After Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, the EU announced the creation of a special payment channel to circumvent U.S. economic sanctions and facilitate trade with Iran. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini made the announcement after a meeting with foreign ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran. She said the new payment channel would allow companies to preserve oil and other business deals with Iran.
This underscores a risk to the U.S. sanction policies could also have long-run consequences, eventually undermining the dollar as the world reserve currency.
The government of the United States has intervened militarily in other countries for decades, against the council of founders like George Washington who advised America should “observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all.”
But the U.S. doesn’t only project power across the globe through its massive military. It also weaponizes the U.S. dollar, using its economic dominance and its privilege as the issuer of the reserve currency as a carrot-stick tool of foreign policy.
The U.S. government showers billions of dollars in foreign aid to “friends.” On the other hand, “enemies” can find themselves locked out of SWIFT, the global financial system that the U.S. effectively controls using the dollar.
SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The system enables financial institutions to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized environment. Since the dollar serves as the world reserve currency, SWIFT facilitates the international dollar system.
SWIFT and dollar dominance give the U.S. a great deal of leverage over other countries.
The U.S. has used the system as a stick before. In 2014 and 2015, the Obama administration blocked several Russian banks from SWIFT as relations between the two countries deteriorated. Under Trump, the U.S. threatened to lock China out of the dollar system if it failed to follow U.N. sanctions on North Korea. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin threatened this economic nuclear option during a conference broadcast on CNBC.
“If China doesn’t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system, and that’s quite meaningful.”
Locking a country completely out of SWIFT would effectively cut it off economically from the world. But there would also be consequences that ripple through other economies. For instance, a member of the Russian parliament warned locking his country completely out of SWIFT would halt the flow of goods into Europe.
If Russia is disconnected from SWIFT, then we will not receive [foreign] currency, but buyers, European countries in the first place, will not receive our goods — oil, gas, metals and other important components.”
Given America’s history of using sanctions as a foreign policy tool, Russia wasn’t unprepared for the move. In fact, A number of countries that know they could easily find themselves in the crosshairs have taken steps to limit their dependence on the dollar and have even been working to establish alternative payment systems. This includes Russia, China and Iran.
In the current political climate, it’s difficult to pass new federal gun control through Congress. But that hasn’t stopped the last two presidents from implementing new rules on firearms via executive fiat. Trump banned bump stocks with an executive order. Now, two EOs by Joe Biden set to go into effect this summer will impose additional federal gun control.
The first EO would require registration of “80 percent lowers.” These are basically unfinished firearm parts that you can use to build your own gun. Because 80 percent lowers fall outside of the FFL process, they effectively allow the private manufacture of unregistered rifles. Some people refer to them as “ghost guns.”
This EO is expected to be finalized in June.
The second executive order set to go into effect in August will place regulations on “pistol braces.” This device serves as a stabilizer that enables a shooter to fire a rifle with one hand. Pistol braces are popular with disabled people who can’t use both arms. But the feds claim they are a dangerous firearm accessory.
Under the executive order, pistol braces will fall under the National Firearms Act. This is the same law used to regulate machine guns, silencers, and short-barrelled rifles. The EO won’t ban pistol braces, but it will require anybody that has one to register it with the feds. This will come with a $200 tax, and it can take up to one year to complete the registration. In effect, it registers the gun with the federal government.
According to an op-ed by attorney John Werden, upwards of 40 million Americans own pistol braces. There is no grandfather clause under the order. In other words, when the EO goes into effect, all of those people will become felons if they don’t go through with the registration process.
Even if you could strain this kind of regulatory power out of the Constitution, it would have to come from Congress. The president was never intended to be a lawmaker. These executive orders are unconstitutional.
It is clear constitutional scruples won’t stop this federal gun control – or any federal gun control that might come down the pike in the future. But state action can stop it dead in its tracks.
States can nullify these federal rules in practice and effect simply by refusing to participate in their enforcement and implementation. A piece of legislation known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act does just that.
The federal government relies heavily on state cooperation to implement and enforce almost all of its laws, regulations and acts – including gun control. By simply withdrawing this necessary cooperation, states and localities can nullify many federal actions in effect. As noted by the National Governors’ Association during the partial government shutdown of 2013, “states are partners with the federal government on most federal programs.”
