Report: Even President Biden Is Aggravated by Ukraine President’s Nonstop Demand for More Money

President Joe Biden has been a top pusher for the United States and other governments to shovel an apparently never-ending supply of money and weapons to the Ukraine government, while imposing sanctions on Russia that have severely hurt some sanctioners while seemingly leaving the sanctionee doing just fine. “Anything for Ukraine” seems to be the tack of Biden and his cohort who are using the country as a means to attack Russia.

Still, even Biden appears to have his limits in avoiding aggravation in response to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s habit of nonstop demanding money, weapons, and additional assistance from other countries’ governments as if he has a right to it. That is the revelation of individuals privy to a June call between Biden and Zelensky as reported Monday at NBC News. The NBC News article begins as follows:

It’s become routine since Russia invaded Ukraine: President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak by phone whenever the U.S. announces a new package of military assistance for Kyiv.

But a phone call between the two leaders in June played out differently from previous ones, according to four people familiar with the call. Biden had barely finished telling Zelenskyy he’d just greenlighted another $1 billion in U.S. military assistance for Ukraine when Zelenskyy started listing all the additional help he needed and wasn’t getting. Biden lost his temper, the people familiar with the call said. The American people were being quite generous, and his administration and the U.S. military were working hard to help Ukraine, he said, raising his voice, and Zelenskyy could show a little more gratitude.

Nevertheless, Biden continues to push for the US and other governments to keep dumping more money into the Ukraine War rathole. Indeed, the NBC News article notes that Biden is seeking congressional appropriation of tens of billions of dollars in additional aid to Ukraine during the lame duck session before the new Congress convenes in January.

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/31/report-even-president-biden-is-aggravated-by-ukraine-president-s-nonstop-demand-for-more-money/

'Gimme Gimme Gimme!' - Ukraine's Zelensky Demands MORE Money From Washington

Ukrainian president Zelensky has warned US Republicans that if they win next week Ukraine needs more than just weapons. Ukraine also needs cold, hard cash to pay its bills. Ukraine's endless demands even irritated President Biden, according to a new article on CNBC. Also today: Covid tyranny aftershocks continue, with Dr. Peter McCullough continuing to be stripped of his licenses...for telling the truth. Finally: 60 years ago we almost saw nuclear war. Cooler heads prevailed. Today we are back...without cooler heads. Watch today's Liberty Report:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/31/gimme-gimme-gimme-ukraines-zelensky-demands-more-money-from-washington/

Writers, Publishers and Editors Call for Termination of Barrett Book Deal in Latest Censorship Campaign

We have been discussing the rising support for censorship on the left in the last few years. Silencing opposing views has become an article of faith for many on the left, including leading Democratic leaders from President Joe Biden to former President Barack Obama. What is most distressing is how many journalists and writers have joined the call for censorship. However, even with this growing movement, the letter of hundreds of “literary figures” this week to Penguin Random House is chilling. The editors and writers call on the company to rescind a book deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett because they disagree with her judicial philosophy. After all, why burn books when you can effectivelyban them?

The public letter entitled “We Dissent” makes the usual absurd protestation that, just because we are seeking to ban books of those with opposing views, we still “care deeply about freedom of speech.” They simply justify their anti-free speech position by insisting that any harm “in the form of censorship” is less than “the form of assault on inalienable human rights” in opposing abortion or other constitutional rights.

Yet, the letter is not simply dangerous. It is perfectly delusional. While calling for the book to be blocked, the writers bizarrely insist “we are not calling for censorship.”

While the letter has been described as signed by “literary figures,” it actually contains many who are loosely connected to the “broader literary community” like “Philip Tuley, Imam” and “Barbara Hirsch, Avid reader.” It also includes many who are simply identified by initials or first names like “Leslie” without any stated connection.

Nevertheless, there are many editors and publishing figures who list their companies (including HarperCollins, Random House and other companies) and university presses (including Cambridge, Harvard, Michigan Northwestern, Oxford) with their titles in calling for censorship. The list speaks loudly to why dissenting or conservative authors find it more difficult to publish today. These are editors who are publicly calling for banning the publication of those who hold opposing views from their own.

It also includes academics like Ignacio Leopoldo Götz Römer, Stessin Distinguished Professor Emeritus, New College of Hofstra University and Carole DeSanti, Elizabeth Drew Professor of English Language and Literature, Smith College (and former VP and Exec Ed, PenguinRandomHouse).

The focus of the letter is the fact that Barrett voted with the majority in the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Barrett has been the singled out in the past due to her judicial philosophy (which is shared by many federal judges and millions of citizens). Her home has been targeted and activists have published school information on her young children.

Recently, Rhodes College alumni sought to strip references to Barrett from the college because they disagree with her views. Her college sorority was even forced to apologize for simply congratulating her for being one of a handful of women to be nominated to the high court.

No attack appears to be beyond the pale for media or the left. Barrett sat through days of such baseless attacks on her character and even had to face attacks referencing her children. Ibram X. Kendi, the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, claimed that her adoption of two Haitian children raised the image of a “white colonizer” and suggested that the children were little more than props for their mother.

The most striking aspects of these protests is the insistence that these individuals are still faithful to free speech as they seek to silence those with opposing views. The signatories express a common righteous rage to justify censoring others. We have seen this hypocrisy openly displayed by those who want to censor authors or journalists in the name of free speech or the free press.

Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy.

Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

An article published in The Atlantic by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

These are professors, writers, and editors who are sawing off the very branch upon which they sit. That would not be a problem but for the fact that they are doing lasting damage not only to free speech but their professions. For a writer to be against free speech is like an athlete being against exercise. It is the defining right for our country and an existential right for writers and academics.

This letter is not simply another manifestation of viewpoint intolerance. It is a statement of virtual self-loathing from people who work in the literary world; writers and editors who cannot abide the publication of opposing views.

The question is whether the companies listed with these signatories (including HarperCollins, Random House Cambridge, Harvard, Michigan Northwestern, and Oxford presses) will issue their own statements that they do not support such censorship and remain committed to publishing a wide array of views on issues like abortion.

As for Justice Barrett, such attacks are unlikely to deter her from ruling according to her long-held and well-established jurisprudential views. She does not deserve such attacks but these individuals are the face of rage in our society. It is the license of rage that can overwhelm every value. It is a general psychosis that overwhelms every countervailing value; it allows writers and editors to oppose free speech and expect us applaud them for it.

It is not that difficult. When it comes to the justices, we have learned to hate the way described by Queen Margaret in Shakespeare’s “Richard III” — “Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were; And he that slew them fouler than he is.”

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

from Writers, Publishers and Editors Call for Termination of Barrett Book Deal in Latest Censorship Campaign

Will the Midterms Change Anything?

Many experts expect public anger over inflation to enable Republicans to regain a majority in the US House of Representatives and maybe the Senate in next week’s midterm elections. However, even if every close Senate race broke in Republicans’ favor, and the new Republican majority was determined to pass a pro-liberty agenda, there still would not be the votes to override President Biden’s vetoes, or Chuck Schumer’s filibusters. Pro-liberty legislation cutting spending, or protecting our First, Second, and Fifth Amendment rights, or shutting down the Department of Education, or auditing the Federal Reserve, would not become law.

The fact that such pro-liberty legislation would not become law is a reason many Republican Congress members feel comfortable cosponsoring and voting for such bills. One of the dirty secrets of American politics is that the establishment of both parties supports the corporatist welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system that makes it all possible. While they quibble over the details, the only real disagreement between the two parties is over which one is better able to run the economy, run the world, and run our personal lives.

One hoped-for benefit of having Congress in Republican hands is that the Republican desire to deny President Biden any major legislative victories going into the 2024 election means the American people will be safe from more big spending legislation like the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act that will lead to more inflation. It is also hoped that our liberty and prosperity will be safe from attempts to expand government’s role in healthcare and implement the Green New Deal.

