First, Biden officially endorsed Nikki Haley!
She’s a democrat … here is why.
Kamala Harris impression is all too accurate …
“Are they not idiots?” Ukraine Demands Russia Disarms Voluntarily
via RT
As President Vladimir Zelensky pushes forward with his so-called “peace formula,” which has been dismissed by the Kremlin as “absurd,” Ukrainian officials continue to propose additional terms and conditions.
The conflict in Ukraine can only end with a “complete liberation” and “restoration of its 1991 borders,” Kiev’s deputy defense minister Ivan Gavrilyuk told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel last week. Only then can Moscow and the pro-Kiev “coalition” sign a document to “create preventive mechanisms so that Russia will never think about another war against Ukraine or any country in the future.”
“This document must include Russia’s renunciation of nuclear weapons, because it poses a threat to the world,” Gavrilyuk claimed.
A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, voiced a similar idea, claiming that the negotiation should take place only when Moscow “suffers a global defeat,” or at the very least a series of “tactical defeats,” and “internal riots” that would threaten political stability in Russia and force it to “voluntarily give up nuclear weapons.”
“What is a global defeat? The Russian Federation will no longer be able to dominate… will not be able to use its veto right in the UN Security Council,”Podoliak explained. “Then conditions are possible for nuclear weapons, and for the number of carriers of nuclear weapons, including missiles of a certain range, and for cross-border buffer zones, etc.”
During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelensky once again attempted to promote his so-called ‘peace formula’, which among other things proposes that Russia pay reparations, surrender its officials to face war crimes tribunals, and restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders. It has previously been rejected by the Kremlin as “absurd,” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov referring to it as a publicity stunt and “a figment of a sick imagination.”
“Are they not idiots?” Putin asked, adding that if Ukraine had simply ignored Johnson, then the violence could be long over by now. “This just proves yet again that they are not independent people.”
‘If Ukraine loses, our enemies will decide the world order’
by Roland Oliphant, SENIOR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT via telegraph
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, a former secretary General of Nato, has seen his fair share of international crises CREDIT: Julian Simmonds
[ . . . ]
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen has seen his fair share of international crises. As Tony Blair’s Secretary of State for Defence and later the Secretary General of Nato between 1999 and 2003, he presided Nato’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, the alliance’s enlargement to include former Warsaw Pact members in eastern Europe, and its only ever invocation of Article Five, the North Atlantic Treaty’s self-defence clause, in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks.
Unlike many retired politicians and generals, he is still viewed by serving defence officials and thinkers as a credible elder statesman. Now, he has a warning: we are living through a period of global volatility “unlike anything in history, and we are not rising to the occasion”.
“If they [Ukraine] lose, we lose…because otherwise the world order will be written by the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians and the North Koreans. And that will make a very, very uncomfortable world for my grandkids.”
It is not a reassuring prediction. The war in Ukraine is about to enter its third year, the Middle East is aflame, and Western nerves jangle over Xi Jinping’s plans for Chinese “unification” with Taiwan.
Ukrainian servicemen fire a M777 howitzer toward Russian troops at a position near a front line in the Zaporizhzhia region CREDIT: Reuters/Stringer
And by the end of the year, Donald Trump, who is on record telling European officials that “Nato is dead,” may once again be president-elect of the United States.
Some officials are openly warning that Britain may be involved in a peer-to-peer conflict within a decade. Some people say the world has never been so dangerous as it is in 2024. Can Lord Robertson reassure us it isn’t?
“Oh, it’s bad,” he says. “People say it’s an incredibly dangerous time. Well, it is. We have never had such a volatility of events, so many things simultaneously happening in politics of both democracies and autocracies. Is it the most dangerous period? No.”
Lord Robertson left Nato in 2003, but never really retired. At the age of 77 he is a frantically busy peer, commuting weekly between Westminster and his home in Dunblane where he lives with his wife Sandra (he also has three grown-up children).
[ . . . ]
“It’s unlike anything in history this period we’re living through,” he says. “It is almost a battle of alliances. The Global South is taking sides and they don’t seem to recognise that they’ve got a dog in the fight – that if you can change borders by the use of force then anarchy is the eventual outcome. The Western alliance is there, but maybe endangered by Donald Trump coming in. We cannot afford to be taken by surprise again.”
It is the vacuum of leadership that bothers him most. Yes, he concedes, the Westerners, including his own generation of leaders, became complacent in the aftermath of the Cold War.
“Even now, when there is a land war in Europe, when we’ve got Ukraine and some other problems – the Prime Minister was reminding us on Monday of how important it was that [Ukraine] gets the equipment. And he still doesn’t say when we will give them a multi-year commitment.”
Lord Robertson talks to troops from the Ukraine and Poland during a joint training exercise in 1998 CREDIT: Adam Butler/PA
This week, Rishi Sunak won a standing ovation in the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, when he announced a new package of aid. It was a strong speech, and greeted with great relief by Ukrainians who sense a creeping fatigue over the war.
