357 Magnum

From the Irish Mirror: Russia threatens to 'punish Europe severely' in nuclear Armageddon warning

A top Russian strategist has warned that Europe could face nuclear attack if Moscow suffers defeat in Ukraine

I haven't followed Russian rulers beyond Putin for a long time. I'm not familiar with how much power Russia's Council for Foreign and Defense Policy has, though it could be he is acting as a mouthpiece for the government.

Vladimir Putin's henchman, in charge of Russia's defence policy, has called on the country's leader to unleash nuclear weapons and 'punish Europe and the UK severely' for its support of Ukraine.

Sergey Karaganov, head of Russia’s Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, added that, if the UK and Nato's defence of Ukraine resulted in a victory for Volodymyr Zelensky, then Putin "would use nuclear weapons and Europe would be finished physically".

One thing I do know, is that Russia NEVER considered nuclear war unwinnable. The Soviet Union build blast and fallout shelters almost continuously from the 1960s on. Maybe it was from the late 1950s. That stopped for a while after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Warsaw Pact, but started up again under Putin, shortly after he came to power in 1999. They never bought into Mutually Assured Destruction, accept that they never thought they had enough of an edge to win. Americans refuse to believe this. (It would mean we should be spending money on Civil Defense, not trains to nowhere, or sending hundreds of millions of dollars to countries that will launder it for us, and send back 10% for the Big Guy™)

Also Putin is reported to have cancer, so it's not like he has a lot to lose personally. He does have a family, namely children and grandchildren.

They should think of it as growing up. From 1819 News - 'Bass Pro Shops has more guns': U.S. Senate candidate Morgan Murphy bashes military capabilities of NATO allies

In the late 1940s and even into the 1950s and '60s, it made sense for the US to provide all or most of the security for Western Europe. You can argue about when it stopped making sense, but certainly after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, Europe should have been able to handle its own defense. There are more Western Europeans than Americans, after all.

"It's unbelievable that our European partners aren't stepping up to take care of this war that is in their own backyard," Murphy told the host. "This is a European war, and frankly, we've got 20 European nations out there that have a smaller army than the average number of guns at a Bass Pro Shop. Literally, I'd rather go to war [on the side of] Bass Pro Shops than 20 of our 31 NATO partners. They're more better armed."

It's a classic rant. Click thru. (Hat tip to Keep and Bear Arms.)

This is not a new gripe of mine. I have been mad at the fact that the US has been funding Europe's security since before the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Here are just a couple of posts from March of this year, mostly on Germany, the largest economy in Europe. (Or it was before they decided to sacrifice their industrial base on the alter of Net Zero.)

• The State of German Military Readiness
• Germany Gets a Wack to the Side of the Head
• Europe Finally Increases Defense Spending

There are more, but that is enough to be going on with.

Peter Imanuelsen: HUGE: European countries to designate ANTIFA as terror group

The parliament in the Netherlands just voted to also classify ANTIFA as a terror group.

But not only that, Hungary just announced that they would also classify the far-left organization as a terror group.

This was about a week after the Trump Administration declared ANTIFA a terrorist organization. So fairly fast for European Parliaments.

Hungary has also written a letter to the EU to urge them to follow the USA and classify ANTIFA as a terror group in the European Union.

The chief whip at the Europe for Sovereign Nations group in the EU parliament has suggested a plenary debate about this. The German AfD party, which is polling at number one in the country now is in this Europe of Sovereign Nations group.

There is more, on the media cover being provided to ANTIFA, and the Extreme Left-wing views of most media.

The Left always says that we should be more like Europe. And in a strange way, it seems we are. Brussels Crime Crisis Forces Soldiers Onto City Streets. Or maybe they are becoming more like the USA.

What does it say about the European Union that its capital has become so violent that officials are resorting to deploying soldiers?

It says that Europe is now dealing with the crime that caused President Trump to call in the National Guard. I'm confused. Is this a good thing when they do it in Europe?

