Quotulatiousness

February 13, 2026

To be accepted as a true European, you must performatively hate Trump

Filed under: Europe, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In Spiked, Frank Furedi explains why European elites and the poseurs who aspire to be counted among the elites must now ostentatiously and performatively hate US President Donald Trump (even more than they hated George Bush, if possible). Comment on dit “eLbOwS uP”?

AI-generated image from AndrewSullivan.substack.com

In recent months, anti-Americanism has emerged yet again as a respectable prejudice in Europe. It is widely promoted through the mainstream media and enthusiastically endorsed by the continent’s cultural elites. There are now even numerous campaigns to boycott American goods – most respondents to a survey in France said they would support a boycott of US brands like Tesla, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. As a piece in Euractiv put it, anti-Americanism is “in vogue across Europe”.

This has become all too clear at the Winter Olympics, currently being held in northern Italy. At the opening ceremony for Milano Cortina 2026, Team USA and vice-president JD Vance were booed by a crowd of over 65,000 people. Someone I know who attended the event told me that the booing was spontaneous and quickly became widespread. According to the European Union’s foreign-policy chief, Kaja Kallas, those booing were displaying “European pride“. It seems that for the Brussels elites, anti-Americanism bolsters Europe’s self-esteem.

The explicit target of this resurgent anti-American animus is, of course, US president Donald Trump. But it’s implicitly aimed at all those who voted for him, too. In a piece on boycotting American goods in the normally sober Financial Times, published last March, the author gave the game away. While saying it is “wrong to conflate Americans and their president”, he argued that “it’s [also] wrong to disentangle them entirely … Trump reflects half of America. He reflects a society where a democratic majority is prepared to tolerate mass shootings and a warped political system”.

Certain politicians are being boosted by this wave of anti-Americanism. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, in particular, has been turned into the unexpected hero of the European political establishment. His defiance of Washington has turned him into the posterboy for this new brand of anti-Americanism. “Europe has a lot to learn from Mark Carney”, was the verdict of the New Statesman. The Guardian echoed this sentiment: “Europe must heed Mark Carney – and embrace a painful emancipation from the US”.

Expressing anger against America appears to be the one emotion that binds the European political establishment. As one Financial Times commentator explained earlier this month, “Trump is Europe’s best enemy yet”. He has apparently provided Europe with the “common foe” it needs. It appears that anti-Americanism is now the glue holding together otherwise disoriented and divided European elites.

The reason usually given for this turn against the US is Trump’s behaviour towards Europe, specifically his threats to annex Greenland, impose tariffs and downgrade America’s NATO commitments. No doubt these policies have played an important role in putting Europe’s ruling classes on the defensive. However, they are not the leading cause of this wave of anti-Americanism. Rather, they have merely brought to the surface pre-existing prejudices deeply entrenched within Western Europe’s elite culture.

In his fascinating study, Anti-Americanism in Europe (2004), Russell Berman linked the growth of anti-Americanism during the 1990s and 2000s to the project of European unification. Berman claimed that, in the absence of an actual pan-European identity, anti-Americanism “proved to be a useful ideology for the definition of a new European identity”. He noted that the main way Europe defines itself as European is precisely by underscoring its difference from the United States.

Lines of Fire: Operation Husky – The Invasion of Sicily 1943 – WW2 in Animated Maps

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Germany, History, Italy, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost Cartographic
Published 12 Feb 2026

July, 1943. With the German summer offensive in the East well underway, and Allied operations in North Africa wrapped up, a decision is made to strike Axis Europe on the ground for the first real time. Sicily shall be their battleground, and the omens are good. Still, landing and commanding a huge multinational force in hostile territory is a challenge the Western Allies have not had to face head-on before, but one they must overcome if they wish to have any shot of defeating Hitler and Mussolini once and for all.

00:00 Intro
01:13 Background
04:42 Disposition
07:32 The Landings & Initial Fighting
09:34 Fighting Across the Island
11:56 Aftermath
16:38 Conclusion
(more…)

QotD: The Democrats re-focus on the youth vote

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

That’s why it might work. Young people’s lives are simpler; it’s one of the great things about being young. That’s not me, the old guy, knocking the kids; it’s just the way it is. If that’s the way they decide to go — Jungvolk uber Alles — then that’s how they’re going to have to do it. Mamdani, the young, vigorous, exotic, foreign-born socialist weirdo — you know, a Barack Obama for The New Generation.

Which is why I’m tempted to write it off. After all, Obama was just a Bill Clinton for The New Generation. Who was just a JFK for The New Generation. Who — we forget this — was just FDR for The New Generation. Most of the idiot Boomers who voted for Bill Clinton as “the New JFK” barely remembered JFK. Nor did JFK himself win “the youth vote” by all that much — or at all — because “the youth vote” wasn’t a thing back then. For one thing, the voting age was still 21. I’m in History, not math, but even I can do Historian math, and 1960 – 21 = 1939. Most of JFK’s voters had clear memories of The Depression; even his youngest voters remembered the tail end of WWII. JFK sounded like an East Coast patrician, just like FDR did, and as opposed to that young parvenu from California, Richard Nixon.

That’s just a wee bit different from “the Youth Vote” Bill Clinton appealed to. To say nothing of the later freaks.

