Cramping Trumpian Impetuosity

A great deal of the consternation related to how this might impact Ukraine. Although it was broadly accepted that the order did not directly interrupt the flow of weapons, there were, nonetheless, numerous ways in which the order would negatively impact both non-military and military dimensins of US participation in NATO’s proxy war against Russia over Ukraine.

Furthermore, the order would clearly impact the activities of non-government organizations (NGOs; funded, of course, by governments and, in particular by the US and Western governments), including those involved in Western electoral interference in the affairs of any country that the collective West does not like.

As it happens, a federal judge yesterday imposed a brief injunction on the order, and earlier today the OMB rescinded the stops on foreign aid activities. However, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that all President Trump’s executive orders halting foreign assistance, terminating DEI and other programs (including USAID programs) remain “in full force and effect and will be rigorously implemented.”

Serbia

On the related issue of the activities of NGOs in US-funded regime-change shenanigans, I yesterday mentioned the resignation of the prime minister of Serbia. Al Jazeera reports that Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vucevic has announced his resignation amid large protests against corruption.

“Vucevic said at a news conference on Tuesday that he had decided to step down to reduce tensions. Student-led demonstrations have been taking place since the deadly collapse of a train station canopy in the northern city of Novi Sad in November”.

I strongly suspect that here as elsewhere there are regime-change agencies at work, either instigating acts of public defiance against a democratically elected government or exploiting public dissatisfaction for alien purposes.

My personal sources in Serbia lead me to conclude that the public dissatisfaction is real, and that it is justified. Much the same could have been said of the Maidan protests in Ukraine in 2013-2014. There were genuine grounds for dissatisfaction (that were then expropriated by the US and the Banderite neo-Nazis as pretexts for the effective overthrow, amidst the street violence of a minority demographic, of a democratically elected government.

That some people are dissatisfied with their government is an eternal condition of human governance. Dissatisfaction is not in itself sufficient ground for unconstitutional and undemocratic rejection of due process.

Matters have not yet reached that stage in Serbia but they may soon get there.

Guantanamo

Another Trumpian order makes Guantanamo available for the Department of Homeland Security to detain up to 30,000 supposedly illegal foreign migrants to the US. Some of these will be migrants whose countries of origin refuse to repatriate them. The legal (or rather lawless) implications of all this will occupy many of us for many years to come.

Ukraine Corruption

The story may yet link to concerns that arms flows from the US to Ukraine during the Biden administration were sometimes expedited by irregular means when legitimate funds were exhausted or had been stopped. For example, in 2024, Yahoo News reported that the U.S. Defense Department had identified $2 billion worth of accounting errors in its estimations of military aid sent to Ukraine, as revealed by a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. In June 2023, the Pentagon said it had overestimated the value of arms sent to Ukraine over the previous two years by over $6 billion.

Ukrainian media source Meduza explains that the case was launched following a complaint from the Anti-Corruption Action Center, which accused Umerov of possible abuse of power over his decision not to renew the contract of Maryna Bezrukova, the head of the Defense Procurement Agency. The agency is an autonomous body within the Defense Ministry and oversees weapons procurement for Ukraine’s armed forces. It was established in the summer of 2022 after a series of corruption scandals at the ministry, with the goal of making military procurement as transparent as possible.

This development comes hot on the heals of concerns in Ukraine and at the G7 reported in the Financial Times (Financial Times) that suspicions of corruption in Ukraine’s military supply chain could further exacerbate Trump’s disaffection with the war. Most western diplomats and analysts in Ukraine have backed Bezrukova. There are worries in Kiev that Umerov’s actions undermine anti-corruption efforts. Umerov had expressed his concern that arms procurement was too transparent. In 2023 Ukraine created the weapons procurement agency to sit outside of the defence ministry after a series of corruption scandals, and Bezrukova, a supply-chain expert, was appointed to head the weapons procurement agency at the start of 2024. She is said to have succeeded in reducing Ukraine’s reliance on intermediaries in defence procurement from 81 per cent in 2023, to 12 per cent in 2024.

Assassinating Putin

“If like [Putin was assassinated]… okay, so who takes over Russia? And what happens to the nuclear arsenal in a country that’s, like, so complex outsiders can’t even understand? That’s demented that you would even think of something like that. So why were they? Because chaos is a screen that protects them.”

So far as I am aware, no independent confirmation of Carlson’s claim is available. Plausible? Certatinly.

Zelenskiy’s Brutal Folly

In his most recent interview with Kremlin-friendly journalist Pavel Zarubin, President Putin claimed that at the very beginning of Russia’s SMO into Ukraine, Russia had offered a deal to Ukraine whereby Russia would pull out of Ukraine if Ukraine withdrew its forces from the two self-declared independent republics of Donbass – Donetsk and Luhansk.

