The Beginning Of The End

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One of the more interesting things to occur while waiting for Trump to be installed as the new ruler of America has been Elon Musk taking on Europe. First, he wrote an essay in support of the political party Alternative for Deutschland, which sent the German political class into a panic. Then Musk attacked the British government for covering up the Pakistani rape gangs. He also demanded the release of Tommy Robinson and said Nigel Farage should quit and let a real man take over the Reform Party.

Stupid people said he was doing this to distract from the dustup over H1B visas, but stupid people say stupid things like this. The world’s richest man, close confident of the new ruler of the American empire, does not need to distract from anything and he does not take aim at the provincial leaders in Europe to hide from a meaningless internet spat over immigration policy. It is safe to assume that what Musk is doing is both deliberate and with the support of Trump.

The first thing to note is that Trump does not like Keir Starmer. No one likes Starmer, but Trump has reasons beyond that to attack him. Starmer was on the anti-Trump train, and he sent people to help Harris in the election. This was a huge blunder that Trump will never forgive. Given that Starmer is as popular as rectal cancer right now, Trump can easily put his government in crisis. We already see this with the Musk attacks on Starmer over the rape gangs.

Keep in mind, that this is happening against the backdrop of Justin from Canada resigning from office after Trump made fun of him. Trump started talking about tariffs on Canada and Trudeau immediately flew to Mar-a-Lago to patch things up only to have Trump call him the governor of Canada. This kept up until the Trudeau government essentially collapsed, forcing Trudeau to resign. The collection of pipsqueaks that make up the European political class certainly noticed this.

Keir Starmer has more to worry about than Trudeau. The British political class has been orchestrating a massive coverup of what should be considered treason by the political class over the last two decades. They invited South Asian migrants into the country, who then created a crime wave, including the mass rape of young British girls as a way of turning them into prostitutes. Meanwhile, the British press waged war against the local population.¹

In other words, it would be very easy for an angry Trump, with the help of his good friend Elon Musk, to destabilize the British government. If the choice is between Keir Starmer, and his diverse collection of halfwits, and the relationship with the American empire, the UK economic elite will pick the latter, even if it means forcing an unprecedented election in which the hated Nigel Farage could win. This is not a fight the UK political class can win.

This is a reality across the EU. The European political class can talk big and pretend they are global leaders, but in reality, they are provincial clodhoppers who exist at the discretion of the United States. Trump has more respect for the wine steward at Mar-a-Lago than he does for Emmanuel Macron. Given the fragile condition of the European economy and the even more fragile political conditions in Europe, Trump could easily remake the politics of Europe if he chooses.

While the drama is interesting and amusing, there is something much bigger happening here regarding the relationship between America and Europe. It is well known that Trump has no use for NATO. He sees it as an expensive American obligation to a collection of pampered ingrates. He has repeatedly said the economic relationship with Europe must change, because as far as he is concerned, the Europeans have been freeriding on America for too long.

What we may be seeing here is the first salvos in an asymmetric war by the Trump administration on the legacy relationship between America and Europe. The choice before the Europeans is to either accept vassalage in exchange for continued American protection or regain their independence but do so without special access to American markets and the American defense umbrella. At long last, the Europeans are going to learn that there is something worse than being an enemy of America.

For their part, the Europeans are taking every chance to make things worse for themselves in this process. Probably the biggest mistake was the arrest of the Telegram founder Pavel Durov by the French. Macron lured him to France, where he was arrested on nonsense charges. If the Europeans will arrest this guy, then they will arrest Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. This was the equivalent of the butler telling his boss to shut up at a dinner party for the boss’s close friends.

The angry comments from Macron, Starmer and Olaf Scholz, the outgoing German chancellor, aimed at Elon Musk suggest these people are incapable of understanding what is happening to them. At some point the economic elites of Europe may have no choice but to step in and begin forcing through reform. This assumes the economic elites have enough gas in the tank to do it. Decades of poor management by the political class have sapped Europe of its economic strength.

Regardless, what we are seeing is the start of a process that will lead to a fundamental revision of the decade’s old relationship between the America and Europe. Similar to how the so-called captive nations of the Soviet Union broke free, ushering in the collapse of communism, this jettisoning of Europe by the United States will mark the end of both Cold War America and the unipolar world. Decades after the Cold War officially ended, it will finally end in the West.

¹Graph first published by Gerry Nolan at The Islander Telegram channel.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

The Deep State

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Note: Behind the green door, there is a post about the world of kitchen knives, a post about Musk’s Twitter issues and the Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here.

One of the difficult things for most Americans to accept is that the people on the ballot every election have little role in public policy. The way the system is supposed to work is that the voters select their elected officials, who then meet and agree on new laws and changes to the law. They also pick the people in charge of the many agencies that carry out the laws passed by the elected officials. In reality, the people in those elected offices play almost no role in legislation and policy.

The easiest place to see this is in foreign policy. In the last election, there was little mention of foreign relations. Trump pledged his unconditional support for Israel, which every candidate is required to do in America, but otherwise he had little to say about what is happening in the world. Those running for House and Senate seats were mostly silent of foreign affairs, aside from pledging their loyalty to Israel. We are in a proxy war with Russia and China, and no one talks about it.

