Post

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Jan 10 • 36 tweets • 12 min read • Read on X

Scrolly

https://twitter.com/datarepublican/status/2009953358581485759

Can we pause the Greenland noise for one second and admit the obvious?

Denmark isn’t sovereign anymore it’s in lockstep with @Maersk.

The UN @IMOHQ is run by NGOs.

Maersk and the UN @IMOHQ are in lockstep with China.

Here’s the history 🧵

https://twitter.com/datarepublican/status/2009953358581485759

In practice, its government moves in near-lockstep with @Maersk—the world’s largest logistics empire.

Not officially.
Not on paper.
But in outcomes, incentives, and red lines.

Here’s how we got here.

Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940.

The King stayed. He became a symbol of quiet national continuity.

But Denmark had no army to celebrate. No Normandy. No Stalingrad.

What it did have was a merchant fleet at sea, one of the largest in the world, which joined the Allied cause. Danish sailors carried fuel, food, and munitions under Allied control while their homeland was under German occupation.

They were 💯 critical to allies success.

Over a thousand Danish merchant sailors died while serving with the Allies

Those sailors became Denmark’s war heroes.

And that mattered.

It meant that after the war, shipping companies that fought with the allies had enormous political legitimacy in Denmark in a way the U.S. Merchant Marine never did in America.

After WWII, Truman created the Department of Defense and removed the Secretary of the Navy from the Cabinet.

The Navy responded by consolidating all budget and political power around warships.

They viewed:
•The U.S. Merchant Marine
•The U.S. Coast Guard
•And even the U.S. Marine Corps

as competitors for funding.

The USMC survived only because it had veterans in Congress.

The Merchant Marine and Coast Guard did not.

FDR had promised Merchant Mariners full veterans’ status.
The Navy fought it.
They also blocked recognition of Allied merchant mariners.

Why?

Because if Merchant Mariners were “civilians,” not “military veterans” the Navy could funnel all prestige, propaganda, and money into battleships and carriers.

That decision gutted America’s commercial fleet.

Then Washington sold off the massive wartime merchant fleet for pennies with the Navy’s full support.

European companies, especially Maersk, bought it with free money from the Marshall Plan

In 1949 Denmark joined NATO—but grudgingly.

The treatment of merchant sailors (their heroes) left a deep bitterness toward U.S. military dominance. Denmark became NATO’s most skeptical member:
•Opposed the Korean War
•Opposed Vietnam
•Banned nuclear weapons on Danish soil
•Prioritized diplomacy over force

They became known as “the footnote state”—agreeing to NATO statements but caveating them in practice.

Denmark believed diplomacy would win the Cold War but Reagan believed naval supremacy would bankrupt the USSR.

He was right.

But to build a 600-ship Navy, he pushed U.S. shipyards to abandon merchant ships and build warships instead.

That crippled Sea-Land America’s flagship container line and the company that invented containerization.

It greatly benefited companies like Maersk in nations that greatly subsidized commercial shipbuilding

When Sea-Land collapsed because DC turned its back on subsides (and major mismanagement by its tobacco-company owner RJ Reynolds), Maersk acquired it, along with its massive U.S. military contracts,

It promised the DoD to invest in 🇺🇸logistics ships for U.S. defense.

From then on:
•The Pentagon got cheap logistics
•Maersk got global dominance
•Denmark got leverage over the military which has enormous leverage in congress

Because Maersk now had the majority of @US_TRANSCOM contracts and 🇺🇸 containerships the United States could not fight a war without its help.

Department of Defense became utterly reliant on Maersk and vis-a-vis Denmark

But Maersk profited enormously by globalization which they, via their strong US military ties and lobbying via unions and NGOs like the World Shipping Council.

And Danes in NATO, backed globalization too.

And they got the media to ignore shipping so nobody noticed.

And the globalists stamped out or throttled any 🇺🇸 maritime publication like @gCaptain via tools like banning press past to the UN and blacklisting us on Wikipedia (which social media used to throttle us)

gcaptain.com/day-seafarer-c…

Then Trump was elected and Denmark is progressive and felt disgusted by his administration.

Further Trump’s commerce secretary was a ship owner and knew all about the games Maersk played.

We spiraled into chaos as the Dems and Republicans fought each other at every turn

The Danes are very smart and realized Biden’s plans would fail.

