Idiocracy? Congress Turns Into Madhouse For Biden's SOTU
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Like the scene in the (prophetic?) film Idiocracy, the US Congress became a madhouse during Biden's State of the Union speech last night. Jeers, foul language, etc., marked an event that once took place under proper decorum. How did we get to this point? Also today: US mainstream media narrative on Ukraine is shifting...big time! What does it mean? Watch today's Liberty Report: Idiocracy? Congress Turns Into Madhouse For Biden's SOTU Click on the headline to read the full story from
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On February 16, 2022, a full week before Putin sent combat troops into Ukraine, the Ukrainian Army began the heavy bombardment of the area (in east Ukraine) occupied by mainly ethnic Russians. Officials from the Observer Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were located in the vicinity at the time and kept a record of the shelling as it took place. What the OSCE discovered was that the bombardment dramatically intensified as the week went on until it reached a peak on February 19, when a total of 2,026 artillery strikes were recorded. Keep in mind, the Ukrainian Army was, in fact, shelling civilian areas along the Line of Contact that were occupied by other Ukrainians. We want to emphasize that the officials from the OSCE were operating in their professional capacity gathering first-hand evidence of shelling in the area. What their data shows is that Ukrainian Forces were bombing and killing their own people. This has all been documented and has not been challenged. So, the question we must all ask ourselves is this: Is the bombardment and slaughter of one’s own people an ‘act of war’? (bigger) We think it is. And if we are right, then we must logically assume that the war began before the Russian invasion (which was launched a full week later) We must also assume that Russia’s alleged “unprovoked aggression” was not unprovoked at all but was the appropriate humanitarian response to the deliberate killing of civilians. In order to argue that the Russian invasion was ‘not provoked’, we would have to say that firing over 4,000 artillery shells into towns and neighborhoods where women and children live, is not a provocation? Who will defend that point of view? No one, because it’s absurd. The killing of civilians in the Donbas was a clear provocation, a provocation that was aimed at goading Russia into a war. And –as we said earlier– the OSCE had monitors on the ground who provided full documentation of the shelling as it took place, which is as close to ironclad, eyewitness testimony as you’re going to get. This, of course, is a major break with the “official narrative” which identifies Russia as the perpetrator of hostilities. But, as we’ve shown, that simply isn’t the case. The official narrative is wrong. Even so, it might not surprise you to know that most of the mainstream media completely omitted any coverage of the OSCE’s fact-finding activities in east Ukraine. The one exception to was Reuters that published a deliberately opaque account published on February 18 titled “Russia voices alarm over sharp increase of Donbass shelling”. Here’s an excerpt: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voiced alarm on Friday over a sharp increase in shelling in eastern Ukraine and accused the OSCE special monitoring mission of glossing over what he said were Ukrainian violations of the peace process….Notice the clever way that Reuters frames its coverage so that the claims of the Ukrainian military are given as much credibility as the claims of the Russian Foreign Minister. What Reuters fails to point out is that the OSCE’s report verifies Lavrov’s version of events while disproving the claims of the Ukrainians. It is the job of a journalist to make the distinction between fact and fiction but, once again, we see how agenda-driven news is not meant to inform but to mislead. Quote: Larry C. Johnson, A Son of a New Revolution The point we are trying to make is simple: The war in Ukraine was not launched by a tyrannical Russian leader (Putin) bent on rebuilding the Soviet Empire. That narrative is a fraud that was cobbled together by neocon spin-meisters trying to build public support for a war with Russia. The facts I am presenting here can be identified on a map where the actual explosions took place and were then recorded by officials whose job was to fulfill that very task. Can you see the difference between the two? In one case, the storyline rests on speculation, conjecture and psychobabble; while in the other, the storyline is linked to actual events that took place on the ground and were catalogued by trained professionals in the field. In which version of events do you have more confidence? Bottom line: Russia did not start the war in Ukraine. That is a fake narrative. The responsibility lies with the Ukrainian Army and their leaders in Kiev. (bigger) And here’s something else that is typically excluded in the media’s selective coverage. Before Putin sent his tanks across the border into Ukraine, he invoked United Nations Article 51 which provides a legal justification for military intervention. Of course, the United States has done this numerous times to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy to its numerous military interventions. But, in this case, you can see where the so-called Responsibility To Protect (R2P) could actually be justified, after all, by most estimates, the Ukrainian army has killed over 14,000 ethnic Russians since the US-backed coup 8 years ago. If ever there was a situation in which a defensive military operation could be justified, this was it. But that still