Dmitry Orlov

Since diplomacy, in the western understanding of the term, has degenerated into an exchange of insults and the laborious process of negotiating agreements which nobody ever intends to keep, all that remains is war. Or, perhaps, the plural form — wars — is more appropriate, since there are several ones going on at once. In each case, there is a battlefield, there are military actions taking place (or preparations for them) and there is, inevitably, an eventual outcome. Motivations for these conflicts range from outright delusion to political expediency all the way to ideological imperatives and the demands of national survival.

A lot has already been said and written about the death of diplomacy in the West, but a recent exchange is just too perfect to pass by. When the Russians pointed out that the Americans reneged on the agreements reached during the Putin-Trump summit in Anchorage, Alaska on August 15, 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pointed out that these were not agreements, just proposals. As it turns out, it was the Americans who proposed and the Russians who accepted the proposals. Thus, the Americans made proposals which they themselves did not agree to. What could possibly be the point of trying to reach a peace agreement with such people? There is no point, and that just leaves war.

Although it is commonly thought that the goal of war is victory — and this is most often the stated goal of any war, to preserve the morale of the troops and to maintain the support of the populace which pays for it — just as often the goal is the perpetual continuation of the conflict. A prime example of such a perpetual conflict was the Cold War. It is possible to argue that it was not truly a war because it was never fought; it is also possible to argue that it was fought more or less continuously. The Cold War was fought in dozens of regional wars, large and small. In case you need a refresher, here is a quick summary of them:

Korea (1950–1953): A major direct clash in which US and UN forces fought Chinese and North Korean troops supported and resupplied by the USSR. The US managed to fight this war to a permanent stalemate which left the Korean peninsula permanently divided at the 38th parallel, with the North allied with Russia and China and the south under permanent occupation by American troops.

Vietnam (1955–1975): The US intervened in French Indochina, taking over for failing colonialist France to stop Vietnamese quest for independence while the Soviets backed the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese military in a prolonged and devastating conflict which ended when the US-supported regime in the south collapsed, the Americans were routed and the north triumphed.

Afghanistan (1979–1989): The USSR intervened to prop up a socialist government, prompting the US (and allies) to arm, train, and fund the Mujahideen insurgents. The last Soviet troops left Afghanistan on February 15, 1989. The withdrawal was carried out in accordance with the Geneva Accords, and the commander of the 40th Army, Lieutenant General Boris Gromov, became the last serviceman to cross the border bridge over the Amu Darya River, flags flying, as seen in the photo above. The socialist government of Mohammad Najibullah stayed in power for approximately three years and two months following the final withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Its collapse was precipitated by the withdrawal of Soviet support under General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. A civil war then raged until September 27, 1996, when Kabul was taken over by the Taliban. The Americans then occupied Afghanistan from October 7, 2001 until August 30, 2021 in a failed effort to dislodge the Taliban, having falsely accused the Taliban for complicity in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Cuba: The US and USSR almost found themselves in a nuclear war during the badly misnamed Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). It was, in fact, the Turkish Missile Crisis: the US positioned nuclear missiles in Turkey which threatened the USSR; the USSR responded by positioning nuclear missiles in Cuba which threatened the US; in the end, each side withdrew their missiles.

Africa: The USSR actively supported decolonization movements throughout the continent, helping a score of countries achieve independence, including Algeria, Angola, Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa (where the war was against apartheid) and Zimbabwe. After the collapse of the USSR these relationships were put on pause for a time but have since been renewed and revitalized. The 2nd Russia–Africa Summit was held in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 27–28, 2023. The summit drew delegates from 49 of the 54 African Union member states, including 17 heads of state. The 3rd summit will be held in Moscow in late October of 2026.

The African national liberation movements included quite a lot of armed conflict. Official records indicate a combined total of 1,100,000 to 1,800,000 casualties for the major anti-colonial conflicts in Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe alone. These were, to avoid the use of euphemisms such as “conflict”, wars of national liberation.

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Let us enumerate the stakeholders of the war in the former Ukraine: Russia, the US, European members of the EU and of NATO, various other nations not hostile toward Russia and, of course, the former Ukraine itself (the Kiev regime and the population of the former Ukraine). Each of these stakeholders is disinterested in a quick end to the war in the former Ukraine, each for its own set of reasons.

Russia’s ultimate goal for the former Ukraine is to render it harmless without burdening itself unduly or suffering too many casualties. What precipitated the conflict can be reduced to two main factors. There was the threat of NATO troops stationed on Ukrainian soil, right on the invasion path toward Moscow followed by both Napoleon and Hitler.

