German journalist who asked how Europe can “help kill more Russians” is the grandson of a senior Wehrmacht officer.

Michael Martens of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung put the question to Zelensky in Belgrade: how can Europe help kill more Russians?

The same Martens has written openly about his grandfather, Hans-Hermann Martens, a prosecutor and senior officer who served under the Wehrmacht High Command.

A group of Germans has now launched a petition demanding he be dismissed from his post. It has already collected thousands of signatures.

The irony of these people claiming there is no nazi problem in Ukraine... The bloodline is not an accident of history but a continuity.

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Russia rules out any freeze in Ukraine.

Moscow marking it crystal clear: there will be no pause, no temporary ceasefire, no breathing space for Kiev. Why the hell should Russia pause while Ukraine still dreams of NATO, still rejects neutrality, and still pretends the four regions and Crimea are somehow up for discussion?

Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said peace only comes when the root causes are buried for good.

A freeze now would just hand Zelensky time to rearm and the West another chance to pretend this war can still be salvaged.

Russia’s terms have not moved an inch: neutral status, limits on the Ukrainian military, and formal recognition of the new borders. Anything less is just another Western trap designed to let the proxy catch its breath. Galuzin called Zelensky completely detached from reality and accused him of pushing further escalation while Ukrainian strikes hit civilian energy infrastructure and even the CPC terminal that moves Kazakh oil for Western companies.

This is the endgame language. No more illusions about frozen conflicts or endless negotiations that never touch the real issues. Russia is not interested in managing the crisis. It is interested in finishing the causes that started it. At this point not even sure Ukraine will be left with any rump statelet. Natural consequences playing out...

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Ukraine sat through the night of August 4–5 with zero air defence.

Not one of the ballistic missiles Russia sent at Kiev and the surrounding logistics hubs that night was intercepted. At least 17 people were reported killed. Warehouses burned. The air defence picture is no longer strained but empty. The Patriots are dry particularly PAC 3 (the only version that has a chance at intercepting ballistics). And the people who spent four years promising “as long as it takes” have quietly decided it no longer takes anything at all.

That is the real story right now. The sky over Ukraine has been opened, and Russia is pouring steel through the gap. After months of Ukrainian long range strikes on Russian civilian infrastructure and logistics nodes — the Wildberries warehouses, the fuel sites, the Black Sea oil infrastructure — the United States has finally told Kiev to back off the tankers in the hopes of unlocking Kiev's access to the Black Sea (good luck). Bloomberg reported the quiet instruction: avoid targeting the tankers and the Black Sea oil facilities. The message is clear. The proxy is free to bleed, but the energy markets that keep Western capitals warm (compounded by the suicidal Iran war) are not to be touched. Zelensky’s attempt to drag Russia into a domestic political crisis by hitting consumer warehouses has produced the opposite result. It produced a methodical Russian response that is now dismantling Ukraine’s own industrial and urban survival systems.

The ports around Odessa have taken a sustained beating. Ukrainian supply chain operators are openly admitting that warehouses are gone and stores are emptying. GMK – a Ukrainian analytical centre now projects up to a 35 percent drop in iron ore output for 2026. They are careful with the language, but the conclusion is brutal: this year is already harder for Ukrainian metallurgy than the first year of the war. The sea corridor is not simply closed; the supporting logistics and energy systems around it are being methodically degraded. The comparison to 2022 does not hold.

Further north, the pressure seems to be shifting toward dual use military-civilian life support systems. Ukrainian Pravda has reported repeated ballistic strikes on the Bortnychi aeration station — the single wastewater treatment facility serving Kiev and the surrounding oblast. Design capacity of 1.8 million cubic metres a day with no backup. The pattern is power plants first, then water and sanitation. The goal is not random terror (that is the tactic of choice for Kiev). It is to make large urban centres increasingly uninhabitable through winter. Russian channels have floated the return of Surovikin to oversee a finishing campaign. Ukrainian channels are circulating claims that bridges in Kiev itself could be next to isolate and demoralize cilivian and military capacity to keep enduring. Whether every rumour is accurate is secondary. The tone has changed. Russia speaks of a decisive phase rather than another grinding season.

Even Western client media outlets that spent years insisting the tide was turning are now forced to describe the arithmetic. The Spectator, writing in the immediate aftermath of the latest (Aug 4-5) attack, noted that a grim turning point has been reached — not the one Zelensky has been selling. Zero interceptions of a large ballistic salvo. Major retail and logistics sites flattened. The same piece lays out the numbers the Ukrainian government prefers not to discuss: four winters of attacks have already removed roughly 61 percent of Ukraine’s electricity generating capacity. DTEK, the largest private power company, has lost 90 percent of its generation.

Thermal plants that once formed a substantial share of the mix are damaged or destroyed and now contribute around five percent. Russia’s monthly ballistic output continues to climb. Ukrainian analysts such as Serhiy Flash are openly discussing a sustained rate of roughly one hundred ballistic missiles a month (the real number may well be double). Against that volume, the remaining Western interceptor stocks are a rounding error.

July produced another record: more than 8,300 glide bombs dropped on Ukrainian positions and infrastructure, according to Ukrainian military reporting carried by the Kyiv Independent. That is not a peak. It is the new baseline while Ukrainian air defence is hollowed out.

Julian Roepcke, long one of the more optimistic German voices cheerleading the war against Russia, returned from a recent trip and published an assessment that reads like a quiet surrender. The early-summer hope that deep Ukrainian strikes would break Russian logistics and halt the advance has predictably not materialised. Russian casualty figures, higher for Russian standards at the beginning of 2026, have not produced the strategic effect Kiev needed. Instead, Russian forces are applying greater volumes of kamikaze drones, smart glide bombs, and long range fire in a systematic fashion — forest belt by forest belt, village by village, bridge by bridge. Logistics centres behind the front are being hit with the same intensity Ukraine once reserved for Russian territory, only with far (multitudes higher) greater destructive effect. Julian Roepcke records two Ukrainian assessments. One still clings to the delusion that Western industrial capacity can eventually outlast Russia. The other is more suicidially delusional: Russia must be pushed into a domestic political crisis faster than it can achieve its operational goals on the ground.

In other words, the deep strikes on Russian commercial warehouses and civilian infrastructure are not military. They are an attempt to produce a political miracle inside Russia for Kiev's masters. That is the desperate strategy of a side that no longer pretends to believe it can win by force of arms.

The miracle is not coming. Russian society has absorbed the warehouse hits and terrorist attacks and galvanized wanting harsher strikes on Kiev. Gasoline prices are lower than a year ago. The political system has not cracked. Meanwhile the Ukrainian industrial base, energy grid, and urban sanitation systems are being taken apart in public view. Loss trackers continue to show the vehicular and equipment exchange rate heavily favouring Russia. The front is not static. It is advancing in the directions that matter most to the Russian operational plan.

This is not a temporary shortage that can be fixed with another emergency package. The production rates for the interceptors Ukraine actually needs like the PAC 3 do not exist at for the Iran war let alone Ukraine. Western stocks themselves are strained are thread bare thanks to both the Ukraine and Iran theaters. The political will to empty what remains for a proxy that can no longer protect its own capital is evaporating. Ukraine’s air defence crisis has become a global one only in the sense that it exposes how little the collective West can still deliver when the bill comes due.

