at best stagnated, in many cases even declined or people have faced mass lay offs.
A 6 figure income today means no longer top class income, it means decent middle class and in some area's not even that anymore.
I wonder what your sources are regarding U.S. dollar dominance. Google A.I. Overview returns the following which is consistent with my previous understanding of the astonishing trend over the last few years.
I asked for 2024 estimates which admittedly are out of date because of the recently announced plans to move away from the U.S. dollar by some major economies.
..........estimates suggest the dollar was involved in over 50% of cross-border payments (via SWIFT) and held around 58% of official foreign exchange reserves, underscoring its vital role despite growing interest in alternatives from some nations. .....
When I took my international trade finance courses more than a decade ago your numbers were valid. Except the global reserves number was much, much higher then than your seemingly accurate assessment of current global reserves in U.S. dollars. It *used* to be that eighty five percent of global trade was conducted through the U.S. dollar system.
And now even SWIFT itself has recently been made to be suspect. My circumstances are such that I have no choice but to use SWIFT. However, if I had a reliable choice available I would beat feet from SWIFT in a Brussels minute. And that's just me. I wonder what all the smart money guys are thinking right now.
At any rate, operating from the U.S. dollar system I have lost thirty five percent purchasing power while my profits have increased ten percent in the same period. If by dominance you mean I got run over by having to rely on the U.S. dollar system, I guess you are right.
The total value of all of the gold ever mined in the world throughout history is estimated to be about US $30 trillion at the current gold price of $4350/ounce. The US federal debt today is over $38 trillion. National bank gold reserves worldwide are only estimated to be about 17% of the total amount gold, so that would be about $5 trillion in gold in the central banks around the world. Interestingly, about two-thirds of all gold ever mined has been mined since 1950. Data is from the World Gold Council in 2025:
No real intention other than to provide readers with the actual total value of gold. I'm not an expert trader. I used to be a "goldbug" and somewhat of an Ayn Rand and Greenspan accolyte, but not so much anymore. I would also point out that the total global value of oil production in just one year, 2024, was about $6.1 trillion, which is 20% of the speculatively inflated 2025 value of all gold production in the history of the world. I'm not big on bitcoin either or other "cryptocurrencies". It all just reeks of tulip-bubble speculation.
Hmmm.....sounds eerily like re-insurance on top of re-insurance piled on top of insurance guaranteeing coverage of Collateralized Debt Obligations. You know, the 2008 crisis when the music stopped and there weren't enough chairs. Then a trickle of people said ....hey, I want my money not something on a computer screen because I have to pay my employees and they need real money in their pocket. Which inevitably turned into a flood.
We still haven't fully recovered. Only now all the Western economies have deliberately doubled down on the illusion at the same time. So they will all crash simultaneously.
I don't disagree with your observations. I wish I could get excited about gold or silver but I'm a dividend investor not a growth investor. Precious metals are the growth game. But you're absolutely right about relative worth of these precious metals vs "goodwill currencies" of "trust my printing press".
That is true only if your only yardstick is the price of precious metals. If your yardstick were the price of oil (and energy is far more important to the functioning of the world than is gold) fiat currencies increased in value. Reality is between those. I don't disagree that overall fiat currency values have decreased, but not by 50%.
The price of gold has increased 80%+, just this year, yet the amount of gold required to buy the average priced house in Sydney has been unchanged since 1960.
That's devaluing of the fiat $AU right there.
Do try and pay attention to the world around you, there's much to be learned.
Wow, you write extremely coherently about money and you also write about sex? I think you and I could talk & interact (wink) 24 hours a day. Seriously I'm teasing but if you're interested in communication outside here please let me know. Best wishes for 2026!
I agree with you, very well said. You are versed in Austrian economics I see. I would make some slight comments to your post though : there is a lot of speculation involved as well, to explain this, certainly for silver. And even though Western fiat currencies have declined in value as you say, that's for sure, it is not 50% I believee, since this is not reflected in comparison with price of other currencies or resources world wide (which are also fiat based or $ pegged, it is true). So I think a lot also of this rise of silver, but in particular of gold, has to be with the tense and unstable moment we are living including the potential AI bubble (i.e. flight to safety).
I would think Russia does have the manpower for a full-fledged offensive, but it's simply not required. This is not WWII and the 'allies' are the ones pressed for time.
Wars of attrition are a bitch. Lucky for the Russians their Chinese allies haven't even made a move yet. As Wang Yi told Kajal Kallas, "we won't let Russia be defeated because we'll be next".
That is the only way they can look at the thing right now. Russia, China, India, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea are traveling in the same boat now and jumping the boat is against their best interest.
What about Odessa? The biggest change in the battlefield came with bombing the port and killing the French contingent. This was a big escalation targeting NATO, no ground troops. BIG explosion there. Energy is what is going to end this war. Ukraine and Europe will freeze and die. France and Germany need natural gas to survive economically, not Macron, the most unpopular leader in the world. Turn your thermostats down to off. With Putin being targeting (a false flag), Russians will take on the Ukrainian government (finally). The war starts when the Kiev airport goes down and no one can fly into Kiev and give them publicity and arms.
It's an old video or AI. He mentions Scholz, who was Bundeskanzler before Friederich Merz, who was voted in in May of this year. Since he's talking about winter conditions, the video must be at least a year old.
JimG. You should have pointed out that the video is an AI generated item and does not reflect the realities on the ground. John Mearsheimer is an excellent political scientist but the content of this video does not stand against the facts. The level of Western dependence on Russian fossil fuels was already reduced to the point where further limits of imports will not cause widespread civilizational, economic collapse. The self-inflicted damage in Western Europe is already major and is displayed in the failing productivity levels of the major industrial nations there. They are presently trying to gear up their military hardware production to the point where they can successfully pressure or cut up Russia and exploit natural resources there. And they do have a problem, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Their second major issue is to convince their own people to go and die for the most degenerated upper classes this planet ever experienced in its long history.
He may have posted the video rather innocently. You need to have some background knowledge to spot discrepancies. Had the video been info on military tactic without dates or location, I'd have been a 'babe in the woods'.
Russia needs to increase the pressure (and pain) on the EU and American support. They won't stop until they feel enough pain that makes them doubt their efforts.
There has been very little cost (other than money, which western countries just print as needed) to the west in Ukraine.
Not really, if popular support mattered, every european leader's head would be on a stick.
Instead, they sleep soundly in their beds, after days spent swanning from star-studded conference to high profile event, secure from the peons that they lord it over.
‘Ukraine and Europe will freeze and die. France and Germany need natural gas to survive economically, not Macron, the most unpopular leader in the world.’
As far as Macron freezing and dying, I have no plans to stop him from the act. On the other hand it is not going to happen to the majority of the European population.
Quite. The attrition of the counter force is vital. Move forward too fast and you make yourself an easy target for a surviving defence.
Kupyansk, the real story as opposed to the false narrative, demonstrated just how you work this, drawing in an elite Ukraine fighting force and then eliminating it, although Russia had to swallow a lot of Ukrainian posturing and chest thumping while the Ukkies (yet again, yawn) marched into the trap.
They are driven by the Green Goblin’s conviction that optics are reality and pretending is actually doing(the only kind of “doing” a D grade actor would understand ).
General 404 (“there was no where to retreat to” - Duh because he left it to late) just follows the actor’s instructions like any Zionist lickspittle , with zero regard for the lives of his troops.
Kupyansk has been given the Goblin’s kiss of death, aka a selfie on the outskirts, as he has done many times previously in places now far , far behind the Russian front line.
It was noted that when he went to Florida to kiss Trump’s ring , not a single US official met him at the airport. Zaluzhny (aka Quinn the Eskimo for Dylan fans) is returning from his triumphant tour of London to his Azov buddies.
Doubt the Goblin will make it to Israel unless he leaves very soon in the dead of night.
And yet the Russian military machine moves on -- and the Ukrainian force is just bled that much more. I don't think the Russians care very much that you see it as their incompetence.
That narrative keeps the money and weapons flowing, which is what Ukraine needs to keep the war going.
Meanwhile, at the pace the Russian military machine is moving, the war may end as soon as 2078. Even Simplicus doesn't seem to be predicting the collapse that were are constantly assured is coming, any day now, just like The Great Pumpkin.
The biggest change is the reduction in equipment and funding going to Ukraine. They desperately needed the frozen funds but that battle just split the EU. Without military hardware the Ukrainians are toast. Did you see the Geran production/interception chart?That says it all.
Russians know they did the heavy lifting in WWII. Of course the U.S. helped. Akin to making a great cup of coffee for Russian troops. Peripheral, sometimes important.
Still, the truth is deliberately opaque in the records, but FDR's sacrifice of American sailors in Pearl Harbor, for an excuse to enter the war, is slowly seeping out of the cracks.
Imagine a country, a so-called Empire, built nearly entirely on Mythology.
Holding the moral hi ground is a propagandist's wet dream. They have rarely had the media power of the last 30 years. Or the captured audiences.
Witness the frenzy over the call of duty guy! Oh what a tragedy, guy singlehandedly addicts numerous generations to pointless pursuit. Yet comes out the unabashed hero, for dying wealthy without a reset button to push?
While I think the battlefield prognostications are interesting, the political situation/developments will probably be more decisive in terms of what happens in Ukraine.
There is a real danger that false flags, dirty bombs, antics at nuclear power plants and other bad behavior by Ukraine, EU or other bad actors take this war in a different direction.
I believe time is of the essence for Russia to accomplish its goals. A cornered rat(s) is very dangerous.
Time is of the essence, but one should read the times correctly.
There is no need to rush offensives,
enemy will concede defeat when everything has been tried, everything, and only then.
Russia has to confront all Britain can muster, all US can supply, all Germany can pay.
Russia should use the rules of the proxy war game, established unofficially, to its maximal advantage.
Rules are simple
no nuclear war,
no one is ready for nuclear war, not US, not France, perhaps Britain if nuclear war could somehow be contained just to Ukraine and Russia and neighbouring European states...
no foreign armies in Ukraine
European citizens can be manipulated into supporting war with their money, it would be much harder to make them support war with the lives of their soldiers.
The problem with the slow approach is one has to pay the price of Ukraine hitting inside Russia
No offensive is needed on battlefield, just slow grinding progress, and offensive in doubling, tripling, quadrupling attacks on infrastructure
There are winners in war, a small elite who take their profits from both side's suffering.
The problem with Nukes? Even if you survive, you have a constant reminder, God that was a dumb thing to do!
The idea that the world's problems will go away if the right country wins a war is fantasy. Russia's approach has always been admirable to me.
Sure they'll fight, but it's our choice. They signed peace deals, kept their side of the deal. But hate is closer to love, than indifference.
Haters have no fall back position, except outright defeat, or so it seems. Russia has had to fight, a lot, so they will. With the wisdom that indifference manifests.
Who does? Did you see how the Ukrainians were mauled in Zaporozhye? That was the best NATO could come up with. Remember Milley pushed for settlement after that bloodbath. No one listened, he quit.
"There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they're going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night". That Milley? I'm so glad the cretin retired.
Why did the US perform a calibrated retreat from its proxy conflict in Russia?
The American war machine has over-reached its position globally without the means of adequately enforcing its hegemony against a peer power like Russia. No matter how many billions go to its war machine, the US cannot obtain the material resources needed to conduct a lengthy campaign. Trump knows it. But the US can exert its might against a smaller nation on the cheap without exhausting its war material.
Here's the problem:
Although the US has a formidable combined military capability, it is constrained by the lack of minerals necessary for any type of prolonged conflict. In fact, the US has practically no minerals whatsoever that are needed to re supply and operate its combined air, army, and naval forces.
Looking at this further:
China is the world's largest producer of metals. It's refusing to send any war minerals to the US like tungsten, antimony, Galium, bismuth, and germanium. Without such materials The US can't produce bombs that explode and bullets that fire without antimony, tanks that protect with tungsten,and essentials for its F-35, like infrared targeting and night vision without germanium. It will take many years before the US can produce these critical metals. So, China, to an extent, controls the US's ability to conduct war. lol
So what does that mean?
It means that China has the US on a leash militarily, preventing it from being all it can be, no matter how many billions it spends on its combined forces. So I think all Trump can do is thump his chest like the baboon that he is to give the illusion of might, but in reality, it's just theatrics. China holds Trump by the marbles and can squeeze at will.
Europe is in deep, deep trouble. On top of the silver fiasco its banks have over-shorted. It wastes billions to finance Coke head Zelensky's lost war with Russia.
It wastes billions to rebuild an army without critical war materials like Antimony and Tungsten.
Europe will need to fight with bows and arrows and Molotov cocktails.
Oh wait, Europe has no oil to spare. Maybe it can ask Russia to spare it a few barrels. lol
Europe will waste billions to train LBGTQ or alphabet warriors supplied with rainbow bean bags to throw at the nasty Ruskies. Europe could also try to train its immigrants, who more likely would run for cover at the sound of the first artillery volley and run back to terrorize European cities.
Yep, Europe will spend billions to train unwilling combatants to fight without modern weapons and transportation for shortages of material. They'll have to go in Napoleonic style with horse, buggy, and sword, the good old-fashioned way.
Europe has been too pussyfied. Even Macron's husband beats the hell out of him in public, and I bet he likes it that way. Now off to war, Europeans in your rainbow uniforms.
You're right. Trump is one dumb bunny, but those who came before him were even dumber bunnies. Perhaps they have learned their lesson, if not the Chinese will have a hard time teaching them.
"They'll have to go in Napoleonic style with horse, buggy, and sword, the good old-fashioned way."
Napolean claimed that armies marched with their (full) bellies. True.
But he didn't mention they were called FOOT soldiers and that wasn't by accident. Imagine marching on foot from Paris to Moscow. That...was the old-fashioned way.
Why did the United States proceed with a measured withdrawal from its proxy war in Russia?
The alarm has been sounded for the Caribbean fleet. It's going to have to come home; the aircraft carrier is about to exceed its maintenance deadline, it costs a fortune to maintain, the sailors want to go home—what a fleet! One month at sea and they're crying for their mothers.
Trump is a useful idiot like Joe and "coffee fetcher", Kamala. Does anyone believe that this galoot ever spent ten minutes reading about the two big wars of the last century? That to this day he could locate Ukraine on a map? The Neo-con-Zionist money minders and war pigs do the heavy lifting and Don is only hauled out to read the teleprompter, bloviate and polish his bigly ego. (isn't it about time to rename the Mississippi River?!) Watch his fake smile and deferential body language when Bibi is in town to talk about "what's next". I'm sure the Not-Lutherans have some wonderful video footage of short-eyed Don, partying with the kids. Meanwhile, the Euro-tards, cruising for a bruising, exclaim, "tis but a flesh wound."
Sullivan, Nuland, and Power were all clearly sociopaths. Blinken was a fool of the first order. I've never been sure what to make of Biden. Maybe half sociopath and half fool. Trump, I believe, is not a sociopath. I would also venture that he is at least capable of learning from his mistakes.
