Reality Defeats the NATO Narrative

To the surprise of absolutely no intelligent observer, the much-vaunted Ukrainian “offensive” that didn’t even manage to reach the first Russian line of defense has proven to be a failure of catastrophic proportions. So catastrophic that even the US intelligence agencies are now publicly admitting that the Kiev regime cannot win the war no matter how much help it receives from NATO:

US intelligence agencies have made a “grim” assessment of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive, believing Kiev will fail to plunge south toward the Crimean Peninsula by the end of the year, according to the Washington Post.

Officials have voiced grave doubts about the Ukrainian mission in a classified intel report, the contents of which were relayed to the Post on Thursday, with the outlet citing Moscow’s “brutal proficiency” in defending captured territory.

“The US intelligence community assesses that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol,” the report said, adding that Kiev would then be unable to “fulfill its principal objective of severing Russia’s land bridge to Crimea in this year’s push.”

The Post report appears to echo recent revelations by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In a story published earlier on Thursday, he cited an unnamed US intelligence official who bluntly stated that Ukraine “will not win the war.”

The CIA warned US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces would fail, and that Kiev “will not win the war,” American journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Thursday. Blinken “has figured out that the United States – that is, our ally Ukraine – will not win the war” against Russia, Hersh wrote on his Substack blog, quoting an anonymous US intelligence official.

“The word was getting to him through the Agency [CIA] that the Ukrainian offense was not going to work,” Hersh’s source continued, without specifying when these warnings began to surface. “It was a show by [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bulls**t.”

You may recall that I told you the Kiev regime not only would not, but could not win a war with Russia. This was entirely and absolutely obvious from the start. Every single aspect of the NATO narrative was false, from Putin’s purges to Russian ammunition shortages to the existence of a popular pro-Western, anti-Putin political opposition.

In fact, the only things that have been a surprise about the war is the extent to which a) NATO countries were willing to waste money and arms, and b) Ukrainians were willing to fight and die for a foreign regime that was perfectly happy to shed their blood. If the Ukrainians had any sense of self-preservation at all, its elite 82nd Air Assault Brigade would be rounding up the NATO puppets in Kiev and putting them on trial for treason and war crimes instead of dutifully obliterating itself on three lines of sophisticated Russian defenses.

Now the Narrative is shifting, as NATO is counting on Russia’s willingness to keep what it has won and prepare to fight another war with NATO in the next ten years. One can’t discount the possibility entirely, as there might be some advantage to Russia in letting NATO pivot to China, watching the US Navy die by attrition, then rolling up what remains of Ukraine and NATO once the Europeans understand that the US military is no longer capable of bailing them out. There is a reasonable strategic case for passing the baton to China and the People’s Liberation Army while providing military aid on the African, Arabic and South American fronts.

But given the combination of future uncertainty and Russian awareness of the pure evil that drives the neoclowns, I tend to doubt that the Russians will elect to take their foot off the military gas until all of Europe has been freed from the chains of Clown World.

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The US Housing Crash Cometh

Karl Denninger explains why, and in the process, also explains why people had so much money to spend over the last 3-4 years.

All Real Estate is local.

But — it got a lot less specifically-local in the last three years, and bifurcated basically two ways: Blue and not-Blue.

The problem is that the dynamic of virus restrictions along with wildly ridiculous fiscal and monetary policy drove a dynamic that was utterly unsustainable and, fundamentally, stupid as a whole although for the people doing it the act looked smart at the time. There were several elements of this:

  • Work-from-home on a near-universal basis was forced by many employers. This, in high-cost areas, drove employees to think they could arbitrage their higher salary (a result of the high cost of living where they were, such as in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and similar) and keep it while moving somewhere much cheaper, such as Tennessee or Florida. For those who pulled this it was a massive windfall, provided they could sell their home in the high-cost place.
  • Forced-low interest rates meant mortgages were extraordinarily cheap. The brokers of same — banks, independent shops and similar — feasted on the fees, both for purchase money (see above for the flow on that!) and refinances. Many of those refinances were strategically wise, being committed just a few years after origination and not materially-lengthening the amortization clock. All of them wildly increased available consumer funds for spending, however, by reducing the monthly payment amount.

These two dynamics skyrocketed home prices. The All-US index went from ~450 to 625, a roughly 40% increase in two years. That is much greater than the explosion higher during the last couple of years of the housing bubble; that was a mere 14%. There were plenty of areas, including where I live, that prices of “real” (not AirBNB friendly) single-family homes roughly doubled and some of those “short-term rental opportunities” were even more-obscene with some of them tripling in three years time.

All of this was ridiculously stupid. The premise that employees operated on — that they’d never have to set foot in an office again — was crap. As the pandemic ended so did the curtailment of occupying office space and the cities could not survive with all that office space empty; the tax revenue plus all the retail business activity associated with those people being in the buildings during the day is utterly essential to their fiscal survivability.

