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Moscow welcomes Trump’s stance on Kiev’s NATO bid

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. © Getty Images / Mert Gokhan Koc/ dia

RT

The US president earlier said he understands Russia’s position that Ukraine should not be part of the military bloc

Russia welcomes the statements made by US President Donald Trump regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership ambitions, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Trump is the first Western leader to admit that it was wrong to support Kiev’s plans to join the military bloc, the diplomat said on Wednesday.

Trump stated last month that he understands the Russian stance that Ukraine should not be part of NATO. Speaking to reporters in Florida, the US president said Moscow’s position had long been “written in stone,” but that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had ignored it, which contributed to the current conflict.

“Somewhere along the line, Biden said, ‘[Ukraine], they should be able to join NATO.’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I can understand their feelings about that,” Trump added.

Speaking at an ambassadors’ roundtable on Ukraine, Lavrov said Trump’s comments suggest Washington may finally be ready to address issues linked to Ukraine’s NATO bid and the bloc’s eastward expansion.

“President Trump bluntly said that one of the main mistakes was drawing Ukraine into NATO, and that if he had been in power the past four years, the conflict would not have happened,” Lavrov noted.

“For the first time, a Western leader… the leader of the entire Western world, uttered these words, which we welcome because for the first time the problem of NATO was identified as something that the US is ready to discuss seriously,” he added. Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s stance that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations were a root cause of the current conflict, saying that warnings not to encourage these aspirations either fell on deaf ears or were met with “duplicity” and “hypocrisy” by Western politicians.

“The root cause is the conscious, long-term desire and… practical steps of the West to create direct military threats to Russia on our borders, on the territory of Ukraine, and drawing it into NATO. We have raised this issue repeatedly, demanding NATO honor its pledge not to expand eastward, but all was in vain,” Lavrov said. He suggested Trump’s remarks could signal a shift in US policy, which he called crucial as “Washington is the one who will ultimately make the decisions” regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership.

Moscow has long opposed Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, insisting any settlement of the ongoing conflict must include Kiev’s neutrality and demilitarization. Ukraine, however, considers its membership a strategic foreign and security policy objective, and has recently claimed that it sees its admission to the US-led military bloc as a security guarantee to agree to a ceasefire with Moscow. While NATO last year declared that Ukraine was on an “irreversible” path to joining the bloc, its members warned that Kiev would have to meet certain conditions first, such as resolving the conflict with Moscow.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/russia/612216-lavrov-trump-nato-ukraine/

CIA Offers Buyouts to ENTIRE WORKFORCE with Generous Eight-Months Pay & Benefits as Trump Moves to Downsize Federal Bureaucracy

Photo credit: depositphotos.com

By Jim Hoft

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly extended a buyout offer to its entire workforce.

This follows President Trump’s proposal to encourage millions of federal workers to resign by February 6 in exchange for pay and benefits lasting until September 30.

Trump is offering the buyouts to make sure all federal workers are “on board with the new administration’s plan to have federal employees in office,” CNBC reported.

Only 6% of all federal workers actually work full-time in the office!

Trump’s offer does not include postal workers, military, immigration officials or people in national security roles.

A senior administration official disclosed that over 20,000 federal workers have accepted Trump’s buyout, a figure representing about one percent of the federal workforce and falling short of the White House’s target of five to ten percent.

“We expect more to come,” the administration official explained. “If you see what’s happening at USAID, it’s just one piece of the puzzle.”

According to a report first released by the Wall Street Journal, the new CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, has spearheaded these changes, which include a generous eight-months pay and benefits package for any employee opting for resignation.

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/mass-exodus-horizon-cia-offers-buyouts-entire-workforce/

Condos in Gaza! Solving the Mideast Problem Trump Style

by Eric Margolis

[…]

Gaza is a ‘mess’ said President Trump and must be ‘cleaned up.’ 2.1 million human refuse are befouling this potentially prime beachside property. `We just clean out that whole thing’ quoth the Great Developer.

Trump said the answer to this thorny problem is to move all these Palestinian refugees to neighboring Egypt and Jordan. Voila! Problem solved!

Why didn’t the world think of this earlier? Small problem: Egypt, has 107.5 million people crammed into a fertile area the size of the small US state of Maryland. Overpopulated Egypt is so crowded that its people have taken up camping in cemeteries.

