> “A more equal spread of the gold supply between North America, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. also helps to spread the risk.”
They’re not exiting all the gold held in North America; instead they’re rebalancing so that for more resilience against a backdrop of increased geopolitical risk.
European countries aren’t worried that China will conquer the U.S. and they’d lose access to their gold because a hostile Chinese government controls it.
The increased risk is that the U.S. was considered basically risk free for allies, and now the U.S. isn’t considered risk free anymore and allied status is also at risk.
No, but "removing" around half of it from one place is quite a bit. Though I doubt any single physical kg ever moved more than a few meters to the buying countries vault. edit: They physically moved 27 tons, the rest was traded away and bought again in London.
If they sell enough of it in the US and buy enough in London, traders who take the other side of that position will physically move it to London.
That's exactly the service the commodities markets provide: they will absorb a small trade without anyone incurring the costs of shipping precious metals, and they know who to call to get it shipped once there's enough supply/demand imbalance to make shipping it worthwhile.
In times of crisis it can be physically moved, e.g. under threat of Nazi invasion in 1939-1940 the UK physically moved over 1,500 tonnes of gold from London to Canada ("the largest known movement of physical wealth in history"[0]), and infamously at the start of the Spanish Civil War the Spanish physically moved 510 tonnes of gold from Spain to the Soviet Union (never to see it again[1]).
That's the fun thing about gold. It's literal gold, not numbers on a spreadsheet. Moving it really means moving it: bars are stamped and owned, and if the owner wants to move them, those bars need to get transported to wherever the owner says they should be.
It's also the idiotic thing about gold, a metal that has no more or less inherent monetary value than a fiat currency =)
Currency is inherently about trust: you believe it can be traded later for goods. The mechanism with fiat is that you need to trust your state and government.
In gold, you trust that everyone is believing gold has value. And that it is commmon knowledge (in the logic sense [0])
Saying that gold has no more or less inherent monetary value than fiat currency assuming a magic wand that can change a large percentage of people's belief.
gold has quite the inherent value - no oxygen reaction (all electronics) and partly jewelry.
if the gold has cheaper would be used quite alot due to being the only metal not oxidizing (the other one being platinum which is even rarer and comes from the same ore source)
I agree, the price of gold depends on demand like everything else. Although gold just has some inherent utility value in addition to scarcity that makes it less likely for the price to go to zero, other stuff like cryptocurrency have only scarcity and can go to zero much more easily.
That is the non idiotic thing about gold, since it is not fiat, is not easy to produce, and it is easy to verify, it can be used as a currency in less stable times/places. It’s a redundancy. Perhaps bitcoin satisfies many of these properties without the high costs to secure and move gold, but it needs electricity and a network?
It's a hedge against the risk of the current government. Leaving a bunch here is part of the hedge. It's not as "multifaceted" as you're making it out to be.
The Dutch are pretty direct but not to Donald Trump, who has a famously thin skin and can cause a huge European crisis with a single tweet.
You have to see all European diplomacy through that lens. Everybody’s tiptoeing around the orange idiot’s feelings and meanwhile working hard to make sure we’re never again so dependent on a country that’s so untrustworthy. This gold move is one of the many little steps taken in that direction.
Considering the Netherlands’ strategic ties with the US, this sounds like quite a bold move. France doing so was one thing, but the Dutchs have always been rather Atlanticists.
One of the crazier ideas to address the deficit is revaluing gold reserves and throwing them at the deficit. Does anyone really think the Trump admin wouldn't consider seizing foreign gold reserves as part of such a move?
I know that instinctively sounds crazy, but this administration attacked Iran without a plan for their closing the Strait of Hormuz, and tariffed uninhabited islands based on an AI-generated list.
They're rational, but they're aggressive and dumb. Treat them as you would treat a guy who starts bar fights; one strategy is quietly moving to the far side of the bar, which is what this appears to be.
This shows how much trust in the US has declined due to Trump. Netherlands is not the only or first country to do this, other countries have started this too.
No it's not simple to call "he" did this. WH people, half? of the country supporting him for 2nd time, and wealthy people that donated so much too, it's never "he". Nothing big like that is one persons responsibility. Actions have cons. ?
All elected and supported, especially AFTER how he and his supports lead the so many extra deaths in covid. I know your media does not bring facts but truth is out there.
That's reasonable enough, but you have to consider it in the context that we don't vote for president, we vote for state electors to vote for president.
If you live in a 'safe' state, tacitly agreeing with your state's electors doesn't mean tacitly agreeing with the electoral college result.
If you can’t be bothered to make your disapproval seen at least once every 4 years, then I consider it a tacit approval. So that actually makes 2/3 of Americans in support of Trump’s brand of America.
I disagree with your take. You have the right to not vote when you disagree with all parties running.
In fact, from a moral point of view voting for the lesser evil is highly objectionable because you are voting for someone who you do not even support just so that another person you support even less does not get elected.
Its perfectly fine to say, I don't agree with either and I am going to sit this one out otherwise you end up in weird political dynamics that you can see playing out in real time in France for example.
If your political system does not present you with a candidate that aligns with your interests or beliefs, you should vote to change the political system. Not voting is consent to the status quo.
Not voting is simply not making a choice. If the choices presented do not align with my preferences then I do not vote. Why would I vote for someone who I don't support? I don't pick the candidates that are offered. Want me to vote? Then get better candidates next time! Until then I will exercise my right to not vote.
Your status quo also assume that either one or both candidates are presenting you with potential change to what has happened in the past whereas most of the time, the choices are simply a continuation of what has been happening aka tinkering on the margins without pissing too many people off.
I think purposely spoiling your ballot is a better signal to the parties that none of them are acceptable. Is that possible in your elections? Around here, a spoiled ballot is scrutinized by the party observers, so your message would definitely be heard.
I'd love to see a ballot with ranked choice voting that includes a none of the above option.
This! I get frustrated when i hear folks in the US claim Trump has failed them. You failed yourselves. The system is falling apart and barely half of people turn up to participate in elections? What are the rest of us expected to take away from this? Apathy is what I take away from it, and that does not earn my trust.
The legend about the sole man in charge has been carefully crafted and cultivated for ages, but it's never the puppet and always puppet masters in this clown show.
Sadly, the way people vote is more complicated than you might believe. Trump is the symptom of malfunctioning system that doesn't give people good options in the ballot box.
I'll say something controversial: Clinton and Harris were both better options than the guy who started his campaign mocking a reporter's disability. If voters had any sense it should've ended right there.
The rationalizing, the "corrupt DNC" arguments and everything else is a cop-out.
Here's a real controversial opinion: If Clinton had won, the eventual backlash would be much greater and have elected a far more odious figure than Trump. America is lucky that Trump is kind of a bumbling oaf that channeled populist rage.
Disagree. Trump has done way more damage than Clinton ever could have. The backlash would’ve been similar to post Obama cuz the racists are also the sexists.
That kind of normalises Trump, which is totally the wrong thing to do. You should not accept this as fact, nor should you tolerate this current regime. Doing so without protest is the biggest problem you have. Your defeatism is a self fulfilling prophecy.
That explains how he got almost half the votes on election night, but it does not explain the 1/3 that still to this day support him 100%. There is a pretty substantial underlying problem in play and Trump is the symptom, but the problem is deeper than a malfunctioning political system.
That explains how he got the votes on election night in 2016. A vote for Grump in 2016 was completely understandable. But he should have plainly been a one term president, after his abjectly terrible handling of Covid (for starters, we needed leadership rather than dividership). But unfortunately in our upside-down world, Covid actually handed Grump a big excuse for why his first term was such an exercise in failure. And if there is one thing Grump is good at, it's weaseling responsibility onto others - a quality that his followers greatly admire as it soothes their own consciences as well.
