The American style never disappoints. But remember: when cowboys challenge each other, only one survives.

We had no doubts

To date, no peacemaker has ever emerged from the United States of America. All leaders have waged war on someone, somewhere in the world, after having waged war at home for centuries. Nothing more, nothing less. We therefore had no doubts about the outcome of Donald Trump's meetings in Riyadh, held in the well-known climate of friendship that binds the Saudi world to the US, which has literally built Saudi Arabia banknote by banknote as a watchdog for the Middle East.

This is how Trump made a series of very significant statements, which need to be analyzed from several points of view. The salient points were, in his own words:

• My dream is for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords.
• Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords at its own pace.
• We want the Middle East to be known for trade, not chaos, and for exporting technology, not terrorism.
• A few days ago, we reached a historic ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan. Millions of people could have died in the conflict between India and Pakistan.
• Secretary Rubio will participate in the Russia-Ukraine talks.
• I am here today not only to condemn the past chaos of Iran's leaders, but to offer them a new path and a much better way toward a much better and more promising future.
• Iran can have a much brighter future, but we will never allow it to threaten America and our allies with terrorism or a nuclear attack.
• Iranian oil supplies will be reduced to zero and the country will go bankrupt if Tehran abandons the nuclear deal.
• We have launched more than 1,100 strikes against the Houthis.
• The people of Gaza deserve a better future.

Well, now that we've made the list, let's read it all again.

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to end the protected status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan citizens living in the United States. In a brief unsigned order, the justices paused a ruling by a federal judge in San Francisco that had blocked Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, from terminating the protection.

The justices left open the possibility that individual Venezuelan citizens could bring their own challenges to Noem's efforts to terminate their work permits or to remove them from the United States.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated that she would have denied the government's request and left the lower court's ruling in place while litigation continues.

Alejandro Mayorkas, then the DHS secretary, initially designated (and later extended the designation of) Venezuela in 2021 as a country whose nationals in the United States were eligible to stay in the United States and work under a program known as the Temporary Protected Status program. Created in 1990, the program gives the DHS secretary the power to make such designations when a country's citizens cannot return safely to their home country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other "extraordinary and temporary conditions" there.

The West's interference in other nations' affairs has already brought grave consequences to Europe, Vladimir Medinsky has said.

The Ukraine conflict could have ended very quickly if Kiev had chosen to negotiate from the beginning rather than heed its Western backers and fight Russia, Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Moscow's delegation at the Istanbul talks, has said.

Medinsky made the comments after nearly two hours of talks between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul on Friday. The two nations agreed upon a major prisoner swap involving 1,000 POWs from each side, as well as continuing contacts once each side has prepared a detailed ceasefire proposal, the Russian delegation said.

After the meeting, the presidential aide and professional historian sat down for an interview with Russia's Channel 1.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky could hold talks if the ongoing peace efforts between Russian and Ukrainian delegations result in progress and firm agreements, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday. His comments come after the first direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev since 2022.

On Friday, Russian and Ukrainian representatives sat down for a two-hour Turkish-mediated meeting in Istanbul. The sides agreed to exchange their ceasefire proposals and to discuss a potential follow-up meeting, according to Moscow's chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky. Moscow and Kiev also agreed to a major prisoner exchange, he said, adding that Russia is "satisfied" with the results of the talks and is ready to "resume contacts" with Kiev.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Peskov said a meeting between Putin and Zelensky "is possible but only as a result of the work of the delegations of both sides and reaching specific agreements."

He added that a key issue for Moscow remains the question of who Ukraine would authorize to sign any potential agreements reached by the negotiators.

What are we to make of the Anglosphere political leadership's abrupt narrative reversal towards immigration restrictionism and rhetorical nativism?

In the wake of America's 2024 election a curious narrative shift has been unfolding within the political leadership of Canada and Great Britain.

The moment he assumed the office of Prime Minister, Canada's Mark Carney played up the country's founding British and French (and, of course, Indigenous) heritage, referring to Canada as the 'most European of non-European countries', deploying nativist rhetoric that hasn't been heard from the country's Liberal politicians in living memory and thereby rejecting by implication the official stance of multiculturalism that has dominated Canadian politics since the elder Trudeau. To back up his commitment to Canada, Carney renounced his Irish and UK citizenships, symbolically burning his boats on the beach, and implicitly repudiating other members of parliament holding dual citizenships. As a further emphatic gesture towards Canada's historical roots, King Charles III will give the throne speech inaugurating the new parliament, the first time the monarch has delivered the throne speech in person since 1977.

Gary Lineker, a former England captain and the face of soccer on British television for over two decades, will leave the BBC, the broadcaster said in a statement on Monday.

Lineker, 64, had been due to cover the 2026 World Cup for the broadcaster, but his early departure comes after he apologised last week for sharing a social media post about Zionism which featured a picture of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.

Even the need for transition - just to be clear - has only just begun to be recognised in the U.S.