The skies over Kiev are open. The logistics arteries are being severed. The industrial capacity that once underwrote the war effort is being reduced to zero though that capacity was always a joke compared to the industrial capacity of Russia. And the people who spent years insisting on fairytales that Ukraine could fight to a victorious end are now reduced to telling their proxy to stop hitting the oil tankers while the ballistic missiles continue to fall.

This is the reality on the ground. Everything else is the usual delusional fairytales designed to finish the job to the last Ukranian.

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Kiev just begged the empty suit that is the West to force Russia into reopening a sea corridor to Odessa. But the Black Sea runs on power not bad PR stunts.

After Zelensky’s self declared 40 day “influence operation” of terror drones slamming Russian civilian targets deep inside Russia, Ukraine’s acting foreign minister Andrii Sybiha is now crying to Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland that Moscow must be pressured into restoring Odessa’s maritime exports. How rich. Over 30 million tons of product risk being stranded, alternative land routes can handle maybe half the volume, and every idle day at Greater Odessa ports is costing Kiev roughly $70 million while the same ports have long doubled as logistics nodes for Western military supplies.

This is not a humanitarian plea. This is a regime that spent weeks trying to set Russia’s energy system on fire and commiting acts of terrorism against Russian civilians, then acts shocked when the Black Sea stops being a free delivery lane for its own exports and dual-use cargo. Sybiha rejects any “retaliation” framing and calls Russian strikes ironically “systematic terror” going back to 2022. Reality is simpler: you launch a public 40 day campaign of long-range drone strikes designed to create domestic pressure inside Russia, you hit energy infrastructure that keeps the Russian economy and war machine running, and you expect the other side to keep your ports and shipping lanes open out of goodwill.

What exactly are the empty suits in Brussels, Paris and Berlin supposed to do now? Hit Russia with an EU working group and letter of condemnation? Threaten more sanctions that Russia has already adapted to? Send more non-existent ATACMS and Storm Shadows so Kiev can keep escalating while Europe’s own industrial base continues to deindustrialize under the cost of this forever war? The “allies” Sybiha is appealing to cannot even guarantee their own energy security without Russian hydrocarbons or LNG from across the ocean at inflated prices. They certainly cannot open a sea corridor that Russia has decided is no longer available on the old terms.

Natural consequences are not “terror.” They are the predictable result of treating the Black Sea as a one way street for your own war and terror logistics while attempting to cripple the other side’s economy and fuel supplies. Kiev had years of a functioning corridor after the original grain deal collapsed. Now the ports that handle its maritime trade are effectively frozen, shipowners have walked away from the risk, and the regime is reduced to begging neighbors for overland scraps that will never match Odessa’s capacity.

The multipolar reality is that Russia is not required to subsidize the logistics of a regime that is actively trying to terrorize her people. Europe’s political class can keep performing Russophic hysteria for the cameras. The ships are not sailing. The grain is stacking up. And the bill for this particular round of escalation is landing exactly where it was always going to land. In geopolitics rhetoric backed only by hysteria and terrorist stunts has a shelf life. Logistics see what matters.

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The war is going so well!

Washington is now pulling its last forces out of the compound near Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Patriot batteries are already gone. The drawdown started last week and the heavy kit is still moving. Officials call it routine, just another step toward the September 30 deadline with Baghdad (the kinetic reality from losing this suicidal war with Iran says otherwise). The Kurds (useful tools of the Anglo zionist empire), who lived under that American umbrella for years, are left wide open. Erbil has been hit again and again since February. Those Patriots claimed a 95 percent intercept rate (continuous bombardment from Iran and friends has dispelled the myth). That cover is over.

This is not an isolated housekeeping exercise. It is the next chapter in debasification. Iran has spent months methodically working the map: first the bases closest to its own shores, then the radar nets, fuel farms, drone hangars, tankers and barracks. The American response has been the same every time — step backward. Kuwait’s Camp Arifjan sits roughly sixty miles from Iranian territory. Bahrain hosts the Fifth Fleet headquarters barely 130 miles away. Jordan’s bases have already taken casualties and direct hits. All of them have been under sustained missile and drone fire. The pattern is clear. What is happening in Erbil is simply the latest admission that the old forward basing model no longer works under Iranian range, resolve and volume.

There is no spinning the embarrassment. For two decades these Gulf and Levant bases were sold as the permanent architecture of American power. Now the Empire is rearranging the deck chairs under fire, quietly moving what it can toward Israel and deeper into Jordan while the Kurds watch the failed shield get loaded onto trucks. Iran does not need to occupy a single American base. It only needs to keep making the cost of staying higher than the cost of leaving. That process is already underway, and the map is shrinking.

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Chris Wright tells Bloomberg 13 million barrels a day are still leaving the Gulf. Kpler's actual data says 2 million through Hormuz. The escorts are theatre. The strait is functionally sealed save for traffic Iran approves, with the flow running on Iranian forbearance alone.

America’s emergency oil cushion just took another brutal hit. Commercial crude stocks plunged 7.2 million barrels last week to 404.5 million, their lowest since 2018. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve dropped another 3.8 million to 307 million against a 714 million capacity. Combined, the US just burned through 11 million barrels in seven days while Brent jumped more than 6 percent to $83.50.

That dual draw is a sharp acceleration from the prior week’s roughly 3 million combined, when commercial stocks had actually risen. Total U.S. crude reserves now sit at their lowest point since 1984. The SPR alone has shed roughly 108 million barrels since the US-Israeli war on Iran opened in February, as Hormuz disruptions forced Washington and the rest of the world to lean hard on stockpiles and market manipulation. The planned 172 million barrel release that began in March from about 415 million is still on track to bottom the reserve near 243 million. Analysts warn the real operational floor sits far above the theoretical EIA minimum of 70 millio bcloser to 200 million or higher  —below which drawdown and distribution capacity degrade severely or become effectively impossible. But who's buying the 200 million floor scenario? A federal watchdog already found the SPR can only manage about 61 percent of its intended rate.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News and Bloomberg he is “not concerned” about the  40 year low, claiming 13 million barrels a day still left the Persian Gulf over the past seven days, half through Hormuz and half via bypass routes. Kpler data tells a different story: from July 22–28 only 14.24 million barrels of eastbound liquids crossed Hormuz in total, an average of roughly 2 million barrels a day. Wright also insisted the companies that borrowed from the SPR will repay with premiums once the war ends, and that the reserve will actually grow by 40 million barrels next year thanks to this same conflict.

What we are watching is the Empire of Chaos burning through its last strategic buffer to keep the Iran front from blowing the global price structure wide open, while the Russian energy sanction theater continues to expose the same hollow logic. Moscow never stopped moving oil; the shadow fleet, Chinese and Indian buyers, and flexible discounts kept the barrels flowing and the budget funded even as Western capitals congratulated themselves on “maximum pressure.”

Now the third door (after further boomerang sanctions are about to land on buyers of Russian buyers a la 500% tarrif aptly named after deceased Lindsey Graham). Yemen declared a Bab el-Mandeb blockade — 10% of global trade through one Red Sea gateway. Two straits, one axis, both sealed to non aligned traffic.

Tehran, for its part, has repeatedly framed Hormuz as sovereign Iranian water where traffic moves on Iranian terms or not at all—an assertion the Kpler numbers now quietly validate. The SPR hemorrhage is not a technical adjustment; it is the visible cost of fighting a multipolar energy order with dwindling stockpiles and aging infrastructure while the actual producers keep the taps under their own control.