Should Republicans take the Senate, my son Kentucky Senator Rand Paul could assume the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Rand has already stated he wants there to be a full investigation into Dr. Anthony Fauci’s actions leading up to and during the covid scare. Rand’s chairmanship would also allow him to examine ways in which the Department of Education has undermined parental authority and weakened academics while promoting the use of critical race theory in government schools. He could also look at how the Education Department is abusing its authority to force schools to allow boys to play on girls’ sports teams and even to use girls’ bathrooms.

Arizona could send pro-liberty members of Congress a new ally: Blake Masters. Masters is an advocate of limited constitutional government who understands the importance of challenging the Federal Reserve’s unchecked power and protecting liberty and prosperity. He is currently in a very close race with incumbent Senator Mark Kelly, who is a leading advocate for gun control in the Senate.

While we should support those few politicians who stand up for liberty, we should remember that we cannot rely on politicians alone to restore liberty. Instead, the only way to win back our liberty is to change the political and cultural environment politicians operate in. That is why converting a critical mass of people to libertarianism is crucial. Our victory will come not by electing a libertarian majority to Congress but by controlling the political and intellectual environment so even the authoritarians feel compelled to vote for liberty.

from Will the Midterms Change Anything?

'The Gates of Hell Opened': A Media Panic Ensues As Musk Takes Over Twitter and Fires Chief Censors

Thursday night I wrote a column on the challenges faced by Elon Musk in taking over Twitter and suggested steps to “hit the ground running.” One of those obvious steps discussed in earlier columns was to fire CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal policy, trust, and safety Vijaya Gadde, the primary figures responsible for creating one of the largest censorship systems in history. He did so within minutes of taking over and their removal constitutes as singular advances in the cause of free speech around the world.

As expected, yesterday morning media figures were in full panic at the thought that one social media platform may restore free speech protections after years of biased and aggressive censorship. The controversial Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz lamented, “It’s like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight.” That’s right, the prospect of others having access to Twitter to express their own views is a hellish prospect for many in the media.

Agrawal and Gadde personified the censorship culture at Twitter, figures who were unabashedly opposed to traditional views of free speech and viewpoint diversity.

Not long after taking over, Agrawal pledged to regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.”

Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”

I have long admitted to being an “internet originalist,” someone who viewed the internet as the greatest development for free speech since the invention of the printing press. However, the rapid erosion of free speech values – from our Congress to our campuses – has been alarming.

Led by President Joe Biden, Democratic leaders and media figures have demanded corporate censorship and even state censorship to curtail opposing views on issues ranging from climate change to election integrity to public health to gender identity. The Washington Post’s Max Boot, for example, declared, “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.”

Many of those same figures are now apoplectic at the thought that others may be able to express dissenting views on subjects ranging from climate change to election regulations to gender identity.

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast asked, “Can someone make a new Twitter or is this a very stupid question?” In other words, a journalist wants to recreate a social media platform where others can be routinely silenced. The answer is simple: Facebook . . . and virtually every other social media platform.

The freak out from the Musk-phobic was triggered by the prospect of a single social media company offering greater free speech protections. Just one. However, they know that the effort to control political and social speech will be lost if people have an alternative. These companies are only able to sell censorship because they have largely been able to bar free speech competitors. Now there may be an alternative.

The panic over free speech breaking out on a single social media site is shared by journalism and law professors. CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis wrote “The sun is dark” and “This is an emergency! Twitter is to be taken over by the evil Sith lord.” He previously wrote, after news of the likely purchase by Musk, that “Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.”

He is not alone.

We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy.

Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Likewise, an article published in The Atlantic by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating that “in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong.”

We will have to see if Musk can remain faithful to his pledge to restore free speech protections to the site. To that end, I have proposed a “First Amendment option” that could quickly reframe the company as a free speech site. Regardless of his approach to restructuring the company, what is clear is that there is now a serious chance for free speech on a major social media site. The panic of anti-free speech figures is enough to give hope to millions that one door has now opened for greater viewpoint diversity and discussion on social media.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

from 'The Gates of Hell Opened': A Media Panic Ensues As Musk Takes Over Twitter and Fires Chief Censors

Dennis Kucinich Says Use Diplomacy to End War

Former United States House of Representatives member and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) remains a reliable advocate for peace, even when it seems that the United States president and every Democrat in Congress is committed to pursuing endless war and rejecting giving peace a chance relative to US policy regarding Ukraine and Russia.

While most Republican Congress members are just as adamant in their support for sending more and more weapons and other aid to the Ukraine government to perpetuate war with Russia, at least some Republican Congress members have voted against such spending.

In a new interview with host Robert Scheer at Scheer Intelligence, Kucinich, who is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, addresses the appalling blanket support from Democratic President Joe Biden and Democratic Congress members for pursuing the war in Ukraine. Kucinich also opines on the quick retracting this week of a group of thirty Democratic House members’ letter to Biden that challenged the pro-war party line by merely requesting Biden consider using diplomacy to resolve the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The government of Russia, in contrast with that of the US, has been open to negotiation.

The “put down” of the 30 Democratic House members for “simply asking for diplomacy,” Kucinich states in the interview, is “a powerful symbol” showing that “Democrats are buying all in on continuing to prosecute” a proxy war against Russia that both is “very expensive” and is “causing loss of life of innocent Ukrainian people.” Given this situation, comments Kucinich, “it’s time to go to the negotiating table.”

Kucinich states that during his time in Congress that ended in January of 2013 he “led Democratic efforts against wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria,” and “worked to end a war in the Balkans and to divert war against Iran.” “What’s happing now, though,” continues Kucinich, “is that Democrats seem to be making support for the war as a test of party loyalty, and that is totally wrong; it is dangerous.”

Speaking of the dominant approach of US politicians in regard to policy toward both Russia and China, Kucinich warns:

Just suffice it to say that what we’re seeing, both in the ratcheting up of tensions with China and the continued prosecution of the war in Ukraine which is squarely aimed at trying to displace Russia as a world power, what we’re seeing in that is a misguided attempt to try to assert American hegemony. And that era is over. The world is changing. We cannot pursue policies by force, and when we tried to do it over the last 50 years it’s generally been a disaster. So, you know, I think that this is an inflection point — the Democratic Party slapping down 30 Democrats who said ‘look let’s try for peace, let’s negotiate because if you don’t negotiate you’re going to escalate.’ And that’s the path that we’re on right now — escalation.

Instead of more escalation, Kucinich offers that diplomacy is what is now needed. He states in the interview:

The political system is set up to exclude anyone who dares challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, particularly about war. And, yet, challenge it we must because this trajectory that we’re on, unless it is corrected through negotiations, will end up in a much wider war, and we’re slowly reaching that precipice from which one mistake — one mishap — could trigger something much broader in terms of conflict. And, the fact that the leaders don’t recognize that right now shows that we have a failure of political leadership.

Diplomacy is difficult. It requires intelligence and patience. But, the only way the wars are going to end — can end — is at the negotiating table.

Listen to Kucinich’s interview here:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/29/dennis-kucinich-says-use-diplomacy-to-end-war/

Biden Surrenders First Use Nuke Policy to Pentagon Neocons

It’s not unusual, in fact is typical, for presidents to ditch campaign promises. One such promise Joe Biden made on the campaign trail was a “no first use” of nuclear weapons.

That was then, this is now.

“The Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy rejected limits on using nuclear weapons long championed by arms control advocates and in the past by President Joe Biden,” Bloomberg reports:

Citing burgeoning threats from China and Russia, the Defense Department said in the document released Thursday that “by the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.” In response, the US will “maintain a very high bar for nuclear employment” without ruling out using the weapons in retaliation to a non-nuclear strategic threat to the homeland, US forces abroad or allies. (Emphasis added.)

According to the National Defense Strategy, delayed after Russia went into Ukraine, a policy of non-use of nukes, except in response to a nuclear attack, “would result in an unacceptable level of risk in light of the range of non-nuclear capabilities being developed and fielded by competitors that could inflict strategic-level damage.”

