Gold has hit $4,000 an ounce and if I was a member of the global ruling class or a pal of Judge Napolitano, I would certainly have bought a lot of the bright stuff by now and have hidden it somewhere safe, like a long way away from the likes of HSBC, Pat Bondi or James Comey, and securely stuffed under a stack of dirty washing in the garage.
Because I am not a Western economist, I would for some time now have monitored the progress of the SCO and the BRICS towards non-dollar denominated trade. I would also have calculated the economic distortions of US tariff policies and have concluded that no matter where I am, I am better off without trade with the US.
And this week I would have added to these key observations a third namely, that there can be no reasonable hope for Western rationality and that I must therefore look to my own long-term survival albeit under conditions of the utmost peril.
Just as in 2022 Vladimir Putin came to the correct conclusion that there was absolutely no chance the West would cease its relentless provocations in their hope of a plausible justification for the rape and dismemberment of Russia, Russia’s final acceptance this week that Trump is as ineffectual and deranged as he looks, that the political machinery of which he is leader is corroded by a severe, collective, suicidal, mental illness - possibly the product of excessive plutocratic intermarriage - does not bode well for the cause of peace.
This is coupled with the equally alarming realization that the Europeans remain bamboozled by their own nauseating cocktail of arrogance, misinformation and self-righteousness, and will never cease their relentless prattle about how they must defend themselves against a monster of their own steamy imaginations.
Some voices in Moscow and Beijing should now be advising their leaderships, just as they did in Moscow in 2022, that absent some credible, verifiable climbdown from US Neocon Hegemony this nightmare is never going to go away, this will never end. War will come, and if you sit back and wait for it, it will eat you alive. We cannot be sure, these voices may say, that things are going to be more or less favorable to our interests one year, or five, or ten years into the future - very likely less favorable if we give our opponents time to re-arm and modernize their pathetically depleted stocks, manpower and budgets - but now, right now, is a very good time to strike.
America is plunging into fascism and civil war. Could this be a tad distracting for the Neocons? You bet! They are running out of TNT and even cotton for their artillery. They knew this over a year ago and they STILL haven’t been able to resolve the crisis. Because it cannot produce the number it needs for all its proxy bunnies around the world, the US has to lean on Israel and the Dutch to supply Patriot missiles to Ukraine, of which Ukrainians need two for every time they try and shoot down a Russian missile at a cost to the West of $2 million.
The US is trying its best to look tough and mean (but absurdly over-extended) as it ramps up for war with Iran on the false pretext that Iran is a threat to Israel, the false pretext that Venezuela is killing Americans with drugs (no, that’s America that’s doing that), and the false pretext that American security requires a Taiwan that is no longer part of the One China that is the only China that either the US or the UN recognize.
A very good time, then, when Hungary’s leader says the EU will soon collapse, Slovakia is equally disenchanted, the new leader of the Czech Republic signals an end to the flow of Czech artillery munitions to Ukraine, when there are rumors of nuclear weapons for Poland, a deindustrializing and high energy cost Germany struggles to lift its fighting forces, at huge expense and borrowing cost to a remotely credible level, and the so-called Far Right looks set to crush the Salafist (i.e. extremist) “Centre” in France and Germany, Britain just cannot stop looking, sounding and acting like a public school fag in a Rudyard Kipling novel, and when Europe’s great offensive against the misleadingly named Russian “shadow fleet” ends up with the detention by the French of one vessel that they then have to release for lack of evidence.
Can this bunch of dangerous Keystone Cop loonies be any less competent than they are now? Well, why would you want to bet on it? Putin at Valdai sounded like he had made a rational bet on the ultimate possibility of Western rationality, but in the relative absence, I would argue, of rational justification for such a bet in favor of reason.
For the prosecution, let us examine the case of Syria, whose head-chopping, self-appointed, terrorist, Erdogan puppet was drooled over with sycophancy last week by former CIA director David Petraeus.
