STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

How to be a successful businessman, but not a success. From Paul Rosenberg at freemansperspective.com:

I was downtown last Thursday and ended up with an hour to kill before my train home, so I went down the station’s back stairs and around the corner to Jay’s Bar. It was almost six o’clock, so the crowd was a mix of corporate suits buying expensive vodka, tradesmen enjoying decent beer, and jobless neighborhood guys drinking cheap beer. I ordered something inoffensive and watched to see if any of my old Cypherpunk pals would show up.

But instead, my oldest nemesis showed up, whom I’ll call Jerry. I went to school with Jerry and whatever I did, he was always desperate to do better. The crazy thing was that we were almost the same guy: We played the same positions in sports; we were both crossing guards; and we were equally skilled at almost everything we did. We should have been buddies, but instead, Jerry was my permanent opponent. I never hated him and he never really hated me, but whatever I did, he had to do better.

I hadn’t run into Jerry in ten years, and the last time I saw him, he was trading coffee futures. We greeted each other; then, he sat down and ordered a better drink than mine. He asked what I was doing lately. I did not mention that I was writing – this job is strange enough without Jerry turning it into a win-lose game. Instead, I said that I was managing a few companies.

“Are they big companies?” he asked.

“Nah, they’re small.”

He got a disgusted look on his face, and I knew immediately what it was – he was disappointed that beating me wasn’t going to be a challenge.

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Trump’s proving that taking Greenland wasn’t just easily dismissed fantasy. The fantasy is that Greenland will yield the rare earths and other natural resources he envisions during his term of office, or even his lifetime if he makes himself dictator for life. Michael Kern with a cold splash of reality at oilprice.com:

• The U.S. demand for control of Greenland is framed as an obligation of the NATO alliance, leading European diplomats to scramble for a deal that reaffirms Danish sovereignty while satisfying American political demands.
• The supposed “win” of accessing Greenland’s vast potential rare-earth mineral wealth is undermined by the atrocious unit economics and massive infrastructure gap, which would require a significant subsidy from Europe to make mining commercially viable.
• By threatening to coerce a NATO ally into ceding territory, the US risks defaulting on the “Rules-Based International Order” and losing the moral leverage to condemn Russian or Chinese expansionism.

The United States will officially begin negotiations to dismantle the Western world’s operating system in just about 30 minutes or so…and oil prices are up just over 1% in anticipation. 

The meeting, which will take place at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, will include Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland. 

The official agenda serves up standard diplomatic fare: “Arctic security,” “strategic partnership,” and “resource development.”

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You find heroism in unexpected places. It’s certainly unexpected to the Ukrainian conscription goons. From Remix News Staff at rmx.news:

In one incident, locals directly intervened when recruiters forced a young man into their van

In Ukraine, ongoing forced conscription and violent practices by the military are provoking civilians to finally resist in unprecedented fashion: passersby, neighbors, and family members are blocking the recruiters’ path as they try to drag civilians off the streets.

Forced conscription is causing increasing fear and distrust among civilians, reports Magyar Nemzet, but many are also no longer standing idly by: More and more footage shows passersby, neighbors, and family members stepping in when the TCK recruitment authorities show up.

People are now openly confronting the authorities, with a few lucky ones escaping conscription. Sadly, other videos show men being forced into vehicles by recruiters or beaten to death.

This past summer, József Sebestyén, a Hungarian from Transcarpathia, died during his forced conscription. The Ukrainian authorities tried by all means to cover up his case.

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What makes a tyrant? From Lars Møller at americanthinker.com:

From Wikimedia Commons: Execution of Louis XVI (Charles Monnet, 1794)

History is replete with revolutionary figures who transformed society through “vision”, “vanity”, and “violence”—a vicious triad covering the strategy of being ideologically uncompromising, outmaneuvering rivals, and eliminating political opposition, respectively.

Maximilien Robespierre and Vladimir Lenin stand out as architects of radical political transformation. Bridging the cultural divide, their leadership styles and psychological profiles show striking similarities. Both men were pedantic ideologues driven by an unshakable belief in their own moral and intellectual superiority.