In short, the neocons in the Pentagon have overruled Biden, who is too weak and cognitively impaired to argue in defense of his campaign promise.

Biden appears to have concluded that it is too costly in political terms to fight for his views. He has let the Pentagon dictate his strategy rather than challenge a bureaucracy resisting any alteration of current programs and doctrine. https://t.co/kTpUbRruOc

— Joe Cirincione (@Cirincione) October 27, 2022

This take is interesting because Joe Cirincione is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and bills himself, on his blue check Twitter profile, as a national security expert. In the past, the CFR warned against nuclear proliferation, although blame for expanding the number of nukes was placed on Russia, China, and North Korea.

In 2017, as Obama’s Vice President, Biden said: “In our 2010 Nuclear Posture Review—we made a commitment to create the conditions by which the sole purpose of nuclear weapons would be to deter others from launching a nuclear attack.”

Accordingly, over the course of our Administration, we have steadily reduced the primacy nuclear weapons have held in our national security policies since World War II—while improving our ability to deter and defeat any adversaries—and reassure our Allies—without reliance on nuclear weapons.

Given our non-nuclear capabilities and the nature of today’s threats—it’s hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary. Or make sense. (Emphasis added.)

Sense and non-psychotic behavior have nothing to do with it. Nukes are required, in the warped minds of neocons, to maintain a different “primacy”—that of making certain the violence and thievery of neoliberalism remain firmly entrenched.

So what should @POTUS have put in his NPR? For starters, President Biden should start by declaring that the US will never be the first nation to use nuclear weapons in any conflict, a change that would reduce the nuclear threat. https://t.co/1m9CsGaYAx

— Union of Concerned Scientists (@UCSUSA) October 27, 2022

Now that no-first-use commitment is in the trash and the neocons, infamous for their eagerness to engage in violent behavior that has thus far killed well over a million people (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria), are in control of the nukes and will decide when to use them.

The lies spread by Biden and the corporate war propaganda media—that Russia will use “tactical” nukes in Ukraine—have provided an excuse for the national security state to finally move life-terminating nukes into the category of usable weapons.

US President Biden says the world risks nuclear "Armageddon" for the first time since the Cold War.

Russian President Putin is "not joking" when he threatens to use nuclear weapons to pursue his invasion of Ukraine, Biden sayshttps://t.co/yZGrsDBPIN pic.twitter.com/GydlyGoqDn

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) October 7, 2022

I believe the latest Biden NPR will move the Doomsday Clock ever closer to midnight.

Reprinted with permission from  Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.
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from Biden Surrenders First Use Nuke Policy to Pentagon Neocons

Energy: The Last Frontier of the Ukraine War

The Ukraine war has intensified the old energy conflict between Russia and the US. The ultimate result of this struggle is uncertain but US main allies, i.e., Europe, are not expected to perform well.

Fossil fuels (coal, crude oil and natural gas) are the main sources of world energy providing 80 percent of the world’s consumption. In Europe, and despite long-dated political, social and media initiatives in favour of green energy, in 2021 fossil fuels sourced 70.6 percent of total energy consumption and renewables only 12.3 percent, the latter an unremarkable feet as green promotion started in the late 1970s. Historically Europe has relied on Russian fuels and as of May 2022 Russian oil imports represented 23.7 percent and 16.1 percent of OECD Europe’s oil demand and total imports, respectively, whereas in 2021 Russian gas equaled 71.7 percent of Europe’s total gas pipeline imports and 49 percent of total gas imports, respectively.

Reflecting a deep structural transformation in economic clout, the balance of power in the world energy markets has changed in the last decades to the West’s detriment. In 2021, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) energy production was 37.9 percent of the world’s total against 21.6 percent by the G7 and 4 percent by the European Union (EU), and the BRICS energy consumption was 40.1 percent of the world’s total against 25 percent by the G7 and 9.4 percent by the EU. Meanwhile, the energy weight of the US and Russia is backed by both having the world’s highest levels of fossil fuel reserves – each about 14 percent of world’s total in 2020 – and producing 15.9 percent and 11.8 percent of the world’s total energy, respectively. 

In the US there is an old symbiotic relationship between government policy and its oil multinationals with geopolitical gains and corporate profits going hand in hand. In 1946 an early Cold War crisis unfolded when the US pressed the USSR to evacuate Northern Iran to protect US Middle East oil interests. In 1953 the fall of Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh started with a US oil company blockade followed by a CIA sponsored coup. Price competition from Russia led Exxon in 1959 to cut oil prices without consulting its host nations, prompting producers to create OPEC the year after.

From the 1920s to the 1950s the US established its Middle East oil presence at the expense of France and Russia and by 1955 the five major US oil companies produced two-thirds of world oil. Although being the largest oil producer, the USSR had limited market impact as one-fourth of its production went to its East European allies, but nevertheless played a growing geopolitical role for instance through military support of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, who organized in 1970 against Occidental Petroleum the first oil price increase of a producing nation. In the 1970s the US regarded the Arab/Persian Gulf as a security problem second only to the Soviet Union.

After the 2nd oil shock of 1979, the Carter Administration laid out an energy policy that allegedly set the stage of US modern geopolitical initiatives. The US-led interventions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, and Syria were ultimately aimed at securing the Eurasian energy space for the US “strategically compatible partners,” as pointed out by former US National Security Advisor Brzezinski in 1997. “Global War on Terror”, “Assad Must Go” and “Rules-based International Order”, among others, have been questioned as euphemisms for US policies directed at geopolitical hegemony through the control of energy sources and transportation routes.

US natural gas is a late comer in this conflict. In 2000 US gas exports were only 1.2 percent of the world’s total but by 2021 they have reached 17.5 percent and have become Europe’s main source of LNG imports representing 28.5 percent of total. US increasing denunciations against the impact of Russian gas on Europe’s security, as mentioned for instance by US former Secretary of State Rice in 2014 and by US former President Trump during his mandate, coincided with the growing potential of US natural gas to compete and displace Russia.

The Ukraine conflict has turned the table on the geopolitical and energy struggles. For the US, the war is an opportunity to end once and for all Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, destroy the old Russo-German economic partnership based on cheap Russian energy and enable further European reliance on “the US energy platform” as pointed out by Rice. The war has also stopped Russo-Norwegian attempts to counter US LNG through lower pricing. Sanctions purportedly destined to cripple Russian energy exports and stop its war machine financing have also sought to destabilize and induce regime change in the Kremlin, the latter the ultimate geopolitical prize worth the US oil companies’ recent departure from Russia.

Europe, deprived of fossil fuel reserves except coal, has blindly followed US policies and is suffering a vicious circle of energy supply disruptions, severe increases in energy prices with direct impact on population’s welfare, decreasing industrial competitiveness leading to business closures and job losses, and deterioration of financial conditions. Differing actions are preventing a European unified energy response including unilateral aid support on consumer energy costs (Germany) and attempts to carve out Russian sanctions from preferred sectors like oil marine transportation (Greece) and nuclear fuel (France). European politicians are realizing that US gas is sold in Europe at prices four times higher than domestically. The UK Prime Minister just became the first casualty of misguided economic policies intended to control rising energy bills.

Europe’s preference for natural gas purchases through exchange quotations rather than by long-term contracts is worsening supply uncertainties as major providers like Qatar and Nigeria - representing 32.8 percent of combined 2021 LNG imports - insist on contractual arrangements and are prompting LNG suppliers to sell to the highest bidders. Europe appears paralyzed in its own ambivalences and contradictions on energy policy, including big business versus the green agenda and the future role of nuclear energy and coal.

