U.S. negotiators arrive in Riyadh for talks with Russian foreign ministry
EU leaders hold 'temper tantrum' session in Paris, being shut out of Ukraine talks
They failed to pursue independent leadership; chose to live in artificial construct
Do they prefer war because it masks their economic collapse?
Can continent regain leverage, no longer be dependent and defenceless?
What happens to Zelenskiy now, and will the West get its money back?
(2,300 words or 11 minutes of your company)
Feb 17, 2025
Teams of U.S. and Russian negotiators, headed by secretary of state Marco Rubio and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, will meet in Saudi Arabia on February 18 to seek an end to the war in Ukraine.
They will do so without the presence of Ukraine or any other European state.
The West European crowd was not amused.
The headlines blared: "Starmer to join Macron-led European crisis summit on Trump's Ukraine plan."
Peace? Stop that now!
Vice chairman of America First Policy Institute Fred Fleitz said they were having a tantrum.
Sadly, this is not a joke. Europe's leaders appear to favour war at any cost, even if their armies are not fit for purpose.
Why would that be? A cynic may guess that war justifies austerity, and several of the bigger European governments are in a state of financial crisis. Thus given the choice between peace, and fighting to the last Ukrainian, they favour the latter.
U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth has said that Ukraine will not regain land it has lost because it is not practical. This means that the war policy espoused by Germany's Christian Democrat (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz or the former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, who is now NATO's secretary general, is fading.
Bigger pictureThe war in Ukraine must be seen against a broad set of policies, if not failures.
Conflicts in Ukraine, Yemen and Syria are linked by pipelines, trade routes and power play.
Europe's de-industrialisation and ageing populations mean finance ministers need an excuse to cut public services to the bone, along with health care and education. And war is a darned useful excuse.
No-one knows that better than Friedrich Merz, the former head of BlackRock Europe, running in the federal election of February 23.
It is little surprise that he supports more war, or higher defence spending. On illegal immigration he borrowed the Alternative for Deutsch land's (AFD) policies, while saying he would never form a coalition with them.
Outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz defends the Green policies and war, while blaming Russia for the collapse of Germany's economy.
Scholz has never questioned whether the high cost of energy might have something to do with closing down nuclear power stations without a viable alternative. He has never questioned who blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline on which his nation relied for cheap energy — now Germany's biggest brand names, BASF and Volkswagen are leaving.
Like his expected successor, Scholz has come out in favour of increased weapons spending. A special budget of €100 billion to finance German military was only "first step," he told the Munich Security Conference (MSC). He suggested changing the country's debt rules, in order to spend more on weapons.
Dr Rainer Rothfuss, MdDB, a member of the Bundestag for Bavaria, and of the AFD, compares Germany to a tanker caught in a narrow channel.
On the one side is the policy of isolation, in confrontation with Russia and China, and in alliance only with Brussels and the globalist faction in Washington.
To the right of this channel is Green policy of energy rationing and degrowth.
If AFD came to power it would immediately assist in peace talks and promote Eurasian integration, he told Harley Schlanger. The European Union had been a constraint on Germany's development and cooperation. [1]
Germany being a manufacturer without its own resources is more dependent than most countries on external relations. Rothfuss would even support membership of the BRICS.
Selling outCrisis, war and austerity is the background against which the British government is negotiating to sell patient data. Could there be a connection?
The National Health Service is on the operating table, along with the valuable medical data of the entire population — an FT headline reads, "UK studies pricing plan for selling NHS patient data."
The value lies in crunching that data for artificial intelligence and research, such as Stargate announced in January by Oracle's Larry Ellison.
The U.S. military is said to have the most complete data set of medical records, but that is 1.4 million people. The NHS is an entire nation.
With the inflow of population from countries like Nigeria, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, etc, the NHS data set would only become more complete, and thus more valuable, with the addition of new NHS patients.
Is this one of the financial benefits of war and open borders?
With peace in sight, European leaders still talk war. Germany heads into federal election planning re-militarization. Why the need for crisis & austerity?
Trump speaks to Putin: no NATO membership, no restitution for Ukraine
European leaders demand a seat at the table; threaten strong words
Ukraine offers 'Contract 18-24' to send youth to the front
Europe's biggest war since the one that ended in 1945 has parallels
A battle begun over ethnic minority rights and the defence of borders
Germany's peaceful drive eastwards in 1991 was stopped as surely as 1941
Germany goes to the polls amid economic and governmental collapse
Now threatening the whole of Europe's economic viability
The memory of Dresden is not enough, it seems, to dissuade some from their path
Related:
Germany May Ban Opposition Party - Globalists desperate as their narrative Babel breaks down (Jan 21, 2024)
Eurasia note #32 - Ukraine May Meet Its Gladio - Insurgents may drag Russia into a version of Italy's 'Years of Lead' or Greece's 'Z' (Mar 09, 2022)
EU Buys Journalists, Same As USAID - German, Romanian elections in the spotlight (Feb 12, 2025)
(2,300 words or 10 minutes of your company)
Tbilisi, Feb 13, 2025
Just after 10 p.m. on a chilly night, 80 years ago, the bombs began to fall.
High explosives first demolished roofs and walls, creating a channel for oxygen to feed the incendiary devices that followed.
If it is hard to summon pathos, that's because it's through numbers that we interact with the world nowadays, in digital binary code.
Dresden has been reduced to a dispute over the numbers killed. (Images at your discretion).
In January 2024 the inscription was removed from the Dresden memorial to those who were incinerated — 30,000 people; some historians say many more.
Bilt newspaper reported that unnamed bureaucrats had removed the inscription because the "day of remembrance has been repeatedly used for political purposes."
That includes historical revisionists, nationalist politicians and those who draw comparisons both to justify and condemn mass bombings today, such as Gaza.
See Germany May Ban Opposition Party - Globalists desperate as their narrative Babel breaks down (Jan 21, 2024)
In the West it has become common to tear down statues; to try to obliterate history. The process began in Germany, as the story of the Alt-Nickern memorial tells.
The bone of contention has for a long time been, as with the mass killings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the adversary had already been defeated.
Today we confront the scrubbing of the record.
Revenge, retaliation, the righteous punishment of the other: many explanations are put forward but where does it end?
Likewise the Soviet Union would be defeated in the Cold War in 1991. Yet NATO would press on, seeking to impose a further humiliation. One could even argue that Ukraine, as part of the USSR, is being punished for its defeat.
War has its own logic and momentum. It stops only when it meets a greater force.
In Europe of 1945 the combatants had exhausted themselves. The Europeans were bankrupt and could no longer afford the maintenance of their colonies. U.S financial might exacted a usurous price.
And yet we see, in real time a Europe no longer vigorous, spent of its energies, attempting to fight the last war one more time, to punish and humiliate its own.
If the skeletons of Dresden had not been carbonised, they would rattle and warn us: take not that path.
Historical perspectiveGermany's economy is being destroyed again, this time from within.
This 80th anniversary embraces a few days later the German election on February 23, brought about by the collapse of Olaf Scholz's coalition over its failure to pass a budget, and the shuddering halt of Germany's post-war economic miracle.
Europe's innovative, industrial behemoth was held hostage, first by the expansion of NATO in defiance of a commitment not to encroach on Russia's borders, and then by the detonation of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, a joint venture that allowed Germany to profit by selling its high tech to the Russian producers of raw materials and energy.
So, in a very real way, this was a parallel to Germany's drive eastwards in 1941, first as military aggression and, after the fall of the Soviet Union, as a business joint venture.
The peaceful approach was destroyed as surely as the earlier armed attack.
Dresden's anniversary coincides with an attempt to end the biggest war on European soil since WW2 which began, as in 1939, as the response of one country to the treatment of its minorities across the border.
Peace talksPresident Donald Trump spoke to his Russian counterpart yesterday and "agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately." They will meet face-to-face later.
