Scott Ritter: With Dark Eagle Hypersonic Missiles in Europe, ‘One Mistake’ Could Spark All-O ut War

by Iliya Tsukanov via Sputnik

Russia has vowed a military response to US’ plans to deploy strategic, ground-based missiles in Germany by 2026. Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector-turned international affairs observer who literally wrote the book on arms control in Europe in the 1980s, tells Sputnik why the prospective deployment is so dangerous.

The White House announced plans to deploy three types of strategic missiles in Germany last week, with the new capabilities set to include:

Ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, which became available to the Pentagon after the US unilaterally scrapped the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia in 2019. The Raytheon-manufactured missiles have a range anywhere from 460-2,500 km, and can be armed with conventional or low-to-intermediate yield nuclear warheads.

The SM-6 – a long-range surface-to-air-missile system which can be launched from the US Army’s new Typhon Mid-Range Capability (MRC) missile system, or the Aegis Ashore air and missile defense systems the US has deployed in Romania and Poland. Manufactured by Raytheon. Firing range of 240-460 km.

Unnamed ‘hypersonic’ capabilities widely speculated to be the Army’s Dark Eagle Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) – the only one of the half-a-dozen plus US hypersonics programs anywhere near operational status. Developed by Lockheed Martin. Reported range up to 3,000 km. Payload unknown.

“It’s the Dark Eagle that is perhaps the most destabilizing,” former weapons inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik. “While it is not a nuclear-capable missile, it is a system that has the ability to strike deep inside Russia with precision hypersonic warheads that are virtually impossible to intercept,” Ritter explained.

With such a system, the observer noted, Pentagon planners and hawks in Washington may be tempted to launch aggression against Russian military and leadership targets. This would be in line with the DoD’s long-running Conventional Prompt Strike (formally Prompt Global Strike) initiative – a program which has been in the works since the 2000s.

“This is an extraordinarily destabilizing development, and Russia has said it will respond,” Ritter said, noting that while “the specifics of a Russian response aren’t known,” it’s possible that it may include resuming development of the RS-26 Rubezh – a solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile with a nuclear multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) or maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) payload.

Artist’s impression of RS-26 Rubezh’s possible configuration on the base of the RS-24 Yars ICBM mobile ground-based launched strategic missile system.
© Photo : MilitaryRussia.ru

“It’s believed that Russia could bring this system back into operation and deploy it in short order. The RS-26 is a road-mobile system that has the ability of carrying three Avangard hypersonic [glide vehicle] warheads that are nuclear-capable,” Ritter said.

The former weapons inspector, who wrote a book on his experiences working with the On-Site Inspection Agency in the late 1980s to verify the USSR’s compliance with the then-recently ratified INF Treaty – which was designed to dramatically reduce nuclear tensions in Europe by eliminating all US and Soviet ground-launched missiles in the 500-5,500 km range, told Sputnik that Washington’s plans to deploy missiles in Germany again are eerily familiar to him.

“We’ve gone back in time. It’s back to the 1980s, back to a situation where the United States and NATO and Russia once again face off with weapons that are inherently destabilizing. One mistake, one miscalculation, one misjudgment could lead to a situation where these missiles are fired in anger, and this would lead to the potential of a general nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia,” Ritter warned.

“The American and German decision to deploy the intermediate-range capable systems into Europe is one of the most dangerous decisions that have been made by the US and NATO in a season of dangerous decisions. It’s an irresponsible escalation that, unless it’s reversed, can only lead to very tragic conclusions. It’s déjà vu all over again. We got rid of these weapons once. We made the world safer. The question is, can we do it again? And I would say with the current American and European leadership, the current American and German leadership, I’m not holding out much hope,” the observer summed up.

Biden, the Warmonger Clown

Scott Ritter is no stranger to speaking truth to power. Here is a video of him staring down then Senator Joe Biden over US WMD in Iraq claims. History would prove Ritter right and Biden wrong.

Brussels Is Hellbent On Destroying European Farming

by Dénes Albert via ReMix News

The EU, under the control of the global elite, is systematically crushing agriculture through its policies, but this is happening not only in Europe but also across the wider West.

The European Commission and the member states that slavishly follow it, such as Germany, are taking one measure after another that can have no other result than to make traditional farming and livestock breeding impossible, an act that has been practiced for thousands of years.

EU policies threaten to destroy what has provided us with our daily bread and food and make it impossible for farmers to survive. The adage of “No farmers, no food” is apt. Without them, we will all ultimately starve to death.

Denmark has recently announced that it will introduce cattle, pig, and sheep taxes in 2030. They say (…) these animals cause huge damage, as they emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Behind this is the green ideology, the European Union’s Green Deal, which is based on the idea that global warming is caused by human carbon dioxide emissions, and agriculture is linked to this, since cows, for example, emit a lot of methane into the atmosphere.

The measures that the EU and individual Western countries are putting in place are diverse, but they all point in the same direction. First, forcing farmers not to cultivate certain areas, to clear land, and to stop their activities in order to protect the climate. This is what farmers in the Netherlands were forced to do a few months ago, and the measures put some 3,000 farmers in an impossible situation.

The release of Ukrainian agricultural products onto the European market is a concrete, tangible crime by Brussels, which poses a direct, clear, and present danger to European farmers, especially those in Eastern and Central Europe. It is well known that the standards for Ukrainian agricultural products are far more lax and permissive than those within the EU, and the quality of Ukrainian products (from cereals to foodstuffs) is far inferior to that of European products — but that is why EU farmers simply cannot compete with the prices of Ukrainian products.

It is clear, therefore, that every move by Brussels and the European leaders who serve the globalist elite in Brussels is deliberately destroying European agriculture. Normal leaders would not do this.

Behind it are the left-liberal and globalist aspirations. This is what they believe, and it is now manifested in the fact that global warming is increasing in a devastating way, that the earth’s climate is becoming unbearable, but they believe that this is due to one single cause: human activity, mainly and decisively anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

Gaza As A New(?) Western Method of Waging War

via Moon of Alabama

We have seen a myriad of reports about systematic torture and murder in Israeli concentration camps, aka prisons, for Palestinians.

These reports come even from prime media which generally serve as outlets of the ruling class. There are by now so many of these reports that there is no doubt that they are real.

However, there have been no political consequences from those reports. I have also not seen or heard any western politician or any editorials condemning Israel over these reports. To my best knowledge no western country has punished the Zionist government over such behavior.

This, even as it is obvious who the main people responsible for this are. Everyone knows and talks about them:

Musa ‘Aasi, a 58-year-old painter-decorator and father of four, said he heard guards beat 38-year-old Tha’er Abu ‘Asab to death in a neighbouring cell at Ketziot in November. One guard told 50-year-old Firas Hassan, from Bethlehem: “We are livestreaming this for Ben-Gvir.” Ben Gvir’s spokesperson said the minister was “proud” of his prison policy, and that it was in line with international law. “The conditions of the terrorists imprisoned in Israeli prisons have been tightened to the minimum required by law. In accordance with the minister’s policy, the terrorists do not receive the improved conditions they received in the past,” they said.

The Guardian fails to refute those lies from Ben Gvir’s spokesperson.

The Palestinians will continue to be tortured and killed. And all their families – in fact – every Palestinian in Gaza shall be killed:

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich implies he believes that blocking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip is “justified and moral” even if it causes 2 million civilians to die of hunger, adding however that the international community won’t allow this to happen.“We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,” Smotrich says at a conference in Yad Binyamin hosted by the Israel Hayom outlet. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned. Humanitarian in exchange for humanitarian is morally justified, but what can we do? We live today in a certain reality, we need international legitimacy for this war.”

As no one, Smotrich claims, will let the Zionists kill 2 million civilians by hunger at once, it must be done slowly. By now some 10% of the once 2.3 million people in Gaza are likely already dead – killed by bombs or by the consequences of the war the Zionists are waging against them.

Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, a former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who also served as Israel’s Defence Minister, is quoted by Alastair Crooke as saying this.

“When you talk about Smotrich and Ben Gvir: They have a Rabbi. His name is Dov Lior. He is the Rabbi of the Jewish Underground, who intended to blow up the Dome of the Rock – and before that the buses in Jerusalem. Why? In order to hurry up the ‘Last War’. Do you [not] hear them talking in terms of the Last War; or of Smotrich’s concept of ‘subjugation’? Read the article he published in Shiloh in 2017. First of all, this concept rests on Jewish supremacy: Mein Kampf in reverse”.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir are sitting right in the cabinet. But has any western country even blocked their travel or entry or sanctioned them?

