Xerxes

Behind all the PR theatrics, Trump understands the leverage vis a vis aide (with Kremlin), and doesn’t want the nightmare of 2021 Kabul repeat. if there will be a catastrophic collapse on the Ukrainian front it has to be set up as Kiev’ own mishap w/ proper narrative, that “he told them what to do for the war to end and they just wouldn’t do it” washing my hands

“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle,” Trump said of Zelenskyy, who was popular television star in Ukraine before running for office. is this a political thriller on HBO or what ….

there you go

I listened to the full Trump interview today. It is clear that he wants Zelenskyy gone pronto.

Poland, Japan, South Korea, yes but not Ukraine. Ukraine will go the Iranian path, coming out of a similar brutal long war. It will become a near threshold nuclear state. There but not there.

Wrong. Those ICBMs were not Ukraine’ to give or not to give, nor they had command and control. They belonged to the Soviet Union, and then Russia as the surviving state. That said I agree that they could have “taken” them and through their ingenuity found a way to control them. They are after all resourceful people. Had they done that, they would have become a pariah state. You cannot change one parameter in the past assume everything else would have remain the same.

In couple of years time, Warsaw will have a nuclear weapon. It is clear. How else does one protect itself. Many refer to UK as an European nuclear power. I somewhat disagree. Only France has truly sovereign control over its nuclear arsenal while UK’ arsenal is subordinated to US to a certain degree.

SPOILER. now ponder this: the little child in the first movie is revealed to be actually Maximus’ son with that hot Italian woman. (Marcus Aurelius’ daughter) note that a major pillar of the first movie is Maximus desire to revenge the killing of his family. So the second movie implies that he not only was having an affair with emperor’ daughter, but also had a son, alongside his legitimate family. Whatever happened to Strength and Honour ! So not only Gladiator 2 was a disaster on a biblical proportion, it also destroyed Gladiator 1 and raped my memories. PS: the first Gladiator movie is said to be closely based on Spartacus. Not quite. Those who have seen Sir Alec Guinness performance in The Fall of Roman Empire, would know that in fact it is 100% correlated to that movie with sprinkles of the Spartacus. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire_(film)

pretty impressive that in Q1 and Q2, he added mightily to Starbucks on the dip. In contrast I added mightily to Starbucks before the 30% drop in early 2024. opps

Gladiator 2 is one of the worse movie ever made. Bad script. Bad acting. Useless nods to the first movie. Everyone know everyone 12 years later. my god. What happens to Ridley Scott. How the almighty has fallen. Just all around bad. Hollywood at its worse. And in the middle of it all, Denzel Washington with his Chicago accent.