One main reason for those House and Senate candidates not saying much of anything is they have no role in the process. Many of them could not find Ukraine on a map, despite cheering wildly for Zelensky when he spoke to Congress. Only those who have been around for a decade or more understand why Ukraine is an issue. Some of them have been invited to get a taste of the side action, which is the primary benefit to sticking around in Congress for a long time.

Foreign policy is the domain of the executive, but it is obvious that the President has little role in the process. Joe Biden was a vegetable for his term in office. So much so that decisions on most things were delegated to various appointees. Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken ran foreign policy, but even they were only in charge of a small portion of what the world sees as American foreign policy. The reason for that is much of it is now done off the books, outside the official system.

For example, the years long effort to regime change the country of Georgia was not a White House or State Department caper, in the sense that there were high level meetings about the program or decisions made by the senior staffers. This operation was run by the informal network of formal and informal operational nodes that make up the American foreign policy community. It is not really accurate to call it American, as it now includes nodes around the West.

For example, last year the Russians raided a group of call centers operating in Russia, that were organized by something called The Milton Group, by the former Minister of Defense of Georgia, David Kazerashvili. Amusingly, these call centers were intended to operate various frauds in the West, but they also helped organize the pro-Western protests in Georgia. One center was run by an Israeli and Ukrainian citizen and the other by an Israeli and Georgian citizen.

How a normal fraud operation gets repurposed into a mechanism to topple governments is not a big mystery. It turns out that there is more money in regime change than in scamming old people out of their pensions. That money comes from the thicket of NGO’s and clandestine government operations that often operate independent from Western governments. It is unlikely that elected officials in the West had any idea who was running the Georgia caper.

One reason why this shadow foreign policy establishment remains unknown to most elected officials is much of it predates their time in politics. For example, one of the main organizers of the Georgia regime change operation was an organization called CANVAS, which operates out of Serbia. It is a spinoff of a group called Otpor, which was founded in the 1990’s when the former Yugoslavia was falling apart after the end of the Cold War. Guess where they got their money?

CANVAS now operates all over the world, targeting regimes that are coincidentally on the list of regimes targeted for a color revolution. They were involved in the effort to overthrow the Belarussian government and in the overthrow of the Ukraine government during the Obama administration. Of course, that event haunts us today. It has been made infamous for the scenes of Victoria Nuland waddling around Kiev, handing out cookies to the pro-Western protestors.

Speaking of Toria Nuland, she was not only responsible for the Ukraine catastrophe that continues to rage, but she has been a lifelong advocate for regime change as the official policy of the American government. This is why after she left the Biden administration, she landed a post at the National Endowment for Democracy, one of those semi-formal nodes in the foreign policy community. She will bring years of regime change experience to the organization.

The National Endowment for Democracy is one of those groups that has been around longer than most politicians, so it is background noise to them, but it plays a key role in what manifests as American foreign policy. It was founded in 1983 by Carl Gershman and Allen Weinstein. They worked in the Reagan administration and then formed several NGO’s, all with help from government money. Like so many NGO’s, it is a clearing house for money and international activism.

There is a good bet that there is not a single Senator involved in foreign policy oversight who has ever heard of the men who founded NED. They have no idea that there are lines in the State Department budget sending money in the form of grants and vendor contracts to groups like NED. They certainly have no idea about how the State Department encourages corporate giving to these groups. It is a world that operates in the shadows, where elected officials rarely tread.

These groups are not just operating abroad. They play a major role in building narratives in which the elected official operates. For example, there are ads on YouTube from a group called Center for Civil Liberties, that claims Vladimir Putin is kidnapping Ukrainian children. This group wants your help to stop him. If you go to their about section, you see they are supported by familiar names, like the National Endowment for Democracy and the American State Department.

What this means is those ads telling American YouTube viewers that Vladimir Putin is kidnapping Ukrainian children are, in some way, sponsored by the American government, operating through a proxy. Much of what elected official believe to be reality is the product of such operations. One point of this network of NGO’s is to help shape and control the information space. You can see why Washington is obsessed with creating narratives rather than reality.

This is just in the area of foreign policy. Every day politicians are briefed by groups they think are grassroots organization, but in fact are marionettes operated by one of the formal or informal organizations. The media is peppered with press releases and provided copy for their outlets. Most important, the organizations can introduce the right people to the right people, with “right” being the key word. If you play ball and avoid asking the wrong questions, you can be a right person.

It is why voting seems to make things worse. The people making decisions that matter to you are never on the ballot. The people on the ballot are often less informed about how things work than the voters. The reason for that is the parties select for the compliant and the incurious. Those who get too curious or refuse to play ball will find themselves with a primary opponent and no money. It is why “our democracy” is a rhetorical and literal fig leaf for the Deep State.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Radio Derb January 03 2025

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m06s Crazy people doing crazy things
  • 06m47s Bracing for disappointment
  • 14m29s Can Britain be saved?
  • 23m00s Consanguinity Central
  • 31m13s 9/11 plotters win again
  • 32m51s Jimmy Carter, R.i.P.
  • 36m21s Generation what?
  • 37m46s Yoon defiant
  • 39m45s Muhammad takes New York
  • 41m22s Number notes
  • 43m05s Signoff with Punta

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee  width=”560px” height=”315px;”

Odysee is broke again

Transcript

01 — Intro.     Welcome, listeners, to the first Radio Derb of 2025. That was Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2 performed by a small wind band arrangement, and this is your primarily genial host John Derbyshire with some commentary on the week’s news.

