On the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

A century after Versailles, and eight decades after the system based upon that flawed treaty collapsed, the world needs order more than ever. Not the order of “benevolent global hegemony” based on full-spectrum dominance of the United States, but an order – possible and necessary – which would be based on a multilateral balance-of-power system which accepts each key player as both legitimate and permanent. Of course this is the exact opposite of the relentless Russophobic expansion of NATO, the promotion of color-coded revolutions, the many wars in the Middle East which have had disastrous consequences for the countries concerned and for the rationally articulated American interest.^[1]

Given how the U.S. takes it upon itself to judge the worth of all other nations in the world and to decide any matter outside the framework of collective security agreed to after WWII (and heedless of the constitutional restriction on executive war making), the U.S. hypocrisy about the “rules-based international order” is a bit hard to swallow.

Mr. Trfkovic’s article is well worth your time. It’s one of the more lucid discussions of the settlement of WWI I’ve run across.

Notes
^[1] "A Century of Disorder." By Srdja Trfkovic, Chronicles Blog, 6/28/19.

Flag Day.

Alex at Ammo.com wrote a piece about Flag Day which was on June 14 this year.

I'm a little slow off the mark publishing a link to it. This gent is always a thoughtful observer:

"Flag Day: The Forgotten History of America’s Flag Day and What It Commemorates."

Things that make you crazy.

In December, world leaders of 165 countries adopted an ostensibly non-binding agreement that propagates a radical idea: that migration -- for any reason -- is something that needs to be promoted, enabled and protected . . . .

The agreement is named the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), and now comes its implementation.^[1]

In this time of lunatic immigration policies and betrayal, when I read nonsense like this I want to tear my hair at the insanity. The ONLY policy options that are ever on the table in all the freaking world are the ones that assume (1) primitives in Africa who still believe in witches or (2) Muslims who believe in female genital mutilation and non-judicial murder of apostates have an unchallengeable right to relocate to Kansas City, Oxford, Stockholm, or Stuttgart.

Diversity is our strength.

The option of returning invaders found drifting in the Mediterranean Sea to the shores of N. Africa is just assumed not to exist. No way, Jose! Any invader found standing three feet north of the Rio Grande River is never a candidate for instant removal to the south side of the river. No, he can now suck of the welfare tit and help himself to a job that would otherwise got to an American citizen. If there's a kid involved, he's entitled to gender reassignment surgery and a scholarship to Stanford.

Who knew that the Due Process Clause trumps national survival and that CBP officers do not have the experience and professional judgment to know that some foreigner they've just arrested had breakfast yesterday in Juarez not El Paso? Administrative discretion has its perils but it's long past the time when we cleared the decks and allowed the people we hire to protect us to strike fear in the hearts of people who think they can move here if the notion strikes them.

Here's a new national priority: You can apply for a visa or asylum status all you want from outside the U.S. all you want and if you're in the country illegally you'll be immediately deposited on the other side of the U.S. border at a place of the government's choosing. THEN you can file what paperwork you want. If you're legally entitled to be in the U.S. and you're mistakenly ejected, go to the nearest U.S. border crossing and provide the necessary proof. Take $5,000 for your trouble and otherwise suck it up and shut up. Take one for the team.

How did we get to the point where (1) only one point of view completely trumps and vanishes other views that guarantee an intact, non-third-world civilization and (2) the laws of the land are twisted so that commonsense judgment is relentlessly attacked? As to the latter, if there's a hint of an effective national response to illegal immigrant invasion, some U.S. District Court judge in Seattle issues a fatwa that somehow shuts down such responses in Seattle AND Kansas City and Bangor. I still haven't figured that one out.

Notes
^[1] "UN Global Compact: What Happens Next?." By Judith Bergman, The Gatestone Institute, 6/28/19 (footnote in text omitted).

Words to live by (Climate Change Fraud Department).

Over the past fifteen years, air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse gas emissions have continued to soar.”

~ Economist magazine quoted in "Global Warming, Carbon Dioxide, And The Solar Minimum." By Renee Parsons, ZeroHedge, 6/21/19.