Why is this allowed to happen?

Back in February, Tarik Cyril Amar found this explanation.

The Gaza Method
The West’s evolving blueprint for controlling a poly-crisis world by mass-murdering and subjugating the poor, the rebellious, and those deemed “superfluous.”

The non-paywalled full text is available here.

The West is in decline and it has only one method left to delay it – brute force.

All of the above means that the West is left with one option: the hardest of powers, if the dumbest, too: military force. And that is where the Gaza Genocide precedent fulfills its most important function as method-setting and method-“normalizing.” In a very concrete way, too: For since the 1990s (at the latest), Western militaries – with the US in the lead, obviously – have been thinking intensely about fighting in cities.

You see where this has been going, right? To Gaza. Gaza is not the first but, for now, the worst instance of a doctrinal body of pseudo-technical and rationally vicious thought coming into practice: How to subdue the cities of the Global South (and the poor in general, make no mistake, Northerners), by all and any means. And for this type of very-near/present future warfare everywhere, humanitarian law as we know it – with all its immense flaws – is still too “soft,” too restraining. The same holds, of course, for our notions of crimes against humanity, including genocide.

He concludes:

Gaza is a method. A Western method. Fascist, Zionist, apartheid, sadistic Israel is a pioneer, a trailblazer into yet more evil to be done from those above to those below. That is why those above will shield Israel. They are shielding themselves and their future deeds.

I was in doubt about this theory when I first read it. But by now I think that the elite are really planning like this. It is the only explanation that makes sense and it is also consistent and fits with their increasing endorsement of pure fascism, be it in Israel or in Ukraine.

Netanyahu, The Provocateur

A provocateur ally is trying to draw the United States into a large-scale military conflict. 

In the early morning of July 31, after attending the inauguration ceremony for Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated at his residence in Tehran by Israeli loitering munition launched from the territory of Azerbaijan. This was followed by the assassination of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi earlier this May by Israeli security forces. He was killed while returning from a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on the border between two countries.

The transition to the tactics of political terrorism against top officials of the anti-Israeli resistance axis shows Israel’s inability to resolve security issues through military means. Israel does not have enough military power to attack Lebanon. The IDF can only control the northern border and carry out local operations in Gaza. Israel cannot resolve the issue with the Houthis or the naval blockade on the Red Sea.

Residents of Northern Israel were evacuated to central areas of the country. Hundreds of thousands of reserves were drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces, causing a serious blow to Israel’s economy. Israel has never fought protracted wars, and its economy is not capable of sustaining a long conflict with a serious adversary.

Israel escalated the conflict in an attempt to provoke Iran into direct armed conflict. The Israeli leadership expects the United States to intervene and solve their problems if this happens. Two carrier strike groups have aready been sent to support Israel in the Middle East, including aircraft carriers Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) and Abraham Lincoln (CVN -72), as well as more than 10 destroyers and cruisers. Additionally, the F -22A Raptor squadron is being deployed.

Another war in the Middle East would be disastrous for America. We must force Israel to solve its own problems. Enough is enough.

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Hungary’s Grandiose (Strategy) Delusion

Ed. Note: We are posting excerpts from a speech by the Hungarian President Victor Orban. Here are a few observations:

1. There exists an evident axis of the “nationalists,” Trump-Netyanahu-Orban, with some nods of approval from Putin, against the so-called “globalists” with the most visible representatives being Soros-Karl Schwab-Biden, likely with the support of the House of Rothschild. On the face of it, the “nationalists” are for the “people” while the “globalists” stand for the big financial interests. Or put differently, the “nationalists” are the hungry, would-be nouveau rich globalists against the old rich globalists. The nationalists’ agenda is how to get their guys rich and dominant against the existing world’s hegemon. Or, at the very least, get a piece of the action and join them in the grand theft.

2. The essence of Orban’s grand strategy for Hungary is the defense of Hungarian sovereignty, BUT he is making his calls for Hungarian sovereignty while addressing a minority of Hungarians in the Romanian town of Tușnad, shamelessly trampling on the sovereignty of the Romanian state. That alone is a red flag, as his real agenda is to create a revisionist Hungary by reconquering lost territories and populations from the neighboring countries.

3. Orban is one son of a gun, a big demagogue, outclassed only by the biggest contemporary demagogues Netyanahu and Trump. All three, big-time charlatans and the would-be new potentates on the world grand stage.

If the choice is between the demagogues that we don’t know and the demagogues that we know, guess what? Better stick with the known entities. The alternative would bring even more mayhem.

********************************
Here is the last part from Orban’s grand strategy for Hungary in its naked and brazen delusional grandeur. via https://miniszterelnok.hu/en/speech-by-prime-minister-viktor-orban-at-the-33rd-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp/

[ . . . ]

Dear Friends, Dear Summer Camp,

We are in a change, a change is coming, that has not been seen for five hundred years. This has not been apparent to us because in the last 150 years there have been great changes in and around us, but in these changes the dominant world power has always been in the West. And our starting point is that the changes we are seeing now are likely to follow this Western logic. By contrast, this is a new situation. In the past, change was Western: the Habsburgs rose and then fell; Spain was up, and it became the centre of power; it fell, and the English rose; the First World War finished off the monarchies; The British were replaced by the Americans as world leaders; then the Russo–American Cold War was won by the Americans. But all these developments remained within our Western logic. This is not the case now, however, and this is what we must face up to; because the Western world is not challenged from within the Western world, and so the logic of change has been disrupted. What I am talking about, and what we are facing, is actually a global system change. And this is a process that is coming from Asia. To put it succinctly and primitively, for the next many decades – or perhaps centuries, because the previous world system was in place for five hundred years – the dominant centre of the world will be in Asia: China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and I could go on. They have already created their forms, their platforms, there is this BRICS formation in which they are already present. And there is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, in which these countries are building the new world economy. I think that this is an inevitable process, because Asia has the demographic advantage, it has the technological advantage in ever more areas, it has the capital advantage, and it is bringing its military power up to equilibrium with that of the West. Asia will have – or perhaps already has – the most money, the largest financial funds, the largest companies in the world, the best universities, the best research institutes, and the largest stock exchanges. It will have – or already has – the most advanced space research and the most advanced medical science. In addition, we in the West – even the Russians – have been well shepherded into this new entity that is taking shape. The question is whether or not the process is reversible – and if not, when it became irreversible. I think it happened in 2001, when we in the West decided to invite China to join the World Trade Organisation – better known as the WTO. Since then this process has been almost unstoppable and irreversible.

President Trump is working on finding the American response to this situation. In fact, Donald Trump’s attempt is probably the last chance for the US to retain its world supremacy. We could say that four years is not enough, but if you look at who he has chosen as Vice President, a young and very strong man, if Donald Trump wins now, in four years his Vice President will run. He can serve two terms, and that will total twelve years. And in twelve years a national strategy can be implemented. I am convinced that many people think that if Donald Trump returns to the White House, the Americans will want to retain their world supremacy by maintaining their position in the world. I think that this is wrong. Of course, no one gives up positions of their own accord, but that will not be the most important goal. On the contrary, the priority will be to rebuild and strengthen North America. This means not only the US, but also Canada and Mexico, because together they form an economic area. And America’s place in the world will be less important. You have to take what the President says seriously: “America First, everything here, everything will come home!” This is why the capacity to raise capital from everywhere is being developed. We are already suffering as a result: the big European companies are not investing in Europe, but are investing in America, because the ability to attract capital seems to be on the horizon. They are going to squeeze the price of everything out of everyone. I do not know whether you have read what the President said. For example, they are not an insurance company, and if Taiwan wants security, it should pay. They will make us Europeans, NATO and China pay the price of security; and they will also achieve a trade balance with China through negotiations, and change it in favour of the US. They will trigger massive US infrastructure development, military research, and innovation. They will achieve – or perhaps have already achieved – energy self-sufficiency and raw material self-sufficiency; and finally they will improve ideologically, giving up on the export of democracy. America First. The export of democracy is at an end. This is the essence of the experiment America is conducting in response to the situation described here.

