UK, France, Ukraine Agree To Work On Cease-Fire Plan To Present To US
UK, France, Ukraine Agree To Work On Cease-Fire Plan To Present To US
By Jacob Burg of the https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/uk-france-ukraine-agree-to-work-on-cease-fire-plan-to-present-to-us-5818634
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on March 2 that Britain, France, and Ukraine are working on a cease-fire plan to present to the United States as he prepares to host European leaders in discussions to end the Russia–Ukraine war.
Starmer’s Sunday summit of leaders stands in contrast to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting in the White House on Friday, during which U.S. President Donald Trump scolded him for not being ready for peace and not being grateful for America’s support in his nation’s defense against Russia’s three-year-long invasion.
Starmer said he’s working on restoring discussions of peace and is using Friday’s breakdown as an opportunity to re-engage with Trump, Zelenskyy, and French President Emmanuel Macron rather than “ramp up the rhetoric.”
“We’ve now agreed that the United Kingdom, along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting, and then we’ll discuss that plan with the United States,” Starmer told the BBC, adding that he and Macron have both spoken to Trump since the latter’s meeting with Zelenskyy.
At Sunday’s summit, European leaders will look toward shoring up the continents’ defenses in defending Ukraine, including discussions to create a European military force to send to the war-torn country to cap a cease-fire. Starmer suggested the military force would include a “coalition of the willing.”
While he does not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin, Starmer said he trusts Trump.
“Do I believe Donald Trump when he says he wants lasting peace? The answer to that is yes,” he said.
Starmer added that “intense discussions” to obtain a security guarantee from the United States are one of the three components of lasting peace.
“If there is to be a deal, if there is to be a stopping of the fighting, then that agreement has to be defended, because the worst of all outcomes is that there is a temporary pause, and then Putin comes again,” Starmer said. “That has happened in the past. I think it is a real risk, and that is why we must ensure that if there’s a deal, it is a lasting deal, not a temporary pause.”
The summit, which will be held at Lancaster House—a 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace—will also include leaders from France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Romania.
Other attendees include the Turkish foreign minister, NATO secretary-general, and the presidents of the European Commission and European Council.
Zelenskyy received support from European leaders after Friday’s contentious meeting at the White House in which a rare earths deal was abandoned and Trump told Zelenskyy to come back when he was ready for peace.
After the Ukrainian president arrived in Britain on Saturday, Starmer embraced him.
“As you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom,” Starmer said. “We stand with you, with Ukraine, for as long as it may take.”
Starmer also pledged to boost military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027. Other European nations might follow suit.
Continue reading at the https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/uk-france-ukraine-agree-to-work-on-cease-fire-plan-to-present-to-us-5818634
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Sun, 03/02/2025 - 13:29
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uk-france-ukraine-agree-work-cease-fire-plan-present-us
Trump Declares Border 'Invasion' Is Over as Apprehensions Plunge To Historic Low
Trump Declares Border 'Invasion' Is Over as Apprehensions Plunge To Historic Low
President Donald Trump on Saturday said the “invasion of our country” is over after the number of illegal immigrant apprehensions at the U.S.–Mexico border fell to a historic low in February, his first full month in office.
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According to newly released https://x.com/CBP/status/1895938058635321532
from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Border Patrol agents recorded just 8,326 apprehensions last month—the lowest monthly total in recorded history. By contrast, during the administration of President Joe Biden, CBP reported as many as 300,000 apprehensions of illegal border crossers in a single month.
Trump credited his administration’s strict enforcement policies for the dramatic decline in border arrests. “The month of February, my first full month in office, had the LOWEST number of Illegal Immigrants trying to enter our Country in History – BY FAR!” Trump said in a https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/114088564162922800
on Truth Social.
On his first day in office, Trump signed 10 executive orders and proclamations addressing border security and the deportation of illegal immigrants. He ended “catch and release,” shut down the CBP One app used for parole exceptions, and pressured Mexico through the threat of tariffs into deploying 10,000 troops to curb drug trafficking and tighten enforcement of immigration controls.
Trump also declared a national emergency at the border, ramped up deportations of illegal immigrants, and issued an order ending birthright citizenship.
“Thanks to the Trump Administration Policies, the Border is CLOSED to all Illegal Immigrants,“ Trump wrote.
”Anyone who tries to illegally enter the U.S.A. will face significant criminal penalties and immediate deportation.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) echoed Trump’s sentiment. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed the record low in apprehensions and emphasized the administration’s firm stance against illegal immigration.
“The world is hearing our message: do not come to our country illegally. If you do, we will find you, arrest you, and send you back,” Noem wrote in a https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/1895919691236790333
on social media.
“We’re just getting started.”
Despite the administration’s success in reducing illegal crossings, Trump’s policies have drawn opposition. Last month, a group of Quaker congregations filed a https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/quakers-sue-homeland-security-for-allowing-ice-arrests-at-churches-5800726
against DHS, accusing the agency of violating their religious freedom by allowing arrests of illegal immigrants attending religious services.
Additionally, multiple federal judges have https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/4th-federal-judge-blocks-trumps-order-to-end-birthright-citizenship-5810024?ea_src=author_manual&ea_med=related_stories
Trump’s executive order that ended birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, with the Trump administration vowing to appeal.
Immigration and border security were top voter priorities during the 2024 election, rivaled only by economic concerns such as inflation.
In addition to his day one actions on border security, Trump recently https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/trump-to-order-agencies-to-terminate-all-federal-assistance-for-illegal-immigrants-5813054
an executive order instructing all agencies to identify federally funded programs that provide financial assistance to illegal immigrants and to eliminate such aid.
“With this Executive Order, President Trump is ensuring taxpayer resources are used to protect the interests of American citizens, not illegal aliens,” a White House fact sheet states.
Also, DHS recently https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/02/25/secretary-noem-announces-agency-will-enforce-laws-penalize-aliens-country-illegally
that illegal immigrants in the country must register with the federal government and that failing to do so will result in fines or imprisonment. The aim is to allow law enforcement to track and compel illegal immigrants to self-deport, while saving agency resources that would otherwise be used to carry out physical removals.
recently that the number of illegal immigrant arrests in the interior of the country have jumped significantly under the Trump administration, with more than 20,000 arrests in the past month, compared to around 33,000 during President Joe Biden’s last full year in office.
Estimates of the total illegal immigrant population in the United States vary significantly.
The Department of Homeland Security https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/2024_0418_ohss_estimates-of-the-unauthorized-immigrant-population-residing-in-the-united-states-january-2018%25E2%2580%2593january-2022.pdf
a higher estimate of 16.8 million in June 2023.
the total could reach up to 30 million.
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Sun, 03/02/2025 - 13:05
US And UK To Forge New Trade Agreement
US And UK To Forge New Trade Agreement
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/US-and-UK-to-Forge-New-Trade-Agreement.html
President Trump indicated a willingness to work on a new trade agreement with the UK and suggested that tariffs on British goods might not be necessary.
Prime Minister Starmer emphasized the balanced trade relationship between the UK and the US and expressed hope that tariffs would not be imposed.
The leaders discussed collaborating on a new technology-focused economic deal, with a particular emphasis on artificial intelligence.
The UK could be set to dodge US tariffs with work to begin on a new US-UK trade deal, it was revealed during Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to US President Donald Trump.
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The Prime Minister flew to the States yesterday for a https://www.cityam.com/topic/people/donald-trump/
.
And the visit, which came amid uncertainty over peace in Ukraine and the impact on European security, saw Trump outline his hopes for a “great trade agreement” with the UK.
Following discussions with Sir Keir, the President told a press conference on Thursday: “We’re going to have a great trade agreement, one way or another.
“We’re going to end up with a very good trade agreement for both countries and we are working on that as we speak.”
He added: “I think we’ll have something, maybe in terms of possibilities, agreed very shortly.
“We’ll see if we can do something pretty quickly. But we’re going to make some great trade agreements with the UK and with the Prime Minister, and it’ll happen very quickly.”
Asked if Starmer, who he also described as a “tough negotiator” and “terrific in our discussions” had convinced him not to impose trade tariffs on the UK, Trump said: “He tried.”
US tariffs on British steel imports are looming and the US president had previously hinted he could target the UK further, as well as suggesting he could impose 25 per cent tariffs on goods from the European Union (EU).
Trump said: “He was working hard, I’ll tell you that. He earned whatever the hell they pay him over there, but he tried.
“I think there’s a very good chance that in the case of these two great, friendly countries, I think we could very well end up with a real trade deal where the tariffs wouldn’t be necessary. We’ll see.”
The US President also told reporters that he uses tariffs to “even things up” on trade, adding: “We’ve been treated badly by a lot, we’re using tariffs and… it’s not about inflation, it’s about fairness, and the inflation for us has not existed. I don’t think it’s going to exist.”
But Starmer emphasised that the UK-US trade relationship is “fair”, as he signalled he hoped not to see tariffs imposed on Britain’s economy.
The Prime Minister said: “We have $1.5 trillion invested in each other’s economies, creating over 2.5m jobs across both economies, our trading relationship is not just strong. It’s fair, balanced and reciprocal.”
And Starmer earlier stressed: “Mr President, it’s no secret we’re from different political traditions, but there’s a lot that we have in common. We believe it’s not taking part that counts. What counts is winning.
“If you don’t win, you don’t deliver, and we’re determined to deliver for the working people of Britain and America who want and deserve to see their lives improve.
“So, we’re both in a hurry to get things done, and that’s what the UK and US do when we work together: we win and we get things done.”
Starmer also revealed the UK would work with the US on a new technology-focused economic deal. Speaking of the countries’ hopes for artificial intelligence (AI), he said: “Instead of over-regulating new technologies, we’re seizing the opportunities they offer.”
He added: “We’ve decided today to go further to begin work on a new economic deal with advanced technology at its core.
“Look, our two nations together shaped the great technological innovations of the last century. We have a chance now to do the same for the 21st century.
“I mean, artificial intelligence could cure cancer. That could be a moonshot for our age, and that’s how we’ll keep delivering for our people.”
Following his comments on the EU, Trump also said he will “have to take a look” at whether there will be any trade sanctions on the UK.
The President said: “I can say that … we’re here for a different reason – we’re talking about a very different place. I have investments there, I own Turnberry, I own Aberdeen, and I own a great place called Doonbeg in Ireland. So, I have a great warm spot for your country.”
Starmer then said: “And our trade, obviously, is fair and balanced and, in fact, you’ve got a bit of surplus. So, we’re in a different position there – and obviously we contributed hugely in relation to Ukraine.”
Trump said: “It’s going to work out.” Asked if there will not be any sanctions on the UK, Mr Trump said: “Well, I have to take a look.”
Elsewhere, the US President Donald said the https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-mauritius-joint-statement-on-the-chagos-archipelago-20-december-2024
did not “sound bad” when he suggested the US may accept the deal.
Answering questions in the White House, the US President said: “We’re going to have some discussions about that very soon and I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well.
“They’re talking about a very long-term, powerful lease, a very strong lease, about 140 years, actually. It’s a long time. I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country.”
He added: “It’s a little bit early, we have to yet be given the details, but it doesn’t sound bad.”