Russia, meanwhile, does not seem to be losing the energy war as it just showed, due to higher energy export earnings, a Jan-Sep 2022 current account surplus of US$ 198.4bn which is 2.6 times larger than in 2021. Japan, with Russian fossils sourcing 7.1 percent of its energy needs, has conveniently been exempted from a planned Russian oil price cap. Russia is quickly pursuing alternative markets for its energy stocks, with China and India growing as buyers for their own use and intermediaries to third countries. From buying almost no Russian oil, in July 2022 India imported from Russia about 1 percent of the world’s oil global supply.

Europe’s weak market position could neutralize the impact of energy sanctions on Russia as the latter will likely circumvent the West’s planned oil price cap through alternative shipping and insurance arrangements. European officials are acknowledging the West’s “overestimation of control of global oil trade” as they witness Russian, US and Norwegian companies increase their energy profits. Moreover, Russia has unleashed several initiatives intended to expand and strengthen energy-linked political-economic partnerships, like a planned Turkey gas hub that could become a major energy crossroad potentially enabling Europe to access again Russian gas mixed with Central Asian sources.

The recent OPEC+ decision to reduce oil production has been justified by the need to preserve market stability but is also a response to the attempted Russian oil price cap which is perceived as a dangerous precedent that could equally be used against other producers or even other commodities. The US has entirely blamed the OPEC+ output decrease on Saudi Arabia, given the latter’s 25 percent share of the cartel’s production, and is considering using old antitrust legislation to lift sovereign immunity and allow suing oil producing nations in US courts on market manipulation grounds. This would not be the first time that the US uses this legislation to pursue geopolitical aims but targeting OPEC+ states could further destroy US credibility and lead affected governments to protect themselves, for instance through divestures from US financial holdings currently at over US$ 200 billion.

But the Biden Administration appears to be using oil not only to pursue long-term geopolitical goals but also to support its short-term agenda. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency stockpile created in 1973 to counter severe supply interruptions has been brought down to early1980s levels in a perceived effort to control domestic gas prices and have a happy electorate ahead of the coming mid-term vote.

The explosions at the Nord Stream gas pipelines have risen energy warfare to an unseen level as they have taken away from Germany an energy supply alternative (cheaper than Russian gas imports via Ukraine), severely weakened a diplomatic option for the Ukraine war and enable further European reliance on US gas as admitted by US Secretary of State Blinken. Suspicions that the US is the main beneficiary of these events will only increase apprehension and ultimately damage whatever trust still exist on US good intentions towards Europe. Sadly, this episode will not be the last escalation step on the energy theatre as the Ukraine war continues.

Oscar Silva-Valladares is a former investment banker that has lived and worked in North and Latin America, Western & Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the Philippines, and Western Africa. He currently provides strategic consulting advisory on financial matters across emerging markets.

from Energy: The Last Frontier of the Ukraine War

Peak 'Woke'? Facebook, Netflix Crashing And Burning

After relentlessly pushing "woke" ideology and "cancel culture," Netflix, Facebook, and many other media and social media companies are now experiencing the wrath of the masses, as they shed value at an astonishing pace. Are we at "peak woke"? Why is Facebook trying to "cancel" the Ron Paul Institute? Will Elon Musk help turn the tide back to free expression? Also today: election funny business in Pennsylvania? Finally: Finland eyes nukes aimed at Russia. Good idea? Watch today's Liberty Report:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/27/peak-woke-facebook-netflix-crashing-and-burning/

Don Basilio, a Hero for our Times

‘Russian spy among the guest lecturers of a Budapest elite college? ’The question mark at the end of this headline above a recent article in an English-language Hungarian media outlet, Daily News Hungary, is an excellent example of the vigorous dishonesty practiced by journalists around the world, both in major national newspapers, including Dutch ones, as well as in minor media like this Hungarian one. Gideon van Meijeren caught a mendacious Dutch journalist red-handed this week but they are the same all over the world.

The question mark in the headline illustrates the dishonesty. It is nothing but an attempt to say something while denying that you are saying it. Right at the end of the piece, with breathtaking chutzpah, the journalist writes, ‘Of course, all the above written does not support he (Laughland) was ever a Russian spy.’ But of course that is the whole thrust of the text, otherwise the headline would have been ‘Innocent academic wrongly questioned by British police. ’You have to get to the end of the article to read this miserable disclaimer, whereas the intent of the text is to make the reader see the headline (while overlooking the question mark).

Ever since I started working at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in 2008, and long before the concept of ‘fake news’ became common (around 2016) I observed the industrial production of fake news at close quarters because it concerned me personally. Whether the journalists contacted me or not, it made no difference: they always wrote the same story - that IDC was a front organisation for the Kremlin. The accusation was always more interesting than the truth, even though the accusation was always identical. In the last 15 years, the so-called ‘news’ has not progressed one jot.

On some occasions, my enemies simply invented things, such as the ridiculous Cécile Vaissié whose book on ‘Kremlin networks in France’ recounts, in loving detail, an IDC conference, including quotes from speeches, whereas in fact the conference never even occurred. Other minor lies include the claim that I have addressed the Russian State Duma and other such nonsense.

Even though IDC ceased all activity in 2017, and terminated my employment for lack of funds (something no media outlet has ever reported or investigated) - in other words this all goes back nearly 5 years - the identical conspiracy theories all started up again in the Dutch press when I started to work for FVD, first at the European Parliament in 2019 and then, this year, for FVD International. Dutch journalists are evidently so provincial that they do not know what rubbish their French colleagues had been writing all these years. Moreover, they do not care.Nor evidently, do the Hungarian ones.If I had been a Russian spy, my cover was blown a decade and a half ago.

Just as with the French journalists, it did not make any difference whether the Dutch journalists contacted me or not: they always peddled the same fairy tale. The Zembla documentary of April 2020, rebroadcast this year and available on Youtube, was a spectacular exercise in dishonesty, taking a 5-second clip from a 20- or 30-minute interview I gave to the team, and instead lavishing long minutes on two compulsive liars, Anton Shekhovstov and Henk Otten.

It also did not make any difference if I wrote to the news outlet in question or not: a letter sent to NRC Handeslbad in early 2020, denouncing an article by Tom-Jan Meuss, was simply never published. No Hungarian journalist has attempted to contact me about this latest rubbish.

The phenomenon of the snowball (or mud ball) is particularly arresting. Malevolent people, by which I mean most journalists, decide they want to write the ‘Laughland is a Russian spy’ story, even though it has been written countless times before. They go on line, they find someone else who has written the same story, they take that as proof for their presupposition, they often add in a bit of their own dirt, and they thus increase the size of the mud ball which they then throw at me. This happens again and again, the latest example being fantastical lies told about the level of my salary in Hungary and duly repeated, along with all the other garbage, by strange obsessive Twitterati in Dutch provincial cities.

In case anyone is interested, here is the truth. I am not a Russian spy and never have been one. I am not a Russian agent and have never been one. I have never worked, directly or indirectly, for the Russian government, or indeed for any government. IDC was not funded by the Kremlin or by the Russian state, but by Russian companies and foundations: its whole identity was to be a Russian-funded non-governmental organisation. It was not a lobbying organisation. 

While director of studies there, I never received instructions about what line to take on a particular subject, nor what subjects to tackle, nor whom to invite as speakers at our seminars and conferences: on the contrary, my job was to come up with ideas for subjects and possible speakers, whom I generally invited. 

I had an extremely good working relationship with the president, the Russian historian and conservative public figure, my good friend, Natalia Narochnitskaya. A kindred spirit, she gave me an exceptionally high degree of freedom, including in some very high-profile events which we helped organise, for which I was and remain very grateful. It goes without saying that we let our guest speakers say whatever they wanted. Many of our speakers were very senior politicians, from heads of state downwards, and all of them were themselves free men and women.

We never lobbied anyone. We never tried to recruit anyone. All our activity was in the public domain. The whole ‘Kremlin influence’ thing is pure nonsense, the product of sick minds.

I was not arrested at Gatwick airport. I was not accused of being a Russian spy. No charges of any kind have been brought. No legal procedure is under way. 

