I Feel the Earth Moving Under Our Feet

Events in Europe, Middle East, here are moving so quickly, it seems that decades of deceit, corruption and, just plain stupidity are nearing their end sooner than we could have imagined.

American Thinker 

Events in Europe, the Middle East, and here are moving so quickly, it seems that decades of deceit, corruption, and just plain stupidity are nearing their end sooner than we could have imagined. Here’s a sample of the tremors this week, which promise to undo the near past.

Iran

Credible reports indicate 23,000 civilians have been murdered by the mullahs’ forces, and videos (again made public due to the extraordinary efforts of Elon Musk’s teams to work around the mullahs' blackouts) reveal incredible brutality. Corpses with catheters and heart monitors still attached support accounts of persons being snatched from hospitals and left to die of untreated bullet wounds. A major bazaar was set on fire, and those who sought escape from the flames were machine-gunned.

Khalid Umar reflects on the protest culture’s silence.

No “Free Iran.”

No marches.

No slogans.

The absence is not accidental. It is revealing.

SELECTIVE MORALITY, PERFECTED 

The modern protest industry is not driven by universal ethics. It is driven by alignment. Iran does not fit the approved script of oppression -- because condemning Tehran would mean indicting the very ideological ecosystem that has been protected, rationalised, and indirectly funded for decades.

Iran is not an inconvenience.

Iran is the source. 

Only the U.S. and Israel have come to the aid of the suffering Iranians, he notes, and explains in detail why “there are no emergency UN sessions, no campus occupations, no celebrity tears.” It is, he argues, because Islam is killing Muslims, and neither Islamophobia nor colonialism, nor the Jews, nor, indeed, any outside force can be blamed.

THE UMMAH IN COGNITIVE SHOCK

Sunni and Shia alike stand frozen.

Voiceless & Paralysed.

There is no script for this moment. No victim card to play. No external enemy to blame. Iran has ripped the mask off political Islam from the inside and the Ummah does not know how to respond. Soulless men walking. Living ghosts.

A CIVILISATIONAL RUPTURE

An entire nation -- larger than the UK, Germany, France, and Spain combined -- is attempting something unprecedented: abandoning a theocratic death cult en masse.

After fifty years of enforced darkness, Iranians are not reforming Islam.

They are rejecting it. They are leaving it. Telling Islam can’t be reformed; it can only be banished.

This is not a protest. It is a declaration of freedom.

As for the U.S. response, it looked this week as if we would see action, and then the apparent offensive was reversed after the mullahs, through channels, promised to delay planned executions. Are we reneging on a promise, as some claim? I think, as does this author, that the initial containment operation was strategic, a Phase 1 of our plan.

This is a live containment operation. [snip] The response was not symbolic. It was surgical. The deterrent message was delivered with maximum ambiguity. Iran blinked. Trump flexed. But neither side collapsed. This was a trial run. The US gained full-spectrum data on Iranian readiness. Command latency. Radar activation. Defensive posture. Iran showed its hand under pressure. The Pentagon watched every move. What the US just did was a dry-run ignition protocol to test reflexes. And it worked. No bombs dropped. No martyrs made. But the field was mapped, the pressure applied, and the exit offered. Trump now controls the pace of escalation. Iran is buying time through signals and intermediaries. The Ayatollah is either evacuating or preparing an internal firewall. Both are collapse moves. The sanctions, the media leaks, the social media info war -- they are not distractions. They are phase 2 of a psyops-led siege campaign. Collapse without a missile. Submission through saturation. This is war by other means. The strike is no longer the question. The strike is now leverage. Collapse has entered the slow spiral. No fundamental rescue exists inside Iran. Sanctions are deepening. Capital is fleeing. Water shortages, blackouts, repression -- all accelerating. The regime is now hostage to its own stagnation. And everyone at the top of the game knows it. This was not about killing leaders. This was about proving who moves the sky. And now the whole world sees who moves it. The tempo of collapse has entered American control. Not by force. By frequency.

Money is pouring out of the pockets, and banks of the mullahcracy, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant says we see the flow, and know who sent what and where it’s going. The Iranian banking system and its currency are collapsing. Tyrants don’t ship their means of control out of a country they think they have in hand.

