While Turkey is a NATO ally, Recep Erdogan strategically refused to participate in the process to ostracize Russia.  True to Erdogan’s strategic political interests of being an influence broker, Turkey is the only NATO country that does not participate in the sanctions regime against Russia.  Next month Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to Turkey for diplomatic discussions.

Turkey represents the literal gateway for most Western travel into and out of Russia.  However, first things first.  Despite the position of Turkey, notice how Hungary receives all the EU admonitions for not supporting the Ukraine side of the conflict, while NATO/EU never criticize Turkey who never even joined the EU/Western sanctions regime.  Inside that hypocritical contrast there is a revealing story.

Turkey established themselves as the neutral entity for future brokering negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.  Turkey has multiple geopolitical ties to Russia, including the purchase of Russian military equipment.  Apparently, despite the severity of the original sanction demand, Western interests -specifically the U.S. government- had no issue with Turkey proactively taking their ‘neutral’ position.  Always remember this.

Given all of the domestic headlines in the USA, there is a very good reason for Americans to keep paying attention to all things that happen in the orbit of Russia right now. Many people ponder the issue of a dollar-based central bank digital currency; however, only a few people have paid attention to the self-fulfilling prophecy of the CBDC that was created by the Russian sanctions regime.

Those who ask about the possibility/probability of a dollar-based CBDC, and the possibility of the timeframe therein, should always be referenced back to the Western financial sanctions against Russia.  It was that triggering point that put the USA and Western alliance on the irreversible path to the U.S CBDC, and the process is no longer a matter of “if” because the determining issue is no longer (primarily) in U.S. control.

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In this brief video below {Direct Rumble Link Here} Former Blackrock portfolio manager, Ed Dowd, explains why every last remnant of human freedom depends on mass resistance to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). “Once the central bank digital currency is linked to all your credit cards and bank accounts, then social controls can be implemented. If you’re a dissenter like me, talking about truth, they shut you down.” WATCH:

I know at first blush a lot of this CBDC discussion seems esoteric, difficult to understand, and there are a lot of other issues happening simultaneously in the background. However, if you contemplate the biggest threat on this overarching power arc of western government, you arrive to understand how serious this seemingly opaque issue really is.

I first started to deep dive research into these CBDC datapoints when the Russian sanctions were triggered. You see, nothing about them really makes sense from the way they were structured; additionally, the intensity of the drive to make the sanctions the tip of the western spear was just too pointed, something about it didn’t make sense. That’s what took me to dig deep into the impact and realize nothing said about these financial sanctions makes sense when compared against their actual irrelevance {Go Deep}.

When the White House first started openly saying the Biden administration was reviewing how to implement CBDC’s, yes THAT Announcement ACTUALLY HAPPENED, September 2022, then things from a research perspective really started to get serious. “While the U.S. has not yet decided whether it will pursue a CBDC, the U.S. has been closely examining the implications of, and options for, issuing a CBDC.”  Whenever the U.S. govt says they’re “undecided,” pay close attention.

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On Wednesday, Russia claimed an IL-76 transport aircraft carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs was shot down en route to a POW exchange in the Belgorod region.

Western media, particularly those with a vested anti-Russia narrative, expressed skepticism of the Russian statement, including the claim that Ukraine had shot down the plane.  However, the BBC has an outline [SEE HERE] based on a conversation with a Ukrainian intelligence official that seems to directly corroborate the Russian statements.

Oddly, but perhaps not unexpectedly, the BBC article is framed to retain the skepticism; however, if you read the article carefully, what you will notice is the details are generally confirmed.

Yes, there was a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine military that was supposed to take place in Belgorod on Wednesday, at the exact time the plane was shot down.   Yes, for some unknown reason the prisoner exchange did not take place as the POWs never arrived.  Yes, there was a previous POW exchange that took place in this exact same Belgorod location, and yes, a Russian IL-76 aircraft was previously used to transport the Ukraine POWs.

(Via BBC) – … [Ukraine Intelligence Officer] Andriy Yusov stressed that Russia had provided no proof to back its claims there were. “There is no clear information about prisoners of war. There are only statements by Russia, of a political and propagandist nature,” he said. “Who or what was on board needs to be clarified.”

Mr Yusov, who is the first Ukrainian official interviewed by the BBC since the incident on Wednesday, accused Moscow of “hiding” information, with limited images from the crash site – including of any dead.