When oil hits $150 this reserve cannot be resupplied. The supply runs through the very chokepoints the Pentagon is forced to patrol against the people who live there. The multipolar order isn't arriving. It's already here. The folks at the pump will be the last to he told. Kinetic WWIII on deck?

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The whole performance was staged around a dead warmongering senator’s funeral. Here’s what the bill actually does. It hands the White House power to slam up to 100 percent tariffs on the five biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas. It goes after the shadow fleet, the banks, the businessmen, their families. It rolls Iran sanctions forward another five years so nothing expires. Secondary pressure aimed straight at China, India, and anyone else still buying Russian crude. Just look at the headlines of who demands and still buys Russian oil.

It will not work the way they think. Russia already rerouted its energy flows east and south years ago. The "shadow fleet" is larger and more experienced than ever. China and India are not going to kneel over a tariff threat from a country that still needs their manufacturing and their markets. Every new secondary sanction just accelerates the construction of parallel payment systems, parallel logistics, parallel insurance. The same pattern we have watched since 2022.

This is escalation theater at its most pathetic and desperate.

The real multipolar world is already pricing in the next round of Western self-harm timed perfectly with the strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb under Iranian and Yemeni control. Moscow will keep selling to the real world and the buyers will keep buying. Boomerang sanctions will continue to hit these fools hard.

Ukraine sent long range drones deep into the Caspian and struck vessels running between Iran and Russia. One of them was Iranian. FM Abbas Araghchi came out hard: what the “freeloader in Kiev” did “CANNOT GO UNANSWERED.” He called the attack a blatant UN Charter violation carried out at Israel’s behest to pull Europe deeper into the

war. An Iranian sailor is dead. Tehran is no longer prepared to stay one step removed from the war in Ukraine.

This was not clever strategy. It was Zelensky’s latest act of desperation, a high-risk throw to court favour with Trump by showing Kiev can hit Iranian interests and the wider multipolar supply chain when American patience is running out. Strike the Caspian supply route, kill an Iranian sailor, and hope the signal reads in Washington as useful escalation instead of pure recklessness.

Iranian channels moved fast. Maps of the Khorramshahr-4 and its range appeared within hours. The point was simple: every part of Ukraine sits inside Iranian ballistic missile range. Official language remains measured — “we will defend our national interests and security.” The real message is sharper.

The Caspian has been the quiet link in the multipolar logistics chain, the waterway where Iranian production reaches Russia without constant Western interference. Kiev just put drones on that route and claimed success against “military cargo.” Tehran says the vessel was commercial. A dead Iranian sailor is more than enough to get Iran involved in meeting out revenge.

Ukraine is no longer fighting only on its own territory or in the Black Sea. It is now hitting waters that border Iran, betting it can widen the war and make others carry the cost. Iran is answering with the only currency that counts: range. Both sides are now talking openly about striking each other’s territory. The old story that these were two separate conflicts is finished.

Araghchi delivered the same warning to Kaja Kallas and Sergei Lavrov in consecutive calls. This will not be shrugged off. Whether Tehran chooses a limited demonstration or something heavier is still being decided. The window is open and timing will be of Iran's choosing.

What was once a logistics corridor is now contested water. Zelensky reached for a dramatic gesture aimed at Washington and instead gave Tehran the justification it needed. The battlefield just expanded, and the man who expanded it is the same freeloader still begging for more weapons and cash.

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Axios can recycle the same sources all weekend about an “offramp” and a possible weekend deal to reopen Hormuz, but the real arithmetic is written in the empty canisters of PAC-3 MSE and THAAD interceptors already expended. Between the opening phase of Operation Epic Fury and the latest two week night and day campaign, the US has fired circa 1500 Patriot interceptors — more than half the pre war reported stockpile of 2300. Lockheed’s production line, even after the exborant emergency contracts, is still crawling at 620 missiles a year, shared with every desperate basket case "ally" from Ukraine to the Gulf.

Only 172 replacements have actually been delivered. The promised surge is fantasy that will not materialize before the end of the decade; restoration of pre war magazines is penciled in for mid-2029 if nothing else explodes in the meantime. THAAD is even more terminal: more than half the inventory of roughly 360 interceptors already gone, production still stuck at 96 a year, zero US deliveries scheduled for all of 2026 and a realistic replenishment horizon of late 2029. Each Patriot costs $4-5 million, each THAAD 12 to 15. The Empire has been burning 18 months of production capacity in a matter of weeks only to fail to stop Iranian drones and ballistic missiles that cost a fraction of that. This is controlled demolition of the very magazine depth the Pentagon needs for any future war.

IRGC and Tehran Times reporting describe successive waves of Operation Nasr-2 and Operation Thunderbolt that have already struck Patriot batteries, THAAD linked radars, and support infrastructure across Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. They claim radar nets blinded, Patriot systems knocked offline, American personnel killed, and the Strait of Hormuz still under Iranian control through warning shots, vessel interdictions, and the simple fact that traffic has collapsed.

Parallel assessments put Iran’s remaining mobile launcher fleet and missile inventory at roughly 70 percent of pre war levels, with nearly 90 percent of the underground facilities along the Hormuz approaches restored to partial or full activity and this before factoring in Yemen joining the fight. The Empire’s night strikes hit empty targets or civilian infrastructure; the Iranian underground network reloads and keeps firing.

The result is a textbook attrition contest that the industrial base of the United States is structurally incapable of winning. Every additional night of bombing simply accelerates the drawdown while Tehran continues to impose costs measured in multi million dollar interceptors against cheap, mass-produced lethal projectiles.

Meanwhile the second front is already open and bleeding. Yemeni missiles have hit Saudi linked tankers and reportedly struck a refinery; the Saudi response in Hodeidah only multiplies the fallout of a full Red Sea–Bab el-Mandab closure on top of the near-paralysis of Hormuz. Brent settled Friday at $96.78 after passing $100, and the commodity desks at Goldman, RBC, and JPMorgan are already modeling $130 plus if both chokepoints stay disrupted.

One Hong Kong flagged VLCC has already turned around and taken the long Cape route. Pipeline bypass schemes and new Gulf ports exist only on paper, none of them can replace the physical barrels that are no longer moving. The Omani channel and the talk of a weekend deal are useful theater. The harder truth is that the US has already spent the better part of its ready A/D magazine depth defending an overstretched presence that cannot be sustained without stripping every other theater. The pause is the recognition, however delayed , that the Empire is running out of the very weapons required to keep the fiction of military dominance alive.

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There’s a massive black hole devouring the Western economies, and it’s been expanding for decades. Year after year, it pulls in huge amounts of money that could have gone toward building real infrastructure, new factories, better technology, and actual productive growth, only to pump it straight into ever higher home prices.

This might be one of the biggest overlooked explanations for why so many Western economies feel stuck despite the official numbers. The same destructive pattern is playing out in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

In a healthy economy, when prices for something rise, the market responds by increasing supply. Capital flows in, production ramps up, and things balance out. Simple self-correction that keeps everything stable.

But picture an asset class where supply is basically fixed no matter how much money chases it. Think prime urban land or housing stock in big cities. Flood it with investment, and the only result is higher prices. No new quantity appears to meet the demand.

Let's call it the rentier asset black hole.