> if there is one thing Grump is good at, it's weaseling responsibility onto others
That is true, I struggle to think of a single time he has taken responsibility for anything. But it works, his supporters actually believe that he is infallible and just can't get competent help. Or it's the deep state. Or something.
It is almost unheard of in the US for an elected politician to poll lower than 30%, it seems to be a floor. This is for both parties, and all sorts of terrible behavior.
> almost unheard of in the US for an elected politician to poll lower than 30%, it seems to be a floor
Alan Keyes apparently set the floor at 27%, which is not far below 30%
> Obama vs. Alan Keyes. ... Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement.
- being a last minute insert when Jack Ryan was caught in a sex scandal (who was already fighting an uphill battle with sharing a last name with the corrupt former governor)
- being a carpetbagger (he didn't live in Illinois at any point until running for senate)
- running as a hard-line social conservative in a state where the GOP is torn between appealing to suburban Chicago fiscal conservatives and downstate Illinois social conservatives
I disagree not because "brainwashed MAGA crowd" but because people saying "it can't be worse" are almost always wrong. Unless you're starving in the ruins of your house in one of the world's war zones, in which case you're likely focussed on survival, not saying that.
Pick any of the leader's third-rate third-tier henchmen or failsons for example of a worse option. Don't dismiss it out of hand.
People in the UK voted for Brexit because "well it can't be worse, can it?" They were suckers.
>> People in the UK voted for Brexit because "well it can't be worse, can it?" They were suckers.
I don't think that's true it all. They were promised that it would be better and sold pretty obvious lies. Same applies to Trump. Unfortunately the intelligence of the average voter is now at the bottom of the barrel and I wouldn't expect that to improve soon. Just look at the support people like Andrew Tate get among young people.
I am not sure why you are being downvoted, because IMHO you are correct.
If Trump was an isolated incident, sure, but he is not. In Europe the far-right and far-left parties are rising in many countries and the traditional parties are crumbling.
I think there is a serious lack of trust in the institutions and in the politicians that is spreading around the world at a quick pace and many people are just fed up with the status-quo that has been in place since the fall of the USSR.
People want change, not small marginal tinkering on the edges, they want to see that things move decisively in one way or the other and they are not afraid to flip the table and see what happens.
Technically, he campaigned on not starting new wars... so he's doing the worst combination of what he said he would do, AND what he said he wouldn't do. Amazing!
When he ran, did he say that he'd make tariff rates bounce around like a kangaroo on speed? No, I don't think he did.
Did he say that he'd threaten to annex Canada and Greenland? Not that I recall.
Did he say that he'd start a war with Iran? No, I'm pretty sure he said "No new wars."
Look, he's a loose cannon. Everyone who voted for him should have known that. But no, he's not doing "exactly what he said he would do when he ran". Some of what he's doing is what he said, and some is completely contradictory to what he said.
(Credit where due: I stole the "kangaroo on speed" line from an unpublished short story. Don't remember the author, or I'd give them credit by name.)
So what? None of this is a surprise at all, if his voters fell for his "president of peace" bit then thats on them, at minimum they KNEW they were voting for a loose cannon who had no morals, cared about himself, insulted everyone around him, had terrible monetary and international policy... He bank rupted CASINOS for gods sake. They had every sign the 2nd time around, anyone who voted for him and regrets it now mainly does so because his bad choices are now personally affecting them lets not get it twisted. They were all happy as long as "others" got owned and not them
> Anyone can be held accountable for things they are responsible for, the question is how they'll react to being held thusly.
Voters are responsible for selecting representatives, but they are not responsible for running things and making the kinds of decisions that elected officials need to and do make.
> If they could have known or suspected those things, then yes, they bear the responsibility.
In a situation like this, I like to do a thought experiment where I replace "Trump" with "Republican voter" in a headline or a story to see whether that idea holds up.
If you vote for a man that thinks he can "grab women by the pussy" because he's famous, and then you vote for him AGAIN, you should be held accountable for everything he does. It's patently obvious he's an absolutely awful person and completely untrustworthy.
He opened the door, and I find it very, very unlikely that either side will close it after this. Dems and Reps will both use this to take control in ways that would have been unthinkable prior to Trump's first election. The only way to restore any measure of that trust would be to pass laws that prevent this kind of abuse, and there's no way that politicians will give up power they've gained.
They had the laws to stop him but since congress stopped legislating, it gave the supreme courts wide discretion to approve executive actions. Strong executive isn’t a flaw of the system, it’s the inevitable consequence of years of media illiteracy and vast sums of money in politics enabled by citizens united.
Passed laws don't seem very constraining. Between simple disregard and disregard plus eventual compliance after lengthy court review, there's a lot of time spent under unlawful orders and regulations. There's no personal liability for (most?) of these unlawful actions and Trump doesn't seem to care about continuity of government or having a legacy of doing unlawful things.
Impeachment could be a check on his power, but impeachment is a kangaroo court with a political jury, so he would need to piss off a lot more Republican senators than he has.
A few presidental impeachments over unlawful acts ending in conviction would change future behavior. But it seems unlikely that we'll get there.
The ideal would be that a new president is elected who uses current powers to reverse/rebuild what Trump has torn down and have their "one big bill" that Congress seems to pull off per president be a reforms package that locks in additional checks and legislative powers against the Executive. The Unitary Executive theory is the most dangerous attack on our Constitution in a long time.
On the other hand, a right-wing Supreme Court may try to block any reforms that check the Executive. The Legislature's ultimate oversight power of the Exec is impeachment, and they have decided that no amount of corruption or crime or destruction should be checked as long as it "feels right".
Trust in the US started to decline dating back in the Obama era when they listened to Merkel's phone etc. Trump has finally eroded what was left of it. Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe are still trying to keep a good relationship with thd US regardless, because they don't want to lose US support due to Trump's whims… err transactional diplomacy.
The sociopathic criminals who dominate American business and politics are the cause of the kleptocracy; plus the tens of millions of citizens indoctrinated with mental illness from their disinformation and psychological warfare.
None of this should be a surprise to you if you've ever watched Fox News and derivatives; propaganda so on the nose it would make a nazi blush.
It may be quirky for Americans to hear this, but one pivotal moment when it truly dawned on the average european citizen how corrupt the US has become, was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup. Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted. Any toddler could see how wrong it was and it was felt deeply in many hearts.
Needless to say trust is close to 0% throughout the population - even the right wing populists distance themselves from Trump - and this is the consequence. I fear we are heading into dangerous times.
One example to illustrate: when talking about dying, Americans would kick the bucket, Poles would kick the calendar, French would break the pipe, Germans would drop the spoon, and the Spanish would pull the leather. But they all would be referring to the US's trust among its allies.
In the US "Could care less" is the equivalent to the British expression "Couldn't care less". The intention and meaning is the same. So the original comment did mean to say what they said.
My point was that what may look like a mistake or a contradiction is just cultural development of natural language.
Another example is the British expression "It would be cheap at half the price"
I think you misunderstood the emphasis there - yes Europeans love football.
The point is that it's so blatant for such little gain, it's still a game. I.e. if he is willing to do that so openly for such low stakes, imagine what he does behind closed doors when it matters.
> Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted.... was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup.
FIFA, a largely European organization created by Europeans for a sport that Americans barely care about and in the center of multiple corruption scandals and controversies over the last few decades and you're really going to sit here and try to tell others that the real wakeup call was when Trump made a phone call to ask that a star player who by many respects shouldn't have received a red card over at best a technicality in the first place be reinstated for the good of sport and competition...?
And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
I guess Donald Trump's phone call was the real last straw, and something like, idk, 6,500 migrant workers in Qatar dying to construct World Cup facilities is just another day at the anti-corruption office? [1]
There is a big difference between some sports association being greedy/unethical and elected officials abusing their position of power (especially when they sit in the highest positions and there are zero consequences).