Based on James Madison’s advice for states and individuals in Federalist #46, a “refusal to cooperate with officers of the Union” represents an extremely effective method to bring down federal gun control measures because most enforcement actions rely on help, support and leadership from state and local governments.
Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano agreed. In a televised discussion on the issue, he noted that a single state taking this step would make federal gun laws “nearly impossible” to enforce.
“Partnerships don’t work too well when half the team quits,” said Michael Boldin of the Tenth Amendment Center. “By withdrawing all resources and participation in federal gun control, states and even local governments can help bring these unconstitutional acts to their much-needed end.”
An Article by The Trace has already questioned the ATF’s ability to enforce the pistol brace order. According to the report, “Biden’s pistol brace rule would put pressure on an already strained ATF division.”
“The plan put forward by the administration this summer will hinge on the efficiency of an obscure division at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that routinely misses its own performance benchmarks. And now, with millions of stabilizing braces estimated to be in circulation, some outside observers are warning the efforts to restrict them could flounder if federal regulators are unable to handle the workload.”
The feds are going to need state and local cooperation.
It should be denied.
States can legally bar their agents from enforcing federal gun control. Refusal to cooperate with federal enforcement rests on a well-established legal principle known as the anti-commandeering doctrine.
Simply put, the federal government cannot force states to help implement or enforce any federal act or program. The anti-commandeering doctrine is based primarily on five Supreme Court cases dating back to 1842. Printz v. U.S. serves as the cornerstone.
“We held in New York that Congress cannot compel the States to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program. Today we hold that Congress cannot circumvent that prohibition by conscripting the States’ officers directly. The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. It matters not whether policy making is involved, and no case by case weighing of the burdens or benefits is necessary; such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty”
No determination of constitutionality is necessary to invoke the anti-commandeering doctrine. State and local governments can refuse to enforce federal laws or implement federal programs whether they are constitutional or not.
The battle against federal gun control won’t be won by begging your Congressman to protect the Second Amendment. It won’t be one suing in federal court. It can be one by following Madison’s blueprint – refuse to cooperate with federal gun control.
President Biden’s “maskless” State of the Union signifies the near-end of the COVID tyranny we have lived under for the past two years. Fortunately for Congress, the President, and the Federal Reserve, the Ukraine-Russia conflict is replacing COVID as a ready-made excuse for their failures and a justification for expanding their power.
Even before politicians began declaring the end of the pandemic, polls showed that rising prices were the people’s top concern – particularly the increase in gas prices. Since Russia is one of the world’s leading energy producers, sanctions imposed on Russia, as well as Germany’s decision (made under pressure from the US) to shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, provide a convenient excuse for rising gas prices. This is the case even though the US, citing the “instability” in world energy markets created by the Russian-Ukraine conflict, has yet to officially ban imports of Russian oil.
The Federal Reserve has been planning several interest rate increases this year, even though some fear that rate increases could decrease growth and increase unemployment. The Russian crisis allows the Fed to either postpone rate increases or blame Russia for any unemployment that accompanies the rate increases. Either way, the Fed can use the crisis to deflect attention away from its responsibility for our economic problems. As of now, it appears the Fed will go through with at least a modest rate increase this month, but because of the Ukraine crisis, the increase will be smaller than previously expected.
The Ukraine crisis also provides an excuse for Congress to do what Congress does best: increase federal spending. President Biden has requested Congress provide an additional $10 billion in emergency military aid to Ukraine. Congress will likely quickly approve the President’s request. This will not likely be the last time Congress rushes billions of “emergency” money to Ukraine.
It is also certain that lobbyists for the military-industrial-complex are already “explaining” to a very receptive Capitol Hill audience why the Ukraine crisis justifies increasing the military budget to “counter the threats” from Russia, China, and whoever else can serve as a convenient boogeyman. It is unlikely there will be much resistance in Congress to a further increase, even though the US already spends more than the combined defense budgets of the next nine biggest spending countries.
Over the past two years, many leading Internet companies did the government’s bidding by “de-platforming” anyone who expressed skepticism of vaccines or promoted alternative treatments — even when they presented evidence to support their claims. These companies are once again helping the government by de-platforming those who question, or are suspected of questioning, the official narrative regarding Ukraine. Yet these companies’ concerns with “fake news” have not led them to stop people from sharing widely debunked stories supporting the US-backed Ukrainian government.
