There’s so much conflict going on, led by the Anglo-Zionist Empire backed by Trump’s US. One of the big news items this week—one of several—was the Deep State’s strong pivot from Trump meeting with Putin. The proposed meeting in Budapest—which, according to Putin, was requested by Trump—was summarily and rudely squashed and was quickly followed by major new sanctions on Russia’s energy sector. We’ll get into that a bit later. Let’s start with the question of what, if any, effect those sanctions will have. The Trump regime is claiming wide support and there are also reports trumpeting that China is backing off purchases of Russian oil. This is almost certainly propaganda, as explained:
S.L. Kanthan @Kanthan2030
Stunning stats on China’s dedollarization:
 30% of China’s trade and 54% of its cross-border transactions now settled in renminbi/yuan
CIPS, the alternative to SWIFT, had ¥160 TRILLION of transactions last year.
Most people imagine that China is simply a consumer of the oil that it imports. In fact, China not only refines Russian oil for its own use, it is also a major exporter of refined petroleum products.
DaiWW @BeijingDai
This news says Chinese state oil majors have suspended purchases of seaborne Russian oil, but it is a fake news, at least a severely distorted news.
Currently, about 47% of the oil imported by China from Russia is transported through pipelines, and about 53% is transported by shipping. The recipients of pipeline Russian oil are large state-owned enterprises, while the recipients of seaborne Russian oil are mainly private refining enterprises in China.
Perhaps China’s state-owned enterprises have stopped accepting Russian seaborne oil to avoid some sanctions from the West, as these state-owned enterprises also have some transactions with Western companies. But this has no substantial impact at all, they still can obtain Russian oil through pipelines. And those private Chinese companies that have little deal with the West will continue to buy Russia’s seaborne oil.
The overall oil trade between China and Russia has not actually changed much.
8:59 AM · Oct 24, 2025
The likelihood is that China will rejigger the way it imports Russian oil while, at the same time, accelerating dedollarization.
Far more significant are signs that there is a major split within the US Deep State regarding China. While Trump continues under the influence of China Hawks, the major Military Industrial Complex think tank, RAND, has published a new study that runs directly contrary to the current Trump regime’s policies:
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
Absolutely extraordinary paper by RAND, the main think tank of the US military-industrial complex, and another key sign that the U.S. deep state - despite all the chaos and noise - is shifting away from deterring China, towards accepting coexistence (it’s literally what they recommend in the paper).
1. Rejecting the false belief that a victory is possible in the China-US rivalry and accepting the legitimacy of the Communist Party:
They write that the U.S. should “clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.”
They explain that it’s necessary because victory is objectively impossible (”the effective destruction of the other is not a feasible option”), rejecting it is imposed by hard realities and because continuing to try would be catastrophic (as it would “threaten [either side’s] survival”).
2. Accepting coexistence
They write that “each side [must] accept, in ways that are deeply ingrained and broadly shared among decision-making officials, that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.” They also write that “each side [must] accept the essential political legitimacy of the other.”
3. On Taiwan, they recommend not only reassuring China that it can achieve its reunification objective but also using US leverage AGAINST Taiwan to prevent provocations
This is probably the most surprising aspect of the paper. They recommend that “the United States and China should exchange a mutual set of signals” where the US would make “statements that it does not support Taiwan independence, seek a permanent separation across the Straits, or oppose peaceful unification.” They write that the US should be “creating the maximum incentive for Beijing to pursue gradual approaches to realizing its ultimate goal [i.e. reunification].”
More remarkably, they argue the US should “balance its commitments to Taiwan with leveraging its influence to ensure Taiwan’s actions do not escalate tensions with China.” The paper explicitly criticizes Taiwan’s Lai Ching-te for statements asserting Taiwan is “sovereign” and says Washington should use its “potential leverage over Taiwan to limit its activities that upset the status quo” - essentially US leverage to pressure Taiwan into not provoking China.
When such a think tank as RAND makes recommendations this deferential to a strategic competitor, it’s not out of kindness of heart, they’re anything but peaceniks. It’s because they realize that the material balance of power has dramatically shifted.
