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Why Did US Torpedo The April Ukraine War Negotiated Settlement?

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Most Americans are unaware how close Russia and Ukraine came to ending the current war in April.

Last March 27, Ukraine president Zelensky told his people "Our goal is obvious – peace and the restoration of normal life in our native state as soon as possible."

He was hinting at what went unsaid: Ukraine and Russia, brokered by NATO member Turkey, reached a tentative fifteen-point peace plan to end the month old war.

Key points were Russia withdraw from all Ukraine except for breakaway Donbas and Crimea. Ukraine would pass on future NATO membership, pledging neutrality between Russia and NATO. Donbas and Crimea would undergo political transition based on self-determination to be recognized by both combatants. Ukraine security would be guaranteed by neighboring countries but no foreign troops would enter Ukraine.
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Europe Commits Suicide-by-Sanctions

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A Swiss billboard is making the rounds on social media depicting a young woman on the telephone. The caption reads, "Does the neighbor heat the apartment to over 19 degrees (66F)? Please inform us." While the Swiss government has dismissed the poster as a fake, the penalties Swiss citizens face for daring to warm their homes are very real. According to the Swiss newspaper Blick, those who violate the 66 degree heating limit could face as many as three years in prison!
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Prosecuting Trump

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What would you do if you were Merrick Garland? Would you prosecute Trump? Or would you walk away, concerned about accusations you and the FBI were playing politics?
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Pray for Ukraine?

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The latest empty cliché that one hears out of the mouth of Christians is “Pray for Ukraine.” But do Christians who utter this pious platitude even know what they mean when they say it?

I suppose that it is supposed to mean that we should pray for the people of Ukraine who are suffering because of the unjustified Russian invasion of their country. If only things were that simple.

Some observations are in order.

This appeal is based on the overly simplistic yet false and evil notion of Ukraine, good; Russia, bad.

This trite expression in the form of a prayer request is virtue signaling at its worst.

I think we are at the point now where someone saying “Pray for Ukraine” is the verbal equivalent of someone wearing a face mask.
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It’s Even Later than You Thought

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Allow me to say at the outset how pleased and not a little surprised I was to be invited to address this seminar for the second year in a row. Pleased, because I can’t think of a better place than the Ron Paul Scholars Seminar to encounter bright young people who can afford even the most cranky old Boomer like myself grounds for hope. Surprised, because as I recall following last year’s presentation the organizers were constrained to confiscate your predecessors’ belts and shoelaces and place them under 24-hour protective watch. As I asked them last year: “How do I tell you that, in the layman’s terms, your lives will probably suck? At least in the near future. But there is hope. I will return to that.”

My talk last year was called “It’s Later than you Think,” and of course now it’s even later still. On the off-chance that none of you has memorized that text, I will give a brief summary of what I said then – which as I noted even then ended with a dim glimmer of sunlight – and then review how the past year has, I believe, confirmed my assessment then and, somewhat paradoxically, made that glimmer shine just a bit brighter. All in all, I think we have grounds to be cautiously pessimistic.

In brief, my thesis last year was that the gathering clouds were not just those of a political crisis (presumably one that would be amenable to change through political means – “Vote harder next time! Vote harder, boy!") or just an economic and financial crisis (is two quarters of negative GDP growth by definition really a recession, or not – ah, the rollercoaster of the business cycle!). No, it was something more fundamental. Rather, the America we oldsters had grown up with, and which had been declining for decades, had fundamentally ceased to exist.
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Dancing with the Politicians

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If the non-stop dancing duo Biden and Blinken is seriously seeking to validate its view that the United States of America is and should be the world’s hegemon, they are going about it the wrong way. They should be taking their lead from Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky by turning their press conferences into entertainments with dancing bears and scantily clad chanteuses pirouetting and singing across the stage. They would benefit from recalling how Zelensky rose to power through his performances of comedy routines in which he would be prancing around on high heels with three colleagues who appeared to be mocking what might be construed as gay mannerisms to amuse the audience? Or perhaps the rather more outreperformance where Zelensky would play a piano with his penis

If one can remember all that it would most definitely help to understand the foreign policy that is somehow playing out in Ukraine, where Zelensky has transitioned into a serious, unsmiling guy who is adept at solicitations for money and weapons. His pleading has become a shameless full-time endeavor as he now appears on thousands of screens via video link all over the world, saturating the airwaves and dropping in on both major and minor gatherings. 

Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone recalls how he has appeared on “the Grammy Awards, the Cannes Film Festival, the World Economic Forum and probably the Bilderberg group as well, [while also] having meetings with celebrities like Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, and Bono and the Edge from U2. It’s as busy a PR tour as he could possibly have without having a discussion about the strategic importance of long-range artillery with Elmo on Sesame Street.”
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Inflation: State-Sponsored Terrorism

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Remember the quaint old days of 2019? We were told the US economy was in great shape. Inflation was low, jobs were plentiful, GDP was growing. And frankly, if covid had not come along, there is a pretty good chance Donald Trump would have been reelected.
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Lessons from Biden’s Disinformation Board Debacle

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President Biden’s campaign to banish (or maybe outlaw) political paranoia took a wallop last spring. In April, the Department of Homeland Security proudly announced that it had created a new Disinformation Governance Board. The following month, the board’s chairman resigned, and Biden administration officials claimed the board was being “paused.” But it remains in the wings awaiting the White House summons for an encore performance.Thought police by another name

From the start, the Disinformation Governance Board looked like a political caricature dreamed up by people who never appreciated either Monty Python or Orwell’s 1984. Given the Biden record, it was unclear whether the new board will be fighting or promulgating “disinformation.” After controversy erupted, an unnamed DHS spokesperson told the Washington Post: “The Board’s purpose has been grossly mischaracterized; it will not police speech…. Its focus is to ensure that freedom of speech is protected.” Geez, why didn’t the Founding Fathers think of adding a clause to the First Amendment creating a nefarious-sounding government agency to ride shotgun on the nation’s media?

Team Biden expected applause and deference when they announced the first disinformation czar for the board, Nina Jankowicz, a 33-year-old Bryn Mawr college graduate who was hailed as an “information warfare expert.” Jankowicz had the type of resume that made the Washington Post swoon — a Fulbright scholar, a graduate degree from Georgetown University, and “stints at multiple nonpartisan think tanks” — all of which were coincidentally progovernment — thus proving that Jankowicz herself was trustworthy.

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Anatomy of a Police State”: Notes from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity Conference

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“If there was no hope at all, I would ask Daniel (McAdams) if I could hand out cyanide capsules” – speaker Jacob Hornberger

While at times it seems to many of us as if, as the 1965 Barry McGuire song goes, we’re on the eve of destruction, hundreds of high-spirited, intelligent freedom loving critical thinkers gathered on September 3rd to honor the greatest living liberty-promoting leader in their time: Dr. Ron Paul. 

Attendees at a hotel near Dulles Airport 31 miles from Washington, DC ranged from teenagers to senior citizens who had travelled from distant points across America and Canada to be in the presence of the 87-year-old revered statesman. One young couple drove from Pittsburgh and camped out the night before in a tent. A teenager from Nottingham, Virginia told me how excited she was that her parents had brought her to her first Ron Paul conference. A businessman from Maryland who listens to each and every one of Dr. Paul’s Liberty Reports broadcast Mondays through Fridays had his teenage son in tow.
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Ukraine Decision Time for Biden

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September 5, 2022

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time
REF: Nukes Cannot be Un-Invented, VIPS

Mr. President:

Before Defense Secretary Austin flies off to Ramstein for the meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group we owe you a few words of caution occasioned by our many decades of experience with what happens to intelligence in wartime. If he tells you Kyiv is beating back the Russians, kick the tires – and consider widening your circle of advisers.

Truth is the coin of the realm in intelligence analysis. It is equally axiomatic that truth is the first casualty of war, and that applies to the war in Ukraine as well as earlier wars we have been involved in. When at war, Defense Secretaries, Secretaries of State, and generals simply cannot be relied upon to tell the truth – to the media, or even to the President. We learned that early – the hard and bitter way. A lot of our comrades in arms did not come back from Vietnam.


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