🇺🇸🇨🇳🇷🇺 “The U.S. could find itself in a near-peer conflict with an adversary like China and Russia “tomorrow,” Air Force Secretary Kendall said in a livestreamed event—and the department is “not as [ready] as we could be, by a significant margin.”

- Air and Space Forces

🇺🇸🇪🇺🇺🇦 Slowly by slowly realism steps back in.

'The West must prepare for humiliation'

- Richard

🇺🇸🇪🇺🇺🇦 “Now, polls in both Europe and the US show public support for military aid to Kyiv dropping away, with one recent survey indicating that less than 50 per cent of Americans are in favour of additional funding. This at least partially reflects sluggish progress in Ukraine’s counter-offensive, which has seen only limited gains so far.

Western military analysts and the media built expectations that, this summer, Kyiv would repeat its striking victories of last autumn at Kharkiv and Kherson. Now, people are wondering how much bang they are getting for their buck, and whether the significant investment made by their countries will ever achieve anything concrete.”

- Telegraph

🇷🇺🇺🇦 The Lancet kamikaze UAV of the Dnepr Group destroys another 155-mm M777 howitzer in the Kherson direction.

🇰🇵🇷🇺 North Korea has officially confirmed Kim Jong-un's visit to Russia.

The leader of the DPRK traveled to our country on the famous armored train.

In Vladivostok he will meet with Putin, who arrived in the Far East by plane today.

The meeting is expected to seriously expand Russian-Korean economic and military-technical cooperation.

What interests us:

1. Ammunition and deployment of the North Korean military-industrial complex.
2. Development and strengthening of trade relations, as well as access to the North Korean domestic market.
3. North Korean pressure on South Korea to limit arms supplies to Europe in the interests of the war in Ukraine.

What interests them:

1. Admission of North Korean workers to work in the Far East.
2. Russia’s profanation of UN sanctions against the DPRK.
3. Access to modern military technologies.

For those who loved to make fun of North Korea, these are difficult times. The Juche Songun ideology is based on the principle of “self-reliant development.” For Russia, after acquiring full military-political and economic subjectivity, this is a more than urgent issue.

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Peskov said that at the moment there are no prospects for any negotiations on Ukraine.

It was also reported that there will be no place for Russia’s enemies in Russia.

Somewhat earlier, Medvedev called for the suspension of diplomatic relations with the European Union.

Note to witnesses of the "Freeze War in September" sect.

🇺🇸📉 Households’ net worth is contracting for the 4th time since 1990

At a time when credit card debt is above $1 trillion, the highest levels ever and credit card interest rates have soared above 20%. Consumers do not look to be in good shape.

- Game of Trades

🇺🇸🏡 Mortgage applications to buy a house are now lower than back during the post real estate recession GFC time period of 2009 to 2015.

- Wall Street Silver

🇺🇦 “We will not have a happy ending” (c) Zelensky.

🤡 Oh, what happened? They promised to go to Crimea in the summer.

🌐 Non-Western powers are already looking for alternative economic arrangements.

- UnHerd

🌐 With the Brics alliance growing, the West is waking up to the reality of a rapidly changing world.

- UnHerd

🇺🇸🇲🇽 Biden should take a closer look at Mexico’s democratic decline

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis recently outlined his vision for the U.S.-Mexico border, which included blocking Mexican ports and sending U.S. forces to Mexico to battle drug cartels. While DeSantis’ proposals are unrealistic, he has touched on a real problem: poor governance and the erosion of democracy under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

This is contributing to a rise in drug trafficking and uncontrolled migration that is being felt throughout the United States. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is taking the short-sighted approach of waiting out López Obrador’s presidency.

📎 Dallas Morning News

🇺🇸🇲🇽 A War in Mexico would mean War in America

The Global Drug Trade is valued 200-300 billion per year the vast majority of which passes through the Central American Cartels… If they capture merely 1/3-1/2 of that that’s more than the value of all foreign Aid to Ukraine since the start of the war… And they do that every year.

This is in addition to all the money the Cartels receive from protection rackets they run, the cartelization of other industries they’ve affected (every avocado you buy is significantly overpriced thanks to their schemes), and the massive amount of money they and their associates bring in by effectively taking over and governing large swathes of Mexico, mostly under a Mexican Government coat of paint. US Northern Command estimates 30-35% of Mexico is effectively ungoverned, ie. Cartel Governed… that’s an area the size of Texas and a population comparable to Iraq.

A US intervention against the Mexican Cartels would be taking on organized forces that have been under arms longer than the Taliban, are better funded than Ukraine, Have a population and territory bigger than Saddam had in Iraq, and some of whom, as in the case of the Los Zetas Cartel, are themselves former Special Forces trained by American Green Berets.

- Anarchonomicon

🇺🇸🇲🇽 A convoy of vehicles crossing into Mexico from the US was attacked by armed civilians early Saturday, and nine people, including American citizens, were wounded with gunshots.

- Bloomberg