A comprehensive personality profiling of Robespierre and Lenin requires an analytical framework that transcends ideological taxonomy and historical contingency. While both men operated under conditions of revolutionary crisis, their responses to this strain were neither inevitable nor merely situational. Rather, the extremes of savagery that they authorized, rationalized, and sustained reflect enduring psychological structures that shaped their political conduct. Revolutionary atrocity, in this sense, is best understood, not as an accidental excess of upheaval but as an expressive manifestation of personality under pressure.

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“The fact they’re “bright” enough to twig that there can be no troops in Ukraine without Russia’s paradoxical consent suggests that their plans to introduce these troops are nothing more than performative theater to keep Ukrainian morale from catastrophically collapsing, while the purveyors of these plans know full well it will never happen.” From Simplicius at simplicius.substack.com:

Eurocrats are scrambling for a perceptually ‘sensible’ policy, as their Ukrainian project continues to crumble before their eyes.

The latest information suggests that the much-vaunted €90B “loan” that was the highlight and ‘triumph’ of von der Leyen’s rotten caucus last month—and which itself was actually a miserable downgrade from the now-memory-holed far-larger requested amount—has become another abject lesson in theatrical deception.

Major outlets now report that the so called “loan” will only provide Ukraine ~€30B, while the remaining €60B goes directly to European “arms manufacturers”.

And from Bloomberg:

As one TG summary writes:

THE EUROPEAN UNION DECEIVED UKRAINE: Out of the promised 90 billion euros, the EU will allocate only 30 to Kyiv (15 per year), and 60 will be kept in the EU for the needs of European defense industry enterprises. Earlier, Kyiv was promised a loan of 90 billion euros in direct credits (45 per year), and the money for weapons was supposed to be provided separately from other sources.

Everyone in Ukraine wants to profit, and no one except Russia cares about its prosperity, not even its own leadership. Europeans are planning to build their own defense industry and army at Ukraine’s expense, then seize its assets to pay off debts.

Zelensky is complaining about the €90bn. What’s he going to do now?

Meanwhile, the anti-EU bloc grows with Slovakia’s announcement that it will be ending all aid to Ukraine and will not participate in the EU’s €90B phony-crony “loan”.

EU Commission planners must have read the writing on the wall about how little their pitiful funding games will actually yield for Ukraine in the long term because suddenly they’ve changed their tone. After a top official had urged that the EU must eventually “talk to Putin” it is now being reported that EU is being pressured internally to create an official negotiator role for a kind of EU envoy to Russia on the issue of Ukraine:

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h/t The Burning Platform

Laws ostensibly set up to protect minors on the internet have another, quite nefarious, purpose. From Gary D. Barnett at garydbarnett.substack.com:

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

H.L. Mencken

In May of 2025, the governor of the state of Virginia signed into ‘law’ the bill that imposes major restrictions on social media use by minors, in this case those under 16 years of age. The newest version of this bill took effect on January 1st, 2026, and limits any minor under the age of 16 to one hour of screen time. There can be exceptions granted, but the bill is targeted toward social media operators, and requires commercial methods be used for age verification. The state ‘claims’ that this of course is meant to “protect the children,” (minors) but that is just pure hogwash, as this is strictly a method to advance additional control measures.

Currently, there are 8 states that have passed legislation to block screen time for minors, but 25 want to implement these bans currently. I am not endorsing that kids should be on phones and devices non-stop, and in fact, I think it harmful and a mistake, but this is up to parents to decide, not the government. Government has no place in raising the kids of this citizenry, and since government and its members are the most corrupt and perverted class of people, why would any allow their families to be taken over by the State?

But this is not about protecting minors, it is about control. By passing these heinous censorship ‘laws,’ the State is setting up a control grid based on age verification. This will require at some point (happening already) that everyone using a phone, or other device, will be required to give their personal information in order to verify age. This will not be restricted to minors, it will be a tracking and tracing of every single individual who wants to access apps, sites, and most importantly for the State monsters, it will be used to require everyone to verify their age and identity to access the internet. This is a pure surveillance tool, and the plot only begins with the minors, but will become mandatory for everyone in the near future.

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To where was ICE going to deport them? From Mike Shedlock at mishtalk.com:

Four Oglala Lakota tribe members (aka Oglala Sioux) were kidnapped by Ice. One released.