President Vladimir Putin insisted on the need to remove the root causes of the conflict (meaning NATO's presence in Ukraine) and agreed with Trump that a lasting settlement could be reached through peace talks.
Also discussed were the Middle East settlement, the Iranian nuclear program and Russian-US economic relations, energy, artificial intelligence, and the status of the dollar.
We don't know if they discussed the fate of Ukraine's youth.
The day before the leaders spoke, Kyiv began offering one-year voluntary contracts to 18-24 year-olds, starting February 11. Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy has resisted lowering the age of the draft to 18 but he is under pressure to do so.
The lure is higher pay than soldiers currently receive. The contract includes basic military training for a one-time payment of hryvnia 1 million ($24,000) and a monthly allowance of up to Hr 120,000 ($3,000), followed by vocational training.
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Brussels responseNewspaper headlines captured the European mood:
Britain's Daily Telegraph opines: "America is no longer interested in underwriting Ukrainian and European security and it's time for Britain to face this reality."
The Guardian put lipstick on the Hogwarts that is the Brussels headquarters of Europe's warlocks: "No lasting peace in Ukraine without European role in talks."
Before the phone call, Ian Brzezinski, son of Zbiginiew, said the window for Europe to shape Trump's actions was closing. He called for a "correlation of forces" decisively against Russia. He meant European forces on the ground in Ukraine, with the U.S. as a backstop.
European leaders held an emergency meeting on Thursday, attended by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Kyiv and its European allies demanded they be included in any peace talks. European foreign policy chief, the Estonian Kaja Kallas, said "any quick fix is a dirty deal," accusing the U.S. of appeasement.
The EC promised frank and demanding dialogue with U.S. representatives at the Munich Security Conference on February 14 -16.
On courseNeocons like John Bolton are twitching with fury, blinded by hatred of what they still perceive to be the USSR. They are slow to turn course, like seagoing tankers.
Any settlement to the war is going to have to recognise Russia's conquest of territory. Ukraine has lost most of its mineral resources, which are in the Donbas, which is largely under Russia control.
The danger is that if Europeans don't like the deal, they may resort to a guerrilla-style insurgency, increasing the assassinations and bombings of military staff in Moscow and drone attacks on civilians.
British and U.S. intelligence supported the Ukrainian Banderites — those who had sided with the invading SS against other ethnicities — from WW2 to the present day.
The British and Americans also promoted jihadist militants — originally al Qaeda, against the same target, Russian, in Afghanistan — and recently brought them to power in Syria, ousting the Russia-aligned Assad government.
See Eurasia note #32 - Ukraine May Meet Its Gladio - Insurgents may drag Russia into a version of Italy's 'Years of Lead' or Greece's 'Z' (Mar 09, 2022)
It has never been clear what Europe wants. We got a clue from British prime minister Keir Starmer's 100 Year Partnership with Ukraine, announced last month. This 10 point plan is the most transparent document that we have on the corporate plan for Ukraine.
If Britain does not pursue it, U.S. companies likely will. American corporations are already on the ground: the likes of Monsanto, BlackRock, Cargill.
Tripartite solutionThe Russophile commentariat is also misguided. This is not a competition between the dollar and BRICS - or unipolar versus multipolar free-for-all.
Has democracy had its day?
EU fact checkers already warning that Germany's Feb 23 election may be invalid
Romania's EU-backed coup gets more sinister, vote cancelled, re-run in May
This is not about party but the making of political sausage
Series:
USAID Files Expose Knot In West's Throat - Graham Greene killed the do-gooder in Vietnam (Feb 08, 2025)
USAID's Fist In A Velvet Glove - Cass Sunstein's malevolent hand (Feb 09, 2025)
What Is This EU That Georgia Would Join? - Europe lost its way in the '90s – Georgia-EU part 3 (May 07, 2024)
Related:
Romania Coup Is Your Western Warning - Has the EU become a dictatorship? (Dec 07, 2024)
Georgia's Colourful Riot Not Yet Revolution - Violent protest over registering 'foreign agents' timed for president's visit to U.S. (Mar 08, 2023)
Ukraine: Just Bizniz for Some - Claiming to defend a country, while looting it, has a touch of depravity (Jan 27, 2022)
Any 'Emergency' Would Be Step Closer To Dictatorship - Hate laws will censor all dissent (Sep 21, 2023)
Feb 12, 2025
The European Commission is using the same tactics that promoted the Covid response and the war in Ukraine, but now to influence upcoming elections.
Its rapid response units identify thoughtcrime and trigger a network of fact checkers and pliant journalists who "correct the record."
The EC funnelled €132 million to buy influence in last year's elections across the Union. It paid media to publish EU-friendly articles, while trashing those the Brussels Directoire does not like.
EC president Ursula von der Leyen used a non-competitive, secret mechanism that avoided public scrutiny or tenders. It was similar to the contract she signed with Pfizer for Covid shots, and which the EC has struggled to keep private.
See Vaccine Scandal A Case Study In Great Reset - Corporations set the price, create a market and regulators get out of the way (Oct 18, 2022)
Intriguingly, von der Leyen signed off on the "buying of political media" while she herself was running for a second term as president.
The scheme has parallels to that of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which poured hundreds of millions into favoured outlets like Politico and the BBC. It also funnelled half a billion dollars to a secretive global news propaganda matrix.
WikiLeaks published a report on the "Internews Network" with offices in over 30 countries, including London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi.
See USAID's Fist In A Velvet Glove - Cass Sunstein's malevolent hand (Feb 09, 2025)
The Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano discovered more than €132 million in funds was transferred to advertising agency Havas Media France, which is part of the Vivendi Group.
The grant was made without disclosing the beneficiaries or the criteria for allocation
By using a standardised "framework contract" it is not subject to competitive tender and is not listed on Ted.europa.eu, the register of tenders. Because it uses an intermediary, there is no information on recipients, amounts, conditions and results.
One of the bodies supported with European taxpayers' money is the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN).
The European Federation of Journalists, instead of protecting journalists, participates in EFCSN conferences, co-funded by the European Union, with titles like "fact-checkers under attack - how to deal with threats and harassment."
The EFCSN has also launched ClimateFactsEurope, a public database for debunking and identifying trends in climate disinformation.
'Democracy' networkOne target was the Romanian elections. The country's intelligence service claimed that TikTok had been used to aid the top contender Calin Georgescu, leading the country's top court to annul the election, disenfranchising nine million voters in a country of 20 million people..
See Romania Coup Is Your Western Warning - Has the EU become a dictatorship? (Dec 07, 2024)
The network of "democracy promotion" is vast. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department has teamed up with George Soros and his Open Society Foundation (OSF). Sometimes USAID provides grants directly but more often to "partner" organisations. [1]
For example the U.S. has granted over $270 million to the East-West Management Institute, an organization partnered with George Soros' Open Society Foundations, in the last 15 years. [2]
A particular strategy of Soros is to influence judicial appointments. This is seen in the U.S. through OSF donations to progressive candidates in district attorney elections. [3]
Another Soros strategy is to fund so-called anticorruption NGOs, like the controversial AntAc in Ukraine.
In Ukraine Anti-Corruption Action, or AntAC, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros, led the resistance to a law in 2018 that would have forced them to disclose financial accounts. Western diplomats and NGOs defeated that legislation. The irony of anti-corruption activists fighting against financial disclosure was presumably lost on these agents of Western influence. [4]
Romanian journalist Iosefina Pascal says the judges on the Romanian constitutional court have links to financier George Soros. In particular judge Simina Tănăsescu sits on the board of a Soros NGO. Two other judges, Livia Stanciu and Bogdan Licu, participated in training seminars at Freedom House Romania.
One judge was forced by then-president Klaus Iohannis to resign over a dispute with the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). Petre Lăzăroiu was replaced by Simina Tanasescu.
These were the judges who overturned the November 24 in which Calin Georgescu won the first round convincingly.