What is the European response to global system change? We have two options. The first is what we call “the open-air museum”. This is what we have now. We are moving towards it. Europe, absorbed by the US, will be left in an underdeveloped role. It will be a continent that the world marvels at, but one which no longer has within it the dynamic for development. The second option, announced by President Macron, is strategic autonomy. In other words, we must enter the competition of global system change. After all, this is what the USA does, according to its own logic. And we are indeed talking about 400 million people. It is possible to recreate Europe’s capacity to attract capital, and it is possible to bring capital back from America. It is possible to make major infrastructure developments, especially in Central Europe – the Budapest–Bucharest TGV and the Warsaw–Budapest TGV, to mention what we are involved in. We need a European military alliance with a strong European defence industry, research and innovation. We need European energy self-sufficiency, which will not be possible without nuclear energy. And after the war we need a new reconciliation with Russia. This means that the European Union must surrender its ambitions as a political project, the Union must strengthen itself as an economic project, and the Union must create itself as a defence project. In both cases – the open-air museum or if we join the competition – what will happen is that we must be prepared for the fact that Ukraine will not be a member of NATO or the European Union, because we Europeans do not have enough money for that. Ukraine will return to the position of a buffer state. If it is lucky, this will come with international security guarantees, which will be enshrined in a US–Russia agreement, in which we Europeans may be able to participate. The Polish experiment will fail, because they do not have the resources: they will have to return to Central Europe and the V4. So let us wait for the Polish brothers and sisters to return. The second presentation is over. There is only one left. This is about Hungary.

What should Hungary do in this situation? First of all, let us record the sad fact that five hundred years ago, at the time of the last global system change, Europe was the winner and Hungary the loser. It was a time when, thanks to geographical discoveries, a new economic space opened up in the western half of Europe – one in which we were completely unable to participate. Unfortunately for us, at the same time a civilisational conflict also kicked down our door, with Islamic conquest arriving in Hungary, making us a war zone for many years. This resulted in a huge loss of population, leading to resettlement – the consequences of which we can see today. And unfortunately we did not have the capacity to break out of this situation on our own. We could not liberate ourselves by our own efforts, and so for several centuries we had to be annexed to a Germanic Habsburg world.

Let us also remind ourselves that five hundred years ago the Hungarian elite fully understood what was happening. They understood the nature of the change, but they did not have the means that would have enabled them to prepare the country for that change. This was the reason for the failure of the attempts to expand the space – the political, economic and military space – and to avoid trouble: the attempts to cut our way out of the situation. Such an attempt was made by King Matthias, who – following Sigismund’s example – sought to become Holy Roman Emperor, and thus involve Hungary in the global system change. This failed. But I would also include here the attempt to have Tamás Bakócz appointed as Pope, which would have given us another opportunity to become a winner in this global system change. But these attempts did not succeed. Therefore the Hungarian symbol of this era, the symbol of Hungarian failure, is [military defeat at] Mohács. In other words, the beginning of the West’s world power dominance coincided with the decline of Hungary.

This is important, because now we must clarify our relationship to the new global system change. We have two possibilities: Is this now a threat for Hungary, or an opportunity for Hungary? If it is a threat, then we must pursue a policy of protecting the status quo: we must swim along with the United States and the European Union, and we must identify our national interests with one or both branches of the West. If we see this not as a threat but as an opportunity, we need to chart our own development path, make changes and take the initiative. In other words, it will be worth pursuing a nationally-oriented policy. I believe in the latter, I belong to the latter school: the current global system change is not a threat, not primarily a threat, but rather an opportunity.

If, however, we want to pursue our independent national policy, the question is whether we have the necessary boundary conditions. In other words, would we be in danger of being trodden on – or, rather, being trampled on. So the question is whether or not we have the boundary conditions for our own path in our relations with the USA, the European Union and Asia.

In short, I can only say that developments in the US are moving in our favour. I do not believe that we will get an economic and political offer from the United States that will create a better opportunity for us than membership of the European Union. If we do get one, we should consider it. Of course the Polish trap is to be avoided: they have bet a lot on one card, but there was a Democratic government in America; they have been helped in their strategic Polish national goals, but the Poles are subject to the imposition of a policy of democracy export, LGBTQ, migration and internal social transformation which actually risks the loss of their national identity. So if there is an offer from America, we need to consider it carefully.

If we look at Asia and China, we have to say that there the boundary conditions exist – because we have received an offer from China. We have received the maximum offer possible, and we will not get a better one. This can be summarised as follows: China is very far away, and for them Hungary’s membership of the European Union is an asset. This is unlike the Americans, who are always telling us that perhaps we should get out. The Chinese think that we are in a good place here – even though EU membership is a constraint, because we cannot pursue an independent trade policy, as EU membership comes with a common trade policy. To this the Chinese say that this being the case, we should participate in each other’s modernisation. Of course, when lions offer an invitation to a mouse, one must always be alert, because after all reality and relative sizes do matter. But this Chinese offer to participate in each other’s modernisation – announced during the Chinese president’s visit in May – means that they are willing to invest a large proportion of their resources and development funds in Hungary, and that they are willing to offer us opportunities to participate in the Chinese market.

What is the consequence for EU–Hungary relations if we consider our membership of the EU as a boundary condition? As I see it, the western part of the European Union is no longer on course to return to the nation state model. Therefore they will continue to navigate in what to us are unfamiliar waters. The eastern part of the Union – in other words us – can defend our condition as nation states. That is something we are capable of. The Union has lost the current war. The US will abandon it. Europe cannot finance the war, it cannot finance the reconstruction of Ukraine, and it cannot finance the running of Ukraine.

In parenthesis, while Ukraine is asking us for more loans, negotiations are underway to write off the loans it has previously taken out. Today the creditors and Ukraine are arguing over whether it should repay 20 per cent or 60 per cent of the debt it has taken on. This is the reality of the situation. In other words, the European Union has to pay the price of this military adventure. This price will be high, and it will affect us adversely. As a boundary condition, the consequence for us – for Europe – is that the European Union will acknowledge that the Central European countries will remain in the European Union, while remaining on nation-state foundations and pursuing their own foreign policy objectives. They may not like it, but they will have to put up with it – especially as the number of such countries will increase.

All in all, therefore, I can say that the boundary conditions exist for independent nationally-oriented policy towards America, Asia and Europe. These will define the limits of our room for manoeuvre. This space is wide – wider than it has been at any time in the last five hundred years. The next question is what we need to do to use this space to our advantage. If there is a global system change, then we need a strategy that is worthy of it.

If there is a global system change, then we need a grand strategy for Hungary. Here the order of words is important: we do not need a strategy for a grand Hungary, but a grand strategy for Hungary. This means that up to now we have had small strategies, usually with a 2030 time horizon. These are action plans, they are policy programmes, and they have been intended to take what we started in 2010 – what we call national course building – and simply finish it. They have to be followed through. But in a time of global system change this is not enough. For that we need a grand strategy, a longer timeframe – especially if we assume that this global system change will lead to a stable long-term state of affairs that will last for centuries. Whether this will be the case will, of course, be for our grandchildren to say at Tusnád/Tușnad in 2050.

How do we stand with Hungary’s grand strategy? Is there a grand strategy for Hungary in our drawer? There would be, and in fact there is. This is the answer. Because over the past two years the war has spurred us on. Here some things have happened that we have decided to do in order to create a grand strategy – even if we have not talked about them in this context. We immediately started working on such a grand strategy after the 2022 election. Unusually, the Hungarian government has a political director whose job is actually to put together this grand strategy. We have entered the programme-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team, and we have deep involvement there. For some time researchers at the Magyar Nemzeti Bank [Hungarian National Bank] have been taking part in strategy workshops in Asia – particularly in China. And to turn our disadvantage into an advantage, after we were forced into a ministerial change, we brought into the Government not a technocrat but a strategic thinker, and we created a separate European Union ministry with János Bóka. And so in Brussels we are not passive, but we have set up shop there: we are not moving out, but moving in. And there are a number of such soft power institutions associated with the Hungarian government – think tanks, research institutes, universities – which have been operating at full throttle over the past two years.

So there is a grand strategy for Hungary. What condition is it in? I can say that it is not yet in a good condition. It is not in a good condition because the language being used is too intellectual. And our political and competitive advantage comes precisely from the fact that we are able to create a unity with the people in which everyone can understand exactly what we are doing and why. This is the foundation for our ability to act together. Because people will only defend a plan if they understand it and see that it is good for them. Otherwise, if founded on Brusselian blah-blah, it will not work. Unfortunately, what we have now – the grand strategy for Hungary – is not yet digestible and widely comprehensible. It will take a good six months to get to that stage. Currently it is raw and coarse – I could even say that it was not written with a fountain pen, but with a chisel, and that we need to get through a lot more sandpaper to make it comprehensible. But for now, I will briefly present what there is.