Moinil says much of this violence is linked to drug trafficking and gang disputes over territory, and has criticised politicians for their lenient approach.

Lenient politicians not throwing criminals in jail. Now, where have I heard that before?

And privacy. They are not too fond of privacy, either. From Arstechnica we get a story of encryption designed to government specifications. Encryption made for police and military radios may be easily cracked

Two years ago, researchers in the Netherlands discovered an intentional backdoor in an encryption algorithm baked into radios used by critical infrastructure–as well as police, intelligence agencies, and military forces around the world–that made any communication secured with the algorithm vulnerable to eavesdropping.

The algorithm in question European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), who then recommended a work-around, which also has a problem with encryption.

But now the same researchers have found that at least one implementation of the end-to-end encryption solution endorsed by ETSI has a similar issue that makes it equally vulnerable to eavesdropping.

It is almost like the ETSI, and the governments that pay the bills, don't like the idea of encryption and privacy.

All four TETRA encryption algorithms use 80-bit keys to secure communication. But the Dutch researchers revealed in 2023 that TEA1 has a feature that causes its key to get reduced to just 32 bits, which allowed the researchers to crack it in less than a minute.

Strong encryption algorithms have been known, and implemented in audited code, for a long time. There is absolutely no reason for this kind of thing.

While the old saying is "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action," this is not the first time that governments and other large bureaucracies have worked to undermine privacy and/or security.

So who is it that hates the very idea of privacy? Despots. Which is begining to seem like that term describes the governments of the European Union.

From The Freedom Corner with PeterSweden we get the following. Free speech under attack in Europe. - by Peter Imanuelsen

The Europeans do not value free speech. Did they ever?

It was just announced tonight that Britain will be assembling an ELITE squad of police officers to monitor social media posts for wrong think!

It isn't only the UK of course.

In Norway, I exposed how leaders in a religious cult were engaged in what many consider to be grooming behaviour of young girls. Not long thereafter, police attempted to enter my house without any court order which should be illegal.

And instead of investigating the cult, the police interrogated me. I later found out that the police officer that interrogated me had very close connections with the very same religious cult…

Lone Star Parson has a similar story. Support Your Local Thought Police

In the UK you can be censored or go to jail for the sheer, brazen, literal temerity of daring to criticize the policies of that country's benevolent rulers. Pay attention, serfs, we're watching you, for your own benefit. And remember this, you thought criminals.

Click thru for the infographic on certain type of violent crime alone.

Wombat-socho versus Europeans. Rule Five Sunday: The Ghost of Safeguard-chan Watches Over Us

A couple of weeks ago on X I was inspired to rip on various Euros who thought they were some kind of classy for having various tatterdemalion castles scattered about by pointing out that not only did we have pyramids, we could afford to build them in the middle of nowhere and have them shoot down ICBMs. One thing led to another, and Grok drew me a pic of Safeguard-chan, maintaining her lonely vigil amidst the wheatfields of North Dakota.

Clic thru for Safeguard-chan.

From Impro Guns we get Modern DIY Arsenal in Europe

In many countries in Europe it can take up to two years to get a license to enjoy a shooting hobby. It is no wonder some Europeans opt for an increasingly popular ‘weird special hack’ which allows unlimited dirt cheap automatic carbines to materialize in one’s home without needing to ask anyone’s permission.

Click thru for a great photo that includes exampls of the FGC-9, Urutau, FGC-EVO, Rogue-9 and a Scorpion EVO variant, along with some pistols.

I have to do some research on DIY ammo.

From William Teach at Pirate's Cove: NY Times Goes All Satan And Fall Of Man For European Climate Doom

I wonder if NY Times Warmist Jason Horowitz even understands the meaning of Paradise Lost?

I doubt he read more than the CliffNotes version of Paradise Lost. William Teach gives you the introduction to Paradise Lost, in case you haven't read it.