Paradoxically Georgescu is a globalist — a former senior United Nations official and member of the Club of Rome — however he has questioned NATO building what may be its largest European base near the Black Sea port city of Constanta, 130 km from Ukraine's border and around 300 km from the port city of Odessa, to control the Black Sea region,
TikTok boogeyIt turned out that the TikTok campaign used as the excuse to cancel the elections was paid for by the ruling National Liberal Party — which then supported cancelling the elections!
The globalist outlet Politico stretched credibility, suggesting the National Liberal Party's campaign may have been "hijacked to benefit far-right candidate." Not surprisingly it turns out that Politico is on the payroll of the U.S. government.
The evidence showed that Politico lied. An investigation by Snoop Ro found that Kensington Communication's influencers complied with their contract and did not switch sides in the way that Politico suggested. [5]
PNL had hired Kensington Communications to coordinate 130 influencers, spending a total of $200,000.
Either the intel services did not know PNL had financed the campaign, or it did know and was complicit in the coup.
Although he was the front runner, Georgescu was not getting the most exposure online: he ranked third or fourth on TikTok.
Russiagate reduxLike Russiagate in 2016, the social media posts could have been a mix of electioneering, regular engagement farming by influencers eager to amass followers, clicks and thus ad revenue but there was scant evidence of political intent to interfere, — as there was not in the 2016 Trump campaign.
Another similarity to Russiagate 2016 is the relatively small number of influencer accounts involved. Could 130 TikTok accounts have swung the election given that Georgescu ranked third or fourth in engagement?
As for campaign finance violations, some payments may have been made outside the campaign period, whether this was intentional or incompetence the number of payments was not statistically significant.
Despite the failure to prove Russia or TikTok even tried to influence the previous election, EFCSN called on TikTok to "take action against disinformation on their platform... labelling all misinfo instead of only removing harmful content.
This week Romania's president Klaus Iohannis finally resigned under threat of impeachment for the cancellation of elections. He had refused to step down in December when his mandate expired. He followed the identical script to Georgia's president Salome Zourabichvili who refused to recognise that country's October election.
Vote again!Romania's elections are to be re-run on May 4 and 18.
USAID spent more than $41 million on Georgian elections - which on a per capital basis would be equivalent to $3.7 billion if injected into U.S. elections.
Slovakia's prime minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt in May 2024 has written an open letter to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team (DOGE) asking for information on all grants from USAID to Slovak journalists and NGOs who may have interfered in the country's politics.
Hungary's prime minister Victor Orban posted on Twitter that the "globalist liberal elite used US taxpayers' money to force their own progressive political agenda down the throats of people around the world."
Broad interferenceIt's not only countries on NATO's periphery like Romania and Georgia that experience election interference. Voters in much of Europe but particularly France, eastern Germany and Austria have been denied their voice.
The same deeply unpopular policies of war and austerity have politicians polling at record lows, while ruling coalitions are struggling to make the financial numbers work.
The German government of chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed over the inability to pass a budget. Elections have been brought forward from September to February 23.
See Governments Fall As War Drive Exposes Rifts - 'Centrists' face moment of truth over social services (Dec 20, 2024)
EFCSN is already warning about interference in Germany's elections. It cites one of its own "members" Corectiv Faktencheck as publishing a report "that shows a Russian influence operation has created about 100 websites that will probably be used to spread disinformation soon."
French prime minister François Bayrou pushed through a 2025 budget without a vote. The government does not have enough support to pass the budget, so it's been delayed - and that was Bayrou's excuse for imposing it by diktat, using Article 49.3 of the constitution.
Earlier he survived a no-confidence vote by France Unbowed which the National Rally and Socialists failed to back.
Havas mafiaHavas has eight offices in Brussels. One of them is a public affairs practice dedicated to the EU.
It helped shape voters' outlooks during the previous EU elections in 2019 when it launched the We Europeans project. This is not purely informational but has a strong political bent, and was active in the 2024 elections as well:
The European 2024 – They have been characterized by a notable rise in populist political parties across the continent,
Argumentation training – Do you know situations that leave speechless when confronted with populist statements? Get prepared and train yourself.
The EU and its achievements – Let's take a look at a few of the EU's achievements that have changed our lives and which are quite normal for us today. [6]
The commission also directly finances journalists:
Under the Creative Europe project the Commission in October 2024 €16 million available to support journalism and media literacy across Europe "aimed at organisations that can set up and distribute funds to news media entities in sectors of particular relevance to democracy."
The EC also wants to extend its rapid response system "that will systematically and comprehensively monitor violations of press and media freedom across the EU."
Under EU Digital Reporting, if funds platforms to ensure free access, discoverability and sorting, user-friendliness and dissemination of content in a minimum of 6 EU languages
Multimedia Actions funds general EU information, news and programmes for the public from European perspectives [7]
Havas Media launches scheme to fund start-ups founded by BAME and minority people. While the plan is ultimately to focus on business owners from across all under represented groups, Havas Boost will initially concentrate on black, Asian, and minority ethnic-owned businesses.
Direct supportThe EC already funds establishment media. For example in Italy the Agnelli-Elkann family, who own La Repubblica and La Stampa entered in to a partnership with the European Parliament and the Commission to run paid article. The family also jointly own The Economist with the Rothschilds.
As Oliver Janich writes on Substack, Havas is behind Agence France-Presse and was for many years part of a news cartel including Reuters and later Associated Press.
Today Reuters is part of the ultra-private Thompson family of Canada. Havas comprises AFP and the advertising arm, Havas Media. [8]
We will coupIronies never end in the USAID story. We described in the last article its involvement in regime change and coups.
"We will coup whoever we want," Musk wrote on Twitter/X after a U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia in 2019 that unseated its first indigenous president Evo Morales.
The Bolivian's Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) would have been a classic target of the Central Intelligence Agency, seeking to redistribute land and water rights to the 80 per cent indigenous population.
Business classes have long competed for control of water (see Maui, Hawaii) but it was the discovery of lithium deposits that attracteda the attention of Musk.
See Maui's Fire Hydrants Ran Dry; The Politics Of Water - H20 is being rationed in an attack on humanity (Sep 18, 2023)
Land and water rights have been the driving force behind coups across the world, especially in Latin America and Central America. Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz in 1952 and Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973 are well-known to this day when the focus is on countries like Venezuela.
The meddling is unlikely to end. USAID has been reshuffled into Marco Rubio's State Department, and Musk's top influencers are going along with the Trump administration's charade.
Refer a friendReferring a friend can cut the cost of membership if five people sign up. So please consider recommending Moneycircus to your circle.
[1] Judicial Watch, 2018 (PDF) — The Financial and Staffing Nexus Between the Open Society Foundations and the United States Government
[2] East-West Management Institute - A veritable roll call of globalists
[3] NYP, Dec 2021 - How George Soros funded progressive 'legal arsonist' DAs behind US crime surge
[4] AntAC, 2017 - Threats and risks сaused by newly introduced obligation for anti-corruption activists to file asset declarations of public officials
[5] Politico, Dec 21, 2024 - Report ties Romanian liberals to TikTok campaign that fueled pro-Russia candidate
[6] Havas Media - We Europeans
[7] EU funding opportunities for the news media sector
[8] Oliver Janich, Substack, Feb 12, 2025 - The company who distributes the money of the EU to European media is connected to the Rothschild family
USAID is not a charity; and yesterday few knew of its existence
Students of Latin America and post-Soviet Europe are the benighted few
If Dan Mitrione and Brazil '64 mean anything to you…
A fresh generation is bamboozled into cancelling the present truth
Even Mike Benz and Tucker Carlson won't broach its history
Perspective informs USAID's present with its hidden past
Series:
USAID Regime Change Revealed - Eurasia note #105: Georgia's Color Revolution (Feb 04, 2025)
USAID Files Expose Knot In West's Throat - Graham Greene killed the do-gooder in Vietnam (Feb 08, 2025)
USAID's Fist In A Velvet Glove - Cass Sunstein's malevolent hand (Feb 09, 2025)
Related:
Judicial Overreach Mars Brazil's Election - Separation of powers has become a political plaything (Jan 11, 2023)
Jabbed At Gunpoint: Tropical Mémoire - Jim Jones was a CIA red flag: was it a dress rehearsal? (Nov 05, 2021)
Trump Addresses C02-Choked Audience - Yet WEF may abandon climate change for AI (Jan 24, 2025)
Tasting Uncertainty; Learning To Love Doubt - Why managed outcomes in politics and companies are killing creativity (Aug 12, 2021)
Series:
9/11, Part One: They Wouldn't Do That - The World Trade Center bombing set the narrative (Sep 10, 2024)
9/11, Part Two: The Perpetrators - Whodunnit is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma (Sep 11, 2024)
9/11, Part Three: Boomer & Zoomer - Wild tangents and useful conclusions (Sep 14, 2024)
(2,600 words or about 11 minutes of your company.)
