I’m probably in meetings until early afternoon tomorrow but will wholeheartedly dive into Friday intoxication as soon as I can with a full battery of hysterical dog videos \ud83e\udd23<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m pretty sure the USA has already made a decision about Iran according to our previous discussions \u2013 what’s interesting in this context is the following;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Russia has threatened DEVASTATING consequences if the USA attacks Iran, and Iran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First of all, an attack on Iran, which is absolutely not just a whim from Trump but a decision made by the USA some time ago, would expose the epic hypocrisy Sullivan and Biden displayed regarding “we are terrified of nuclear weapons or war with Russia” in the case of the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which we have also suspected, right – so now we might soon have this confirmed as well, probably quite soon judging by the traffic congestion on Diego Garcia and the fact that the USA is shuttling Patriot systems to all its allies in the MENA region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don’t need to be so puzzled about Trump since we already know that he rigged the “peace negotiation” 100% in favor of Russia and wants to colonize Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran is allied with Russia, which definitely does not want to lose them in massive bombing campaigns \u2013 and everyone, including us in the comment section, understands that Iran is on the verge of collapsing domestically, so major fires in Tehran could probably work wonders for the will to overthrow the Islamists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if that regime falls, Russia loses Iran, period – which somewhat contradicts the idea that Trump is playing on Russia’s field, but I don’t have the energy to dwell on that because there are too many twists now, so I’m ignoring it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it’s also a step up in global escalation AND a severe blow to the oil price, which the USA is well aware of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the way, Egypt has deployed troops in the demilitarized Sinai, which has prompted Israel to protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My thought on how the MENA region will play out in a global conflict is that Israel will be overrun, by the way, if you remember our previous discussions. We are quite far from that, but if neighboring countries join forces while everyone is preoccupied with other matters in times of robots and drones, things could get lively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The world doesn’t need an arms race like we had during the Cold War, which was probably very close to collective suicide at its worst \u2013 the USA had 30,000 nuclear weapons, many thermonuclear, and Russia decided in the ’60s to catch up and eventually had even more \u2013 and the “firing button” had been delegated to various commanders in case they lost contact with higher-ups in the doctrine of mutual destruction. At least once, a Russian colonel refused to obey orders when the computers indicated that the USA had launched everything they had at Russia, and he was punished to the maximum even though the world was saved. It also happened in the USA, by the way, and researchers say it happened dozens of times, even though we only know of a few instances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, it was the human factor that stood between a full-scale nuclear rain or peace; the USA themselves never understood that in 1983, they had so thoroughly alarmed the Russians that when the USSR conducted its RYAN, they genuinely believed that the USA would attack them \u2013 because the USA had changed the nuclear launch codes as a routine right when tensions were at their highest, and the USSR interpreted it as a final step before the war began. The quick-witted quickly realize that this coincided with our most spectacular submarine intrusions and culminated in a prime minister’s assassination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But one of the lessons the USA learned from the downed South Korean passenger plane was that when tensions were high, everyone had their finger on the trigger, and maybe some de-escalation would be good \u2013 which followed until Gorbachev accidentally crashed the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just like in Ukraine with General Donahue (as we just learned from the NYT article), major events were driven by individuals, or Putin for that matter. The whole world sees escalation or de-escalation because of one or a few individuals, and the world was saved more than once by someone’s unwavering integrity that then completely ruined their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My thought is instead that if we can shoot down incoming Russian robots and have enough to target a couple of major cities in Russia with nuclear weapons, that should be deterrent enough since they have 90% of their population there, so maybe the arsenal that France and the UK possess is sufficient?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the long run, Europe wouldn’t need to start acquiring more nuclear weapons, and the whole discussion would become irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, landmines have proven to be excellent when combined with cluster ammunition, and who leads the way there \u2013 well, Finland. We need to soon establish impenetrable minefields along the entire Russian border and permanently close it because nothing good will ever come from there. Until today, they have only infiltrated criminals, GRU, and played a significant role in drug and addiction trafficking to strengthen our criminal clans and gangs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we can seal it off with our modern-day Great Wall of China and start reducing all diplomatic representation to a minimum, perhaps calm will settle in Europe in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lately, I’ve come to understand that we are well on our way into at least a new Cold War and I am immersing myself in post-WW2 history to better understand this, so today we’ll take a little look back at the USA since they have veered in a direction that we in Europe don’t appreciate since Trump took office, or it’s more evident after he took office because he’s not exactly known for keeping quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Germany has found its inner Prussian again, and I have a pretty good understanding of how they have acted, given that they were under guardianship until 1989 and have had an absolutely enormous collective guilt to deal with. It’s not easy to explain to grandchildren that grandpa used