The Universe Smiles

Tomorrow the Trump team arrives in Germany to participate in the Munich Security Conference, where they are expected to inform the Europeans of their plans to bring Project Ukraine to an end. No one knows what Trump is planning, but the Europeans are braced for bad news. That bad news is either a plan for peace brokered without them or a plan that hands the whole mess over to them. Team Trump had made clear that their first priority is accounting for the money.

As a general rule, anytime the guy giving the money starts making angry noises about accounting for the money, the guy receiving the money is in trouble. This type of scene is always part of gangster movies for a reason. It means the giver is unhappy with the receiver and has come to a conclusion about the arrangement that is going to be bad for the receiver. Imagine some DOGE kids stuffing Zelensky into a locker and you have a good idea of what is coming.

To make matters worse, Trump just had a long call with Putin and both sides described it in very positive language. There has been an exchange of prisoners, with Trump indicating the Russians asked for little in return. He was making clear that he understood their gesture and was ready to reciprocate. It is the sort of thing that is done when two sides are looking to build a larger relationship. You do small deals to build trust and develop a process for larger deals.

What is clear is that Trump has looked at his options with regards to Ukraine and did not see a deal worth pursuing. The Russians are not interested in anything but the deal they feel was done in Istanbul in 2022, plus some extra to cover the costs of litigating it on the battlefield for the last two years. They will get that deal either at the table or on the battlefield and there is nothing to be done to prevent them. Trump seems to understand this and accepts it.

Deal making always starts with discovery. You must first learn if there is a deal to be had, otherwise you are wasting your time. The number one rule in deal making in the private sector is that time is your most precious asset. The best salesmen maximize their time by not wasting time chasing bad business. For Trump, Project Ukraine, as constructed by his predecessor, is bad business. The goal now is to get this off the agenda as quickly as possible.

Most likely, the starting place this week is to inform the Europeans and Zelensky that the deal for them right now is Istanbul plus some other things. If they are ready to take that deal, then the Trump Team will hammer out the deal with the Russians and at some point, the Ukraine government will be invited in to sign it. Who the representative of that government is will be determined by elections to be held immediately. That means Zelensky will not be part of the signing ceremony.

This is why they are talking about the money. Imagine the bosses from Chicago coming out to Las Vegas to talk to the guy they sent out to oversee their operations, and their first question is, “Where’s our money?” Zelensky made the fatal mistake of saying he will never be able to account for it. That sealed his fate. There is simply no way Trump will do business with the guy. It now means any support requires elections and repayment of the money.

Like the guy who cannot pay in the gangster films, this leaves Zelensky and the Europeans in an impossible position, which is the point. Team Trump is prepared to work with the Russian on other issues, even if they cannot get a deal on Ukraine, so they are prepared to walk away from Ukraine entirely. If Europe wants to keep the United States engaged, then it means elections and an accounting of the hundreds of billions sent to Kiev over the last three years.

Now that the Trump plan is coming into focus, the girl boss running EU foreign policy issued a statement declaring the unconditional support for Ukraine. Not having come to grips with what is happening in Washington, she seems to think Team Trump will sit down with her to talk it out and come to a compromise. Instead, this will be used to justify handing the whole mess over to the Europeans so Trump can move onto matters far more important than Project Ukraine.

This is the other thing coming into focus. The war caused the Russians to rethink their relationship with Europe. They stopped taking calls from people like Macron and Schultz, because there was no point in speaking with them. The Chinese have gone out of their way to humiliate European leaders who turn up in Beijing. Men close their doors to the setting sun and that is what is happening to Europe. The emerging great powers of the new world order are ignoring Europe.

Now we are seeing Trump do the same thing. Vance was in Paris this week, in advance of the Munich meeting, and he told the Europeans in no uncertain terms how things are going to be going forward. They were properly offended, and that was most certainly the point of his speech. Friday, the Trump delegation is going to tell the Europeans how it is going to be with regards to Ukraine. If they do not like it, they can go it alone, but everyone knows they lack the ability to do it.

It is proof that the universe has a sense of humor. Four years ago, the Eurocrats were congratulating themselves along with Biden people, telling each other stories about the new world order and how they would build back better. Now, the guy they thought they had vanquished will be telling them their place in the new world order. The guy building back better, will be the guy they were sure was the final boss in their quest to spread the managerial revolution around the globe.


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Severian
1 month ago

I have nothing to add, but…Munich, man. Really. Did it have to be Munich, of all the cities in Europe? Trump is Hitler, Putin is also Hitler, and now the one Hitler is going to be “appeasing” the other Hitler… in Munich. We will never hear the end of it.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

On the other hand, perhaps it was chosen for just that reason. In Munich the disaster of the 20th century was coddled and fortified. Perhaps the symbolism is that this is a ceremonial breaking of the spell on the ground where it was cast. That was then. This is now. The 21st century has begun, and its great task is to undo the 20th. It started in Munich. It ends in Munich.

Food for thought.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

I don’t know that to have been the intended effect, but it is the reality. The conference location will mark the end of the post-World War II consensus. Western idiots will try to frame it as a repeat of the last big event there, but it is the final chapter of the OG. The GAE is downsizing, and it will be a better world for both the Europeans and the North Americans–the actual people rather than the clown leadership–as a result. Ukraine was the greatest self-own of recent history. It would be amusing but/for the hundreds of thousands of casualties.… Read more »

Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

Yes. It is ending now. We are living through the closing of the books on the Cold War, at long last. By 2028 it will be for us old men to sit around and reflect upon. I’ve waited for these times since 1991-2.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
1 month ago

Amen.

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

Bobby Jr just got confirmed for HHS.

52-48 vote.

B!tch McConnell [of course] casting his vote with the sh!tlibs.

With any luck, maybe now thangs are finally gonna get real.

John Campbell: “We need complete freedom to discuss why we are burying and cremating people in what should be the prime of life.”

https://tinyurl.com/m7pbkvrw

james wilson
james wilson
Member
Reply to  NoName
1 month ago

I am impressed that the quislings been cowed into submission. Kennedy has a potential equal to DOGE in blowing up their schemes.

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
1 month ago

It’s great but I also reflect on the waste of lives and resources in the last thirty years. It’s infuriating. I would love for those responsible to be punished but that does not seem to be in the cards.

Arthur Metcalf
Arthur Metcalf
Reply to  Dutchboy
1 month ago

Yes, I was a Pat Buchanan staffer for two of his campaigns, and was right there at the beginning in NH in December 1991 as he walked in the snows outside of Manchester NH factories that are now lofts for Boston-based power couples. After 9/11 I understood that any hopes I had for the future of the US would be dashed much later in life, unfortunately, when I likely to be at my physical weakest in some hospital with Belize-tier standards in the 2050s. This is all I have left, basically. Tomorrow night I may buy some great beer from… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Arthur Metcalf
I.M. Brute
I.M. Brute
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
1 month ago

I was a big Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot fan back in the day! Who knows, maybe things could have been different had they won.

james wilson
james wilson
Member
Reply to  I.M. Brute
1 month ago

Very unnlikely. The Borg would have deterred them as they deterred Trump ’16. And, there were no serious internet alternatives to inform the public. A far greater percentace of the public is (somewhat) wised up to the game now, and they are not feeling charitable about it.