Right, its just we all lose respect and we're real mad when Donald Trump makes a phone call about something that, well you know frankly the American public agreed with, and we don't lose respect or whatever and we're not outraged when that same extremely corrupt organization continues to do greedy, unethical, and corrupt things.
It's astounding that European governments would never do corrupt things. Totally never. And if they did, sorry they only draw the line at influencing FIFA.
Jeez dude. If you have a point to make, just make it. This weird sarcasm is borderline unreadable.
Anyway, everyone agrees with you that FIFA is a corrupt cesspool. The fact that Trump found a corrupt counterparty does not make his open and blatant corruption any less, well, corrupt.
The point here is that if he’s openly abusing his power for something so trivial, what is he doing behind closed doors?
Sorry my point wasn't clear. Let me state if plainly: the OP's comments and points about corruption and Vladimir Putin and Xi Kingpin somehow wouldn't stoop to this level of corruption are fucking stupid.
Yes, exactly that. And precisedly for that reason.
FIFA was corrupt. Infantino took it on another level, making it massively more corrupt then before. Then he created a peace price which combined corruption with astonishing lack of self respect and mockery.
And then Trump called over the red card, which contrasted with everything before as yes another never seen before level of corruption.
But second, FIFA is not an European institution. It is worldwide org and non European members are large contributors to the corruption. The middle east and afrikan members do like it corrupt, it suits their political goals.
> And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
Honestly, it even seems so. Trying to directly influence a soccer match, publically changing rules while not even understanding them is a new level.
Moreover, there is no reason to think Trump is less corrupt then Putin or Xi. If anything, he is equally or more corrupt.
A better way to think about it is imagine that FIFA is a massive, roaring inferno of corruption and Europeans are ignoring it and then Donald Trump walks by and tosses a Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno and it grows every so slightly and now all of a sudden everyone is concerned. Sorry don't care. Most Americans agreed with him doing that as well since the foul was stupid.
There are things worthwhile criticizing folks for. Donald Trump is corrupt. So is FIFA. So are numerous European countries and organizations. But equating Trump making this phone call to "some unheard level that Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin wouldn't dream of attempting" is absolutely absurd sensationalism that is, frankly, anti-intellectual, dishonest, and only serves to instigate flame wars and other such nonsense.
He did not threw "Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno". He shit on it and took a video of the shit and then threw a grenade on thr said shit. The peace prize would be the "Mcdonalds wrapper". The red card thing was huge additional escalation.
The corruption about who gets the championship and who rips of who is bad. Changing outcomes is entirely different thing.
> But equating Trump making this phone call to "some unheard level that Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin wouldn't dream of attempting" is absolutely absurd sensationalism
Neither Putin nor Xi would do that phone call. Nor would they proudly brag about making such phone call. That is fairly safe guess.
It is not sensationalism. That is just safe guess based on those people previous publically known actions.
To add to this, because I think it is important context for Americans who may not be aware, football is seen very officially by many European nations and national governments as a cultural counterpart to many international treaties within Europe that were born out of the desire to bring our respective cultures closer together after the second world war.
It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
It is so important, that there are articles written about its importance on EU institutes websites. For example, this one reflects on Footballs importance in relation to the First, Second and Cold wars. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/alerts/european-footb...
To see Trump so flagrantly manipulate it sends a cultural signal that is hard for those outside of Europe to see, and that by some can be seen as the cultural equivalent of the political threats Trump has made against NATO.
At this point, your average European Trump supporter/right wing populist needs only reminding of Trumps interference to get a complete positional change - that's how bad it is.
> It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
Sports is peak diversion from real issues, Whether Europe, US or India and so on. The countries can go to hell, people can drown in endless real problems. But if people can be smothered with sport entertainment so they ignore real things whats better than that.
In India whole country can become absolute crap. Worst on any social, economic indicator but as long free cricket broadcast is on TV and mobile, life is good.
Another interesting aspect to this story is the flow of value from US Treasuries to gold.
Total gold held by central banks globally was valued at approximately $4tr at
the start of 2026, surpassing, for the first time, the roughly $3.9tr in US
Treasuries held by the same institutions. This marked a reordering of reserve
asset preferences with significant long-term implications. [0]
Implications are on the treasury side. Without treasury buyers the US dollar collapses or hyperinflates or the US government is bankrupt or some other widespread system failure, in any case the entire US economy falls apart without treasury buyers. But these things move slowly.
> It is not in their interest to save the federal government, US dollar, or the economy.
I think "save" is not even in the room with us; they seem to be actively harming every industry: farming, food, oil, electronics, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. It's a full on assault.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but in this case we're dealing with malicious actors and it's apparent these are malicious actions. DOGE was just the first step.
At first I thought they were trying to establish something that looked closer to Russia, where they can make life just hard enough for them to keep accumulating wealth indefinitely. Now I'm worried they're going for something that resembles Africa's poorest nations, where we fight amongst ourselves over resources that are increasingly constrained.
Stated in another article it said the reason is it cannot be used as a bargaining chip during trade disputes. They specifically mentioned it would likely be more difficult to use in emergency situations when located in North America (without mentioning specific reasons).
Well, one of their near neighbouring countries is currently worried about Trump stealing their territory, and he's made threats to annex Canada too, so it's not exactly an unreasonable fear.
Just in time before major European continental war begin. Strategic move.
For the context : German airport was officially attacked by Russia . And that’s only one of many incidents. UK is on the radar of official Russian hawks for a very long time
More a vs. US strategy than a vs. Russia strategy.
Russia has been weird for a long time, they are doing sub-threshold-of-war attacks for a while now.
But the USA? Outright threatening allies, talking about annexing some of them, making more threats against other allies who make moves to defend those allies? And he's got a known love for gold, started wars without bothering to inform allies he's now trying to punish for failing to provide help that he told them he didn't even want.
Yeah russia has been waging war against the west basically since putin came into power. That paranoid kgb fuck sees anything free as direct threat to their model of how to run a dictatorship and very much a personal threat on top of that (he may not be completely wrong given how proactive cia has been and their general methods of subversion). Divide and conquer, subvert EU and produce infighting on some emotional topics with ideal goal of breakup to pick countries one by one, subvert US to focus more inward and stop policing the world, ideally weaking it long term.
This is nothing new for anybody interested in the topic, its all very open and public (which is kind of the point I guess to manipulate public perception too). Every single secret service know this as 101 reality. In same way ie war in Ukraine started in 2014 in all measurable ways, not 2022.
US part... well its painful to watch, especially the incompetence or elephant-in-porcelain-shop part, of a shop that took many decades to build. But its good long term for Europe and rest of west - we became uber weak and over-reliant on US bases, their tech and power projection, and even if its 2026, influence not backed by real power means very little in actual world out there. Be provably strong or vanish seems to be mantra. Its smart to adapt to reality rather than expect the world to rearrange itself to some idealistic wishful thinking, however nice it may feel and however well it may have worked during easy peaceful times.
Thinking that there's a major continental war about to begin is exactly what Russia wants people to think and what they push through their propaganda machine. It's also good for some governments, because then nobody questions military spending. Poland just bought 96 Apache assault helicopters for 10B USD. It takes just 1M USD in drones to take them down, just to show how absurd show of loyalty to US that deal was.
There's issues with defending the east flank. Namely, without taking full control of the Baltic Sea, Baltic States and Finland will run out of provisions in weeks.
Here we go again... Finland and the Baltics are "the East flank" when Russia and Germany want to go to war again. Excellent and fun battle fields for them, without a doubt. Far away from important regions and important people.
That was a rather obvious false flag attempt, presumably from Ukraine. It was a weaponized drone, the first that would have been directly used against NATO, that was found just outside a Ukrainian plane and by amazing coincidence just sat there instead of detonating.
When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
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That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories and other things that have been going boom, but it's always going to be done with plausible deniability - sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia, and the like. They're not going to just start bombing planes in airports with drones.