doesn’t fully explain why Putin invoked UN Article 51. For that, we turn to former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who explained it like this: Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing Article 51 as his authority, ordered what he called a 'special military operation'….Here’s a bit more background from an article by foreign policy analyst Danial Kovalik: One must begin this discussion by accepting the fact that there was already a war happening in Ukraine for the eight years preceding the Russian military incursion in February 2022. And, this war by the government in Kiev… claimed the lives of around 14,000 people, many of them children, and displaced around 1.5 million more … The government in Kiev, and especially its neo-Nazi battalions, carried out attacks against these peoples … precisely because of their ethnicity. ..So, has anyone in the western media reported on the fact that Putin invoked UN Article 51 before he launched the Special Military Operation? No, they haven’t, because to do so, would be an admission that Putin’s military operation complies with international law. Instead, the media continues to spread the fiction that ‘Hitler-Putin is trying to rebuild the Soviet empire’, a claim for which there is not a scintilla of evidence. Keep in mind, Putin’s operation does not involve the toppling of a foreign government to install a Moscow-backed stooge, or the arming and training a foreign military that will be used as proxies to fight a geopolitical rival, or the stuffing a country with state-of-the-art weaponry to achieve his own narrow strategic objectives, or perpetrating terrorist acts of industrial sabotage (Nord-Stream 2) to prevent the economic integration of Asia and Europe. No, Putin hasn’t engaged in any of these things. But Washington certainly has, because Washington isn’t constrained by international law. In Washington’s eyes, international law is merely an inconvenience that is dismissively shrugged off whenever unilateral action is required. But Putin is not nearly as cavalier about such matters, in fact, he has a long history of playing by the rules because he believes the rules help to strengthen everyone’s security. And, he’s right; they do. And that’s why he invoked Article 51 before he sent the troops to help the people in the Donbas. He felt he had a moral obligation to lend them his assistance but wanted his actions to comply with international law. We think he achieved both. (bigger) Here’s something else you will never see in the western media. You’ll never see the actual text of Putin’s security demands that were made a full two months before the war broke out. And, the reason you won’t see them, is because his demands were legitimate, reasonable and necessary. All Putin wanted was basic assurances that NATO was not planning to put its bases, armies and missile sites on Russia’s border. In other words, he was doing the same thing that all responsible leaders do to defend the safety and security of their own people. Here are a few critical excerpts from the text of Putin’s proposal to the US and NATO: Article 1It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what Putin was worried about. He was worried about NATO expansion and, in particular, the emergence of a hostile military alliance backed by Washington-groomed Nazis occupying territory on his western flank. Was that unreasonable of him? Should he have embraced these US-backed Russophobes and allowed them to place their missiles on his border? Would that have been the prudent thing to do? So, what can we deduce from Putin’s list of demands? First, we can deduce that he is not trying to reconstruct the Soviet empire as the MSM relentlessly insists. The list focuses exclusively on security-related demands, nothing else. Second, it proves that the war could have easily been avoided had Zelensky simply maintained the status quo and formally announced that Ukraine would remain neutral. In fact, Zelensky actually agreed to neutrality in negotiations with Moscow in March, but Washington prevented the Ukrainian president from going through with the deal which means that the Biden administration is largely responsible for the ongoing conflict. (RT published an article stating clearly that an agreement had been reached between Russia and Ukraine in March but the deal was intentionally scuttled by the US and UK. Washington wanted a war.) Third, it shows that Putin is a reasonable leader whose demands should have been eagerly accepted. Was it unreasonable of Putin to ask that “The Parties shall refrain from deploying their armed forces and… military alliances.. in the areas where such deployment could be perceived by the other Party as a threat to its national security”? Was it unreasonable for him the ask that “The Parties shall eliminate all existing infrastructure for deployment of nuclear weapons outside their national territories”? Where exactly are the “unreasonable demands” that Putin supposedly made? There aren’t any. Putin made no demands that the US wouldn’t have made if ‘the shoe was on the other foot.’ Fourth, it proves that the war is not a struggle for Ukrainian liberation or democracy. That’s hogwash. It is a war that is aimed at “weakening” Russia and eventually removing Putin from power. Those are the overriding goals. What that means is that Ukrainian soldiers are not dying for their country, they are dying for an elitist dream to expand NATO, crush Russia, encircle China, and extend US hegemony for another century. Ukraine is merely the battlefield on which the Great Power struggle is being fought. There are number points we are trying to make in this article: 1) Who started the war? Answer– Ukraine started the war 2) Was the Russian invasion a violation of international law? Answer– No, the Russian invasion should be approved under United Nations Article 51 3) Could the war have been avoided if Ukraine declared neutrality and met Putin’s reasonable demands? Answer– Yes, the war could have been avoided 4) The last point deals with the Minsk Treaty and how the dishonesty of western leaders is going to effect the final settlement in Ukraine. I am convinced that neither Washington nor the NATO allies have any idea of how severely international relations have been decimated by the Minsk betrayal. In a world where legally binding agreements can be breezily discarded in the name of political expediency, the only way to settle disputes is through brute force. Did anyone in Germany, France or Washington think about this before they acted? (But, first, some background on Minsk.) (bigger) The aim of the Minsk agreement was to end the fighting between the Ukrainian army and ethnic Russians in the Donbas region of Ukraine. It was the responsibility of the four participants in the treaty– Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine– to ensure that both sides followed the terms of the deal. But in December, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with a German magazine, that there was never any intention of implementing the deal, instead, the plan was to use the time to make Ukraine stronger in order to prepare for a war with Russia. So, clearly, from the very beginning, the United States intended to provoke a war with Russia. On September 5, 2014, Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia all signed Minsk, but the treaty failed and the fighting resumed. On February 12, 2015, Minsk 2 was signed, but that failed, as well. Please, watch this short segment on You Tube by Amit Sengupta who gives a brief rundown of Minsk and its implications: (I transcribed the piece myself and any mistakes are mine.) (11:40 minute) “In 2015, Germany and France were supposed to play a neutral role.They were supposed to make Ukraine and Russia follow the rules. But they didn’t do that, and the reason they didn’t do that is what Angela Merkel revealed in her interview on December 7. Merkel said, “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It also gave time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014 and 2015 is not the modern Ukraine.”There’s no way to overstate the importance of the Minsk betrayal or the impact it’s going to have on the final settlement in Ukraine. When trust is lost, nations can only ensure their security through brute force. What that means is that Russia must expand its perimeter as far as is necessary to ensure that it will remain beyond the enemy’s range of fire. (Putin, Lavrov and Medvedev have already indicated that they plan to do just that.) Second, the new perimeter must be permanently fortified with combat troops and lethal weaponry that are kept on hairtrigger alert. When treaties become vehicles for political opportunism, then nations must accept a permanent state of war. This is the world that Merkel, Hollande, Poroshenko and the US created by opting to use ‘the cornerstone of international relations’ (Treaties) to advance their own narrow warmongering objectives. We just wonder if anyone in Washington realizes whet the fu** they’ve done? Reprinted with permission from Unz Review. Setting the Record Straight; Stuff You Should Know About Ukraine Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity As I originally wrote in my July 10, 2022 article Wunderwaffe Du Jour: “The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.”The incontrovertible reality is that the US and its NATO allies are presently incapable of supplying the massive material demands of modern industrial warfare, as Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Alex Vershinin articulated so well in this essential June 2022 analysis: The Return of Industrial Warfare. And yet the public discussion of potential war always includes convinced voices proclaiming that, just like in the Second World War, US industry could very rapidly ramp up to produce armaments of surpassing quality, and in overwhelming quantities. This titillates the biases of American exceptionalists in general, and is a particularly seductive fantasy of the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult drones propagandizing for filthy lucre at the countless armaments-industry-funded “think tanks” in Washington and London. But the notion that the rapidly declining empire can resurrect the Arsenal of Democracy band for one final farewell tour is a singularly delusional vanity. You see, for all its massive plunder of the public purse, the US armaments industry is effectively a modestly scaled high-end boutique. And there is simply no way this domestic US industry can expeditiously expand its production. It would literally take years – probably a full decade – for the US to expand its military production to a seriously potent industrial scale. For one, the labor pool for these industries is extremely finite and highly specialized. In the overwhelmingly financialized and service-oriented US economy, there is a shocking dearth of technical expertise of ALL kinds. It’s not simply a boomer cliché that “kids these days are innocent of almost any mechanical know-how”. If the US wants to staff new armaments factories any time soon, it will have to import the skilled labor from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Beyond that, the permitting of new factories, with the attendant bureaucratic delays, public hearings, environmental impact studies, and various special interest road-blocking … well, everyone knows how these things work now in America. It took five years to build the Hoover