Feb 9, 2025
Yet more revelations about USAID — and thousands more journalists in their pocket.
Just a day ago we wrote that USAID was funding over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets and 279 "media" NGOs
In the past 24 hours Wikileaks revealed that it used a proxy, Internews Network, to push almost half a billion dollars ($472.6m) to 4,291 media outlets, "training" over 9000 journalists (2023 figures), and producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people.
In this article we'll look at:
what we knew of USAID years before these revelations;
how that challenges our perception of recent history;
what precautions we should take toward the media;
what that tells us about how politics works today.
In no particular order.
USAID is not a charity, though in recent years it was happy to shelter under umbrella of the non-profit sector.
For most of its existence it was pronounced "U.S. ai-aye-dee," not aid.
Few people had cause to know of its existence, despite its budget estimated in the range $40-60 billion.
Only to students of the seamy side of Latin America during the dictatorships of the 1970s, or those who witnessed a similar struggle to control post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe, is it a familiar name.
That is why the revelations that accompanied president Donald Trump's spending freeze caused such excitement among a bunch of nerds, in which I number myself.
History has jumped into real time. Researchers who unpicked the coups and far-off wars of the second half of the 20th century now see the same agencies manipulating elections in the U.S. and Europe today.
The Trump team's animosity towards USAID stems from the fact that the methods by which the U.S. waged war abroad, eventually came home, in the words of Douglas Valentine. USAID's techniques of political manipulation were weaponised in the struggle between the uniparty and the populist wings.
Potted historyThe relevance of history goes something like this, with the broadest of brush strokes.
First, that the Allies recruited the top German scientists and spies after WW2. Hilariously, this was an open secret. You could watch German rocket scientist and SS Leutnant Werner von Braun on American television in 1955.
Frederick Forsyth would cement in popular culture the idea that large numbers of senior Nazi leadership survived, with the publication of The Odessa File in 1972.
Second, that elements in the Anglo-American Establishment had armed and financed Hitler's Reich. This would remain taboo for decades.
Thirdly, that these fascist elites survived WW2 and were planning a Fourth Reich. Even the comatose could see how former top Nazis occupied jobs in NATO, military intelligence, the UN, the European Union. Indeed, when the CIA merged with Reinhard Gehlen's Foreign Armies East (FHO) it was something of a reverse takeover.
You don't say!Yet, this was unmentionable in the establishment-controlled press.
The alternative press — Mae Brussell and Jack Anderson, and the academic Antony Sutton in the mid-1970s — would document in detail what the mainstream media would only mention three decades later, in 2004.
The Guardian's article meets the definition of a bombshell only because it broke the omerta: "How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power."
Two decades after The Guardian's article and 50 years after Antony Sutton's Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (1974) and Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (1976) there are still many who give you a blank stare if you suggest that there was any element of social engineering or malice aforethought on the part of the West.
Western perceptions are managed, and the press curated, by operations like USAID, which is being exposed in real time.
Yet even when the spymasters and storytellers are exposed in the act of paying journalists and censoring researchers, it is unlikely to open the minds of the majority.
Tropical MémoireU.S. meddling in Brazil long pre-dated the military coup of 1964.
Dan Mitrione, seemingly an ordinary Midwestern policeman, arrived in the northern state of Belo Horizonte in 1960, working for the Public Safety Program of the International Cooperation Administration, soon to become the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Mitrione taught torture techniques to the Brazilian police, using beggars for demonstrations with electrical wires. It is said that he tortured four of these homeless to death.
Myth of neutral media - thousands of journalists financed by U.S. government
Ignorant of civilisations, Graham Greene shows how we 'improve' them
'The deep state is far preferable to the Trump state,' says Bill Kristol
USAID manipulation of reporting & funding has centralists on the hop
Those who wear heart on sleeve are forced to confront the purchase of conformity
Democracy is sacrificed on the altar of saving democracy
Series:
USAID Regime Change Revealed - Eurasia note #105: Georgia's Color Revolution (Feb 04, 2025)
USAID Files Expose Knot In West's Throat - Graham Greene killed the do-gooder in Vietnam (Feb 08, 2025)
USAID's Fist In A Velvet Glove - Cass Sunstein's malevolent hand (Feb 09, 2025)
Related:
From Coup To War, Ukraine's Historical Parallel - interventions reveal the intent of 'the players.' (Nov 01, 2022)
Setting The Silk Road Ablaze - From Kyiv to Samarkand, are geopolitical arsonists lighting multiple fires? (Jul 04, 2022)
Happy 'No Deference' Day - Down those 4th July hotdogs as the war horses charge (Jul 04, 2024)
Assange In Final Battle Against Extradition - Truth and disinformation are a hall of mirrors (Feb 21, 2024)
Can I Vote Against The Bombe? - War's monetary motive in the implosion of nations (Oct 28, 2024)
(2,000 words or about 10 minutes of your company.)
Feb 8, 2025
"I'm not involved… It had been an article of my creed," Thomas Fowler boasts in The Quiet American, Graham Greene's novel of Western descent into the cauldron of 1950s Vietnam.
Fowler is a British journalist, and neutrality is his brand. Not simply a marketing lie, but one that the audience believes because on one level it reinforces the liberal viewer's complicity.
"Not involved... the only sensible position in a world of imperfect options." [1]
And yet the unravelling of USAID is telling a different story: that vast numbers of journalists are on the dole, the handout, the take, in return for telling the establishment version of events.
USAID was funding over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets and 279 "media" NGOs, which includes 90% of the reportage out of Ukraine. It was giving direct donations or buying subscriptions to boost the reach of NPR, the BBC and Politico. [2]
Liberals, who wear their heart on their sleeve, but are ready to change their overcoat at the drop of a hat — when standing up for the freedoms of others costs them personal and financial comfort.
We should identify with Greene's message, as I. S. Berry writes, "that the human and global are hopelessly intertwined."
I would rather stand with the deep state than with the electorate. So said the standard bearer of the neo conservatives.
"The deep state is far preferable to the Trump state," said Bill Kristol.
Kristol is a promoter of the Clash of Civilisations - an endless war that keeps in play the oil-rich lands of South West Asia, aka Middle East, suiting the oiler bankers.
How does this evolve into policy?
The U.S. will always say that it is standing with Israel even though prof Jeffrey Sachs says the Democratic Party lost the election largely because of the appearance that the Biden administration had lost national control of its foreign policy.
The current scandal is USA-ID, or USAIDs, so rendered in any number of memes.
The serious point is that the U.S. is wedded to a policy of taking out governments in SW Asia (Mid East) as General Wesley Clarke described in "seven countries in five years."
So far Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon have been checked off, leaving Iran.
Which raises the question: what is the point of regime change?
As we'll see, even the think tanks that form the thinking muscles of the deep state, are not agreed on the benefits.
Three USA-IDsNinety per cent of the alt media in countries that the U.S. envies or despises, are financed by the U.S. government.
Russia Today was banned in much of the West because it is state funded media. It turn out that not just the Western legacy media but much of the alternative media is on the payroll of the U.S. government or its proxies.