Evidently the people who write that I was arrested do not understand the meaning of ‘arrest’; evidently they also do not believe in the presumption of innocence, which means that the burden of proof lies with the accuser. Repeating someone else’s accusation (as did this latest tawdry little piece in Daily Hungarian News does) is not proof; it is just backbiting. 

Worse, these people are the willing executors of the totalitarianism I patiently explained in an article I wrote for this site shortly after the event at Gatwick: they are the hoodlums in the lynch mob. Let that be on their conscience.

These attacks are against me but the real target (in the case of the Hungarians) is the Mathias Corvinus College, where I am a Visiting Fellow until next year, and the Fidesz government which partly funds it, and (in the case of the Dutch) Thierry Baudet and FVD. These people have no trouble prostituting themselves for political purposes. They are today’s embodiment of the contemptible Don Basilio in Rossini’s Barber of Seville whose most famous aria[1] I am now going to listen to to cheer myself up.

Slander is a gentle breeze, a gentle zephyr which insensibly, subtly, lightly and sweetly, commences to whisper.

Softly, softly, here and there, sottovoce, sibilant, it goes gliding, it goes rambling.

In the ears of the people, it penetrates slyly and the head and the brains it stuns and it swells.

From the mouth re-emerging the noise grows crescendo, gathers force little by little, runs its course from place to place, seems like the thunder of the tempest which from the depths of the forest comes whistling, muttering, freezing everyone in horror.

Finally with crack and crash, it spreads afield, its force redoubled, and produces an explosion like the outburst of a cannon, an earthquake, a whirlwind, which makes the air resound. 

And the poor slandered wretch, vilified, trampled down, sunk beneath the public lash, by good fortune, falls to death.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHgYwOuOFsE With thanks to Jacques Sapir for suggesting this comparison, as long ago as 2013!

Reprinted with author's permission from Forum for Democracy International.

John Laughland is Director of Forum for Democracy International and a Member of the Academic Board of the Ron Paul Institute. He is a Visiting Fellow at Mathias Corvinus College in Budapest, Hungary.

from Don Basilio, a Hero for our Times

The Pentagon Brought on Both Nuclear Crises

I fully realize that when it comes to Ukraine, one is supposed to focus exclusively on Russia’s invasion and not on what the Pentagon did to gin up the crisis, a crisis that has gotten us perilously close to a world-destroying nuclear war with Russia. 

Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s role in this crisis needs to be emphasized, over and over again, just as the Pentagon’s role in ginning up the Cuban Missile Crisis also needs to be emphasized, over and over again.

Yes, what I am emphasizing is the Pentagon’s role in ginning up both of these crises that have gotten us so close to nuclear war with Russia. 

At the end of the Cold War racket, there was absolutely no reason for NATO to remain in existence. Its purported mission of protecting Europe from a Soviet (i.e., Russian) attack had been fulfilled. The Cold War was supposedly over. 

The only problem was that it wasn’t over for the Pentagon and the CIA. If they had had their druthers, their Cold War racket would have gone on forever. After all, what better justification for their ever-increasing budgets and power within the federal governmental structure?

That’s why they kept NATO in existence. While they were engaging in their interventionist antics in the Middle East, which led to their war-on-terrorism racket, they were, at the same time, using NATO to provoke Russia, with the aim of reigniting their old Cold War racket. Instead of dismantling their old Cold War dinosaur, they used used it to absorb former members of the Warsaw Pact, which enabled the Pentagon and the CIA to move their nuclear missiles and military forces inexorably closer to Russia’s border, over Russia’s vehement objections.

Ultimately, they threatened to absorb Ukraine into their NATO racket, knowing full well that Russia had vowed for some 25 years to invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening. Their scheme succeeded. Once Russia invaded Ukraine, the loyal followers of the Pentagon and the CIA focused exclusively on the invasion and not also on the NATO racket that had provoked the invasion.

It was no different with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The reason that Cuba and the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba was to deter another invasion of the island by the CIA and the Pentagon. Don’t forget that the CIA had already invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and had failed miserably. After that, the Pentagon continually exhorted President Kennedy to initiate a full-scale military invasion of Cuba. That’s what the Pentagon’s fraudulent false-flag operation known as Operation Northwoods was all about, which Kennedy, to his everlasting credit, summarily rejected.

What legal justification did the Pentagon and the CIA have to invade Cuba? None! The fact that Cuba had a communist regime certainly never justified an invasion (or, for that matter, repeated murder attempts against Fidel Castro). Keep in mind that Cuba had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. In the long relationship between communist Cuba and the United States, it has always been the US government that has been the aggressor, including with its old Cold War economic embargo that continues to target the Cuban people with death and impoverishment as a way to achieve regime change on the island.

Cuba and Russia knew full-well that the CIA and the Pentagon were fully determined to invade Cuba again, with the aim of replacing the Fidel Castro regime with another pro-US dictatorship, like the one that preceded the Castro regime. That’s why Cuba and Russia installed those nuclear missiles in Cuba — to deter another illegal US invasion of the island. 

Why can’t the loyal acolytes of the US national-security establishment see all this? Because for them, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are their triune god. Who wants to question or criticize god? 

But if we are going to put out nation back on the right road — the road to liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world, it is necessary for the American people to not only question this false god but also to toss it and its evil rackets into the dustbin of history and restore America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

from The Pentagon Brought on Both Nuclear Crises

NY Shocker: Supreme Court Judge Demolishes Vax Mandate, Orders Reinstatement!

New York State Supreme Court Judge has ruled that the city of New York must reinstate all 2,000 workers fired for refusing the Covid shot WITH back pay. The city's termination of the employees was "arbitrary, and capricious." Also today: US military personnel are blowing the whistle on their own vax mandate. Finally: House Progressives apologize and rescind their letter begging for a bit of diplomacy before launching WWIII. Watch today's Liberty Report:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/26/ny-shocker-supreme-court-judge-demolishes-vax-mandate-orders-reinstatement/

Ron Paul Shares Stories from the US House of Representatives on the Tulsi Gabbard Show

Ron Paul, in an hour-long Tulsi Gabbard Show interview with host Tulsi Gabbard that aired on Tuesday, shares several stories from his time in the House of Representatives as a Republican from Texas.

Paul left the House in January of 2013, just before Gabbard joined the House as a Democrat from Hawaii.

Stories Paul shares in the interview open a window on the workings of the House. The stories deal with subjects including Paul avoiding hiring employees for his office who had worked elsewhere in the House, a fellow representative voting “yes” on the USA PATRIOT Act despite knowing the right vote was “no,” House members walking up to a desk to see which special interests support and oppose bills up for votes, Paul’s practice of voting against the awarding of Congressional Gold Medals, and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Henry Hyde telling Paul in the lead-up to the Iraq War that the US Constitution provision requiring a congressional declaration of war is “anachronistic” and can just be ignored.

Watch the interview here:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/26/ron-paul-shares-stories-from-the-us-house-of-representatives-on-the-tulsi-gabbard-show/

Smackdown! House Dems Desperately Walk Back Letter Urging Diplomacy For Ukraine

How it started: 30 Members of the House Progressive Caucus penned a relatively timid letter to President Biden suggesting a bit of diplomacy before we march to WWIII. How it's going: The House Progressive Caucus almost immediately began furiously backpedaling from their own letter. Meanwhile the US 101st Airborne is in Poland and "ready to fight." Also today - MSNBC pundit: if you worry about inflation, you might be pro-Hitler. What? Watch today's Liberty Report:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/25/smackdown-house-dems-desperately-walk-back-letter-urging-diplomacy-for-ukraine/

Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

It’s been more than obvious since April 2020 that lockdowns were far too costly for individuals and society and could never earn a rational public-health defense. And the evidence was rolling in from one year later that the vaccine mandates were similarly indefensible.

Both tactics had in common the enormous use of state coercion that flew in the face of every principle of civilized government.

