The Last Wunderwaffe

By William Schryver - June 29, 2024 at 09:25AM

F-16s, Romanian bases, and NATO pilots

I shall return yet again to the prospect of “Made in the USA” F-16s sallying forth boldly into eastern Ukraine to “teach the cabbage heads what Airpower (capitalized) really means.”

From what information I’ve been able to glean in recent weeks, it does in fact look as though the US is aggressively setting up air ops housekeeping in Romania, very near the Black Sea coast — ostensibly to serve as the base of F-16 operations against Russia.

I submit that the preparation of this base is implicit proof that they have long-since assembled and, likely for many months, have been honing the skills and teamwork of a few squadrons of “NATO-affiliated contractor pilots” — and the plan must be to use them.

You see, if the “true plan” were to put a dozen woefully undertrained Ukrainian apprentice kamikazes behind the wheel of 1980s vintage F-16s, and then wave them off on a glorious one-way mission into the wild blue yonder … well, you don’t need much of a logistical hub for that operation.

So, if they’re really working to prepare what is reputed to be the “largest NATO base in Europe,” the logical conclusion is that it is intended to house, maintain, and sustain at least a couple squadrons of NATO “volunteer” pilots flying much later F-16 models than the European boneyard relics Ukraine has long been promised.

Hey, I say field five full squadrons, and outfit at least a couple of them with the latest model F-16 Vipers.

Go big or go home.

Make it the last “all in” roll of the wunderwaffe dice.

Never mind that literally no one in the US air fleet, at any level, has any experience whatsoever in high-intensity air combat operations against an enemy that:

– can match or exceed you with high numbers of superior air frames

– will be flying from interior lines, with well-established logistical infrastructure

– backed by high numbers of the finest layered air defenses on the planet

– with far superior magazine depth

– and will significantly outrange NATO platforms in almost every plausible scenario.

Oh, yeah. And I almost forgot: anyone (including the perpetually catastrophist Russian murmurers) who believes for a moment that Russia will not act to obliterate a NATO base in Romania under such circumstances … well, that’s just silly talk.

Of course they will. They’ll hit it hard. Really hard — with a strike package that exceeds anything ever thrown at a Ukrainian target over the course of this war.

It could well become the most intensely pressure-packed moment in modern times — a situation exceptionally fraught with the possibility of catastrophic miscalculation.

Every time I stop to think about these things, I just shake my head at the obvious stupidity of it all.

If the Imperial Masters of War actually attempt such an air campaign against Russia, not only will the entire operation almost certainly end up being a logistical debacle of truly epic proportions, but the combat results will be shockingly one-sided — disastrous to the point the US will very likely feel compelled to cease operations after just a few days, and try to spin it into some sort of “bold statement” that “achieved its purposes”.

But it will be ugly. Exceedingly ugly. And everybody that is anybody of consequence in power structures around the world will know the score and understand exactly what it means.

Reprinted with permission from imetatronink.
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What an Awful Choice!

By Eric Margolis - June 29, 2024 at 09:08AM

This week’s presidential debate made me both horrified and dismayed. Here was the world’s most powerful nation trying to decide which elderly candidate to select as its presidential candidate. Maybe the best expression is ‘cringe-worthy.’

Joe Biden was left looking feeble and halting before the bombastic Trump. At least Trump made some sense in what he said whether true or false. The former president’s mouth is his biggest enemy as well as his strongest point. Biden was shockingly inarticulate.

Few should doubt that President Biden is much too old for a second term. He soldiers on but clearly has lost the fire in his belly that keeps politicians running. The second biggest motivator is money. Right now, a Niagara of money is flowing to both candidates. America’s much vaunted democracy is for sale or at least rent.

Look at the US Congress. Money from pro-Israel groups floods Congress which gives billions to Israel and ally Egypt. As the wise Pat Buchanan said, “Capitol Hill has become Israeli-occupied territory.” Since October 7th of last year, the Biden administration has poured more then $6.5 billion into Israel to fund its war against Palestine.

The Biden White House is under the thumb of a cabal of pro-Israel neocons allied to the extreme right wingers now in power in Israel. PM Netanyahu’s rickety coalition depends on the votes of Israel’s far, far right – so much to the right that the late, great Israeli columnist Uri Avnery called them “Jewish fascists.” Ukraine is also veering in that direction.

Ukraine and Israel are both dominated by pro-Israel groups. Hence the recent gift by Washington of $95 billion to Ukraine and Israel. No wonder many Israelis refer to Ukraine as “the second Israel.”

Biden’s feebleness must be addressed. The Democrats badly need a new leader. My sense is that California’s abled, telegenic governor Gavin Newsom is the most attractive candidate. He currently denies any plans to run. But pressure must be mounting on him to jump into the race.

Biden is not finished yet, but the next weeks may prove his undoing. He still has lots of campaign funds to buy TV ads. Trump has the promise of $100 million from the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the world’s fifth richest woman and an ardent supporter of Israel.

So far, that looks like ante that will buy Congress and the presidency for now. What a dark time in US history. America seems to be going the way of the old Soviet Union, with a decrepit leadership sitting atop a sea of corruption. One wonders whom the desperate Dems will select to replace Biden. Perhaps Tony Blinken, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton (gasp) or a surprise candidate like businessman Jeff Bezos.

Those who do not love the United States must be very happy now. Things could only get worse.

Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.

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Julian Assange Is Free!

By Andrew P. Napolitano - June 27, 2024 at 08:17AM

“I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

It wasn’t until 1969 that the Supreme Court’s modern First Amendment jurisprudence made it clear that whenever there is a clash between the government and a person over the constitutionality of the person’s speech, the courts will give every benefit and draw every inference to the speaker, and none to the government. This is so because the freedom of speech is a natural right, it is also expressly protected by the Constitution, and thus it is always to be presumed constitutional and lawful.

I have argued elsewhere that because the essence of government is the negation of liberty, this presumption against the government should always be the case. Even when it purports to be protecting liberty, the government — because its existence without unanimous consent is based on stealing liberty and property from those who have not consented — should always be presumed wrong, immoral, unconstitutional and unlawful. But the courts have only made that so in the case of the freedom of speech.

I offer this brief legal lesson in order to examine just how twisted the government’s views on speech have become in the Trump and Biden years, as the Department of Justice in both administrations has persecuted mercilessly and sought to prosecute aggressively the Australian journalist Julian Assange for his exercise of the freedom of speech.

Until now.

Here is the backstory.

Assange was the head of WikiLeaks, an international digital journalistic enterprise that specializes in publishing formerly secret matters about governments. In 2010, WikiLeaks acquired secret U.S. videos showing an attack on civilians and journalists in Baghdad perpetrated by American Apache helicopters. The 2007 attack killed a dozen civilians and two Reuters employees. The George W. Bush administration had egg on its face, as it had previously denied that this attack had taken place.

The video also contained audio that revealed the cavalier, childish and remorseless attitude of the military personnel who perpetrated the deaths of these innocents.

In the ensuing weeks and months, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of pages of secret classified materials and diplomatic cables, which further embarrassed the Bush and Obama administrations. The government claimed that this was the largest security breach of secret materials in American history. The documents revealed government crimes and death on a grand scale.

WikiLeaks’ source for these secret materials was an Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Edward Manning. Manning was arrested and charged with numerous offenses, not the least of which was providing aid and comfort to an enemy, for which he was exposed to the death penalty. Manning pleaded guilty to some of the charges and was tried and convicted on the remainder of them.