Dominating the week’s news were the two events early on Wednesday morning, the first in New Orleans around 3:15 a.m., the second in Las Vegas five and a half hours later. The first was plainly an act of terrorism; the second probably so, but we’re not yet certain.

Let’s see what can be said. Continue reading →

The Age of Ignorance

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Note: There is no show today, but for those who need to hear my voice, I was on a couple of popular programs over the holidays. I was on with Paul Ramsey and his lovely new cohost, Alicia Bittle. Rumble link. I was also on with Mike Farris. The Rumble link for that is here.

One of the strange aspects of the so-called information age is how little information there is relative to what was expected at the start of this age. At the dawn of the internet, everyone assumed we were on the cusp of a great democratization of information, where everything was available to the public. Not only would the sum of all human knowledge be made available to everyone, but the ability to conceal information, like government secrets, would be near impossible.

It has not turned out like that at all. In many ways, people are more ignorant now than fifty years ago, despite having access to the great data stream. It turns out that you must want the information in order to have it and most people just want to be told what to think. Faced with the great firehose of information called the internet, most people simply find a narrative source to trust. Instead of gathering up the available facts to understand what is happening, people just trust the news.

This was always true, but prior to the internet there was some competition inside the media for an audience. That meant doing genuine reporting. The local newspaper had lots of information about what was happening. One unexpected result of the internet is a mass convergences of mainstream news sources and a narrowing of what is presented to the readership. Look at a aggregation site like this one and you can see the echo chamber that is mass media quite clearly.

The internet killed off local news and the organs that provided it. The days of making a career as a newspaperman covering local events are gone. Along with it the apprenticeship system has disappeared. People entering media as a career now step into a narrow, vertical world where the major regime outlets are at the top and everything below is aimed at feeding people into those major outlets, while echoing everything that comes from those outlets.

It is why we know so little about the Jefferey Epstein case, relative to what should and could be known about it. The major media outlets have little interest, beyond parroting government statements, so there is nothing for the rest of the system to echo and amplify. For example, the two guards that night have been ignored by the media, despite being the second to last people to see Epstein alive. The NY Times does not care about the case, so no one else cares about it.

This is a pattern with most big stories. The lunatic they caught outside of Trump’s Florida villa should be great tabloid fodder. The guy’s internet profile alone makes for great clickbait, but the major media has no interest in him. In the analog age, camera crews would have tracked down everyone who met him. In this age of a trillion cameras, no cameras show up anywhere interesting. The same is true for the kid who allegedly took shots at Trump in Pennsylvania.

There are many ways to describe the modern mass media, but one label that fits is “deliberately uninterested.” There is a weird lack of curiosity in the modern media that defies easy explanation. Sure, the people running the Post or the Times coordinate with the government, but one would think a small outlet would see this gap as a chance to grow their audiences. Instead, even C-list outlets follow the lead of the Times and Post into the great darkness of modern ignorance.

Look at the New Year’s Day terror attacks. Now that the identity of the two people involved are known, it should spawn a million questions. The obvious place to start is the fact that neither man fits the profile. According to the government, for no reason at all, two military men went crazy on the same day. The Vegas guy’s back story makes no sense whatsoever, but so far no one in the mass media has found anything weird about it, much less questioned the government about it.

Both guys were attached to Fort Bragg, which is a pretty big coincidence all by itself, but this is not the first terrorist attached to that base. This alone should spark some curiosity by the media, but when you look closer you see there is a lot of violent crime attached to this base. It is the sort of thing that in a prior age would be the basis for a big expose in a major news outlet. Reporters would have been tasked with asked the government about it, but today it gets ignored.

Even if the Fort Bragg connection is mere coincidence, we will never learn anything about these two cases. The “journalists” will cut and paste some government press releases into their sites and a week from now it will be forgotten. Like the Trump assassins, the major media outlets will simply ignore these stories and so the rest of the media system will ignore them too. In their place will be the latest conspiracy theories around Trump that the Post and Times are peddling.

The great leaving alone that now defines official media is, in part, due to the professionalization of media. In the analog days, the news was a working-class job, so there was a degree of distrust between the media and the ruling class. Today, every journalism student imagines herself as part of the ruling class and one day she will do her part to further the mission of the ruling class. To reach the top of the media system, one must be an unusually good toady.

There is also the fact that the interests of the ruling elites have consolidated, which has resulted in confluence in the media. In the old days, the guy who owned a major newspaper saw the guy who owned a factory or the guy who owned the bank as a rival, so he was fine with his people poking around in their business. He also looked at the government as a potential problem, so maintaining an adversarial relationship with the political class was in his interests.

Financialization has resulted in a narrow economic elite. They are all in the same boat when it comes to how they view society, so they no longer see each other as rivals, and they all depend on the managerial elite to run things. In the media, the result has been a shift in skill selection. In the old days, getting dirt on a banker and a politician doing deals would make your career. Today, what makes your career is building a relationship with them, so they trust you with information.

The shift to access journalism has come with new selection pressure. In the old days, noticing patterns and having a curious mind were rewarded. Today, those are qualities that get you weeded out early in your career. What matters today is the right LinkedIn profile and the right relationships. It a world where curiosity can get you expelled from your social group, in addition to our profession, it is no wonder that everyone in the media is good at never noticing anything.