Events are moving rapidly, with numerous sharp left and right turns or even complete reversals. A time, as they say, to hold on to one’s hat.

Beachfront for Jared

The resilience of the Palestinians seemed to directly and brazenly fly in the face of the repulsive comments emitted by Donald Trump only hours beforehand insinuating that the demolition wasteland created by the IDF in one of the greatest war crimes of modern history would present a wonderful opportunity for property developers of the likes of Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner but only once the people living there could be shunted off to Egypt, Jordan or even Indonesia.

Egypt has long refused to go along with this idea, although Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi in a mirror image of Trump’s own ugly transactionalism expressed his opposition in racist anti-Palestinian terms, while Jordan’s King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein (progeny of a Saudi line and a lackey of Washington) protested that his country was already, to use the language of Max Blumenthal earlier today, a “neocon warehouse” for millions of Palestinians. The country simply had no room for more.

As for Indonesia, I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever that anyone has asked Indonesians as to what they think of the idea. Nor do I expect to find any, just as I do not expect to find any clear-cut acknowledgement in western mainstream media that the very idea of forcibly displacing a settled (or, for that matter any kind of) people from their own country to somewhere else is to entertain a massive war crime and humanitarian injustice.

There is no evidence, whatsoever, that the Palestinians are going to buy into this filthy Western White discourse.

[su_note note_color=”#e9ebed” text_color=”#0c0a0a” radius=”6″]The collective West is owner of and heir to genocides, massive displacements and impoverishment of peoples thoughout the formerly colonized worlds and now in the post-colonial as well. We can include the Holocaust in this collective condemnation of a self-declared “civilized race,” whose criminal and immoral acts of greed and lust across five or more centuries contribute to practically every one of our major political, social and cultural crises today.[/su_note]

Yet even now, in the face of so much historical knowledge, amidst evidence of shocking, massive abuses still ongoing, the leaders of this pathetic legacy, desperately cling to the pretense they have some kind of entitlement to be regarded as “serious people” who are morally pure and superior to everyone else.

Elaborating on his argument that, Jared Kushner and his ilk notwithstanding, the Palestinians are not going to go anywhere, Max Blumenthal in interview today with Judge Napolitano says that the reality of the strip, over whose destruction Israeli finance minister Smotrich and his brother fanatics have so recently gloated, is actually promised to Qatar and will not be going to IDF baby-killers any time soon.

Qatar, with Hamas, Egypt and Jordan have all shared responsibility for overseeing the ceasefire negotiations. Qatar will play a very significant role, Blumenthal claims, in the reconstruction of Gaza, the “domestication” of Hamas, and leadership of the post-conflict territory. He traces a history of collaboration between Qatar and the first Trump administration. It is a story not unlike the tangled narrative of Qatari, Saudi, and Emirati shenanigans that ended with the sinking of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Morsi in the post-Mubarak period of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, and its reinstatement by a good old-fashioned Egyptian military dictator (Sisi).

Qatari influence in Gaza goes back to the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Qatar in that period of the first Trump administration. This relates at least in part to the fact that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were backing different and competing species of jihadis – essentially Wahhabi as opposed to Muslim Brotherhood versions – in their struggle to take down the Assad regime in Syria. Saudi Arabia at one point was threatening to crush Qatar. Qatar turned to the Trump administration for help. A deal was struck whereby Qatar invested a large amount of money in the US economy (notably, the redevelopment of parts of Washington D.C.) and Trump, in turn, pressured Saudi’s Prince MBS to back off from Qatar. Blumenthal describes Trump’s Attorney General in this period as being virtually a lobbyist for Qatar. In his interview, Blumenthal appears not to have had time to fully unpack the latter stages of this narrative but at its heart is the concept of a tight alliance between Qatar and members of the Trump administration and Trump himself in matters relating to Hamas and to Gaza.

Israeli War Crimes in Southern Lebanon

Murray begins his article with the failure of Israel to meet the conditions of the much-trumpeted ceasefire negotiated between Hezbollah, Israel and the Lebanese government under whose terms Israel should have retreated out of Lebanon:

“Not only did Israel fail to evacuate its army from Southern Lebanon on Sunday, as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement, its forces also shot over 130 Lebanese civilians attempting to return home in accordance with the deal, killing 23 and wounding 109 (of whom some are in critical condition).