“People of privilege will always risk complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” ~~John Kenneth Galbraith~~
"Once subversion succeeds, even exposure of the truth can’t reverse preconditioned belief systems, as groupthink rejects facts that contradict their programmed worldview." ~~Yuri Bezmenov~~
"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the Earth.”~~Rachel Carson~~
'During our effort to classify Earth’s flora and fauna, we realized that humanity’s self-classification is false, for all true mammals develop ecological stasis or become extinct. Yet, humanity is the sole exception to the rule of natural selection. When you migrate to an area, you rapidly multiply beyond the Earth’s carrying capacity and consume until every natural resource is exhausted. Your survival depends upon metastasizing the human contagion to new, unspoiled environs. Another pathological organism follows a uniquely similar destructive pattern - cancer. '
'Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.'
'Beware the beast Man. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, lust, and greed. Shun him: If he is permitted to breed in great numbers, he shall make a desert of his home and yours. For Man hath becometh death, the great destroyer of worlds.'
These are generalisations applicable in our times more to the degenerate and collapsing West, it’s “leadership” and the privileged sections of the klepto/kakistocracies.
As one culture collapses, others arise and hasten the demise, as human history graphically illustrates.
The climate hoax is part of the cycle of intellectual self destruction by western “elites” ( a term which merely designates those with money and an ephemeral and “democratic “ “authority “.)
A new cycle appears to be beginning, despair and despondency are pointless and in any event based on our very limited perspective. As T.S. Eliot wrote : “ Humankind cannot bear very much reality” and reality has its own rhythms of which humanity is but a small part.
You start well but the Malthusian, millenarian, Club of Rome limits to growth, carrying capacity, humans are cancer stuff shows you are well programmed. I doubt you can be helped.
Malthus didn't foresee what technology could do to kick the can down the road for so long. But he is still right in concept. There are hard limits to forever growth. Continuous and relentless "growth" forever is what the western economic system is based on. And forever-growth is a mathematical and physical impossibility. No matter how much Ayn Rand one has read, resources are indeed finite, and infinite growth of population and economy are physically impossible.
But, Malthus was born in and died during the British Industrial Revolution. It would have been hard to remain ignorant of the Specialization of Labor and the practical application of Economies of Scale in Malthus's own home.
Further, when there is nothing to do in the evenings in old England, then rolling the old girl over becomes the only pleasurable activity. Heck, most people couldn't even read. For more than a century there have been evening alternatives, books, radio, TV, now the Internet.
That Malthus could not see this future, begs the question, why did Malthus try predicting the future then? After all, He wasn't writing about Econ History. Searching in your own "Book of Comfort" to confirm your preconceived prophesies is common, true, but Malthus was writing about the exponential growth of population while Presuming food supplies would/could only grow linearly. Notwithstanding his faulty presumptions and allowing for the fact that you can grow linearly and exceed exponential growth, depending on starting conditions and the formulas, that you use, Malthus helped get Economics the tag of Dreary.
So that is hard to forgive. Especially now that we have Modern Monetary Theory, harmless inflation, exponential division of the classes and rewards for parasites and skimmers that exceed the profits of Buccaneers. Heck. There is no economic problem whatsoever that can't be solved by a Central Bank and a determined Government that keeps its nose to the stone and gets that spending done, good and hard.
So can we agree that Normative Economics isn't normal?
Thank you for providing a cogent and well-developed reply. Have you come across the work of Professor Al Bartlett from the University of Colorado and his seminal lecture "Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101", and statement "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
The comparison of October 7th (ignoring the invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque) as a Jewish "Pearl Harbor" is being promoted as "Justification" for killing all Gazans (like the fire-bombing and nuking of Japan).
Aside from the not-so-clever LIE, the Historical ignorance is stomach-churning.
Venezuela betrayed by Russia so many times. Written in 2015.
Clueless Russia never supported Venezuela under President Chaves who had offered a military base near USA, but Russia was too arrogant and thought of herself as ally of west and back stabbed Chavez.
All the troubles that Russia has faced in last ten years would have been impossible if Russia had done to allies what was promised. Delivering Paid up S300 to Iran and Syria, supply of major heavy arms to Venezuela, vetoing western excuse to bomb Libya etc .then west would have been restrained and Anglos would not have dared attack Russia economically and now directly through NATO . Russian treachery invited attack on herself.
Russia is eating its own medicine, and methodically killing its own Slavic brethren, coincidentally making it a ritual of weekly social media gatherings with the royal criminal lynch pin seated at the round table. Who almost got taken out before orthodox Xmas, but there is always a next time.
Thrashing out at its helpless neighbour with greater fury, destroying, massacring millions, while the real instigator walks away. only to return, behind a great wall, the great cowardly leader dare not cross, should NATO's red line reciprocate destruction for all. What a great saviour... (sarc)
So you're saying Russia avoided another Cuban missile crisis in Venezuela. Perhaps you're unaware how the 3rd submarine commander prevented a global nuclear holocaust during that standoff.
In the western model of thinking that's true. But the West now stops being the force that no one can withstand. There is more to humanity than western (especially 'liberal') thinking.
It's in the interest of all to abandon the terrible school of individualism since cooperation and social cohesion is only what has humanity brought this far. 500 years of colonialism and western exploitation of humanity must end now. And 'times they're changing' as Bob Dylan knew already back then.
BRICS+, SOC and Belt & Road are the future and all attempts to refuse this truth are futile.
You can build a free society on individuals who choose to work together - and inevitably have a troublemaking minority who will try to game the system. or you can build on hierarchy (The right), or communalism (the left) to build that society, and inevitably end up with authoritarian dictatorships to 'deal' with that minority.
There's no absolute right and wrong system, because circumstances change.
Personally, I prefer to live in a liberal, even if semi/quarter democracy, with lawful human rights, rule of Law, and restrictions on what the gummint/corporations can get away with.
We've already been there and agreed to disagree, my friend ;-)
For me it's the Chinese model that will win in the long run.
To implement it with regard to the individual, cultural and historical special circumstances of the countries that will try to do so, will be an art that one would have to learn first.
As long as corruption can be banned and accountability is not an empty phrase, I have high hopes that especially the 'southern world' will adopt the Chinese model rather soon.
The West will hold on to it's distorted picture of human nature but as we can see already, the communist leadership in China beats the West in 58 out of 64 crucial developments for the future already.
Putin returning to the Sovjet-model of state industrial hegemony of the most crucial key industry is becoming more clear as well.
Socialism and communism were burned words after 1990 but now we see that a vital and prosperous model of this form of society marks the return of the idea and ideals of this kind of society as a wish to many people.
I think specifically communism never had a chance because of the relentless attacks after the October revolution and the aftermath. Primarily by those that profited hugely from other political ideologies like capitalism and democracies and never wanted to give up there wealthy positions. The rich vs the rest.
Sure, as soon as you get get people to stop being, well, people. I think Gnueno described it well. You and I have discussed this before and I believe you have a rather idealistic view of the Chinese government. They do seem to be in the ascendency -- at the moment. As was the US for a while, Britain before that, Spain before that, Rome before that (yeah, I left out a few).... Al Stewart (British songwriter, best known for Year of the Cat) put it well in his song "Russians and Americans". “Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.” (yeah, not a new concept, I just like his turn of phrase -- it is a really great song released in 1984 in the depths of the cold war).
Set aside the emotion and you will find Crony Capitalism (our current model) and "market" Communism are precisely the same thing.
A few at the top are unbelievably wealthy/enriched, while the rest scurry around under byzantine rules, where the winning hand, especially legally, requires great wealth.
There is simply no empiric evidence of what you are saying. No political leader in a socialist country ever has gotten to a point where they enriched themself to great wealth. The society would simply not have accepted that. After the Berlin wall fell, people went to the 'Politburo-enclave' in Wandtlitz by Berlin to see how rich those families lived. Many were disappointed because every bookkeeper or dentist or engineer in West- Germany would have a nicer and bigger house than the 'communist leaders' had. "Market communism" is also a non starter to begin with since there is nothing wrong with markets and markets are not system bound or an ideological issue. Markets are as old as humans decided to share labour and have specialties. Slave markets are also markets and cooperatives also sell their products on markets.
The problem is that markets need strong regulations, even in socialism and preferably by the state since in the 'free world' people are free to monopolize and dominate markets, what leads to impoverishing all the people that are forced to buy on those markets.
Economics follows laws, laws that are ingrained in the economic system that is made by men. Those are not natural laws, they are made and they can be changed.
>>Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.<<
So be my guest and celebrate what ever freedom you think you have.
The Chinese are also mastering the art of individualism - it's why their grip on power is still so strong. Where they differ from current Western models is that they don't identify "Unrestricted wealth" as an individual 'right'.
And they've also kept Finance on a close rein, with the backbone banking systems directly owned or controlled by the State.
Which, if you recall, I said I consider a good thing. :)
The current 'Western Model' - especially with neofuckingliberalism (Which, like neofuckingconservatism, took a small part of the ideology it claims in the name, and then directly oppose the rest and best of the ideology) - is designed to recreate Feudalism from our capitalist system (The two are directly opposed, as it happens).
The Chinese leadership are smart enough to want to avoid that fate. And while many Chinese just as Westerners would fall without a murmur into that abyss, the State is run by the best of the best over there.
There is very little ACTUAL difference between all of these ideologies - it's the small things in practice that make the big difference.
A Western liberal democracy could also have the national exam system to join the civil service (And get rid of the Party structure, which was NOT part of the original Democracy btw), could also nationalise the banking systems, could also direct investment. Could also execute/imprison/re-educate those private citizens who get too wealthy and big for their boots.
It's not the underlying ideology - it's the will of the ruling classes to do those things.
China will inevitably continue to become more actual Liberal, same as Russia. And unless we do something rather dramatic soon, our technofeudal slavery future will be locked in.
All the isms in the world, China, the USSR or whatever system a country adopts is far less consequential than their ability to ensure wealth generated within their country is efficiency recycled to increase the productivity, prosperity and wellbeing of the country - as a whole. Ideology is often just a shield against the all to often pillaging by outside powers. The big ism: Imperialism.
Today it's rebranded as neo-liberal free trade. Nothing to do with freedom, more to do with trans-national capital feeding freely on the carcasses of countries unable to protect their own interests.
I mostly agree with you -- especially your final paragraph. My only quibble is that if the troublemaking minority can't warp government to its own ends (a problem in a democracy when the takers start to outnumber the workers) you may not inevitably end up with the authoritarian dictatorship. The framers of the US Constitution tried to ensure that, but chip by chip the protections have been dismantled. So maybe it is inevitable after all....
Most, if not all, Western "Democracies" quickly grab the spiked club when there is any whiff of loss of power. Even asking questions is Verboten.
Every Decent Idea for the organization of humanity into productive, respectful groups gets introduced to Division by those who survive and thrive from Division.
And the Intoxication of Stupid Names (concocted by the Dividers) is vomit-inducing.
Thank goodness the US knows how to over take adversaries by the whim of their own interests. More evidence the Russians are powerless fools, Atleast Iran was intelligent enough to keep them at bay.
It was Iran that didn't sign the military agreement with Russia, which the Duma had approved. Didn't Assad reject Russian assistance to reform the Syrian army? Then rejected Iranian troops to help in Syria?
Do you have a link for the S300s? All I can find is
Not to mention that Russia in 2015 had not yet properly recovered, its army still in tatters, arsenals being rebuilt, etc. and had emerged from the Chechnya conflict.
Sounds like an armchair general to me. We should have put Sandra Bullock in power as she had the wish of world piece already in 2000. Yes, miss Congeniality.
Just imagine how the world would look like today… for sure we wouldn’t be gathered here to exchange comments on the situation of Venezuela (or on one of the other many conflicts).
A pipe dream. We humans are incapable of living in peace. I think because we allow a small section of humans to acquire huge powers and because we are not made for the society we live in.
"A pipe dream. We humans are incapable of living in peace..."
Tuchman's account of Europe, back in the day, was so depressing that I actually put the book down about half way through. Could not read any more. The big difference between then and now is we've 'improved' on the pike and longbow and there's less horseshit in the streets. Otherwise, it's the same old, same old...working overtime in the abattoir.
"A Distant Mirror
Book by Barbara W. Tuchman
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning history that examines the chaos, contradictions, and daily life of 14th-century Europe, focusing on events like the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and the Papal Schism through the life of French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy. The book contrasts the era's chivalric ideals with its brutal realities, covering political, social, and religious turmoil from the perspective of all classes, from peasants to popes."
Projections, predictions or wishful thinking is all ok the last Day off the year.
Hopefully the year 2026 will bring an end to at least the War in Ukraine.
Excellent work Simplicius!
Here is my thinking about it:
1. The logical projections presented by Simplicius is hard to argue against. Russia is creeping forward and destroying AFU bit by bit. Zaporozhye and Kramatorsk are obvious targets because they are essential for the ”liberations” of the Oblast that Russia sees as their own now.
It would be, for me, a big dissatisfaction if the War plays out like this during 2026 and goes beyond 2027. So many good men dead, so much destruction, so many irreparable wounds, scars, traumas and hatred. I hope 2026 is the last year.
2. It is interesteing to see Putins conferences, obviously for the public and the optics in Russian media. I think he is well informed but would be surprised if he made the mistake to start micro-managing the conduct of the War. In other occasions he has declared that the Military is solving the problems Politics cant. I cant help to feel that both sides seems really tired. Four years of War should have strained even Russians built with concrete. I cant imagine how the soldiers at the front are feeling. If Russia indeed is rotating their soldiers and the contracts are ended there is hope tht those men will survive the War. As for the ukrainians there is no hope and History tell us how german soldiers were hollowed out during WW2.
3. Some people argue that this War is not over territory - it is just a War of attrition. I hope we will see an end of this type of argumentation during 2026. The conduct of the War on the ground and the ”peace” talks has all shown that Territorial gains and losses is all that matters.
All Wars are won or lost because of attrition but the attrition itself is caused by enemy movements, encirklements and straining the front lines (besides the constant destruction of logistic, energy and communications). Simplicius notes of what the effects will be if Zaporozhye and/or Kramatorsk falls emphasizes those facts.
4. Cant help wishing/dreading for Black Swan events during 2026.
One can say that History moves on in its logical ways irrespective of Sudden events that no one counted on. This War has seen innumerable unimaginable events/actions but the War tugs on.
Could be that the slow pace makes us accustomed to every new event we witness.
I expect us to experience unprecedented events in 2026 such as assasination of leaders, bombing of Capitals outside Ukraine, another crazy round in Mid-East, usages of new weapons and sudden collapses of societys with riots&chaos.
Thx, all and especially to Simplicius for his good work. Happy New Year.
Peace is impossible for years. Ukrainians are tough like Russians and will fight to last man woman and child. Then neither side wants to compromise and pursues maximalist objectives.
Europe/US will fail before Ukraine probably. Then Ukraine can fall w/o supports.