They assessed that the US was a lost cause,

They needed a new best friend.

Then COVID Made Maersk a Financial Superpower

During COVID:
•Port congestion
•Stimulus spending
•Consumer panic

sent freight rates into the stratosphere.

Maersk printed billions in cash.

At the same time:
•Companies began exiting China
•Beijing panicked
•China turbo boosted subsidies but few companies took them

Maersk doubled down in China, building terminals, warehouses, and fleet with the CCPs subsidies and help at rock bottom prices. gcaptain.com/maersk-ceo-cle…

Problem was all their competitors were also raking in billions and the COVID boom was ending

The container lines were now in a knife fight:
•Maersk
•MSC
•CMA-CGM
•COSCO
•ONE

So they made a deal:
Stop competing. Divide the world into trade lanes. Create monopolies.

The problem?

When the US created the post war rules based order they gave the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission @FMC_gov enormous power to break global shipping cartels.

So Denmark and the EU pushed climate regulation instead.

The plan:
•Make oil tankers and conventional ships impossible
•Force every company to pick a different green fuel
•China builds all the ships
•Maersk locks in methanol ports
•Routes become monopolies
•The UN @IMOHQ UN Carbon Tax on non-compliant ships

The Shanghai–Los Angeles “Carbon-Free Corridor” was the pilot.

This wasn’t environmentalism.
It was cartelization.

Trump Blew It Up

Trump killed the UN carbon tax.

Who fought him hardest?
Denmark and Canada.

Maersk still has enormous leverage over US military logistics but then Hegseth announced massive funding for the U.S. Merchant Marine.

Trump promised to “keep the ships” used in Venezuela.

Maersk lost its leverage.

Remember:

Maersk holds extraordinary influence over the Danish government

Denmark controls Greenland.

That is the fulcrum of this entire geopolitical struggle.

The other country that fought hardest for the UN Carbon Tax was CANADA.

Why does that matter? Because Greenland only matters because Canada has failed to secure the Northeast Atlantic and Arctic missile corridor.

Nearly ICBM from China or their ally Russia aimed at the U.S. East Coast must fly over or near Canada

The Golden Dome can cover the West Coast from Alaska.

The East Coast remains exposed unless the northern corridor is sealed.

That leaves only three realistic options:
1.Canada radically increases defense spending to afford installing Golden Dome (including battleships) which it can only afford by slashing its social-welfare state
2.Canada becomes the 51st state

3. The United States takes strategic control of Greenland so Golden Dome coverage overlaps with Alaska

Those are the only ways to close the nuclear missile corridor to New York and Washington.

China opposes all three.

Beijing must preserve:
•An Arctic submarine route into the Atlantic past Greenland and Canada
•A ballistic-missile corridor to the U.S. East Coast

That makes Danish control of Greenland an ABSOLUTE strategic necessity for China.

Denmark knows how to play this game. Just as it “footnoted” NATO for decades, it will placate Washington by allowing base expansions but it will defend one absolute red line it’s had since joining NATO:
No nuclear anything on its soil.

Historically that meant no nuclear weapons but could be expanded to…

No nuclear interceptors.
No nuclear-armed subs.
No nuclear anti-submarine weapons.

And that matters because there is serious discussion that the Golden Dome may require nuclear airburst interceptors to stop Chinese ICBMs in space.

Denmark could also extend its no-nuclear doctrine to U.S. submarines transiting Danish or Greenlandic waters the very subs that would be needed to hunt Chinese SSBNs coming down from the Arctic.

Ht @navalnewscom & HI Sutton

So here is the alignment:
•China needs Greenland kept nuclear-free to preserve its strike corridor
•Maersk needs China to protect the tens of billions it invested there
•Denmark depends on Maersk for economic power and global leverage

All being backed by massive UN @IMOHQ NGO support

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ Which means Greenland isn’t governed by Copenhagen.

It’s governed by Maersk, NGOs, Canada, the United Nations and China

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ With the most weight at intersection of Maersk’s balance sheet and China’s nuclear strategy.

And that is why this fight is not about ice, climate, or sovereignty.

It is about whether the United States will be allowed to close the last open nuclear highway to New York and DC

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ Final thought: stop the “Denmark can defend Greenland” and “NATO will turn on the U.S.” fantasy.