This included a 12-year-old boy wounded in the neck in Kfarkela, standing right next to my local producer Mahmood. I was 20 yards away and on my way to them. Four were killed in Kfarkela and overnight the Israeli army demolished numerous homes there in “punishment.”

Apart from one Lebanese army soldier, all of the dead were civilians simply attempting to return to their homes. At least five of the dead were children. All were shot, not bombed.

“Israel’s excuse for not withdrawing is that the ceasefire agreement is not fulfilled, in that Hezbollah have not been disarmed south of the Litani River, and that the Lebanese army has not assumed control.”

Murray testifies that there are no arms-bearing Hezbollah south of the Litani, that the only people carrying weapons there, other than the IDF, is the Lebanese Army which is wholly under US control – the US pays 50% of its salaries and it is fully supportive of the Israeli occupiers who have committed massacres and other aggressions on Lebanese territory.

Four Happy Young Israeli Women

They look well, these girls, praising Hamas’ al-Qassam brigades, grateful for being kept humanely alive, and healthy. They are released to Israel amidst the serried ranks of disciplined, immaculately uniformed Hamas military who confidently exert their authority over the fateful strip.

And all of a sudden Israelis understand that Netanyahu and his extremist apparatchiks have sold them a bill of goods. Hamas is not defeated, nor, further north in Lebanon, is Hezbollah, whose members now journey southwards to confront Israeli forces who should have left yesterday.

In the face of this realization, Israelis are poised to see the peace process through to its end. They yearn to receive – smiling and happy – all the other hostages, notwithstanding the putrid hate of the likes of Smotrich, and Givir (already on their way out) who think the only good peace process is one they can routinely violate and destroy. And as Netanyahu appears, humbled, in a court of law, to be tried on charges of bribery and corruption they may begin to pick up the smell of corruption beneath the manufactured Israeli narrative of October 7th. This is far from being a strong administration and if it risks playing games with the ceasefire, which is of course the Netanyahu standard operating procedure, who can tell the consequences for Israel. Netanyahu has recently suffered ill-health; his wife and son are in Florida and will likely stay there. Relations between father and son are reportedly not good, with rumors of a recent physical altercation between them. His personal decline may prefigure the nation’s.

This is beginning to look a whole lot less than a glorious new Zion and more a multi-frontal catastrophe, its putryfying bloody intestines spilled out across at least three nations of West Asia, offering nothing good for the future of Israel if it has one. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has further exposed the mendacity of Israel and the treacherous weakness of the Lebanese political system, of the Lebanese army and of their Western would-be sponsors.

Six More Months for Ukraine

If these reports are true (and some later sources are suggesting that they may not be true or that Budanov has been misquoted or that his comments have been misunderstood), then they coincide with two other significant developments. (I would note, before I proceed, that there have been signs recently either of Budanov’s disaffection with the Zelenskiy mob, or their disaffection with him).

The first companion development is that the Rada is only two days away from giving its consent to a bill to reduce the age of mobilization to 18. The measure follows the urging of politicians across the collective West – the same ones, pretty much, who are absolutely fine with the genocide of Palestinians, the seizure of beachfront for New York property developers and with profit for the West and Israel from maritime gas deposits, and who, as though in paen to box office takings for Nosferatu, display vampiric lust for young blood, and comic self-delusion by their claim that Ukraine is a “democracy,” or that their own plutocratic corporatocracies could be similarly described.

In theory, mobilization of the 18-24 year old male population, might raise an additional army of 300,000. Russia currently fields 450,000 active soldiers in Ukraine; Ukraine’s army now numbers around 250,000. However, Ukraine’s most recent, previous mobilization fell well short of its target. The newly proposed mobilization, even in the face of cruel measures to stop it, will provoke another mass flight from Ukraine. Those who are mobilized, by definition, will be very young and militarily inexperienced. The thought that the mobilization, meaningful professional training and deployment can be funded and executed by the summer of 2025 invites ridicule.

The second companion development is the publication in a dissident online Ukrainian publication (based outside of Ukraine for obvious reasons), Strana (Strana), of a document that purports to be an outline of a peace agreement, one that the publication claims to have been sent by sources close to the Trump administration to interlocutors in Europe.

Alexander Mercouris, in his broadcast today, suspects it is actually a “float” that originates from Ukraine’s Budanov himself. Mercouris, I should say, runs an excellent and generally insightful daily YouTube commentary, well attuned to multiple Russian publications and other sources. It is sister to a show which Mercouris jointly runs with Alexander Christoforu under “The Duran” brand, and one that can certainly be described as “pro-Russian,” given its prevailing sympathy (which, overall, I happen to share) for the Russian position on NATO’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine. I note he is actually cited in an article today in the Russian publication Izvestia.

