Clausewipf On War by Other Means: "Thou Shalt Not Kill: Blessed are the Peacemakers: I Have Hewed Them by the Prophets"

"War is politics by other means"--Clausewitz

--Every soldier is no more than a politician in uniform

--Every politician is no more than a soldier in civil dress

--The State is the sum total of the sword--no more, no less.  It is pure violence ("the things that are Caesar's") .  What ("the things that are God's") is not violence clings to it accidentally--that is, it would stand on its own without the State ("in the World, but not of it").

3-21--25

"Germany embedded itself after the war in the European Union for domestic prosperity and in NATO for security, and Germans developed almost a religious belief in the importance of an international community of shared values — and worked to strengthen it.

Confronting an American administration that says there is no international community but only nation states competing for prosperity and power “is an existential challenge for Germany,” Mr. Bagger said (NY Times).

Trump Voters Love Him More Than Before.

Imagine that:  "an international community of shared values."  In other words, a globalist village controlled by Thomas the Fraudman's "experts."  Meanwhile, Putin was building bombs.  Europe had put "the wars of religion" behind it.  So now it's back where they left off in 1945. 

So why are the Europeans shrieking at the top of their lungs?  Because EU made nation states as meaningless as borders.  Tech would create such a tight social web that that global man would stand cheek to jowl whether he wants to or not.  500 hundred of almost constant wars was the result of the nation states jostling for position.  EU bureaucracy would solve all the problems down to the smallest detail.  This is what is called statism, absolute control by regulation.  

But now that the nation state is back, what happens to the EU project designed to keep the bully of Europe in check?  

Putin attacked to to keep Pride flags out of Red Square.  Pride is the flagship of "EU values", and the global is throwing everything it has to save the EU Project, the blueprint of the End of History.  MAGA understands the math here perfectly:  defund the Left in the US, force the Left to turn from Welfare to Warfare in Europe.  Because, Europe cannot let of its Colonial conceits and create the United States of Europe, they are left to seek help where they find it.  In this case German militarism.  Their loathing of the Czar may resurrect the German Kaiser.  80 years down the drain.  And Europe is too old to start over again.  It will collapse, and than a strongman will make one out of all of them, as Alexander did of the Greek city states.  

3-18-25

ON THE ASHES OF GAZA:  HOW HAMAS RESURRECTED THE FOURTH REICH

Israel’s Deadly Strikes in Gaza Raise Prospect of Return to All-Out War

Hundreds are killed, Gazan officials say, shattering a period of relative calm.

The Third Reich created Israel, the Fourth Reich will destroy it.  Why?  Because without German war guilt to keep the old European anti-Semitism from colluding with rising Third World anti-Colonialism to target the last Colonial holdout (Israel), without Germany there to sacrifice itself on behalf of Israel, End-Time Evangelicals remain Israel's only remaining ally.  And their days are numbered.  It is only because Evangelicals still retain the global monopoly of violence that Jews are able to use the terror of the State to hound their enemies on US soil and on US Campuses.  But aside from destroying German war guilt by making Jews mass murderers in Gaza, Hamas needed to reenergize the Old Colonial Civil Rights guilt that so convulsed Western Capitals in the Sixties,  and ended with the Third World attack on 9/11, which forced the Left, which instigated the attack by stirring up global anti-American resentment, to go silent.  The horrors of Gaza will now bring them roaring back on US campuses,  and if Trump keeps listening to his Third Temple whisperers, the Jews will doom his Presidency.  No American politician has ever prevailed against Civil Rights: the crime of slavery.  

Germany is now free from the Jewish weight around its neck.  The global impact of  Hamas's attack on October 7 will make Putin's attack on the EU look like an obscure gloss on the page of history.  

Not only will the renewed mass-murder by the Jew destroy the Trump Presidency, but it will also drive the last nail into the coffin of its most rabid cheerleaders: Evangelicals.  For these wife-swapping murderers are egging the Jews on to embark on a Final Solution to the Jew's Palestinian problem.  Mein Kampf must be enjoying brisk sales in Jerusalem as the Netanazis probe the Nazi manuals for fresh ideas to the same problem.  Ironically, most modern Jews are Aryan, both in name and DNA, and bear little resemblance to their Palestinian neighbors, who are what Jesus looked like before European artists cast him as "the Blonde Beast" to upgrade their religion to suit the racial superiority of the times.  

Gaza has become the face of Evangelicalism, and because Evangelical MAGA churches are the face of Christianity,  they have become the greatest obstacle to the universal preaching of the Gospel.  Because Third Temple Jewolatry has become their fixation, and with it the enmity of the entire Third World, and the disgust of the pagan Left.  Evangelicalism will become another casualty of the Hamas attack.  

Watch what happens on US campuses and European streets now with the renewed Jewstruction.  The Left has yet to find a catalyst to mount a counter attack against the Trump purges, the spear of which will be the simmering guilt of slavery: Civil Rights, the last remaining repository of historic moral credit.  I talked with a Catholic not so long ago, and he couldn't make the connection between the rich Left and poor black people.  "The Left understands that black people have moral credit and by joining ranks  rich whites get to use it against their political opponents," I said.  His head went up sharply and after a while he said, "Black people do have moral credit."  The Jews had moral credit until they picked up in Gaza, where Hitler left off in Auschwitz.  For German guilt is now buried in Gaza.  The Palestinian Cause will become the face of a global Civil Rights against the Colonial Right.  Trump was helpless during George Floyd (see here).  He's waiting for him in Gaza.  

Now you would think that Evangelicals with their newfound power would lean on Trump, the Bible profiteer, to make the Mideast fertile ground for church planting.  The frauds!  The last thing they want in the Mideast is a Bible believing church  preaching the power of the Gospel: 1)  They don't want anymore non-white people showing up in Church America.  "America is full," the Rev Dobson cursed.  The do not sent missionaries down to the Wall because they know from history the power of the Gospel, and want none of it.  They are the Jonahs of their time; 2) A revival in Jerusalem would delay the End, because God needs Jews to be non-Christian when the Jewish Messiah comes, because no born again Christian would set foot in the Temple, and the Jewish Messiah will come to restore the Law of Moses, which is God's plan of salvation for the Jews.  You would think that Evangelicals would demand at least some presence in the birthplace of their religion.  But Evangelicals feel a greater kinship with the Sodomites in Tel Aviv than with born again Mexicans, and they envy the Sodomites because they are God's Chosen People.  But the Jews are anti-Christ, and would crucify the Son of God afresh if He appeared again "without form or comeliness."  Can you imagine the strife if "the Word of God prevailed" in Jerusalem.  "I come to bring a sword."  And since Hitler, Jews, Evangelicals conclude, have earned the right not to be preached to, because there is no greater "offense" for a Jew than to be told that Jesus is the Messiah..   Moreover, a saved Jew does not return to Jerusalem, unless to broadcast the message that salvation is through Christ alone. For there is no such a thing as a Christian Jew, any more than a Christian German.   Jerusalem would be in an uproar.  It is the most Gospel-free place on the face of the earth.  There are more Bible believing people in Saudi Arabia (immigrants), Tehran, and Egypt than in Israel.  For no other place has been marked off-limits by America, but Israel.  Because, 1) "God's chosen people" (blasphemy, because only Christians are God's Chosen people) don't need to be saved, because how could God condemn you when He has already chosen you?  Jews have their own way, as the Pope says; 2) A bible believing church in Jerusalem would spread the Gospel to other parts of the Mideast, a direct contradiction of Prophecy.  Revival in the Mideast would cause Evangelicals to lose  faith in the Bible.  The conclusion then is that all Mideastern non-Jews remain forever the enemies of God,  "vessels who the potter fitted for destruction."  A Final Solution for Palestinians is thus only a foretaste of things to come, when their "blood shall reach the bridle's mouth."  This accounts for the Evangelical  embrace of rabid Jewish Arab hatred.  Those Samaritan "fields were once white unto harvest."  But they only passed for white back then, in the absence of today's white Aryan Jews.  Today they would become an even greater scourge to the Jews as Christians than they are as Muslims.  And the notion of the Judeo-Christian Nation of Israel would be an abomination to Evangelicals who boast of America as such.  Because, the frauds say, the promises to Abraham were not given to Christ and his Church as Paul says, but to the  Chosen People.  And Jesus  shows Himself to be a fraud by not correcting the women when she claimed that "their father Jacob had given them the Well of Jacob" on the land he bought for 200 silvers.  Because there cannot be  two "Biblical Deeds" to the Holy Land.  And because Jews considered the Samaritans as pagans to be destroyed when the time comes,  their conversion would be of no use to them in the eyes of Third Temple MAGAS, because Prophecy sorts all Mideasterners as either Jews or enemies of the Jews (and hence enemies of God).  Evangelicals demand the Holy Land to be Palestinian Rein, whether Christian or Muslim.  And this is how MAGA is already sorting Church America, as either Jewish allies are enemies of God.  The preaching of the Cross has completely disappeared among these Judaizing heretics in their zeal to restore the Law of Moses, of which the Temple is the head of the corner.  This is what the world now hears from the Evangelical church.  They have made the Cross of none  effect:  "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor.1).  But Paul would say that, wouldn't he.  Like Jesus he found the strait and narrow of the Law of Moses hard, and invented a religion of the mind, faith, grace, the Holy Spirit, and preaching as a substitute for strict law keeping.  And then he turned around and claimed that only a  select few would see the wisdom of the new religion and not call it "foolish."  The favorite ploy of the snake oil salesman to account for his lack of followers.  And the majority of the Jews who discerned Jesus to be a fraud?  "All Israel," he claimed, "was never at anytime Israel." That is, not all Chosen People were the Chosen People, and only a handful of Jews through history entered the kingdom of God.  The rest perished.  

The Catholic Inquisition which burned Jacob Hutter at the stake and drowned Anabaptists in Switzerland was invented by Augustine to counter just this heresy.  When the Donatists sought to form born-again fellowships, Augustine told the Emperor to compel them to remain in the corrupt State church lest the Church split into a thousand cults.  Both Calvin and Luther knew that only by joing ranks with Ceasar could they avoid persecution.  But this mean making Caesar the head of the church and all his subjects were then Christians because they lived in a Christian nation.  Turgenev once called Dostoevsky “The most evil Christian I have ever met” thoughts?  All Russians are Christians.  Google the churches Putin has built.  And Orban is an Evangelical favorite because he promotes the Christian heritage.  