Denmark sent its most powerful frigate to the Red Sea and it suffered a total weapons failure against the Houthis. 👇

gcaptain.com/danish-frigate…

https://twitter.com/johnkonrad/status/2009764550602625458

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ And even if it was possible to trigger NATO Article 5 against the United States (it’s not) they really couldn’t do much to stop the US if they tried 👇

https://twitter.com/johnkonrad/status/2009764550602625458

https://twitter.com/johnkonrad/status/2009102026265985261

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ And now you know why out everyone in new pentagon press corps - including BIG names like @LauraLoomer @mattgaetz @JackPosobiec @BreannaMorello - CNN’s @halbritz and @drewharwell, zeroed in on me for this big Washington Post hit job to get the ship guy discredited and kicked out:

https://twitter.com/johnkonrad/status/2009102026265985261

@navalnewscom @IMOHQ @LauraLoomer @mattgaetz @JackPosobiec @BreannaMorello @halbritz @drewharwell Thank you all for sharing this thread!

If you want to stay informed of the truth behind shipping please go follow @gCaptain and hit the bell icon

If you want to dive deeper into the strange history of @Maersk then go read my article here: gcaptain.com/day-seafarer-c…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

More from @johnkonrad

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Jan 8

https://twitter.com/drewharwell/status/2009070183797936402

Oh Drew, I’m thrilled you asked.

If any of my followers want to explain this to him directly, please jump in. I’ve officially run out of crayons.

Otherwise, I’m happy to walk through exactly how ya’ll at WaPo engineer hit pieces🧵

https://twitter.com/drewharwell/status/2009070183797936402

Foe those unfamiliar here’s the hir piece Drew Wrote about me, a licenses ship captain and MARITIME journalist , who was invited to go with @SecWar on a shipyard tour

washingtonpost.com/business/2026/…

First let’s define “hit piece” so we are all clear

I’ll even give you the biased Wikipedia version

Read 26 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Jan 7

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2009009090820030475

I like this a lot. Some sections are demanding, you have to reread them, but that’s not a flaw. It forces the reader to slow down. And sometimes hard is not only good, it’s necessary.

What many people miss is that linear systems are incredibly efficient but only under very specific conditions: rule-based order, geopolitical stability, and a high degree of trust and safety.

Linear systems excel at things like this: start a business, raise X capital, optimize for Y, expand into Z markets. Capital flows easily because there are few externalities. You don’t worry much about supply-chain collapse, interest-rate shocks, reputational risk from social media swings, or geopolitical sabotage. The system absorbs those risks for you.

For decades, the job of government was to simplify everything:
•One monetary system (the dollar)
•One diplomatic framework (the UN)
•Fewer barriers to trade
•Low interest rates
•Free trade
•Colorblind governance (no DEI sorting)
•Outsourcing complexity to NGOs

This was a very good thing.

The ultimate expression of this logic is a one-world, highly integrated system. From a pure efficiency standpoint, that is also a very good thing.

The catch is simple but fatal: everyone has to agree and act with some degree of honesty.

The reason we ended up with a “uniparty” consensus is that a global linear system made business extraordinarily efficient and reduced many traditional security risks. Conservatives liked it because it boosted growth and stability. Liberals liked it because it freed up capital and cognitive bandwidth for social priorities.

That alignment wasn’t sinister, it was rational.

To make it work, however, you need powerful international institutions capable of managing complexity. Organizations like the IMO, alongside dozens of NGOs, effectively regulate 90% of global trade. For a long time, that worked and it worked well.

“But John, I thought you were MAGA?”

Yes and what I just described is the system we had in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We came remarkably close to a near-optimal arrangement.

But a perfect system depends on trust. And trust broke.

Russia and China refused to play by the rules. Both became aggressively extractive. China hollowed out global manufacturing for themselves. Russia stripped natural resources. And NGOs, operating inside a high-trust, low-scrutiny environment, captured everything else.

Consolidated power plus high trust is an open invitation to fraud.

So now we’re stuck in the worst possible configuration: a system optimized for efficiency, but hemorrhaging value through corruption. The most honest, rule-following participants are being drained to subsidize the least honest ones.

That brings us to the present bifurcation.