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

Yes. In this sense with modern communication we have the ability to give the optic its meaning. This is the whitepill if you will of the time and the opportunity we have been given. You define the optic as the 21st century has finally begun knowing that an oligarch has used this exact phrase and expressed it as a good. (Peter Theil) This gets around and you tag Theil and Musk … … If they see it and endorse it, we, not the GAE Regime have given it the symbolic meaning. This is the beauty of what is happening now.… Read more »

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

I’ve been reluctant to make any definitive statements on it until now, but the last three weeks have been a sea change.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

Marginal sea change. A new concept. The antifa guys I know haven’t stopped getting paid, and they’re the ones who get paid like CEOs. Since USAID was taken out (it wasn’t), 4chan has more fake activity than ever, and efforts to “slide” (censor via drowning) real threads have greatly intensified. The bot/jeet/jidf/whatever-blue spam has shifted its emphasis. It now pretends to be (or has revealed itself to be) libertarian-partisan-Democrat (against any reform, public or private, like Reason magazine) instead of just posting black dicks or bot-training threads with pictures of Japanese girls and mental apples. Etc. Trump was overthrown via… Read more »

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

Munich was inevitable because Britain and its allies had no ability to defend the Sudetenland, which was ethnic German anyway…As usual, Europeans wanted an outsider to defend their interests…

rasqball
rasqball
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

Nice…!

manc
manc
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

The Munich Security Conference has been around since the 1960s; I first heard of it in a Len Deighton novel. You’re right about it probably being past its “sell by” date.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

did you notice they also released a group statement titled “Weimar+”?! talk about on the nose…

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

Link please. That is amazing.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Maybe this finally closes the 20th century. Let’s hope.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

That’s my thought. It will be seen in time as the final chapter of the post-World War II consensus rather than a repeat of the OG. The court historians no longer have a lock on the framing.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

Yep. The 20th century is over when the loons scream “Hitler! Munich! Hitler!” and everyone just laughs or, even better, no one even notices because no one is listening to them.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

Most people under 40 outside the small number who are hyperpolitical now respond with “who is Hitler?” Policy, always a lagging indicator, is just now catching up to the political and social reality.

Piffle
Piffle
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

We even still talk about H-man because WWII is the public obsession of largely the Boomer generation. That’s even to the expense of the Vietnam War, which by rights should be what they talk about. Gen X generally has not sought out alternative thoughts, although most of them are more indifferent to the topic.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Piffle
1 month ago

Forgetting the past isn’t exactly a good idea, so long as it’s really the past, and not the mythology. Even mythology serves a purpose, but like @Zman said not too long ago, ripping down Chesterton’s Fence has consequences. The lessons of a Great War with a 20-year cease fire must not be lost, particularly with modern weaponry.

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve
Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  Piffle
1 month ago

When I was a boy in the fifties, somebody polled American children about who were America’s greatest enemies. The hands down winners: Germany and Japan. All those WWII movies did the trick.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Dutchboy
1 month ago

Really? Y’all were hiding under your desks from the nips and the krauts? And you never once doubted that, despite all the newsreel footage of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, etc.?

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve
ZFan
ZFan
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

The boomer generation, me included, was thoroughly propagandized. I was completely disabused of it when reading history in college, though skeptical even as a kid. One of my sisters likes to read Evangelical “historical” fiction and related to me that German soldiers in World War II tossed babies on bayonets, which I recognized as a propaganda line from WWI. God bless her, she had fallen before for for the hoax of the Iranians shooting down their own airliner (missile from the USS Vincennes) and the ’90s bullshit that the initials CIA really meant “Christians In Action). We really are a… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  ZFan
1 month ago

Thank God I was from rural South Dakota. Ex., my German instructor was from Germany, in his mid-teens when Berlin was taken. He was planning on joining the Wehrmacht so his little sisters would get the extra food for being a military family. (His older brother had already done so, but after being killed, the extra rations ended.) So I was already immunized against the Holoscam. Everyone was going hungry.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized not everyone had a similar background.

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

My standard joke is that Hitler is the most popular politician in American history. Why? Because the Dems have been running against him for eighty years.

Member
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Exactly my first thought. That was deliberate on some Eurofag’s part. I would have insisted the meeting be held someplace without those historical connotations, anyplace rather than that cursed city. If I were in charge, I would have held the negotiations on board a USN warship, if only to humiliate the Eurofags and also keep the media whores off the ship, because if there’s one thing that is sure to happen, is media whores trying to turn it into a circus.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Pickle Rick
1 month ago

Any schadenfreude they gain will be quickly lost. This is their appointment with reality and with someone who is head and shoulders above them. For someone who has the onerous task of rubbing shoulders with globalists on a daily basis, I can’t wait to see their faces ground into the midden.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Pickle Rick
1 month ago

We call them Eurofags they call us Ameriniggers.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  TempoNick
1 month ago

Of only they did. I’m hearing they have negrophilia as we do over here.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Compsci
1 month ago

I don’t know, a cousin’s husband, his parents were Italian, but from the center and north. They sneered at everything in the southern part of Italy. From them and from others I’ve encountered, I get the feeling over there they think everything here and in the Americas is mulatto at least to some degree and they look down on us for that.

The countries like France and the Netherlands, who had/have black colonies seem to be fond of their black citizens.

BigJimSportCamper
BigJimSportCamper
Reply to  TempoNick
1 month ago

Fond. That’s one way of putting it…

Xin Loi
Xin Loi
Reply to  TempoNick
1 month ago

They sneered at everything in the southern part of Italy.”

In Milan, they call the Southern Italians “terroni”, slang translation “the dirt people”. They say, “Where does Africa begin? Termini”, Termini being the main railroad station in Rome.

Ride-By Shooter
Ride-By Shooter
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Eighteen years ago, at the Munich Security Conference, Putin gave his important speech.

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Munich is where the security conference is traditionally held — this one will be the 61st. That it was a stronghold for the Nazis and Hitler’s favorite city is purely coincidence. The neocons will probably draw some parallel with Chamberlain’s famous statement in Munich in 1938 about “peace in our time” and equate Trump with Chamberlain.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Arshad Ali
1 month ago

If the neocons are equating someone with Chamberlain, that means it’s Thursday. Or Monday. Or any other day of the week.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Arshad Ali
1 month ago

There must’ve been a reason I was watching Man In The High Castle clips and reminiscing about a better world that might have been…

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 month ago

It’s a conundrum. The mythic imagery of Whiteness™—slavery and Auschwitz—originates as much in pornography as reality, so If you’re not making something truly sleazy you’re mishandling the material. You’re hiding the true horror of it or lost in sentimentality or whatever. There’s never been an artistically good Holocaust or slavery movie—in which those things actually appear. So what to show? Whiteness circa WW2—which everybody likes. Art deco, pretty blonde, tended lawn, fitted suit, sidewalk without turds (or persons of turd) on it, etc. With ominous music. The original novel, which has a different idea than being “antifascist”—anti-German or anti-Japanese at… Read more »

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  Arshad Ali
1 month ago

The actual Nazi stronghold was Nuremberg.

Danny
Danny
Reply to  Dutchboy
1 month ago

Thank you – that was my recollection as well.

Pozymandias
Reply to  Arshad Ali
1 month ago

I’m sure the AI generated video of Trump waving a piece of paper on an airfield is already made. That’s the great thing about the pomo Left. They freely pilfer memes from the whole political spectrum. So here they are pretending to be old school jingoists attacking “appeasers” as if they were Bush or Rumsfeld fans in 2003. Just yesterday the EFF (remember them?) sent me an email attacking DOGE for revealing “sensitive” information. Aren’t you guys supposed to be cyber-libertarians in favor of openness and transparency? As I unsubscribed to their spam list I told them they were clearly… Read more »

Vegetius
Vegetius
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

The mythology surrounding Munich, Churchill and Auschwitz are the three legs upon which the creaky boomer truth regime rests.

BigJimSportCamper
BigJimSportCamper
Reply to  Vegetius
1 month ago

Not for this boomer. But ok.

Xin Loi
Xin Loi
Reply to  Vegetius
1 month ago

NABALT

mmack
mmack
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

They were going to use Compiègne, France.

Until someone found out the railway coach wasn’t there. 🤦‍♂️

I won’t worry too much about someone holding up a piece of paper and proclaiming “Peace for our Time” either.