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Sun, 03/02/2025 - 08:10
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Armed Venezuelan Ship "Threatens" Exxon Mobile Vessel Off Guyana Coast
Armed Venezuelan Ship "Threatens" Exxon Mobile Vessel Off Guyana Coast
A Venezuelan military ship entered a major offshore oil and gas field off the coast of Guyana early Saturday, approaching an ExxonMobil contracted vessel, according to https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-01/venezuelan-navy-approaches-exxonmobil-vessel-off-guyana-coast
a key oil deal with Nicolas Maduro's Venezuela, citing its failure to repatriate an adequate number of illegal aliens from the US.
X user News Source Guyana posted a video showing the armed Venezuelan patrol boat probing the waters around the Exxon contracted ship in the Stabroek Block (Oil & Gas Field).
News Source: Authorities in Guyana at the Government level and at the level of Exxon Mobil are probing the presence of a Venezuelan Military vessel in Guyana’s waters sailing close to drill ships and other vessels in the Stabroek Block where oil production is taking place. https://t.co/9YsmfWft8X
— News Source Guyana (@newssourcegy) https://twitter.com/newssourcegy/status/1895842902879977702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The US State Department wrote on X the incident was unacceptable:
"Venezuelan naval vessels threatening ExxonMobil's floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is unacceptable and a clear violation of Guyana's internationally-recognized maritime territory. Further provocation will result in consequences for the Maduro regime. The United States reaffirms its support for Guyana's territorial integrity and the 1899 arbitral award."
Venezuelan naval vessels threatening ExxonMobil’s floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is unacceptable and a clear violation of Guyana’s internationally-recognized maritime territory. Further provocation will result in consequences for the Maduro regime. The…
— Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (@WHAAsstSecty) https://twitter.com/WHAAsstSecty/status/1895866770440724576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Another video of the incident.
Video donde observamos al ABV "Guaiquerí" de la Armada Bolivariana de Venezuela frente a un Buque de perforación petrolera. Posiblemente sea en el Campo "Payara" del bloque "Stabroek" en aguas por delimitar entre Guyana y Venezuela https://twitter.com/hashtag/1Mar?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
— Mi Mapa de Venezuela incluye nuestro Esequibo (@AntroCanal) https://twitter.com/AntroCanal/status/1895899534460665866?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Exxon discovered Stabroek in 2015. It produces 650,000 barrels daily and is situated in heavily disputed waters with Venezuela.
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Guyana's President, Irfaan Ali, stated that the Venezuelan military vessel radioed the Exxon-contracted ship, declaring that the area lies within disputed international waters.
"During this incursion, the Venezuelan vessel approached various assets in our exclusive waters, including FPSO Prosperity," Ali said, referring to one of the Exxon-contracted vessels.
The Organization of American States stated, "Such acts of intimidation constitute a clear violation of international law, undermine regional stability, and threaten the principles of peaceful coexistence between nations," adding it "unequivocally condemns the recent actions of Venezuelan naval vessels."
The incident follows Trump's decision to https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/trump-revokes-venezuela-oil-license-after-failing-receive-enough-migrants-back
of an oil transaction agreement dated Nov. 26, 2022, with Venezuela, citing Maduro's failure to repatriate enough migrants.
We are hereby reversing the concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro, of Venezuela, on the oil transaction agreement, dated November 26, 2022, and also having to do with Electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime.…
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) https://twitter.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1894828961798255096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Not a smart move, Maduro.
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Sun, 03/02/2025 - 07:35
America As Republic, Not As Empire – Europe's 'Sound And Fury' After Jaw-Dropping Pivots In US Policy
America As Republic, Not As Empire – Europe's 'Sound And Fury' After Jaw-Dropping Pivots In US Policy
Authored by Alastair Crooke,
The bits are falling into a distinct pattern – a pre-prepared pattern.
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Defence Secretary Hegseth at the Munich Security Conference gave us four ‘noes’: No to Ukraine in NATO; No to a return to pre-2014 borders; No to ‘Article 5’ peacekeeper backstops, and ‘No’ to U.S. troops in Ukraine. And in a final flourish, he added that U.S. troops in Europe are not ‘forever’ – and even placed a question mark over the continuity of NATO.
Pretty plain speaking! The U.S. clearly is cutting away from Ukraine. And they intend to normalise relations with Russia.
Then, Vice-President Vance threw his fire cracker amongst the gathered Euro-élites. He said that the élites had retreated from “shared” democratic values; they were overly reliant on repressing and censoring their peoples (prone to locking them up); and, above all, he excoriated the European Cordon Sanitaire (‘firewall’) by which European parties outside the Centre-Left are deemed non-grata politically: It’s a fake ‘threat’, he suggested. Of what are you really so frightened? Have you so little confidence in your ‘democracy’?
The U.S., he implied, will no longer support Europe if it continues to https://www.dw.com/en/will-german-far-right-afd-party-be-banned/a-70531838
. “If you’re running in fear of your own voters”, Vance said, “there is nothing America can do for you”.
Ouch! Vance had hit them where it hurts.
It is difficult to say what specifically most triggered the catatonic European breakdown: Was it the fear of the U.S. and Russia joining together as a major power nexus – thus stripping Europe from ever again being able glide along on the back of American power, through the specious notion that any European state must have exceptional access to the Washington ‘ear’?
Or was it the ending of the Ukraine/Zelensky cult which was so prized amongst the Euro-élite as the ‘glue’ around which a faux European unity and identity could be enforced? Both probably contributed to the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ_K6RXfWC8
.
That the U.S. would in essence leave Europe to their own delusions would be a calamitous event for the Brussels technocracy.
Many may lazily assume that the U.S. double act at Munich was just another example of the well-known Trumpian fondness for dropping ‘wacky’ initiatives intended to both shock and kickover frozen paradigms. The Munich speeches did exactly that all right! Yet that does not make them accidental; but rather parts that fit into a bigger picture.
It is clear now that the Trump blitzkrieg across the American Administrative State could not have been mounted unless carefully pre-planned and prepared over the last four years.
Trump’s flurry of Presidential Executive Orders at the outset of his Presidency were not whimsical. Leading U.S. constitutional lawyer, Johnathan Turley, and other lawyers https://www.conflictsforum.org/mailster/4143/cd55a8bc957e4746f3f008aa7da8526b/aHR0cHM6Ly9qb25hdGhhbnR1cmxleS5vcmcvMjAyNS8wMi8xNi90YWtpbmctYXdheS1ldmVyeXRoaW5nLXdlLWhhdmUtZGVtb2NyYXRzLWFuZC11bmlvbnMtbGF1bmNoLWFuLWV4aXN0ZW50aWFsLWZpZ2h0LW92ZXItYnV5b3V0cy8
that the Orders were well drafted legally and with the clear understanding that legal challenges would ensue. What’s more, that Trump Team welcome those challenges.
What is going on? The newly confirmed head of the Office of Budget Management (OBM), Russ Vought, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vydAb4RR1iI
his Office will become the “on/off switch” for all Executive expenditure under the new Executive Orders. Vought calls the resulting whirlpool, the application of Constitutional radicalism. And Trump has now issued the Executive Order that reinstates the primacy of the Executive as the controlling mechanism of government.
Vaught, who was in OBM in Trump 01, is carefully selecting the ground for all-out financial war on the Deep State. It will be fought out firstly at the Supreme Court – which the Trump Team expect confidently to win (Trump has the 6-3 conservative majority). The new régime will then be applied across all agencies and departments of state. Expect shrieks of pain.
The point here is that the Administrative State – aloof from executive control – has taken to itself prerogatives such as immunity to dismissal and the self-awarded authority to shape policy – creating a dual state system, run by unelected technocrats, which, when implanted in departments such as Justice and the Pentagon, have evolved into the American Deep State.
Article Two of the Constitution however, says very bluntly: Executive power shall be vested in the U.S. President (with no ifs or buts at all.) Trump intends for his Administration to recover that lost Executive power. It was, in fact, lost long ago. Trump is re-claiming too, the Executive’s right to dismiss ‘servants of the State’, and to ‘switch off’ wasteful expenditure at his discretion, as part of a unitary executive prerequisite.
Of course, the Administrative State is fighting back. Turley’s https://jonathanturley.org/2025/02/16/taking-away-everything-we-have-democrats-and-unions-launch-an-existential-fight-over-buyouts/
is headlined: They Are Taking Away Everything We Have: Democrats and Unions Launch Existential Fight. Their aim has been to cripple the Trump initiative through using politicised judges to issue restraint orders. Many mainstream lawyers believe Trump’s Unitary Executive claim to be illegal. The question is whether Congress can stand up Agencies designed to act independently of the President; and how does that square with the separation of powers and Article Two that vests unqualified executive power with one sole elected official – the U.S. President.
How did the Democrats not see this coming? Lawyer Robert Barnes essentially https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVsmgopMPcg&feature=youtu.be
that the ‘blitzkrieg’ was “exceptionally well-planned” and had been discussed in Trump circles since late 2020. The latter team had emerged from within a generational and cultural shift in the U.S.. This latter had given rise to a Libertarian/Populist wing with working class roots who often had served in the military, yet had come to despise the Neo-con lies (especially those of 9/11) that brought endless wars. They were animated more by the old John Adams adage that ‘America should not go abroad in search of monsters to slay’.
In short, they were not part of the WASP ‘Anglo’ world; they came from a different Culture that harked back to the theme of America as Republic, not as Empire. This is what you see with Vance and Hegseth – a reversion to the Republican precept that the U.S. should not become involved in European wars. Ukraine is not America’s war.
The Deep State, it seems, were not paying attention to what a posse of ‘populist’ outliers, tucked away from the rarefied Beltway talking shop, were up to: They (the outliers) were planning a concerted attack on the Federal expenditure spigot – identified as the weak spot about which a Constitutional challenge could be mounted that would derail – in its entirety – the expenditures of the Deep State.
It seems that one aspect to the surprise has been the Trump Team’s discipline: ‘no leaks’. And secondly, that those involved in the planning are not drawn from the preeminent Anglo-sphere, but rather from a strand of society that was offended by the Iraq war and which blames the ‘Anglo-sphere’ for ‘ruining’ America.
So Vance’s speech at Munich was not disruptive – merely for the sake of being disruptive; he was, in fact, encouraging the audience to recall early Republican Values. This was what is meant by his complaint that Europe had turned away from “our shared values” – i.e. the values that animated Americans seeking escape from the tyranny, prejudices and corruption of the Old World. Vance was (quite politely) chiding the Euro-élites for backsliding to old European vices.
Vance implicitly was hinting too, that European conservative libertarians should emulate Trump and act to slough-off their ‘Administrative States’, and recover control over executive power. Tear down the firewalls, he advised.
Why? Because he likely views the ‘Brussels’ Technocratic State as nothing other than a pure offshoot to the American Deep State – and therefore very likely to try to torpedo and sink Trump’s initiative to normalise relations with Moscow.
If these were Vance’s instincts, he was right. Macron almost immediately summoned an ‘emergency meeting’ of ‘the war party’ in Paris to consider how to frustrate the American initiative. It failed however, descending reportedly into quarrelling and acrimony.