Revealed: Trump's confidential plan to put Ukraine in a stranglehold Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country. The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv. The Telegraph has obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract, marked “Privileged & Confidential’ and dated Feb 7 2025. It states that the US and Ukraine should form a joint investment fund to ensure that “hostile parties to the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine”. The agreement covers the “economic value associated with resources of Ukraine”, including “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure (as agreed)”, leaving it unclear what else might be encompassed. “This agreement shall be governed by New York law, without regard to conflict of laws principles,” it states. The US will take 50pc of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, and 50pc of the financial value of “all new licences issued to third parties” for the future monetisation of resources. There will be “a lien on such revenues” in favour of the US. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” said one source close to the negotiations. It states that “for all future licences, the US will have a right of first refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals”. Washington will have sovereign immunity and acquire near total control over most of Ukraine’s commodity and resource economy. The fund “shall have the exclusive right to establish the method, selection criteria, terms, and conditions” of all future licences and projects. And so forth, in this vein. It seems to have been written by private lawyers, not the US departments of state or commerce. President Zelensky himself proposed the idea of giving the US a direct stake in Ukraine’s rare earth elements and critical minerals on a visit to Trump Tower in September, hoping to smooth the way for continued arms deliveries. Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a US stake in Ukraine’s minerals production when he met Donald Trump in September He calculated that it would lead to US companies setting operations on the ground, creating a political tripwire that would deter Vladimir Putin from attacking again. Some mineral basins are near the front line in eastern Ukraine, or in Russian-occupied areas. He has played up the dangers of letting strategic reserves of titanium, tungsten, uranium, graphite and rare earths fall into Russian hands. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” he said. He probably did not expect to be confronted with terms normally imposed on aggressor states defeated in war. They are worse than the financial penalties imposed on Germany and Japan after their defeat in 1945. Both countries were ultimately net recipients of funds from the victorious allies. A new Versailles If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty, later whittled down at the London Conference in 1921, and by the Dawes Plan in 1924. At the same time, he seems willing to let Russia off the hook entirely. Donald Trump told Fox News that Ukraine had “essentially agreed” to hand over $500bn. “They have tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earths, in terms of oil and gas, in terms of other things,” he said. He warned that Ukraine would be handed to Putin on a plate if it rejected the terms. “They may make a deal. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But I want this money back,” he said. Trump said the US had spent $300bn on the war so far, adding that it would be “stupid” to hand over any more. In fact the five packages agreed by Congress total $175bn, of which $70bn was spent in the US on weapons production. Some of it is in the form of humanitarian grants, but much of it is lend-lease money that must be repaid. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham suggested at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend that Trump’s demand was a clever ploy to bolster declining popular support for the Ukrainian cause. “He can go to the American people and say, ‘Ukraine is not a burden, it is a benefit,’” he said. Sen Graham told the Europeans to root hard for the idea because it locks Washington into defending a future settlement. “If we sign this minerals agreement, Putin is screwed, because Trump will defend the deal,” he said. Ukrainian officials had to tiptoe though this minefield at the Munich forum, trying to smile gamely and talking up hopes of a resource deal while at the same pleading that the current text breaches Ukrainian law and needs redrafting. Well, indeed. Talk of Ukraine’s resource wealth has become surreal. A figure of $26 trillion is being cast around for combined mineral reserves and hydrocarbons reserves. The sums are make-believe. Ukraine probably has the largest lithium basin in Europe. But lithium prices have crashed by 88pc since the bubble burst in 2022. Large reserves are being discovered all over the world. The McDermitt Caldera in Nevada is thought to be the biggest lithium deposit on the planet with 40m metric tonnes, alone enough to catapult the US ahead of China. The Thacker Pass project will be operational by next year. The value of lithium is in the processing and the downstream industries. Unprocessed rock deposits sitting in Ukraine are all but useless to the US. It is a similar story for rare earths. They are not rare. Mining companies in the US abandoned the business in the 1990s because profit margins were then too low. The US government was asleep at the wheel and let this happen, waking up to discover that China has acquired a strategic stranglehold over supplies of critical elements needed for hi-tech and advanced weapons. That problem is being resolved. Ukraine has cobalt but most EV batteries now use lithium ferrous phosphate and no longer need cobalt. Furthermore, sodium-ion and sulphur-based batteries will limit the future demand growth for lithium. So will recycling. One could go on. The mineral scarcity story is wildly exaggerated. As for Ukraine’s shale gas, a) some of the Yuzivska field lies under Putin control, and b) the western Carpathian reserves are in complex geology with high drilling costs, causing Chevron to pull out, just as it did in Poland. Ukraine has more potential as an exporter of electricity to Europe from renewables and nuclear expansion, but that is not what is on Donald Trump’s mind. The second violation of Ukraine Ukraine cannot possibly meet his $500bn demand in any meaningful timeframe, leaving aside the larger matter of whether it is honourable to treat a victim nation in this fashion after it has held the battle line for the liberal democracies at enormous sacrifice for three years. Who really has a debt to whom, may one ask? “My style of dealmaking is quite simple and straightforward,” says Trump in his book The Art of the Deal. “I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.” In genuine commerce the other side can usually walk away. Trump’s demand is iron-fist coercion by a neo-imperial power against a weaker nation with its back to the wall, and all for a commodity bonanza that exists chiefly in Trump’s head. “Often-times the best deal you make is the deal you don’t make,” said Trump, offering another of his pearls. Zelensky does not have that luxury. He has to pick between the military violation of Ukraine by Putin, and the economic violation of Ukraine by his own ally.

The Enemy [I mean, Zelenskyy] gets a Vote too.

Is this a political thread in disguise we do already have a DOGE thread, a Tesla thread etc even a SpaceX thread

imagine if Putin comes back with a counter offer: I will give 60% control to the U.S. of rare earth in the Donbas (occupied by Russia or not) if U.S. formally recognize Russia’ annexation and halt all aides what a world

Fantastic book and long. So it is my long-read book in the background on slow burn. Read that chapter that I posted just this past week. Timely I think with what will be happening (or not happening) in the Pentagon.