The $60 billion USAIDs behemoth does some grounded, charitable work: clean water, tents for refugees etc.
However it is an instrument of foreign policy: it helps those who help the USA.
Thirdly it is the deep state. It funds Color Revolution and the alternative media that "springs up on demand when a government needs to be otherthrown," as Sachs says.
Closing USA-ID if only temporarily has exposed how much of the "alt" media and the charity sector is on the deep state payroll.
Greene viewOn one level, diplomats and agencies pry open countries so that corporations can sell more goods. It is little different, superficially, to how McDonald's or Coke sell their products.
When effecting whole-of-society change, the hypothesis, methods and outcomes are more complex than Coca-Cola profiting while target nations shoulder the burden of childhood obesity.
Some argue that missionaries produce the same by product of Westernising, though with a different goal.
In an already globalised world, however, the reach of commerce or scripture hardly require nations to fall. The purpose of regime change is more abstruse.
For the perpetrators it must by fun, flying from one country to the next, overthrowing governments, without knowing the people or the language, yet forthright in the vagueness of one's cause.
This is what Graham Greene captured in his 1950s novel The Quiet American. The character of the title, Alden Pyle (said to be based an officer of the Economic Aid Mission, suspected by the French to be a cover for the CIA) seeks to save democracy in late-colonial Vietnam.
See Eurasia note #64 - From Coup To War, Ukraine's Historical Parallel - Past interventions have some ominous implications as to the intent of 'the players (Nov 01, 2022)
Though not noticeably religious, Pyle — a Harvard graduate of government theory, like Henry Kissinger and Klaus Schwab — is zealous, "obtuse and destructive" according to contemporary criticism.
Although U.S. readers considered Greene's book a sleight, the diplomatic community took note and a cautionary tale, The Ugly American, would be published three years later depicting the failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Southeast Asia. It became required reading.
Today we still witness Harvard graduates of government theory, such as Klaus Schwab, with their wrecking balls, building back better.
Plus ça changeIn Georgia, in the Caucasus, you may bump into American missionaries occasionally but theirs is not the righteousness you'll find motivating the students on their midnight rambles of street protest.
There is an overlap between some missionaries and the CIA - see Defending Democracy Together Institute and Mormon Women For Ethical Government.
The modern day Pyle, however, is not carrying a copy of York Harding's 'The Role of the West.' He is Woke.
Who decided that LGBTQ2IA+ and diversity, equity and inclusion mirrors the nation of Georgia which they seek to change?
Greene's theme throughout The Quiet American is the tragic consequence of blundering, unknowing foreign interference.
The rise and fall of powers leads to the construction of hypotheses: to explain history and to approach the future.
To quote Harold Sprout of Princeton University (Geopolitical Hypotheses in Technological Perspective, 2011):
"One characteristic of most of these activities has been a persistent search for the "master variable" that would provide a simple yet plausible and satisfying basis for explaining or predicting the ordering of political relationships among nations."
In practice there is no one hypotheses but a series of hypotheses - and the process of technological or social change brings on attrition, as well as the observer effect - in scientific terms the act of observation alters the behaviour of the particles being observed.
The foreign agent, or Pyle, is an imperfectly chosen tool, who does an approximate job, while changing prevailing conditions - not least with the bicycle bombing that so outraged American readers.
A series of hypotheses gives us not only different yardsticks by which to select options in the present; it gives us a vision of different world maps, not just ethnographic, topographic but in space and time.
We still seek to identify universal values, as did Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) that give us a framework to approach multitudinous nations.
In his era the spread of European commerce around the globe drove mercantilists to seek a universal language of trade - seen in the work of Adam Smith.
The East India Company college in Hertfordshire provided an education "fitted to the training of East India Company recruits prior to their departure for India."
Will the public get to see debate on this level? Will they have a say in the policy that follows?
Does it work?The objection to regime change is partly empirical. The American Conservative wrote in 2017 that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya were evidence of a failed strategy.
It isn't a strategy, though. It's merely a tactic or, strictly, two: foreign funding to destabilise a government, or economic blockade followed by military invasion.
We have seen the Taliban in Afghanistan replaced with the Taliban, and Syria split between Israel, Turkey and al-Qaeda.
Illogic of changeThe target is declared hostile because it does not lay itself open to free trade with Western corporations, or is protectionist of national assets, or its political system is intolerable to neighbours.
The first example was Iran, with the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953. Incoming decades Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria would follow. Largely secular states were overthrown by foreign destabilisation or military force. In no case was change democratic.
In each case some group complains about human rights violations which allows the U.S. to intervene and install a new fellow, who then deliver real human rights violations.
Moneycircus is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Each region was turned, whole or in part, into religious-dominated fiefdoms. This while the global elitist institutions - the UN and such - claim they are committed to "world interfaith harmony" and even a one-world church.
It is an abuse of trust - of the regional hegemon and, above all, of the target population, who never get the promised fruits of democracy.
The Western Atlantic alliance creates ever more bodies to advertised the promised democracy - the National Endowment for Democracy, Alliance of Democracies Foundation, the Democratic Order Initiative, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the Western Balkans Democracy Initiative... you can see where this is going.
Many of these are funded by USAID and the U.S. State Department, including the National Democratic Institute and the Bureau of Democracy. Many more don't have democracy in their title but work in the same orbit: Human Rights, and Labor, the Middle East Partnership Initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation etc.
One of the latest is the European Democracy Shield. This is supposedly just a talking shop on how to strengthen the public's resilience to disinformation and to combat foreign manipulation of information. [3]
It fits, however, into the glove of the NATO;the "soft power" by which NATO seeks to wage hybrid war — as much on its own population as on foreign enemies.
NATO created with the Pentagon and Britain's Ministry of Defence, along with the European Commission, a political warfare infrastructure based in Germany, Ukraine and the Baltic states, as described by Mike Benz.
See Assange In Final Battle Against Extradition - Truth and disinformation are a hall of mirrors (Feb 21, 2024)
Can I Vote Against The Bombe? - War's monetary motive in the implosion of nations (Oct 28, 2024)
In the Western Balkans the above named proponents of democracy annulled the Romanian election, excluded overseas ballots in Moldova's vote, and seemingly tried to assassinate the Slovakian prime minister.
The European Commission shoe-horns Georgia into the Western Balkans, which is why we witness a "democracy initiative" underway in Tbilisi.
It is easy to miss the intent of regime change. Instead we are lured into Monty Python's Argument Clinic - and a tennis match of gain saying.
This leads us to seek verification from the past, at the expense of focus on the present.
The NED is the spawn of organisations set up after WW2 to "market democracy."
The phrase captures the economic objectives behind marketing Western "values" as a means to pry open more traditional societies for profit.
The CATO institute suggests five incentives behind regime change:
the powers' predilection for quick, cheap and easy short term solutions - "who will rid me of this turbulent priest";
the opposition leaders in the target country make the objective seem easy and worthwhile - mainly because they profit from it;
policymakers' cognitive bias leads them to dismiss the downsides;
covert operatives like the CIA focus on the job in hand, and consider the task completed with the overthrow;
the delusion that a new political incumbent will change the socio-cultural expectations and pressures. [4]
Moneycircus is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
[1] I. S. Berry, May 2023, Crime Reads - What The Quiet American Teaches Us
[2] RSF, Feb 2025 - Trump's foreign aid freeze throws journalism around the world into chaos
[3] Special committee on the European Democracy Shield, Feb 4, 2025
[4] CATO Institute, 2020 - The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: The Failure of Regime-Change Operations
Only now do leaders acknowledge what the scale of Gaza's destruction implies
USA-ID scandal unrolls like toilet wipe: Politico, BBC got millions
Is Musk's efficiency drive gaining him access to profitable government data?
Big money moves on Bitcoin - to profit or to limit the off ramps?