3-14-25

THE REICH IS BACK

“There will no longer be a lack of financial resources to defend freedom and peace on our continent,” Mr. Merz said, adding: “Germany is back. Germany is making a major contribution to defending freedom and peace in Europe” (NY Times)

German law now allows Germany to borrow unlimited amounts of money to rearm, a tall  order in a no-growth economy.  Borrowing rates will be high, and the bond sharks are waiting for them.  

Governments cannot just print money, so they lure investors to buy bonds which yield interest.  But will the money be there when investors redeem their bonds?  Well, bonds are not without risk, which is why governments have to offer higher yields as the risk increases.  But Germany is almost bulletproof.  They rose to the top wearing a three layered strait-jacket, and wasted away with never enough to do.  Now they've got a real task at hand.  

It wouldn't surprise me if Germany became a global powerhouse within 1o years.  They've been twiddling their thumbs for 80 years under a threefold straitjacket: NATO, the EU, and Israel. The debilitating "1000-year guilt", during which Germany was to be seen and not heard, has been cancelled by Israeli mass murder in Gaza, and Netanyahu was convicted as a war criminal by the same process that hanged Nazis.

Because Germany never really got into the Colonial game, the chickens didn't come home to roost when the Empires collapsed, as with Britain and France.  Germans and the Eastern Bloc are still fairly homogeneous, and not riddled with the resentment that seethes in Britain and France.  

But the question is why would Germany assume a mountain of debt to confront a fake problem?  Most Germans cannot wait to resume "Handel nach Wandel" with Russia, confident that they can co-opt Russia while enriching themselves in the process.  But "Germany is back" comes from the ranks of the Left, which is why the Right looks on through lidded eye.  Even a mountain of debt is worth the price of getting Germans from Sitzkrieg to Blitzkrieg.   A German worries about the price later.  "Erst wegen, den wagen" says the von Moltke coat of arms.  The Schlieffen Plan called for Germany to pass through Belgium enroute to Paris.  "We'll pay reparations later," the generals told the Kaiser.  Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.  But now it's all system go again for the Reich.  This was, after all,  Musk's provocative speech to the Right:  Forget the past and move on.  And the rest of Europe, seething with loathing for Trump, can't wait for the Reich to take charge.  At first they thought the Reagan/Bush cowboys would ride like before.  Instead, they were forced to submit to a crude dressing down by country bumpkins Vance/Musk/Hegseth.  Resurrecting the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe is their revenge.

For the Right, the problem was never one of money or ability.  They know what Germany is capable of.  Rather, they seek to overcome the historic hurdle of allowing Germans "to become Germans" again.  This was after all the purpose of NATO:  to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.  But now Europe is right back where it left off in 1945: the German Problem once again, too small for the world, to big for Europe.

The difference this time around is that Germany's old enemies have succumbed to the fate of outdated Empires.  Their societies are hopelessly riven and incapable of collective action:  France is no longer the land of the French, nor the UK the land of the British.  But Germany and the Eastern Bloc can still pull as one.  

And the AfD (the largest opposition party in Germany now) sees Russia not as an enemy, but as a rich market waiting for Germans to "fly upon the spoil."  Which  means that Germany has no credible enemies.  It's also too small to ever become a Superpower,  but rich enough to play  the Big Powers against each other.  Nuclear confrontation will occur only between the Big Powers, so why engage in a trillion dollar boondoggle to aquire nukes?  Because, a trillion dollar conventional army is worthless without a nuclear umbrella. Which is why British and French grandstanding about putting European peacekeepers in Ukraine is nothing but empty posturing.  Some of those troops will come back in body bags within weeks.  Then what?  Does Europe now attack Russia?  But Putin, from the beginning, threatened to attack Europe with nukes if they attack with conventional weapons.  

Nuclear powers do not go to war with conventional weapons.  And if a non-nuclear state  attacks a nuclear power the outcome is certain.  This is why the US has to stay out of Ukraine, to prevent WW3.

Germany missed the tech revolution entirely, because of the dispiriting fatigue of its straitjacket.  It'll take some time to get back up to speed.  If if they still have the initiative of their ancestors, Germany unleashed could wrest scientific and creative leadership back from the Chinese.  But the biggest upset in world affairs will be a Russian/Prussian alliance, with all between Berlin and St. Petersburg (the Teutonic fiefdoms) under their control.  "To keep Germany down" was as much the mantra of fellow Europeans as it was of the loathed American occupier.  With the Strongman now unbound, does anyone think he will put himself at the disposal of Sick Man Europe?  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US40m ago

“It is not going to be ideological. It’s going to be style.”

The Culture War is not about "style".  It's all about ideology.  Climate, Gender, non-borders, are not about style, and cannot be repackaged to get them to gain traction.  And they remain the main Democratic focus.  But none has grassroots appeal.  Which explains the attempt to grab market share by blitzkrieging toward the center (Newsom), and going wobbly on Democratic staples (again Newsom).  The Left suffered the fate of all empires:  they collapse before they reach Nirvana; that is, the perfectibility of the messianic State,  the dismantling of which is what's behind the ideological fervor of MAGA, and their "bonfires of vanities."

ReplyRecommend

3-13-25

Shoffmensch

(Brooks finally let this through.  It likely has been read by millions of readers--but note the one Reply.  The NY Times is trying to get more non-Left readers, which is why they let me Comment without paying.  Probably only 8 MAGAs read it).

Afdeestupple, US8h ago

80 years is a long time to be embedded in the body politick:  enough time to become hopelessly corrupt.  One is reminded of the "creative" steward in the Bible who, when stripped of his entitlements wailed, "I cannot dig, to beg I'm ashamed."  The Revolution is simply following a long historic precedent:  purging the titled non-workers who leeched the Treasury dry, and multiplied year by year like the flies on the head of Beelzebub.  Paper-shuffling pretend-work with 5 star perks has long been the Left's fiefdom to power.  Like the EU, which hasn't had to do Realpolitik for 80 years, much of the paper-shuffling Left have trouble tying their shoelaces--which is why you see EU leaders clinging to each other in summit hugfests.  The Left has no path of return because it still clings to the faux causes which turned them out: Climate, Gender, non-borderism.   These have been categorically "fired."  "Backlash" is a fit description.  The purges of the Savonarola/Cromwell are of short duration.  But there's no going back to End of History utopias.

Reply 8 Recommend1 Reply

J commented 15 minutes agoJ

J

Western Colorado15m ago

@Shoffmensch

I commend you on getting the fewest recommendations on your comments of anyone I’ve seen.

Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US8h ago

@Karel 

"why we should never have allowed a bunch of ingrates become a superpower"

The question is if Europe can cast off its NATO straitjacket, without ending up under the paw of the Bear.  Europe lacks the means and will to become a superpower, which leaves it shivering between Trump and Putin.  And to become s superpower will require either a Trump or a Putin at the helm.  Either way, Europe will be turned upside down.

Reply1 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US2m ago

Europe is broke, disorganized, and stuck in the past.  They missed the tech revolution entirely, destroyed their industry by switching off Putin gas, and cannot let go of their Colonial conceits:  who gets to wear the hat among the 32 Napoleons?  And the new (Right) politics sees nothing here but a contrived problem:  a mix of the globalist expansion of "EU values", and US "interests."  This nationalistic cohort has little appetite for an EU Superstate, and sees the Russian market as the means to replenish European coffers.  But the biggest hurdle is one of identity:  the EU is a peace instrument, and to become a "bristling steel porcupine" would destroy the Welfare state entirely.  The nuclear capacity to deter Russia would bankrupt Europe  many times over, needlessly, the Right says, because they don't believe Russia has designs on Berlin.  The reality is that Putin will settle for nothing less than Ukraine as a buffer zone, and Trump is in a hurry to move on.  And without US boots on the ground, General Time will keep advancing.  Again, Putin invaded on the back of his Nukes, and Trump, like Biden, is not about to start WW3 to save what's left of Ukraine.

Reply  2 RecommendShare

1 Reply

Steven commented 4 minutes ago

Steven

NYC4m ago

@Shoffmensch There's room for a robust defense and an affordable health care. The key is to control the costs which can only be a congress decision. Of course, it's better to scare people or call it socialism. 

As for Europe, the US nuclear deterrence is already gone. It's all about credibility, and Putin already knows Trump will not fight for Europe. The French, however, are in Europe, and might not have a choice, if attacked ,to defend it. And when we talk about this type of weapons, only a few is enough. Ask Japan.

ReplyRecommend

3-12-25

How the Jews Control America

Gabbard Drops Pick for Key Intelligence Post, a Critic of Israel on Gaza

At Columbia, Tension Over Gaza Protests Hits Breaking Point Under Trump

3-11-25

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US8h ago

Friedman continues to miss the forest for the trees.  At the end of the day, this is the Culture War, rooted in religion/ideology, the potion that drove the US out of Afghanistan.  The Taliban were willing to burn the house down over their own heads to win.  The destruction Friedman sees on every side doesn't raise a single MAGA eyebrow.  They have long felt that America has been hijacked by "the 80 year institutions" of which the EU is chief.  The Zelensky-baiting on the world stage was by design, to show their contempt of European leadership.  They see the EU as the architect of anti-American Cultural Marxism and are determined to destroy it.  The asymmetric which puzzles Statists is this:  Mutual Assured Destruction is never a factor in religion, because New Horizons are possible only through cataclysmic fire.  Note the obsession with End Time Prophecy:  Rubio/Hegseth/Huckabee are Third Temple fanatics.  The statecraft here is hardly ordinary.

107 Recommend

Shamblesheep

USPending Approval

Hamas attacked to bring the Palestinian Cause back on the global consciousness.  It exceeded beyond all expectations:

1)  It split the ranks of the Left by forcing Jews to side with Israel against social justice activists, while simultaneously driving the billionaires to support Trump.  