The lockdown and mandates did more harm than the coronavirus itself. They were based on lies promoted by the government and its allies in the “private” sector. Yet too many Americans refuse to even question the US government’s claims regarding the Ukraine crisis or question whether Russia is really responsible for our economic problems as opposed to a spendthrift Congress, successive spendthrift Presidents, and an out-of-control Federal Reserve. The only way to stop authoritarians from using crises like these to grow their power is to make enough people understand a simple truth: authoritarian politicians will always lie to the people to protect and increase their own power.
In history, sociopaths have played important destructive roles because they have no moral compass and no commitment to virtuous conduct. A republic cannot stand without a virtuous people.
Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide by Miranda Devine 224 pp Kindle 14.99 Hardcopy 24.33, ISBN978-1-63758-105-6 A Liberatio Protocol Book Imprint of Post Hill Press New York 2021
It is hard to find words to describe the debauched and sleazy satyr that is Hunter Biden and how he used his family name and his father’s status as an important American politician to become an extraordinary international grifter involved in multi-million dollar — sometimes billion dollar — deals with international entities that included corrupt criminal enterprises such as Burisma Holdings of Ukraine and the government- and military-controlled companies of Russia and China, international enemies of the United States.
His business activities and lifestyle were revealed on the laptop he left in a Wilmington, Delaware Mac computer repair shop owned by a Mr. Isaac, who took possession after Hunter failed to pick it up after 90 days. Mr. Isaac had already fixed the water damage and looked at the contents, found discussions about Burisma (the Ukrainian oil and gas company) so he arranged through his father, a retired Air Force Colonel, to turn the laptop over to the FBI in Arizona.
Mr. Isaac kept a hard drive copy to protect himself. Then he made some inquiries after the FBI failed to do anything. The inquiry that was most productive was to Rudy Giuliani, who was Trump’s personal attorney and very interested in the Burisma matter. Mr. G had an old DOJ colleague named Costello from his federal prosecutor days who was an IT expert, and the hard drive was analyzed. Then, in October, it was presented to the New York Post for the bombshell it was — proof of Hunter’s grifting and also proof that Joe Biden lied when he claimed he didn’t know anything about Hunter’s international machinations involving corrupt Ukrainians and nefarious Chinese and Russian autocrats/plutocrats.
The plot thickened as the Post did its due diligence. A full-court press was initiated to suppress and censor the Post’s publication of the laptop materials in October of 2020, the run-up to the election and the interval in the debates being held between Trump and Biden.
The U.S. and Ukraine are manipulating everyone for the Globalist agenda, damn the consequences.
NATO is a paper tiger that has never been tested. When the day comes that it is finally tested, when the shells start flying and the laser guided bombs flatten buildings, Poland is only ensuring that it is her cities and her people that are flattened first.
They’d better follow Hungary’s lead and dispense with their America-as-savior fantasies and historical differences with Russia in a hurry. Western hyenas will keep poking the bear into a darker and darker corner. Putin has shown tremendous patience with these bloodthirsty animals over the years, but every bear has his limits.
Update March 8: Does Tucker Carlson read The Good Citizen?
In Carlson’s monologue last night he begins by showing the CBS Blinken interview on Sunday that also inspired this piece. Blinken goes on TV and nonchalantly sells out Poland as ground zero for a NATO war with Russia. Despite Poland’s relentless insistence that the WILL NOT be sending any fighter jets to Ukraine, Blinken callously ignores them on live TV. This is how the U.S. treats its allies, with reckless disregard and back stabbing PR diplomacy. Tucker also shows the Lindsay Graham rah rah speech to Ukrainian soldiers from 2016 I embedded at the end of this piece yesterday, where he says war with Russia is coming and the U.S. has their back.
On September 11, 2002, the Bush anniversary speech of 9/11 I recall hearing him name Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the speech and knew right then and there he was manufacturing consent for an invasion of Iraq despite the country have zero connections to the 9/11 attacks. I explicitly remember yelling to family members around me that the U.S. will invade Iraq next. They were so wrapped up in the superficial emotionalism of the speech and the moment, they told me I was crazy and to sit down and shut up. Family, eh?
When I watched the Blinken CBS interview Sunday, I got the same chills I got watching the Bush speech that day. It made me sick. This is how the U.S. psychologically manipulates its population into wars and in this case uses Poland as a sacrificial lamb for what would surely be a destructive global conflict. According to one analyst Tucker cites in his monologue, who war gamed a U.S.-Russia conflict in 2019, it would result in a billion dead. A billion.
