It is time to have these debates and begin reducing US ambitions, instead focusing on the interests of the American people while adapting policies to available resources.
It is tough today to be a member of the Washington foreign policy establishment, called “the Blob” by onetime deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. Members of the Blob make, implement, and assess foreign policy. Their general shared objective is to run the world. Alas, nothing they do seems to be working very well.
Although they fight fiercely over influence, positions, and rewards, they even more resolutely work together to resist accountability. The Blob took America over a humanitarian cliff in the Iraq war, yet who among those responsible for years of brutal sectarian conflict, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, millions of people displaced, and the destruction of historic religious minorities in Iraq alone paid a professional price for their grotesque policy malpractice?
To the contrary, they uniformly advanced professionally and continue to despoil the foreign policy debate, authoritatively pushing more interventions, commitments, and wars. The cost never seems to matter because others always pay.
Instead, Washington should be retrenching. America is under domestic siege, with widening political divides and uncontrolled government spending. Today policymakers are juggling at least four possible wars: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. An outside observer could be forgiven for believing that Blob members have never heard of the concept of setting priorities. Everything is vital and we are a global power! The entire world must be brought under Washington’s, meaning the Blob’s, control. Onward, irrespective of cost and risk!
The White House has pulled the trigger on a fresh troop deployment which marks the first amid the still ratcheting Russia-Ukraine crisis, days after President Biden announced he would bolster US forces in East European allied countries. Senior defense officials have confirmed that 3,000 American troops have been ordered to depart to Poland, Romania, and Germany – after last month they were placed on “alert” as part of ‘prepare to deploy’ status.”Mr. Biden is sending roughly 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Poland and Germany this week and also repositioning about 1,000 troops that are part of a Germany-based infantry Stryker squadron to Romania, on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s eastern flank closest to Russia, the officials said,” according to details in The Wall Street Journal.
The optics are never good for any politician taking on the Left with a hostile media. But that does not mean those who are terrified can win by pulling punches.
According to, among other sources, Politico and the Federalist Society, Senate Republicans are not exactly bracing for a “bare knuckle” fight over Biden’s nominee to replace liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Whoever that nominee will be, that replacement supposedly will not change the balance of forces on the court between liberal activists and their opponents. It would therefore be a mistake, we are told, to waste ammunition and the good will of voters by going after the black female successor to Breyer.
Of course, Brown-Jackson is no centrist, unless we make that term highly elastic. While a judge on the D.C. district court, she tried to block Trump’s attempts to control illegal border crossings; and on the federal bench, she has faithfully supported the congressional January 6 Committee, particularly its efforts to force Donald Trump to hand over White House records that he treated as confidential.
Brown-Jackson also decided in favor of Biden’s executive order barring residential evictions last August, something the Supreme Court later reversed. Like Garland, Brown-Jackson is clearly a Democratic operative, which in addition to her gender and racial identity explains why Biden may be choosing her. But Brown-Jackson is no less moderate than Leondra Kruger, who sits on the California Supreme Court and who is also being considered for the vacancy that Breyer’s departure will create.
The Republicans, being the polite party, will not summon up the ruthless determination that the Democrats did in trying to block the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. Republican sources are assuring us that this new nominee won’t change the composition of the court. She will be nothing more than a replacement for Stephen Breyer, who almost always voted with the Left on divisive judicial issues. Besides, Republican Party leaders are determined not to do anything that might alienate minority voters, for example, taking a strong stand against a female who is also a member of a racial minority.
James Howard Kunstler writes, “The American people have been played backward and forwards, inside and out, through and through, and up and down; driven to the very edge of national suicide by a combine of enemies within and without. If China’s CCP wanted to take maximum advantage of a weakened, confused USA, they couldn’t have found more zealous help-mates than the seditious Democratic Party, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s treasonous public health empire, the murderous pharmaceutical companies, the recklessly dishonest news media, and a demonic host of federal agencies, especially the three-stooge “Intel Community” — the CIA (Moe), DOJ (Larry), FBI (Curley) — plus the many secret horror chambers in the Pentagon.
A complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) accused 16 individuals of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. The 16 defendants include Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Peter Daszak, Bill and Melinda Gates, the CEOs of Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson along with several other British authorities, as well as the presidents of the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Economic Forum.
Hitler’s medical monsters were hung after the Nuremberg Trials, and it’s anyone’s guess how far this and other legal processes will go against our present crop of medical monsters. However, in terms of the gain of function research that medical devils who invested billions in creating COVID, we could line up the nasty deeds of all the evil men in history and still not balance the scales. So it is now or never for medicine, humanity, truth, justice, and the prevalence of good over evil.
The whole game of detracting the reality of this pandemic resulting from lab-created gain of function research is so the principal people involved would not be arrested. So far, they are getting away with their murderous deeds, yet resistance is hardening. However, die from taking one of these experimental COVID shots, and the chances are excellent your life insurance company will rule death by suicide and not pay your family the benefits.
Its insane actions now are killing people while seeking to punish those who refuse to walk sheepishly into America’s version of the gas chamber, the Anthony Fauci “vaccines.” James Howard Kunstler
No writer can vomit enough bad words to address the glee of Fauci as he predicts vaccinating babies with COVID shots. No one can cry enough tears for the mothers who trusted their doctors only to lose their babies in the womb. There must be three thousand of them. Is anyone in the world of medicine crying for them? Have we gotten so stone cold?
The Canadian Prime Minister, who recently described the trucker convoy as a “small fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views” against Covid mantes, may have unwittingly unleashed the greatest challenge ever to his political career.
Like those in the medical profession, long-haul truckers dutifully perform their jobs largely behind the scenes, even during the peak of the Covid pandemic. And just like thousands of nurses and doctors – many of whom were exposed to the virus in the line of duty and probably protected by natural immunity – unvaccinated truckers have found themselves out on the street, or rather, out on the highway.
Dubbed the “Freedom Convoy” that began in Vancouver last week, the 18-wheeler movement is expected to reach Ottawa this weekend as thousands of truckers will clog the capitol in protest. The convoy reveals the level of frustration being felt across the country thanks to Justin Trudeau’s draconian vaccine mantes.
Speaking from Ottawa this afternoon, the PM describes #freedomconvoy2022 participants as a ‘small fringe minority’ expressing ‘unacceptable views’ that don’t represent the views of most Canadians pic.twitter.com/TtYcFE3Izr
Since Jan. 15, unvaccinated truckers entering Canada are required to be tested and quarantined for 15 days; the U.S. mandated similar restrictions on Jan. 22. Naturally such regulations made their job impossible to perform. Thus, the mandates have removed some 20-25% of the estimated 175,000 cross-border American and Canadian truckers due to noncompliance in both countries. But these sidelined workers are not leaving their jobs without a fight, and it seems that many Canadians support the cause.
While mainstream media and social media has largely been able to control the flow of information that Canadians receive with regards to Covid and the vaccination mandates, the trucker convoy has given the public a chance to really express themselves. Judging by early indications it doesn’t look particularly good for the Trudeau administration.
Telegram, the censorship-free messenger application, is chockfull of videos and photographs of overpasses near Toronto loaded with placard-waving supporters as the convoy grinds its way towards Ottawa to the east. Other platforms showed the local residents of small towns handing out meals to the truckers despite the frigid temperatures.
Undoubtedly the most influential advocate of the truckers’ cause thus far has been Elon Musk, who tweeted a three-word message that certainly did not sit well with Justin Trudeau: “Canadian truckers rule.”
Speaking of Trudeau, the 50-year-old leader of the Labor Party announced just this week that he had been “exposed to Covid-19,” and would therefore be isolating at home for five days. That announcement sparked a small riot on social media, with many suggesting that the Canadian leader had used the excuse of Covid to hopefully avoid the truckers.
Keean Bexte, a journalist with Counter Signal, suggested in a tweet that a new variant of “Coward-19” was detected.
“This is, perhaps, the greatest act of cowardice from a sitting Canadian PM in this nation’s history,” Bexte wrote in an accompanying article. “When Canadians finally take a stand, finally take real action, Trudeau merely waves it away, practically flipping them the bird through a single Tweet, ending it with “please get vaccinated” to rub salt in wounds he’s opened.”