And yet above you said that the Ukrainian incursions were important at shifting the narrative to Russian incompetence. Public opinion only matters when you want it to?
That assumes that the elites are stupid and can't see through the ruse. I doubt that is the case. Perhaps it is to give the elites something to manipulate public opinion with. If true, it would mean that public opinion did matter. Perhaps not a deciding factor, but a factor.
I think you have to look at the public acceptance for the need to negotiate, even on unfavourable terms, and as I recall, something like 60% of Ukie civilians are willing to do this now - especially as an increasing percentage of the respondents will now be female, and females are always more "agreeable" than men.
Contrariwise in Russia, negotiation is not even considered.
The two questions are not phrased correctly, as either / or.
If they were, the percentage wanting peace at the price of withdrawal from Donbass would be far higher than the percentage wanting peace only if there were no withdrawal.
It's called gaslighting, and Z is very good at it.
You made the assertion, it is not up to him to prove you wrong since you did not provide anything to back it up. I'm actually inclined to agree with you, but that isn't the point.
I very much appreciate and respect your analysis and on top of that I wish *emphatically * for Black Swan Russian - positive events such as New "Ultra Oreshnik", "Burevesrnk Plus Massive Swarms", and "Ukraine End Game Amageddon" like destruction of the Verkovna Rada, Zelensky and all of his followers and supporters, with Russia making the calculation that massive application of new battlefield technologies will "wipe out" anyone to negotiate with. And if this happens due to the Kremlin being sick of the war, they will also send a message that their patience has run out and that one bomb, one little stupid thing by Europe against Russia will result in flattening of all European military facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Enough is enough, it's a war that's now getting close to the length of WWII (1939-1945). If the Russians are still able to justify being far more patient then this war will extend into 2027-2028. God I hope not. Everyone from the combatants to the spectators is exhausted with the day to day snails pace of the war and even though it has been done for the most sensitive and effective reasons, can the public systems of Europe and Ukriane last ? I don't think Europe will last to 2028 if this war escalates into that time period - an insane Black Swan event will trigger a NATO (sans USA) RUSSIA limited nuclear war the like of which we have never seen and will be a new lesson for humanity. Europe will disappear from the geopolitical map of humanity, never again to be able to cause trouble, and maybe just starve to death. On one very bad day the whole thing could be all over (no more endless cold war between the West and Russia) and Australia, North and South America, Africa, Asia will survive but Europe will not. I hope I am utterly wrong in this fear. God bless eveyone for 2026.
Russia policy on the war is tightly controlled by Putin who is reticent to embark on an aggressive American style war. Remember he wants to win, unlike America who loses every war. And yet because they control the media, manage to convince the people the US are not utter losers. This is partially result of the lack of education ans brainwashing of the American population.
Jeff didn't come off very well in a discussion with John Mearsheimer I watched a few weeks ago - he also has a completely disingenuous belief - or apparent belief - that "the Brits" are behind everything bad that happens in the world, despite the fact that Britain has been ruled by his co religionists for at least the last 225 years.
He's an American and probably knows American history quite well, so ofc the British are seen as the biggest troublemakers. In fact he probably knows quite a bit of European history also, so ofc the British are seen as the biggest troublemakers. The problem stems from who wrote the history books.
Maybe he doesn't know about the "troublemaking" the Brits did when they largely helped to ensure that the entirety of Europe wasn't overrun by Napoleon?
Or Europe by his bete noir, the "nazis"?
What kind of "historian" is this man, then?
Now I have the same history books to read as anybody else has available - the difference is, I don't believe everything I'm told by them, as he clearly does.
BTW, if you are jewish, you will always try to deflect blame onto the British, who only wanted a small increase in the tax paid on a beverage you don't even drink, rather than seeing the real culprit behind the war, which was the jewish Rothschild bankers from Europe who wanted America's taxes to flow to them as interest on loans given, rather than to the King in England.
The professor is a practised dissembler, as they all are.
Well, good on Jeffrey Sachs for pushing back the boundaries of this West - East war to the 19th century, but those who care to learn know we can go a lot further back than that.
Today there are war bands from the Pontic steppes pushing westwards into the Pripet marshlands. That's proto-Indo-European era stuff. It's like a Hollywood movie, in that it's a sequel of a sequel of a reboot of a sequel.
In case anyone thinks that's a stupid point to make, I can point to warriors in this particular fight literally worshipping Perun, the Slavic War & Thunder God, and inscribing mystic runes on their weapons and armor.
Completely irrelevant history. Unless your point is that "war isn't new".
The steppe is no longer the steppe, but highly productive farmland. The Russians aren't bands of shepherd-warriors roaming wild pastures but a settled, farming, industrialized society whose standards of life are practically the same as that of westerners, outside of Govnogorsk, northern Yakutia.
The Russian Army doesn't consist of elite settlers taking over a network of depopulated farming villages after a massive plague, they're a professional army conquering new territories while attempting to weaken and delegitimize their rivals and beat their rivals' proxy into forced neutrality. Think Rome instead of Pecheneg raiders.
You could just as well have considered Saddam the modern king of Uruk defending himself from the evil Gutians. And it would've sounded idiotic, since the only thing the two situations had in common was conflict and geographical area.
And a couple of nazi LARPers worshiping a dead god means nothing when 99.99% of the army either carries the flags of Peter the Great, Nevsky or Stalin.
This isn't about any specific event or even a bunch of unconnected events. It's about repeating patterns of behavior revealing fundamental underlying structures.
Nobody is expecting Genghis Khan to rise from the dead and another Golden Horde of horsemen to attack Europe. Once an event has happened it can never happen again, but the fundamental forces that propel those events are still in full effect, so they can create very similar events.
Technology has not abolished geography or the human condition.
Where is a great empire more likely to arise, in the interior of Eurasia or the Pacific islands?
Soldiers currently carrying the images of long dead heroes and the symbols of ancient faiths rather proves MY point not yours. Why do men continue to do that when they are clearly physically non-functional?
The human condition has not be abolished.
On the geopolitics side of this question, I can highly recommend,
"The Geographical Pivot of History" (1904) by Halford Mackinder
But there are no repeating patterns. Steppe confederations expanded into Europe a) because they were pushed by other steppe confederations to their east, the whole movement being started by climatic changes making life unbearable somewhere deep in Mongolia or b) opportunistically grabbing as much from Europe as they could when it was weak.
Tell me how that in ANY way resembles the current war.
Pacific islands are completely irrelevant. Tell me how steppe invasions resemble the Russian "SMO".
The men continue to carry old Russian flags because it provides an unbroken narrative - "the USSR won. Nevsky won. Peter the Great kept winning. We are gonna win. And we'll always be here."
Are you seriously asking me how previous movements of steppes people, along with their cultures, way of life, weapons and transports moving westwards into Europe in anyway resembles the SMO?
It resembles it because we are currently seeing movements of steppes people, along with their cultures, way of life, weapons and transports moving westwards into Europe.
Can you deny any of that?
The Pacific Islands are relevant because the provide another example of how geography dictates behavior but in a very different way. The interior of Eurasia is vast, the largest contiguous land mass on planet earth. The area of the Pacific islands is tiny and are separated by vast distances of water. Human populations living in one will show very different behaviors than the other.
These things aren't determined by human will, they are determined by much more fundamental powers that themselves determine human will.
You never clarified how Russians count as steppe people. Somehow you also seem to be unaware both Russians, and Ukrainians, live in cities, work as wage slaves, spend their free time having family gatherings, listening to or making music, watching movies. You know, like the rest of us. Or are you actually imagining them as some barbarian nomadic horde? Are you gonna provide actual analysis of this war or are you gonna keep shitting over the chessboard like a pidgeon, my retarded western friend?
Probably because dousing an area in chemical weapons poses risks to any troops you're planning to send into the area, in addition to all the other propaganda and legal issues.
If you can spot the troops hiding in the forests, thermobarics work better and don't prevent your troops from securing the area.
Will you be doing an article on the current uprising in Iran, with pro-Pahlavi crowds chanting for his return? How will a collapse of the Iranian government and potential replacement with a new pro-Western Shah affect the current course of geopolitics?
Take them with a huge pinch of salt, as I believe they are more Zionists' orchestrated demonstrations and psy-ops than anything else.
Yes, Iran has some problems that its government is trying to take care of, however the Iranian people rallied around their leader, Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, during the 12-day war and Pahlavi's calls for revolution against him fell on deaf ears and failed miserably.
FYI I follow developments in Iran and the wider Middle East quite closely in my substack. Here you can find a collection of my articles on the 12-day war: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/12-day-war
It addresses exactly the issue you are talking about: nothing to worry about. The protesters themselves are pledging allegiance to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
So today there's been another raft of articles about the IRGC fleeing Tehran, local police forces joining the revolt, and Khamanei also being forced to flee. IS there any truth to these?
Just checked all my reliable sources and performed a quick research: I cannot find any report matching yours. On the other hand, I have found these which counter this narrative:
Thank you! It's always a bit suspicious if something suddenly pops up all over social media, but I was also very surprised about how the Assad government in Syria collapsed.
He knows he's not the military expert, and so, whilst certainly contributing his ruble's-worth, he will leave the final decision to his generals - whom he may of course dismiss if they don't do what he wants.
Wonderful article- loved how balanced and well-explained this is. Helps me understand so much more about frontline dynamics and how decisions are being likely made by the General Staff of both sides. You are one of the most prescient geopolitical and military commentators with great command over language - literally every single article enriches the reader. Thank you for your great work, wish you and your family a very happy New Year! May Peace come to the world soon.
There are many surprises to come, if one relates to the lessons of history and the practice of Russians to use sledgehammers to finish off flies. There needs to be a comparison of forces, during the red army's major operations during WW2 operations Uranus and Bagration and the battle at Kursk. Saying the Russians over prepared would be an understatement. The major constraint on Russia ever since 2022 has always been to hold back potential for the possible entry of NATO forces to complicate the Ukraine conflict. So the Russians being pragmatic and Stoic in their outlook could not afford to ignore the possibility. Now with the demonstration of the Oreshnic, being in serial production and deployed that concern becomes less. Europeans, in their billigerence, should consider the Oreshnic is not an ICBM it is intermediate ranged. Thus the intended target is not the US, but possibly every major European city. The times to each target were published a little after the demonstration. The Russians learned from the RAF and USAF campaign in Europe during WW2. Why drive tanks and sacrifice men when today they don't even need to sacrifice pilots.
With that said, I am wishing Simplicuous, one and all a very happy, prosperous and productive 2026 and more than all a return to sanity and a few steps back from the Abyss of extinction.
I have some trouble commenting on or responding to so much imagination. Besides, NATO has never demonstrated anything in military terms, not even against populations from the 14th century. A pack is used to pouncing on those it perceives as weak, not barking at them while retreating.
Then I would suggest not commenting. Seeker gave a rational reason for the actions of Russia. Whether or not you consider NATO a force to be reckoned with or not, he believes the Russians do -- at least to the extent of being able to counter them. After all, if NATO were to attack, Russia has basically one chance to stop it. There are no do-overs. Like you I think NATO is a toothless mongrel, but Russia has access to a lot of information we don't have and isn't willing to risk not being prepared. Regardless of that, though, you were dismissing a reasoned argument (whether you agree with the reasoning or not) with what is basically an insult to the person making it. I don't think it was called for -- not to mention there is no way to know what it was that you considered to be the myth.
I expect the US to bring this war to an end long before mid 26, by withdrawing critical support for what it is coming to realise is a potty gangster regime that is never going to win but which is capable of creating significant globally destabilising escalations, kissing goodbye to Trump's aspirations for the Ignoble Piss Prize.
Laughable really, that the US supports this Ukkie outfit while banging some moral high ground drum over Venezuela.
In the interests of reclaiming the invaluable moral high ground (the value of which is only now being realised as it is everywhere being lost) Ukraine has to go. Righteous self belief was what the western edifice of global control was really built on, not on hard resources, dodgy money and legacy colonial control- despite what the likes of Berletic think. This rediscovery of a Righteous Self Belief must be of the rooted variety that embraces Russia's righteous cause.
Europe, seemingly a lost cause in this regard, will go down with Ukraine unless it has a change of heart. This does not mean turning into a racist hermit kingdom. That arm of the US narrative is going to have to be cut off. It means rediscovering a belief in the narrative of a better future for everyone over whom it holds established governmental control. From that high ground it will get a much better view of what is in the best interests of those people it does not have the right to push around but in whose best interests it can lobby and press for a better future, using the soft power that comes from true righteousness so pithily demonstrated by Mahatma Gandhi so long ago.
Naw. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the "Moral high ground" nonsense was a fabrication built upon hardnosed piracy and theft of resources. Europe never HAD any moral high ground, they had to pretend that Christianity was somehow moral, so they were "Bringing it" to those Brown people who just happened to be sitting on valuable lands and resources.
It was the post WW2 period, based on US Hollywood propaganda, that created this fantasy of 'moral high ground', over their alleged destruction of Germany and its atrocities.
Deep buried were the facts that what Germany did was not even as bad as what the other European powers had done already.
While I agree with you to some extent that it would be NICE if the EU gave up the current trajectory of its latest 'leadership', and went back to protestations of decency and human rights - thereby saving another million of Ukie lives, and potentially countless millions of its own - and that that MIGHT save the EU itself from its current path of implosion, it was rarely anything more than window-dressing and outright hypocrisy.
That's post modernist revisionism. It is a reflection of the trashed unbelief of the twenty-first century alienated class and its glassy eyed followers, neither of whom believe in anything other than content of their own wallets in terms of what it will buy (many have a fixation on cash or gold that is also incorporated into this unbelief system that anything else is unreal too). And this unbelief extends to an unbelief in their leaders. Leadership, government, is atomised. It is what Berletic does. I have argued it when it suited me but it pays to know what you are doing with these arguments- whose interests you are promoting when you sing your song. Nihilism has (by definition) no future.
It is New Year, traditionally a time for hope for peace and so I have posted my own version of that hope..... and the only way of realising it.
It's not revisionism actually - it's the simple fact that the 'leaderships' in Western countries since at least Roman days have been educated to BE nihilists. Power and wealth for its own sake.
Now, if you're talking the plebs, that's another matter. Many of them are fooled by the pretty speeches and ikons, even against their own best interests as often as not.
And I'm not an "unbeliever" at all. Well, I am about the Monotheistic trash that has been imposed on us for 2000 years, but there is a far greater mystery behind it all.
FWIW, much of what is now labelled "Nihilism" is nothing of the sort. Questioning the existence of "Evil" is NOT Nihiliism, it is a valid religious/social/epistemological position. Nor is post-Structuralism "Nihilism", although that is closer.
As I said, I did agree that the EU moving back to its largely empty words of "Human rights and peace" WOULD be a great improvement on the like of what VDL and K(K)K are doing to it - I just think they were largely empty words anyway.
A neutral position is preferable to an active hostile one.
Thoughtful reply, G, which sadly I don't have the time at the moment to debate. It would take some careful dissection! But thanks for it anyway. Happy new year.