But Lord Robertson fears there is still too large a gap between the bravado of Western rhetoric and the hesitancy of their actions for the Kremlin to take them seriously.
“There is a basic principle in politics: it is not what you say, it is what people hear. We forget that all the time. The only thing that will change Vladimir Putin’s mind – and that’s the mind that dictates what is happening there – is you’ve got to say you are there for the duration. One speech on a Monday afternoon is not enough.
“The money we pay for Ukraine at the moment runs out in a few weeks time in March. The Prime Minister goes out there and makes all the right noises and gets an award and announces £2.5 billion for the next year. What they need is for us to say ‘we’re going to give you £2.5 billion every year.’ Because that’s the only thing that will be heard in the Kremlin.”
He sees a similar problem across the Atlantic. Joe Biden has also shown “timidity” in his response to Ukraine. And Donald Trump has even worse messaging problems.
US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hold a press conference at the White House in December CREDIT: AFP via Getty Images
“I was talking to an American congressional delegation this week who were pointing out that, although he was rhetorical about Nato before, he actually increased the American contribution to Nato. The American Congress has now put in place a law that says he cannot withdraw from Nato,” he explains.
“They were saying, ‘Look what Donald Trump did. We are absolutely on the side of the Ukrainians. We just want this deal done’. I said, ‘But that’s not what is appearing in the Kremlin. And that is all they are listening to’.”
[ . . . ]
“I think the next stage for Putin, if he succeeds here, is that you build up another buffer. He will mop up Moldova, Armenia, Kazakhstan – building that buffer in there. There is a timidity both in the White House and in Downing Street and in other capitals in Europe, that they don’t want to escalate.
“You can’t give them long-range weapons because they might use them into territorial Russia and then we will have World War Three. So that fear of escalation is reducing that objective, that Ukraine has got to win,” Lord Robertson explains.
“In my view, again psychologically, we have got to inculcate into the Russian high command the thought that they could escalate and bring about that conflict. Because a conflict with Nato would lead to Russian defeat.”
[ . . . ]
Admiral Rob Bauer, Nato’s current military chief, warned this week that Nato must prepare for all-out war with Russia in the next 20 years. The head of Poland’s national security agency last month gave the alliance’s eastern members just three years to arm themselves.
Defence think tanks are rehearsing a nightmare scenario of Russia launching a surprise attack on the Baltic States, presenting Nato with a fait-accomplis before the alliance can agree on an effective military response.
By exploiting fear of nuclear war, Putin could then seek to persuade European governments to talk rather than fight – avoiding a conventional war (which he would lose), while effectively destroying Nato politically by demonstrating that Article 5 is useless.
Lord Robertson is sceptical. “I don’t think he will cross the Article 5 line. The key thing about nuclear deterrence is you don’t know what we’re going to do. And you can say Trump won’t press the button. But actually you’ve got the French and the British deterrents. And the British deterrent is independent.”
He freely admits he has come a long way from scouting for CND protesters at Holy Loch.
And yet the painting on his office wall is a reminder that there is more continuity than contradiction between the angry young pacifist scouting CND campsites and the peer of the realm putting faith in mutually assured destruction.
It was, after all, a group of former student radicals who resolved to stop Slobodan Milošević’s nascent genocide in Kosovo.
“The French, German, and British foreign and defence ministers around that table were all of that Sixties generation who protested against the Vietnam war,” Lord Robertson recalls. “You had people like Robin Cook, and me, and Joschka Fischer, confronted with something horrible going on, that we can stop.
“We knew what the public didn’t know, about Operation Horseshoe and Milošević expelling an entire population. Are you going to take military action? You have to, when you’re faced with that enormous responsibility.”
In the end, it comes back to the bones beneath the poppies on his office wall.
“We need to look at Ukraine in the same context. Because if they lose – if Putin wins – then we all lose.”
Read the whole article here.
ProPalestinian Rally, Water Cannons and Batons
Pro-Palestine rally in VicenzaOro Fair northern Italy crushed by the police.
Did Lenin Create Ukraine?
by Sergey Markov
Did Lenin (or more exactly the Bolsheviks) create Ukraine? Yes. More precisely, of course, Ukraine was created by the Bolsheviks.
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They artificially divided the Russian people, consisting of Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians. They recorded that Ukrainians are not Russians. Although this directly contradicts thousands of years of history. The goal of the Bolsheviks was to artificially reduce the number of Russian people and increase the number of national communities, according to the principle – divide and conquer.
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The Bolsheviks created an artificial Ukrainian language. “Little Russian” regional dialects don’t differ much from the official Russian language recorded in dictionaries. But on the instructions of the Bolsheviks, an artificial official Ukrainian language was created, seeking to use as few Russian words as possible. [Same way as they created the artificial language and the nation of Soviet Moldovans, in total disregard to the evidence that they are unmistakably ethnic Romanians.]
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Huge territories were assigned to Ukraine – part of Donbass and Novorossia and Slobozhanshchina (Kharkov). And later Crimea.