Here’s where the article seems to confirm the Russian story:

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg always reminds me of former ODNI James Clapper. Both men, a little ordinary, had a tendency to say the obvious non-political ordinary thing accidentally, and that would seemingly frustrate the political narrative engineers.

Stoltenberg did it again recently when he was questioned about the horrific and horrible likelihood that terrible Russia would expand their military conflict beyond Ukraine. Surely, given the intensity of the common western narrative, this Russian expansion was only a matter of timing. Nope….

According to the NATO Secretary General, “…we don’t see any direct or imminent threat against any NATO Ally. And therefore, we, of course, monitor closely what Russia does, we have increased our vigilance, our presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, but the whole idea of that is to prevent an attack on a NATO Ally.” {LINK}

What Stoltenberg said was transparently true and confirmable simply by looking beyond the preferred western talking points.  However, no doubt his tracked and monitored cell phone was immediately receiving apoplectic calls from the U.S. State Dept for going off script.

Another transparently true thing is, the eastern Ukraine killing stops as soon as President Trump wins the 2024 general election.

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In the past five years, specifically in the ‘Western’ geopolitical world, there have been two overarching narratives pushed so hard it made us pause, elevate and question the intensity of the push. These are narratives outside the USA domestic front, and specifically attributable to the entire ‘Western’ alliance of nations.

The first was the COVID-19 vaccine demand.  No other modern unity governmental push in modern history was focused so intensely, to the exclusion of all other factors, as the demand that citizens within various Western nations take the vaccine. If you take a breath and look at the issue from the highest intellectual overview possible, everything about that demand was fraught with over-the-top intensity.

The narrative push included threats and action to stop income, threats and action to stop travel, threats and action to stop unvaccinated people from shopping, purchasing goods and from otherwise participating in society.  Literal checkpoints, roadblocks and quarantine camps were established in some nations and some regions within nations.  The push to force vaccine compliance was extreme.

The second overall narrative, again, this is almost exclusively a ‘Western’ government narrative, surrounds Ukraine.

The demand that Ukraine be financially and militarily supported against Russian action is unilaterally intense to the exclusion of all other diplomatic and geopolitical approaches.  However, outside the ‘Western’ governmental view, the perspective toward Ukraine from the non-Western world is completely different; you might even say completely indifferent.

If you think about the triggering scale of the ‘Western’ financial sanctions against Russia, you start to realize the unprecedented nature of the effort; then, when we overlay the futile nature of the outcome of those sanctions, things really appear odd.  In reality, Russia now has one of the fastest growing GDPs and economies in the world, and the newly disconnected national economic strength therein is the exact opposite of what was claimed to be intended.

This reality establishes the elevated question: what is it about Ukraine that creates such a strong and visceral Western government reaction?

That context brings us to the next story.  Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears to be leading an effort to pre-position President Trump’s forced adherence to the Western global perspective on Ukraine.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is so committed to the retention of war in Ukraine he seemingly implies if President Trump negotiates with Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop fighting, then Zelenskyy will fight both sides of the conflict.  This guy is a little weird.

(VIA NEW YORK TIMES) – […] Zelensky used an expletive to describe a Trump claim about containing Vladimir Putin. At a Q. and A. with journalists that Andrew moderated, Zelensky dismissed the idea that Trump could stop the Russian president from going after other parts of Europe. Putin, he added, “will not stop — but the question is what will the U.S. and Trump do after this point, because in this case it will mean that Europe lost the most useful and most strong army in Europe because we lost Ukraine.”

Zelensky initially sought to tamp down worries about Trump, and whether his potential re-election would lead to a drop in support for Ukraine. But he also appeared somewhat fearful about the prospect. “One man cannot change the whole nation,” Zelensky said in the Q. and A., adding that deciding on the next president is “a choice for the American nation and only the American nation.”

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Trust me, I had to dumb down this headline to avoid the Google “reputation” block.   But let me start by reminding everyone [CHECK DATE]:

[SOURCE]

{GO DEEP} – And so, it begins:

White House – Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces—together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands—successfully conducted strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways.
 
These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea—including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history. These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation. More than 50 nations have been affected in 27 attacks on international commercial shipping. Crews from more than 20 countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy.  More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea—which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times. And on January 9, Houthis launched their largest attack to date—directly targeting American ships.