Those who thought they could arbitrage their cost of living while keeping their “bonused up” salary are now getting a rude shock: Come back to the office, which we have leased and have to pay for, or be fired. Except….. those employees now live hundreds or even a couple thousand miles away! Worse, they bought houses on <3% mortgages and spent the rest and, while their “price paid” is what it is nothing is moving.

Around here I looked at recent sales. Among single-family homes there are an effective zero from roughly April forward. The top of the Realtor.com page for this county comes up with sales from March, February, May, a couple the first two weeks of June and a couple of (wildly-overpriced cabins) recently. This is the second week of August and Memorial Day to Labor Day, which is a couple of weeks away, is prime closing season here because the kids are out of school and similar.

The market is basically locked up and the reason is quite-clear: Those who bought at the top can’t move; they have 3% mortgages and that $500,000 place has a $2,100 payment. The same $500,000 house at 7% carries a payment of $3,326!

The net present value of that payment on their house today is $316,000, a $184,000 loss!

Translation: things aren’t looking so great for your new neighbors from California who arbitraged the location delta into an overpriced home in your community. Or for the banks that hold their mortages. It should be worse than 2008.

The higher interest rates were inevitable and unavoidable. However, it remains to be seen if the minor premise was false and employers are going to be able to force their employees back into the office. I remain skeptical about the “back to the office” scenario, because I think it’s more likely that the corporations will break their leases, pull out of the cities, and decentralize. They certainly have no dearth of other reasons to do so.

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Then They Came for Wranglerstar

Miles Klee of Rolling Stone gets Wranglerstar banned from Tik Tok and goes after his YouTube account with a hit piece written on behalf of Jared Holt, the social media hit man who was previously “instrumental in getting social media and other internet platforms to give Infowars the boot” from Apple, YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, among others.

While his comments are a mixed bag of supporters and detractors, there’s no telling whether someone will put Crone’s more irresponsible recommendations into practice. “It’s alarming to see content that he offers instructions for doing damage paired with content that promotes a generally paranoid worldview,” says Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who studies the intersection of tech and U.S. political extremism. “That can be a volatile cocktail, and I worry that it normalizes types of violence.” 

After Rolling Stone brought the UN helmet video and other clips to TikTok’s attention, the company deleted Crone’s page. A TikTok representative confirmed that Crone was banned for “repeatedly violating” their policies, though did not enumerate which rules he had broken. The TikTok representative also reported that Crone had never made money on the platform. “While our investigation is ongoing, I can confirm that it did not monetize through our product features this year, and we’ve so far not found an indication it did so before that,” the rep said. Another Wranglerstar-branded TikTok account with more than 200,000 followers has preserved clips including a guide on breaking into buildings and a screed about “pushing back” against police officers by showing up to their houses to confront them. (It’s unclear whether Crone operates the account or someone else is reposting his content.)

YouTube, for its part, did not remove any of Crone’s videos or issue him a warning, and continues to generate revenue from his brand. (Crone, who has had an ad partnership with the site for at least a decade, was previously featured as an “On The Rise” influencer and on YouTube’s “Spotlight” channel.) In a statement to Rolling Stone, YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon says Crone’s videos have not violated the site’s community or the advertising-friendly guidelines for official YouTube Partners. “As such, they will remain on the platform,” Malon says.

According to the site’s policy guidelines, YouTube forbids “content intended to praise, promote, or aid violent extremist or criminal organizations is not allowed on YouTube,” though notably, Crone does not seem to identify with any particular radical group. YouTube also prohibits “content encouraging others to commit violent acts.” Whether Crone risks violating this policy with material like the arson clip — which falls into something of a gray area — is an open question. Malon’s statement did not address the assessments YouTube made of any individual video.

Holt tells Rolling Stone that Crone is “crossing or edging on the line of policies that platforms have against what’s usually called ‘dangerous’ or ‘harmful’ content,” but that such rules are useless without rigorous enforcement. If YouTube doesn’t see fit to remove this kind of content, says Holt, it would “be responsible to at least down-rank it in sorting.”

Though Holt emphasizes that “most people who view this sort of content will not be compelled to act, and even fewer will be violent,” he says a slim minority may feel emboldened to take action “in harmful or violent ways.” For YouTube to allow this content on their platform, he explains, is “to provide the next would-be attacker or vigilante with the tools they need to act,” comparable to “scattering instruments all over a stage and inviting musicians into the theater.”

Of course, Holt cautions, we can’t say for sure that this is what Crone intends — which gives him the plausible deniability to continue operating on YouTube without interference. As long as he is ambiguous enough in his prophecies, avoiding direct imperatives to act or praise for known terrorist groups, he comes across as just another eccentric, gun-loving conservative. This way, Crone is able to walk a thin line, seeding extremist propaganda while separately laying out strategies for an anticipated clash with authorities, leaving his audience to connect the dots. Unlike his less-filtered TikTok channel, his YouTube presence relies on the power of what remains unsaid.