He was sentenced to 35 years in a military prison. In 2017, President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence to time served, and he was ordered released just hours before the inauguration of Donald Trump to the presidency.

Trump, who had been harshly critical of both Manning and Assange, ratcheted up his attacks on Assange and Obama after Manning’s prison release. His anger was interpreted by his Department of Justice as his wish for an indictment of Assange, which the DoJ obtained in 18 counts including espionage. The DoJ then sought Assange’s extradition from London, whereupon he fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy there, where he resided in the basement for seven years until he was forcibly extracted by British police.

The case against Assange is a sham and is motivated by the U.S. intelligence community and its colleagues in the DoJ. It is a sham because the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech of all persons, not just Americans. Even though the materials Assange and WikiLeaks received had been stolen by Manning, because they were and are of profound interest to the public — American drones targeting civilians, secret U.S. military actions in countries with which the U.S. was not at war, and government lying to the public on a grand scale — the media is free to reveal them.

The Supreme Court announced this legal principle in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971. There, Daniel Ellsberg, a civilian employee of the Pentagon, stole classified materials that demonstrated that U.S. Army generals had been lying to President Lyndon B. Johnson and LBJ had been lying to the public about military progress during the war in Vietnam.

When Ellsberg turned the materials over to The New York Times and to The Washington Post, the Nixon DoJ obtained a court order barring their publication. Within days, the Supreme Court lifted that order and issued an opinion further expanding First Amendment rights — to include the right to know what the government has done.

The court ruled that publishers are immune from civil liability and criminal prosecution when they publish data of material interest to the public, even if the data was stolen.

Ellsberg, like Manning, was indicted for espionage. Yet, when the trial judge in Ellsberg’s case learned that the FBI had vandalized the office of his psychiatrist looking for his medical records, the judge dismissed the case.

Last weekend, the American and British governments agreed to set Assange free if he pleads guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit espionage. He will be sentenced to time served and then go home to freedom in Australia. I am ecstatic that Assange is free. Once he reaches Australia, he should denounce the governments that persecuted him and renounce his own guilty plea since he has committed no crime. Then, he should resume WikiLeaks revelations!

The feds have perfected three things — lying, stealing and killing. In the Assange revelations, we learned that they have excelled at what they have perfected. They don’t care about the Constitution or the rule of law, both of which they have sworn to uphold. The deep state is animated by a warped belief that its personnel are superior to the Constitution and can use the powers of government however they want, so long as they can get away with it.

They prefer the government’s unbridled liberty and the servitude of the rest of us. Assange is a hero. He exposed government without limits — the archenemy of personal freedom.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

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Lost in the Labyrinth: Left and Right in Geopolitics

By Oscar Silva-Valladares - June 26, 2024 at 09:55AM

The current ideological debate between the right (which normally defends private enterprise, market economies with minimal government interference, democratic forms of government and traditional family values) and the left (which supports social solidarity, government involvement in the economy, subordination of democratic forms to social priorities and defence of minority rights on social behaviour) is a struggle between opponents who are not necessarily true to themselves and therefore often do not seem to defend their interests. Therefore, it is worth asking whether there is still a genuine ideological dimension in this contest.

A key reason for this disorientation in the left versus right debate is unawareness of the current world geopolitical confrontation. This conflict is a struggle between an exclusivist vision of Western hegemonic dominance (based on its conviction that it offers a superior political, ethical and economic model because of its supposedly proven effectiveness in defeating antagonistic models and because it is the result of a millenary evolution of Western civilisation) and a multipolarity perception promoted by Russia and China, among other powers. The conflict between the West and the East (which certainly does not follow strict geographic boundaries) is not a recent phenomenon, but today it has new meaning because the division that existed between political, economic, and ideological economic systems from the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 (in simple terms, capitalism versus communism) no longer exists.

The new geopolitical alignment (Western hegemonism versus multipolarity) has complex roots, but its most recent development is the fast consolidation of the BRICS group of countries as a consequence of the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia in the wake of the conflict in Ukraine. This new alignment does not respond to a division between opposing political or economic models of governance, but to a simple power struggle for the continuation of Western hegemonic primacy resisted by a growing majority of countries with diverse economic and political models.  On the one hand, Western hegemonic power transcends political formulas and ignores or dispenses with them as it sees fit, for example in its interest in forging alliances with Arabian Gulf countries that do not follow democracy. On the other hand, the BRICS countries followed diverse political and economic models but have in common a paramount inclination to preserve cultural and social autonomy; Russia and China, for instance, strive to strike a balance between their authoritarian political models and the need to maintain stability among their diverse multi-ethnic groups.

Historically, most right-wing positions have had a strong affinity with Western hegemonic groups. Beyond a traditional ideological accommodation with their democratic ways, their positions reflect a strong cultural familiarity as well as familial, social, and economic ties with the West. There is also great complacency and comfort with the US security umbrella and a conceptual difficulty in understanding that today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union, let alone Tsarist Russia. The left, for its part, pretends to have less affinity with the US-led status quo but in practice much of its leadership has a strong economic dependence on the West as employees of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), international organisations or academic institutions funded directly or indirectly by Western governments.

These historical gravitations of the left and the right have created relations of dependency which, in the face of the new geopolitics, have led to great ideological distortion and confusion.  A good example is the antagonistic positions in some Latin American countries regarding legislative proposals to limit NGOs interference, initiatives supported from the right and rejected from the left. Curiously, in the antipodean Republic of Georgia, an identical political contest has just ended with the approval of a law limiting NGOs foreign influence, a law that was fervently opposed by most Western governments and has led to sanctions against its proponents who are accused of being manipulated or directed by Russia. The opposition of official Western sectors to the Latin American initiatives have been less conspicuous but there is no doubt about their position, and in this debate the right, despite notable exceptions, mostly skirts the Western roots of this infiltration while the left ironically defends the Western establishment.

Another controversial issue with deeper dimensions is the discussion about transhumanism and its dangers. The right, while attacking transhumanism, claims that this phenomenon is part of a sinister agenda of international organisations promoting globalism, but it is ignored that transhumanism can be interpreted as a classic phenomenon inherent to the development of world capitalism in its quest for profit maximisation and whose primary forms (alienation, dehumanisation) were warned about many decades ago by Marx and his followers. The right, in seeking parallels between communist utopias and transhumanism, mistakenly sees globalism as a neo-Marxist, Gramscian cultural offensive and overlooks the leading role of Western power groups in this phenomenon. In the side discussion in defence of traditional family values, the right largely ignores the conservative character of the Russian government’s support for the nuclear family, which ironically has led a contemporary Russian philosopher to argue that Russia is the last bastion of the defence of traditional Western values.

The conflict in Ukraine is another strong example of this ideological distortion.  With the exception of minority groups (e.g. sectors of the left traditionally sympathetic to Russia), there is almost unanimous condemnation of Russia from opposing positions that have nothing in common but ignorance of the roots of this conflict.  The right criticises so called Russian authoritarianism and imperialism but ignores the growing anti- democratic manifestations in Ukraine through the persecution of religious groups aligned with the Russian Orthodox hierarchy, the absolute control of the Ukrainian press, and the suppression of presidential elections.  The left, for its part, passively supports the geopolitical positions of the US Democratic administration and the EU bureaucracy and his repeatedly ignore the strong pro-nazi roots in Ukrainian nationalism.