The United States

Those of us angry at the double standard in criminal prosecutions probably should stock up on popcorn. Jeff Childers offers up a preview of coming attractions. 

I penciled out a quick list of all the public officials that are or have been under DoJ investigation or prosecution. The Devil’s inventory is swelling:

1. Tim Walz, catfish-like governor of Minnesota
2. Jacob Frey, slimy mayor of Minneapolis
3. Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve and palace-builder
4. Lisa Cook, Federal Reserve governor (diversity hire)
5. James Comey, former FBI Director and Russiagate architect
6. Letitia James, trash-talking New York Attorney General
7. Adam Schiff, shifty U.S. Senator
8. John Bolton, former National Security Advisor and deep-state crocodile
9. Elissa Slotkin, U.S. Senator (for her reckless “defy illegal orders” video)
10. Mark Kelly, U.S. Senator (same)
11. Jack Smith, pencil-necked former Special Counsel on Trump prosecutions
12. Dana Williamson, shady former Chief of Staff to Governor Newsom (swamp operator)
13. Sean McCluskie, top aide to former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (and vaccine mandate architect)
14. Greg Campbell, heavyweight Sacramento Democrat lobbyist and fundraising bundler, now jailbird

There are more in the crosshairs. Fani Willis is probably wondering when she’ll get a visit from the process server, for example. Trump has teased investigations of Governor Newsom himself, for another.

I ask you -- have you ever seen anything like this?

It shows no sign of slowing down. If anything, it is picking up pace. As I’ve previously reported, last week on January 8th, the White House created a new Division for National Fraud Enforcement, homed in the West Wing and not the DOJ, which is rapidly ramping up to focus on welfare and benefits fraud, and its website suggests a plethora of new fraud prosecutions coming soon.

Europe

Latin America, tutored by Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, is moving steadily rightward, away from Marxism and narcoterrorism. Europe, on the other hand, is sinking deeper into the slough. The EU destroys Western Europe (Eastern Europe is pushing back) by punishing dissenting speech, forcing open borders, and expanding a bureaucratic chokehold on free markets and innovation.

People and political opponents are being muzzled and kept from holding office. Keir Starmer's Labour Party is canceling elections right and left to keep even a crooked toehold in Parliament.

The article “The Great Leap Backwards” clearly explains what’s happening to Europe’s economy and culture, and I urge you to read it all.

...modern European businesses are being encouraged to melt down their profit margins to produce mountains of "Compliance Certificates." It is a spectacular race to the bottom where the winner is the country that can produce the most paperwork with the least amount of actual electricity.

The energy policy has reached a level of avant-garde absurdity that would make a central planner weep with joy. By banning everything that actually glows or hums while the sun is down, the Union is pioneering a "Post-Industrial Romanticism" where factories operate only when the wind blows at exactly twelve knots. It’s a bold return to the medieval agrarian calendar, but with much more expensive spreadsheets. We are witnessing a revolutionary Five-Year Plan where the goal is to have every citizen hand-knitting their own carbon credits while sitting in the dark, celebrating the fact that while they have no heating, they do have a standardized USB-C charger for the phones they can no longer afford to charge.

[snip]while the rest of the world is distracted by artificial intelligence and space travel, Europe remains focused on the true struggle: ensuring that every single digital interaction is preceded by a twenty-page legal disclaimer written in a language that no human has spoken since the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.

Politically, the "Solidarity of the Breadline" is making a massive comeback, as the Union replaces the "invisible hand" of the market with the "very visible thumb" of the regulator. There is a certain poetic beauty in watching twenty-seven nations sit in a circle, debating the precise curvature of a subsidized organic turnip while their global market share evaporates like a puddle in a heatwave. It is a total commitment to the "Equality of Stagnation" -- a grand vision where no one is allowed to get ahead, because moving forward would require a permit that hasn't been printed yet.

Minnesota

In a clear attempt to deflect from the massive corruption in Minnesota and, in particular, Minneapolis, Governor Walz and Mayor Frey are encouraging the lawless attacks on ICE personnel. They are hoping to replay the outrageously deceitful prosecutions of police officers when a very sick, dope-filled George Floyd died in custody, and the BLM riots, which burned the city down, took hold. I don’t think it’s working. (For one thing, this time the progressive private school heads in D.C. are not sending out messages of support for Renee Good, who was killed as she drove her car into an ICE officer, as they did when lifelong criminal Floyd died. Maybe enough parents and donors registered their contempt for this idiotic virtue signaling, then to warn them off it now.) Walz and Frey seem to be trying to egg the president into calling this an insurrection and bringing in federal troops, so the miscreants can ignite their fellow leftists in other blue cities to ramp up riots before the midterms. So far, it’s not working. ICE is showing clever thinking.