As we are constantly told, both people and government were panicked, and needlessly so. As it turns out, the infection fatality rate was not 2-3 percent, as the WHO had said early on, or 1 percent as Fauci told the Senate in March 2020, but rather 0.035 percent for anyone under the age of 60 (which is 94 percent of the population).

Covid has been highly transmissible and with it the resulting protection of natural immunity. The correct policy should have been to maintain all social and market functioning while the actual vulnerable population protected itself as it awaited widespread immunity. That’s how every generation for 100 years has handled infectious disease: as a medical and not political matter.

In other words, politicians and officials the world over made enormous and obvious errors, just not later but from the outset. This is not really worth arguing any more. The evidence is now 2.5 years deep. Insisting on 85 percent coverage of an ineffective vaccine was also an egregious error becaus people are not stupid and knew that they did not need this vaccine, especially since it protects not against infection or transmission and its approval bypassed all normal standards of clinical trials.

Where are the apologies? Sorry seems to be the hardest word. Faced with enormous failure, the machinery that did this to us has generally refused to say the simple word. It’s the hardest thing for people with power to admit their fallibility. Even though the whole world knows what they did and vast and increasing numbers are aware of the utter failure, the political class still insists on living in a fantasy land of its own creation.

There are exceptions.

Prime Minister Imran Khan apologized for lockdowns in April 2020.

Ramazan Mubarak to Muslims across the world. We in Pakistan must use this holy month to ask Allah for forgiveness for neglecting the poor & vulnerable in our society. We as a nation have been elite-centric in our policies, with no thought for these people, incl in the pandemic

— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) April 24, 2020

Ron DeSantis of Florida has repeatedly said that the lockdowns were an enormous mistake and will never happen again so long as he is in charge. That’s very close to being an apology, though many residents are still awaiting the magic word.

Also in 2020, Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg went on Norwegian television to say that she and others panicked and “took many of the decisions out of fear.”

That’s close to being an apology.

So far as I know, that’s about it. Until yesterday. The new Premier of Alberta Canada Danielle Smith has offered an apology to Albertans who were discriminated against because of their COVID-19 vaccination status. “I am deeply sorry for any government employee that lost their job and I welcome them back if they want to come back.”

Premier Danielle Smith has just offered an apology to Albertans who was discriminated against because of their COVID-19 vaccination status.

“I am deeply sorry for any government employee that lost their job and I welcome them back if they want to come back.” pic.twitter.com/eybO19v79n

— Rachel Emmanuel (@Emmanuel_Rach) October 22, 2022

Glory be! That’s precisely what we are looking for. Not just from a few but from all. The near absence of such apologies is driving the massive political realignment the world over, as furious voters demand admission of wrongdoing and justice for the victims.

They are not forthcoming and therefore the anger is only rising. The storm clouds are gathering around the impossibly arrogant Anthony Fauci, with a new hit movie making the rounds and a judge demanding that he be deposed in a powerful lawsuit filed against his hypercritical collusion with social media companies to censor truth.

Now nearly three years into this disaster, the worry that humanity would just accept the outrage and move on is proving unwarranted. People are discovering that there is plenty of dissent out there, and it stretches across the partisan divide. The resulting cultural and political realignments will echo long into the future, like other major upheavals of the past.

Think of the big historical events that echoed for generations in American politics. The struggle over slavery. World War I. Prohibition. The New Deal. World War II. The Cold War. The last one I know well, having come of age in the latter years. In retrospect, the long episode of the Cold War was packed with mythology. Still, the struggle was expressed in ideological terms of freedom vs. communism. The alliances that lined up remained for decades and impacted cycle after cycle of political controversy at home and abroad.

For strange reasons of timing and loss of principle, the “woke” left found itself mixed up in lockdown politics and then the vaccine mandate. Many of them lined up with policies that violate the very rights they had spent decades defending. So much for the Bill of Rights, the freedom of movement, the appreciation for the classless society, bodily autonomy, and so on. The left lost its soul during these years, and thereby alienated multitudes of sane lefties who watched in horror as their own tribe abandoned them in favor of the authoritarianism they had long decried.

Lockdown/mandate vs not: this has the capacity to be a theme that will resonate far into the future. It also unites people on the political “right” again with small business, genuine civil libertarians, and champions of religious liberty. It permits the “left” to again find its voice for human rights and freedoms. For that matter, they do not have to be activists; they only need to be people who do not want their houses of worship padlocked, their business closed and bankrupted, their speech curtailed, or their bodily autonomy violated.

It also put the emphasis on the correct point: the protection of American liberties not from some shadowy foreign enemy but from our own governments. It also draws in the left that has long been suspicious of the place of big business, and, in this case, rightfully so. The largest corporations such as Google, Amazon, and Meta (Facebook), for all the good that they achieve in this world, have leaned decisively in favor of lockdowns.

Same with Big Media. The reason is not just that they are harmed less by lockdowns and, in many cases, actually benefited from them. It’s because the people ruling these companies enjoy ruling-class lives, and they see the world through them. Lockdowns were the favored policy for cultural and political reasons, which is itself a scandal.

There is another group of powerful people in a position to dedicate themselves to the anti-lockdown/anti-mandate cause: parents. In an astonishing act of despotic ignorance, governors closed schools down all over the country, with zero medical benefit and grotesque levels of abuse for children and parents.

These are schools for which people pay heavily in property taxes, while parents using private schools pay twice. Governments shut them down, robbing parents of their money and smashing their settled lives. Many children in this country lost two years of education. Many families with two incomes had to drop one of them in order to babysit their children at home as they pretended to learn on Zoom while being denied access to peers.

Then once schools were operating normally, the CDC approved without evidence the Covid vaccine as an addition to the childhood schedule. Parents are not this dumb. They will never go for it. They will pull the kids out of public school and into private and homeschooling, causing a real crisis for one of the most settled institutions in American life. 

Then you have the problem of colleges and universities. Rightly or wrongly, parents and students make extreme financial sacrifices to pay for college in the hopes that the right education and degree sets people up for a lifetime of success. Whether this is true or not, parents are risk-averse with their children’s future so that they do whatever is necessary to make it happen.

Then one day, the kids were locked out of the universities that they pay to attend. No parties. No study sessions. No going to other people’s rooms. No in-person instructions. Many thousands of students in this country have been fined and harassed for noncompliance. They’ve had masks forced on them even though their risk from the virus approaches zero, and the memory of this humiliation will last a full lifetime. Then came the vaccines, forced on college students who did not need them and are most vulnerable to adverse events.

Why have the people put up with this? Under normal conditions, they never would have. None of this would have been possible. The one reason they did this time: fear. Fear of getting sick and dying or, if not dying, experiencing permanent health effects. This emotion can last far longer than one might think. But eventually emotions do catch up with facts, among which is that the danger of severe outcomes was wildly exaggerated and the lockdowns and mandates achieved nothing in terms of disease mitigation.

You mean all this suffering and horror was for naught? Once that realization dawns, fear turns to anger, and anger to action. If you understand that dynamic, you can see why the architects of lockdowns from Dr. Fauci to the CDC are doing their best to delay that dawning, with daily doses of alarmism designed to keep people languishing in fear and ignorance.

The fear however is breaking. We will reflect on all the incredible health theater to which we’ve been subjected for two and a half years, the hopping around people to stay 6 feet away, the silly ban on restaurant menus, the on-again-off-again mandatory masking of the people, the curfews and capacity limits, and we’ll realize that the people who passed on all these emergency measures were just making things up in order to appear decisive and precise.

We will look back and feel mortified at how we treated each other so brutally, how so many turned into rats hungry to get our friends and neighbors in trouble with the compliance police, how we willingly believed so many untrue things and practiced such preposterous rituals out of a belief that we were avoiding and thus controlling the enemy pathogen we couldn’t see.

None of this will soon be forgotten. It’s the trauma of our lives. They stole our freedom, our happiness, our way of life, and attempted to replace them all with a stern regime with puritan sensibilities that rivaled the Taliban, forcing the whole population to hide their faces and live in fear of the American Mandarins who then came after the whole population with needles and woefully vetted shots.

