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Kremlin reacts to Trump’s stance on long-range strikes into Russia

RT | December 13, 2024

US President-elect Donald Trump’s statement regarding Ukraine’s use of Western long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia is completely in line with Moscow’s stance on the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

Peskov was commenting on Trump’s sharp criticism this week of President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Kiev to conduct long-range strikes on Russian territory with US-supplied missiles.

“The statement itself completely coincides with our position,” Peskov told reporters. “In this case we have the same vision of the reasons for the escalation.” He added that Trump’s thinking on the matter “appeals” to Russia.

“It is obvious that Trump understands what exactly is escalating the situation around the conflict,” he said.

At the same time, the Russian presidential spokesman warned against “jumping ahead of ourselves” and predicting the actions of the incoming US administration.

“Let’s wait until the moment when the president-elect takes his post in the Oval Office,” he advised.

In an interview with Time magazine, which named him the 2024 Person of the Year, Trump stated that he disagrees “very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia,” asking rhetorically: “Why are we doing that?”

Trump said that missile strikes deep into Russia’s internationally recognized territory are “just escalating this war and making it worse,” and described such attacks as a “very big mistake.”

The US president-elect’s comments came a day after the Russian Defense Ministry reported that Ukrainian forces had launched six US-supplied long-range ATACMS missiles towards an airfield in Rostov Region.

In response to Kiev’s attacks, Moscow hit a number of Ukraine’s key energy facilities overnight into Friday.

Russia has repeatedly warned that long-range strikes using foreign-made weapons would escalate the conflict and be seen as NATO’s direct participation in the hostilities.

In late November, Moscow used its new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile system for the first time, striking the Yuzhmash military plant in the Ukrainian city of Dnepr.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned at the time that if Ukraine’s attacks deep inside Russia continue, Moscow reserves the right “to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow the use of their weapons against our facilities.

December 13, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran Rejects Evidence-Free Claims It Hacked Trump’s Presidential Campaign

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 11.08.2024

The Islamic Republic has faced increasingly hostile rhetoric from the US deep state and Donald Trump’s president’s campaign over the past month, rejecting media claims about a supposed Iranian plot to assassinate him, and disregarding comments by Trump himself that Iran should be wiped “off the face of the Earth” if he was killed.

Iran has responded to the Trump campaign’s latest hostile claims, rejecting allegations that it was responsible for the recent hacking of the campaign’s internal communications, including a 271-page dossier on Trump running mate JD Vance’s “potential vulnerabilities.”

“We do not accord any credence to the news. The Iranian government has no intent or motive to interfere in the US presidential election,” Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations said in a statement.

“The US presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere,” the mission said, emphasizing that Iran’s cyber capabilities are “defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces.” The mission further recalled that Iran itself “has been a victim of various cyber offensive operations against the country’s infrastructures, public service centers and industries.”

In a statement Saturday, the Trump campaign blamed Iran for the hack and possible leak to media of sensitive internal materials, but did not provide any evidence of Tehran’s involvement.

“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our democratic process,” campaign spokesman Steve Cheung said.

Cheung also warned media receiving the hacked documents not to publish the materials. “Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want,” he said.

Later in the day, Trump took to social media to say that Microsoft had informed his campaign that Iran had purportedly hacked one of his campaign websites, but supposedly retrieved only “publicly available information.”

“Nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature,” Trump said. “Iran and others will stop at nothing, because our Government is Weak and Ineffective, but it won’t be for long,” he added, without elaborating.

US media began reporting on the receipt of the hacked campaign materials on July 22, about a week after Trump survived an assassination attempt, and was officially picked as the Republican nominee for president at the party’s convention in Milwaukee. The materials reportedly included an array of internal documents, including a report on JD Vance’s “potential vulnerabilities,” as well as a “variety of documents from [Trump’s] legal and court documents,” and “internal campaign discussions.”

The ‘Iranian hacking’ claims come in the wake of separate allegations by anonymous US intelligence sources in US media last month that Tehran was out to kill Trump. Those claims came just days after the attempt on his life and the spate of questions from the media, lawmakers and the public about the curious and unprofessional conduct of the Secret Service officers charged with protecting him. Instead of asking questions of his own about who in the US deep state may want him dead, Trump piled onto the Iran story. “If they do ‘assassinate President Trump’, which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth – If that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!” Trump wrote in a social media post on July 25.

