Here's our summary of key economic events overnight that affect New Zealand, with news rising oil prices are reigniting inflation concerns and even equity investors have noticed. Bond investors have bid up benchmark bond rates. The Fed next has to deal with this risk in just over a month, but that investors are moving now indicates the heightened concern that Trump's quagmire isn't getting resolved anytime soon. Certainly, his promise of a deal with Iran "very soon", has vanished.
Meanwhile, the Yemeni Houthis have struck Saudi related tankers and hit a Saudi oil refinery. So the conflict is spreading.
Markets have reacted as though they expect inflation to rise from here.
In Japan, their official 'economy watchers' July survey is signaling continued improvement, especially in their services sector. These survey results took a sharp tumble when the US attacked Iran and the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. But since then it has climbed back as time has shown that most of the world has adapted effectively, and that includes Japan. Strong exports and a weaker currency have helped.
You may recall the recent deadly earthquake in the historic city of Kumamoto. But that hasn't stopped Sony and Taiwan's TSMC announcing yesterday a US$6.3 bln new joint investment into an advanced image sensor plant there. Nikkei has the details.
Indonesia’s consumer confidence fell in July from June to its lowest level since April 2025 although still in positive territory. The moderation was largely driven by weaker assessments of current economic conditions.
And staying in Indonesia, their government has appointed the long-experienced deputy central bank governor to the top position made vacant by the President firing him, foregoing the opportunity to appoint the daughter of the President. This will reassure financial markets that some Turkish-like instability is being avoided.
In Australia, bank shares are took a beating yesterday, with Westpac down -5.9%, CBA down -2.1%, ANZ down -1.7% and NAB down -2.4%. The reason is a Westpac Q3 market update that shows their mortgage applications down -11% in the period and are running down -20% following their Federal Budget. Almost all of this fall away is because residential investors are pulling back because the expectation of capital gains is vanishing. Westpac says investor "credit growth" will fall from +9.1% this year to about +4.5% in the next two years. They expect little change in demand by owner occupiers.
And don't forget there is an RBA monetary policy review later today. No-one expects any official rate change, but given the high and sticky inflation levels, there will be a lot of interest in their analysis of why they aren't moving to quash it.
The UST 10yr yield is now just on 4.70%, up +4 bps from this time yesterday. The 30 year yield is at 5.24% and up +3 bps. The key 2-10 yield curve is now at +46 bps (up +1 bp). Their 1-5 curve is now at +36 bps (unchanged) and the 3 mth-10yr curve is at +101 bps (+5 bps). The China 10 year bond rate is little-changed at 1.70%. The Japanese 10 year bond yield is now at 2.82%, up +2 bps. The Australian 10 year bond yield starts today at 5.00%, up +1 bp. The NZ Government 10 year bond rate is at 4.70%, and down -4 bps from yesterday at this time.
Wall Street has opened its week on a softish note with the S&P500 down -0.1% and the Nasdaq down -0.4%. Overnight, European markets were mixed between London's -0.4% drop and Paris's +0.1% firming. Yesterday Tokyo ended its Monday trade up +2.1%. Hong Kong was up +1.0% and Shanghai was up +.07%. Singapore gained +1.1%. The ASX200 ended down -0.3%. But the NZX50 rose +0.5% in its Monday trade.
The price of gold has risen to US$4364/oz, up +US$21 from yesterday. Silver has risen +US$1.50 at just over US$65/oz.
Oil prices are up +US$4 from yesterday at just under US$82/bbl in the US, while the international Brent price is now just under US$87.50/bbl, Hormuz transits have dried right up. There have been no crude tankers and only 2 cargo ships exiting over the past 24 hours (0 dark with transponders off) and five entering for new loads (1 dark), again all Iran-linked. The Red Sea activity is where the focus is shifting and still low with less than 20 either way at the Yemen chokepoint.
The Kiwi dollar is down -10 bps from yesterday at just over 58.8 USc. Against the Aussie we are little-changed at 83.4 AUc. Against the euro we have held at 51 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at 62.5 which is down -10 bps from this time yesterday.
The bitcoin price starts today at US$63,860 and down a full -2.0% from this time yesterday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest however at just on +/-1.2%.