Hitler's case, of course, totally destroys your argument.
His own lifestyle was spartan to say the least, whilst the Germany he resurrected from its Weimar depravity and corruption exploded all aroiund him with prosperity and happiness.
But you don't realise that, to answer your question, "Why is he here?" it has always been to expose your hollow nihilism and atheism.
>>His own lifestyle was spartan to say the least, whilst the Germany he resurrected from its Weimar depravity and corruption exploded all aroiund him with prosperity and happiness.<<
It's a frigging lie in every measure one could lay on this period of time.
From the night over the long knife's, to the GESTAPO and the mass murder of the inner german opposition, iclusive the destruction of any political resistance helped and/or engineerd by it's american NAZI admirers and followers (like H. Ford plus many others).
Yep, just because a whole nation gives itself over to racial hatred does not make it righteous! Just because one man filled with mouth spitting hatred for anyone different happened to be kind to animals does not make him righteous either.
The Gestapo were mostly university-educated men - contrast them extremely favourably, then, with Stalin's Cheka.
They were tasked with rooting out what was basically jewish / bolshevik dissent, which if allowed to fester and develop, as it surely would have, would have been a clear and present danger to the security of the state.
So those who entered its halls of residence were fully investigated in accordance with the law, and either sent to the camps, or executed if their activities ( bomb-making, assassination etc ) made that necessary.
"Mass murder of opposition" would have been driven - not that it was such a hysterical event - by the realization that desperate men do desperate things - so "Get them before they get you."
Again, this "political opposition" you speak of would have been either jewish or jewish-financed - remember who declared war on Germany on 24.3 33?
So of course it was suppressed - and rightly so.
Henry Ford, who clearly did so much for the US, had a very powerful realization of what exactly the jewish menace consisted of, and he would have worked well with Hitler.
As to their state of happiness, I will let David Lloyd George, a past Prime Minister of the UK - who was alive at the time, and who visited Germany - have the defining statement.
"I have never seen a happier people than the Germans, so yes, I too say "Heil Hitler".
He is a truly great man."
( From memory. )
Alternatively of course, you could watch Leni Riefenstahl's great movie "Triumph of the Will."
Or, you could consider what implications getting 6 million men back into employment in less than five years might have for a nation.
And notice the venomous hatred that the other European "elites" had for him - and it wasn't the atrocities he committed either, they themselves had done far worse without not a care in the World.
1. I am not a Nihilist.
2. I am not an Atheist.
It will obviously surprise you to learn that there are more religious positions than just Shittianity or Atheism, but hey ho.
Namibia, Genocide and the Second Reich https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1978485/ is a good documentary showing the worst of Nazi practices didn't develop in a vacuum. Concentration camps originated in wars against Boers, used in Namibia, with forced labor, and experiments providing scientific "proof" of racial superiority. I think the documentary mentions colonial veterans joined the Nazi party and brought their racial attitudes and methods to Europe.
Concentration camps should not be confused with extermination camps - which neither existed for the Brits in Africa, nor for the Germans in Europe.
Whatever happened to those Boer women and children happened more for reasons of incompetency than malice - and the Germans needed their inmates to bolster war production, so simple logic ( a commodity in short supply ) says that the last thing they wanted was the disease and death which the "Allies" brought to them with their 24/7 terror bombing campaign.
Any reference to "medical experiments" should always be adduced with proof, rather than assertion - and the only ones who asserted that such things took place were the jews, who incidentally, were the only ones who tattooed anybody - themselves primarily.
"Colonial veterans" will definitely have joined the NSDAP - there was never a "nazi party," but just as in Namibia, they were trying to do a difficult job as well as they could, and the negroids were resentful of them, and so engaged in the sorts of murdering rampages which had to be answered.
As J Wallace Simpson affirms in his work "Which Way Western Man" page 642.
WW2 was entirely about the conflict between the jewish usury-based system, which strangles the entire world, and Germany's realization under Schacht that another system was available, similar to the one the ancient Athenians devised, whereby work - not gold - could underpin a currency.
As for the "camps" question - re read what I said, if you have time.
I diffentiate between different types of camps - I do not assert that they did not exist, as you seem to be implying.
"negroids were resentful of them, and so engaged in the sorts of murdering rampages which had to be answered."
Aren't you talking about Namibia? Last time I looked Namibia was in southern Africa. Africa as in the place Africans live. Their homeland. Why were Germans locking up Namibians in concentration camps in southern Africa. I'd be rampaging too if it was my family getting dispossessed.
They were being educated and given jobs which they would never have had had the Germans not arrived.
As one might say, Africans may well have existed in Namibia - but they didn't have lives.
Why were the Germans locking them up?
Probably because they just woke up one day and decided to do so - either that, or the Africans were starting to do the things they like to do, ie to kill people and steal from them, as they are still doing today in South Africa.
So had you been there at the time, you would have been put in one of their camps too, and rightly so.
"They were being educated and given jobs which they would never have had had the Germans not arrived."
Between 1904 and 1908 nearly all of the Herero and around half the Nama were killed. I guess many survivors were burying people if you can call that a job. You are either incredibly ill-informed or a pathological ethno-supremist.
"Moral high ground" was apparent not in verbosity, but in actions, eg by no means an invasion of others' lands, as the moslems did for unending centuries, but simply the protection of Europe from them.
Slavery was anathematised, when it was embraced and exploited by the moslems and jews - again for centuries.
Christianity of course, is completely moral - I openly challenge you to deny any of its moral rulings - so whereas mohammedanism is simply based upon religious supremacy at the point of a sword, Christianity's morality applies to each and every one, no matter their creed or skin colour.
The "theft of resources" you implicitly attribute to Christian civilizations actually arose after the wholesale takeover of them by jews, which began in earnest after the rising of the Rothschild banking cartel - which was and is avowedly antithetical to Christian values.
And Germany never committed any atrocities - this is why its leaders could not be tried in civilian courts after the war - but only by military courts, which refused to give her leaders the right to speak in their self-defence, such was the certainty of their guilt.
You genuinely don't know how Shittianity was spread, do you Tim? You honestly think that intelligent, decent people gave up their own religion freely to choose this slave-religion?
Fucking hell.
No, it was mainly "Spread by the sword", which is what you have to do when it is the STUPIDEST religion/cult on the block, and all the surrounding religions are at least 2-3000 years older.
Shittianity wouldn't know morality if it bit it on its arse. If the prophet Jesus came back and saw what had been built in his own name - he'd be killed as a "Heretic" (Or indeed in a concentration camp for Jews for that matter).
It's the worst religion extant today. Islam is head and shoulders above it, not that I'd choose to be Islamic either.
Germany committed MANY atrocities - the problem the allies had was that most of them had already done similar, many times over, so they hadn't made any "International Laws" against such crimes.
No way Churchill would have risked his own gross neck just to hang some Germans.
"I expect the US to bring this war to an end long before mid-2026 by withdrawing critical support..." Nothing is impossible. It would seem that Trump has understood that the Europeans will not be able to pay for the weapons the green dwarf is demanding. Moreover, the oil/gas investment agreement has still not come into effect on the European side.
Maybe worth adding that afaik, the US Mid-terms are set for November next. Although that's 11 months off there's a lot of tidying up to do beforehand and some disgruntled Voters to get back aboard the heavily holed and listing good ship USS MAGA. Every month that passes without doing any of the necessary groundwork will only make the task harder and provide the opposition with ammo.
Trump and his team are incompetent in managing affairs. I don't believe in the myth of "Taco, the great real estate businessman"—he still racked up bankruptcies. He likely bought off many key people, decisions, and policies. Besides, one does not degenerate into mediocrity after having been great. Trump has no skill or ability to handle domestic affairs; like all mediocre Western leaders, he retreats to foreign affairs. This will cost him dearly. In the midterms, Republicans will be swept from both chambers, MAGA will have self-destructed, and he will be impeached and dragged before judges (his family’s conflicts of interest are far more significant than Biden’s). Let’s talk about Vance, the Republicans’ Kamala—apart from throwing around words, what’s his actual job? The only Western elected official I recognize who truly serves her voters, the people, is Green. By throwing her mandate in everyone’s face, she made it clear she didn’t need power, illicit millions, or privileges to wipe herself—toilet paper did the job just fine. In my opinion, a Green vs. Vance primary would be juicy, and Vance would likely be the outsider. From this term, we will probably remember the Republican Party’s last words: "Taco killed me."
Just to further clarify your point: you are talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG). Trump threw her under the bus, just as he did and is doing to Thomas Massie, and now to Lauren Boebert with his first veto today of a non-controversial bill that was supported almost unanimously in Congress by both parties. Trump is dumping shit on all real MAGA people, and has become purely MIGA.
The problem is any real change candidate would be dead in the first year. Trump may have had good intentions (or not) but is he foolish enough (or have the guts) to do a JFK?
"Righteous self belief was what the western edifice of global control was really built on"
Really, I thought it was built on violence, more violence and if that didn't work, genocidal violence. Righteous self belief may have allowed them to sleep at night but without the violence I doubt their beliefs would have stayed the universal uprisings. No one likes having their land stolen, being enslaved, raped and murdered.
WION
The period of 1880 to 1920, when the imperial power was at its height, was the most devastating for the population of India. During this time, the death rate increased considerably – from 37.2 deaths per thousand in the 1880s to 44.2 in the 1910s. The life expectancy also plummeted – from 26.7 years to 21.9 years.
An analysis conducted by Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel for Al Jazeera says that between 1891 and 1920, 50 million excess deaths occurred. It further says that the staggering figure is a conservative estimate.
They do like having the thuggee and sati sects suppressed, though, and having nice railways built that they can travel on for free by running along the roof.
In India, of course, all the things you accuse the Brits of doing were returned with a vengeance at the time of the Mutiny.
So it seems that the Indian temperament is no better than the British one - although from our present day experience in the UK relating to Pakistani rape gangs, that's never what Britain was noted for when we lived amongst them.
Not for the Azov NAZI types I hope.
Azov is a Jew loving group. Break your stupid Jew programming and Stop insulting ‘Nazi’
I know of no Western fiat declining 50% this year.
This is correct.
You could as easily say that fiat has declined 50%, as that gold has increased in value by 50%.
Effectively, gold remains stable, and fiats are measured against it.
We will keep working on them, Elena.
For someone who is constantly harping on "the Jews!", you have a huge blind spot about the "gold standard" and how that came about. Basing a nation's currency on a very sparse metal, the value of which is easily controlled by a small group of people in The City of London and NYC, isn't in any way populist. Look into the gold business a little deeper, it has long been a controlled monopoly. It isn't just the little goy prospector hitting it big (hardly ever happens).
Silver has made a strong move recently too. The Swift System is rapidly getting kicked to the curb. Trump's move on Venezuela is an act of desperation.
As I understand it - having used it a couple of times recently - it is simply a money-transfer system.
What is getting kicked to the kerb is the dollar-backed reserve currency system.
the US dollar remains the dominant fiat currency, accounting for 89% of global transactions and holding 57% of global reserves. The money supply has tightened by over 2 trillion dollars but now the Fed has started quantitative easing, pumping about 40 billion a month into the system. Inflation is at 4% tops. Fiat currencies may fall relative to gold but all currencies trade against one another. The US dollar remains king of the hill.
Check this guy out: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/
So, what advice would you give to a retired person with a seven figure dollar amount in savings, currently invested in a diversified portfolio?
Yes, the ruble is at a three-year high against the USD.
1 dollar equals 76 rubles.
Your statement is a non statement and on top of it not true.
4% inflation means nothing without mention the former number.
Statistics is a bitch: it's from->of->at. Let alone that the 4% is a political lie to begin with, it is on itself already a 100% over their self declared goal of 2% (what is stupid to start with anyway).
To let the purchase power fall out of this equation is the top of false information. In the end it only counts what I am able to buy with my money and wages have at best stagnated, in many cases even declined or people have faced mass lay offs.
A 6 figure income today means no longer top class income, it means decent middle class and in some area's not even that anymore.
Denis
I wonder what your sources are regarding U.S. dollar dominance. Google A.I. Overview returns the following which is consistent with my previous understanding of the astonishing trend over the last few years.
I asked for 2024 estimates which admittedly are out of date because of the recently announced plans to move away from the U.S. dollar by some major economies.
..........estimates suggest the dollar was involved in over 50% of cross-border payments (via SWIFT) and held around 58% of official foreign exchange reserves, underscoring its vital role despite growing interest in alternatives from some nations. .....
When I took my international trade finance courses more than a decade ago your numbers were valid. Except the global reserves number was much, much higher then than your seemingly accurate assessment of current global reserves in U.S. dollars. It *used* to be that eighty five percent of global trade was conducted through the U.S. dollar system.
And now even SWIFT itself has recently been made to be suspect. My circumstances are such that I have no choice but to use SWIFT. However, if I had a reliable choice available I would beat feet from SWIFT in a Brussels minute. And that's just me. I wonder what all the smart money guys are thinking right now.
At any rate, operating from the U.S. dollar system I have lost thirty five percent purchasing power while my profits have increased ten percent in the same period. If by dominance you mean I got run over by having to rely on the U.S. dollar system, I guess you are right.
This "King of the Hill"?
https://youtube.com/shorts/1c0sq6C9UvY?si=HEPoW-bFAoRlM3Ln
Too bad the "pig eradication" biz failed. There are still a lot of (war) pigs to be eradicated.
The total value of all of the gold ever mined in the world throughout history is estimated to be about US $30 trillion at the current gold price of $4350/ounce. The US federal debt today is over $38 trillion. National bank gold reserves worldwide are only estimated to be about 17% of the total amount gold, so that would be about $5 trillion in gold in the central banks around the world. Interestingly, about two-thirds of all gold ever mined has been mined since 1950. Data is from the World Gold Council in 2025:
https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/how-much-gold
interesting point, thx.
No real intention other than to provide readers with the actual total value of gold. I'm not an expert trader. I used to be a "goldbug" and somewhat of an Ayn Rand and Greenspan accolyte, but not so much anymore. I would also point out that the total global value of oil production in just one year, 2024, was about $6.1 trillion, which is 20% of the speculatively inflated 2025 value of all gold production in the history of the world. I'm not big on bitcoin either or other "cryptocurrencies". It all just reeks of tulip-bubble speculation.
This debt is not real, though.
Just as the currency lent wasn't real - just conjured out of thin air - so repayment can be done via the same methodology.
Hmmm.....sounds eerily like re-insurance on top of re-insurance piled on top of insurance guaranteeing coverage of Collateralized Debt Obligations. You know, the 2008 crisis when the music stopped and there weren't enough chairs. Then a trickle of people said ....hey, I want my money not something on a computer screen because I have to pay my employees and they need real money in their pocket. Which inevitably turned into a flood.
We still haven't fully recovered. Only now all the Western economies have deliberately doubled down on the illusion at the same time. So they will all crash simultaneously.
Those the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
And fiat currency is complete madness.