Dam in the early 20th century. It would take FIFTY here in the early 21st century – if it could be built at all. Those clamoring for the US to intervene in the Ukraine war in order to “teach those filthy Russians a lesson they’ll never forget” simply have no conception of the catastrophe that would ensue were their dreams to be fulfilled. If the Pentagon consented to such an undertaking, it could probably amass no more than 250,000 combat-capable troops in the theater, and to do so would entail the evacuation of virtually every major US military base on the planet (and most of the minor ones). It could probably assemble an additional quarter million troops from the active reserves and National Guard units in the United States. That said, it is empirically impossible that 500,000 combat troops could be satisfactorily equipped for high-intensity conflict such as would be the scenario in a war between the US and Russia in eastern Europe. And even if they could be assembled and equipped, it would be an insufficient force to face over a million Russian troops, close to a third of which are already “battle-hardened” from almost a year of high-intensity combat in Ukraine. In anticipation of the casualties attendant to great power warfare, it would become necessary for the United States to reinstitute conscription almost immediately. If a strong anti-war movement had not already been incited by its previous actions, conscription in America would almost certainly induce a widespread political upheaval, with large and aggressive public protests cropping up in all the major cities of the nation. And, of course, it should go without saying that Russia would not simply remain passive (as did Iraq in 1991 and 2003) while the United States concentrated a huge force on its borders preparatory to an invasion. A shooting war would ensue even before the US was able to position in eastern Europe the men and equipment required to launch an assault against Russian forces in Ukraine. Most meaningfully, even if the US/NATO could magically materialize a million and a half soldiers on the Polish, Romanian, and Lithuanian borders, it would not be able to sustain such a massive force for more than just a few weeks; likely less than a month. It would turn into the most humiliating military debacle in American and European history, and the Russians would sing songs about it for centuries to come. Reprinted with permission from imetatronink Subscribe and support here. The Arsenal of Democracy Isn't Click on the headline to read the full story from A group of House Republicans is supporting legislation that would replace federal income, payroll, estate, and gift taxes with a 30 percent national sales tax. The bill also eliminates the Internal Revenue Service, giving states the responsibility to collect the sales tax and send the revenue to DC. This deputizing of states to act as federal tax collectors violates the principles of federalism, especially since the plan forces states that have chosen not to make their residents pay sales taxes create a mechanism for collecting sales tax. A 30 percent sales tax on all goods with no exceptions and no deductions will increase taxes imposed on millions of Americans. The sales tax legislation provides a way Americans can receive a monthly “prebate” payment to help offset the cost of the sales tax. Still, many taxpayers would be paying more under the new national sales tax system. If the sales tax becomes law, Congress may never have to increase the rate above 30 percent. This is because it can rely on the Federal Reserve to increase the sales taxes via inflation. Consequently, this inflation tax will increase the pain inflicted by the sales tax on the American people. The imposition of a national sales tax will lead to a flourishing black market for many goods. This will cause the government to increase surveillance of our purchases. It could also lead to government bureaucrats keeping lists of our purchases. This information could be abused by government officials to embarrass and punish political enemies. The surveillance could track whether an individual is complying with government dietary recommendations or is consuming “extremist” content. The need to ensure compliance with the tax laws may also be used to justify replacing cash with government issued and managed digital currency. The proposed national sales tax rate is set at a high level because the bill’s sponsors did not want to reduce the federal government’s revenue. A big problem with tax reform occurs when it fails to include reductions in federal spending. Unfortunately, even some libertarians get sucked into the DC game of ignoring the need to tie tax reform to reducing government spending. Instead, they focus on making the tax code more efficient. Even worse is if they make the supply-side argument that certain taxes should be cut to increase government revenue. Libertarians should view increasing government revenue as an unfortunate consequence of otherwise sound tax policy. They should advocate for tax cuts that are far beyond the point where tax cuts increase government revenue. Some people support sales taxes because sales taxes discourage consumption and encourage savings and investment. While savings and investment are crucial to a free market, government policies should, to the greatest extent possible, be neutral between savings and consumption. Policies favoring savings distort the market just as do policies that encourage consumption. Supporters of the free market who pursue various tax reform schemes without also working to cut spending are putting the cart before the horse. The American people will not be free from tax tyranny until government is returned to its constitutional