4 Oglala Lakota men kidnapped by ICE in Minneapolis have finally been located. One of them was released but the other 3 are being held at Fort Snelling, a former concentration camp used to imprison Native people incl. the Dakota 38 during the Dakota Wars.

ICT reports Four Oglala Detainees Located.

The four Oglala Lakota men detained by ICE in South Minneapolis have been partially identified, according to a Tuesday night statement from Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out.

Star Comes Out said as of Jan. 13, the individuals last names have not been released, only first names. Tribal leaders are demanding full, comprehensive information from the Department of Homeland Security.

Additionally, the tribe is demanding the immediate release of all enrolled tribal citizens held by immigration, written assurances that ICE will stop detaining Native Americans, and immediate government-to-government consultation.

At least one of the men has been released, but tribal leaders said the remaining three are being held at Fort Snelling, a site historically used as a concentration camp for Native people during the Dakota removal period.

“The irony is not lost on us,” Star Comes Out said in a statement. “Lakota citizens who are reported to be held at Fort Snelling — a site forever tied to the Dakota 38+2 — underscores why treaty obligations and federal accountability matter today, not just in history.”

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Lots of things are different between the 1930s, the decade of the Great Depression, and today. Today may ultimately be worse. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

You’ve heard the axiom “History repeats itself.” It does, but never in exactly the same way. To apply the lessons of the past, we must understand the differences of the present.

During the American Revolution, the British came prepared to fight a successful war—but against a European army. Their formations, which gave them devastating firepower, and their red coats, which emphasized their numbers, proved the exact opposite of the tactics needed to fight a guerrilla war.

Before World War I, generals still saw the cavalry as the flower of their armies. Of course, the horse soldiers proved worse than useless in the trenches.

Before World War II, in anticipation of a German attack, the French built the “impenetrable” Maginot Line. History repeated itself and the attack came, but not in the way they expected. Their preparations were useless because the Germans didn’t attempt to penetrate it; they simply went around it, and France was defeated.

The generals don’t prepare for the last war out of perversity or stupidity, but rather because past experience is all they have to go by. Most of them simply don’t know how to interpret that experience. They are correct in preparing for another war but wrong in relying upon what worked in the last one.

Investors, unfortunately, seem to make the same mistakes in marshaling their resources as do the generals. If the last 30 years have been prosperous, they base their actions on more prosperity. Talk of a depression isn’t real to them because things are, in fact, so different from the 1930s. To most people, a depression means ’30s-style conditions, and since they don’t see that, they can’t imagine a depression. That’s because they know what the last depression was like, but they don’t know what one is. It’s hard to visualize something you don’t understand.

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Another travesty that, like Epstein, a lot of powerful people would rather you not look too closely. From Seymour Hersh at seymourhersh.substack.com:

An eyewitness account of the ongoing devastation in Gaza

The world remains on fire in many places, but it is easy to forget that things are still burning in Gaza, and the worst is not over for the Palestinians.

The Israelis are in the process of deciding whether once again to bomb what they fear is a rebuilt Hezbollah command in Lebanon. I’ve been told by an informed official that the Iranian Army, more than a million strong, may hold the fate of Iran. President Donald Trump, after attacking Venezuela and apprehending President Nicolás Maduro, now claims control of more oil in reserve than Saudi Arabia and Russia put together, and of course far more than China. Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone missing from the peace talks with Ukraine.

The Israel military, under the command of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is continuing to drop bombs on Gaza as yet another ceasefire is broken. Now squeezed into one half of Gaza, the Palestinians are staying put and doing all they can to stay alive. Some are even preparing to plant their crops for the coming season.

It is a miracle of endurance despite the fact that, as the New York Times reported this week, the Israeli Air Force and Army have destroyed more than 2,500 buildings in Gaza since the ceasefire agreement with Israel was signed last October. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian survivors are now living in tents that are flooded in heavy rain. It is a zone that is very cold.

As has been widely reported, there is now more food coming into Gaza, but much of it does not reach those in need but instead those most able to pay.

I recently had a long talk with a veteran observer of Gaza, who has been visiting the territory for years, long before and many times after the murderous Hamas attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023.

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