Related:
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Gaza Depopulation Plan Revealed By Intel Leak - Israel leverages U.S. to finance the deportation and resettlement of Palestinians (Oct 30, 2023)
From Welfare State To Communitarianism - Pensions and Medicare to go; replaced by digital allowance. Food rationing is a pretext (Aug 02, 2022)
(1,400 words or about seven minutes of your company.)
Feb 6, 2025
Crisis one - Gaza RivieraTrump's spending freeze hits spending on CIA's foreign intervention
Comes weeks after CIA's MK-Ultra psychological experiments exposed
USAID being folded into State Department; this won't end its activities
Trump may shift foreign policy back to one based upon spheres of influence
Instead of value-based policy that seeks to intervene based on Woke ideology
Agents invoke 'tactical Wokeness' to rouse resentment and street protest
Georgians labour for Asian wages while paying European prices
Desire for improvement is just, but protest organisers vague about objectives
As Ukrainians found out after their 2014 Euromaidan protest
Series:
USAID Regime Change Revealed - Eurasia note #105: Georgia's Color Revolution (Feb 04, 2025)
USAID Files Expose Knot In West's Throat - Graham Greene killed the do-gooder in Vietnam (Feb 08, 2025)
USAID's Fist In A Velvet Glove - Cass Sunstein's malevolent hand (Feb 09, 2025)
Related:
A Century Of Control Condensed - From MK-Ultra to eugenics (Jan 28, 2025)
Can Less War Mean More Liberty? - As Trump seeks success abroad, keep watch at home (Jan 16, 2025)
What Is This Europe That Georgia Would Join? (May 7, 2024)
Manoeuvres In Georgia; The Opposition's Plan (May 3, 2024)
(2,200 words or about 11 minutes of your company)
Tbilisi, Feb 4, 2025
UPDATE: Edited for clarity, 2/5/25.
It has been a bad week for Washington's premier international agencies, the non-profits that propagate "democratic values" around the world.
The top two are the United States Agency for International Development (USAID, est 1961) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED, est 1983).
USAID has one foot in the voluntary world, established by president John F Kennedy in 1961, who also created the Peace Corps.
Growing up in Latin America in diplomatic circles, these staffers and voluneteers populated my parents' social life in Brazil in the 1960s, where a military dictatorship had seized power two years before we decamped in R. Barão de Jaguaripe.
See: Jabbed At Gunpoint: Tropical Mémoire - Jim Jones was a CIA red flag: was it a dress rehearsal? (Nov 05, 2021
Kennedy had established the Alliance for Progress to boost economic cooperation with southern America.
Independent researchers and human rights activists know USAID and NED are used by the CIA but also politicians to avoid accountability keep activities in the dark.
It was president Donald Trump's spending freeze that confirmed the link: regime change artistes around the world started complaining the moment the money spigot was shut, if only temporarily.
Senator Chris Murphy revealed USAID's role in regime change on CNN, saying "Congress writes a law that dictates how USAID spends money to counter Chinese influence in Africa to make sure we don't lose access to critical minerals…"
Of course, the NED denies its connection to intelligence. See the correspondence between the Grayzone and NED communications VP Leslie Aun.
The CIA's regime change operations have been shared with stand alone "charities" since they were exposed in the Congressional assassination hearings of the 1970s.
It marked the start of the NGO boom: the "third sector" in which non-profits and private foundations make policy and fund operations outside the government structures.
After the latest confirmation of the CIA's MK-Ultra psychological experiments (by George Washington University's National Security Archive), the mask has been ripped off CIA spending on foreign intervention.
See A Century Of Control Condensed - From MK-Ultra to billionaire eugenics (Jan 28, 2025)
Already there are complaints that the shortage of cash is hurting in Georgia, in the Caucasus, where EU and U.S.-backed protestors are attempting a Color Revolution ™.
The freeze led to complaints in the "independent" press in Georgia which is largely funded by the above two agencies.
Economic conditions mean it's impossible for most news sites to survive without benefactors. If you write in favour of Color Revolution you can make a good living from the powers that be. If you expose hypocrisy, you'll scrape by.
Moneycircus is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The journal Georgia Today noted on Jan 30 that USAID money had been "particularly critical, supporting the country's ongoing development."
The Tbilisi protests began over a law that would make NGOs reveal their globalist funders — not at all ironic.
Money spiderThe spider's web of U.S. agencies is nothing new. For decades they have been as unaccountable as they are well funded. By routing their grants through shell organisations they have made the "soft power" operation almost impenetrable.
Charities cannot be divided into saints and sinners. They may be rigorous on this issue, complicit on that, and they probably don't pay attention to how much of their funding is coming from governments.
As a 40 year network journalist I can say that even among the most honest investigators there will be topics where few dare to tread. Most network correspondents may do competent work but there will come a tap on the shoulder and they will report what they're told. Producers write what comes off the Reuters or AFP wire. Covid was an example.
That is why you should choose your sources of information judiciously.
There are signs that Trump seeks to shift foreign policy back to one based upon spheres of influence in order to contain the spread of war.
See Can Less War Mean More Liberty? - As Trump seeks success abroad, keep watch at home (Jan 16, 2025)
This is in contrast to a the much more friendly-sounding values-based, humanitarian or ethical foreign policy. But when Western governments claim a "right to protect" any population, wheresoever, they are claiming the right to intervene based less on international law than their own assessments and claims.
Charities or NGOs — supposedly independent voices from the field — supply the pretext to call upon Right to Protect (R2P) and they may manipulate events on the ground to justify that policy, or at least do nothing to upset their funding stream.
Under the guise of providing humanitarian aid, USAID could get into regions that foreign military or government diplomats could not.
A compliant media would promote the narrative and portray the victim-du-jour as righteous and beyond reproach.
The "White Helmets" of Syrian civil defence are one such example — presented as organic, grass roots but in fact set up by former British Army officer James Le Mesurier and funded in part by the British Foreign Office.
Georgia's protestsDaily protests in the country of Georgia have been continuous for more than two months.
Well-meaning citizens gather outside parliament by day, strollers draped with European, NATO and Georgian flags. Black-hoodie Antifa types emerge at night to do intermittent battle with police.
What's emerged from the USAID scandal, and previous reporting, is that the organisation amplifies those divisions within society that are easiest to inflame: generational, Woke, LGBTQ2IA+ or racial, as in Bangladesh last August (see below).
That is why you see, with respect, niche issues dominate the television news as people shriek and police prowl around them.
The misrepresentation on both sides has been reported in previous articles.
See Eurasia note 102 - Politicians Fail Georgia's Youth - Objectives & hopes not articulated as leaders play dumb (Dec 04, 2024)
Politicians have flown in from Brussels and lied about who determines Georgia's accession to the EU:
international observers did NOT find last October's elections to have more faults than usual;
the European Union and the U.S. interfered before those elections with sanctions and freezing of aid;
the European Commission, not Georgia, first suspended talks on membership;
Georgia's foreign agent Transparency Law is similar to U.S. FACTA and is not especially a Russian law.
That's not to whitewash the government but simply to set the record straight. The real objectives of the protests are unstated, as we'll see below.
European politicians are entitled to urge support for their NATO wars, but this is what makes USAID's underhand manipulation so nefarious.
Dark historyPresident Kennedy created by Executive Order a civilian agency USAID to assist economic development in poorer countries, working in the humanitarian, disaster relief and health sectors. Nowadays it is active in climate change and, when called upon, regime change.
Trump signs 25%+ tariffs on Canadian, Mexican, Chinese exports to U.S.
Tariffs are a policy tool and their merit depends on objectives
Selective and defensive, they serve a purpose
2010s saw an upsurge in talk of protectionism; now it has happened
Other countries should refocus their economic strategy
They might find a way out of the dead end of degrowth
Related:
Europe Sold Out By Own Elites - Sacrificed in U.S. contest with Asia (Nov 10, 2024)
Pirates, Privateers And Merchant Adventurers (Aug 15, 2023)
(1,700 words or about 10 minutes of your company).
Feb 2, 2025
It's been a long time coming. We thought trade wars would break out in response to president Barack Obama's tariffs, and in the aftermath of the 2008 crash.