More foreigners!

And they must be from the third-world.

Ruth Davidson has ambitions far beyond Scotland, but Nicola Sturgeon wants to become leader of an “independent” Scotland, so that she can bind it more firmly into the EU. She likes the authoritarianism of the EU just as much as she likes the idea of opening Scotland’s borders to the Third World. She has claimed that Scotland “needs more working age people to help our economic growth, generate the tax revenues and support the public services so many of us rely on.”

As Migration Watch pointed out in response, she’s arguing for a Ponzi scheme even if only high-IQ White European immigration into Scotland is taken into account. But Sturgeon doesn’t really care about public services and the economy: she wants to flood Scotland with tax-eating, welfare-dependent non-Whites from the Third World.^[1]

The passage is from an interesting article, to say the least, about Jewish influence in British politics. It also sheds much bright light on the oddity that is Scottish politics, though "Orwellian nightmare" is closer to the truth than "oddity."

The photos of Scotland's gynocracy will soft boil your no. 5 iron for sure, if you have one. The list of courageous, insightful, articulate women who fight for sanity and the preservation of Western nations (e.g., Brigitte Gabrielle, Vanessa Beeley, Oriana Fallaci, Pam Geller, Dymphna, Sharyl Atkisson, Eva Bartlett, Laura Loomer, Blond in the Belly of the Beast, Vanishing American, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Ingrid Carlqvist, Marine Le Pen, Lauren Southern) is as long as a line of illegals at a California DMV office but the Western women who have political ambitions seem to require a regular transfusion of lizard blood, Tulsi Gabbard being a notable exception to that rule notwithstanding some loopy leftist beliefs.

As an aside, you have to love part of a Frederick Peterson comment on the Langdon article:

We need to keep in mind that the plural of anecdote is not ‘data’ . . . .

That's probably an old timer but it's still a true Pearl of Expression.

Be sure to read all the comments.

Notes
^[1] "A Tartan Tyranny: Censorship and Silence in the Virtue-Signalling Scottish Police State." By Tobias Langdon, The Occidental Observer, 11/28/18 (emphasis added).

Great story.

This Hiker Saved the Life of an Alaskan Timber Wolf—4 Years Later the Wolf Still Remembered Him. By Morris Homer Erwin, Reader's Digest, date unknown.

The rot at the center of democratic government.

In the early 2000's this ship could have been turned around.

But rather than concentrating on those spiraling debts and unfunded liabilities, the British and really all European governments decided their time is better spent introducing laws banning people from being mean on the internet.

This last week Trump visited the Brits and out came London's mayor Sadiq Khan, who spent the entire week whinging about the orange man. And so thanks to Trump's security detail, London was, for the first time in ages, safe... at least within a 200 metre radius of Trump.^[1]

"This ship" mentioned above refers to "European governments, due to socialist Ponzi schemes, [having] created a financial and now domestic social fustercluck."

By financial [disaster] the author means doing what Western governments do, namely, promise freebies to the sky and impose horrendous levels of taxation and play with debt like a child plays with nitroglycerine. What a surprise that finding decent employment and having even one kid gradually became heroic and ruinously expensive endeavors.

I recall a statistic I ran across in the 1990s to the effect that somewhere around 1990 the average American family of four paid an average of 22% of its income in income and employment taxes (Medicare, Social Security, unemployment). In 1948, that same family paid just 2% of its income for such taxes. I can't find the source for that now but it seems ballpark. In effect, the wife went to work to pay the taxes with a surtax on the family of having to pay for day care for the kids. All that work on her part for strangers to receive money that politicians have come to believe it is their right and duty to distribute.

By social [disaster] he means the importation of millions of hostile, oversexed, parasitic, third-world military-age males and others whose sprogeny despise the European ground they walk on. Do you hear any politician talk about why raising a family (or even finding a good job where wages aren't driven down to third-world levels) require such heroic efforts? That a change in course might be in order to avoid, say, an existential problem?

Thus, financial stupidity leads to social disaster "necessitating" the importation of your enemies.

