TRUMP TAKES ANOTHER NAP IN CABINET

Breaking snooze!

Donald Trump has been caught napping in cabinet again. This time, however, the "cabinet" was a shiny wooden box with brass handles, raising concerns about the President's health and his ability to award pardons to drug barons and start wars with Venezuela.

In recent weeks, the 79-year-old President appears to have slowed down and even stopped moving completely, although he remains more active than ever on Truth Social, where he recently assured his followers that he was "sharper than I was 25 years ago," rebuking The New York Times for a report that maggots are probably "feasting in the rancid caverns of his diseased brain" by now. 

"Trump is sharp, but they’re not sharp," Trump 'truthed' back at them, chastising their reporters for what he cast as unfair treatment when it comes to his health and stamina, adding, "You people are crazy."

Meanwhile Trump's other cabinet, the one made-up of all the losers he appointed to government positions, gathered round the cabinet he was dozing in to celebrate the President's sharpness and vigour, despite what one onlooker described as a smell "like bad meat left in a hot car too long."

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick praised his trade wars and hailed the cabinet as "the greatest cabinet ever for the greatest president ever."

ROLLING COAL REVEALS RIGHT-WING REPULSIVENESS

The passive aggression of the right-wing American pickup truck driver

by Nix Jeelvy

In the past several years, I’ve come to distance myself from the political right. I realised sometime in 2022 that by marrying white identity politics to the political right, we not only limit our ability to convert liberals and leftists to racialist thinking, but also that we’re opening the tent up to some quite unsavoury characters, many of whom turn out to be non-whites using right-wing ideology to whitewash themselves and pass themselves off as "upstanding members of the white race." As such, I’ve called on white identitarians to dump the right-wing ballast from their ideology.

However, I didn’t really grow disgusted with the political right, or its adherents until relatively recently. Now, it was a long time coming, and it had many reasons. The low quality of human capital on the political right, the hypocrisy, the stupidity, the absence of dynamic thinking, the parochialism, the lack of any aesthetic, culinary, fashion or indeed behavioural standards. But the straw that broke the camel’s back was coal-rolling, or rolling coal.

While I am European, I always thought of myself as well acquainted with American culture and mores. Imagine my surprise when I heard of coal rolling for the first time. For those that don’t know, it’s the practice of installing an after-market modification that if switched on, temporarily disables the fuel filter on a pickup truck, causing the vehicle to belch out billows of black smoke out of its exhaust. The driver then uses this smoke to smother cyclists, pedestrians or drivers of smaller vehicles, impairing their vision and exposing them to noxious fumes.

Drivers of pickup trucks extol coal rolling as a means of "triggering the libs" in real life. While Wikipedia frames it as "protest against environmentalism," I’ve spent enough time in right-wing chats to know that the real reason is just petty cruelty, a character flaw all too abundant amongst right-wingers. And indeed, there are precious few practices in this world which are better described as petty cruelty than coal rolling. After all, these after-market modifications on the already expensive pickup trucks are not cheap, and they have no use other than to annoy and possibly endanger pedestrians, cyclists and other motorists. It requires a creature of remarkable pettiness and revoltingly low moral standards to even consider such an act, yet it is widespread among conservative pickup truck owners.

It’s not like the practice is harmless. Obstructing a driver’s or cyclist’s vision can easily lead to a traffic collision. Obviously, smothering someone in diesel smoke can cause injury to their eyes and respiratory organs. The practice is usually employed against the operators of hybrid cars or cyclists, which is supposed to express contempt for their environmental consciousness. I suppose it’s a variant on that old anti-vegetarian chestnut, "for every animal you don’t eat, I’ll eat two," only this time it’s supposed to mock and frustrate people who care about the environment.

After all, real men dump untreated chemical waste into the seas and blight the common biome, just like those "hypermasculine" Chinese!

Tai chi in the smog

The astute observer will also notice that the act of rolling coal is also a means of symbolically farting on a perceived political enemy. Far from a frustrated Frenchman "farting in your general direction," coal-rollers are very much in your face with their vehicular flatulence. This seems to track with data from behavioural scientists who’ve determined that no right-winger has emotionally matured past the age of twelve since at least 1981. I suppose we should have expected no less from the demographic which suspends plastic bollocks from the rear bumpers of their comically oversized vehicles.

So, to recap, an American conservative will purchase an already overpriced gas-guzzling gender affirming vehicle, and then spend even more money modifying it so it has even lower fuel efficiency, just so he could belch black smoke at people. Even if the smoke weren’t dangerous, the sheer self-pauperising lunacy and incredible pettiness of the act mark such people out as nothing but small creatures motivated by seething, miserable hatred.

I note with a dose of irony that such, generally "white" people have a lot more in common with the polluters, animal abusers and petty criminals of the Third World, who at least have the excuse of poverty. How odd that the petty cruelty you would expect from a donkey driver in Baghdad or a dog farmer in Beijing is also found among white right-wingers.