It transpired that Europe could not gather a ‘sharp-end’ military force greater than 20,-000-30,000 men. Scholtz objected in principle to their involvement; Poland demurred as a close neighbour of Ukraine; and Italy stayed silent. Starmer, however, after Munich, immediately rang Zelensky to say that Britain saw Ukraine to be on an irrevocable path to NATO membership – thus directly contradicting U.S. policy and with no support from other states. Trump will not forget this, nor will he forget Britain’s former role in supporting the Russiagate slur during his first term in office.
The meeting did however, underline Europe’s divisions and impotence. Europe has been sidelined and their self-esteem is badly bruised. The U.S. would in essence leave Europe to their own delusions, which would be calamitous for the Brussels autocracy.
Yet, far more consequential than most of the happenings of the past few days was when Trump, speaking with Fox News,after attending Daytona, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GhZ7UVF3AI&feature=youtu.be
Zelensky’s canard of Russia wanting to invade NATO countries. “I don’t agree with that; not even a little bit”, Trump retorted.
Trump does not buy into the primary lie intended as the glue which holds this entire EU geo-political structure together. For, without the ‘Russia threat’; without the U.S. believing in the globalist linchpin lie, there can be no pretence of Europe needing to prepare for war with Russia. Europe ultimately will have to come to reconcile its future as a periphery in Eurasia.
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Sun, 03/02/2025 - 07:00
Trump, Vance, & The New New World Order
Trump, Vance, & The New New World Order
https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/01/trump-vance-and-the-new-new-world-order/
This past week, the venerable Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for The Financial Times, used his column to declare the Trump administration and, by extension, the United States “https://www.ft.com/content/b46e2e24-ca71-4269-a7ca-3344e6215ae3
.” “Today,” Wolf wrote, “autocracies [are] increasingly confident,” and “the United States is moving to their side.” According to the subhead on the column, “Washington has decided to abandon…its postwar role in the world.” Meanwhile, Wolf cites the (in his estimation) august Franklin Roosevelt, as he complains that the United States “has decided instead to become just another great power, indifferent to anything but its short-term interests.”
The ironies here—as well as the historical ignorance—abound.
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To start, one would imagine that Wolf, an educated man with two degrees from Oxford, might know that it was his countryman (and two-time Prime Minister), Henry John Temple (i.e. Lord Palmerston), who declared in a speech in the House of Commons that “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Wolf might also be expected to know that this statement was repeated—more famously and more pithily—by Henry Kissinger, perhaps the quintessential American diplomat in the supposedly vaunted postwar order. Kissinger, like Palmerston and Trump (apparently) understood that a nation that pursues anything other than its interests is foolish, faithless, and, in time, doomed.
What bothers Wolf, it would seem, is that American interests are diverging from British and continental European interests. That is unfortunate, but it is also more than likely the case that this divergence is the result of Britain and Europe’s abandonment of the principles, values, and ambitions the allies once shared, rather than the other way around. For example, Wolf criticizes the speech given by J.D. Vance in which the vice president defended the traditional American dedication to free speech and attacked the British and European rejection of that principle. Yet again, Wolf might be expected to know that the American preoccupation with this and all other negative rights is something the nation’s Founders inherited from their British forefathers. If the two nations now differ on the importance of this fundamental right, then that’s hardly Vance’s, Trump’s, or any other American’s fault.
More ironies are found in Wolf’s praise of the now-dying postwar order and his citation of FDR as the architect of that order. While Wolf is correct that Roosevelt was one of two Americans most responsible for the creation of the postwar order, he is wrong in believing that the order was virtuous by design and that it played out precisely as Roosevelt intended. Indeed, he couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.
Almost from the moment the United States entered World War II, Roosevelt was planning how best to achieve the goal he inherited from his former boss and Progressive predecessor, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson’s goal, of course, was “global governance” under the League of Nations, a goal that the U.S. Senate, mercifully, denied him. Regrettably, Roosevelt shared Wilson’s dream. The political scientist and historian of the Cold War, Amos Perlmutter, wrote that Roosevelt’s “vision for a postwar world was neo-Wilsonian, totally at odds with reality. He would help create a new international order, presided over in an equal partnership by the two emerging superpowers, the United States and the USSR, and buttressed by the newly created world organization, the United Nations.” Like Wilson, Roosevelt sought to fix the world by bringing the whole of it under the control of a handful of its most benevolent and brilliant men—himself included, naturally.
The catch, of course, was that in order to believe that he could effectuate his plan for the postwar global order, Roosevelt also had to believe that it would be received positively by the man who turned out to be the most proficient mass murderer in the war, Josef Stalin. Remarkably, Roosevelt did, in fact, believe just that. He repeatedly told his staff and others that he was convinced that the man he affectionately called “Uncle Joe” would eagerly welcome his friendship and American entreaties to share governance of the world jointly. They would, he believed, be the closest of allies and the best of friends. In 1943, before ever even meeting Stalin, FDR told his first ambassador to the USSR, William Bullit, that “I have just a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world democracy and peace.”
Roosevelt approached the end of the war and Yalta in the same state of delusion. He went, hat in hand, to beg Stalin to join him in his plan to rule the world together as the benevolent co-victors and co-representatives of the triumphant political left. As history shows, Roosevelt gave Stalin everything he wanted at Yalta, in the vain hope that the two could be friends and work together. History also shows that FDR was never disabused of this fantasy and, as a result, set about trying to put it in place.
To this end, Roosevelt put his best men on the job of ensuring the creation—and the successful ratification by the Senate—of the United Nations. Among these best men were his Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and an aide on whom Roosevelt relied heavily while at Yalta, the director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, a man named Alger Hiss.
Many years of work went into creating the United Nations and planning its charter, and many prominent Americans—including Stettinius and Dulles—had tremendous input into the documents. In the end, though, it was Hiss, the Soviet spy, who ensured that the United Nations was born. Hiss was the primary author of the United Nations Charter and attended the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco as part of the official American delegation headed by Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Among other things, Hiss was tasked with ensuring Vandenberg’s support and compliance—both in endorsing the U.N. Charter at the conference in San Francisco and then shepherding it successfully through the Senate ratification process.
The United Nations was the most critical step in transforming the world at the end of the war. But it was only the first step. For the better part of a century, the leftist secular intellectuals and the Utopian pietists colluded to push the notion of “global governance” on an unwilling and uninterested globe. In 1945, however, with the Utopians victorious in the West and murderous but canny cynics victorious in the East, the Wilsonian-pietist dream at last became a reality. The entire postwar period—from Roosevelt’s attempts to court Stalin at Yalta and beyond to the establishment of the United Nations, the World Bank, and International Monetary Fund; from Truman’s speech on the Greek crisis to the formulation of the policy of containment; from the war in Korea to the Marshall Plan—is perhaps best understood as the story the American Left’s attempts to nurture and encourage world government, and to consolidate power under beneficent American leadership.
This world order—which inarguably produced the wars in Korea and Vietnam and arguably contributed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—is the world order Trump and Vance are supposedly abandoning and which Martin Wolf wishes so desperately to preserve.
I can’t say with any degree of certainty that any new, new world order will be particularly grand, but I can say that the old, new world order was, at best, a happy accident that only nearly resulted in the nuclear destruction of the entire planet - and which might not be so lucky next time.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 23:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-vance-new-new-world-order
The Turnaround...
The Turnaround...
https://straightlinelogic.com/2025/03/01/the-turnaround-by-robert-gore/
The best way to understand Trump is also the simplest: he’s a businessman. From that perspective, little of what he’s doing is as inexplicable or surprising as many make it out to be. The inexplicability arises from general ignorance of business. Most Americans have little knowledge or understanding of how private American businesses work, although they generates the majority of the U.S.’s $29 trillion GDP and employ many of them.
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Trump is now CEO of the federal government. That enterprise has over $36 trillion in direct liabilities and unfunded liabilities in the hundreds of trillions. Its cost of credit is rising and debt service is taking an ever-expanding share of its revenues. Self evidently, it cannot continue on its present course.
The common element of successful business turnarounds is that they don’t emerge from slow, incremental changes from within the system. Somebody comes in and administers shock therapy. Turnaround artists are never popular. Lots of people are fired, unprofitable operations discarded, finances tightened, business philosophies rethought, and the company’s direction radically reset. Because the company’s situation is dire, this all has to be done quickly, with shareholders howling and creditors pounding at the door.
It begins with the numbers. In failing enterprises, they often reek of falsification, self-dealing, and corruption. You analyze the numbers and you keep asking questions until you uncover the real answers. What Musk and DOGE are doing would be standard operating procedure in a comparable business situation; indeed Musk did the same thing when he took over Twitter. Applied to government, it’s considered revolutionary, but how many politicians or bureaucrats have ever run a business?
That the Department of Defense has never passed an audit and the Federal Reserve tenaciously resists one tells you all you need to know about the government’s numbers. Finding the “anomalies” is like shooting fish in a barrel. Resolving them invariably uncovers sordid secrets. Secrecy is the decaying dreck that feeds swamp corruption. Publicly, swamp creatures are screaming about “democracy” and DOGE access to the government’s sacred information. Privately, they’re checking into overseas bank accounts, defense attorneys, and realtors while updating their LinkedIn profiles.
There are valid security, cybersecurity, and legal, even Constitutional, concerns about the way DOGE is operating that would not be present in a business situation. DOGE’s victims can be counted on to litigate these issues and courts may well impose restrictions. There will also be pushback from within the bureaucracy, even from Trump appointees. Kash Patel has already told FBI employees not to file Musk’s what-I-did-last-week emails. Courts and pushback could derail the project, in which case, revolution would be the only avenue left to defeat the Blob.
At Twitter, Musk fired 80 percent of the workforce, reflecting business wisdom that 20 percent of any workforce does 80 percent of the work. For government, those figures should be revised to 10 and 90. However, is any of the work useful? It’s often counterproductive, producing results contrary to its stated purpose. Government-declared wars on poverty, drugs, and terror produced more impoverishment, drug-addiction, and terrorists, wasting billions. Those “war fighting” agencies and many others should be terminated.
Trump has decided that Operation Ukraine must be terminated. The sunk cost fallacy—throwing good money after bad—has cost the U.S. government trillions, particularly in its military endeavors. The fallacy justifies future spending, and in the case of the military, more destruction and death, on a failing project (like Afghanistan) by citing money already spent and lives already lost—sunk costs. Those costs are irrelevant in deciding whether to continue a project; only the probability of future success matters.
Businesspeople who throw good money after bad go bankrupt. They don’t have fiat money or tax dollars to perpetuate their mistakes. Trump’s not going to throw more money down the Ukrainian rathole. He’s talking about cutting the military budget in half, and the only way to do that is to forego these forever fiascos. The money already spent on Ukraine cries out for an illuminating line-by-line audit. If it happens, watch the cockroaches scatter, including the Bidens and the Clintons.
It appears that Trump and team have decided that unipolarity—the foreign affairs equivalent of monopoly—must give way to multipolarity—the foreign affairs equivalent of oligopoly. As a businessman, Trump undoubtedly prefers monopoly, but reality requires recognition of competitors who are too big to eliminate.