"Esteemed fellow citizens, we helpless."

I commend Chris's article to you. It's witty and is an apt distillation of the Western disaster that focuses on the inevitable problem of government overreach that comes from pandering to dim-witted voters who want Bamaphones and real "voodoo economics." Bush '41 didn't know what he was talking about, mindless cipher he. A simple indicator of this political failure is the use of the terms "austerity" and "neo-liberal economics." Both refer to any effort to move the dial back in the direction of sound fiscal and monetary policies and, by God, the last thing a statist moron and modern electorates want is "austerity" or "neo-liberalism."

I think Chris's idea that getting third-world darkies to pay for first-world pensions for white Europeans was the basic reason for importing foreigners. IIRC, the Germans early on experimented with bringing in Turks nobly to do their part for a comfortable retirement for Germans. They half-heartedly held them at arm's length insisting on the fiction that the Turks were "guest workers," except that the Turks didn't think they were any kind of "guests" and shortly the Germans -- and then all other European political morons -- wouldn't turn off the flood, tried to square the circle that primitives belong in the West, and turned a blind eye to the obvious social and political disaster they had set in motion.

That deliberate failure to react to obvious catastrophe makes me think there was and is more of a moving spirit of malevolence to this whole affair. The viciousness with which objecting native voices have been attacked and with which long-existing freedoms have been jettisoned are because politicians desperately want to avoid having to deal with the disaster they created and the unworkability of the social welfare state. However, there still seems to me to be a large component of sheer evil, destructive intent in this suicidal course set by the political elite. Think Cloward-Piven and the Frankfurt School.

Be that as it may, Chris's article highlights the problem that modern governments are intent on sailing this grand Western ship straight onto the rocks. Listen to any of the regiments of Democrat contenders for the presidency in the U.S. and you'll see how much self-degradation Western politicians will embrace to keep the crazy gravy train going.

Notes
^[1] "The Real Reason For A Refugee Crisis In Europe." By Chris, ZeroHedge, 6/17/19.

Is anyone thinking through this sanctions stuff?

If Mr. Lavrov is right, thanks to Washington's indiscriminate use of sanctions against Russia, China and other nations could result in the end of the U.S. dollar hegemony.^[1]

Or is our foreign policy so awesome that the world admires the justice and cleverness of our approach? Really? Is the dollar's ceasing to be the world's reserve currency something that's a trivial matter to us? Our "experts" are apparently working overtime to make that happen.

New motto for the U.S. Department of State:"Filthy foreigners. Obey."

Notes
^[1] "Washington's Duplicitous Approach to Russia and Crimea and It's Unintended Consequences." By Viable Opposition, 6/7/19.

Beloved Franklin, American patriot.

The Venona Project constituted the definitive proof of the massive extent of Soviet espionage activities in America, which for many decades had been routinely denied by many mainstream journalists and historians, and it also played a crucial secret role in dismantling that hostile spy network during the late 1940s and 1950s. But Venona was nearly snuffed out just a year after its birth. In 1944 Soviet agents became aware of the crucial code-breaking effort, and soon afterwards arranged for the Roosevelt White House to issue a directive ordering the project shut down and all efforts to uncover Soviet spying abandoned. The only reason that Venona survived, allowing us to later reconstruct the fateful politics of that era, was that the determined Military Intelligence officer in charge of the project risked a court-martial by directly disobeying the explicit Presidential order and continuing his work.^[1]

But Joe McCarthy was some kind of low life for daring to ask why so many communists were employed by the federal government. Yes, that was "McCarthyism" when what we really ought to talk about is "dishonest, manufactured, diversionary, anti-McCarthy hysteria."

Notes
^[1] "American Pravda: Secrets of Military Intelligence." By Ron Unz, The Unz Review, 6/12/19.

The Diversity.

The lovely ladies of Baltimore..

The Fuller Brush Company.

S.B. Fuller was one of the most successful black entrepreneurs of his time. See Alex's article about him over at Ammo.com:

"S.B. Fuller: The Forgotten History of a Legendary Black American Entrepreneur."