How can it be not "real"? There are real creditors that have bought US treasuries.
It cant be real because they haven’t bought anything but squiggles on paper.
No physical wealth has ever changed hands.
I don't disagree with your observations. I wish I could get excited about gold or silver but I'm a dividend investor not a growth investor. Precious metals are the growth game. But you're absolutely right about relative worth of these precious metals vs "goodwill currencies" of "trust my printing press".
That is true only if your only yardstick is the price of precious metals. If your yardstick were the price of oil (and energy is far more important to the functioning of the world than is gold) fiat currencies increased in value. Reality is between those. I don't disagree that overall fiat currency values have decreased, but not by 50%.
You generally know nothing of worth.
The price of gold has increased 80%+, just this year, yet the amount of gold required to buy the average priced house in Sydney has been unchanged since 1960.
That's devaluing of the fiat $AU right there.
Do try and pay attention to the world around you, there's much to be learned.
Wow, you write extremely coherently about money and you also write about sex? I think you and I could talk & interact (wink) 24 hours a day. Seriously I'm teasing but if you're interested in communication outside here please let me know. Best wishes for 2026!
I agree with you, very well said. You are versed in Austrian economics I see. I would make some slight comments to your post though : there is a lot of speculation involved as well, to explain this, certainly for silver. And even though Western fiat currencies have declined in value as you say, that's for sure, it is not 50% I believee, since this is not reflected in comparison with price of other currencies or resources world wide (which are also fiat based or $ pegged, it is true). So I think a lot also of this rise of silver, but in particular of gold, has to be with the tense and unstable moment we are living including the potential AI bubble (i.e. flight to safety).
I would think Russia does have the manpower for a full-fledged offensive, but it's simply not required. This is not WWII and the 'allies' are the ones pressed for time.
Wars of attrition are a bitch. Lucky for the Russians their Chinese allies haven't even made a move yet. As Wang Yi told Kajal Kallas, "we won't let Russia be defeated because we'll be next".
That is the only way they can look at the thing right now. Russia, China, India, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea are traveling in the same boat now and jumping the boat is against their best interest.
What about Odessa? The biggest change in the battlefield came with bombing the port and killing the French contingent. This was a big escalation targeting NATO, no ground troops. BIG explosion there. Energy is what is going to end this war. Ukraine and Europe will freeze and die. France and Germany need natural gas to survive economically, not Macron, the most unpopular leader in the world. Turn your thermostats down to off. With Putin being targeting (a false flag), Russians will take on the Ukrainian government (finally). The war starts when the Kiev airport goes down and no one can fly into Kiev and give them publicity and arms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onRLdAUgWeU
It's an old video or AI. He mentions Scholz, who was Bundeskanzler before Friederich Merz, who was voted in in May of this year. Since he's talking about winter conditions, the video must be at least a year old.
If Amazon can enforce the identification of AI produced content there so can we on this forum. It is AI.
JimG. You should have pointed out that the video is an AI generated item and does not reflect the realities on the ground. John Mearsheimer is an excellent political scientist but the content of this video does not stand against the facts. The level of Western dependence on Russian fossil fuels was already reduced to the point where further limits of imports will not cause widespread civilizational, economic collapse. The self-inflicted damage in Western Europe is already major and is displayed in the failing productivity levels of the major industrial nations there. They are presently trying to gear up their military hardware production to the point where they can successfully pressure or cut up Russia and exploit natural resources there. And they do have a problem, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Their second major issue is to convince their own people to go and die for the most degenerated upper classes this planet ever experienced in its long history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onRLdAUgWeU
He may have posted the video rather innocently. You need to have some background knowledge to spot discrepancies. Had the video been info on military tactic without dates or location, I'd have been a 'babe in the woods'.
100%
Russia needs to increase the pressure (and pain) on the EU and American support. They won't stop until they feel enough pain that makes them doubt their efforts.
There has been very little cost (other than money, which western countries just print as needed) to the west in Ukraine.
Of course european rulers and their policies are unpopular? So what? The rulers' orders get carried out, just the same.
It's not the same. There's a significant difference between a leader with popular support and one without.
Not really, if popular support mattered, every european leader's head would be on a stick.
Instead, they sleep soundly in their beds, after days spent swanning from star-studded conference to high profile event, secure from the peons that they lord it over.
‘Ukraine and Europe will freeze and die. France and Germany need natural gas to survive economically, not Macron, the most unpopular leader in the world.’
As far as Macron freezing and dying, I have no plans to stop him from the act. On the other hand it is not going to happen to the majority of the European population.
ABC
now just imagine how dumb or hard headed one has to be
not to understand what Chinese are going to do,
not to understand diplomatic language
but has to be told publicly
Quite. The attrition of the counter force is vital. Move forward too fast and you make yourself an easy target for a surviving defence.
Kupyansk, the real story as opposed to the false narrative, demonstrated just how you work this, drawing in an elite Ukraine fighting force and then eliminating it, although Russia had to swallow a lot of Ukrainian posturing and chest thumping while the Ukkies (yet again, yawn) marched into the trap.
They are driven by the Green Goblin’s conviction that optics are reality and pretending is actually doing(the only kind of “doing” a D grade actor would understand ).
General 404 (“there was no where to retreat to” - Duh because he left it to late) just follows the actor’s instructions like any Zionist lickspittle , with zero regard for the lives of his troops.
Kupyansk has been given the Goblin’s kiss of death, aka a selfie on the outskirts, as he has done many times previously in places now far , far behind the Russian front line.
It was noted that when he went to Florida to kiss Trump’s ring , not a single US official met him at the airport. Zaluzhny (aka Quinn the Eskimo for Dylan fans) is returning from his triumphant tour of London to his Azov buddies.
Doubt the Goblin will make it to Israel unless he leaves very soon in the dead of night.
Indeed.
General 404 is doing his job, butcher.
Z-boy makes it to Israel just in time for an Iranian thunder rod. Karma.
"Kupyansk, the real story"
Where do we find that?
In about a month almost anywhere
Probably more like Kursk. Russia was not happy about the incursion, but in the end the Ukrainians trapped themselves.
Kursk (and Kupiansk) did exactly what they were intended to do - shift the narrative from Ukrainian defeat to Russian incompetence.
And yet the Russian military machine moves on -- and the Ukrainian force is just bled that much more. I don't think the Russians care very much that you see it as their incompetence.
That narrative keeps the money and weapons flowing, which is what Ukraine needs to keep the war going.
Meanwhile, at the pace the Russian military machine is moving, the war may end as soon as 2078. Even Simplicus doesn't seem to be predicting the collapse that were are constantly assured is coming, any day now, just like The Great Pumpkin.
The biggest change is the reduction in equipment and funding going to Ukraine. They desperately needed the frozen funds but that battle just split the EU. Without military hardware the Ukrainians are toast. Did you see the Geran production/interception chart?That says it all.
Russians know they did the heavy lifting in WWII. Of course the U.S. helped. Akin to making a great cup of coffee for Russian troops. Peripheral, sometimes important.
Still, the truth is deliberately opaque in the records, but FDR's sacrifice of American sailors in Pearl Harbor, for an excuse to enter the war, is slowly seeping out of the cracks.
Imagine a country, a so-called Empire, built nearly entirely on Mythology.
Holding the moral hi ground is a propagandist's wet dream. They have rarely had the media power of the last 30 years. Or the captured audiences.
Witness the frenzy over the call of duty guy! Oh what a tragedy, guy singlehandedly addicts numerous generations to pointless pursuit. Yet comes out the unabashed hero, for dying wealthy without a reset button to push?
The info was always there but Americans ignore it and fall for narratives
While I think the battlefield prognostications are interesting, the political situation/developments will probably be more decisive in terms of what happens in Ukraine.
There is a real danger that false flags, dirty bombs, antics at nuclear power plants and other bad behavior by Ukraine, EU or other bad actors take this war in a different direction.
I believe time is of the essence for Russia to accomplish its goals. A cornered rat(s) is very dangerous.
Time is of the essence, but one should read the times correctly.
There is no need to rush offensives,
enemy will concede defeat when everything has been tried, everything, and only then.
Russia has to confront all Britain can muster, all US can supply, all Germany can pay.
Russia should use the rules of the proxy war game, established unofficially, to its maximal advantage.
Rules are simple
no nuclear war,
no one is ready for nuclear war, not US, not France, perhaps Britain if nuclear war could somehow be contained just to Ukraine and Russia and neighbouring European states...
no foreign armies in Ukraine
European citizens can be manipulated into supporting war with their money, it would be much harder to make them support war with the lives of their soldiers.
The problem with the slow approach is one has to pay the price of Ukraine hitting inside Russia
No offensive is needed on battlefield, just slow grinding progress, and offensive in doubling, tripling, quadrupling attacks on infrastructure
There are winners in war, a small elite who take their profits from both side's suffering.
The problem with Nukes? Even if you survive, you have a constant reminder, God that was a dumb thing to do!
The idea that the world's problems will go away if the right country wins a war is fantasy. Russia's approach has always been admirable to me.
Sure they'll fight, but it's our choice. They signed peace deals, kept their side of the deal. But hate is closer to love, than indifference.
Haters have no fall back position, except outright defeat, or so it seems. Russia has had to fight, a lot, so they will. With the wisdom that indifference manifests.
I don't think that the Russian leadership has the stomach for an actual offensive.
Who does? Did you see how the Ukrainians were mauled in Zaporozhye? That was the best NATO could come up with. Remember Milley pushed for settlement after that bloodbath. No one listened, he quit.
"There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they're going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night". That Milley? I'm so glad the cretin retired.
Not really. What we saw in Zaporozhe was no air cover, no Combined Air Land Battle.
Never a dull moment these days. Looking forward to you continuing work in 2026. Thanks Simplicius 🙏
Why did the US perform a calibrated retreat from its proxy conflict in Russia?
The American war machine has over-reached its position globally without the means of adequately enforcing its hegemony against a peer power like Russia. No matter how many billions go to its war machine, the US cannot obtain the material resources needed to conduct a lengthy campaign. Trump knows it. But the US can exert its might against a smaller nation on the cheap without exhausting its war material.
Here's the problem:
Although the US has a formidable combined military capability, it is constrained by the lack of minerals necessary for any type of prolonged conflict. In fact, the US has practically no minerals whatsoever that are needed to re supply and operate its combined air, army, and naval forces.
Looking at this further:
China is the world's largest producer of metals. It's refusing to send any war minerals to the US like tungsten, antimony, Galium, bismuth, and germanium. Without such materials The US can't produce bombs that explode and bullets that fire without antimony, tanks that protect with tungsten,and essentials for its F-35, like infrared targeting and night vision without germanium. It will take many years before the US can produce these critical metals. So, China, to an extent, controls the US's ability to conduct war. lol
So what does that mean?
It means that China has the US on a leash militarily, preventing it from being all it can be, no matter how many billions it spends on its combined forces. So I think all Trump can do is thump his chest like the baboon that he is to give the illusion of might, but in reality, it's just theatrics. China holds Trump by the marbles and can squeeze at will.
Next in reply is Europe.
Europe is in deep, deep trouble. On top of the silver fiasco its banks have over-shorted. It wastes billions to finance Coke head Zelensky's lost war with Russia.
It wastes billions to rebuild an army without critical war materials like Antimony and Tungsten.
Europe will need to fight with bows and arrows and Molotov cocktails.
Oh wait, Europe has no oil to spare. Maybe it can ask Russia to spare it a few barrels. lol
Europe will waste billions to train LBGTQ or alphabet warriors supplied with rainbow bean bags to throw at the nasty Ruskies. Europe could also try to train its immigrants, who more likely would run for cover at the sound of the first artillery volley and run back to terrorize European cities.
Yep, Europe will spend billions to train unwilling combatants to fight without modern weapons and transportation for shortages of material. They'll have to go in Napoleonic style with horse, buggy, and sword, the good old-fashioned way.
Europe has been too pussyfied. Even Macron's husband beats the hell out of him in public, and I bet he likes it that way. Now off to war, Europeans in your rainbow uniforms.
You can't make this up, folks.
'Europe will need to fight with bows and arrows and Molotov cocktails.'
Are you sure the Russians have no patent on those cocktails?
Molotov cocktails? Impossible, Russia would never give permission. Besides, the launchers would risk catching fire.
European strategy since 1917 has been simple - get Americans to do their fighting for them.
You're right. Trump is one dumb bunny, but those who came before him were even dumber bunnies. Perhaps they have learned their lesson, if not the Chinese will have a hard time teaching them.
"They'll have to go in Napoleonic style with horse, buggy, and sword, the good old-fashioned way."
Napolean claimed that armies marched with their (full) bellies. True.
But he didn't mention they were called FOOT soldiers and that wasn't by accident. Imagine marching on foot from Paris to Moscow. That...was the old-fashioned way.
THAT. Is very, very dark humor.
I know the weight of carrying every tragedy, great and small, knowing that man/woman can only try to be more cruel than Mother Nature.
Why do I know? Because I sleep beside such a sufferer, every night. Often, with one eye open.
Why did the United States proceed with a measured withdrawal from its proxy war in Russia?
The alarm has been sounded for the Caribbean fleet. It's going to have to come home; the aircraft carrier is about to exceed its maintenance deadline, it costs a fortune to maintain, the sailors want to go home—what a fleet! One month at sea and they're crying for their mothers.
Trump is a useful idiot like Joe and "coffee fetcher", Kamala. Does anyone believe that this galoot ever spent ten minutes reading about the two big wars of the last century? That to this day he could locate Ukraine on a map? The Neo-con-Zionist money minders and war pigs do the heavy lifting and Don is only hauled out to read the teleprompter, bloviate and polish his bigly ego. (isn't it about time to rename the Mississippi River?!) Watch his fake smile and deferential body language when Bibi is in town to talk about "what's next". I'm sure the Not-Lutherans have some wonderful video footage of short-eyed Don, partying with the kids. Meanwhile, the Euro-tards, cruising for a bruising, exclaim, "tis but a flesh wound."
👌👍🤣
Good one Oconomowoc guy! I once fished at Lac La Belle. Love this song!....
https://youtu.be/Ljw28HBNlL4?si=JWh2bEWrYRB_I9dn
Zion don knows nothing but what his Jew masters tell him.
Isn't that ironic? The US campaigns nonstop against China, after/while letting China control supply chains the US needs to wage war.
Clown world - we are led by warpig incompetents.
Sullivan, Nuland, and Power were all clearly sociopaths. Blinken was a fool of the first order. I've never been sure what to make of Biden. Maybe half sociopath and half fool. Trump, I believe, is not a sociopath. I would also venture that he is at least capable of learning from his mistakes.
Hubris has replaced competence it seems.
Words of wisdom...