There was also Kiev’s incipient genocide of the Russian population in the Ukraine’s former eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk which served as the trigger for the launching of Russia’s Special Military Operation in February of 2022 as an R2P (Responsibility to Protect) mission. The dramatically increased shelling of Donetsk by the Ukrainians in February of 2022 provided ample justification for it.

The imperative to save Russian lives in Donetsk and Lugansk overlapped with Russia’s secondary goal, which was to save numerous Russians still living in the territories held by the Kiev regime. Thus, carpet-bombing Ukrainian cities, as the Americans or the British or other NATO forces would have done (and, indeed, have done in similar circumstances) is not something that the Russian government would ever consider doing.

Quite the opposite: those Russians who are still living in Kiev-held territories are offered visa-free entry into the Russian Federation and a path to Russian citizenship and integration into Russian society. Since all Ukrainians speak Russian, the vast majority of them as their first language, they reintegrate easily.

If the war were to end, it could do so in at least three different ways. The first way, entirely unacceptable to Russia on every level, would be to agree to a cease fire, freeze the conflict at the current line of separation (which runs through what under Russian law comprises sovereign Russian territory, though it will not do so for much longer given the pace of Russian advance) and allow the stationing of NATO troops on territory still controlled by the Kiev regime. This end to the war would be equivalent to a defeat.

Another way the war could end is through a sudden, outright Russian victory. The Ukrainian forces are routed and the Ukrainian military dissolves. The US, NATO, the EU all wash their hands of the Ukrainian conflict, abandoning their Ukrainian dependents to their fate. Russia then has a chaotic, ungovernable humanitarian disaster area on their border which they somehow have to rescue from its horrible fate.

The Russians are working assiduously to liberate the remaining small patches of what is, constitutionally, Russian Federation territory in the Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions (Lugansk has been completely liberated as of July of 2022). They just liberated Konstantinovka. There are now just two major towns left to liberate: Kramatorsk and Slavyansk. Likewise, major advances are taking place in the south, in Zaporozhye in particular. They are also making strides in building up buffer zones in Sumy and Kharkov regions to safeguard neighboring Russian regions from attack. These are some of the stated goals of the Special Military Operation and they are being achieved, albeit rather more gradually than many people would like.

Meanwhile, the Kiev regime, assisted by NATO, has been launching a great many terrorist attacks against Russian regions. Crimea has been particularly badly hit and today was forced to impose a state of emergency to deal with the damage from Ukrainan drone strikes. Other Russian regions have been affected as well, although the overall effect of these strikes is generally overestimated. These terrorist attacks are being used in a propaganda campaign in the West which aims to convince the populace that the Ukraine is winning and that therefore continued support for the Kiev regime is justified. Apparently, war, like beauty, is in the eye on the beholder. How else could we ever hope to explain the following: last Monday, in Gdańsk, Poland, US Deputy Secretary of State Jeremy Levin pompously declared that “Ukraine is winning the war.” Nothing could be further from the truth!

The Kiev regime is losing, but not for lack of trying. Its attack on Russian territory during the night of June 26 was the most massive so far in 2026. After analyzing data published by the Russian Ministry of Defense, RIA News service reported that Russian air defense systems shot down 660 Ukrainian drones. A handful of drones probably got through (no air defense system can be 100% effective). The news in Russia is quite full of stories of the damage caused by drones and drone fragments: a few people get hurt and a few houses and apartment buildings are damaged almost every day. This is, of course deplorable. But war is like that; people get hurt.

But from the point of view of the Russian government and the Russian military, this is by no means altogether bad. Russia has developed the world’s best air defense system and the Russian defense establishment will be busy selling these systems to eager customers around the world for many years to come. The conflict is allowing Russia to keep up with drone development and related technology including the battlefield use of AI systems and satellite communications. And Russia has plenty of cards left to play if the terrorist attacks ever grow too painful. In particular, Russia has the weapons in place to disable Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite system which Alex Karp’s Palantir AI uses to generate targeting information (it takes a perverse interest in girls’ schools) and which the drones then use to navigate to these targets. But doing so now would deprive Russia of the great sport of shooting down hundreds of drones every night.

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Moving on to the United States, a quick end to the Ukrainian war is unlikely to be on terms acceptable to it. This makes it preferable to push off the moment when the policy of fashioning the former Ukraine into an anti-Russia and squandering countless billions in pursuit of the lofty goal of weakening Russia finally crashes and burns. Also, a premature end to this war would deprive American arms manufacturers of sales. Since weapons for the Kiev regime are now being paid for by the Europeans, it would also deprive the US of a valuable way of bleeding dry the European economy — a reasonable goal for it, since the EU is the only major economic competitor against which the US still has the ability to compete, being increasingly left behind by China, Russia and India. Lastly, many in the US still cherish the forlorn hope that the Ukrainian conflict will weaken Russia and prevent it from developing its economy. (If you believe, I have a few thousand economic sanctions to sell you at bargain basement prices.)