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In the 20s and 30s, the Bolsheviks actively pursued a policy of forced Ukrainization in the territories of Little Russia, Novorossiya, Slobozhanshchina, and Donbass. This policy of Ukrainization in a mild form continued in the 60-70-80s.
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The Bolsheviks persistently called the ancient Russian city Kiev “Kyiv”, Ukrainian.
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In general, the Bolsheviks adopted the Polish concept of Ukraine, abandoning the Russian concept of a united Rus’.
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Therefore, Lenin can be considered the creator of modern Ukraine, an artificial formation that has one goal – the division of a single large Russian people into separate groups.
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Ukrainians are not non-Russian. Ukrainians are Ukrainian Russians, just like there are Siberian Russians, Moscow Russians, Volga Russians, Ural Russians.
Banks, Credit Card and Financial Firms are Searching Your Purchases
Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Faith leaders and religious liberty advocates are up in arms over news that the federal government encouraged banks and other financial institutions to search customers’ private accounts using the search term “religious texts.”
Tony Perkins (C), president of the Family Research Council, speaks during an interfaith roundtable on the Chinese Communist Party’s threat to religious freedom in Washington on July 12, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
The “religious texts” search term was among those federal officials asked financial institutions to use following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, a congressional source with direct knowledge confirmed to The Epoch Times on Jan. 18.
Other terms that were asked to use in the searches included “MAGA” and “Trump,” according to the House Judiciary Committee. Federal officials at the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department sought the data from such searches as part of their investigation of the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Religious liberty advocates interviewed by The Epoch Times were unanimous in condemning the searches, which were conducted without judicially authorized search warrants.
“This is beyond alarming,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told The Epoch Times. “If we did a word search in history of the type of activities the Biden administration is engaged in, it would return words like ‘KGB,’ ’totalitarian,‘ ’repressive,’ ‘anti-democratic,’ and ‘grave threat to freedom.’”
Family Research Council is a Washington-based nonprofit advocacy group that works on behalf of traditional values, including and especially defense of the family and religious freedom.
“The last place you would anticipate this kind of government intrusion into freedom of speech is America and yet it is rife with this administration and with the ‘deep state,’” Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told The Epoch Times.
“It is a very serious concern and it should be a serious concern, no matter your political beliefs because if this is permitted, then it just depends on who is in power. This is what despotic governments do to suppress people that they don’t agree with,” he said.
Mr. Staver’s organization, Liberty Counsel, is an Orlando, Florida-based nonprofit religious liberty defense foundation.
‘Mockery of Our Laws’
Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel for the Plano, Texas-based First Liberty Institute, told The Epoch Times the searches exposed by the House panel represent a threat to religious freedom.
“It’s outrageous and frankly chilling that the federal government may be urging banks to monitor Americans for exercising their religious freedom by simply purchasing a Bible or other religious text,” Mr. Shackelford said.
“Weaponizing the federal government against religious Americans freely exercising their constitutionally protected freedom is outrageous and a danger to all our freedoms. It makes a mockery of our laws. When religious people are attacked and religious freedom is not upheld, all other civil liberties—including economic freedom—soon start crumbling.”
“This news should serve as a wake-up call for every American,“ warned Jeremy Tedesco, senior vice president of corporate engagement for Alliance Defending Freedom. ”The revelation that the government is working with financial institutions to flag everyday American citizens as ’threats’ because they shop at Cabelas, Dick’s Sporting Goods, or buy religious texts is terrifying.
“No one should live in fear that law enforcement or a financial service provider will flag their account based on the exercise of their constitutionally protected rights.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said in a Jan. 17 statement that the searches were sought by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in conjunction with the FBI.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) accused the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division of politically based prosecutions while questioning U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke during a House hearing about “Oversight of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division” in Washington on Dec. 5, 2023. (Screenshot via NTD)
Mr. Jordan wrote a Jan. 17 letter to Noah Bishoff, the former FinCEN director who is now the anti-money laundering officer for Plaid Inc., a San Francisco digital financial platform developer and marketer.
“According to this analysis, FinCEN warned financial institutions of ‘extremism’ indicators that include ‘transportation charges, such as bus tickets, rental cars, or plane tickets, for travel areas with no apparent purpose,’ or ‘the purchase of books (including religious texts) and subscriptions to other media containing extremist views,’” Mr. Jordan wrote.
“In other words, FinCEN used large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”
Officials’ Testimony Sought
Mr. Bishoff was asked to provide testimony to the House Judiciary panel about the searches, as was Peter Sullivan, senior private sector partner for outreach in the Strategic Partner Engagement Section of the FBI.
“Freedom of Religion is a fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution,” Mr. Jordan told The Epoch Times. “It should frighten every American that the federal government is watching people based on their purchases. This is as wrong as it gets and we will continue to expose this blatant attack on faith and civil liberties.”