Filthie
Filthie
Member
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Interesting comment. It’s always fun to put on the historian’s hat and scream about old ghosts coming back to haunt us. But the world has irrevocably changed. Consider: Hitler’s Revenge is now complete. Western powerhouses are now under the thumb of the international jewry. Opposing them will be the so-called BRICS. Europe has undermined itself for half a century, and we here in North America for at least half that. Russia is no longer a backward country of rural peasants and farmers. Nor are the Chinese. In the Middle East and the Arab world, formidable enemies are rising and uniting… Read more »

Jannie
Jannie
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Maybe they just wanted to catch a Bayern game and see Harry Kane score…

Duttchmn007
Duttchmn007
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Shame the Burgerbräukeller no longer exists or they could have the meeting there! ;<)

fakeemail
fakeemail
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Maybe we’re at the end of WWII/Holocaust Narrative? Is Hitler now up for review? Or will he always be the one-testicled, gay, half-Jew, rejected by jewish girls for dates, blood thirsty monster who wanted to conquer the world and gas jews with masturbating bears and eagles inside a lampshade?

fakeemail
fakeemail
Reply to  fakeemail
1 month ago

Shoot, I forgot art school reject, hiring the Red SKull to put jews on electrified roller coasters, and being the original super-villain of the DC and Marvel Universes!

Last edited 1 month ago by fakeemail
TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

1. Don’t you love whoever writes all those statements coming out of the EU? They use such hackneyed English … “Unconditional support” … “ever closer union.” It’s kind of Orwellian in a way. 2. Don’t you just love how US foreign policy changes with every administration. One administration bumbles into a war, the next one pulls out. Kind of like what Republicans always complained about before except now we are the ones pulling out. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for pulling out. 3. With USAID money drying up, perhaps that will put an end to the neocon military… Read more »

manc
manc
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

So many Hitlers…according to the Shiites, Trump is the 12th Hitler.

Rkb100100
Rkb100100
Member
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

I am simply relieved a step towards peace is being made. I don’t care if they had the conference in Antarctica. For four years a senile narcissist was carrying the nuclear football and I was afraid.

Last edited 1 month ago by rkb100100
Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Rkb100100
1 month ago

Who is actually in charge of the nukes remains one the regime’s deepest secrets. Cause I guarantee you it wasn’t him. I’m pretty sure Trump wasn’t either. I’m not sure if he is now.

Last edited 1 month ago by Jeffrey Zoar
Bartleby the Scrivner
Bartleby the Scrivner
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

…it’s Chinatown…..

Dinodoxy
Dinodoxy
Reply to  Severian
1 month ago

Did it have to be Munich.

First time a tragedy, second time a farce.

usNthem
usNthem
1 month ago

It really is remarkable how tone deaf and unable to read the tea leaves so many of these European leaders are – to say nothing of the libtards in the US. The game has changed, there’s a new sheriff in town and they can’t deal it, but will be forced to. On a related note, I see a “peaceful asylum seeking migrant” has plowed into another crowd of Germans. It’s hard to believe the AfD isn’t at 50% by now..:

Hun
Hun
Reply to  usNthem
1 month ago

Germans are broken people, mentally abused from the moment they are born. It’s difficult to wake up from that. And even then, their best option is AfD, a party that has been mostly neutered.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Hun
1 month ago

The irony of Germany is that their quest to atone for their crimes and completely destroy their identity will probably lead to the return of forces very similar to those of the guy with the little moustache.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

Boo hiss
What crimes

Rented mule
Rented mule
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

So be it.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

From your mouth to God’s ears.

Duttchmn007
Duttchmn007
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

Problem is they have WWII & the Holocaust shoved in their faces every five minutes from the moment they’re borne! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Atone – atone for your sins!!! It’s a mantra. Know I’ve made this point before here but reading between the lines of WWII histories, the Allies were so thoroughly humiliated by German prowess in the military arts (knocking out France in 6wks, kicking Britain out of Europe 4x – Dunkirk, Norway, Greece, {& Dieppe in 1942} then inflicting 3.5 million casualties on The Red Army in as many months ’having advance units in the town of Astrakhan… Read more »

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Duttchmn007
1 month ago

Food for thought: the youngest possible Holocaust Survivor™ today would have to be 80 or more years old. In another generation there will be nobody alive who participated in the events of World War II in any way shape or form.

Similarly, Germans may someday start to ask themselves why are they being made to atone for the the sins of people who died long ago.

Hun
Hun
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
1 month ago

Being a Holocaust Survivor™ is a heritable trait.

S K
S K
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
1 month ago

Don’t worry, the jews will remind them of it 24/7.

Wolf Barney
Wolf Barney
Reply to  Hun
1 month ago

I think you’re right. My niece lives in Germany and she mentioned that her young kids really get “holocaust education” drilled into them a lot at school. She’s a complete normie, and thinks it’s extremely excessive.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Wolf Barney
1 month ago

We wondered when we wandered away from reality…
I’ll tell you when.

The entire latter half of the 20th Century was a vast fantasia to hide the Great Lie that the adrenochrome peddlers could never dare admit to.

Ride-By Shooter
Ride-By Shooter
Reply to  Wolf Barney
1 month ago

Why not help her to flip the script of Holocaustianity? Your niece and the kids could start with Simon Wiesenthal’s five million myth, then move on to an exposition of many shrill newslaper headlines and reports about this and that six million Jews allegedly at risk. The latter pattern began in the late 1860’s or 1870’s, although I think that the 6m figure has been cited in the context of Simon Bar Kochba’s revolt. At one point, it was alleged that 10m innocent Jews were killed during the war to make Evrope safe for Jewish power in Palestine. Somehow, as… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Ride-By Shooter
Wolf Barney
Wolf Barney
Reply to  Ride-By Shooter
1 month ago

I did ask her if the schools teach the kids about Dresden, which she replied with a confused look….what?

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Ride-By Shooter
1 month ago

Somehow, as if by coincidence, crank historians like Yehuda Bauer settled on the magic number.

Sounds like the “incredible meeting of minds” and “consensus -mind reading” by which Raul Hilberg tried to explain away the German NSDAP government somehow coming up with an incredibly complicated plan to exterminate Jews while having left behind no paper-trail whatsoever.

Jewish projection at its finest.

Winter
Winter
Reply to  Hun
1 month ago

If there’s any justice in this world, “holocaust education” will someday include inconvenient math and facts, allowing the Germans to reclaim their pride and heritage. But of course, sunlight must first penetrate the propaganda.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Winter
1 month ago

I suspect their “Holocaust education” is the equivalent of our continued indoctrination wrt slavery in our past. It works to demoralize the White population and render them impotent in political discourse and decision making. You can substitute White for German in most of the above commentary and apply it to us.

Last edited 1 month ago by Compsci
Vaari
Vaari
Reply to  Hun
1 month ago

They are indeed a broken people. I was in Germany last summer and every tour guide groveled about being German and well you know who was German too. It was disgusting to see a once proud and strong people reduced to this from years of public education and media propaganda. I met one Austrian tour guide who wasn’t ashamed of his genetic heritage and it was in stark contrast to all of the others. You can’t hate the media and public educators enough!

Piffle
Piffle
Reply to  Vaari
1 month ago

The attitude is just the inverse of open pride. It’s not humility. They still aren’t forgetting themselves to forgive their own mistakes and be human. No, they are slaves for the moment to “ruining the world”, which sounds a lot like they were and still are in charge.
For the record, I don’t want to see Germans like that. They should have the healthy sort of pride that comes with with nation and family, one of God’s many creations. Unfortunately, Northern Europeans still are bitten by a pride that is destructive.

