Summer of Living Dangerously

I had a friend tell me they've not worried about nuclear war since they were a kid, but today he has the same fear of his youth mainly for his grandchildren. The world seems to be on the edge of nuclear conflict, driven largely by the aggression of both the US and Israel. I don't think I've ever seen a more incompetent, dysfunctional, and dangerous US administration in my life time.
It is not just a hot war which threatens the US, but an economic collapse stemming from international dedollarization due to the endless economic sanctions we levy against any and all countries which don't follow US diktats. Mix in an insane election between tweedle dumb and tweedle dumber, and you can understand my view of a dangerous summer ahead.

We're in a web of conflicts all influencing one another. The Gaza Genocide and probable Hezbollah invasion is bound to create both chaos and arms shortages. The Houthis continue to sink and damage ships as the US/UK navy is helpless. Ukraine is hemorrhaging men and weapons while refusing offers of peace. The western colonial powers are being out smarted and cornered ... that makes them dangerous.

Doug Macgregor does a good job weaving the conflicts together.

Col. Douglas Macgregor : IDF vs. Netanyahu plus many Ukraine insights. (32 min)

Let's begin with the Ukraine Proxy War
Will Ukraine survive until the November election? I don't see how with a death rate of close to 2000 Ukrainians/ day. Putin claimed this week that Ukraine is throwing it's soldiers away in an attempt for some sort of victory before the NATO summit this summer.

Vladimir Putin:
...The Kiev regime is reluctant to relinquish power or hold proper elections in accordance with the Ukrainian Constitution. This means that they will delay a ceasefire indefinitely. They have a vested interest in the Russian forces remaining in those territories because they are not interested in holding elections. That is the bottom line.
...
the Constitutional Court issued a decision in 2015 stating explicitly that the presidential term shall not exceed five years. So what are we talking about? The West simply does not want to replace him today because apparently, it is not the right time. I have already said this, and I believe that it should be obvious to everyone. He will be blamed for all unpopular decisions, including the reduction in the draft age, and he will be replaced later on. I believe that this will happen somewhere in the first half of 2025.
...
As for the Kharkov theatre, ...we know that the Americans and Europeans are mainly behind this. They are pushing the Ukrainians to drive our units to the state border at any cost – again, I want to emphasize this, to do whatever it takes – and they plan to present this as a major success in 2024 ahead of the planned NATO summit and later the elections in the United States.
...
I did say that we had no intention to advance to Kharkov and so on, but it is still a tactical theatre, and the enemy will try to present it as a strategic success – if they succeed. Let’s see what they will actually do. But this has already entailed heavy losses. I think that, most likely, the situation will develop in the same vein.

In 1 Day, Ukraine Loses Nearly 2,000 Soldiers, Says Russia; Putin's Army Unleashes 'Flamethrower'

Moscow asserted that Ukraine suffered 1,700 military casualties in a single day. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Zelensky countered, stating that Kyiv's forces were successfully pushing Russian troops out of Kharkiv.

Zelensky is trying to hang on to his illegitimate presidency.

It’s the end of the world as we know it Scott Ritter

The American-NATO rush toward nuclear war with Russia...
Putin took time from his visit to Uzbekistan to reply, warning that NATO members in Europe were playing with fire by proposing to let Ukraine use Western weapons to strike deep inside Russia. Putin said Ukrainian strikes on Russia with long-range weapons would need Western satellite, intelligence and military assistance, thus making any Western help in this regard a direct participant in the conflict. “Constant escalation can lead to serious consequences,” Putin said. “If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the United States behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? It’s hard to say,” Putin said, answering his own question. “Do they want a global conflict?”
...
In an interview to the British Telegraph newspaper given at NATO’s headquarters building in Brussels, Belgium, Stoltenberg said that NATO members were consulting about deploying more nuclear weapons, taking them out of storage and placing them on standby in the face of a growing threat from Russia and China. “I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues,” Stoltenberg said.
...Stoltenberg’s statements... points to a dangerous shift in focus within both NATO and the US away from the concept of nuclear weapons representing a force of deterrence, and instead increasingly being seen in the West as a usable weapon of war.
...
The proactive utility of nuclear weapons form the standpoint of US nuclear doctrine, as expressed in the US Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) of 2010, where the US, while continuing to commit not to “use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against [NPT-compliant] non-nuclear-weapon states,” declared that “there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which US nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or [chemical and biological weapons] attack.”
...
Accusing the West of “lowering the threshold” for the use of nuclear weapons against Russia, Putin declared that Russia must now reconsider its own nuclear posture considering NATO’s apparent willingness to make operational tactical nuclear weapons—a clear reference to Jens Stoltenberg’s June 16 comments.
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The United States and Russia are drifting closer and closer to all-out nuclear war. It is high time that the people who would pay the ultimate price for such folly decide, to borrow from the poetry of Dylan Thomas, if they want to go “gently into the night” of nuclear Armageddon, or instead “rage, rage against the dying of the light” by demanding better policy from their respective governments.
As for me, I choose rage.