limitations. This will not occur until enough people reject the welfare-warfare state and embrace the moral, as well as the practical, case for peace and liberty. (Sales) Taxation is Theft Click on the headline to read the full story from Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of "Russian propaganda". I know I'm not a Russian propagandist. I'm not paid by Russia, I have no connections to Russia, and until I started this political commentary gig in 2016 I thought very little about Russia. My opinions about the western empire sometimes turn up on Russian media because I let anyone use my work who wants to, but that was always something they did on their own without my submitting it to them and without any payment or solicitation of any kind. I'm literally just some random westerner sharing political opinions on the internet; those opinions just happen to disagree with the US empire and its stories about itself and its behavior. Yet for years I've watched people pointing at me as an example of what "Russian propaganda" looks like. This has helped inform my understanding of all the panic about "Russian influence" that's been circulating these last six years, and given me some insight into how seriously it should be taken. That's one reason why I wasn't surprised by Matt Taibbi's reporting on the Twitter Files revelations about Hamilton 68, an information op run by DC swamp monsters and backed by imperialist think tanks which generated hundreds if not thousands of completely bogus mainstream news reports about online Russian influence over the years. Hamilton 68 purported to track Russian attempts to influence western thought on social media, but Twitter eventually figured out that the "Russians" the operation has been tracking were actually mostly real, mostly American accounts who just happened to say things that didn't perfectly align with the official Beltway consensus. These accounts were often right-leaning, but also included people like Consortium News editor Joe Lauria, who's about as far from a rightist as you can get. They played a massive role in fanning the flames of public hysteria about online Russian influence, but while they did this by pretending to track the behavior of Russian influence ops, in reality they were tracking dissent. One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way westerners are being brainwashed by western propaganda into panicking about Russian propaganda, something that has no meaningful existence in the west. Before RT was shut down it was drawing a whopping 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. The much-touted Russian election interference campaign on Facebook was mostly unrelated to the election and affected "approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content" according o Facebook. Research by New York University into Russian trolling behavior on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2016 election has found "no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior." A study by the University of Adelaide found that despite all the warnings of Russian bots and trolls following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the overwhelming majority of inauthentic behavior on Twitter during that time was anti-Russian in nature. Russia exerts essentially zero influence over what westerners think, yet we're all meant to freak out about "Russian propaganda" while western oligarchs and government agencies continually hammer our minds with propaganda designed to manufacture our consent for the status quo which benefits them. All this and we're still seeing calls for more narrative management from the western empire, like the recent American Purpose article "The Long War of Ideas" being promoted by people like Bill Kristol which calls for a resurrection of CIA culture war tactics like those used during the last cold war. Every day there's some new liberal politician sermonizing about the need to do more to fight Russian influence and protect American minds from "disinformation", even as we are shown over and over again that what they really want is to shut down dissident voices. That's what we're seeing in the continual efforts to increase online censorship, in the bogus new "fact-checking" industry, in calls to increase the output of formal US government propaganda operations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, in the way all dissent about Russia has been forcefully purged from the western media in recent years, in the way empire-amplified trolling operations have been shouting down and drowning out critics of US foreign policy online, in the way censorship via algorithm has emerged as one of the major methods of restricting dissident speech. They claim there needs to be a massive escalation in propaganda, censorship and online psyops in order to fight "Russian influence", while the only influence operations we're being subjected to in any meaningful way are only ever of the western variety. They just want to do more of that. Our rulers aren't actually worried about "Russian influence", they're worried about dissent. They're worried the public won't consent to the "great power competition" they plan to subject us to for the foreseeable future unless they can exert massive influence over our minds, because they know that otherwise we will recognize that our interests are directly harmed by the economic warfare, exploding military spending and nuclear brinkmanship which necessarily accompanies that campaign to reign in Russia and stop the rise of China. They're propagandizing us about the threat of foreign propaganda in order to justify propagandizing us more. We're being manipulated into consenting to agendas that no healthy person would