Doug Macgregor Goes Truth Bombing; Jake On A Rampage

Or maybe carpet bombing with truth bombs? He covers a lot of ground in a new video interview. The entire interview is 46 minutes, and I’ve transcribed some excerpts, but you’ll see from my time marks how much is left out:

Col Douglas Macgregor: An Empire Of Lies

The title comes from an untranscribed portion where he’s talking about the war on Russia, although it applies more broadly:

[16:00] In the US we have a problem with the concept of war. We're like Britain before 1914--war is always something that happens on someone else's soil. The result of this notion is an inflated view of your capabilities. If you go back to Britain before the Boer War and then WW1 there was this attitude that Britain was the preeminent power, they were richer than everyone else, they could do pretty much what they wanted. The Boer War certainly changed a lot of people's views of the world, but even then attitudes didn't change enough--it took WW1 to really make a dent. And that's always been one of my nightmares--that we would stupidly precipitate our involvement in something that could become a world war when there was no reason to. Just like I personally believe that there was no reason for Britain to go to war with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914. Absolutely none. I think it did more to destroy the British Empire, which I think, on the whole, was a positive rather than a negative thing. I worry that we're embarked on a similar course.

But there's good news. Our economy can't keep up. The money printing can't be substituted for low productivity [sic]. So I think the whole financial lie is going to come home to roost just in time to prevent us from embarking on stupidity overseas. The other thing is that our armed forces are in terrible condition. The army is in no position to fight the Russians. I don't think the British army is, either. I think everybody in Europe is aware of that, privately.

So, what do you do if you're a globalist and you're losing? This is the question. Do you do something really stupid? That's what I really worry about. Do we suddenly send forces into Western Ukraine--once the Russians overrun everything in June--in an attempt to somehow hold back the inevitable, thinking that this will somehow impress the Russians? The Russians are not impressed anymore. The Russian people are furious. We should be grateful that Mr. Putin is someone capable of exercising restraint, rather than reacting emotionally. Here we're ruled a lot by emotion. [18:46]

Macgregor provides a rundown on our post Cold War wars, and our reflexive interventionism as he sees it--inserting ourselves into situations better left alone or not respecting legitimate national and cultural differences, trying to change the world to suit our own predilections. That's especially disastrous at this juncture because ...

[22:19] Quite frankly things in the United States are not very good, and haven't been for a very long time. One would think, given the destruction of our country--open borders, the ruination of our economy--everyone forgets that China didn't come to the US and invite everyone to come to China! They didn't force us to export our industries, our scientific and industrial base! All of this was done in 80s and 90s and the early part of this century by people anxious to line their pockets. The elites. The elites have gotten us into real trouble--the question is, what are we gonna do about it? I don't know about a future election. I'm unconvinced that it would mean much. I see a lot of evidence that the Left has established itself in power and has no intentions under any circumstances of ever giving it up.

If you look at the alleged Republicans, with very few exceptions, there's not much difference between them and the Democrats. They're all profiting from the same disaster. The only people suffering in the United States are Americans. Americans are the ones who don't have police protection; Americans are the ones who don't enjoy the Bill of Rights and the protection under it; the Americans are the ones who don't have freedom of speech. It's hard for me to imagine an election working at this stage, especially with all the absentee ballot nonsense. The opportunities there for corruption are unending. The French tried it, didn't work. Several countries in Europe have tried it and threw it out. And treating the requirement to prove your citizenship as some sort of evil action is absurd. So, we've got real problems. [24:10]

[36:30] We [law abiding citizens] are now the enemy in our own country.

I wonder how much longer this can continue before something breaks in a big way. The population is angry.

We're law abiding by nature. We want to make the system work. But increasingly it's becoming obvious that the system doesn't work. It's broken.

We're being overwhelmed—with the collusion of our own government and the media in ways that are leading to our destruction.

I think there's an enormous effort invested in convicting Trump of a felony [to try to derail his candidacy].

Now, Hillary gofer Jake Sullivan, and current National Security Adviser, went to Lefty stronghold Brookings Institution this week to talk about … economics. He gave a long speech outlining what Alexander Mercouris characterizes as Plan B.

Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Renewing American Economic Leadership at the Brookings Institution

The Duran guys discuss this in uncharacteristically brief fashion, but nevertheless have a good time doing so:

The Zhou regime’s Plan A on the economy, says Mercouris, was the usual Dem plan—spend lots and lots of money, most of which would go to buying the support of special interest groups, while focusing much of its energy on bullying foreign demons into submission. Unfortunately for that plan, the war on Russia has exposed the fundamental weakness of the hollowed out US economy. Sanctions on Russia and hawkish rhetoric directed at China have backfired on the US economy. So the regime is now shifting to a hastily slapped together Plan B: renewing America’s industrial base. The problem is, Sullivan provides lots of worn out rhetoric borrowed from Stiglitz and Krugman and Reich, but Plan B lacks any real coherence. If you read between the lines, you can see—even from this brief sample—that it still amounts to the US somehow cobbling together its crumbling global coalition (really, the collective West) around King Dollar while strong arming the rest of the world into compliance with a Rules-Based Order as defined by the US:

And we’re taking another kind of new approach that we think a critical blueprint for the future—linking trade and climate in a way that has never been done before. The Global Arrangement on Steel and Aluminum that we’re negotiating with the European Union could be the first major trade deal to tackle both emissions intensity and over-capacity. And if we can apply it to steel and aluminum, we can look at how it applies to other sectors as well. We can help create a virtuous cycle and ensure our competitors aren’t gaining an advantage by degrading the planet.