The key points in the document indicate a preparedness by whoever penned it to negotiate on the basis of a commitment to Ukrainian neutrality; a change in the constitution of Ukraine to divest Ukraine from its commitment to joining NATO; ratification by NATO of Ukrainian neutrality; Russia to hold on to the territories that it currently occupies but without Ukraine being obliged to officially recognize these territories as Russian; the lifting by Ukraine of restrictions on the use of Russian language, Russian culture and media, the Russian Orthodox Church; new presidential and, I presume, RADA elections; Ukraine to proceed in its bid to join the European Union (with the expectation that it would join by 2030); Ukraine retaining the right to as large a military as it chooses and for the US to support this military as it wishes.

Such a negotiating position makes no mention of US guarantees for Ukraine, nor of US involvement in the reconstruction of Ukraine. It leaves to a separate negotiation considerations of a “peace-keeping” force.

If this is indeed an indication of an initial negotiating position on the part either of the Trump administration or of Ukraine, or both, I do not believe it deserves to get outside the door.

In short, America’s decline is every day more visible to the naked eye.

McCoy (McCoy) has discovered the NIO ET7, which comes with a standard 649-mile range and complimentary access to “3,000 battery swap stations across China.” Battery swap stations allow you to exchange your depleted battery for a fully charged one in just a few minutes, minimizing downtime. The ZEEKR 001 can load a 300-mile charge in 11 minutes flat, less time than it takes to pump an equivalent-mileage of gas. The XPENG P7, has an innovative battery that “operates optimally” in temperatures ranging down to –22° Fahrenheit, ending the cold weather battery loss that makes EV driving so frustrating in Midwest winters.

China’s largest automaker, BYD, is selling its Dolphin hatchback for a low-low $15,000, complete with a 13-inch rotating screen, ventilated front seats, and a 260-mile range. The Dolphin has a plug-in hybrid version with an industry-leading 74-mile range on a single charge for only $11,000 and an upgrade with an unbeatable combined gas-electric range of 1,300 miles. EVs accolunt for 52% of all auto sales in China. Chinese companies accounted for more than 70% of global EV sales. China accounts for well over 80% of global sales of battery components and over 60% of all finished EV battiers. China’s robotic factories assemble complete cars, hands-free, from metal stamping to spray painting for less than the cost of a top-end refrigerator in the U.S.

“Chinese companies pop in their low-cost batteries and head to one of the country’s fully automated shipping ports. There, instead of relying on commercial carriers, leading automaker BYD cut costs to the bone by launching its own fleet of eight enormous ocean-going freighters.”

China’s EV exports are rapidly making major headway in Europe and BYD is already planning an export hub in Mexico for the American market while building billion dollar factories in Turkiye, Thailand and Indonesia.

McCoy rightly asks whether Tesla will soon be toast. This is what Trump’s pitiful regime of tariffs is all about: to shore up the tired, megalopolimaniac USA. He has vowed a sweeping roalback of federal support for the adoption of EVs. McCoy considers that the loss or even weakening of the U.S. auto industry will have a devastating effect on this country’s economy and its quality of life.

Frontline News from where News Really Matters

China achieved stable growth in outbound investment in 2024, with a notable increase in international green infrastructure collaboration. Newly signed contracts included eco-protection, and clean energy initiatives rose by 12.7 percent last year. China’s overseas contracted projects hit a record high as newly signed contracts totalled $267.3 billion, marking a 1.1 percent year-on-year growth. In green infrastructure new contracts for energy-saving, environmental protection, and clean energy projects rose 12.7 percent to $49.26 billion. In 2024, Chinese enterprises channeled $33.69 billion in non-financial direct investment into these countries, reflecting a 5.4 percent year-on-year growth. China has collaborated with over 100 countries and regions on green energy projects and launched a number of key projects and some “small yet smart” projects that effectively address the accessibility and affordability of power supply in those areas, and provide them with clean, safe and reliable energy supply solutions.

Overall, China’s non-financial outbound direct investment rose by 10.5 percent year-on-year to $143.85 billion in the past year. Investment in ASEAN countries grew particularly fast, increasing by 12.6 percent compared to 2023, with significant inflows into Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand and other regional economies. By sector, the majority of investments flowed into leasing and business services, manufacturing, and wholesale and retail trade, official data revealed. China’s overseas labor services dispatched 409,000 workers abroad, representing a 17.9 percent increase from the previous year. Most of these workers were employed across construction, transportation, warehousing, and postal services, playing a crucial role in securing employment and promoting all-around rural revitalization.