Trump now acknowledges Russia as a peer oligopolist, and obviously, so, too, is China (see “Russia and China Are Facts of Life,” SLL, 1/28/25). It’s always a risk trying to guess Trump’s thinking. However, he apparently wants to settle the ugly Ukraine business quickly and get on with the three-party oligopoly in which the oligopolists sometimes cooperate and sometimes compete—hopefully economically and diplomatically, not militarily. Blood, as businessman Virgil Sollozzo noted in The Godfather, is a big expense. Oligopoly may well have been Trump’s thinking back in his first term (see “The Eagle, the Dragon, and the Bear,” SLL, 6/21/18). However, the Russiagate hoax prevented him from even making overtures in that direction.
Everyone else, including Europe, will be second- or third-tier, although jockeying for markets and securing favorable arrangements for extracting resources will be important aspects of oligopolistic competition. Like many oligopolies, there will be a territorial dimension. Without admitting it, Trump will cede Eurasia to China and Russia while shoring up the U.S. base in North and South America. That may be the thinking behind Trump’s rhetoric concerning Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. Africa and the poles will be open territory over which the oligopolists will compete.
The Middle East and Israel have bedeviled presidents since Truman. If it had no oil, the Middle East would be a desert backwater, an oxymoron. The U.S. has plenty of oil and natural gas. It could buy Middle East oil when prices were favorable and otherwise stay out of the region. However, there is the relationship with Israel, which gets far more from it than the U.S. That’s intolerable from a business perspective, but it’s a political necessity for Trump. The relationship could destroy Trump’s presidency if the two countries wage war on Iran. Given Iran’s ties with Russia and China, such a war could escalate to World War III.
While Trump’s business perspective brings fresh thinking and some honesty to government, there are times when it’s grossly inappropriate. Since 1948, Palestinians have been squeezed into ever-smaller areas in the land formerly known as Palestine, and it’s clear that Netanyahu and Trump want them completely evicted. Getting rid of them and turning Gaza into a luxury beach resort may have a cold-blooded business logic to it, but it’s a patently unjust solution for the Palestinian “problem.” The Trump Gaza video recently released on Truth Social is beyond grotesque.
Back at home, Trump and many Americans understand that the U.S. government is a rathole. Indeed, it’s been common knowledge since Roosevelt’s New Deal, which turned a recession into a Great Depression on the moronic mantras that government bureaucrats are omniscient and government spending is the key to prosperity. Unfortunately, the average American has no power to force the government to disclose information or change its ways. Turnarounds are top-down affairs, which is why so much hope rests on Trump, Musk, and DOGE.
You can’t cut costs to prosperity; successful turnarounds require new revenues. In the case of a government turnaround that doesn’t mean government finds new ways to soak the productive private economy. It means government gets out of the way and lets entrepreneurs, capitalism, and markets do their revenue- and wealth-generating thing. Laws, regulations, and bureaucratic extortion are barnacles encrusting the U.S.S. Economy, stopping it dead in the water. Neither inflation-adjusted private-sector incomes nor the real economy have grown in years. (The public sector has made out nicely, though.)
If Trump and Musk fire government employees, but thousands of laws and regulations aren’t blowtorched, their efforts will come to naught. Legislation drafted by the ignorant stifles industries they don’t understand. Many businesspeople have to “politely” explain to regulators the business they presume to regulate.
That their taxes pay the salaries of these parasites, often with additional “taxes” levied under the table, compounds the absurd injustice. Large, connected, crony-socialistic enterprises can absorb the costs, gaming the system to subsidize themselves and stifle the competition. Ultimately, it’s the much-heralded but much-abused entrepreneurs and small businesses who are crushed. Europe has snuffed out its innovation and economic dynamism almost entirely. The U.S. is well down the same path.
Unfortunately, Trump wants the government to “help” business instead of simply getting out of its way. Business will supposedly thrive behind tariff walls, but its going to be the large, crony-socialistic enterprises that benefit. Trump’s Stargate project will throw half a trillion dollars at well-heeled Silicon Valley outfits to develop AI. China’s DeepSeek and Musk’s latest iteration of Grok has made Stargate obsolete before it spends its first dollar. The one thing Trump and team can do that will help all business is slash spending, reducing the government’s drain on the economy and the national debt’s upward pressure on interest rates.
Honest, successful businesspeople—and the U.S. still has plenty—must deal with reality. They have to produce a good or service at a cost less than what the market will pay for it. The miracle of profit propels production and progress. Yet, it’s the villain in the unreal worlds of government, academia, and mainstream media and entertainment, none of which would survive a day if somebody out there wasn’t generating profit. America is built on profit, not politics. General recognition of that fact would restore some sanity in what’s loftily called the “national discourse.”
The business of America has been and must be business. Trump can’t elucidate an Ayn Rand-type defense for the morality of free enterprise, production, and profit. However, he realizes that the productive element of society is supporting its own parasitic destroyers. Nor can he elucidate a John Quincy Adams-type defense of a foreign policy in which America minds its own business. However, he apparently recognizes that the empire cannot be sustained.
It remains to be seen if Trump and team can turn around America at home and abroad. They’re taking on a powerful Overclass that produces far less than it takes, destroys far more than it creates, and will fight tooth-and-nail to preserve its sinecures. One thing is clear. Without recognition of hard realities and a dramatic turnaround, America’s government will go the way of other failing enterprises that couldn’t change course, sooner rather than later.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 22:10
Trump To Host First White House Crypto Summit On March 7
Trump To Host First White House Crypto Summit On March 7
https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-white-house-crypto-summit-march-7
US President Donald Trump will host the first White House Crypto Summit on March 7, bringing together industry leaders to discuss regulatory policies, stablecoin oversight, and the potential role of Bitcoin in the US financial system.
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The attendees will include “prominent founders, CEOs, and investors from the crypto industry,” along with members of the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets, according to an announcement shared by the White House “AI and crypto czar,” David Sacks, in a March 1 X https://x.com/davidsacks47/status/1895660834799698008/photo/1
.
The summit will be chaired by Sacks and administered by Bo Hines, the executive director of the Working Group.
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Source: https://x.com/davidsacks47/status/1895660834799698008/photo/1
Sacks was appointed https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-names-david-sacks-ai-crypto-czar
wrote in the announcement.
Part of Sacks’ role will be to “safeguard” online speech and “steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship,” Trump added.
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Source: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113603133222686186
Trump has previously signaled that he intends to make https://cointelegraph.com/news/trump-executive-order-crypto-national-priority-bloomberg
and make the US a global hub for blockchain innovation. The upcoming summit may set the tone for crypto regulations over the next four years.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/david-sacks-2-years-push-meaningful-policies-lawyer
pro-crypto policies before the 2026 midterm elections in the US, Joe Doll, the general counsel for NFT marketplace Magic Eden, told Cointelegraph in an interview.
According to Doll, the threat of a gridlocked government could stifle regulations, and the current administration must push through pro-crypto policies while still in control of both chambers of Congress.
Stablecoin, Bitcoin reserve regulation remain focus
While there are no additional details about the summit’s agenda, stablecoin regulation and legislation related to a potential strategic Bitcoin reserve have been at the forefront of regulatory discussions in the US.
The White House announcement came days https://cointelegraph.com/news/stablecoin-firms-registered-us-circle-jeremy-allaire
, co-founder of Circle, the company behind the world’s second-largest stablecoin, said that stablecoin issuers worldwide should be required to register with US authorities.
Citing consumer protection, Allaire argued that US dollar-based stablecoin issuers should not get a “free pass,” enabling them to “ignore the US law and go do whatever the hell you want wherever and sell into the United States.” Allaire told https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-25/circle-s-allaire-says-stablecoin-issuers-should-be-us-registered
:
“Whether you are an offshore company or based in Hong Kong, if you want to offer your US dollar stablecoin in the US, you should need to register in the US just like we have to go register everywhere else.”
The upcoming summit may shed more light on upcoming stablecoin legislation, considering Sacks previously stated that stablecoins could “extend the dollar's dominance internationally.”
Interest in a US-based https://cointelegraph.com/news/kentucky-introduces-bitcoin-reserve-bill-as-16th-state-to-pursue-btc-reserves
data shows.
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US states with Bitcoin reserve bill propositions. Source: https://bitcoinlaws.io/
However, the state-level Bitcoin reserve initiatives may not represent a pivotal moment for Bitcoin; they are only a “symbolic move” unless a significant purchase is announced, according to Iliya Kalchev, dispatch analyst at Nexo.
“Unless the hearing unveils a near-term purchase plan or a major policy shift, the market’s response will likely be mild, as Texas’ pro-crypto stance is already well known,” Kalchev told Cointelegraph.
Bitcoin has averaged over 1,077% returns over the past five years, showing the lucrative potential of a long-term holding strategy.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 15:10
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/trump-host-first-white-house-crypto-summit-march-7
Rubio Demands Apology From Zelensky, Who Attempts Belated 'Gratefulness' For All The Billions
Rubio Demands Apology From Zelensky, Who Attempts Belated 'Gratefulness' For All The Billions
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is demanding an apology from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after Friday's Oval Office https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-meets-zelensky-says-minerals-deal-be-signed-today-will-use-ukraine-rare-earths
. Trump had sarcastically quipped the whole scene will make for "great television" before he shut it down and kicked Zelensky out of the White House, prior to a planned lunch.
Rubio told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the Ukrainian leader should "apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became. There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic. Look, this thing went off the rails."
"When you start talking about that aggressively, and the President’s a deal maker. He’s made deals his entire life, you’re not going to get people to the table," the US top diplomat https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5170548-rubio-zelensky-apology-trump-ukraine-russia/amp/
.
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Many sources say that before the blow-up which started when Zelensky specifically called out Vance to 'answer' a question (after which the vice president appropriately unleashed on Zelensky), a final minerals deal was all but assured and ready to be signed.
But Rubio in his Saturday comments said he's unsure whether Zelensky actually wants to see any kind of peace agreement at all.
"And so you start to perceive that maybe Zelensky doesn’t want a peace deal. He says he does, but maybe he doesn’t, and that active, open undermining of efforts to bring about peace is deeply frustrating for everyone who’s been involved in communications with them leading up to today," Rubio explained.
Zelensky just prior to these fresh remarks of Rubio's expressed what perhaps came close to regret, but something far short of an apology...
"No, I respect the president, and I respect the American people and if, I don’t know, I think that we have to be very open and very honest and I’m not sure that we did something bad," Zelensky responded when asked by Fox News’s Bret Baier if he would apologize for the meeting.
"This is not good for both sides, anyway, and I was very open, but I can’t change our Ukrainian attitude toward Russia," he said.
Still, on the same day Zelensky issued a very lengthy thread on X, at over a dozen full posts, which many will see as reeking of desperation.
He wrote that he knows that the US is on 'our' side and that "America’s help has been vital in helping us survive, and I want to acknowledge that." This appears a response to Vance the day prior noting that he had not once said "thank you" during Friday's meetings. "Peace can only come when we know we have security guarantees, when our army is strong, and our partners are with us," Zelensky also said.
"It will be difficult without the U.S. support. But we can’t lose our will, our freedom, or our people. We’ve seen how Russians came to our homes and killed many people," he continued in the long message.
At one point he further expressed: "I want the U.S. to stand more firmly on our side. This is not just a war between our two countries; Russia brought this war onto our territory and into our homes."