The lack of understanding of the current state of the world economy prevents both the left and the right from defining clear ideological options that would allow them to develop solid and consistent political messages. There is an ignorance of key economic facts that have worsened the current geopolitical confrontation, including the declining economic importance of the West vis-à-vis the rest of the world, the increase in US public debt and its unsustainable financing through monetary issuance, the de-dollarisation of the world economic system as protection by many countries against possible US sanctions, and the continued importance of traditional energy sources in world economic development that renders the Western ecological agenda doubtful. The right seems to ignore that traditional communist economic models have been discarded in Russia and China. The left, in its rigid defence of the migration phenomenon in the West, disregards the fact that such patronage is a fundamental part of the globalist agenda.

The right’s staunch defence of the capitalist economic model as the standard-bearer of free enterprise belittles the growing role of the state in the West as the promoter and client of the military-industrial complex. Some voices on the right have attempted to differentiate between the advantages of economic capitalism versus the pernicious character of cultural capitalism and question the current cultural message in the transformation and manipulation of the agents of economic capitalism.  However, let’s not forget that cultural capitalism as a consequence of economic capitalism was explained by Marx as an inevitable development, who also asserted that the progress of economic capitalism requires a continuous ideological adaptation of economic agents.  The preponderance of the cultural capitalist message has been accentuated in recent decades by capitalism’s turning away from its traditional activities of market expansion, production, and trade, and its increasing  concentration  on  lending  and  financial  speculation,  a  phenomenon historically indicative of economic decline.

Regardless of their roots and objectives in the context of the Cold War, and despite growing convergence with leftist sectors, globalism and progressivism are firmly embedded in the current political leadership of the West. Needless to say, NGOs, for example, are precisely the opposite of their name, as they are organisations that design, coordinate and execute government agendas in the geopolitical interests of the West. Globalism is a weapon and a manifestation of the Western hegemonic power struggle and will likely continue regardless of the results of the upcoming US presidential election.

The aggravation of the geopolitical confrontation will sooner or later lead to a larger widening of positions on both the left and the right. An interesting case will be Argentina, with a government that claims to have conservative roots in defending the traditional family but which will necessarily have to compromise that position by persisting in its unconditional geopolitical alignment with the West.

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‘Draft Notice’ from the Shop of Horrors

By Dennis J. Kucinich - June 26, 2024 at 08:33AM

The coming wars are not patriotic. They are the result of the abject failure of political leadership and a long trail of lies stretching back decades. 

Those who control the narrative and push for ever-increasing war as a solution to all ills are leading America, and America’s future generations, into an abyss from which we may never be able to recover. 

Generations of political leaders have destroyed America’s economic largess through the signing of trade agreements which exported jobs and industry abroad. They have removed consumer protections and supported massive bailouts of casino capitalism, and now – again – predators are circling to extract every cent possible from the public purse through the forever war machine. 

This time, however, it’s not just our tax dollars they’re after. It’s our children. 

The military industrial complex, which President Eisenhower so presciently described, today has a death grip  on America’s budget, politics, media narrative and foreign policy. 

We hear a brassy marching band and chowder society beating the war drum. In its wake is an infernal sucking sound as resources are pulled away from America’s domestic economy, into destructive posturing which leads to tragic hot wars and bankruptcy. 

What follows is the hemorraging of our nation’s wealth. Instead of  building things of domestic value, we blow things up around the world.  Instead of investing money into things which help our domestic economy thrive, America borrows and spends for war,  creating a mechanism for rampant inflation.    

America is already saddled with staggering war debts to the tune of trillions of dollars, with daily expanding interest payments, while  our economy weakens, our nation’s cities  crumble and the Middle Class fades.   

America is imploding from the inside while our leaders take us on an insane around-the-world journey of destruction.

We are constantly being fed a false narrative to condition us to take positions in support of U.S. taxpayer dollars and materiel shipped to other lands for fabricated wars which leave us insecure, financially weak and morally bankrupt.

We saw this with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now with wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East. 

Our  anxiety-dispensing 24-hour news cycle demands constant glutting like Seymour Krelboyne’s human flesh-and-blood-eating plant in the Little Shop of Horrors crying:  “Feed Me!”  

The government feeds the news beast.  Fear-based clicks follow.  Fear paralyzes judgment, inhibits action and empowers corrupt leaders.  Those in journalism who raise questions about the veracity of reports from world capitals are given orders from headquarters, which if not followed, lead to being cashiered.  

Make no mistake, this current system is set up for wider wars. The kleptocratic war machine is in hyperdrive and, in the words of a political hack who was about to get a windfall of taxpayers’ cash for his favorite enterprise, with an expectation of reciprocity:“I can smell the bacon cooking!”  Except now they are roasting a whole hog..

Enter the draft!

The scaffold for a large military draft infrastructure is being constructed to prepare to sacrifice young Americans to global war. 

The first step is automatic registration for Selective Service, at a time when military recruitment is lagging, badly.  According to USA Facts, “There were 1.3 million active duty military in 2023, 41% fewer than in 1987 – – the recent peak.”  Forever wars have outstripped recruiting.  The voracious war machine needs to be fed new blood.

The House of Representatives, on June 14, 2024, passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a military spending authorization bill, which quietly included a Democratic-sponsored provision for automatic registration for the draft for 18-26 yr. old males.  The U.S. Senate Armed Forces committee released its proposal for women to be subject to the same draft registration requirements.  

All eyes on the Senate to see if they will put 18-26 year olds into the Selective Service’s automatic draft registration scheme. Unless this process is brought to a halt in the US Senate, all young U.S. men and women, fully 32 million Americans, will be subject to a draft.

Recent news reports indicate that several Republican senators are balking at drafting women and it could delay the passage of the NDAA into which the conscriptive language is folded.

All young men 18 years old are currently required to register for Selective Service, which manages the draft.  This system currently operates with a light touch. However, automatic registration for the draft  is an altogether different animal.  It will allow the Selective Service System to use the most sophisticated databases to track young Americans. This creates a surveillance system for one purpose, and one purpose only, to make sure young people can’t escape going to war.  This raises several constitutional questions, regarding the Fourth and Fifth Amendment.

Women are currently free to enlist, but are not subject to the same Selective Service requirements.  Women are already prominent in the nation’s defense, as volunteers.  According to the MilitaryOne 2022 Demographic Profile of service members, 17.5% of the active duty enlistees are women. 

The average age of both men and women in active duty is 28.5 years.

Those who see automatic registration of women for the draft as a step in the direction of equal rights are missing something essential.  This is not a case of  “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,”  or  vice versa.  

Here both goose and gander are being led to slaughter, based on…. what?  Politics?  Profits? Hegemony, Lies?  

It is up to all of us, as the current generation of parents stewarding America, to protect our future, our country, our children from such corrupt thinking..

Those who pooh-pooh automatic registration as an homage to government efficiency and not a harbinger of a full-blown draft, need to consider the following scenarios:

First the Draft, Then the War

Historically Americans have not been eager for war. In 1939, an estimated 94% of Americans professed a desire for neutrality at the start of WWII, absent any direct attack on America.   

The first and last peace-time draft was in September of 1940, and affected men were ages 21 to 45. The  government, in anticipation of entering a state of war, instituted that draft, more than a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  The US then declared war against Japan (December 8, 1941) in the Pacific and in Europe against Germany and Italy (December 11, 1941).  

Women were not drafted during WWII,  but served critical roles in a range of national defense positions

VIETNAM: The Lie, the War, the Draft

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed by Congress on August 7th, 1964 became the legal basis for the US escalation of the War in Vietnam.  War was pursued due to a fictitious intelligence report of a North Vietnamese attack, in the Gulf of Tonkin, upon US Naval assets on August 4th 1964.   

