patrick.net

https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-republicans-panic-as-trump-brings-world-to-brink-of-peace

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/my-valentine-friday-february-14-2025

Trump is ending the Proxy War, and fast. He’s mainly doing it by cutting out the slow-walking, warmongering Europeans. I’ll show you in a post featuring four headlines and a Truth. Here is the first headline, from Reuters this morning:

US Treasury's Bessent says Americans will see value in Ukraine for them
By Andrea Shalal and Jasper Ward

We are peering through a fog of diplomatic war, so we don’t know exactly what’s going on. But new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went to Ukraine Wednesday to deliver a “proposal” for continued U.S. support in Ukraine. Sources suggest that Trump wants payment for all our previous and future support, to the tune of $500 billion dollars, which would be secured by mineral rights in mineral-rich Ukraine.

Many commenters also think the proposal includes an audit of the money already provided. Wouldn’t that be spicy. Even the suggestion of an audit would probably send Zelensky racing to his panic room.

Remember when everybody was upset because Trump and Speaker Johnson acquiesced to the last big Ukraine funding round? Trump already had an idea of how to get our money back. Zelensky is riding the horns of a big dilemma. If Ukraine refuses to agree to pay us back, then Trump has everything he needs to refuse to provide any more aid. It’s only fair they should pay us back.

That’s how Trump plans to solve problem number one: Zelensky and the Ukrainians.

Europe is problem number two, and it is fitting that two headlines apply this morning to our EU “allies.” The next headline ran in yesterday’s Associated Press:

NATO is in disarray after the US
announces that its security priorities
lie elsewhere

Disarray! Just like the Democrats! The short version is, newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth traveled to Munich’s annual Security Conference this week and told our European NATO partners two world-changing things: first, they should get ready to defend themselves a lot more, since the U.S. plans to draw troops out of Western Europe for redeployment in Asia.

He explained that Europe must “take ownership of conventional security on the continent.” The U.S. will still provide nuclear deterrence for Europe.

Next, Hegseth curtly informed the Old World that President Trump will handle the negotiations with Putin and Zelensky, not them. In other words, Hegseth manifested NATO’s worst fears, a prospect even more terrifying than French President Macron unexpectedly arriving for an unannounced weekend visit.

Regarding the Proxy War, SecDef Hegseth delivered even more bad news. We don’t agree with any of your dumb Proxy War ideas.




In short, Hegseth eviscerated all of Zelensky’s insane peace-plan demands, which of course were unthinkingly embraced by Europe’s NATO partners. First, the Secretary told them in no uncertain terms that Ukraine will never join NATO. Conversation over. Likewise, he told them no U.S. troops would ever be deployed to Ukraine as peacekeepers. If the EU wants peacekeepers in Ukraine, they must do it themselves, outside of NATO, and pay for it all on their own.

NATO membership was a deliberate obstacle to any peace agreement with Russia. But it was worse than that. Biden’s relentless brinksmanship about Ukraine’s NATO membership brought us to the precipice of nuclear apocalypse.

Finally, as if all that weren’t enough bad news, and as if the Europeans weren’t already grappling with a financial existential crisis in the form of Trump’s reciprocal tarrifs plan, CNN ran more bad news in the form of a story concluding that U.S. relations with Europe will never be the same — after one single phone call:

US relations with Europe will never be the
same after Trump's call with Putin

CNN began its article generously describing Wednesday’s momentous events as “two geopolitical thunderclaps.”

If there was one mindless, diplomacy-destroying mantra, endlessly repeated, that by itself explains the pitiful failure to end the Ukraine war much earlier, it was this stupid slogan: Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. What that meant was, nobody talks to Putin by themselves. As a result, Joe Biden only spoke to Russian President Putin exactly zero times in almost four years.

It wasn’t just President Cabbage. We didn’t even send a negotiating team to Russia. Yet the whole time, the Russians were practically begging us to negotiate.

So yesterday, Trump shattered all the nebulous anti-negotiating rules by picking up the telephone by himself and talking to his counterpart, Russian President Vladimir Putin. According to the Russian readout, they spoke for ninety minutes. You can imagine how, after almost four years of silence, they had a lot to discuss.

The best description of how furious the sidelined Europeans were is right in the headline: the relationship will never be the same. It was a betrayal of trust! Trump cheated on us!

They’re not breaking up with us, not yet, but we’d better plan for a polar vortex of a Valentine’s Day. The romance is over.

Because a successful resolution of the Proxy War crisis affects us all, I decided to reprint the whole report from President Trump that he posted to Truth Social about his call with Putin:




Later Trump also called Zelensky. According to reports, the U.S. President spoke to Ukraine’s Martial Law Administrator for ten minutes.

So.

You’ll note that, in his post, Trump announced Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will now lead the negotiations. Witkoff is on a mediating roll, having just negotiated the Israel-Hamas cease-fire, which the Biden Administration attempted for two years but utterly failed.

Could you imagine? Imagine how wonderful it would be if Trump settled the Proxy War conflict, stopped the dying on both sides, and at the same time got all our money back?

It seems appropriate to close this massive post with a quote often attributed to Lenin (although nobody knows for sure): There are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen.

We are living through weeks trying to keep up while decades of winning unfold. From time to time, take a moment to gratefully reflect on how dire and irresolvable it all seemed for so long. Then last year, we bravely began to hope. But now, we’ve moved way beyond hope. This is something vastly bigger than hope. This is the ride of our lives.

Patrick says

If Ukraine refuses to agree to pay us back,

They already agreed*. Next.

*) In fact, it was proposed by Zel in his "victory plan" even before Trump was inaugurated.