Zelensky had two explicit verbal commitments from Trump that he was going to continue arming Ukraine, which is the most acute policy issue from Ukraine's perspective. But then later he decided to stupidly interject with Vance, and everything went haywire. Epic diplomatic meltdown https://t.co/J4t5HVtNia
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1895612257918468259?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
And again, more after-the-fact efforts to salvage that disaster of an Oval Office meeting: "Our relationship with the American President is more than just two leaders; it’s a historic and solid bond between our peoples. That’s why I always begin with words of gratitude from our nation to the American nation."
...though that's not what President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance are saying. All of this from Zelensky is likely too little, too late.
Below is Zelensky's full thread on X...
We are very grateful to the United States for all the support. I’m thankful to President Trump, Congress for their bipartisan support, and American people. Ukrainians have always appreciated this support, especially during these three years of full-scale invasion. https://t.co/Z9FlWjF101
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) https://twitter.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1895793386990551336?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 14:35
Yosemite Employees Hang US Flag Upside Down In Budget Cut Backlash
Yosemite Employees Hang US Flag Upside Down In Budget Cut Backlash
On Feb. 22, a large group of outdoor enthusiasts gathered at El Capitan, one of the world’s most iconic rock formations, in California’s Yosemite National Park to witness the “Firefall”—a natural phenomenon that occurs when the setting sun hits the park’s Horsetail Fall at just the right angle, causing it to resemble a flow of lava.
However, the moment was marked by the presence of an upside-down American flag draped over the side of the granite monolith near the fall.
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According to the U.S. https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/1892936/dos-and-donts-for-displaying-old-glory/
, the U.S. Flag Code determines that when the U.S. national flag is displayed, the union should be uppermost and to the observer’s left. Furthermore, “it should never be displayed upside down unless trying to convey a sign of distress or great danger.” However, the code does not specify any legal penalties for violations.
Yosemite employees reportedly positioned the upside-down flag to protest recent budget cuts, hiring freezes, and federal layoffs, all components of President Donald Trump’s https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/house-passes-budget-blueprint-to-fund-trumps-agenda-5816308
, which was narrowly approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday—authorizing at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade.
A spokesperson for the National Park Service told NTD that the agency “is aware of the unauthorized and inappropriate display that occurred at Yosemite National Park over the weekend.”
“The NPS does not condone such actions, and the flag was removed as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said. “We take the protection of our national parks seriously and will not tolerate behavior that undermines their integrity. At this time, we have nothing further to add.”
The flag appeared on the same day that an https://www.ntd.com/musk-says-federal-workers-must-report-weekly-accomplishments-or-face-termination_1049478.html
was sent to thousands of federal employees by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), requiring them to submit a report within 48 hours detailing five specific achievements they had made at work in the previous week.
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk warned in a social media post that failure to meet the deadline would result in termination.
that Musk’s agency has already found “hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud.”
“A lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist. That’s how badly various parts of our government were run,” Trump said, “So, by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’”
A new poll by Harvard CAPS-Harris reveals that 76 percent of those surveyed support a “full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government” and that 77 percent support a “full examination of all government expenditures.”
According to a https://www.npca.org/articles/6978-parks-group-responds-to-deepening-national-park-staffing-crisis-as-hundreds
from the National Parks Conservation Association, more than 700 National Park Service staff across the country have submitted resignations as part of the Trump administration’s buyout offer, while another 1,000 employees are at risk of termination—and more than 2,000 seasonal and permanent parks positions across the country have been eliminated.
Responding to the upside-down flag incident, Connecticut State Sen. Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) shared a quote in an https://www.instagram.com/p/DGcHO8IOaPu/
post this week, purportedly from Gavin Carpenter, a Yosemite maintenance mechanic Duff identified as a “disabled military veteran.” Carpenter allegedly admitted he had supplied the flag and helped position it.
“We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties,” the quote read.
In his post, Duff asked his followers, “Are we listening to one of our veterans?”
The photo Duff used in the Instagram post was from the San Francisco Chronicle with the caption indicating that the flag was intended to “protest the thousands of federal job cuts made by President Donald Trump’s administration.”
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 14:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/yosemite-employees-hang-us-flag-upside-down-budget-cut-backlash
Ukraine Lost More Villages On The Battlefield During The Zelensky-Trump Showdown In The Oval
Ukraine Lost More Villages On The Battlefield During The Zelensky-Trump Showdown In The Oval
Many geopolitical pundits who are of the realism camp said from the start of the Ukraine war that it would be settled on the battlefield. Russia's military superiority has been evident to all - especially in the last two years of the conflict - which is of course why Kiev has remained totally reliant on military arms and aid from US-NATO countries.
This week as international press was focused on a flurry of diplomatic activity, which saw President Trump host France's Macron, the UK's Starmer, and Ukraine's Zelensky - all in quick succession, there hasn't been enough attention paid to developments on the battlefield in Ukraine's east.
While Zelensky was readying to make his last stand and 'confront' Trump at the White House - which https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-meets-zelensky-says-minerals-deal-be-signed-today-will-use-ukraine-rare-earths
- Ukrainian forces were steadily losing ground on the eastern frontline. Indeed Kiev forces were being beaten back at the very moment Zelensky and VP Vance were arguing in the Oval.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry https://t.me/mod_russia/49493
at the moment all eyes were on Trump-Zelensky meeting that its forces were busy seizing two more villages along the eastern frontlines.
"Moscow on Saturday said it had seized two more villages in eastern Ukraine as Kyiv officials said Russian strikes had killed one person and wounded 19," AFP https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/03/01/russia-says-seized-two-new-villages-in-eastern-ukraine-a88213
.
"The Russian defense ministry said its forces had captured Skudne and Burlatske in the south of the eastern Donetsk region," the report continues. This is just outside the town of Velyka Novossilka, which Russia captured at the end of January.
The Ukrainians have been steadily losing ground for months in Donetsk, but have continued efforts to strike Russian oil and gas facilities inside Russian territory, which hasn't made any level of a strategic difference in the war. Russia too has been sending drones on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, with at least 150 launched overnight. Ukraine said it was able to down at least 100 of these inbound UAVs.
The Russian military and security services are also reportedly taking back ground in southern Kursk region, which has been occupied by Ukrainian forces since last August.
Russia’s Defense Ministry https://t.me/mod_russia/49493
Friday that four villages have been taken back in the Kursk region over the last week, with the village of Novaya Sorochina being the latest to be liberated.
And days ago the military https://t.me/mod_russia/49494
it had recaptured the nearby villages of Pogrebki and Gorlovka, near Novaya Sorochina, and also the village of Nikolsky, toward the Sudzha direction.
This steady Russian progress has been well understood by the Trump White House, which is why during the Friday meeting Trump kept telling Zelensky that he has no more cards to play.
"You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people," Trump said. "You're gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to the country, this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have."
Zelensky again repeated the lie that Putin violated the Minsk Agreement.
The Minsk Agreement demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donetsk and Luhansk regions (Donbass). Ukraine did not withdraw and continued attacking civilians from 2014 until 2022.
In 2019,… https://t.co/L76HlFj7y9
— Sentletse 🇿🇦🇷🇺🇵🇸🇱🇧 (@Sentletse) https://twitter.com/Sentletse/status/1895745685862916105?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In essence, everyone but Zelensky (and some European leaders, apparently), understands that there's no military solution to the conflict, and that greater Western military intervention seems a sure path to WW3. The 'solution' at this point is for Ukraine to negotiate and cede territory, or face total military defeat. Trump is now making crystal clear to all allies that any kind of US-NATO military intervention simply will never happen.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 13:25
WaPo Hit By Second Wave Of "Rapid-Fire" Mass Subscription Cancellations As Leftist Readers Revolt Against Libertarian Bezos
WaPo Hit By Second Wave Of "Rapid-Fire" Mass Subscription Cancellations As Leftist Readers Revolt Against Libertarian Bezos
The Washington Post was hit with another wave of subscription cancellations—its second in months—following an op-ed by its owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in which he advocated for "personal liberties and free markets."
Bezos announced on Wednesday morning that the WaPo's opinion pages will be "writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/what-actual-fk-wapo-reporters-melt-down-editor-quits-after-jeff-bezos-makes-hard-pivot
."
As Bezos explained on X:
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too…
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1894757287052362088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
According to https://www.npr.org/2025/02/28/nx-s1-5312819/washington-post-bezos-subscriptions-cancellations
, this led to the immediate resignation of Opinions Editor David Shipley and the cancellation of 75,000 digital subscribers.
The number of cancellations comes from a person who asked for anonymity because of the fear of repercussions at the Post.
...
The rapid-fire cancellations since Wednesday represent a historic level of reader fury over the changes. Yet they are only the most recent wave in a series of mass cancellations that began in late October. That was when Bezos killed a planned endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Between then and Election Day, more than 300,000 subscribers canceled the Post, as NPR first reported last month. That was more than 12% of digital subscribers, which make up the vast majority of the paper's paid circulation.
The Post has aggressively wooed new subscribers to replace them, boosting circulation by 400,000, often at highly discounted rates, according to a Post executive.
Google Search trends data showed "cancel Washington Post" surged the most in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, three states home to the radical left - and subs of WaPo that would be the most angry with Bezos shifting towards libertarian views.
?itok=zNSkzuLQ
?itok=5wvg7sQK
What happened last fall:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/wapo-bails-kamala-wont-make-presidential-endorsement
. . .
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 09:55
US Lawmakers Express Concern About China's 'Super-Embassy' In London
US Lawmakers Express Concern About China's 'Super-Embassy' In London
Two top House lawmakers expressed concerns about China’s plan to build a new large embassy in London, in a Feb. 26 letter to British Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson.
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Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), said that allowing China to build what they called a “super-embassy” on the site of the Royal Mint Court in London would be a “counterproductive and unearned reward.”
The two lawmakers wanted Mandelson to convey their concerns to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who met with President Donald Trump in Washington on Feb. 27.
The Chinese regime first announced plans for a nearly 700,000-square-foot embassy at the Royal Mint Court, a historic site near the Tower of London, in 2018. The plans received a boost in January after the British foreign and interior ministers indicated they would support the construction proposal.
If completed, the new Chinese Embassy https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/us-congressional-committee-warns-of-significant-security-risks-from-chinas-mega-embassy-in-london-5813266
be 10 times the size of China’s current embassy at London’s Portland Place and almost twice that of the Chinese Embassy in Washington. It would also be China’s biggest mission in Europe.
Beijing’s plans have also sparked some https://x.com/kevinhollinrake/status/1883458892715172099
in the British Parliament.
In a https://x.com/MPIainDS/status/1891502335735595048
on social media platform X on Feb. 17, Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith said it would be the “biggest act of ‘kowtowing’ in British history” and a “nightmare” if China were allowed to proceed with its plans.
Smith and Moolenaar wrote in their letter that allowing the Chinese regime “such a prominent diplomatic foothold in the UK will only embolden its efforts to intimidate and harass UK citizens and dissidents and experts across Europe who oppose or criticize its policies.”
“China’s transnational repression operations are well-documented in the UK and throughout Europe,” they wrote.