Wow. This post serves as a great example on how propaganda can brainwash people brain. Sure , Ukraine whose survival solely depends on EU, plans a false flag attempt . To achieve what ? Russia openly attacked territory of eu with drones , infiltration, poison operations , not to mention Slovakia , Orban etc . What is there to prove for Ukraine ???
Ukraine is, in the most positive framing - in a war of attrition that isn't going well. They want greater involvement, ideally much more directly, from NATO countries. And Germany is certainly going to be happy to play along because the AfD is quickly becoming the largest single party in that country. They are Euroskeptical and against continuing the war with Russia. A direct Russian attack on Germany would likely undermine the AfD's growing support.
But since I've been brainwashed by propaganda, perhaps you can enlighten me on what benefits you believe Russia would see for themselves in deciding to directly attack a NATO country in a way that would lack any plausible deniability. In particular you need to come up with some sort of argument here for how they might see this as viably resulting in an improved positioning for themselves.
Yeah and that’s exactly what add happily picked up as any MAGA clone eg Afd,FvD, Orban etc . Populism , echo different voices . In this case :
Ukriane is dragging us into war . Russia openly warm up this agenda by softly attacking Poland , Romania , other areas. Mixed with nord stream and other similar voices .
Under different angle they will tell this is Ukraine’s false flag attempt … oh evil ukriane , these bastards who try to survive how dare they are
Anyways still 0 political win , only losses . Current German government can’t defend themself and start talking NATO , that is again very unpopular among maga-Germans , since they hate USA
After observing the talk as opposed to the actions of Meloni and Trump, I would bet that the AfD would continue the war as is.
Weidel would make a "Notwendige Politikwende" speech and that's it. They'll then cut social services and enact pro-business laws and make some noise about immigration until ordered by the industry to allow it.
I don't think the fear in most politics is about the actions of the 'newcomers', but about potential of the old guard losing power. In the US if a third party started looking like a real threat, Rs and Ds would 100% come together to frame them as the greatest threat of humanity to ever exist, exactly as happened with Perot even in the age before hyper hyperbole.
Like you alluded to Meloni went from end of the world to business as usual in remarkably short order, and the same could viably if not likely happen with AfD as well, but the bigger change behind the scenes there is that her party went from 2% in 2013, to leading Italy today - and that gain came at the expense of the loss of power by whatever the older establishment was in Italy.
> That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories
They're involved in all of them.
> sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia
This isn't a movie. They pay criminals to do criminal activity. They're not utilizing "sleeper agents" to burn down a building.
>When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
What does this even mean? Are you equating Ukraine with Iran and the Houthis?
Comparing that German airport "attack" by Russia to the 9/11 attack by Mr. bin Laden - would you say that all gold reserves should have been moved out of the USA back in 2001?
Looking at TFA, they are moving it to a venue where selling off the gold can happen quickly. This kind of thing was not necessary for the USA's approach to funding the War on Terror because we decided on a really innovative combo of Taking On Debt and also Just Not Accounting For Things which will surely have no consequence later on.
No, the German US lapdogs put out a statement that the drones in Leipzig “are known to us from other Russian hybrid operations and its war against Ukraine” and that they “pointed to a high degree of technical expertise”.
So high in fact that the operation malfunctioned. Precisely what a false flag would do.
The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
All that these stupid politics accomplish is that the AfD will have 35% in the next elections so Germany can enjoy Trump-like corruption and the industry can exploit people even more. At this point one wonders if the CDU is in on it and the AfD is secretly already part of the uniparty, public theater of forbidding the AfD notwithstanding.
A false flag attack would malfunction? Why not do damage to really up the reaction? Even after an explosion there's plenty of pieces left to investigate and figure out where the devices came from. Just throw some parts made in [insert target of false flag here] and you're all set.
> The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
What "oil rich" Baltic states are you referring to? Is the US going to takeover Norway?
Fun fact, France did exactly the same earlier this year (though the trend has been there for decades).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation#France
There were discussions in Germany to do the same, but I don’t think they followed up on it
France made an even a smarter move as it sold its reserves in the US and bought higher purity gold locally.
wow! that would have saved some shipping expenses ?
Nl sold some part as well
NI? Not Northern Ireland...
NL, Netherlands
> “A more equal spread of the gold supply between North America, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. also helps to spread the risk.”
They’re not exiting all the gold held in North America; instead they’re rebalancing so that for more resilience against a backdrop of increased geopolitical risk.
Yes, but it’s a very specific geopolitical risk.
European countries aren’t worried that China will conquer the U.S. and they’d lose access to their gold because a hostile Chinese government controls it.
The increased risk is that the U.S. was considered basically risk free for allies, and now the U.S. isn’t considered risk free anymore and allied status is also at risk.
To the extent this is the justification, why is Canada included?
In case the US takes over Canada, I guess. After all, we've already taken over Lake America.
No, but "removing" around half of it from one place is quite a bit. Though I doubt any single physical kg ever moved more than a few meters to the buying countries vault. edit: They physically moved 27 tons, the rest was traded away and bought again in London.
If they sell enough of it in the US and buy enough in London, traders who take the other side of that position will physically move it to London.
That's exactly the service the commodities markets provide: they will absorb a small trade without anyone incurring the costs of shipping precious metals, and they know who to call to get it shipped once there's enough supply/demand imbalance to make shipping it worthwhile.
In times of crisis it can be physically moved, e.g. under threat of Nazi invasion in 1939-1940 the UK physically moved over 1,500 tonnes of gold from London to Canada ("the largest known movement of physical wealth in history"[0]), and infamously at the start of the Spanish Civil War the Spanish physically moved 510 tonnes of gold from Spain to the Soviet Union (never to see it again[1]).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fish
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Gold_(Spain)
That's the fun thing about gold. It's literal gold, not numbers on a spreadsheet. Moving it really means moving it: bars are stamped and owned, and if the owner wants to move them, those bars need to get transported to wherever the owner says they should be.
It's also the idiotic thing about gold, a metal that has no more or less inherent monetary value than a fiat currency =)
Currency is inherently about trust: you believe it can be traded later for goods. The mechanism with fiat is that you need to trust your state and government.
In gold, you trust that everyone is believing gold has value. And that it is commmon knowledge (in the logic sense [0])
Saying that gold has no more or less inherent monetary value than fiat currency assuming a magic wand that can change a large percentage of people's belief.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic)
Ammunition and canned goods actually have inherent monetary value. While not being fiat currency.
gold has quite the inherent value - no oxygen reaction (all electronics) and partly jewelry.
if the gold has cheaper would be used quite alot due to being the only metal not oxidizing (the other one being platinum which is even rarer and comes from the same ore source)
>inherent monetary value
I agree, the price of gold depends on demand like everything else. Although gold just has some inherent utility value in addition to scarcity that makes it less likely for the price to go to zero, other stuff like cryptocurrency have only scarcity and can go to zero much more easily.
That is the non idiotic thing about gold, since it is not fiat, is not easy to produce, and it is easy to verify, it can be used as a currency in less stable times/places. It’s a redundancy. Perhaps bitcoin satisfies many of these properties without the high costs to secure and move gold, but it needs electricity and a network?
https://www.macrotrends.net/1335/dollar-vs-gold-comparison-l...
Gold is a fiat currency because it has no inherent value.
Can’t move what isn’t there
That is what the pamphlet says.
Fact is, it was not a issue before, because of trust.
"for more resilience against a backdrop of increased geopolitical risk." is just nice wording for "Trump is burning down all bridges".
> "for more resilience against a backdrop of increased geopolitical risk." is just nice wording for "Trump is burning down all bridges".
It is more multifaceted than that. To wit: they're leaving a substantial amount still in North America.
America's actions is a big part of it, but it isn't the only reason.