I’ve always known that conservative Americans love their pickup trucks, and that their cultural mores are different from my own. I was ready to accept these differences and celebrate the "great kaleidoscope of Western cultures." However, by embracing the practice of rolling coal, right-wing Americans, and increasingly right-wingers in other countries have shown that they will go out of their way, spend good money and time modifying their vehicles just in order to inflict this, at best, minor inconvenience, at worst, serious injury on others. As such, I can no longer endorse, support or celebrate such people. They’re some of the most morally repugnant creatures I’ve ever had the misfortune to observe, and insofar as their re-education is possible, it cannot begin quickly, or harshly enough. 

EUROPE NEEDS MORAL REARMAMENT

by Cemil Kerimoglu

Preparing for the civilizational confrontation with Russia that lies ahead, and in fact is already ongoing in Ukraine, will require more than weapons, industry, and budgets. Europe also needs moral rearmament. In fact, it is the pre-requisite for success of the physical rearmament program that European leaders and policymakers at least finally recognized as necessary and inevitable. The continent has spent decades wallowing in guilt about its past, and that guilt has become a strategic liability. It is time to recognize how heavily this burden is being used against the West by its enemies. And it is time for the West to get rid of that guilt.

Russia heavily exploits the West’s guilt complex in its rhetoric. Its propaganda leans on the idea that the West is forever stained by its colonial history and therefore unfit to defend its interests. Every firm response to Russian aggression is twisted into a supposed act of Western expansionism. Both the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia have long tried to portray even the weakest Western pushback against Russian aggression as evidence of a colonial project aimed at them. Today, Russia even presents Western support for Ukraine as a colonial war against Russia itself!

At the same time, Russia cynically casts its own invasion of Ukraine as an anti‑colonial struggle. This messaging is designed to paralyze Western confidence. A society trapped in self‑reproach is a society that hesitates. Russia knows this and uses it. The more Europe indulges in self‑flagellation, the easier it becomes for Russians to undermine Western resolve.

Part of this strategy relies on resurrecting the ghosts of Europe’s Nazi past, especially Germany’s. By labelling any form of Ukrainian nationalism as "Nazism," Russia plays directly into the Western neurosis. The tactic works because it lands on sensitive ground. Whenever Europe stands firmly against Russian encroachments and hostility, Russian officials and propagandists claim that old "Nazi spirits" are rising again. Even in recent months, as Europe increased its support for Ukraine due to Washington’s instability, Russian voices compared Europe's stance to Nazism. Russia's intention is thereby to shame Europe into moral confusion, so that the Russians can present themselves as the "righteous" side.

This is why Putin and Russian commentators, capitalizing on the current pro-Russian US administration, recently evoked the Soviet‑American alliance of the Second World War. They wanted to wrap themselves in the memory of fighting Hitler and present their assault on Ukraine as the same kind of struggle. The goal is to make Europe feel ashamed for supporting Ukraine and resisting Russian aggression, as if doing so were a betrayal of its own historical lessons.

The same tactic appears in the rhetoric of parts of the German Left that are sympathetic to Russia. They point to Germany’s past to scold it for supporting Ukraine. The message is always the same: because Germany once committed terrible crimes, it must now silence itself and stand down in the face of Russian brutality. Russia and its advocates know which emotional triggers work. Europe has many. But if these triggers are neutralized, Russian leverage evaporates.

Admitting past crimes is honourable. So is apologizing for them. Europe's willingness to atone reflects its humanity. Yet this virtue becomes dangerous when it is used by hostile actors that feel no shame themselves. Europe cannot allow its enemies to turn its conscience into a weapon against it. Europeans may choose to remember their history and learn from it, but they must not let outsiders use that history to manipulate them. Only Europeans have the right to judge the faults of their ancestors. No one else can claim that authority.

For this reason, Europe needs a moral reassessment of the Second World War narrative. Above all, this is needed in Germany, whose leadership will be decisive in any future mobilization for European war effort. This reassessment does not mean denying Nazi crimes or going into revisionism. It means moving from total self‑condemnation toward a fairer, more nuanced view of history.

Different actions of Nazi Germany carried different moral weights. For example, the persecution and murder of Jews and Poles were crimes that deserve condemnation – albeit without guilt-complex and moral self-flagellation. But the invasion of the Soviet Union is another matter.

Germany, and the rest of Europe, should not feel guilty towards Russia for that campaign. The Soviet Union was the greatest threat to European Civilization at the time, just as its successor state is today. Confronting that threat was not a crime against humanity. It was a recognition of reality. The Soviet Union needed to be attacked and destroyed. The tragedy was that the only major European power who clearly saw that danger at the time, and was willing to act, was a regime that had already isolated itself morally and alienated many other Europeans – its natural allies. And hence it couldn’t convince enough of them to join in its just cause.

Essentially, a just cause was being pursued by an unjust state.

"Are we the good guys?"

Furthermore, Russia's claim to be fighting a noble "anti-colonial" struggle against the West is not only manipulative – it is laughably dishonest. For if there is a colonial empire in this war, it is Russia itself.