In October 2022, Bob Chan, a Hong Kong pro-democracy protester, was https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/uk-police-should-finish-manchester-chinese-consulate-assault-investigation-simon-cheng-5014650
he was indignant at Chinese diplomats’ behavior but felt “powerless to hold them to account.”
?itok=JZN-x0jw
The U.S. lawmakers also highlighted a case of the regime’s transnational repression in San Francisco in November 2023, when organizations connected to Chinese consulates helped mobilize individuals to harass peaceful pro-democracy protesters during CCP leader Xi Jinping’s visit for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
At that time, many of the pro-democracy protesters were https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/bipartisan-us-panel-demands-doj-investigate-ccps-role-in-brazen-apec-violence-5548518
to call on the Department of Justice to investigate the CCP’s united front groups in the United States. The “united front” is a multipronged strategy for pushing the regime’s agenda overseas.
The two lawmakers reminded Mandelson that the British government “is likely well aware of the Chinese Communist Party’s systematic effort to coopt social and business elites to advance its political and economic goals through malign influence operations.”
American and British authorities have also uncovered Chinese spy cases in recent years.
In September 2024, a former CIA officer was https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/former-cia-officer-who-spied-for-china-receives-10-year-prison-sentence-5722939
to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of providing classified U.S. national defense information to China.
In the UK, a parliamentary researcher and another man were https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/parliamentary-researcher-charged-with-spying-for-china-5634473
in April last year with spying for China.
The CCP’s record of human rights https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/replacing-god-the-ccps-century-long-war-against-faith-3883475
in China and Hong Kong is another reason that the British government should reconsider allowing China to build the giant embassy, Smith and Moolenaar said in their letter.
The lawmakers pointed to British citizen and former media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who has been https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/remember-jimmy-lai-5030987
in Hong Kong since December 2020.
“We know that Prime Minister Starmer has expressed concern about Jimmy Lai’s detention and promised to make his release a UK government ‘priority.’ We urge him to use his meeting with President Trump to coordinate efforts to gain Lai’s unconditional release,” the lawmakers wrote.
Smith and Moolenaar said they would be “happy to discuss” their concerns directly with Mandelson.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 08:10
One In Three Spaniards Say Their Area Suffers From Over-Tourism
One In Three Spaniards Say Their Area Suffers From Over-Tourism
A YouGov https://yougov.co.uk/travel/articles/50526-european-attitudes-to-overtourism
highlighted how the sting of over-tourism is being felt by as many as one in three people in Spain.
https://www.statista.com/chart/33947/local-area-receives-too-many-international-tourists/
this figure grows even higher when looking at certain regions, with 48 percent of respondents living in Catalonia saying that there are too many international tourists in the local area.
https://www.statista.com/chart/33947/local-area-receives-too-many-international-tourists/
You will find more infographics at https://www.statista.com/chartoftheday/
The polling company found that where 45 percent of respondents in Spain had an unfavorable view of the holiday rental properties industry, only 21 percent held the same view of the hotel industry.
Looking at Spain's neighbor, 18 percent of respondents in France said they thought there were too many international tourists there.
However, a higher share of French respondents said that there were about the right number of international tourists (44 percent) or even that there were not enough (24 percent).
In Britain, Denmark and Sweden, very few held the view that overtourism was a local issue.
As one response to the housing crisis in Spain, the government proposed last month a https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7enzjrymxo
on the value of properties bought by non-residents from outside of the EU, including the UK.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 07:35
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/one-three-spaniards-say-their-area-suffers-over-tourism
Coming Soon: The European Digital Identity Wallet
Coming Soon: The European Digital Identity Wallet
https://off-guardian.org/2025/02/26/coming-soon-the-european-digital-identity-wallet/
The elite are already running large-scale pilot schemes for the future they want and we don’t. They are not being subtle about this. They are not hiding it.
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The plan is a single government-issued app that holds your medical records, employment records, travel records, education records, vaccination records, tax records, financial records as well as (potentially) copies of your signature, fingerprints, facial scans, voice samples and DNA.
All stored handily on your phone…and shared with the governments of nineteen countries (plus Ukraine) and over 140 other public and private partners. Everyone from Deutsche Bank to the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Progress to Samsung Europe.
You will use this app to make payments, apply for loans, pay your taxes, pick up your prescriptions, cross international borders, start businesses, book doctor’s appointments, apply for jobs and even sign digital contracts online.
Businesses and government agencies would access this data from the back-end to conduct “automated background checks”.
The German Federation of Consumer Organizations (Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband, VZBZ) has raised concerns that such an app would https://www.biometricupdate.com/202502/eudi-wallet-sees-progress-but-also-criticism
to which the only response is “duh, that’s what it’s for!”.
None of this a hypothetical, by the way. It’s https://www.digital-identity-wallet.eu/about-us/140-public-and-private-partners/
.
Just one of the pilot schemes “building prototypes and testing use-cases” for the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, there arehttps://evrimagaci.org/tpg/eu-launches-largescale-digital-identity-wallet-pilots-174481
.
This is the latest development in a roll-out dating back to the birth of Covid and beyond, with the EUID wallet being touted since 2021.
It was freshly brought to my attention a couple of days ago, when I stumbled on this article – https://therecursive.com/what-is-eudi-wallet-european-digital-identity/
– by Anton Chashchin.
Chashchin is apparently chair of the fintech investment group N7, and his article is fairly good example of the kind of thing you can expect to see more widely in bigger mainstream outlets as we get closer to EUID’s full-scale implementation. It talks up the costs of fraud and how digital ID schemes will make everything so much safer and more efficient, but bemoans the “lack of harmonization” across borders and systems.
It’s standard stuff.
Interestingly, he also flags up that national-level digital ID schemes received a massive boost from the Covid “pandemic” [emphasis added]:
in Belgium, the rapid adoption of itsme, the online identification system in 2021–2022, was fueled by a government mandate requiring a COVID-19 pass for restaurant visits. Itsme’s digital identity offered the most convenient way for consumers to obtain the pass, doubling the user base from 3 million to 6 million within a year. This demonstrates that consumer adoption follows when a service is needed and backed by government trust.
He’s right. Covid started the digital ID/vaccine pass ball rolling, and it has lost momentum since then. So maybe what we really need to be on the lookout for is the next big “Reason”. A “catastrophic catalysing event”, to borrow a phrase.
What do you think they have planned to make people suddenly need a digital ID wallet?
I guess we’ll find out.
In other digital ID-related news, Jordan has announcedhttps://www.biometricupdate.com/202502/jordan-plans-digital-id-for-voter-verification-in-next-election
and required to vote in their next election.
Cameroon launched their new national ID system just https://www.wearetech.africa/en/fils-uk/news/tech/cameroon-new-national-id-paves-way-for-digital-identity-system
, which could potentially go fully digital in the near future.
And Tony Blair has been back on his favourite hobby horse, claiming British people will https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/tony-blair-id-cards/
.
It goes on and on and on.
I really hope no US readers are thinking Donald and Elon are going to spare you this mess. The Department of Government Efficiency is going to be all over digital identity.
After all, what could be more “efficient” than a single app used for everything? Hasn’t Elon already said he wants X to be the “everything app”?
The only difference is that the US version might be rather more private than public, but is there any real difference any more?
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Sat, 03/01/2025 - 07:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/coming-soon-european-digital-identity-wallet
Escobar: Baltic/Black Sea Power-Games & Red-Lines Intersect In A "Strange War"
Escobar: Baltic/Black Sea Power-Games & Red-Lines Intersect In A "Strange War"
Authored by Pepe Escobar,
No one ever lost money betting on the batshit crazy “policies” of the ferociously yapping Baltic chihuahuas. Their latest power play of sorts is a drive to turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.
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The notion that a bunch of Russophobic sub-entities have what it takes to expel the Russian superpower from the Baltic Sea and pose a threat to St. Petersburg does not even qualify as cartoonish. Yet that is indeed part and parcel of NATO’s re-configured obsessions, as their warmongering “vanguard” has been relocated to a London-Warsaw-Baltic chihuahuas-Ukraine axis.
What kind of black hole rump “Ukraine” will turn out to be after the end of the war – which may not even happen in 2025 – remains to be seen. What’s certain is that in the case of a Ukraine exit – whatever the modalities – enter Romania.
The whole electoral farce in Romania – complete with the demonization of election front-runner Calin Georgescu – revolves around the upgrading of the Mihail Kogalniceanu base, which will become the largest NATO military base in Europe.
So, once again, this is all about the Black Sea. NATO wreaking havoc in the Black Sea carries way more savory prospects than NATO via chihuahuas monopolizing the Baltic Sea.
Ilya Fabrichnikov, a member of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, has published a remarkable essay essentially focusing on the Black Sea (https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7516851
.
Fabrichnikov convincingly argues that from an European – UE/NATO – angle, what really mattered in Ukraine was “to move its borders, along with its military, political and economic infrastructure, close to Russia’s, to put under full control the strategic Black Sea trade corridor – which easily stretches further north along the Odessa-Gdansk route – in order to more conveniently and quickly explore the economic spaces of Asia and North Africa, and to begin dictating its terms to Russian supplies of oil, gas and other resources needed by the European economy.”
As this focused power play instrumentalizing Ukraine is unravelling in real time, a replacement is needed – even as warmongering Eurocrats keep peddling their Orwellian “peace is war” dementia non-stop, complete with a non-stop tsunami of sanctions and renewed promises of avalanches of weapons to Kiev.
This is a classic Brussels vassals affair – even as the toxic Medusa von der Lugen as head of the EC and Rutti-Frutti as the new head of NATO were essentially appointed by Washington and London. Collectively, Europe has pumped way more military-political funds into black hole Ukraine than the Americans.
The reason is simple. For Europe there’s no Plan B apart from that mirific “strategic defeat” of Russia.
The EU/NATO Black Sea power play would make it even more imperative for Russia to connect with Transnistria. The only one who can answer whether this is part of the current planning is of course President Putin.
Neo-nazis go pipeline bombing
Russian intel is very much aware that the Europeans have to some extent already carved up their own areas in Ukraine – from ports to mines. Not surprisingly the Brits, via MI6, are ahead of the “continentals”, mostly Germany.
All that intertwines with the extremely murky weapons-for-metals deal clinched by Trump 2.0 with the totally illegitimate sweatshirt actor-turned-gangster in Kiev. The only thing that matters for Trump is to get U.S. money back – whether the total bill is $500 billion or less (actually, much less).
Into this kabuki steps in the real power in Kiev after the proclamation of martial law: the National Defense and Security Council of Ukraine. The unelected, actually illegal actor is not taking any major decisions for some time now. These are issued by the former head of the foreign secret service, Oleksandr Lytvynenko.
It was the council that on February 17 ordered the bombing of the crucial pipeline owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) linking Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk, exporting loads of Kazakh and Russian oil.
Crucially, CPC shareholders included Italy’s ENI (2%); the Caspian Pipeline Co., which is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil (7.5%); and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium Co., a subsidiary of Chevron (15%).
Well, that’s not very bright; the “integral nationalists”, code for neo-nazis in Kiev decided to bomb a partially owned American asset. Not only there will be blowback by Trump 2.0; it is already on.