The August 4th Gulf of Tonkin incident was the whole-cloth fabrication of  the U.S. National Security Agency.  Congress was rushed into a war against Vietnam based on entirely false premises,  murderous lies, for which no one in the government has ever been held accountable. 

Fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and twenty courageous and dedicated U.S. soldiers sacrificed their lives to this cause, almost one third of them draftees.   At least two million and as many as six million civilians lost their lives in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the war, which was accelerated under the Johnson Administration. 

Automatic registration for the Vietnam-era draft went into effect in 1972.  Nearly two million men were drafted. 

Iraq:  The Lie, the War

On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by several hijacked airliners, more than 3,000 individuals died.  In response, on September 18, 2001, Congress authorized the Use of Military Force to pursue those responsible. 

The Bush Administration blamed Iraq.  It was a lie.  Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. However, in March 2003, the Administration prosecuted a war against Iraq as retribution for 9/11, with the additional horrifying, and additionally false, tale that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction it was preparing to use against America.   

Once again, Americans were led into war based upon an intricately constructed false narrative.   Four thousand, four hundred and thirty-one  Americans lost their lives in the Iraq war. With this lie, America was responsible for the deaths of one million Iraqis. 

We learned nothing from Vietnam and even less from Iraq.  It is a condition aptly described by the brilliant historian, Gore Vidal, as the “United States of Amnesia.”  The narrative of those wars has receded into the mists of confabulation. In a state of constant conflict, one war bleeds into another.  When a lie is a predicate, and the scope of the war global and the adversaries formidable, hold onto your children..

The Wars in Our Face

America’s global role should be peacemaker, bridge builder, using diplomacy to settle differences and avert conflict.  But, America doesn’t do that.  It chooses to fan and fuel the flames of war around the world.  

So, US naval assets are under attack in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthis opposing US support of Israel in Gaza.  The Biden Administration has kept Israel in supply of weapons and bombs.  The Gazan death toll is now approaching 38,000.  

The US has also affirmed support for Israel at war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.  At the same time National Guard units from Ohio and Illinois have being activated and sent to the Middle East.  Israel will not be able to expand war in the Middle East without the United States.

Ukraine has been a pawn in the Western effort to draw Russia into a wider war.  The people of Ukraine have paid a horrible price for the war, destruction of homes, families, farms, and businesses.   But, as they say, about the healthcare system, the money is in maintaining sickness in people, not health.  For the military industrial complex, the money is in war, not in peace. 

If the U.S. truly cared about Ukraine it would not have usurped its neutrality, overthrown its government, coaxed it to attack Donetsk and Luhansk, observe the sacrifice of 600,000 Ukrainians,  blocked a peace agreement two years ago, and facilitated the privatization of land. This is not in any way to excuse Russia for its actions in causing death and destruction, but the causal chain cannot go unexamined.

The escalation of the war between Ukraine and Russia is morphing into open conflict between the United States and Russia.  Highly sophisticated missiles, with cluster munitions, made in the U.S., programmed by the U.S. military and launched from Ukraine under U.S. supervision, are now attacking and killing Russian civilians.  The U.S. has promised to send additional  US military assistance to Ukraine for another DECADE.  

It’s time for our country to awaken to the real impetus here, and the dynamics at play, which are now about to draw a new generation into harm’s way. The powers that be know that when young Americans start to die in battle, the country will rally to dive headlong into the abyss. 

Given our recent history, it will not take much for those who benefit from war to manufacture an incident to take America’s youth on a conscripted ride into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

Reprinted with permission from the Kucinich Report.

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Ideas for Candidates Beyond Talking Points

By Douglas Macgregor - June 25, 2024 at 08:08AM

American political, economic, and military global hegemony—sustained by America’s past economic productivity, the dollar’s reserve status, and the reliance on forward-deployed American military power—is over. In a new world shaped by sweeping technological change in warfare, business and finance, it’s not just the end of the much exaggerated “unipolar moment.” The tectonic plates of the international system are shifting beneath America’s feet, crushing Washington’s reactionary, postwar world order, giving rise to a new international system with new power centers and coalitions.

Washington is horrified. Washington’s impulse to think and behave like an unyielding autocrat is a failure. Attempting to freeze the deteriorating postwar status quo, or beating down resistance to Washington’s will, is a poor way to cultivate liberty and order in the world.

Unfortunately, Washington is currently populated with far too many men and women who cannot reconcile the reality of the new world that is emerging with Washington’s failed vision of hegemony. This delusional state of mind reinforces the idiotic belief that political, economic and military conflict or crisis is inevitably a contest between absolute virtue and absolute evil. 

The biggest problem with this approach is that it discards tangible concrete interests as a guide to action in favor of a false ideology of moral supremacy. The outcome is Washington’s blatant disregard for human life, ethics, and morality combined with a predisposition to smear, demean, and demonize any foreign power or individual that opposes them.

To paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus, Washington’s policies destroy the lives of tens of millions inside the United States and overseas, then call the resulting wasteland “Democracy.” The wastelands created by Washington’s ruling class are visible at home and abroad.  

America’s city centers are filled with homeless people. Smash-and-grab gangs roam American city streets unchecked. Criminals sell drugs, traffic children, assault the innocent, and devastate rural and urban communities without fear of punishment. America’s electrical grid is unreliable, its roads are crumbling, and its bridges are collapsing.

Inflation is destroying the middle class as real wages stagnate. America’s southern border is overwhelmed with millions of illegal migrants whose presence inside American society comes at a time when America’s economy is fragile. Many illegal migrants are taking jobs that Americans need, and many others are committing criminal acts. Societal cohesion in America is at an all-time low.

The wastelands beyond our borders are out of sight for most Americans, but the destruction of life and property stretching from Kabul to Baghdad, Baghdad to Damascus, Damascus to Benghazi, and Benghazi to Kiev is impossible to hide.

Ukrainians are living in a hell that Washington’s political class created for them. Today, the Ukrainian army relies on whatever men and boys the Ukrainian military’s press gangs can force into uniform and send to a front that is melting away in the face of the Russian onslaught. What Ukraine needs now is peace and humanitarian assistance, not more weapons that will change nothing on the battlefield.

Washington’s reckless actions in Ukraine and Washington’s unconditional support for Israel’s ruthless war of annihilation against Gaza, and increasingly Hezbollah, is doing irreparable damage to American interests and threatens to provoke a much wider war with nuclear-armed powers.

The 50-year-old petrodollar agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia expired on June 9. The end of the petrodollar will likely precipitate a decline in global demand for dollars that could hike inflation and devastate an already weak bond market in the United States.

America’s futile attempt to isolate Russia has isolated Washington, not Moscow. Rather than joining the sanctions bandwagon, the rising powers of the Global South—India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, the Gulf States—are all deepening economic ties with Moscow and Beijing. Turkey, our erstwhile NATO ally, will now probably join the BRICS. 

In Europe, where authoritarian globalism masquerades as liberal democracy, the glacial pace of change in European politics is giving way to a flood of anger at the ballot box. The wholesale devastation of Europe’s economies, especially Germany’s economy, combined with an intense backlash against the policies of denationalization through unrestricted mass migration, is creating a political upheaval that will sweep away the current governing elites. NATO, the sacred cow of the uniparty, is on life support.

Instead of negotiating to resolve the conflicts that threaten world peace and investing in the health, education, and prosperity of the American people, Washington hunts for elusive “white supremacists,” whom the ruling class believes is the real threat to America. It is time for the American people to redefine America’s role in the world, reverse America’s economic decline, and restore the foundational principles of the American Republic.

