Underhill, a seller of “Mechanicals” (unthinking robots that perform menial tasks) in the small town of Two Rivers, is startled to find a competitor’s store on his way home. The competitors are not humans but are small black robots who appear more advanced than anything Underhill has encountered before. They describe themselves as “humanoids”.
Disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new Mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: “to serve and obey and guard men from harm”. Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers, and more, and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the humanoids’ benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids.
Underhill learns that his lodger Sledge is the creator of the humanoids and is on the run from them. Sledge explains that 60 years earlier he had discovered the force of “rhodomagnetics” on the planet Wing IV and that his discovery resulted in a war that destroyed his planet. In his grief, Sledge designed the humanoids to help humanity and be invulnerable to human exploitation. However, he eventually realized that they had instead taken control of humanity, in the name of their Prime Directive, to make humans happy.
The humanoids are spreading out from Wing IV to every human-occupied planet to implement their Prime Directive. Sledge and Underhill attempt to stop the humanoids by aiming a rhodomagnetic beam at Wing IV, but fail. The humanoids take Sledge away for surgery. He returns with no memory of his prior life, stating that he is now happy under the humanoids’ care. Underhill is driven home by the humanoids, sitting “with folded hands,” as there is nothing left to do. – Wikipedia
People have to start using their brains when considering whom to elect. Of course we could just continue to leaving election results to the CIA and FIB. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) anti-decorum work uniform at the United States Senate has the entire country (me included!) asking: Even if you can wear a hoodie and athletic shorts to work, should you?
News broke this week that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had defunded the dress code police — greenlighting the likes of Fetterman to join a plague that probably many of us have fallen victim to in recent years: excessive casualness.
Fashion is reflective of the times. I’ve hardly ever looked to Washington, D.C. for such commentary on our culture because it’s generally just suits and sheath dresses with some standouts once every decade or so.
To get to the bottom of Fetterman’s insistence on larping working poor in the Senate, I spoke to two of my favorite menswear aficionados: O.W. Root (Instagram linked here) and W. Matt Tinch (Instagram linked here).
“If you’re familiar with Fetterman’s history … he just got out of like a clinical depression, he was in a facility, and he’s come out publicly and talked about his depression,” Tinch told me over the phone.
“In one sense, Fetterman is authentic if you believe his story,” Tinch said. “However, it’s a question of how much of it is authentic. He’s obviously a person who can afford more than a hoodie and basketball shorts … If you know Fetterman’s history, it just seems odd. He’s portraying himself as just an average joe, and it feels dishonest.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) arrives to the U.S. Capitol Building on April 17, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has a quick exchange with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WA), right, as Fetterman walks to a vote on the Senate floor on June 22, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
When you first look at Fetterman, let’s say you know nothing about him, you may assume he was a truck driver turned U.S. senator or a former handyman or felon who got his act together. And then a quick Google search shows none of that to be the case.
In Fetterman’s own words to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he says he had a “cushy” suburban upbringing so much so that he was able to get an MBA from the University of Connecticut and later a master’s at Harvard without ever racking up student debt. By August 2022, his family’s assets totaled more than $700,000. Good for him, right?
I wanted to know if the experts assumed what I’ve assumed, that Fetterman is appropriating working class culture, or at least what he thinks working class culture is. It wouldn’t be so far-fetched considering tan Carhartt overalls and tees are dominated today by Brooklyn transplants rather than the construction and steel workers the heavy-duty duds were intended for.
“He is cynically appropriating clothing that reads as a working class stereotype,” Root told me over Instagram. “He’s doing this intentionally as a cynical move to be seen as something he is not — it’s a costume.”
“I would be willing to bet that if you took a poll of working class American men and asked them ‘What would you wear if you were invited to speak to the Senate?’ I suspect that most would not say a hoodie and shorts,” Root noted. “Most, even if they wear that during their average day, would think they should wear something more formal, something which shows respect for the place and the setting.”
What Trudeau is doing is pretending to be stupid while engaging in a very clever strategy of scapegoating. It’s the government and the central bankers that are the foundational cause of inflation, but by blaming individual business sectors he sets the stage for government enforced price controls. When these fail and create a crisis in supply he will then introduce rationing, and once the government has conditioned the public to accept rationing the elites then control the entire population’s access to food and necessities.