2)  Now Gaza stands to become the flashpoint in the Culture War, with MAGA weaponizing the conflict on US  campuses to further its agenda.      But Universities are the redoubts  of the Left.  There are no rightwing Universities, just as there are no Leftwing sovereign states.  MAGA is taking the wolf by the ears here.  It can tear down the Universities.  It has nothing to replace them with.  

3) Global resentment against MAGA heavy-handedness needs but a catalyst to mount a counter offensive.  Because of Gaza, MAGA will find itself isolated at the UN, the Hague (the flagship of the EU), and boiling US campuses.  All because of Hamas. 

3-9-25

CHURCH AMERICA'S LAST STAND: THE JEWS AS THE NEW FACE OF THE CULTURE WAR--WITHOUT VANCE/THIEL/MUSK

He took to Truth Social after that meeting, writing to Hamas: “This is your last warning!” “‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye - You can choose,” Trump wrote. “Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you.”

Another idle boast.  He's about to run headfirst in a religious Buzzaw that will make US campuses and European streets explode, and set the Mideast on fire.  Syria is getting worse by the day, and he can't afford any more Jewish dumpster fires.  

Hamas destroyed the Left by driving the Benjamin Protocols and Instituti0nal Marxists into the ranks of the Right.  Now Hamas is upping the ante again to create civil war between the White Nationalist (Vance/Thiel/Musk) and the Third Temple fanatics (Rubio/Hegseth/Hucksterbee) who see Prophecy at hand.  Musk is a White Nationalist, which is why he was forced to schwitz in Auschwitz after making intemperate remarks online.  But he is now goading the Prussians to cast off the Holocaust and become Weltmeister again.  The Right in Europe is utterly Pagan .  This is the old entrenched Medieval anti-Semitism that simmers in both the Right and Left.  "They turned, but not to the most Hight."  

Third Templism is now the most explosive item on Trump's agenda, with old line Evangelicals as his only ally.  If he restarts the carnage, his Presidency is over.  Evangelicals feel confident enough to bun their bridges and go all in.  It will be a long way down from the Mountaintop.  The Time of the End is the most closely guarded secret in the Universe and beyond.  Those who traffic in it always use it as license not to "hope" and, consequentially, "not to purify themselves."  Moreover, they have forsaken the Great Commission and alienated the greater part of mankind with their cursed Jewolatry, for the Jews have infected them with their rabid Arab hatred.   God burned Jerusalem to the ground before because of apostasy.  He will do so again to restore the preaching of the Gospel.  

3-8-25

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US8m ago

The Culture War is now Total War, and MAGA is simply dismantling the Left's redoubts from which it could mount a counter-attack.  Lawsuits are little more than refined violence in that they seek to harness the coercive violence of the state against opponents.  Good Will masks this reality.  Once it is gone, only violence remains.  The Culture War marks the depletion of Good Will, and French might wonder what destroyed it. In the end, all politics is Power Politics.  The Puritans exercised their newfound freedom by beheading their king.  The mask was off.  The great preacher John Owen preached the Execution Sermon.  His "reward of divinity" was the Presidency of Cambridge.  They soon found the cure (Cromwell) worse than the disease, and restored the monarchy.

45 Recommend

Shoffmensch

(Cohen must have sent this over to young Macron for approval, and let it through only after they shut down Comments so no one can respond)  

Afdeestupple, US2m ago

"Emotional" statecraft would have raised the eyebrows of the old Machiavellians who carved up the world in bygone days.  The daily spectacle of European leaders clinging to each other in hugfests belies the "steely resolves" of which there seems to be no end.  But the chaos is easily understood by this simple metric:  global MAGA sees "EU values" as liberty turned into subversive license regimented by the statist Left.  Moreover, the Left is completely alienated from the grassroots which sees Leftwing staples like Climate, Gender, and Sans-borderism as exotic trifles.   Enter the Culture War.  The West is divided.  For most of the population, the Putin-math doesn't add up.  The notion that a depopulated Russia seeks more Lebensraum is laughable.  The new politics sees the Putin problem as little more than another of the Left's superficial  faux crusades like Climate and Gender.  The proof is that Europe's able-boded cannon fodder are not rushing to the Front.  So why turn Europe upside down to solve a superficial problem?  Once the Right takes charge, the problem will vanish.

Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US18m ago

Germany's Merkel, switched from "plain speaking" to "ambiguity" not long into her term.  Ambiguity is the art of one-streaming both-sides-of-the-mouthism, or equivocation, the more sinister term for such political dark arts.  In a pluralistic society, all sides need to hear what they want to hear to keep the peace.  The successful Prince, Machiavelli said, has but one task, the wellbeing of his state.  Here all means are equal.  If a timely lie is but the lesser evil for the greater good,  is it not in the interests of the larger truth?  Only a fool looks for virtue in politics.

Reply2 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USPending Approval

"war criminals in the Kremlin"

Don't forget the "war criminal" in Jerusalem.  Or is that too much "both-siderism?"  Everybody walking on eggshells (to pun) these days.  But MAGA now has the monopoly of violence, with Musk as DOGE catcher.   What will undo his Presidency is what undid Biden:  "All-in" on Israel.  If the carnage returns on his watch  (as he threatens) , the collective wrath of an angry world will descend on him.  The global Left is paralyzed for lack of a mascot: Gaza 2 could provide it.  

3-7-25

Joint US-Israeli military action being considered against Hamas if hostages aren’t released

He's walking into a trap.  The Palestinian Cause has become the world's most potent moral crusade.   From here on all the carnage will be on his head.  Hamas attacked to put the Palestinians Cause back on the global table.  It succeeded beyond anything anyone could have imagined.  Now global anti-Americanism will come back with a vengeance.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US15m ago

Again?  What now, fertilizer to drive up food prices?  In other words, tighten your belts another notch.  

And yet Russia keeps advancing.  Why? Because Trump inherited Biden's fears:  a nuclear response to  American boots in Ukraine, barring which, Russia will keep advancing.  Bigly Bombast will not change the algorithm.  

The Deal in Riyadh not going as planned?   Or is this more of the "maximalist" rhetoric to cut to the chase.  And Trump even Tweeted a threat for Russia to come to the table, NOW!  Apparently , he really means it this time, BIGLY.  And he's threatening to join Israel in a campaign to re-pulverize the rubble that is Gaza.  But sooner or later he'll have to actually pull a rabbit out of a hat.  MAGA vapors only go so far.

Reply1 Recommend

AND I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME--BIGLY, THAT IS

"In a direct order to Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, he added: 'To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late. Thank you!!!."

"Gallio cared for none of these things."  

Is this for show--wink, wink to Putin--look I have so say something to keep the Left from rioting.  Putin is mopping up, knowing that Trump will not intervene.  And there are no more meaningful sanctions left, just as he was  running out of mountain tops in Afghanistan to blow the tops off.  Syria is flames once again with Assad's people  on the warpath.  His Deal with Putin shows some progress.  He's digging himself in deeper with the Third Temple Crusade.  Tariffs  have got Wall Street spooked.  He's got many things going.  Sooner of later something will have to bear fruit, or a backlash 

will become unavoidable.  The lack of progress will make him jumpy and erratic.  If the Left goes  into  action on campuses, he will lash out.  Universities are the churches of Babylon.  They're like Moscow.  They cannot be conquered.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US1m ago

"A European army" under 32 Commander-in-Chief's and 32 budgets.  Why?  Because the EU was created to disarm Germany, and they are not about to recreate the Wehrmacht:  Germany taking control of the army both by temperament and clout.  

But the real obstacle is the Culture War:  The German Left sees the war as a US problem, and the German Right as a sinister globalist one.  Change the politics, the thinking is, and the problem disappears.  Why turn society upside down to address a superficial problem?  

For the average European, the hysteria is contrived because the math doesn't add up.  Putin's Siberia is already in danger from China because of depopulation.  And he wants to spread himself even thinner by taking the wolf by the ears in Europe?  Germany, for instance, has no ambition to become one of the Inter Pares.  So why get involved in a Super Power shoving match.  The US will contain Russia with or without Germany, and will keep it out of Germany to retain its global footprint.  In fact, Germany could enrich itself by playing hard to get and playing the Powers against each other.  

Finally, the "steel bristling porcupine" strikes at the heart of EU identity as the End of History peace blueprint.  In short, ideological suicide.  The  remake is the opposite of "EU values",  the pretext for Putin's invasion.  Hence, the absence of the one collective will needed to wage war.  The West cannot overcome the civil war raging in its midst.

ReplyRecommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

@Bogwood 

That's the math that makes the average European scratching their head.  But instead of reducing Europe's population, change Russia by overwhelming it with Europeans to develop its vast stores,  This is the concept of Schroeder's Handel nach Wandel that provided Germany with free gas.  This is also where the new politics (Right/Left) is headed.

ReplyRecommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

@Barry 

Germany

But therein lies the problem.  For 80 years, Europe was not allowed to do serious statecraft while kept in perpetual adolescence by its mercenary paymaster.  Now that the children have become incapable of tying their own shoelaces, what does their nanny state (the US) do with them?  The danger is that they will end up on US AID, and Musk stands ready to send his DOGES on them.

ReplyRecommend

Vox Pop

Boston1h ago

@Shoffmensch 

Enough Europeans feel that "Ukraine is not their war" and not surprisingly more and more Americans feel the same way.  Although there are many theories of statecraft, there is no right answer.

So instead of becoming a "nanny state" we should simply let them figure it out for themselves and indicate that by 2049, on its hundredth anniversary, NATO will be sunset.

