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Vader

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: Empire of Chaos, Reloaded

Pepe Escobar
Sputnik Globe
Fri, 10 Jan 2025 16:51 UTC
capitol building u.s. flag
© Shutterstock
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Empire of Chaos is relentless. Lawfare, destabilizations, sanctions, kidnappings, color revolutions, false flags, annexations: 2025 will be the year of BRICS - plus BRICS partners - as choice targets under fire.

Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson coined "chaos" as official US policy. That's bipartisan - and it runs across all silos of the Deep State.

In the absence of long-term strategic vision, and amidst the progressive imperial expulsion from Eurasia, all that's left for the Hegemon is to unleash chaos from West Asia to Europe and parts of Latin America - a concerted attempt to Divide and Rule BRICS and thwart their collective drive affirming sovereignty and the primacy of national interests.

US Think Tank had already floated a year and a half ago the notion of swing states. Not the parochial American electoral version, but its transposition to geopolitics.
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Attention

Trump tramples on Danish doormat with threat to annex Greenland


Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 10 Jan 2025 16:50 UTC
Trump Greenland
© Strategic Culture Foundation
With friends like that, who needs enemies? Thus Denmark finds out how dispensable it is regarding the geopolitical ambitions of the United States, its supposed "strongest ally."

President-elect Donald Trump is like a cat among pigeons. Neighboring countries, allies and NATO members are all in a flap over his recent remarks about the United States forcibly annexing their territories.

The former real estate tycoon who takes office in the White House for the second time on January 20 is setting out his presidential agenda like a property acquisition spree. He wants to absorb Canada as the 51st state, take back control of the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and annex Greenland, which is part of Denmark.

It is easy to dismiss the incoming Republican president's talk as bravado and outsized ego. He has a propensity for hyperbole especially when promoting his abilities. Trump has talked about bringing peace to Ukraine "within 24 hours". He has also previously referred to himself as a "business genius". During his first administration, he talked up brokering "the deal of the century" between Arabs and Israelis only for that initiative to end up in the disaster of genocide in Gaza and aggression towards Lebanon.

So, Trump's rhetoric about acquiring new territories for the United States is probably best not taken too literally. It is whimsical and highly speculative. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called it "cosmic stupidity" whose real intention is to serve as a distraction.
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Warning

After Iraq, Libya, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, the Pentagon attacks Yemen

Thierry Meyssan
Voltairenet,org
Tue, 07 Jan 2025 00:00 UTC
2maps
© PentagonThese maps, drawn up by the Pentagon General Staff in 2001, were published by Colonel Ralph Peters in 2005. Today, in 2025, we are witnessing the continuation of this program.
It is a race against time that the Pentagon has started before President Donald Trump takes office. After destroying Iraq, Libya, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, it is launching its men against Yemen. Don't mistake appearances for reality: officially, Israel is responding to the bombings of Ansar Allah and the United States is responding to attacks on Western ships. In reality, the destruction of Yemen is only one step in that of all the political institutions of the broader Middle East. Don't believe what you are told about the inevitability of the clash of civilizations, all this is just a set-up to make you accept the unacceptable.

Since October 7, 2023, we have been witnessing a massacre of Palestinians, an invasion of Lebanon and Syria. For two weeks, the war has been moving to Yemen.

As always, the international media segments the information and explains each event to us by certain local factors, sometimes correct, sometimes false. While we are struggling with this mixture, we fail to perceive that all these events belong to a larger plan and that it is not possible to win on a front if we do not know how far it extends.

Comment: We need to fully comprehend Meyssan's conclusion. Does Trump?

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Uzi

Bloodshed and a hope for peace: What does 2025 hold for Israel and the Middle East?

Elizabeth Blade
RT
Tue, 07 Jan 2025 18:33 UTC
Soldierflag
© Leon Neal/Gety ImagesSoldier and Israeli flag
The many conflicts West Jerusalem has been mired in over 2024 will likely be resolved during the coming year. How will this happen?

The last year has been characterized by more than 45,000 deaths in Gaza, the destruction of Hezbollah, confrontations with Yemen's Houthis and an exchange of fire with Iran. 2025 will probably continue this trend. Yet, with the return of Donald Trump to the US presidency, Israel may also be given opportunities, including the expansion of its historic Abraham Accords.

Bloody but successful year

2024 has been a challenging year for Israel but also one of major military gains.