Price controls results will result in nothing but disaster.
Last month in the middle of the surreal “Bidenomics” hype I published an article titled ‘Nothing Is Over: Inflation Is About To Come Back With A Vengeance.’ I outlined the misconceptions surrounding CPI and how it is not an accurate model for the effects of inflation. I also noted that the index had been manipulated downwards by Joe Biden as he flooded the market with oil from the strategic reserves. Because so many elements of the CPI are connected to energy, Biden had created an artificial drop in CPI using this strategy.
I argued that as the strategic reserves ran out and Biden lost his leverage, CPI would rise again and prices on a number of necessities would climb. This is happening now, with the biggest jump in CPI in 14 months and gas prices clawing back towards all-time highs.
Inflation is not going away anytime soon, but the bigger issue at hand is who benefits most from inflation and rising prices? The answer might be obvious to some but many people are oblivious to the root cause of inflationary dysfunction and often see it as a consequence of random economic chaos rather than a product of clever engineering. The truth is, banking oligarchs and political authorities revel in the inflationary tidal wave because it is a perfect opportunity to institute far reaching socialist controls over resources.
In most cases central bankers are the primary culprits behind the creation of an inflationary event, and the word “creation” best applies because it is nearly impossible for overt inflation to occur without them. While money supply is not the only factor when dealing with inflation (sorry purists, but there are indeed other causes), it is the most important. More money chasing less resources triggers supply-side instability and prices go up. Central banks have a number of excuses as to why they “need” to conjure up more dollars or pesos or pounds or marks, but there is no doubt that they know what the ultimate end result will be.
It’s happened too many times for them not to know…
These inflation events trigger a predictable set of dominoes in society as well as in economy and finance. Price spikes, diminished savings, rising poverty, rising crime, and rising interest rates – This is then followed in most cases by failed rate hikes, more inflation, then more hikes, diminishing foreign investment in debt, foreign currency dumps (causing more inflation), plunging consumer spending and job losses.
This same pattern has been witnessed from 1920s Weimar Germany to 1970s America to 1990s Yugoslavia to 2000s Argentina and Venezuela and beyond. But what happens next? In each case the trend leads first to price controls on producers and distributors, which ultimately fail. Then comes government rationing and the complete takeover of necessities including the food supply.
The AP notes that some Haitians are opposed to the deployment of UN soldiers from Kenya. In 2010, UN forces released sewage, causing a cholera outbreak that killed nearly 10,000 Haitians. Additionally, Kenyan soldiers have been credibly accused of war crimes in Somalia, where Nairobi conducted military operations in the name of counterterrorism.
No one wants to touch Haiti. Kenya must be getting a lot of US taxpayer inspiration.
Too bad the Clinton Foundation’s efforts at directing restoration funds, less a hefty service charge, did absolutely no good.
The US is preparing a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution to authorize Kenya to send its soldiers to Haiti. Washington believes Nairobi can aid Port-au-Prince in restoring order to gang-controlled territory. The Joe Biden administration said the American taxpayers will foot the bill for the deployment, and US soldiers will train the Kenyan force.
For a year, the White House has sought a third country to send its soldiers into Haiti as UN Peacekeepers. After Canada resisted American pressure to lead the force, Nairobi agreed to send its troops to the Caribbean nation.
The AP notes that some Haitians are opposed to the deployment of UN soldiers from Kenya. In 2010, UN forces released sewage, causing a cholera outbreak that killed nearly 10,000 Haitians. Additionally, Kenyan soldiers have been credibly accused of war crimes in Somalia, where Nairobi conducted military operations in the name of counterterrorism.
Kenya-based Independent Medico-Legal Unit issued a report this month warning that Kenyan police are committing an increasing number of human rights abuses since President William Ruto took office. The US has provided a significant amount of training to the Kenyan soldiers. However, there is no indication it has curbed abuses by Nairobi’s security forces at home or in Somalia.
Speaking at the General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Biden called on the UNSC to pass a resolution allowing Kenya to send troops to Haiti. “On Haiti, the Caribbean communities facilitated a dialogue among Haitian society. I thank President Ruto of Kenya – I thank him for his willingness to serve as a lead nation of a UN-backed security support mission,” he said. “I call on the Security Council to authorize this mission now. The people of Haiti cannot wait much longer.”