Last edited 1 month ago by Piffle
Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Vaari
1 month ago

It would be interesting to take the common German and educate him on just how many of his fellow countrymen from America (literally millions) fought against him in WWII. Germans are not inherently evil or bad. They took a wrong turn in WWII, but to say that it is inherent, or of the “blood”, is pure propaganda set on demoralization and destruction of a great nation.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 month ago

Mustache Man just made a bad strategic decision. He should not have declared war on the US in response to Dec 7. Rather just let FDR know that how US and Japan work out the Pacific is fine with Germany. If MM had said he would pressure Japan to focus on Indonesia and SE Asia and leave the greater Pacific alone, that would have been a hard deal to turn down, particularly if those details became known to the public.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

We can Monday morning quarterback moustache man, but he still perceived the world more accurately than anyone else.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 month ago

Depends on what you mean by that. If you include his autarky and state control of all the things lunacy, no. Granted it would have been Germany’s downfall anyway, but Germans would have suffered longer than they did.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

state control of all the things lunacy”

No normal legacy German was inhibited in the least. Only the subversives felt threatened.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 month ago

Oh, so the Junkers didn’t lose their aircraft factory?

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

Walt Disney Studios was occupied by the U.S. Army from December 8th, 1941 (curious timing, that; almost as if the move had been prepared in advance of the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor) until the end of the war.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Templar
1 month ago

OK, but the Nazis took over Junkers 5 years before the war. That’s a little different.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

That sounds well and good but even with my limited knowledge of World War II history I’m aware that that there were various hidden powers in Europe and America that were steering the the US to intervene in World War II well before 1941.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
1 month ago

Sure, and there were forces in the States to keep America out. They were winning, which is largely why FDR ended up needing to goad Japan into attacking, and facilitating their success. It was the German declaration of war that brought the America Firsters down.

Had Washington not counter-manded Short and Kimmel, the planes would have been spread out, and within striking range of the Jap flattops. Kimmel had his flattops positioned not too far from where the Nips parked theirs before he was ordered to return to harbor. A very different outcome.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Hun
1 month ago

Germans have been broken badly and bounced back for centuries. It was humiliated in the Franco-Prussia war almost as badly as the world wars and was a leading power half a century later, and before that was knocked on its heels by Napoleon, and before that survived almost half a century of religious wars. Propaganda allowed this slap down to go on longer but in time, if the demographic war is won, Germany will rebound. Demographics are destiny.

Jannie
Jannie
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

Seems like you need a history lesson. Germany won the Franco-Prussian war!
Germany didn’t exist as a united nation during Napoleon’s time: it was the Prussian military which played a vital role in his defeat.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Jannie
1 month ago

I do! That was a brainfart.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Jannie
1 month ago

Germany won the Franco-Prussian war!

In fact, they won so hard that it kicked off a half-century of British paranoia that Germany was going to displace them as European top-dog, resulting in a twisting tangle of continental alliances that ultimately helped bring about WWI.

Harbatkin
Harbatkin
Reply to  Hun
1 month ago

As a german myself, i want to say that there is a lot of truth to it. But there are also a lot of people (myself included), who were never members of the cult of guilt and shame. There are a lot of people in the younger generation, which are fed up to the hilt with the Reductio ad Hitlerum. But you don’t see them on the official news channels. I’m quite hopeful for the future of the Vaterland. Germania will rise again. And i’m thankful for Trump, the destroyer of the old order.

Last edited 1 month ago by Harbatkin
james wilson
james wilson
Member
Reply to  Harbatkin
1 month ago

Everyone here is cheering for you.

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
Reply to  usNthem
1 month ago

This is the Davos and CNN effect. The same folks sit in Davos BS-ing each other. They are very disconnected from reality. Meanwhile, you have a generation in Europe that has grown up watching CNN. I regularly meet senior European financial and business executives who have a Scarsdale housewife’s view of American politics. I’ve said here before that it will take generational change to fundamentally alter European politics. We’re seeing this in real time.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Captain Willard
1 month ago

“A Scarsdale housewifes view of American politics.” 🤣 you could not have picked a demographic more deserving of scorn and derision!

BigJimSportCamper
BigJimSportCamper
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

“moved out to Scarsdale
Where the hell am I?”

Lakelander
Lakelander
Reply to  usNthem
1 month ago

It’s remarkable until you realize that Euro leaders are primarily a collection of girl bosses and effeminate men. Perhaps after they’re done completely destroying Europe and it’s role in the world, strong, intolerant men will come to power and right the ship. As much as I enjoy seeing the Eurocrats humiliated, this ultimately means further degradation for hundreds of millions of White Europeans. Let’s just hope the hard times create the strong men that are so desperately needed over there.

Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
Reply to  usNthem
1 month ago

That individual should not have done that to those other individuals

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
1 month ago

if i were trump (or putin) i would make the eu reps serve drinks and clear plates, at the meeting. but not let them talk. the baltic chihuahuas would provide entertainment via skits and tumbling. honestly, just humiliate the shit out of these deluded poseurs.

oh, and i would hold the uk responsible for repaying all US costs re; ukraine. that country really needs to be slapped down hard; make them give us Windsor castle (put it in Disney World). and to think i used to be an anglophile.

General Giap
General Giap
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

Before you take Windsor you might think about taking back California and Texas.Or New York,Chicago,L.A. etc.

The UK is not responsible for the Ukraine war. Victoria Nuland is your compatriot, not mine.

Also, the idea that the EU is driving the “Managerial Revolution” rather than the permanent bureaucracy in Washington is an interesting take.

Last edited 1 month ago by General Giap
Hun
Hun
Reply to  General Giap
1 month ago

The UK needs a good slapping no matter what.

ZFan
ZFan
Reply to  Hun
1 month ago

It’ll be for their own good. Starmer has maybe the most “face needing slapped” I’ve ever seen.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  ZFan
1 month ago

Backpfeifgesicht, isn’t it?
(“A face begging for a fist”)

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 month ago

Yes.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  General Giap
1 month ago

On the list of who bears responsibility for the Ukraine war, the UK is in fact pretty high, even if they aren’t #1.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 month ago

Correct. How can they avoid responsibility when they played the role of such a willing accomplice to American shenanigans in the region?

Pozymandias
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 month ago

The US and UK are a dysfunctional gay couple who fight over who gets to be the “top”. They take out the resulting frustrations by going to straight bars and starting fights where they get their asses kicked. They quite enjoy the beatings.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  General Giap
1 month ago

The City of London owns this one. Obviously the same types/tribe in D.C. were fully onboard and supplied the grease but the dark underbelly of Britain bears major responsibility here. The same was true to a lesser degree with Iraq when the evil Blair had a hapless and stupid W at his disposal. All of us do need to concentrate on our home countries but confession is good for the soul, as they once said long ago in a confident West. A return to that West if it is at all possible is the only thing that matters.

Ride-By Shooter
Ride-By Shooter
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

A return to that [confident] West if it is at all possible… Sure it’s possible, but it would be a fool’s voyage. The social and political foundations of the old regime were intrinsically unstable because false. The confidence was unearned, as it always is when dependent upon obvious lies and a great guilt trip. The modern state of Israel has very much the same legitimacy problem given the lies and guilt trip used to establish it and to perpetuate it. Wrecking the confidence of its confused enthusiasts is a necessary task here. If you find the people whom we call… Read more »

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  General Giap
1 month ago

remind me again which country sent their PM to turkey to scuttle peace talks in 2022? also, you owe us for burning down the original White House.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

You also owe us for not burning the new one down in 2021…

RealityRules
RealityRules
1 month ago

Morning Z. A little errata in paragraph two: “has come to a concussion about the arrangement” I have to say I appreciate and admire the work you put into making this blog. You have been doing it consistently for a long time at a high level of quality. Well done. I caught a clip of Hegseth in Europe yesterday. He got straight to the point with the pillow biters and fem bots. For me, his reasoning for putting Europe on its own, with responsible disengagement, was that America needs to protect its homeland. I pray that this means not what… Read more »

Bartleby the Scrivner
Bartleby the Scrivner
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

Could it be we are entering the “strong men create good times” phase of the cycle?

Im cautiously optimistic, as are most of the posters here. We will know things are really progressing when Hegseth responds to a gotcha question from the press with “Back Satan”!