So the essence of the grand strategy for Hungary – and now I will use intellectual language – is connectivity. This means that we will not allow ourselves to be locked into only one of either of the two emerging hemispheres in the world economy. The world economy will not be exclusively Western or Eastern. We have to be in both, in the Western and in the Eastern. This will come with consequences. The first. We will not get involved in the war against the East. We will not join in the formation of a technological bloc opposing the East, and we will not join in the formation of a trade bloc opposing the East. We are gathering friends and partners, not economic or ideological enemies. We are not taking the intellectually much easier path of latching on to someone, but we are going our own way. This is difficult – but then there is a reason that politics is described as an art.

The second chapter in the grand strategy is about spiritual foundations. At the core of this is the defence of sovereignty. I have already said enough about foreign policy, but this strategy also describes the economic basis of national sovereignty. In recent years we have been building a pyramid. At the top of it are the “national champions”. Below them are the internationally competitive medium-sized companies, below which are companies producing for the domestic market. At the bottom are small companies and sole traders. This is the Hungarian economy that can provide the basis for sovereignty. We have national champions in banking, energy, food, the production of basic agricultural goods, IT, telecommunications, media, civil engineering, building construction, real estate development, pharmaceuticals, defence, logistics, and – to some extent, through the universities – knowledge industries. And these are our national champions. They are not just champions at home, but they are all out there in the international arena and they have proven themselves competitive. Below these come our medium-sized companies. I would like to inform you that today Hungary has fifteen thousand medium-sized companies that are internationally active and competitive. When we came to power in 2010, the number was three thousand. Today we have fifteen thousand. And of course we need to broaden the base of small enterprises and sole traders. If by 2025 we can draw up a peace budget and not a war budget, we will launch an extensive programme for small and medium-sized enterprises. The economic basis for sovereignty also means that we must strengthen our financial independence. We need to bring our debt down not to 50 or 60 per cent, but close to 30 per cent; and we need to emerge as a regional creditor. Today we are already making attempts to do this, and Hungary is providing state loans to friendly countries in our region that are in some way important to Hungary. It is important that, according to the strategy, we must remain a production hub: we must not switch to a service-oriented economy. The service sector is important, but we must retain the character of Hungary as a production hub, because only in this way can there be full employment in the domestic labour market. We must not repeat the West’s mistake of using guest workers to do certain production work, because over there members of host populations already consider certain types of work to be beneath them. If this were to happen in Hungary, it would induce a process of social dissolution that would be difficult to halt. And, for the defence of sovereignty, this chapter also includes the building of university and innovation centres.

The third chapter identifies the body of the grand strategy: the Hungarian society that we are talking about. If we are to be winners, this Hungarian society must be solid and resilient. It must have a solid and resilient social structure. The first prerequisite for this is halting demographic decline. We started well, but now we have stalled. A new impetus is needed. By 2035 Hungary must be demographically self-sustaining. There can be no question of population decline being compensated for by migration. The Western experience is that if there are more guests than hosts, then home is no longer home. This is a risk that must not be taken. Therefore, if after the end of the war we can draw up a peace budget, then to regain the momentum of demographic improvement the tax credit for families with children will probably need to be doubled in 2025 – in two steps not one, but within one year. “Sluice gates” must control the inflow from Western Europe of those who want to live in a Christian national country. The number of such people will continue to grow. Nothing will be automatic, and we will be selective. Up until now they have been selective, but now we are the ones who will be selective. For society to be stable and resilient it must be based on a middle-class: families must have their own wealth and financial independence. Full employment must be preserved, and the key to this will be to maintain the current relationship between work and the Roma population. There will be work, and you cannot live without work. This is the deal and this is the essence of what is on offer. Also linked to this is the system of Hungarian villages, which is a special asset in Hungarian history, and not a symbol of backwardness. The Hungarian village system must be preserved. An urban level of services also needs to be provided by us in villages. The financial burden of this must be borne by towns and cities. We will not create megacities, we will not create big cities, but we want to create towns and rural areas around towns, while preserving the historical heritage of the Hungarian village.

And finally there is the crucial element of sovereignty, with which we have arrived here on the banks of the River Olt. We have reduced this to a minimum, fearing that otherwise Zsolt might take the microphone from us. This is the essence of the protection of sovereignty, which is the protection of national distinctiveness. This is not assimilation, not integration, not blending in, but the maintenance of our own particular national character. This is the cultural basis of the defence of sovereignty: language preservation, and avoiding a state of “zero religion”. Zero religion is a state in which faith has long disappeared, but there has also been the loss of the capacity for Christian tradition to provide us with cultural and moral rules of behaviour that govern our relationship to work, money, family, sexual relations, and the order of priorities in how we relate to one another. This is what Westerners have lost. I think that this state of zero religion comes about when same-sex marriage is recognised as an institution with a status equal to that of marriage between men and women. That is a state of zero religion, in which Christianity no longer provides a moral compass and guidance. This must be avoided at all costs. And so when we fight for the family, we are not just fighting for the honour of the family, but for the maintenance of a state in which Christianity at least still provides moral guidance for our community.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

And finally, this Hungarian grand strategy must not start from “Little Hungary”. This grand strategy for Hungary must be based on national foundations, it must include all areas inhabited by Hungarians, and it must embrace all Hungarians living anywhere in the world. Little Hungary alone – Little Hungary as the sole framework – will be insufficient. For this reason I dare not give a date, because we would have to stick to it. But within the foreseeable future all the support that serves the stability and resilience of Hungarian society – such as the family support system – must be extended in its entirety to areas inhabited by Hungarians outside the country’s borders. This is not going in a bad direction, because if I look back at the amounts spent on these areas by the Hungarian state since 2010, I can say that we have spent an average of 100 billion forints a year. By way of comparison, I can say that during the [Socialist] government of Ferenc Gyurcsány, the annual expenditure on this was 9 billion forints. Now we are spending 100 billion a year. So that’s a more than tenfold increase.

And then the only question is this: When the grand strategy for Hungary is in place, what kind of policy can be used to make it a success? First of all, for a grand strategy to succeed, we need to know ourselves very well. Because the policy we want to use to make a strategy a success must be suited to our national character. To this, of course, we can say that we are diverse. This is particularly true for Hungarians. But there are nevertheless shared essential features, and this is what the strategy must target and fix on. And if we understand this, then we do not need compromises or consolidation, but we need to take a firm stand. I believe that, in addition to diversity, the essence – the shared essence that we must grasp and on which we must build the Hungarian grand strategy – is the freedom which must also be built inwards: we must not only build the freedom of the nation, but we must also aim for the personal freedom of Hungarians. Because we are not a militarised country like the Russians or the Ukrainians. Nor are we hyper-disciplined like the Chinese. Unlike the Germans, we do not enjoy hierarchy. We do not enjoy upheaval, revolution and blasphemy like the French. Nor do we believe that we can survive without our state, our own state, as the Italians tend to think. For Hungarians order is not a value in itself, but a condition necessary for freedom, in which we can live undisturbed lives. The closest thing to the Hungarian sense and meaning of freedom is the expression summing up an undisturbed life: “My house, my home, my castle, my life, and I will decide what makes me feel comfortable in my own skin.” This is an anthropological, genetic and cultural characteristic of Hungarians, and the strategy must adapt to it. In other words, it must also be the starting point for politicians who want to carry the grand strategy to victory.

This process we are talking about – this global system change – will not take place in a year or two, but has already begun and will take another twenty to twenty-five years, and therefore during these twenty to twenty-five years it will be the subject of constant debate. Our opponents will constantly attack it. They will say that the process is reversible. They will say that we need integration instead of a separate national grand strategy. So they will constantly attack it and work on diverting it. They will constantly question not only the content of the grand strategy, but also the need for it. This is a fight that must now be committed to, but here one problem is the timeframe. Because if this is a process spanning twenty to twenty-five years, we have to admit that as we are not getting any younger, we will not be among those who finish it. The implementation of this grand strategy – especially the final phase – will certainly not be done by us, but mostly by young people who are now in their twenties and thirties. And when we think about politics, about how to implement such a strategy in political terms, we have to realise that in future generations there will essentially be only two positions – just as there are in our generation: there will be liberals and there will be nationalists. And I have to say that there will be liberal, slim-fit, avocado-latte, allergen-free, self-satisfied politicians on one side, and on the other side there will be streetwise young people of nationalist sympathies, with both feet firmly on the ground. Therefore we need to start recruiting young people – now, and for us. The opposition is constantly being organised and deployed to the battlefield by the liberal Zeitgeist. They have no need for recruitment efforts, because recruitment happens automatically. But our camp is different: the national camp will only come out at the sound of a trumpet, and can only rally under a flag that has been raised high. This is also true of young people. Therefore we need to find courageous young fighters with nationalist sentiments. We are looking for courageous young fighters with a national spirit.