We have two choices:
1.Double down on consolidation and linearization, squeezing out even more efficiency so we can do better despite the fraud (liberals)
2.Accept complexity, abandon false simplicity, and actively intervene to repair what’s broken (MAGA)

But this isn’t just MAGA vs liberals.

It’s linear thinkers vs non-linear thinkers.

The skill set required to streamline a functioning system is completely different from the skill set required to diagnose and repair a failing one.

And at the root of all of this is education.

Our education system has spent decades selecting for linear thinkers—because that’s what worked. The formula was clear: honors track, X hours of study, Y tutors, Z credentials. Choose the right majors, follow the prescribed career ladder, earn the right degrees. The path wasn’t easy, but it was linear—and it rewarded intelligence and discipline.

In a well-managed linear system, you don’t need to think broadly. If something matters, the system tells you. If CNN isn’t talking about it, keep your head down and stay on the track.

That model no longer works. 1/2

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2009009090820030475

Today, we need people who can hold multiple competing ideas in their heads at once—people who can reason across systems, not just within them, so they can repair the system and end fraud while it’s still running. Those people were liabilities in a smoothly operating machine, so we sidelined them.

That’s why a single-lens worldview, what DR describes, became dominant. The people elevated into leadership across NGOs, international institutions, and finance are highly linear thinkers who need everything reduced to BLUFs and flowcharts.

But here’s the contradiction: we no longer have a linear system.

It’s impossible to go back without repairing the system. The fraud is too great.

And since roughly 2015, instead of adapting to the fraud, liberals pushed harder for linearity—forcing more people into increasingly brittle efficiency tracks—while parallel ideologies (DEI, ESG, Marxist frameworks) taught others how to exploit the growing fraud inside the system.

The result isn’t progress or equity.

It’s systemic failure hiding behind the language of efficiency.

And now the people with the power under a linear system (like the person at CNN who is intelligent and put in the hard work to go to x school, follow y career path, and follow z type stories) are pissed off because they did everything they were told to do and they achieved the pinnacle of the system but they have zero power.

While those who were tossed out of the system (I had to leave the navy and follow a very non-traditional career to succeed) are running circles around them because we think nonlinearly and can jump around with a wrench fixing problems.

And here’s the reason why they are getting SO ANGRY at us. Because they cannot see what we see.

It’s not that they are dumb, it’s that they have been trained and selected for a very tunnel vision worldview.

And we are angry because we have no credentials or traditional power combined with a very wide field of view.

We can see all the problems very clearly and multitask…. While they can only focus on one problem in predefined buckets: in this case, that bucket is Maduro.

P. S. BOTH take work.

It takes a lot of work to get into Harvard and follow the formula to Senator or CEO. You have to read all the right books and climb the singular path.

It also takes a lot of work to read what DR is saying and my long text and map it to the world around you. You have to read a wide diversity of books and climb many difficult paths.

Work is just the prerequisite.

Problem is all the work the ivy league CEO or “top military journalist” has become useless in the last 10 years because of all the fraud while the work of the much smaller subset like Dr or Elon or me have become wildly more valuable.

Read 5 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Jan 7

This hit piece on me by @oliverdarcy wasn’t a mistake.

It wasn’t sloppy reporting.

It wasn’t “concerned journalism.”
It was a coordinated hit by the old Pentagon press corps to kneecap @PeteHegseth and to punish anyone they don’t control.

And this time, they overplayed their hand.

The first hit piece is already live, written by Oliver Darcy. I’m reliably told the second is queued up at @wapo. Same framing. Same tone. Same anonymous whispers. Same goal.

This isn’t journalism.
It’s a pile-on.

Before I tear this apart, let’s establish the inconvenient truth they couldn’t avoid.

I’ve spent over twenty years reporting on the collapse of the U.S. Merchant Marine. My wife sailed a rusting ammunition ship through known minefields during the Iraq War. I’ve fought, publicly and relentlessly, for American shipbuilding, industrial capacity, and a fleet that can actually fight a war.

So yes, I’m 💯 thrilled that a president is finally serious about shipbuilding.

And yes, as one of 🇺🇸’s few remaining licensed ship captains, I was in awe reporting from USS John F. Kennedy.

That’s called expertise.
The legacy press treats it like a crime.
Now the rot.