Americans want to live in a prosperous country that is strong and free. Americans want a nation that leads by example. The candidates for the presidency and Congress should provide it to them. To chart a new course, the candidates should pursue action in ten key areas…

Fair Use Excerpt. Read the whole article here.

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The Myth of the European ‘Far-Right Surge’

By David Thunder - June 24, 2024 at 10:10AM

There has been much talk of a “far-right surge” in the European Parliament. For example, BBC ran a headline, “Far right eyes Europe vote surge…,” shortly before the elections. On June 5^th, Politico reported, “As the far right surges, this week’s European Parliament election will reorder the Continent’s political landscape.” One of CNN’s post-election headlines ran, “Far right surges in European Parliament elections but center still holds.” These sorts of headlines may make for exciting reading, but they reveal a profound lack of understanding of what is really going on politically in Europe.

First, while you will always find pockets of far-right thinking in Europe’s political system, the notion that new and emerging political parties on the right are generally “far-right” is simply false. For example, if you go to the webpage of one of the major emerging political groups that is supposed to be part of the “far-right surge,” the European Conservatives and Reformists, you are greeted not by neo-Nazi slogans, but by commitments to “safeguarding citizens and borders,” “respecting the rights and sovereignty of member States,” “protecting the global environment at a cost we can afford,” “improving the union’s efficiency and effectiveness,” and “cooperating with global partners.” 

If you peruse the website of the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia), the political party associated with the supposedly “far-right” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in search of reactionary and extremist ideas, you will be deeply disappointed. The website displays a fairly humdrum list of policies to promote economic growth, a safer Europe, a better health system, policies to support families and boost the birth rate, opposition to bio-surveillance (“green pass”), and the need to combat illegal immigration. 

Here, for example, is a translation of one paragraph from the Brothers of Italy’s European electoral platform, concerning immigration:

It must be Europe that decides who enters its territory and not criminal organizations or external actors interested in using migratory flows as a weapon to destabilize governments. Immigration must be framed within a context of legality and addressed in a structural manner. Saving lives is a duty, as is protecting those entitled to asylum, but the model favored by the left—characterized by indiscriminate acceptance and never-implemented redistributions (of migrants)—has proven to be a failure.

Anyone who describes these sorts of policies as “far-right” is either deeply deluded or simply determined to discredit their political adversaries by any means available. Yet this sort of lazy, dishonest, and demonising treatment of the new right in Europe, which mostly ignores the actual electoral platforms of new-right parties, is now standard fare in mainstream Western media. 

The term “far-right” should be reserved for political groups that oppose constitutionalism, are rabidly racist, or want to institute an authoritarian State akin to fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. But instead, the term has degenerated into a cheap label used to discredit political conservatives. 

This label is being attached willy-nilly to people who take political positions that are not in vogue among those who self-identify as “Woke” and/or “progressive,” even if these same positions were considered fairly conventional a couple of decades ago: People are labelled “far-right” if they defend the idea of a national identity, want an orderly immigration process, advocate for laws that are tough on crime, believe in traditional marriage and biological markers for gender; or believe that civil rights like informed consent are still relevant during a pandemic.

If you really want to understand why new parties are emerging on the right, throwing around the “far-right” label will not get you very far. What is really happening is that the traditional right-wing parties, many of which are represented by Europe’s largest political group, the European People’s Party, have jumped ship on a lot of traditional right-wing commitments, creating a vacuum to be filled by the “new right.”

For example, rule of law and limited government have been replaced, under the watch of mainstream “right-wing” parties, with vaccine passports, lockdowns, intrusive hate speech laws, crippling “green” taxes and regulations, and the Orwellian idea that we should clamp down on “disinformation,” lest citizens be exposed to “dangerous” ideas.

The old right has overseen a Europe of uncontrolled and disorderly immigration, with no proper vetting of migrants and little consideration for the impact of large-scale migration on local communities. And the old commitment to the right to law and order has given way to a palpable complacency and inaction in the face of a growing crime problem in Europe’s cities.

This has created a pent-up political demand for parties prepared to avow traditional right-wing commitments, such as law and order, orderly immigration, freedom of speech, pro-family taxation and welfare policies, and limited government. 

In some cases, this political vacuum has been filled with egregiously xenophobic, racist, and authoritarian rhetoric. But in many other cases, parties dismissed as “far-right” are simply questioning the wisdom of open border policies, exposing abuses of the refugee system, defending free speech, and trying to moderate the green agenda so that it is not so oppressive for farmers and ordinary citizens.

If having serious concerns about immigration and being opposed to far-reaching environmental regulations is considered “extreme,” then it appears that being “extreme” is now pretty normal in Europe: one recent opinion poll shows that immigration is one of the leading concerns for European voters, after the economy and war. In addition, the abysmal performance of the Greens in these EU elections—dropping from 71 to 53 seats—suggests that the Greens’ enthusiasm for ambitious climate regulations is not shared by many voters.

In short, two of the central concerns of the new right—uncontrolled immigration and excessively burdensome environmental regulations—are actually shared by a sizeable number of European voters.

Finally, there was no “surge” to speak of among the new and emerging parties on the right: more like a moderate consolidation. 

The new right in Europe is still significantly outnumbered in the EU Parliament by centrists and leftists. For example, the European Conservatives and Reformist and Identity and Democracy groups, which are the most organized sections of the new right, grew from 118 to 131 seats in a 720-member parliament. The European People’s Party, with 189 MEPs, has enough allies on the left to continue to maintain a commanding presence in the parliament.

The rise of alternative-right parties in these EU elections is thus vastly overstated. Nonetheless, the steady consolidation of the new right, combined with the decisive triumph of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National over Macron’s Renaissance party in these elections, shows that there is a growing appetite among European voters for candidates and parties that make stricter border controls and scaling back environmental regulations a major part of their electoral platforms.

This does not fundamentally upend the balance of power in the European Parliament. However, it does suggest a rightward shift in public sentiment in Europe, and this will inevitably have an impact on the policymaking process. Most notably, we are likely to see “centre-right” parties like the European People’s Party adopting a softer line on the environment, and a harder line on immigration, going forward. Anything else would put their own political future in jeopardy.

Reprinted with permission from The Brownstone Institute.

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Stop Taxing Tips

By Ron Paul - June 24, 2024 at 09:47AM

Donald Trump recently promised that, if he wins the November election, he will support eliminating taxes on tips as part of his proposal to renew and expand the 2017 tax cuts. This tax law change would be a long overdue boost for millions of Americans.

Tips often comprise a substantial portion of the earnings of waiters and waitresses, as well as of other service-sector employees. However, unlike regular wages, a service-sector employee usually has no guarantee of, or legal right to, a tip. Instead, the amount of a tip usually depends on how well an employee satisfies his customers. Since the amount of taxes one pays increases along with the size of tips, taxing tips punishes workers for doing a superior job!

Many service-sector employees are young people trying to make money to pay for their education, or single parents struggling to provide for their children. Making tips tax free gives these hard-working Americans an immediate pay raise. A person may use this pay raise to devote more resources to his children’s or his own education, to save for a home or retirement, or to start a business.

Eliminating taxes on tips will provide some (limited) relief from the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax. This tax results from the decline in the dollar’s purchasing power caused by the Federal Reserve’s monetization of federal debt. The inflation tax is the worst form of tax because it is hidden. Thus, most people will not blame the Fed for higher prices. The inflation tax is also regressive, as price inflation is more of a burden to those at the lower end of the income scale than to billionaires. The Fed-created price inflation has forced many Americans to work two jobs.

