US Secretaries of State and Defense made a surprise visit to Kiev over the weekend to declare that Russia had already failed and Ukraine had already succeeded in the two-month conflict. Promising additional weapons transfers, the US is becoming ever more engaged in the war. Dangerous? Also today, some NATO officials openly declare goal is to "bleed Russia." And...Finland in NATO? Good idea? Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
Ask a hundred Americans and you’ll be lucky to find even one who’s ever heard of Minsk II. But ask those same Americans how the Ukraine war started, and you’ll likely get "Russian President Putin woke up one day and decided to re-establish the Soviet empire, starting with Ukraine."
That is because our government and its slavishly loyal media have created a false narrative for maximum propaganda to support pouring billions in weaponry into the Ukraine war zone, ensuring that death and destruction will proceed endlessly.
Minsk II was the 2015 agreement hammered out by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany to end the civil war in Ukraine between the pro west, ultra nationalist government and the pro Russian Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Why a civil war in Ukraine? Historically, Ukraine was cobbled together first by the Russian Empire, then the Soviet Union over 4 centuries, containing disparate peoples. The main ones were the Western leaning, Ukrainian speaking people in the north and west, and the Russian speaking in the east and south.
Their relationship was always toxic, but under Soviet rule relative peace prevailed. Once freed from Soviet rule in 1999, the tension between the two disparate groups resurfaced. Fifteen years on the US essentially blew up whatever chance for peaceful resolution by aiding a coup which violently removed Russian leaning President Yanukovych, replacing him with an ultra nationalist government under Petro Poroshenko. read on...
All of a sudden everyone is an expert on inflation. Your brother-in-law, your local paper, and even dilettantes at dubious outlets like the Washington Post or The Atlantic feel compelled to explain our current predicament. With the admitted rate of consumer inflation running somewhere around 8 percent, and the real rate much higher, even central bankers can’t hide the reality from us. So the commentariat has to explain to us why this is happening and make sure we blame the mysterious workings of capitalism for our troubles.
In other words, economics is back. Covid was a nice diversion, and Ukraine took up all the media’s oxygen for a few months. But now we must deal with the economic devastation caused both by lockdowns and two years of crazed fiscal and monetary policy. Everyday Americans, stubborn as they are, care more about rising gas and food prices than the political class would like. So they trot out Nancy Pelosi to explain how government spending actually reduces inflation and push pseudoeconomic ideas like modern monetary theory to explain why more federal spending is always the cure.
But what is really happening?
First, consider the two covid stimulus bills passed by Congress in 2020 and 2021. These pumped more than $5 trillion directly into the economy in the form of payments to government, payments to households, unemployment benefits, employer payroll loans, cash subsides to airlines and countless other industries, and a host of grab-bag earmarks which had nothing to do with covid. This new money injected itself straight into the veins of the daily economy. read on...
“War is a racket, wrote US Maj. General Smedley Butler in 1935. He explained: “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.” read on...
The US and its NATO allies claim they are continuing to send massive military aid to Ukraine. At the same time, Washington appears to have no interest in a negotiated end to the conflict. This begs the question: What is Washington’s policy goal? Could it be direct conflict with Russia?... read on...
The very concept of Public Health, once a rather innocuous term, is facing an extinction level event, and Americans should be incredibly thankful for this development. read on...
In what his lawyers have described as a “brief but significant moment in the case,” a British magistrates' court has signed off on Julian Assange's extradition to the United States, bringing the WikiLeaks founder one step closer to a US trial under the Espionage Act which threatens press freedoms worldwide.
“He is a war criminal,” President Biden said of Vladimir Putin following allegations of war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine earlier this month. “I think it is a war crime. ... He should be held accountable.”
And that's all I'd like to say here today, really. That this discrepancy is very interesting. read on...
A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing US foreign policy. The majority of this letter is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the US by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Tech's power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Tech's monopolistic power would therefore undermine the US fight against Moscow. read on...
Russian and Donbas forces have cleared the city of Mariupol except for the giant metallurgic complex of Azovstal which is held by some estimated 4,000 men, including many from the fascist Azov battalion.
On Sunday Russia opened corridors across the front line and asked for those forces to surrender. However the Zelensky government ordered them to stay and to continue to bind Russian forces which otherwise could be used elsewhere:
"Russia had given the Ukrainian fighters in Mariupol until Sunday morning to lay down their weapons or be “eliminated.” On Sunday, the forces at the plant ignored the deadline, and Ukrainian officials vowed that they would not surrender. In response, the Russian assault intensified, with missiles and bombs hitting the city and new attacks occurring near the plant, according to the Ukrainian military. ... "Ukrainian officials said on Sunday that the struggle was not over for Mariupol, which for two months has tied up Russian troops and resources that are badly needed elsewhere."
The Azovstal complex is a 2 by 2 miles industrial area. It can be surrounded and controlled by a relatively small force. Those within the area no longer have heavy artillery ammunition and presumably little other supplies. The Russian forces can see and bomb anything that moves on the open ground and can otherwise sit back and wait their enemies out. read on...
In my view, the mask regime is officially dead and buried. In many of our day to day lives [at least those of us who live in Free States], the mask has already become a complete afterthought. Unless you happen to be entering an airplane or a doctor’s office, there has long been no reason to have a mask signal in your possession. read on...