This is the problem when the media and government refuses to permit any sort of formal debate on a serious issue that affects millions of people on so many different levels. Trudeau has given his countrymen just one option, and that is to get the vaccination or essentially become second-class citizens in their own country. Unlike other effected industries, however, truckers have the option of putting their machines to use for a very effective form of protest, and one that promises to cause severe logistical problems as far as transport goes.
Although the Canadian Trucking Alliance and the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) have both distanced themselves from the movement, saying 90 percent of long-haul truckers are vaccinated, the remaining 10 percent (that is, assuming the figure is accurate as some believe the number of unvaccinated may be as high as 25 percent) leaves anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 of rigs easily capable of affecting a large swath of the economy, both in the U.S. and Canada.
With tens of thousands of truckers now unemployed, the supply chain crisis, which was already noticeable before the mandates went into effect with over 100 cargo ships docked off the coast of California, unable to unload their shipments, store shelves could become conspicuously less stocked in the days and weeks to come. Already Canadians are displaying disturbing images from their local grocery stores on social media.
Thank you Truckers! Trudeau is attacking personal liberty and threatening everyone’s ability to get groceries because of his overreach on vaccine mandates. He is the biggest threat to freedom in Canada.https://t.co/5b5k5ZjuY3
Mike Millian, the president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, said his organization is against vaccine mandates for truckers, but is worried about some of the rhetoric he’s seen among the protesters.
“Truck drivers are isolated in their jobs, haven’t been associated to spread, and we can’t afford to damage our supply chain any more than it is,” Millian said in an interview with CBC News. “But this convoy seems to have morphed into a kind of protest against all vaccine and COVID-related shutdowns.”
“We’re seeing signs that are calling our government ‘communists’ and ‘nazis’ and comparing the [situation over vaccine mandates] to the holocaust.”
“Obviously, we can’t support that message,” he said.
Meanwhile, the media in Canada seems to be priming the protest, suggesting that far-right agitators are behind the movement, even warning that Ottawa could experience its “January 6th storming,” a reference to the day when pro-Trump supporters took over the U.S. Capitol in their belief that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged in favor of Joe Biden.
What Justin Trudeau seems unwilling to admit is that Canadians are weary of the debate over vaccine mandates and the divisiveness it has caused throughout society, not to mention the loss of freedoms. For many of these people, the ‘Freedom Convoy’ represents an opportunity for Canadians to latch onto a movement that promotes their own ideas, which includes a strong dislike for the government’s handling of the Covid crisis.
Whether or not this trucker movement will morph into something greater remains to be seen, but it’s not a good sign that Justin Trudeau has removed himself from the public spotlight at possibly the most pivotal point in his political career.
he phone call between President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky “did not go well”, CNN headlines: while “Biden warned that a Russian invasion is practically certain in February, when the frozen ground makes it possible for tanks to pass through”, Zelensky “asked Biden to lower his tone, arguing that the Russian threat is still ambiguous”. As the Ukrainian president himself takes a more cautious stance, Ukrainian armed forces are massing in the Donbass near the area of Donetsk and Lugansk inhabited by Russian populations.
According to reports from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, obscured by our mainstream which only talks about the Russian deployment, Ukrainian Army and National Guard units, amounting to about 150 thousand men, are positioned here. They are armed and trained, and thus effectively commanded, by US-NATO military advisers and instructors.
From 1991 to 2014, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service, the U.S. provided Ukraine with $4 billion in military assistance, which was added to by over $2.5 billion after 2014, plus over a billion provided by the NATO Trust Fund in which Italy also participates. This is only part of the military investments made by the major NATO powers in Ukraine. Great Britain, for example, concluded various military agreements with Kiev, investing among other things 1.7 billion pounds in the strengthening of Ukraine’s naval capabilities: this program provides for the arming of Ukrainian ships with British missiles, the joint production of 8 fast missile launchers, the construction of naval bases on the Black Sea and also on the Sea of Azov between Ukraine, Crimea and Russia. In this framework, Ukrainian military spending, which in 2014 was equivalent to 3% of GDP, increased to 6% in 2022, corresponding to more than $ 11 billion.