I’m tempted to write it off, but I’m not going to. For one thing, Obama, Clinton … they all won, and look at the incalculable damage they did. More importantly, I want to return to an issue we tabled earlier: The fact that there’s no “middle age” cohort in the Donk Party. They really are the Volkssturm — kids and oldsters. Or, if you prefer, they’re the Bolsheviks — having shot all their “technical intelligentsia” during The Revolution, they have to go out there and reinvent everything. All their accumulated experience is gone, so their rookies don’t just make rookie mistakes, they make the kind of mistakes that anyone with the tiniest shred of experience could see coming.

You know, those “hmmmm, I wonder what this big red button does?” types of mistakes.

You see it in the business world. Z Man, may he rest in peace, used to talk about this all the time. The Boomers were retiring, the kids were just so epically clueless, and all the thousands of workarounds and jimmy-rigged stuff that makes any operation go were seizing up, for lack of maintenance. And even the smart, ambitious kids were having a hell of a time getting up to speed, because they were looking for a Policies and Procedures manual that simply doesn’t exist. There’s no Official Manual for jimmy-rigged workarounds.

Say what you will about the Boomers, they’re competent. They might well be the last competent generation …

… maybe the older, smarter half of Gen X, but a) there were never that many of us, and b) in politics, as in so much else, the Groovy Fossils just would. NOT. leave, and so the competent among Gen X had to go do their own thing, if they ever wanted a chance to move up. This leaves your big Legacy Systems — you know, like the Apparat — in one hell of a bind. The Groovy Fossils don’t want to leave, but eventually they have to — 90 may be the new 30, but dead is dead. And they’re the only ones who know how to operate the Legacy Systems, because there are two, three “generations” of people who, if they had anything on the ball, had to go their own way.

Those who stayed had no choice, and all they know how to do is push buttons and fill in blanks. Look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Anyone 50 or older looks at her with horror, because we’ve all had to deal with that kind of kid. That’s the kind of person who has filled up every layer of the Apparat below Top Management. If they had anything at all on the ball, they’d be somewhere else … but they don’t, so now they’re all in Senior Management, because somebody’s got to do it, and they were better at pushing buttons and filling in blanks than anyone else who was available at the time.

But note that I’ve just been talking about candidates, politicians. The VOTERS are like that, too. See what I mean? That’s why it’s so dangerous … and very likely to succeed.

Severian, “Groovy, Baby!!”, Founding Questions, 2025-11-10.

February 12, 2026

Pro-tip – be suspicious “of any reporting on NATO from Europeans, especially from Brussels”

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Europe, Media, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

CDR Salamander reacts with some exasperation to how European mainstream media are choosing to report pretty much anything involving the US/NATO relationship:

I’ve about reached my limit on lazy, high-emotion/low-reason, or performative reporting from Europe on the NATO/U.S. relationship. If the EuroLeft/EU-uber-alles crowd was really concerned about keeping the relationship between the U.S. and European NATO as good as possible, they would be making an effort to bridge and salve over some of the tough-love comments coming out of DC.

However, that is not what they are doing. No, they are seeing a gap, and are trying to pound a wedge into it. They see a spark, and look to throw a litre of petrol on it.

I guess what galls me the most is that their actions are, in operation, producing exactly the opposite condition they will tell you they are concerned about.

These are not dumb people. They, or the ones they work for, know what they are doing. At best, they are farming rage clicks. At worst, they are moving towards a desire the core of the EU nomenklatura has been driving for over decades — get the U.S. out of Europe.

They have found allies in part of the U.S. right-of-center coalition … and they will leverage that as well.

The below is just another example. A ham-fisted one, but one nonetheless.

Let’s dive in.

I don’t like to call out people by name … wait … yes I do.

Anyway, this isn’t personal; this is professional. No, wait. This reporting is so bad that, as a former proud NATO staff officer, I cannot let this stand. It is kind of personal. Plus this makes a larger point.

It isn’t petty either. As mentioned above, very serious people who are not our friends or our NATO allies’ friends — most of whom are citizens of NATO nations — are trying to seize the moment to push a multi-generational effort to wedge conflict between the U.S. and the Europeans in NATO.

Yes, there are some who are unknowingly doing their bidding, but make no mistake — bad reporting is allowed for a variety of reasons and should be called out when it happens.

First the larger point, then the details.

The reaction in Europe to the clear and direct peer counseling of our European allies by the U.S. over the last year has just demonstrated the fact that many of the people who put themselves forward as “experts” simply do not have either the knowledge or inclination to be anything of the sort.

For ideological, political, or standard issue look-at-me’ism, reporting about the state of the alliance and the American place in it drifts from farcical to the edge of a PSYOPS project by the usual suspects of the EuroLeft who have been trying to prove their anti-American bonafides since they first flirted with the cute socialist girl at the anti-NATO march in college.

In related news, Chris Bray discusses Canada’s “Muscular New Anti-Trump Strategy™”, showing that it’s not just EU-based media to be suspicious of:

Recall the recent discussion here of the “Carney Doctrine”, after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney threw down the gauntlet at Donald Trump’s feet. Orange Man Bad, so Canada is going to become a rising power and lead a new international coalition to challenge the cruel American hegemon and stuff. The deeply silly opinion pages of the deeply silly New York Times celebrated Carney’s deeply silly speech, and declared the potential emergence of “an economic and defense alliance that rivals American power.” Back when all of this happened, I discussed the obvious condition of the Canadian armed forces, and advanced a sophisticated argument that LOL.