Future Tariff and Other Wars…Against America

We had to turn to Russian daily Pravda for the news that following Colombia’s refusal to accept two planeloads of handcuffed Colombian migrants from the US, and the institution of 25% tariffs on imports from the US in retaliation for Trump’s imposition (now apparently withdrawn – read further) of 25% tariffs on Colombian exports to the US (retaliation for Colombia’s refusal to accept illegal migrants), the Colombian leader Gustavo Petro ordered to use his presidential plane for this purpose.

“The Government of Colombia, under the leadership of President Gustavo Petro, has allocated a presidential plane to facilitate the dignified return of compatriots who were about to arrive in the country this morning on deportation flights. This measure is a response to the government’s commitment to guarantee decent conditions.”

Trump banned Colombian officials from entering the United States, imposed visa restrictions on their family members and other close associates, and imposed enhanced security checks on all Colombian citizens at the US border.

The Colombian Government announced the extraordinary assembly of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States CELAC, chaired by Honduras, to be held on Thursday, January 30. Former Pentagon whistleblower Scott Ritter has warned that Trump may face a united resistance from Latin American nations.

BUT:

Late in the evening of Sunday, January 26, California time, the BBC reported a White House statement claiming that Colombia has now agreed to accept migrants arriving on US military aircraft “without limitation or delay”. Colombia says Washington has agreed to treat repatriated citizens with dignity.

Agitating Brazil

Along with Colombia, Brazil has been equally agitated about the forced deportation of Brazilians from the US, in particular the subjugation of illegal migrants to handcuffing and other indignities. Tel-Sur reports:

“La Cancillería de Brasil ha denunciado el uso indiscriminado de esposas y cadenas para la transportación de deportados desde los Estados Unidos, lo cual viola un acuerdo bilateral que prevé un «trato digno, respetuoso y humano» de los ciudadanos retornados.

 

(Thanks to People’s Daily)

New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.

Technology Solutions (or Disasters)

Is Chinese fusion experimentation a promise of endless energy that will at a glance solve our climate change and energy dilemma; is it just another very expensive way of boiling a kettle? Or will it collapse and destroy the planet. Really, the competition for this status is already intense.

China está próxima a replicar los procesos del Sol

Chinese news agency Xinhua reports that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) maintained a steady-state high-confinement plasma operation for a remarkable 1,066 seconds on Monday, setting a new world record and marking a breakthrough in the quest for fusion power generation. The ultimate goal of an artificial sun is to create nuclear fusion like the sun, providing humanity with an endless, clean energy source, and enabling space exploration beyond the solar system. Only after reaching temperatures over 100 million degrees Celsius, sustaining stable long-term operation, and ensuring controllability can a nuclear fusion device successfully generate electricity. A fusion device must achieve stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds to enable the self-sustaining circulation of plasma, which is critical for the continuous power generation of future fusion plants.

On a similar theme, if you want to find out how China’s AI is quickly closing the gap on American, see here: (Economist on China’s AI)

Financial Implosion

“The bond market is being moved by concerns over how much longer governments can continue to finance the mountain of debt they have accumulated. The International Monetary Fund estimates total global government debt to be $100 trillion. This is the result of the continual outlays governments have incurred in propping up their economies and corporations…

“Significant attention has focused on the UK which experienced severe financial turbulence in October 2022 because of the attempt by the short-lived Liz Truss government to finance tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy by increasing debt. This set off an escalation in bond yields requiring the intervention of the Bank of England to prevent a full-blown financial crisis, leading to the resignation of Truss”.

The underlying causes of the near meltdown have remained. Ray Dalio, founder of the global hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, told the Financial Times (FT) this week that Britain could be headed for a “debt death spiral.” This is a situation where increasing amounts of money must be borrowed just to pay the interest on existing debt.

“There was a risk that the combination of rising interest costs, now at £100 billion a year, and the need to roll over existing debt at a higher interest rate would produce a self-reinforcing cycle…The supply-demand problem means that the issuing of government bonds (debt) exceeds the demand for them at a given price. Consequently, investors are only prepared to purchase bonds if their price is lowered with a consequent rise in the yield. (The two have an inverse relationship.)

“While the UK may be characterised as the “sick man” of the major economies as far as debt and interest payments are concerned, the position of the US is objectively even worse. However, it is able to sustain massive government debt, now approaching $36 trillion, with an annual interest bill heading for $1 trillion, because the US dollar is the global currency and in demand.

“But there are growing warnings that even with this “exorbitant privilege” the US financial position is ultimately not sustainable.