In a Jan. 17 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Mr. Jordan explained that Mr. Sullivan’s testimony “will help to inform the [House Judiciary] Committee and Select Subcommittee [on the Weaponization of the Federal Government] about the FBI’s mass accumulation and use of Americans’ private information without legal process; the FBI’s protocols, if any, to safeguard Americans’ privacy and constitutional rights in the receipt and use of such information; and the FBI’s general engagement with the private sector on law-enforcement matters.”
Congressional leaders also told The Epoch Times the searches warrant further investigation and corrective action.
FBI Director Christopher Wray looks over notes as he arrives for a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 10, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) also commented.
“The Biden administration is bringing back ‘Operation Chokepoint’ from the Obama-Biden era to weaponize our financial system against their political opponents. House Republicans, under the leadership of Chairman Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee, will not tolerate this un-American abuse of power.” Mr. Emmer said.
He was referring to a Department of Justice investigation in 2013 of firearms dealers, payday lenders, and other businesses thought to be vulnerable to money laundering.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told The Epoch Times that “digging through American citizens’ private financial transactions, based on political phrases, is a clear weaponization of the federal government and those responsible must be held responsible.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called the searches “outrageous” and claimed “the Biden administration is using federal law enforcement to engage in financial surveillance of Americans. … Shockingly, the government is even monitoring people for purchasing religious texts like the Bible. This is an Orwellian invasion of privacy, and it should have never happened in the United States. Biden’s bureaucrats running this horrendous financial surveillance system must be held accountable.”
Similarly, Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) told The Epoch Times: “This is yet another example of the federal government being weaponized against Joe Biden’s political opposition, as well as people of faith. This sort of activity is highly concerning and warrants further investigation. I applaud the House Judiciary Committee for digging into this issue and I look forward to investigators exposing and rooting out this misconduct.”
Tactics of Marxism
Shea Bradley-Farrell is an international development professional and president of the Washington-based Counterpoint Institute for Policy, Research, and Education. She told The Epoch Times that the searches are typical of the control measures used by totalitarian regimes to counter dissidents and other groups not approved by the authorities.
“Weaponizing the federal government against private citizens for their political or religious beliefs is straight out of the playbook of Marxism, and was also used to identify, crush, and control the occupied peoples under the communist Soviet Union,” Ms. Bradley-Farrell said.
“As I explain in my book, ‘Last Warning to the West,’ these are totalitarian, police-state tactics used to impose ‘docility, discipline and controllability of subject populations. These are warrantless searches that violate the Fourth Amendment.”
A spokesman for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
Biden Has Always Been a Pro-Israel ‘Hardliner’
“There’s a long history. If you ask me where Biden stands, I would say that ultimately, he stands to the right of some members of the cabinet in Israel. He’s a hardliner,” former British diplomat Alastair Crooke told the New Rules Podcast.
Crooke noted that even during the Obama administration, Biden undercut other cabinet members to support Israeli interests.
Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble
Escobar: How The West Was Defeated
Ed. note: Pretty good analysis except for one fundamental question: Who are “THEY”?!
We want to know names and how they are managing all of this assault on the rest of us. We only see the designated, hired impersonators, the holograms (in Tucker Carson’s word) of the real villains. But who are the villains, some 267 families, or 36 families? Is there a Don Corleone at the head of the clan? If so, who is the Don Corleone of the cabal? What does the oligarchs’ organizational chart look like? Are the Rothschilds that powerful? Or the British Royal House ? How does Soros, the Rockefellers or Israel fit into this scheme?
Until we know that, anything else is just academic speculation, beating around the bushes.
Emmanuel Todd, historian, demographer, anthropologist, sociologist and political analyst, is part of a dying breed: one of the very few remaining exponents of old school French intelligentsia – an heir to those like Braudel, Sartre, Deleuze and Foucault who dazzled successive young Cold War generations from the West to the East.
The first nugget concerning his latest book, La Défaite de L’Occident (“The Defeat of the West”), is the minor miracle of actually being published last week in France, right within the NATO sphere: a hand grenade of a book, by an independent thinker, based on facts and verified data, blowing up the whole Russophobia edifice erected around the “aggression” by “Tsar” Putin.
At least some sectors of the strictly oligarch-controlled corporate media in France simply could not ignore Todd this time around for several reasons. Most of all because he was the first Western intellectual, already in 1976, to have predicted the fall of the USSR in his book La Chute Finale, with his research based on Soviet infant mortality rates.
Another key reason was his 2002 book Apres L’Empire, a sort of preview of the Empire’s Decline and Fall published a few months before Shock & Awe in Iraq.
Now Todd, in what he has defined as his last book (“I have closed the circle”) allows himself to go for broke and meticulously depict the defeat not only of the US but of the West as a whole – with his research focusing in and around the war in Ukraine.
Considering the toxic NATOstan environment where Russophobia and cancel culture reign supreme, and every deviation is punishable, Todd has been very careful not to frame the current process as a Russian victory in Ukraine (although that’s implied in everything he describes, ranging from several indicators of social peace to the overall stability of the “Putin system”, which is “a product of the history of Russia, and not the work of one man”).
