Ebrius Disputatios

Gordon Chang's views on China are to be considered his own. Each man has rights to his opinions. We have listened to many hours of Chang's strategies on how the US and the west should deal with China. We have heard him proclaim China as a threat and danger to them both. I believed him once, but no more. Chang's views on China and geopolitical affairs are the very same as John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, just to name a few.

We are finished with listening to men such as these, for these men judge unfairly. They never complain about the dangers of Israel's destabilization of western Asia. They only focus on the nations who do not bend to the will of the western hegemony whenever it snaps its metaphorical fingers. Thus making nations such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and whomever else dares to defy the Gods, enemies and threats to be dealt with.

However, don't take our words at face value. Chang is quite the prolific writer and speaker. In today's information age, it is indeed, possible to read his works, hear is views, in audio and visual media to make judgement as to the validity of his claims. Here is one of his latest writings, attached and embedded in this post.

Finally, in his article, Chang speaks about China seeking to be the next global hegemonic power, and Xi Jingping has ambitions of leaving his mark in the history books as the Chinese emperors before him presumably aspired to. Which seems highly speculative. He also speaks about Xi wanting to manipulate Trump to abandon US global leadership. The question we'd like to ask, is when has the US demonstrated any legitimate, genuine global leadership?

If Chang's idea of global leadership includes destabilizing nations who share differing opinions about their national interests, the assassination of key political opponents of other countries for non compliance or to make war with nations whose leaders who do not relent then that kind of leadership is harmful, dangerous and isolates the US as a bully, pariah nation. Indeed, the US has been so successful with these tactics, that the establishment politicians, judges, prosecutors and law enforcement agencies in many jurisdictions, have begun to employ them domestically in dealing with their political opponents.

Trying to reach a grand bargain with China — what Trump was hinting at — would be exactly the wrong approach at this or any other moment. Trump has already tried to reach an accommodation with China: his Phase One Trade pact of January 2020. He calls it “the best trade deal” ever, but it is now widely viewed as a bust. The Chinese, during an election year in America, never honored its terms. Chinese President Xi Jinping's actions are the inevitable result of China's communist political system, which idealizes violence, struggle, and dominance. This system means there can be no accommodation with the Communist Party.

How unfortunate we all know just how honorable the Jewish occupational forces are in respect to human lives. They have obviously been having a spate of bad luck with all those journalists, always getting in their way. Surely, Hamas had to be using all 55 of them, as human shields.

We can all understand that. We ourselves, would have no complaints, if the journalists in question, were from the BBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS or Fox. It's totally understandable. Why, how else are the Israeli Occupying Forces, going to get away with murdering women or children? After all, who in the world, is going to hold them accountable?

An International Federation of Journalists survey released earlier this month estimated that at least 55 journalists were killed in Gaza this year alone, more than half of the global total of 104. According to the tally from the Committee to Protect Journalists, a US-based non-profit, at least 141 journalists have been killed in the region since the war broke out in October last year.

What would you do if a great cataclysm brought a sudden end to our society and you were forced to survive on what you currently have on hand? When I was growing up, very few people thought of such things. In fact, I never heard the words “prepper” or “prepping” until I became an adult.

Poverty is increasing in Italy and there are more and more protests that we hear almost nothing about in Germany.

from Anti-Spiegel December 26, 2024

German media are very reluctant to report on social problems and unrest in Western countries because they want to give the impression that the West is still a haven of prosperity and social protection, which is no longer the case when compared to once backward countries. The yellow vests in France are an example that many people will still remember, because at that time the reporting in Germany about the massive, nationwide protests in France that lasted for months was very sparse compared to the scale of the protests.

German media are very reluctant to report on social problems and unrest in Western countries because they want to give the impression that the West is still a haven of prosperity and social protection, which is no longer the case when compared to once backward countries. The yellow vests in France are an example that many people will still remember, because at that time the reporting in Germany about the massive, nationwide protests in France that lasted for months was very sparse compared to the scale of the protests.

Anyone who disputes this should ask themselves how the German media would have reported if, not in France, but in Russia, hundreds of thousands had protested every weekend for months against the government's economic and social policy and rising poverty. Even protests in Russia are worth long articles for Spiegel when “a few dozen” (quote from Spiegel) participants are protesting there.

The Italian correspondent for the Russian news agency TASS has written an article about the economic, social and political situation in Italy, which I think is very interesting because it shows how little German media reports on social and economic problems, even when they affect a country that many Germans know well.

Or have you heard in the German media that, according to Save The Children, 200,000 children under the age of five are malnourished and living in “food poverty” in Italy?