He Taught People to Make Bombs — And YouTube Is Helping Him Cash In, ROLLING STONE, 11 August 2023

When, as they like to say, there is no place in their society for us, it is clear that there is no place for them in our society. It’s not paranoia when they really are out to demonetize, deplatform, and destroy you. This is why it is foolish to rely in any way upon enemy platforms; there is more to preparation than building a cabin in the deep woods. Fortunately for us, our half of the global economy is much bigger than the one they have coopted; the two leading BRICSIA nations, Russia and China, have already declared war on their Empire of Lies.

It’s fascinating to see the Imperial SJWtroopers intensifying their attacks and expanding their range of targets at the same time that the companies they utilize as weapons are in decline and increasingly desperate to bring people, including those they previously banned, back to their platforms. Just this week, one major platform unsuspended an account that was frozen in 2020 and tried to get us back on the platform; we declined and took advantage of the unsuspension to cancel it for good. Just as it’s a mistake for consumers to subscribe to Disney+ or ESPN, or drink Bud Light, it’s a mistake for a non-SJW creator to become reliant upon YouTube, Facebook, or any other converged platform.

Big Bear and I have warned other creators about this for years. Most of them didn’t heed those warnings. But it’s just going to keep getting worse as the US continues to implode internally and the external pressure on its various institutions and corporations grows. Is it going to be easy at first? No. Are you going to take an initial hit in terms of every single metric? Yes. But that’s the price of playing the long game that ensures you’ll be around in the future.

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Professionally Anti-Trump

Ben Shapiro’s organization has been paid $110,429 to attack Donald Trump since July 2021.

Did you know @realDailyWire is paid by @RonDeSantis?

In case you were wondering why so much of their content these days is ANTI TRUMP.

DeSantis has paid @benshapiro’s Daily Wire over $110,000!

Wow! That’s a lot of money for a lot of LIES!

How very strange. One would have assumed that The Littlest Chickenhawk would do it for nothing. I’m as skeptical of the 5D Chess narrative as anyone, but there has to be a reason that the neocons, the Republican Establishment, and the Democrats are attacking him so relentlessly.

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No, They Haven’t Always Died

Young people have died of heart attacks before, but never anywhere close to this extent. Excess cardiac deaths are higher than they have ever been before.

Sudden Cardiac Death in 0 – 54 yr-olds.

  • 30.4% excess (28.2% 5 wks ago)
  • Magenta line shows RXX erosion (none)
  • 20 sigma excess

In other words, too many young persons are dying suddenly, & without Covid CDC can’t find a place to hide these deaths in the ICD catalog.

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Stop Playing Stupid

It’s getting a little tiresome to repeatedly listen to these grieving parents and family members pretending that they have absolutely no idea why a perfectly healthy individual died of “suddenly”:

Helen Smart’s heartbroken parents say they ‘cannot comprehend’ how Olympic swimmer died suddenly aged 43 as they pay tribute to their ‘pride and joy’: ‘How could she simply go to sleep and never wake up?’

No further details have been released yet regarding her death. 

There is at least one easy answer: she got vaxxed. And the mRNA technology in the vaccine created blood clots that led to a stroke or a heart attack. That’s the most likely reason for her death, and for the tens of thousands of similar excess deaths around the world.

And the people who are responsible are not only going to get away with it, they’re going to do it again, if those they have victimized don’t stop playing dumb and pretending that they have no idea what could possibly have killed their loved ones.

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MY SISTER SUPREMA Now in Print

MY SISTER SUPREMA marks the very first Arktoons-only digital comic to appear in a print edition. But it will not be the last.

Randy is a bright young boy who devours comics and dreams of becoming a superhero. One day, he discovers a secret formula on the Internet that claims to be able to endow an individual with superpowers. After assembling all the ingredients and technology required, he experiments with the process, but the whole thing goes terribly wrong. Somehow, by accident, his big sister Cecelia ends up with the very superpowers he’d been seeking for himself. And she has no idea what to do with them.

So it falls to Randy to help her figure out what her powers are, select a costume, choose a superhero name, and teach her what it means to be a superhero. But while Randy and his sister are trying to figure things out and hide her new powers from their parents, the villain whose formula Randy inadvertently discovered is hunting for the thieves who stole his secret.

Written by The Legend Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Anthony Gonzales-Clark, MY SISTER SUPREMA is a unique and charming superhero origin story.

The 60-page print edition now available in the USA direct from Arkhaven. All other locations: available from Amazon and local bookstores.

MY SISTER SUPREMA appears regularly on Arktoons.

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