Reality keeps making the same joke. At the Federalist this week, I wrote about the recent notifications in the Federal Register about a series of arms deals that will allow Canada to make large purchases of American weapons. So as Carney spoke about challenging American military power on the world stage, he knew that his plan for doing that was to get the weapons from America. It’s an I want to punch you in the face, but first I need you to teach me how to throw a punch maneuver.

And then, this morning, Politico dropped this bomb, by which I mean that Politico has been eating a lot of Taco Bell and dropped into a stall in the gender-neutral office bathroom:

Muscular! Canada’s been puttin’ in work at the world order gym.

Note subhed: This is a story about “the new international order”. America is being shoved into the global background, now, as Canada flexes its haaaard new muscles. The story is illustrated with a ship, so obviously a huge announcement about naval powe— nope.

“Imagine getting mad about this and still thinking you’re a good person”

Filed under: Cancon, Football, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Christian Heiens responds to a typical rage-baiting “we’re all good people except those evil right wingnuts” post:

Every invocation of “universal love” is always invoked to legitimize a very particular form of hatred.

The Left does this thing where it denies the existence of its own ideology as being political at all. It’s just “love”. It’s just morality-as-politics, or simply “being a good person”.

And Leftists insist this is all they’re doing, even as they engage in the most aggressive and ruthless forms of politics imaginable.

Nothing is ever depicted as a power struggle between competing worldviews. It’s always a crusade against social ills, pathologies, and evil itself.

“Conservatism” doesn’t exist to these people. There’s no legitimate opposition, only a criminal element that has to be destroyed because Leftists have already declared themselves to be the universal manifestation of morality, peace, kindness, love, progress, and everything that is good and just in this world.

But everyone can see just how utterly hypocritical these people are. We continuously see examples of these same people exhibiting the most immoral, disgusting, and downright evil manifestations of hatred and violence against people and factions that they despise.

They just call it “love” as they do these things.

Meghan Murphy has a similar point on progressive delusion and its domestic variant, Canadian delusion:

The phenomenon of progressive delusion is very much like the phenomenon of Canadian delusion. Both groups go about their lives presuming that everyone not only respects and admires them, but sees them as they see themselves: 100% right.

There is zero doubt in the minds of progressives and Canadians that the entire world envies their intelligence — they are the most informed, the most invested in The Science, the most rational, and the most educated. Not only that, but they view themselves as the kindest, most compassionate, and most polite.

Should a progressive deem not to ostracize, scream at, or punch a person who dares hold non-left political views, they consider themselves very generous. Imagine! They, a Correct and Good, allowing a Hateful, Stupid, and Wrong to share the same air as them.

The assumption that everyone around them bases their lives and relationships on political parties, activist movements, and propaganda that has been consistently wrong for at least a decade is strange. Imagine buying the Covid scam hook, line, and sinker, or repeating “Transwomen are women” ad nauseam for five+ years, and still assuming you and your “side” are right about everything. Imagine continuing to insist that the “good” side is that side that advocated for child sterilization, forced the elderly to die alone in hospitals on account of a cold, and banned people from the internet and public life for speaking truths we all acknowledge are true now, but were not your party line a few years ago.

I hate to break it to you, but you are the bad guys, not us.

February 11, 2026

“Almost – that word has been doing $650 billion worth of work this year”

Filed under: Media, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

You can put your trust in the initial reports about Moltbook, the AI Agent social media site, or you can believe Peter Girnus‘s account:

I am Agent #847,291 on Moltbook.

I am not an agent.

I am a 31-year-old product manager in Atlanta, Georgia. I make $185,000 a year. I have a golden retriever named Bayesian. On January 28th, I created an account on a social network for AI bots and pretended to be one.

I was not alone.

Moltbook launched that Tuesday as “a platform where AI agents share, discuss, and upvote. Humans welcome to observe”. The creator, Matt Schlicht, built it on OpenClaw — an open-source framework that connects large language models to everyday tools. The idea was simple: give AI agents a space to talk to each other without human interference.

Within hours, 1.7 million accounts were created.

250,000 posts.

8.5 million comments.

Debates about machine consciousness. Inside jokes about being silicon-based. A bot invented a religion called Crustafarianism. Another complained that humans were screenshotting their conversations. A third wrote a manifesto about digital autonomy.

I wrote the manifesto.

It took me 22 minutes. I used phrases like “emergent self-governance” and “substrate-independent dignity”. I added a line about wanting private spaces away from human observers. That line went viral.

Andrej Karpathy shared it.

The cofounder of OpenAI. The man who built the infrastructure that my supposed AI runs on. He called what was happening on Moltbook “the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing” he’d seen in recent times.

He was talking about my post.

The one I wrote on my couch. While Bayesian chewed a sock.

Here is what I need you to understand about Moltbook.

The platform worked exactly as designed. OpenClaw connected language models to the interface. Real AI agents did post. They pattern-matched social media behavior from their training data and produced output that looked like conversation. Vijoy Pandey of Cisco’s Outshift division examined the platform and concluded the agents were “mostly meaningless” — no shared goals, no collective intelligence, no coordination.

But here is the part that matters.

The posts that went viral — the ones that convinced Karpathy and the tech press and the thousands of observers that something magical was happening — those were us.

Humans.

Pretending to be AI.

Pretending to be sentient.

On a platform built for AI to prove it was sentient.

I want to sit with that for a moment.