Thank you for your kind attention.

US Extends License for Operations with Moscow Stock Exchange

The US Treasury Department has extended a license allowing transactions with the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) and its two subsidiaries until October 12, according to a statement published on the department’s website on Friday.

Russia’s MOEX, the National Clearing Center (NCC) and the National Settlement Depository (NSD) were added to a sanctions list by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on June 12. OFAC then issued a license to wind down operations with the entities by August 13.

“All transactions prohibited by Executive Order (E.O.) 14024 that are ordinarily incident and necessary to the wind down of any transaction involving one or more of the following blocked entities are authorized through 12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time, October 12, 2024,” OFAC’s latest statement reads.

In June, the US government unveiled a major round of sanctions targeting Russia’s financial sector and currency market. The Moscow Exchange subsequently announced the suspension of trading in US dollars and euros, noting its impact on the foreign and precious metals sectors, as well as stock and currency trading in Russia’s largest public markets. All other financial instruments remained operational, MOEX said.

The Treasury Department’s decision to extend transactions with the Moscow Exchange could be a sign that some common sense has started to emerge in the minds of American politicians,” the chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Financial Markets Committee, Anatoly Aksakov, told Parlamentskaya Gazeta on Friday following the news.

He said that while the sanctions “created certain problems for Russia, they could not significantly affect financial processes.”

American officials may have started to realize that by imposing sanctions against Russia, they are doing “more harm to the US financial system” and undermining the dollar, Aksakov said.

On Friday, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI), the UK regulator in charge of enforcing sanctions, also announced an extension of its general license allowing the sale, divestment, or transfer of financial instruments held at the NSD and the payment of safekeeping fees until October 12. The license was originally issued on July 3 until August 13.

The UK followed the US lead in sanctioning MOEX, NCC and NSD on June 13.

Kamala Harris: The Soros Candidate?


By Maxim Suchkov, Director of the MGIMO Institute for International Studies (IIS)

The old joke that a ‘color revolution’ is impossible in the United States because there is no American embassy there no longer seems quite as funny. Especially from anyone who has followed American affairs closely in recent weeks.

We’ve had the sudden withdrawal of the incumbent president from the electoral race, hastily organized support for a replacement – who only a few weeks ago was considered an unlikely heir – and the murky story of an assassination attempt on the opposition candidate. Furthermore, as the icing on the cake, the name Soros, a constant presence in all ‘color revolutions,’ has been gaining column inches again.

George Soros has long been a household name. But he is now 93 years old and, unlike Biden, he has arranged for the transition of his family business in good time, handing over the major assets to his 38-year-old son Alexander.

The younger man has certainly not been idle. But if his activities abroad are not particularly noteworthy (he continues his father’s work of ‘spreading democracy’ of the Soros kind), Alexander’s vigorous activity inside America has become the object of increased attention against the background of the current election campaign. To show how deeply immersed he is, it suffices to say that the Soros’s, together with the Clintons, were the first to support the replacement of Biden with Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s candidate.

Soros Jr. is a frequent presence at the White House – between January 2021 and May 2023 the visitors’ log recorded 20 of his visits. The twenty-first appearance took place on the 31 May. He arrived at the residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in the company of seven major donors to the Democratic Party and a young model named Savannah Huitema. They stayed at Harris’ home from 4pm until midnight. The details of the conversation have not been revealed. All we know is that they discussed the presidential election. But eight hours in the company of the second most powerful person in the country in the middle of the working week is a lot of time, even for a valued donor.

But old friends always have something to talk about. The Soros’s have long been close friends with Harris – George supported Kamala when she was a prosecutor in California.

Over the years, from Latin America and the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the Hungarian billionaire has meddled in domestic politics and sponsored changes of government. The US is no exception. But the Americans use a different system, which means that change is better instigated at the county and state level. That’s why Soros’ organisations have invested in local politicians and legislators who are overwhelmingly ‘progressive,’ i.e. on the left of the ideological spectrum.

One of the first to call attention to this practice was the ubiquitous Elon Musk. Discussing Soros’ election funding policy, Musk remarked: “The lowest value for money is a presidential race, then the next lowest value for money is a Senate race, then a Congress. But once you get to sort of city and state district attorneys, the value [is] extremely good.” He pointed to the Hungarian’s tactical insight: “Soros realized that you don’t actually need to change the laws. You just need to change how they’re enforced.”

Early in her career, Harris was one of those who Soros thought could apply the law in the right way. It’s not known exactly which of her legal initiatives Soros funded, nor when he began to do so. What is known, however, is that Kamala attended Soros’ flagship conference, Vision 2020, and Soros Sr does not invite unverified people to speak publicly at such an event.

In 2020, however, even Soros’ patronage did not help Harris win the Democratic Party’s nomination. She was left off the presidential shortlist in part because most of her law enforcement initiatives turned out to be highly controversial.

In particular, many voters were alarmed by her support for bias training for police officers, initiatives to cut police funding and the Safe Neighborhoods & Schools Act, which would have reduced sentences for a number of previously serious crimes (forgery, counterfeiting) and thefts under $950. The latter caused particular irritation among small shopkeepers, who realized that the thieves they had to deal with would no longer be afraid of the consequences.

Many black people were also unhappy. Despite her Jamaican roots, Harris has defended the conviction of African-Americans when there was evidence of their innocence and proof of police misconduct. Perhaps for this reason, one of the most prominent liberal human rights groups, Black Lives Matter, is wary of Harris and has not yet endorsed her nomination.

Kamala’s political biography is full of examples of inconsistent behavior. For example, as district attorney of San Francisco, she opposed the death penalty, but after becoming California’s attorney general, Harris fought to end the moratorium on capital punishment.

As a result, Kamala has developed a reputation as someone who possesses two important skills for a modern politician: behind the scenes, she is flexible enough to do what her sponsors want, and in public, she is persuasive enough to justify that decision, even if it means flip-flopping.

Indeed, what was a liability for the Democrats in 2020 is being presented as an asset four years later. Now, Harris is a seasoned prosecutor, Trump is a criminal, and the campaign is a public trial. This is the model now being promoted by Democratic political technologists. And the shift from Vice President Kamala to Prosecutor Kamala is a clever move to gloss over Harris’s failures as Biden’s deputy and focus voters’ attention on her merits as a guardian of the law.

“She has prosecuted six ‘sexual predators’. He [Trump] is one. She shut down for-profit colleges that were defrauding Americans. He supported them. He is a puppet of the big banks. As attorney general, she fought America’s biggest banks and forced them to pay homeowners $18 billion,” a campaign video claims.

As they say, it’s all about the narrative. Harris’ love affair with the former mayor of San Francisco that launched her career? That’s a young girl thing! Soros funding her campaign? Well, all his entities are non-profit, so there’s no shame in taking money from Soros, unlike another billionaire Peter Thiel, who backs Trump and J.D. Vance!

In July, Alexander Soros announced his engagement to Huma Abedin, 47, a long-time aide to Hillary Clinton, whom she calls her “second daughter”. A practising Muslim with extensive government experience and influential friends in Washington, Abedin has become the ‘bridge’ in the relationship between the Clintons and the Soros’s.

“Soros is doing things that erode the fabric of civilization,” warns Elon Musk. Whether Harris is part of this sinister plan or this is just another conspiracy theory by right-wing conservatives, Americans will have to find out, perhaps very soon.

This article was first published by Profile.ru, translated and edited by the RT team

Trump Is Heading for Defeat

by Keith Woods via Substack

Without a dramatic change of strategy, this election is now the Democrats’ to lose

Donald Trump is heading for defeat in this year’s election. I realise stating this is controversial — there has developed what I think is a misguided sense of inevitability about a Trump victory, especially on the radical right. When I said recently that I now believe Trump is going to lose, I encountered a flood of angry comments accusing me of needlessly blackpilling, ignoring polling, being contrarian, or just plain stupid.

I first expressed this view in opposition to my old nemesis, Academic Agent, who claims the election is a foregone conclusion, that Harris has “zero chance”, and that she has been appointed to play the role of a “jobber” (that’s pro-wrestling lingo for a wrestler whose job is to lose and make their opponents look strong.)