“In his FT interview Dalio did not confine himself to the UK but pointed to the situation in the US. He called for the deficit to be cut from its present level of 6 percent of GDP to 3 percent. This burden will be borne, without any doubt, by the people.

“US government spending is around $6.3 trillion, of which nearly $1 trillion is on the military and the same amount on interest payments to bond holders. Neither of these items will be reduced which means that the target will be social services, health, education and other vital areas impacting the working class”.

Lunacy Score for Donald Trump

If there is any significant correlation between lunacy, on the one hand, and being totally wrong, on the other about important facts in public statements; telling flagrant lies; manifesting utter ignorance about important life-and-death issues; threatening punitive actions against others that will hurt oneself first and even more lethally than they will hurt their targets; talking about weighty, complicated issues in a reckless or heedless fashion; uncritically parroting information fed from provenly dubious sources (namely, Biden-staffed US intelligence outlets); or issuing wild and meaningless threats; and exhibiting nauseous self-satisfaction and narcissism, then the arrow on my lunacy continuum is shifting darkly rightwards towards the MMB extreme.

The lies? How about that 65 million Russians were killed in World War 2 – it was 27 million; or that Russia kindly helped the US win World War Two – Russia, more than any other single nation, won the war; that many more Russians than Ukrainians have died in the present conflict (it is strongly the reverse); Russia’s economy is tanking – Russian economy has actually been growing, and will continue to grow but at a slightly less frenetic pace).

At the WEF, a forum in which only suspected MMBs are foolish enough to show themselves, Trump, having expressed in one breath his deep love for the Russian people and then in the next telling them he wants to destroy their economy unless they humbly kow-tow to his unreasonable demands, says he will destroy Russia by bringing down the price of oil and that the Saudis, ever so kindly, will help him do that by lowering the price of OPEC oil.

Saudi Arabia did create a challenge for Russia in the 1980s, after having instigated a massive oil price rise in the 1970s which almost destroyed the West under Carter, and which created difficulties for Russian exports – but was far from being a major factor leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Saudis, in a bid to protect market share, also dropped their prices after 2014. If Russia was indeed an intended target, and it is doubtful, the Russian economy was barely shaken.

Russia today is not existentially dependent on oil prices because energy contributes less than 10% of its revenues.

The Saudis, on the other hand, are very anxious not to be seen as US imperial dotes. Their regional credibility and their credibility in OPEC requires this. They are already members of the BRICS – a little unsteady, perhaps, but they can see which way this wind is blowing. They like high prices for their oil, not low prices because, among other things, there are a lot of Saudi princes and they have big ambitions for the desert.

A liking for high oil prices is something that Saudi princes share with US oil producers. Russia likes high prices too, and gets them because there is very high demand for Russian energy, a demand that enables Russia to overcome and work around every manner of sanction, price cap, tariff, shipping penalty, third party sanctions that the US and its European vassal states have thrown at it (even while, like Von der Leyen, they still spin the egregious lie that it was Russia that cut off energy supplies to Europe).

If the US successfully puts pressure on Saudi Arabia to lower its prices (and why doesn’t Trump put pressure on domestic US or North American producers?), then Russia can react by lowering production to push prices back up, and engineering a reduction in the value of the ruble which will sustain the ruble denomination of a barrel of oil on international markets.

In today’s Russia, Gilbert Doctorow notes in a column today:

‘Gas and oil revenues to the state are lower than the taxes it collects from the industrial economy, which are surging. Russia’s economy is far more diverse and healthier than it has been in more than 100 years. The balance of payments of Russia in 2024 was positive to the tune of $50 billion and there is little that Mr. Trump can do to change that fact”.

On the question of more US sanctions on Russia, Russian elites are laughing, as Doctorow reports:

“Russia’s Sixty Minutes program this afternoon discussed all of the points of possible punishment that Trump put into his Truth Social text. They laughed aloud at the idea of raising tariffs on Russian goods sold in the United States, since the total volume of Russian exports to the USA in 2024 was 350 million dollars, and much of that was for uranium which US power stations badly needed to stay operating. They also ridiculed Trump for some foolish and ignorant statements that he made to journalists this morning: that he didn’t want to hurt the Russian people, since ‘Russia had helped us to win WWII,’ and that Russia had lost 60 million of its citizens in that war. For Russians, the question of who helped whom to win WWII is precisely the inverse, and their war dead, bad as they were, amounted to 27 million”.

Israeli Lunacy and the Struggle for Hegemony in the Middle East

Almost certainly, Israel has outstretched itself for the time being in Gaza, Southern Lebanon, and Southern Syria. From Gaza, Israeli attention has shifted to the West Bank, where there are so many more people for Israel to murder. With the complicity of its lackey, the Palestinian Authority, Israel has staged its latest expedition for the annihilation of Palestinians.