In addition to the US-NATO military investments in Ukraine, there is the $10 billion plan being implemented by Erik Prince, founder of the private US military company Blackwater, now renamed Academy, which has been supplying mercenaries to the CIA, Pentagon and State Department for covert operations (including torture and assassinations), earning billions of dollars. Erik Prince’s plan, revealed by a Time magazine investigation, is to create a private army in Ukraine through a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company, with which Prince has supplied mercenaries in the Middle East and Africa, and the main Ukrainian intelligence office controlled by the CIA. It is not known, of course, what would be the tasks of the private army created in Ukraine by the founder of Blackwater, certainly with funding from the CIA. However, it can be expected that it would conduct covert operations in Europe, Russia and other regions from its base in Ukraine.
Against this background, it is particularly alarming that the Russian Defense Minister Shoigu denounced that in the Donetsk region there are “private US military companies that are preparing a provocation with the use of unknown chemicals”. It could be the spark that causes the detonation of a war in the heart of Europe: a chemical attack against Ukrainian civilians in Donbass, immediately attributed to the Russians of Donetsk and Lugansk, which would be attacked by the preponderant Ukrainian forces already deployed in the region, to force Russia to intervene militarily in their defense.
In the front line, ready to slaughter the Russians in the Donbass, is the Azov battalion, promoted to a special forces regiment, trained and armed by the US and NATO, distinguished for its ferocity in attacks on the Russian populations of Ukraine. The Azov, which recruits neo-Nazis from all over Europe under its flag traced from that of SS Das Reich, is commanded by its founder Andrey Biletsky, promoted to colonel. It is not only a military unit, but an ideological and political movement, of which Biletsky is the charismatic leader, especially for the youth organization that is educated to hate the Russians with his book “The Words of the White Führer”.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
It’s not for anything I said, but for what I might have said. I might have told the truth about the Biden Administration’s insane push to war over Ukraine to an American audience steeped in mainstream media gaslighting. I might have mentioned that there is zero US national interest in who governs Ukraine. This crook or that one…who cares?
Let me back up a bit. Earlier today I got a message from the gentleman who helps us out with media bookings. A nationwide news outlet is looking for someone to do six minutes live on Russian President Putin’s remarks about the US response to a Russian security proposal, he wrote. Was I interested?
Washington and its obedient lapdog press have been pushing war with Russia over Ukraine for weeks and I thought I might be able to provide just a couple of gentle counter-points to the narrative. While Newsy, the requester, is not a network I was familiar with, it is owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, which is a billion dollar media organization. So I said “yes.”
The hit time was coming up. I set up the camera and the lighting and changed out of my gym clothes. And waited.
And waited.
At the last minute a call came in from our PR guy. He sounded a bit apologetic. “Well, here’s the thing, they said they don’t want anything ‘political’ so they are cancelling the segment.”
“Are they cancelling the story, or just cancelling me as a guest?” I asked.
“Well,” he said, “all the news outlets are being really weird right now about the Russia thing and they don’t seem interested in a ‘pro-freedom’ message.”
Shocker! (Not).
That exchange was a fascinating bit of insight into how the media manipulates the message rather than provides information for the consumer. They don’t tell you what’s going on: they tell you what to think about what is going on.
So somewhere in that approximately ten minutes between my accepting the media request and the cancellation some alarm bells must have gone off somewhere. “We CAN’T have anyone like THAT on our network! They’re the WRONG type of people!”
So Americans will never hear anyone tell them that the “massing Russian troops” are actually inside of Russia’s borders. And that the real “massing” is US and UK governments sending massive weapons shipments to Ukraine. Another half-billion dollars in weapons – including missiles – was approved by the US government, and US and UK military are on the ground helping train Ukrainians how best to use those weapons to kill Russians.
No one will ever tell their viewers that it is absurdly unlikely that the Russian military will launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine because it would make absolutely no sense. One does not need be a Putin apologist to recognize that Russian foreign policy is far more conservative than the endless interventionism that characterizes US foreign policy.