A propos of door-to-door sales, this fellow looks like he has a bright future. What an amazing sense of humor:

The most devious political dirty trick in American history.

Nothing less:

But Clinton’s campaign, in concert with the Democratic Party and through their shared law firm, funded Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier which, it turns out, falsely portrayed Republican Donald Trump as a treasonous asset colluding with Russian President Vladimir Putin to hijack the U.S. election.

Steele went to the FBI to get an investigation started and then leaked the existence of the investigation, with the hope of sinking Trump’s presidential aspirations.

On its face, it is arguably the most devious political dirty trick in American history and one of the most overt intrusions of a foreigner into a U.S. election.^[1]

Notes
^[1] "Hillary Clinton's Russia Collusion IOU: The Answers She Owes America." By John Solomon, The Hill, 6/3/19, republished in "Solomon: Time To Hold Hillary Accountable." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 6/5/19 (emphasis added).

The why of asset inflation.

Today, we are witnessing a broader asset price inflation driven by a belief that central banks will engage in extraordinary monetary policy indefinitely to prop up valuations in the hope for the always “just around the corner” wealth effect. Equity markets are near all-time highs and at extreme valuations despite weak economic growth and limited earnings growth. Bond yields are near the lowest levels (highest prices) human civilization has ever seen. Commercial real estate is back at 2007 bubble valuations and real assets such as art, wine, and jewelry are enjoying record-setting bidding at auction houses.

These financial bubbles could not occur in an environment of weak domestic and global economic growth without the migration of debt borrowers from hedge [paying principal and interest from cash flow] to speculative [paying interest from cash flow and rolling over the debt to avoid the penalty of failure to pay the principal] to Ponzi status [inability to pay interest and principal but hoping that the value of one's investment will continue to rise enough to pay off the loan].^[1]

I don't pretend to have much beyond a surface understanding of economics. Bonds are a bit mysterious to me, for example. I get it that the yield of a bond will rise if an investor pays less than the face value of the bond and decline if he pays more than the face value. Presumably, I will pay less for a 3% bond if I think there is a smidgen of risk that the issuer won't pay at maturity and I will pay more for a bond if I think it offers more security in an environment when other risk-on investments seem shaky. These purchases take place at auctions, I'm thinking. where investors basically place their bets, just as they do in the stock market.

That little detour aside, the author of the article from which the passage above is taken is making the point that relying on the central banks to kiss it better is not wise when we have "weak economic growth and limited earnings growth." Or ever, come to that.

This is right up there, but not quite, with Illinois Gov. Pritzker's idea that Chicago's fiscal problems can solved by legalizing marijuana state-wide and opening a casino in Chicago. I kid you not. I consider weed something indulged in by total losers and do not consider gambling anything that is wise or productive (though I do play the lottery). God knows where the money from gambling goes. And neither of these options has anything to do with fundamentally valuable production.

But there we have it. Central banks, weed, and gambling are our go-to solutions for deadly serious problems. Not military retrenchment and keeping out and kicking out parasitic foreigners who steal our jobs and live high on our tax money. Nothing sensible and gutsy like that but rather demeaning reliance on airy-fairy-hail-Mary gimmicks.

'Chachos, we are a failing nation.

Notes
^[1] "The Death Of The Virtuous Cycle." By Michael Lebowitz, ZeroHedge, 6/6/19.

The foreign policy of Lower Slobovia.

[Gareth] Porter notes that vice-president Dick Cheney “hoped to use the alleged [Syrian] reactor [bombed by Israel in 2007] to get President George W Bush to initiate US airstrikes in Syria in the hope of shaking the Syrian-Iranian alliance”.

In fact, Cheney wanted far more sites in Syria hit than the bogus nuclear plant. In his memoirs, the then-secretary of defence, Robert Gates, observed that Cheney was “looking for an opportunity to provoke a war with Iran”.