This week, they began working at dawn, a time when paid protesters are still in bed sleeping off their cosplayed revolution. Also, this time, investigations are underway into who is funding these riots with the aim of ultimately holding them responsible for the damage done.

Why should poor and middle-class citizens and business owners pay the price and not the rich donors who fueled the mayhem?

Podcast thread for Jan 20

 

Anyone feel sore today?

Hatred Brought Us to a Place the Haters Don’t Care For

American Thinker 

My wife and I have a close family friend who lives in a suburb of Minneapolis, MN. I’ll call her Jane. She is a real person, but “Jane” is not her real name.

Jane is a hard-working, big-hearted woman who has never intended to hurt anyone. She is the type of person who calls on your birthday, comforts you when tragedy strikes, or takes you to the doctor when you’re under the weather. She is the friend that every person should be blessed with. We are grateful to have her in our lives, despite her one glaring fault -- an all-consuming hatred for Donald J. Trump. It is a hatred that far exceeds mere derangement.

For Jane politics isn’t the business of rational choices. It is a war of emotional expression. While Jane is vehemently opposed to illegal immigration, she is highly offended by the Trump administration’s tactics in her community. She recently posted on Facebook:

This is not the America I grew up in. And I'm beyond pissed. Now I hear Trump is threatening the insurrection act in Minnesota… does that mean war on the citizens of Minnesota? Shoot now ask questions later… Untrained ICE is (sic) indiscriminately and, might I add illegally, snatching people off the streets and pulling them out of their cars. Just because the color of their skin, sexual orientation, or for confronting them for an injustice being perpetrated on their community!! …Even Native Americans are being picked up and held in custody as illegal immigrants!!! WTF!!!

I can almost hear her keyboard pleading for mercy as Jane hammered out that posting. It drips with hatred for Donald Trump. She considers his actions an afront to civilization, even though he is only fulfilling his oath of office.

I can tell that Jane’s disdain for President Trump is a hormonal rather than intellectual. Her response to Presidents depends a great deal on whether they have “D” or an “R” behind their name.

Bill Clinton used a heavily armed SWAT raid to detain and deport Elián González, a six-year-old Cuban boy. Jane wasn’t “beyond pissed.” She didn’t care at all.

Barack Obama murdered an entire wedding party with a drone strike. Jane didn’t call him a war criminal. She adored him.

Joe Biden trafficked over 300,000 children into slavery and prostitution. Jane didn’t join a mob blowing whistles in protest. She voted for the woman who said she wouldn’t have done anything differently.

Donald Trump is enforcing laws passed by our duly-elected representatives. Jane is filled with rage that he as the temerity to do his constitutional duty, and is committed to making his job as difficult as possible.

Could ICE operations be conducted with better optics than what we are currently experiencing? Of course, but only in a world other than the one created by Jane and her fellow Democrats. Just imagine what border security would look like had she and her fellow travelers made different electoral choices over the past couple of decades.

In a perfect world, our leaders would discourage illegal immigration and keep the borders sealed. Illegal immigration would be a relatively small problem -- requiring only a tiny ICE presence. But Joe Biden threw the gates open and invited the world’s worst to come and live on the backs of taxpayers. Now it’s a crisis, requiring drastic measures.

In a perfect world, illegals arrested for violent crimes would be quietly turned over to ICE by local authorities. There would be no need for neighborhood raids. But officials like Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Milwaukee judge Hannah Dugan implemented sanctuary practices instead. Rather than handing rapists, murderers, thugs, and thieves over to ICE, they sneak them in through the back door to prey on otherwise peaceful communities. Now ICE is forced to go into Jane’s community to dig out the worst of the worst.

In a perfect world, protesters would march peacefully, carry signs, make media appearances, and lobby their congressmen. In America today the resistance stalks ICE agents, blocks roadways, interferes with law enforcement, vandalizes property, and even conducts armed ambushes -- all with the encouragement of Democrat politicians. Their behavior has cost them their moral authority and made incidents like the Renee Good shooting inevitable.