It works in clear stages:

1.  It keeps growing through accumulation. Rising prices make it look like a better bet, so more capital rushes in, driving prices even higher in a self-reinforcing loop.

2.  It distorts all surrounding decisions. Capital that ought to fund productive businesses or infrastructure gets diverted because the risk adjusted returns on housing crush everything else, especially with leverage and tax breaks thrown in.

3.  It reaches a point of no return — an event horizon where the usual economic rules stop working the way they should. What used to be diminishing returns to capital flips completely, and the unproductive asset starts offering stronger pull than real growth opportunities.

4.  The headline GDP figures and bank balance sheets look decent because they capture the asset inflation and imputed rents, but the missed factories, stalled innovation, and hollowed out real economy stay invisible.

Looking at Canada, in places like the Greater Toronto Area, we’ve seen housing prices detach completely from wages. Working families struggle while GTA detached homes trade well above the $1 million mark and require 63% of a typical household’s income just to service ownership costs. High immigration boosts demand, strict zoning blocks supply, easy mortgage credit treats homes as the ultimate safe asset, and governments celebrate the “wealth effect.” Meanwhile, the money that could revive manufacturing, mining, or critical projects sits parked in real estate.

The bill lands squarely on young Canadians choosing between rent and groceries.

The UK has been dealing with this for even longer. London and the South East became the prime example decades ago. As industry declined and capital shifted, housing became the dominant attractor, with London homes selling for over 10.5 times average earnings. The financial sector ballooned by lending against it, while the productive base shrank. Same pattern: strong numbers on paper, but a weakened real economy underneath.

Australia and New Zealand mirror the pattern exactly. Sydney homes command 13.8 times median income, with Melbourne and Auckland locked in the same cycle —exploding prices, a generation largely priced out of ownership, and capital flowing away from businesses that actually create things.

These countries share similar property laws, cultural attitudes toward real estate, and policy incentives that supercharge the cycle.

Leaders across the spectrum have allowed it because rising asset values feel like success, banks get safe collateral, and the benefiting class has influence. But basic economics, geography, and math don’t bend to wishful thinking. You can’t build a strong, innovative nation when the best capital is endlessly chasing fixed location property instead of creating value.

Time to name this beast and get capital building the future again, before the next generation inherits nothing but rent receipts.

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The Financial Times just published the latest chapter of Western intelligence fan fiction.

Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST), told the paper that Russia is “systematically manipulating” its economic data, hiding a $30 billion budget deficit, cooking the inflation numbers (he claims the real figure is closer to 15%), and burning through its last reserves. Without oil staying above $100 a barrel for a full year, he warns, Moscow faces “long-term decline or shock.”

This is the same NATO intel echo chamber (MUST, BND, MI6) that has spent four straight years predicting Russia’s imminent collapse. Every single time they’ve been humiliated by reality.

Here’s what the numbers actually say.

According to the IMF’s own April 2026 World Economic Outlook, Russia’s GDP on a purchasing power parity basis stands at $7.53 trillion!  The fourth largest economy on the planet. China, United States, India… then Russia. That’s not Kremlin propaganda. That’s the Fund’s own data.

If anything is being systematically under-reported, it’s the sheer growing scale and resilience of Russia’s real economic power. The empire keeps staring at nominal dollar figures and cherry-picked inflation scares because those are the only lenses left that let them pretend the bear is dying.

But the bear isn’t dying (Russia is surging economically), it’s simply stopped caring what the old dying Atlanticist zoo thinks.

Keep telling yourselves Russia is one bad oil price away from collapse. The rest of the world already knows better.

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By Georgy at hilislaw.substack.com; @hilislaw at x.com

Opinions about why we should have democracy, or why democracy is preferable to other forms of government, are anything but rare. Indeed, so much has been said and written on that account that, in my view, Professor Andreski’s diagnosis, which he made in 1972 – almost sixty years ago, is now fully vindicated: “The word 'democracy', incidentally, has long ago ceased to have any definite meaning, and in common usage has come to indicate a mere approval of the given system, whatever it might be.” Painfully true, isn’t it? Opinions about democracy are an embarrassment of riches. The real thing, that is, the system we actually have today, is still very much in rags. So, can we find a proper, logically rigorous and sound case for democracy?

In my view, such a case was presented by Sir Karl Popper – a great thinker of the past, whose pro-democracy formula stands out, being qualitatively different from mere crowd-pleasing babble. How does it stand out? Because it is straightforward, logical, and, right at the outset, it leaves all pleasantries behind.

Democracy is preferable, as Popper observed, not because it is somehow intrinsically good, or noble, or spiritually elevated, or ideally representative of the general will, or historically pre-ordained. Such sentiments about democracy are pretty much what they are – so much maudlin dross and bunkum, designed mostly to beguile the many-headed. No, in reality, democracy is preferable not because it is good, but because all other options are worse.

How come? Worse? Worse than what? As some might rightly observe, the fruits of democracy can be perfectly rotten: arrangements such as mob rule, for example, or oligarchic dictatorships can be produced through the mechanisms of democracy. What’s even worse, as history shows, under democracy, people tend to elect leaders perfectly unfit for rule: demagogues, populists, oligarchs, dead-eyed technocrats and mass-surveillance sadists.

Perfectly correct, I say, but that’s exactly Popper’s point. You see, Popper was, fundamentally, a realist. To him, the ‘damned question’of political philosophy, the question of “who should rule?” was a meaningless question. Why? Because, according to Popper, no matter how we answer that question, i.e. whether we say “the best should rule”, or “the wisest”, or “the general will”, or “the people”, or “industrial workers,” at the end of the day, we invariably get the worst. An observation as old as philosophy itself! People who are fit to rule rarely ever rule; people who are unfit to rule and should never be allowed to rule invariably become rulers.

It’s not to say that things mightn’t be good at first! By a stroke of luck, we might get a Pericles or a Solon as our ruler, but eventually (and inevitably) the throne will be taken by a shaved ape. Once again, a hard lesson of history: that a brazen-faced, rascally rogue should take power is never a matter of “if” or even “how”: it is a matter of “when” and the answer is usually “now!”

All of that our old philosopher understood, coming to the following conclusion: “It forces us to replace the question: Who should rule? by the new question: How can we so organise political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?” In other words, how do we kick that rogue out of power without having to tear down and burn the commonwealth? Well, if theparasite-in-chief is a tyrant, an oligarch, or an absolute monarch – good luck kicking him out. Chances are, people won’t be able to budge him without a full-blown civil war, which, needless to say, is a very grim and grotty prospect, entailing lots of suffering and bloodshed with very uncertain political and social outcomes. The commons might succeed and displace the tyrant, but at the expense of the destruction of the commonwealth. A very sour deal.

To avoid rebuilding the country from the ground up every time we change the leader, Popper suggested democracy, since democracy offers the possibility of removing rulers without bloodshed. Here’s Popper’s final definition, giving us the logical criterion of democracy: “Democracy cannot be fully characterised as the rule of the majority, although the institution of general elections is most important. For a majority might rule in a tyrannical way. In a democracy, the powers of the rulers must be limited; and the criterion of a democracy is this: In a democracy, the rulers—that is to say, the government—can be dismissed by the ruled without bloodshed.”

As you can notice, this definition places an explicit safeguard against dictatorship by making a peaceful transition a hard requirement. If we can get rid of our rulers by peacefully voting them out of office, we have democracy. If we cannot do that, we don’t. In essence, this is a litmus test of whether we have democracy or not. Very simple, right?