Egypt can’t feed its people without millions in US aid delivered through a network of corrupt suppliers. Trump had nothing to say about the corrupt former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, who took large bribes for decades from the Egyptian government – and possibly from others such as Ukraine and Israel.

Egypt is one of this world’s most rigid dictatorships. But you never hear about this in the tame western media. Cairo worked hand in glove with Israel in keeping Palestinians caged up in the Gaza open air prison. Egypt’s military regime rightly feared that Palestinians would infect Egypt with ideas of democracy or Islamic government. Egypt is the Arab world’s most populous country. Cairo’s military rulers don’t want any revolutionary, trouble-making Palestinians.

The same applies to Jordan’s royal regime. Its former prince, Hassan, was elbowed out of the succession to the Hashemite throne because the US and Israel considered him too pro-Palestinian. The more amenable and charming Abdullah II was made king.

Tiny Jordan, carved out of the Arabian desert by the British Imperialists after World War I, is already at least 60% Palestinians, ruled over by the crack Jordanian Army. Jordan is a decent, well-run nation but it too cannot absorb any more Palestinians. Neighboring Lebanon faces a similar problem.

All these irksome Palestinians did not come from the moon. They were created when Israel ethnically cleansed what’s now Northern Israel and bulldozed flat its former Arab villages. Gaza was created as a giant open-air prison camp for Palestinian refugees, whose very existence was denied by Israel.

Here’s an idea! Dear President Trump. Why not move the 2.1 million homeless Palestinian refugees to your Mar-a-Lago estate and its surroundings. Throw in Tampa and Lauderdale. Then you can green light your son-in-law Jared Kushner to turn the lovely Gaza coast – now unpopulated – into a new Miami. I

[…]

Via https://ericmargolis.com/2025/01/condos-in-gaza-solving-the-mideast-problem-trump-style/

 

Dr. Reiner Fuellmich running as candidate in German federal elections later this month

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Rhoda Wilson

After Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag (German Parliament) on 16 December 16 2024, Germany is holding elections for the members of the 21st Bundestag.  The federal elections are scheduled for 23 February 2025 .

Although still in jail and back in shackles for court appearances, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is running as an independent candidate.

For Dr. Reiner Fuellmich to secure his candidacy, he required 200 signatures from voters of Wuppertal’s District 101 before the deadline of 20 January 2025. Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.  “The volunteers collected the signatures in the cold and rain long before the deadline,” Laufpass wrote.

Eight hearings in the criminal proceedings against Dr. Fuellmich have been cancelled by the court in Göttingen since late 2024.  Although one of the judges is reportedly recovering from an accident that required surgery, Laufpass suspects that these cancellations were really an attempt to maintain media silence to stop Dr. Fuellmich from gaining the attention he might need to obtain the 200 signatures he required.

“What makes the long break suspicious is that the hearings will begin directly after the deadline of 20 January 2025; the first hearing of the new year is on January 21.  If the interruption is indeed a form of censorship, this is not the only way in which the German authorities are trying to limit the amount of information the public receives about Reiner Fuellmich,” Laufpass said.

However, if this was the aim, it was in vain. By 8 January, Dr. Fuellmich had obtained the requisite number of signatures and he is now a candidate in the federal elections hoping to become a member of the Bundestag.

Free Reiner Fuellmich on Twitter, 8 January 2025

In the video below, Andrea Henning explains how it came about: “Lucky coincidence (there are no luck coincidences) led to Dr. Reiner Fuellmich being nominated in a district in Wuppertal where he is the direct opponent of the very popular [sarcasm] former President of the Office for Protection of the Constitution Mr. Haldenwang.”

“I don’t like Mr. Haldenwang,” Michael Schele said, “because he said on television … that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution … that this institution alone is not responsible for changing election results.  Back then he said [ ] about a certain party, “This institution has no right to interfere in free elections. They should hunt down terrorists.”

“There is a need in Magdeburg [capital of the German state Saxony-Anhalt] right now. And that’s why I support stories like this,” Schele added.

Henning explained that Dr. Fuellmich is running as an independent candidate because as he says, “I want to be there for the people and not hide behind a state-controlled party and thereby have excuses.”

Dr. Fuellmich has obtained the required number of signatures and “they have been confirmed and handed to the electoral officer,” Henning said.

