I spent most of the morning on the Sussmann trial, so I’ll offer a down and dirty update on Russia, NATO, and so forth.
CTH has a Rumble video featuring Doug Macgregor. The important part of the video is that Macgregor points out that the Swedish PM revealed the real reason for joining NATO—Sweden plans to cut defense spending from 4% of GDP to the NATO minimum 2%. There are various ways to look at this. One would be NATO welfare—getting a mostly free defense ride courtesy of the US. Well, that’s what US inflation is largely about—it’s part of the protection racket, literally, that we’ve been running. The other way to look at it would be Sweden surrendering sovereignty and accepting vassal status. The US Deep State likes this, but the US subject population is the real loser, as we have been for many decades now—the result of this racket is serious undermining and distortion of our economy. We all lose from that. The Deep State wins, for the time being, but ultimately the whole country loses. Deep Staters are in it for the short term, or so it seems.
So far, however, all has not been smooth for Sweden and Finland. Turkey is holding their feet to the fire—demanding the Sweden turn over certain Kurds who are wanted by Turkey. Sweden doesn’t really dare talk back to Turkey, which possesses a for real military and, therefore, carries some weight in NATO. OTOH, Sweden thinks they’ve found a country they can push around, at least verbally—NATO, more united than ever!
Is it really smart to openly say we want to “destroy” a huge nuclear power that has hypersonic missiles for which we have no defense? I’m not gonna tell ya that our rulers are smart—there’s way too much evidence to the contrary:
Can we have a vote on this? How many people really want rising prices and falling living standards? Our “elected representatives” voted for that, it seems. How many normals across the fruited plain actually want to “destroy Russia”?
Alfred E. Neumann turns 75:
There’s a food front in this war—looks like Russia is winning on that front, too. Whose idea was this? I don’t remember voting for it.
Who knew we could be so flexible on sanctions?
So, let’s see—we “temporarily” lift sanctions when we start hurting, but then it’ll be back to trying to “destroy” Russia. And of course Russia will do nothing to defend itself. Who are the dumb ones in this scenario?
Is there an Anglo link to the full text of Yellen's remarks?
Dmitrii Medvedev: “On the one hand, insane sanctions are being imposed on us, and on the other hand, they are demanding food supplies. It will not happen. We are not idiots.”