In a perfect world, local police would come to the aid of ICE when confronted with unruly mobs. There would be no need for ICE to gun up, mask up, and travel in tactical squads. They could make arrests in a quiet orderly fashion, knowing that their brethren in blue would “have their backs.” But officials like Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey and Philadelphia sheriff Rochelle Bilal have pledged to arrest ICE agents rather than protect them. Now mobs confront law enforcement with impunity, while they struggle to perform their constitutional duties. In Jane’s community, mobs have even begun harassing private citizens whom they suspect might be ICE agents. Is that the fault of Donald Trump also?

In a perfect world, those opposed to border enforcement, would lobby their representatives in Washington to change immigration laws. But in our world, they show disdain for the elected choices of the majority by disrupting civil order and impeding the enforcement of our laws.

Jane is furious -- as are we. She went into the voting booth and wished for all of this, without considering what the reality would look like. I’m sure having her nose rubbed in a putrid mess of her own making, only adds to her rage. But that’s on her, not on those of us who voted to clean up the mess her beloved Democrats created.

There’s little others can do for Jane’s well being. Dialog isn’t an ineffective treatment for hatred. My wife and I intend to keep loving her, and pray that she eventually finds her way out of the darkness that consumes her. But that will be up to her.

Europe Blinks! Did Brussels cancel WWIII?

American Thinker 

It’s the craziest thing.  For four years, European “leaders” have puffed out their chests and proclaimed that Russia would be defeated in Ukraine.  The preservation of the “rules-based international order,” they’ve told us repeatedly, requires that Russian-speaking peoples be deprived of self-determination and remain part of a post-Cold War-constructed state that they have no interest in supporting.  The world has watched as hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian men have lost their lives for what exactly?  For comedian holdover-president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s sacred honor (you know, the guy who became famous by pretending to play the piano with his penis)?  For the glory of a European Union that desperately wants to gobble up Ukraine in its “United States of Europe”?   

For four years, European censors have insisted that all Russian points of view are “disinformation.”  European sports commissions have banned Russian athletes from competition as punishment for the actions of their government (while welcoming athletes from nations whose governments regularly commit human rights abuses and even genocide).  European politicians have confiscated Russian assets and sovereign wealth funds in violation of the same “rules-based international order” that they claim to preserve.

Now some of those same “leaders” are changing their tunes.  Le Petit Fromage Emmanuel Macron says that Europe must “re-engage” with Moscow.  King Kraut Friedrich Merz admits that a peace agreement regarding Ukraine “just doesn’t work without Russia’s consent.”  What a strange about-face from a Franco-Prussian tag team that has been pretending for years that Russia will have no say in how the war ends.  You mean that a potential peace treaty between two belligerent parties must eventually involve both parties before mutually agreed-upon terms are accepted and signed?  How novel. What will contract lawyers come up with next?

What in the world just happened?  Before Christmas, the German War Machine was reactivated as Chancellor Merz secured the greatest increase in military spending since WWII.  Word has spread for months that French hospitals were instructed to prepare for mass casualties from an impending pan-European war.  The United Kingdom and France both pledged to station troops in Ukraine’s interior.  Across Europe, politicians have been telling citizens that if the Russians aren’t stopped in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will soon conquer the whole continent.  Just as it seemed that World War III was ready to begin, the whole bloody disaster looks like it might be postponed…or even cancelled! 

Could it be that Europe’s politicians decided that sacrificing millions of people in the continent’s third catastrophic bloodbath (and fifth if you include the Balkan and Yugoslav Wars!) in little more than a century is a bad idea, after all?  Not likely.  European “elites” aren’t particularly concerned about the lives of common Europeans.  Why else would they invite tens of millions of foreign barbarians into their countries to rape their women and children (while housing and feeding the rapists for free)?  

Besides, “war with Russia” has become politicians’ favorite band-aid for every European problem.  Why is everything so expensive?  Don’t blame “green energy”-induced inflation; blame Russian aggression!  Why are Eurocrats censoring social media posts?  Don’t call it a war on free speech; call it a war on Russian disinformation!  How can European manufacturers survive now that their wind-powered production lines are too expensive to compete against cheap Chinese imports?  European governments will just have to subsidize bankrupt companies’ efforts by converting them into defense production facilities!  What will Europe’s globalist governments do about all the upstart “populist” movements gaining political support?  Import more foreigners and send the local, vocal rabble off to fight the Russians!  From Britain to Estonia, every politician with a problem has found a use for the War in Ukraine.