President Donald Trump imposed a 25 per cent levy on most goods imported from Canada — vehicle and auto parts, lumber, seafood, potash — and 10 per cent on its top export, energy. Eighty per cent of Mexico's exports go to the U.S., including cars, computers, televisions and household appliances. The largest increase for China is on electric vehicles (100 per cent), steel and aluminium, semiconductors and solar cells.
Trump says he wants to curb fentanyl and illegal entrants to the U.S.. He's using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a much faster path to sanctions than using trade laws.
First thingsOne should be asking, what's your economic strategy.
We've been duped by the 'greater good' to de-industrialise; overlooking human productivity that could make big government unneccesary.
Tariffs often lead to knee-jerk accusations of protectionism, as in the 2010s when Obama launched a case against China, accusing it of shielding its refining of raw earth minerals.
There were fears of a tit-for-tat response, just as we see after the orders of president Trump.
Protectionism can make sense when a nation is developing its capacity in a competitive area, as we'll see below. Tariffs can help rebuild essential industries, like those exposed when supply chains broke down during Covid
Trump has a number of objectives, such as persuading countries to take back illegal entrants to the U.S., and encouraging corporations to switch production to the U.S..
In 1971 president Richard Nixon imposed a short-lived 10 per cent import tax, across the board. He used the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act and introduced it on the same day he ended the dollar's convertibility into gold, to incentivise trading partners to use floating exchange rates, and ensure that the ensuing money flows did not shackle American industries. Some see a striking similarity.
As a strategy to boost domestic energy production, it's unlikely to work, says commodities analyst Tracy Shuchart of Hilltower Resource Advisors. The shale industry is much less nimble than in 2016, since the industry has seen consolidation, she told Tom Luongo. [1]
The media frames tariffs as an offence to "free trade." That's from a media largely owned by big corporations that abandon their country of origin for the cheapest labour and lowest taxes - as they are entitled to do.
All the great industrial powers used tariffs in their time to build up their industries, embracing free trade only when they could profit even more through their efficiency over rivals.
Larry Elliot's Guardian article, From Edward III to Alexander Hamilton: history's biggest protectionists, provides a neat historical summary. [2]
The real debate should not be about tariffs but the kind of economy we want.
The economist Adam Smith, a towering figure of the eighteenth century Scottish Enlightenment, used the metaphor, "the invisible hand" to claim that free trade creates incentives that benefit the greater good.
He described free trade in moral terms - but a moral order that was largely beyond human understanding.
Greater good"Nature has directed us to the greater part of these by original and immediate instincts. Hunger, thirst, the passion which unites the two sexes, and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for their own sakes, and without any consideration of their tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director of nature intended to produce by them." — Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
Readers will recognise that the "greater good" is left to "the great Director of nature."
This century we are told that Gaia will take care of the greater good, so long as we honour her by starving the people of heat, food and fuel in the name of climate change.
This Green goddess is inadequate to the role, however; her measures are the opposite of the greater good since they explicitly reduce abundance, rather than powering a more productive society across the board.
Western politicians decrying Trump's tariffs have pursued degrowth, the de-industrialisation of their countries, by deliberately turning off the spigots of traditional energy before wind and solar are ready (if ever) to take up the slack. Having stopped digging coal, they chop down forests on the other side of the world, to feed their subsidised "biomass" power stations.
See Europe Sold Out By Own Elites - Sacrificed in U.S. contest with Asia (Nov 10, 2024)
A leading critic of Net Zero is co-founder of Greenpeace Dr Patrick Moore. It was another Moore, Michael, who supported the Jeff Gibbs documentary, Planet Of The Humans (2020) which asked essential questions — not about climate change but the honesty of the policy response. [3]
The point, perhaps, is not to argue over the "greater good" but to take a material approach based in the process of physical science; which is to acknowledge human power over nature through our adaptive learning.
Does an interest in Gaia conflict with husbandry of the Earth? Only if you insist on their incompatibility.
What links JFK, MK-Ultra, cancer research, Auschwitz, Nuremberg, Stargate?
100 years of unhinged oligarchs pursuing power
Same families involved in opposing Trump nominees Patel, Gabbard, Kennedy
Trump shocks MAGA by promoting billionaire mRNA bio-identity profiteers
George Washington University reveals trove of MK-Ultra documents
Even a broken clock is right when history comes around
Related:
The CIA And The Elephant In The Room - Agency's role exposed by colluding with Fauci on Covid origins (Oct 02, 2023)
Artificial Intelligence, Digital ID And Depopulation - Worldcoin and life in an app (Aug 01, 2023)
Depopulation Article Ignites Debate Over Complicity - Bestselling psychologist said to have shifted blame from perpetrators to victims (Jan 02, 2023)
Hawaii's Deep State Billionaires - 'Made men,' the creation of defence and intel agencies, are appropriating the islands (Sep 4, 2023)
Race Against Time As Bankers Circle - Building BRICS to counter policy of feudal degrowth (Oct 11, 2024)
Globalism, Socialism, Fascism, Feudalism (Sep 19, 2022)
(2,500 words or about 14 minutes of your company)
Jan 28 2025
Stars align. Trump promises to release all documents relating to the JFK assassination. A trove of MK-Ultra files is published about the testing of behaviour-altering drugs on unsuspecting Americans.
Larry Ellison, the latest tech billionaire turned amateur physician, snagged taxpayer money for his "Stargate" project, which is about much more than personalised mRNA injections.
We haven't had a full accounting for the Covid mRNA shots. Yet another Auschwitz anniversary has passed, the 80th since its liberation. And you're still not allowed to mention the Nuremberg Code.
In any practical sense, the Nürnberger Kodex, which banned experiments without consent, was allowed to lapse some time around the pandemic in 2020.
Even a broken clock is right when history comes around.
Otto Heinrich Warburg, of the banking family, had helped start the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (est 1911) along with the Rockefellers, and from 1914 headed the research centre for cell physiology. Otto Warburg's interest was cancer.
Rockefeller at the time owned most of the U.S. pharma industry through his development of petro-ceuticals and the takeover of American medical education in order to suppress alternatives.
I.G. Farben, the world's biggest oil and drug cartel, was formed by the 1925 merger with Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey, and financed by National City Bank (later Citibank).
Paul Warburg was chair of Farben's U.S. subsidiary: American I.G. Chemical Company at the time of his death in 1932. Max Warburg, brother of Paul, was the key financier in Germany, helping to create the largest industrial holding in the world.
The scale of this oil and drug combine cannot be underestimated. The summary of the indictment from Nuremberg suggested that without I.G. Farben, Germany could not have fought WWII.
Bayer's merger with Monsanto in 2018 largely restored the might of the former I.G. Farben.
Not to flatter the Warburgs but they were more than prominent. Perhaps the Schiff family had largely exhausted themselves running the Bolshevik revolution.
When it came to deciding which Nazi-aligned families got to keep their corporations after WW2 (like the Quandts) the decision fell to Anglo-German banker and interrogation officer Eric Warburg, according to his daughter Marie, in Remarks On My Father Eric M. Warburg.
"At the end of the dinner, Jack McCloy asked my father to draw up a list within 48 hours of those industries which should be spared from demolition. My father provided the list, and Jack McCloy subsequently put in great efforts to convince the U.S. and the Allies that this was ultimately the right policy to pursue." [1]
See Globalism, Socialism, Fascism, Feudalism (Sep 19, 2022)
The influence of the German-American research institutes on world history is immense. You might even wonder if they brought us Covid.
LSD had been synthesised in Germay in 1943 and would be central to the CIA's behavioural modification experiments in the 1950s and 60s.
German and Austrian medical researchers would move to the U.S. and work with American counterparts like Alton Ochsner. At Tulane University in New Orleans his team researched SV-40 virus in the hope a creating a biological warfare agent.
