Sure, Let J.D. Try It.

 I wonder if he knows what expects the US in this case. 

PARIS—Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the U.S. would hit Moscow with sanctions and potentially military action if Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t agree to a peace deal with Ukraine that guarantees Kyiv’s long-term independence.

Not to mention the fact that in this case J.D. decides absolutely nothing. VP post in the US serves only three purposes:

1. To break the deadlock in Senate.

2. Ceremonial duties.

3. Theoretical honing for future Presidential Run. 

That's all. Yes, Russian Armed Forces are shaking in their boots just from the thought of the US "military action" against Russia, LOL. Ah, this ever-present reality of COFM.   

France Being... France.

 Leo Tolstoy said it best. 

A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.

I still don't understand why France's political and pseudo-intellectual elites think and are assured in their thinking that they are "irresistibly attractive" to Russia but they, evidently, are self-assured. Why, because they think that Russia owes them something. Hm, really?

МОСКВА, 31 окт - РИА Новости. В посольстве Франции в России глубоко обеспокоены угрозами в адрес республики, сообщили об этом российским властям, призывая их выступить с официальным осуждением, заявила дипмиссия.  

Translation: Moscow, 31 October, Ria. France's embassy in Russia is deeply concerned with the threats against the republic as they informed Russian authorities and called on them to officially condemn those. 

There was a group of Russian Muslims, I don't know 30-40 men, which held a protest at French embassy in Moscow regarding this whole business with Mohamed's caricatures and decapitation of the teacher, Moscow police observed them for a short time and then dispersed them. Big fvcking deal. What is happening inside France is France's internal affair and let France deal with her own problems. I may remind French diplomats St. Petersburg's terrorist act of April, 2017. Let's see, as Kathy Hopkins describes it, France, it is about you:

Only Trump called to offer support. And only Tel Aviv lit up the City Hall with the colours of the Russian flag. Thank God for the decency of these two leaders — for both of whom the threat posed by Islamic extremism is so stark.

Only after public outcry did Paris do something (turned lights off, I recall) with Eiffel Tower. By then it didn't matter. As Hopkins points out and overwhelming majority of Russian know it:

After Westminster we 'stood united', we 'were not cowed' and we would 'carry on'. Our leaders (such as they are) spoke of the bravery of the victims, the swift response of the emergency services; we heard from the families of the victims, who held no grudge against the attacker. The Eiffel Tower was plunged into darkness. Merkel said she stood with Britain. The hashtag #prayforLondon and #WeStandUnited trended around the globe. This is our terror-response template, to which we are encouraged to conform when we need to self-soothe. But, it is now clear, it is not universal. It is not extended to all. It is not extended to Putin's Russia.

France supported throughout the years all kinds of jihadists all over the world from Syria to Russia. In fact, as I state non-stop, France gave shelter to Chechen terrorists whose hands were covered in blood of Russia's servicemen and civilians, from pregnant women to children. France continues to play a decisive role in destabilizing Syria, French native population is being diluted by non-stop stream of people who are incompatible with the values of France and the process is long time out of control. France supported Chechen separatism, so it is really simple--what goes around, comes around. I can only remind French diplomats what their Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov stated couple of weeks ago:

Those people in the West who are responsible for foreign policy and do not understand the necessity of mutually respectable conversation--well, we must simply stop for a while communicate with them. Especially since Ursula von der Leyen states that geopolitical partnership with current Russia's leadership is impossible. If this is the way they want it, so be it.   

I don't understand what's so complicated with all that? Russia owes nothing to anyone. Want to deal with Russia and have Russia's support--be nice and take a number. I do feel for average French people but it is what it is--they voted for those who are in power, so it is a moot point. Plus, French on average do not consider Russians a European people and, finally, Russians arrived to the same conclusion. Considering who French "elites" largely are and where they came from, I don't think there is any future for Russian-French relations in any serious sense. Economics, you know, some trade, sure. Other than that, they want Russians? How about cleaning Paris from dirt, crime, rats and maybe using some air freshener for it not to stink with urine. That could be a good start, including dropping a pretense and self-assurance in own attractiveness and looking at the reality of Western Europe in general, and French motherland in particular. 