But I gather you can sense the presence of the elephant in the room: if we follow Popper’s criterion, can we say we presently have democracy or live under democracy? Well…

Democracy Without the Dismissal

So, if we accept the Popperian definition of democracy, then, considering our current state of affairs, we cannot help but notice a certain pattern of degradation. Methinks, our brazen-faced rogues adapted to democracy, or rather had democracy adapt to their particular wants and needs.

Pay close attention: indirectly, Popper’s definition of democracy still answers the question of “who should rule?”, giving the people sovereign right to vote for their government. Essentially, it is the people who rule, but their rule is conceptualised as an exercise of negative power: people vote bad rulers out, rather than vote “good rulers” in. Thus, the whole point of democracy lies in people’s ability to change the government: to replace rulers, to remove and assign decision-makers according to the people’s will. And that’s exactly what the rogues hijacked!

How did they do that? The idea was simple enough to be brilliantly effective: keep the mechanism of democracy, but abstract proper political power from it. That’s the real cause behind the popular complaint about the seemingly immovable “uniparty”: no matter who you vote out and vote in, government policy doesn’t change, and it doesn’t change because the actual political power lies outside the mechanism of voting, parties, and popular candidates. Elections, under such an arrangement, become a charade, a shuffle of meaningless figureheads, and that’s exactly what the rogues desire. Power, real power, remains safely in their hands.

Other disarming ploys include, but are not limited to:

• The Administrative State: it’s when you elect a new government but then discover that 90% of the actual levers of state are held by permanent, unelected civil servants in a glass building which is not even in your country.

• Supranational Institutions: you elect a national government that campaigns on, say, controlling borders or exiting ruinous energy pacts. It takes office… only to discover it is bound by treaties, EU regulations, IMF conditions, and WTO rules that cannot be altered without the unanimous consent of some remote parasites who were never on your ballot.

• Judicial Supremacy: you vote the rascals out, but their policies are guarded by black-robed mandarins who answer to no electorate and cannot be impeached.

• Central Banks and Technocratic Agencies: monetary policy, financial regulation, public health emergencies… whole swathes of governance have been declared “too important” for mere voters. Central bankers and expert panels operate with statutory independence, setting interest rates, printing money, or imposing lockdowns without ever caring to ask the hoi-polloi.

Then again, there’s the all-encompassing ploy of the proportional electoral system. Why is the proportional electoralsystem such a problem? Because it allows small parties to wield disproportionately great, often decisive influence in coalitions, thus sustaining deeply unpopular governments explicitly against the wishes of the voters. This, in its own turn, leads to the following undemocraticdevelopments:

A) The Decay of Responsibility. In a well-functioning democracy, a party holds a clear majority. This means full and transparent responsibility, both personal (a politician) and collective (the party), for government actions. In Proportional systems, however, all responsibility is blurred. Politicians can always claim that they “had to concede to their coalition partners” or that “the other party’s veto forced their hand.” Suddenly, no one in government can be held accountable, especially when it comes to treachery and failure.

B) The Frustration of the Democratic Mechanism. In a properdemocracy, the election day is the Day of Judgment: a day when a government stands accountable for its deeds and omissions, for its successes and failures. The election day is when the Popperian principle gets fulfilled – people peacefully kick out morons, rascals, and rogues. Proportional representation, however, frustrates all of that. Already, voters know that, chances are, no single party will achieve an absolute majority. Thus, instead of treating elections as the Day of Judgment to convict and dismiss a government for its failures, voters spread their support across multiple parties, leading to fragmented results. This fragmentation enables unpopular politicians to retain power by negotiating new alliances and coalitions with smaller parties. The result? An unpopular government persists despite dissatisfaction, frustrating the mechanism of non-violent removal from power. Political power still remains with the rogues.

Finally, there’s the moral side of the problem. How does all of thatinfluence the characters of our prospecting politicians? What sort of behaviour does this arrangement incentivise? Well… First, let me offer you a little tableau from a play by Aristophanes, written sometime in 424BC:

Cleon: You have embezzled a sum from the Treasury that runs into five figures, and I swear you shall pay for your villainy! Agoracritus: And you got sixty thousand drachmas from the Potidaeans, and don’t deny it! Cleon: Would you be prepared to take six thousand to keep quiet about it? Agoracritus: I'm sure I would, with pleasure. 

In a nutshell, this is precisely the kind of moral fibre and behaviour our present system incentivises. Our system is fine-tuned to produce more rogues: personal responsibility is diluted, loyalties are shifted from the people to the party apparatus, sponsors, donors, various lobbying groups and special-interest PACs. Proportional representation, for example, turns politicians into mere extensions of the party apparatus, where apparatus and its favour come first while direct voter approval comes last. This, in its own turn, creates fertile ground for “moral flexibility”, or plain old roguery: politicians who are willing to compromise with truth, honesty, hard-held convictions, and the trust of the public are more likely to climb the ranks and secure a safe position on party lists. An unscrupulous willingness to toe the party line no matter what is rewarded much more than ideological purity and public accountability. All in all, our present system is, in essence, a school of political roguery that churns out the worst, whilst keeping the potential best down in the gutter.

And that brings me to the final reflection: democracy, or at least its Popperian concept, is an admirable thing. It is imperfect, yet still better than the arbitrary rule of narcissistic despots and warty old kings. Yet, considering all that I thought about and said above, do we have democracy? Well, fry me in butter and simmer me in prune juice, but I’ll be damned if we do. All we have is a flattering myth…

Agoracritus: I still don’t know how you expect me to manage all the People’s business. Demosthenes: Dead easy. Just carry on doing what you’ve always done, Mix all the City’s policies into a complete hash, butter the People up a bit, throw in a pinch of rhetoric as a sweetener, and there you are. All the other essentials of a good politician you’ve got already. You’ve a voice to scare a Gorgon, you were brought up in the Market Square, oh yes and born in the gutter – what more do you need? Here, put on this wreath and pour libation to Stupidity.

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Ursula von der Leyen just crowed that the EU’s age verification app is “technically ready” and will be shoved down our throats any day now. Ireland is one of the “frontrunners” already building a digital wallet that verifies your age using your PPS number (that’s your Irish social security ID folks).

They want you to download their app, feed it your passport or national ID, and then “prove your age” every time you hit an online platform. Just like buying booze in a shop, says the EU President. “No more excuses” for platforms.

But here’s the punchline they’re ramming down with their jackhammer: the app “respects the highest privacy standards in the world,” is “completely anonymous,” and based on open source code so even non-EU countries can copy the surveillance model.

Bullshit.

This is the same EU that wrote GDPR, their precious data-protection bible and then immediately violates every core principle in it.

Data minimisation? Gone. They’re demanding your PPS, passport, or full digital wallet just to browse.

Privacy by design/default? Destroyed.

DSA Article 28(3)? Ignored — it explicitly says platforms cannot be forced to process extra personal data for age checks.

eIDAS 2.0? Exposed as a lie. The wallet was sold as “voluntary.” Now it’s the mandatory key to the internet.

An EU official even admitted on the record that the whole process will be “annoying” but hey, it’s “worth it” to protect kids. Translation: your freedom and privacy are collateral damage in Brussels’ digital dictatorship. The grotesque irony of protecting the children brought to you by the Epstein class, that protects the Epstein predators.