Instead of reporting on the most advanced aircraft carrier and attack submarine ever built, one reporter, @halbritz, who has made zero effort to hide her contempt for Hegseth spent the tour watching me. Writing about me. Whispering about me. Feeding her impressions to friends embedded in legacy newsrooms.

I’ve done more press tours than I can count. This was the first time I witnessed a reporter actively hostile not to the administration but to other journalists.

She didn’t knowI spent years sailing falling apart rust bucket ships through massive storms and years more in hard shipyards. She didn’t bother to ask, her contempt was plane as she shared stories about being invited to royal palaces overseas by previous administrations. She refused to write articles about our ships being left defenseless under attack under Biden.

That’s not competition.
That’s enforcement.

Now, the lies—because there are many.

Lie #1: “The Pentagon is icing out journalists in favor of sycophants.”

This collapses instantly. Five minutes on gCaptain shows years of hard criticism of both Trump administrations. My own X account shows me being publicly smacked down by the White House press secretary.

Yes, I’m pro-Trump.

No, that does not mean obedience.
That assumption says more about them than me.

Lie #2: “A collection of right-wing outlets.”

They didn’t check. They didn’t care. Independent bias tools rate @gCaptain near dead center. Facts are optional when the target is preselected. The majority of our employees did not vote for Trump.

Lie #3: “Niche media site gCaptain.”
This one is pure contempt. gCaptain is the largest and most-read maritime news site on the planet, covering defense, shipping, energy, labor, and national security. Calling it “niche” is what powerful institutions say when they want to make it socially acceptable to crush someone smaller.

Lie #4: “A very different cast of media figures.”

Blatantly false. Invited to the tour was:
•Two people from CNN
•Fox News—home to @JenGriffinFN, Hegseth’s loudest critic
•A reporter from Bloomberg, a news organization owned by a billionaire who openly hates Trump

That’s diversity of viewpoint.
The old press corps only supports that idea when they control it.

Lie #5: “According to people familiar with the matter.”
This is where the mask slips.

Darcy emailed me warning me about the hit piece while I was still on the Secretary’s plane. I didn’t see it until we landed at Andrews Air Force Base. Walking through the terminal, I asked the other journalists, the only ones who heard my request “Oliver Darcy” was.

No one knew.

Then @halbritz panicked. Grabbed her CNN colleague. Vanished back into the terminal to avoid questions.

So let’s stop pretending.

Where did Oliver Darcy work?

CNN. 1/2

I haven’t read the full article—Darcy refused to send it but I’m told it sneers at something trivial.

What I did was asking Hegseth to sign a book.

Real journalists like Hegseth and I understand book exchanges. We’ve been doing it for centuries. There are literal stacks of books from reporters and officials inside the Pentagon press office where Britzky worked for years before self deporting over new rules meant to seal leaks.

New rules that proved wildly effective during the Maduro Raid. Rules I am proud to follow

Unlike Pete and I, neither Britzky or Darcy are real journalists with books that have been taught in some of the world’s best colleges.

This wasn’t reporting.
It was a warning shot.
Not even against me but against every “niche” journalist who tries to challenge the uni-media’s monopoly over piblic opinion

And now, right on schedule, the rest of the mainstream media, armed with billion-dollar budgets, floors of lawyers and collapsing credibility, are circling like vultures to hammer a journalist from a much smaller outlet.

Power punching down.
Always brave.
And then there’s Brixey.

The “journalist” who showed up to a heavy-industrial shipyard tour dressed for a lifestyle shoot… leather pants, designer accessories, waxed Barbour jacket… regaling is about the royal palaces the Biden Administration flew her too while cowardly attacking fellow journalists from organizations a fraction of her size.

Being a political enforcer while sneering at smaller reporters must pay well.

Shame on CNN for hiring her.
This wasn’t journalism.
It was discipline.

And the reason they’re panicking is simple:

They’re losing control and they know it.

Losing control to people who have sailed into harms way.

Let me be crystal clear…

Darcy you are lazy and careless.

Haley: YOU ARE A SNAKE SUFFOCATING AMERICA - FUCK YOU

BTW @oliverdarcy the book I asked Hegseth to sign wasn’t for me. It was for a kid who had to leave ROTC for a hardship I won’t share.