This is not to suggest that reducing taxes on tips will fully compensate working people for the income they lose to the inflation tax. The best way Congress can help relieve the people of the inflation tax is to cut federal spending that leads to the Federal Reserve monetizing debt. Congress should also pass a law forbidding the Fed from monetizing debt by purchasing federal debt instruments.

It is also long past time to stop talking about tax cuts “costing” the government money. Talking about tax cuts in terms of how much money they cost the government, as opposed to how much money they leave in the hands of the people, accepts the premise that the government has a greater moral claim to the money than those who actually earned it. In truth, saying cutting taxes cost the government money makes as much sense as saying stopping a mugger from taking everything in your wallet “cost” the mugger money. Instead of worrying about how much tax cuts cost the government, the politicians should worry about how much welfare and warfare spending cost taxpayers.

The idea that tax cuts should only be supported if they promote “efficiency” should also be rejected. All tax cuts promote efficiency because, as economist and Ludwig von Mises Institute President Thomas DiLorenzo put it, “private individuals always spend their own money more efficiently than government bureaucrats do.” Instead of worrying about whether the government can “afford” tax cuts or whether tax cuts promote economic efficiency, those concerned about the government deficit should focus their efforts on reducing government spending. If the government stopped trying to run our lives and run the world, there would be no need to punish hard-working

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What If It’s Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong?

By Andrew P. Napolitano - June 20, 2024 at 09:45AM

What if the government is a myth? What if it doesn’t produce what we pay it for? What if it fails to safeguard our lives, liberties and property from its own agents? What if nothing changes after these failures and after elections? What if we’re stuck with it?

What if the National Security Agency — the federal government’s 60,000-person strong domestic spying apparatus — has convinced Congress that it needs to cut constitutional corners in order to spy on every person in America?

What if Congress has bought that argument and enacted a statute that put a secret court between the NSA and its appetite for all electronically transmitted data? What if that secret court — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — is supposed to protect personal liberty but instead has become a wall behind which the NSA can hide and a tool for its insatiable spying appetite?

What if the courts have ruled that electronic surveillance constitutes a search and seizure within the meaning of the Constitution? What if the Constitution requires warrants for searches and seizures and only permits warrants that are based on probable cause of crime? What if the Constitution requires that all warrants for searches and seizures specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized?

What if the FISA Court issues warrants based on a lesser standard than probable cause of crime? What if that standard is probable cause of speaking with or knowing someone who has spoken with a foreign person? What if this is such an absurd and loose standard that it violates the Constitution, permits spying on anyone and ends up protecting no one except the spies who pretend to employ it?

What if the NSA has convinced every president since George W. Bush that it needs to spy on everyone in America to keep us safe, no matter what the Constitution says? What if those presidents have bought that devil’s bargain?

What if NSA spying is really done without any warrants? What if this spying captures in real time every keystroke on every computer and hand-held device — as well as the content of every email, text message, telephone call and fiber-optic cable transmission — in the United States 24/7?

What if NSA computers have direct and unimpeded access to all mainframe computers of all telecoms and computer service providers in the U.S.? What if the acquisition of all this data is known in the intelligence community as bulk surveillance?

What if the Constitution is the supreme law of the land? What if the Constitution, with its requirement of warrants based on probable cause of crime and specifically identifying targets, expressly prohibits bulk surveillance? What if bulk surveillance is not only unconstitutional but also useless because it produces information overload — too much data to sift through in a timely manner?

What if the FISA Court is a facade? What if one FISA Court judge signed an order authorizing the NSA to spy on all customers of Verizon — at the time, all 115 million of them? What if that included the White House, the Congress, the federal courts and the issuing judge himself?

What if President Bush and his successors have unleashed the NSA to acquire all communications data about everyone in America even though it’s obvious that the NSA cannot possibly sift through it all in a timely enough manner to keep us safe?

What if Bush’s government was asleep at the switch on 9/11? What if 3,000 civilians died while the government slept? What if the government’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were perpetrated to divert our attention from its sleeping on 9/11? What if these invasions targeted civilians and constituted war crimes?

What if the Franklin D. Roosevelt government knew of the attacks on Pearl Harbor before they came? What if it looked the other way knowing that the American people would react with fury and thus America could enter World War II, which FDR desperately wanted? What if 3,000 sleeping sailors died because the government looked the other way? What if looking the other way in the face of a certain attack constituted murder?

What if liberty is a personal birthright? What if it cannot morally or legally be taken away by government without a guilty verdict by a jury?

What if the genius of the Constitution — if followed — is not only its protection of privacy but also its requirement that the government confine its searches and seizures to persons whom it has reason to suspect are engaged in criminal activity and about whom judges have ratified the government’s evidence to support those suspicions? What if the Constitution requires the government to leave the rest of us alone?

What if the government is a failure at preserving liberty but a champion at stealing it?

What if bulk surveillance is about power and control and not about safety? What if the NSA has selectively leaked what it knows about some folks for political purposes? What if President Donald Trump himself and his former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn have been victims of those leaks? What if government’s bulk acquisition of private data makes us less free?

What if the use of intelligence data for political purposes is a profound danger to democracy? What if government can’t keep us safe? What if we falsely think that it does keep us safe? What if that delusion makes us less safe?

What if exposing the government generates its wrath? What if the government hates being caught spying and lying? What if it humiliates and frustrates and falsely charges and seizes the passports of those it hates and fears? What if the government hates and fears our freedoms? What if the government works not for us but for itself? What do we do about it?

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

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A Terribly Lopsided, Very Cruel War Continues

By Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. - June 19, 2024 at 08:31AM

As I write this, in the last 15 days, Israel has bombed a tent city and a UN school and has killed 276 Palestinian non-combatants in a mid-day raid to gain the release of four Israelis being held as hostages.

Almost 400 people were killed in the three actions, with many hundreds more wounded. In the hostage retrieval, 64 Palestinian children and 57 women were killed.

The UN has reported that more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war in Gaza started, with over 38% (about 14,000) being children under the age of 14.

Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia professor and one of the most respected foreign policy experts in this country, in a one-minute, 34-second blast on YouTube said the following:

“Israel has deliberately starved the people of Gaza. Starved! I am not using an exaggeration. Israel is a criminal, is in war crime status now I believe, in genocidal status, and it is without shame, without remorse….” Sachs is a Jew.

Another Jew, Dave Smith, has a very popular podcast called “Part Of The Problem.” He has been very critical of the way Israel has treated the Palestinians, both in this war and in the way Israel evicted hundreds of thousands of them from their homes during Israel’s founding in 1948.

I have read that Netanyahu has only a 34% positive rating in Israel, but that 80% approve of his handling of the war in Gaza. If 80% of Jews worldwide approve of Israel’s war, this still would leave more than 3,000,000 Jews who do not approve.

After the tent city bombing mentioned above, the Washington Post reported the “horrific scenes” and said, “Parents were burned alive in their tents while children screamed for help. Doctors recounted struggling to treat gruesome shrapnel wounds with dwindling medical supplies.”

The Post quoted one man who lost seven relatives in the attack: “We were not able to identify them until this morning because of the charred bodies. The faces were eroded and the features were completely disappeared.” Four were children.

The Post interviewed another man who said “he still heard the screams…” He said he took a fire extinguisher and rushed to help. “I didn’t know what to do to help people as they burned… dismembered bodies, charred bodies, children without heads, bodies as if they had melted.”

Another man found his brother and three-year-old niece dead, the little girl had been hit in the head and he said “There was blood everywhere.”