ever consent to without copious amounts of manipulation. Reprinted with permission from Caitlin's Newsletter. Support the author on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. They're Not Worried About 'Russian Influence', They're Worried About Dissent Click on the headline to read the full story from It’s remarkable how easy it is to rile up the American public. The latest bit of theatrics centers around a “communist” balloon that is either a spy device or a weather balloon that has drifted off course. Either way, this thing isn’t some sort of major threat to America. Even so, it can be used as clickbait. That’s right, the commies may use the balloon to poison us, never mind how ludicrous this is on its face. First, allow me to dispel a myth. The government in China is not communist. It is, at best, authoritarian crony capitalism. Marx would be appalled. His idea was to do away with capitalism. Ms. Greene seems to have a problem with physics. Business Insider explains: Attempting to take out the high-altitude balloon with the air defense systems the US has is "very difficult," it's hard to engage it with fighter aircraft, and shooting it down also risks injuries and fatalities on the ground, explained Brynn Tannehill, a former naval aviator and senior technical analyst at the RAND Corporation think tank.For instance, the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor cash cow has a maximum operating altitude of 50,000 feet. It is reported the ominous balloon is currently at 60,000 feet or above. OK, so why not shoot a missile at the damn thing? Well, that would be extremely difficult. The USG military's air-to-air missiles are not designed to operate at that altitude, primarily because the wings, fins, and tail cannot work effectively. Moreover, according to a naval aviator, both surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles “aren't designed to attack balloons because balloons don’t look like the kind of valid targets that they were designed to attack… They look more like a cloud or (anti-radar) chaff, and modern missiles are designed to ignore chaff.” The corporate media, however, ain’t letting this one go. According to the Babylon Bee, Biden has surrendered to the commies. Here we have a grandstanding senator (a common trait of narcissistic “public servants”) from Missouri. Eric Schmitt demands our tax dollars must be squandered on an “investigation” of the nefarious commie balloon. It’s another example of the endless, pointless, and wasteful partisan politics of the USG. Speaking of narcissistic grandstanders. Here’s one who can’t seem to keep his mouth shut, even though opening it in the past has cost him millions of dollars. Well, at least Xi and the commies won’t take him to court for speaking his mind, which in the past was a cherished right of all Americans. Now it’s considered an excuse for white supremacists. Here we have yet another privileged blue checker pining for Trump. Earlier today, Trump suggested F-16s should cruise over China—you know, to just send a message that you don’t mess with the exceptional nation. It should be noted that Terrence K. Williams is a comedian, so maybe we should cut him some slack. Twitter is an inexhaustible source of ridiculous demands that the balloon must be shot down pronto (few seem interested in investigating the feasibility of this stupid idea). I could post more examples, but what is the point? The Chinese balloon is yet another distraction. It’s fear porn aimed at the ignorant. Finally, in Ukraine, the possibility of nuclear war grows more likely with each passing day. Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics. Communist Doomsday Balloon Nonsense Click on the headline to read the full story from
It's completely irrelevant what he or any other ambassador thinks about domestic political developments in Hungary, because they have nothing to do with it. So, we ask for more respect for Hungarians. But the thick-headed Pressman didn't take the hint, responding: Respectfully, we do not consider Russia’s attempt to unilaterally redraw the borders of Europe as just a 'domestic political development in Hungary.' [That's rich coming from a US government that has repeatedly used military force in unprovoked wars throughout the Middle East and that has redrawn the borders of Serbia by force after illegally bombing the country to smithereens and salting the earth with depleted uranium munitions.] Regarding statements of the US Ambassador to Budapest I would like to say the following: It is irrelevant - absolutely irrelevant - what he or any other Ambassador thinks about domestic political developments in Hungary because it has nothing to do with him. It's not for him to interfere in Hungary's internal affairs, and if he wishes to use his stay in Hungary to criticize the actions of a government elected by a clear majority of the Hungarian people and legitimized by the Hungarian people, he will have a very difficult job in working effectively to improve cooperation between the two countries. This is a new era in Hungarian-US relations. And I would argue that it is healthy for both Hungary and the United States. Smack-Down! Hungary Pushes Back Against Obnoxious US Ambassador Click on the headline to read the full story from Note the following sentence in a New York Times news story yesterday by Michael Schwirtz and Anton Troianovski about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “Mr. Putin’s attempt to put a veneer of nobility on an unprovoked invasion that has killed thousands of civilians and turned millions more into refugees was made in the Russian city once known as Stalingrad, on the 80th anniversary of a victory there against Nazi Germany that changed the course of