It's a hedge against the risk of the current government. Leaving a bunch here is part of the hedge. It's not as "multifaceted" as you're making it out to be.
Hey, I’m simply echoing what the Dutch government said. I’m taking them at face value since the Dutch are pretty direct.
The Dutch are pretty direct but not to Donald Trump, who has a famously thin skin and can cause a huge European crisis with a single tweet.
You have to see all European diplomacy through that lens. Everybody’s tiptoeing around the orange idiot’s feelings and meanwhile working hard to make sure we’re never again so dependent on a country that’s so untrustworthy. This gold move is one of the many little steps taken in that direction.
The US being that 'geopolitical risk'.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/06/bank-of-eng...
Considering the Netherlands’ strategic ties with the US, this sounds like quite a bold move. France doing so was one thing, but the Dutchs have always been rather Atlanticists.
For what it's worth, the Dutch Central Bank argues that this is simply because it'd be easier to sell in London in a crisis situation.
They've previously stated to be far more worried about the dependency on VISA and MasterCard than the gold reserves in the US.
https://nos.nl/artikel/2560460-dnb-maakt-zich-zorgen-over-am...
That was indeed the case
They're still hoping to get back New York City some day.
They are also consummate antifascists, which I suppose is in tension now with atlanticism
One of the crazier ideas to address the deficit is revaluing gold reserves and throwing them at the deficit. Does anyone really think the Trump admin wouldn't consider seizing foreign gold reserves as part of such a move?
I know that instinctively sounds crazy, but this administration attacked Iran without a plan for their closing the Strait of Hormuz, and tariffed uninhabited islands based on an AI-generated list.
They're rational, but they're aggressive and dumb. Treat them as you would treat a guy who starts bar fights; one strategy is quietly moving to the far side of the bar, which is what this appears to be.
This shows how much trust in the US has declined due to Trump. Netherlands is not the only or first country to do this, other countries have started this too.
And this lost trust will not suddenly reappear when he leaves office. He has damaged our reputation for a generation
No it's not simple to call "he" did this. WH people, half? of the country supporting him for 2nd time, and wealthy people that donated so much too, it's never "he". Nothing big like that is one persons responsibility. Actions have cons. ?
All elected and supported, especially AFTER how he and his supports lead the so many extra deaths in covid. I know your media does not bring facts but truth is out there.
Not half the country. Almost half of the people who voted.
IMO if you don't vote, you're tacitly agreeing with whoever gets voted into office.
(Although US voter suppression weakens this argument)
That's reasonable enough, but you have to consider it in the context that we don't vote for president, we vote for state electors to vote for president.
If you live in a 'safe' state, tacitly agreeing with your state's electors doesn't mean tacitly agreeing with the electoral college result.
If you can’t be bothered to make your disapproval seen at least once every 4 years, then I consider it a tacit approval. So that actually makes 2/3 of Americans in support of Trump’s brand of America.
I disagree with your take. You have the right to not vote when you disagree with all parties running.
In fact, from a moral point of view voting for the lesser evil is highly objectionable because you are voting for someone who you do not even support just so that another person you support even less does not get elected.
Its perfectly fine to say, I don't agree with either and I am going to sit this one out otherwise you end up in weird political dynamics that you can see playing out in real time in France for example.
If your political system does not present you with a candidate that aligns with your interests or beliefs, you should vote to change the political system. Not voting is consent to the status quo.
> Not voting is consent to the status quo.
I disagree fundamentally.
Not voting is simply not making a choice. If the choices presented do not align with my preferences then I do not vote. Why would I vote for someone who I don't support? I don't pick the candidates that are offered. Want me to vote? Then get better candidates next time! Until then I will exercise my right to not vote.
Your status quo also assume that either one or both candidates are presenting you with potential change to what has happened in the past whereas most of the time, the choices are simply a continuation of what has been happening aka tinkering on the margins without pissing too many people off.
I think purposely spoiling your ballot is a better signal to the parties that none of them are acceptable. Is that possible in your elections? Around here, a spoiled ballot is scrutinized by the party observers, so your message would definitely be heard.
I'd love to see a ballot with ranked choice voting that includes a none of the above option.
Totally valid correction, thanks !
This! I get frustrated when i hear folks in the US claim Trump has failed them. You failed yourselves. The system is falling apart and barely half of people turn up to participate in elections? What are the rest of us expected to take away from this? Apathy is what I take away from it, and that does not earn my trust.
The legend about the sole man in charge has been carefully crafted and cultivated for ages, but it's never the puppet and always puppet masters in this clown show.
Sadly, the way people vote is more complicated than you might believe. Trump is the symptom of malfunctioning system that doesn't give people good options in the ballot box.
I'll say something controversial: Clinton and Harris were both better options than the guy who started his campaign mocking a reporter's disability. If voters had any sense it should've ended right there.
The rationalizing, the "corrupt DNC" arguments and everything else is a cop-out.
Here's a real controversial opinion: If Clinton had won, the eventual backlash would be much greater and have elected a far more odious figure than Trump. America is lucky that Trump is kind of a bumbling oaf that channeled populist rage.
Maybe the backlash would've been in Congress, through the election of more extreme figures on the right and left.
Disagree. Trump has done way more damage than Clinton ever could have. The backlash would’ve been similar to post Obama cuz the racists are also the sexists.
That kind of normalises Trump, which is totally the wrong thing to do. You should not accept this as fact, nor should you tolerate this current regime. Doing so without protest is the biggest problem you have. Your defeatism is a self fulfilling prophecy.
That explains how he got almost half the votes on election night, but it does not explain the 1/3 that still to this day support him 100%. There is a pretty substantial underlying problem in play and Trump is the symptom, but the problem is deeper than a malfunctioning political system.
That explains how he got the votes on election night in 2016. A vote for Grump in 2016 was completely understandable. But he should have plainly been a one term president, after his abjectly terrible handling of Covid (for starters, we needed leadership rather than dividership). But unfortunately in our upside-down world, Covid actually handed Grump a big excuse for why his first term was such an exercise in failure. And if there is one thing Grump is good at, it's weaseling responsibility onto others - a quality that his followers greatly admire as it soothes their own consciences as well.
> if there is one thing Grump is good at, it's weaseling responsibility onto others
That is true, I struggle to think of a single time he has taken responsibility for anything. But it works, his supporters actually believe that he is infallible and just can't get competent help. Or it's the deep state. Or something.
It is almost unheard of in the US for an elected politician to poll lower than 30%, it seems to be a floor. This is for both parties, and all sorts of terrible behavior.
> almost unheard of in the US for an elected politician to poll lower than 30%, it seems to be a floor
Alan Keyes apparently set the floor at 27%, which is not far below 30%
> Obama vs. Alan Keyes. ... Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement.
https://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_Senate_elec...
And lizardman's Constant is 4% https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lizardman%27s_Constant
To drive that home, Alan Keyes got to 27% by
- running against a charismatic Obama
- being a last minute insert when Jack Ryan was caught in a sex scandal (who was already fighting an uphill battle with sharing a last name with the corrupt former governor)
- being a carpetbagger (he didn't live in Illinois at any point until running for senate)
- running as a hard-line social conservative in a state where the GOP is torn between appealing to suburban Chicago fiscal conservatives and downstate Illinois social conservatives
yes! we need ranked choice voting everywhere!
Are you saying there was a worse option than Trump?
Really?
Because unless the alternative option was a diminutive Austrian with a dodgy 'tache, I find that rather hard to believe.
The reality is America voted for Trump (TWICE!) because they wanted him. The rest of the world knows this, and is now acting accordingly.
EDIT: Downvotes coming from the brainwashed MAGA crowd!
I disagree not because "brainwashed MAGA crowd" but because people saying "it can't be worse" are almost always wrong. Unless you're starving in the ruins of your house in one of the world's war zones, in which case you're likely focussed on survival, not saying that.