The war has been raging for four years, and Europe’s “leaders” have sounded downright giddy about it raging for another decade — or at least long enough for them to use the crisis of war to justify the imposition of government-monitored central bank digital currencies.  Germany’s spending money it doesn’t have to put the muscular threat of violence behind its authoritarian threats against speech the government doesn’t like.  (But don’t call it the return of a fascist Fourth Reich!  Germany sends people to prison for saying less.)  Brussels Eurocrats were so close to declaring that their dead-broke lords and ladies could simply rob anyone the prim and proper crowd find distasteful.  Britain’s war-instigating intelligence agents were popping champagne bottles in anticipation of seizing control over Crimea.  And then out of the blue, European Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho confirmed: “Obviously, at some point, there will have to be talks also with President Putin.” 

Excuse me?  European officials have spent the last few years calling Putin a “dictator,” a “war criminal,” and a “tyrant,” but president?  Such titles are generally reserved for globalist European politicians who assume power after pretend “elections” that the European Commission has rigged.  What’s up with this nominal display of respect?  Why would Europe give up its favorite scapegoat now?

Three answers solve the riddle, and they all involve President Trump: (1) The American money spigot that flowed heavily during Puppet Joe Biden’s installation has been reduced to a trickle.  (2) The European blowhards have not yet received absolute guarantees that the American military will save their bacon should they poke the Russian Bear a few too many times.  (3) After hyperventilating about how Ukraine must be secured for the European Union, the European Union just noticed that America was securing Greenland a little more than it likes.  

One moment, American tax dollars were being money-laundered through Ukraine with such ease that government employees drove Lamborghinis to their mistresses’ vacation homes; the next moment, the Ukrainian holdover-president, whom the U.K.’s MI6 laughably lauds as the second coming of Churchill, is telling the world, I have no idea where all those hundreds of billions of dollars went!

One moment, mini-mouse Macron and scowling führer Merz (there goes my German visa!) were huffing and puffing and promising to blow Vladimir Putin’s Russia house down; the next moment, the lords of Euro-stan realize that President Trump is having a laugh with his Russian counterpart.

One moment, the American military was providing the pompous nobles of Europe free security; the next moment, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller remarks to reporters, “They want us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars defending a territory for them that is twenty-five percent bigger than Alaska at one hundred percent American expense, but they say while we do this, it belongs one hundred percent to Denmark.”  

Meanwhile, German politicians and corporate “stakeholders” are recalling what happened to their grandparents the last time the Russians and Americans managed to work together.  Uh-oh, if the Russians and the Americans figure out how to ignore Brussels’s foot-stomping hysterics and find a mute button for the narcissistic ramblings of Starmer, Macron, and Merz, then the Old World gets older and even more irrelevant.  There won’t be much left for the European gentry to do other than to hand over the continent’s keys to the Islamic invaders and perhaps ask their conquerors — in the name of the “climate change” hobgoblin — to turn out the lights. 

Never fear, Europe!  There’s breaking news seeping out from America’s maple-scented hat: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pledges to militarily defend the Kingdom of Denmark against any U.S. attempts to annex Greenland.  “Don’t worry, the Canadians are coming!” said no-one ever.  Carney may have cozied up to communist dictator Xi Jinping, but given that Canada depends entirely upon American military might (as does Greenland), Carney might just find that all his bluster is the Canadian mayonnaise that loses him Alberta.  President Trump sure does love to buy undervalued properties before flipping them into luxurious American states!

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President Trump Invites Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko to Join Gaza Board of Peace – U.N. Now Having Fits

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse 

My message is simple: Relax and watch him work folks. I didn’t just spend three months in the region for nothing.

Media has just discovered that U.S. President Donald Trump has invited Russian Federation Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to join the ‘Gaza Board of Peace.’ The United Nations Assembly is going bananas.