No one denies that the colonial record of the European powers is mixed and includes injustice. But the West has nothing to be ashamed of in the way its enemies, above all Russia, want it to be. Most former European colonies – despite the legitimate grievances they may hold – benefited in tangible ways from European presence. Roads, railways, schools, hospitals, modern bureaucracies, and legal systems were built. Diseases were treated. Lifespans rose. One need only look at the population boom in post-colonial Africa, driven by medical advances and humanitarian aid brought by the West, to see how beneficial this legacy has been.

Were there abuses? Certainly. But in the final balance, Europe’s colonies were left better off than they had been before European contact. Africa, for instance, was not some flourishing civilization interrupted by colonialism – it was a deeply underdeveloped place even before contact with Europeans. European colonization often brought the first semblance of modern infrastructure, public health, and administration. The notion that the continent’s current challenges are simply the fault of colonialism is both historically false and politically convenient for the West’s enemies.

Russian colonialism, by contrast, brought none of these benefits. Wherever Russia went, it made things worse. This is not a matter of opinion, but of historical fact. The peoples who once lived under Russian or Soviet domination – Poles, Balts, Ukrainians, Finns, and others – did not flock to Russia after independence. They built their own futures in their newly independent countries, and they built them better. In fact, it was Russians who migrated into these countries, eager to live among their former subjects rather than in the destitute realm they left behind. Also, unlike Africa before European colonialism, Poland, Baltic territories, Ukraine (Ruthenia), Finland were already developed and prosperous before being subjugated by Muscovy-Russia. Russian rule sent them backwards; in contrast, Europeans uplifted the colonies which they ruled.

Satire of the fact that Europeans made Africa much more orderly and safe

This tells you everything you need to know. When the Baltic states regained their independence, it wasn’t Estonians or Latvians who rushed to settle in Russia. It was the Russian settlers and their descendants who chose to stay. They preferred life among their former subjects to life in the "ancestral homeland" they claimed such an attachment to.

The pattern repeats itself across Russia’s other former holdings. Ukraine, for example, has always been more developed and culturally sophisticated than the Muscovite-Russian heartland. In the 17th century, it was Ukrainian scholars, theologians, and writers who brought learning and cultural refinement to Muscovy. Kyiv was a beacon of civilization while Moscow (its conqueror) was a civilizational backwater. Even during the Soviet period, Ukraine remained richer and more productive than much of Russia.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, before his brief rebellion, openly admitted that one motive behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was plunder. Moscow coveted Ukraine’s richer lands and industries, just as it had in the past. This isn’t new. For example, what came to be known in history as the "Russian Civil War" was, in essence, an attempt by the impoverished north-eastern Muscovite realm to seize control of the wealthier and more developed Ukrainian territories.

Even today, the contrast between Russian and European colonialism is visible in the direction of migration. It tells the real story. Ukrainians, Balts, and Poles have stayed and built. Russians, however, leave to those very places they colonized before, and also further west. But it is the opposite of the pattern we see with former European colonies. Africans, South Asians, and others continue to seek a future in Europe. Whatever their historical grievances, they choose to live among their former colonizers. Because, unlike in the case of Russians, the societies built by Europeans are prosperous, sophisticated, and offer opportunity and human dignity.

This is the crucial difference. Russian colonialism was extractive, repressive, and backwards. It dragged down the peoples it ruled. Western colonialism, even when marred by exploitation, often brought advancement. This is not to whitewash anything. But we must be clear-eyed about history, especially when the very country with a centuries-long record of brutal expansionism dares to lecture others on colonial guilt.

The hypocrisy of this so-called anti-colonial movement runs even deeper. In practice, it has rarely functioned as a consistent moral principle. Instead, it has often served as an ideological weapon – one wielded selectively, and almost exclusively, against the West.

During the peak of decolonization in the 1960s, when African nations were gaining independence, many of the most vocal anti-colonial activists were also passionate supporters of the Soviet Union – the most brutal colonial empire at the time. They condemned British and French imperialism with fervour, yet remained silent on the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The same pattern continues today.

Many of those who rail against the West for its colonial past – and accuse it of perpetuating neo-colonialism today – are some of the most ardent defenders of Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, which is nothing less than a colonial war waged with terror, looting and crimes against humanity.

The reason is not hard to see. Since shedding its artificial European veneer with the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia has been the vanguard of Third Worldist anti-Western resentment. Therefore, it is admired in the Global South and in the anti-colonialist circles within the West itself in spite of its colonial crimes, which were even more brutal than European ones. Essentially, the anti-colonial movement is less about defending the oppressed than it is about attacking Western Civilization. At its core, it has often been not anti-colonial, but anti-Western – and sometimes, quite plainly, anti-white.

Somehow forgot to mention of Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Tatarstan, among her list of victims of colonialism

This double standard is staggering. Over the centuries, Russia has killed, deported, and subjugated more non-white peoples than most Western empires combined. Entire Turkic, Uralic, and Caucasian peoples have lived for centuries under brutal Russian domination – stripped of their resources, languages, and identities. Today, large swaths of the Russian Federation are home to indigenous non-Russian peoples who are still subjected to cultural Russification and economic exploitation. From the Siberian Yakuts to the Bashkirs and Chechens, Moscow’s grip remains tight.