The Trump campaign’s hacking allegations and the former president’s response to them are not without a sense of irony, given that Trump himself spent nearly the entirety of his first term in office fending off false claims that Russia had hacked the 2016 election to help bring him to power.

Similarly, while US officials, media and intelligence agencies regularly allege that foreign actors like Iran, Russia and China seek to meddle in or otherwise disrupt US elections, they haven’t been nearly as concerned about efforts by Washington’s allies, including Israel and Ukraine, to do the same thing, whether through the use of powerful lobbying groups in Washington, or attempts to dig up dirt on candidates hostile to their corrupt interests.

August 11, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Taiwan must pay for defense – Trump

RT | July 17, 2024

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has indicated he would be less willing to defend Taiwan from mainland China than his Democratic rival and incumbent US President Joe Biden.

It is “stupid” for Washington to offer protection to Taipei for free, Trump insisted in an interview with Bloomberg recorded on June 25 but published in full on Tuesday.

“I know the people very well, respect them greatly. They did take about 100% of our chip business. I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said.

The self-governed island of Taiwan, which China views as part of its territory, produces an estimated 90% of the world’s super-advanced semiconductor chips.

“I don’t think we are any different from an insurance policy,” the former president stressed. “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything” despite being “immensely wealthy,” he added.

According to Trump, protecting Taipei would also be problematic for Washington due to purely geographical reasons. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles (around 15,000km) away [from the US]. It’s 68 miles (just under 110km) away from China,” he explained.

Taiwanese Premier Cho Jung-tai responded to Trump’s comments by saying that the island of 23.5 million is dedicated to boosting its defenses and “willing to take on more responsibility” for its own security.

“Taiwan has steadily strengthened its defense budget and demonstrated its responsibility to the international community,” he said during a press conference on Wednesday.

Cho expressed the belief that “as long as we continue to demonstrate [these efforts], we will receive support from more countries.”

The premier thanked the US several times for paying attention to the issue of Taiwanese security, stressing that Taipei and Washington have “good relations” despite the lack of any formal ties.

Officially, the US accepts the One China policy, which states that Taiwan is an integral part of Chinese territory. However, Washington has been backing Taiwanese pro-independence forces and supplying weapons to the island. Biden has pledged on several occasions that America would defend Taiwan militarily if it were attacked from the mainland.

Beijing vigorously opposes contacts between Washington and Taipei, repeatedly calling the Taiwanese issue its “red line.” The Chinese authorities have said that they would prefer peaceful reunification with the island, but have warned that a military scenario cannot be ruled out.

A poll published earlier this year by the Taiwanese National Chengchi University showed that more than 80% of the island’s population was not seeking independence, but wanted to maintain the status quo with mainland China.

July 17, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | 2 Comments

Kremlin Saw Nothing ‘Particularly Good’ for Russia in Trump Presidency, But Dialogue Existed

Sputnik – 17.07.2024

MOSCOW – During the presidency of Donald Trump in the United States, nothing particularly good was done for Russia, new restrictions were introduced, but there was a dialogue between the two countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.

“Under Trump, nothing particularly good was done for Russia; on the contrary, more and more restrictions were introduced under Trump. But, nevertheless, there was a dialogue,” Peskov told reporters.

The topics of Russia and personally Russian President Vladimir Putin became an integral part of the US election campaign, Kremlin spokesman said.

“Traditionally, during the election campaign of the United States, especially in recent years, Russia and President Putin personally are an integral part of this election campaign. The topic of Putin and the topic of Russia is always on the agenda in election debates,” Peskov told reporters.

The Kremlin does not share the forecasts of Polish President Andrzej Duda that Russia’s victory in Ukraine could lead to a war against the West, Peskov said.
“No, we do not share such forecasts,” he told reporters.

July 17, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

RFK Jr apologizes for Trump leak

RT | July 16, 2024

US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has apologized after his son posted a video recording of a recent phone call with his Republican challenger, Donald Trump. During the call, Trump sought RFK Jr’s endorsement and said that he shared the independent’s concerns about vaccinating children.

An excerpt of the call, which took place on Sunday, was posted to X on Tuesday by Bobby Kennedy III, before it was deleted shortly afterwards. According to screenshots of the post, the younger Kennedy posted the video as he felt “these sorts of conversations should be had in public.”