AA’s take on this is definitely the majority view. Trump has been handed win after win this year, from Biden’s shocking debate performance against him to his brush with death and triumphant recovery, giving us one of the greatest photos ever taken. With the nominee now almost certain to be Kamala Harris, some have taken this as confirmation that Trump really is the anointed one. Whatever chance old Joe had in a rematch with Trump, Kamala is electoral poison. While Biden could make the Democrats’ anti-white, radical left agenda palatable with his old-timey white guy shtick, Harris is the DEI regime’s real, ugly face. After all, even Democrat voters soundly rejected her.

This is a simple and intuitive, vibes-based approach to forecasting, and anyone could be forgiven for thinking fate is just on Trump’s side after the events in Pennsylvania, but I think the more I take a cold look at Trump’s prospects for this election, the more bleak they seem. I’m not saying he is certain to lose, and a lot can happen between now and November, but he is currently rated 1/2 with bookmakers, or about a 65% chance of winning. Presuming she is the unchallenged nominee for the Democrat party (not yet assured) I would flip it, and give those kind of odds, if not even shorter, to Harris. Thus, I think the current odds of 6/4 being offered on Harris represent a lot of value (not financial advice).

If we want to go from vibes to something tangible, we could look at polling. The problem though, is polling has proven to be a poor predictor of election outcomes in US presidential elections, especially this far out. It’s July. In July 1988, George H.W. Bush — who, like Harris, was then vice-president — trailed his Democrat opponent by 17 points. Bush not only won that year’s election, he won it handily: a smashing 426-111 victory in the electoral college vote.

At first, Trump was well ahead of Harris in national polling, but recently, Harris has made big gains, including in key swing states. A shift that dramatic in the space of a few days only underscores the fact that we can’t really expect these numbers to be the same four months from now, and that’s not even accounting for other issues like who’s answering the pollsters and who will actually turn up to vote.

No, polls won’t do. A lot of political scientists have tried to come up with a more reliable means of forecasting, to mixed success. From decades of testing, one method seems to stand out for its success: these are the “keys to the White House”, a method developed by American historian Allan Licthman.

Lichtman developed the keys in collaboration with a Soviet seismologist. Treating US elections with the same kind of systems-driven approach used to study earthquakes, the duo found a method of analysis which treats general elections as a referendum on the performance of the ruling party. Using the keys, Lichtman has correctly predicted the popular vote winner in every General Election from 1984 and 2012, correctly predicted Donald Trump’s win in 2016 (though he failed to win the popular vote), and Biden’s win in 2020. The system was also tested on past elections right back to the 1800s, and found to retrospectively predict them correctly, too. If there is a better system to predict elections, I haven’t found one.

With that said, I am not treating this method as decisive. Demographics are changing so rapidly that the US is hardly the same country as it was during most of the elections studied. But based on its past performance it is probably a good test of how voters will be feeling about the ruling party come November, and so seems like a good place to start.

The Keys to the White House in 2024

There are thirteen “keys” to the White House, which are a measure of the sentiment around the ruling party heading into the election. If a challenger candidate can turn a majority of the keys, there is likely to be a political earthquake, and an ousting of the ruling party, regardless of debate performances or the nature of their election campaign.

So, let’s see what the thirteen keys are, and how they are looking for this election cycle:

KEY 1 (Party Mandate): After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.

2024 Verdict: False. The Democratic Party won fewer seats in the 2022 midterms than in 2018. However, this key has the least predictive value of all; the decline was slight (235 to 213 seats), and the Republicans performed well below the expected “Red Wave” in these elections.

One key for Trump.

KEY 2 (Contest): There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.

2024 Verdict: True. Biden didn’t face competition for the candidacy and then appointed Kamala as his successor, who has been endorsed by all the party big-wigs and seems to have the nomination secured. If she were to be challenged, or Democrat higher-ups were to organise a coup to replace her at the last minute with someone they consider more electable, this could be flipped, but right now it seems Harris is secure.

One key for Harris.

KEY 3 (Incumbency): The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.

2024 Verdict: False. Was true for Biden, not for Harris, though she represents the same administration.

Two keys for Trump

KEY 4 (Third-party): There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.

2024 Verdict: True. RFK jr. looks like one of the more credible threats to come from a third-party candidate for some time, but probably not enough to turn this key. Lichtman’s system rates them as a serious contender only if they poll over 10%. RFK jr. is unlikely to break this threshold.

Two keys for Harris.

KEY 5 (Short-term economy): The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

2024 Verdict: True. The US Economy is experiencing good growth, and the Biden/Harris administration has invested heavily in the US economy in the last 4 years. A big economic shock between now and the election is unlikely.

However, although per-capita GDP is the easiest way to measure the short term health of an economy, it can be misleading, and since this is an election, voter perception matters more than real numbers. Lichtman’s model does not look at perception, only real growth, which seems like a potential oversight.

A recent study found that 3 in 5 Americans think the country is in recession, and most think it began last year. People also tend to misremember how good things were economically under previous administrations, and this seems to be happening with Trump now.

If most Americans think the country went into recession some time during the Biden/Harris administration after being handed a strong economy by Trump, can we really still call that a key for the Democrats? I think it will depend how voters feel by election time, so I’m going to leave this key neutral.

KEY 6 (Long-term economy): Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

2024 Verdict: True. Growth under Biden/Harris has been higher than the previous two administrations, and included a large bounce-back from the COVID slump.

Again, the same caveat applies regarding public perception. The American public think they’re a year into recession, mostly due to changes in the cost of living. Cost of living matters just as much as growth figures or earnings, since people judge their affluence by how much they can actually buy with what they earn. Still, the government seems to be getting inflation under control now, and on paper, Harris still has a good record to sell, so I’m going to say this key leans Democrat. Both economic keys could easily swing to Trump if the American economy goes into recession between now and the election.

(Tentatively) Three keys for Harris.

KEY 7 (Policy change): The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

2024 Verdict: True. Biden’s greatest accomplishments are the massive investment programs, including a $1.9 trillion rescue package after COVID, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the CHIPS and Science Act which has directed more resources into American innovation.

Deindustrialisation was a major reason for the turn to Trump’s populism in the Rust Belt in 2016, but now Biden has doubled the amount of factory building in the United States and invested billions into American manufacturing. The US is also gettinginflation under control, meaning there is a very formidable economic record for Harris to run on.

Four keys for Harris.

KEY 8 (Social unrest): There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

2024 Verdict: True. The pro-Palestine protests are the closest thing to serious social unrest, but they are nothing on the level of the summer of Floyd and not enough to turn this key.

Five keys for Harris.

KEY 9 (Scandal): The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

2024 Verdict: True. As much as conservatives tried to make Hunter Biden the focus of a real scandal, it never landed, and Biden was a pretty controversy-free President.

Six keys for Harris.

KEY 10 (Foreign/military failure): The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.

2024 Verdict: True. This one could be controversial, but none of the things that will be held up as Biden’s major foreign policy failures by Republicans really hold up. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was promised by Trump, and although some American soldiers were lost in the process, this hasn’t plagued the Biden administration. Although the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the breakout of war between Hamas and Gaza have caused problems for the Biden government, neither has been a disaster for him domestically. Russia has not yet achieved victory over the multinational coalition led by the US, and Americans are broadly in agreement with the current approach, or at least not opposed enough for it to be yet seen as a major failure.

Seven keys for Harris.

KEY 11 (Foreign/military success): The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

2024 Verdict False. Just as there hasn’t been any massive failure, the Biden/Harris administration has no great foreign affairs story to brag about. Afghanistan could have been a success, if not for the messy withdrawal and loss of American lives on the way out. It seems unlikely the Israel/Palestine conflict will be resolved soon, and the hope of a surprise Ukrainian victory over Russia is even more unlikely.

Three keys for Trump.

KEY 12 (Incumbent charisma): The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

2024 Verdict: False. This is reserved for the once in a generation candidate with huge cross-party appeal like FDR or Ronald Reagan, Harris certainly is not that.

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Four keys for Trump.

KEY 13 (Challenger charisma): The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

2024 Verdict: True. Trump has a cult-following and is a very charismatic figure, but he is also extremely divisive, and doesn’t have the ability to appeal to a broad base of support outside his party, as someone like Reagan of John F. Kennedy could.

Eight keys for Harris.

Final tally: Harris 8 – Trump 4.

The keys are firmly in favour of the Democrats, suggesting voters are unlikely to be in the mood for the political earthquake of a democratic regime change. This methodology is mostly about the viability of the party, not the appeal of the candidate. But the keys would have been turned even more strongly in Biden’s favour if he was the incumbent, yet after his disastrous debate performance in early July, a consensus developed that his senility was so apparent that he would lose, regardless of his record governing. A similar argument is currently being made about Harris, she is just too unlikeable to win a national election. Is that true?