Yet Western anti-colonial activists who claim to stand for justice rarely mention them. They remain fixated on "Islamophobia" in Europe while ignoring the Russian wars in Chechnya – two genocidal campaigns that flattened cities, killed tens of thousands, and continue to cast a shadow over the region. Even Turkey, the leading Turkic power and self-declared champion of pan-Turkism, seems more interested in scolding Europe and the United States than in confronting Russia’s centuries-long oppression of Turkic peoples.

Nowhere is this moral inconsistency more obvious than in the treatment of settler populations. When Algeria won independence from France, millions of French settlers were expelled – often violently. When India became free of British rule, few questioned the departure of the British. In both cases, the world accepted that colonizers had no rightful claim to stay.

But when the Baltic states regained independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, no one called for the expulsion of Russian settlers – many of whom had been brought in after World War II to replace the native populations, large portions of which had been murdered or deported to Siberia. In Latvia and Estonia in particular, this demographic shift was not accidental. It was a deliberate policy of ethnic dilution implemented by the Soviet Union.

Latvia, still not fully decolonised

Moreover, these Russian settlers were not innocent bystanders. Many were complicit – directly or indirectly – in the brutal Soviet occupation of these countries. Yet when Latvia or Estonia tried to assert control over their own language, culture, and citizenship policies after independence, they were morally hamstrung by the prevailing sentiment in the West. They were not praised for their restraint. Instead, they were chastised by some Western circles for "violating human rights" of Russians. If they chose to expel those Russian settlers (and their descendants), such an act would have been frowned upon in the West. Russia capitalized on this sentiment, using it to paint itself as the protector of "oppressed Russian minorities" and to cast the Baltic peoples – victims of occupation – as perpetrators.

Meanwhile, no one wept for the French who were killed or expelled from Algeria. No one demanded that India extend political rights to the British who had ruled them. Those colonial removals were accepted, even justified. But in the case of Russia, the rules changed.

Here, the anti-colonial movement revealed its true face. The French in Algeria were labelled as "occupiers" who had to leave. The Russians in Latvia, in contrast, were cast as "victims" whose presence must be honoured and preserved. Never mind that the Baltic peoples had far stronger moral grounds to expel their colonizers. Never mind that they showed restraint far beyond what was shown to the French in Algeria. In the eyes of the Left the Baltic peoples were wrong – because in this case the colonized were Europeans and the colonizers (i.e., Russians) were not. And therefore, in this twisted moral logic, Russians could not be colonialists.

Russian propaganda has mastered a grotesque reversal: it casts its victims as perpetrators. It has learned to manipulate Western concepts like "human rights" and "minority rights" to shield its own colonial legacy. In this twisted narrative, the descendants of Russian settlers – often brought in to replace native populations that were brutalized, massacred or deported – are painted as innocent victims, while the nations they helped subjugate are branded as "fascist" for wanting to reclaim their identity and independence.

Worse still, large parts of the Western establishment have accepted this inversion. Because in this case, the colonizers weren’t Western – they were Russian, and therefore, in the eyes of the anti-Western Left, beyond reproach. French settlers in Algeria or British officials in India were vilified and expelled, often violently, with the tacit or open approval of the global anti-colonial movement. But Russian settlers in Latvia or Estonia? They are treated with sympathy. The West mourns for them, not for the native populations they displaced.

This double standard is alive today, and it reaches deep inside Russia itself. The so-called "autonomous republics" inside Russian Federation, like Bashkortostan, Tatarstan or Yakutia are not genuine expressions of self-rule. They are occupied territories, ancestral homelands of non-Russian peoples who have lived for centuries under Moscow's boot. And yet, when voices from those republics speak of independence, they are met with warnings – including from so-called Russian liberals – about the fate of the ethnic Russians who live there. The concern, once again, is not for the colonized but for the colonizers.

This is nothing less than moral inversion. The burden of guilt is again shifted from the abuser to its victims. The Bashkirs, Tatars, and Yakuts are told to think first about the human rights of those whose very presence is the legacy of conquest. When the French were driven out of Algeria, few in the West raised such concerns. When India gained independence, no one demanded guarantees for the British who had ruled it. But now, the descendants of Muscovite settlers in northern Asia are to be protected at all costs – while their hosts remain voiceless.

This is the moral trap that Europe must escape. If it is to prevail in this historic confrontation with Russia, it must shed the burden of self-imposed guilt. Europe owes no apology to anyone. It does not need to explain itself. Its civilization has been the greatest force for advancement in human history. The world is better because Europeans exist. Even Russia, in its brief and partial flirtation with European values, briefly became less cruel. The rest of the world, whether it admits it or not, has benefited greatly from European Civilization.

The tables must now turn. It is not Europe that should feel shame. It is Russia. It is not Europe that must apologize. It is Russia that owes an apology – to the peoples of Eastern Europe, to the nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus, to its own colonized republics, and above all, to Ukraine.