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49 Comments
I wonder how long the stalemate will continue. It isn't exactly a win for Iran either is it?
Silver lining is that the planet will be grateful. If fuel prices stay at current levels it actually seems like a reasonable outcome to me. In addition it will extend the timeframe before we hit peak oil, making it even more likely we hit peak demand before supply.
I think Iran see this as a golden opportunity to cause some real harm to the global economy and more importantly the US. They (and their allies) will continue to play this game of smoke and mirrors, lies and deception until they achieve this.
Trump has a big problem.
Ever since 1979 the Iranian regime has been strategising and reinforcing its situation internally, regionally and internationally to position Iran to be able to withstand exactly the circumstances that it faces now. In short, resultantly at the outset of this conflict Iran has been playing the long game as opposed to the other side, a short game. It sort of comes out in a similar vein, to that old adage about finance house failures put down to lending long and borrowing short which, with regard to ammo, is now a consideration that appears to be emerging.
If they had left Iran alone for the last few decades there would be not problem.
The locals kicked out the USA from stealing their oil in (1979?). After so many decades it's time the USA got over it.
Iranians are very patriotic, bombing them makes them more so, and the last thing they want is to go back under foreign control.
Election issues: Ideological purity as demonstrated by National Christian Bishop stopping the East Coast council from using the power of the community to change the permissible activities on the very unstable land. Is it acceptable for ideology to override the needs of the community? The answer is no. Voting for the “safe hands” “business friendly “ Coalition perpetuates the insanity. If we insist on putting these people and policies in power, we will continue to fail. Enough, be gone!
Certainly there are many recorded examples of land areas in NZ that have been entirely unsuitable for how they have been developed. The EQ sequences in Canterbury exposed land that should never have accommodated residential housing and then there are the historical flood plains throughout NZ causing perennial problems. The thing is though, be it local or central government, all of them are right before Mother Nature says “not so,”but none of them, at that point, are in sight.
I dont think councils have a good history when it comes to red tape or getting the declined stamp out, so good on Bishop I say.
This from Stuff this morning
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/361017034/chris-bishop-blocks-gisborne-…
Arguably Central Government was a prime driver of the vulnerability that exists in the Gisborne region.
First the livestock incentive scheme and cheap land development encouragement loans drove bush/scrub clearance by root raking on very steep erosion prone soils.
Then the reforestation scheme came in after cyclone Bola but permanent retirement was not required = production forestry. And the harvest cycle is well under way.
Then come cyclones Hale and Gabrielle and the region is devastated. And subsequent lesser events have repeated impacts from slash.
There is undeniable urgency to redress the extreme vulnerability in this region. Commendably Gisborne District Council (unitary authority) develops a plan to address this.
And what does government do? Quashes progess on that plan, hanging the region out to dry.
That is beyond belief. Especially against a backdrop where regions devastated by climatic events like this have been given a clear message that government support for recovery costs will be limited compared with Gabrielle.
Chris Bishop, grant the exemption and support Gisborne taking well researched and pragmatic steps to build greater resilience for their people, communities and infrastructure.
Go figure
One word. Greed.
So who's fault is the slash ending up on beaches?
Look no further than the forestry companies and their logging practices. Not economic to remove slash during logging so it's left behind. It didn't need to be that way. If they cared about the environment and the communities they operate in, they would have cleaned up after themselves.
Plenty of examples around the country where responsible forestry companies do exactly this and leave behind pristine hillsides after logging, ready for the next rotation
IIRC forestry slash used to be burnt in piles in situ? Which helped regenerate growth etc A practice apparently stopped years ago due to Green emissions pressure.
Plant oaks. Look after each tree for 150 years. Take them out one at a time carefully and selectively and replace it.
The French make money doing it like this.
Yes, high value logs would be a much better option, but this doesn't account for the short termist greed neoliberal central has brainwashed NZers with for 40 years.
Extracting individual logs is an expensive operation though and not particularly practical on steep erodable land. Maybe by helicopter? Problem is, I suspect higher value logs don't really stack up profitably if you take the longer growing time into account? Sure you get more/tonne, but is it double, triple+ what can be made from radiata? I recently did the figures on Cypress and the slower growth isn't really compensated for with higher price.