Italy in the invisible fire: What the Meloni government is hiding. about the country's problems that people try not to notice.

Italy is sinking into a series of endless strikes.

Protest actions are announced by workers in very different sectors. The strikes in local transport have already become almost permanent. There are also problems on the state railway, where trains have almost not been running as scheduled since the summer due to repair work. Medical staff are also on strike because, in addition to the constant cuts in healthcare funding, hospital medical staff (until recently hailed as heroes for their efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic) are increasingly being beaten by violent patients. Workers generally reject the government's budget proposal. This in itself is nothing new, but now there are a number of serious demands and complaints, including dissatisfaction with the increase in military spending.

The majority of Italians are against arms deliveries to Ukraine; recent polls show that only 13 percent believe that deliveries should continue. The unions openly propagate the slogan: “All you have to do is give money for weapons and armaments and raise wages.” There is increasing talk of the “working poor,” meaning that even people with jobs do not have an adequate standard of living while social benefits are constantly being cut.

Added to this are the almost weekly pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations and student unrest, which often lead to clashes with the police, followed by mutual accusations.

All these conditions are creating a situation of acute social tension and confrontation in Italy that has not been seen for a long time.

However, Meloni praises herself.

It was basically predictable when the center-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni came to power. She and her “Brothers of Italy” party are not accepted by a large part of Italian society and many see them as the successors of fascism. As a result, the government is increasingly accused of trying to restrict the right to freedom, including freedom of speech. Elements of censorship and dictatorship are increasingly being seen. In my opinion, however, the latter is generally characteristic of the democracy of the so-called collective West, both on the right and on the left.

Nevertheless, the Italian government is trying, as usual, to turn good fortune into evil. In particular, Meloni boasts of her recognition on the international stage, that is, the stage of strict subordination to the North Atlantic axis. In her own country she is increasingly accused of vassalism. It is noteworthy that she has already received the support of Donald Trump after managing to endear herself to Democrat Joe Biden. It gained recognition in Washington and Brussels by fulfilling demands that Meloni himself once spoke out against in order to protect national sovereignty.

Household from crumbs.

The same applies to the 2025 state budget, which fits into the framework set by the EU but does not take the interests of the people in the country into account.

The problem is that the budget had to be tailored somehow from what little was available, which the government openly admits. The forecasts for economic growth to decline and are approaching zero, and industrial production is declining. Last but not least, the price increase plays a role because energy costs are rising following a significant decline in Russian gas exports. After the unprecedented price increase in August 2022, prices have fallen, but are still two to three times higher than in 2021. And they are unable to completely abandon Russian gas. According to recent data, imports of Russian gas almost doubled from January to August 2024, from 5.5 to 9.7 percent of total demand. However, 40 percent of this was previously covered by deliveries from Russia.

Despite citizens' dissatisfaction, the budget, which is in the final stages of revision and is due to be adopted before the new year, envisages a reallocation of significant resources to defense. Italy is desperately trying to reach the two percent of GDP threshold for military spending that NATO promised a few years ago. So far the country is at 1.57 percent, and it will obviously not be possible to significantly increase this spending before 2028.

Decline in key sectors.

In addition to the education and healthcare sectors, important industrial sectors such as the steel and automotive sectors are particularly affected. The crisis of the former Italian manufacturer Stellantis – what had become the original Italian Fiat after several mergers, including with the American Chrysler – is telling. After enormous losses, sales in Italy fell by more than 40 percent, CEO Carlos Tavares resigned. The car manufacturer, which has always been privately owned (owned by one of the most prominent industrial families, the Agnelli), has benefited from extensive government subsidies and financial injections. Thanks to these subsidies, production is maintained in Italian companies that have long been on the verge of closure. Stellantis itself has relocated to the Netherlands and London for tax and administrative purposes. The biggest mistake, according to the media, was the switch to electric motors under the pressure of the “green transition” imposed by Brussels. Of course, the board and the Agnelli family are by no means impoverished because of the poverty of the workers in the Italian factories of the former Fiat.

The situation is similar in steel production, once one of Italy's leading industries. With an annual turnover of 30 billion euros, a worker's wages do not exceed 1,000 euros. The same applies to the healthcare sector, where there has been a massive migration of skilled workers abroad.

Poverty.

What is particularly telling is that the number of Italians living in absolute poverty in the northern Apennines, the region considered the engine of the Italian economy, has doubled in the last nine years. The latest report from the Catholic charity Caritas shows that the number of poor families rose from 506,000 to almost one million between 2014 and 2023. An increase in poverty is also recorded in the center of the country at 28.6 percent and in the south at 12.1 percent.