6:42 AM · Oct 25, 2025
Before moving to a partial transcript of Scott Ritter’s conversation with Judge Nap this week, I’ll link to an article that refers to some of what Ritter is talking about, which may not be explicit from his remarks. This is a very brief excerpt. The article spends most of its space on the sanctions, but I’m emphasizing the military escalation:
President Donald Trump pulled the trigger on sanctions that European Union leaders and American neocons have long urged him to impose on Russia. An analyst for the Ron Paul Institute said this makes it “Trump’s war now.”
…
On Tuesday, Ukraine hit a Russian plant in Bryansk with British Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The plant produced explosives and rocket fuel. According to The Wall Street Journal, the strike came after “authority for supporting such attacks was recently transferred from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon to the top U.S. general in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who also serves as NATO commander.” Nevertheless, the United States can “restrict Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow because the missiles use American targeting data,” the Journal reported. Trump responded to the article by calling it “fake news.” He said in a Truth Social Post, “The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them!”
Ukrainians have used Storm Shadows before, but after Trump’s reelection, “the Pentagon set up a review procedure for approving cross-border strikes using U.S. missiles or those from other countries, including Storm Shadow, that rely on U.S. targeting data,” according to reports.
So, in other words, Trump claimed that the strikes authorized by a US general had nothing to do with the US, even though those strikes rely on US targeting data. Whomever else Trump may think he’s fooling, it’s not the Russians. Which brings us to Ritter’s very clear exposition of all this, which tracks with what I’ve long maintained. The other very important point Ritter makes is that Marco Rubio is one of the minders that the Anglo-Zionists have surrounded Trump with.
Judge: Is the war in Ukraine now Donald Trump’s war?
Ritter: 100%. It was always Donald Trump’s war. I mean, no matter how he tried to spin it, people tend to forget that Donald Trump was president for four years before Joe Biden. He’s the man that put 20 CIA bases inside Ukraine to carry out broader objectives that he signed off on—lethal objectives, authorizing covert action on Russian soil to pave the way for direct action operation, combat operations. It goes beyond spying. We’re talking about sabotage. We’re talking about, blowing things up. This is what Donald Trump signed off on. He’s the guy that helped train one Ukrainian battalion every 55 days to go to the east and kill Russians. That’s what the US Army was bragging about while Donald Trump was president. No, this is Donald Trump’s war.
And of course, he’s going to spin it and say it was Joe Biden’s war. But that failed because now what we have is Donald Trump literally becoming an active participant in the conflict, freeing up the Ukrainians to use weaponry deep into Russia. Things they couldn’t do without American approval. Now he’s declared economic war against Russia, sanctioning the two largest energy producers, Rosneft and Lukoil. And he’s committing diplomatic war, trying to encourage people to turn on Russia. And the goals and objectives are clear. Scott Bessent, the Secretary of Treasury, has said to collapse the Russian economy. And that’s part of the overall master plan that Trump helped design in his first term to collapse the Putin administration. This is a regime change operation taking place today. It’s going to fail. So, no, this is Trump’s war. He owns it and now he’s got to deal with the consequences. It will not change anything on the battlefield. I’m paraphrasing Sergey Lavrov, but it will change our relationship to the United States that Trump has authorized the use of long range missiles.
Vladimir Putin made it quite clear today. He told the Ukrainians and Europe, and that’s the important part. Trump may say America had nothing to do with it. Europe does. If a European long range weapon strikes Russia, it’ll be catastrophic. Catastrophic for both Ukraine and Europe. I don’t know how to make it much clearer. He’s going to strike Europe. He’s not playing games. The Russians have said all along, you guys keep escalating, keep escalating, keep escalating. I think he put Trump on notice. When you hear Ushakov and others talk about a “frank discussion,” that means it was pretty blunt language. And I’m pretty sure that Putin made it as clear as possible that if the United States provided Tomahawks that it wouldn’t have any impact on the battlefield, but that Russia would be hitting American targets in return. That there’s no way Russia would allow a Tomahawk missile to strike Russian soil and America could walk away from that one. And that’s why Trump has backed off.