Strange News: Reiner Fuellmich is on the ballot as an independent candidate in the upcoming German election, 16 January 2025 (5 mins)

Via https://expose-news.com/2025/02/04/fuellmich-a-candidate-in-german-elections/

USAID Pays the Terrorists Who Kill Us

Twitter/Da Afghanistan BankVictoria TaftIt seems shocking that a government entity that has the word “aid” in its acronym would ever be accused of doing dirty tricks and worse against the friends and foes of the U.S., much less be defanged or shut down by Donald Trump. For the world’s lefties this defanging is unthinkable. But now, we’re finding out all kinds of skullduggery attributed to our color revolutionistas at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Victoria Nuland, and Samantha Power and their kindred through the years. And color revolution coups have been their specialty. See Ukraine 2014.Need a race riot in Africa? No problem, USAID is your go-to riot planner. Want to force out a democratically elected president? Call USAID for an information onslaught guaranteed to get rid of any elected populist. Need conservatives censored? Call USAID.But you may not have heard this one unless you follow the work of former CIA targeter and Defense Department operative Sarah Adams. See her interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast below.

She tracked the Al-Qaeda operation and operators that Jake Sullivan and Hillary Clinton denied were part the Benghazi attack and proved it was a preplanned Al-Qaeda terrorist attack.

And Adams has tracked-back the money being sent by the United States government to our enemies—the people we went to war against to settle the score for 9/11.

Catherine reports nearby that USAID dollars support Iran’s proxies Hamas. If that’s shocking, then you’ll want to sit down for this next revelation. The U.S. State Department and USAID pay millions of dollars per week to the Taliban, the bin Laden family leading the group, and the Haqqani terror network. Remember those guys? Didn’t we wage a 20-year-long war to get rid of them …???

We left Afghanistan, left behind billions of dollars in equipment, the strategically important Bagram Air Base, and all the biometric data of our Afghani supporters who put their lives on the line to help our efforts to get the Taliban and the terrorists they were hiding from us. So, of course, when Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan had us bug out in disgrace, they left the Taliban a ready-made kill list of our allies.

And now, as Adams reckons, we pay the Taliban and all the above parties between $40-87 million per week that is carried on a plane complete with a bag man who doles out the payoffs: https://t.co/2Cv2IwFQJN

I asked Adams on X if USAID money was going to pay our enemies. Oh, yes, you’d better believe it: https://t.co/2Cv2IwFQJN

Adams replied, “They [sic] money to the Taliban moves through so many channels, but yes, USAID is one of them.”

Indeed, not only do we do that, but we also pay the costs of running the Taliban “rufugee” office.  That refugee money actually goes to Al-Qaeda training camps.

Well, isn’t that special?

We pay our enemies—and they’re our enemies—millions per week. We share intelligence with them, and we left our other enemy, China, in the driver’s seat in Afghanistan. How does this help the United States? Both the U.S. State Department and USAID and the Pentagon made that happen.

Whose side are they on?

And even though we’re paying them millions per month, Adams says Al-Qaeda terrorists who’s training camps we’re paying for have gone gotten visas from Brazil, come up through Panama’s Darien Gap, and entered our country for Hamas-like attacks in the U.S. Thanks, Joe Biden.

I know Trump talked about negotiating with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan when he was President #45, but considering that the USAID employees were attempting to sidestep his foreign policy priorities (and were fired for it), wouldn’t it be a good idea to get a reckoning of how much we’re paying these terrorists to kill us?

[…]Via https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2025/02/03/usaid-paid-taliban-and-al-qaeda-n4936641

Mexico, Canada Will Each Send Troops to Border in Effort To Stop Trump Tariffs

Donald Trump (Joe Raedle/Getty Images), Justin Trudeau (Reuters/Mike Segar/File Photo), Claudia Sheinbaum (Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)

Matthew Xiao

Hours before President Donald Trump’s tariffs were slated to go into effect, Mexico agreed to immediately send 10,000 troops to its border with the United States to curb the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants, prompting Trump to pause the tariffs for one month. Canada soon followed suit, promising to send troops to its U.S. border in exchange for a tariff pause.

“Mexico will immediately reinforce the northern border with 10,000 members of the National Guard to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, particularly fentanyl,” Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum told Trump during a Monday morning call. Trump confirmed the tariff pause in a Truth Social post, noting that “these soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country.”

Hours later, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said Monday afternoon that Canada will be “reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel” and that “nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border.”