Last edited 1 month ago by Bartleby the Scrivner
Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Bartleby the Scrivner
1 month ago

We haven’t even had the hard times yet

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 month ago

But regardless, we’ve really not seen any significant, nor lasting results of the BOM rein. Hopeful signs sure, but nothing that approaches a substantive fix. All these things have yet to mature and solidify. The signs are promising, but only time will tell.

G Lordon Giddy
G Lordon Giddy
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

Hegseth is also a Christian Zionist with a blindness towards Zionist Israel.
He is a decent man, while wearing a eye patch that might cause him to fall down some stairs.

Last edited 1 month ago by G Lordon Giddy
Ride-By Shooter
Ride-By Shooter
Reply to  G Lordon Giddy
1 month ago

Hegseth is dazed and confused, like commenter ray, the one who ran away like a timid little dog to Latin America long before the shoe of Christian crusading was on the other foot in Anglophone North America. (Note: The shoe is still not on the other foot.) Much good could be done for Hegseth’s mental disorder through a massive movement of truth through the ranks and files of enlisted personnel in every service branch. The object is a public beatdown of him and several of his dirty, rotten officers.

Last edited 1 month ago by Ride-By Shooter
iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

To me Hegseth is the worst pick of them all. I’ve always thought of him as a bumbling fool, another talking head tough guy who loves reminding everyone what a badass he is, while being an absolute tool. Beyond that though, he will be in no way a reformer, which is exactly what the DoD needs. Yes, get rid of DIE and the woke nonsense, that is great, but the DoD needs a buzzsaw taken to its core, and Hegseth is not the guy to do it. I’m becoming concerned that Trump will not be either, as it appears he’s… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  iForgotmyPen
1 month ago

Think about the Pentagon as if it were a business. Because it is.

You don’t need a reformer as CEO to reform a company. You just need a CEO to hire consultants who come in and make the recommendations for reform.

The same for your fears about Trump. He wants an effective military, which is not what we have.

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve
iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

You need a CEO that is inclined to agree with reformers. That is not Hegseth. He is totally fine blowing a trillion dollars a year on the military, just make sure there’s no embezzlement and graft and we’re fine? Nope, we simply don’t need that much military. And the fear is that Trump’s definition of effective military means just blowing more money and inserting ourselves in every conflict worldwide. Effective is relative. Effective to accomplish what mission? We need to shift our thinking away from having a military budget 10-15x greater than the developed world is necessary. It leads to… Read more »

ray
ray
Reply to  iForgotmyPen
1 month ago

Buzzsaw is right. Both military and DoD. Remember, woodchips make a fruitful mulch! There still is a scattering of savvy vets around, whose experience from the inside would aid the nation enormously in cleaning out that Augean stable. They’d bring the Deluxe woodchipper (with trailer) for sure, but they’d also know who to recommend for leadership. There are vets, mostly NCOs, inside the U.S. capable of fixing most of the military’s manifold problems, many of which are self-inflicted by human nature gone rabid and predatory. I know nada about Hegseth, I’m just saying the necessary folks are available, at reasonable… Read more »

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  iForgotmyPen
1 month ago

Time will tell. Do you want Lloyd Austin in there or Pete Hegseth? The changes coming are along multiple attack vectors. The tech oligarchs led by Anduril and Palantir and other emergent companies like Radiant are an attack on old school DoD contracting and equipment practices and sclerosis. To be sure there are many hornet nests that will be stirred up. The audiences at Hegseth’s initial internal speeches and meetings are filled with head scratching visuals. A lot of POCs, beenie caps, fat womyn, Chinese national looking figures … … The ratio of uniform to non-uniform in those meetings is… Read more »

iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

Come on man! You dog faced pony soldier! That’s a false choice- Austin or Hegseth. How about neither? How about a SecDef who wants to reduce the DoD down to size and cut out the 100s of billions of BS weapons programs that only enrich defense companies? How about a SecDef who understands we don’t need a standing multi-million man force? Someone who wants to focus on oh I don’t know, actual defense and not meddling the world over? (This is from someone who spent some significant time in field so I have some opinions about this.)

Filthie
Filthie
Member
1 month ago

Ughhh. I’m up in Canada, surrounded by clueless morons that think Orange Man Bad is going to invade us and make us into the 51st State. I’m not kidding either – most of them think we could militarily push the evil Americans back, storm across the border and burn down the Whitehouse just like we did in 1812. 😖 But first we have to kick your asses in this trade war! Yep – we’re all gonna BOYCOTT you stupid Americans and FORCE you into penury and submission!!! THAT’LL learn ya!!! Learn ya REAL good!!! Some idiot seriously proposed giving America… Read more »

Piffle
Piffle
Reply to  Filthie
1 month ago

My Canadian relatives routinely displayed an inferiority/little brother complex about the US. It seems like they can’t account for a)better weather, b)more natural resources, and c) a way bigger population from some very productive founding stock. For some reason Canada was supposed to be just like big brother and taken very seriously on the world stage.
It appears what was mostly a rude argument inside a family has become a society self delusion. They are about ready to find out it appears.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Piffle
1 month ago

For some reason Canada was supposed to be just like big brother and taken very seriously on the world stage. Personally, I’m quite happy living in America’s shadow, and with the perception of Canada as a sort of weird-yet-tolerated younger sibling (it certainly seems preferable to the sort of ancestral hatreds that persist between certain European nations). I think it’s been of tremendous (and mostly unappreciated) benefit to us throughout most of Canada’s history, and this idea that not only can we compete directly with the U.S. politically and economically, but that we should is just madness to me, grown… Read more »

Filthie
Filthie
Member
Reply to  Templar
1 month ago

Some of that is a holdover from times when we were better people. We had the fourth largest navy in the world at the conclusion of WW2 – albeit most of them were supply/support ships – we kept you and the Brits and everyone else in the fight when your supply lines stretched thin. Our squaddies distinguished themselves in the European theatre well. We pulled our weight for our size and historically we had a reputation for being there when needed. But in the 60s Turdo The Elder discovered he could gut the military’s budget and use the money on… Read more »

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Filthie
1 month ago

You should point out how Canada has been invaded, just like the US! Only I think I think it’s worse in Canada when adjusted for population. Americans and Canadians should team up and clean both countries out.

Jkloi
Jkloi
Reply to  Filthie
1 month ago

That joke about burning down our fucking white house negates any good feelings about Canadians who still have a dumbass king as their head of state. Our national anthem celebrates our fight against the monarchist north. Let those fucking snowbird Ontario douchebags try again and they’ll get the same treatment as that loser pakenham who died for “king” in Louisiana.

Jkloi
Jkloi
Reply to  Jkloi
1 month ago

Since they swore loyalty to that bitch queen and her asshole son and they were and still are loyal monarch worshipping ass kissers, the south park guys were and are right. They aren’t a real country anyways. Bring on the fight Toronto and Montreal shitheads. How many monuments do they have to Benedict arnold again?

Steve
Steve
1 month ago

The only deal the Russians will do will be after they’ve taken at either all of Ukraine or, at the very least, the part of it East of the Dnieper and including Odessa. Then they will hand them a bit of paper and a pen and say “This is where you sign”. The Russians are done with us.

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve
Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

The Russians are done with us.”

If they are smart. Putin is smart, however all depends if Russia is weakened by the conflict more than let on. I doubt, but who knows?

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

I’m quite fuzzy on the details, but didn’t our Navy place itself uninvited in Sevastapol on the Black Sea? If so, possible bargaining chip.

Last edited 1 month ago by Alzaebo
Mike
Mike
Reply to  Alzaebo
1 month ago

Sometime after the Maidan there was a contract proposal circulated by the Pentagram for improving the facilities at the Russian base there after Russia was kicked out and the USN and NATO were invited in. We never had anything there, we were just greedy and gave the game away too soon.

august
august
Reply to  Mike
1 month ago

Thanks for mentioning that little episode. A formal “Request for Bids” was indeed posted online by the US Navy for the remodeling of an older school building into “US Navy HQ – Sevastopol”.