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In this outline I am going to expand on the details previously discussed {HERE}.  You won’t find this in any financial media discussion, and there’s only a handful of people I know in the west who really understand the ramifications.  Fortunately, one of them is running for President.

First some non-pretending context.  If you are a Friedman-ite, finance major from any traditional academic institute – including Wharton, and/or a person who uses data models to frame analysis about economics and finance, without the capacity to put all of your traditional reference points in the trash heap of irrelevance, then just move along.  We ain’t got time for that.

Consider Austan Goolsbee and Bill Ayers having dinner talking about what would happen if they successfully de-dollarized the globe.  Austan comes at it from one perspective, Bill from another. Bernardine Dohrn smiles, because neither of the Chicago dinner guests has any idea what would really happen in this ideological landscape; no one really does.

I first sounded the alarm on this on March 2, 2022, almost two years ago {SEE HERE}.

In the ideological DoS/CIA/WEF/Western banking frenzy to punish the horrible Russia, I took a different approach. I overlaid the human factor with the geopolitical reality of financial control mechanisms.  I predicted a cleaving outcome, because I carry no assumptions.  That’s the context.

Additionally, I’m not coming at this situational analysis having relied on charts, graphs, trade analysis, Western finance systems or actuarial constructs of monetary manipulation by central bankers.  Nope.  I sat quietly inside small to medium-sized regional banks in Western Europe and listened to the reality of what businesspeople are doing, actually doing, in their operation of their enterprise as it relates to finance and Russia. {Go Deep}

This is where the razor’s edge outcome of the cleaving, the “yellow zone” -vs- “grey zone” construct, meets reality.

What we will witness this year will be one of the biggest stories of 2024 that will impact every American.  However, few people will understand the information that will slowly trickle toward us, because too few people analyze information without historic assumptions.

When the “West” (yellow zone) triggered the sanction regime against Russia, almost no one took a big picture overlay and asked, “What about those nations who do not align with the Western intent; what will they do?”

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I’m very serious when I share with people that almost everything we understand about the geopolitical purposes and impacts of sanctions against Russian economic interests is entirely fabricated.  However, because the scale of the propaganda against us is so effective, breaking the mental/cognitive barrier is almost impossible.

It’s not that situations are ‘shaped’ or information is ‘manipulated,’ like would be the definition of the term “disinformation.”  But rather that the entire construct of reality regarding the economic issues -as presented- is fabricated, created by massive financial interests, and flat-out lies; I mean, total unadulterated nonsense. Complete fiction.

This latest article from Reuters, and the accompanying graphic from ZeroHedge, only scratches the surface.

[SOURCE]

We are through the looking glass folks.  Literally captive to the narrative as sold by our Western government officials, and there’s a huge one-way mirror; beyond which, massive segments of the grey zone are looking at us as if we are pathetic victims of professional propaganda.

The worst part of this dynamic is how the USA looks insufferably weak, because we are playing this massive game of pretending that only the Yellow Zone is participating in.

MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) – Almost all of Russia’s oil exports this year have been shipped to China and India, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday, after Moscow responded to Western economic sanctions by quickly rerouting supplies away from Europe.

Russia has successfully circumvented sanctions on its oil and diverted flows from Europe to China and India, which together accounted for around 90% of its crude exports, Novak, who is in charge of the country’s energy sector, told Rossiya-24 state TV.

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An interesting set of details amid a few reports on Ukraine, with one very interesting White House announcement under section 621 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA).

First, as previously discussed within the year-end National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) there was a supplemental addition of $300 million more for Ukraine.

(VIA CBS) – The Biden administration Wednesday announced a $250 million military assistance package for Ukraine.

The aid package — the final of 2023 — will include arms and equipment, including air defense munitions, anti-armor munitions, ammunition for high mobility artillery rocket systems, and more than 15 million rounds of small arms ammunition, a State Department spokesperson said to CBS News.

“Our assistance has been critical to supporting our Ukrainian partners as they defend their country and their freedom against Russia’s aggression,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement, urging Congress to “swiftly” approve further aid to Ukraine. (read more)

Then, there’s something rather interesting….

Remember how we’ve talked about Ukraine being somewhat of a money laundering operation; and the entire series of events being akin to “world war Reddit” without any visible ‘boots on the ground’ war correspondent reporting; and the highly visible structure of the CIA running the operation from Foggy Bottom with the Dept of State controlling the outcomes… Remember all that?

Now, check out this little slush fund:

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