Proxy wars or gang wars?

As I wrote in my last article — WWIII: Biden's War — the US is on a collision course with destiny, an empire in decline, a nation divided. Joseph Biden's dementia is matched by that of that of his political culture.

US industry has hollowed out. Russia and China by contrast are rising, and with them BRICs and other countries outside the G7, which increasingly has little to sell but "narratives".
The graph shows the trend to 2015, with the major drop-off beginning in 2011, which coincidentally is when the US war on the world began. Things have gotten worse and worse.

As of today, what does the US make? Really only war, of course. And weapons.

The US is like the Mafia, and the G7 and NATO a cartel — a supra-criminal organization that survives through violence and global protection rackets, extortion, bribery, and of course that Casino of Casinos — the American Stock Market. Biden is Pablo Escobar with a facelift — and arguably less concern for the poor.

The country that got its start stealing from Native Americans and Mexicans moved on to stealing from the rest of the world. From simple imperialism it moved on to neoliberalism. Now, however, the country that once welcomed the poor and downtrodden to exploit in its factories and fields, is increasingly living on borrowed money - and also on borrowed time. There are fewer factories and fields. The Statue of Liberty's torch has been moved to a museum which you need to pay to enter. ICE has become the symbol of America.

The original Italian Mafia didn't much care about ideologies, Nor did its later iterations. Neither does the US Government. Duopoly confounds the intent of the founders of the Republic. "Bipartisanship" means political promiscuity. Joe who sleeps with both the Left and the Right, as does the rest of the political class. Trump at least paid his whores.

As with the Mafia in the Godfather, the US has its Dons and "made men".

You find them in politics, in both parties, the Media, the military industrial complex, the State Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, Big Business. This "Deep State" is not really deep just muddy and polluted and full of creepy-crawlies. Just deep enough to drown you if your face is pushed into it. Not that you drown physically of course - just intellectually and spiritually.

Like most mafias, this political gang of thugs in thousand-dollar suits pretends to protect the "people," and occasionally makes little shows of doing so — but in the end it is all about money. Greed. greed. greed.

There are those who serve their country sincerely. But that's not the generals — military or otherwise — it's those in command. Those who call the shots, wihout ever risking getting shot.

Work has already begun on new offices in Africa for Russian media outlets, including RT and Sputnik, President Vladimir Putin has announced.

Addressing participants at the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum in St. Petersburg on Thursday, Putin argued that Russia and Africa should create what he called a 'joint information space'.

Objective and unbiased information on global events will be broadcast on the continent, the Russian leader added.

"Work is already underway to open offices of the leading Russian media outlets in Africa: TASS news agency, Rossiya Segodnya [media group, which includes RIA Novosti and Sputnik], RT television channel, the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, Rossiyskaya Gazeta [newspaper]," Putin stated.

Some Russian news outlets already have bureaus operating in Africa, including TASS, which maintains a number of offices there. The outlet has so far focused on reporting African news to Russian readers, but will now expand its operations to broadcast to an African audience.

The scandal was never about Hunter's sordid sex life and drug abuse. It was about Joe Biden's abuse of power — and all those covering it up.

When the New York Post broke the news that documents recovered from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop implicated Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scandal, the corporate media — to the extent they didn't frame the story as Russian disinformation — pretended the reporting solely concerned Hunter Biden's personal life.

The scandal, however, was never about Hunter's sordid sex life and history of drug abuse. Rather, it concerned Joe Biden's abuse of power as vice president for financial gain. But now it reaches much further — including 10 distinct scandals.

Saturated in Scandal

1. The Many (Uncharged) Crimes of Hunter Biden

While the current scandals swirling around the laptop are unrelated to Hunter Biden's sex life or drug abuse, the president's son features in the first scandal: Evidence indicates Hunter Biden committed numerous crimes, including felonies.

Evidence suggests Hunter Biden acted as an unregistered foreign agent for, at a minimum, Ukraine and China in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The confidential human source's (CHS) reporting suggests Hunter also accepted bribes from Burisma or alternatively helped extort $10 million from the Ukrainian oil and gas company for himself and his father.

IRS whistleblowers and federal prosecutors also believed the evidence supported multiple felony tax counts. Lying on a federal firearm application is a serious felony as well.

The evidence that the president's son likely engaged in extensive criminal conduct for over a decade is a huge scandal, but it also bred a separate scandal: the DOJ and FBI's efforts to protect him, No. 7 below.

Kim and Shoigu's tour of ballistic missiles is being regarded as a significant development by analysts, as it suggests that Russia is now accepting of North Korea's nuclear programme. Kim Jong Un has showed off banned ballistic missiles to Russia's defence minister during his visit to North Korea.

Sergei Shoigu's trip coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War's end, which is referred to in Pyongyang as Victory Day. He is the first Russian defence minister to enter North Korea since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The North Korean leader was given a letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin - and according to state media, Kim "repeatedly expressed belief that the Russian army and people would achieve big successes in the struggle for building a powerful country."

Chinese officials were also part of the delegation, making them the first prominent visitors to the isolated state since the coronavirus pandemic.

All three countries are now pledging to boost ties, united by their rivalry with the US.

Over five hundred and twenty-five days ago, between the evening of February 13 and afternoon of February 14, 2022, four men were arrested for their participation in Freedom Convoy protests at the Alberta border town of Coutts. They were charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police officers in support of a plot to overthrow the Government of Canada. They have been dubbed the 'Coutts Four.'