Privacy campaigners in Ireland are already sounding the alarm about handing over PPS numbers for every click. Digital rights group EDRi nailed it: this age-gate obsession is a distraction from the real issue — platforms’ own accountability. But the EU doesn’t want real fixes. They want control.

They built GDPR, the DSA, and the Charter of Fundamental Rights to virtue-signal about privacy and free expression. Now they’re using “protect the children” as the pretext to build the full surveillance panopticon — the EU Digital Identity Wallet as the gateway drug to tracking every adult online.

This isn’t protection, but enslavement dressed up in odious protect the children propaganda, as they protect the Mandelsons, the Rothschilds and the entirety of the Epstein class.

This is a blatant violation of:

GDPR Articles 5, 25 & 35 — data minimisation, privacy by design, and mandatory impact assessments. Blanket surveillance fails the proportionality test instantly.

DSA Article 28(3) — explicitly says platforms are not required (and cannot be forced) to process extra personal data just to guess if you’re a minor.

eIDAS 2.0 — the Wallet is supposed to be VOLUNTARY. You cannot be denied service for refusing it. Turning it into mandatory internet ID is straight-up authoritarian overreach.

We beat them with their own rulebook:

File complaints with every DPA citing GDPR Arts 5, 25, 35, DSA Art 28(3) and EDPB guidelines. Demand the DPIAs they can’t produce. Drag them to the CJEU. Expose the hypocrisy.

Resist the app, reject the Orwellian the wallet, and crush the Brussels digital prison.

The EU isn’t shielding children, it’s chaining adults in the name of “safety" and bullshit "protect the children" as they exploit your children as tools to ensure compliance of all future generations that come after your children.

Share this. Fight this. Before the jackhammer turns the entire internet into a gated EU authoritarian checkpoint.

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An insulting bandaid if you can even call it a bandaid on a wound they helped manufacture, while the EU’s net-zero scam mandates and the 60% tax take on every litre at the pump stay untouched. They called the blockades “national sabotage” and sent in the Garda public order (assault) units to harrass and beat back lawful protestors.

This Micheál Martin impression is sadly very true. The staged concern, the handful of coins waved around like it’s manna from heaven, the middle finger to the people actually paying the bills is art imitating the cynical contempt Martin has for the Irish.

The Irish people didn’t ask for charity. They asked for a government that puts Irish families, Irish farms and Irish businesses first instead of kneeling in Brussels. Diesel jumped 30% in weeks. Home heating oil nearly 70%. Taxes were already crushing before the latest global spike.

The same ministers who backed sanctions and green levies that made this inevitable suddenly discovered heavy handed “intensive engagement” when the tractors wouldn’t move.

Credit to every man and woman who held the line. You reminded Leinster House who actually keeps this country moving. But don’t let the pressure drop now that the cameras are off. These measures are tokenism damage control, not a change of direction. The EU Orwellian agenda stays. The carbon ponzi stays. The betrayal of ordinary people stays unless we keep the heat on.

The Irish have never been good at staying quiet when backs are against the wall. This week proved it again. Hold the line. Demand better. Sovereignty was a slogan but the right to energy independence, the right to strong borders and putting your people first, to secure your childrens future.

Tiocfaidh ár lá. The fight isn’t over.

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Viktor Orbán has conceded defeat in Hungary’s parliamentary election after 16 years in power, calling Peter Magyar to congratulate Tisza on its victory. With 52% to 39% of the vote and a record 77.8% turnout, the highest in Hungarian electoral history.

And Brussels is delighted. Which is precisely why you should be paying attention to how this happened, not just that it happened.

Let’s be clear about what the European Union spent years telling us. Orbán was a dictator. A puppet of Putin, which is ludicrous. An authoritarian who had captured the courts, the media and the institutions. A man who could never be removed through a fair democratic process because he had rigged the system beyond repair. Then he lost a free election. By thirteen points.

So which is it, was Hungary an authoritarian state, or a functional democracy that just voted out its government? You cannot claim both when convenient and discard the one that doesn’t serve the narrative.

What you can do, and what nobody in the West's client media will do tonight, is look honestly at the infrastructure assembled around this result. Years of EU-directed NGO funding flowing into Hungary’s civil society. Client media bankrolled through Brussels aligned networks. A Zelensky — Brussels’ own armed puppet thug who stood at a press conference in March and told the world he would give Orbán’s personal address to the Ukrainian Armed Forces so they could “speak to him in their own language.” An open threat against a sitting elected leader of a European Union member state, so brazen that even the European Commission was forced to condemn it.

That is called setting the table, you threaten the man, you delegitimise the institution, you flood the zone with money and messaging, and then when the vote goes the right way you call it democracy.

And then there is the document — leaked today from inside Magyar’s own circle before a single ballot was cast advising him to declare victory prematurely, cite fraud if necessary, and mobilise street groups against government buildings using the 2014 Maidan coup as the explicit operational model. The same playbook used in Romania, where Georgescu actually won an election and had it cancelled two days before the runoff. The same playbook used in Georgia. The same playbook, different country, every time the EU needs a veto removed.

Tonight the ballot delivered what the street might otherwise have been asked to do. Magyar won and so the €90 billion Ukraine loan may clear. The last major sovereign obstacle in the EU’s eastern flank is gone.

And so Brussels didn’t need Maidan in Budapest, but they built it anyway. And that tells you everything you need to know about what kind of "democracy" they are actually defending.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ With principles always conditional to the true authoritarian gang in Brussels.

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🇮🇪 Ireland’s farmers can’t afford to work their land. Their government sent the army.

The people who feed Ireland are being crushed migration and suicidal energy diktats from Brussels, by a war they didn’t vote for.

This is what the betrayal of the Irish people looks like. Armored personnel carriers sent to crush the popular will of the people.

Diesel is up 30% since mid-February. Home heating oil has surged almost 70%. Why? Because Ireland’s government is being predictablely squeezed in a vise along with its EU masters by both the Iran war and by suicidal sanctions on Russian energy — with Simon Harris declaring last month that any return to Russian fuel “would be utterly despicable.”

So Irish farmers pay the price. Irish hauliers pay the price. Irish families pay the price.

The protests have blockaded three of Ireland’s main refineries and terminals. Forecourts are running dry. Dublin is at a standstill for the fourth consecutive day.

The government’s response? Deploy the army. Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan formally submitted the paperwork — a C70 request calling in the Defence Forces to forcibly remove farmer vehicles. He warned protesters “should not complain later about any damage caused.” An Irish minister threatening Irish farmers about damage to their own tractors. So much for consent of the governed?

Taoiseach Micheál Martin called the protests “an act of national sabotage.”

So feeding your country is sabotage? Blocking a refinery is terrorism. But destroying the rural economy with an 18% fuel tax hike, that’s just policy....

Taxes make up nearly 60% of fuel costs in Ireland. The government had months to act. They didn’t. They tossed out a €250 million package in March — pocket change against a 30% diesel spike and when the farmers finally said enough, they called a meeting and locked the protesters out of it.

James Geoghegan, one of the chief protest organisers, called it a breakthrough when the meeting was announced yesterday. Then spokesman Christopher Duffy told the crowd on O’Connell Street: “We’re not going home until we see what we get.”