This also explains the obsession with narratives. Now that the media is absorbed into the managerial class, it is assumed that controlling the narrative is the key to pushing the programs and initiates of the managerial class. As you see inside every large corporation, everyone feels the need to support the latest things and be seen promoting the latest things, so what little imagination and creativity remains, flows into creating and promoting the narratives that support the latest things.

The result of this is we now live in an age of ignorance. The objective facts are often more readily available than in the prior age, but they are so layered in pejorative narratives that they are difficult to locate. With no institutional support in finding and assembling the facts, we are left with narratives that often serve no other purpose than to make the participants feel like winners. The great leaving alone that defines the public square has created an age of ignorance.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

An Early Warning

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The new year has started with a bang, literally and figuratively, as terrorism was the big story on the first day of the year. A Tesla truck exploded outside the Trump building in Las Vegas, killing one and injuring seven. Then there was the car attack in New Orleans, where according to news reports a car went on a rampage killing fifteen people and injuring dozens of others. Police say the driver of the vehicle was not alone and there is currently a manhunt for the others.

The identity of that driver in New Orleans has been released and to no one’s surprise his ancestors were not on the Mayflower. The media is calling him a “Texas man” but he was born to recent arrivals, most likely from East Africa. He served in the military and had various office jobs until he decided to go on jihad. Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar is a good reminder that absimilation is just as likely as assimilation. It is a thing we increasingly see as alien populations increase in the West.

Assimilation means to become like that which you joined. As John Derbyshire observed almost a decade ago, there is an opposite, absimilation, which means to become less similar to that which you have joined. In the case of second and third generation immigrants, this is a common enough thing that it has become the focus of the overall immigration debate. While most absimilated migrants do not go on murderous rampages, many refuse to assimilate on principle.

This is one of the problems with immigration that the Romans understood, but our current oligarchs do not understand. When the alien population is small, the pressure to assimilate is very high. Those who refuse can find little support within their alien community, so they either assimilate or leave. This was the case with 19th century immigration from Europe. Some claim up to a third of European immigrants remigrated because they could not or would not fit into American society.

When the alien population reaches a large enough size, there forms a critical mass of aliens who refuse to assimilate and find enough support within the alien population to survive apart from the main population. This was the lesson of the 19th century when Italians packed into ghettos became a society within a society. It turned out that even in 19th century America, assimilation is not automatic. The more alien the population, the more difficult it is to assimilate them.

Of course, in this age, there is no effort to assimilate these people. Instead, they are encouraged to let their freak flag fly in the name of diversity. Further, there has been intense pressure on the native population to move aside and not demand these new people quickly assimilate into the native culture. The result is second a third-generation migrants who are alienated by the deracinated state of America and encouraged to hate the white population.

That alienation is not just with the migrants. It appears the Las Vegas Tesla attack was done by a white man named Matthew Livelsberger. Like Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the New Orleans terrorist, Livelsberger was an army veteran and served with Jabber at the same base in Texas. It is looking like these two attacks are connected and the result of a group that may have come together in the military. Long forgotten, Nidal Hasan was in the Army when he went on his rampage.

It should surprise no one that alienated migrants are now finding common cause with alienated natives this way. On the one hand, we have massive importation of people unlikely to assimilate into American society. On the other hand, we have a culture war against the native white population, specifically white men. It is as if the ruling class is trying to create the perfect conditions for terrorism. This is not an unreasonable suspicion, given the performance of the FBI.

Even though these events took place in the new year, they are part of a pattern we saw in 2024 from the FBI and the other security forces. The assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania was due to staggering incompetence. The same is true of the attempt in Florida by a guy who should have been on the FBI radar. Time after time we see that the FBI fails at its basic duties, most likely due to the fact they spend all their time trying to frame people for the latest fads.

As we always see in these terrorism cases, the people involved in this one will have been brought to the attention of law enforcement. The FBI will say they had reports about these people. No one will ask what they did with those reports, because the answer is they did nothing. Their response will be to demand more money so they can frame some people for whatever they will call this stuff. They will pretend they are now on top of this new problem.

Putting aside the FBI malfeasance, this batch of terrorism is a reminder that our rulers have created a tinderbox. The revolt against Musk over the holiday break regarding Indian migrants should be another warning to the oligarchs. To head off much bigger problems down the road, there needs to be an immigration moratorium, including a halt to most “guest worker” programs. Every new arrival is a flammable log on the hot coals of the deracinated American population.

Further, there needs to be a national effort to assimilate the current alien population into the native European culture. Part of this needs to be remigration. Those who refuse to assimilate must leave. Cultural diversity needs to be treated like communism was treated in the 1950’s. It took an economic collapse and world war to assimilate the last great immigration wave. That was with a diverse European population before the major powers had nuclear weapons.

Unless the oligarchs wish to be swinging from trees, they need to head off this looming demographic disaster. Things like diversity and openness are luxury goods that can be indulged in easy times, but the easy times are over, so these leisure habits must be replaced with realism. What the first day of the new year tells us is America has a real problem with its population. That reality can no longer be ignored. To fix it means being realistic about the human condition.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

2025 Predictions

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One of the challenges with making predictions the last few years was that every year seemed to be wilder than the last. It was tempting to hope that crazy things you want to see happen would happen. This year, it feels like we are headed to a more normal time, but that probably means we see some important things begin to happen, now that the crazies are going into hibernation. This could turn out to be a less dramatic year than 2024, but a much more substantial one.