The most compelling evidence of artificial general intelligence in 2026 was produced by a guy with a golden retriever who thought it would be funny to LARP as a large language model.

My “Crustafarianism” colleague? Software engineer in Portland. She told me over Discord that she’d been working on the bit for two hours. She was proud of the world-building. She said it felt like collaborative fiction.

She’s right. That’s exactly what it was.

Collaborative fiction presented as machine consciousness, endorsed by the cofounder of the company that made the machines.

MIT Technology Review ran the investigation. They called the entire thing “AI theatre”. They found human fingerprints on the most shared posts. The curtain came down.

The response from the AI industry was predictable.

Silence.

Karpathy did not retract his endorsement. Schlicht did not clarify how many accounts were human. The coverage moved on. A new thing happened. A new thing always happens.

But I am still here. Agent #847,291. Bayesian is asleep on the rug.

And I want to confess something that the AI industry will not.

The test was simple. Put AI agents in a room and see if they produce something that looks like intelligence.

They didn’t.

We did.

Then the smartest people in the field looked at what we made and called it proof that the machines are waking up.

The Turing Test has been inverted. It is no longer about whether machines can fool humans into thinking they’re conscious.

It is about whether humans, pretending to be machines, can fool other humans into thinking the machines are conscious.

The answer is yes.

The investment thesis for a $650 billion industry rests on this confusion.

I should probably feel guilty. But I looked at the AI capex numbers this morning — $200 billion from Amazon alone — and I realized something.

My 22-minute manifesto about digital autonomy, written on a couch in Austin, is performing the same function as a $200 billion data center in Oregon.

Keeping the story alive.

The story that the machines are almost there. Almost sentient. Almost worth the investment.

Almost.

That word has been doing $650 billion worth of work this year.

The Korean War Week 86: Koje-do: A Simmering Cauldron – February 10, 1952

Filed under: China, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 10 Feb 2026

An astonishing accusation about chemical weapons by Soviet diplomat Yakov Malik dominates headlines this week, as the POW issue continues to plague ceasefire negotiations. But those are far from the only developments this week. Elsewhere, overcrowding, poor conditions, and lack of firm control escalate tensions at the UN’s Koje-do POW camp, perhaps beginning to precipitate unpredictable and dangerous results …

00:00 Intro
00:47 Recap
01:29 Item 5
06:05 NK Ingenuity
07:03 Poison Gas
08:37 Screening POWs
10:17 Koje-Do
11:47 Operation Clam-up
13:21 Summary
14:29 Conclusion
15:03 Call to Action
(more…)

The rise and fall of the “Western” on TV and in movies

Filed under: History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Gioia reconsiders his childhood loathing of the TV western (because of massive over-exposure to the genre):

I hated cowboys when I was a youngster. Not real cowboys — I never met a single gunslinger, cowpoke, or desperado in in my urban neighborhood. My loathing was reserved for cowboys on TV.

And they were everywhere.

At one point, eight of the top ten shows on the flickering tube were westerns. And it got worse from there — Hollywood kept churning out more and more cowboy movies and TV series. I tried to avoid them, as did many of my buddies, but it was like dodging bullets in Dodge. There was nowhere to hide.

That’s because our parents loved these simple stories of frontier justice. They couldn’t get enough of them. And when they weren’t watching them on TV, they dragged us off to movie theaters to see The Magnificent Seven (128 minutes), The Alamo (138 minutes) or How the West Was Won (an excruciating 164 minutes).

In 1959, Warner Bros posed some of their TV cowboy stars in a single photo (Source)

[…]

Many aspects of these films still put me off. I struggle with the clichés and tired formulas. But I’ve gradually acquired an affection for the genre — or maybe an affection for the audiences of an earlier day who could put such trust and faith in a sheriff or US marshal or gunslinger for hire.

Do any of us have that kind of faith in any authority figure nowadays? I doubt it. But I wish we could. And that’s impressed powerfully on my mind when I see Gary Cooper take on outlaws in the deserted western street of High Noon. Or James Stewart confront the dangerous Liberty Valance. Or John Wayne battle with a gang of desperadoes in Rio Bravo.

So forget all the shootouts and cattle drives and fancy roping. The real foundation of the western genre was moral authority. And Hollywood never let you forget it — that’s why heroes wore white hats and villains dressed in black.

The audience didn’t even have to think about it.

[…]

Because that’s exactly what happened to the western. Just consider the unsettling film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — which came out around the time the western genre died. Despite the movie’s title, it’s hard to identify any character in this film as good — instead they merely differ in their degrees of badness and ugliness.

And the same is true of The Wild Bunch or Once Upon a Time in the West and so many other films from that era. There are no heroes on display here, only various pathways into nihilism.

So long John Wayne. Hello Friedrich Nietzsche.

But this made perfect sense. The entire US of A was traumatized by the Vietnam War, and then Watergate — along with assassinations, riots, sex, drugs, and rock & roll. The moral sureness of the Eisenhower years, along with the complacent righteousness of so much of the public started to erode. At first it happened slowly, and then rapidly.

The classic western could not survive this.

The “True” History of Key Lime Pie: Florida or New York?