This follows immediately, as Robert Inlakesh notes today for Consortium News, the lifting by Trump of all sanctions previously placed on Israeli settlers in the West Bank. On Monday night, with the backing of the Israeli military, settler groups launched a series of violent assaults on residents in the West Bank. The most severe attacks occurred in two villages near Qalqilya, where masked settlers set fires and fired indiscriminately.

Inlakesh details US support for Israel murder and land-theft against Palestinians.

“The role of U.S. citizens and their donations in enabling messianic-extremist settler movements cannot be overstated. However, the Trump administration has adopted one of the most hardline pro-settler positions in American history, a stance made abundantly clear by the individuals selected to fill key cabinet roles”.

In Gaza, the return of HAMAS to de facto authoritative functionality is an illustration of what, without the support of US zionists and their Presidential godfather, the fundamental weakness of the Israeli zionist project and an explanation for Israeli terror campaigns in its fear of finally falling apart under the weight of internal fractures, international revulsion, US dependency, demographic decline, diminishing economy.

Israel, Turkey, Syria and Iran

But Hezbollah, like Hamas, will arise from the ashes, and restore to Iran the kind of influence it has for long been able to sustain. This will happen, first and foremost, because Syria – as was obvious from the first day of HTS rule – is already a mess and will become more and more of a mess, providing many vacuums of power and fissure points for the reintroduction of Hezbollah and Iranian influence both in Syria and Iraq. HTS-aligned death squads have already been mobilized to murder Alawites and harrass Christian in Latakia and the northwest. This may involve Turkey more directly: it is currently present in the north and northeast through its proxy SNA army, which is in combat against the US proxy army, said to be 60,000 strong, of the Kurdish SDF, while Israel is in the process of permanently settling into southern Syria (Quneitra and Daraa provinces).

Turkey may formalize its position in Syria, partly on the pretext that it is protecting Alawites and other Syrian minorities from the (Turkish-backed) HTS, also to motivate Russia to sustsin its presence in Syria, a superpower force that Turkey might seek to manipulate in its attempts to maintain control over Israeli and and Kurdish expansionism. HTS cover for the terrorist East Turkestan Islamic Movement of anti-China Uighurs (there were 15,000 of them in Idlib before the HTS invasion) will further complicate relations between the Syrian “authorities” and many of the nations between Central and Eastern Asia that are already having to deal with affiliated terrorist organiztions seeking to destabilize Chinese Belt and Road initiatives and efforts to induce regime change where they can.

Desperation in Syria

“Intensified violence had also led to the Tishreen Dam becoming damaged and non-functional for the past six weeks, depriving 413,000 people in Menbij and Ain-al Arab of water and electricity. The Menbij National Hospital has also been compromised due to lootings, with medical equipment, ambulances, and generators being at low stock, making healthcare efforts increasingly difficult. Repair efforts have been impeded due to persisting insecurity.

“Heightened insecurity and displacement has plunged Syria into a state of economic emergency. Devaluation of Syrian currency and inflation have made the cost of food and other basic goods nearly inaccessible for the vast majority of the Syrian people. Poverty in Syria has been described as “near universal” by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), with approximately 90 percent of Syrians being financially insecure.

“Living conditions for the majority of Syrians have exacerbated significantly in the past two months. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that approximately 13 million people struggle with extreme hunger. Additionally, IRC estimates that over 100,000 children under five years old suffer from acute malnutrition.

“636 displacement shelters have had their water, sanitation, and hygiene services suspended due to underfunding, leaving approximately 636,000 people without access to clean water. OCHA states that the situation is particularly dire in northeast Syria, with 24,600 internally displaced persons (IDPs) residing in 204 collective shelters in dire need of water, latrine service, heating, winter clothing, and mental health support.

“Poor sanitation and overcrowding in displacement shelters has led to the emergence of a cholera outbreak in Syria. Disease outbreaks have been a persistent threat in Syria since the eruption of hostilities and have significantly worsened in late 2024. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have been over 200 confirmed cases of cholera in Syria.

“According to a 2025 situation overview from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently about 7.2 million internally displaced people in Syria, as well as 6.2 million refugees, primarily based in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Türkiye, and Jordan. Additionally, rates of displacement have increased significantly since the transition of power, with approximately 627,000 people, including 275,000 children, having been displaced across the country, especially in Idlib and Aleppo”.