Turns out the coronavirus and jabs didn’t do enough on the depopulation front, so it’s on to steps 2, 3 and 4. War, energy crisis, and mass starvation. Those Georgia guide stones aren’t going to be realized on their own.
The whole 22 minute Tucker piece is worth the watch as he shows how the blood thirsty hyenas explicitly wanted Russia to invade and do not want the war to end. Strangely the entire rest of the western corporate media completely ignore this Poland sell-out story even though it may be the first public signal from the U.S. of a desire to start World War Three.
Dancing with The Globalists The propaganda is endless and everywhere. The images of babies and elderly people fleeing war blasted across western “news” sites with unsubtle headlines like:
PUTIN HAS THIS BABY’S BLOOD ON HIS HANDS!
There was once a masterful art to effective propaganda as psychological manipulation. Subtlety is no longer required with so many eager to assimilate to the latest media created madness, socially conditioned to reveal their stupidity in the comment sections: “Putin is the next Hitler! Someone needs to stop him at once!”
The citizens are seamlessly assimilating to this prepared Ukrainian Borg, happy to outsource their brains to a western corporate media who command them to only devote their emotions to the cause and nothing more.
Everything is designed to pull at the heart strings of people to manufacture consent for this conflict that should never have started and could be immediately ended with Ukraine disavowing NATO membership and allowing three majority Russian regions to rejoin their mother.
This is what the west wants, more war, more refugees, more propaganda to be used for their efforts to topple Putin in Russia. The warring neoliberals and neocons have been planning this for years and are loving every minute of the show.
The US and its NATO allies are sending weapons into Ukraine from an undisclosed airfield near the Ukrainian border in Eastern Europe, CNN reported on Monday.
An unnamed senior Pentagon official told CNN that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley visited the airfield last week and examined the shipment activity. It’s not clear where the base is, but last week, Western officials told the Economist that one of the main routes to deliver weapons into Ukraine is via the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Since the weapons being sent into Ukraine are meant to kill Russian troops, there are fears that Russia might target the deliveries. The Pentagon official told CNN that so far, the Russians haven’t targeted the shipments.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, 14 countries have pledged to send weapons to Ukraine. Another US official told CNN that the US and its allies have sent Ukraine 17,000 anti-tank missiles and 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
Despite the risk of provoking Russia, the Biden administration is determined to send even more advanced weaponry into Ukraine and has given the green light to Poland to transfer Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. In exchange, the US would replace the planes Poland gives to Ukraine with US-made fighter jets.
The growth of and reliance on militarism as the solution for our problems both domestically and abroad bodes ill for the constitutional principles which form the basis of the American experiment in freedom.
As author Aldous Huxley warned: “Liberty cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.”
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” — James Madison
War is the enemy of freedom.
As long as America’s politicians continue to involve us in wars that bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse, “we the people” will find ourselves in a perpetual state of tyranny.
It’s time for the U.S. government to stop policing the globe.
This latest crisis—America’s part in the showdown between Russia and the Ukraine—has conveniently followed on the heels of a long line of other crises, manufactured or otherwise, which have occurred like clockwork in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms.
And so it continues in its Orwellian fashion.
Two years after COVID-19 shifted the world into a state of global authoritarianism, just as the people’s tolerance for heavy-handed mandates seems to have finally worn thin, we are being prepped for the next distraction and the next drain on our economy.
Yet policing the globe and waging endless wars abroad isn’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, it’s certainly not making America great again, and it’s undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.
Indeed, even if we were to put an end to all of the government’s military meddling and bring all of the troops home today, it would take decades to pay down the price of these wars and get the government’s creditors off our backs.
War has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.
What most Americans—brainwashed into believing that patriotism means supporting the war machine—fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with propping up a military industrial complex that continues to dominate, dictate and shape almost every aspect of our lives.
Consider: We are a military culture engaged in continuous warfare. We have been a nation at war for most of our existence. We are a nation that makes a living from killing through defense contracts, weapons manufacturing and endless wars.
We are also being fed a steady diet of violence through our entertainment, news and politics.
All of the military equipment featured in blockbuster movies is provided—at taxpayer expense—in exchange for carefully placed promotional spots.