“People of privilege will always risk complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” ~~John Kenneth Galbraith~~
"Once subversion succeeds, even exposure of the truth can’t reverse preconditioned belief systems, as groupthink rejects facts that contradict their programmed worldview." ~~Yuri Bezmenov~~
"Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the Earth.”~~Rachel Carson~~
'During our effort to classify Earth’s flora and fauna, we realized that humanity’s self-classification is false, for all true mammals develop ecological stasis or become extinct. Yet, humanity is the sole exception to the rule of natural selection. When you migrate to an area, you rapidly multiply beyond the Earth’s carrying capacity and consume until every natural resource is exhausted. Your survival depends upon metastasizing the human contagion to new, unspoiled environs. Another pathological organism follows a uniquely similar destructive pattern - cancer. '
'Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us.'
'Beware the beast Man. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, lust, and greed. Shun him: If he is permitted to breed in great numbers, he shall make a desert of his home and yours. For Man hath becometh death, the great destroyer of worlds.'
These are generalisations applicable in our times more to the degenerate and collapsing West, it’s “leadership” and the privileged sections of the klepto/kakistocracies.
As one culture collapses, others arise and hasten the demise, as human history graphically illustrates.
The climate hoax is part of the cycle of intellectual self destruction by western “elites” ( a term which merely designates those with money and an ephemeral and “democratic “ “authority “.)
A new cycle appears to be beginning, despair and despondency are pointless and in any event based on our very limited perspective. As T.S. Eliot wrote : “ Humankind cannot bear very much reality” and reality has its own rhythms of which humanity is but a small part.
Happy new year.
👏
You start well but the Malthusian, millenarian, Club of Rome limits to growth, carrying capacity, humans are cancer stuff shows you are well programmed. I doubt you can be helped.
Malthus wasn't very good at math and had no concept of the many humans that solved problems instead of creating problems.
Malthus didn't foresee what technology could do to kick the can down the road for so long. But he is still right in concept. There are hard limits to forever growth. Continuous and relentless "growth" forever is what the western economic system is based on. And forever-growth is a mathematical and physical impossibility. No matter how much Ayn Rand one has read, resources are indeed finite, and infinite growth of population and economy are physically impossible.
Not to quibble and seem argumentative:
But, Malthus was born in and died during the British Industrial Revolution. It would have been hard to remain ignorant of the Specialization of Labor and the practical application of Economies of Scale in Malthus's own home.
Further, when there is nothing to do in the evenings in old England, then rolling the old girl over becomes the only pleasurable activity. Heck, most people couldn't even read. For more than a century there have been evening alternatives, books, radio, TV, now the Internet.
That Malthus could not see this future, begs the question, why did Malthus try predicting the future then? After all, He wasn't writing about Econ History. Searching in your own "Book of Comfort" to confirm your preconceived prophesies is common, true, but Malthus was writing about the exponential growth of population while Presuming food supplies would/could only grow linearly. Notwithstanding his faulty presumptions and allowing for the fact that you can grow linearly and exceed exponential growth, depending on starting conditions and the formulas, that you use, Malthus helped get Economics the tag of Dreary.
So that is hard to forgive. Especially now that we have Modern Monetary Theory, harmless inflation, exponential division of the classes and rewards for parasites and skimmers that exceed the profits of Buccaneers. Heck. There is no economic problem whatsoever that can't be solved by a Central Bank and a determined Government that keeps its nose to the stone and gets that spending done, good and hard.
So can we agree that Normative Economics isn't normal?
Thank you for providing a cogent and well-developed reply. Have you come across the work of Professor Al Bartlett from the University of Colorado and his seminal lecture "Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101", and statement "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
Solve the Jew problem.
The comparison of October 7th (ignoring the invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque) as a Jewish "Pearl Harbor" is being promoted as "Justification" for killing all Gazans (like the fire-bombing and nuking of Japan).
Aside from the not-so-clever LIE, the Historical ignorance is stomach-churning.
capped from MoA:
Venezuela betrayed by Russia so many times. Written in 2015.
Clueless Russia never supported Venezuela under President Chaves who had offered a military base near USA, but Russia was too arrogant and thought of herself as ally of west and back stabbed Chavez.
All the troubles that Russia has faced in last ten years would have been impossible if Russia had done to allies what was promised. Delivering Paid up S300 to Iran and Syria, supply of major heavy arms to Venezuela, vetoing western excuse to bomb Libya etc .then west would have been restrained and Anglos would not have dared attack Russia economically and now directly through NATO . Russian treachery invited attack on herself.
Russia is eating its own medicine, and methodically killing its own Slavic brethren, coincidentally making it a ritual of weekly social media gatherings with the royal criminal lynch pin seated at the round table. Who almost got taken out before orthodox Xmas, but there is always a next time.
Thrashing out at its helpless neighbour with greater fury, destroying, massacring millions, while the real instigator walks away. only to return, behind a great wall, the great cowardly leader dare not cross, should NATO's red line reciprocate destruction for all. What a great saviour... (sarc)
So you're saying Russia avoided another Cuban missile crisis in Venezuela. Perhaps you're unaware how the 3rd submarine commander prevented a global nuclear holocaust during that standoff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov
"Nations do not have permanent allies, only permanent interests".
In the western model of thinking that's true. But the West now stops being the force that no one can withstand. There is more to humanity than western (especially 'liberal') thinking.
It's in the interest of all to abandon the terrible school of individualism since cooperation and social cohesion is only what has humanity brought this far. 500 years of colonialism and western exploitation of humanity must end now. And 'times they're changing' as Bob Dylan knew already back then.
BRICS+, SOC and Belt & Road are the future and all attempts to refuse this truth are futile.
You can build a free society on individuals who choose to work together - and inevitably have a troublemaking minority who will try to game the system. or you can build on hierarchy (The right), or communalism (the left) to build that society, and inevitably end up with authoritarian dictatorships to 'deal' with that minority.
There's no absolute right and wrong system, because circumstances change.
Personally, I prefer to live in a liberal, even if semi/quarter democracy, with lawful human rights, rule of Law, and restrictions on what the gummint/corporations can get away with.
We've already been there and agreed to disagree, my friend ;-)
For me it's the Chinese model that will win in the long run.
To implement it with regard to the individual, cultural and historical special circumstances of the countries that will try to do so, will be an art that one would have to learn first.
As long as corruption can be banned and accountability is not an empty phrase, I have high hopes that especially the 'southern world' will adopt the Chinese model rather soon.
The West will hold on to it's distorted picture of human nature but as we can see already, the communist leadership in China beats the West in 58 out of 64 crucial developments for the future already.
Putin returning to the Sovjet-model of state industrial hegemony of the most crucial key industry is becoming more clear as well.
Socialism and communism were burned words after 1990 but now we see that a vital and prosperous model of this form of society marks the return of the idea and ideals of this kind of society as a wish to many people.
Agree!
I think specifically communism never had a chance because of the relentless attacks after the October revolution and the aftermath. Primarily by those that profited hugely from other political ideologies like capitalism and democracies and never wanted to give up there wealthy positions. The rich vs the rest.
Sure, as soon as you get get people to stop being, well, people. I think Gnueno described it well. You and I have discussed this before and I believe you have a rather idealistic view of the Chinese government. They do seem to be in the ascendency -- at the moment. As was the US for a while, Britain before that, Spain before that, Rome before that (yeah, I left out a few).... Al Stewart (British songwriter, best known for Year of the Cat) put it well in his song "Russians and Americans". “Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.” (yeah, not a new concept, I just like his turn of phrase -- it is a really great song released in 1984 in the depths of the cold war).
Set aside the emotion and you will find Crony Capitalism (our current model) and "market" Communism are precisely the same thing.
A few at the top are unbelievably wealthy/enriched, while the rest scurry around under byzantine rules, where the winning hand, especially legally, requires great wealth.
But...you are free to think you are free.
There is simply no empiric evidence of what you are saying. No political leader in a socialist country ever has gotten to a point where they enriched themself to great wealth. The society would simply not have accepted that. After the Berlin wall fell, people went to the 'Politburo-enclave' in Wandtlitz by Berlin to see how rich those families lived. Many were disappointed because every bookkeeper or dentist or engineer in West- Germany would have a nicer and bigger house than the 'communist leaders' had. "Market communism" is also a non starter to begin with since there is nothing wrong with markets and markets are not system bound or an ideological issue. Markets are as old as humans decided to share labour and have specialties. Slave markets are also markets and cooperatives also sell their products on markets.
The problem is that markets need strong regulations, even in socialism and preferably by the state since in the 'free world' people are free to monopolize and dominate markets, what leads to impoverishing all the people that are forced to buy on those markets.
Economics follows laws, laws that are ingrained in the economic system that is made by men. Those are not natural laws, they are made and they can be changed.
>>Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.<<
So be my guest and celebrate what ever freedom you think you have.
The Chinese are also mastering the art of individualism - it's why their grip on power is still so strong. Where they differ from current Western models is that they don't identify "Unrestricted wealth" as an individual 'right'.
And they've also kept Finance on a close rein, with the backbone banking systems directly owned or controlled by the State.
Which, if you recall, I said I consider a good thing. :)
The current 'Western Model' - especially with neofuckingliberalism (Which, like neofuckingconservatism, took a small part of the ideology it claims in the name, and then directly oppose the rest and best of the ideology) - is designed to recreate Feudalism from our capitalist system (The two are directly opposed, as it happens).
The Chinese leadership are smart enough to want to avoid that fate. And while many Chinese just as Westerners would fall without a murmur into that abyss, the State is run by the best of the best over there.
There is very little ACTUAL difference between all of these ideologies - it's the small things in practice that make the big difference.
A Western liberal democracy could also have the national exam system to join the civil service (And get rid of the Party structure, which was NOT part of the original Democracy btw), could also nationalise the banking systems, could also direct investment. Could also execute/imprison/re-educate those private citizens who get too wealthy and big for their boots.
It's not the underlying ideology - it's the will of the ruling classes to do those things.
China will inevitably continue to become more actual Liberal, same as Russia. And unless we do something rather dramatic soon, our technofeudal slavery future will be locked in.
All the isms in the world, China, the USSR or whatever system a country adopts is far less consequential than their ability to ensure wealth generated within their country is efficiency recycled to increase the productivity, prosperity and wellbeing of the country - as a whole. Ideology is often just a shield against the all to often pillaging by outside powers. The big ism: Imperialism.
Today it's rebranded as neo-liberal free trade. Nothing to do with freedom, more to do with trans-national capital feeding freely on the carcasses of countries unable to protect their own interests.
Well said and absolutely true, thank you. Happy new year!
Nail on the Head.
I mostly agree with you -- especially your final paragraph. My only quibble is that if the troublemaking minority can't warp government to its own ends (a problem in a democracy when the takers start to outnumber the workers) you may not inevitably end up with the authoritarian dictatorship. The framers of the US Constitution tried to ensure that, but chip by chip the protections have been dismantled. So maybe it is inevitable after all....
"The Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots" - or whatever the direct quote was. :)
Problems always arise when the hoi polloi trust the powerful to look after their best interest.
It always ends in tears.
Most, if not all, Western "Democracies" quickly grab the spiked club when there is any whiff of loss of power. Even asking questions is Verboten.
Every Decent Idea for the organization of humanity into productive, respectful groups gets introduced to Division by those who survive and thrive from Division.
And the Intoxication of Stupid Names (concocted by the Dividers) is vomit-inducing.
BRICS is basically a glorified dorm room bull session.
Thank goodness the US knows how to over take adversaries by the whim of their own interests. More evidence the Russians are powerless fools, Atleast Iran was intelligent enough to keep them at bay.
It was Iran that didn't sign the military agreement with Russia, which the Duma had approved. Didn't Assad reject Russian assistance to reform the Syrian army? Then rejected Iranian troops to help in Syria?
Do you have a link for the S300s? All I can find is
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2016-11/news-briefs/russia-completes-s-300-delivery-iran
and
https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/venezuela-deploys-s-300vm-air-defense-missile-a-major-threat-to-u-s-fighter-jets-and-missiles
Not to mention that Russia in 2015 had not yet properly recovered, its army still in tatters, arsenals being rebuilt, etc. and had emerged from the Chechnya conflict.
Sounds like an armchair general to me. We should have put Sandra Bullock in power as she had the wish of world piece already in 2000. Yes, miss Congeniality.
Just imagine how the world would look like today… for sure we wouldn’t be gathered here to exchange comments on the situation of Venezuela (or on one of the other many conflicts).
A pipe dream. We humans are incapable of living in peace. I think because we allow a small section of humans to acquire huge powers and because we are not made for the society we live in.
"A pipe dream. We humans are incapable of living in peace..."
Tuchman's account of Europe, back in the day, was so depressing that I actually put the book down about half way through. Could not read any more. The big difference between then and now is we've 'improved' on the pike and longbow and there's less horseshit in the streets. Otherwise, it's the same old, same old...working overtime in the abattoir.
"A Distant Mirror
Book by Barbara W. Tuchman
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning history that examines the chaos, contradictions, and daily life of 14th-century Europe, focusing on events like the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, and the Papal Schism through the life of French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy. The book contrasts the era's chivalric ideals with its brutal realities, covering political, social, and religious turmoil from the perspective of all classes, from peasants to popes."
Occam approves of this message ;)
Lololol! MoA sucks now. People.are deleted unless they are Trump worshippers. It has become disgusting.
Happy New Years to Simplicius (the mystery man) - keep up the great work.
I still maintain the mystery man Simplicius is Canadian, but that doesn't tell you much.
Projections, predictions or wishful thinking is all ok the last Day off the year.
Hopefully the year 2026 will bring an end to at least the War in Ukraine.
Excellent work Simplicius!
Here is my thinking about it:
1. The logical projections presented by Simplicius is hard to argue against. Russia is creeping forward and destroying AFU bit by bit. Zaporozhye and Kramatorsk are obvious targets because they are essential for the ”liberations” of the Oblast that Russia sees as their own now.
It would be, for me, a big dissatisfaction if the War plays out like this during 2026 and goes beyond 2027. So many good men dead, so much destruction, so many irreparable wounds, scars, traumas and hatred. I hope 2026 is the last year.
2. It is interesteing to see Putins conferences, obviously for the public and the optics in Russian media. I think he is well informed but would be surprised if he made the mistake to start micro-managing the conduct of the War. In other occasions he has declared that the Military is solving the problems Politics cant. I cant help to feel that both sides seems really tired. Four years of War should have strained even Russians built with concrete. I cant imagine how the soldiers at the front are feeling. If Russia indeed is rotating their soldiers and the contracts are ended there is hope tht those men will survive the War. As for the ukrainians there is no hope and History tell us how german soldiers were hollowed out during WW2.
3. Some people argue that this War is not over territory - it is just a War of attrition. I hope we will see an end of this type of argumentation during 2026. The conduct of the War on the ground and the ”peace” talks has all shown that Territorial gains and losses is all that matters.
All Wars are won or lost because of attrition but the attrition itself is caused by enemy movements, encirklements and straining the front lines (besides the constant destruction of logistic, energy and communications). Simplicius notes of what the effects will be if Zaporozhye and/or Kramatorsk falls emphasizes those facts.