I suspect this was a rather big straw on the camel’s back for Russia.

george 1
george 1
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

The Russians have said as much. Earlier this week one of Lavrov’s deputies basically said, paraphrasing:

“It is all well and good to have a dialogue with the Americans, we are in favor of such talks. The truth is how can we make any substantial security agreements with the Americans or Europeans when we know they are agreement incapable?”

I take that to mean you can’t make deals with liars. I think most of the negotiations by the Russians will be on the battlefield.

Zulu Juliet
Zulu Juliet
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

No doubt, Putin has the winning hand, but there is much to be said for not humiliating your opponent.

I hope Trump tells the Euros it’s their problem. “We’ve got our own problems and we’re broke. Good luck to ya.” Then Putin offers the Euros a deal that won’t humiliate them.

Unfortunately, it seems the Euros are insane, so they might not take the deal, and might well get the humiliation they so richly deserve.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
1 month ago

Collectively, the EU has a GDP that dwarfs Russia and has significantly more manpower (450 million people vs. 165 million).

There is no reason NATO, which is primarily manned and paid for by the US to exist.

“Keep the Germans down, the Russians out and the Americans in” needs to be updated to the true underlying reality:

“Look Europe, we’re done spending treasure and manpower keeping you from murdering each other. Knock yourself out.”

Next time the UK and France want to team up against Russia and Germany, we’ll get the highlights from X. If we care.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  ProZNoV
1 month ago

Collectively, the EU has a GDP that dwarfs Russia and has significantly more manpower (450 million people vs. 165 million)

What kind of “manpower”? What is the GDP measuring?
It makes me think domestically where if those metrics were one-to-one then we’d be beating Russia on the battlefield with our fleets of heavily financed taco trucks.

S K
S K
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
1 month ago

You’ve not seen power until you’ve heard 225 million soy boys shrieking.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  ProZNoV
1 month ago

The EUSSR has one huge problem that limits any reindustrialization and military buildup.

That problem is – No cheap energy.

BigJimSportCamper
BigJimSportCamper
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 month ago

UK and Germany have beaucoup coal but we all know that’s icky…

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  BigJimSportCamper
1 month ago

they didn’t just shut down their coal fired power plants, they also dismantled them?! so while they may have coal, they do not have the capability to use it as fuel.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  ProZNoV
1 month ago

We didn’t keep them from murdering each other. We de facto disarmed them, leaving them wide open to migrant conquest. We might as well have gone house-to-house first, rather than waiting for USAID fronts to get it done for us. Let me explain that sentence- the reason for funding arcane projects like studying trans parakeets in Madagascar. That is actually funneling money to radical niche groups likely to vote the way we want them to, under cover of a pet cause. Done for the purpose of destabilizing or influencing elections, for reasons either commercial (Pepsi-Cola bottling in Allende’s Chile) or… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Alzaebo
Karl Horst
Karl Horst
1 month ago

The Europeans did basically nothing for the duration of this conflict. But of course they will want to be included in any decision for a peace proposal so they can virtue signal to the world how wonderful they all are.

Starting with that miserable excuse for an EU President, followed by the various and loud mouths and do nothings across Europe. EU ‘leadership’ is really nothing more than a human centipede.

I’m pretty sure Trump’s deal is going to be the same as the dinner choices my mother gave me growing up as a kid…

Take it or Leave it!

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Karl Horst
1 month ago

I don’t think so. Not if he listens to his advisors. Tulsi will push for peace, and Hegseth will probably at least tell him we can’t take Russia. Not now, maybe not ever again.

Mike Tre
Mike Tre
1 month ago

“Imagine some DOGE kids stuffing Zelensky into a locker and you have a good idea of what is coming.”

A locker? Or the plastic lined trunk of a Lincoln Continental?

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

Maury thought he was a deal-maker. He should have stuck to managing his gambling habit.

Tars Tarkas
Member
1 month ago

Putin would be a fool to deal honestly with President Trump. Trump may be an honest broker looking for a win-win with Russia/Putin, but America isn’t. America’s signature isn’t worth the paper it’s not printed on. We will hold up our end of the bargain for exactly as long as it serves the managerial elite to uphold it. The minute it becomes advantageous to rip up the treaty, we will renege.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 month ago

Exactly. Putin is no dummy. He has hard liners he is holding back. Any “peace” deal has little to nothing to do with Ukraine. He’s got just about everything he wants directly from Ukraine. Peace treaty is really between Russia and the West. Putin is not going to settle for a peace deal where there continues to be an undeclared war between Russia and the West via sanctions and such.

Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 month ago

True. Putin has been in charge a long time, and his foreign policy doesn’t vary much from that of traditional Russian and even Soviet leaders. He’s watched all the gyrations in AINO policy, over the 25 years he’s been near or at the top of Russian leadership. This means he’s been subjected to Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, and of course Cheeto Jesus. That said, my guess is that “we” – meaning AINO – scare the shit out of Putin, because he is a practical and hard-headed man, and all he gets from us are various flavors of wtf? We are… Read more »

usNthem
usNthem
1 month ago

I’d suggest Ms Kaja “Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity are unconditional” Kallas grab a Ukrainian flag, bare her breasts and lead the glorious charge to martyrdom. I’m sure Vlad is shaking in his boots.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

I’m surprised that the Russian would take the Istanbul plus a little on top deal. I’d think after three years of brutal fighting, they’d want a lot more. I would have thought that the Russians would want all of eastern Ukraine to have the river as a natural buffer along with a demilitarized and neutral Ukraine.

Would the Russians really settle for just the Donbas at this point?

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

Yeah, the Russians have made it clear that they don’t want to rule over non-Russian areas. However, they also need a security on the ground. Tough spot.

The Russians also have made a lot of noise about Odessa being a Russian city. However, Putin has to keep an eye on domestic public opinion. It sounds like the Russian people are in no mood for a weak deal when they’re winning on the ground.

Finally, there’s Ukr. I agree that Trump would be happy to just walk away if the Ukrainians won’t play ball. That’s not a loss for him.

Zulu Juliet
Zulu Juliet
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

I don’t think the Russians are so concerned about security as they are about taking care of fellow Russians in lands that are historically Russian.

But I’m not Russian, so I am only guessing. Whatever happens, it will be interesting and can’t be any worse than the current situation.

Evil Sandmich
Evil Sandmich
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

Unfreezing of assets and normalization of trade would be two huge scores for Russia that might make up for some concessions.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
1 month ago

Somewhat. But Russia’s economy is now growing at 4.5%. The sanctions leverage might not be as much as people think.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

I think the longest and most negative fallout for the West will be how the war revealed it no longer can sanction a country into compliance. Russia took a hit but survived with little damage. The United States as a safe place to invest was thrown into question and Switzerland shit its bed in that regard.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

Switzerland was strong armed into being America’s bitch well before 2022.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

the only thing the sanctions proved is you cannot trust eu or US to hold your assets. brics is not going to end just because the ukraine mess goes away.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

The sanctions lifting seems a must. It is the sine qua nons of a true peace between Russia and Ukraine (the West). If Putin fails to demand such, then he admits to weakness in the eyes of his Western and home adversaries, which includes Trump (from official pronouncements directly from Trump).

Such agreements may be done “unofficially”, but Russia was fooled before so that avenue may not be available this time.

Last edited 1 month ago by Compsci
Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 month ago

Just imagine the reaction if Trump started the negotiations with, “OK, what concessions are you willing to accept if we lift sanctions, the US backs out of NATO, and you get everything east of the Dnieper plus Odessa?”

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

If you believe in statistics like that I have a bridge to sell you in The Crimea 😁

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Evil Sandmich
1 month ago

The knockout blow to win the media war and the moral high ground is to demand removal of the biowarfare labs, under international supervision.