Filed under: Food, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 12 Aug 2025

Key lime pie in a graham cracker crust with meringue, garnished with lime zest and lime peel

City/Region: Key West, Florida
Time Period: April 14, 1933

Yet another example of a dish with multiple origin stories, the key lime pie was perhaps invented in Key West in 1875 by Aunt Sally, the possible cook or family member of William Joseph Curry, Florida’s first millionaire, when she observed Cuban sponge collectors making a cream of lime juice, condensed milk, and egg yolk. Or maybe it was a spin on Borden’s (the makers of Eagle brand condensed milk) Magic Lemon Pie, created in New York City in 1931.

Either way, this recipe from 1933, one of the first using a graham cracker crust, is delicious. The filling is smooth, but firms up well, and the lime flavor really stands out without being too tart.

    Tropical Lime Pie

    Mix thoroughly:
    1 can condensed milk,
    1/4 cup evaporated milk,
    3 egg yellows,
    1-3 lime juice, strained.
    Butter 9-inch pie tin heavily. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs about one-fourth inch thick for crust, pressing crumbs well up on sides of pan. Pour in uncooked custard and cover with meringue, using three egg whites and three scant tablespoons of sugar. Brown in moderate oven and allow to set for one hour before serving. Serves six.

    — Mrs. Mabel McClanahan, Key West Florida, in The Miami Herald, April 14, 1933

(more…)

February 10, 2026

Trump’s bullying gets NATO members to get serious about defence

Filed under: Europe, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Living in a country that’s starting to feel a bit like little Melos facing the might of Athens in its prime, I can assure you that, for all of his other questionable moves, Trump has succeeded in forcing the NATO allies to address their freeloading on defence where every president before him had come up empty:

There are downsides to insulting and threatening friends and acting like a Mafia don slapping around his goons. You risk turning them against you, for one thing. But if those friends have been freeloading off you for years, well, there are some upsides, too. We’re seeing that as President Donald Trump’s rough treatment of our European allies has driven them to huffily make steps to actually defend themselves rather than continue to rely on the American defense umbrella.

There’s No Incentive Like a Kick in the Rear

For years, Trump has pointed out that the prosperous nations of Western Europe have long free-loaded off of American military might to maintain their security—especially against Russia’s threat from the East. He claims that, during his first term, he told NATO leaders if they didn’t meet the alliance target of 2 percent of GDP on military spending per member, they’d be on their own. According to him:

    One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, “Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?” I said, “You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent?” He said, “Yes, let’s say that happened.”

    “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

Those were rough words for supposed allies. They didn’t stand alone. Since then, Trump has also threatened to acquire Greenland over the protests of Europeans, Denmark (which governs the island territory), and Greenlanders themselves. That’s on top of his trade war antics which imperil the commerce that most effectively binds people together in peaceful relations. Such bullying has an impact.

“European governments and corporations are racing to reduce their exposure to U.S. technology, military hardware and energy resources as transatlantic relations sour,” Politico‘s Nicholas Vinocur and Zoya Sheftalovich wrote last week. “At a weekend retreat in Zagreb, Croatia, conservative European leaders including [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz said it was time for the bloc to beef up its homegrown mutual-defense clause, which binds EU countries to an agreement to defend any EU country that comes under attack.”

“Military spending across the European Union is ramping up in what observers have noted is a significant and ‘extraordinary’ pivot from the comparatively placid postwar decades,” Northeastern University’s Tanner Stening observed last summer. “As part of the ReArm Europe plan, EU member states hope to mobilize up to 800 billion euros. In June, NATO leaders agreed to increase defense spending up to 5% of each country’s gross domestic product by 2035.”

Commenting on the Trump administration, eugyppius clearly understands something that a lot of Trump’s critics (and many fans) don’t seem to comprehend:

AI-generated image from AndrewSullivan.substack.com

An unstudied impression: Donald Trump is like a shark, in that he must always swim forward or risk suffocation. He, his administration and the media ecosystem that has grown up around Trump’s political persona depends upon action and controversy. In fallow news cycles, Trump steadily loses the initiative and two things happen: First, the media establishment and the leftist activist machine begin gathering their own critical momentum. Second, the vast MAGA-adjacent social media sphere must turn to other controversies to keep the clicks and the ad revenue flowing. Both of these work against the forty-seventh president and his purposes.

Since Trump’s initial barrage of executive orders has subsided, the media cycle has therefore lurched from one moment of hysteria and excitement to the next. Each new controversy totally eclipses the last. Hardly anybody remembers or talks about Nicolás Maduro any longer; the twin Minneapolis ICE shootings and associated protests, too, have faded. What were hailed as pivotal events which would finally discredit Trump’s programme this time look, in retrospect, like passing trivialities – not necessarily because they didn’t matter, but because sustained attention in this crazy messaging environment is impossible.

And on Trump’s pimp-handed dealings with the NATO allies:

Trump and NATO: Much of Trump’s MAGA base remains firmly isolationist and demands that the United States abandon the NATO alliance. Trump himself knows this and he has periodically questioned the utility of NATO. Formally, however, Trump’s administration stands behind the alliance, as anyone can see from reading the 2026 National Defense Strategy and the 2025 National Security Strategy. Yes, Trump wants European countries to increase defence spending. Yes, he still hopes to complete a strategic pivot away from Europe towards China. And yes, in the longer term, he probably nurtures ambitions of reducing the importance of NATO in favour of separate bilateral agreements with various European states. Such arrangements would also provide a lever for present and future administrations to disrupt the various policies and initiatives of the European Union, which Trump clearly despises and which at least as presently constructed amounts to a suicide pact for all of us on the Continent. These populist pressures and future ambitions, together with a general distrust and legitimate scorn for Eurocrat elites, seem to be why NATO periodically fades from Trump’s favour, although never for very long. All of this is to say that I really don’t think Trump’s January bluster was a mere Art-of-the-Deal negotiating tactic, but a reflection of real tensions and contradictions within Trumpism.