Israel in Syria

Israel’s government has recently approved plans to expand Israeli settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, and Netanyahu has said he wants to double the settler population in the Golan, which currently has a settler population of approximately 30,000 concentrated in 35 settlements. There are urgent calls for Israel to seize a “security belt” to include Mount Hermon.

“In June 2024, at Uri Tzafon’s “First Lebanon Conference,” Dr. Hagi Ben Artzi, Netanyahu’s brother-in-law and Uri Tzafon member, told participants that Israel’s borders should be expanded to include Syria — according to what was promised in the Bible.

“We don’t want even one meter beyond the Euphrates River. We are humble. [But] what we were promised, we must conquer,” Ben Artzi said.

“Southern Lebanon and southern Syria have long been part of the Zionist vision of a Jewish state. In fact, Zionist leaders were in conversation with the United Kingdomand France to include these areas while working to establish a state”.

“Local Syrian sources say Israel has expanded beyond the buffer zone to occupy the villages of Arab al-Sudi, Shabraq, Sihyun, Nofa and the east of the town of Sayda. Israeli forces have also taken control of Syrian water sources, including the Saharan al-Julan Dam. Taking control of the water supply is part of the settlement strategy, Ayoub explained.

“Israel won’t leave the new occupation area,” Ayoub said. “They need new settlers to control the land and the water. So they need a new settler power to continue controlling the area.” And with Uri Tzafon and Nachala, they already have Israelis ready to take up that mantle”.

Stability for Iran?

Feeble Resolution of NATO’s Proxy War Against Russia

The extent to which this impacts military aid to Ukraine has been disputed and I am finding considerable confusion in mainstream and alternative news sites leading me to think, as confirmed by Scott Ritter, that there has probably been no cessation of military support to this point in time. It would hardly make sense for Trump to deescalate so significantly in this respect while escalating his threats of sanctions, tariffs, penalties and so on.

Some commentators had suggested that the number of days was significant because Trump has given his Ukraine advisor, General Kellogg, 100 days to secure an agreement to end the conflict, and three months is about what it will take for Ukraine to eat its way through the $50 billion funding provided in his last days by former President Biden. Commentators have also suggested that resumption of the flow of weapons might depend on investigations of budgetary irregularities both in the Pentagon and also in Poland and Ukraine taken to maximize the volume of weapons.

But Ukraine’s military aid is said (by Ukrainian sources) not be affected, as Trump’s executive order applies to international assistance under the “development programs” of United Nations agencies, peacekeeping initiatives and refugee support programs. Ukraine receives assistance from the United States under the Presidential Drawdown (PDA), Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), and Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programs. The executive order does not apply to these programs. Trump’s order seems to be mainly aimed at programs run by USAID, responsible for handing out $22 billion in civilian and development. This harms Ukraine as it includes initiatives like restoring bombed energy facilities and demining, said Maksym Samoiliuk, a monetary and fiscal policy expert at the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv-based think tank.

Zelenskiy at Davros was busy encouraging European leaders to make up, if necessary, the withdrawal from NATO of 60% of NATO’s budget in the event that Trump takes the US out of NATO, and urging them to be prepared to pony up a 200,000 NATO-staffed “peace-keeping” buffer force that would in practice, most assuredly, keep Russia at war. Zelenskiy insists that such a force should include Americans. This would ensure, he thinks, that in the event of a violation of any ceasefire (easily engineered by Ukraine or the CIA) all of NATO, including the US, would become implicated in a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

Trump keeps claiming that Zelenskiy “wants peace.” Yet Zelenskiy has done nothing to remove his edict against any negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, while Putin has said no peace negotiation could be conducted with Zelenskiy without the restoration of elections, and Zelenskiy has rarely said anything convincing that suggests he is no longer seeking a complete Russian climb-down.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, his own political survival in increasing doubt (thanks, in part to Elon Musk’s campaign to revitalize a scandal about how Starmer, as Musk puts it, “was complicit in the rape of Britain when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years.”), and who has just signed off on an incredibly foolish 100 year friendship treaty with Ukraine, does not want negotiations either.

Putin today, as reported by RT and CNN Friday January 24, said that “the crisis in Ukraine” might have been prevented if Donald Trump was in power at the time, and that he was ready to talk with the new US president about the conflict.

“Trump has long claimed that the war in Ukraine would not have happened under his watch, but Friday marked the first time Putin suggested the same thing – while also repeating Trump’s false claim that the 2020 US election was “stolen.”

“I can’t help but agree with (Trump) that if his victory had not been stolen in 2020, then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that arose in 2022,” Putin told a Russian TV channel, presumably referring to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine which he himself had ordered in February 2022”.