I also wonder if he took a fossil fueled trip in order to “report from Barcelona, Spain”, considering he is stationed in Rome

Go see what the Europeans are so bent out of shape over.

For reference, here is a story from the BBC, on Monday, July 14th. Road closed as surface melts in hot weather

According to the Met Office, temperatures in Cannock reached highs of 29C (84F) on the weekend

So I'm not too worried about the Brits, anyway, even though they can't stop complaining about the heat. (84 would be great right now, and I'm only in Ohio.)

According to Accuweather, which is subject to change, as I type this the heatwave is going to see 90 degrees F on Wednesday in Barcelona, Spain. They are also suffering from Poor air quality, with high mold, extreme dust and dander, and an unhealthy level of pollution. Barcelona is where the NY Times Journalist went to wring his hands over the climate doom.

For comparison, as I type this (on Monday), Phoenix, Arizona is at 108F/42C, and Miami, Florida is cooling down for the evening, but expecting to see 89F/31.6C on Wednesday. Minneapolis, Minnesota is 90F/32C. Which are all seasonable for this time of year.

I believe in preserving the environment, but the way Europe is going about things looks insane to me. Green rules ‘stop Europe preparing for Russian invasion’

European countries have blamed EU environmental regulations for hindering their preparations for defending against a possible Russian invasion.

In a leaked letter obtained by The Telegraph, the nations’ defence ministers argued that the rules had stopped the expansion of military bases and prevented fighter jet pilots from training.

The United Kingdom is upping its defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. The continent is dragging its collective feet.

They said this was “mainly (but not exclusively) in the areas of procurement legislation, nature conservation and environmental protection, and more generally the administrative burden on defence organisations deriving from various EU legal acts”.

The letter was signed by the Dutch, Swedish, German, Belgian, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Finnish, Estonian and Danish governments.

I'm old enough to remember how the Europeans laughed at President Trump, during his first term, for insisting that they increase defense spending in the face of Russian aggression. I don't think their laughing so much now.

The commission had promised to ease regulations that could hinder the rearmament efforts, but has yet to do so in any significant way.

It would seem that they would rather live under Putin, than give up the control they've siezed of life in Europe. Bureaucracies NEVER yield power.

And yes, Putin is acting like he wants to take on NATO. Putin is building new force to take on Nato

Russia is building bases and expanding its military footprint near the Finnish border, in a sign of where its swollen army could be moved after a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Hat tip to William Teach at Pirate's Cove LOL: Europe Not Ready For Russian Invasion Due To Climate (scam) Rules.

Eco-zealotry is damning Europe. Putin might have an easier time rolling over the EU than Ukraine.

From The Volokh Conspiracy. "500M Europeans Are Begging 300M Americans for Protection from 140M Russians Who Have Been Unable to Overcome 50M Ukrainians for Three Years"

Well, my question has always been - at least since The Berlin Wall came down - "Why doesn't Europe pay for its own damn defense?" And yes, this is from more than a week ago, but it only came to my attention recently.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk asked Europe to step up, and pay their fair share.

But I thought this was a well-put call for action, from a country that is estimated to have spent 4.12% of its GDP on defense in 2024, compared to a 2.02% average for European NATO members and Canada, and 3.38% for the U.S. "The Polish military is now about 200,000, which makes it the third-largest in NATO after the U.S. and Turkey and the largest among the alliance's EU members."

In fact, if you look at Europe's military spending since the 1990s, the economic powerhouses have not even spent the 2% of GDP on military that they COMMITTED to. Trump, in his first term as President, gave them a dressing down, and they laughed it off.

By the way, the only other NATO member that spent a higher fraction of its GDP than the U.S. is Estonia, at 3.43%. Latvia and Lithuania are also high, at 3.15% and 2.85%, well above everyone else except Greece at 3.08%. The one behind Lithuania (though closer to the middle of the pack) is Finland, at 2.41%. See a pattern?