The accused are: Self-employed fisherman Chris Carbert, who ran a landscaping and fencing business with nine employees. A Lethbridge, Alberta, resident, 42-year-old Carbert is a single father who has been raising his son since the boy was nine-months-old. Another Lethbridge resident, and best friend of Chris Carbert since public school, is 49-year-old Chris Lysak. He is an electrician and father of two girls. A third member of the 'Coutts Four' accused of conspiracy to commit murder is 41-year-old Jerry Morin. He is a lineman who grew up near Vulcan, Alberta. The CBC states he resided in Olds, Alberta, at the time of his arrest. The fourth accused of these serious charges is Anthony "Tony" Olienkick. Tony, age 40, took part of the clean-up in High River, Alberta, after the 2013 floods.[1] He has a gravel truck and is self-employed, and the CBC has reported his home is in Claresholm, Alberta.

The Coutts Four have been denied bail. They have remained in custody for over 525 days with a trial date yet to be set. More pretrial motions will be heard between July 25 to 28 by the crown and defence lawyers at the Lethbridge court house. Since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, kingdoms and democracies have allowed those charged with a crime to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. With that provision has come the right to be granted bail and to a speedy trial. When citizens are accused of a crime and left to rot in prison without having their day in court, their spirits can be broken and be persuaded to agree to plead guilty even when they are innocent.

Not that you asked, but Viktor Orbán is the most intelligent major politician I've ever seen, and it's not even close.

You might think: Well, of course Dreher would say that; he lives in Hungary and works for a think tank that is indirectly funded by the Hungarian government. Nope, that's not it. I chose to move to Hungary to work in part because I regard Orbán and his kind of conservatism as the only real political shot we on the Right have to save Western civilization. He's the only Western politician at his level who thinks like a visionary.

Very few people in the United States or Western Europe know this, because the media trashes him incessantly, and he has little way to make his voice heard in languages other than Hungarian. (He speaks much better English than he thinks he does, but is not comfortable in the language.) When you meet the Hungarian prime minister face to face, and hear him discourse at length on geopolitics (in English), you realize that you are not dealing with an ordinary politician.

The first time I met him was four years ago, when I came to Budapest to talk at a conference on religious liberty. All the speakers were invited afterward to meet the prime minister at his office. I thought it was going to be a short meet-and-greet, take an official photo, then say goodbye. Nope. He spent an hour and a half with us, taking our questions, and answering them all with remarkable candor and intelligence. I could scarcely believe that this was the authoritarian ogre that the U.S. media assured me had Hungary under his jackboot.

Economic Logic has been Replaced by National Security Overrides

The July NATO summit in Vilnius had the feeling of a funeral, as if they had just lost a family member - Ukraine. To clear away NATO's failure to drive Russia out of Ukraine and move NATO right up to the Russian border, its members tried to revive their spirits by mobilizing support for the next great fight - against China, which is now designated as their ultimate strategic enemy. To prepare for this showdown, NATO announced a commitment to extend their military presence all the way to the Pacific.

The plan is to carve away China's military allies and trading partners, above all Russia, starting with the fight in Ukraine. President Biden has said that this war will be global in scope and will take many decades as it expands to ultimately isolate and break up China.

The U.S.-imposed sanctions against trade with Russia are a dress rehearsal for imposing similar sanctions against China. But only the NATO allies have joined the fight. And instead of wrecking Russia's economy and "turning the ruble to rubble" as President Biden predicted, NATO's sanctions have made it more self-reliant, increasing its balance of payments and international monetary reserves, and hence the ruble's exchange rate.

In March 2022, President Biden signed an Executive Order directing government agencies to urgently research and develop a potential US central bank digital currency (CBDC) "in a manner that protects Americans' interests." It also encouraged the Federal Reserve Bank to continue doing so. And it isn't just the Biden Administration in the United States working in such a direction.

As of the time of writing, CBDCTracker.org lists three countries or regions with retail CBDCs already "launched" (Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria), another five in "pilot" stage, and another twenty in "proof of concept" stage. Many more have at least researched wholesale CBDCs. ("Wholesale" CBDCs are intended for commercial and central bank use and the like, while "retail" CBDCs are intended for the rest of us). A report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) released just this month summarizes the results of a survey of 86 central banks and concludes that "there could be 15 retail and nine wholesale CBDCs publicly circulating in 2030."

When you read statements from high-level officials of the BIS, central banks, and governments, you get the impression that CBDCs are an exciting development in the evolution of money. The BIS, for example, calls them "a new tool in the financial inclusion toolkit." An op-ed co-authored by BIS General Manager Agustín Carstens and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands frames them in the title as "CBDCs for the people." An IMF working paper asserts that CBDCs can "bank large unbanked populations" in developing countries.

A coup has been declared on national television by soldiers in Niger, a West African country. They have announced the dissolution of the constitution, the suspension of all institutions, and the closure of national borders.

Niger's President, Mohamed Bazoum, has been held by troops from the presidential guard since early Wednesday. In response to the situation, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured President Bazoum of Washington's unwavering support during a phone call. Similarly, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed full support to the president after speaking with him.

President Bazoum has been a crucial ally to Western nations in combating militancy in West Africa. The region has witnessed coups in neighboring countries, Mali and Burkina Faso, due to uprisings in recent years. In both instances, the new military leaders had strained relations with France, the former colonial power that also once ruled Niger.

She's done as much as anyone to sour US-Russia ties; now, she is one of Washington's top diplomats.

In a little-remarked move, the Biden administration announced Monday that Victoria Nuland will take over as the acting second-in-command at the State Department. She replaces Wendy Sherman, who plans to retire at the end of this week.

Nuland's appointment will be a boon for Russia hawks who want to turn up the heat on the Kremlin. But, for those who favor a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine, a promotion for the notoriously "undiplomatic diplomat" will be a bitter pill.