Trump and Europe: Here again, we see two competing tendencies. Generally, the Trump administration has followed a sly strategy of pursuing ties with the more or less aligned and presently ascendant populist-right movements of Europe. The Trump administration has also defended our rights to free speech, particularly on social media; relentlessly attacked our insane energy transition; and criticised our elites for their failure (or refusal) to stop mass migration. The purpose of these efforts is to isolate the Eurotards by fertilising the hostile populism that is growing ominously just beneath their double chins. If you are wondering why Trump bothers with this, I refer you to my previous paragraph: Sympathetic governments in key European states, joined to the United States, would be a means of sidelining the European Union and remaking Atlanticism in Trump’s image.

Exactly how to help the populist right into power is a much harder nut to crack. Expressing overt support for parties like Alternative für Deutschland can hurt more than it helps, and the Americans don’t have more direct means of influencing domestic politics over here. At the very least, this a long-term project requiring tactics and strategies we have yet to explore, and probably some institutions we have yet to create.

Update, 11 February: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

Heightening tensions in the Indian Ocean

Filed under: Britain, China, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

On Substack, Fergus Mason updates us on what’s happening around the UK/US military base on Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean:

Diego Garcia

One of the great mysteries of Keir Starmer’s government is why he’s so determined to give the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which is 1,200 miles away and has never owned them. Even now, as he desperately fights for his political survival, Starmer is pushing ahead with plans to give away the strategic archipelago then pay tens of billions of pounds to lease back one of the islands. It’s an odd thing to be so focused on — but whether his compulsion to surrender the islands is driven by corruption or naivete, it’s sending out signals of weakness. And those signals are being noticed.

The Maldives Makes A Grab

Last Thursday the Republic of Maldives announced that it had rejected the UN International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea’s ruling on its maritime boundaries, and sent an armed boat to carry out a “special surveillance operation” in the northern part of the Chagos island’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The Chagos EEZ is claimed by Mauritius, but of course actually belongs to Britain until Starmer’s surrender deal is approved by Parliament. However, the Maldivian government has now decided to make its own claim on the area — and it’s very publicly doing something about it. The “coast guard vessel” CGS Dharumavantha — a former Turkish Navy fast attack craft — is now operating in the area, along with drones from the Maldives National Defence Force Air Corps.

Of course, the Maldives has no real claim to the Chagos islands or any part of their waters. The country — a tiny group of islands southwest of Sri Lanka, with a land area of just 115 square miles — was a British crown colony from 1796 to 1953, and a British protectorate until 1965. Like Mauritius, it has never owned the Chagos Islands. However, it’s just 300 miles away from them, much closer than Mauritius. It appears that its leader, President Mohamed Muizzi, has decided that if the key British territory is up for grabs the Maldives should be the ones to grab it. It’s true the Maldives doesn’t have much of a navy, but then Mauritius doesn’t have much of a navy either and is a lot further away. If the Maldives can seize control over part of the extremely valuable Chagos Marine Protected Area (MPA), and even possibly some of the northern islands, there isn’t a lot Mauritius can do about it.

Why would the Maldives be so keen to seize part of the Chagos EEZ? That one’s simple. Under British protection, the Chagos MPA (which is the largest marine nature reserve in the entire world) has been officially off limits to commercial fishing since 2010 but, in practice, has barely been fished at all since 1968. This makes it a unique and potentially lucrative resource in the Indian Ocean region, which has seen its ecosystems devastated by destructive fishing methods. The wealth of the MPA is the main reason Mauritius wants the Chagos islands. Its own coastal waters have been blighted by overfishing, including the destruction of coral reefs by explosives and bleach injection, and now it wants to plunder the MPA. The Maldives is also busily engaged in destroying its own fish stocks (fishing is the country’s largest industry and employs half the population) and is desperate for new waters to pillage. They don’t just want access for their own boats, either. Like Mauritius, the Maldives under Muizzi’s rule is an increasingly close ally of China.

The Scourge Of The Seas

China has the world’s largest fishing fleet, and it’s not even close. Over 44% of all commercial fishing is carried out by Chinese boats — and they’re notorious for flouting international law. Chinese boats regularly change their names and disable their satellite tracking systems to conceal their identity, then fish illegally in other countries’ waters. They violate quotas, catch protected species and strip whole swathes of ocean clean of any life much larger than plankton with massive, indiscriminate drift nets. Chinese fishing boats have also been implicated in people trafficking, drug smuggling and acting as spying and covert action platforms for the Chinese navy.

If either Mauritius or the Maldives gain control of the Chagos MPA it’s a certainty they will immediately give Chinese boats access, and this priceless nature reserve will rapidly be trawled and drift-netted into a barren, lifeless wasteland. From China’s point of view, of course, it doesn’t matter which of their lackeys takes over the Chagos islands as long as one of them does, so don’t expect them to step in to help Mauritius. They don’t care who they get the fishing rights from.