Rather, he focuses on the key reasons that have led to the West’s downfall. Among them: the end of the nation-state; de-industrialization (which explains NATO’s deficit in producing weapons for Ukraine); the “degree zero” of the West’s religious matrix, Protestantism; the sharp increase of mortality rates in the US (much higher than in Russia), along with suicides and homicides; and the supremacy of an imperial nihilism expressed by the obsession with Forever Wars.
The Collapse of Protestantism
Todd methodically analyses, in sequence, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia and finally The Empire. Let’s focus on what would be the 12 Greatest Hits of his remarkable exercise.
1. At the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, the combined GDP of Russia and Belarus was only 3.3% of the combined West (in this case the NATO sphere plus Japan and South Korea). Todd is amazed how these 3.3%, capable of producing more weapons than the whole Western colossus, not only are winning the war but reducing dominant notions of the “neoliberal political economy” (GDP rates) to shambles.
2. The “ideological solitude” and “ideological narcissism” of the West – incapable of understanding, for instance, how “the whole Muslim world seems to consider Russia as a partner rather than an adversary”.
3. Todd eschews the notion of “Weberian states” – evoking a delicious compatibility of vision between Putin and US realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer. Because they are forced to survive in an environment where only power relations matter, states are now acting as “Hobbesian agents.” And that brings us to the Russian notion of a nation-state, focused on “sovereignty”: the capacity of a state to independently define its internal and external policies, with no foreign interference whatsoever.
4. The implosion, step by step, of WASP culture, which led, “since the 1960s”, to “an empire deprived of a center and a project, an essentially military organism managed by a group without culture (in the anthropological sense)”. This is Todd defining the US neocons.
5. The US as a “post-imperial” entity: just a shell of military machinery deprived of an intelligence-driven culture, leading to “accentuated military expansion in a phase of massive contraction of its industrial base”. As Todd stresses, “modern war without industry is an oxymoron”.
6. The demographic trap: Todd shows how Washington strategists “forgot that a state whose population enjoys a high educational and technological level, even if it is decreasing, does not lose its military power”. That’s exactly the case of Russia during the Putin years.
7. Here we reach the crux of Todd’s argument: his post-Max Weber reinterpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published a little over a century ago, in 1904/1905: “If Protestantism was the matrix for the ascension of the West, its death, today, is the cause of the disintegration and defeat.”
Todd clearly defines how the 1688 English “Glorious Revolution”, the 1776 American Declaration of Independence and the 1789 French Revolution were the true pillars of the liberal West. Consequently, an expanded “West” is not historically “liberal”, because it also engineered “Italian fascism, German Nazism and Japanese militarism”.
In a nutshell, Todd shows how Protestantism imposed universal literacy on the populations it controlled, “because all faithful must directly access the Holy Scriptures. A literate population is capable of economic and technological development. The Protestant religion modeled, by accident, a superior, efficient workforce.” And it is in this sense that Germany was “at the heart of Western development”, even if the Industrial Revolution took place in England.
Todd’s key formulation is undisputable: “The crucial factor of the ascension of the West was Protestantism’s attachment to alphabetization.”
Moreover Protestantism, Todd stresses, is twice at the heart of the history of the West: via the educational and economic drive – with fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God engendering a work ethic and a strong, collective morality – and via the idea that Men are unequal (remember the White Man’s Burden).
The collapse of Protestantism could not but destroy the work ethic to the benefit of mass greed: that is, neoliberalism.
Transgenderism and the Cult of the Fake
8. Todd’s sharp critique of the spirit of 1968 would merit a whole new book. He refers to “one of the great illusions of the 1960s – between the Anglo-American sexual revolution and May 68 in France”; “to believe that the individual would be greater if freed from the collective”. That led to an inevitable debacle: “Now that we are free, en masse, from metaphysical beliefs, foundational and derived, communist, socialist or nationalist, we live the experience of the void.” And that’s how we became “a multitude of mimetic midgets who do not dare to think by themselves – but reveal themselves just as capable of intolerance as the believers of ancient times.”
9. Todd’s brief analysis of the deeper meaning of transgenderism completely shatters the Church of Woke – from New York to the EU sphere, and will provoke serial fits of rage. He shows how transgenderism is “one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not just things and humans but reality.”
And there’s an added analytical bonus: “The transgender ideology says that a man may become a woman, and a woman may become a man. This is a false affirmation, and in this sense, close to the theoretical heart of Western nihilism.” It gets worse, when it comes to the geopolitical ramifications. Todd establishes a playful mental and social connection between this cult of the fake and the Hegemon’s wobbly behavior in international relations. Example: the Iranian nuclear deal clinched under Obama becoming a hardcore sanctions regime under Trump. Todd: “American foreign policy is, in its own way, gender fluid.”