And as you already know “I voted so hard for this” was about administering the oath to she best kids this nation produces. But of course you left that fact out.

So YOU ARE A FUCKING SNAKE TOO

But of course you already knew that too.

Read 4 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Dec 31, 2025

LONG POST WARNING: How did this Somali fraud happen?

I have a close relative who works inside this system. She processes medicalcare claims for a large provider, we’ll call it SMH, in a deep-blue state (not Minnesota).

What people miss is that the biggest fraud isn’t the checks written to individuals. It’s the staggering cost of administering the programs.

My relative isn’t some paper-pusher. She’s a nurse with multiple degrees, managing a full team. Her entire day is spent chained to a computer: nonstop paperwork, Zoom calls, audits. There’s a fingerprint scanner and a camera on her desk. Family emergency? Too bad. Break down in tears from abuse? Still too bad.

Now, start with a real medical event: heart attack, cancer, stroke. The hospital treats you, then pushes you home quickly because long stays are crazy expensive and the hospital doesn’t have enough beds. Fine.

But home recovery requires ramps, grab bars, equipment. The state cuts checks to upgrade homes. Many recipients simply pocket the money. The state knows this, but doesn’t have enough inspectors, so it forces SMH to do “due diligence.”

That means more paperwork. More subcontractors. More verification. More zoom meetings for my relative. One claim can consume hundreds of man-hours.

Then there’s a shortage of visiting nurses. So patients must travel for bloodwork and follow-ups. Transportation services exist, but they’re heavily regulated and audited. That’s expensive.

Cheaper solution? Pay family members. Give them money to add a ramp to a minivan and drive the patient themselves.

Have an uncle who already has a van (because he’s scamming the system too), great we pay him monthly and you have to do nothing.

Now the real games begin.

How much help you get depends entirely on how you answer Zoom questions. Normal Americans say things like, “My son can help” or “A neighbor can drive me.” That caps benefits.

But there are cheat codes.

Say instead:
“I care for my autistic grandson.”
“I provide childcare for my niece.”

Now SMH must either support those dependents or move the patient into a full-service facility which is vastly more expensive than any other option. So they pay for childcare.

Because my relative is a mandatory reporter and children are involved m, every meeting now includes medical care teams, child-safety teams, housing teams, transportation teams. The clock is running. These are highly paid professionals.

Except there doesn’t even need to be children involved because privacy laws prevent basic verification. No birth certificates. No DNA tests. So SMH provides a list of approved childcare facilities.

You can just borrow someone else’s child for the paperwork and give them a new name because things like ID and birth certificates are “anti-immigrant” so they can’t be checked.

Now if the child supposedly has autism, costs explode: specialized care, transportation, services.

Ironically, local public schools often have excellent autism programs but school administrators won’t jump through SMH’s audit hoops. And when a child doesn’t actually have autism, schools quietly disenroll them without paperwork to avoid lawsuits. SMH is left holding the bag so better just to contract with a center.

If anyone complains you can just say the school doesn’t meet your religious needs.

Those are just patient meetings.

There are thred more meeting categories that devour time:

State audits:
Auditors expect problems and won’t leave without finding them. Missing paperwork means more meetings.

Legal:
Endless lawyers. Enough said.

Efficiency
Then come the “efficiency experts.” SMH needs to turn a profit so my relative’s boss is an Ivy League MBA. The solution is always the same: push more work onto families because it’s cheaper than more hospital time. That’s the cheapest option.

And to republicans (the only ones demanding accountability) it makes sense to support families over facilities

Except that if you’re a normal American, you’re screwed. 1/2

The forms are overwhelming. The documentation is insane. You don’t know what photos to take or how to claim modifications on someone else’s house. You don’t understand “the system”.

So you give up and sign a waiver and move in with family who are already exhausted by their jobs but are willing to care for you.

Or SMH is forced to put you in the cheapest facility possible which is crazy expensive and probably sucks.

But if you’re part of a tight-knit tribal group that knows the system, you know exactly how to answer every question on the forms to maximize payouts.

And if SMH pushes back? There’s a nuclear option: state hotlines.

A single complaint alleging elder abuse triggers audits. Audits cost SMH enormous money. So managers pressure staff to just write checks and move on.

Now imagine someone wants to scam the system but they don’t have a real medical condition.