Reply2 Recommended

3-6-25  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US1m ago

Far too complicated and time consuming.  MAGA is in a hurry and has already decided Ukraine/Europe's fate in the larger scheme of things.  Plus the daily spectacle of 27 EU leaders hugging (clinging to) each other like frightened children confirms basket-case Europe stereotypes.  Vance/Thiel/Musk are in a hurry to create Fortress Global North to save Western Civilization from its worst enemy:  the statist EU.  They bear-baited Zelensky on the world stage to show their contempt and loathing for the EU status quo. Their doom is sealed.  This troika sees Third Rome Moscow as the eastern bookend of a Tolstoian imperium--embassy balls, big hats, Red Square parades--presided over by strutting oligarchs.   Ukraine/Europe is on the menu in Riyadh as a bartering chip to get Russia to play Minimus Inter Pares with the US against China.  Taiwan ceases to be of any "interest" whatsoever.  Trump is currently lying low to give Putin time to establish clean borders to simplify the Deal.  Moreover, he'll give Putin the breathing room he craves, by reducing US military assets in Europe.  Again, with Russia as an ally, who needs them?  Europe is slowly awakening to its nightmare.  They have yet to imagine the worst.

ReplyRecommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US23m ago

Brooks would do well to remember that voters repudiated Democrats for their lack of "classical virtues."  Trump is, after all, a product of the Culture War, which is all about virtues.  Putin wages war against the decadent EU on behalf of virtue. 

Voters chose a strongman to deliver them from the tyranny of the Left's multiplying exotics and subversions.  Hungary is not a bad place to live--if you're an Orbanite.  Rome flourished under the good Caesars.  Most people sense that the American Dream has passed, and that Trump/Orbanism may be the best that can now be hoped for.  At the end of the day, voters too are playing politics, and politics is pure, selfish "interests."  As in, "Politicians don't have morals, only interests."  Note Biden's MBS fist bump.  Machiavelli, wanted his magnanimous prince to embody all the virtues publicly,  while treacherously stabbing his opponents in the back privately.  Utterly Clausewitzian.  Only a fool looks for virtue in politics.

ReplyRecommend

Shoffmensch

(they probably blocked this for fear that MAGA will come howling)

Afdeestupple, USPending Approval

"Mr. Renn was married....his second wife."   

Until Luther/Calvin rewrote the Bible to suit the bedroom antics of their Christian princes (Luther told Hesse to commit polygamy if he could not refrain from adultery), there was no such a thing as "was" (you can find the unmodified version of marriage in the Vatican Catechism).  The Bible Belt continues to have the highest divorce rate (commensurate with gun ownership) in the nation.  Since Luther/Calvin seized the monopoly of violence, their followers could not be persecuted (they even beheaded their king), hence their fear of loosing it.  So which of the Ten Commandments would Renn post on classroom walls?  The varnished version of the 7th, the 6th?  If Renn was honest, he would admit that the 2nd Amendment is the only Commandment left him.  He's afraid, because he has destroyed the source of faith (the Bible) by his transgressions:  "For faith conmeth by hearing, and hearing by the world of God."

Third Temple Blustering:  The Beginning of the End of Trump's Presidency

"Trump Gives ‘Last Warning’ to Hamas: Release Hostages or Face Annihilation

In a blistering social media post, the president told Hamas that if it continued to hold hostages, “you are DEAD!”

He forgot that a ragged band of religious zealots drove him out of Afghanistan, and here, within the shade of the Third Mosque, he's dealing with the heart of the beast.  But he's not Dealing here, because he's not doing rational statecraft as with Ukraine.  He's in the grips of sinister religious forces which will abort his Presidency.  He's not even trying for two-state, which means that the Mossad is in control of the Oval.  But now he'll have to exterminate the Palestinians from the Holy Land, which will bring the collective wrath of the world down upon his head.  Hamas gave him the Presidency by driving the Benjamin Protocols from the ranks of the Left.  It will deprive him off it by causing him to overreact and inflame the Left.  The Left cannot be destroyed, because it is the "Babylonish garment" that hides the violence of Cain's invention: secular politics.  It lurks, it waits, and long after Abraham smote it to rescue Lot, it arrives in Jerusalem--to Hezekiah's delight.  Evangelical Speaker Johnson's chief of staff was arrested for DUI after the speech.  All of MAGA revels in the fleshpots of the Left when in Washington: "spiritual wickedness in high places."  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US2m ago

Too late:

1)  The EU WAS a Welfare/Peace instrument, a repudiation of Europe's non-stop wars since the Reformation.  The rush to return to the industrial scale killing of last century strikes at the heart of the EU charter.  It no longer knows what it is, and the Right is ready with Plan B.  The new crop of politicians is pro-Putin and anti-EU/NATO, more concerned with replenishing empty coffers, and restoring national values, than engaging in globalist messianics.

2)  Europe would have to declare a state of emergency and anoint a Commander-in-Chief to address the Putin crisis.  27 Capitals would be reduced to one, with the largest dominating.  The call for Germany to take up where is left off in 1945 and assume leadership is already ominous.  Ironically, this is precisely Musk's call to action to the German Right last month.  The EU has ceased to exist as a Warfare State. 

3)  Giving the funding, infrastructure, and political constraints, any plans made today will materialize only ten years down the road.  Putin will likely be gone by then.

4)  All current plans run up against the same roadblock:  Putin's nuclear threat if  NATO puts boots on the ground.  Only American boots on the ground could sway the outcome.  Europe could win the conventional war.  But Biden was convinced that Putin would go nuclear.  And there, they are right back where they started, trying to win a bloodless war with gadgets.  Besides, the first body bags arriving in Berlin would end the war.

Reply 8 RecommendShare

2 Replies

PDM commented 8 minutes agoP

PDM

MA.8m ago

@Shoffmensch

“Going Nuclear”, by any country with Nukes means the end of all human life.

The living will envy the dead.

I think Trump would push the button before Putin, England or France.

Reply 1 Recommend

Georg Witke

Orlando, FL18m ago

@Shoffmensch Do you know that England and France also have nuclear weapons?

Reply1 Recommend

3-4-25

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

"staffed with experts who would know what they were doing"

So if the right "experts" applied their wizardry in Iraq, it would have become a vibrant Democracy?  And if the right "experts" took the Palestinians in hand, they would vote Hama out?  And if the Democratic Party had listened to the right "experts", the Trump nightmare would only be the stuff of dreams?  Who has more paper-shuffling  "experts" than the EU, capable, as the young Macron tuts, of solving the problems of Planet A.  Their "experts" have been working on Plan B for weeks now, equally, judging from their increasing hysterics, without success.  More time, no doubt, more summits, more "steely resolves," more flattery--and as they keep reminding themselves, "Putin did not look well in his last appearance, perhaps..."  There too, the "experts" were wrong.  He's still there, and they're being voted out.

Reply1 RecommendShare

1 Reply

roger rabbit commented 8 minutes agor

roger rabbit

uk8m ago

@Shoffmensch   And so,  the anti-intellectualism that thrives in America reveals itself once again. Anti-intellectual societies fall prey to tribalism and simplistic explanations, are emotionally immature, and often seek violent solutions.  Sounds familiar?

Reply 3 Recommend

xgrunt

Minneapolis4m ago

@Shoffmensch

Had Rumsfeld's so-called "experts" listened to a few of my peers who were developing the Iraqi plans over a year before the 2003 invasion, the results might have been different. You see, my fellow Infantry officers recommended a force size 3x's more than Rumsfeld adopted. This is what happens when you listen to civilian consultants versus warriors like me and my brothers. Bush trusted Rumseld too much and it led to 100's, perhaps 1000's of unnecessary American ground force casualties. Read the book, Cobra II by Michael Gordon. It is a superb account of the politics of war and Rumsfeld's so-called expert advisors.

No Thanks

Again, No Thanks8h ago

@roger rabbit truly you have hit the nail on the head of the current and continual problem we find ourselves in here.

ReplyRecommend

BLITZKRIEG--AGAIN:  THE REICH IS BACK

How the return of the German army could help save Europe.  Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz announces an end to strict borrowing limits on defence spending

1)  Will be interesting to see how the Wehrmacht handles "the pronouns."  Pride was, after all, what caused Putin to invade Ukraine.  But now, we're back to Old Prussia.  

2)  The German Right sees this as a false alarm.  They're ready for Drang nach Ostern again, and Putin would welcome them.

3)  If the Right gets hold of the  rearmed Germany, it will either hi-jack the rest of the EU or align with Russia agains the US.

4)  The new spending will be funded by debt.  But selling bonds requires a strong economy to keep borrowing costs low.  If the economy sinks further, sharks will bet against the Euro, and borrowing costs will become ruinous.  

5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!NOTE THE SHIFT IN TONE.  The 1000 year guilt is cast aside, as Europe cries to Germany to assume leadership.  Here be monsters.  For 80 years, Germans were not allowed to have as much as an opinion.  They could be counted on to give unqualified support to Israel.  Gaza changed all that.  Another of the unintended consequences of Hamas.   

6) This marks the end of kingdom of god EU, which was to repudiate all that went before: wars and rumors of war.  Now they're picking up where their fathers left off in the kill-pits of WW2.  

7)  How does Russia play this?  It needs to find some way to keep China out of east Siberia.  And alignment with the US might work, temporarily.  On the other hand, Russia/Europe would be the largest economy in the world by far, and with Prussia at the helm....Overnight, Putin expanded his options a thousand fold.  And now who gets left behind?  France, Britain, Spain, Italy?  

8)  And of course, Taiwan's days are numbered.  If Trump doesn't scruple about carving up Europe, he wouldn't give it a second thought.  Musk Group is chattering about a Global North Fortress for the sons of Japheth.  The Asian Tigers might form another league to keep from falling to China.  

Jews in the US Treasury: How the Third Temple Protocols Will Bring Down the Trump Presidency

"The minister, Bezalel Smotrich, met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday, remarking in a statement about his embrace after years of being effectively shunned.

“After four years during which, under the Biden administration, there was no ministerial-level meeting between the U.S. Treasury Department and the Israeli government, ​​we are now entering the Treasury Department,” Mr. Smotrich said"  (NY Times).

It is here that the Left will galvanize to bring down the Trump Presidency.  In all else, he makes deals in ruthless fashion--coldblooded Realpolitik.  Not here.  Here three forces will conspire with a fourth to make the US wager all on behalf of religion.

1)  The Wall Street Protocols.  You cannot do policy with the Jewish Lobby against you.  This force is now squarely behing Trump.