10. Europe’s “assisted suicide”. Todd reminds us how Europe at the start was the Franco-German couple. Then after the 2007/2008 financial crisis, that turned into “a patriarchic marriage, with Germany as a dominant spouse not listening to his companion anymore”. The EU abandoned any pretense of defending Europe’s interests – cutting itself off from energy and trade with its partner Russia and sanctioning itself. Todd identifies, correctly, the Paris-Berlin axis replaced by the London-Warsaw-Kiev axis: that was “the end of Europe as an autonomous geopolitical actor”. And that happened only 20 years after the joint opposition by France-Germany to the neocon war on Iraq.
11. Todd correctly defines NATO by plunging into “their unconscious”: “We note that that its military, ideological and psychological mechanism does not exist to protect Western Europe, but to control it.”
12. In tandem with several analysts in Russia, China, Iran and among independents in Europe, Todd is sure that the US obsession – since the 1990s – to cut off Germany from Russia will lead to failure: “Sooner or later, they will collaborate, as “their economic specializations define them as complementary”. The defeat in Ukraine will open the path, as a “gravitational force” reciprocally seduces Germany and Russia.
Before that, and unlike virtually any Western “analyst” across the mainstream NATOstan sphere, Todd understands that Moscow is set to win against the whole of NATO, not merely Ukraine, profiting from a window of opportunity identified by Putin in early 2022. Todd bets on a window of 5 years, that is, an endgame by 2027. It’s enlightening to compare with Defense Minister Shoigu, on the record, last year: the SMO will end by 2025.
Whatever the deadline, inbuilt in all this is a total Russia victory – with the winner dictating all terms. No negotiations, no ceasefire, no frozen conflict – as the Hegemon is now desperately spinning.
Davos enacts The Triumph of the West
Todd’s ample merit, so evident in the book, is to use history and anthropology to take Western society’s false consciousness to the couch. And that’s how, focusing for instance in the study of very specific family structures in Europe, he manages to explain reality in a way that totally escapes the brainwashed collective West masses lingering under turbo-neoliberalism.
It goes without saying that Todd’s reality-based book will not be a hit among the Davos elites. What’s happening this week in Davos has been immensely enlightening. Everything is out in the open.
From all the usual suspects – the toxic EU Medusa von der Leyen; NATO’s warmongering Stoltenberg; BlackRock, JP Morgan and assorted honchos shaking hands with their sweaty sweatshirt toy in Kiev – the “Triumph of the West” message is monolithic.
War is Peace. Ukraine is not (italics mine) losing and Russia is not winning. If you disagree with us – on anything – you will be censored for “hate speech”. We want the New World Order – whatever you lowly peasants think – and we want it now.
And if all else fails, a pre-fabricated Disease X is comin’ to get you.
Was 2023 Really The Second-Hottest Year Since 1884?
Authored by Iain Davis via Off-Guardian.org,
According to the UK Met Office, 2023 was the second hottest year in the UK since 1884.
Quite obviously, this is complete nonsense.
Unless they are troglodytes that never venture out in daylight, why would anyone in the UK believe such absurd drivel?
The Met Office states:
2023 is provisionally the second warmest year for the UK according to mean temperature. [. . .] 2023’s provisional mean temperature of 9.97°C puts it just behind 2022’s figure of 10.03°C and ahead of 2014’s 9.88°C.
Right, it’s “provisional” drivel.
The UK summer of 2023—where I live—was a thoroughly miserable affair. We had a few weeks of decent sunshine in the spring and a couple of hot weeks of Indian summer. That was it!
The rest of it was cold, wet and comprehensively devoid of anything we might traditionally call “summer.” The winter preceding and following it wasn’t particularly cold, but nor was it unusually warm.
I’m knocking on a bit and can remember about 50 years of my life. I know, for a fact, that I have lived through many warmer years. Sure, this is anecdotal, but I haven’t completely taken leave of my senses and I still have a functioning memory. No way am I unquestioningly buying the Met Office’s silly claim.
Neither do I believe any of the legacy media reports trying to convince me that the Met Office’s preposterous assertion is evidence of an alleged climate crisis. It simply isn’t true, so it is not “evidence” of anything at all. Although it does suggest deception.
The Met Office—obviously unreliably—tells us “UK mean temperatures have been shifting over the decades as a result of human-induced climate change. [. . .] 2023’s provisional mean temperature of 9.97°C puts it just behind 2022’s figure of 10.03°C.”
For a start, “human induced climate change,” or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), is a questionable and unproven scientific theory, not scientific fact. This too is just another claim from the Met Office which it wrongly asserts as fact.
The Met Office also tells us that “sunshine was near-average for much of the UK.” If we have got this right, the Met Office is claiming that, with average hours of UK sunshine in 2023—which also seems pretty dubious to me—somehow, since 1884, the only year that has been “hotter” was 2022. Which doesn’t ring true either.
What’s going on?
What does the Met Office mean—pardon the pun—by “mean temperature”? It reports that its 2023 alleged “provisional mean temperature of 9.97°C” had been obtained via the HadUK-Grid data set. The Met Office also cites its 2023 rapid attribution study. It is from this that we can—eventually—glean how the “UK mean temperature” is calculated by the Met Office.