It’s the same thing that happened to Biden on September 13th of last year where he was going to sign documents that Kier Starmer brought, and Anatoli Antonov made a frank phone call to people who told Biden what he said. We don’t know exactly what it was, but from what I’ve heard it was clear that Washington DC would be in the target deck of Russia’s retaliation. And that caused Biden to back down, and I think Trump backed down as well. Russia’s not bluffing here.
Now Trump is playing the Scott Bessent game, believing the Russian economy is weak, and so he’s not going to risk escalation to military on military contact. Trump believes by sanctioning the major Russian oil companies that this will lead to a collapse of the Russian economy and that will compel Putin to walk away from the war. ... Russia knows the global energy business better than any nation. Ask the Saudis. Every time they try to squeeze the Russians, the Russians come in on the market and squeeze the Saudis. It’s the Saudis who back down 100% of the time. Russia’s been preparing for this moment. They’re not panicked. They will have to tighten belts here, make adjustments there. But Vladimir Putin made it clear: real nations, genuine nations, never buckle under pressure. ... That if you wanted concessions from Russia, this isn’t the way to do it. All this does is harden Russian resolve. So, we’re headed towards an escalation that will result in the physical destruction of Ukraine. And if Europe’s not careful, the physical European cities.
Judge: A couple of minutes after the phone call between Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov, Foreign Minister Lavrov told a press conference, “Let me reiterate--an immediate ceasefire suddenly back on the agenda as opposed to addressing the root causes of this conflict is not anything we’d be interested in.” Is Rubio dumb enough to have raised that issue in the phone call?
Ritter: Rubio doesn’t want diplomacy between the United States and Russia. The president of the United States needs to understand that Marco Rubio is a poison pill. Let’s go back to the 2016 presidential campaign. Marco Rubio hates Donald Trump, despises Donald Trump. The only reason Rubio is the Secretary of State is because of Miriam Adelson’s $100 million bribe to Donald Trump, which came with the name tag that said Rubio has to be vice president. Trump wouldn’t agree. So, they gave Rubio the second best thing, Secretary of State. Rubio will do nothing to make this policy work. He is the poison pill. Just like Mike Pompeo was, just like John Bolton was, ... I mean, it’s so glaringly obvious that Marco Rubio is undermining any chance for peace with Russia. And yet, Donald Trump continues to soldier along because he sold his soul to literally the devil, Miriam Adelson.
Judge: Do we know who canceled the meeting in Budapest, the Russians or the Americans?
Ritter: The Americans canceled it. Now, the Russians are saying, “Yeah, it’s obvious that it’s not going to happen now.” The Russians still believe in diplomacy. Look, the Russians are the adults in the room. And so, even now, you have Russian diplomats saying, “Nah, we’ll continue to talk to the Americans. You know, we have to leave a a safety valve here. There has to be an off-ramp or else the consequences are inevitable. Force on force.” And so the Russians will continue to manage this situation properly until the time Donald Trump, flips the other way.
Judge: Why is Marco Rubio pushing Donald Trump to invade Venezuela?