Click thru for more, and a link to the NATO document detailing defense spending through 2024.

Hat tip to Granite Grok: Why CAN’T You Deal With Ukraine Yourselves?

Both stress and big flashlights can show reality to those who are living in another world and dimension. In this case, it is the Euro weenies who are all about continuing the Never-Ending-Ukranian War – even as they’ll only fight if the US is involved:

Why haven't they spent money on military? Because since the 1950s they've relied on America. There is no other reason. Early on, it made sense, probably. Since the 1980s, not so much.

Except for Poland. Trump went after the EU in his first term just to get them to spend 2% of their GDP on their militaries without much success. Poland, knowing the danger from Russia, is at 4.12%. It is now the powerhouse of the EU, far exceeding Germany, Britain, and France with respect to actual capability.

And you don't build a military overnight. You have to buy and maintain equipment. You have to recruit (though Europe is considering a draft again) and train troops. And that is hard today. Take Germany. Their Tank crews ride around in vans for war games because the tanks are broken. Same for helicopters. Or it was true the last time I looked, which admittedly was before COVID.

If Europe isn't interested in paying for its own defense, why should the US pay for it?

There just isn't the demand, despite all the things the globalists can do. End of the road for EV battery maker that raised $15 billion from investors including Goldman Sachs and BlackRock

Northvolt was started in Sweden by two ex-Tesla executives to make Europe more independent from China for EV batteries. There is a problem, however. Europeans don't want EVs or the batteries that go into them.

Northvolt said it faced multiple challenges in recent months that undermined its financial position, including growing capital costs and geopolitical instability, resulting in supply chain disruptions and fluctuating demand.

Markets work. That is what makes Progressives so angry. They want to control things that they cannot control.

[The company] was founded in 2016 by Peter Carlsson and Paolo Cerruti and had raised more than $15 billion from investors including Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Baillie Gifford, and Spotify cofounder Daniel Ek.

There is a lot more detail in the article. (Hat tip to MGUY Australia.)

Military spending is expensive, and they have votes to buy with lavish social welfare states. Europe is still dithering about defense

Instead of urgently ramping up defense production and building a self-sufficient security framework, European nations continue to lean on Washington for leadership and resources. Europe’s citizens, meanwhile, are left watching and waiting, hoping that NATO’s security umbrella will hold.

The Hill has a rosy view of NATO, but be fair, it was always mostly a one-legged stool. Having the US pay the bulk of bill probably made sense in 1955, or 1965, but by 1975 Europe, and in particular Germany, should have been paying more. The United Kingdom and France have done a credible job of having a military commensurate with the size of their economy, even if France did make a few questionable purchases - like a nuclear aircraft carrier that didn't have enough shielding around the reactor to make actually using the thing possible.

One of the clearest examples of NATO’s misaligned priorities is Germany’s extensive Air Force deployment across the Indo-Pacific, a region increasingly defined by military tensions, territorial disputes and strategic competition between China and the U.S. As part of its operations, Germany has sent fighter jets and support aircraft to Alaska, Japan, Hawaii, Australia and India for joint training missions.

Why is Germany prioritizing deterrence in the Indo-Pacific when European security remains fragile? The U.S. values European support in Asia, but what it truly expects is a stronger, self-sufficient defense framework in Europe that ensures NATO remains a collective alliance, not one dependent on America.

There is more. Click thru.

Nothing will be solved in the short run. After decades of NOT spending money on their militaries, they won't make up the difference with a couple of years of spending 2% of GDP. I've seen one estimate that Germany needs to spend an additional $432 billion to completely modernize their military. That isn't going to happen.

For decades they couldn't take an interest in their own defense; they just expected the US to foot the bill. Europe Increases Defense Spending — But Still Are Decades Behind the U.S. and Unprepared for War with Russia

So the real question is, what do they expect to do?

Ironically, while these increases are being made in defiance of the U.S., they align perfectly with what Trump has been demanding since his first term: that Europe boost its defense spending and ease the burden on America.