World War II.” (Italics added.) The operative word is “unprovoked.” First of all, it’s a strange word for news reporters to be using because it’s more in the nature of a commentary or editorial. News reporters are supposed to report the news, and the editorial department of a newspaper is supposed to render opinions and commentary on the news. Schwirtz and Troianovski do both in their news article. Second, and more important, for the life of me, I cannot understand how Schwirtz and Troianovski are unable to see that Russia’s invasion was provoked. It was provoked knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately. Now, one could argue that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wasn’t justified. That’s a different word from “unprovoked.” An invasion can be “provoked” and “unjustified” at the same time. My hunch is that Schwirtz and Troianovski meant to use the word “unjustified” rather than the word “unprovoked.” When the Berlin Wall came crashing down in 1989, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact was terminated, and the Soviet Union was dismantled. As far was Russia was concerned, the Cold War was over. Not so, however, for the United States and, specifically, for the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. The Cold War had been very beneficial to the US national-security establishment in terms of ever-increasing power within the federal governmental structure and ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess to finance America’s Cold War military machine, including its vast army of voracious “defense” contractors who had become dependent on feeding at the public trough. Thus, while Russia was ready to move on, the US national-security establishment was not. It was determined to not let go of its Cold War racket. NATO had been brought into existence after World War II to ostensibly protect Western Europe from an invasion by the Soviet Union. But the notion of such an invasion was ludicrous from the start. Russia had been devastated by the war. As many as 27 million Soviet citizens were killed as a result of the war. That’s 27 million people! That’s a lot of people. Moreover, the entire industrial might of the country had been decimated. The Soviets knew that if they started a war with their former World War II partners and allies, the United States would immediately come to their assistance. The United States had not suffered any damage to its industrial capacity and was still fully capable of fielding a massive army. Moreover, the United States had a monopoly on nuclear bombs and had displayed a willingness to use them against people living in populated cities. Thus, there was never any realistic possibility whatsoever that the Soviet Union was going to invade Western Europe. NATO served no purpose whatsoever. Recall that one of the major reasons for all the death and destruction that Russia had experienced during the war was Germany’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union, an invasion that almost resulted in the German conquest of Russia. German troops made it all the way to Stalingrad before they met with defeat, partly because of the tenacity of the Russian people but mostly because of the brutality of the Russian winter. Make no mistake about it: Germany’s near-conquest of their country — and the massive death and destruction wreaked by Germany on their country — was seared into the collective conscience of the Russian people. No Russian generation will ever forget it. Thus, when Germany decides to send tanks to Ukraine in the hopes that Ukraine ultimately joins NATO, which would enable German tanks, troops, and missiles to be aligned on Russia’s border, one should be able to at least understand why the Russian people might feel a bit uneasy about that. In fact, Schwirtz’s and Troianovski’s news article mocked Russian president Vladimir Putin for using the 80th anniversary of Russia’s victory at Stalingrad to deliver a speech about the war in Ukraine. In their mockery, Schwirtz and Troianovski are clearly unable to draw the link between Germany’s near conquest of Russia and Germany’s current thirst to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, which would enable Germany to put its tanks, missiles, and troops along Russia’s border. Once the Cold War was over, NATO had fulfilled its ostensible mission. There was no longer any threat of the Soviet Union invading Western Europe. Thus, this old Cold War dinosaur clearly should have gone out of business. Instead, the Pentagon decided to keep NATO in existence and, even worse, began using NATO to absorb former members of the Warsaw Pact, which was enabling the United States and Germany to move their troops, missiles, bases, and armaments eastward, i.e., ever closer to Russia’s border. Throughout this process, Russia was, not surprisingly, vehemently objecting. Russia continuously asked: If the Cold War was really over, then what was the point of doing this? NATO’s answer was that there was nothing to be concerned about. The United States and Germany were both peace-loving nations that would never aggress against Russia. That, of course, is a ridiculous notion. For its part, Germany had already aggressed against the Soviet Union in World War II, which had resulted in 27 million Russian deaths, the total destruction of the country, and the near-conquest of Russia. For its part, the United States was, in the words of Martin Luther King, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” How could anyone not understand why Russia would be concerned about NATO’s expansion toward Russia’s border, especially when there was no good reason to do so? As Russia continuously objected to NATO’s expansion, Russia made it clear