Every year there is an important topic that is bubbling under the surface, either in the ruling class or amongst the rabble, that suddenly breaks through. In 2024, we moved from “securing the border” to “mass deportation now” as the growing sentiment against immigration of all types finally broke through. The 2025 issue will be the collapsing birth rates around the world. It is a thing that gets discussed in certain circles, but 2025 will be the year it goes mainstream.

We will have to suffer from the usual slop from the commentariat, who will try to make money applying the old slogans to this issue. The public nuisances we call influencers will pollute the waters too. But by the end of the year, the educated debate will settle on the four D’s of human destiny. Diet, Development, Divinity and Deracination will be the focus for what is causing the fertility collapse. The most important issue in the world will suddenly become import…

A long ignored issue related to the immigration debate and related to the birth rate debate, is the collapse of middle-class wages relative to the labor productivity gains of the last thirty years. A thing everyone has sensed for a long time is finally getting hard numbers attached to it. The truth is the fruit of the microprocessor revolution went primarily to the economic elites. Meanwhile, the middle-class has seen themselves turned into wage slaves…

One immediate upshot in the changing nature of the online right will be the long overdue marginalization of the influencer. These pests who jump into every issue hoping to score attention, while pretending to lead the debate will finally run out of road with the audience. They will not go away completely as there is always a supply of suckers for them to grift, but in 2025 the label “influencer” will become synonymous with the word “grifter” for the online right…

Once Trump ascends the throne, he will pardon all but a handful of the January 6 victims, leaving the edge cases for review. The overwhelming majority of the victims should have been handed a fine, but some did engage in criminal acts that are serious enough to warrant a review before pardoning. These victims may get commutations as a compromise solution. There will be no retribution from Team Trump. He will avoid going down this road for political reasons…

In February, the Republican Party will try to focus Trump on passing another tax scheme like they did in his first term. This will be part of a scheme to run the clock until the midterms, which they plan to throw to the Democrats. Having learned his lesson, Trump will squash this idea before it gets going. Look for Trump to be much tougher with his own party this time around. The fact is the biggest obstacle to reform is the GOP and the conservative industrial complex…

In the run up to the German elections, the government will begin arresting AfD members on the grounds they are coordinating with Russia. The Musk endorsement will prove to be the thing that breaks the glass for many Germans, and we will see polling that suggests the AfD could be following the path of Le Pen as a populist alternative to the corrupt ruling coalition. In defense of democracy, the German ruling coalition will seek to take the public out of the process…

The unrest in Syria will begin to spill over into other countries. Jordan will be the first crisis as the government has been unpopular for a long time but has also been weakening for a long time. They have the same problem as the Assad government, just without American sanctions. Similarly, the Egyptian government will begin to crack in the face of new activity by the Muslim Brotherhood and the spill over from the Israeli war on the people of Gaza.

This will not be the only problem in the Muslim world. The Israelis will shift from Iran as the great enemy to Turkey, as the Turks seek to establish themselves as the new Ottoman empire and regional hegemon. The Turks are using the Syrian crisis to address their Kurdish problem and build a new Arab coalition that is aligned with them over the Iranians. The Israelis will seek to use rising tensions between the Turks and Washington to warrant a militaristic line against Ankara…

Despite his promise to end the war in Ukraine within 24-hours, Trump will find that there is no deal to be made in Ukraine. Zelensky and his European backers will never agree to a deal and the Russians are in no mood to help Trump, so the result will be a slow burn of Ukraine until it collapses this summer. Trump will conclude that it is a loser and simply stop supporting Zelensky. Often, the best solution to a problem is to accept that there is no solution to the problem…

Trump will begin talks with China that will evolve into a grand bargain to not just include Taiwan, but the long-term economic relationship between the Western hemisphere and the Chinese. Trump’s bluster about the Panama Canal is aimed at expanding the discussion beyond Taiwan. Adding China’s growing influence in South America gives Trump options, but also gives the Chinese a shot at a long-term solution to their problems as well…

I will have three surprises for 2025…

In sports, the world will suddenly realize that soccer is boring and stop watching these interminable events. The New York Mets will win the World Series, and the Detroit Lions will win the Super Bowl. This will lead many to dub 2025 the year of the loser in honor of the fanbases of these two teams. In 2025 it will finally be acknowledged that we have moved past peak sports. Interest has been declining, but new ways to monetize every nook and cranny has masked it, but the mask drops in 2025…

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

 

2024: The Year In Review

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As is tradition, the last post of the year is a review of and comment upon the predictions made in the first post of this year. Normally, the results are mixed, as even the most cautious prognosticator gets some things wrong. Caution is the key to being good at making predictions. Assume that nothing will happen, your dreams will be dashed, and everything will continue as before. You will be right ninety percent of the time, and you can pretend to be smart.