We have natives that would do that. I suspect oaks would suffer the same outcome as pinus radiation - the climatic conditions result in faster growth rates than where the species is endemic, lowering final quality of timber.
We have the 1930s depression to thank for pines dominating timber production in NZ, thanks to the government work schemes introduced to plant the largest man made firest at the time, on the central plateau
Yes, that is true. I've heard anecdotally that NZ grown oak doesn't have the quality of Euro oak. Who knows , with the climate of Europe heading towards Saharan conditions, it may be NZ oak that's better quality? Even NZ natives may struggle to adapt to the new climate paradigm? I don't know that NZ radiata is poorer than Monterey grown? Any pictures I've seen of the original source material, the trees look particularly stunted. It was the hardiness of the species that first attracted attention. Same with Monterey cypress. A lot of selection has gone into the current varietal accessions.
Radiata could be fantastic if looked after and left for say 100 years?
Does anybody here know?
Currently it's 30 years and off to China for boxing. Does it have to be.
Heartwood radiata is definately a different beast to the sap wood. It doesn't absorb chemical treatments easily which is why it's usually harvested pre heartwood development. I remember a big old radiata I cut down (120+) for a friend was basically all heartwood. It was dry enough to burn straight off the healthy living trunk and very easily shattered. I imagine it would be naturally insect resistant, but probably no use structurally.
Old radiata is full of resin so can't use for clearwood applications. Growth maxes out well before 30 depending on stocking so better to replant and get better genetics. Only a small proportion used for boxwood and the chinese don't really want that anyway, it is just an arising. The government doles out carbon lucre to steel, concrete and the landed gentry, it doesn't dole out anything for wood that could remain here if it was on an even playing field or if the ETS was thrown out.
They send radiata to Canada too but China is only market that can take the volumes we produce.
https://www.accoya.com/nz/project/banff-gondola-deck/
The ETS should be thrown out and replaced with a payment levied on burners and transferred to storers. The current system is nonsense. I can't sell my credits because they create a liablity at the same time, and that liability is unquantified into the future. Can't harvest the trees, they may burn down, blow over, killed by a novel pest.
There needs to be a penalty for burners using the atmosphere as an open sewer, otherwise they're just dirty freeloaders! At the moment I'm cleaning up their filth for free, while they laugh all the way to the bank!
I've heard anecdotally that NZ grown oak doesn't have the quality of Euro oak.
Perhaps we need to invest in a long term wine barrel industry to support our exports without having to import horrendously expensive French oak ones. The spinoff markets of course being woodturning, cabinetry, firewood etc.
What does burning slash have to do with our emissions? Insignificant. Got any sources regarding this change in practice?
What does burning slash have to do with our emissions?...Green virtue signaling? I said IIRC so no sources & I'm not going to Google. I'd heard it said a few years ago
Aussie banks taking a hit?
Bet they are real pleased they've got their cash cow subsidiaries in NZ.
Maybe we kiwis should be crowing from the rooftops about how we are propping up the banking companies across the ditch.
Its a real possibility that kiwis don't have suitable respect for being massively in debt. Especially the interest only "investors". As the noose of debt tightens save the squealing for looking in the mirror.
Not talking investors however I'm increasingly coming across good people who bought at 2021 market peak for all sorts of reasons (typically family circumstances) & have since lost all equity & more. There's a hidden homeowner subclass scraping by in hardship over the last 5 years with no light in the tunnel.
Easy to say buyer beware however I don't believe the banks would have been anything like as cavalier with lending if they had their own skin in the game = no recourse mortgages as USA. I'd probably vote for a party that had that policy.
Agree the buyers from 21-22 have real problems. Talked a bunch of people at work out of buying in this window. All have done so since and saved most of this pain. Agree banks here take no enough risk of their own money. Any changes here will seen the cost of debt rise.
Banks virtually have no risk at all. Even their deposits are insured for free by the taxpayer.
I know a few around Wellington region. One went to Australia and rented their house out + topping up the mortgage with what is currently a favourable exchange rate. Others managed to get reasonable jobs before the big downturn and are managing, but for those that lose their jobs or fixed the entire mortgage at one low rate, they will have been hit with a financial freight train having repayments double or more when they rolled over.