Pick any of the leader's third-rate third-tier henchmen or failsons for example of a worse option. Don't dismiss it out of hand.
People in the UK voted for Brexit because "well it can't be worse, can it?" They were suckers.
I don't disagree with the "The reality is" line.
> Pick any of the leader's third-rate third-tier henchmen or failsons for example of a worse option
But none of them were on the presidential ballot in 2016, 2020, or 2024.*
*Under one of the two parties that has any chance of actually winning.
>> People in the UK voted for Brexit because "well it can't be worse, can it?" They were suckers.
I don't think that's true it all. They were promised that it would be better and sold pretty obvious lies. Same applies to Trump. Unfortunately the intelligence of the average voter is now at the bottom of the barrel and I wouldn't expect that to improve soon. Just look at the support people like Andrew Tate get among young people.
I am not sure why you are being downvoted, because IMHO you are correct.
If Trump was an isolated incident, sure, but he is not. In Europe the far-right and far-left parties are rising in many countries and the traditional parties are crumbling.
I think there is a serious lack of trust in the institutions and in the politicians that is spreading around the world at a quick pace and many people are just fed up with the status-quo that has been in place since the fall of the USSR.
People want change, not small marginal tinkering on the edges, they want to see that things move decisively in one way or the other and they are not afraid to flip the table and see what happens.
Voters cannot be held accountable for all the specific things the person they elected do.
That much should be self-evident.
He’s doing exactly what he said he would do when he ran. People who voted for him can very much be held accountable.
Technically, he campaigned on not starting new wars... so he's doing the worst combination of what he said he would do, AND what he said he wouldn't do. Amazing!
> People who voted for him can very much be held accountable.
Can you give an example of how, in practice, it would work to hold millions of voters accountable for what their elected representative does?
Worth picking not just Trump, but let's say a few other Presidents around the world, including someone you voted for.
When he ran, did he say that he'd make tariff rates bounce around like a kangaroo on speed? No, I don't think he did.
Did he say that he'd threaten to annex Canada and Greenland? Not that I recall.
Did he say that he'd start a war with Iran? No, I'm pretty sure he said "No new wars."
Look, he's a loose cannon. Everyone who voted for him should have known that. But no, he's not doing "exactly what he said he would do when he ran". Some of what he's doing is what he said, and some is completely contradictory to what he said.
(Credit where due: I stole the "kangaroo on speed" line from an unpublished short story. Don't remember the author, or I'd give them credit by name.)
If you found anything he did surprising you haven’t been paying attention to him at all.
https://www.project2025.observer/en
So what? None of this is a surprise at all, if his voters fell for his "president of peace" bit then thats on them, at minimum they KNEW they were voting for a loose cannon who had no morals, cared about himself, insulted everyone around him, had terrible monetary and international policy... He bank rupted CASINOS for gods sake. They had every sign the 2nd time around, anyone who voted for him and regrets it now mainly does so because his bad choices are now personally affecting them lets not get it twisted. They were all happy as long as "others" got owned and not them
Is this sarcasm?
That’s the definition of democracy. Of course voting is significant and has consequences.
> That’s the definition of democracy.
In a democracy, it is the elected officials, who are meant to represent the voter, that are held accountable. Not the voter.
> Of course voting is significant and has consequences.
Tautology but also not relevant. How do you propose the voter be held accountable?
You might have a better point if the elected person hadn't made such a big show of following "mandates" from the voters. You can't have it both ways.
Anyone can be held accountable for things they are responsible for, the question is how they'll react to being held thusly.
> Anyone can be held accountable for things they are responsible for, the question is how they'll react to being held thusly.
Voters are responsible for selecting representatives, but they are not responsible for running things and making the kinds of decisions that elected officials need to and do make.
Voters can be held accountable; he demonstrated exactly what he was the first time in office and then people voted for him again.
If they could have known or suspected those things, then yes, they bear the responsibility. And Trump's intentions were there for all to see.
> If they could have known or suspected those things, then yes, they bear the responsibility.
In a situation like this, I like to do a thought experiment where I replace "Trump" with "Republican voter" in a headline or a story to see whether that idea holds up.
If you vote for a man that thinks he can "grab women by the pussy" because he's famous, and then you vote for him AGAIN, you should be held accountable for everything he does. It's patently obvious he's an absolutely awful person and completely untrustworthy.
What if they knew what they were voting for?
And I'd argue that it should.
He opened the door, and I find it very, very unlikely that either side will close it after this. Dems and Reps will both use this to take control in ways that would have been unthinkable prior to Trump's first election. The only way to restore any measure of that trust would be to pass laws that prevent this kind of abuse, and there's no way that politicians will give up power they've gained.
They had the laws to stop him but since congress stopped legislating, it gave the supreme courts wide discretion to approve executive actions. Strong executive isn’t a flaw of the system, it’s the inevitable consequence of years of media illiteracy and vast sums of money in politics enabled by citizens united.
Passed laws don't seem very constraining. Between simple disregard and disregard plus eventual compliance after lengthy court review, there's a lot of time spent under unlawful orders and regulations. There's no personal liability for (most?) of these unlawful actions and Trump doesn't seem to care about continuity of government or having a legacy of doing unlawful things.
Impeachment could be a check on his power, but impeachment is a kangaroo court with a political jury, so he would need to piss off a lot more Republican senators than he has.
A few presidental impeachments over unlawful acts ending in conviction would change future behavior. But it seems unlikely that we'll get there.
The ideal would be that a new president is elected who uses current powers to reverse/rebuild what Trump has torn down and have their "one big bill" that Congress seems to pull off per president be a reforms package that locks in additional checks and legislative powers against the Executive. The Unitary Executive theory is the most dangerous attack on our Constitution in a long time.
On the other hand, a right-wing Supreme Court may try to block any reforms that check the Executive. The Legislature's ultimate oversight power of the Exec is impeachment, and they have decided that no amount of corruption or crime or destruction should be checked as long as it "feels right".
Trust in the US started to decline dating back in the Obama era when they listened to Merkel's phone etc. Trump has finally eroded what was left of it. Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe are still trying to keep a good relationship with thd US regardless, because they don't want to lose US support due to Trump's whims… err transactional diplomacy.
The sociopathic criminals who dominate American business and politics are the cause of the kleptocracy; plus the tens of millions of citizens indoctrinated with mental illness from their disinformation and psychological warfare.
None of this should be a surprise to you if you've ever watched Fox News and derivatives; propaganda so on the nose it would make a nazi blush.
In the end it is all about money. Putin killed hundreds of EU citizens and we are still buying his gas, oil, uranium and fertilizer.
Trump can bomb cities in Europe and we would trade with the US. I doubt we will ever fully separate from the US.
It may be quirky for Americans to hear this, but one pivotal moment when it truly dawned on the average european citizen how corrupt the US has become, was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup. Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted. Any toddler could see how wrong it was and it was felt deeply in many hearts.
Needless to say trust is close to 0% throughout the population - even the right wing populists distance themselves from Trump - and this is the consequence. I fear we are heading into dangerous times.
Unironically true. The average person could care less about following politics, but Europeans live football.
> could care less
Surely you mean couldn't care less.
I just saw David Mitchell fall to his knees at a Waitrose
Weird Al - Word Crimes
Well, I could care less, personally. I wish I did care less!
Countries have different idioms.
Please explain?
One example to illustrate: when talking about dying, Americans would kick the bucket, Poles would kick the calendar, French would break the pipe, Germans would drop the spoon, and the Spanish would pull the leather. But they all would be referring to the US's trust among its allies.
In the US "Could care less" is the equivalent to the British expression "Couldn't care less". The intention and meaning is the same. So the original comment did mean to say what they said.
My point was that what may look like a mistake or a contradiction is just cultural development of natural language.