5.7 million people live in absolute poverty in Italy, i.e. almost one in ten of the country's citizens. Young families with children remain the most at risk.

Families living in absolute poverty in Italy include those who cannot afford the minimum expenses to ensure an acceptable standard of living. The spending threshold is calculated based on the cost of basic goods and services such as housing, healthcare and clothing. The amount varies depending on where the family lives, the number of members, their age and other factors.

In industrialized Italy, a G7 country (which also includes Great Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Japan and the USA), according to Save The Children, 200,000 children under the age of five are malnourished and live in “food poverty”.

Italy is not a revolutionary country by nature and the scale of the protests is not comparable to such loud movements as the “yellow vests” in France or “Occupy Wall Street” in New York.

But increasing internal social tensions can have unexpected consequences for political stability. The most important result today is a total disillusionment with politics, the loss of orientation and preferences. Already, only 50 percent of the country's total population votes in elections in Italy, and it turns out that the elected leaders enjoy the support of the majority of only this part of the electorate. I come to the conclusion that a large proportion of citizens throughout Italy do not support, do not share and are dissatisfied with the government's policies.

Russia’s 2022 Istanbul proposal called for Ukraine to abandon aspirations to join NATO, become a permanently neutral state, and drastically shrink its armed forces. This would ratify Russia’s territorial gains and render Ukraine defenseless against inevitable future Russian aggression.

All around us, the empire crumbles while it begins to fall. Yet the empire and a host of its inhabitants, either do not realize it or they're in denial. The people, their concerns are with frivolities, vanity and pleasures. The elitists who hold sway over them, are equally frivolous while they themselves ponder the wonders of deceit, war, greed and lust for power.

The so-called “rules-based international order” aims to facilitate a hegemonic world, which entails displacing international law. While international law is based on equal sovereignty for all states, the rules-based international order upholds hegemony on the principle of sovereign inequality.

If the European Union disappeared from the face of the planet, who but the inhabitants thereof, miss them? While the elitist politicians and officials of the EU deny their irrelevance by roaming the world exhausting their perceived notions of dominance, the rest of the world carries on and wonder, what does the EU bring to the table which is unique and rare?

The elitist mob ruling Europe, are of the impression that they and their nation states are essential to the rest of the world. Indeed, to them, it is as if the sun will not shine without their presence. Little do they realize that they're already at the halfway point to irrelevance and obscurity. It should have happened eighty years ago, but they were bought, a half life.

The elitists of the western Europe, like the other elitists of the west aren't serious people. They are corrupt, greedy, pretentious, liars living within bubbles pretending to be consciously wise. While their actions and words betray them. They have lost the ability to mask their true motives and thus, present themselves ever so nakedly.

Only a few years ago, most of Western Europe seemed like a fortress of stability in international politics. With robust economies, solid social systems, and the grand edifice of “European integration,” it gave an impression of permanence, impervious even to major geopolitical upheavals. Now, however, it has become an inexhaustible source of peculiar headlines and confusion.

Donald Trump is announcing more and more plans for his new presidency that show that the USA will continue to pursue an aggressive foreign policy under Trump. Trump could become a catastrophe, especially for Europe.

Donald Trump differs from other Western politicians in that he actually tries to implement his campaign promises. And his most important campaign promise was “Make America Great Again”. He is not as different from the US Democrats as one would think, he just has a slightly different approach, which is primarily financially based, because Trump comes from a business background, while the US Democrats operate geopolitically .

Let's take a look at what goals Trump has formulated and what they mean for the EU countries.

Europe.

Europe is likely to face even darker times under Trump than under Biden. The EU states are vassals of the USA. This has been true since the Second World War in Western Europe, where the transatlantic structures were established after the war, without which no one can have a career in the media and politics. In this way, the USA has secured power over Western Europe and is ensuring that, if possible, only governments loyal to the USA come to power there.

Eastern Europe had the chance to become sovereign after the Second World War, but the USA extended the structures that were so successful in Western Europe to Eastern Europe and took over power there too, which it consolidated with the expansion of the EU and NATO. The current example of Romania shows how tightly the USA has these countries, where no politician explicitly loyal to the USA made it to the runoff vote in the presidential election, which is why the election was summarily canceled after the USA had quite openly demanded this.