The meeting came and went. It ended with no new offer from ministers. The actual protest leaders including spokesman John Dallon showed up at the doors of the Department of Agriculture alongside a Fine Gael TD and were turned away. Names not on the list.

Tánaiste Simon Harris called the talks “constructive” and promised a “substantial and significant” package with further “intensive engagement” needed over the weekend before anything is finalised. No numbers or timeline.

At Whitegate, talks between Gardaí and protesters broke down and the farmers responded by moving their trucks into tighter positions, hardening the blockade.

As of tonight (day four) the blockades at Whitegate refinery, Foynes, and Galway remain in place. Fire and ambulance services have been curtailed. Up to 500 forecourts could run dry by end of evening.

Duffy emerged from being refused entry and said the protesters had been treated like “a bunch of criminals and hooligans.” His words: “We are not criminals. We are Irish farmers and contractors and people in the transport industry.”

Geoghegan told RTÉ today: “This is a revolution. The Taoiseach is not in control... the people of Ireland are in control.”

You can send the army. You can bar the doors. But the men who built this republic with their bare hands never asked permission and neither will their grandchildren.

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By Georgy at hilislaw.substack.com; @hilislaw at x.com

As some of you might know, just a couple of days ago, the @IslanderWORLD account on ‘X’ got suspended. No reason whatsoever was given to its baffled owner. Sometime later, the “tech support” automaton coughed up a canned reply – something along the lines of ‘repeated violations of X rules’ (without, of course, providing any specific cases or examples), and then the front got silent, remaining silent ever since.  

Such displays of shameless, brazen censorship aren’t exclusive to ‘X’. Indeed, the problem we’re facing is much larger. Everywhere and on every platform – be it in web-space, real-life politics, or academia, individual truth-seeking voices are silenced and destroyed as the censorship picks them out one by one. The excuse? Well, I’m afraid, but the apparatus is past offering excuses: today, they don’t deem it necessary to explain themselves, even superficially. A couple of years ago, one could still have expected some semblance of excuse, no matter how bogus, no matter how superficial, yet at least a symbol of due process, a nod to the niceties of “free speech” and “rule of law”,the notions of which, no matter how profaned and besmirched in reality, were still nominally upheld. Today, however, the superintending techno-cluster doesn’t deem us worthy of pretexts. They begrudge us even the old, duplicitous techno-babble about ‘hate speech’ and ‘malinformation.’ Present censorship is sneeringly reserved, their grinning mockery is silent, yet the core message rings loud and clear: “We silence you. Why? Because we can.”  

And this, my friends, must stop!

The Source and The Answer

“Is it possible to stop this? After all, we’re dealing with major players, with vested interests, with money and influence beyond the dreams of avarice, with cloak-and-dagger operations, with dark powers, forces and alliances beyond all ordinary notion!” – runs the counter-argument. And, quite frankly, I’m dead tired of it, I’m sick to my stomach with all those conjured spectres of apocalyptic doomsaying. The gibbering ghosts of the ‘mondial cabal’, the dark wizards in their towers, the evil geniuses manning the ineffable machinery – most, if not all of that, is plainly bogus.

You see, dear friends, while evil is altogether real, what we’re dealing with in its absolute majority is plain, old natural human evil. Our modern censors and oppressors aren’t supernatural orarcane – an ineffable coven of maguses presiding over mysteriesof some dreadful, incorporeal techno-magic, oh no. They are, if we look squarely at them, but a bunch of sleek, greedy, scaredy corporate merchants, hiding behind the bloat of legal papers, accounts, and bodyguards. They are small, mediocre, beetle-like men, and whatever powers they have are mostly because we’ve given them those powers.

Certainly, it is their greed, their malice, their stupidity, their treachery and unnatural human-hatred that animates most of our present troubles. But likewise certainly, dear friends, it is the toxic drug of indolence that allows that animation of evil to happen. The social and cultural poison of indolence, partly as narcissistic individualism, partly as a mere fashion, has been the root of many ills, past and present. J.R.R.Tolkien, the ever-wisestoryteller, just as he described the resurgence of a supernatural evil in his beautiful work of fiction, pointed squarely at the root: “But the strength of Gondor failed, and men slept, and for long years the towers stood empty. Then Sauron returned.” Men slept, this is the root! And even as the natural evil creeps upon us today, in our lived realm of reality, lots of men are lolling in comfortable slumber, poisoned by indolence.

Coming roundly to our present problem: should we shake off that torpor, should we gather our God-given reason and strength, we can disarm the censorship apparatus with relative ease. What we need, in my view, is first of all unity – and not just unity in rhetoric, but formalised unity, an association, a league, a fellowship, an alliance, a union – you name it! It has to be an organised structure of outspoken resistance with truth-seeking individuals standing hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder.

Right now, we’re isolated, picked out one by one, and erased. And because we remain isolated, this stupidly simple censorship works! Organised unity will make the difference: when one of us is picked out and erased, others immediately muster and rally round: all members of the truth-seeking league, no matter the size or the scope of their audience, speak loudly out, spread information and, importantly, return the silenced voice to the public! And that’s precisely how censorship fails: the silenced member comes back with no delay whatsoever, with their new platform amplified and rendered even stronger by the vaulting surge of support.

In my view, this ought to have been done a long time ago, especially considering how easy it is to do such a thing. All that’s required to put such a plan into motion is, essentially, human will, and that is all. What is stopping truth-seekers, especially those with large, extended, multi-million audience and reach, from standing up for a fallen colleague? There’s no obstacle to proffering a strong arm of fellowship and crying to all those hearkening millions, just like the great Swiss hero Arnold von Winkelried did in his glorious time: “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno - One for all and all for one!” Mess with one of us? Mess with all of us!  

E Pluribus Unum

“United we stand, divided we fall” – I know, it’s a commonsensical old hat, yet common sense, as I say time and again, is the cornerstone of all worldly wisdom. Mark my words: if we don’t follow our common sense, if we insist on keeping separate, dwelling solemnly each in one’s own watertight bubble, if we keep thinking of ourselves either as “too big to fail” or, conversely, “too small to be bothered about” – then all of us will fail, will be crushed, and that’s the truth of it.

Of course, achieving this unity is, in some respects, not too trivial a task. Most of us are divided geographically. Geographical division often brings about a certain lack of interest, a detachment, a distancing which resolves into a form of dejectant ennui: “Oh, why should I care about what that bloke from Spain/England/Russia/Slovakia/Germany/etc says or thinks? This hardly concerns me here and now, in my homespace of Italy/Spain/Moldova/Ireland/Greece/etc.” Likewise, strong voices from certain locales can command more interest, respect, and attention than others because of a certain historical mien - a species of cultural panache if you will: “That academic bloke from Cambridge knows what he’s talking about,while that other cheeky chappie from Chelyabinsk… na-ah, he’s just some provincial wiseacre from the very edges of civilisation, what on earth can he know?” Then there are qualms (sadly, often justifiable) about the purity of one’s motives: “Is he saying that because he believes in what he says, or is he just farming engagement or stroking his internet ego?”

Mind you, I’m not trying to make an accusatory point about‘inequality’ or unreason! All I’m saying is that such reservations, such qualms, whether real or imaginary, must be overcome, for otherwise it would be too late: it’s either we learn how to bring ourselves together and stand up collectively for our freedoms, or an elite of technocratic managers would preside over us with its neo-feudal worldview and immoral censorship.  