It’s hard to lie to a doctor but easy to import sick relatives from overseas. SMH actually prefers this: no long records, no criminal history, no paperwork, no previous medical conditions they have to worry about. For SMH these patients are a clean slate.

And most importantly non-citizens can’t easily sue.

Now anyone saying MSM is hiding all this is wrong. Occasionally, the media DOES notice and hard working taxpayers are outraged.

People demand action!

A few arrests and deportations (sometimes people who wanted to go back to Somalia anyway) are made and learing center close

But… they just reopen in a few weeks or months under a new name.

A Republican senator demands accountability. He proposes a bill that will “eliminate loopholes” and “hire more auditors” and “eliminate $5 billion in fraud”.

Democrats agree on one condition: they get to spend half that “savings” on new social services for the immigrant communities.

The bill passes but now an additional $2.5B is being spent on the new programs and costs aren’t cut but instead skyrocket.

The bill results in more paperwork and rules. Lawyers get richer. Americans get buried under more red tape. The system gamers adapt instantly.

And nobody gets put in jail.

Why? Because the SMH lawyers drop gigabytes of paperwork and zoom meeting footage on the DA who can’t possibly manage it all.

Which brings us to the truth of rhe matter:

POSIWID — The purpose of a system is what it does.

P.S. and when a real emergency hits, like COVID, people die, because the whole thing is a brittle, over-engineered house of cards. There are no “transportation providers” or “learning centers” or medical care equipment in the home.

NOTE: I’m not in the medical profession, I probably got some of this wrong, It’s just what I’ve pieced together from years of hearing my relative rant.

I just felt the need to share this because she can’t talk about any of this online… if she did she would lose her license for violating patient privacy laws.

For the “stick to ships John” crowd…

This is 💯 why we can’t afford to build battleships… because our money isn’t just lost to fraud. It’s burned up by the massive administrative costs of a broken medical system.

This is the connection 👇👇

Read 4 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Dec 27, 2025

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2004657253199057355

First, yes—this post is anti-American, Pyotr. Second, it’s wrong.

The argument that Europe should unite to compete with the United States and undermine the dollar’s reserve-currency status fails for two basic reasons:

First: that’s exactly why the EU and the euro were created—and they failed to achieve that goal.
Second: the United States built enormous political, economic, and security leverage into the post-WWII system—and we haven’t even begun to fully pull those levers.

I backpacked through Europe in the late ’90s. Pro-American sentiment was real and widespread. But what many people miss is why.

A lot of that “pro-America” feeling was actually anti-EU. Ordinary Europeans understood, intuitively, that the EU wouldn’t work. American culture appealed because it offered an alternative to claustrophobic national systems and an emerging EU globalist blob.

Then reality intervened.

The EU and euro turned out to be both disastrous and convenient. Currency exchanges and border checks were a pain; the EU solved that. That convenience made it popular on a personal level.

But the downsides—work-visa chaos, rigid monetary policy, endless bureaucracy, repeated fiscal crises, and job displacement—were real. They just faded into the background. Functionally, Europeans went from a two-layer government system to a three-layer one.

After WWII, there was serious discussion about folding everything under an American umbrella.

Europe didn’t want that.
France clung to national pride.
The UK wanted to retain remnants of its empire.
And the U.S. didn’t want the hassle of direct control.

But Europe was also too weak to stand on its own.

So we built institutions and systems—NATO, free trade, freedom of navigation, the dollar reserve system—as an umbrella over weak nations.

The EU was supposed to replace that umbrella. But it was designed as direct competition to the U.S. system, which is why we resisted it quietly. And the same national pride that kept Europe from accepting American control also prevented the EU from replacing national governments.

The truth is: the U.S. should have fought harder against the EU. But we didn’t—because as long as Europe didn’t start another war, we didn’t really care.

The EU was sold as “the United States of Europe”—states replaced by nations. That analogy was always nonsense.

The single overriding priority for Americans and the U.S. elite has been simple: no more European wars. Full stop.

We had zero interest in micromanaging Europe’s economy or governance. So we tolerated the EU and the euro—even knowing they’d fail—because they helped our primary objective: stability.

If we’d believed the EU would actually succeed as a true rival system, we would have stopped it. We didn’t, because it never replaced the checks, balances, overrides, and leverage we built after WWII.