Karma is already turning on the whole gang of coercive totalitarians here and abroad. While the virus is invisible, the people who dreamed up and enforced lockdowns and mandates who wrecked the country are highly visible. They have names and careers, and they are right to be very worried about their futures.

The sociological basis of the Catholic institution of auricular confession is to habituate people into the psychologically most difficult practice of admitting error, asking forgiveness, and pledging not to do it again. Saying it out loud within earshot of others is harder still. Every religion has some version of this because doing so is part of becoming a responsible human being.

The best approach is a simple word: sorry. So rare but so powerful. Why won’t more follow the lead of Danielle Smith and just say it?

Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute.

from Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word

Playing at War in Ukraine

As the astute author Hunter S. Thompson noted, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” Weird is indisputably the condition in Great Britain, where Liz Truss, an arguably empty and talentless prime minister, is out—and was, it seemed for a moment, very nearly replaced by her vacuous predecessor, Boris Johnson.

Weirdness, however, is not foreign to American politics. An indicator of just how weird Washington is becoming is the apparent interest in General (ret.) David Petraeus’s recent suggestion that Washington and its allies may want to intervene in the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

According to Petraeus, the military action he advocates would not be a NATO intervention, but “a multinational force led by the US and not as a NATO force.” In other words, a US-led Multi-National Force on the Iraq model composed of conventional ground, air, and naval forces.

Petraeus does not explain why US military action is needed. But it’s not hard to guess. The intervention is designed to rescue Ukrainian forces from defeat and presumably compel Moscow to negotiate on Washington’s terms, whatever those terms might be.

Admittedly, the whole business seems weird, but Petraeus’s suggestion should not be dismissed. Not because Petraeus’s military expertise warrants consideration—it doesn’t. Rather it merits attention because Petraeus would never make such a recommendation unless he was urged to do so by powerful figures in Washington and on Wall Street. And as Jeffrey Sachs tells Americans, globalist and neocon elites clearly want a direct armed confrontation with Russia.

For Petraeus, it is business as usual. He rose through the ranks by checking with everyone in a position of authority above him before doing anything. Seeking permission to ensure no one in authority is offended (like a “coalition of the willing”) is key to promotion. It works well in peacetime, or during wars of choice against weak, incapable enemies that present no existential military threat to Western forces. But Ukraine is not Iraq nor is the Russian Army an Iraqi-like force, or mounted on “technicals”—pickup trucks with automatic cannon.

These points notwithstanding, Petraeus’s suggestion confirms two critical insights. First, the perilous state of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Absent the foreign fighters and Polish soldiers fighting in Ukrainian uniform, Ukraine has little left to withstand the Russian winter offensives. The series of Ukrainian counterattacks over the last 60 to 90 days have cost Ukraine tens of thousands of lives, human capital in uniform that Kiev cannot replace.

Second, it is the 11th hour. The Russian sledgehammer scheduled to fall on the Zelensky regime in the November or December timeframe, or whenever the ground freezes, will crush whatever remains of Ukrainian forces.

In other words, Petraeus’s real message is that the only way to prolong the life of the Zelensky regime is for Washington and its coalition of the willing to intervene directly before it's too late. The usual war hawks in the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, and on the Hill probably assume that a quiescent American electorate will buy the argument that the commitment of US forces in Ukraine without a declaration of war could facilitate a face-saving deal with Moscow.

It's dangerous and stupid to think so, and Americans should reject this notion, but it’s not unreasonable to assume this deluded thinking is prevalent inside the beltway. George F. Kennan, American diplomat and historian, insisted 30 years ago that, “We [Americans] tend to overemphasize military factors at the expense of political ones, and in consequence, overmilitarize our responses.” The result, Kennan argued, is Washington’s chronic failure to relate the development and use of American military power to attainable ends of national strategy.

Read the whole article here.

from Playing at War in Ukraine

Does Blake Masters Have The 'Right Stuff' For Senate? With Guest...Blake Masters!

Businessman Blake Masters has run an underdog race for the US Senate against former astronaut Mark Kelly. He has openly embraced the free market, foreign policy restraint...and Donald Trump. As Masters gains on the establishment-favored Kelly, the Arizona Senate race may be bellwether for what to expect in the midterms just weeks away. Watch today's Liberty Report:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/october/24/does-blake-masters-have-the-right-stuff-for-senate-with-guestblake-masters/

Fake News, Fake Putin Nuclear Threat

If one reads the news with an uncritical eye, he or she would more than likely believe Vladimir Putin intends to nuke Ukraine. Of course, Putin never said he would use nukes in Ukraine, only if his country faces an existential threat, undoubtedly the same policy followed the USG.

The lies and hysteria spread by the corporate war propaganda media have resulted in frightening millions of people in Europe and America. The fear campaign went so far as to insinuate there will be a nuclear attack staged against New York. The NYC Emergency Management Department played its part by releasing an entirely ludicrous PSA instructing New Yorkers what to do in response to a nuclear attack. Go inside, stay inside, and stay tuned, the video instructs.



Left unsaid is the fact that “sheltering in place” during a nuclear explosion is less than worthless. The PSA assumes a single nuke would be targeted at New York. More fear porn and stupidity. If its existence is threatened, Russia would use its Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to replace it SS-18 Satan ICBM. The new missile can travel 6,000 miles and carry 16 independently targeted warheads. It has the capability to destroy and area the size of France.

Needless to say, those “sheltering in place,” from Manhattan to Queens and beyond, would die in place. It is conservatively estimated 4 million people would be killed with an additional 5 million injured. A couple of these nukes targeted at America’s east coast would kill more than 10 million people.

The bogus assertion making the rounds is that Putin will, as Foreign Policy (owned by Graham Holdings Company, an Operation Mockingbird production) puts it, “blow up the world.” Nothing of the sort will happen unless it is the result of a false flag.

It appears that the prospect of a false flag is a distinct possibility. “Russia’s defense chief on Sunday alleged that Ukraine was preparing a ‘provocation’ involving a radioactive device, a stark claim that was strongly rejected by Ukrainian and British officials amid soaring tensions as Moscow struggles to stem Ukrainian advances in the south,” Free Press Journal reported on October 23.

Russia’s defense ministry said [Sergei] Shoigu voiced concern about 'possible Ukrainian provocations involving a "dirty bomb,"' a device that uses explosives to scatter radioactive waste. It doesn’t have the devastating effect of a nuclear explosion, but it could expose broad areas to radioactive contamination.

Telling lies and making omissions for political oneupmanship is hardly a recent development. One of America’s most revered presidents, John F. Kennedy, wasn’t straight with the media during the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis. Greg Mitchell writes for The Daily Beast (Newsweek),

While Kennedy drew wide praise for his handling of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, he had, in the process, sparked wide resentment among the media for how the White House had manipulated or even lied to the press about it while it was transpiring. Reporters had reluctantly gone along with repeated requests from Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary, for self-censorship during the crisis and acceptance of a formal 12-point list of 'guidelines' for withholding news. Surely, with the crisis over, the administration might admit it went a little too far—even lying about the president’s health and travel—or at least quickly shed the crisis-spawned secrecy demands.

Arthur Sylvester, a public affairs spokesman for the Pentagon, “set off a firestorm when he admitted the control of information was even tighter than in World War II” during the “crisis,” a practice he defended. “And he used a loaded term in speaking favorably of government ‘management’ of the news. (He stopped short of revealing that Kennedy himself had used the phrase ‘news management,’ and favored the practice.)”

“Journalists of all political persuasions raised a hew and cry, declaring that they were now expected to act as little more than government propagandists.”

There is no “hew and cry” today in corporate media suites over state-produced fake news.

The vast majority of “journalists” simply churn out lies and misinformation handed down by the state without complaint, lest their careers and livelihood arrive at a sudden dead end.

