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Georgia: The Color of Foreign Influence

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There is a distressing and familiar sight in the nation-state of Georgia. Young protestors have take over a central area and are chanting anti-Russia slogans, often obscene and in English, as they wave Ukraine and EU flags and clash with the police.

At issue, a now-withdrawn draft law on foreign influence which would require that entities receiving more than 20 percent of funding from abroad register and explain their funding source. This received overwhelming support in the legislature, though the largely symbolic pro-Western President said she would veto the legislation, however the legislature had a veto-proof majority. The legislature of Georgia, which has a large border with Russia and has so far remained relatively neutral, is under attack from angry anti-Russia mobs. While we are supposed to believe nefarious Russian influence reaches into everything, the sheer fact that this legislation which would treat all foreign interference equally is seen as being a Russian influence ploy shows that there is massively more US and EU influence in Georgia. As ever, “democracy” simply means doing whatever the Western oligarchs want.

It seems we are looking at what is known as a “Color Revolution,” where US soft-power funds pro-Western protestors to overthrow the government of a former Soviet state. The legislature was wise to withdraw the legislation in an attempt to calm the situation, though it did not cause the protestors to leave the streets. This is a rare time my piece will be about how a government’s decision is correct. Escalating is the worst decision the Georgian legislature could make now that this conflict has arisen, and they will find that if they can simply deal with the internal pressure and let time pass, they should be able to wait out the Russia-Ukraine War and then carefully look at their options for reducing outside influence on the country.
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Democrats champion censorship and smear Twitter files heroes

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The House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing Thursday on the Twitter Files, which are exposing pervasive federal browbeating to suppress free speech.

Congressional Democrats championed the National Lampoon definition of censorship: Unless there is a photo of an FBI agent holding a gun to the head of a Twitter employee, the feds did nothing wrong.

Twitter Files reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were on the witness stand. Though both are bestselling authors with long records of excellent reporting, they were treated as shameless grifters who were basely smearing noble federal agencies.

Taibbi and Shellenberger labored under the misconception that congressional hearings seek to reveal facts.

Instead, Democratic members viewed them as sacrifices on the altar of boundless federal prerogatives. Democratic members continually cut off the witnesses, signaling that their role was to shut up and take a whupping.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-USVI) kicked things off for the Democrats by ominously declaring the pair “pose a direct threat to people who oppose them.”
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Hidden Meanings In NYT's Nord Stream 'Revelations'

On Tuesday the New York Times published an incendiary story - based on anonymous Biden Administration officials - that the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines was carried out not by the US military, as Seymore Hersh has discovered, but rather by Ukrainian forces not associated with President Zelensky. Why put out such a transparently bogus counter-narrative? Many reasons. Also today: more revelations about Fauci's malfeasance come out in House Covid hearings. Finally - what does yesterday's Syria vote mean? Today on the Liberty Report...
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A Permanent Wartime Economy

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“Governments create money all the time. We do that for war.” This is the argument for more money printing, and perhaps unlimited money printing, recently advanced by Professor Mariana Mazzucato on prime-time BBC.

This is the argument for more money printing, and perhaps unlimited money printing, recently advanced by Professor Mariana Mazzucato on prime-time BBC.

Channeling Warren Mosler, the godfather of modern monetary theory, Dr. Mazzucato argues against “austerity”—by which she means any natural restraints on government spending. In order to spend, sovereign states need not “earn” tax revenue like a household must earn money, nor do they need to borrow.1 There is a third option: they can print new money at will and enjoy the profit of seigniorage. Just look at Germany, she says approvingly, which recently conjured up 100 billion by executive edict for the war effort in Ukraine!

She certainly is correct that governments print money to pay for wars. America was effectively born into debt during the Revolutionary War, and borrowed/printed money for every war thereafter.


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Biden Weaponizes Hate to Win Votes

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Historian Henry Adams observed a century ago that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” President Biden confirmed this axiom in his raging speeches prior to the mid-term congressional elections.