Having recent discussions with a friend who has just bought, they asked my thoughts on fixing rates. My opinion (clarified as such) would be to fix in 3 chunks at different trerms to allow for risk for unexpected events such as; a job loss, the kids needing braces etc, sickness or injury, allowing less of an increase when having to refix one portion each year. They advised between their mortgage broker, among others, I was the only person to even suggest this as an option. Goes to show the level of advice people are getting around such important decisions.
Probably less hassle for the broker to lock in one term than deal with three refixes each time... I agree 100% on multi-tranche loans though
There has been a definite change of perception in precious metals. Gold and Silver have stopped moving in opposite direction to the price of oil (which was the case since the beginning of the war) and perhaps more surprisingly, PM prices are heading higher at the same time as Bond yields and inflation expectation are increasing. Remember, what matters for Gold and Silver prices is not interest rates per se, but real or net interest rates, meaning interest rates minus inflation. So we could actually be experiencing negative real interest rates, which are bullish for PM.
The U.S. has positive real interest rates Dr Y.
Barely JC, and most likely negative if you account for the true rate of inflation.
Barely JC, and most likely negative if you account for the true rate of inflation.
This is true. But probably not so long ago you would likely have been in the camp where that sees "official inflation is a fiction" as little more than conspiracy.
To support your thesis, if you can identify what this is inflation is and how it impacts upon gold, it's good. But not so easy.
What you should consider is that public / pvte debt to GDP in the 70s and now are entirely different. Gold has rallied despite positive real rates. Yes. Conventional wisdom suggests it shouldn't happen. But debt to GDP is on a completely different scale now. F.more, when interest rates are raised in the U.S., the impacts on the federal deficit are potentially greater than constraining commercial bank lending.
Well, I belive that money or rather credit expansion runs at about 7% pa, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to take this figure as a more realistic estimate of price inflation. If so, real intetest rates are indeed negative.
A STRUCTURAL PAPER ASSET DESTRUCTION OF MONUMENTAL PROPORTIONS IS ALREADY BAKED INTO THE CAKE
Marie Antionette, Ah la la... "Let them eat cake"
IMO, your comment is spot on, Yvil. The correlation broke because the market is waking up to deep, systemic currency debasement.
I believe that you have hit on the most critical structural shift in the modern macro environment.
The fact that Gold and Silver are surging simultaneously with rising bond yields and inflation expectations is a historical anomaly that traditional financial models (which rely on official government CPI shite) cannot explain.
The traditional rule, that rising nominal yields hurt precious metals, only applies when investors believe that interest rates will eventually outrun inflation. The current price action tells us that this trust has completely evaporated.
This shift isn't just retail speculation; it is a profound institutional realignment.
Global central banks have initiated a massive structural pivot, aggressively dumping western paper assets (US Treasuries) to accumulate physical gold at record-breaking volumes.
This institutional flight out of sovereign debt and into hard money provides definitive proof of the "change of perception" you noted - the world's most powerful financial entities are openly signaling that Western fiat debt is no longer a reliable store of value.
To understand why this is happening, we need to look at what "real interest rates" actually look like when we discard cooked government metrics and use objective economic indicators:
1. The Ranson Method Reality (Precious Metals as the Inflation Gauge)
If we apply the Ranson Method - developed by economist David Ranson - precious metals are treated as a real-time, objective measure of dollar depreciation rather than a lagging indicator.
With Gold currently trading at $4,390/oz compared to its ~$1,500 baseline in 2020, the dollar has effectively lost 65.83% of its total purchasing power against hard assets in just six years.
This translates to a compound annual currency debasement rate of roughly 19.5%.
2. The ShadowStats Baseline
Even if we look at consumer goods using the conservative ShadowStats minimum baseline of 7.5% annual inflation (which uses pre-1980/1990 calculation methodologies), the dollar has still lost over 35% of its value since 2020.
What This Does to "Real" Interest Rates and Bondholders
When you plug these structural inflation figures into the bond market, your suspicion of "negative real rates" becomes a mathematical horror show for paper asset holders.