Another example is the British expression "It would be cheap at half the price"
> In the US "Could care less" is the equivalent to the British expression "Couldn't care less"
No, it's not.
https://xkcd.com/1576/
> The average person could care less about following politics
Could they?
If they isolated themselves from all news, social media, and lived as a hermit, yes. They could care less, but it'd be difficult.
I think you misunderstood the emphasis there - yes Europeans love football.
The point is that it's so blatant for such little gain, it's still a game. I.e. if he is willing to do that so openly for such low stakes, imagine what he does behind closed doors when it matters.
> Blatant corruption for zero gain that even the Putin's and Xi Jin Pings never attempted.... was when Trump phoned Infantino to drop a red card during the world cup.
FIFA, a largely European organization created by Europeans for a sport that Americans barely care about and in the center of multiple corruption scandals and controversies over the last few decades and you're really going to sit here and try to tell others that the real wakeup call was when Trump made a phone call to ask that a star player who by many respects shouldn't have received a red card over at best a technicality in the first place be reinstated for the good of sport and competition...?
And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
I guess Donald Trump's phone call was the real last straw, and something like, idk, 6,500 migrant workers in Qatar dying to construct World Cup facilities is just another day at the anti-corruption office? [1]
I'm going to assume you're being sarcastic...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/r...
There is a big difference between some sports association being greedy/unethical and elected officials abusing their position of power (especially when they sit in the highest positions and there are zero consequences).
Right, its just we all lose respect and we're real mad when Donald Trump makes a phone call about something that, well you know frankly the American public agreed with, and we don't lose respect or whatever and we're not outraged when that same extremely corrupt organization continues to do greedy, unethical, and corrupt things.
It's astounding that European governments would never do corrupt things. Totally never. And if they did, sorry they only draw the line at influencing FIFA.
Jeez dude. If you have a point to make, just make it. This weird sarcasm is borderline unreadable. Anyway, everyone agrees with you that FIFA is a corrupt cesspool. The fact that Trump found a corrupt counterparty does not make his open and blatant corruption any less, well, corrupt. The point here is that if he’s openly abusing his power for something so trivial, what is he doing behind closed doors?
Sorry my point wasn't clear. Let me state if plainly: the OP's comments and points about corruption and Vladimir Putin and Xi Kingpin somehow wouldn't stoop to this level of corruption are fucking stupid.
Who exactly is talking about goverments? This was a random citizen having the "oh, so this is that rupture they talk about" moment.
Yes, exactly that. And precisedly for that reason.
FIFA was corrupt. Infantino took it on another level, making it massively more corrupt then before. Then he created a peace price which combined corruption with astonishing lack of self respect and mockery.
And then Trump called over the red card, which contrasted with everything before as yes another never seen before level of corruption.
But second, FIFA is not an European institution. It is worldwide org and non European members are large contributors to the corruption. The middle east and afrikan members do like it corrupt, it suits their political goals.
> And you're also going to claim that this "level of corruption" is something Vladimir Putin or Xi Jingping and their corrupt authoritarian regimes would never dream of attempting?
Honestly, it even seems so. Trying to directly influence a soccer match, publically changing rules while not even understanding them is a new level.
Moreover, there is no reason to think Trump is less corrupt then Putin or Xi. If anything, he is equally or more corrupt.
A better way to think about it is imagine that FIFA is a massive, roaring inferno of corruption and Europeans are ignoring it and then Donald Trump walks by and tosses a Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno and it grows every so slightly and now all of a sudden everyone is concerned. Sorry don't care. Most Americans agreed with him doing that as well since the foul was stupid.
There are things worthwhile criticizing folks for. Donald Trump is corrupt. So is FIFA. So are numerous European countries and organizations. But equating Trump making this phone call to "some unheard level that Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin wouldn't dream of attempting" is absolutely absurd sensationalism that is, frankly, anti-intellectual, dishonest, and only serves to instigate flame wars and other such nonsense.
He did not threw "Mcdonalds wrapper on the inferno". He shit on it and took a video of the shit and then threw a grenade on thr said shit. The peace prize would be the "Mcdonalds wrapper". The red card thing was huge additional escalation.
The corruption about who gets the championship and who rips of who is bad. Changing outcomes is entirely different thing.
> But equating Trump making this phone call to "some unheard level that Xi Jingping and Vladimir Putin wouldn't dream of attempting" is absolutely absurd sensationalism
Neither Putin nor Xi would do that phone call. Nor would they proudly brag about making such phone call. That is fairly safe guess.
It is not sensationalism. That is just safe guess based on those people previous publically known actions.
To add to this, because I think it is important context for Americans who may not be aware, football is seen very officially by many European nations and national governments as a cultural counterpart to many international treaties within Europe that were born out of the desire to bring our respective cultures closer together after the second world war.
It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
It is so important, that there are articles written about its importance on EU institutes websites. For example, this one reflects on Footballs importance in relation to the First, Second and Cold wars. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/alerts/european-footb...
To see Trump so flagrantly manipulate it sends a cultural signal that is hard for those outside of Europe to see, and that by some can be seen as the cultural equivalent of the political threats Trump has made against NATO.
At this point, your average European Trump supporter/right wing populist needs only reminding of Trumps interference to get a complete positional change - that's how bad it is.
> It is so important, that many countries make it illegal to hide international football matches behind paywalls, specifically.
Sports is peak diversion from real issues, Whether Europe, US or India and so on. The countries can go to hell, people can drown in endless real problems. But if people can be smothered with sport entertainment so they ignore real things whats better than that.
In India whole country can become absolute crap. Worst on any social, economic indicator but as long free cricket broadcast is on TV and mobile, life is good.
Another interesting aspect to this story is the flow of value from US Treasuries to gold.
0. https://www.investing.com/analysis/why-central-banks-are-bri...What are the long term implications? Gold can’t reasonably be the medium so new currency baskets?
Implications are on the treasury side. Without treasury buyers the US dollar collapses or hyperinflates or the US government is bankrupt or some other widespread system failure, in any case the entire US economy falls apart without treasury buyers. But these things move slowly.
Literally moves? Physically moves? Come on, doesn't this make your hands itch? Is it heist time folks?
It's in the article; They sold gold in NYC and with that money bought gold in London.
But how did they move the money between NYC and London?
They traded some 1s and 0s for some different 1s and 0s
likely at some point the gold bars would be ferried as well if the 1s and 0s fail to balance anytime soon(ish)
Everyone now has to hedge against the dollar because Elon, bank run Thiel, and Trump have taken over the system.
I will not get better until they are removed.
It is not in their interest to save the federal government, US dollar, or the economy.
They are all BRIICS backed and want the dollar and trans atlanticism, backed by the US military, to fail.
> It is not in their interest to save the federal government, US dollar, or the economy.
I think "save" is not even in the room with us; they seem to be actively harming every industry: farming, food, oil, electronics, manufacturing, healthcare, etc. It's a full on assault.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", but in this case we're dealing with malicious actors and it's apparent these are malicious actions. DOGE was just the first step.
At first I thought they were trying to establish something that looked closer to Russia, where they can make life just hard enough for them to keep accumulating wealth indefinitely. Now I'm worried they're going for something that resembles Africa's poorest nations, where we fight amongst ourselves over resources that are increasingly constrained.
What do you even mean by 'removing' Elon from 'the system'?
Is this to prevent the Orange man from stealing it? What do they imagine the risk is?
Stated in another article it said the reason is it cannot be used as a bargaining chip during trade disputes. They specifically mentioned it would likely be more difficult to use in emergency situations when located in North America (without mentioning specific reasons).
Well, one of their near neighbouring countries is currently worried about Trump stealing their territory, and he's made threats to annex Canada too, so it's not exactly an unreasonable fear.
Would you put it past Trump to use gold stores as a threat?
Their national color is orange so they should get along with him fine
Just in time before major European continental war begin. Strategic move.