On Wednesday, Ruto met with Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry in an official ceremony to commemorate Washington’s plot to send Kenyan forces to Port-au-Prince. Washington says it will fund the missions and provide the peacekeepers training.
The irony is that anyone who understands energy knows that there is no successful energy transition without natural gas and nuclear, and this requires incentives to invest in energy security. Governments will not back down, and they will prefer a decline in energy prices coming from a deep recession to an improvement coming from diversification and investment.
Oil prices are soaring, and, as always, we read in many articles that OPEC and Russia are to blame. However, if OPEC and its allies were almighty and the drivers of oil prices, why have Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude plummeted in 2022? OPEC only reacts to demand, but it is not a price-setter. It is a price-taker.
WTI is up 13% year-to-date, but it only started bouncing in May. WTI is only up 6% in the past year. At $90.7/barrel, it is still far away from the June 2022 high of $122/barrel and barely reaching the levels of November 2022.
What made oil prices plummet from their June ’22 highs? Rate hikes and monetary contraction sent the entire commodity complex down to pre-Ukraine invasion levels despite production cuts, geopolitical risk, and the Chinese re-opening. Commodity prices are driven by monetary factors, and the hawkish stance of global central banks accelerated the decline despite supply chain challenges and limits to production. Added to the decline in the money supply and rate hikes, the United States and non-OPEC production offset the negative impact of Russia and OPEC limits on some exports. Competition works. Finally, oil prices stumbled as Asian demand ended up being weaker than estimated, with global industrial production declining, particularly in developed economies.
The weakness in crude was a combination of monetary factors, increased United States supply, and weaker global demand. Those three factors have now reversed at the same time.
We cannot blame OPEC when prices rise and ignore them when prices fall.
The biggest challenge for the oil market in developed economies in the next five years is self-inflicted.
Governments and financial institutions all over the world declared war on investment in fossil fuels under the misguided view that supply and prices would not be affected. According to JP Morgan, there is a chronic underinvestment in the oil and gas complex that exceeds $600 billion per year. In 2022, with oil prices rising to the previously mentioned $122/barrel, companies all over the world continued to reduce investment in exploration and production. Development capital expenditure was kept to a bare minimum, and even some European oil and gas giants started selling their “net zero emissions” strategy, ignoring the global energy reality. Total oil and gas investment came below depreciation for the sixth year in a row, according to Goldman Sachs.
The energy transition cannot happen through ideological imposition. It requires technology and competition. Destroying the incentives to invest in oil and gas and imposing an ideological, not industrial, view of energy has made developed economies more dependent on fossil fuels.
When politicians decide, they willingly ignore economic calculations because they believe that the political world dictates prices, not supply and demand. Economic analysis has been abandoned, and the result is an exceedingly negative scenario.
The connections of Fink are incredibly telling of the power wielded by Blackrock. Blackrock effectively has control of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury, as well as banks around the world. It should be noted that Fink was appointed to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Board on August 22, 2019, the onset of the fraudulent ‘covid pandemic,’ which was set up, solidified, and begun, the same month that Fink took his seat on the board of the WEF.
“The one thing man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by a World Government, a New World Order.”
“The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control. Do I mean a conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, incredibly evil in intent.”
~ Rep. Larry P. MacDonald (Note: Lawrence McDonald was killed (likely murdered) on Korean Air Lines 007, 1983, a few months after making this statement.)
To begin, I will preface my remarks by saying that this is an attempt to explain in simple terms, very complicated financial and economic crimes being used against Americans, and also against the entire world population, in order to create and sustain total control over humanity. This is meant to manifest itself in the concept of one world governance, the ‘Great Reset,’ or the New World Order. This may seem a bold statement; it is not, but once you understand that everything that has happened over many decades is linked, especially since the plotted and premeditated false flag event called ‘9/11,’ you should be able to recognize the massive number of obvious connections that are incredibly evil.