The American public, considered ignoramuses (and, admittedly, many are) by the state and its owners, must be fed a constant stream of big and little lies in order to shield the national security state (NSS) from criticism and public indignation.

Kennedy disliked the media and, in regard to the supposed missile crisis in Cuba, he wanted the CIA to verify the Soviets had removed all missiles from the embattled Caribbean island.

Behind the scenes, JFK continued to rail against the press. There were media reports that some Cuban refugees were claiming the Soviets were hiding some of the missiles they had purportedly removed from the island. In a meeting at the White House with national security aides, Kennedy complained that the American people were 'bound to think it’s true' if it appeared in the press and that this could raise tensions with the Soviets again, even “possibly a war.” Such media reports made the Kennedy team appear 'incompetent or liars.' He asked CIA Director McCone to verify the removal of the missiles and debunk the news accounts.

Kennedy wanted a “new system” to control what the media told the American people. “Aides argued, however, that it might not be a good idea for the White House to start refuting news scoops by attempting to prove the negative.” Kennedy eventually backed down on his demand the media turn over to the state evidence to back assertions made in news articles.

Naturally, due to the fact The Daily Beast (Newsweek) is a component of the big and small lie propaganda media coopted by the NSS (beginning in the 1950s under the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird), the article quoted above ends with harsh criticism of then president Trump.

Kennedy retreated on this. Even if he’d had his own Twitter feed at that time, one can’t imagine, unlike the current occupant of the White House, that he would have charged that the press 'is the enemy of the American people' or that it is 'frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.'

There is no longer an adversarial relationship between the corporate media and the state. The current effort, ongoing for several years now, is to eradicate the “alternative” media by all means necessary. The information space must be sanitized and made safe for the dissemination of lies and misinformation favorable to the actions of the state, no matter how psychotic or murderous.

The above PSA is a textbook example of the sort of propaganda and scare tactics employed, no matter how absurd or at odds with reality, by the state and its media. The video leaves the impression Putin will nuke New York and much of the east coast. Fear is the preferred template, as it produces an emotional and irrational reaction on the part of the public and forms consensus for illegal and immoral wars abroad and further police state actions at home.

Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.
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from Fake News, Fake Putin Nuclear Threat

Fauci and White House Officials Ordered to Testify in Social Media Censorship Case

There is an interesting development out of a case in Louisiana where a federal judge has ruled that Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House officials must testify in a case alleging a backchannel for censorship on social media. The complaint in Schmitt v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-1213 in the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana alleges that Facebook and Twitter coordinated their censorship programs with government officials. I have previously written about what some of us view as a “censorship by surrogate” system used on social media. This discovery could help understand some of those back channel contacts.

Judge Terry Doughty granted a request to require Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and others to sit under oath for up to seven hours each.

The First Amendment Rationale and Censorship Realities

As discussed earlier, social media companies have created the largest censorship system in history. For years, anti-free-speech figures have dismissed free speech objections to social media censorship by stressing that the First Amendment applies only to the government, not private companies. The distinction was always a dishonest effort to evade the implications of speech controls, whether implemented by the government or corporations.

The First Amendment was never the exclusive definition of free speech. Free speech is viewed by many of us as a human right; the First Amendment only deals with one source for limiting it. Free speech can be undermined by private corporations as well as government agencies. This threat is even greater when politicians openly use corporations to achieve indirectly what they cannot achieve directly.

We have recently seen evidence supporting the suspicions of a censorship by surrogate.

Evidence of Censorship by Surrogate

The recently disclosed exchange between defendant Carol Crawford, the CDC’s Chief of digital media, revealed a back channel with Twitter and other companies to censor “unapproved opinions” on social media. The “tricky” part may be due to the fact that, during that week of March 25, 2021, then CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying on such censorship before Congress and insisting that “we don’t have a censoring department.” It seems that any meeting on systemic censorship with the government would have to wait until after Dorsey denied that such systemic censorship existed.

The exchange is part of the evidence put forward by leading doctors who are alleging a systemic private-government effort to censor dissenting scientific or medical views. The lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was joined by experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University).

Bhattacharya objected this week to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents.Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.

The Great Barrington Declaration was not the only viewpoint deemed dangerous. Those who alleged that the virus may have begun in a lab in China were widely denounced and the views barred from being uttered on social media platforms. It was later learned that a number of leading experts raised this theory with Fauci and others early in the pandemic.

Fauci is accused of quickly scuttling such discussion, and critics point to his own alleged approval of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci and other leading experts now admit that the lab theory is a real possibility, even if they do not agree that it is the best explanation.  Social media companies like Facebook declared that the previously banned “conspiracy theory” would now be allowed to be discussed. Yet, some in the media continued to push the media to avoid discussing it. The New York Times science writer Apoorva Mandavilli declared the theory “racist” even as Fauci and others were saying that it is now considered a possible explanation.

Indeed, many of the views that the media attacked as conspiracy theories or debunked are now again being seriously considered. That includes claims of adverse responses to the vaccines, natural immunity protection, and the psychological costs from masking or isolation, particularly among children. None of these views are inviolate or beyond question — any more than the official accounts were at the time. Rather, they were systemically “disappeared” from social media – pushed to the far extremes of public and academic discourse.

While the CDC now admits that it made serious mistakes during the pandemic, it allegedly worked with companies to ban opposing views. Those who sought to raise these questions found their accounts suspended. There is every reason for the CDC to combat what it considers false information through its own postings and outreach programs. However, the involvement in censoring dissenting views is deeply troubling.

The “Tricky Part” and My Earlier Testimony

That brings us back to the “tricky” part. The request for the meeting was made on March 18, 2021. That week, Dorsey and other CEOs were to appear at a House hearing to discuss “misinformation” on social media and their “content modification” policies. I had just testified on private censorship in circumventing the First Amendment as a type of censorship by surrogate. Dorsey and the other CEOs were asked about my warning of a “little brother problem, a problem which private entities do for the government which it cannot legally do for itself.” Dorsey insisted that there was no such censorship office or effort.

The new lawsuit sheds new light on that testimony. It now appears that the CDC was actively feeding disapproved viewpoints to these companies, including a list of tweets that the CDC regarded as misinformation. In one email, Twitter senior manager for public policy Todd O’Boyle asked Crawford to help identify tweets to be censored and emphasized that the company was “looking forward to setting up regular chats.”

Facebook also received lists of “offensive” posts to be “dealt with.” Facebook trained government officials in using its “CrowdTangle” system used by “health departments [to] flag potential vaccine misinformation” to allow the company to review and possibly remove it. It added that “this is similar to how governments and fact-checkers use CrowdTangle ahead of elections….”

That was another eye-raising reference since these companies were criticized for killing the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election. The story was blocked as presumed “Russian disinformation,” a move that Dorsey admitted in the March hearing was a mistake. Now, a year later, the story is accepted not just as legitimate but potentially a serious threat for the Biden Administration.

Whatever the outcome of the litigation, the filing raises, again, whether our concept of state censorship and a state media are outmoded. The last few years have seen a striking uniformity in the barring of certain political and policy viewpoints, including dissenting medical or scientific views that could potentially protect lives. That occurred without any central ministry of information or coercive state laws. It was done by mutual agreement and shared values between the government and these companies.

Discovering the Truth on Corporate Censorship Systems

What was not known were the moving parts in what has been arguably the most successful censorship system in our history. To some extent, no direction was needed beyond the periodic announcements of figures like Fauci or the CDC, which were treated as gospel and not to be challenged. Even when Fauci was criticized for reversing himself on key issues like the wearing of masks or their efficacy, it did not change the concerted effort to suppress opposing views.

The “tricky” part for the public is how to deal with the circumvention of the First Amendment in a system of censorship by surrogates.

This and other cases could well help in understanding the scope of this problem and the possible options in protecting free speech on social media.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

from Fauci and White House Officials Ordered to Testify in Social Media Censorship Case