4. Cant help wishing/dreading for Black Swan events during 2026.
One can say that History moves on in its logical ways irrespective of Sudden events that no one counted on. This War has seen innumerable unimaginable events/actions but the War tugs on.
Could be that the slow pace makes us accustomed to every new event we witness.
I expect us to experience unprecedented events in 2026 such as assasination of leaders, bombing of Capitals outside Ukraine, another crazy round in Mid-East, usages of new weapons and sudden collapses of societys with riots&chaos.
Thx, all and especially to Simplicius for his good work. Happy New Year.
Peace is impossible for years. Ukrainians are tough like Russians and will fight to last man woman and child. Then neither side wants to compromise and pursues maximalist objectives.
Europe/US will fail before Ukraine probably. Then Ukraine can fall w/o supports.
That was a nice, early Christmas present for Humanity.
It is a nice Christmas present, but public opinion doesn't matter.
And yet above you said that the Ukrainian incursions were important at shifting the narrative to Russian incompetence. Public opinion only matters when you want it to?
The public has nothing to do with it.Rather, the narrative is for elite consumption.
That assumes that the elites are stupid and can't see through the ruse. I doubt that is the case. Perhaps it is to give the elites something to manipulate public opinion with. If true, it would mean that public opinion did matter. Perhaps not a deciding factor, but a factor.
I think you have to look at the public acceptance for the need to negotiate, even on unfavourable terms, and as I recall, something like 60% of Ukie civilians are willing to do this now - especially as an increasing percentage of the respondents will now be female, and females are always more "agreeable" than men.
Contrariwise in Russia, negotiation is not even considered.
The two questions are not phrased correctly, as either / or.
If they were, the percentage wanting peace at the price of withdrawal from Donbass would be far higher than the percentage wanting peace only if there were no withdrawal.
It's called gaslighting, and Z is very good at it.
It's always the bit that's not accurate that you have to worry about.
Axtually, women tend to be the diehards, the ones demanding war to the bitter end.
Anyway, nobody cares what the Ukrainian public thinks or wants.
"Axtually, women tend to be the diehards, the ones demanding war to the bitter end. "
What data do you base your assertion on?
Got any data stating otherwise?
You made the assertion, it is not up to him to prove you wrong since you did not provide anything to back it up. I'm actually inclined to agree with you, but that isn't the point.
Unfortunately. My uni classmate's hubby is a career military who says "enough," but she demands to continue as most women with no sons!
I very much appreciate and respect your analysis and on top of that I wish *emphatically * for Black Swan Russian - positive events such as New "Ultra Oreshnik", "Burevesrnk Plus Massive Swarms", and "Ukraine End Game Amageddon" like destruction of the Verkovna Rada, Zelensky and all of his followers and supporters, with Russia making the calculation that massive application of new battlefield technologies will "wipe out" anyone to negotiate with. And if this happens due to the Kremlin being sick of the war, they will also send a message that their patience has run out and that one bomb, one little stupid thing by Europe against Russia will result in flattening of all European military facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. Enough is enough, it's a war that's now getting close to the length of WWII (1939-1945). If the Russians are still able to justify being far more patient then this war will extend into 2027-2028. God I hope not. Everyone from the combatants to the spectators is exhausted with the day to day snails pace of the war and even though it has been done for the most sensitive and effective reasons, can the public systems of Europe and Ukriane last ? I don't think Europe will last to 2028 if this war escalates into that time period - an insane Black Swan event will trigger a NATO (sans USA) RUSSIA limited nuclear war the like of which we have never seen and will be a new lesson for humanity. Europe will disappear from the geopolitical map of humanity, never again to be able to cause trouble, and maybe just starve to death. On one very bad day the whole thing could be all over (no more endless cold war between the West and Russia) and Australia, North and South America, Africa, Asia will survive but Europe will not. I hope I am utterly wrong in this fear. God bless eveyone for 2026.
You hammered down the Nail perfectly. Enough is enough. Best wishes for 2026!
This would require an audacity and decisiveness that the Russian leadership has entirely lacked so far.
Thank god for that!
No, we wouldn't want Russia to actually take the war seriously.
I'm glad you agree.
Russia policy on the war is tightly controlled by Putin who is reticent to embark on an aggressive American style war. Remember he wants to win, unlike America who loses every war. And yet because they control the media, manage to convince the people the US are not utter losers. This is partially result of the lack of education ans brainwashing of the American population.
The Americans have gotten what they wanted from their wars. Russia is further from its goals than it was in 2022.
Reasonable analysis good Sir... Chip
A lot of wishful thinking here on this site.
Its allowed you know. Presenting wishes as facts or destiny is another matter.
My wishes for 2026 is that more people discuss the topics presented by Simplicius instead of deflecting into other matters.
I’m wondering if ‘26 will be the first time a world leader is assassinated by a drone. It’s just a matter of time
You can guarantee that if anybody does it, it will be the jews.
How long will the war last? It has been going on for 200+ years as Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out.
https://www.cirsd.org/en/news/european-russophobia-and-europes-rejection-of-peace-a-two-century-failure
No reason to think it won't continue in one form or another for centuries more.
Jeff didn't come off very well in a discussion with John Mearsheimer I watched a few weeks ago - he also has a completely disingenuous belief - or apparent belief - that "the Brits" are behind everything bad that happens in the world, despite the fact that Britain has been ruled by his co religionists for at least the last 225 years.
He's an American and probably knows American history quite well, so ofc the British are seen as the biggest troublemakers. In fact he probably knows quite a bit of European history also, so ofc the British are seen as the biggest troublemakers. The problem stems from who wrote the history books.
He's not an American, he's a jew.
BIG difference.
Maybe he doesn't know about the "troublemaking" the Brits did when they largely helped to ensure that the entirety of Europe wasn't overrun by Napoleon?
Or Europe by his bete noir, the "nazis"?
What kind of "historian" is this man, then?
Now I have the same history books to read as anybody else has available - the difference is, I don't believe everything I'm told by them, as he clearly does.
BTW, if you are jewish, you will always try to deflect blame onto the British, who only wanted a small increase in the tax paid on a beverage you don't even drink, rather than seeing the real culprit behind the war, which was the jewish Rothschild bankers from Europe who wanted America's taxes to flow to them as interest on loans given, rather than to the King in England.
The professor is a practised dissembler, as they all are.
Well, good on Jeffrey Sachs for pushing back the boundaries of this West - East war to the 19th century, but those who care to learn know we can go a lot further back than that.
Today there are war bands from the Pontic steppes pushing westwards into the Pripet marshlands. That's proto-Indo-European era stuff. It's like a Hollywood movie, in that it's a sequel of a sequel of a reboot of a sequel.
In case anyone thinks that's a stupid point to make, I can point to warriors in this particular fight literally worshipping Perun, the Slavic War & Thunder God, and inscribing mystic runes on their weapons and armor.
The past isn't dead, it isn't even past.
Completely irrelevant history. Unless your point is that "war isn't new".
The steppe is no longer the steppe, but highly productive farmland. The Russians aren't bands of shepherd-warriors roaming wild pastures but a settled, farming, industrialized society whose standards of life are practically the same as that of westerners, outside of Govnogorsk, northern Yakutia.
The Russian Army doesn't consist of elite settlers taking over a network of depopulated farming villages after a massive plague, they're a professional army conquering new territories while attempting to weaken and delegitimize their rivals and beat their rivals' proxy into forced neutrality. Think Rome instead of Pecheneg raiders.
You could just as well have considered Saddam the modern king of Uruk defending himself from the evil Gutians. And it would've sounded idiotic, since the only thing the two situations had in common was conflict and geographical area.
And a couple of nazi LARPers worshiping a dead god means nothing when 99.99% of the army either carries the flags of Peter the Great, Nevsky or Stalin.
Of course it isn't irrelevant history.
This isn't about any specific event or even a bunch of unconnected events. It's about repeating patterns of behavior revealing fundamental underlying structures.
Nobody is expecting Genghis Khan to rise from the dead and another Golden Horde of horsemen to attack Europe. Once an event has happened it can never happen again, but the fundamental forces that propel those events are still in full effect, so they can create very similar events.
Technology has not abolished geography or the human condition.
Where is a great empire more likely to arise, in the interior of Eurasia or the Pacific islands?
Soldiers currently carrying the images of long dead heroes and the symbols of ancient faiths rather proves MY point not yours. Why do men continue to do that when they are clearly physically non-functional?
The human condition has not be abolished.
On the geopolitics side of this question, I can highly recommend,
"The Geographical Pivot of History" (1904) by Halford Mackinder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_History
Long story short, if you don't think history is relevant, you're doomed.
But there are no repeating patterns. Steppe confederations expanded into Europe a) because they were pushed by other steppe confederations to their east, the whole movement being started by climatic changes making life unbearable somewhere deep in Mongolia or b) opportunistically grabbing as much from Europe as they could when it was weak.
Tell me how that in ANY way resembles the current war.
Pacific islands are completely irrelevant. Tell me how steppe invasions resemble the Russian "SMO".
The men continue to carry old Russian flags because it provides an unbroken narrative - "the USSR won. Nevsky won. Peter the Great kept winning. We are gonna win. And we'll always be here."
Are you seriously asking me how previous movements of steppes people, along with their cultures, way of life, weapons and transports moving westwards into Europe in anyway resembles the SMO?
It resembles it because we are currently seeing movements of steppes people, along with their cultures, way of life, weapons and transports moving westwards into Europe.
Can you deny any of that?
The Pacific Islands are relevant because the provide another example of how geography dictates behavior but in a very different way. The interior of Eurasia is vast, the largest contiguous land mass on planet earth. The area of the Pacific islands is tiny and are separated by vast distances of water. Human populations living in one will show very different behaviors than the other.
These things aren't determined by human will, they are determined by much more fundamental powers that themselves determine human will.
You never clarified how Russians count as steppe people. Somehow you also seem to be unaware both Russians, and Ukrainians, live in cities, work as wage slaves, spend their free time having family gatherings, listening to or making music, watching movies. You know, like the rest of us. Or are you actually imagining them as some barbarian nomadic horde? Are you gonna provide actual analysis of this war or are you gonna keep shitting over the chessboard like a pidgeon, my retarded western friend?
Cant they use nerve gas or something to flush out those forests? Why does Russia fight with two hands behind back?
Probably because dousing an area in chemical weapons poses risks to any troops you're planning to send into the area, in addition to all the other propaganda and legal issues.
If you can spot the troops hiding in the forests, thermobarics work better and don't prevent your troops from securing the area.
I have always advocated for the use of laughing gas, or helium, to smoke those Ukies out.
Use resupply drones to drop LSD laced water bottles?
Poison Ivy.
Because it violates the Geneva Convention and International Law. Putin and company play by the rules as opposed to their western foes... Chip
Will you be doing an article on the current uprising in Iran, with pro-Pahlavi crowds chanting for his return? How will a collapse of the Iranian government and potential replacement with a new pro-Western Shah affect the current course of geopolitics?
That is NOT going to happen. Western media doing their usual thing of propaganda, making 50 people look like 10s of thousands.
And that 50 people is the sum total in Iran who wants the grotesque Pahlavi's back.
Most certainly it is indeed. :)
‘Western’ media = Jew
The Jewish bankers are puppets themselves. This shit is darker.
Why defend the Jew w your nonsense.
I suppose you are referring to reports such as this one from Israel Hayom:
https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/12/30/iran-tehran-economic-protests-security-forces-basij/
Take them with a huge pinch of salt, as I believe they are more Zionists' orchestrated demonstrations and psy-ops than anything else.
Yes, Iran has some problems that its government is trying to take care of, however the Iranian people rallied around their leader, Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, during the 12-day war and Pahlavi's calls for revolution against him fell on deaf ears and failed miserably.
FYI I follow developments in Iran and the wider Middle East quite closely in my substack. Here you can find a collection of my articles on the 12-day war: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/12-day-war
Thanks! I'll give it a follow.
See also this post by Larry Johnson earlier today: https://sonar21.com/neocons-premature-celebration-over-protests-in-iran/
It addresses exactly the issue you are talking about: nothing to worry about. The protesters themselves are pledging allegiance to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
So today there's been another raft of articles about the IRGC fleeing Tehran, local police forces joining the revolt, and Khamanei also being forced to flee. IS there any truth to these?
I will get back to you ASAP. I have had limited Internet connection and haven't followed the news today.
Just checked all my reliable sources and performed a quick research: I cannot find any report matching yours. On the other hand, I have found these which counter this narrative:
- https://en.mehrnews.com/news/240343/7-rioters-linked-with-adversary-groups-detained-in-Iran
- https://en.mehrnews.com/news/240355/Thousands-gather-at-martyr-Soleimani-tomb-in-Kerman
Thank you! It's always a bit suspicious if something suddenly pops up all over social media, but I was also very surprised about how the Assad government in Syria collapsed.
Do not rely (exclusively) on social media and Western MSM: they are heavily polluted by propaganda.
https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/neocons-premature-celebration-over?
about Putin not getting involved but just passively listening. I remember when he was first president - he said they'd get 'em in the toilets !
He knows he's not the military expert, and so, whilst certainly contributing his ruble's-worth, he will leave the final decision to his generals - whom he may of course dismiss if they don't do what he wants.
Wonderful article- loved how balanced and well-explained this is. Helps me understand so much more about frontline dynamics and how decisions are being likely made by the General Staff of both sides. You are one of the most prescient geopolitical and military commentators with great command over language - literally every single article enriches the reader. Thank you for your great work, wish you and your family a very happy New Year! May Peace come to the world soon.
Indeed. It is the Balance that makes Simplicius to stand out.
There are many surprises to come, if one relates to the lessons of history and the practice of Russians to use sledgehammers to finish off flies. There needs to be a comparison of forces, during the red army's major operations during WW2 operations Uranus and Bagration and the battle at Kursk. Saying the Russians over prepared would be an understatement. The major constraint on Russia ever since 2022 has always been to hold back potential for the possible entry of NATO forces to complicate the Ukraine conflict. So the Russians being pragmatic and Stoic in their outlook could not afford to ignore the possibility. Now with the demonstration of the Oreshnic, being in serial production and deployed that concern becomes less. Europeans, in their billigerence, should consider the Oreshnic is not an ICBM it is intermediate ranged. Thus the intended target is not the US, but possibly every major European city. The times to each target were published a little after the demonstration. The Russians learned from the RAF and USAF campaign in Europe during WW2. Why drive tanks and sacrifice men when today they don't even need to sacrifice pilots.
With that said, I am wishing Simplicuous, one and all a very happy, prosperous and productive 2026 and more than all a return to sanity and a few steps back from the Abyss of extinction.
It seems you still take the NATO myth as fact. What did you miss in the last episode?
A truly pointless comment. If you want to take issue with something he said, be specific rather than just sneering.
I have some trouble commenting on or responding to so much imagination. Besides, NATO has never demonstrated anything in military terms, not even against populations from the 14th century. A pack is used to pouncing on those it perceives as weak, not barking at them while retreating.