Ritter: Marco Rubio has--from the the very beginning of his tenure as a senator--positioned himself to be anti- Maduro, anti-Hugo Chavez before that. He’s been a proponent of this. This is when when he got his appointment to the foreign relations committee, he made going after Venezuela a top priority. That’s how he separated himself from the pack. He is of course a Cuban, and the Cuban-American community in Florida thrive on being anti-communist and opposing Cuba. Cuba is a major backer of Venezuela. So, he’s just made this his pet project. And ever since he became a senator, he’s been advocating for military operations against Venezuela. Now he’s the secretary of state, and this is his baby. He’s not just a secretary of state, he’s the national security adviser, which means he’s the guy who drafted the findings signed by the president authorizing the CIA to carry out lethal covert action against Maduro. And that’s where we’re in right now. We’re in the assassination business.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in Venezuela. I do believe that we are going to end up in some sort of war with Venezuela. I do believe we will overthrow the Maduro government because we’re the United States and that’s what we do. But, we overthrew Gaddafi and look at Libya today. Just a disaster. We overthrew Saddam Hussein. Look at Iraq, a disaster. We helped orchestrate the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. Look at Syria, a disaster. And if we remove Maduro from Venezuela, it will be a disaster. And now the president’s talking about Colombia as well. Everybody screamed about Henry Kissinger, who of course was the last secretary of state to dual hat as a national security adviser, as being a a war criminal and his entire life that hounded him because of his illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos and what he did in South America. Marco Rubio will go down in history as one of America’s most notorious war criminals. The things that he will be responsible for, not just in the Middle East, the genocide against the Palestinian people, not just underwriting the continued murder of Ukrainian men on the battlefield, but what he’s doing right now in Venezuela and Colombia, the illegal covert actions that he’s authorizing as the national security adviser. When the truth becomes known, Marco Rubio’s name will be carved into the stones in the deepest pit of hell because that’s where he belongs.
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Earlier I stated that my belief is that Dmitriev was meeting with Witkoff not to negotiate but to send a message. That is apparently more or less the size of it. Mercouris is saying that it was the Americans who asked Dmitriev--whom the US has sanctioned--to please come to DC and talk with them. The US is trying to fix their screwup. But Dmitriev, says Mercouris, is reiterating that Russia will not change its terms. Further, the Russians are incensed at the Trump regime's bad faith.
**It’s clear that RAND is trying desperately to make US policymakers abandon their obsolete and blinkered world view centered on the idea that any challenger must by its nature represent the selfsame kind of hegemonic exceptionalism cultivated by the US itself for over a century. The US views the entire world as a threat in the same light that a thief mistrusts all those around him—it is past guilt sublimated into national suspicion and Machiavellian subversiveness.**
The US, being the pernicious by-blow of the late British Empire, has inherited all the hawkish trappings of its former parent. RAND here attempts to ween the US political culture away from this perpetually adversarial and hostile approach to foreign diplomacy because, as it has become apparent, the people ‘behind the scenes’ have slowly recognized that confrontation with China will lead not to some kind of global war, but rather the much barer reality that the US simply isn’t what it once was, and does not have the sheer overwhelming capability to bully the world’s foremost ascendant power. Thus, this RAND call to action is not—as they would have us believe—some kind of de-escalatory peacenik measure, but rather a desperate attempt to stave off the US from a historically fatal humiliation and geopolitical defeat at the hands of China.
Earlier I stated that my belief is that Dmitriev was meeting with Witkoff not to negotiate but to send a message. That is apparently more or less the size of it. Mercouris is saying that it was the Americans who asked Dmitriev--whom the US has sanctioned--to please come to DC and talk with them. The US is trying to fix their screwup. But Dmitriev, says Mercouris, is reiterating that Russia will not change its terms. Further, the Russians are incensed at the Trump regime's bad faith.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/rand-urges-for-major-chinese-re-think
**It’s clear that RAND is trying desperately to make US policymakers abandon their obsolete and blinkered world view centered on the idea that any challenger must by its nature represent the selfsame kind of hegemonic exceptionalism cultivated by the US itself for over a century. The US views the entire world as a threat in the same light that a thief mistrusts all those around him—it is past guilt sublimated into national suspicion and Machiavellian subversiveness.**
The US, being the pernicious by-blow of the late British Empire, has inherited all the hawkish trappings of its former parent. RAND here attempts to ween the US political culture away from this perpetually adversarial and hostile approach to foreign diplomacy because, as it has become apparent, the people ‘behind the scenes’ have slowly recognized that confrontation with China will lead not to some kind of global war, but rather the much barer reality that the US simply isn’t what it once was, and does not have the sheer overwhelming capability to bully the world’s foremost ascendant power. Thus, this RAND call to action is not—as they would have us believe—some kind of de-escalatory peacenik measure, but rather a desperate attempt to stave off the US from a historically fatal humiliation and geopolitical defeat at the hands of China.