In its battle against Hamas, an Islamic organization that has been controlling Gaza since 2007, Israel entered Rafah, the southern governorate of the strip, establishing full control over the crossing that connects the area to the outside world. The IDF has also seized the so-called Philadelphi corridor, a nine-mile route that Israel claims is used by Hamas to smuggle weapons, money and militants outside its borders.

Comment: The state of global affairs are 'the sum of its parts' on any given day. To Israel it says: 'eliminate'.

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Fire

Apocalypse still unspooling

James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com
Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:00 UTC
housefire
© Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty ImagesA home burns during the Eaton Fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles on Wednesday.
"Life imitates art," Oscar Wilde quipped, a most insightful glimpse into the human condition delivered as a wise-crack. Very Hollywood. Too bad there were no late-night talk shows in Oscar's time. It took more than eighty years, but the apocalyptic burning of Los Angeles depicted at the climax of Nathanial West's 1939 novel The Day of the Locust has finally come — the city of dreams turned into one big flaming nightmare. The adumbrations of this fiasco will darken our national life for years to come.

Who knew that the best way to convert Utopian Woke Democrats back into a reality-based thought system would be to burn their houses down? The wealthy showbiz folk occupying the moral high ground of the Pacific Palisades voted Democratic by 90-percent. They were fully on-board with the agenda of the Party of Chaos, especially Diversity-Equity-and-Inclusion (DEI) and the open border that allowed a deluge of mysterious strangers to flood the country.

Now, reports come across the "X" wires that these mystery folk are cruising the wreckage in the canyons on scooters and in cars to loot anything left of value. The police are shown on video capturing a mystery migrant with a blowtorch suspected of starting the latest outbreak named the Kenneth Fire on the edge of the San Fernando Valley. Loud-and-proud DEI firefighters were stymied in their work by neighborhood fire hydrants that were disappointingly not "full of water," as they put it. Is that how it works? Each hydrant is supposed to get filled up on a regular schedule by water pixies?

Comment: California exodus: Disaster in motion.

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Calendar

Trump's Ukraine envoy sets 100-day timeline to end conflict


RT
Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:35 UTC
Ukraine soldiers
© Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu/Getty ImagesUkraine soldiers near the front line in Donbass • January 8, 2025
US President-elect Donald Trump's incoming special envoy on the Ukraine conflict has said he hopes to mediate a resolution within 100 days after Inauguration Day on January 20.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to quickly mediate a successful peace deal, but offered little specifics. According to media reports, his team is considering to propose freezing the conflict along the current front line.

Retired US Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg told Fox News on Wednesday:
"I know I'm on the clock. I would like to set a goal on a personal level, on a professional level. I would say let's set it at 100 days and move your way back.

"He's not trying to give something to Putin or to the Russians. He's actually trying to save Ukraine and save their sovereignty. And he's going to make sure that it's equitable and that it's fair.

"The biggest mistake President [Joe] Biden made is the fact that he's never engaged in any conversations with Putin. He hasn't talked to him in over two years. Trump does talk to adversaries and allies alike."
Kellogg stressed that Trump remains committed to restarting negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to find a settlement to the fighting, which has claimed "enormous" casualties on both sides.

Comment: The target is Easter for Ukraine peace deal:
The team of incoming US President Donald Trump has reassessed its time frame for reaching a potential peace deal between Moscow and Kiev, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told journalists on Thursday. The Financial Times also reported, citing European officials, that Trump's team is yet to narrow down its options for how to approach negotiations.

Trump no longer expects to strike an agreement between Russia and Ukraine immediately after his inauguration on January 20, Lammy said, adding that such an outcome "is now unlikely."
"There had been a slight pushback in Washington that a deal can be achieved on January 21. We have heard the timetable has moved to Easter. The whole [Trump] team is obsessed with strength and looking strong, so they're recalibrating the Ukraine approach. It is absolutely clear Donald Trump is an individual who wants a deal, but he is also an individual who sees himself as a winner and not a loser."
However, Trump's team still does not have a specific plan on how to put an end to the conflict, according to the Financial Times. The incoming administration also does not want to repeat the mistakes of its predecessors and create a scene similar to the US hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 under President Joe Biden.

Russia welcomed Trump's desire to restore contacts with Moscow on Thursday. The Russian president "has repeatedly spoken about his readiness for a dialogue" and the need for it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

In December, Putin told a press conference that he was ready to meet and talk with Trump. Russia has also repeatedly stated that it wanted to arrive at a sustainable and lasting solution to the conflict instead of simply freezing it.


