Well, damn. I was all set to connect the dots and reveal exactly what The great Pumpkin and Elon Musk were up to for term two, but that will have to wait a week as Old Joe Biden will not go quietly into that good night. He will not back down from a good fight. He will not stop making my nights scary, he will not leave well enough alone and eat Ben and Jerry’s. Joe Biden has decided that his first act as lame duck president other than scratch hisself, is to try and put us into World War III. That’s right. In September there was a military coup, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin took over and told Biden to stand down. Well, with the Deep state of the liberal agenda staring down four years of backing the hell up, it seems that Scranton Joe is now itching for a fight.
Remember what we wrote last month in 50/50. Putin was going to launch something somewhere as soon as the agreement between Keir Starmer and Joe Biden happened. It was to be a first strike. The Russians aren’t waiting for the missiles to hit them, no no no. They are in a war, they have warned the west and they are done with this. So after Joe does the unthinkable and I spend all night waking up every two hours to see if Ukraine is a glass ornament.
Here are the latest comments coming out of Russia and they sound awfully similar to the first, “The US decision to lift a ban on Ukraine using long-range missiles to fire into Russian territory escalates the conflict in Ukraine and will spark an immediate response, senior Russian lawmakers said on Sunday. “The west has decided on such a level of escalation that it could end with the Ukrainian statehood in complete ruins by morning,” Andrei Klishas, a senior member of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper chamber of parliament, said on the Telegram messaging app. Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy head of the Russian upper house’s international affairs committee, was quoted by Tass news agency as saying: “This is a very big step towards the start of world war three.”
Let me quote that admirable deep thinker and statesmen C Thomas Printer from Oct 16, “This has continued “Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov on Friday added to prior Kremlin warnings, telling Rossiya 24 channel that he fears American leadership and the people are under “illusion”.
He said they seem to think that “if there is a conflict, it will not spread to the territory of the United States of America.”
Antonov continued by stressing that Americans can’t hide from nuclear war if this unthinkable happens. “I am constantly trying to convey to them one thesis that the Americans will not be able to sit it out behind the waters of this ocean. This war will affect everyone, so we constantly say – do not play with this rhetoric,” Antonov stated according to state media translation.”
Ok, that wasn’t me saying anything profound, but I am literally quoting what the Russian Ambassador said to the UN the morning before Russia was planning to use nuclear weapons. Antonov didn’t say, we are going to send big ass bombs, he said America can’t hide from nuclear war if this unthinkable happens and we can’t hide behind the waters of an ocean. Listen, this is my biggest takeaway and what I have been saying all along about this entire Russian military operation. NATO has been expanding toward the Russian border for 20 years and they have said that Ukraine was the line in the sand. They meant it. They have been shut out of the global economy, officially. They are still maneuvering through the back channels just fine. They have had their soldiers die for 1,000 days, they have had Ukraine attack Russians on their own soil in a failed counteroffensive. Putin has warned us, his ambassadors have warned us, his diplomats have warned us. Is this the person that appears to be bluffing and is the risk worth it?
The answer is no. It is not. Ukraine is not worth starting World War III over, not for the US. I think we are getting played by the Europeans that have a shitty hand and they are using the last gasp of a man that is near his last gasp, meaning Joe.
Here is what Donald Trump Jr posted on Twitter via Zero Hedge, “The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives. Gotta lock in those $trillions. Life be damned!!! Imbecilies!” Well, trillions are a lot of money there Donny Deuce. However this is also important from ZeroHedge, “…a popular Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta (that means gazette in Russian, you’re welcome), had this to say: The madmen who are drawing NATO into a direct conflict with our country may soon be in great pain…And House Representative Thomas Massie has ripped Biden for once again circumventing Congress on matters of war, calling the decision an “unconstitutional Act of War that endangers the lives of all US citizens… But there may be hope that the Kremlin will plays things coolly and calmly, counting down the just over two month clock until Trump enters the Oval Office. CNN has cited a Russian political analyst who predicts just that scenario:
The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump may complicate the Kremlin’s reaction to President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia with US-made weapons, Alexey Naumov, a Russian political analyst, told CNN.
Although Russian officials have stressed that such a decision would mark a major escalation that would be met with a severe response, Naumov said there would “definitely” be a reaction from the Kremlin, “but I do not expect it to be a full-scale escalation.”
Naumov emphasized in the interview from Moscsow, “The Kremlin will give Donald Trump some time to maybe reevaluate this policy, readjust it.”
That is reassuring, but damn little. I wonder what happened to Lloyd Austin and the Pentagon on this little mouse turd lame duck? I hope they aren’t too upset by Don Trump’s eye-opening pick for Secretary of Defense to simply walk away and say screw it. We tried. The timing of this is very coincidental. Don’t be surprised if this Hegseth pick goes away in some backroom deal to get Biden back into pocket.