Again the West is desperate and might use a first strike mini-nuke, as Ray McGovern often says.

Pepe Escobar on Putin Crushing NATO's Strategy

(42 min)
Here's a shorter (32 min) interview with the Judge if you don't have 42 minutes.
Pepe Escobar : World Reactions to Putin Peace Plan
Topics:
**The specifics of Putin's Peace Plan
**How different countries are responding to the plan
**The implications for global power dynamics
**Pepe Escobar's expert analysis on the situation
**Potential outcomes and future scenarios

Putin’s peace initiative is Russia’s fourth proposal on Ukraine, says top diplomat
"Had the agreement on the political settlement not been disrupted in February 2014, Ukraine would have now been within the 1991 boundaries that "it dreams so sweetly now," Lavrov said.
Ukraine itself "destroyed its territorial integrity with the hands of those who came to power through a bloody state coup and began to impose Russophobic and Neo-Nazi rules," Russia’s top diplomat stressed."

Another take on the Peace Plan and North Korean visit.
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Putin’s Peace Plan Panned
Both Gilbert and Scott Ritter see Putin's visit to NK as pivotal.

The Duran weigh in on the NK topic too.
Putin in North Korea & Vietnam, driving collective west crazy (20 min)

The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system.

The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement.
Ahead of his trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Putin outlined the integrated vision thus: “We are also ready for close cooperation to make international relations more democratic and stable… To do this, we will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time – to build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.”
...
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has ramped up aggression in the Asia-Pacific against China and North Korea with impunity. Under his watch, the US has increasingly moved nuclear forces into the region to intimidate not only Beijing and Pyongyang but also Moscow. The Biden administration has been assiduous in forming hostile military formations in the region with its NATO partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.
...
The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system. The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement. But such principles must be reinforced with military defense and security for all. This is far from the one-sided “defense and security” of the United States and its NATO partners, which in reality is an Orwellian cover for aggression.
The defense commitments given by Russia to the DPRK this week can be seen as long overdue. One may wonder how the U.S. and its allies got away with threatening the people of North Korea for so long and denying Pyongyang the sovereign right to self-defense. Admittedly, Russia did previously support UN sanctions on North Korea over its missile program. That’s over.

G7 is about to Commit Suicide as NATO Desperately Denies Losing the War | Alex Krainer

(42 min)

The Duran also discussed the topic as well
G7 and the decline of empire (20 min)

Suicide might be a good idea for these G7 leaders.

VOICES: 'Washington elite are detached from reality, harming G7 bloc'' - German scholar (6 min)
In view of the discussions of the G7 on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Stephan Ossenkopp, researcher at the Schiller Institute in Germany, said in an interview with Dragon TV’s Chen Bin, that without the participation of China and Russia the ‘Ukraine Peace Summit’ would be a failure.

Trump made an appearance on Sacks' podcast on Thursday, covering a wide range of topics from taxes and tariffs to energy to artificial intelligence to foreign policy decisions to Ukraine to China to Covid to immigration and many other issues the Biden administration seems to be failing on.
(@ 20:22) foreign policy: ukraine/russia

According to the former president, one of the key issues was the rhetoric coming out of the White House.
“Biden was saying all of the wrong things. And one of the wrong things he was saying [was] ‘no, Ukraine will go into NATO’,” Trump said.
Sacks pointed out that in January 2022 or thereabouts, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Moscow that Ukraine would join NATO and that Washington thought it was OK to put nuclear weapons there. “So no wonder the Russians hit the roof,” he noted.
“Well, let’s say you were running Russia. You wouldn’t be too happy,” Trump replied. “And that’s always been off the table. It’s always been understood that that was a no-no,” he added, addressing Kiev’s potential NATO membership.
Floating the idea of Ukraine in NATO was “very provocative,” Trump said. “And now it’s even more provocative. I hear routinely they’re now talking about Ukraine entering NATO. And now I hear France wants to go in and fight. Well, I wish them a lot of luck!”

