After the western alliance previously swore that NATO would not put any member NATO state on the doorstep of Russia, a promise that was weak and viewed by many as false – ultimately influencing the decision by Russia, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said today that Ukraine will be joining NATO as soon as the conflict is concluded.
Now, given that statement, why would Russia even fathom entering any type of peaceful resolution to the conflict. In essence, Stoltenberg has just turned the conflict in Ukraine into a zero-sum issue for Russia. The only way Russia can keep NATO away from its border is to win violently against Ukraine. WATCH (00:42 prompted):
Do you really believe the United States would be okay with Russia establishing forward military bases in Mexico or Canada? Why should Russia permit U.S. and NATO military bases on its borders?
We almost went to war when Russia was assisting Cuba with weapons and missiles, and the U.S. will not permit any Russian interests in North America. Why should Russia accept U.S. interests on their doorstep?
It’s not just the United Kingdom, but as we await the latest figures from monthly U.S. data, the statistics from the U.K. are hitting the newswires. According to Reuters, food inflation in the U.K. is currently 17.1% The primary driver of the skyrocketing food costs is the energy cost associated with the fast turnover categories.
With prices increasing 17.1% yet net sales only increasing 8.1%, there is a substantial impact in unit food sales. British customers are buying much less to offset the fact they are paying much more. This trend is not just in the U.K. we have seen the same trend in U.S. data as families are being squeezed at the grocery store.
The prices on name branded products like Kraft and Heinz are leading the escalating food prices. Just last week I noticed 6oz Kraft Philadelphia cream cheese was $6.99, and a 24 oz. bottle of Heinz ketchup at over $8. Dairy products are leading the way with the most rapid increases in price. It appears that we are entering the fourth wave of food inflation currently.
LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – British grocery inflation hit 17.1% in the four weeks to Feb. 19, another record high, dealing the latest blow to consumers struggling with a cost-of-living crisis, industry data showed on Tuesday.
Market researcher Kantar said prices are rising fastest in markets such as milk, eggs and margarine. It said UK households now face an additional 811 pounds ($978) on their annual shopping bills if they don’t change their behaviour to cut costs.
Requested to stick at top of site for few hours. /SD
This is it. This is pure MAGA. President Trump is announcing the big one… “Economic Agenda 47“
This is the economic policy blade to drive a stake through the vampire heart of corporatism, globalism and the exploitation of the U.S. economy by multinational corporate interests. This “universal baseline tariff” approach, is the policy that slays the dragons of the World Economic Forum, destroys the Beijing dragon and simultaneously ends the EU Marshal Plan advantage. This is a big deal.
President Trump makes the economic policy announcement today, and it is an incredible structure of trade and economic proposals that would be resoundingly effective at restoring every financial mechanism within the United States as a sovereign country. The proposal is economic nationalism in policy form.
[Transcript] – “Joe Biden claims to support American manufacturing—but in reality, he is pushing the same pro-China globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country. It ripped us apart. Biden and the globalists support RAISING taxes on American production. They support MORE crippling regulations killing American jobs. They support skyrocketing domestic energy costs. And they support massive anti-American multinational agreements that send our wealth and factories overseas.
Very simply, the Biden agenda taxes AMERICA to build up CHINA.
China is the big beneficiary. We cannot let that happen. And just a couple of years ago, it wasn’t happening. China paid to the United States hundreds of billions of dollars and no other president got ten cents. Legitimately, ten cents from China.
With around 4,000 miles separation, two friends of the Treehouse, Neil Oliver and Lee Smith, essentially asked me the same question this week, “how do we stop this madness?”
It should not be an option hearing this talk about the need to secede, fracture, isolate or form smaller defensive boundaries. WE ARE IN THE MAJORITY, they just control the power structures and systems of communication. That’s why they spend so much time, effort and attention manipulating social media. My proposed solution is to draw from history, specifically from the Polish solidarity movement. What we need is a general two-day workers strike, highlighting to the few that the many have had enough.
In his weekly monologue Neil Oliver takes the new issue of rationing vegetables in the U.K and overlays the surplus of lies that creates it. Neil Oliver generally has exceptional insight and strong grasps on the obvious; however, this one is epic and one of his best. WATCH:
[Transcript] – They’re rationing tomatoes in the supermarkets. We’re told it’s about supply chains, bad weather and the price of heating, but right now, in terms of the messaging, I suspect it’s more about pushing the word – rationing. Less about any believable shortage of food and more about getting us used to hearing the word.
No doubt, if experience is anything to go by, the rest will come later. My money says the rationing app for our smartphones is already sitting on a hard drive somewhere, ready when we are.
For now, it’s more of a familiar process of psychological manipulation. Get us acquainted with the general idea of food scarcity so that we’re well-primed when the planned reality is unrolled.
We were given the same treatment with words like “lockdown” and “pandemic”, “mandate” and “denier”. Nudge, nudge. Rationing is a word from our parents’ and grandparents’ generation, a bit like “War in Europe” and “Fascist” and now they’re back in fashion once more. Rationing, I ask you, while the landfills swell with fresh food dumped every day.
A few interesting aspects to this soundbite before the hubris is displayed. Notice how Ukraine President Zelenskyy immediately affirms his knowledge that an increasing number of Americans no longer support the endless proxy war in Ukraine. Apparently, the CIA and State Dept are focused very heavily on managing U.S. war fatigue and communicating that issue with the Ukrainian government they control. {Direct Rumble Link}
Zelenskyy is asked about the increasing number of Americans who no longer support the war. His response is to demand support and tell the stoopid Amerikaan voters, their opinion means nothing. The direct and implied message is, if America doesn’t continue funding the war in Ukraine, our global credibility will collapse and people around the world will start laughing at us.