Now, for those who have posed the question, the Biden Administration is still committed to the WTO and the shared values upon which it is based: fair competition, openness, transparency, and the rule of law. But serious challenges, most notably nonmarket economic practices and policies, threaten those core values. So that’s why we’re working with so many other WTO members to reform the multilateral trading system so that it benefits workers, accommodates legitimate national security interests, and confronts pressing issues that aren’t fully embedded in the current WTO framework, like sustainable development and the clean-energy transition.

In sum, in a world being transformed by that clean energy transition, by dynamic emerging economies, by a quest for supply chain resilience—by digitization, by artificial intelligence, and by a revolution in biotechnology—the game is not the same.

That’s all rhetoric for the domestic Left and for WEF globalists. As Mercouris points out, a real industrial policy would involve talking to political adversaries to reach some sort of consensus, rather than endlessly demonizing “MAGA Republicans.” It would involve planning ahead for at least ten years. None of that is on the table—it’s obvious that the real idea is to somehow get back to where we were before the crazy war on Russia was started and then pivoting to some sort of economic war on China. Getting back to that privileged hege-maniacal state would require roping the rest of the world back into economic submission. That horse is long since out of the barn, and it’s not coming back. Worse, our international economic relationships are continuing to unravel, along with the status of the dollar.

Mercouris characterizes Sullivan’s speech as “every bit as crazy as Yellen’s” recent speech. It’s almost as if, he says, that the Neocons, having screwed up in Ukraine and having discovered that Putin wasn’t the pushover they thought he’d be, have simply pivoted to China—which is what Mercouris says this speech was really about.

As an example of the problem with this approach, consider this statement by the EU’s foreign policy supremo:

Borrell Says EU Needs Own Policy on China Separate from US

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The European Union should have its own approach toward the ever-strengthening China, regardless of the bloc's close relationship with the United States, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday.

"I think that yes, we, Europeans, we have to have our own way of facing China. On the EU-US-China triangle, we are closer to Washington, certainly, but we have to have our own way and we are working on that," Borrell told a conference in Florence, Sputnik reported.

The chief EU diplomat said at an EU event in Italy entitled "Building Europe in Times of Uncertainty" that the 27-nation bloc should not stand in the way of China's ascent to global power status.

That sounds very much as if, after experiencing the ongoing disaster of the US economic war on Russia, Europe is not about to sign on to a war with China. This puts the EU in direct opposition to the Neocon goals. Further, the rise of China as a global power is now—thanks to the Neocon rage for hegemony—inextribably linked with Russia’s new determination to safeguard its sovereignty. The EU will find—and I’m sure they know this—that their independent China policy will undermine any notion of continued cooperation with the US against Russia. China knows that Russia’s military power is essential to China’s ability to retain its own sovereignty with regard to the US, and the EU knows that Neocon plans to “defeat China” will boomerang against Europe.

As part of this new initiative to construct a global alliance against China Sullivan and Blinken will be traveling to Saudi Arabia, which has pivoted to close relations with the Eurasian bloc of nations: Russia, China, India, Iran. M. K. Bhadrakumar dashes cold water all over this part of the strategy:

US needs a junior partner in the Gulf

… National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan disclosed at a think tank conference in Washington on Thursday that he proposed to travel to Saudi Arabia on Saturday for talks with Saudi leaders.

The Saudi establishment daily Asharq al-Awsat, quoting from Bloomberg, reported that Sullivan will be followed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken “in a new sign of the US administration’s determination to cement ties with the Kingdom.”

Meanwhile, Sullivan revealed that also going to Saudi Arabia will be representatives from India and the United Arab Emirates to discuss “new areas of cooperation between New Delhi and the Gulf as well as the United States and the rest of the region.” In essence, he claimed he is spearheading a White House initiative to reset Washington’s Gulf strategy.

Sullivan has a way of creating misconceptions, and there are no signs that New Delhi is even aware of this White House initiative to integrate India into the Biden Administration’s Gulf strategy.

The timing of Sullivan’s disclosure is interesting; it came soon after the India-Iran consultations in Tehran and on the eve of the foreign minister-level meeting Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in New Delhi on May 3-4.

Against the backdrop of Iran’s formal accession as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at the summit meeting in India on July 3-4, there is renewed interest in New Delhi to re-energise India-Iran economic cooperation.

The prospects for Sullivan and Blinken being able to persuade India and Saudi Arabia to join a grand coalition against China are about the same as prospects of talking the EU into the same—slim to none. Instead, we see a Zhou regime that remains primarily focused on foreign adventures while, as Macgregor argues, festering problems at home remain unaddressed—they are being addressed largely through inflammatory rhetoric aimed at holding the Left’s coalition together for 2024. Confidence in Yellen’s handling of the economy seems at a low ebb, as well—she seems to spend as much time traveling to Ukraine and trying to support the ECB as she does doing anything constructive on the home front. And, as Macgregor argues, in economics as well as in war the name of the game is confidence. We seem to be cruising for a major bruising on multiple fronts.