One comment under the Russian song Those Were the Days reads:

Europe needs Russia! Russia come back!

I don't think so. Too little, too late--Russia's plans are Eurasian in essence and scale, Europe in general, and France in particular, can remain in their belief in own attractiveness. I liked this meme:

Transliterated phrase means: we don't give a fuck. They better learn to live with this reality in Europe.  

So, Michael Hudson Calls It.

Hudson, who, by my primitive criteria, is one of the best (true) economics and economic history brains of our time doesn't mince the words and calls it as he sees it (correctly): Trump’s Trade Threats Are Really Cold War 2.0. Hudson correctly identifies the issue:

He opens negotiations with a threat. That costs nothing, and you never know (or at least, he never knows) whether he can get a freebee. His threat is that the U.S. can hurt its adversary unless that country agrees to abide by America’s wish-list. But in this case the list is so unrealistic that the media are embarrassed to talk about it. The US is making impossible demands for economic surrender – that no country could accept. What appears on the surface to be only a trade war is really a full-fledged Cold War 2.0.

Let's see: by now Trump and his gang of misfits and chicken-hawks headed by knightly Bolton and sophisticated Pompeo threatened pretty much most of the economically viable world. The issue here (for Trump and, by implication, the United States) is that nobody really is quaking, as Pat Buchanan put it, in their boots. Here, Hudson gives some really good rationale for this lack of quaking:

Trump’s trade tantrum is that other countries are simply following the same economic strategy that once made America great, but which neoliberals have destroyed here and in much of Europe. U.S. negotiators are unwilling to acknowledge that the United States has lost its competitive industrial advantage and become a high-cost rentier economy. Its GDP is “empty,” consisting mainly of the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) rents, profits and capital gains while the nation’s infrastructure decays and its labor is reduced to a part-time “gig” economy. Under these conditions the effect of trade threats can only be to speed up the drive by other countries to become economically self-reliant.  

I am sincerely happy that my diagnosis of the United States, of which I am writing  for years now, follows so closely  Michael Hudson's. In fact, we still do not know the true scale of the loss of the key enclosed technological cycles in the US. We all know it is bad, as this terrifying report to this very same Donald Trump testifies to. Did Trump even read it? Did he get the gist of it? I am beginning to believe he didn't. Someone in his Administration did, but not him. With each passing day I only reinforce my opinion on him as one trick pony fed on a steady diet of American exceptionalism and values of New York's shady real estate business--this is not enough for trying to save such country as the United States, let alone declare and win Cold War 2.0. One really has to know the real battlefield, be that economic or, which is a whole other story in the US, military one. 

The trick, however, is to explain it to the cabal of "political scientists", sociologists and other foreign relations "experts" infesting fat remuneration greased  corridors of Establishment, that they know shit about either battlefields. Those who know, or understood  finally, however few of them, they are out of ideas precisely for being those proverbial one trick ponies--US establishment can not produce anymore someone different. Delusion still abounds, though, with professors in basically nothing continuing to wax strategic and military when having zero qualifications for that. The world is complex, it is getting even more complex with astonishing acceleration and new ideas are needed to preserve it peaceful, even if relatively, and with some hope for the future. Current American political class cannot do it and will increasingly find itself at the curb of the humanity's highway. So, it will be left with only one thing to do, as one trick ponies know, to threaten until, as Hudson points out, they self-destruct and take the country with them. I have no problem with this cabal going down, the country? We may need to discuss that separately--I know some prescriptions are out there, the main question--WHO is going to implement them. 

P.S. In a wonderful news: sue their asses into utter financial destruction! Somebody started doing this. Read excellent piece by real left-wing American:

Campus Wokesters with boundary problems got “woke” for real on Thursday when an Ohio jury laid an additional $33-million for punitive damages on top of $11-million in compensatory damages already awarded against Oberlin College for running a “social justice” campaign to ruin the business of a four-generation small-town bakery that followed the shoplifting arrest of three black Oberlin College students there in 2016.

About fvcking time.