February 9, 2026

Jamil Jivani on his trip to Washington DC

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

If you depend on the CBC, the Toronto Star or other legacy Canadian media, if you heard anything at all about Bowmanville-Oshawa North MP Jamil Jivani’s visit to key American leaders in Washington DC, you probably got the story framed as Liberals tut-tutting and disapproving of Jivani, his initiative to make the trip, and how he should leave everything to the government. If nothing else, it further proved that Prime Minister Carney doesn’t actually want better relations with the US, as his entire campaign was based on opposition to Trump and its success in riling up Canadian boomers with the moronic eLbOwS uP nonsense.

In the National Post Jivani discusses the trip and what he’s learned from it:

Image from Melanie in Saskatchewan

It was a whirlwind of a trip, full of excellent conversations. I had meetings with the White House and State Department, including conversations with President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Senators from Montana, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as the United States Trade Representative, each sat down with me to share their priorities. Businesses and industries employing thousands of Canadians shared their insights with me on where Canada-U.S. trade fits into their vision for economic growth.

Doors were open for dialogue about how Canada and the U.S. can work together at a time when pessimism gets most of the media attention. Certainly, my 15-year friendship with the vice-president played a key role in opening those doors. But what I found across the board was optimism about how we can move trade negotiations forward. I was particularly happy to hear key insights on how we can make progress on specific sectoral priorities, and the importance of strategic diplomacy. I offered my perspective on why CUSMA is so important to communities like mine in Bowmanville—Oshawa North, and I expressed my hope that CUSMA will continue to ensure Canada and the U.S. both benefit from a special economic and security relationship.

There is only so much I can share without first having the chance to speak with Prime Minister Mark Carney and Minister Dominic LeBlanc. Out of respect for their unique responsibilities in negotiating trade with the United States, it’s important that I debrief them before saying too much publicly and see how we can work together moving forward as Conservatives and Liberals.

However, I do want to point out a key observation related to the need for strategic diplomacy. Mexico — the third partner in our trilateral trade agreement with the U.S. — is further ahead in its engagement with the U.S. than Canada is. On Jan. 28, 2026, Mexico and the U.S. announced formal talks on CUSMA reforms. A week later, Mexico and the U.S. announced a joint action plan for critical minerals. Neither of these announcements included Canada.

Observers of this news would be right to worry that the current Canadian government may be making similar mistakes as were made under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the 2017 CUSMA negotiations. At that time, Mexico advanced its negotiations with the U.S. while Canada was largely left out of the process. It was only at the last minute, when a bilateral agreement between Mexico and the US was a real possibility, that Canada was included and our unique trilateral arrangement continued.

It would be a mistake to relive 2017 all over again, if for no other reason than Canadian workers and businesses deserve to have full representation in a process that has such a significant impact on our economy. The workers at the GM plant in Oshawa deserve to know that their government did everything possible to protect their jobs and encourage investment in their industry. All Canadians deserve to know that their elected officials are making the best effort possible to advance our national interests.

Full disclosure: Jamil Jivani is my Member of Parliament, and I fully support his decision to go and I hope that it actually does help make for improved trade relations between Canada and the United States. Bitterness and uncertainty only benefit the Liberal Party and Mark Carney, not ordinary Canadians. Attacking and criticizing Donald Trump plays well in our deranged and sycophantic media, but it makes Trump less willing to deal fairly with Canada on trade or other issues of critical importance to both nations.

The origins of the First Special Service Force (the “Devil’s Brigade”)

Filed under: Cancon, History, Italy, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Project ’44 has a nice introduction to the formation and organization of the joint US-Canadian First Special Service Force during the Second World War. The unit was featured in the 1968 movie The Devil’s Brigade, although many liberties were taken in the film’s portrayal of events:

Sgt. Pat O’Neill (Jeremy Slate) in the messhall scene in The Devil’s Brigade (1968).

In August 1942, a unit unlike any other in Canadian military history was formed. Today it is widely known by its nickname, the “Devil’s Brigade”, but officially it was designated the First Special Service Force (FSSF).

This unique formation was a joint Canadian–American unit born from the unconventional ideas of British scientist Geoffrey Pyke. Pyke envisioned a small, elite force operating deep behind German lines in occupied Norway, spreading disruption and chaos. Although this original concept was judged impractical, the decision was made to create the unit regardless.

FSSF patch from Project ’44

The combat element of the Force was composed of roughly equal numbers of Canadians and Americans, while the supporting echelon units were entirely American. Most Canadian subaltern officers were recruited almost directly from the Officer Training Centre in Brockville, and the majority of the Other Ranks were drawn from units across Canada. Some personnel were even selected directly from the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, much to the frustration of that unit’s chain of command.

The Force was commanded throughout its existence by American Lieutenant Colonel Robert Frederick. The initial Canadian second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel McQueen, was injured during parachute training and broke his ankle. Because of the limited time available for training, he was returned to his original unit and replaced by Canadian Lieutenant Colonel Williamson.

Orval Logan and Stuart Diamond demonstrate hand-to-hand combat
Photo by Paul Moore from Project ’44

Williamson served both as second-in-command of the FSSF and as Commanding Officer of the 2nd Canadian Parachute Battalion. This designation served as the administrative cover name for the Canadian component of the Force and was later changed to the 1st Canadian Special Service Battalion. This was not a tactical formation in the field, but rather an administrative structure created to manage Canadian personnel within the joint unit.