For the European leadership however, and for the beneficiaries of financialisation who haughtily lament Trump's 'storm' unwisely unleashed on the world, his base economic theses are ridiculed as bizarre notions completely divorced from economic 'reality'.

That is completely untrue.

For, as Greek Economist Yanis Varoufakis points out, the reality of the western situation and the need for transition was clearly spelled out by Paul Volcker, former chair of the Federal Reserve, as long ago as 2005.

The harsh 'fact' of the liberal globalist economic paradigm was evident even then:

"What holds together the globalist system is a massive and growing flow of capital from abroad, running to more than $2 billion every working day - and growing. There is no sense of strain. As a nation we don't consciously borrow or beg. We aren't even offering attractive interest rates, nor do we have to offer our creditors protection against the risk of a declining dollar".

"It's all quite comfortable for us. We fill our shops and garages with goods from abroad, and the competition has been a powerful restraint on our internal prices. It's surely helped keep interest rates exceptionally low despite our vanishing savings and rapid growth".

"And it's [been] comfortable for our trading partners too, and for those supplying the capital. Some, such as China [and Europe, particularly Germany], have depended heavily on our expanding domestic markets. And for the most part, the central banks of the emerging world have been willing to hold more and more dollars, which are, after all, the closest thing that world has to a truly international currency".

"The difficulty is that this seemingly comfortable pattern can't go on indefinitely".

Precisely. And Trump is in the process of blowing up the world trading system so as to re-set it. Those western liberals, who today are gnashing teeth and lamenting the advent of 'Trumpian economics', are simply in denial that Trump has at least recognised the most important American reality - ie. that the pattern can't go on indefinitely, and that debt-led consumerism is way past its sell-by date.

Recall that most participants in the western financial system have known nothing other than Volcker's 'comfortable world' their entire life. No wonder they have difficulty thinking outside their sealed retort.

"Donald Trump's 2025 Middle East policy balances Gulf investments and coercive diplomacy, pressuring Israel to align with US interests while still sidelining Palestinian concerns. His strategic pivot, marked by $600 billion Saudi deals, signals a transactional shift, with effects on the US-Israel 'special relationship'."

Is US President Donald Trump doing a "balancing act" of sorts in the Middle East? His latest gestures towards the Saudis and Qatar, and even surprising statements about pressuring Israel into allowing humanitarian aid to get to Palestine clearly suggest so.

Donald Trump's Middle East policy in 2025 is, by all indication, a blending economic opportunism, coercive diplomacy, and calculated pressure on allies and adversaries alike. His recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — notably excluding Israel — signals a strategic pivot, prioritizing Gulf investments and regional stability over unwavering allegiance to the US-Israel "special relationship."

While Trump's gestures toward Saudi Arabia and Qatar, alongside calls for humanitarian aid to Palestine, suggest a pragmatic recalibration, his approach remains rooted in that transactional "they're ripping us off" mindset. This blunt, Mafia-style tactic — often devoid of traditional diplomacy — employs tariffs, threats, and provocative proposals to extract concessions, thereby leaving partners on edge — as Israel is now seeing.

Yet, beneath the bluster, Trump's moves serve basically as a stark reminder to the Jewish State: Washington holds the reins, and therefore even its closest ally must "behave", so to speak — or pay a price.

"Don't misunderstand me. I want Biden to get better and live many more years, so he can watch his family go broke from running out of influence to sell."
-- Oilfield Rando on X

If the slithering denizens of Okefenokee-on-the-Potomac were nervous about their fates before Sunday — and I'd say they've been rather jumped-up since Nov. 4 — then Maria Bartiromo's Sunday morning session with FBI top dawgs Patel and Bongino must have been a near-death experience for them. Something Roto-rooterish this way comes, officialdom must be thinking, if you can call utter hysteria "thinking."

Washington is nervous because there have been zero leaks from the agency, a condition heretofore unknown in that haunted, pestiferous, reeking marsh. There's plenty of the usual background noise, of course: the insectile hum, the croaking, trilling, buzzing, staccato peeps, chirps, and squeals of the squirming lesser creatures. . . the occasional roar of an ancient gator. . . the guttural cry of the night heron, the sharp yelp of some furry prey meeting its doom, the pulsating, primordial, chthonic cacophony of creatures suffering to mate in the frightful darkness. . . but that's just the news media doing their thing.

If courts can 'strike down' the other branches' actions, as Roberts claims, then that isn't 'co-equal.' It's judicial supremacism.

It's a sad day in America when the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ignores the basic framework of the Constitution he's supposed to interpret.

That's what happened on Wednesday, when Chief Justice John Roberts took it upon himself to subtly thumb his nose at President Trump and conservatives during a rare sit-down interview in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. In addition to rebuking calls to impeach activist lower court judges for overstepping the confines of the Constitution, the chief justice had this to say about the subject of "judicial independence":

In our Constitution ... the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president. That innovation doesn't work if ... the judiciary's not independent. Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive. And that does require a degree of independence.

To quote Vice President J.D. Vance, does John Roberts hear himself?