In the video, Trump told the elder Kennedy that “clearly something’s wrong” with the US’ childhood vaccination program.

“I said I want to do small doses,” Trump told Kennedy Jr, who was listening on his phone’s speaker. Trump complained that children are given a “vaccination that’s like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not a ten-pound or twenty-pound baby. And then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change…and then you hear that doesn’t have an impact.”

“You and I talked about that a long time ago,” Trump added.

Kennedy Jr has railed against vaccinating children since before the Covid-19 pandemic, and Trump – whose administration funded the development of Covid vaccines – at one point publicly shared his views. “My theory,” he told reporters in 2007, “is the shots” are responsible for causing autism. “We’re giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.”

Within hours of the video being posted, Kennedy Jr apologized for the leak. “When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer,” he explained in a post on X. “I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted. I apologize to the president.”

Kennedy Jr did not speak during the section of the call posted online. After laying out his views on vaccines, Trump appeared to ask for the independent candidate’s endorsement, telling him “it would be so good for you.”

Trump met with Kennedy Jr the day after the phone call to discuss his possibly suspending his bid for the White House and joining the Republican’s campaign, Politico reported on Monday. The Kennedy campaign acknowledged that the meeting took place but said that the two discussed “national unity,” and that Kennedy Jr would remain in the race.

Recent polls show Kenendy Jr winning around 10% of the national vote in a hypothetical race that includes the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Justice for All Party’s Cornel West. These same polls show Trump leading President Joe Biden by between one and six points.

July 16, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

So Much for Lawfare? Trump Found Guilty and So What

By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 5, 2024

A New York jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with buying the silence of a porn star. He is the first American president to become a felon. The verdict is not unexpected from the deep blue Democratic enclave of Manhattan; the larger question is if lawfare will defeat Trump on November 5.

The jury found Trump faked records (hiding hush payments as “legal expenses”) to conceal the purpose of money given to the onetime attorney Michael Cohen. Trump was actually reimbursing Cohen for a $130,000 hush-money deal struck with porn star Stormy Daniels, to silence her account of an affair with Trump. The affair was in 2006, a decade before Trump was elected president. The falsification of business records took place in 2017, after Trump was already in the White House and thus could not have influenced the election. He was found guilty nonetheless.

For the jury to reach its unanimous decision of guilt on all 34 charges, the key was believing two witnesses over Trump.

There are only two people on earth who know if an affair actually took place between Stormy and Trump. Trump said no, Stormy said yes and the jury agreed with her, fully absent of any further actual evidence. Daniels benefitted greatly from her claims to having the affair, and violated a nondisclosure agreement she voluntarily signed and accepted money for, to achieve her goals. “Proving” the affair was the base upon which the rest of the case to find Trump guilty was made.

It is important to understand that having an affair and paying off someone to remain quiet about it are not crimes, even for a presidential candidate. Nonetheless, the prosecutor claimed in closing arguments Trump “hoodwinked the American voter” with a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. In addition to those who may have benefitted from the plan, “all roads lead to the man who benefited the most: Donald Trump,” Joshua Steinglass told the jury.

But the witness whose testimony was fully believed by the jury, and whose testimony will see Trump receive a criminal penalty when he is sentenced on July 11 (four days before the Republican National Convention!) is Michael Cohen. In the total absence of physical evidence and in the face of Trump’s claims to the contrary, Cohen served as connective tissue for many disparate elements. It was Cohen who claimed Trump masterminded the plan to hide the payments to Stormy. It was Cohen who said the 34 checks and invoices, only nine of which were signed by Trump himself, were not for legal expenses as they were labeled but were to reimburse Cohen for paying off Stormy. Stormy’s name appeared on none of the 34 documents, a fact which instead of exonerating Trump became under Michael Cohen’s testimony the linchpin of the conspiracy to falsify business records. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, told jurors the case hinged on the testimony of Michael Cohen, whom he called “the greatest liar of all time.”

Nearly incredibly (Trump’s defense team called Cohen a “walking reasonable doubt”) the jury believed Cohen based on nothing but his good word. This is despite Cohen having gone to jail for perjury, been caught lying to Congress, being disbarred, and actually telling a lie during his testimony at the instant trial. It remains difficult to understand how a jury could objectively grant so much credence to Cohen in the face of his record of lying to his own advantage. Every critical element of the case came down to whether his word could be trusted. That is what convicted Trump. You might have thought Robert De Niro was leading the deliberations.