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Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/37e694d0-880f-4404-9a9f-c798e938ccf7

By Jeffrey A Tucker

The closest thing we have in this country to a pandemic plan is called the Pandemic Action Crisis Plan or PanCap. It remains the prevailing unclassified document. It posits stay-at-home orders, school closures, business shutdowns, office closures, travel restrictions, testing, track-and-trace, and the creation and distribution of countermeasures called vaccines.

So far as anyone knows, it is still the prevailing document. It’s one of many. Nothing has changed about any of them in light of what we learned from Covid. The CDC currently hosts all these documents:

• National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
• National Strategy Implementation Plan
• MMWR: Updated Preparedness and Response Framework for Influenza Pandemics
• 2017 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
• 2009 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
• 2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
• 2006 HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan Update
• Allocating & Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Guidance

This approach has no precedent in the long history of public health. The old way was to keep calm, understand the illness, treat those affected, and use rational approaches to mitigate the impacts. The new way invented in 2005 is about command and control, pretending to manage the microbial kingdom like an engineering project.

This is still the operational manual. If a pathogen should leak and the machine clicks into gear, this is what will happen. It will be profoundly disturbing to civil society. Like last time, the results will not be good. The medicine will be worse than the disease. We can say this based on the experience from 2020 to 2023. And yet the plan survives.

The existing plan is PanCap-Adapted. It is still not posted on any government website. It was leaked to the New York Times and, again, so far as anyone knows, this remains the architecture of control. Why the latest is not posted is unclear. Don’t the American people deserve to know what their government plans for them?

It is supplemented by dozens of other documents that pertain to nearly every federal government agency and are expected to be followed by downstream agencies in states, counties, cities, and towns. This is what is called an all-of-government response.

This is not some conspiracy theory. We need only look at one related document, the Biological Incident Annex to the Response and Recovery Federal, Interagency Operational Plan as produced by FEMA. It is out of classification and available for anyone to observe. It comes into operation with any pathogen that is new, perhaps manufactured in a lab as many of them are.

Halfway through this document you find a presumption of business closures, transportation restrictions and disruptions, widespread commodities hoarding by the public, stay-at-home orders, workforce shift to virtual environment, school and childcare closures, restaurant closures, hotel closures, reduced workforce, and plant closures.

This plan is still out there, waiting to be implemented under the right circumstances. The US Constitution does not pertain. American expectations of liberty do not pertain. Law does not pertain. Even now, the idea that an emergency requires the end of all normal expectations for freedom is baked into all pandemic protocols.

At this point, you might already be asking the very obvious question. How could this be true in light of the last experience? The answer points to the core problem. We’ve never had a reckoning for the Covid period. There has been no commission, no push for changes in underlying protocols, no fundamental shifts at the top other than new political appointees, and no real national statement that what happened was wrong and destructive.

In short, nothing has changed other than public opinion. That too is extremely malleable. People these days routinely say that they won’t comply. What they mean is that under similar circumstances, they won’t comply. But the circumstances will not be similar. A strain of Ebola, for example, could have an extremely high mortality rate that does not discriminate by age. With a 21-day latency period, anyone could have it. It’s the kind of pathogenic release that strikes terror in the hearts of the bravest men and women.

The real problem here dates back more than two decades, to 2005, when federal officials first started imagining extreme plans for the management of pandemic conditions of any sort. The first document was the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, announced by President George W. Bush on November 1, 2005.

This high-level White House/Homeland Security Council document was driven by concerns over the H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in Asia. It outlined a whole-of-society with core pillars: stopping/slowing the spread to the US, limiting domestic impacts, and sustaining infrastructure/economy, and the production of shots.

The document in question drops some hints. In this report you will find what you must do: be “prepared to follow public health guidance that may include limitation of attendance at public gatherings and non-essential travel for several days or weeks.” The government, meanwhile, will establish “contingency systems to maintain delivery of essential goods and services during times of significant and sustained worker absenteeism.”

This was more than 20 years ago. The ominous intonations suggest eventual lockdown at least as a possibility.

Simultaneously (November 2005), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its detailed HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan, serving as a blueprint for public health and medical response, including surveillance, vaccines, and state/local guidance backed by force.

Then came the 2006 National Strategy Implementation Plan with 300-plus specific actions across federal agencies, states, and the private sector. This was followed by the 2008 Biological Incident Annex to the National Response Framework which integrated biological threats into broader disaster response.