In its rapid attribution study, the Met Office states:
Observed values of the UK annual mean temperature are obtained from the HadUK-Grid dataset v1.2.0.0. The time series spans 1884 – 2023, with the 2023 values being provisional as of 2nd January 2024.
“Observed,” that’s what we want to hear. So what observations are reported in the HadUK-Grid dataset? The Met Office claims:
HadUK-Grid is a collection of gridded climate variables derived from the network of UK land surface observations.
If we look at the HadUK-Grid methodology, the Met Office adds:
The gridded data sets are based on the archive of UK weather observations held at the Met Office.
So far so good. The HadUK-Grid reportedly records real data, such as sunshine hours, rainfall and even temperature. We live in hope. Unfortunately, there is some caveats. The Met Office continues:
The methods used to generate the daily grids are described in more detail in [this] report.
OK. So beyond just recording real-world data, what are the “methods” outlined in said report?
[. . .] the Met Office climate data archive [. . .] contains a simplified version of the raw observations generated according to well-defined rules. [. . .] Mean temperature [. . .] is the average of the maximum and minimum temperatures.
At last we have a definition of the “mean temperature” the Met Office claims to be the second highest since 1884. Apparently, it is “generated according to well-defined rules.”
In Met Office speak “mean temperature” isn’t the actual arithmetic mean of daily temperatures but rather the “average” of minimum and maximum temperatures recorded between 09:00 and 21:00 on any given day. Begging the question how are the minimum and maximum UK temperatures “observed”?
Although the data ha[s] undergone some quality checking, the extent and effectiveness of this has changed through time since the 1960’s. [. . .] NCIC climate data analysis software was again used to create the gridded data. [. . .] The station data were normalised with respect to the monthly 1km x 1km gridded 1961-1990 climate normals described by Perry and Hollis (2005a).
So the minimum and maximum allegedly “observed” 2023 “mean UK temperature” wasn’t actually observed at all. It was calculated from normalised data using computers running software based upon the “climate normals” defined in Perry and Hollis (2005).
The related paper considered how to calculate long term averages (LTAs) and suggested a methodology by which “mean” temperatures could be calculated:
For air temperature, 1490 stations reported at some point between 1961 and 2000 but only an average of 560 of these were open at any one time. This gives an array which is 38% complete. [. . .] [T]he solution is to fill in the gaps using an appropriate estimation technique. [. . .] Once the gaps in the array have been filled, long term averages for the periods 1961-1990, 1971-2000 and 1991-2000 can be calculated for each station from the complete array. [. . .] The regression model parameters provide an estimation of [. . .] the UK climate, explaining between 29% and 94% of the variance in the data depending on the climate variable.
Potentially, up to 62% of the data forming the Met Office’s “Mean UK temperature” is “generated” by “fill[ing] in the gaps.” This is based upon an “estimation technique” which supposedly explains between “29% and 94% of the variance in the data depending on the climate variable.” This doesn’t mean that the estimated fill-ins are inaccurate but they cannot be called “observations” either.
We seem to be moving further away from empirical science. Surely the Met Office isn’t claiming that it knows what the average UK “provisional” mean temperature was in 2023 based upon such limited observations? With regard to how it interprets the HadUK-Grid dataset the Met Office states:
The HadUK-Grid dataset is produced on a 1km x 1km grid resolution on the Ordnance Survey’s National Grid. To facilitate comparison of the observational dataset with the UKCP18 climate projections [. . .]. All the gridded datasets use the same grid projection. The re-gridding is conducted through averaging of all 1km grid points that fall within each of the coarser resolution grid cells.
Whoa there! We already know that the “observational dataset” is created by “fill[ing] in the gaps”—around a 60% gap apparently—with computer modelled estimates. Now we are told some sort of “re-gridding” is necessary to “facilitate comparison” with UKCP18 climate projections. Why is that necessary?
The UK Met Office adds:
Area averages are also produced based on averaging the 1km grid [data] across a set of geographical regions to provide spatial statistics for country, administrative regions and river basins. The details of these areas can be found in the UKCP18 guidance notes.
Now we’ve got “spacial statistics,” instead of empirical measurements, based upon “area averages” that facilitate, for some unknown reason, comparison with “UKCP18 climate projections.” OK, so how are the “area averages” constructed in accordance with the UKCP18 guidance notes:
Before using [UKCP18 guidance notes], it is important to understand the assumptions made, the caveats and limitations and the appropriate use of the results.
Assumptions made, caveats and limitations! What bloody assumptions, caveats and limitations? Just measure the temperature and calculate some sort of meaningful average for crying out loud!
Let’s look at the caveats and limitations:
Our understanding and ability to simulate the climate is advancing all the time but our climate models are not able to represent all of the features seen in the present day real climate and there are still limitations in our ability to project 21st century weather and climate.
Why are the Met Office “generating” temperature datasets to “facilitate comparison” with climate models if those models “are not able to represent all of the features seen in the present day real climate.” Surely the models should be based upon the empirically observed and measured features of the “real climate,” as opposed to creating “area averages”containing “spacial statistics” to fit in with the models?