Throughout his career, Biden has relied on a two-step routine —first appealing to “our better angels” before demagogically vilifying his opponents. In December 2020, after the Electoral College had certified his presidential victory, he declared, “Now it is time to turn the page, to unite, to heal.” In his inaugural address last year, Biden appealed to his audience: “We can join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature.”

Except when turning up the temperature. After rowdy protestors briefly entered the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Biden and his Democratic allies portrayed any Republican who did not unquestioningly endorse the 2020 election as a traitor. President-elect Joe Biden condemned the protestors as “domestic terrorists” and said their action “borders on sedition.” (Actually, Republican members of Congress who objected to the Electoral College verdict were being denounced as the “sedition caucus” even before January 6.) Pervasive allegations of treason are demands for a political death sentence (if not actual execution) for one’s opponents. This became the template for the Biden administration’s effort to preemptively demonize dissent. Biden piled on additional charges, such as his comparison of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
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BUSTED! Tucker Carlson Exposes Jan. 6 'Insurrection' Lie!

The 40,000 hours of surveillance footage released from Jan 6th to Tucker Carlson began airing on his show and it was devastating to the "insurrection" narrative used to lock up innocent protesters and throw away the key. Now we know. Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, and the rest of the "January 6th Committee" lied about every aspect of the January 6, 2021 protest at the US Capitol. Also today: Southern Poverty Domestic Terrorism Center? Finally: Will Congress vote to end the illegal Syria occupation? Watch today's Liberty Report...
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US Occupation of Syria Will Continue

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The sudden unannounced arrival of the top US military officer General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a dusty American base in Syria’s remote northeast on Friday may call to mind a famous quote by Dick Cheney, vice-president in the George W Bush presidency: “The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.” 

According to eyewitness accounts, as recently as last week, on 27 February, US troops transported at least 34 tankers filled with stolen Syrian oil through the illegal Al-Mahmoudiya border crossing to their bases in Iraq. In the estimation of the Syrian foreign ministry, the cumulative losses incurred by the country’s oil and gas sector on account of theft and other US actions were to the tune of $107 billion as of August last year. 

Oil is a unique mineral that anaesthetises thought, blurs vision, corrupts. But according to a Reuters report, Milley’s visit was about something else than oil — purportedly “to assess efforts to prevent a resurgence” of the Islamic State militant group and “review safeguards for American forces against attacks, including from drones flown by Iran-backed militia.” 

Now, that is a stretch for two reasons — one, there are only around 900 US troops all in all in Syria and Milley doesn’t have to undertake such routine mission; two, there is actually no history of the Islamic State [ISIS] having ever attacked the US forces in Syria.
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US Foreign Policy Goes 'Woke'?

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It is generally observed that imperial powers like the United States frequently interfere in foreign governments in support of economic or hard political reasons. To be sure, Washington has refined the process so it can plausibly deny that it is interfering at all, that the change is spontaneous and comes from the people and institutions in the country that is being targeted for change.

One recalls how handing out cookies in Maidan Square in Kiev served as an incentive wrapped around a publicity stunt to bring about regime change in Ukraine in 2014 when Senator John McCain and the State Department’s Victoria Nuland were featured performers in a $5 billion investment by the US government to topple the friendly-to-Russia regime of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Of course, change for the sake of a short-term objective might not always be the best way to go and one might suggest that the success in bringing in a new government acceptable to Nuland has not really turned out that well for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, nor for those Americans who understand that the Biden Administration’s pledge to arm Ukraine and stay in the fight against Russia “as long as it takes” just might not be very good for the United States either.

And the United States continues to be at it, meddling in what was once regarded as something like a war crime, though it now prefers to conceal what it is up to by preaching “democracy” and wrapping the message in “woke-ish progressivism” at every opportunity. An interesting recent trip by a senior government official that was not reported in the mainstream media suggests that the game is still afoot in Eastern Europe.
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