It has recently become more prevalent by mostly alternative news sites and bloggers, to put forth the notion that many are waking up, and that the people are winning the battle for freedom. In my opinion, this is just not so, and in fact is misleading, as false hope is the driving force of this thinking. It is evident that more are claiming to be against government tyranny, but absolutely nothing has been done to reduce or eliminate the power of the State at any level to date. In addition, the nefarious efforts of the State and its controllers continue to expand, and the drive toward more draconian policies is never-ending. In the current environment, it is not known what the reaction by the masses might be considering the vast and imminent array of so-called ’emergencies’ that are certain to arise as this controlling cabal seeks to advance its agendas, but if the past is any indication, compliance should be expected.
The takeover framework of these ruling psychopaths is based always on the prototype of problem-reaction-solution, of which all are fake premeditated events and false emergencies; conspiracies in fact, meant to instill fear, hatred, or confusion, so that the State can pretend to come to the rescue of its hapless slave-class. This strategy has worked most every time it has been tried to date, and the herd continues to simply go along, regardless of the erroneous rhetoric being spewed that this populace is winning. It is not, and so long as the State continues and succeeds in its push to remake and transform society, whether psychologically, financially, or economically, the power of the ruling class and its governing system, will advance its wealth transfers, its monetary monopoly, and its depopulation efforts.
Psychological manipulation and control is necessary in order for the State thugs to accomplish their mission of world takeover, but financial and economic control is mandatory. This brings us to the real question; who owns and controls this world? It is certainly the big banking cartels, including all central banks, the large corporate magnates, the government protected NGO foundations, and of course, the entire global asset industry, which by 2020 controlled well over $100 trillion dollars. But who owns and controls all of these entities? Who has controlling interest in everything on earth? That is Blackrock and The Vanguard Group, and as I explained a year ago:
“There are a few thousand institutional investment firms that own every large bank, every large corporation, every large investment firm, every ‘news’ outlet, every large communication company, every large pharmaceutical company, every large transportation company; in other words, most every large company on earth is owned by these institutional investors. In turn, the small institutional investment firms are owned by larger institutional investment firms, and the larger investment firms, are owned by even larger investment firms. The two institutional investment companies that are the major owners and controllers of all the others in the world are Vanguard Holdings and Blackrock, and Vanguard is the largest shareholder (owner) of Blackrock. What this means is that Vanguard and Blackrock own and control this planet.”
The current CEO of Vanguard is Tim Buckley, and of course, the head and founder of the powerful Blackrock institution is Larry Fink. It should be noted that Fink and Blackrock have attained a position of extreme and almost infinite power over finance and economics, and according to many are now the fourth branch of government.
George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the Cold War, perceptively warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of NATO’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”.
“arguably the single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year, when the entire western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word ‘unprovoked’ in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Brussels, Belgium on Jun. 28, 2018. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg arrives for a meeting with European Union leaders.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg likely surprised both factions in the ongoing debate about NATO expansion and its role in triggering the Russia-Ukraine War. He also undermined (perhaps fatally) the official cover story about the reasons for the Ukraine war. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Western officials and their allies in the corporate media have insisted vehemently that the alliance’s addition of Eastern European nations after the Cold War and giving a pledge to Ukraine that it would become a member someday had nothing to do with Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack his neighbor. Indeed, anyone who argued otherwise risked being accused of echoing Russian propaganda and being “Putin’s puppet.”
Both the official explanation and the pervasive narrative regarding the war were unequivocal. Putin was power-hungry and unwilling to tolerate an independent, pro-Western Ukraine on Russia’s border. Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Steven Pifer’s interpretation was typical; “For the Kremlin, a democratic, Western-oriented, economically successful Ukraine poses a nightmare, because that Ukraine would cause Russians to question why they cannot have the same political voice and democratic rights that Ukrainians do.” Even when Pifer published his piece in July 2022, that explanation was extremely weak, given Ukraine’s own corruption and authoritarianism. Volodymyr Zelensky’s subsequent systematic assault on civil liberties makes the notion that Putin felt threatened by Ukraine as an irresistible democratic magnet patently absurd. Ukraine is not a democratic country by any reasonable definition of the term.