The propaganda is pretty thick, yet there are millions of Americans asking if the war is really such a dire situation, why does it always seem like there is an endless amount of time to promote the theater of it? An auditorium filled with mindless captures, stares at a stage containing a leader who has unlimited time to play the role in the script…. yet somewhere, in some place… there is apparently a war happening. What I mean is, the “theater” of the Ukraine war narrative is consuming far more resources than the actual fighting of the ‘war.’ WATCH:
Following upon the heels of Joe Biden attending a meeting of NATO’s “eastern flank” partners, colloquially known as “the Bucharest-9”, and against the backdrop of China stepping into the picture with “no separation” support for Russia, the Pentagon is noting the anniversary of the Ukraine conflict by indicating additional U.S. troops maybe needed on the NATO eastern flank.
It is important to mention that Ukraine is NOT a NATO country. The U.S. and Western media tend to avoid noting this uncomfortable fact, but NATO has no obligation to defend Ukraine. Some might ask why NATO is even involved at all.
With that in mind, France 24 notes there is a possibility of a brigade sized reinforcement group inbound to this region [LINK HERE]. The Pentagon press release is below:
(Pentagon) – […] In response to the most urgent danger to European security since the end of World War II, we have moved swiftly with our allies to further unify and strengthen NATO. The Alliance has bolstered its defenses on the Eastern Flank. Meanwhile, the United States has deployed or extended more than 20,000 additional U.S. forces to Europe and forward-stationed the first permanent U.S. forces on NATO’s Eastern Flank. NATO is more united than ever, and the U.S. commitment to defend every inch of allied territory remains ironclad.
The Biden administration and UniParty congress continues announcing additional tranches in tens-of-billions in U.S. taxpayer funds to support Ukraine. The total spent or committed now exceeds $100 billion in just one year alone, with no end in sight. We are funding almost all military operations and the government expenses of Ukraine to include pensions, pay and benefits for Ukrainian officials.
During his opening monologue Thursday, Tucker Carlson outlines the Joe Biden “as long as it takes” policy. WATCH:
This sounds exactly like something out of the State Dept playbook from an era when the U.S. military had the actual strength to back it up. However, against the current state of affairs, specifically the U.S. control over the western NATO alliance, sending additional troops to Taiwan just because the U.S. is upset about China and Russia’s relationship, is simply poking the Beijing dragon.
There are approximately 30 U.S. troops in Taiwan on a regular rotating basis. Nothing large or significant. However, immediately after China and Russia announce there is no distance or limit in their relationship, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration is sending an additional 200 U.S. military troops into Taiwan.
(Via Wall Street Journal) – […] The number of American troops, which has included special-operations forces and U.S. Marines, has fluctuated by a handful during the past few years, according to Defense Department data. The planned increase would be the largest deployment of forces in decades by the U.S. on Taiwan, as the two draw closer to counter China’s growing military power.
[…] The expanded training, both in the U.S. and in Taiwan, is part of a gathering U.S. push to help a close partner prepare to thwart a possible invasion by China. The U.S. officials said the expansion was planned for months, well before U.S.-China relations plummeted anew this month after a suspected Chinese spy balloon traversed North America for more than a week before being shot down by the Air Force.
… and because of that, he’s now a bigger target than ever.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is not willing to join the NATO alliance in pushing further escalation of war against Russia.
Now, we begin to connect the dots, see the bigger picture and understand exactly why Samantha Power is running an operation inside Hungary with the unspoken intent of destabilizing the Hungarian population against the government.
(Via Daily Mail) – Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban snubbed Wednesday’s meeting in Warsaw with President Joe Biden and the other Bucharest Nine leaders after insisting Donald Trump was the only person who could broker peace with Vladimir Putin.
Orban has been an outlier on the war in Ukraine, chiding the European Union for prolonging the conflict and saying in October that only former U.S. President Donald Trump could negotiate a deal between the Ukrainians and Russians to end the conflict.
‘This is going to sound brutal, but hope for peace goes by the name of Donald Trump,’ Orban said at the time, arguing Biden wasn’t the man for the job because he has ‘gone too far’ in calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘war criminal.’ (read more)
Follow the bouncing ball of consequence…. TWO WEEKS AGO:
I wrote about distinct data points in the last 24 hours {SEE HERE] that lean toward direct NATO hostile activity against Russia. Joe Biden might be saying that Ukraine flags are hanging from homes in small town America (major propaganda footing), but the overwhelming majority of Americans do not support an expanded war.
Russia is preparing. Today, high level officials from China and Russia held talks in Moscow and they were not hiding their unity of purpose in an alliance that would oppose western NATO engagement. When Beijing allows the panda mask to fall, the dragon message underneath it, “a relationship with no limits,” should be reviewed very carefully. The AP has some good color on the Moscow meeting.
(Via AP) Russia and China showcased their deepening ties Wednesday in meetings others are watching for signs that Beijing might offer the Kremlin stronger support for its war in Ukraine.
The visit by Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, to Moscow comes as the conflict in Ukraine continues to upend the global diplomatic order.
Relations between Russia and the West are at their lowest point since the Cold War, and ties between China and the U.S. are also under serious strain. Moscow suspended its participation in the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty with Washington this week. And the U.S. expressed concern that China could provide arms and ammunition to Russia.