Dr Mary Sherman, David Ferrie and a young prodigy Judyth Vary Baker (who was romantically involved with Lee Harvey Oswald, see Lee and Me, 2010) were experimenting with "polyoma virus," so named because it induced multiple tumours in mice.
See Dr Mary's Monkey by Edward Haslam (2014).
Both Pfizer and Moderna Covid injections also alleged to have DNA contamination and Pfizer's Covid injection is said to contain SV40 promoters.
Incidentally, inflamation around the spinal column, often blamed on polio, was also caused by the spraying of DDT against malaria, as the WHO recommended in the 1950s and 60s. DDT was made by... Monsanto.
Auschwitz, a simplified pronunciation of the Polish Oświęcim, was a labour camp for the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border.
A director on the board of CSSC was Prescott Bush, father of George H.W. Bush, and grandfather to Dubya.
The only person who could not remember where they were on the day of president John F Kennedy's publicly execution was... George H.W. Bush.
Photographs suggest Bush and Lee Oswald were both on Elm Street, Dallas, but that Oswald was standing outside the Book Depository.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote in a memo five days after the assassination that he had been visited by a George Bush of the CIA. The only other George Bush in the CIA at that time was a menial hand in the post room.
To conclude, we no longer have a working Nuremberg Code. But our broken clock has proved surprisingly accurate.
We could go on, but this potted history is a matter of story telling rather than to a full accounting: Astonishing News, Tales of the Bizarre, Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Fear and Loathing in the style of Hunter S Thompson.
There is much more to learn at each station of this black mass.
One is the connection of a relatively small number of families. The same names who suppressed the investigation of these events in the 1970s, are the same perpetrating them today.
Trump's comments to WEF broadly align with its industrial objectives
The difference is his focus on national, rather than supra-national, interest
Massive energy needs of AI may force Davos to loosen its focus on climate change
Two narratives clashed. AI is going to save the world; renewable energy not much
How did self-strangulation or asphyxia became an economic policy?
Is climate a distraction from reconfiguring energy in ways that are not yet clear?
Related:
Not Enough Minerals For Green Energy - Putting the D in population (Sep 08, 2022)
From Welfare State To Communitarianism - Pensions and Medicare to go; replaced by digital allowance. Food rationing is a pretext (Aug 02, 2022)
The Great Replacement Of Everything - Dollar, Western civilisation sidelined: what gives? (Jul 21, 2024)
Great Reset Exposed As Replacement - Globalists have nowhere to hide (Oct 22, 2024)
(2,700 words or about 13 minutes of your company)
UPDATE:
Wow, looks like we were absolutely on the money.
WELT reveals unprecedented break with policy. Instead of climate change, the focus is now on easing the burden on the economy.
https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/plus255235456/Das-Ende-des-Green-Deal-die-neue-Agenda-fuer-den-Standort-Europa.html
The end of the Green Deal – the new agenda for Europe as a business location.
Jan 24, 2025
Trump may be providing an exit from the climate ramp. It seems plain that the globalists' latest AI obsession is incompatible with their long-running carbon ogre.
When they dreamed up the New Ice Age in the 1950s and 60s, artificial intelligence was niche science.
The heirs of Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann managed the population through narratives, nudges and winks.
Cybernetics was a future dream because they didn't have the computing power. Now is reality but it requires tons of energy.
When the New Ice Age failed to arrive in the late 20th century they replaced it with Global Warming. But whatever the flavour of climate crisis, frappucino or spice latte, they cannot avoid the growing need for vast energy capacity.
Renewables cannot do it; wind and solar are not a joke, they're an insult. AI algorithms and cybernetic control of the masses needs oil, gas, coal, nuclear and more.
How to transition? Europe's Ursula or America's O'Biden would not admit they had trodden the dead end of energy rationing.
They needed the contrarian "other" that would recklessly abandon climate change, pull out of the Paris Accords (vague platitudes anyway) for a second time — a double crime against humanity by Orange Man Bad.
Thus we could have our AI, and feel that we had done our best for the climate, while enjoying our cars and phones, with their cobalt mined by children, as we ignored their and our own digital slavery.
It's the one-two punch. Don't even grace it with academic verbiage like dialectic. It is two thieves, one attracting your attention to the starving puppy while the other picks your pocket.
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We have examined president Donald Trump's foreign policy and domestic options. Yesterday he spoke to the World Economic Forum, remotely.
He addressed complaints that regulations and taxes in the EU are too high. The chairman of French energy giant Total spoke of its investment in Texas as the world's largest LNG player. He asked for guarantees of supply from U.S. to Europe.
Under emergency declaration Trump will double the energy available in the U.S. for artificial intelligence (AI) to be as big as it needs to compete with China.
The objective is power plants off grid, dedicated to data centres. Trump described copying the Chinese practice of nearby coal plants as back up.
So far, so good for the WEF's corporate backers.
The net zero project fits hand in glove with other proposals to fully control the human population. If previous experiments with Utopias that tout equity have taught us anything, it is that "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
As Dr Oliver Tearle has observed, George Orwell's example of doublethink "contains a grain of sense which allows the bigger lie to flourish." The pigs are equal among themselves while other animals are repressed and given barely enough food to survive.
See From Welfare State To Communitarianism - Pensions and Medicare to go; replaced by digital allowance. Food rationing is a pretext (Aug 02, 2022)
But Trump also set an objective of 15 per cent tax for companies that manufacture in the U.S.. In the Davos-friendly European Union tax competition is frowned upon; they favour harmonised taxes.
Regarding China he wanted an answer to the $1.2 trillion trade deficit as of 2023. As we shall see in this article, the U.S. has never liked deficits, and president Barack Obama also put pressure on Germany and China, though with less success than Trump.
"I would like to meet with president Putin to stop that war as soon as possible. There are so many young people being killed in this war. We have mad a lot of progress in the Middle East and we hope that is going to come along as well."
Trump has a dislike of the war business. Having cut his teeth in New York where he worked with all kinds, it's as if the good side of the mob rubbed off on him: you make your money, but there are certain things you do not do. Above all, you don't harm the children or slaughter the youth.
Stoke like ChinaHe wants nuclear reduction talks with Russia in particular, but also with China.
Ouch, he told the CEO of Bank of America to grant bank accounts to Conservatives instead of debanking people for their politics - "because what you are doing is wrong."
To keep the reader entertained, and move swiftly on, this article is in two parts.
Will the WEF step aside from its focus on climate change, as the contradictions of AI and renewable energy become evermore clear?
Secondly, how did we reach a point where self-strangulation or asphyxia became an economic policy — were the people are being acclimatised to austerity?
We are talking about the WEF because it is meeting now. It is the most public platform of centralisers, although there is the Council on Foreign Relations-Chatham House, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group (run by mostly the same people) and that's ignoring the hundreds of (non) governmental organisations, charities and philanthropies that profit in whole or part from taxpayer funds while promoting an agenda on behalf of a small, entitled portion of society.
Lost whalesYou wondered, perhaps, how the environmental movement went off track, from the days when Greenpeace would save the whales, to the present slaughter of whales by wind farm construction. And how we were schooled like fish to separate our waste for recycling (plastic they just burn) while governments did little about pollution?
The History Forum has the answer:
"In the early 1970s, a different kind of climate worry took hold: global cooling. As more people became concerned about pollutants people were emitting into the atmosphere, some scientists theorized the pollution could block sunlight and cool Earth."
So pollution became good! And "save the whales"? To hell with them. [1]
I don't believe this rewriting of history for a moment. But it is true that the evolving needs (obsessions) of society do affect what we (care to) worry about.
That's happening now with artificial intelligence. Governments are so keen on it that they are beginning to throw climate change overboard.
Perhaps we'll start worrying about pollution and saving the whales again.
Shooting tigersAs a child I only joined two organisations: Baden-Powell's Cub Scouts and the World Wildlife Fund. It was a few short years after the WWF had been founded in Switzerland in 1961. It was the latest thing, along with the Moon landings — our planet and its Satellite of Love.