Almost unbelievably, this is evidently what the UK Met Office is doing:
The relative probabilities indicate how strongly the evidence from models and observations, taken together in our methodology, support alternative future climate outcomes. [. . .] The probabilities are conditioned on methodological choices and expert judgement. The results may change if a different methodology is used.
In essence, the Met Office uses a tortuous and unnecessarily convoluted methodology to make up the bulk of its UK “temperature” data. While the Met Office claims that the provisional UK mean temperature was for 2023 was 9.97°C it also states that its results might change “if a different methodology” was used.
What’s more, the data it uses is normalised, based upon a wide gamut of climate assumptions, in order to fit in with its own climate models. Again, it admits its so-called observations, of things like mean temperature, are “taken together in [its] methodology” expressly in order to “simulate the climate.”
Most of these modelling shenanigans are utterly superfluous if your objective is to calculate the arithmetic mean annual UK temperature. Of course anomalies, such as heat islands, need to be normalised in the data but the rest of the Met Office’s “methodology,” which doesn’t even attempt to calculate an arithmetic mean temperature anyway, is about as far removed from empirical science as it is possible to venture.
Inevitably, it produces completely meaningless pap. The problem with such allegedly “scientific” rubbish is that, rather than being laughed off, it is then taken seriously by millions—thanks the unquestioning propaganda reports of the legacy media—and used to advance policy agendas, such as Net Zero.
Apart from the fact that it is blatantly obvious, to anyone who has lived in the UK from more that a couple of decades, that 2023 was not a warm year, there are other notable reasons not to automatically trust the Met Office’s makey-uppy “climate science.” Its entire claim is reliant upon the HadUK-Grid dataset which is a project funded by the UK government. As is the Met Office itself.
Apparently, the UK government is irreversibly committed to UN Sustainable Development and the associated UK Net Zero policies. The Met Office’s alleged scientific “observations” suffer from an enormous financial conflict of interest. Providing any evidence that contradicts the notion of “unprecedented global warming” couldn’t be further removed from the Met Office’s and the UK government’s own declared interests.
There is absolutely no reason to believe any of it. As “science” goes, it’s complete junk. I’ve read comics with more credibility that the Met Office’s claim that 2023 was the second warmest year in the UK since 1884.
Pull the the other one, it’s got bells on it.
Russia and Iran Agree to Sign a Bilateral Strategic Pact
A significant development this week with respect to Iran. Russia has agreed to enter into a bilateral strategic pact with Iran.
Iran has been a target of U.S. and Israeli intelligence operations for several decades. These efforts appear to have accelerated over the last ten years because of shared Israeli and U.S. fears that Iran was edging towards becoming a nuclear power.
Both sides stressed their commitment to the fundamental principles of the Russian-Iranian relations, including unconditional respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, which will be confirmed in the major intergovernmental treaty between Russia and Iran as this document is being finalised already.
After China, Iran became the next major “player” who signed such an agreement (or is about to sign). This is a huge development in world politics and will further shift the balance of power and influence away from the U.S. I cannot overstate how big of an impact this will have. It means that Israel and the United States will face the risk of going to war with Moscow if either openly launch a military attack on Iran. This puts a new arrow in Iran’s quiver. Iran already has an array of ballistic missiles – non-nuclear – that can strike Israel and many U.S. military bases in the region. In addition, Iran has been conducting joint military exercises with Russia and China for the last four years.
On Monday, the Russian Defense Minister, Army General Sergey Shoigu, held a telephone conversation with the Minister of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani.
I suspect a similar agreement is coming between Iran and China. That will create a group of three very strong states, looking for each others’ geopolitical interests. This is not an actual alliance (defensive or otherwise), but it shows just how far the “Global South” has come on their journey of mutual cooperation. This agreement, unlike the one Russia and Iran signed on mutual free trade, is a clear signal to the West and exists to counter the various Western infrastructures that exist to bully countries into obedience.
The question now is how will our State Department react. They can either continue on this path of self-destruction, or realize that the world isn’t what it used to be and they can no longer do whatever they want without consequences. My fear is that the former will be the case and our neo-cons will continue pushing for war with China and Iran, while the Democrats do the same with Russia, plunging us into an unwinnable, catastrophic war on three massive fronts. The time until the November elections will be critical. If Donald Trump is serious about disbanding NATO, he has my vote. It’s because it doesn’t exist as a “defensive alliance”, but rather as an instrument of our foreign policy which has been highly aggressive for decades and needs to end if any of us are to live peacefully. It’s not us who are defending ourselves, it’s everyone else who is defending themselves against NATO. It needs to stop.
The economic and strategic alliances to give countries an alternative to the the American post-war system will only grow. But while our system offers very little, theirs offers fair trade and no strings attached. All we offer is subservience for very little gain. If we want to stay relevant in this world, we need to fundamentally re-think our attitude towards everyone else.
We can either live and prosper in the new world, or die in the old, taking everyone else with us to hell.
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