Consider an investor who bought a 30-year US Treasury in 2020 at a 1.5% nominal yield:
The Secondary Market Crash: As the Fed aggressively raised rates to try and chase inflation, the market sale value of that long bond collapsed by roughly 45% on the secondary market. A $100 bond is now worth roughly $55 in nominal terms.
The Capital/Purchasing Power Wipeout: When you apply the Ranson dollar debasement factor to that remaining $55, the real purchasing power left over is a mind-numbing $18.79 out of the original $100.
Even under the gentle ShadowStats 7.5% metric, that bondholder has suffered a real wealth destruction of over 64%.
FLIGHT TO THE SHORT END OF THE YIELD CURVE FOR INVESTORS IN USTs - this is no place to hide the train-wreck either.
The short end of the yield curve provides individual investors with a temporary hiding place from nominal price crashes, but it strips the sovereign state of its long-term financing stability.
By shortening the maturity profile of national debt, the system becomes hypersensitive to interest rate shocks.
The pivot to T-Bills doesn't solve the problem - it concentrates the risk, shortens the fuse, and guarantees a much faster, liquidity-driven spiral into aggressive currency debasement.
Conclusion
Net interest rates matter most. The reason PM prices are heading higher at the same time as bond yields is because the market is realisation-pricing a triple-whammy penalty: nominal capital losses on long-dated bonds, deep purchasing power erosion, and completely uncompetitive yields.
Gold and silver aren't just rising because of geopolitics or mild inflation expectations; they are rising because they are the only objective assets accurately pricing the absolute capitulation of the long end of the US Treasury curve.
We aren't just experiencing mildly negative real rates - we are witnessing the maths of a structural paper asset wipeout.
Great post Colin. Here's another way to look at it, Gold has not increased in value, but $ have depleted very badly. Here's an example.
Average house price in NZ in 1985: $80,000, average Gold price in 1985: NZ$600/ounce So you needed about 133 ounces of Gold in 1985 to buy an average house in NZ
Average house price in NZ in 2025: $775,000, average Gold price in 2025: NZ$5,600. So you needed about 138 ounces of Gold in 2025 to buy an average house in NZ
Astonishingly, the price of an average house when measured in Gold, has barely moved in the last 40 years. Yet, when measured in NZ$ the house has increased almost tenfold. This shows the immense devaluation of the NZ$ of about 85% in 40 years!!! Other currencies are barely better, the Swiss Franc being oner of the most resilient currencies.
Here's the visual: https://x.com/fthegurus/status/2086866124709183611
100%, Yvil.
We cannot hope to make any sense out of this monetary debacle when we try to measure these trends in debt-based fiat-paper-tokens.
Thankfully, we have a "rock relic" that carries no counterparty risk (IOWs its real money not credit) that has bought a remarkably similar volume or parcel of goods and services, for more than 5000 years.
That rock our only reliable yardstick - all other comparisons are simply distracting noise, which only serve to obfuscate the inherent mathematically pre-destined and imminent fiat currency implosion.
Your excellent example spanning 40 years, the same as the more than 5 millennia example, illustrates this point.
There are the short-term spikes, in the gold spot price, but these are blips caused by the paper market m,anipulation, where entities that don't own physical gold sell paper gold, to entities that don't want to own gold bullion.
One day soon China in consultation with a few other like-minded countries will revalue gold, and that will be the end of the LBMA and COMEX paper markets, and an organic physical price discovery will have its say.
That will signal the end of the Western-facing global bond Ponzi and a new global financial and central banking paradigm at the same time.
Kiwis would do well to reflect on the fact that ,if you have so much as a single gold tooth, then you own more gold than the RBNZ.
ALL WARS ARE BANKER'S OR RELIGIOUS WARS
Surely, humanity only really needs one simple commandment to follow…
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
If humanity could only follow that one basic common-sense concept, and at the same time rid itself of religious fundamentalism, along with it’s associated creationism, including the infantile belief that their personal god/creator construct is the very centre of the universe – fat chance.
This fundamentalist behaviour is of course the most powerful divide and rule tool deployed against humanity, by the ~0.000035% of the global population that form the head of the human food chain – they work hand in hand with the global MIC to orchestrate their forever-war agenda.