Follow Cemil Kerimoglu's Substack here

"INDECISIVE DAVE" IS THE SPIRIT ANIMAL OF THE DISSIDENT RIGHT

by Colin Liddell

Indecisive Dave is a well-remembered but rather one-dimensional character from The Fast Show, a brilliant UK comedy sketch show from the 1990s.

Dave's characteristic behaviour is to constantly change his mind and opinions to fit in with the people around him:

Yes, it's funny because there are real people like this.

The even funnier thing is that so many of them are in now the Dissident Right.

Over the years, my opinions have hardly shifted. I still more or less believe what I believed 10, 20, or even 30 years ago, although I now know a lot more. Not so for the leading lights of the Dissident Right, who have trouble not only keeping their views and opinions lined up over two or three years, but over five minutes.

Don't believe me? Well, have a listen:

Wow, a brilliant exposition on the way that Trump throws chum to his dumb supporters to keep them energised and on board, while effectively giving them nothing that they actually want.

I did a somewhat more sophisticated analysis of this phenomenon HERE and HERE.

Anyway, based on the above clip, Fuentes is clearly a hard core nationalist with a direct and unnuanced view of illegal immigration. He isn't about to tolerate illegals in his neighbourhood, is he?

Except he is:

Yup, the above clip completely undercuts and contradicts the previous clip. If Fuentes is personally turning a blind eye to illegals in his neighbourhood and is cool with them being there, why is he so hard on Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric being a bit hollow? It just doesn't add up. It's like two different people speaking.

Not sure which one of these clips is first, but it doesn't really matter, as I believe there is another video somewhere where Fuentes talks proudly about his own "migrant" heritage.

Fuentes does this shapeshifting all the time -- and it has to be said with great skill -- but he's not an anomaly in the Dissident Right. They are all at it, which makes you wonder what the whole thing's really about, something on which I have a few theories of my own.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

Follow on Twitter and Bluesky

TRUMP RENAMES PEACE INSTITUTE AFTER HIMSELF

Clownworld

In what appears to be an act of extreme arrogance and intense insecurity, Donald Trump has apparently ordered the US State Department to rename the Institute of Peace, the "Donald Trump Institute of Peace."

The Institute of Peace is a supposedly nonpartisan, federally-funded institution that aims to promote peace worldwide.

A tweet "released" by the State Department on Wednesday read: 

"This morning, the State Department renamed the former Institute of Peace to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation's history. Welcome to the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The best is yet to come."

This heavy-handed attempt by Trump to "associate" his name with the word "peace" could be part of his increasingly senile and demented campaign to extort a Nobel Peace Prize. 

Meanwhile his administration is (a) attempting to do sordid business deals with the Russian regime, right in the middle of a war of aggression, while Putin makes threats of nuclear war against Europe; (b) vaporising "drug boats" in the Caribbean in an attempt to kick-start a war with Venezuela in order to violently seize its oilfields; and (c) continuing to support Israel's policy of bombing whomever it likes whenever it likes.

EUROPEANS READY TO TRIGGER COUP AGAINST WEAKENING TRUMP CRIME FAMILY

From White House to shite house

by Colin Liddell

The constant cosying-up of the criminally corrupt Trump regime to the corruptly criminal Putin regime is constantly played down in official media, but European intelligence agencies and therefore European governments have a much clearer picture of what is really going on. They also have a much clearer picture of the growing dissident movement in the GOP itself, which is daily gaining strength from a badly aging and increasingly unpopular Trump. 

Now there are reports that Europe will simply not accept Trump's moves to compromise Ukrainian and European security, and is prepared, in the ultimate case of a sordid Trump-Putin deal that carves up Ukraine in exchange for "business concessions" for the Trump Crime Family, to threaten the US economy with a massive "debt bomb."

So, what exactly is being threatened? So far, there is not much out in the public realm, but it is clear that several major news organisations have already acquired details of the European countermeasures and are sitting on them.

Some sense of what is going on can be gleamed from this recent story in the Daily Express which refers to the Wall Street Journal:

"European leaders are considering dumping $2.34 trillion in US debt if Trump abandons Ukraine, potentially triggering an economic crisis worse than 2008. [...]

Insiders informed the Wall Street Journal that European leaders are weighing severe countermeasures in response, calculated to trigger economic turmoil across the United States. The proposed strategy includes liquidating trillions in American government bonds held by European governments [...]

The political fallout could be catastrophic for Trump and the Republicans as the midterm elections loom next year. 

The WSJ has yet to mention these countermeasures, described metaphorically as a “nuclear option,” in their public reporting, but the Express story is at least confirmation that the WSJ and thus the US political establishment now have a degree of awareness of them. As a result, such countermeasures are now an important piece on the political chessboard.

The likelihood of Europe taking this path is still extremely low, but the point of "nuclear options" like this is deterrence, and to embolden elite opposition to the rampant corruption of the Trump regime. 

With Trump aging day-by-day before our eyes and with his approval rate hitting 35% in some polls, we are already living in a post-Trump world.