At an International Medical Corps Clinic, a surgeon said one little girl was asking everyone if they had seen her parents. The parents were dead. He said the clinic had run out of even basic medical supplies and said he had tried to save a six-year-old girl, but she died that night.

After these latest episodes, even people and countries that had always supported Israel had seen too much. Canada, France and Germany all condemned the bombings. Spain, Norway and Portugal joined the 145 other countries that had previously called for full UN membership for Palestine.

The U.S. finally supported a UN Security Council call for an immediate ceasefire but is still sending military aid to Israel. In fact, on June 7, CNN reported Israel’s latest bombing of a UN school “leaving dozens dead, using U.S. munitions.”

Our national media has reported that many Jewish students have felt “uncomfortable” on some college campuses. They should not be treated rudely, but this pales in comparison to thousands of Palestinian children being killed and thousands more being starved or losing arms or legs or parents.

I have been a very loyal, very conservative Republican since I was a teenager. But this war is not conservative. I am disappointed that only one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has had the courage to oppose and criticize Israel’s cruelty in this war. I was pleased that he won 76% in his recent primary even though huge money was poured in against him.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee owns the Congress because of its ability to steer many millions in campaign contributions from all over the U.S. to anywhere in the U.S.

Netanyahu funded Hamas for several years in a strategy that horribly backfired last Oct. 7. Since then, he has led a terribly lopsided war that has caused the deaths of many thousands of innocent men, women, and children.

He has been invited to speak to Congress and the nation on July 24. He will be treated as a conquering hero. As a man with the blood of thousands on his hands, he should not have even been invited.

Reprinted with author’s permission from The Knoxville Focus.

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The US Is Preparing For WWIII While Expanding Draft Registration

By Caitlin Johnstone - June 18, 2024 at 09:48AM

So I guess we should probably talk about the way NATO powers are rapidly escalating toward hot war with Russia at the same time the US is expanding its draft policies to make it easier to force more Americans go and fight in a giant war.

In an article titled “NATO: 500,000 Troops on High Readiness for War With Russia,” Antiwar’s Kyle Anzalone highlights NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s comments on Friday stating the alliance actually has a far greater number of troops it could deploy than the 300,000 it had previously set as its goal.

“Allies are offering forces to NATO’s command at a scale not seen in decades,” Stoltenberg said on Friday. “ Today we have 500,000 troops at high readiness across all domains, significantly more than the goal that was set at the 2022 Madrid Summit.”

NATO: 500,000 Troops on High Readiness for War With Russia
Officials say the alliance now has hundreds of thousands of soldiers ready to deploy to fight Russia within a month
by Kyle Anzalone@KyleAnzalone_ #Russia #NATO #Ukraine https://t.co/jy85ZrNCze pic.twitter.com/DTEMaHQxk0

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) June 16, 2024

Anzalone writes the following:

The alliance hit its goal as its members significantly ratcheted up support for Kiev in recent weeks. The US and several other nations also recently gave a green light for Ukraine to use their weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

The Netherlands and Denmark plan to supply Kiev with F-16s in the coming months, and say the advanced aircraft could be used to bomb Russia. Stoltenberg added that he welcomes the policy shift, and said it should not be considered an escalation by Russia.

This comes shortly after we learned that NATO is developing multiple “land corridors” to rush troops to the frontline of a future hot war with Russia in eastern Europe.

It also comes as we learn from Stoltenberg that NATO is considering increasing the number of nuclear weapons it has on standby, meaning ready to use in a nuclear war. White House spokesman John Kirby bizarrely told the press that this aggressive move should not be seen as a provocation towards Russia, because NATO is a “defensive alliance”.

“How can this not be perceived as provocation or an escalation of tension in Europe?” Kirby was asked regarding Stoltenberg’s recent comments.

“Who would perceive it as a provocation or an escalation?” Kirby responded.

“Russia,” the reporter answered.

“Oh, Russia, Russia, the same country that invaded Ukraine which posed absolutely no threat to them,” Kirby replied indignantly, saying, “NATO is a defensive alliance and NATO countries are some of the most sophisticated in the world when it comes to military capabilities. And it would be irresponsible and imprudent if we weren’t constantly talking to our NATO allies about how to make sure we can meet our commitments to one another across a range of military capabilities, and that’s as far as I’ll go.”

One of the dumbest things the empire asks us to believe these days is that surrounding its official enemies with existentially threatening war machinery should always be seen as a defensive measure. The last time a credible military threat was placed near the US border, Washington responded so aggressively the world almost ended. Yet nations like Russia and China are expected to let the US and its allies amass military threats right near their borders without even regarding this as a provocation.

White House spokesman John Kirby was just asked if NATO's plans to deploy more nukes are a "provocation."

He said it can't be a "provocation" because NATO is a "defensive" alliance.

Yes, NATO is fielding "defensive" nuclear weapons capable of "defensively" destroying the world. pic.twitter.com/g9j2AeCa8J

— Andre Damon (WSWS) (@Andre__Damon) June 17, 2024

This and other frightening nuclear escalations with Russia are happening at the same time US lawmakers are working to expand draft registration to women and to automate registration for men, both of which would help broaden the pool of warm bodies the US would have available to throw into a hot war with a major military power.

Edward Hasbrouck writes the following for Antiwar:

“The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) approved a version of the NDAA that would expand Selective Service registration to include young women as well as young men. This version of the NDAA will now go to the floor as the starting point for consideration and approval by the full Senate.

“Also on June 14th the full House of Representatives approved a different version of the NDAA that would make Selective Service registration automatic while keeping it for men only.”

As Reason’s CJ Ciaramella explains in an article about this move to automate draft registration, the official reason for this push is to make the system run more efficiently, but “The other, unspoken effect would be removing young men’s choice to engage in civil disobedience.” If the US war machine starts a new horrific conflict that the Zoomers don’t believe in, ideally you want to make it as hard as possible for them to resist being fed to the cannons.

The draft is one of those things that gets more disgusting the more you think about it, especially in a nation whose government is as belligerent and psychopathic as the USA’s. These freaks can engage in any amount of brinkmanship they like with nations they have no business fighting — all without any of their actions ever being put to a vote from the general public — and then if it goes hot they get to turn to a bunch of kids in their teens and early twenties and say “This isn’t our problem, it’s your problem. Go fight and kill and die for your country.” They can start a war with their own recklessness and then chill out and sip martinis while your kids go get killed in it.

This is evil, this is ugly, and it needs to stop.

Reprinted with permission from Caitlin’s Newsletter.
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We Spent a Billion Dollars Fighting the Houthis…and Lost

By Ron Paul - June 17, 2024 at 12:34PM

Why does it seem the Pentagon is far better at spending money than actually putting together a successful operation? The failed “Operation Prosperity Guardian” and the disastrous floating Gaza pier are but two recent examples of enormously expensive initiatives that, though they no-doubt enriched military contractors, were incapable of meeting their stated goals.

To great fanfare, last December the Pentagon announced the launch of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a joint US/UK military operation to halt the Yemeni Houthi disruption of Israel-linked commercial shipping through the Red Sea. The Houthis announced their policy in response to civilian deaths in Israel’s war on Gaza, but when the US and UK military became involved they announced they would target US and UK shipping as well.

The operation was supposed to be quick and easy. After all, the rag-tag Houthi militia was no match for the mighty US and UK navies. But it didn’t work out that way at all. Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal published a devastating article revealing that after spending more than one billion dollars on munitions alone, the operation had failed to deter the Houthis and failed to re-open commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

The Journal reported that Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, recently told Congress that “the U.S.-led effort has been insufficient to deter the militant group’s targeting of ships and that the threat will ‘remain active for some time.’”