The tragic irony is that the West funds this entirely by giving this same network the power to create ~97% of our “money supply” – out of thin air, and then charge us trillions of dollars in unearned economic rent – when we ourselves could create those tokens (yes, out of thin air), as a credit-based system, for the betterment of society, and with no third parties whatsoever making off with a continual huge heist of capital.
Until humanity WTFU as to the fact that, as long as we continue to allow this monumental daylight heist of wealth, then we will continue to gormlessly fund our very own victim-hood.
Only four nations, Russia, China, Iran and Cuba have survived the wrath of the Western central banking cartel, and in particular it’s number one attack dog the U$A. It is not coincidence that these nations are numbers 1-4 on the hegemon’s hit-list.
They continue to operate their central banking architectures as state-directed public utilities and as such are targeted for destruction.
Iraq was invaded in 2003 - after all, they had the gall to operate a deeply centralised command economy where the financial system was run as a state utility. The ability for the US to thieve Iraq’s energy resources for the next few decades was another juicy enticement.
During the 2003 invasion, the Central Bank of Iraq building in Baghdad was physically bombed and heavily damaged. Following the toppling of the government, the US Coalition Provisional Authority completely rewrote Iraq’s banking laws, forcing the central bank into a Western-style “independent” model.
Crucially, the US established a system requiring all of Iraq’s oil export revenues to be deposited into the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Today, Washington continues to restrict and ration Iraq’s access to its own cash to enforce compliance.
In 1953, the US CIA, alongside British intelligence, orchestrated a military coup (Operation Ajax). Mosaddegh was overthrown, and the absolute monarchy of the Shah was restored. The banking and oil infrastructure were promptly reintegrated into Western corporate systems until the 1979 Islamic Revolution broke them away again.
Following the 1959 revolution,Cuba nationalised all private banks, including major US-owned institutions – and transformed the National Bank of Cuba into a public economic utility.
In April 1961, the US government financed, trained, and launched a direct military invasion at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the government and reverse the nationalisation of Cuba’s financial and agricultural systems. The invasion failed, prompting the US to pivot to a decades-long total commercial blockade. To this day the U$A contiues to try to starve Cuba off the planet.
This pattern the “Ecomonic Hitman” hegemonic playbook in full deployment – alternative models were systematically dismantled over the past half-century through international banking pressure, military intervention, coups, and structural debt conditions.
As I have said before many times on this forum, all wars are banker’s wars or religious wars, what’s more all have an element of both factors… and the beat goes on.
Reply
Correct. And regarding the banking side there's plenty of quotes from the horse's mouth confirming such:
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system,” said Henry Ford, “For if they did, there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
David Rockefeller admits in his book on page 405: “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterising my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Sir Josiah Stamp, former Director of the Bank of England, once said: “Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again.”
We are born into this matrix and conditioned to serve it. Its purpose is not human flourishing but the perpetuation of debt and control.
The religious side of these wars is just as important. Kabbalah controls Washington and western culture yet most people don’t even know what Kabbalah is. It’s jewish mysticism.
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
I guess there's exceptions to every rule though Col? Like your pal Vlad the mafia invader and his genocide in Ukraine, or President Xi and his re education camps for the inconveniently uninformed?
And you, Palmtree, whilst you hide behind a convenient nom de plume, and yet remain utterly clueless as to who the real enemy is, even when it is spelt out for you.
Anyone with half a brain would know that the US/NATO orchestrated proxy war in Ukraine is the cause of the ongoing tragic bloodshed, and that the only reason it persists is because of the global-MIC and its lunatic-agents mentioned here in my final paragraph.
The repetition of the trope, that Putin and the RF have territorial aspirations, is the most dangerous and ludicrous message ever peddled by the global MIC - the one that brings the doomsday clock ever closer to midnight than any other misinformation on the planet.
Those who remain eyebrows deep in bigotry and russophobia, refuse to acknowledge this, and by supporting this tripe, add to the likelihood that a huge swath of the Northern Hemisphere remains in great danger of being turned into molten glass.
Hopefully one day you might WT$U and realise that parroting the memes of the imbeciles, crooks, and quislings, such as Ursula von der 'Lying', Kaja Kallas, Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz, etc, is profoundly risking the very survival of your species.