2) Third Temple Jewolatry.  Rubio/ Hegseth/Rev Hucksterbee see End Time Israel as the last chapter of American Manifest Destiny.  America will not sink like previous empires because God created it to midwife the Coming (not Return) of the Jewish Messiah.  They worship the same God as the Jews, they say.  No Jew ever said that.  There is no Anti-Christ in Jewish lore, only the Real Messiah, of which Jesus was a fake, in his grave to this day.  That figure, Paul says,  will be the  Anti-Christ.

3) Family bonds.  The Kushite and Trump's grandchildren are Orthodox Jews, for whom One Israel is the center of their religion.  Two-State strikes at the heart of Trump's family religion.  His grandchildren are the Chosen People.  To become a born again believer like the Apostate Nicodemus would be a step down.  Scofield and Ryrie held that Nicodemus could have been saved in his own religion while rejecting the false Messiah, because God has two redemptive programs running side by side  throughout History, one for Jews (through observing the Law), another for the Gentiles (by faith).  

4)  These three forces will now conspire to lay  an irresistible bait before Trump:  the lure of Mammon.  That's the straw that will break the camel's back.

As of now, he's still under the delusion that everything has a material price, and that he can offer Arabs enough to sell out their Palestinian co-religionist for a mess of commercial pottage:  trade, protection, more US aid, political legitimacy, etc.  He will run into a religious Buzzsaw.  A dead end.

Now what does he?  Israel is going nowhere with their enemies living in their midst.  Palestinian will either have to be killed or driven out.  Trump will give the go-ahead to do what's necessary for a Final Solution.  This will not only set the Mideast on fire, but bring the collective wrath of an already resentful world down on his head.  Europe's streets and US campuses will explode,  and the European elite will go into overdrive exacting revenge at the UN, with China fanning the flames from the side.  ISIS will resurface with Syria as its base to rescue the Third Mosque.  From then on, Egypt, Jordan, and Arab's days are numbered as the Caliphate gains momentum.   The Left is looking for a catalyst:  if Israel restarts mass murder, the Palestinian Cause will become a global rallying cry against Trump.  DEI, BLM, anti-Colonialism will come  roaring back with a vengeance.   

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

The terms of "the Deal" have already been decided and all Ukraine can do now is sign on the dotted line--without reading the details.  Putin gets his buffer zone and a free hand in Europe  in exchange for becoming Minimus Inter Pares with the US against China.  Europe will be left to muddle along for decades to come, half War/Welfare state, with few prospects to reverse its economic decline.  Trump is starving Ukraine into submitting to a fate beyond its control, and both it and Europe are of "interest" only as bait to lure Putin away from China. "The Deal" is larger than Biden's moral fistbump to MBS, but of the same vintage.  Paris is always worth a Mass, and if "the Deal" forestalls WW3 against China, MAGA reasons, carving up old Colonial Europe is a small price to pay.   Besides, they did that to the Ottoman  Empire.

Reply 2 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

Earth to Friedman:

1) MAGA sees the Left (of which the EU is the architect) as a greater threat to "freedom" than Putin, in that, in its subversions of traditional and cultural  values, it regiments license, rather than promote freedom.  They want the EU destroyed and replaced--with Orban/Putinism if need be.  

2) In Trump's evolving macro-Deal, if Russia can be cajoled  to take its place as Minimus Inter Pares as the US High Sheriff on the eastern end of Trump's Global North,  it eliminates Biden/Friedman's China hysteria with a stroke.  In this scheme, Ukraine/Europe is of little consequence, except in a post-Colonial role to "fetch and carry," as they used to say.  

3)  The war has become a desperate bid to save what's left of the Old Traveler Left--the Nordic Social Welfare model proffered as a globalist template.  The End of History did not come, and Trump is merely shutting off the Biden oxygen which kept it wheezing along.  

4)  "Negotiations", for  27 post-Colonial wannabees, means endless years of toothless "steely resolve" posturing.  Too many "broke"  Chiefs here.  "Steely resolve" means little more than inventing new terms of flattery to appease their mercenary paymaster.  

5)  Trumpism reverts back to the old statecraft where there are no "partners,"  only coldblooded "interests."  Europe has nothing to put on the table, in Trump's view, and thus finds itself under the bus and on the menu.

Reply 3 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US11m ago

@Keith 

Hiding"?

What invokes terror is that he's not hiding anything:  

1) He needs Putin to round out his scheme of a Global North axis against China. 

2)  To lure Putin from China, Trump has put Ukraine/Europe on the menu.  Consequently,

3) Team Trump has declared war on Ukraine/Europe to make them fit for purpose.  

4) He blames Ukraine for his political troubles, which accounts for the Zelensky cat-n-mouse baiting.  

5)  Ukraine/Europe's fate has already been decided:  Proof?  When he doesn't insult them, he simply ignores them.

5 Recommend

3-3-25

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

"betrayal'?

If Ukraine is a Protectorate of the US, then why didn't Biden defend it by engaging Russia directly?  Was failure to do so a "betrayal?"  Or is the sleight of hand here the conceit that the EU and its messianics are "family," with the understanding that families and their petty squabbles don't need treaties.  "Nations,"  Kissinger said, "don't have friends, only interests."  And they have morals only until "interests" beckon (Biden's MBS fist bump).  Trump sees China as America's greatest threat, and will barter Europe to get Russia to align with the "interests" of the Global North.  Europe will be under the bus for lack of "interests."  We're talking Nuclear jostling here, which is why Trump has time for neither Zelensky nor the EU with all their squabbles.  Europe has zero options, and nothing to put on the table.  Which is why they find themselves under the bus and on the menu.

Reply  5  Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

The problem?  Trump has larger fish to fry, and neither Ukraine nor Europe have anything, in his view, to put on the table, and can thus be safely ignored.  For a consummate Machiavellian, if you don't want to be  on the menu, you need to put something on the table.  Trump wants to solve Biden's China hysterics by recruiting Russia as High Sheriff  on the eastern end of the Global North.  In this scheme, whatever happens to Europe is of no consequence, in that they will continue to have lost their freedom of action.  It's an old trick:  "Paris is worth a Mass."  Consequently, Zelensky could offer Trump the whole of Ukraine and still walk away with nothing.  Trump is playing with Zelensky to weaken him in order to make him more pliable, and buy more  time for Russia to establish clean-cut borders to simplify "the Deal."  In Kissingerspeak:  "Nations don't have morals, only interests."

Reply 14 Recommend Share

Flag

1 Reply

Fetchcat commented 1 hour agoF

Fetchcat

Catskills1h ago

@Shoffmensch  I think you are attributing a high level of statecraft to a man who can barely get out two coherent sentences and who calls "rare earth minerals" "raw earth."

Reply1 Recommend

Shoffmensch

(Afdeestupple, USJust now

The article dodges the elephant in the room:  Mercenary Paymaster Trump tolerates zero interference in his scheme to simplify the world into three Great Powers, with Russia forced to cling to the US against China. Without NATO, Europe is at the mercy of Putin, and Trump holds all the cards on NATO.  Moreover,  Russia would retaliate by seizing European assets on the  high seas and  elsewhere, knowing that Trump will not intervene.  Robbing the deposits of its customers is always the last sign of an institution on the rocks:  killing the  goose that lays the golden eggs.  Finally, Germany will never sign on, for fear of escalating the hot war, and bringing the war to Europe with Trump standing by.

ReplyRecommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

"offering reassurances"  

I tried that at the bank and ran into Realpolitik.  Young Macron needs to turn from Planet A and find a Plan B for Europe, because Trump has already lumped Europe with Ukraine.  Like Obama, he doesn't think the whole lot amount to one honest nation.  Trump, in Kissingerspeak, doesn't have "partners,"  only "interests,"  and he's swinging for the bleachers, simplifying the world into Three Great Powers, with the US Primus Inter Pares, with Russia at his side.

ReplyRecommend

3-2-25

With the ceasefire in peril, Arab leaders rush a plan for Gaza’s future.  Arab states are working on a plan for Gaza’s reconstruction, an alternative to Trump’s proposal to take over the territory and displace its residents.

Blitzkrieg.  And they're not asking for "negotiations."  Like Europe, they've been sitting on their lees for 80 years.  Except the Europeans wail that they need more time, now that they finally realize that Trump is serious.  Galileo cared for none of these things.  They're (Arabs) even afraid to complain.  In Gaza, they're afraid Trump will move in.  In Europe, that he'll move out, because he's but a hair away from pulling the plug, and giving Europe to Putin as a reward for making trouble for China.  The scheme is to simplify the world by creating Three Powers, China/US/Russia, with Russia forced to cling to the US.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US4h ago

Trump will not allow seizure of Russia's frozen assets, and a mineral deal was always a red herring.  The fact remains that Europe, like Ukraine, has zero options.  They lack the will to turn from Welfare to Warfare state.  They're broke, and most tellingly, lack a Commander in Chief.  Their only hope lies in their conceit that Trump can be flattered to come to Europe's rescue.  Trump can simply keep his distance to keep from owning the war and let Realpolitik run its course, with the understanding that Putin will do what it takes to make Brand Trump look good.  They should have listened to Kissinger:  "Nations don't have friends, only interests."

Reply4 RecommendShare

Flag

1 Reply

Gray Goods commented 40 minutes agoG

Gray Goods

Germany40m ago

@Shoffmensch: Nobody should have listened to Kissinger, that disastrously misguided advicer of Tricky Dick Nixon during the failed Vietnam war. It's not only that he lost in that conflict, but that he learned nothing from that!

Reply1 Recommend

3-1-25

How the Jews and Third Temple Fanatics Hi-Jacked the Trump Presidency, and Destroyed the First Amendment

Rubio Bypasses Congress to Send Israel $4 Billion in Arms

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s emergency declaration calls for sending 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons to Israel.

Gannett Fires an Editor After He Runs a Cartoon About the Gaza War

Tony Doris, the editorial page editor at The Palm Beach Post, was fired after he selected a cartoon that drew criticism from a nearby Jewish organization

The Mossad is running its Final Solution from the Oval Office.  They have direct access to both the US Treasury and America's arsenal.  They don't even bother with Congress.  JD Vance needs to look closer to home next time he lectures Europeans on censorship.  But he too, is in the grips of the Protocols.  