In one of the most beautiful and strategic constructs of international maneuvering in our lifetime, Chairman of the Board and U.S. President Donald Trump has just constructed a geopolitical pathway for the Russian Federation to rejoin the world and establish a respectful global governance assembly based on pragmatic, humanitarian and sovereign interests.

Simultaneously, President Donald J. Trump has just nulled the globalist United Nations Assembly by framing a new global vision; an actionable international construct, based on the same reciprocity, non-interventionist and sovereign nation worldview.

Chairman/President Trump is using the most complex, conflicted and multidimensional landscape to assemble a synergy of perspective.

The visionary map is in his head, and it is a beautiful thing to see materialize.

(VIA MSM) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to join US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” the committee that will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, his spokesman said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters during a regular media briefing, Dmitry Peskov said: “President Putin also received through diplomatic channels an invitation to join this Board of Peace.”

He said the Kremlin is now reviewing the invitation and “hoping to get more details from the US side.”

CNN has asked the White House for a comment.

Later on Monday, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said President Alexander Lukashenko also received an invitation to join the board.

The ministry’s press service said Minsk “highly appreciates that the American side sees Belarus – and this is clearly stated in the text of the address – as a country ready to take on the noble responsibility of building a lasting peace and leading by example, investing in a secure and prosperous future for future generations.”

Lukashenko is Putin’s closest ally and has been described as Europe’s last dictator.

The establishment of the board, chaired by Trump, is a key step in the United Nations-backed American plan to demilitarize and rebuild Gaza, which was ravaged by two years of war between Israel and the Hamas militant group.

Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee issued a statement on Sunday warning that the body proposed by Trump “would have a mandate wider than the implementation of the Gaza Peace Plan.”

“The United Nations has a unique mandate to maintain international peace and security, and the legitimacy to bring nations together to find common solutions to shared challenges. While it may be imperfect, the UN and the primacy of international law is more important now than ever,” she said in a statement. (read more)

The United Nations Assembly are not happy.

Those who constructed the United Nations are not happy.

President Trump calls the Gaza Board of Peace, “the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled” for a reason.  However, he is not describing the board simply for who assembles around the table, but rather for the actionable intent created by the assembly itself.

For this intention Gaza -the place- represents a tool, an example, a useful geographical means to an end, a proving ground for the impossible.

When people think of Trump, they think big, bold and unique. This perspective carries with it, both big support and big opposition. But even those scaled perspectives are not quite grasping the scope of what he is prepared to accomplish.

Maduro was a lesson.

It is really remarkable to watch.

Trump’s Leverage, Russia’s Tactics, and the Real Test of Ukraine Peace Talks

RedState 

A Ukrainian delegation has arrived in the United States to discuss a Trump administration peace plan while Russia again pounds Ukraine’s power grid in the dead of winter. That pairing tells the story better than any slogan. On one side, a White House trying to turn a battlefield stalemate into negotiated terms. On the other, Vladimir Putin using energy strikes to freeze civilians in the dark and gain leverage at the table.

According to Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Kyiv’s envoys are in the United States to work through the details of a procurement that would cover postwar security guarantees and economic recovery, with a potential signing in Davos if Washington signs off. Trump is expected to attend, underscoring that this is not a side show but a central test of his foreign policy in a second term. Any deal will still require Moscow’s consent, which means whatever is written on paper must be backed by hard power and sustained pressure, not wishful thinking.

While diplomats talk, Russia has not paused the war. Ukrainian officials report hundreds of strikes on energy facilities over the past year, with more than 20 communities around Kyiv recently losing power in subzero temperatures. This is deliberate. Kyiv calls it “weaponizing winter” because the targets are not tanks but transformers, hospitals, and homes. It is a reminder that Russia’s strategy has not changed: break the will of the Ukrainian public by making daily life unbearable.

That reality should shape how the talks are viewed. This is not about chasing an abstract “peace process” for its own sake. It is about forcing Russia to accept terms that stop the attacks on civilians and prevent a replay two or three years down the road. A bad agreement that blesses Russian control, weakens Ukraine’s defenses, and asks taxpayers to fund another fragile status quo would simply invite the next invasion.