Back to Donny Deuce’s comment on the military industrial complex for a minute, this is a problem that needs to be fixed. I’m pretty sure RFK is’t the man for that job as he has lost enough of his family to that organization. Here is what the late great Dwight Eisenhower warned when he left office in 1961, from History.com “On January 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower ends his presidential term by warning the nation about the increasing power of the military-industrial complex. His remarks, issued during a televised farewell address to the American people, were particularly significant since Ike had famously served the nation as military commander of the Allied forces during WWII. Eisenhower urged his successors to strike a balance between a strong national defense and diplomacy in dealing with the Soviet Union. He did not suggest arms reduction and in fact acknowledged that the bomb was an effective deterrent to nuclear war. However, cognizant that America’s peacetime defense policy had changed drastically since his military career, Eisenhower expressed concerns about the growing influence of what he termed the military-industrial complex.
Before and during the Second World War, American industries had successfully converted to defense production as the crisis demanded, but out of the war, what Eisenhower called a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions emerged. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience Eisenhower warned, “[while] we recognize the imperative need for this development…We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Eisenhower cautioned that the federal government’s collaboration with an alliance of military and industrial leaders, though necessary, was vulnerable to abuse of power. Ike then counseled American citizens to be vigilant in monitoring the military-industrial complex.”
That man is in my opinion one of the most underrated Presidents of all time. How prescient he was. I can’t disentangle their agenda and the European agenda on this and perhaps it is because they are intertwined. I know Europe is screwed. They can’t manufacture like Asia, they can’t print the reserve currency like the US, so they are stuck driving the lonely Autobahn with expensive gasoline by themselves. They don’t have a good play to make here without a war. I wonder if they would fight Russia without the US as an ally? I don’t think Trump will back them although by treaty we are obligated to do so. Of course, the US military has broken treaties with the American Indian more times than they can count, and they also lied to Ukraine when they got Ukraine to give up all their nukes in exchange for the protection of the US military. Ukraine wouldn’t be in this fix if they hadn’t trusted us in 1991.
The whole world must be sick of watching us lie and cheat and steal our way through the last half of the last century and the first quarter of this one. We defaulted on the gold standard, we defaulted on our obligations to protect Ukraine if they gave up their nukes in 1991, we went into Iraq after weapons of mass destruction which weren’t there, we went into Afghanistan because we were looking for a goat rodeo, we stole Russian reserves in 2021, and we are about to get in a real international conflict that might end up on our soil for the first time since the War of 1812. Sorry Hawaii, you weren’t even a state during Pearl Harbor.
Trump might get us a reprieve on the Ukraine situation, at least for a bit. However, other countries are already making plans for his new plans. This from Michael Every of Rabobank via ZeroHedge, “China warned the US it still has four non-negotiable red lines: Taiwan, democracy, human rights, and China’s right to development. If the US arms Taiwan more, expect escalation; if the US tries to push back against the CCP, expect escalation; and if the US tries to limit China’s rise -e.g., via tariffs- expect escalation… China already said from 1 December it will tighten export controls on “dual use” materials such as tungsten, graphite, magnesium, and aluminum alloys commonly used in tech supply chains. (Recall the “strategic goods fallacy” noted in my report on economic statecraft: everything can be ‘strategic’.) As with recent Chinese sanctions on goods supplied to a US drone maker, physical supply chains are weaponised. Now imagine a surge in US goods demand around/ahead of tariffs, and a deliberate reduction in Chinese supply.
In parallel, Russia announced a ban on the export of enriched uranium just as the US, and world, realises it needs to go nuclear again rapidly: it will now only go to “friendly countries” like India, Iran, and China. Russia also just stopped selling piped natural gas to Austria… Team Trump has said that from day one, it will aim to crush the Iranian economy: presumably no large benefits given to Tehran this time, and sanctions on oil will actually be enforced – which could create further stand-offs with China, and maybe India.”
Alex Maxia writes for the BBC, “On Monday, millions of Swedes will start receiving copies of a pamphlet advising the population how to prepare and cope in the event of war or another unexpected crisis.
“In case of crisis or war” has been updated from six years ago because of what the government in Stockholm calls the worsening security situation, by which it means Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The booklet is also twice the size.
Neighbouring Finland has also just published its own fresh advice online on “preparing for incidents and crises”.
And Norwegians have also recently received a pamphlet urging them to be prepared to manage on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather, war and other threats.”
Here is the key takeaway, too late is too late. We need to pay attention now because this is about to escalate. The world is through with the US telling it what to do, and we ain’t strong enough to make that big stick shit stick anymore. We can’t even assure safe passage through the Red Sea. Now we want to pick a fight with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world? Please, tell me I’m not taking crazy pills….
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
On this date in history… 114 years ago to be exact, Russian author Leo Tolstoy, suffering from pneumonia, died of heart failure at the railroad station of Astapovo.
Also born on this date… one of the best joke tellers of all time Bob Einstein.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.