There’s more. For jurors to have found Trump guilty of all 34 counts, they must have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt not only that Trump falsified or caused the falsification of business records “with intent to defraud” but also that he did so with the intent to commit or conceal another crime. That second element — the intent to commit or conceal another crime — elevates the charges to felonies and got around the statue of limitations that usually governs misdemeanors such as false business records. To reach this conclusion the jury had to also believe Cohen that Trump’s primary intent in all this was election influence and not, as Trump claimed, to hide the affair from his family.

There are many questions surrounding the jury’s verdict, and the fact pattern of the case itself, all of which should come out in Trump’s inevitable appeal. With that in mind, the actual legal conclusion of this case is far into the future, almost certainly after the November 5 election. But that begs the more important question: does any of this matter to voters? This is lawfare, not justice, after all. “The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people,” said Trump.

CNN, for example, concluded “Donald Trump, who built a mystique as the brash epitome of power, has never been more powerless to dictate his own fate. His reputation, future, and even perhaps the White House’s destiny, [was] placed in the hands of 12 citizens of his native New York City, proving that not even once-and-possibly future commanders in chief are above the law.”

So a victory for Democratic lawfare? Maybe not. Trump remains eligible to campaign for the presidency and serve if elected. None of the other lawfare shots is likely to conclude before November.

So does it matter? A majority of registered voters said a guilty verdict in Trump’s trial would make no difference in their vote in the 2024 presidential election. Across all registered voters, 67 percent said a guilty verdict would have no effect on their vote, while 17 percent say they would be less likely to vote for him and 15 percent say they would be more likely, according to the NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll released before the verdict. An ABC News poll earlier this month showed 80 percent of Trump’s supporters say they would stick with him even if he’s convicted of a felony in this case. Some say they would either reconsider their support (16 percent) or withdraw it (four percent.) Similar polls followed Trump’s defeat in New York courts over supposed real estate fraud.

And Biden knows it. A Biden campaign spokesman said Trump’s conviction showed “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”

As in other Third World countries where the judiciary is used to smite political opponents, let us hope the people can see the truth, as they still hold the final card to be played. The Deep State has tried from day one to destroy Donald Trump — Russian collusion and dossier hoax, pee tape accusation, Mueller hearing and report, Emoluments Clause, various calls for extra-legal interventions and coups, Alfa Bank hoax, Impeachment I, Impeachment II, demands Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment, MSM blackout of Hunter Biden laptop story, Twitter purge of conservative accounts, FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Letitia James prosecution “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” with no victims, no monetary loss but an effort to bankrupt Trump with civil judgment, Colorado attempt to remove Trump from state ballots over the 14th Amendment, and false statements Trump will “take revenge,” “demand retribution,” ensure a “bloodbath,” and “end democracy” (America’s last election if he wins.)

Trump meanwhile has characterized this trial, and the others, as unjust, rigged, lawfare pure and simple. He has kept the voters’ eyes not on who he is (his personal life has been baked-in to the vote long ago) but on what he represents to the electorate. As such, it is hard to see this guilty conviction, however unfair, as mattering too much come November.

June 8, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | 1 Comment

Syria on the brink of recovery as Qatar and Turkey change their policies

By Steven Sahiounie | Mideast Discourse | June 3, 2024

The Emir of Qatar, Tamim al Thani, recently said that he supports the street protests in Idlib, where people are protesting the dictatorial rule of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist group.
This marks a monumental change in policy for Qatar, and maybe the first step toward restoring diplomatic ties with Syria.

Beginning in 2011, and the Obama administration’s US-NATO war on Syria for regime change, Qatar has been a close and loyal ally to the US, and was used as a financial backer of the various terrorist groups brought into Turkey, and trucked across the border to Idlib.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber bin Mohammed bin Thani Al Thani, former Prime Minister of Qatar, and foreign minister until 2013, gave an interview in which he admitted Qatar provided the money to bankroll the terrorists in Syria as they attacked the Syrian people and state. He made it clear that the cash delivered was sanctioned, and administered by the US in Turkey. Qatar was not working alone, but under a strictly controlled partnership with the US government.

In 2017, President Trump shut down the CIA operation Timber Sycamore which ran the failed project to overthrow the Syrian government.