Nevertheless, other analysts made arguments similar to Pifer’s thesis. That Russian grievances over NATO helped spark the war “makes no sense,” wrote Rutgers professor Alexander Motyl. “NATO cannot have been the issue,” historian Timothy Snyder insists; Putin “simply wants to conquer Ukraine, and a reference to NATO was one form of rhetorical cover for his colonial venture.” Such comments matched the official positions that the U.S. and other NATO governments adopted. Interventionist opponent Caitlin Johnstone was accurate that “arguably the single most egregious display of war propaganda in the 21st century occurred last year, when the entire western political/media class began uniformly bleating the word ‘unprovoked’ in reference to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
In a September 6, 2023 speech to the European Union Parliament, Secretary General Stoltenberg contradicted the entrenched official narrative, most likely inadvertently. “President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade (sic) Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.”
And if the nation should “protect” itself from other nations’ exports, Shouldn’t each U.S. state protect itself from the other states’ exports? How about each city and town? Or each neighborhood?
So who speaks up for real globalization? I have to add the adjective real because counterfeit globalization has been circulating for a while. That’s politically managed commerce where governments, most prominently the U.S. government, manage cross-border private trade and migration. When that happens, we — especially the poorest people in the world — not only miss out on the full wealth-creating benefits of worldwide freedom, but we also suffer all kinds of consequences that follow from bumbling politicians and bureaucrats making decisions for the rest.
Globalization, like the free market and classical liberalism generally, isn’t wildly popular these days, is it? People blame globalization for all sorts of bad things, and the raps are usually bum. In truth, to the extent that governments keep out so-called foreign people, goods, and money, they make nearly everyone poorer. Even the few immediate beneficiaries pay a price in the long run.
So who speaks up for real globalization? I have to add the adjective real because counterfeit globalization has been circulating for a while. That’s politically managed commerce where governments, most prominently the U.S. government, manage cross-border private trade and migration. When that happens, we — especially the poorest people in the world — not only miss out on the full wealth-creating benefits of worldwide freedom, but we also suffer all kinds of consequences that follow from bumbling politicians and bureaucrats making decisions for the rest. Let’s have no more of that, if you please.
One of the top voices favoring real globalization is Deirdre N. McCloskey, the Cato Institute Distinguished Scholar and specialist in classical liberal history. McCloskey has been writing big and important books on how it was the growing acceptance of bourgeois virtues and culture over hundreds of years that lifted the world materially. McCloskey calls it the “Great Enrichment.” Most people don’t appreciate how rich we are in the West and how rich the world’s absolute poorest could be in fairly short order. Freeing individuals and the market is the key
The word “globalization” delights some and terrifies others. But it’s merely the gradual emergence [in] our world of a single economy.
It’s a natural and beneficial result of humans doing what humans have done since the beginning, making their families better off by working hard, inventing new stuff, keeping alert, looking around, making little deals, etc. The result of all this human liberty of choice has been globalization. At various scales of time, it’s been happening from the caves to the modern world, or from 1350 to 1800, or from 1776 to 2024.
That’s right. The international movement of people and wealth is not new, although it was never embraced wholeheartedly and uninterruptedly. Governments and other barriers, such as self-defeating cultural biases against foreigners and markets, got and still get in the way. But when those barriers are lowered or, better, are removed and governments loosen their grips, a single unified market emerges, with its tendencies toward one price through arbitrage (buy low, sell high), increased specialization and division of labor, higher productivity, more and cheaper known goods, and more innovation — that is, new things. Hence, people are enriched across the board, no matter where they began.
Prosperity has even spread to communist China and India, thanks to economic liberalization. (Political liberalization, on the other hand, was not embraced by China’s rulers, and the future of economic liberalization is by no means certain.) The same wealth-enhancing process would spread to other poor areas if rulers and bad values were repudiated by the people longing for better lives. It’s already happening, and McCloskey has the data. (The West can help by not insisting that the poor countries pretend that fossil fuels are destroying the planet — they aren’t. The poorest people need them badly, as do we all.)
“It’s all about liberty,” McCloskey writes.
In light of all this, why is “Buy American” so popular? It’s because people never learned to think economically or overcome self-defeating biases. That goes for politicians too. Spending more than necessary to buy so-called American-made goods (Really? No foreign parts whatsoever?) leaves buyers less money with which to buy other things (also hurting the makers of those things) and leaving foreign producers less money with which to buy American goods that can compete without government help. Don’t worry about the “balance of trade,” which Adam Smith knew was “absurd” in 1776. (Have you checked your trade deficit with your Amazon lately? Probably not.)