The key point for Europe is to keep Trump locked in his trajectory of failure with American voters until the GOP can build up enough courage, moral outrage, or "informed" self interest to rein him in, or even depose him in an internal party coup. Needless to say, "informed" self interest will be the strongest motivator in any such development.

With most Republican politicians now extremely worried about their electoral prospects, the notion that any Trump-Putin "Crime n' Peace" deal could lead to economic chaos rather than opportunities, should embolden some of the cowards in the GOP to get off their well-worn knees long enough to stick a knife in Trump's bloated back. The European "debt bomb" plan is meant to give them a little extra courage.

As of December 2024, the United Kingdom holds an estimated $722.7 billion in US debt and the European Union member countries an estimated $1.62 trillion. This $2.34 trillion in debt is the whip hand that Europe has over America if it chooses to use it or just to threaten to do so.   

The bottom line here is that US elites have more to lose from deteriorating relations with Europe than improving relations with the Kremlin Crime State. They may need a little reminding of that point.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

Follow on Twitter and Bluesky

PUTIN HAS DOOMED RUSSIA AND NOW IT MUST BE DIVIDED

"Mene mene, tekel upharsin"

by Colin Liddell

The "Three-day Special Military Operation" that Putin launched back in 2022 was always a high stakes gamble. When it didn't work -- something that was apparent very early on -- the best course for Putin would have been to immediately pull out and make peace on the basis of giving back the Crimea and Donbas, and Ukraine joining NATO and the EU. 

Instead, Putin doubled down on failure, and trusted to the hope that Kremlin ops in the West would deliver success by the back door. This slightly more realistic hope, however, has proved equally chimerical, and now Russia is not only staring defeat in the face, it is increasingly staring total collapse in the face.

In fact, even if Ukraine somehow collapsed first helping Russia to pull off a last gasp "military victory," that would probably be just as destructive to Russia as an actual Ukrainian victory. This is because Russia has been so bent out of shape economically by this 3-day war (stretching to 4 years) that the extremely bumpy attempt to transition back to a "peace time" economy would shake Russia to bits.

Yes, Putin will not only lose this war, but the actions he has taken have ensured that Russia is doomed and is ready to slide into the dustbin of history, possibly with massive inflows of refugees to the West.

This raises all sorts of possible scenarios, including the possibility of "another Russia" being reborn like a deformed phoenix out of the ashes. This would, however, be the worst result, as it would be a reboot of a stale idea, and would represent a total lack of historical evolution. 

Much better would be a situation that developed the potential of the vast swathe of territory held back by its Russification and a solution that ironed out the glaring inherent contradictions of Russianism.

The problem with Russia is that it is simply not plugged into the global economy in any meaningful way. This is due to its extreme lack of a "thalassocratic" element, to use the terminology of Eurasianism. In a nutshell, Russia has always been a tragically over-"tellurocratic" state.

Thalassocratic essentially means a state enlivened by access to the sea, while a tellurocratic state means one deadened by being landlocked. As an analogy, imagine an animal that lacked a circulatory system. This means that Russia has always essentially been a dead piece of meat or, at best, a zombie.

This was actually its 'good point' at one time, when the Mongol hordes stumbled on a backdoor form of thalassocratic mobility through their adaptation of highly evolved mobile tactics.

This temporarily turned the Steppes into a giant sea and temporarily gave life both to them and to Russia. But, essentially, the dead, lumpen quality of Russian distance, its forests and its swamps, helped to save thalassocratic Europe from the pseudo-thalassocratic threat of the Mongols. 

But the creation of Russia as a "zombie empire" under the Romanovs, then the Soviets, and now Putin has outlived any transitory usefulness by around 500 years. All that this leaves the world with is a giant death zone, whose only relevance are the carbon fuels that the economically vibrant thalassocracies can extract from it; carbon fuels that would have no more value than swamp water without the virility and vitality of the thalassocracies.

This is also the root of the contradiction of Russia -- namely the Russian state assumes a parasitic role on something that would have no utility for Russia itself without the thalassocracies, and then attempts to use those revenues to harm the thalassocracies and "tellurocize" the world.  

However, thanks to Putin and his failure, we are presented with an opportunity to resolve the contradictions of this parasitic zombie empire. 

The telluric nature of Russian can only escape its zombie nature in union with the live-giving force of the thalassocracies. This was partly demonstrated by the Soviet Union, when the Zombie Stalinist heartland gained some traction on the semi-thalassocratic edge of Europe, as well as due to its access to the Black Sea. But this was an unstable and unbalanced concoction that was dragged down by the dominance of the telluric element.

For the union of male and female to be fruitful, the male element must be dominant. Likewise for the union of the thalassocratic and telluric element to be fruitful, the thalassocratic element must be dominant. The thalassocratic is the Yang to the telluric Ying. This, in a nutshell, is the problem of Russia. 

The solution to this is obvious, the vast dead zombie-like telluric mass of Russia must be divided up and then united to potent thalassocratic entities. The ideal solution, given Russia's size, position, and condition, would be a three-way division between China, the EU, and Japan, but Japan is not yet politically ready, and even the EU has certain issues that still hold it back. 