Then I would suggest not commenting. Seeker gave a rational reason for the actions of Russia. Whether or not you consider NATO a force to be reckoned with or not, he believes the Russians do -- at least to the extent of being able to counter them. After all, if NATO were to attack, Russia has basically one chance to stop it. There are no do-overs. Like you I think NATO is a toothless mongrel, but Russia has access to a lot of information we don't have and isn't willing to risk not being prepared. Regardless of that, though, you were dismissing a reasoned argument (whether you agree with the reasoning or not) with what is basically an insult to the person making it. I don't think it was called for -- not to mention there is no way to know what it was that you considered to be the myth.
I expect the US to bring this war to an end long before mid 26, by withdrawing critical support for what it is coming to realise is a potty gangster regime that is never going to win but which is capable of creating significant globally destabilising escalations, kissing goodbye to Trump's aspirations for the Ignoble Piss Prize.
Laughable really, that the US supports this Ukkie outfit while banging some moral high ground drum over Venezuela.
In the interests of reclaiming the invaluable moral high ground (the value of which is only now being realised as it is everywhere being lost) Ukraine has to go. Righteous self belief was what the western edifice of global control was really built on, not on hard resources, dodgy money and legacy colonial control- despite what the likes of Berletic think. This rediscovery of a Righteous Self Belief must be of the rooted variety that embraces Russia's righteous cause.
Europe, seemingly a lost cause in this regard, will go down with Ukraine unless it has a change of heart. This does not mean turning into a racist hermit kingdom. That arm of the US narrative is going to have to be cut off. It means rediscovering a belief in the narrative of a better future for everyone over whom it holds established governmental control. From that high ground it will get a much better view of what is in the best interests of those people it does not have the right to push around but in whose best interests it can lobby and press for a better future, using the soft power that comes from true righteousness so pithily demonstrated by Mahatma Gandhi so long ago.
Naw. I can tell you with absolute certainty that the "Moral high ground" nonsense was a fabrication built upon hardnosed piracy and theft of resources. Europe never HAD any moral high ground, they had to pretend that Christianity was somehow moral, so they were "Bringing it" to those Brown people who just happened to be sitting on valuable lands and resources.
It was the post WW2 period, based on US Hollywood propaganda, that created this fantasy of 'moral high ground', over their alleged destruction of Germany and its atrocities.
Deep buried were the facts that what Germany did was not even as bad as what the other European powers had done already.
While I agree with you to some extent that it would be NICE if the EU gave up the current trajectory of its latest 'leadership', and went back to protestations of decency and human rights - thereby saving another million of Ukie lives, and potentially countless millions of its own - and that that MIGHT save the EU itself from its current path of implosion, it was rarely anything more than window-dressing and outright hypocrisy.
That's post modernist revisionism. It is a reflection of the trashed unbelief of the twenty-first century alienated class and its glassy eyed followers, neither of whom believe in anything other than content of their own wallets in terms of what it will buy (many have a fixation on cash or gold that is also incorporated into this unbelief system that anything else is unreal too). And this unbelief extends to an unbelief in their leaders. Leadership, government, is atomised. It is what Berletic does. I have argued it when it suited me but it pays to know what you are doing with these arguments- whose interests you are promoting when you sing your song. Nihilism has (by definition) no future.
It is New Year, traditionally a time for hope for peace and so I have posted my own version of that hope..... and the only way of realising it.
It's not revisionism actually - it's the simple fact that the 'leaderships' in Western countries since at least Roman days have been educated to BE nihilists. Power and wealth for its own sake.
Now, if you're talking the plebs, that's another matter. Many of them are fooled by the pretty speeches and ikons, even against their own best interests as often as not.
And I'm not an "unbeliever" at all. Well, I am about the Monotheistic trash that has been imposed on us for 2000 years, but there is a far greater mystery behind it all.
FWIW, much of what is now labelled "Nihilism" is nothing of the sort. Questioning the existence of "Evil" is NOT Nihiliism, it is a valid religious/social/epistemological position. Nor is post-Structuralism "Nihilism", although that is closer.
As I said, I did agree that the EU moving back to its largely empty words of "Human rights and peace" WOULD be a great improvement on the like of what VDL and K(K)K are doing to it - I just think they were largely empty words anyway.
A neutral position is preferable to an active hostile one.
Thoughtful reply, G, which sadly I don't have the time at the moment to debate. It would take some careful dissection! But thanks for it anyway. Happy new year.
Happy New Year. <3
Hitler's case, of course, totally destroys your argument.
His own lifestyle was spartan to say the least, whilst the Germany he resurrected from its Weimar depravity and corruption exploded all aroiund him with prosperity and happiness.
But you don't realise that, to answer your question, "Why is he here?" it has always been to expose your hollow nihilism and atheism.
>>His own lifestyle was spartan to say the least, whilst the Germany he resurrected from its Weimar depravity and corruption exploded all aroiund him with prosperity and happiness.<<
It's a frigging lie in every measure one could lay on this period of time.
From the night over the long knife's, to the GESTAPO and the mass murder of the inner german opposition, iclusive the destruction of any political resistance helped and/or engineerd by it's american NAZI admirers and followers (like H. Ford plus many others).
Yep, just because a whole nation gives itself over to racial hatred does not make it righteous! Just because one man filled with mouth spitting hatred for anyone different happened to be kind to animals does not make him righteous either.
I know, Frank. Why do I bother?
The Gestapo were mostly university-educated men - contrast them extremely favourably, then, with Stalin's Cheka.
They were tasked with rooting out what was basically jewish / bolshevik dissent, which if allowed to fester and develop, as it surely would have, would have been a clear and present danger to the security of the state.
So those who entered its halls of residence were fully investigated in accordance with the law, and either sent to the camps, or executed if their activities ( bomb-making, assassination etc ) made that necessary.
"Mass murder of opposition" would have been driven - not that it was such a hysterical event - by the realization that desperate men do desperate things - so "Get them before they get you."
Again, this "political opposition" you speak of would have been either jewish or jewish-financed - remember who declared war on Germany on 24.3 33?
So of course it was suppressed - and rightly so.
Henry Ford, who clearly did so much for the US, had a very powerful realization of what exactly the jewish menace consisted of, and he would have worked well with Hitler.
I don’t know about prosperous (yes, for five minutes) but Nazi Germany happy? 😂
It was National Socialist Germany.
As to their state of happiness, I will let David Lloyd George, a past Prime Minister of the UK - who was alive at the time, and who visited Germany - have the defining statement.
"I have never seen a happier people than the Germans, so yes, I too say "Heil Hitler".
He is a truly great man."
( From memory. )
Alternatively of course, you could watch Leni Riefenstahl's great movie "Triumph of the Will."
Or, you could consider what implications getting 6 million men back into employment in less than five years might have for a nation.
And notice the venomous hatred that the other European "elites" had for him - and it wasn't the atrocities he committed either, they themselves had done far worse without not a care in the World.
1. I am not a Nihilist.
2. I am not an Atheist.
It will obviously surprise you to learn that there are more religious positions than just Shittianity or Atheism, but hey ho.
Namibia, Genocide and the Second Reich https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1978485/ is a good documentary showing the worst of Nazi practices didn't develop in a vacuum. Concentration camps originated in wars against Boers, used in Namibia, with forced labor, and experiments providing scientific "proof" of racial superiority. I think the documentary mentions colonial veterans joined the Nazi party and brought their racial attitudes and methods to Europe.
"Nazis" didn't have any "worst practices."
Concentration camps should not be confused with extermination camps - which neither existed for the Brits in Africa, nor for the Germans in Europe.
Whatever happened to those Boer women and children happened more for reasons of incompetency than malice - and the Germans needed their inmates to bolster war production, so simple logic ( a commodity in short supply ) says that the last thing they wanted was the disease and death which the "Allies" brought to them with their 24/7 terror bombing campaign.
Any reference to "medical experiments" should always be adduced with proof, rather than assertion - and the only ones who asserted that such things took place were the jews, who incidentally, were the only ones who tattooed anybody - themselves primarily.
"Colonial veterans" will definitely have joined the NSDAP - there was never a "nazi party," but just as in Namibia, they were trying to do a difficult job as well as they could, and the negroids were resentful of them, and so engaged in the sorts of murdering rampages which had to be answered.
That's what WW2 was entirely about.
As J Wallace Simpson affirms in his work "Which Way Western Man" page 642.
WW2 was entirely about the conflict between the jewish usury-based system, which strangles the entire world, and Germany's realization under Schacht that another system was available, similar to the one the ancient Athenians devised, whereby work - not gold - could underpin a currency.
As for the "camps" question - re read what I said, if you have time.
I diffentiate between different types of camps - I do not assert that they did not exist, as you seem to be implying.
"negroids were resentful of them, and so engaged in the sorts of murdering rampages which had to be answered."
Aren't you talking about Namibia? Last time I looked Namibia was in southern Africa. Africa as in the place Africans live. Their homeland. Why were Germans locking up Namibians in concentration camps in southern Africa. I'd be rampaging too if it was my family getting dispossessed.
They were being educated and given jobs which they would never have had had the Germans not arrived.
As one might say, Africans may well have existed in Namibia - but they didn't have lives.
Why were the Germans locking them up?
Probably because they just woke up one day and decided to do so - either that, or the Africans were starting to do the things they like to do, ie to kill people and steal from them, as they are still doing today in South Africa.
So had you been there at the time, you would have been put in one of their camps too, and rightly so.
"They were being educated and given jobs which they would never have had had the Germans not arrived."
Between 1904 and 1908 nearly all of the Herero and around half the Nama were killed. I guess many survivors were burying people if you can call that a job. You are either incredibly ill-informed or a pathological ethno-supremist.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57279008
Maybe they didn't want "jobs".
Maybe they were happy as they were, without being forced to work for some naboo who claimed to "own" everything, so they had to?
There was also Belgium's King Leopold in the Congo, tho I imagine the doc covered that too.
"Moral high ground" was apparent not in verbosity, but in actions, eg by no means an invasion of others' lands, as the moslems did for unending centuries, but simply the protection of Europe from them.
Slavery was anathematised, when it was embraced and exploited by the moslems and jews - again for centuries.
Christianity of course, is completely moral - I openly challenge you to deny any of its moral rulings - so whereas mohammedanism is simply based upon religious supremacy at the point of a sword, Christianity's morality applies to each and every one, no matter their creed or skin colour.
The "theft of resources" you implicitly attribute to Christian civilizations actually arose after the wholesale takeover of them by jews, which began in earnest after the rising of the Rothschild banking cartel - which was and is avowedly antithetical to Christian values.
And Germany never committed any atrocities - this is why its leaders could not be tried in civilian courts after the war - but only by military courts, which refused to give her leaders the right to speak in their self-defence, such was the certainty of their guilt.
You genuinely don't know how Shittianity was spread, do you Tim? You honestly think that intelligent, decent people gave up their own religion freely to choose this slave-religion?
Fucking hell.
No, it was mainly "Spread by the sword", which is what you have to do when it is the STUPIDEST religion/cult on the block, and all the surrounding religions are at least 2-3000 years older.
Shittianity wouldn't know morality if it bit it on its arse. If the prophet Jesus came back and saw what had been built in his own name - he'd be killed as a "Heretic" (Or indeed in a concentration camp for Jews for that matter).
It's the worst religion extant today. Islam is head and shoulders above it, not that I'd choose to be Islamic either.
Germany committed MANY atrocities - the problem the allies had was that most of them had already done similar, many times over, so they hadn't made any "International Laws" against such crimes.
No way Churchill would have risked his own gross neck just to hang some Germans.
So - no arguments.
Just assertions.
So no need for me to get involved with your unwarranted prejudices.
Quit mixing the Jew problem with the white west. Solve the Jew problem and almost all problems go away.
"I expect the US to bring this war to an end long before mid-2026 by withdrawing critical support..." Nothing is impossible. It would seem that Trump has understood that the Europeans will not be able to pay for the weapons the green dwarf is demanding. Moreover, the oil/gas investment agreement has still not come into effect on the European side.
Maybe worth adding that afaik, the US Mid-terms are set for November next. Although that's 11 months off there's a lot of tidying up to do beforehand and some disgruntled Voters to get back aboard the heavily holed and listing good ship USS MAGA. Every month that passes without doing any of the necessary groundwork will only make the task harder and provide the opposition with ammo.
Trump and his team are incompetent in managing affairs. I don't believe in the myth of "Taco, the great real estate businessman"—he still racked up bankruptcies. He likely bought off many key people, decisions, and policies. Besides, one does not degenerate into mediocrity after having been great. Trump has no skill or ability to handle domestic affairs; like all mediocre Western leaders, he retreats to foreign affairs. This will cost him dearly. In the midterms, Republicans will be swept from both chambers, MAGA will have self-destructed, and he will be impeached and dragged before judges (his family’s conflicts of interest are far more significant than Biden’s). Let’s talk about Vance, the Republicans’ Kamala—apart from throwing around words, what’s his actual job? The only Western elected official I recognize who truly serves her voters, the people, is Green. By throwing her mandate in everyone’s face, she made it clear she didn’t need power, illicit millions, or privileges to wipe herself—toilet paper did the job just fine. In my opinion, a Green vs. Vance primary would be juicy, and Vance would likely be the outsider. From this term, we will probably remember the Republican Party’s last words: "Taco killed me."
Just to further clarify your point: you are talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG). Trump threw her under the bus, just as he did and is doing to Thomas Massie, and now to Lauren Boebert with his first veto today of a non-controversial bill that was supported almost unanimously in Congress by both parties. Trump is dumping shit on all real MAGA people, and has become purely MIGA.
The problem is any real change candidate would be dead in the first year. Trump may have had good intentions (or not) but is he foolish enough (or have the guts) to do a JFK?
The Jew will continue the war till the last Ukrainian.
"Righteous self belief was what the western edifice of global control was really built on"
Really, I thought it was built on violence, more violence and if that didn't work, genocidal violence. Righteous self belief may have allowed them to sleep at night but without the violence I doubt their beliefs would have stayed the universal uprisings. No one likes having their land stolen, being enslaved, raped and murdered.
WION
The period of 1880 to 1920, when the imperial power was at its height, was the most devastating for the population of India. During this time, the death rate increased considerably – from 37.2 deaths per thousand in the 1880s to 44.2 in the 1910s. The life expectancy also plummeted – from 26.7 years to 21.9 years.
An analysis conducted by Dylan Sullivan and Jason Hickel for Al Jazeera says that between 1891 and 1920, 50 million excess deaths occurred. It further says that the staggering figure is a conservative estimate.
They do like having the thuggee and sati sects suppressed, though, and having nice railways built that they can travel on for free by running along the roof.
In India, of course, all the things you accuse the Brits of doing were returned with a vengeance at the time of the Mutiny.
So it seems that the Indian temperament is no better than the British one - although from our present day experience in the UK relating to Pakistani rape gangs, that's never what Britain was noted for when we lived amongst them.