On the equally murky rare earths front, Putin’s recent interview to Channel One seems to have thrown everyone off balance. Russia, he said, has way more rare earths than Ukraine and is “ready to work with our foreign partners, including the U.S.” to develop these deposits. That’s classic Sun Tzu Putin: the Americans won’t have rare earths to exploit in the future rump Ukraine – because they don’t exist. But they can be partners with Russia in Novorossiya.
All of the above of course would presuppose a solid U.S.-Russia negotiation on Ukraine. And yet Team Trump 2.0 still does not seem to grasp the real Russian red lines:
1. No temporary ceasefire “along the front line”.
2. No trading of new territories acquired in the battlefield.
3. No NATO or European “peacekeepers” in the western borders of Russia.
Putin discombobulating Trump
As it stands, Washington and Moscow remain divided by an abyss.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20250128/pepe-escobar-dancing-to-trumps-disco-inferno-1121513139.html
simply cannot make serious concessions – or de facto recognize the strategic defeat of the Empire of Chaos. Because that would seal the Definitive End of Unilateral Hegemony.
Putin for his part simply will not give away the hard-won victories on the battlefield. Russian public opinion expects nothing less. After all Russia holds all the cards leading to a possible negotiation.
The EU/NATO will never admit their own, self-inflicted strategic defeat; hence those Baltic/Black Sea dreams, which carry the extra self-inflicted fantasy of disrupting China’s New Silk Roads as much as “isolating” Russia.
Putin is actually performing virtual somersaults to instill some common sense. In his https://sputnikglobe.com/20250128/pepe-escobar-dancing-to-trumps-disco-inferno-1121513139.html
he noted how, on U.S.-Russia relations, “this first step should focus on increasing the level of trust between the two countries. This is exactly what we have been doing in Riyadh, and this is what our next high-level contacts will be devoted to. Without this, it is impossible to solve any issue, including one as complex and acute as the Ukrainian crisis.”
Trust is far from being re-established, especially vis a vis a Lavrov-defined “non-agreement capable” Empire of Chaos with its global credibility in tatters. Add to it bombast after bombast manufactured to control the news cycle 24/7: the preferred Trump 2.0 modus operandi. None of it leads to that prime diplomatic mantra: “confidence building”.
And it will get even murkier – and way more dangerous – if Russian public opinion is confronted with the fact that after 11 years fighting a vicious proxy war with the Empire of Chaos, they may become partners in strategic industry sectors that Putin himself defined as essential to Russia’s national security.
Just like that. Or that may be just Putin discombobulating Trump with some unforeseen Sun Tzu gambit.
Earlier this week I had a fabulous off the record conversation with Sergey Glazyev, formerly with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and now leading the consolidation of the Union State (Russia-Belarus). It was up to Mr. Glazyev to come up with the definitive summary of everything unrolling before our eyes: “This is a very strange war”.
* * *
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 02/28/2025 - 23:25
These Are The World's Best-Selling Whiskies
These Are The World's Best-Selling Whiskies
When someone says the word whisky (or whiskey in the U.S. or Ireland), it conjures images of rolling Scottish highlands.
Or distilleries with traditions stretching back hundreds of years.
But today, the world’s best-selling whiskies come from an unlikely source: India.
For this graphic, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/dig01-best-selling-whiskies/
to explore recent whisky sales and determine what the most popular brand is today.
?itok=_k4Wmv4p
The Dominance of Indian Whisky
The global alcohol industry is valued at around $1.8 trillion and ishttps://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/alcoholic-drinks-market-report
to grow with a 9.7% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2025 and 2030.
The Indian and Chinese markets are largely responsible for this growth. These markets now have incredible demand for luxury and artisanal drinks. So it should be no surprise that eight of the 20 most popular whiskies globally are Indian.
Rank
Brand
Country
Sales (9 L cases, million)
1
McDowell's Whisky
🇮🇳 India
31.4
2
Royal Stag
🇮🇳 India
27.9
3
Officer's Choice
🇮🇳 India
23.4
4
Imperial Blue
🇮🇳 India
22.8
5
Johnnie Walker
🏴 Scotland
22.1
6
Jim Beam
🇺🇲 U.S.
17.0
7
Suntroy Kakubin
🇯🇵 Japan
15.8
8
Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey
🇺🇲 U.S.
14.3
9
8PM
🇮🇳 India
12.2
10
Jameson's
🇮🇪 Ireland
10.2
11
Blender Pride
🇮🇳 India
9.6
12
Royal Challenge
🇮🇳 India
8.6
13
Ballantine's
🏴 Scotland
8.2
14
Crown Royal
🇨🇦 Canada
7.7
15
Canadian Club
🇨🇦 Canada
6.0
16
Sterling Reserve Premium Whiskies
🇮🇳 India
5.1
17
Chivas Regal
🏴 Scotland
4.6
18
Grant's
🏴 Scotland
4.4
19
William Lawson's
🏴 Scotland
3.4
20
Dewar's
🏴 Scotland
3.3
India’s https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-alcohol-preferences-around-the-world/
estimates that in 2027, it will be seven times larger than in 2019.
What Sets the India’s Market Apart?
India’s alcohol market has grown due to its people’s deep passion for whisky. While the nation imports from many of the usual sources, such as Scotland, the U.S., and Japan. Its local whiskies are so popular that they dominate global sales.
The most popular Indian whisky, McDowells, is also the most popular globally. The brand sold 31.4 million cases in 2023 alone, growing 2.1% year-over-year, nearly double the sales of the most popular American whisky, Jim Beam.
A World of Whisky
Today, the global alcohol market is driven by the massive demand for luxury drinks like whisky in large markets such as India. This demand has led to India’s complete dominance of the global whisky scene, with sales far exceeding those of any other region.
Are you interested in learning more about the diverse world of whisky?
Rare Whisky 101 is one of the world’s most extensive whisky databases, covering everything from indexes comparing regional sales to valuations of the rarest bottles of Scotch.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 02/28/2025 - 23:00
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/these-are-worlds-best-selling-whiskies
Shut Up And Pay Me
Shut Up And Pay Me
https://www.piratewires.com/p/listen-up-bezos-shut-up-and-pay-me?f=home
,
Dad’s home.
Earlier this week, Amazon founder, part-time rocket man, and fellow billionaire media mogul Jeff Bezos announced The Washington Post’s opinion page was adopting a new philosophy.
?itok=DSQAxLX5
Henceforth, he published to X, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
From here, he provided quite a bit of context on his thinking:
?itok=3j_D3nQC
Predictably, reaction from even the center left was immediately hysterical. This was the end of democracy, we were told, and the rise of fascism. No, scratch that. This was https://x.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1894778433420382570
.
But his decision mostly just strikes me as inevitable, and not only because Bezos has previously signaled his displeasure with the overall communist barista disposition of his paper, a once-storied institution disgraced by several years of openly partisan propaganda (an evolution I’ve https://www.piratewires.com/p/what-the-hell-is-going-on-at-the
.
Over the weekend, MSNBC rocked the internet with its decision to shake-up prime-time programming, including the controversial move (according to Rachel Maddow only) to cut Joy Reid, the openly racist psych ward patient and self-proclaimed beneficiary of affirmative action who, more importantly, no longer had much of an audience. The Los Angeles Times began its pivot even before the last election, when it, https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/25/media/washington-post-wont-endorse-presidential-candidate/index.html
.
Still, in reaction to the Bezos op-ed blitzkrieg, media reaction was not only immense, but almost uniformly self-defensive. The lack of control over a billionaire’s op-ed page was, for some reason, too great a slight to bear. On the more good-natured end of the spectrum, writers tended to simply conflate the op-ed page with reporting, and incorrectly imply that Bezos would be shaping reported news coverage. Then, there were business questions. The New York Times Mike Isaac wondered https://x.com/MikeIsaac/status/1894762683582611794
the paper in the first place, which I guess is fair enough — though my sense is he probably did it more for the legacy of Watergate than the smooth boomer ramblings of Jennifer Rubin. But over on BlueSky? Our favorite mental patient was working through it.
“I told you all @jeffbezos was feral,” wrote Kara Swisher, who then went on to reference Orwell. “He’s now killed the Graham/Bradlee legacy of justice, the First Amendment and basic humanity in a vomitous spew of nonsense, testosterone fueled (and HGH) double talk that is more than a little pathetic and utterly shameless.” At the time of my writing, she’s posted and reposted 21 times on the subject.
From Unherd, the upstart media outlet “challenging the herd with new and bold thinking,” editor Sohrab Ahmari wrote, “There is a rich irony in an oligarch touting his commitment to freedom in a memo narrowly restricting the range of views available at his paper.”
Mostly, this is how detractors framed Bezos’ decision: an unthinkable, hypocritical violation of free speech from a crowd of businessmen who’ve spent years defending it from, well, the likes of Kara Swisher, who favor draconian political censorship because — and I’m trying to steelman this, I promise — they think it will stop fascism. Which I guess we now have? (It’s hard to keep up.)
There’s a lot we could unpack here, but probably nothing is more important than the outrageous entitlement on display. In the meandering thoughts of the average loser writer, which they for some reason continue to shamelessly post publicly on X and Bluesky, we often encounter the implicit, and sometimes stated belief that their work, composed of their personal opinions, is itself a kind of social good. These people are not just sharing their thoughts on why democracy is actually a coup, or calling out the inherent white supremacy of the latest Traitors episode. They are speaking truth to power in a manner the public should — indeed, must in the case of outlets like NPR — support.
It doesn’t matter that an anti-capitalist writer who thinks the assassin https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-killer-inside-you
“made some good points” works for an outlet owned by some other ostensibly free human being who is (I really must mention!) paying their salary. It doesn’t matter if, in the case of Joy Reid, the American public is totally disinterested in what they’re saying. These people are not only entitled to share their personal opinions from the largest and most influential media platforms in America, their act of sharing is itself an essential public service.
I can’t stress enough how important this is, because you will never understand the media until you comprehend this point: these people not only believe they are right, they believe you should be forced to listen to them speak because they are right. They are professional opinion havers. No mere human plebes, these are doctors for bad ideas (on occasion, they will even rattle off a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62hn2UczGqI
to prove it). Therefore, any act that inhibits their ability to speak, for whatever reason, is a moral ill, and they tend to assume it’s illegal. I am not being hyperbolic.
Earlier this week, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the Trump administration would be choosing which news outlets are joining the press pool moving forward. It was “a sharp break from a century of tradition,” https://apnews.com/article/trump-ap-news-outlets-ban-gulf-mexico-25c77f617418dd3ca2791af90b263a59
, over their first ouster from the briefing room, alleging a violation of their First Amendment rights.
The New York Times is not yet litigating (give them a minute), but the sentiment was echoed by Peter Baker, their White House correspondent:
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“A president doesn’t pick.” I find this all very confusing. If the president doesn’t pick which reporters are in the press pool — which, by the way, is in his actual house — who does? Who is this “independent group” determining which journalists are invited to the White House? Because I’m a journalist, and I still haven’t received my invitation. Surely, if all journalists enjoy some sort of First Amendment right to ask the president annoying questions in his living room (almost explicitly the AP’s claim), that right extends to your friendly neighborhood Pirate King. Right?
Who the hell makes this decision?