China, taking over Russia on its own, however, is a doomed project, as China is already an uneasy hybrid of the telluric and the thalassocratic, and taking over all Russia would quickly push it into the telluric realm and thus political necrosis.

If Europe could step up, then a more feasible solution and political evolution would be possible. This would involve partitioning Russia.

The best line to do this would probably be the Yenisei River, which neatly cuts through Russia all the way from the Arctic to the Mongolian border. The beauty of this line is that it creates a clear geographical border and dumps most of Russia's population, which is still largely European in nature, culture, and affectation, on the West side, while China gets slightly more land.

The exact figures would be 93% of population to the West and 48% of the land, including the biggest gas and oil reserves.

It would also be advisable to integrate this part of Russia into the EU not in one lumpy telluric state, but in several smaller more nimble and easily digestible entities. Once extra lands are given to Finland, Ukraine, and Georgia, new states could be set up, centred on Moscow, St Petersburg, in the Volga Region and in the Trans-Urals. This would make the integration of these dead, telluric regions into the potent thalassocratic network of Europe all the smoother.

Japan, too, could realistically be given some scraps from the table, like Sakhalin and the Kuriles, despite its lack of political readiness. 

One may disagree with this solution as much as one wants, but can you really argue that it goes against the true nature of the Eurasian ideology?

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

Follow on Twitter and Bluesky

UNDERSTANDING THE LATEST UK IMMIGRATION FIGURES (NET NON-EUROPEAN GAIN 391K)

Can you order home deliveries in the UK and legitimately be against mass immigration?

by Daniel Barge

On the back of an extremely unpopular budget designed to shore-up support among Labour backbench MPs by splurging on welfare, Keir Starmer's government is now trying to win points for its immigration policy.

Here's the BBC: 

"Net migration - the difference between the number of people arriving and leaving the UK - fell in the year to June 2025 to 204,000, the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show...Today's ONS figures mark a significant drop from 649,000 in the year to June 2024, and an even further drop when compared to when net migration peaked at 944,000 in the 12 months to March 2023."

On the face of it, this sounds great, as if Labour is finally getting to grips with an issue that has pushed Nigel Farage's Reform UK Party to the top of the polls and a potential landslide victory at the next election.

But "net migration" is a pretty meaningless term. For example, if a million Africans migrate to the UK but a million Brits leave, you have Zero net migration.

So, before anybody starts patting themselves on the back, you need to see who's coming in and who's leaving. 

The BBC vaguely tries to paint a picture:

"Among the leading causes of the drop are the fewer non-EU nationals arriving to work or study in the UK and the 'continued, gradual increase' of people leaving the country."

Meanwhile the Tories are claiming the credit:

"But to shadow home secretary Chris Philp, the fall does not go far enough and it is largely due to reforms when the Tories were last in government."

The real picture however is this:

693,000 left the UK (58% British or EU/ 42% Non-EU)

898,000 entered the UK (24% British or EU/ 76% Non-EU)

This means that:

402,000 British or EU people left the UK

215,000 British or EU people entered the UK

A net loss of Europeans of minus 187,000

And: 

291,000 Non-EU people left the UK

682,000 Non-EU people entered the UK

A net gain of non-Europeans of 391,000

This means that the UK is still rapidly becoming a less European and White country and Labour are failing abysmally.

SHORTPOD (108): KEIR STARMER'S "DON'T STAB ME IN THE BACK" BUDGET

Keir Starmer (and Rachel Reeves)’s latest budget is a tax-n-splurge budget that bleeds another £26 billion from the already overburdened British taxpayer and showers it on privileged pensioners, the workshy, and dysfunctional people having too many kids. The short-term goal is purely political, namely to stop Left-wing Labour MPs rebelling. The long-term goal is non-existent.

THOUGHTS FROM AN ASIAN-BASED TWITTER ACCOUNT

Twitter following the dox

by Colin Liddell

Thank goodness that Elon Musk has finally decided to throw the switch and allow "X" users to see where various accounts pushing political narratives in the West are based.

Not surprisingly a great many of them are totally fake, pretending to be European or American, while being based in Tehran or Calcutta. 

This is a good business move by Musk, as it will increase the credibility of "X" and reinforce its position as the "honest" market-place of ideas.

There is a degree of irony here because all that these fake accounts are actually doing is just pushing ideas, like "muh Scottish nationalism" or "muh Neo-Naziism," "muh neo-masculinity," "muh MAGAtardism," etc.

These are all 'ideas' of course, but coming from Indians, Iranians, or other Third Worlders, in the guise of patriotic Americans or politically engaged Brits, there is something immediately fake about them. 

MAGA with the lights on.

This emphasises that ideas are never entirely abstract, but are rooted in identity, locale, and genuine motivations. This is even true for Left-wing ideas. Without that they become largely meaningless and merely a means of manipulation.