Eric Holder says

It’s neocon copium. Trump’s “aid” means help rebuilding, not the weapons cache we falsely claimed was aid the last 3 years. And Blackrock’s grubby landgrab won’t go through either. Nor will ethnic ‘diversification’ of Ukraine now that they’ve killed a generation of young men. Nor will Zelensky’s greater Israel or war with Russia. Thank God adults are back in charge.

OkDOGEisAmountingToSomething says

This is why Macron is panicking:

https://x.com/LukeGromen/status/1891570490696777751

https://babylonbee.com/news/congress-warns-trumps-attempts-to-end-war-in-ukraine-could-result-in-end-of-war-in-ukraine

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/pharmakeia-wednesday-february-19

Two things happened yesterday. First, the American and Russian negotiating teams met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and agreed to general terms of a three-part plan. Second, Trump said stuff that wasn’t nice about Ukraine’s Martial Law Administrator and Venmo Glutton Volodymyr Zelensky.

Well, technically, three things happened. Also, Zelensky flew to Riyadh and tried to crash the meeting. I am not making that up. The Saudis politely invited him to return later. But that was just an awkward sideshow. ...

Speaking from Riyadh, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained late yesterday that the negotiating teams had already nailed down the outlines of a three-part plan. First, the U.S. and Russia will re-establish diplomatic relations obliterated by the Biden Administration. For example, the mothballed Russian embassy in DC can re-open for normal diplomatic business.

Second, the US and Russia will explore brand new geopolitical and business opportunities together. Meaning, no more sanctions. And beyond that, it likely means new joint ventures, probably related to energy.

And third —last and least— they will discuss a structure to end the war in Ukraine. ...

“I hear that the Ukrainians are upset about not having a seat,” President Trump said. “Well, they’ve had a seat for three years. And a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, the loss of much land, or very little land. Without the loss of any lives. And without the loss of cities that are now just laying on their sides.”

Trump —who himself just won the popular vote— also dismissed Zelensky’s approval rating as flatlining “around 4%,” He also seemed to endorse the Russian argument that Ukraine needs to have democratic elections. It was another weird turnaround; the corporate media are forced to defend not having elections and the dictator Putin is insisting that Ukrainians be allowed to vote.

Zelensky, of course, opposes holding elections in Ukraine.

Then Trump asked the reporters, “Where is all the money?” That question did not bode well for the Ukrainians.

Patrick says

Speaking from Riyadh, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained late yesterday that the negotiating teams had already nailed down the outlines of a three-part plan. First, the U.S. and Russia will re-establish diplomatic relations obliterated by the Biden Administration. For example, the mothballed Russian embassy in DC can re-open for normal diplomatic business.

Second, the US and Russia will explore brand new geopolitical and business opportunities together. Meaning, no more sanctions. And beyond that, it likely means new joint ventures, probably related to energy.

And third —last and least— they will discuss a structure to end the war in Ukraine. ...

OMG! It's Niven's & Pournelle's CoDominium!

Rest of the world is FUCKED. Not just Ukraine.

CoDominium is a series of future history novels written by American writer Jerry Pournelle, along with several co-authors, primarily Larry Niven.

The CoDominium (CD) is a political alliance and union between the United States and the Soviet Union in Pournelle's fictional history. Formed to maintain planetary stability,

https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1892242622623699357

https://x.com/BRICSinfo/status/1891971313624809484

https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1892218938236215650

https://x.com/CilComLFC/status/1892314041449685211

How to win friends and influence people:

https://bioclandestine.substack.com/p/putin-was-right

The world is starting to realize that Ukraine was a massive psyop and money laundering operation.

Which means that Putin was kind of right about the whole Ukraine thing.

This is why the Deep State conditioned the world to believe everything Russia says is “disinformation”. They knew that Putin knew their schemes, so they weaponized nearly all media around the globe, via Soros’ USAID influence machine, to make the public believe anything Russia says is a lie.

In reality, it was all to cover up their own lies and criminality in Ukraine. This is why the MSM have been screeching about “Russian collusion” and “Russian disinformation” since around 2014. The Deep State knew that Putin knew, so they weaponized the media against him, the same way they did Trump.

You just lived through the most advanced information and propaganda war in human history. The people you have been taught to hate are actually the good guys, and the people you have been taught to worship are actually the most evil people on the planet.

Patrick says

To be fair Putin is a dictator as well. If you're an executive in office for 20+ years, that's a dictator regardless of their bull shit elections. I think most would agree with this, I wouldn't want Trump in office for 20 years. Why? Everyone disengages and the guy in charge just gets to do what he wants.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/blowback-monday-february-24-2025

Yesterday, the National Post ran an arresting story headlined, “Trudeau joining world leaders in Ukraine for summit on third anniversary of war.” It’s another emergency counter-summit! More talking! And, in Kiev. In the midst of the war. I guess this means they aren’t that worried about Putin, after all. One Oreshnik missile could take out Canada’s lame-duck Prime Minister and most pesky EU ministers.

Good point. Clearly Putin could do that, so why doesn't he?

So, the great "Kyiv in 3 days" SCHMO has entered the 4th year of quagmire.

It'd be the equivalent of the US staging a massive invasion of Mexico, going all the way to Mexico City, then kicked out half of the occupied land, get Pacific Fleet sunk, suffer a million casualties, deploy donkeys and camels to the frontline, advance whopping 25 miles after a year and half of constant assult.... and then, on top of everything, Texas gets invaded and held by the enemy for 7 months (and counting), refineries being drone-bombed every night, Fed rate at 20%, mortgage rates at 42% (with 60% minimum downpayment).... and this is all according to plan!

Greated like liberators indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trL_vgX9oSc