What I didn’t know then as a schoolboy was the extent to which the Pentagon was paying to be cast as America’s savior. By the time my own kids were growing up, it was Jerry Bruckheimer’s blockbuster film Top Gun—created with Pentagon assistance and equipment—that boosted civic pride in the military.
Truth is terrorism! New update from US government and the department of homeland security. Spreaders of online misinformation are now considered domestic terrorists. You better start subscribing to the narrative before you go to jail!
A variation on “truth is treason” as our good friend Ron Paul says.
Why has Putin not shut off the gas to a Europe that is rapidly running out of it?
Because to do so would target civilian populations. If he’s not targeting civilians in Ukraine to minimize their anger at being invaded, then why would he use that weapon now against civilians in Germany who hold the key to getting overthrowing the insane politicians and oligarchs who provoked this war in the first place?
Last week I wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin rewrote the rules for the geopolitical game board. A week into his campaign to officially “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine” it’s clear to me that Putin’s ambitions lie far beyond this stated goal.
He will, however, stick to that script until that part of the campaign is complete.
Today I want to start outlining where we go next and to do that we have to describe where we are.
Looking around the reports that are the most credible (and properly bracketing for any partisanship) we are staring at a complete, effective neutralization of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) to hold any of the ethnically-dominant areas of Ukraine.
MacLeod: Both sides probably do not know how fragile the Eurozone banking system is,with both the ECB and its national central bank shareholders already having liabilities greater than their assets. In other words, rising interest rates have broken the euro system and an economic and financial catastrophe on its eastern flank will probably trigger its collapse.
I’ve been banging my shoe on this table for 3 years now. If the US/NATO respond with some kind of guerilla war here to hang Ukraine like an albatross around Putin’s neck, as we should expect, then Europe is in big trouble financially.
Because the financial war will keep escalating as Putin responds militarily. Remember, he’s openly threatened the ‘decision makers’ here. And no amount of mealy-mouthed CIA/MI6 disinformation will deter him from action anymore.
This is always what I meant by “spooks start civil wars, militaries end them.” There is no more War for Ukraine.
I still believe that. This isn’t a war for Ukraine, it’s a war for the future of the entire world. Ukraine represents the hill both Davos and Russia have chosen to live or die on.
The Afghanistan Gambit
Davos has refused to let President Zelensky surrender because if he does then legally there is no more war to sanction Russia with. It’s not Putin’s War at that point, it is a settled conflict and terms negotiated.
At that point what’s left of Ukraine can be carved up into pieces. It’s way to early for that to occur, so you’ll see constant threats of peace talks, but that’s only to assuage the fears of the capital markets, which is where Davos has the most control over the situation.
The primary goal of the information war from the West is to push capital markets as far in its favor as possible, keeping things within the bounds of the ‘acceptable’ to avoid any short-term pain. Gold is still under it’s all-time high, which is just hilarious.
That said, in that same post I put up this map of a future Ukraine which I felt, conservatively, would be in effect by the end of this year. Events are moving far faster than that, however.
Chernihiv and Sumy are also in play, as is Lviv as a bargaining chip to Poland. As Fmr. Col. Douglas Macgregor pointed out on Fox News recently, everything east of the Dnieper River will become part of a new Novorussia, if not part of the Russian Federation.
Clearly this is Putin’s initial goal, the partitioning of Ukraine. He’s moved militarily, the EU and the rest of the West have responded financially. Their hope is to turn Ukraine into a quagmire, a la Afghanistan (per Hillary Clinton’s recent remarks), which they hope Russia will not be able to sustain after being choked off from the global economy.
The financial sanctions regime put in place so far are brutal but also full of holes wide enough for Putin to maneuver within and around because of the well understood facts of Russia’s dominance as a global supplier of life-sustaining commodities for the entire world.
This is an asymmetric war.
There isn’t much farther the West can go financially. They’ve seized Bank of Russia foreign assets, for pity’s sake. What other weapons do they really have in their arsenal which can threaten Russia with?
They have, in effect, executed their nuclear first strike against Russia. Once you’ve gone nuclear, where do you go next? Real nukes? Yes, that’s a possibility, sadly, given the people we’re talking about.
On the other hand, Russia has so far only committed the necessary troops to neutralize Ukraine. So, in this respect, big advantage Russia.
MCViewPoint 