“Canada is making new commitments to appoint a Fentanyl Czar,” Trudeau continued. “We will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24/7 eyes on the border, launch a Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.”

In exchange, Trudeau finished, “proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days.”

The agreement comes two days after Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada to “protect” Americans from the “major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs.” Both Canada and Mexico announced retaliatory tariffs against the United States. Trump also levied a 10 percent tariff on China, which remains poised to take effect on Tuesday.

Mexico will also expand an import substitution plan, dubbed Plan Mexico, to reduce reliance on Chinese imports and produce more goods in Mexico, Sheinbaum said at a news conference after the call.

[…]

Via https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/mexico-to-send-10k-troops-to-border-in-effort-to-stop-trump-tariffs/

Octopus Game Part IX – Hidden History of Palestine

Octopus Game Part IX

Press TV (202)

Film Review

https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2024/12/31/740063/Octopus-Game-US-military-Ukraine-Israel-American-foreign-policy-documentary-PressTV

This episode continues the timeline of the Israeli-Hamas War into 2024:

January 14 – UN announces that Israel has killed more than 1,978 Palestinian civilians since October 8, 2023, with more than half children.

January 2 – Israel assassinates Hamas second-in-command and six party officials with a missile strike on their headquarters in Qatar. Turkey dismantles a 33-member network of Israeli spies performing intelligence on possible assassination targets. Israel orchestrates (via Daesh proxies) two terrorist bombings in Iran during a memorial for General Suleiman.

January 4 – international shipping firm Maersk, which had temporarily resumed Red Sea shipping, begins to re-direct all trade around Africa.

January 6 – Hezbollah attacks Israel’s Mount Mairo air control base with 62 missiles and Israel retaliates by assassinating one of their leaders.

January 9 – Saudi Arabia reiterates it will only resume diplomatic relations with Israel if they guarantee Palestine’s right to form a state. Iran reiterates its call for a binding referendum open to all residents (Muslim, Jewish and Christian) of historic Palestine.

January 11 – US and UK down 27 Houthi drones and initiate rocket attacks on Ansarollah (Houthis)-controlled territory in Yemen. UN envoy Martin Griffiths announces Israel’s blockade of humanitarian relief is causing Palestinian deaths from starvation and communicable disease.

January 13 0 Netanyahu announces his intention to ignore any future ruling by International Criminal Court.

January 14 – Gazan civilian deaths exceeds 24,000

January 15 – Iran launches missiles against Mossad-backed terrorists (ie ISIS and related groups) in Idlib and Kurdistan regions of Syria and in the Balochistan region of Pakistan.

https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2024/12/31/740063/Octopus-Game-US-military-Ukraine-Israel-American-foreign-policy-documentary-PressTV

Even with Western aid drying up, corruption continues to flourish in Ukraine

By Ahmed Adel | February 3, 2025

The deep-rooted corruption in Ukraine began to surface after it became clear that the Kiev regime was losing the war. Although the West used a corrupt Ukraine to attack and weaken Russia, the Westerners themselves now look for an alibi for the defeat and to distance themselves from their proxy after ignoring the total corruption of the Kiev regime due to the ambitions of certain leaders to inflict as much damage as possible on Russia.

Cracks have begun to appear in the relations between the allies due to corruption, and Ukraine accuses its Western partners of using corruption accusations as an excuse not to admit the country to NATO and the EU. Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe today, but the West continued to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky uncritically until Donald Trump raised the issue due to then-US President Joe Biden sending American taxpayers’ money to Ukraine.

It was then discovered that the Kiev regime was giving part of that money to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden. Hunter Biden, in turn, sent that money to his father, who, at the end of his term, issued a decree on Hunter’s preventive pardon.

Trump is now conducting a “special financial operation,” which will include both the Pentagon and Ukraine, to determine where the money went. For this reason, Trump has suspended the US aid program to Ukraine for 90 days, suggesting that there is evidence of financial mismanagement and theft of US taxpayer money.

Biden’s last decrees also indicate corruption related to Ukraine. Besides Hunter, Joe Biden issued preventive pardons for his brothers and their wives, as well as for his sister and her husband. It was not clear why and for what reason. However, there was no information about the existence of any criminal offenses and so on.