to burn people alive in ovens as a full-time job in his youth, but he’s also a lovable uncle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The USA fought extremely many wars in the 19th century to expand their territory, and the 19th century as a whole was chock-full of wars. Everyone knows about the 20th century, but since the turn of the millennium, there has actually been a sharp drop in wars worldwide, until a few years ago…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After WW2, the USA supported all right-wing dictatorships in South America because the Soviet Union supported communist guerrillas, and older South Americans, like my former Peruvian colleague, had nothing good to say about the USA at all – it was almost in his genes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Burgeoning democracies that were starting to function were completely crushed by the CIA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not only that \u2013 the USA used the CIA to overthrow legitimate governments so that American companies could access raw materials \u2013 Iran and Guatemala in the ’50s are good examples because, in Iran’s case, it laid the foundation for the Ayatollahs’ power grab that they still suffer from today. And fortunately, it was the beginning of the rise of (extreme) Islamists in the world as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was enough for the proposed company in question to go to the CIA and announce that the government of a certain country was communist for a diabolical plan to overthrow them to be developed and carried out in less than half a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 1990s and onwards have been all about the USA’s wars in the Middle East that we all know, “weapons of mass destruction,” and all those lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1970s, Pakistan carried out a significant genocide in Bangladesh (before they became independent) which India stopped – guess which side the USA supported, and it wasn’t the good side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 1990s were all about Japan and the tiger economies, and 2008 was indeed exciting and recent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet so many refuse to accept that the USA does not stand for all that is good in the world. Trump is just clumsier than Biden and Obama\/Clinton who started many wars – the USA is just like the bank, not your friend, as someone usually says, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one wants to understand what predators Obama and Biden were, but Trump doesn’t seem to have the ability to act like a chameleon, and therefore the world has turned against the USA in record time. The Caribbean is upset with Rubio, Greenland, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Ukraine – the list of former allies who have had enough can be quite long right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And after this tariff debacle, there will probably be even more \ud83e\udd23\ud83e\udd23<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Influence operations and subversive activities are very old – modern Russia, or the Soviet Union, began actively in the 1920s, and the USA only got started after WW2. However, Russia seriously started its operations to influence opinions in the West in the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Guatemala, the USA ran radio chatter as if it were a civil war and bombed randomly with their own aircraft until the administration collapsed (it was actually a civil war between the CIA and no one). In Iran, they managed to get all newspapers to write negatively about the president until he was overthrown because the citizens believed that was the case since that’s what they read in all newspapers – newspaper 1 writes X and newspapers 2&3 confirm it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The CIA bought many journalists to carry out their influence operations, but they had to operate in democracies, so everything had to be somewhat discreet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Soviet Union and later Russia, it was much easier for their counterparts to operate as they owned the citizens and could do whatever they wanted because they had the Gulag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Europe was the epicenter of influence operations – the Cold War was quite dramatic, and all of the CIA’s “stay behind” programs make for exciting reading. But what they did was to place weapons and unrestricted power in the hands of a group in a country and hope that they would never realize they could use their new position as the strongest in the country to enrich themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the way, Nikita Khrushchev was interested in a bit more openness in the Soviet Union, and it was a time when the youth felt hope. The Soviet Union had about 4 nuclear weapons in whatever form they were, but they fooled the USA into thinking they were strong, so the USA felt they needed 4000. For the USA, the Cold War became a blank check for the Military-Industrial Complex, and the question is whether the USA knew or not, but the official version is that it wasn’t until the U2 incident that they realized they had been deceived and that the USSR was weak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then Brezhnev came, and the Soviet Union eventually caught up in the number of nuclear weapons for the Cuban Missile Crisis shook them up… that the USA could force them to back down – even though they removed the nuclear weapons from Turkey and Italy as a concession, which can be considered acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am pretty much done with the USA, with just one lingering question about how they intend to come out on top in all of this – I don’t want to believe that they are as clumsy as everyone laughs about, but that they do things with a purpose. Personally, I believe they want to collapse Europe and maybe China, but we’ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am starting to sense a recession for us in the EU as well because of this, or do you economically savvy people believe in something other than that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now, the trade balance is plummeting, and the economy in the USA is quite shaky, and it probably won’t get any better after this broadside \ud83d\ude36<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My suspicion is simply that the USA is ahead of the curve and needs to take a hit themselves to get the ball rolling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They have evidently had Russia’s back for over three years, so they definitely do not want Russia to collapse – in my opinion, the USA is still stuck in the old ways, just like Putin – but it could also become the new way