Meanwhile, the article informed us that a continued US effort to fight the Houthis over Red Sea shipping was “not sustainable.” Perhaps the most revealing part of the article comes from a Washington military expert, Emily Harding of CSIS: “Their supply of weapons from Iran is cheap and highly sustainable, but ours is expensive, our supply chains are crunched, and our logistics tails are long.”

It is reminiscent of a recollection by Col. Harry G. Summers of a discussion he had with North Vietnamese Col. Tu: “You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield,” said Summers. Tu paused for a moment, then replied, “That may be so. But it is also irrelevant.”

Similarly, the US military spent a quarter of a billion dollars building a temporary floating pier to deliver aid to the starving Palestinians even though a land route already existed and would have been far cheaper to use. The project was doomed from the beginning, as days after opening stormy weather broke up the pier and washed part of it up on Israel’s shore. The US military managed to gather the pieces together again, but in total only a few aid trucks managed to use it before, over the weekend, the pier was again disassembled for fear of another weather-related break-up.

The only thing the pier was good for, it seems, was assisting the Israeli military in a Gaza raid on June 8th that killed 270 Palestinian civilians.

As neocons inside the Beltway continue to plot war with China over Taiwan, it seems someone should notice the trouble we have had dealing with Houthis and floating piers. For now, the growth in military spending seems unlimited, but increasing spending bringing diminishing results raises the question of just how much bang are we getting for our bucks?

We have the most expensive military on earth, they say. That may be true, but it is also irrelevant.

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Why is the EU Copying Communist Albania?

By Timofey Bordachev - June 15, 2024 at 10:40AM

In history, entire countries sometimes suddenly leave the path of normal development and begin to behave differently towards their neighbors. However, while this used to be typical of small and weak states, it is now characteristic of the whole of Western Europe, which was not previously afflicted by the ‘besieged fortress’ complex that underscores the national consciousness of Americans, for example.

Today, the European Union is beginning to resemble Albania during its dictatorship in the second half of the twentieth century. Its main achievement was the construction of hundreds of thousands of defenses along its borders with all its neighbors.

A program to build 200,000 bunkers throughout the territory of this small country in the Western Balkans was adopted by the ruling regime in the early 1970s and consistently implemented until the late 1980s. As a result, the bunkers were literally scattered all over, and became the best-known symbol of Albania. At the same time, they exposed what happens when paranoia becomes the main driving force behind all foreign policy. Many Western European politicians are now leading their nations down this path, and they are getting away with it. 

A few days ago, the head of the EU’s bureaucracy, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Finland and then happily wrote on a social network that she was impressed by how quickly the country had managed to build 50,000 underground bomb shelters for use in the event of ‘Russian aggression’. A few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine both the Finns – who were quite friendly to us at the time – putting their country on the defensive, and EU politicians expressing their delight at this. But they are not alone.

Our immediate neighbors from the former Baltic republics of the USSR are constantly declaring their intention to build walls, the same hundreds of bunkers, or defensive ramparts on the border with Russia. German newspapers are already reporting that the Ministry of Defense has drawn up plans to regulate the construction of shelters and the distribution of food rations to citizens in the event of war with Moscow. The French are holding out so far, but probably because of a lack of funds – economic indicators suggest that France has already fallen to the level of the countries of southern Europe. 

What happened? There seem to be several reasons. The EU’s political systems are mired in crisis. This doesn’t just entail the well-known collapse of traditional parties and movements, or their replacement by populists like Emmanuel Macron’s movement in France or the True Finns in Finland. The whole Western European order, which is designed to convince citizens that the status quo is the most just, is in crisis.

There is no longer enough money for it. Western Europe’s ability to extract neo-colonial rents from the rest of humanity has declined sharply in recent years. The main ‘culprit’ is China, whose power is creating alternative sources of finance for the poor countries of Africa or Latin America to develop and sustain their populations. The other is Russia, whose military and political capabilities have grown, allowing former European colonies to rely on a different kind of power support. 

Finally, the whole world is to blame for the Western European tragedy, simply because it is developing and can no longer be controlled by the shrinking powers of the old world. The Americans are less tolerant too; they are even forcing the EU to finance more and more of their own foreign policy adventures, such as supporting Kiev. That is why the ruling classes of the bloc are using every opportunity to drive their own citizens into conditions of mobilization and make them feel like they live in a ‘fortress under siege’.

They gained their first significant experience in this area in the 2010s, when Western Europe was flooded with refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Mobilization technologies were then fully deployed during the coronavirus pandemic. At that time, almost all Western European citizens, with rare exceptions such as Sweden, were locked up and their contact with the outside world drastically reduced. However, Swedes did not need to be particularly restricted as they already had the traditional Scandinavian worldview.

At the same time as strict quarantines were imposed, Western European states were denied the opportunity to choose their own vaccines. The same von der Leyen was put in charge of centralized procurement, giving observers plenty of reason to suspect her of corruption. The experiment was apparently considered a great success. And the armed conflict in Ukraine is already being used by politicians as an excuse to lock their citizens into the ‘bunker’ strategy.

Many ordinary Western Europeans are indeed as anxious and confused about the world around them as their elected or appointed leaders. In the decades since the Cold War, there has been a very interesting change in the minds of many EU citizens – a loss of the ability to make cause-and-effect connections. We can laugh about it all we want, but many people in Western Europe actually believe that they live in a ‘flowering garden surrounded by a jungle’. Those who don’t are seen as crackpots or dangerous ‘pro-Russian’ renegades.

It is difficult to judge whether this is a complete or partial ‘rewiring of the brain’. It is not easy to create in people the psychology of a ‘besieged fortress’ when there are no objective reasons to feel this way. The aforementioned Americans have them – an island position on the world map. Even Hollywood’s productions for children cultivate two feelings: their own omnipotence and, at the same time, being surrounded by dangerous enemies on all sides.

This was not particularly noticeable in Western Europe before. But there was something else – arrogance towards other nations. If in the case of Russia it is a pronounced phobia, i.e. fear mixed with contempt, in all others it is absolutely unadulterated contempt.

After the Cold War, most Western European politicians and thinking citizens realized in principle that they were doing something very wrong by trying to expand their military and political blocs into Russia’s backyard, without seeking to include Moscow itself. The lack of a way to support their own incomes without the predatory treatment of others led them to continue a policy that the best minds in region itself doubted. The realization that such a strategy would lead to a dramatic outcome was always present among those in the EU. It inevitably forced them to prepare for a confrontation caused by their own behavior.

So the Western Europeans were ready to start shutting out the rest of the world. Over the past decade, they have sent patrol boats into the Mediterranean to turn away or sink small boats carrying refugees. Then they kept out those who hadn’t been inoculated with vaccines approved by corrupt EU officials. Now they are massively building bunkers and bomb shelters along their borders with Russia.

The EU is entangled in its own mistakes and sees no way out. Because for decades it has outgrown the ability to seriously doubt the correctness of its actions. And so, for the time being, it is left to walk along a narrow road. Ahead of it is only the construction of new bunkers and other lines of defense in all directions. 

Russia and its diplomats are now talking quite sincerely about their willingness to resume dialogue with our EU neighbors. But at the same time, we must be prepared for the fact that the distortions of political and mass consciousness in Western Europe cannot be cured too quickly.

Reprinted with permission from RT.

from Ron Paul Institute Featured Articles

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