When a (likely US-backed) coup was launched in strategically critical Kazakhstan last month, Putin responded to a request for military assistance from its CSTO ally and sent peacekeepers. They were gone within a week. Compare that to the 20 year US occupation of Afghanistan and the near-20 year US military presence in Iraq. And let’s not talk about the continued illegal US military presence on sovereign Syrian territory.
Biden last Friday told Ukrainian President Zelensky to “take cover” because the Russians were about to “sack Kiev” any minute. No one even asked: what would they do with it once they owned it? Who wants Kiev? Even Zelensky had to tell Biden to take his meds. Of course it was a bogus tip. Nothing happened.
No Newsy viewer will hear anyone draw this analogy: What if the shoe was on the other foot? What if an extremely hostile Mexico, which not long ago had an anti-US regime in power and armed to the hilt by China, hosted Chinese troops training Mexicans how to re-take California and Texas? Washington wouldn’t move a couple of troops around inside the US?
And if they did, would it be “aggression”?
No one will hear anyone pointing out that the Biden Administration – with plenty of hawkish Republicans in tow – is pursuing a policy that is in no way in America’s national interest, that in no way makes any sense, and that could very well backfire and get millions of people killed for nothing. No one will hear anyone tell them the truth: there are few things that matter less to the US and its security than who governs Ukraine.
“Ah,” I told our PR person, “I see how it is. It’s just like the run-up to war with Iraq, when the media didn’t want to have anyone on air saying that Saddam didn’t have WMDs and that attacking Iraq would be a foolish disaster.”
“Yep,” he said.
That way they can all in unison assure us when it all goes to hell that “nobody could have guessed it would turn out that way!”
This is the US media in a nutshell.
As an ironic postscript, no sooner had I pressed my shirt and prepped for my aborted Newsy appearance than I got a call from RT in Moscow eager to hear my take on the exact topic originally requested by Newsy. I would have told both outlets the same thing, but here in “free press” USA they didn’t want Americans to hear it.
Approved positions only. Freedom!
Sincerely yours,
Daniel McAdams Executive Director Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity
The news from Italy has started to sound like good incipits for a dystopian fantasy novel or like a déjà vu recalling the Soviet Union. A couple of weeks ago, a new decree of the Draghi government established yet more rules restricting the lives of people who have not been injected with the latest vaccine booster and who therefore cannot show the latest version of the Green Pass. These second-class citizens, who have already been stripped of their right to move, work, and participate in a great number of social activities, are now forbidden from entering post offices to withdraw their pension, and they are to be allowed access to supermarkets only to buy “goods of primary necessity.” In other words, the Italian government decides what kind of food and what other goods (if any) these people will be able to purchase. It is unclear how exactly the government intends to enforce this new decree: Will we see policemen putting their hands into shoppers’ bags? Will bread be considered a “primary” good while shaving foam and candies will be seized? There is no limit to the madness. And a recent note from the executive to clarify the situation only made things worse: the state now decrees that the unvaccinated can actually also buy nonprimary goods in the few shops they are allowed to enter. For the time being. In other words, Italy is now a society where your sphere of action goes only as far as the prime minister’s website explicitly and graciously allows. Heading out for a stroll at the park? You better check the latest blog post from Mario Draghi to see if he explicitly grants you this freedom!
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Legendary quarterback Tom Brady has announced his plan to retire from the NFL to spend more time carving little wooden toys for his grandkids. In response to the earth-shattering news, President Joe Biden has announced his commitment to replace the outgoing football star with a woman of color.
“Listen, folks, it’s time,” said Biden to the press. “In the hundred-year history of the NFL, not a single quarterback has ever been a woman of color. That’s racist! We all know that poor women are just as smart and powerful as white kids. As president, I will nominate a new quarterback to replace Tom Brady that reflects America’s diversity.”
When told he doesn’t have the authority to nominate quarterbacks to the NFL, Biden told his staff he would just sign the executive order and let the courts deal with it later.
“There’s no excuse,” said Biden. When I used to play Nine Pins with Jehoshaphat Jenkins and the townsfolk, we always used to let the black women play with us. I was a civil rights hero, darn it! It’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!”
So far, candidates being considered for the empty position include Michelle Obama, Tyler Perry, and Colin Kaepernick in a woman’s wig.
by Tyler Durden