It didn’t replace the U.S. political, economic, or security umbrella. It just added another bureaucratic layer beneath it.

Then three things happened:
1.People’s daily lives improved due to easy travel.
2.The EU became a fiscal, security, migration, and bureaucratic nightmare—especially for operating inside a U.S.-led system.
3.The U.S. began quietly pulling the hidden levers.

And then came the Iraq War.

People think Iraq was George W. Bush’s personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t.

It was a vendetta against Europe.

Conflicts happen constantly around the world. We don’t build coalitions for most of them. We did for Kuwait because Europe—especially the UK—asked us to.

Remember: George H.W. Bush was UN ambassador and CIA director before becoming president. And what did he do in office? He invaded Panama.

Then, in 2016, the Panama Papers exposed what had been happening all along: European elites were undermining the U.S.-led world order with dark money, political favors, and back-channel finance.

That’s the part this argument conveniently ignores. 1/3

https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2004657253199057355

HW Bush wanted to strengthen the American world order

He didn’t want to do this to strengthen his grip on Europe… he wanted to do it because the world order worked: it brought peace and prosperity to billions.

His plan to strengthen that was called 1000 points of light but to accomplish it he first had to regain control of a the grift and dark money he found while he was CIA.

Hence panama.

But Europe (especially the UK) was building that dark network as their own leverage against America…. And they were doing it right in our backyard… not just in Panama but CIA shell companies registered in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Bahamas… and even Canada

So they got us in a war to distract us from Panama and to take down HW Bush.

Why did he agree to it? IDK. But he did.

And the war was a success to everyone except him and his 1000 points of light.

Europe, with the help of the dark money, backed Clinton and big business (which wanted to retain global dominance) backed Ross Perot. And the vote was split and Clinton won.

Not just because of the money but also because European media pushed the narrative that Bush was there just to control the oil (which makes no sense but that’s another rabbit hole)

And in exchange for winning Clinton made a deal:

Throttle back on the dark money networks and make it legitimate with the Euro/EU

And he made a special consession to the brits: NAFTA will give you free access to the USA via the commonwealth of canada

Now nobody in America really like the EU and there was a lot of pushback against NAFTA but Clinton gave them top cover

So now W Bush comes in and starts pushing back on all these things Clinton approved.

It’s going well until 9/11 happens. Bush activates Article 5 and it’s extremely popular in Europe.

American flags are waving everywhere and pro-American sentiment hits a high pitch.

European leaders know Bush is dangerous and could reinstate his dad’s 1000 points of light.

Something must be done.

So they played the same trick on us again.

UK intelligence produced the September 2002 Iraq Dossier which claimed Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.

Then they got the media to back another war in Iraq. People today forget but go good “New York Times apology Iraqi” and you will see that media was pushing us into war.

Why did W agree to invade? Again, IDK, maybe they have something on the Bush family.

Then, once we invaded, they created the same fake narrative: the Bushes are just in it for the oil.

Bush fell for the first part of the scam but he was prepared for the second and when they propped up World Economic Forum superstar John Kerry, Bush solidly defeated him.

But Bush was unpopular and the EU was failing so they needed a new scam.

They helped Obama write a book and pushed it to go viral.

And the deal Obama made with the globalists? We will pump massive amounts of money into Europe to prop up your failed Euro via NGOs backed by USAID, NATO, UN and direct payments

And Obama, with the help of the uniparty in congress, opened the taps full wide.

But how would they hide this massive transfer of wealth? Keep the wars going and blame the rising national debt on “military spending”

Read 4 tweets

John Ʌ Konrad V

@johnkonrad

Dec 23, 2025

The new @USNavyCNO reading list is out—and #1 is about the US Merchant Marine pioneering containerization 🇺🇸🙌

Seapower. Logistics. American innovation.

Outstanding list, Admiral. Links in 🧵

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

One of my all time favorites!

amzn.to/4qoefOz

Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II

Another of my favorites! amzn.to/4quxYwp

Read 15 tweets

Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

John Ʌ Konrad V

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @johnkonrad

John Ʌ Konrad V

John Ʌ Konrad V

John Ʌ Konrad V

John Ʌ Konrad V

John Ʌ Konrad V

John Ʌ Konrad V

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Send Email!