I don't know how Europe increasing defense spending can be "in defiance of America." Trump was trying to get them to increase defense spending in his first term, and I've thought that Europe needs to do more to defend themselves for a long time. Defending Europe from Russia in the late 1940s made sense, when a lot of Europe was still recovering from WWII. By the time the Berlin Wall fell, and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, Europe was an economic powerhouse, and could have stood on its own, with some help from the USA. Instead the bulk of the tanks in Europe were American, etc.

This highlights another fundamental issue in Europe: some countries are relatively poor, and the socialist nature of their governments has accustomed them to expecting handouts rather than earning and spending on their own.

This raises a critical question—will countries like France and Spain fully commit to the plan if they are told they must repay the loans?

So if France and Spain don't want to pay for their own defense - they want grants. Who do they expect to pay? Germany? they need to expand their own defense spending. Germany has other problems, but at least they are meeting their NATO spending commitments, though I think they are losing more via waste than we are.

France is also meeting its commitments under NATO, and in 2024 was spending 2.06% of its GDP on its military. (The commitment has been 2% for a long time.) Spain is only spending 1.28% of GDP. source: NATO Spending by Country 2025. I have no idea how accurate those numbers are; that is just what a quick search of the intertubes turned up.

There is more. Click thru.

Here are some past posts, in which I bash on German Military preparedness. They were the largest economy in Europe before they decided to de-industrialize and embrace Green power.

• German military procurement is “one hell of a complete disaster.”
• If German Military Might is Non-existent…
• Remember When Trump Lit Into Germans Over Military Spending?
• Germany – Still Shirking Their Responsibilities to NATO

This might also work for some Democrats, but then most Democrats are too deep in the grip of TDS to hear anything.

A list of 10 reasons Trump was elected. Not a perfect list, but if you look in the comments you will find some others.

This is the Triggernometry video 10 Reasons You Didn't See This Coming - Konstantin Kisin.

This video is for my British and European friends who are shocked, surprised, and horrified at Donald Trump's Landslide Victory. Here are 10 reasons you didn't see it coming. By the way once you watch this video make sure you look in the comments and see what Americans are saying about whether this video makes sense or not.

Kostantin Kisin was born in the Soviet Union, and moved to the United Kingdom when he was 11. He was only a child when the Berlin Wall came down, and the Warsaw Pact fell apart, but he clearly remembers what that time was like.

Or that seems to be how the Germans feel anyway. There are many stories, but I will limit myself to one. Well OK, this story links to a few others.

If you're ever curious about what is going in across the pond, you can do a lot worse than start with Deutsche Welle: 'The nightmare': Germany's media react to Trump's victory

An opinion poll held days before the vote found that 74% of Germans supported Kamala Harris whereas only 11% supported Trump.

I always find the asymmetry fascinating. Europeans are heavily invested in American politics, while Americans can't tell you who is in charge of Germany, or France, or the UK, let alone Poland or Slovenia.

Can you imagine running an opinion poll in the US and asking the man in the street how they feel about the candidates in an upcoming German elections?

The election was seen as a referendum on issues like migration and economic policy at home, but also pivotal for geopolitical issues around the world.

Germany's most widely-read tabloid Bild said the election outcome was "the last warning signal for our government" as it attempts to overcome voters' grievances similar to those in the US.

Which is why the government and the media are so opposed to what Americans have said we, as a whole, want.

Well, and they are looking at the very real possibility that they will actually have to start paying for their own national defense.

Weekly newspaper Die Zeit also ran an article with a single, uncensored English word as its headline: "F---."

Die Ziet, unlike Deutsche Welle, doesn't translate their content into English, and yet they had one word of English as their headline.

What is really going on? The media, which is the PR branch of globalism, like the World Economic Forum, is pissed off that people are no longer listening to them.