Nah Col, I can just see though your ridiculous pro fascist and dictatorship bias.
"The repetition of the trope, that Putin and the RF have territorial aspirations, is the most dangerous and ludicrous message ever peddled by the global MIC"
Jesus, you need to try listening to what the Russian empire building nationalists themselves say, instead of the uninformed left wing extremists still having wet dreams about the communist nirvana that never was.
"Russia's Supreme Court on Monday barred the country's only anti-war party, Yabloko (Apple), from running in September's parliamentary elections."
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260810-russia-bars-only-anti-war-p…
The Kremlin lives to kill.
You just confirmed your habitual Western MSM sourcing and why you parrot their MIC-forever-war promoting tropes, Palmtree.
Your source, the pro-Western, France 24, aligns and shills for both the EU and NATO, the later of which has to continually invent enemies simply to justify their existence.
This goes back to the crux of why Putin literally begged NATO to allow the RF to become a NATO member - he knew that if they accepted it would, in effect, eventually nullify their principal reason to exist - hence it was never going to happen because Russia had to be framed as the eternal threat.
And when it comes to your sources - you might as well shape all your views on these MIC-cheerleading MSM-establishment outlets and beat the war drums yourself, along with Fox, CNN, WSJ, WAPO, and the UK's Telegraph - so why not add the France24 shill to that list as well.
The common revolving door mode is to hire retired military commanders, and Pentagon officials as "independent analysts" while they simultaneously serve as consultants or board members for weapons manufactures and receive obscene remuneration for their shilling.
These major defense conglomerates, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman sponsor political talk shows, happy-clappy delusional Sunday morning news shows, and "defense"- related newsletters for policy makers.
Furthermore the lawsuit against Yabloko were, ultimately because they received campaign funding from third parties originating in foreign countries like the US and Germany, the very same ones who support Ukraine's attacks on Russian assets deep inside their territory.
Courts and electoral authorities in the UK, US, France, NZ, and Australia would treat the receipt of campaign funds originating from foreign nations with comparable severity. All five countries have strict statutory bans on foreign political donations to prevent outside interference in their democratic processes.
United Kingdom: The Electoral Commission strictly prohibits donations from non-UK entities. Parties must return foreign funds within 30 days or face heavy civil fines. Knowingly accepting foreign money is a criminal offence that can lead to unlimited fines and asset forfeiture.
United States: The Federal Election Campaign Act completely bars foreign nationals, governments, and corporations from donating to any US election. Violations are investigated by the FEC or the Department of Justice, resulting in massive financial penalties or criminal prosecution.
France: French law bans all foreign donations, including from foreign individuals and corporations. Political campaigns are heavily regulated, and violations are referred to the Constitutional Council, which has the power to retroactively invalidate an entire election victory.
New Zealand: The Electoral Act 1993 caps anonymous and foreign donations at extremely low limits ($50 NZD for foreign donations). Accepting significant foreign funding leads to investigations by the Electoral Commission and referral to the Police for criminal prosecution.
Australia: The AEC enforces a strict ban on "foreign donors" under the Commonwealth Electoral Act. Political parties that accept foreign money face civil penalties up to 200% of the value of the prohibited donation.
The fact that the West has made no secret of the fact that they intend to break Russia up as a civilisational state makes their protective stance all the more justifiable.
So you're saying Russian courts didn't just ban the the only party wanting to stop the war? Or do you have an aversion to facts that don't fit your pro fascist bias?
Russia, number 171 on the global corruption index and yet every turd of propaganda they regurgitate is treated as a gem of ultimate truth by Colin. It's almost like you're beavering away in the Russian embassy basement?
Recent wars yes. Not sure you could argue that of WW2, although I've heard some accuse the Rothchild's as complicit. modify 'Religious' to include ideology and then you cover them all.
But Viet Nam certainly was. JFK had apparently been convinced to pull out despite his recent escalations. That decision led to his assassination.
Certainly, his promise of a deal with Iran "very soon", has vanished.
Has there ever been a deal on the table. I don't think so.
I find if you assume every time Trump opens his mouth manure falls out, your assessment of the situation becomes much clearer.
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