In Kiev, the main culprit behind these corruption schemes is Zelensky, who officially has a monthly salary of 28,000 hryvnias, about $664. Undoubtedly, he has other income because he bought a house for his parents and in-laws, a yacht, and more. According to media reports, Zelensky purchased a villa in Italy and acquired an estate in Britain—the former residence of King Charles and Princess Diana—while Zelensky’s wife has an apartment in London. In addition, the couple owns real estate in Cyprus and Miami. This, according to some sources, is not a complete list.

An Egyptian journalist who wrote about the purchase of the Italian villa in the name of Zelensky’s mother-in-law, worth almost $5 million, was found dead under unclear circumstances. As for the castle in the UK, these allegations are made by Ukrainian sources and still need to be verified. However, there is nothing secret that does not become public, and the Trump administration is certainly monitoring the movement of money.

Friends, godfathers, and relatives of Ukrainian officials are also getting rich quickly because property is being purchased in their names. Corruption in Ukraine is flourishing at all levels, and Ukrainian officials are issuing directives to journalists not to write about it until the war is over because it is bad for the country, as it may be left without Western aid. Sooner or later, everything will come to light.

The Trump administration will likely have all the information and initiate criminal proceedings by now. It is no coincidence that Zelensky is now saying that Ukraine does not have the strength to capture the lost territories. This statement seems to indicate a radical change in Kiev’s position and a renunciation of unrealistic goals to “return to the 1991 borders.” The reason for this is that Western aid is drying up.

Trump’s words that Biden and Zelensky started the war and that if he had been president, there would have been no war, draw attention to the fact that since January 20, the new president’s inauguration, there have been no attacks on Russia with American HIMARS and ATACMS missiles. The assumption is that Kiev received such an order from Trump, who replaced and fired people who dealt with Ukrainian issues in the State Department and the Pentagon.

Zelensky was a puppet managed by the West and was under the control of British intelligence. This is evidenced by the fact that in the spring of 2022, Zelensky annulled the Istanbul Peace Accords on the directive of then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, even though he had a chance to stop the war that would have prevented Ukraine from losing more territory and preserved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. However, he instead decided to continue to fight on the promise that billions of dollars would flow endlessly, a prospect that Zelensky could not resist as an opportunity to further enrich himself and those closest to him.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/corruption-continues-flourish-ukraine/5878959

How USAID Linked to Secret Bioweapons Research

By Svetlana Ekimenko

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Armed Forces’ Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops, had previously exposed the Pentagon’s bioweapon program operating in Ukraine. He was killed in a bombing last December, which Russian investigators determined was carried out on the orders of Ukrainian special services.

Elon Musk called USAID a “criminal organization” and said it was “time for it to die,” alleging US tax dollars were funneled through the agency to fund bioweapons research.

Musk’s comments echo claims made by Lt. General Igor Kirillov, former head of Russia’s Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Defense Troops, who was later assassinated by Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces.

Documents obtained during Russia’s special military operation have reportedly exposed:

(4/5)
The US Spending website shows that Metabiota’s main services are ‘training of clinical, laboratory and field personnel involved in infections disease outbreaks’, ‘integrated lab and program support’, ‘pathogen discovery, disease detection, and threat characterization’,… pic.twitter.com/5uM9SVA0B9

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) December 27, 2024

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

USAID & Pentagon Links

Since 2019, USAID and its key contractor, Labyrinth Ukraine, have been involved in the US military biological program.

Labyrinth Ukraine is a branch of Labyrinth Global Health, whose founders were formerly with Metabiota, a major Pentagon bioweapons contractor.

Bioweapons Research

Labyrinth Ukraine participated in the US projects UP-9 and UP-10, studying African swine fever in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.

On February 24, 2022, pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera, and other deadly diseases were allegedly destroyed to cover up US-Ukraine violations of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).

A letter from Ukraine’s military epidemiology chief to Labyrinth Ukraine confirmed cooperation with USAID on troop vaccinations and data collection for the US.

Under the US Department of Defense’s Biological Threat Reduction Program, coronaviruses and monkeypox were key research focuses for Labyrinth Global Health.

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20250203/how-is-usaid-linked-to-secret-bioweapons-research-1121532353.html

How Trump’s Dismantling Of USAID Marks A Seismic, Historic Shift In America’s Role In The World

Getty Images

by Tyler Durden

The most consequential decision and executive order which came within the opening days of President Donald Trump’s administration has without doubt been his “reevaluating and realigning US foreign aid” — which sent shockwaves through Washington especially given federal funding has been cut to USAID in a shock blow to the agency. But it is also having a massive ripple effect throughout the world. Some foreign powers will welcome the news, while many allies as well as an assortment of US-backed ‘opposition groups’ will feel completely abandoned.