For the context : German airport was officially attacked by Russia . And that’s only one of many incidents. UK is on the radar of official Russian hawks for a very long time
More a vs. US strategy than a vs. Russia strategy.
Russia has been weird for a long time, they are doing sub-threshold-of-war attacks for a while now.
But the USA? Outright threatening allies, talking about annexing some of them, making more threats against other allies who make moves to defend those allies? And he's got a known love for gold, started wars without bothering to inform allies he's now trying to punish for failing to provide help that he told them he didn't even want.
US is doing now to Europe and Canada what russia was doing for the last 30 (or 300) years to their neighbours. No response -- push further is the game
Yeah russia has been waging war against the west basically since putin came into power. That paranoid kgb fuck sees anything free as direct threat to their model of how to run a dictatorship and very much a personal threat on top of that (he may not be completely wrong given how proactive cia has been and their general methods of subversion). Divide and conquer, subvert EU and produce infighting on some emotional topics with ideal goal of breakup to pick countries one by one, subvert US to focus more inward and stop policing the world, ideally weaking it long term.
This is nothing new for anybody interested in the topic, its all very open and public (which is kind of the point I guess to manipulate public perception too). Every single secret service know this as 101 reality. In same way ie war in Ukraine started in 2014 in all measurable ways, not 2022.
US part... well its painful to watch, especially the incompetence or elephant-in-porcelain-shop part, of a shop that took many decades to build. But its good long term for Europe and rest of west - we became uber weak and over-reliant on US bases, their tech and power projection, and even if its 2026, influence not backed by real power means very little in actual world out there. Be provably strong or vanish seems to be mantra. Its smart to adapt to reality rather than expect the world to rearrange itself to some idealistic wishful thinking, however nice it may feel and however well it may have worked during easy peaceful times.
Thinking that there's a major continental war about to begin is exactly what Russia wants people to think and what they push through their propaganda machine. It's also good for some governments, because then nobody questions military spending. Poland just bought 96 Apache assault helicopters for 10B USD. It takes just 1M USD in drones to take them down, just to show how absurd show of loyalty to US that deal was.
There's issues with defending the east flank. Namely, without taking full control of the Baltic Sea, Baltic States and Finland will run out of provisions in weeks.
> It takes just 1M USD in drones to take them down
You can buy incendiary armor piercing bullets that could take one down for $5, but strangely they've been utilized for decades.
Finland will run out of provisions in a weeks? How so? Will Russia control their western border?
Here we go again... Finland and the Baltics are "the East flank" when Russia and Germany want to go to war again. Excellent and fun battle fields for them, without a doubt. Far away from important regions and important people.
That was a rather obvious false flag attempt, presumably from Ukraine. It was a weaponized drone, the first that would have been directly used against NATO, that was found just outside a Ukrainian plane and by amazing coincidence just sat there instead of detonating.
When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
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That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories and other things that have been going boom, but it's always going to be done with plausible deniability - sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia, and the like. They're not going to just start bombing planes in airports with drones.
Wow. This post serves as a great example on how propaganda can brainwash people brain. Sure , Ukraine whose survival solely depends on EU, plans a false flag attempt . To achieve what ? Russia openly attacked territory of eu with drones , infiltration, poison operations , not to mention Slovakia , Orban etc . What is there to prove for Ukraine ???
Ukraine is, in the most positive framing - in a war of attrition that isn't going well. They want greater involvement, ideally much more directly, from NATO countries. And Germany is certainly going to be happy to play along because the AfD is quickly becoming the largest single party in that country. They are Euroskeptical and against continuing the war with Russia. A direct Russian attack on Germany would likely undermine the AfD's growing support.
But since I've been brainwashed by propaganda, perhaps you can enlighten me on what benefits you believe Russia would see for themselves in deciding to directly attack a NATO country in a way that would lack any plausible deniability. In particular you need to come up with some sort of argument here for how they might see this as viably resulting in an improved positioning for themselves.
Yeah and that’s exactly what add happily picked up as any MAGA clone eg Afd,FvD, Orban etc . Populism , echo different voices . In this case : Ukriane is dragging us into war . Russia openly warm up this agenda by softly attacking Poland , Romania , other areas. Mixed with nord stream and other similar voices .
Under different angle they will tell this is Ukraine’s false flag attempt … oh evil ukriane , these bastards who try to survive how dare they are
Anyways still 0 political win , only losses . Current German government can’t defend themself and start talking NATO , that is again very unpopular among maga-Germans , since they hate USA
After observing the talk as opposed to the actions of Meloni and Trump, I would bet that the AfD would continue the war as is.
Weidel would make a "Notwendige Politikwende" speech and that's it. They'll then cut social services and enact pro-business laws and make some noise about immigration until ordered by the industry to allow it.
I don't think the fear in most politics is about the actions of the 'newcomers', but about potential of the old guard losing power. In the US if a third party started looking like a real threat, Rs and Ds would 100% come together to frame them as the greatest threat of humanity to ever exist, exactly as happened with Perot even in the age before hyper hyperbole.
Like you alluded to Meloni went from end of the world to business as usual in remarkably short order, and the same could viably if not likely happen with AfD as well, but the bigger change behind the scenes there is that her party went from 2% in 2013, to leading Italy today - and that gain came at the expense of the loss of power by whatever the older establishment was in Italy.
Don't discount russian incompetence and sloppiness. They are really big on half assing everything
> That was a rather obvious false flag attempt
No, it wasn't.
> That said I do expect Russia is likely involved in at least some of the incidents of weapons factories
They're involved in all of them.
> sleeper agents with no direct ties to Russia
This isn't a movie. They pay criminals to do criminal activity. They're not utilizing "sleeper agents" to burn down a building.
>When Russia wants to directly attack NATO they'll likely do exactly what the US/EU is doing and simply arm e.g. Iran/Houthis/etc with weapons/locations, let them push the button, and then go all Slava Allah or whatever while Russia is like 'oh we're not involved in this conflict you have with Iran.' Great precedent that's been set.
What does this even mean? Are you equating Ukraine with Iran and the Houthis?
> For the context:
Comparing that German airport "attack" by Russia to the 9/11 attack by Mr. bin Laden - would you say that all gold reserves should have been moved out of the USA back in 2001?
Looking at TFA, they are moving it to a venue where selling off the gold can happen quickly. This kind of thing was not necessary for the USA's approach to funding the War on Terror because we decided on a really innovative combo of Taking On Debt and also Just Not Accounting For Things which will surely have no consequence later on.
Didn't dear leader (Trump) just say he was going to invade the Bond Market?
If a shooting war breaks out beween the US and the Bond Market, the gold isnt safe anywhere.
No, the German US lapdogs put out a statement that the drones in Leipzig “are known to us from other Russian hybrid operations and its war against Ukraine” and that they “pointed to a high degree of technical expertise”.
So high in fact that the operation malfunctioned. Precisely what a false flag would do.
The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
All that these stupid politics accomplish is that the AfD will have 35% in the next elections so Germany can enjoy Trump-like corruption and the industry can exploit people even more. At this point one wonders if the CDU is in on it and the AfD is secretly already part of the uniparty, public theater of forbidding the AfD notwithstanding.
A false flag attack would malfunction? Why not do damage to really up the reaction? Even after an explosion there's plenty of pieces left to investigate and figure out where the devices came from. Just throw some parts made in [insert target of false flag here] and you're all set.
> The US indeed would like to expand the Ukrainian proxy war to the Baltics so it can carry out its own plans of getting various oil rich countries.
What "oil rich" Baltic states are you referring to? Is the US going to takeover Norway?
No damage because they need the Antonovs.
Parts can be obtained from Russia by Russian speaking Ukrainians that are indistinguishable from Russians.
You are making up "oil rich" Baltic states. The comment said "various oil rich states", i.e. Iran and Venzuela.
I assume you volunteer for the front?