With regard to all these formerly hidden "brown" accounts, the motivation is entirely parasitic, hoping to feed off the polarisation of Western societies for traffic and revenue; but the real fault is ultimately with the architecture of social media and its algorithms that are set up to get people engaged by making them, angry, stupid, and afraid.

This is why my profile on "X" contains the following Rousseauian message:

"We were all born 'frens' but social media algorithms made us 'fite' each other."

The big question of course is whether Western social and political discourse will be able to survive the near "extinction event" of modern social media. Musk shining a light on all the "cockroaches in the kitchen" is a step towards the right kind of informational hygiene, but there is still a lot more to be done.

Busted!

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

Follow on Twitter and Bluesky

LITTLE AMERICA

by Colin Liddell

The latest so-called "peace plan" to come out of the orifice that is the Trump White House has been widely denounced as a farce or even Kremlin-sourced. More pointedly it has been called "amateurish," which is a fairly accurate description.

Essentially it is:

"Ukraine, sign a nebulous deal with a war criminal who is notorious for breaking deals, and give him most of what he wants, in return for some 'security guarantees' from us who provided you with worthless security guarantees in the past."

It is easy to see how this will "plan" will hit the buffers and go nowhere. 

Of course, it's not yet clear exactly how this war will end or who will come out on top. But that may ultimately be a secondary consideration, because what this war is now really about is America's position in the world and more especially its rapid shrinkage in power, credibility, and influence.

Earlier Presidents acted as if they intuited this danger. They seemed to know that America wasn't really a country that could fight wars despite its superpower branding, and so generally avoided them.

The exception was what happened after 9-11. But compare that to what happened after "12-7" (or the 7th of December 1941), when America was attacked at Pearl Harbour. Then America acted like a colossus, taking a dominant role in crushing Germany and Japan, and then changing the world order. This was rebuilt around American power, which was based on the idea that every other country would, more or less, get a fair shake from the system. 

Compare this, then, with what we got after 9-11: merely some inglorious invasions of sandy backwaters, at least one of which was mainly done to please the Israelis, followed by failed exercises in nation-building and pathetic hand-wringing about a few thousands US causalities.

America had to work extra hard to stop the rest of the World finding out just how weak it had become, but largely managed it because it could hide behind its vast array of allies.

Now, however, the war in the Ukraine is showing, with each new development, just how weak America is. It started the war with reasonable caution, because Russia is, after all, a nuclear power, but with a strong commitment to support the victim of Russian aggression. Money and weapons poured in and America almost matched its European allies in this.

In those first two years of the war, it earned its share of the glory in keeping the Russians pinned to relatively small gains in exchange for horrendous losses in both blood and money. If anything, as Russia stalled, America started looking stronger than it really was.

In a nutshell, the cautious support for Ukraine was a relatively low-risk and low-cost means of building up American power and, as we now see with the growing damage to Russia's flailing economy and much-abused military, a continuation of this would probably have seen Russia collapse sometime this year. 

But instead of what would have been a flattering geopolitical victory, we got Donald Trump and his frankly moronic "peace posturing" in which he repeatedly blamed the invaded country for starting the war, while also greatly overestimating Russian power.

Worse then this, there was the total disrespect shown to NATO allies, who were reluctant to give Trump the well-deserved slap in the face that he deserved due to his "madman" tariff terrorism. Instead, they used subtler methods to push back on his Kremling-friendly idiocy or simply decided to wait until Trump's 'shit-plomacy' fell apart under its own internal contradictions.

Being cautious when confronted with a madman is not cowardice or compliance. The Europeans have, individually or collectively, decided to humour the madman at least until his domestic political rivals can place restraints on him or cart him off to electoral Bedlam.

The Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) deal they got out of Trump in July ensures that US weapons continue to flow to Ukraine, while those same nations are working hard to bolster their own armaments industries, along with Ukraine itself, which is now a major armaments hub producing very successful weapons as testified by burning Russian oil refineries.

But the bottom line is this: in the first year of the war American help was vital. In the fourth and fifth years of the war, it is a lot less important.

This means that although Europe and NATO still would like America -- and its lame-duck President -- to be on board, they are quite happy to find alternatives and work-arounds that by-pass America. But, more importantly, they don't think of America the same way they thought of America before.

Now America is simply viewed as an amoral and unpredictable mess; think a bigger version of Saudi Arabia or Nayib Bukele's El Salvador. On a good day, they might view America as a kind of Western Hemisphere version of Modi's India; on a bad day, as a kind of effete Russia with a White House instead of a Kremlin. 

So, whatever happens in Ukraine -- a Kremlin collapse or even a Russian pyrrhic victory (the only one they are capable of) -- the real result of this war is that a formerly dominant global power, liked and admired by most of the World, will be seen as a shrunken husk occupied by a race of midget politicians, regardless of whether they are MAGA or not. 

Some Americans may be happy with this result and say a hearty good riddance to "entangling alliances," but there will be plenty of domestic consequences to this retreat from the world and the torching of American credibility and soft power.

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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Neokrat and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying his book here (USA), here (UK), and here (Australia), or by taking out a paid subscription on his Substack.

Follow on Twitter and Bluesky