You would think that Evangelicals would use their unlimited power to promote evangelism in the Middle East, the last unevangelized region in the world.  But Third Temple fanatics (Rubio, Rev A Hucksterbee, Hegseth) see Jews as having their own scheme of redemption throughout history, because, as God's Chosen People, they do not need to be saved.  And with the  Third Temple now within reach, a Gospel preaching church in Jerusalem would be an abomination, because it would contradict Prophecy, which requires that Jews remain obstinate anti-christs until they "look upon whom they have pierced."  These frauds fall all over themselves groveling before these anti-Christs, because they see Jews as more "saved" (even the Sodomites in Tel Aviv) than Bible-believing Christians.  Jews do not need to be saved, and Palestinians, unlike the Jews who pass for white because most are Arian, are as welcome among Evangelicals as the Mexicans here at home.  What do you do with saved Arabs in Jerusalem, because Jews for Jesus see themselves as a Super category because of their Chosenness.   They hate Palestinians as much as other Jews.  

But look at their End Time Charts.  The Temple must be rebuilt because Anti-Christ will make it his seat of power.  But there is no Anti-Christ (Anti-Messiah) in Jewish lore, only the true Jewish Messiah, of which Jesus was a fake.  Jews will install their true Messiah in the Temple as the long awaited Messiah.  Paul calls this figure the Anti-Christ.  "Another," Jesus says, "will come in his name whom you will receive."  Which means that Evangelical Third Temple fanaticism is Satanic.  For  their charts show the coming of the Jewish Messiah only after the reign of  the Anti--Messiah.  Evangelicals have contributed billions of dollars to the Third Temple effort, so bidding Anti-Christ "God speed", "for he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil  deeds" (2 Jn. 11)

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US2m ago

The fact that Americans knew this was coming shows they think that Climate is just another of the Left's exotics and faux Causes.  Harris's  silence during the campaign speaks volumes.  Then there is the Realpolitik angle.  China and Putin see Net Zero hamstringing by the West as the equivalent of their nuclear arsenals.  Look at the UK, which ran its industries into the ground with Net Zero madness.  The wars of the future will be economic, and China will burn the world down to accumulate market share.  China/Putin treat Net Zero like disarmament--a delusion in a sea of distrust.  The UK, which accounts for 1% of carbon, tried to lead by example by gutting its industry.  China, looking on, built more coal plants to supply the UK's hardware needs--assuming they can afford it.  At which point, they'll deforest Britain to stay warm, while Putin creates Eastern Block oligarchies with free gas.  Germany will find cheap gas irresistible.

ReplyRecommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US1h ago

Support for what?  Prolonging the war to the last Ukrainian?  "As long as it takes" to accomplish what exactly?  Take back all of Putin's gains, including Crimea?  Europe is broke, and it cannot raid the social net without creating massive social unrest.  It cannot put European troops in Ukraine without exposing itself to nuclear attack.  Meanwhile, Putin is gaining ground, and Ukraine's options become more limited by the day.   Again, European leaders are not urging their able-bodied young men to become mercenaries in defense of European freedom.   "More of the same" is not a plan, unless you're talking about Climate, because as the young Macron tuts, "there is no Planed B."  How many of these "cheerleading" summits can Ukraine take?

Reply2 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US6m ago

The US Left and its Mothership (the EU) want to go back to their exotics, Climate, Gender, globalists utopias--all repudiated at the ballot box.  French sees "Citizen America" as humbly submitting itself (and its Treasury) at the Common Table, not even as Primus Inter Pares, but "to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability."   Ironic, that Team Trump and the European Right should look to the land of Marx to save the traditions and culture of Europe in their war against the subversions of Leftwing ideology.

2 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US2m ago

"Cease-Fire Plan to Present to U.S"

So the US is at war with Ukraine?  Why don't these pretenders present a peace plan to Putin?  It shows their utter impotence, statecraft reduced to cheerleading.  The young Macron needs to come up with a "Plan B"--if they would take time out from their "Planet A" solutions.  A Napoleonic hat as a gift might do the trick.

Reply 5 Recommend

(I posted my response to Blue100 minutes after his-1059 Recommended his and 15 mine, yet mine is the first and only response.  They likely all Flag mine as "unsafe") 

Blue100

Atlanta, GA40m ago

This is the beginning of the world order adjusting away from the US. Our power projection around the world with alliances and bases is subject to change. The US dollar as reserve currency of the world is subject to change. US diplomacy on the world stage is already over.

The US will be poorer for it.

Reply1059  RecommendShare

Flag

1 Reply

Shoffmensch commented 15 minutes ago

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US15m ago

@Blue100 

"away?"

These pretenders are so impotent they need the US to float their "peace plans".  Trump is merely trying to make an honest State out of all of them--27 would-be Napoleons.  Obama wanted to lump them all together and serve them up under one ambassador.

        Reply  15 Recommend 

Traisea

Sebastian20m ago

@Shoffmensch brilliant of Obama to save tax dollars.  Nothing at all to do with the current situation.   Trump lies and Putin lies.  And half of Americans, and the rest of the world know this.

Reply1 Recommend

Dave D.

New England5m ago

@Shoffmensch Well, it's difficult to understand this extraordinary point of view. The USA is being dismantled bit by bit every day by apex predators and the power in the world has clearly shifted. Empires cannot rest on their laurels for long before a change takes place.

Britta

Amsterdam, Europe5m ago

@Edit  @Shoffmensch

Please, educate yourself, the European Union and Russia have significant differences in their economic power and structure. The EU, with a combined GDP of approximately $17.18 trillion, far outstrips Russia's GDP of $1.78 trillion. 

On military spending the EU also surpasses Russia. In fact, EU states collectively maintain a substantial military budget of approximately $186 billion, which significantly exceeds Russia’s $65.1 billion. Active military personnel within the EU number around 1.5 million, compared to Russia’s 1 million.

The list goes on: the EU has 447 million inhabitants – far ahead of Russia’s 143 million. And indeed, the average life expectancy for Russian men is just 65.5 years; for men in the EU, it is 78.5 years. This difference exposes the underlying health and societal problems that have long plagued Russia.

ReplyRecommend

Reply 3  Recommend

Marc

Paris, France17m ago

@Shoffmensch

in France and even in Europe, we know how to build nuclear aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, missiles (with nuclear warheads), fighter planes and even artillery.

And all this ITAR free.

We just need to accelerate the pace and especially the political will.

We certainly lack equipment but we have the know-how and the brainpower so we can most certainly develop it.

Of course, and I think it is a very majority idea, we preferred to move forward with our American friends in a spirit of democratic values ​​but…

Cheers from Paris

Reply1 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US2m ago

The war was never more than a reckless Biden/Blinken gambit based on two delusions:  1) that the Putin regime would collapse under the weight of sanctions and casualties, and 2) that the US would be forced to intervene on moral grounds to save Democracy.  But Putin checkmated Biden with the threat of nuclear escalation,  and Europe dared not send troops without the US "backstop."  Which means that the war was lost from the beginning, and without US protection, Europe is now in the same boat as Ukraine:  at the mercy of Putin.  Europe is too broke to make much of a difference, and is not about to commit suicide by attacking a nuclear power with conventional weapons now that it knows that whatever happens in Ukraine is not covered under Article 5.  Trump is merely cutting his losses.  He sees nothing in Europe of interest to the US, and if he can make an ally against China out of Putin by carving up Europe. he kills many birds with one stone.  It's the latest front of the Culture War:  dismantling the European Deep State which MAGA sees as the architect of anti-American Cultural Marxism at home.

Reply  3 Recommend

1 Reply

Claus commented 1 hour agoC

Claus

Munich1h ago

@Shoffmensch This is a paranoid fantasy dressed up as analysis. The war in Ukraine wasn’t some “Biden gambit”—it was a full-scale Russian invasion, launched by Putin, with the explicit goal of erasing Ukraine as a sovereign state. The idea that the U.S. expected Russia to collapse overnight is a straw man argument; the actual goal was to weaken Russia’s ability to wage war, which has largely succeeded.

As for Europe being “at the mercy of Putin,” that’s nonsense. NATO still exists, and Russia has proven itself incapable of even subjugating Ukraine, let alone taking on the full force of the alliance. The claim that Trump wants to “carve up Europe” to make Putin an ally against China is pure speculation, but if true, it would be nothing short of treasonous.

This isn’t about some imaginary “European Deep State” or “Cultural Marxism”—it’s about whether the West allows dictators to redraw borders by force. And if MAGA wants to align itself with Putin, it should stop pretending to stand for American strength or democracy.

Reply2 Recommend

Shoffmensch

(this--my response to @mathiasb from France-- caused so much hysteria, they had to remove it after 6 hours)

Afdeestupple, US45m ago

@mathiasb 

"your Left" is little more than a million points of identity politics.  Here, unlike in France, voters still get to decide elections, which is why Trump is in the Oval.  Trump/Vance made an example of Zelensky  to show their contempt for Deep State Europe, which is now begging Trump to ride to the rescue to (wait for it) save the EU Deep State.

Reply 30 Recommend

Martin

CA32m ago

@Shoffmensch

Here in America voters no longer have the power and voice we once had. The money that the ultra rich throw at elections by buying media coverage is totally skewing the opinion of many Americans.  The same goes for our justices, they are bought too.  

You are, for example, likely a product of these corrupt practices. At least your post is a good indicator that you are.  You have no idea, but America is far less free than most Western European Nations. You have far less power and influence over your government than the people’s of most Western European Nations. 

American exceptionalism is a lie, always has been. America is one one the best nations in the world but we have many flaws and are certainly not the best at everything, especially not at FREEDOM and Self Determination.

Reply 24 Recommend

Brandon

Oregon54m ago

@Shoffmensch This is probably the worst political analysis I've ever seen. Words mean things. There is a state, not a deep state, and France is more democratic than the USA where it is basically a diarchy of 2 parties. Trump and Vance seek freedom for money and the liberty to do whatever they want with it. Yeesh. This is what is wrong with the USA. Analysis like this.