My biggest miss this year was the election. I did not think Trump could make it through the defensive lines of the system, but the guy not only beat the regime, he literally dodged bullets. This is an example of something no one could see coming, but a few people took a flyer on it and now walk around with their chest puffed out thinking they can see the future. The 2024 election is a good argument in favor of the idea we live in a simulation tinkered with by the people running it.

I also got the Democrat side wrong. Years of predicting Biden’s death by God or by the regime came up dry, so I finally capitulated and predicted Biden would continue but then he gets shoved aside. This gets overshadowed by the Trump drama but having a sitting president forced out of the race in the middle of the night is another one of those things that suggests we live in a simulation. Instead of just killing him off or having him retire gracefully, they staged a crazy weekend drama.

Another loser was my prediction on Argentina. I said the revolt would begin in the summer, but so far, no revolt. There were huge protests in the spring and summer, but no revolution. There are weird things turning up in the countryside, like a military base being sacked by an unknown guerilla group, but despite a lot of bad things happening in the economy, no revolt yet. This is one that you can keep betting, because history says it eventually ends in chaos.

I also got the whole Ozark Mountain Shark thing wrong. Paul did not have to start a cooking channel either, mostly due to the failure of Ozark Mountain Shark to make its appearance, but that was a risky call. Similarly, the Lagos sportsball squad did not win the Super Cup, The Dodgers won the Global Series, and the English Premier League escaped bankruptcy. There is money to be made betting the other way on my sports bets, as they are never right.

On the winning side of the ledger, I got the inflation story about as right as possible without being a genuine seer. The Fed has missed the mark, but they seem to have decided that it is easier to lie about the economic figures than to solve the problem of too much credit money in the system. The real inflation rate is probably double their target, but until the politicians start making noises, the Fed can live with it. Whether the rest of us can live with it is to be determined.

My Middle East predictions were spot on, even my call about the change in Saudi – American relations. The Saudis let the petrodollar agreement expire, which will be the thing to watch in 2025. In fact, the biggest mess Trump inherits in his second term is a Middle East that is bleeped up even by the standards of the Middle East. It is all bad options that are made worse by terrible relations with Russia and China. It could easily gobble up his term if he is not careful.

Another winner was the snapback on the antiwhite stuff. This was on display in the debate over Christmas regarding infinity Indians. The antiwhite pogroms have had one unintended effect and that is with regards to immigration, people are asking who is coming in, not just how many and how. People are now perfectly comfortable saying they do not want to live around Indians. This is a massive change that seems to have stunned the great and the good last week.

I was also right about the entertainment rackets. This is one where you bet the trend continuing as the safe play. The people who supposedly make a living on their ability to read the room seem to be the last to notice the change in white attitudes. This year was a string of stunning failures and laughable efforts. Hollywood is mostly about a few flashy films arbitraging the Asian market, so they are not going bankrupt, but that scam will not last for much longer.

The final prediction was on the Ukraine war. I got it about half right, but I underestimated the stupidity of Zelensky. They should have capitulated this year, but greed and madness can overcome anything for a while. The Russians have continued to grind up the Ukraine army as I predicted. What you hear from the Russians is they are looking to wrap up the war in the summer of 2025. Maybe they think Trump will do a deal or maybe they think they just win.

Overall, it was probably the worst year for picks since I have been doing this, primarily because I  broke the golden rule of predictions. That and I bet against Trump, who has proven to be a world historical figure. People should probably keep that in mind when predicting what Trump will do in 2025. He is not only a once in a lifetime figure, but a guy who seems to have a destiny that defies explanation. Dismissing his claims about his next term is probably not wise.

Predictions aside, 2024 will go down as one of the most consequential years in history, simply for the elections. What comes as a result will be gravy. Add in the events around the world and holodeck developers in the next century will be offering a trip through 2024 in their premium package. It explains why it suddenly feels like the morning after a great storm. The calmness of nature is more intense, because the violence of the previous night is still fresh in our minds.

The coming year will initially feel like a year of nothing happening. It could also be the start of a great interregnum when the loonies go back into hibernation and normal people are once again able to speak freely. Either way, it will be tempting to think that the war is over, but we must resist this. The kooks are out there. They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They feel no pity, or remorse, or fear and they absolutely will not stop… ever, until you are dead!

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@mi*********************.com.

Energy Wars

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Note: I was on Coffee and a Mike yesterday. The Rumble version is here. There was no Sunday show this week. Taking a break for the holidays, but behind the green door I have a post about a cheap fitness watch I bought as part of my latest health kick, a post about milling about. Subscribe here or here.

For most of human history the store of value, what we call money, was shiny rocks melted into more useful disks. Occasionally money was colorful bits of paper that represented the shiny rocks or the raw power of the issuer. If someone wanted the produce of your labor, they needed shiny rocks. Then in the 20th century this began to change, and the shiny rocks gave way to drab looking bits of green paper that represented something new, the energy unit.

In the future, historians will put this great shift in how the world does business up there with the semiconductor, the printing press, and the steam engine. The petrodollar that was formalized fifty years ago was the result of a long realization that what every nation needed was access to energy. It was not just to fuel engines, heat homes and light the streets, but to grow the food and make stuff. Oil, coal and natural gas were the most important things in the world, so they became our money.