And if the nation should “protect” itself from other nations’ exports, Shouldn’t each U.S. state protect itself from the other states’ exports? How about each city and town? Or each neighborhood? Heck, let’s go all the way down to household self-sufficiency. That would create maximum employment. It would also create maximum poverty. Specialization and the division of labor saves and enhances lives, and as Adam Smith noted, “The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.”
Simply put: We have no extra money to send to Ukraine.
If that’s not bad enough, Senate leadership has prevented the implementation of effective oversight mechanisms to ensure that hard-earned American tax dollars don’t fall prey to waste, fraud, and abuse. As a result, besides the colossal costs of the war, we will end up paying a corruption tax.
Today I am putting leadership of the House, the Senate, and the President of the United States on notice. I will not consent to the expedited passage of any spending measure providing more American aid to Ukraine.
Simply put: We have no extra money to send to Ukraine. Our deficit this year will exceed $1.5 trillion. Borrowing money from China to send to Ukraine makes no sense.
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Since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the American taxpayer has provided Kiev $113 billion. Over the 583 days of war between February 24, 2022 and the end of this month, that average will come to $6.8 billion per month—or $223 million per day.
This week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington to lobby Congress to approve the Biden administration’s $24 billion supplemental aid request.
When will the aid requests end? When will the war end? Can someone explain what victory in Ukraine looks like? President Biden certainly can’t. His administration has failed to articulate a clear strategy or objective in this war, and Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive has failed to make meaningful gains in the east.
With no clear end in sight, it looks increasingly likely that Ukraine will be yet another endless quagmire funded by the American taxpayer. That’s why public support for the war is waning. A CNN poll from August shows that a majority of Americans now oppose Congress authorizing additional funding to Ukraine.
The Senate leadership of both parties know this. That’s why they are trying to hold the federal government hostage by inserting the $24 billion aid request in a continuing resolution: to force our hand. Either we fund an endless war in Ukraine or the uniparty will shut down the federal government and make the American people suffer.
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This is a clear dereliction of duty, and I will not stand for it. My colleagues: As representatives of the American people, you should not stand for it. The bill that comes before us should be about funding our own government, not anyone else’s. I will do everything in my power to block a bill that includes funding for Ukraine.
As elected officials, we have an obligation to pursue a foreign policy that advances the security and prosperity of the American people. Funneling billions of dollars into the meatgrinder in eastern Ukraine does neither.
The longer this conflict continues, the greater the risk that miscalculation or purposeful escalation draws the United States into direct conflict with Russia. Russia’s military may have a bloody nose, but Moscow still maintains the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Let’s not pretend that American involvement in this war comes without risks.
If that’s not bad enough, Senate leadership has prevented the implementation of effective oversight mechanisms to ensure that hard-earned American tax dollars don’t fall prey to waste, fraud, and abuse. As a result, besides the colossal costs of the war, we will end up paying a corruption tax.
Former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce says Assange is being pursued by the US for ‘being a journalist’ and ‘telling the truth’
This would all be over if Assange would hurry up and die in the foreign prison. That way his death could be blamed on some poor sap in Belmarsh prison. A win win.
A delegation of Australian members of parliament met with US officials in Washington on Wednesday and called for the release of WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange, who faces up to 175 years in prison if extradited to the US and convicted for exposing US war crimes.
The delegation includes six MPs from different ends of the political spectrum in a show of unity aimed at freeing Assange. More than 60 Australian MPs also signed a letter in support of the trip that called for the US to drop the charges against the WikiLeaks founder.
After meeting with Biden administration officials at the Department of Justice in Washington, the Australian delegation held a press conference and said they would keep up the pressure on the US. Barnaby Joyce, the leader of Australia’s National Party and former deputy prime minister, said Assange was only guilty of being a journalist.
“Literally, all sides of politics have come together and united on this one key message, which is that an Australian citizen, Julian Assange, should come home,” Joyce said, according to Fox News.
“The only crime that we see that Julian Assange has been charged with is the crime of being a journalist, the crime of telling the truth.
MCViewPoint 