From 2013 to 2018, FEMA developed the Pandemic Crisis Action Plan (PanCAP), a playbook for federal coordination, now called PanCap-Adapted. That was the operational manual for the Covid policy response. It was backed by a 2017 updated Biological Incident Annex and HHS Pandemic Influenza Plan. This was updated again in 2023, complete with all the familiar apparatus.

These days, we have the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR) , which was created for ongoing coordination. The people who inhabit this office are different from what they were a few years back. They are less convinced of the use of force. They are more sophisticated in their understanding of infectious disease and natural immunity. But have they changed the protocols? We do not know.

We also have widespread public knowledge that broad lockdowns had massive collateral damage: excess non-Covid deaths (delayed care, mental health, overdoses), learning loss (especially for kids), economic dislocation, supply chain breaks, and eroded trust. Sweden’s lighter-touch approach (no full school closures, no strict lockdowns) had comparable or better outcomes on mortality when adjusted for demographics, with far less disruption.

The problem is that these 20-year old protocols are all still in place. If you understand how government works, once a document and protocol are in gear, there is no dialing it back. Bureaucrats are risk-averse and do what they are told. That is how the system works.

If the presumption is that force, the quarantine power, restrictions on civil liberties, censorship, and medical countermeasures are the way forward – essentially lockdown until vaccinate – this will happen regardless of the individual volition of any political appointee.

All these documents need to be torn up. We need a complete reset of pandemic planning to what it was before 2005, before the fear, the frenzy, the wild plans for locking down, and the ambition to vaccinate our way out of a pandemic. This country dealt with uncountable numbers of disease outbreaks without wrecking civil society. The theory that society can be managed as a laboratory has proven extremely damaging. We desperately need the information we learned most recently incorporated into the protocols.

That requires a complete public rethinking of everything with an aim toward clear statements from Congress and an initiative from the White House to map out straightforward principles and a new approach. This can only happen with a national commission on the topic convened at the highest levels and promoted by the national press with public testimony and a determination to change.

The time for this is now. With so many biolabs around the world working on infectious disease, not only examining viruses but also creating them along with the countermeasures, we are certain to face a leak in the future, likely one more terrifying than the last. Yes, the countermeasures are certain to be based on modified mRNA technology, regardless of the vast disaster they created the last time.

Underlying all of this is the problem of special interests. Government officials like exercising power and passing out money. Pharmaceutical companies like making products and distributing them and depend on the liability shield government grants them. Tech companies like stay-at-home orders for obvious reasons. The national media loves an emergency because it gets eyes on screens. Even the churches and nonprofits celebrated their vast bailout funds.

It should alarm every American that, despite all the best intentions of the change in White House leadership, the deeper bureaucracy still has the same plans in place for the next infectious disease outbreak. Not only that: a July 2024 Government Accounting Office report documents how the CDC is tightening and systemizing its isolation, quarantine, and pre-pharmaceutical protocols such that they will be more, not less, severe next time.

It’s too late to make changes in the thick of a crisis. The planning and rewriting of the regulations need to begin now. The Covid experience needs a full repudiation. Otherwise, the pandemic plans in place right now constitute a genuine threat to national security. 

Coda: I asked Claude AI to generate an alternative pandemic plan based on what we learned from the last experience. Here are the results. It needs work but this shows how easy it is not to wreck society in the name of infectious disease control.

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Via https://brownstone.org/articles/the-pandemic-plan-needs-to-be-torn-up/

By Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News

Trillion dollar AI Bubble on Verge of Popping

I have been warning the public about the AI technology bubble since the last quarter of 2022, when the first AI chat bot, ChatGPT, was released to the public and became the most downloaded app of all time.

And while there almost was a crash in the first quarter of 2023 when many of Silicon Valley’s largest banks collapsed, the U.S. Government stepped in and bailed them out.

The main reason why the crash has not happened yet, is because most of the largest technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon.com, etc., all had huge cash reserves to fund their investments into AI in the beginning.

Fast forward to today as we end the second quarter of 2026, and almost ALL of those cash reserves have been spent, and most of these technology companies are taking on debt through corporate bond sales, because they are too afraid of being “left behind” in the great AI race, which is a race to nowhere, and will end very badly, for all of us.

While I have been a mostly dissenting voice in the alternative media sounding the alarms against AI spending for the past three and a half years, I am no longer.

After three straight days of losses on the NASDAQ including huge losses on Monday and Tuesday this week for the Big Tech companies, I would estimate that about 90% of the corporate news financial analysts are talking about an AI crash now, and much of it is not even speculative, but treating it as a certainty.

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Via https://t.me/healthimpact/3626