Last edited 1 month ago by Alzaebo
Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

The West needs Russia if we’re to contain China. From what I understand, the “no-limits partnership” of Russia and China is quite strained. With Russia on “Team West,” China is much more contained.

Our leadership needs to come to terms with the fact that Russia is not the Soviet Union and is a natural part of Europe. How this could be done I do not know.

ray
ray
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

Pushed together by incompetent (and worse) America.

Zaphod
Zaphod
Reply to  ray
1 month ago

And what’s done is done. Nobody will trust American undertakings or agreements for a generation at least. Regardless of who rules, all evidence suggests that the USA is an untrustworthy and unreliable partner.

If you think that the present Russo-Chinese alliance is going to be pried apart by superior American diplomacy and geo-strategic tactical genius anytime soon, well I can get you in on the ground floor of a ice-making plant venture in Harbin. Guaranteed money-maker. Interested?

Templar
Templar
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

That’s really not saying much LOL.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  thezman
1 month ago

true, but that is the flip side of they have actually been close to all out war in the recent past (1969). and then there is the mongol invasion thingy. both russia and china know the other very well, and will only co-operate when truly pushed by current circumstances.

Piffle
Piffle
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 month ago

Russia has never been a natural part of Europe, right down to being Christianized by the Greeks, rather than the Latins. They are Caucasian, but they quite used to dealing with the neighbor to the East.

Last edited 1 month ago by Piffle
Templar
Templar
Reply to  Piffle
1 month ago

Russia has never been a natural part of Europe…

More from circumstance than lack of desire or common ties, though.

Hun
Hun
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

Kiev should be part of Russia too. Only the western third should remain as a buffer state, with the capital in Lvov.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

The Russians have insisted all along that Ukraine be “denazified”. What that means to them is that it be purged of the Banderites. In practical terms doesn’t it mean that they control whatever regime is put into place in Kiev?

The Infant Phenomenon
The Infant Phenomenon
Reply to  Tom K
1 month ago

Yes.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  The Infant Phenomenon
1 month ago

Thank you.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

They have to have some amount of war fatigue themselves. It’s been 3 years. Longer really

Captain Willard
Captain Willard
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

A few points:
1) They learned from us. Occupying hostile populations is expensive and futile
2) They have to consider China’s opinion. China wants this mess to end. India does too.
3) They won. They broke the German economy. They made the future cost of messing with Russia unbearably high.

Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Captain Willard
1 month ago

All true. Related to your third point, and the aspect that will have the longest impact, Russia withstood Western sanctions and showed them to be somewhat irrelevant now. Russia felt some squeeze but not all that much. Also, the United States as a safe place to invest is now seen as dubious, and Switzerland shit the bed in that regard. The United States and the dollar remain the economic focus of the world but the Ukraine war showed that has limits and will end sooner than was assumed.

The Infant Phenomenon
The Infant Phenomenon
Reply to  Captain Willard
1 month ago

The Germans broke the German economy.

Zaphod
Zaphod
Reply to  Captain Willard
1 month ago

Nobody gives a tinker’s damn what India wants or thinks.

Except for the nest of cuckolds in the UK, Canadian, and Australian governing establishments.

Zaphod
Zaphod
Reply to  Zaphod
1 month ago

This notion of India being a player is as much a figment of the wishful imagination as the Brussels/Davos types’ fantasy that Ukraine is thrashing the shovel-wielding Russian hordes.

We want a counterweight to China… so let’s imagine that India is it. Clap yourhands Children and Tinkerbell will live!

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 month ago

Citizen-

I tend to agree.

Strategically and territorially, Istanbul still seems like a loss for Russia. In 1991 Ukraine was still well-inside the Russian sphere of influence.

Additionally, there is no guarantee Vance wins in 2028. What if Trump rebuilds the US military and they manage to install Newsom or Whitmer in 2028?

Steve
Steve
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
1 month ago

I’d hope the rebuilt .mil remember that they swore an oath to the Constitution, not to the (P)resident.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

it’s been a very long time since any US military person has defended the constitution. plenty of lip service though…

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
1 month ago

That bad news is either a plan for peace brokered without them or a plan that hands the whole mess over to them.”

I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall listening to the Europeans getting their orders from the Americans on what precisely they are going to say and do. They have no agency in this interaction between the USA and Russia. They are expendable fodder. Buffer states. I can’t help feeling some schadenfreude at the discomfiture of Starmer, Macron, Scholz, and von der Leyen. They are going to take it up their rear ends without lube.

Alzaebo
Alzaebo
Reply to  Arshad Ali
1 month ago

Me, I’m waiting for the NATO audit by DOGE.

pyrrhus
pyrrhus
1 month ago

I’m pretty sure that there will be no deal, because there’s no reason for the Russians to make any concessions, and it’s better politically for Trump to just walk away and leave the collapse to the Europeans…The Istanbul deal was a bad deal, like the Minsk treaties, and Putin can’t do any more of those, because the Russian public and Security Council won’t allow them…

c matt
c matt
Reply to  pyrrhus
1 month ago

Russia gets Ukraine (or as much of as they want). US gets a cut of rare earths or $$ back from Zelensky & crew. EU gets its cheap Russian gas. Win win win.for the most part, what Russia would get when it wins the war, but we can call it a “deal” to save face.

Thomas Mcleod
Thomas Mcleod
1 month ago

This happy hopeful version of The Z Man is really throwing me for a loop.

WCiv911
WCiv911
Reply to  Thomas Mcleod
1 month ago

Me too, Tom.

Just one thing worries me – the Middle East.
Wars that never end there could unravel all the wonderful progress we are making domestically. Even the Ukraine war is winding down. The ME could be Trump’s Covid or his Waterloo.

The successes we have seen so far could all be tragically undone if we get entangled in Middle Eastern wars.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  WCiv911
1 month ago

Just one thing worries me – the Middle East.

For me, it’s China.

Zaphod
Zaphod
Reply to  Templar
1 month ago

I think your precious bodily fluids are not of much interest to Hypersonic Fu Manchu Man. He’s more into Rhinoceros Horns and various unmentionable body parts of divers endangered species.

But America being America will keep prodding and poking the Dragon and will act all shocked and hurt one day when Suddenly for No Reason at All… Well you know how the script goes by now.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Zaphod
1 month ago

I think your precious bodily fluids are not of much interest to Hypersonic Fu Manchu Man.

I think you’re projecting your own personal concerns onto me.

pecosbill
pecosbill
1 month ago

Fitting that Team Trump attend the security gab in Munich, the location of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 aimed at collapsing the degenerate judeo-communist Weimar Republic. Thanks to the odious FDR and the Greatest Naive Generation, the Weimar won WWII. Trump and the west are left to continue that war against the Weimarians (AKA Globohomoians) who have taken over America and the West.

Since the elites believe Trump is Hitler and Hitler is Trump, Team Trump should request a tour of the Beer Hall uprising site just the drive the crazies crazier.

Jack Boniface
Jack Boniface
Member
1 month ago

Maybe now Europe can find some way to unite in some post-American order.

Clayton Barnett
1 month ago

“…and has come to a concussion about the arrangement that is going to be bad for the receiver.”

Clever, in context.

Tarl Cabot
Tarl Cabot
1 month ago

A pessimistic scenario: Europe and Ukraine decide to “go it alone”, as much to avoid financial and political accountability as anything else. European “peacekeepers” enter Ukraine, and are inevitably drawn into conflict with Russian troops. Russia eventually attacks logistical nodes in Poland and elsewhere, and/or European naval units in the Black Sea.

Europe invokes Article V, and the United States is faced with either war with Russia or breaking the NATO Alliance.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 month ago

do you really think the US military is going to let the nutless eu peanuts wag the dog? far more likely the US leaves nato under that scenario

Steve
Steve
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

Yep. And we dominate the market in popcorn.