that there was one “red line” that would finally provoke a Russian reaction — the threat to absorb Ukraine into NATO. That would enable Germany and the United States to place their tanks, nuclear missiles, bases, armaments, and troops on Russia’s border. Given Germany’s prior invasion of the Soviet Union and the US propensity for violence, that was unacceptable to Russia. The United States and Germany, operating through NATO, knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately crossed that “red line,” knowing full well that it was a “red line” for Russia. By threatening to absorb Ukraine into NATO, they knew that Russia would respond because Russian had said that it would respond. Thus, when President Biden claimed that his “intelligence” had learned that Russia would invade Ukraine, he was being disingenuous. He knew Russia would invade because Russia had been saying it would invade if the United States, Germany, and other NATO powers crossed its “red line” by threatening to absorb Ukraine into NATO. Thus, there is no doubt that the Pentagon, operating through NATO, did provoke Russia into invading Ukraine. Again, one can argue that the Pentagon’s action did not justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but one cannot rationally say that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked,” as Schwirtz and Troianovski did yesterday in their news story in the New York Times. Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation. What Does 'Unprovoked' Mean? Click on the headline to read the full story from
Although the narrative pushed by the US government and propped up by the mainstream media is that "Ukraine is winning," in a recent classified briefing to Congress the Pentagon is singing a very different tune. As the Biden Administration continues up the escalation escalator, shouldn't the American people hear what military experts really believe? Also today: Why F-16s? And...when a medical school goes "woke." Watch today's Liberty Report: Behind Closed Doors, Pentagon Warns Congress Of Ukraine's Weakness Click on the headline to read the full story from Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky just sicced his secret police (Ukraine’s SBU) on Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire oligarch who was once wholly responsible for financing the Ukrainian president’s rise to power. The significance of the story — regarding Zelensky turning on his longtime patron and Kolomoisky’s other significant ties — was entirely buried by foreign and state media, with most merely referring to the situation as another in a series of “anti-corruption” actions.
A quick rundown on why Mr. Kolomoisky is significant: He owned Burisma when it employed Hunter Biden. He financed Zelensky's entire television, business, and political career, including his rise to the presidency. He once funded Ukrainian militias, but later argued that Kiev should engage in a detente with Russia. This part is critical, as Kolomoisky’s good standing with the West shifted dramatically after this decision. Since then, he became the subject of an FBI probe and US sanctions. He has since had his assets seized and nationalized by the Ukrainian government, and he has been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship, despite being born in Ukraine and living his entire life in Ukraine. Ukraine’s secret police is seizing not only Kolomoisky’s assets, but the property of several high-profile figures as part of Zelensky’s highly-publicized anti-corruption tour, through which the Ukrainian president has received endless praise in the western media. All of these raids and seizures are happening entirely outside of the bounds of any semblance of the rule of law. They are simply being ordered by Zelensky’s office, and justified under martial law rules. The truth is that these are anything but anti-corruption raids. Zelensky is running a blitzkrieg operation that is dissolving and disbanding all checks on the president’s authority, concentrating power into the hands of an increasingly authoritarian regime in Kiev, which has now embraced ethnic cleansing and punishes thought crimes. A couple weeks ago, Zelensky’s three highest ranking Interior Ministry officials were killed in a “helicopter crash” over Kiev, which is hundreds of miles removed from the current battlefield. Countless regional governors and deputy ministers have been stripped of authority, again, without any due process. Zelensky’s deputy minister of defense, the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, and the deputy prosecutor general are but many of the high-ranking individuals who were recently removed due to “corruption” allegations. This is not so much an anti-corruption maneuver as it is a Stalinesque Great Purge, the difference being that the USSR-born Zelensky seems not to be the top dog in his own country. The Kolomoisky raid highlights a Ukraine whose sovereignty has been sold to foreign actors, with the new regime in charge having tasked an actor, Volodomyr Zelensky, with the role of managing the day to day operations in Kiev. In the meantime, Ukraine continues devolving into a failed state, as its leadership remains committed to the abuse of realpolitik and maintaining its maximalist war-footing against a much more powerful neighbor. It all comes to the delight of the western defense industry, which continues to use Ukraine as a munitions laundering opportunity. Reprinted with permission from The Dossier. Subscribe and support here. Zelensky's Great Purge continues, launching police raid against oligarch who fell out of favor with Biden Admin Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity |
Ron Paul
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