In his last term in office, Trump openly said what the Democrats and their think tanks only said in secret: the European states should pay the USA more money for “protection”, so one can certainly speak of “protection money”. These “protection money payments” run primarily through two channels: on the one hand, the reimbursement of the occupation costs by US troops, which are officially referred to as the costs of stationing NATO troops, and on the other hand, the defense budgets of the European states, because the Most of the weapons they buy are purchased in the USA.

Increase in payments for troop deployment and defense.

The German government claims it does not know how much Germany pays the United States for the presence of US troops, but it is billions per year. By the way, the fact that the federal government cannot give any figures is a lie, because the German embassy in the USA previously published figures on this; you can find the details on the topic here.

Trump already demanded in 2019 that Germany should “pay the full cost of the American soldiers stationed in your country, plus a 50 percent surcharge for the honor of hosting them.” And it is currently being reported everywhere that Trump is threatening to only grant US “protection” to NATO countries that increase their defense spending to three percent of GDP. There is even talk of five percent.

Of course, these funds will also flow to the US defense industry. In the case of Germany, three percent of GDP would mean that Germany would have to increase its defense spending to around 120 billion euros, five percent would mean an increase to 200 billion. Just a reminder: Just a few years ago, Germany's defense spending was around 40 billion.

And something else to think about: The German federal budget was 445 billion euros in 2024. If 120 or even 200 billion euros of this are to flow into defense in the future instead of 80 billion euros today, then massive cuts will inevitably have to be made in other areas and the Western ones traditionally make savings States always come first when it comes to social spending.

In addition, the NATO treaty contains no legal obligation to help a NATO state in the event of an attack, as I have shown here. And Trump isn't talking about the US making any commitment in return for the huge amounts of money he's demanding.

Business.

The European economy was already significantly weakened under Biden when the EU, under pressure from the US government and with the good help of EU Commission President von der Leyen, gave up cheap Russian energy sources, which are the basis for European industry and thus prosperity for Europe, while at the same time the Biden administration passed its “anti-inflation law”, which promises European companies a total of around 370 billion in subsidies if they bring their production from Europe to the USA.

That could also have come from Trump, who wants to continue on this path. On his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that the EU should import more oil and gas from the USA, otherwise he would introduce tariffs on European goods. The EU should compensate for the “enormous trade deficit,” Trump wrote, adding: “Otherwise there will be endless tariffs!!!,” with the word tariffs written in capital letters.

The US trade deficit with the EU was $131.3 billion in 2022. Trump does not see the blame for this in the weaknesses of the US economy, but rather calls on the EU to reduce the deficit to its own detriment. However, this is not something unique to Trump; previous US administrations have also done this, which has repeatedly been the reason for smaller and larger trade wars between the USA and the EU.

The EU is trying to avoid a trade war with Trump and tariffs by increasing purchases of oil, gas and agricultural products from the US, which may be one of the reasons why von der Leyen recently claimed in all seriousness that US Gas would be cheaper than Russian gas and has demanded that Europe should buy American liquid gas and no longer buy Russian gas.

This is a doubly effective way to reduce the US trade deficit at the expense of the EU, because firstly, US gas sales increase US exports to Europe and secondly, expensive US gas deteriorates the competitiveness of the European economy, which increases European exports to the EU USA reduced.

The problem is not whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power in the USA, the problem is the USA itself and its claim to dominate the world. They don't care what happens to the rest of the world and Europe is currently feeling this very clearly. This will not change under President Trump.

All those who see Trump as something of a savior should think about this.

We're sorry to hear it but only democrats in the District of Columbia, are squeaky clean. Of course Matt had some serious long knives unsheathed, and he probably had good reasons why that was the case. We're also sure that, that had nothing to do with the report being so scathing. We'll just have to read the report ourselves, however, it is certain, that we won't judge too harshly.

Also, we have it on good authority, that a certain Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, she of the Jewish persuasion, was the one who leaked the report and admitted it. We're sure that it has nothing to do with Gaetz's stance on AIPAC, his run in with a certain Jewish criminal, tax collector, in Florida who implicated Gaetz when he himself was arrested for fucking under aged girls. Here's a picture of wild Susan and you can see the resemblance.

Rep. Susan Wild (Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, was absent from the panel’s meeting last week after being traced as the source of leaks to the press regarding the investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), sources told The Hill. It remains unclear if Wild voluntarily skipped the Thursday gathering or was asked not to attend, what information she leaked and to whom, and how the panel tracked her back as being the leaker. Two sources said Wild ultimately acknowledged to the panel that she had leaked information.

The House Ethics Committee released its report on Matt Gaetz and it's as icky as you think. It was wrong of the Committee to release it.