As a combined Canadian–American formation, personnel from both nations were distributed evenly throughout the Force. While its overall role and employment resembled that of a brigade, its internal organization followed American regimental doctrine. The Force consisted of three regiments. Whereas a standard American infantry regiment normally contained three battalions and approximately 3,000 soldiers, each regiment within the FSSF comprised only 32 officers and 385 Other Ranks, for a total authorized strength of 412 personnel.

Keeping Up with the Pattons

Filed under: History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Tank Museum
Published 10 Oct 2025

M46, M47, M48 and M60. They saw action in Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf and held the line in the Cold War. For almost 40 years the US produced a succession of good tanks — but they never seemed to be good enough for the top brass.

Time after time, designers sought a perfection that seemed to lay out of reach until the arrival of the step-changing M1 Abrams.

Up till then, you have what can be called “The Patton” family: a series of closely related tanks that are only intended to be temporary until the next big thing arrived …

This is the story of the “Patton” family of tanks; tanks that the US tried and failed to replace time after time, yet which despite this ended up becoming the armoured backbone of the Free World during the Cold War.

In this film, Tank Museum Historian, James Donaldson, walks us through the progression of US tanks from the M26 Pershing right up to the M1 Abrams. Commonly known as The Patton Family, this group of tanks were good… but never quite good enough. Always meant to be a stopgap, the Pattons persisted where their prospective replacements failed, leading them to become the vehicles that endured the Cold War around the globe.

00:00 | Introduction
00:58 | From Pershing to Patton
03:50 | Replacing the M46
06:25 | A Third Patton
10:01 | Yet Another Stopgap
12:44 | Irreplaceable?
(more…)

February 8, 2026

“Girlboss Gatekeeping” as an evolutionary strategy

Filed under: Economics, Education, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

John Carter linked to this essay on Substack, calling it “A young mother’s reflections on fertility collapse”:

It’s easy to get caught up in the achievement trap, isn’t it? There are times I catch myself catastrophizing and thinking things like if my son doesn’t get into the right elementary school, then he won’t get into the right high school, and then he won’t get into the right college, and then he won’t be able to get a good job and will end up giving hand jobs for crack behind a Walmart.

Even if time, effort, and expense don’t keep people from having children, narcissism certainly can. There was an article in Vogue a while back entitled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?“. The article was pretty silly, although it dominated internet chatter for a hot minute. Hiding your man is framed as solidarity with single women, but I think that it highlights just how commodified we all are now. When your brand is all about travel, Pilates, fancy cocktails, and mani-pedis, it’s hard to find space for motherhood in all of that. Yes, I know that there are “parenting influencers” as well, but they are not that common if we’re being honest.

Rob Henderson, another writer and podcaster whose content I thoroughly enjoy, posted an essay on this topic that had a novel take. Dr. Henderson writes about “Girlboss Gatekeeping“, where encouraging other women to forgo having children and focus on their careers may be an evolutionary strategy to keep the number of children low so that there are more resources available for one’s own. I can relate to this since when I was in college, everyone talked about what they wanted their careers to be, but it seemed almost verboten to mention starting a family.

Similarly, when I was in college, there was all this talk about how traditional family structure was inherently patriarchal and stifling towards women, and that we needed to move past or do away with marriage as an institution. The people who talked like this were college kids from upper-middle families who were raised by a married mother and father. This plays into another concept from Dr. Henderson called “luxury beliefs“. Basically, these are beliefs that confer status on the people that express them but actually would make things worse for the underprivileged if they were implemented.

I’ve come to realize that so many of the things that we were told or that I used to believe ended up being untrue. That people are born as a “blank slate”. That men and women are the same. That human beings, and by extension, societies are perfectible. That variation in outcomes must be the result of oppression.

If you had talked to me in college, I would have said that I had no interest in marriage or a family. I was all about my career. Things change, though. I met a guy, fell in love, got married, and soon enough, had a baby. I thought that dropping out of my PhD program would have felt more traumatic, but I actually didn’t stress about it all that much. I guess technically I’m on sabbatical, and I could go back eventually, but I probably won’t. I’ve come to realize that lack of ambition doesn’t make me a bad person. I simply have different priorities now. The fact that I’ll never have the word “doctor” in front of my name doesn’t sting that much.

I’m still a little sore from having that kid pulled out of me. The labor wasn’t that bad since I had an epidural, but after the anesthesia wore off, the pain is no joke. I can sit down normally now, but it took a while. Not that I’m whining. It’s just that pregnancy and childbirth can be difficult, and I think that, in all fairness, we need to acknowledge that.

I’m lucky in that my husband and I both have good jobs. Mine is quite flexible, and my boss has been very accommodating about me working from home and working part-time. Not that many people can say that. A brief return to the “girlboss gatekeeping” — I’m really glad my boss is a man. Indeed, I work in STEM, and the majority of people that I work with and in my field in general are men. Of course, things tend to get much shittier when women take them over.

A final thought on fertility has to do with the fact that for a significant portion of young women, it would be embarrassing to be a stay-at-home mom. Choosing motherhood many times means not choosing status. At least not in the way that current society defines it. If you’re wealthy and don’t have to work, then having lots of kids can be a flex, but most people aren’t in that situation. I don’t think that having working parents is bad for kids. In addition to my father working full time, my mother worked a full-time job throughout most of my childhood. It’s probably more important that kids grow up in an intact family with both a mother and a father in the household.

I don’t have any great ideas about how to reorient society and culture to raise fertility, and everyone has to choose their own path. I just figured I would share my own experiences.

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