Well, I did a little digging, and as best I can tell both the Times and the AP are referring to the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), an organization of the very journalists who sit in the White House briefing room. Of course, this organization can’t issue badges, as it has no actual power. The Press Secretary has always issued the badges after rubber stamping the WHCA’s “requests” (implicit demands?). But how would you define a scheme like this? Because it’s certainly not democratic, or republican. If you just break it down, what it really looks like is a hereditary aristocracy, in which badges are kept in their respective sacred houses, and passed down from one anointed writer to another. Put a little more simply, the New York Times gets to decide who covers the president, and that group always includes the New York Times.
I guess there are probably decent arguments in favor of a scheme like this. It’s just hard to really identify its potential value following four years of our aristocrats playing block-and-tackle for a left-wing president with, I’m pretty sure, actual dementia. These are really our most deserving arbiters of truth? I mean, you can’t even say they’re popular. It’s the year of our lord 2025. Joe Rogan gets more traffic when he drops a pod about aliens than the Times gets on a typical news day. Which is maybe really why they’re mad. Without a lot of cheating the system, how else will these people find their audience?
I think what we’re looking at here is the end of patronage for the far left. The system was quiet, unofficial, and endlessly wrapped in moralizing bullshit. From Twitter before Musk to every mainstream press outlet in the country, billionaires artificially amplified the views of virulently left-wing writers who, separate from their opinions, also controlled culture. And I imagine for someone like Kara Swisher, who has only ever had her biases confirmed by this system, an absence of privilege is frightening. She must be especially anxious as center right upstarts gain momentum across alternative media platforms — organically. But the people freaking out over the Washington Post doing less antifa shit in their op-ed page are being shortsighted, as are the right wingers celebrating.
It’s obviously true that it’s much more difficult for reflexively left-wing writers to connect with their audience today than it was a decade ago. This is due both to political moderation from the major media companies, and to competition from the alternative press enabled by social media platforms and new tools like Substack. But the very platforms and technologies that grew our current new class of media outlet (yours truly included) are not partisan technologies. Look to the world of streaming, where terrorist-fetishizing Marxists like Hasan are dominant. The truth is, bootstrapping new media companies has never been easier, the left still maintains a near monopoly on writing talent, and the audience for crazy left-wing bullshit, while slightly diminished, is now larger than the ecosystem sustaining it. From where I’m standing, that looks like opportunity for crazy people.
A few years ago, media upstarts tended to code right because everything else was coded left, and the new companies we watched rise up were all servicing an audience ignored by the machine. But if the blue-haired “yay Hamas” girlies are the ones without a home today, might there be room for a communist Pirate Wires? I shudder to think it. But I do think it.
The fragmented media landscape of our future is here, and the next Gawker is coming. So fear not, L-taking MSNBC cat moms, the pendulum is swinging. Now, if you can find it in yourself to stop complaining for a second and start building, it won’t matter what Bezos is doing to the house that built Rubin. And, frankly, I’m looking forward to your (limited) success. The woke whack-a-mole influencers have grown tedious in their victory, and I’m feeling bored without the SSRI-rattled blue checks on X.
See you in the arena.
—SOLANA
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Fri, 02/28/2025 - 13:40
Goldman's Chat With Top Robotics Firm Reveals Skynet Humanoid Timeline
Goldman's Chat With Top Robotics Firm Reveals Skynet Humanoid Timeline
In recent weeks, Ant Group, the Alibaba-affiliated fintech giant, and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Platforms have both ventured into the humanoid robotics race, while Elon Musk's Tesla has been developing a bi-pedal, autonomous humanoid robot for the past several years.
Goldman's Jacqueline Du, Yuichiro Isayama, and others provided clients last Sunday with an https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/goldmans-investing-guide-skynet
—outlining the companies most exposed to the global humanoid robotics industry.
Goldman's Investing Guide To Skynet https://t.co/ZRKpiIUFok
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1893675971221336207?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
On Thursday, Jacqueline Du, Zhou Li, and other analysts at Goldman penned a new note about key takeaways from meetings with China humanoid robotics company Unitree. The title of their note is "China Humanoid Robots: Unitree (private) trip takeaways: Robust hardware performance albeit still not ready for useful tasks."
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Du outlined that Unitree's H1 humanoid robot "is still incapable of handling complex and delicate tasks," adding, "For commercialization progress, the company commented that humanoid robots can hardly achieve same-level efficiency as human workers in 2-3 years but meaningful application may arise over the horizon of 5-10 years."
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Here's more color from the analysts about their meeting with Unitree to gauge what's happening in the industry:
As part of our post-CNY pulse check field trip (Feb 24 - Feb 26, 2025), we visited Unitree (private) and watched its live demonstration of H1 humanoid robots and robot dogs.
Unitree showcased the capabilities of its H1 humanoid robot, which include walking and dancing, with robust hardware performance and strong autonomous self-balancing. This could be attributed to the company's substantial motion control experience from its robot dogs development. During our previous field trip in 2023 and booth visit at 2024 CIIF (China International Industrial Fair), we understand from Unitree's technical staffs that the underlying technology of motion control for humanoid robots and robot dogs is largely the same. However, H1 only have 19 DoFs (Degree of Freedom), and thus is still incapable of handling complex and delicate tasks. For commercialization progress, the company commented that humanoid robots can hardly achieve same-level efficiency as human workers in 2-3 years but meaningful application may arise over the horizon of 5-10 years. The company's current humanoid robot shipment is at a few hundred units, meeting demand from R&D in universities' labs and robot data collection & training.
The company also demonstrated its GO2 robot dog, showcasing its leading technology in robot dogs' gait control algorithms. Unitree delivers thousands of units of robot dogs (all models including GO2 and B2, etc.) annually, mainly applied to patrol & inspection and substitution of hazardous tasks (fire rescue, power substation/nuclear power plant inspection). Unitree has a 60-70% market share in the quadruped robot market globally with 50% overseas revenue contribution, per the company.
The company has successfully equipped its robot dogs with LLM API, enabling robot dogs with voice control capability. However, robot dogs with LLM is incompetent for fully autonomous operation. Unitree's humanoid robot only adopted rotary actuators (planetary reduction gear) in terms of hardware design, so further software and hardware iterations are required for large-scale applications. Per the company, its humanoid robot has experienced technology iteration with substantial improvement every year. As a reference, each generation of Unitree's robot dog can improve its athletic performance (speed, reactivity, step climbing and self-balance ability, etc.) by 2-3X.
All in, the takeaways from our Unitree visit are in line with our view that the technology inflection point for humanoid robots remains unclear due to insufficient capability handling multiple generalized tasks. We model 76k/502k units of global humanoid robot shipments by 2027E/2032E, which is at a slower pace than market expectations as we believe it will likely take longer for AI-empowered robots to be ready. We believe investment opportunity at this stage remains in supply chain component names as we see a comprehensive ecosystem taking shape. We prefer actuator assemblers and harmonic gear suppliers on higher product adoption certainty and stronger technology barriers - stay Buy on Sanhua, Neutral on Leaderdrive, Best Precision and Moons' Electric on valuation.
What's more realistic this decade is the proliferation of robotic dogs, which are already being deployed on https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/terminator-robot-dog-now-equipped-amphibious-capabilities
—much like Tesla has periodically done with Optimus.
This is coming...
. . .
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Fri, 02/28/2025 - 13:20
Even The NYT Is Saying, "Buy Gold"
Even The NYT Is Saying, "Buy Gold"
https://www.schiffgold.com/key-gold-news/even-the-nyt-is-saying-buy-gold
A recent piece in https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/business/gold-price-trump.html
, and presidential policies can add fuel to economic fires.
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But https://www.schiffgold.com/guest-commentaries/the-fed-can-no-longer-ignore-stubborn-inflation
no matter which political party is in power.
https://x.com/PeterSchiff/status/1892626877170258218
on X:
Trump has given the Fed a gift, as FOMC members will blame the coming surge in inflation on tariffs. But tariffs won't be the cause. Resurgent inflation will result from the Fed's monetary policy mistakes. They held interest rates too low for too long and printed too much money.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) https://twitter.com/PeterSchiff/status/1892626877170258218?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The Fed is permanent, and can’t be reformed.
No matter who joins the Board of Governors or who becomes Fed Chairman, https://www.schiffgold.com/commentaries/jerome-powell-has-a-dream-control-inflation
. Money printing and artificially-low interest rates are the only methods the Fed has in their effort to manage the economy.
https://x.com/PeterSchiff/status/1889390023515975824
. Prices go up as a result of inflation, not the other way around. But while the NYT piece attributes this 12% increase in 2025—following a 27% rise in 2024—to President Donald Trump’s second-term policies, such as tariffs and deportation plans, the fundamental driver is that central bank monetary policy has inflated the money supply and eroded confidence in fiat currency, propelling gold’s ascent.
Analysts like those quoted in the NYT article suggest that Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, could stoke inflation by raising import costs. Economists quoted in the piece note that such measures, combined with labor market pressures from deportation policies, are pushing investors toward gold. This makes sense on the surface — disruptions to trade and labor can indeed lift prices, andhttps://www.schiffgold.com/guest-commentaries/tariffs-wont-bring-back-american-prosperity
. But money supply growth is what inflation is; price increases are just one of its downstream effects. Gold’sgain suggests a deeper unease tied to the Federal Reserve’s actions rather than any single administration.
https://www.schiffgold.com/exploring-finance/money-supply-grew-by-4-in-2024
from $15.4 trillion in early 2020 to over $21 trillion today, according to Fed data. Meanwhile, interest rates remain below historical norms. Low rates discourage saving and devalue fiat currency, making gold—a finite asset immune to printing presses—an attractive hedge. The Times focuses on Trump’s tariff threats, but central banks set the stage long ago.
M2, 1981 to Present
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The World Gold Council reports that https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/2024-central-bank-gold-reserves-survey
, up 6% from 2023, signaling a shift away from dollar dominance. Physical demand is also straining markets, with the article noting New York futures traders awaiting bars from London vaults.
The Times mentions Trump’s quip about auditing Fort Knox “to make sure the gold is there,” a comment Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed. Official figures peg U.S. reserves at 8,133 metric tons, but the last https://www.schiffgold.com/key-gold-news/how-much-gold-is-in-fort-knox-we-may-find-out-soon
was in 1953. While the article treats this as a sidebar, it underscores a valid point: opaque, dictatorial monetary systems fuel skepticism. Central banks control the levers but, unlike politicians, their “errors” are academic and esoteric enough to evade mainstream scrutiny.
The Times captures a symptom—gold at $2,900—and correctly tells its readers to buy, wisely realizing that this bull run isn’t over. But it misses the root cause of https://www.schiffgold.com/friday-gold-wrap/inflation-spikes-gold-nears-3000-feb-14-2025
, and assumes that inflation and higher prices are the same thing. Central banks, with their printing presses and interest rate policies, are the architects of inflation. Lots of things can increase prices, and money supply inflation is one powerful force among many as it erodes the purchasing power of the dollar and continues sending gold to record highs.
https://cms.zerohedge.com/users/tyler-durden
Fri, 02/28/2025 - 07:20
https://www.zerohedge.com/precious-metals/even-nyt-saying-buy-gold