1 Recommend

Elliott

New Jersey2h ago

@Shoffmensch Literally nobody is begging Trump for anything and it's extraordinarily weird that anyone would choose to lie about that.

2 Recommend

Claire Leavey

UK2h ago

@Shoffmensch Absolutely no-one over here is begging the US for anything other than a little self-respect at this juncture. We would maybe also quite like the US to shut up for a minute while we take care of business. Watching that pair lure a global hero into their lair so he could be submitted to a high school pile-on has left us all in no doubt about what we need to do, and it's clear that what we do probably won't involve the US at all. Not for the next three years and eleven months, anyway. And we've already done three years so it's eminently achievable.

4 Recommend

Pat

Kansas City2h ago

@Shoffmensch Only a Russian plant would suggest that France or any Western European nation doesn't vote for their leaders.

5 Recommend

Anu

Paris1h ago

@Shoffmensch

You’re disillusioned if you believe the US is democratic - with all the gerrymandering going on - it is no longer 1 vote per person. And now with the voter restrictions that the GOP put in place - give me a break! Your president is a corrupt and in bed with Putin - history will show the truth in the end. Id rather be in the European “deep state” with free health care, clean water, a government that actually governs and cares about its people than stand with a despicable cowardly Trump who is failing his own countrymen.

Recommend

Behind the Collision: Trump Jettisons Ukraine on His Way to a Larger Goal

President Trump’s Oval Office encounter reflected his determination to put aside alliances and commitments to principles in favor of raw great power negotiations.

For Pride Groomerphiles, the world revolves around Fetishes, fake causes (Climate), and football (European name for soccer). Statecraft amounts to highly paid paper-shuffling, with 5 Star perks.  The EU is a paper shuffling monster, corrupt, bloated, unaccountable to taxpayers, forever expanding its reach by finding new things to regulate, such as the shape of  bananas, or appearance of carrots (ugh, some carrots look like troll thumbs).

Meanwhile, China is playing the Big Game while Europe dithers about Biden's Bathrooms.  The whole collective doesn't amount to one  serious state, which is why Trump is ready to hand them over to Putin along with Ukraine.  The Big Picture here is to give Russia a boost, and use it to menace China along its 2000 mile shared border.  Russia's problem is its shrinking population, which makes further expansion ridiculous--it's doesn't have enough people to occupy what it has.  Moreover, Russia sees its history and destiny as utterly European after the manner of Tolstoy.  It would welcome "race replacement"--from Europe as in the days of Catherine the Great.  Which, of course, leaves EU Pride under the bus,  because "Pride cometh before Destruction."  

Things could get out of hand.  Putin could now use his vast stores to create oligarchs in Europe's Eastern Block,  and the Fourth Reich could seize control of a militarized EU,  subvert Russia, and create the Beast--the most powerful state ever.  But for now, Europe is under the bus, with no place to go, and no options.  They are  broke, and the kingdom of god on earth is finished.  

Whether this historical reality accounts for the blowup in the Oval yesterday remains to be seen.  That is, Trump/Vance lured Zelensky into the Oval to bushwalk and humiliate him to show their utter contempt for  hapless Europe to jolt them out of their strutting conceits of bygone glory.  In that sense,  it's Musk's wreaking ball against the Deep State in Europe.  MAGA sees the Left as the globalist Deep State, a creeping globalist and faceless bureaucracy.  He still has a ways to go tearing it down.  What replaces it is another matter.  "How few remember the Old Republic," Roman historians wailed in the days of the Caesars.  The Deep State takes over when grassroots institutions like the Church die.  With no social fabric to replace it, it defaults to temporary anarchy followed by totalitarianism.  Nanny states so dumb down the social virtues and skill of their denizens that they become infantile, incapable of nothing but tantrums.  Oh for the heady days of Climate Summits, when the young Macron would tut, "There is no Planet B."  "Your smoking tundra," Thomas Fraudman hectored Putin,"  "there's your wound.  You need to join the global brotherhood to save the Planet."  Gallio cared for none of these things.  The Germans. especially, were smitten by him.  Then Biden called him into the Oval for a tuna sandwich and chocolate milkshake.  Statists only have power from the State which they hijack to promote their fetishes.  No one pays attention to activists who are not state funded.  You have the right to hold down a street corner like anyone else.  But Biden imposed his Drag Queens and Bathrooms with the coercive power of the state.  

2-28-25

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US21m ago

"Imagine if, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel came to the White House this month, Trump and Vance told him that the war with Hamas had gone on too long, too many lives had been lost and it was costing America too much money, so it was time for Bibi and the Israeli people to do a deal with the Hamas aggressor."

That is precisely what Trump should have told Netanyahu.

 18 Recommend

This Fraudman howls,  is what Trump did to Zelensky today.  Imagine the outrage, he says, if Trump kicked the Jews out of the Oval like this.  Europeans are shrieking at the top of their lungs.  They're not praying yet.  Because, they sniffed during the Shmerkel era, "Europe is now Post-Christian, deal with it."  That is, "We're done with God,"  "with whom we have to do."  In other words, if the Spirit of God wants to "strive with man," He'll have to strive by Himself.  Europe has moved on.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US20m ago

The Big Guns of the Culture War are now in action.  Zelensky's "partners" are shrieking at the top of their lungs.  The whole EU Project, which MAGA sees as the architect of Cultural Marxism (DEI), is on the verge of collapse for lack of funding.  They cannot arm against Putin without destroying the Nordic Welfare Model, and if they don't,  Putin will peel off Eastern Block backsliders with his vast store of freebies.  In either case, the Ukraine war will end up destroying the EU, or militarize it, which amounts to the same thing.  The End of History birthed by "EU values" did not come.  This is the existential terror behind the hysteria of Old Travelers, who see their religion slip away once again.

5 Recommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USPending Approval

For the record:  Ukraine is not part of "the Alliance."  Trump is merely uncoupling the US from another Leftwing globalist vanity project funded by US taxpayers.  The EU was never more than the latest version of Utopian messianics, seeking to prove that politics (the State) is NOT the sum total of the violence of the sword.  Putin invaded because the EU does not have a Commander in Chief. 

Zelensky to Visit White House to Sign Minerals Deal

Here you see Trump's Mammonist instincts setting the tone  of his policy.  Once he takes a stake in Ukraine, he will be forced to defend it, committing the US to engage in a hot war with a nuclear superpower--exactly what held Biden back.  

He sees the world in terms of Mammon:  everything has a material price tag.  He will try the same approach in the Mideast, where Religion is sharpening its knives against him.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USPending Approval

But Trump is merely removing the Left's coercive statist imposition of loaded faux terns on the conscience of  ordinary people who reject the fetishization of Nature and morality.  The First Amendment gives the ordinary person the right to call a spade a spade.  The Left tried to cast the refusal to accommodate fetishes as hate speech.  Trump is merely restoring the First Amendment. 

2-27-25

The EU, as everyone knows, was to be a blueprint for End of History globalism:  perpetual peace and chicken in every pot.  It was meant to replace all that went before it, superstition, ignorance, the Patriarchy, the oppression of women.  Which of course meant, a complete remaking of all that went before.  Feminism was the leader in this effort, and once it gained a foothold, it spawned all the other abominations:  genderology, DEI. Critical Theory, and statism.  Climate Control was simply the latest fad to fill the space previously occupied by religion. 

To underwrite the scheme, the EU created the  Welfare state, war being now obsolete.  The delusion flourished for 80 years under US protection, and its Cultural Marxist ideology became institutionalized in the US.  This is why the Right is waging total war against the EU.  By defunding it, they are forcing it to rearm, to rearm means starving the Welfare state, and with it, Marxist ideology.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USPending Approval

"whether the real goal is to destroy the European Union"

The Right sees the EU as the Left's ultimate anti-American vanity project paid for by the American taxpayer.  Globalist "EU values", in this context, are little more than Pride flags, Climate, and soccer.  Its End of History peace charter made wars obsolete, and Marxist Nirvana was within reach.  The absence of a Commander in Chief is the signal nod to the delusion that the kingdom of god on earth was nigh.  Putin brought the whole chimera down with a stroke.  Now Europe is desperately trying to cobble together a ragtag army by squeezing the last pennies out of its empty coffers--without a Commander in Chief.  They cannot rob the social net without creating major social unrest.  The Right knows that it has but to force the EU to turn from Welfare to Warfare to destroy its DNA.  The scourge of Putin is but a means to that end:  the Culture War by other means. 

2-25-25

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US4h ago

But candidate Trump said he would sic Putin on the Europeans if they don't turn from welfare to warfare:  that in of itself has already destroyed the EU, by desecrating it's peace charter.  MAGA sees the globalist EU in its current form as little more than Pride flags, Climate, and Soccer:  in short, a needy nanny state which the US can no longer afford to keep afloat.  And the new crop of Euro politicians sees the Old Leftwing as a greater danger to Europe than Putin.  MAGA wants to see the Project crash and burn, because they think the Left betrayed the West with its war on cultural and family values.  Trump promised to light a fire under the EU.  They're jumping like a pea on a hot shovel.  Enough voters liked what they heard.  It's called Democracy.

Reply1 RecommendShare

Flag

1 Reply

David T

Hartford CT3h ago

@Shoffmensch When the tools of democracy - fact based debate, sustainable logic, the rule of law under a shared constitutional system, (and today scientific understanding of the natural world) - are used by either right wing or left wing ideologues to undermine democracy and impose an oligarchic autocracy, you can no longer call it democracy.  MAGA has inflated culture wars, unsubstantiated opinion, and mis-representation of scientific truth to wage war on the rule of law in the USA.  What the voters who voted for the Con are coming to realize now is that they have been conned and will continue to be conned and impoverished by the MAGA bulldozer.  What came about through democratic processes is yielding totalitarianism.