Not only is Trump declaring the obvious, so is Farage in the UK. Maybe the media will follow suit...but probably not.

Farage in the UK also said Russia was provoked.
UK's Nigel Farage says the West provoked Putin's invasion of Ukraine
...he posted on social media that the move was a "consequence of EU and NATO expansion". He said he had been predicting a war in Ukraine as early as 2014.
"It was obvious to me that the ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, 'They're coming for us again' and to go to war," Farage said
...Farage later posted on Twitter/X: "Putin was wrong to invade a sovereign nation, and the EU was wrong to expand eastward. The sooner we realise this, the closer we will be to ending the war and delivering peace."

SW Asia

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson : Turkey to Leave NATO and Join BRICS+

He also covers lots of ground in this volatile world. (24 min)

Powerful speech by Chris in the UK

Chris Hedges: Nero's Guests (22 min)

INTERVIEW:The IDF isn’t the mythical army it pretends to be, says Chris Hedges

The IDF is known as the ‘Diaper Army’ (no explanation needed). It would be suicidal for them if, as seems likely, they invade Lebanon (14 min)

Will the BRICS play a role? Pepe thinks they will.
Will the BRICS Shockingly Defeat Israel's Strategy? | Pepe Escobar (19 min)

The BRICS weigh in on Palestine

The gravity around the newly-enlarged BRICS constellation is drawing in Arab, Muslim, and Global South adherents to the influential group's message on international law, Palestine, and halting forever wars.
Bahrain – and the Arab League – recognize that the Russian position centers around what Putin had previously defined as the “UN formula”: an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
That happens to be the position of the BRICS-10 nations and virtually the whole Global Majority. Crucially, it is also the common position of China and the Arab world, reaffirmed in Beijing only one week after the Russia-Bahrain meeting.
The problem is how to implement the “formula” when the US hegemon, Israel's unconditional ally, has a virtual stranglehold on the United Nations.

There are many moving parts, and the probable invasion of Lebanon will be disastrous.

Moving towards Lebanon offensive (14 min)
The Duran explores the likelihood.

‘No place’ is safe if Israel starts war – Hezbollah

Hezbollah is prepared for a full-scale conflict with Israel, the Shia militia’s head Hassan Nasrallah has said. He also warned Cyprus that it could be targeted if it hosts Israeli forces.
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday that it had finalized “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon.”
Responding to US calls for restraint, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said his country was “very close to the moment when we will decide to change the rules of the game against Hezbollah and Lebanon.” adding that “in a total war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be hit hard.”
Israel’s last major confrontation with Hezbollah was in 2006, when a ground offensive into southern Lebanon resulted in high casualties and no military gains.

This is a powder keg ready to go off.

Hizbullah Ready To Defeat Israel
Hizbullah, with its number of forces exceeding 100,000 men, is well prepared for a fight. South Lebanon is criss-crossed with well prepared fighting positions and tunnels. More than 150,000 missiles, many of them long range, are ready to be launched against military and economic targets in Israel. The 2006 invasion of south Lebanon ended in an utter defeat for the Israeli army. There is no reason to believe that a renewed fight would have a different outcome.

The Zionist control the US. Glenn Greenwald uses Rep Bowman as an example...
AIPAC's Singular Ability to Remove Members of Congress (30 min)
They are spending millions in a primary race against Bowman, not because he doesn't support Israel, but because he is occasionally critical of the state.

Phil Giraldi : Israel’s Control Over America (24 min)
Phil also discusses Israel's out sized influence on the US political system

Curious how we consider our overlord, Israel, as an ally. The government is bought and paid for by the Zionists, and as Phil describes, the Zionists also control the MSM shaping public opinion.
I'm shocked at the number of people who think of Palestinians as terrorists, but not the Israelis.

Bib is due to address Congress in July. He's basically campaigning for Trump, and did not receive an invite to the White house during the trip.

There is an axis of resistance with actors like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas. However there is also an axis of assistance as the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan have created a land bridge from the Gulf to Israel to bring in the goods the Houthis shut down in the Red Sea.
Lowkey explains. (25 min)
Rapper and journalist Lowkey (https://x.com/Lowkey0nline) came on the show to discuss Israel's disastrous situation on the battlefield as the IDF finds itself beleagured in the Gaza strip and surrounded by regional forces whose capabilities match or outmatch Israel's.