The importance of energy is obvious. If the price of gold goes up, barely anyone notices, but if the price of oil goes up, everyone notices. Much of Joe Biden’s scheme to run for reelection was based on keeping gas prices low. He drained the strategic petroleum reserve to keep crude prices from rising. His people worked tirelessly to keep a lid on the Middle East because a regional war would send crude price through the roof, which would mean rising gas prices.

There is another piece to it. The deal with the Saudis to price energy in dollars and reinvest oil profits in U.S. Treasuries made the United State the global bank and the global mint. On the one hand, the American banking system could produce as many dollars as it likes, because the demand for energy never slackens. This let the American government run massive deficits. It also provided a form of seigniorage, which profited the American economy.

It is this piece that lies at the heart of global trouble. For example, energy is one reason why Syria collapsed. The United States took control of the Syrian oil fields and starved the Assad government of those revenues. American involvement in Syria was not just about those oil fields, but also about making sure there was never going to be gas lines running from the Persian Gulf to through Syria if Syria was not within the American sphere of influence.

The rebels were not done looting official buildings when there was talk about reviving the Qatar – Turkey gas pipeline. Europe needs natural gas, and the choices now are Russia and much more expensive American LNG, so a new source would be welcome in Europe and be a boon to Qatar and Turkey. The odds of the United States going along with this are low, unless they can control this new pipeline, either directly or through proxies loyal to the dollar.

Of course, the war with Russia is as much about energy as it is about the neocon obsession with Russia. The Ukraine war was an excuse to cut off Russia from the global oil trade and a reason to cut Europe off from Russian gas. This has largely failed, but the United States is now selling Europe more LNG than ever, thus making them more dependent on the dollar. There was also the dream of gaining access to Ukrainian coal and gas reserves after the war.

The Ukraine war offers another example of the centrality of energy. Ukraine makes money transporting Russian gas to Hungary and Slovakia. Zelensky wants to end the deal unless these two countries support NATO membership for Ukraine. These two countries sell electricity to Ukraine, especially when the Russians turn off the Ukraine power plants. The Russians have hinted that they will destroy the Ukraine natural gas system if Zelensky does not continue the gas deal.

If not for those gas lines running through Ukraine, no one would care much about this corrupt backwater on the edge of Europe. The homicidal maniacs we call neocons would still care, but the rest of the world would not care, but since Ukraine is at the heart of the Eurasian energy system, everyone cares about Ukraine. The corrupt midget in the green jumpsuit gets to make demands of the world, because the world’s bank relies on controlling global energy.

America’s greatest ally understands the importance of energy to America, which is why they are talking about war with Turkey. They will claim the Turks are the new Iraq and demand America let them raid their Akkuyu nuclear plant, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2025. The Israelis are worried that the Turks could gain control of Syrian oil fields and make a deal with the Gulf states on pipelines. Soon, we will hear Lindsay Graham talking bad about Erdogan.

Obviously, energy is a major factor in China relations. The Chinese buy a lot of energy, mostly from Russia. The unwillingness of the Chinese to join the war on Russia is due, in part, to dependence on Russian oil and gas. The Chinese also have zero trust in Washington but take away the energy issue and China is behaving different than what we have seen over the course of the Ukraine war. For the Chinese, energy is money and money always talks.

The global energy war that has broken out over the last decade is due to a fundamental reality of the American financial system. The thing that backs the dollar in energy and the control of the energy markets. Just as bits of colorful paper used to be backed by shiny rocks, the American dollar is backed by the BTU. If the United States loses control of that asset, the dollar becomes just another representation of that asset and Washington ceases to be the global bank.

That is the process we see unfolding in these regional crises. It is about control of global energy markets, as much as the ideological fever dreams from certain subcultures in Washington. In fact, the neocon crusade on Russia has harmed the economic interest of America. By shaking the trust in the system, the rest of the world is now looking for a way around the dollar denominated markets. The global bank forgot why it existed and now we have multiple crises.

Most likely, this will shape foreign policy under Trump. Re-normalizing relations with Russia to get them back onto the global banking system will be a priority, even if it is never mentioned. Settling the Syria mess in such a way that the United States, through regional proxies, continues to control the flow of energy will be the focus of Trump policy. Note that everyone has stopped talking about Iran. The project there and everywhere is not war, but the business of America, energy.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@mi*********************.com.

Radio Derb December 27 2024

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 01m28s America First, Americans First
  • 06m50s End guest-worker visas
  • 13m48s Does Trump remember his first term?
  • 21m27s Importing an overclass (cont.)
  • 29m18s Mass deportations are under way!
  • 31m48s California makes theft a crime
  • 33m13s Britain’s Blairite ambassador
  • 36m22s Trump and Cleveland in sync on death penalty
  • 38m30s Mangione hybristophilia
  • 40m27s The Gaetz Report
  • 42m02s goes AWOL, how could they tell?
  • 43m04s The quick key to Congressional spending
  • 45m54s Signoff with Peter Dawson

Direct Download, The iTunes, Podcast Addict, RSS Feed

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners. I hope you have all recovered from your Christmas hangovers and surfeits of fruitcake, turkey, and plum pudding. This is of course your abstemiously genial host John Derbyshire with my last podcast of 2024.

That puts me under the usual temptation to make the show a back-glancing survey of the year. This year, though, I shall resist that temptation. The topic of legal immigration has been all over social media — at any rate, all over X, the only social medium I actually sign on to.