The Bush administration wanted to find a way to unseat Assad, crush Hizbullah in Lebanon, and isolate and weaken Iran as a way to destroy the so-called “Shia crescent”.^[1]

The dreaded Shia Crescent. How come we never hear of the dreaded Sunni Crescent?

Waging war is supposed to be serious business but you'd never know that from reading about our cartoonish takes on world affairs. Evil Russians and their "invasions" of Georgia and Crimea, neo-Nazi Ukrainians, noble Israelis, Iranian terror, loyal Saudis, Assad the Butcher, the Venezuelan threat, murderous Gaddafi, Orban the Bad, Saint Angela, the "migrant crisis," our NATO ally Turkey, and the Afghan tar baby now almost ready to start college.

Just over 100 years since the end of The Great War and Energizer Bunny Pompeo and the presidential son-in-law are making policy for this nation. Four-star generals have to listen to The Boy Adviser. And we sink further and further into the quicksand of endless war and skyrocketing debt.

Notes
^[1] "Monbiot still burying his head in sands of Syria." By Jonathan Cook, Jonathan Cook Blog, 11/21/17. (https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-11-21/monbiot-still-burying-his-head-in-the-sand/).

Pearls of expression.

Calls are constantly being made for government to do more. Remaining areas of personal life are to be invaded by increased government regulation, redistribution, control, command, and constraint. The idea of the independent and self-responsible individual diminishes in the number of its supporters, or so it appears, with every passing day.

Public-policy debates concern not whether something should be overseen and managed by government, but merely how far the interventionist welfare state should go, and who is going to pay for it.^[1]

I never liked the feel of someone's hand in my pocket or of having to deal with some officious nimrod in the public or private power structure. What happened to that citizen prickliness that kept such things in check? Utter garbage is spewed from our "public" airwaves yet still the public shells out huge amounts of money to be lied to and deluged with statist, homo-globo propaganda. We accept highly restrictive ballot access laws so that new parties have a near-impossible task to get a toe in the door to challenge the Holy Duo. The write-in option on the ballot might as well not be there. Lung cancer is more popular.

Don't look to movies to teach independence and defiance. Ever wonder why the Western disappeared as a movie genre, unless it was to teach the delights of adulterous sodomy or serve as a vehicle for moronic, black revenge fantasies?

The elites have involved us in pointless military adventures in recent decades leading to the deaths of more than a million foreigners and misery and death for our military and their families. Ho hum. "They" are at it again.

Levies are in danger of being breached in the Midwest while trillions have been wasted on war and the demonstration of some airy-fairy "exceptionalism." All with utter contempt for the wishes or needs of Americans. Uncle knows best and take it from us those Russians desperately need to be straightened out. Sorry about your beloved son.

Notes
^[1] "The America That Was - The Good & The Bad." By Richard Ebeling, ZeroHedge, 5/31/19 (emphasis removed).

U.S. strategic genius.

What about Western political meddling?

The State Department had run a democracy promotion program since September 11, 2001 and many activists were supplied with media training and equipment to help them capitalize on the moment when it presented itself. March 2011 was that moment.^[1]

March 2011 marks the start of the rebellion in Syria.

Of course, the rebellion was more than a merely local phenomenon. See here, here, and here.

Since then America has sought to characterize the Assad government as a "brutal dictatorship," there being no other kind of dictatorship at the kindergarten-level of U.S. government foreign policy thinking. The solution to which the stuperous mavens of Foggy Bottom thoughtfully propose "more democracy" a la various iterations of the "Arab spring."

The excerpt above from the article by Ehsani does not do his analysis justice. His thinking is what you'd hope would be typical in official U.S. circles but it's not. What we get is cartoonish thinking and bankrupt military involvement that make Larry, Moe, and Curly seem like deep strategic thinkers.

Onward John, Mike, and Donald. Let us piss away our vital resources and what good will we have remaining and advance to new heights of exceptionalism. If Syria has to endure more killing and destruction in the process well certain sacrifices just have to be made for a bright U.S. vision of the New Middle East.

Notes
^[1] "Peak Fragility: Why The Middle East Is Doomed." By Ehsani, Syria Comment, 4/10/18.