Qatar is now turning their back on the terrorists who occupy Idlib. Mohamed al-Julani is the leader of HTS. He is Syrian, raised in Saudi Arabia, fought with Al Qaeda in Iraq against the US, aligned with ISIS founder Baghdadi, came to Syria from Iraq to develop Jibhat al-Nusra, the Al Qaeda branch in Syria.

Once Jibhat al-Nusra became an outlawed terrorist group, Julani switched the name to HTS in order to preserve his support from Washington, DC. Even though the US has a $10 million bounty on his head issued by the US Treasury Department, he is safe and secure in Idlib, where American journalists have visited him for interviews, in which he has sported a suit and tie, wishing to present himself as a western-leaning terrorist that the US can count on.

When the Syrian Arab Army and the Russian military would fire a bullet towards the terrorists in Idlib, the US would denounce it as an attack on innocent civilians. This kept Julani safe and secure, and in charge of humanitarian aid coming across the border from Turkey. The aid was from the UN and various international charities. While the 3 million people living in Idlib are not all terrorists, all the aid passes through the hands of Julani and his henchmen. If you bow down to Julani, you get your share of rations, but if you have complained, you are denied. Those who are cut off from the aid can buy their supplies from Julani at his Hamra Shopping Mall, which he built in Idlib, where he sells all the surplus aid sent to Idlib.

The civilians in Idlib have taken to the streets protesting the rule of HTS. Many people have been arrested by HTS, some tortured, and others killed. The people are demanding that Julani leave.

They are asking for freedom and a fair administration. The various aid agencies have complained that HTS will not allow any free programs for women, such as learning employable skills. Women there are not allowed to seek employment, except in places which are only female. HTS rules with a strict form of Islamic law, which they interpret to their benefit.
Saudi Arabia and Syria have established full normal relations, with an exchange of ambassadors. At the Arab League Summit in May in Bahrain, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) met personally with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They also met at the previous Arab League Summit in Saudi Arabia.

MBS recently announced a humanitarian grant to the UN to repair 17 hospitals in Syria which had been damaged in the 7.8 earthquake which killed 10 thousand in Syria.

MBS also sent spare parts for the Syrian Air commercial planes, which had suffered under US sanctions and were prevented from maintaining their safety by Washington. Recently, the very first planes of Syrians began flying to Saudi Arabia for the first time in 12 years, to perform the Haj pilgrimage.

On May 30, the leader of Iraq said he hopes to announce a Turkey-Syria normalization soon. Turkey, like Qatar, had been supporting the various terrorist groups in Syria in cooperation with the US.

Turkey also has made a turn-around in their position, and has been looking for a way to exit Idlib and the other areas it occupies in Syria, in preparation of a re-set with Damascus.

The relationship between the US and Ankara has remained tense after the US partnered with the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF). Turkey considers the SDF as a branch of the PKK, the outlawed international terrorists group who has killed 30,000 people over three decades, while wanting to establish a Kurdish State.

The SDF are planning to have elections on June 11 in an effort to gain western support for a Kurdish State. Erdogan has stated Turkey will never allow this to happen.

If the SDF were to lay down their arms, they could repair their relationship with Damascus, and at the same time Turkey could then withdraw their occupation forces from Syria. With Turkey out of Syria, their normalization process could begin.

When the SDF have repaired their broken relationship with Damascus, and the Turkish threat no longer exists, then the US military can withdraw their 900 occupation force from Syria.

Recently, General Mazloum, the leader of the SDF, said that the problems between the Kurds and Damascus are internal problems, and cautioned against any foreign interference, especially from Turkey.

The situation is changing rapidly in Syria. The economy is collapsed, with the inflation rate over 100% in the last year due to crippling US sanctions. Because the US military is occupying the largest oil and gas field in Syria, this prevents the production of electricity for the national grid, and Syrians are living with three hours of electricity per day.

US sanctions prevent some of the most vital medicines from being imported, as western medical companies are fearful of running afoul of the US sanctions, and have produced a culture of over-compliance, which deprives Syrian citizens’ life-saving medicines and medical supplies.