Trump enters this moment with leverage that did not exist under previous leadership. Moscow has publicly signaled it agrees with his criticism that Kyiv has been slow to embrace a deal, which means the Kremlin takes his role seriously even as it keeps bombing infrastructure. That is useful leverage only if Washington couples it with clear red lines. Any plan must include tough conditions on Russia’s future conduct, credible enforcement, and serious oversight of reconstruction aid so the money serves U.S. interests and Ukrainian stability, not oligarchic networks.

For Ukraine, the priority is simple but not easy. Security guarantees must be strong enough to deter another assault, and energy resilience must be rebuilt so that “weaponizing winter” fails if Moscow tries it again. For the United States, the goal should be a Europe that is more stable, less dependent on Russian energy, and more capable of carrying its share of the burden. 

Peace, if it comes, should not be sold as charity. It should be presented as a negotiated outcome that punishes aggression, protects civilians, and reduces the long term cost and risk to American power. Done right, this round of talks could be a step toward that outcome. Done wrong, it will be just another document signed under cold fluorescent lights while the lights stay off in Kyiv.

Trump Wants Gaza Board Constitution and Remittance Agreement Signed in Davos – EU/Macron Flips Out, “No Way”

Conservative Treehouse 

In a stunning and rapid strategy to keep the globalists from realizing what he is assembling, it is being reported that President Trump wants the Gaza Board of Peace constitution and remittance agreement signed in Davos.  However, as the United Nations, European leaders and traditional globalists who compromise the WEF assembly begin to realize what Trump is putting together, they are getting triggered.

“Hey boss, they’re catching on. Better hurry up”

In essence, as people of self-appointed political importance are starting to realize, President Trump is assembling an entirely new structure for global partnerships that will likely end up with the functional obsolesce of the United Nations.  Trump is selecting world leaders through the invite to a global board of peace; Gaza merely represents the initial venue.

One of the key aspects is the new global assembly will each pay their own way. No free riders this time. You want to sit at the big table; join the big club of sovereignty; assemble with a mutually respectful team of action; then pay the entrance fee to attend.

Surprise!  [Remember the “Happy Trump” pin?]

(Bloomberg) — US President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace has got off to a rough start: questioned by Europe, criticized by Israel and celebrated by friends of the Kremlin.

France’s Emmanuel Macron, for one, has come right out of the gate to decline an invitation that was also extended to strongmen such as Belarus’s autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko. Several liberal democracies are squirming, uncertain how to respond and not wanting to offend Trump.

They don’t have long to decide.

Trump wants the full constitution and remit of the committee signed in Davos on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. But some elements of the small print have left invitees wondering whether to accept.

Trump is demanding that nations pay $1 billion for permanent membership of the board, Bloomberg reported, a condition since confirmed by the White House. That’s blindsided world leaders and left many bewildered, according to people familiar with the matter.

Potential members of the board — conceived last year as a Trump-headed body to oversee the redevelopment of post-war Gaza — began to filter out over the weekend. Invitees include world leaders from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Much of the concern centers on the wording of the peace board’s charter, seen by Bloomberg, which appears to place its ultimate decision-making power with Trump. That raises many questions — not least over where the payments for long-term membership would go, the people said.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

European allies are working to modify the terms and coordinate a response, people familiar with the matter said, and are seeking to persuade Arab nations to also lobby Trump for changes.

That response encapsulates much of Europe’s approach to Trump’s second term: play for time, be seen to engage, try to talk him down. The conversations are particularly challenging as they come at a sensitive moment in negotiations over Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and with Trump threatening to take Greenland, one of the people said. (read more)

“He can’t. He, he, wouldn’t” – “Oh yes, he bloody well can, and he bloody well is.” – “In case you haven’t noticed, he’s not asking for permission.”

And….

Wait for it….

Who/Where/What is the first voice to rise against this global alliance for peace?

“So far, only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly pushed back against the proposal. While he’s in favor of the Board of Peace as a concept, his office said the make-up of a separate Gaza committee serving under the board, was “not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy,” after officials from Qatar and Turkey were included.”

Wait, so Israel is not happy…. Not just about Gaza; but about, well, everything this new structure could possibly mean.

Meanwhile, “Argentina’s Javier Milei confirmed he’ll become a founding member and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has pitched herself as a mediator who is “ready to do our part.””

Can you see it now?

Leftist/Globalist United Nations imperialism is diminished. While a nationalist, respectful sovereign alliance rises.

Farewell five-eyes.  Giddy up freedom!