The sanctions war, de-dollarization, and economic collapse...
As we discussed last week, the new sanctions against Russia are really aimed at China.
The Duran agrees...US sanctions China via Russia (25 min)

Is the Reign of the Dollar Coming to an End?

Though the Dollar-Wall Street regime remains significantly powerful, de-dollarisation and possibilities of a shifting global order are being driven by US economic weakness, the aggressive use of illegal sanctions by the US and its Global North allies, and the growing political and economic strength of the Global South through platforms such as BRICS.
This arrangement to recycle oil profits into the US economy and the Western banking world is known as the petrodollar system.
This non-exclusive arrangement between the two countries never required the Saudis to limit their oil sales to dollars or to recycle their oil profits exclusively in US Treasury Bills (of which it holds a considerable $135.9 billion) and Western banks. Indeed, the Saudis are free to sell oil in multiple currencies, such as the Euro, and participate in digital currency platforms such as mBridge, a trial initiative of the Bank of International Settlements and the central banks of China, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Nonetheless, the rumour that this decades-long petrodollar agreement had come to an end reflects the widespread expectation that a seismic shift in the financial system will overturn the rule of the Dollar-Wall Street regime. It was a false rumour, but it carried within it a truth about the possibilities of a post-dollar or de-dollarised world.
...
Three factors are driving de-dollarisation: the US economy’s lack of strength and potential that began with the Third Great Depression in 2008; the aggressive use of illegal sanctions – especially financial sanctions – by the United States and its Global North allies against one quarter of the countries in the world; and the development and strengthening of relations between countries of the Global South, especially through platforms such as BRICS

The stealing of Russian funds makes other countries wary of investing in the US as well.

Hundreds More Banks Risk Failing This Summer: Nothing Was Fixed Warns Top Economist
(25 min)
"At this point, we have a banking system that is sick. I mean, it's just crippled,” says Peter St. Onge, a former MBA professor and Ph.D. economist. In an exclusive interview with Daniela Cambone, St. Onge delivers a stark warning about the fragility of the US banking system, revealing the alarming dependence on the Treasury and Federal Reserve for financial survival. Without their support, he asserts, "the entire US banking system for sure would be bankrupt."
St. Onge also criticizes politicians for being woefully out of touch with the real issues facing ordinary Americans. "They don't even appear to be paying attention to what the people want. They're going after farmers for cow farts when the issue is that the median voter can't afford to go to McDonald's. I mean, they're just almost comically out of touch," he remarks.

The War on Us, the people...

Common Sense And Memes Are Viruses To The New World Order (Lynn)

When it was revealed that U.S. Senate ratification was required for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Pandemic “Treaty”, it was, instead, transitioned into an “agreement”. Except that strategy went down in flames, too, at the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly. In response, Team Biden, China, and other unelected WHO totalitarians stealthily passed new International Health Regulations (IHR) behind closed doors. This was done on June 1, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Ethiopian Communist, and WHO Director, Tedros Ghebreyesus, violated the IHR’s Article 55.2 eligibility requirements and with less than the required quorum of member states voting. This power grab was completely illegal and unlawfully elevated the WHO “from a global advisory-only body to an international enforcer of its mandates.” So we all better get the word out, before it’s too late. Especially now that it’s another election year so flu season is almost here.

TPTB want to control the people and will go to great lengths to do so. It is the same lust which drives the US goal of hegemony.

Then there's the migration issue, future military conscription, and endless war driving our economy toward recession or depression. However, it will take many years to unwind the USD from the global economy and trade. The BRICS+ meeting next month may provide more clues to future trading system for that bloc.

Will calmer heads prevail and keep the US or Israel from dropping nuclear weapons? Only time will tell. I wish I could say, "There's no way we would start a nuclear conflict", but I lack the confidence to do so. The incompetence of western leaders is deep and broad, and there is no telling the lengths they will go to to maintain their sense of control. Sadly, I think it is a summer of living dangerously. Perhaps the world will be a bit safer after the November elections, but again we'll have to wait and see.
Please chime in with your stories, insights, and thoughts below...
Here's hoping your personal world is filled with friends, family, nature, and peace. Treasure everyday...it could be the last. Peace out.