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No Entry

Ukraine offers to replace Hungary in EU


RT
Thu, 09 Jan 2025 15:44 UTC
ukraine flag guy
© Thierry Monasse/Getty ImagesRaising the flag of Ukraine
Ukraine is ready to take Hungary's place in the European Union, the Foreign Ministry in Kiev said on Wednesday. Budapest recently blasted Ukraine for blocking the transit of natural gas from Russia to the European Union.

Earlier this week, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused Kiev of creating 'artificially reduced supply', emphasizing that its unilateral decision to stop the transit of Russian gas, coupled with EU sanctions, had sent prices soaring.

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, in a statement, said:
"If the Hungarian side prioritizes strengthening of Russia instead of the EU and the US, it should openly admit it. Ukraine will be ready to fill any vacant seat in the EU and NATO, if Hungary decides to vacate it in favor of membership in the CIS* or the CSTO."
Ukraine chose not to prolong a five-year transit contract with Russia's Gazprom at the end of 2024, cutting off several EU member states from Russian gas supplies, including Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Italy, and Moldova. The halt immediately sent prices in the region soaring to more than €50 per megawatt hour, a level unseen since October 2023.
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Smoking

Butt out, Biden: The soon-to-be ex-President's war on cigarettes belongs on the ash heap

David Marcus
Fox News
Thu, 09 Jan 2025 17:43 UTC
smoking healthier fascism pipe cigarettes
Leave us smokers alone to puff, freeze and commiserate outside

In the final days of his failed presidency, President Joe Biden's Food and Drug Administration is moving ahead with a preposterous and dangerous plan to all but ban the sale of cigarettes in the United States. It must never be allowed to happen.

The harebrained scheme from the geniuses in Washington is to reduce the level of nicotine in a cigarette to an almost imperceptible level, rendering the product all but useless. Mind you, nicotine itself is mainly harmless, but our bureaucratic betters find the cigarette's deadly delivery of it too dangerous, even with high taxes and warning labels. So, like so many illiberal pencil pushers before them, their plan is simply to ban it.

Comment: Marcus' remark about about nicotine making people smarter and more alert is not a small one. Nicotine has a myriad of health benefits the PTB would be very happy for the peasants to do without.

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Cult

'Back to her employers': Pro-Western Georgian ex-president takes up US fellowship


RT
Thu, 09 Jan 2025 15:18 UTC
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili walks in the crowd of anti-government protesters.
© Getty Images / Jerome GillesGeorgian President Salome Zourabichvili walks in the crowd of anti-government protesters.
Salome Zourabichvili will continue to call for new elections in the former Soviet republic, the McCain Institute has said.

Former Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has taken up a fellowship at the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, the US academic institution has said. The institute is named after former US senator, the late John McCain, a renowned foreign policy hawk who backed the Western-supported coup that overthrow the Ukrainian government in 2014.

Georgia's parliament speaker has slammed the appointment, asserting she is going back to "the entity that employed her."

Zourabichvili, who was born in France and maintained a pro-Western stance during her tenure, has been chosen for the 2025 Kissinger Fellowship, named after former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the McCain Institute announced in a statement on Monday.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Will Israel achieve a historic victory in 2025?

Robert Inlakesh
RT
Sun, 05 Jan 2025 17:24 UTC
Tank smoke
© Amir Levy/Getty ImagesIsraeli tank on border with Gaza
In a bid to revitalize its purpose and power, Israel is chasing a victory that is comparable to what it achieved in June of 1967. The goals are to redraw borders, crush the opposition and assert its dominance across West Asia, yet this way of thinking may tremendously backfire because of the recklessness with which it is being implemented.

Left in a state of disarray following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, Israel had been shaken to its core for the first time since its establishment in 1948. The Palestinian armed offensive from Gaza had collapsed the status quo, not only for the Israelis, but also for the United States and its projects across West Asia.

Prior to the war, Hamas, which governed the beleaguered territory of Gaza, was watching a slow transition occur regionally, both inside Israel politically and through the evaporation of the Palestinian cause for national liberation. In September of 2023, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden were publicly expressing their intentions to reshape the region. Washington's goal was to formulate a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia that would facilitate the initiation of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

Comment: The careful and well-thought out analysis in this article is commendable. For a much different take on Israel's quest in Syria, see:
The Syria carve-up creates a de-facto Israel-Turkey border ensuring a broader ME war

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