Reply1 Recommend

2-22-25

The NY Times was the seat of anti-Trumpism.  They know they're a target, and that Trump is plotting a surprise.  They're waiting for the next shoe to drop.  He spent his first term watching Fox and talking to Hannity.  He had no one else to talk to because being close to him was seen as a political death sentence.  This  time, all the rats jumped back onboard, and they know where all the nerves of the System are, and how to  weaponize them at taxpayer expense.  They can bide their time and menace their enemies with unknowing, causing them to stay awake nights and driving them paranoid until they begin jumping at their own shadow--and some out of windows.  At the height of their heckling (when they were convinced he was headed to prison), I pointed out in my Comments that the object of their ridicule could once again  become the most powerful man in the world, and that his rage will be bottomless.  Rest assured, he has them in mind.  This accounts for their shrieking today.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, US7m ago

(they released this  after 10 hours, after they closed Comments so no one could comment on it))

"They cracked lots of jokes feasting in Riyadh" while Zelensky shivered in Turkey, it was reported earlier this week.  Trump is using Russia to destroy what's left of the EU, which Team Trump sees as the architect of Critical Theory  (DEI) and Cultural Marxism.  The war in Ukraine, from this vantage point, was but a Globalist attempt to destroy a redoubt of traditional  family values by planting Pride flags in Red Square under the guise of spreading "EU values."  Putin used this as a pretext to invade.  Trump Team's  demand  for "rare earths" sees American aid as anti-American  "charity,"--they see "EU values" as subversive of American ideals.  In short, Trump is using Ukraine to wage the Culture War abroad.  World (Culture) War 3, if  you will.  Trump stands  to lose nothing by doing nothing and allowing Realpolitik to run its course, with the additional bonus of casting Biden's signature policy as a colossal failure.  He's doing to Europe what the Colonials did to the Ottoman Empire:  carve it up.  On, not at, the table.  "Can anyone tell me," Obama asked, "What US interests are in Ukraine?"  Perhaps he could be persuaded to do an editorial.

Recommend

Emboldened Kremlin Steps Up Efforts to Seize Businesses in Russia

"And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaoh's" (Gen.47:20).

This happened in the second year of famine, at the end of which Joseph's family came.  By this time, he had removed all the Egyptians into cities and was in a position to give the choicest lands to his family.  Likely, the revelation of famine to come was kept as a closely guarded state secret, leaving people to think the good times were here to stay, while the Government horded grain  (talk about weaponizing Climate Change).  Joseph was thinking ahead.  He carefully instructed his father to  tell Pharaoh that they were shepherds, "the abomination of the Egyptians"--no Egyptian could as much as  eat with them and not become an outcast.  He depopulated rural Egypt to keep them from mingling with Israel, remembering the promise given to his great grandfather Abraham that Israel would return to Canaan.  You can see he has answers ready at hand when hungry citizens came begging.  "Here you see Marxism in its rawest form:  the total destruction of property.  The State doesn't own property, it merely allows the use of what it controls with the sword (under the mask of "private property") for a fee of taxation.  The Egyptians were now share-croppers.  The kidnapped slave they bought turned them into Pharaoh's slaves.  Compared to the authoritative communism imposed on Egypt by Joseph's social engineering, previous Egypt had been a landed democracy.  If you wanted to destroy a country,  this is how you would do it.  God already taking revenge on Pharaoh.  

2-21-25

''Without Egypt or Jordan Onboard, Trump Appears to Back Away From Gaza Plan'

oops.  Was he really serious, or just throwing mud to see what sticks?  Everyone knew that deporting Palestinians would topple Egypt and Jordan.  And if they go, so do Arabia and Turkey.  MBS had to go on record stating that nothing but two-state will now do, with East Jerusalem (the Temple Mount) as the Palestinian capital.  The Jews were already making military plans where Gazans would "voluntarily" load themselves up into boxcars to "voluntarily" leave their homeland.  Evangelicals don't think that these descendants of Samaritans have a homeland.  

The guestion then is if Trump keeps his own counsel, away from the his Third Temple fanatics, the Protocols, and the Kushite.  Because, if you read Israeli newspapers, they saw Trump speaking in good faith.  They thought that in cleansing Gaza of Palestinians, the US would shoulder the blame and expense of Israel's Final Solution.  Now Netanyahu may again feel the noose tightening.  Like Trump said, "we give Egypt and Jordan all that money....and not they refuse,  so ungrateful...oh well, back to square one, now where we."  If you're at the receiving end of this kind of thinking, your hair is probably standing on end.  No one knows where he's at.  And he's the most powerful leader the world has ever known.

In this scheme, Trump sought to make the historical boondoggle beyond the hope of reconciliation, in that his rhetoric forced both sides to their extremes.  The art of the deal here would be clarification, to flush all the frauds out into the open.  That is, take a position.  Just stop beating around the bush.  Well. he certainly cleared the air--as in a hurricane.  

Because he's a consummate Mammonist, he fails to grasp the potency of religion.  He was driven out of Afghanistan by religion.  But he still thinks everyone and everything has a price tag.  

His peace making in Riyadh was a brilliant move.  MBS needs political legitimacy, and this puts him on the world stage with two of the Three Powers.  The price will be high.  Trump still thinks he can get a Palestinian deal short of two-state.  MBS knows that would cost him his throne.   But Trump is casting a wide net, and he has much to give (and ask).  So far he has everyone guessing, and sweating.  And both Israel and Hamas keep showing up for ceasefire talks.  They have no choice.  Everyone knows they're skating on thin ice, waiting for the next outrage--"the king's wrath is death," they used to say.  

With Ukraine, he's dealing purely in "interests."  He's crowing about $500 in rare earths from Ukraine.  He forgot that Afghanistan cost $4 trillion.  A war with Russia would cost $50 trillion, and by plundering Ukraine of its minerals, he's forced to put soldiers on the ground, which will get him into a hot war.  Again. his Mammonist greed stands to derail his peace efforts.  He's the personification of Material Marxist-Leninism:  Capitalism come full circle.  All things, Heraclitus said, turns into their opposite if pushed far enough.   

Aside from the new development on rare earths, everyone who needs to be under the bus gets thrown under the bus.  They were cracking jokes while feasting in Riyadh.  Here only historical and material forces are in play.  But now comes religion.  And that's where he'll fall into a trap of his own making.  He thinks all  religion as nothing but hypocrisy and superstition presided over by huckster and con artists.  One of his aides walked in on him watching TV preachers hawk their wares:  "look at them," he chortled in awe, as a Minor watching Major Leaguers.  

"Happy Holy Week! Let's Make America Pray Again," Trump wrote. "As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible."  The two $100 versions are sold out on his site.  The Bible is a book like any other book, nothing sacred about it.  Few would not be afraid to make merchandize off it.  For Trump it's just another commodity.  Very few people in history have attained to this level of Marxist Materialism, which sees the forces of Mammon behind all human conduct.  Even in Ukraine, he's demanding rare earths reparation for money Biden wasted on them:  their "partners" told them they were fighting for Democracy and freedom.  Gallio cared for none of these things.  

In the Mideast he will run up into something totally different:  the Idea of East Jerusalem, the Idea of the Temple Mount, the Idea of Abraham's tomb in Hebron.  He would see nothing wrong, from Muslim and Jewish perspectives, of mining the Rock under the Dome for rare earths (after the vail was rent, you could build a pigsty or outhouse on it for all God cared.  Slay that clean hog and eat, Peter was told).  But MBS has zero room to budge here.  He needs two-state,  and there is no two-state without East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.  Thomas Fraudman thinks a shack just outside of Jerusalem should do for the Palestinian capital--with a Port-a-Potty alongside for the more civilized among them.  They will soon find themselves on a powderkeg of religion, with Third Temple  fanatics and the Caliphate anxious to light the fuse.   

80 years of Sitzkrieg:  Prepare for Blitzkrieg

"Germany Is in Big Trouble, and Nobody Knows What to Do About It" (NY Times)

Big times ahead for American gas to keep the Europeans alive.  The Gulf Wars were all about Big Oil.  Now it's Big Gas.  Why Trump is dragging his feet on peace.  He'll bankrupt them with gas and use the money to rearm them.  Putin chastised them with whips, Trump with scorpions.  He's got them where he wants them now--hooked on his gas. 

But don't worry.  Things are under control, because no one is praying yet.  After all, ///*Europe is now in a "post-Christian" era, the Shmerkels sniffed.  Deal with it.  "Besides,"  as the young Macron tuts, "there is no Planet B."  That is, no place to turn.  We're on our own.  And not "With God, with whom we (previously) had to do."  

Russia Talks Peace While Troops Threaten New Region in Ukraine (NY Times)

"Do what you have to do," Trump told Putin (as he did Bibi), while I look the other way.  While Trump and Musk rage at Zelensky,  Putin will (wink, wink) gain control of all his annexed lands. Trump has nothing to lose by doing nothing.  It's part of his revenge against Biden to see the worst possible outcome.  And Musk wants a revived imperial Russia--with Moscow full of parades, balls, oligarchs strutting around in cape and uniform.  Perhaps even big hats and horses.  

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

"a good life to be had without growth — so long as basic needs are met"

A Stone Age Germany would keep Putin out of Germany without firing a shot--he doesn't do charity.  The Black Forest has enough wood for woodstoves tp last 20 years, at which point the Carbon End cannot come too soon.  And they still have a lot of dirty coal.  They would no longer need NATO.  Einstein prophesied that WW4 would be fought with sticks and stones.  As  for their Climate targets?  Just trick the smokestacks with Volkswagen software.  And hope for warmer winters---brrrr!

ReplyRecommend

Shoffmensch

Afdeestupple, USJust now

Trump gave Putin the same go ahead as he did Netanyahu: do what you have to do on Biden's ticket, before Brand Trump rides in to put out another Biden dumpster fire.  That is, gain control over all the annexed areas to mark a clean-cut border.  The peace needs to be murky enough to keep Europe in fear and tethered to US gas, which he will use to bankrupt them further.  Ukraine gets its "the" back, as it will remain a no-man's land, toxic to the investment needed to rebuild.  Security would be possible only with European troops in Ukraine, at which point Europe would open a hot war with a nuclear poser from which the US would  abstain.  As the Times reported days ago, "they cracked many jokes feasting in Riyadh"--while  Zelensky shivered in Turkey.  And "Germany is in big trouble."  Hiobsbotschaften,  Germans call the messengers of Job--the news went from bad to worse.

ReplyRecommend

archives--older posts