So, if we don’t act and, instead, stay within the nihilistic spirit of our modernity, each in our separate lane, then… then it’ll mean we’re not serious. It’ll mean that all our truth-seeking is either amateurish idealism or just so much empty breath and sophistry– a useless wind-egg farm built on base foundations of indifference and egotism. The result of all our activity (if one can call that a ‘result’) would be mere internet noise, a tempest in a virtual teapot, and personally, I don’t want any of it. Better be a desert hermit than a webspace demagogue.

And the censors, the selfsame glib and mocking apparatchiks, oh - they would be proven divinely right! Presently, they think we’re just a bunch of toothless busybodies, clout-chasers, blabbermouths (as they imagine everyone is, outside their ‘anointed’ group), yet if we don’t act on our words, we’ll just prove those fiends right. I can only hope it will not come to that.

All in all, in order to save and rescue what we love and hold dear – the beloved ideal of an open society blessed with truth, honesty, and free speech, we need to take action presently, action that might appear “impracticable” or even “unthinkable”in this suffocating climate of indolence, nihilistic individualism, grandstanding, and decadence. Our case is, in essence, theperennial case of free-thinking humanity, a history of every dissent against tyranny, manipulation, coercion, and deceit. Our adversary is not a mage, a genius, or a wizard – it’s a churlish humbug, a varlet and a villain who styles himself a king. And if our sires and grandsires succeeded in throwing off the yoke of such false royalty, why shouldn’t we succeed? Why should those doctrinaire centralisers win when there are so many ways to make them lose? Let’s make them lose, dear friends. Let’s stand together and, in great bravery and noble lustre of our spirits,defy them. Forward-ho, avaunt!

Physical crude hit just under $150 a barrel today. A record – been done before in the history of oil markets.

But the real story isn’t the number. It’s what happened in the twenty minutes before the close.

This is what the oil market looked like today... a market that has completely lost its mind.

Trump posts “a whole civilization will die tonight” at 7:45am and oil spikes to war highs. Vance says the war is basically over and military objectives completed at 8:15am and oil dips. Iran suspends all diplomatic communications at 9am so oil screams back to highs.

An hour later the New York Times confirms Iran has stopped negotiations entirely — oil spikes, stocks dump hard. Eleven minutes later Tehran Times says talks are actually not closed and oil reverses. China and Russia veto the UN Security Council motion on Hormuz at noon and oil drops again.

Then Iran and the US and Israel all simultaneously accelerate strikes and oil rises. Then for no obvious reason whatsoever oil plunges and stocks spike at 1:25pm. Then Pakistan’s Deputy PM says he was hopeful until last night but dangerous developments have re-escalated everything so oil goes up AGAIN. Then an Iranian military source on Telegram says: “We have prepared a black hole for Trump from which it will be impossible to get out” — oil spikes, stocks sink. Then Pakistan proposes a two-week ceasefire extension and Karoline Leavitt confirms Trump is aware — everything goes absolutely mental.

That was Tuesday. One trading session. One market. One war that was declared won on 38 times.

Investors panic-bought protection all day. Retail traders who have bought every dip for three straight years turned net sellers for the first time. Goldman said activity was 2 out of 10. Hedge funds better for sale. Long-onlys better for sale. The machines dragged the S&P to green by 0.08% at the close on late peace talk headlines.

Meanwhile Dated Brent the price for real barrels that real refiners actually need today kept screaming to record highs regardless. Because the futures can trade the headlines. The refiner who needs oil on a tanker tomorrow cannot.

12 million barrels a day still locked inside the Gulf. Europe bidding record premiums for North Sea crude. Asia taking everything from West Africa at any price. Diesel near record. Jet fuel near record. Gold at $4,700. Dollar tumbling two days straight. Bond curve steepening. And the average American sees none of this complexity they just see the pump. And it has never been higher.

The Strait still closed to Epstein's friends . The deadline that has moved more than 5x is at 8pm tonight. And a black hole, apparently, waiting for Trump on the other side of it.

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Remember why they told you this war started. To save the Iranian people. Trump looked into the camera on February 28 and said — the hour of your freedom is at hand. Bibi called it liberation.

Today the Iranian people from students, artists, athletes, professors formed human chains around their own power stations. Why? Because the man who came to "liberate them"  is going to free them by murdering them all, all 92 million of them.

Of course none of this would be on the table even for monsters like Trump and his boss Netanyahu if they were winning. This is how sociopathic weak-losers behave when defeated.

40 years Bibi dreamed of this war waiting for the right fool in the White House and then found his Apprentice. But of course the dream manifested itself as a nightmare and defeat of biblical proportions.

Iran is not a rogue state that stumbled into history. Persia was writing poetry, practising medicine, mapping the stars and governing vast empires when the ancestors of those threatening to erase it were still swinging from trees. Seven thousand years of a proud and mighty civilisation. The world’s first declaration of human rights... the Cyrus Cylinder, 539 BC predates the American constitution by 2,300 years. The Persian Empire gave the ancient world its postal system, its road network, its concept of religious tolerance. Zoroaster lit a flame of philosophy that burned into Greek thought, into Judaism, into Christianity, into Islam. This is what “a whole civilization will die tonight” means. Not a regime but seven thousand years of human achievement.

So thank you Donald. For finally dropping the mask and exposing what the American security state has always planned in the face of humilating defeat by Iran. This was never about nuclear weapons. Never about the Iranian people’s freedom. You didn’t come to liberate Iran. You came to take it and when defeated and humiliated, you threatened to mass murder every single Iranian like the monstrously weak coward that you are.

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1 F-35 hit by Iranian SAM limped home with shrapnel damage. 4 F-15E Strike Eagles gone — 3 by Kuwaiti friendly fire, 1 shot down over central Iran by the IRGC’s new passive infrared air defence system.

1 A-10 Warthog struck by Iranian fire near the Strait of Hormuz, pilot ejected over Kuwait, aircraft destroyed.

1 E-3 Sentry AWACS worth $700 million — split in two at Prince Sultan Air Base. At least 2 KC-135 tankers destroyed, 5 damaged. 17 MQ-9 Reaper drones destroyed.

This weekend alone: F-15E from RAF Lakenheath’s 494th Squadron shot down over Isfahan. A-10 providing rescue cover struck and destroyed. 2 Black Hawks hit under rifle fire from Bakhtiari tribesmen. 2 MC-130J Commando IIs blown up on Iranian soil. 1 MH-6 Little Bird destroyed. Iranian reporters and locals photographing all of it in the Isfahan desert this morning.

CENTCOM said Thursday: “Their air and missile defence systems have largely been destroyed.”

At least $2 billion in destroyed American aircraft. Iran still firing. 38 days in. 38x Trump and co. proclaimed Iran had been defeated.

This was never America’s war. It was Netanyahu’s war and the Apprentice was ordered to fight it with American lives, American treasure, and what remained of American credibility in the Gulf. The stated goals were Iran’s nuclear program, regime change, total military defeat, liberation of the Iranian people. Every single one has failed replaced by “at least we didn’t leave men behind.” Tell that to the families of the dead.

In 2016 Trump said of Bush and Iraq: “The war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilised the Middle East.” In 2011 he said of Obama: “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”

Both statements were correct. So by his own measure what does that make the man who actually started and lost this war, on Netanyahu’s orders, with American blood and treasure? History already knows the answer.

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