🇺🇸 Kash Patel sworn in as FBI Director on the Bhagavad Gita instead of the Bible.

📎 AF Post

🇺🇸🇷🇺 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Russia is a global power and the United States has to have communication with them.

🔗 BRICSinfo

🇺🇸📱🇲🇽Trump Says Cook Shifting Apple Manufacturing From Mexico to US

President Donald Trump told a gathering of governors that Apple Inc. (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook promised him that the company’s manufacturing would shift from Mexico to the US during a meeting at the White House this week.

Cook “stopped two plants in Mexico” and will build products in the US instead, Trump said on Friday. He spoke the day after he and the Apple leader — who Trump said also promised hundreds of millions of dollars in US investment — met in Washington.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-tim-cook-meeting-trump-220006653.html

🇺🇸🇷🇺 Trump-Putin summit preparations are underway, Russia says

Preparations are underway for a face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister said Saturday. It marked a clear departure from Western efforts to isolate Moscow over its war in Ukraine.

Speaking to Russian state media, Sergei Ryabkov said a possible Putin-Trump summit could involve broad talks on global issues, not just the war in Ukraine.

“The question is about starting to move toward normalizing relations between our countries, finding ways to resolve the most acute and potentially very, very dangerous situations, of which there are many, Ukraine among them,” he said.

But he said efforts to organize such a meeting are at an early stage, and that making it happen will require “the most intensive preparatory work.”

Ryabkov added that U.S. and Russian envoys could meet within the next two weeks to pave the way for further talks among senior officials.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-trump-putin-talks-89e19bc56677064f6f9a6d6e03de7362

🇺🇸🇺🇦 US President Trump says Ukraine is going to give the United States its money back.

"We're getting our money back."

🔗 BRICSinfo

🇩🇪 Polling shows the AfD is expected to lock down 145 seats in the Bundestag, only second to the center-right CDU, which is expected to land 220.

📝 Keith Woods: If it plays out this way, it will be a really interesting dynamic to have a conservative party governing with a nationalist party as the main opposition.

When was the last time that happened in a major Western democracy?

🔗 Keith Woods

🇯🇵 Japan being 98% Japanese and ~0% "Global South" (read: black/MENA/subcontinental/Latin American) matters a lot more than their zoning and environmental laws (and is one of the two big reasons for their orderly public sphere). The hour is late, time to stop pretending.

🔗 arctotherium

🇿🇦📝 Nemets: Interesting article on why the United States should support the creation of a multiracial & truly democratic Cape Republic in what is now western South Africa:

https://www.capeindependent.com/article/the-road-to-partition

🔗 Nemets

🇺🇸 More than 75,000 federal employees have accepted a buyout and will leave their 'taxpayer-funded jobs,' US President Trump announces at CPAC

🔗 Anadolu

🇨🇩🇷🇼🇺🇸 What Congo’s President Thinks of Rwanda: A ‘Mania to Be the Apex Predator’

“The Trump administration has already shown interest in a deal that could ensure a stream of strategic minerals directly from Congo, Mr. Tshisekedi said. He also touted investments in major Congolese projects including a mega dam that, if completed, would be the world’s largest hydroelectric plant.”

As vast swaths of Congolese territory are seized by a Rwandan-backed armed group, Congo’s president looks to make a minerals deal with the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/world/africa/congo-rwanda-tshisekedi-interview.html

🔗 TheoMpoze

🇺🇸 Elon Musk: "Our goal is to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit. And if the deficit is not put under control - America will go bankrupt."

🔗 unusual_whales

🇺🇸 Why Elbridge Colby Matters

Elbridge Colby is Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as under secretary of defense for policy, but Sen. Tom Cotton is thinking about derailing his nomination.

What makes Colby, who served faithfully in the first Trump administration as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, more objectionable to Cotton than Tulsi Gabbard or Robert F. Kennedy were?

The answer, Cotton has indicated, is that he believes Colby is insufficiently fearful of Iran’s nuclear program.

Beyond that article, Colby has called for Washington to prioritize checking the power of Communist China over further commitments to the Middle East.

Elbridge Colby is a threat to the neoconservatives’ place in the middle layer of politics. He’s the anti-Kristol—a Harvard-educated, right-leaning intellectual, at home in a think tank or appointed government position, with a vision of what Republican foreign policy should be that is sharply at odds with the neoconservatives’.

https://www.compactmag.com/article/why-elbridge-colby-matters/

🇺🇸📝 zerohedge: Instead of various hot takes on a "Mar a Lago accord", just read the original paper from Stephen Miran on which the Trump 2.0 policy framework is based (and why you should be even longer gold and bitcoin).

🇺🇸 A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System - Stephen Miran

https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf

🇺🇸🇨🇳🇷🇺 Trump proposes trilateral agreement with China & Russia to mutually decrease military budgets by 50%, per Ken Klippenstein:

"One of the first meetings I want to have is with president Xi of China, president Putin of Russia & I want to say let's cut our military budget in half."

🔗 unusual_whales

🇺🇸 President Donald Trump says he and Elon Musk will be personally going to inspect the gold at Fort Knox.

🔗 America

🇩🇪 CDU party wins the German election, the AfD sees the biggest gain and comes in second. The far-left Linke surges to 8.5%, according to the first projection.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's left-wing SPD has suffered its biggest defeat in the party's history.

🔗 Disclose

🇩🇪 Current implosion of German industry is comparable with Great Financial Crisis and Covid lockdown, but this time outside of a global recession. It is all self-inflicted, this is what happens when blind left green ideology replaces common sense.

📝 The German ZEW Current Conditions graph indicates economic analysts' assessment of Germany's present economic situation.

🔗 Michael A. Arouet

🇺🇸🇲🇽 US State Department:

We designated cartels like Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. This unlocks new diplomatic and economic tools. It cuts off their commercial ties, disrupts banking, and targets shell companies. This is a crucial step against groups who terrorize countries and run human trafficking operations.

🔗 StateDept