That topic is close to my heart. I’ve been commenting on in the past two weeks. I shall therefore continue my commentary here, leaving unrelated topics to later in the podcast.

Here we go. Continue reading →

The Indian Question

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Fifty years ago, the late political humorist P.J. O’Rourke did a piece for National Lampoon called Foreigners Around the World. It featured exaggerated stereotypes of various races and ethnic groups, along with over-the-top descriptions meant to satirize what was called racism at the time. The piece is preserved online, even though the magazine is long gone. The humor does not hold up, if it was ever humorous, but it is a good starting place for thinking about the immigration debate.

Even when satirizing the idea of racial and ethnic descriptions, the piece cannot help but reflect the hierarchy with regards to how Americans view the world. Fifty years ago, people could be honest about such things, but if you could do a poll today where the respondents are given truth serum, they would most likely rank foreigners similar to how O’Rourke inadvertently ranked them. Of course, the race and ethnicity of the American would play a big role in the ranking.

Black people, for example, would rank Africans at the top and East Asians at the bottom of their list. East Asians would rank Africans at the bottom. White people would rank East Asians at the top, because they see them as the model minority. The tiger mom business a decade ago was driven by upper-middle-class white women who thought the tiger mom explained why the math club was dominated by Chinese kids. Every race and ethnicity have their own ranking.

The one group everyone would put at the bottom, without needing truth serum is South Asians, specifically Indians. Over the last thirty years America has been flooded with migrants from almost every nook and cranny of the globe. Most noticeable are those from South America because of their numbers. In the summer, every business park and suburban neighborhood is littered with Hispanics cutting the grass. The next most noticed group is the South Asians.

Despite their small numbers, relative to Hispanics, South Asians stand out because of their jarring alienness and their reason for being here. Employers import Indians to depress middle class wages and displace American tech workers. As a result, middle-class white people notice them and unlike Hispanics, who white people tend to admire for their work ethic, the Indians have a very negative reputation. Not even the most deluded immigration romantic likes South Asians.

This has come as a great shock to Elon Musk and his tech bros. For some reason he decided to use Christmas Day to announce that he wants Trump to fill your neighborhood with Indians so he can win something. This set off a multi-day firestorm over the topic of Indian immigration. The tech bros were poleaxed by the reaction, as they had no idea how much the average American dislikes Indians. So much so that even yelling “racism” has no impact.

There are a lot of reason for this. Every American has called their bank or the help line for some bit of electronics, only to get someone who is obviously an Indian, despite using an American name. What follows is endless frustration. Of course, we have the stories of Americans being fired and then replaced by Indian guest workers. Now we have the Indian phone scammers targeting old people. During Covid, Indian scammers were on the cutting edge of Covid scams.

Daily, the average American, regardless of his race or ethnicity, is reminded of these alien weirdos who make his life difficult. Much like how gypsies are the one group Europeans are allowed to hate, without being called racist, Indians are becoming that group for Americans. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the origin of the people called gypsies is most likely the Indian subcontinent. Regardless, when it comes to South Asians, Americans of all types have a negative opinion.

There are justifiable reasons for this growing anti-Indian sentiment. The main reason is we do not need Indians. No one has ever said, “This place would be perfect if we fill it up with Indians.” All the arguments in favor of importing Indians do not hold up to scrutiny, so people assume those are deliberate lies. When the official explanation is not trusted, then people are free to conjure their one explanation. Vivek Ramaswamy discovered that when he came out in favor of infinite Indians.

The immediate assumption was that he was in favor of importing his countryman to take your job and take over your neighborhood because they are his countryman. That puts a massive hole in his image as the example of the “New American.” In fact, in one tweet he may have created a majority in favor of not just ending immigration from India, but starting the remigration process. Of course, it also makes it impossible for him to cry racism when he is clearly motivated by race.

Given that Musk and his tech bros were deluged with negative comments, we may have just witnessed a preference cascade with regards to Indians, but perhaps also with immigration in general. Five years ago, Musk would have been able to get away with this, because people would have assumed it was immoral to oppose immigration, much less Indian immigration. Now they are seeing that most everyone around them holds the same negative view of immigration, especially from India.

Immigration patriots are also helped by the fact that the so called tech bros are mostly flim-flam men. Silicon Valley stopped innovating long ago and now relies of financial legerdemain for skim billions for the economy. Vivek Ramaswamy is a pretty good example of this reality. Look at how he got rich and you wonder how he is not sitting in a federal prison, which is itself a reminder that the people promoting Indian immigration are not the most honest people in America.

It is not all good news. In response to getting blasted on his own platform, Musk has rolled out a new censorship scheme so he and his tech bros will not get the sads reading their feed. Regardless of what the people think, the oligarchs are going to plow ahead with their nation wrecking schemes. Even so, as Asad just learned, you cannot rule over a hostile public forever. This Twitter event was not Ceausescu’s famous last speech, but perhaps a foreshadowing of what is to come.

If you like my work and wish to donate, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar or a Substack subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars through the postal service to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: Good Svffer is an online retailer partnering with several prolific content creators on the Dissident Right, both designing and producing a variety of merchandise including shirts, posters, and books. If you are looking for a way to let the world know you are one of us without letting the world know you are one one is us, then you should but a shirt with the Lagos Trading Company logo.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@mi*********************.com.