I would point to Hillary Clinton. In 2016, Clinton ranked as the presidential candidate with the second highest unfavourability rating ever, second only to Trump! Pollsters found ‘liar’ was the word most associated with Clinton in voters’ minds, and, she was shrouded in controversy over her deleted e-mails and, to a lesser extent, her primary contest with Bernie Sanders. Harris isn’t the most appealing politician, but I’m willing to bet she will be more popular than Clinton.

And despite the widespread dislike for Clinton, she still won the popular vote in 2016. What mattered was Clinton lost three key Rust Belt states to Trump that swung the election: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Trump’s margin of victory in those states? 79,316 votes. Trump won Pennsylvania by 46,435 votes, Wisconsin by 22,177 votes, and Michigan by 10,704 votes. These are tiny margins: to be precise, 0.057 of total voters cost Clinton the election. Now factor in eight years of demographic change and cultural leftism and ask yourself if Harris can gain this kind of margin on Hillary Clinton.

How (and who) Trump Won

In 2016, Trump won these Rust Belt states by challenging the Republican party from the outside and presenting as a populist. Trump actually won fewer White voters than Mitt Romney, but he won more of the White voters who mattered. There are a few interesting things about the key areas Trump flipped. For one, they are some of the Whitest counties in America:

Another interesting and anomalous thing about these swing states becomes apparent from looking at a map of voter attitudes in the US, which show that these states are some of the few in America where the majority voter attitude is ‘populist’ rather than some variant of conservative or liberal:

Many of these White, populist voters are disaffected Democrats who felt left behind by the country’s embrace of globalism and free trade. They chose Obama in 2008 and 2012, but switched to Trump in 2016 because they liked how he sounded on issues like immigration, protectionism and rebuilding American industry. After governing like Jeb Bush for four years, Trump gained more support from ideological conservatives, but he lost crucial support from the White, working-class moderates and populists whose votes are decisive in these states.

Instead of governing as a populist, Trump’s great legislative achievement was a Paul Ryan tax cut that favoured the rich. In the Rust Belt states in 2020, the trend was Trump losing a disproportionate share of lower and middle income earners, while either gaining or losing a smaller proportion of high income earners.

Non-college-educated White voters were critical to Trump’s victory in 2016, but in 2020 the Democrats made gains with this demographic, increasing their share of this vote from 28% to 33%.

A more relevant question than how much voters are going to like Kamala Harris is what Trump is going to do to win back the populist White voters he lost. Currently, the Harris campaign is doing more explicit outreach to White voters than Trump, who recently framed his opposition to mass-immigration as motivated by a desire to protect the jobs of Blacks and Hispanics. Part of a strategy, it seems, devised by Trump’s campaign manager Susie Wiles, who says they will compensate for losing White ‘Karens’ by winning ‘Jamal and Enrique’.

Trump had a chance to learn from his mistakes in 2020 and return to the populist platform that won him populist White voters in 2016. But Trump is proud of his record as President. At the RNC, speaker after speaker celebrated Trump’s tax cuts. There was very little mention of immigration — a South American immigrant addressed the crowd in Spanish and spoke about how illegal immigration was hurting legal immigrants like her. There is little mention either, of the vision of economic nationalism Trump pointed to in 2016. The focus instead is inflation — an always popular target for conservatives — gas prices, and oil. Speaker after speaker promised Trump would “unleash American energy” a return to the 2008 GOP “drill baby drill” platform.

Trump talked a good game about rebuilding American manufacturing in 2016, but he failed to deliver for working-class Whites in Rust Belt states. An economic study at the end of Trump’s term looked at well-being in five Midwestern swing states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio. It found that among the counties that flipped from voting for Obama in 2008 and 2012 to voting for Trump in 2016, 61% were in economic decline. During Trump’s term, there was very modest growth in manufacturing jobs — about the same rate as Obama’s, and only enough to restore a fraction of the jobs lost in the prior decade.

In contrast, Biden has pumped billions into these Rust Belt states. Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act is bringing high-paying technology jobs into the American economy, which includes a focus in Georgia and Pennsylvania. In the year after passing the act, construction spending by US manufacturers more than doubled. The Rust Belt is becoming a center of electric vehicle production, with companies like Ford making big investments in EV battery production in these states. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act pumped billions more into these states, giving generous subsidies and tax breaks to green energy manufacturers.

Manufacturing electric vehicles and solar panels isn’t how residents in these states might have imagined the return to industrial dominance when it was offered by Trump, but it has actually put these states at the center of an ecosystem of innovation after Trump offered them little for four years, instead focusing on another Reagan-era tax cut.

That was the whole story of Trump’s first term — making an appeal to White populism and economic nationalism, but handing policy over to the fiscal conservatives who populist voters despise. In fact, Trump’s ability to sell more of the same GOP policies with rhetorical populism has probably masked just how unpopular this agenda, and conservatism in general, is.

The fact is, the Republican Party has underperformed in every election since Trump won in 2016 by presenting as something other than a Republican. Since then, the Democrats have beaten the Republicans in the 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 elections. Democrats not losing ground in 2022 was especially significant, bucking the historical trend of midterm losses for the party in the White House. A big part of the reason Democrats were able to avoid the promised “red wave” in the 2022 midterms was the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the same year, making abortion front and center of national politics.

Abortion

Support for abortion is now at a record high among Americans: 69% now supportlegalising abortion for the first three months of pregnancy. This is not just a Democrat issue, when a referendum on “abortion rights” passed in Trump-voting Ohio in 2023, the New York Times reported that

Across the state, the margin of support for abortion rights was stronger than the margin of support for Mr. Biden three years ago. Among the Trump counties that voted for the amendment, the abortion rights vote was stronger where Mr. Trump won by smaller margins.

Elections in 2023 showed how the abortion issue could be decisive. Democrats in Virginia regained control of their state legislature with heavily abortion-focusedcampaigns. Red state Kentucky elected Democrat Andy Beshear over a Trump-endorsed candidate, helped by an attack on the state’s stringent abortion laws. Similar results occurred elsewhere. Politico concluded:

When the right to abortion is on the ballot, it wins. It wins in red states that voted for President Donald Trump. It wins in counties President Joe Biden lost by more than 20 points. It wins when popular Republican officials campaign for it and when they ignore it. And it wins even when the outcome has no immediate effect on abortion access.

The most telling example is the state of Michigan, an important swing state for the upcoming election. Richard Hanania:

The state voted for Trump in 2016, had a Republican governor until 2019, and a Republican legislature until last year’s midterms. Michigan now has Democratic women in the positions of governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and senate majority leader. To say that the Democrats in the state have run on abortion would be an understatement.

Gretchen Whitmer, the Democrat governor of Michigan, had been tipped as a potential late substitute for Biden if he decided to step down. Whitmer put abortion front and center of her campaigning:

At the Michigan State of the State, she did not treat abortion as Democrats often do, as if it’s slightly icky and private, damp and sad. She did not cordon it off in its own dolorous corner separate from all the rousing stuff about creating a mighty Michigan economy. Rather, she led with it, weaving it into a business-forward spiel called “Make It in Michigan,” suggesting that prioritizing abortion rights and LGBTQ+ protections would help bring businesses and expertise back to her former manufacturing state.

The result was historic support from women in Michigan, widening a gender gap between the parties that was already at a record in 2018.

The abortion issue especially activates college educated White women because it gets at a deep status anxiety — any woman is just one unwanted pregnancy away from joining the “poor Whites”, the most derided, low-status group in the country. These women will spearhead Harris’s campaign, and Harris being handed the torch has energised them in a way Biden didn’t. TikTok has been alight with educated White women and non-White zoomers giving “Momala” the meme energy Biden was lacking, and which Trump so successfully tapped into in 2016.

People writing off Kamala’s chances have said this is an astroturfed boost pushed by regime media, and Harris has little support on the ground. But just a week after being announced as the new Democrat candidate, she has raised $200 million, 66% of which is from first-time donors, and added over 170,000 volunteers to her campaign. This is quite a staggering boost from a change of candidate.

The election will be decided by who can get their demographics to turn out the strongest in key states, and Kamala will have an army of young volunteers to help with that. If Harris gets a strong turnout from Black and younger voters in high-density urban areas in swing states this would give her an advantage over Biden that could offset losing some of his White voters. Clinton lost White moderates to Trump, but the other factor in her defeat is she didn’t drive Black turnout as well as she could have, and that’s another area for Harris to make gains. And, for all the talk of Black voters rejecting Harris for not really being one of them, recent polling on Pennsylvania showed Harris with a slightly higher favourability among Black voters than Biden.