Because you plebes are not to be trusted. EU President Likens Free Speech To Infectious Disease | ZeroHedge

Once again I'm of the opinion that Europe is lost to freedom.

As president of the EU, [Ursula von der Leyen] conducted secret negotiations with Pfizer CEO to purchase a 20 billion Euros of Pfizer’s fraudulent and dangerous vaccine so that it could be inflicted on all the citizens of the European Union.

She is currently under criminal investigation for her conduct in this affair that has come to be known as Pfizergate.

It takes a special kind of chutzpah for a powerful state official who is probably guilty of committing a major crime - a crime that has been systematically and ruthlessly concealed - to lecture the public about the need for censorship.

Read the whole thing for some info/allegations on Biden pressuring the Germans on censorship.

Actually the $12 billion figure underestimates the cost. That is the construction cost for phase 1. It does not include the costs for phase 2, and it also does not include the ongoing costs of running the device, which is estimated at $500 million per year.

How much would phase 2 cost? I'm not sure I believe the figures for phase 1. Also, what's the net present value of a stream of payments of $500 million per year, that lasts in perpetuity?

Sabine Hossenfelder has become unpopular among physicists, because she keeps raining on their parade. The next stop in the parade - or the stop CERN^‡ would like to build - is massive particle collider, like the Large Hadron Collider, only on a much more massive scale. The Future Circular Collider, or FCC, would be 90 kilometers in circumference, 300 meters under the Swiss countryside. The problem is, it wouldn't really accomplish anything.

It's really not a good investment, because there is no reason to expect anything new in the energy range that it could reach. The most likely thing to happen is that it will measure some constants in the Standard Model to higher precision, and that's it. That sounds good if you're a particle physicist, because it will keep you employed, but it's got next to no societal impact. It's a high-risk, low-payoff project, basically insanity. I don't even know why we're even seriously discussing this.

There is an interesting part, in which a chemist, not a physicist, was telling the UK government that of course this collider would discover new particles, even though it won't. So the UK government would have spent billions of British pounds funding an experiment based on misinformation. Isn't that the thing that the EU keeps trying outlaw?

Sabine Hossenfelder pointed this out the UK government. Another reason she went from writing for the New York Times, to ranting on YouTube - an "anti-career."

Folks in the US can take solace in the fact that we won't be asked to fund this, but will be asked, or not asked, to fund other stuff that may or may not be of any value.

This is Sabine Hossenfelder's video Chances for CERN’s Mega-Collider are Sinking

‡ CERN stands for Conseil européen pour la Recherche nucléaire or the European Organization for Nuclear Research

Because of course there are terrorists in Europe. Brussels shooting: 'Europe shaken' after two Swedes shot dead - BBC News

Two Swedish nationals have been shot dead and a third person injured in Brussels, in an attack which prosecutors are treating as terrorism. [SNIP]

Brussels is on its highest terror alert as the gunman, who appeared to have an assault rifle, remains at large.

Click thru for details, and the meaningless things being said by politicians.

The Belgium-Sweden Euro 2024 qualifier football match (soccer) was canceled but some people want it to resume. ("They need to sort our their priorities." With apologies to Ron Weasley.)

Because guarding borders is a very 20th Century idea.

As these stories often do, it reminded me of the poem "The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats. The entire text of the poem, it isn't long, can be found below (after the break). The part I always think of is...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Civilization was nice while it lasted.

Because of course he does. Elon Musk takes Twitter out of the EU’s Disinformation Code of Practice

A request for comment emailed to Twitter’s press office returned an automated reply containing a poop emoji.

You can click thru for the details on what the EU wants, versus what Twitter is planning to do.

Hat tip to Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony - Daily News Stuff 28 May 2023: Frostbite Falls Edition.

The media, and the bureaucrats, who believe they have the sole right to spread disinformation, are taking this about about as well as can be expected, with Thierry Breton, head of the European Union's Josef Goebbels Memorial Happy Fun Time Administration, issuing unveiled threats.