if we’re unlucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Notable that among the few countries that did not receive trade tariffs were Russia and Belarus \ud83e\uddd0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Europe IS under pressure – we have had a period of great upheaval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With soaring electricity prices (everything is always relative, so comparing WITHIN Europe is therefore foolish of the highest order), Europe’s remaining industry is under quite a bit of pressure, for example in Germany and in our electricity area SE4. Europe was supposed to solve the pension age with migration in 2015, so someone has to explain to me why we should work until 75 now if we are to believe that economist from the other week – after all, it’s been 10 years, and we have done everything that was supposed to save us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, both the USA and China have a lower retirement age than us in Sweden, but higher than Southern Europe, which retires very early because they receive all sorts of benefits from us so they can afford it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We made a huge effort to be the first with the green transition, but the fact is that China leads in all categories, even though they balance it out with a significant non-green industry. If the USA just decides that it’s the future, they will also take the lead – they do it because they don’t regulate and slow down like we do in Europe but try to invest in things that are good business, but also environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Europe’s car manufacturers have largely reverted to combustion engines and abandoned their visions of going fossil-free. China produces millions of electric cars annually, and the USA is not far behind, and China was so good with solar panels that we had to introduce trade tariffs to protect ourselves – why does China succeed and not us when we have a thousand times more environmental requirements and should be excellent?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Could it be that all the environmental requirements have made China surpass us in environmentally friendly technology?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s always nice to support environmentally friendly initiatives and believe that what has been done can never be wrong, but when faced with reality, one must still choose what one wants – food on the table or salamanders in the ponds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think the electricity price for BUSINESSES in the USA was 1\/3 of Europe’s and China’s 1\/8 – or around there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gasoline price in Europe is a little over double that of the USA and China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, our trade surplus in 2024 was quite high, but it’s mainly the UK and the USA that account for it – so Trump starting to put up trade barriers may have some contagion risk on how well the EU progresses in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n
And it’s not really appropriate for us to count trade surpluses with the UK – after all, we are in the same boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So it’s actually good that the EU is starting to consider easing the worst obstacles so that our companies become competitive again \u2013 after all, we also need food on the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/omni.se\/kallor-kommissionen-overvager-svagare-klimatlagar\/a\/jQJoBn<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n (link taken from someone in the comments section at johanno1.se \u2013 always the latest news first).<\/p>\n\n\n\n To me, all of this is connected \u2013 what weapons did we have to send, and why didn’t we have any weapons to send \u2013 who made sure we didn’t. How are our economies doing so we can produce more weapons and then the direct decisions to defend our friends in the Baltics and in Svalbard, as well as Ukraine of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because this is the reality we have to deal with right now, and if we navigate it incorrectly, our little preschool children will be desecrated, tortured, and murdered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ukraine war is no longer the only thing we need to care about because the war is on the verge of escalating, and not just militarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know as well as I do that a very effective way to get Russia to leave Ukraine would be to collapse them economically. Just like Germany collapsed economically in WW1 and WW2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So do you then think that when the EU finally stands up and decides to wholeheartedly fight Russia – that Russia, with the help of the USA, might try to collapse Europe economically?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in order to do that, does the USA need to take the first hit so the chain kicks off?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not as far-fetched as one might think, and what I have seen of CCCC now suggests that China will beat the USA in fair manufacturing quality in the future, which they surely do not want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it is quite likely that the USA’s long game here is to try to bring down China or engage in a cold war with China, and that Russia stands on the USA’s side in that conflict. And to push back against a budding Europe \u2013 especially as we seem to want to improve relations with China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This will absolutely NOT benefit the EU in the slightest and is something we should strongly oppose \u2013 first we clip Russia and then we may have to parry China if needed in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what has China done TODAY other than starting to manufacture good products cheaper than what we can handle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you liked the post, please share it on your channels,<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want an entertaining comments section \u2013 johanno1.se. The comments are of high quality, I can promise you that – you learn something new every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Substack \u2013 now, for heaven’s sake, don’t forget to become paying subscribers even those of you who already follow. It’s great to see that some find it worth reading, appreciate all the effort put into this, and took the step to subscribe, but more are needed \ud83d\udc4d<\/p>\n\n\n\n johanno1.se<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n substack.com\/@johanno1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/johanno1.bsky.social<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n