Tarl Cabot
Tarl Cabot
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

Breaking NATO would clearly be lesser evil, but its demise would still represent a categorical loss of US power and prestige, and a third great war in Europe would be a catastrophe for the White race.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 month ago

“[NATO’s] demise would still represent a categorical loss of US power and prestige…”

I already said I was in favor. You don’t have to sell me on it.

Seriously, though, as I reflect on the post-war order, and particularly post cold-war order, I’m not seeing that all that power and prestige was a good thing.

Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 month ago

A categorical loss of US power and prestige? You mean like losing a humiliating colonial war in Afghanistan, or Chinese spy balloons floating unmolested across the fruited plain? Or a demented half-wit wandering around stages across the world, calling himself President, who in his final months almost seemed to invite war with Russia? I didn’t know that AINO had more power and prestige to lose. NATO is not only pointless; it is dangerous. It’s ongoing existence – let alone its relentless expansion – can only be justified by there being a common enemy, and that enemy, apparently, is and always… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve W
Zulu Juliet
Zulu Juliet
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 month ago

There won’t be a third war between major European nations. Russia just wants Russians be left alone. The Euro elites can bluster and blow as long as the US is behind them paying the bills and shaking the big stick at the Russians.

If the U.S. leaves the Euros deal with their own issues, which is to be very much wished for, then the Euros may very well continue to bluster and blow hard, but Russia can and will safely ignore them.

It’s about time for the Europeans to grow up.

Last edited 1 month ago by Zulu Juliet
Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

Three more awesome proposals by the Donald I’d love to see:

01 to pull out from NATO; (hey, France did it in 1966)
02 Withdrawal from the UN; (and kicking it out of NYC)
03 Renaming the Washington football team the ‘Redskins’.

Crank it to 11, Mr President, and keep it there.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Steve W
1 month ago

Crank it to 12. Suggest that Israel replace the US on the Security Council. Explain that in the interests of efficiency, we are getting rid of the middleman. Watch the heads explode. Doesn’t matter if he’s serious. Just the mere mention would be sufficient.

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve
Jack Dobson
Jack Dobson
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 month ago

Like all “international law,” Article V is a fantasy. If Turkey and Israel go at it, does anyone really think NATO will have Erdoğan’s back?

Steve W
Steve W
Reply to  Jack Dobson
1 month ago

The span of NATO, like the schools in the “Atlantic Coast” Conference, is beyond ridiculous. In addition to actual members of the Organization, there are countries such as Armenia “partnered” with NATO, though not actual members. How does this work?

What if the USA is attacked by well-armed drug gangs from the border and Congress declares war on Mexico (not in NATO)? Can we expect the Estonians and Turks, the Danish and the Finns, the Italians and the Swedish, to send their armies? We’d have Mexico 32-1.

Article V baby!

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve W
james wilson
james wilson
Member
Reply to  Tarl Cabot
1 month ago

Putin is way too cagey to be drawn into that.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
1 month ago

zman, did you see this: https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/swamp-apocalypse-wednesday-february

ties in with your recent posts on defunding the blob. strongly recommended to all commenters here…

james wilson
james wilson
Member
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

Great link. Thanks. I keep waiting for the fallback but it appears Trump has really learned who his friends are. Clearly none of this is a product of his mind but it does suggest he has been persuaded by a diffferent class of people that he chose to surround himself this time. Not in any way a criticism, delegation to sharper minds is an art, and these people are artists.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 month ago

kvh-

Seconding the thanks for this link.

I like the points they made about Speaker Johnson. I still don’t trust him, but he’s been pretty good to date. Let’s hope he doesn’t turn into a massive piece of crud like Ryan who did massive damage to the Trump 45 administration.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
1 month ago

My only real question is if they will take another one of those ridiculous group pictures they take every time they have one of their supposedly consequential get togethers, but this time with Trump

Last edited 1 month ago by Jeffrey Zoar
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 month ago

Well at least they don’t have to worry about the President shitting himself or wandering off like a child at the photo session this time…

Vegetius
Vegetius
1 month ago

Vincent Borelli: Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that the money we’re robbing is bein’ robbed? That somebody’s robbing from us? We go through all this fckin’ trouble, and somebody’s robbin’ us?

Remo Gaggi: Eh?

John Nance: Like I said, you know, it’s part of the business. It’s considered leakage.

Americo Cappelli: Leakage my balls,I want the guy who’s robbin us. 

mmack
mmack
Reply to  Vegetius
1 month ago

Nicky Santoro: You know, I think you got the wrong impression about me. I think in all fairness, I should explain to you exactly what it is that I do. For instance tomorrow morning I’ll get up nice and early, take a walk down over to the bank and… walk in and see and, uh… if you don’t have my money for me, I’ll… crack your fucking head wide open in front of everybody in the bank. And just about the time that I’m coming out of jail, hopefully, you’ll be coming out of your coma. And guess what? I’ll… Read more »

Snooze
Snooze
Reply to  mmack
1 month ago

Casino

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Vegetius
1 month ago

the guys inside the senate appropriations committee were all slipped in there to skim the joint dry

RealityRules
RealityRules
1 month ago

Musk’s update is laying it on the line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4LOoxK4j4A

We are going to have a lot of people free to pick tomatoes. We may find out if there are jobs that Americans wouldn’t do, or didn’t have to do.

ZFan
ZFan
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

Unfortunately, the fields needing picked and the slaughterhouses needing cleaned are not close by this labor surplus of punks and women. Thinking of them fighting over shift manager positions for Starbucks and Panda Express is amusing.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  ZFan
1 month ago

That’s fine. $750 was enough for Maui and North Carolina after losing their homes, so it should be enough for bureaurats to resettle where the work is.

Last edited 1 month ago by Steve
ray
ray
Reply to  RealityRules
1 month ago

Karen selling her pantsuits and picking tomaters truly would herald a New America.

Handmaid’s Tale hats optional.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
1 month ago

has come to a *concussion*”. auto-spell strikes again.

Hi-ya!
Hi-ya!
1 month ago

DOGE kids stuffing Zelensky into a locker

come for the racism stay for the zingers!

or vice versa what do I care

RPJ
RPJ
1 month ago

To take the Chicago example a bit further, is Zelensky the Bugsy Seigel character? Is so ……..!!

The Infant Phenomenon
The Infant Phenomenon
1 month ago

Here’s a quite different take:

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/double-decker-special-hysteria-ignites

“This is clearly a step back rather than forward, and the desperate meaningless Putin conversation was likely the patch-up job meant to give the appearance that Trump’s big brawny peace initiative was still proceeding.”

Last edited 1 month ago by The Infant Phenomenon
karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  The Infant Phenomenon
1 month ago

i read Simplicius regularly and this was his weakest post ever. not that he is ever particularly insightful; usually just has a ton of copy-paste/pics/links. his twitter feed is decent for up to date info.

Ronehjr
Ronehjr
1 month ago

If the author’s take on the situation is correct, than I cannot help but be disgusted with the duplicitous blame shifting the Trump faction is engaged in.(I refuse to believe Trump is is anything other than a front man for one faction of the ruling elite) This whole Ukraine mess was a plan that originated in the US, and now the blame is being foisted on the EU and the hapless and inept Zelensky. Unless the ruling elite in America is not changed, another variation of this mess will happen again, perhaps somewhere else, or maybe Ukraine again.Anybody who takes… Read more »

Last edited 1 month ago by Ronehjr
Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ronehjr
1 month ago

Got news for you. Even if the “ruling elite” were changed, it’s going to happen again anyway. Any system that allows one to exercise power is going to result in self-selection of people who enjoy doing so, and, as with any other gang, the worst of the worst are going to end up wielding that power.

You need to think somewhat larger.

WCiv911
WCiv911
Reply to  Steve
1 month ago

What may save us Steve is insolvency and the collapse of the bureaucracy. A sparse, underfunded underpopulated government may save us.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  WCiv911
1 month ago

…and while it remains to be seen how successful they’ll be, all power and glory to Musk and Trump in their attempt to prune the Deep State.