This has meant that pro-Western media outlets, NGOs, and ‘soft power’ organizations are in panic mode. This has basically overnight shutdown a multi-billion dollar regime change apparatus which pushed or often imposed American interests throughout the globe, especially in the very vulnerable Third World, as well as former Soviet satellite regions. The way this works on a practical, on the ground level is detailed in the well-known book Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man. As for Trump’s apparent efforts to dismantle the powerful USAID agency, we compiled some of the best current analysis from around the web outlining the huge significance of this move, which is nothing less than a historic reset (and we say a very welcome reset) of Washington’s relations with the rest of the world.

We’re looking at a seismic shift in the US’s relationship with the world, via Arnaud Bertrand:

1) The US is dismantling its foreign interference apparatuses (like USAID )

2) Marco Rubio stating that we’re now in a multipolar world with “multi-great powers in different parts of the planet” and that “the postwar global order is not just obsolete; it is now a weapon being used against us.”

3) The tariffs on supposed “allies” like Mexico, Canada or the EU: This is the US effectively saying “our attempt at running the world is over, to each his own, we’re now just another great power, not the ‘indispensable nation’.” It looks “dumb” (as the WSJ just wrote) if you are still mentally in the old paradigm but it’s always a mistake to think that what the US (or any country) does is dumb.

Hegemony was going to end sooner or later, and now the U.S. is basically choosing to end it on its own terms. It is the post-American world order – brought to you by America itself. Even the tariffs on allies, viewed under this angle, make sense, as it redefines the concept of “allies”: they don’t want – or maybe rather can’t afford – vassals anymore, but rather relationships that evolve based on current interests.

You can either view it as decline – because it does unquestionably look like the end of the American empire – or as avoiding further decline: controlled withdrawal from imperial commitments in order to focus resources on core national interests rather than being forced into an even messier retreat at a later stage. In any case it is the end of an era and, while the Trump administration looks like chaos to many observers, they’re probably much more attuned to the changing realities of the world and their own country’s predicament than their predecessors.

Acknowledging the existence of a multipolar world and choosing to operate within it rather than trying to maintain an increasingly costly global hegemony couldn’t be delayed much further. It looks messy but it is probably better than maintaining the fiction of American primacy until it eventually collapses under its own weight. This is not to say that the U.S. won’t continue to wreak havoc on the world, and in fact we might be seeing it become even more aggressive than before. Because when it previously was (badly, and very hypocritically) trying to maintain some semblance of self-proclaimed “rules-based order”, it now doesn’t even have to pretend it is under any constraint, not even the constraint of playing nice with allies.

BREAKING: USAID security chiefs placed on leave after they refused to turn over classified material to Elon Musk’s government-inspection teams, officials say. https://t.co/vqdPmJBs1q

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 2, 2025

It’s the end of the U.S. empire, but definitely not the end of the U.S. as a major disruptive force in world affairs. All in all this transformation may mark one of the most significant shifts in international relations since the fall of the Soviet Union. And those most unprepared for it, as is already painfully obvious, are America’s vassals caught completely flat-footed by the realization that the patron they’ve relied on for decades is now treating them as just another set of countries to negotiate with.

[…]

Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, says more often there’s a hidden nefarious agenda…

Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up. While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.

At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda. Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.

More than 30 Iranian opposition orgs and media outlets have lost funding due to the pause in USAID programs (via Middle East Eye) pic.twitter.com/1p30I94bcD

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) February 2, 2025

And here’s journalist Glenn Greenwald: “USAID, like the National Endowment for Democracy, are well-documented CIA fronts that are designed to manipulate other countries’ internal politics for the benefits of DC elites and nobody else in the US. Both agencies have wrought destruction and can’t die soon enough.”

USAID, like the National Endowment for Democracy, are well-documented CIA fronts that are designed to manipulate other countries’ internal politics for the benefits of DC elites and nobody else in the US.

Both agencies have wrought destruction and can’t die soon enough: https://t.co/NoDxJDtht7

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 2, 2025

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/political/how-trumps-dismantling-usaid-marks-seismic-historic-shift-americas-role-world