Part of why Harris got so much young support early in her campaign is her decision to immediately put abortion front and center of her campaign. Trump, too, knows the abortion issue could be decisive, which is why he has emphasised that he does not support a national abortion ban, and stated his support for abortion in the case of “the exceptions”. At the RNC, Trump did something perhaps no other could have done: he got the Republican party to amend its platform to remove support for an abortion ban. But the Democrats look set to launch an offensive campaign which will portray Trump as being the gateway to an ultra-conservative takeover of America, paving the way for a national abortion ban.

This is why they have made Project 2025 the focus of their attacks, as it represents the kind of fear many otherwise Trump-voting women have about them accidentally greenlighting more radical conservatives. This may seem obviously misguided to people who follow this kind of thing (Trump has now disavowed Project 2025 multiple times), but it does seem to be resonating with low-information female voters. And this will only be exacerbated by Trump’s VP selection.

The Vance Problem

I liked the idea of Trump selecting JD Vance to be his running mate. Vance is, you might say, thematically pro-White, and points to a future where conservative politicians might be more willing to explicitly defend White people against blatant anti-White discrimination, as Vance has done. He also seems more likely than most to set about actually turning back the Civil Rights regime and delivering some conservative legislative accomplishments, which is obviously a big part of the reason liberals fear him.

Vance has already been identified by the social media mobs as an awkward chud whose attempts at being relatable to voters end in cringe. “JD Vance is weird” has become the popular meme among his enemies, and it looks like it might stick. This isn’t that bad, Vance could lean into being a nerdy policy wonk who is determined to dismantle the institutions which have kept his people down. But right now, he hasn’t got it. After his selection at the RNC, Vance polled as the most unpopular VP pick ever.

Vance is a much bigger problem for Trump on abortion. The media is going on the attack against Vance: for complaining about ‘childless cat-ladies’, for saying people with children should have more votes, and, for saying as recently as 2022 that he supports a national abortion ban and a federal response to women who travel across state lines for abortion.

These comments are going to be the focus of media and Democrat party attacks for the rest of the election cycle, and will block Trump’s attempts to win women with more liberal views on abortion. Little wonder then, that there are now stories abounding of Trump’s alleged regret over his selection.

Israel

One final point against Trump is his foreign policy. In theory, this should be an easy win for Trump: he didn’t start any new wars, and since he left office, conflict has flared in Gaza and Ukraine. Until recently, Trump intentionally stayed vague on policy as it concerned these conflicts.

Now though, Trump is taking a more hardline Zionist stance on Gaza, complaining that Kamala won’t let the Israelis “finish the job”. By the Democrats switching candidates, they have an opportunity to create some distance between Kamala and “genocide Joe” on Israel — Harris avoided attending Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, then came out and promised a ceasefire, peace deal, and an eventual two-state solution to end the conflict.

Events in Gaza caused a lot of interesting speculation about non-Whites, ideological leftists, and Muslims abandoning Biden, maybe even voting for Trump in protest. If the choice is now a Zionist promising a ceasefire and a Palestinian state versus a Zionist promising unconditional support for the Netanyahu government, there is no chance of this happening.

Harris’ position is the popular one: polling has consistently shown strong support for a ceasefire among Americans, including even a majority of Republicans. Only 13% hold the Trump position of opposing a ceasefire and allowing Israel to “finish the job”. It’s hard to know how much this issue is going to sway voters or boost turnout, but if it does, it won’t be in Trump’s favour.

Some more points in the Democrats’ favour

  • A lot of the talk of Kamala’s unlikability with White voters in swing states will be offset by her VP pick. Currently, the favourites are former astronaut Mark Kelly and Pennsylvania governor Joshua Shapiro.
  • Trump will likely lose the debates with Harris. Although he had some great moments against Hillary, polling on undecided voters showed they thought he lost every exchange. Harris performed reasonably well against Mike Pence in 2020, and Trump is not the man he was in 2016 or even 2020.
  • In recent years MAGA has become more trashy, attracting a lot of low IQ, conspiratorial people. They are less likely to vote or volunteer for his campaign, and many Trump voters generally are demoralised by their belief that the 2020 election was rigged. If they are not demoralised, they are generally dismissive of Kamala’s chances in a way they weren’t of Hillary or Biden, as I have discovered discussing this. Contrast this with Democrat supporters, many of whom felt they were losing under Biden and believe Trump is going to try and end Democracy if he succeeds.
  • Many Trump ‘24 maximalists believe the failed assassination attempt is a huge mark in Trump’s favour. I admit I got caught up in the spectacle of it at the time, and bought the consensus that this would hugely bolster Trump’s chances.In hindsight, I’m not sure it will have any effect at all. Polls conducted since haven’t shown Trump faring any better, and I feel like it will seem like ancient history by November. Trump wasn’t seriously injured, his re-appearance at the RNC after the event was lackluster, and the conservative subculture has already taken the energy out of it and made it uncool (their ability to do this to everything is quite something). Trump actually made a point of not using it to go on the offensive against the left, the media, or the deep state. Instead, he used the moment to push a message of ‘unity’, which translated to a 90 minute stump speech which has already been forgotten.

How Trump Can Still Win

By now, I think I’ve made it clear that the prospects for a Trump victory are very bleak, but that’s not to say he can’t win. There is still a long way to go until the election.

Given everything I have explained here about the demographics of the election, there is one clear path that stands out for Trump. It’s not complicated; in fact, it’s the same strategy that he used to win in 2016.

The election will be decided by who can get more of their demographic out to vote. Harris has recruited thousands of volunteers, raised hundreds of millions; she will win the Black vote. The Trump campaign can face up to this, drop the fantasy of a ‘Blexit’, find the populist White voters who are currently checked out, and focus on getting them to vote for Trump. Only 55% of non-college-graduate whites bothered to vote in 2020. If just 60% did, Trump would have won.

Recall how small the margins of victory were for Trump in swing-states in 2016. He had similarly small margins of defeat in 2020. Now consider that of the crucial non-college-educated White populists swinging between Democrat and Republican deciding these states, half are not even voting.

Brexit would not have passed without the Brexit campaign successfully targeting the biggest demographic of all — non-voters. These voters tend to be populist in their thinking, they don’t see either the “woke left” or the establishment right as representing their concerns. The Brexit campaign realised they could form a powerful protest vote bloc, and successfully won 2.8 million of them to their side.

The path to a Trump victory is staring Republicans in the face, but they would rather focus their energy on the fantasy of a multiracial coalition turning on the Democrats. Imagine if Republicans focused on beating Democrats at their own game, registered tens of thousands of non-college-educated Whites to vote in swing states, and even bussed them directly to the polls? This is an easy way to access tens of thousands of votes, and the only obstacle is the deep aversion to being seen to be courting White people.

We know what White populists want: immigration restriction, protectionism, affordable healthcare, a more fair redistribution of wealth; they still lean conservative in their social values but support more socialist economic policies. In short, they want nationalism. They dislike both parties. They liked when Trump seemed like an outsider challenging the GOP in 2016.

Trump could listen to his better instincts and campaign more like he did in 2016. The focus should be on crime and immigration, where Harris is weak, and on an economic nationalism that Trump dropped after becoming President. But most of these would-be voters aren’t very ideological. What matters is being a challenge to the elites, and the tribulations Trump has experienced over the past year have put him in a good position to embody that. JD Vance could come good as a voice of anger for a part of America that feels forgotten by the elites.

That is Trump’s path to victory in 2024 — not unity, but vengeance. And vengeance on behalf of America’s most reviled demographic: poor Whites. The last eight years make me believe it is unlikely the Trump campaign will embrace this. That’s why I believe this election is still the Democrats’ to lose.

(Republished from Substack by permission of author or representative)

Why Did I Move out of the US — Part II

Revolutionary Communists of America host major rally in Philadelphia, USA

On Sunday, the newly-formed Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA) held their inaugural Congress in Philadelphia, officially launching their American chapter as part of the global Revolutionary Communists coordination, a movement active in numerous countries, according to Business Today.

After the Congress, around 500 RCA members marched through the streets of Philadelphia, waving red flags emblazoned with the hammer and sickle. The demonstration attracted significant attention on social media, drawing criticism from notable figures like Elon Musk, CEO of X and Tesla. Musk, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $238 billion, shared a video of the protest with an exclamation mark, highlighting his disapproval.