The forces led by this sewer creature spawned by the likes of the CIA, MI6, Turkey, Qatar, Al Qaeda and ISIS have been busily massacring Alawite, Christian, Druze and other minorities in Syria. Amidst these war crimes the illegal, self-appointed President, propped up by Erdogan, Trump and Netanyahu - Jolani Al Sewer - has arranged (this past weekend) “elections” of which few Syrians were aware and in which few actual citizens participated. This was because the “electors” are either appointed by Jolani himself or are appointed by committees whose members Jolani has selected. The result is a parliament made up almost entirely of Sunnis, barely any women, and no representation of the Druze or of two Kurdish regions.
By contrast the political system overseen by the Assads in the period leading to the CIA’s Timber Sycamore regime change operation of the 2010s was a model of democracy with regular elections and political parties (even Communist) and fairly inclusive representation. Did I say it was perfect? No, of course not. It’s brutalities were somewhat less sickening than those of the Arab monarchies and autocracies that are utterly dependent on a corrupt and amoral Western imperial protectorate but who rushed to defend the cause of Syrian “democracy” in 2011. Assad’s Syria was constructed on the basis of robust principles of Arab solidarity, socialism and secularism. The advantage of a system whose roots were in Alawite-Shia communities was that it gave a decent measure of security to Syrian minorities, those same minorities now being massacred by the Sewer, and was wide open to opportunities for the majority Sunnis - except when relatively small bands of these were seduced by the Muslim Brotherhood and it’s ilk into murderous and Salafist uprisings against the Assads in 1980 and 2010.
Now Israel, supposedly in some kind of collaboration with Jolani, occupies the south of Syria (“protecting” the Druze), bombs Syria with impunity, just as it has been doing now for years, first against Hezbollah and Iranian militia (there at Assad’s request) now against who exactly knows?
It is pals with the Kurdish, pro-US SDF (who, surprise, surprise, are baulking at their absorption into the Syrian army) and likely to be moving as we speak against pro-Iranian militia in Iraq, as Israel pursues its aspiration for a Greater Israel that may one day absorb part of Saudi Arabia (though, take note. now within Pakistani nuclear umbrella) as it ramps up for the coming next strike on Iran, a county which seems almost perversely unable to avoid projecting weakness.
Erdogan is of course extremely nervous about Israel’s affiliations with the Kurds of northern and north-eastern Syria, even if he thinks he is defanging the Kurdish “threat” in Turkey itself (frankly, I dont believe it) but can likely see big advantages to a weakened Iran that will allow more forceful Turkish advance of its interests towards Azerbaijan and into Uyghur China.
If China and Russia see a possibly not-to-be repeated moment of opportunity for a transformational, geopolitical upheaval at this juncture that would be surprising and unlikely. But it could be a lot more rational than many of the alternatives.
'Some voices in Moscow and Beijing should now be advising their leaderships, just as they did in Moscow in 2022, that absent some credible, verifiable climbdown from US Neocon Hegemony this nightmare is never going to go away, this will never end. War will come, and if you sit back and wait for it, it will eat you alive. We cannot be sure, these voices may say, that things are going to be more or less favorable to our interests one year, or five, or ten years into the future - very likely less favorable if we give our opponents time to re-arm and modernize their pathetically depleted stocks, manpower and budgets - but now, right now, is a very good time to strike.'
I reached this position some months ago - BUT it is also a propaganda war at this stage. The key thing is to wait until the US makes a move against Iran and then begin to escalate things. The growing resentment within the USA against Trump will divide that house. In Europe we have mismanagement - but there is no real political opposition to the neo-cons yet. The vast majority of people are just spectators over increasing turmoil and are unlikely to rally behind their governments and support war. If Russia and China can be united and seen to be reacting to a warlike west, then combined they will triumph. What you need to do is (for the sake of all of us) carry out as detailed an audit as you can about the state of the militaries and their weaponry. My view is that the west is as weak as it ever will be compared to Russia and China at the moment BUT it will re-arm and get stronger. Failing this - just plough ahead.