The battlefields have been silent for years, and the silence grew into a status-quo, where the American and Turkish foreign policy prevented a resolution to the conflict that has destroyed lives and prompted the largest human migration in recent history as Syrians have sought work abroad.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all played significant roles assigned to them by the US State Department under the Obama administration. There is a light at the end of the tunnel with the reversal of policies toward Syria, and Qatar and Turkey are set to play major roles in the recovery process in Syria. These reversals are also significant as they mark a change in the relationship between the US and several regional countries. This is part of the ‘New Middle East’ that Washington called for, but the role the US played has left them the loser.

June 4, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Trump Trial and our Injustice System

By Ron Paul | June 3, 2024

I’ve long criticized our current US justice system – on all levels – as becoming much more about political justice than blind justice. The bizarre trial and conviction of former President Donald Trump last week on 34 felonies only reinforces my concerns.

The New York District Attorney, Soros-backed Alvin Bragg, has been notorious for downgrading felony charges against others to misdemeanor charges. According to a recent article in the Daily Mail, Bragg had downgraded 60 percent of felony cases to lesser charges, resulting in violent criminals being released on the streets and a crime wave across New York City.

But when it came to Donald Trump, Bragg lurched in the other direction, upgrading what normally would have been misdemeanor charges against anyone else to 34 felony charges against the former president. How can this sudden “about-face” be explained other than politics?

Jonathan Turley, who is no fan of Donald Trump, has been covering the trial closely and has found more than a little disturbing the exuberant celebrations of Trump’s conviction among the mainstream media and his political opponents. Recently, he wrote:

“The conviction of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan of 34 felonies produced citywide celebrations [which] extended to the media, where former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that it was ‘majestic day’ and ‘a day to celebrate.’ When I left the courthouse after watching the verdict come in, I was floored by the celebrations outside by both the public and some of the media.”

Regardless of one’s view of Donald Trump, it is a disturbing development in our society when justice is treated more like a football game where you root for your “team” rather than a way of preserving our freedom and liberty in an equal way for all.

The real goal of the trial was political. None other than George Soros’ son Alex let the cat out of the bag recently when he advised fellow Trump-haters how to take advantage of the trial result. He posted on Twitter after the verdict, “Democrats should refer to Trump as a convicted felon at every opportunity. Repetition is the key to a successful message and we want people to wrestle with the notion of hiring a convicted felon for the most important job in the country!”

It was not about justice in any way. It was all about being able to call the likely Republican presidential nominee a “felon” so as to undermine his support among voters. In other words, election interference.

The market has a way of prevailing, however. The repeated attempts at using “lawfare” to remove Trump from the political scene have all backfired and actually have served to make the former president even more popular among voters. Immediately after Trump’s conviction on the 34 charges he began sending out fundraising appeals based on his “persecution” by the state of New York. As of this writing, he has, according to press reports, raised over $200 million for his campaign.

The politicization of justice is not limited to the Democratic Party. The wind sown by political opponents of Donald Trump may well become the whirlwind they reap when their own political opponents are in positions of power. When that is the case, we all lose.

Copyright © 2024 The Ron Paul Institute

June 3, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump has plan to end Ukraine conflict – Orban

RT | March 11, 2024

Donald Trump intends to end the Ukraine conflict, if reelected as US president, and has a “detailed plan” to do so, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told local media, after meeting the presumed Republican nominee.

The former US leader repeatedly claimed on his campaign trail that, if he had remained in the White House for a second term, there would be no hostilities between Moscow and Kiev. If voted back in, he promises to end the conflict “in 24 hours” by applying pressure on stakeholders.

Orban, who spoke with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday, did not explain how exactly the American would do that, but said that cutting the flow of US aid was a crucial part of the plan.

”If the US will not provide the money, Europeans on their own will not be able to finance this war, and then the war will end,” Orban said in an interview with M1 broadcaster on Sunday.

During his presidency, Trump had shown himself to be “a man of peace,” the Hungarian leader claimed. That stance puts him in alignment with Hungary, unlike the administration of US President Joe Biden and many members of the EU, he added.

”The American Democratic government and the leadership of the EU, as well as the leadership of the largest EU member states are pro-war governments. Donald Trump is pro-peace, Hungary is pro-peace. At the bottom of everything lies this difference,” Orban declared.

The Kremlin declined to weigh in on the remarks, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying on Monday that Orban’s account of Trump’s intentions was too vague for any specific commentary.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky previously expressed skepticism about Trump’s ability to deliver on the promise. He said if the plan was feasible, the American politician should share it with the public, or at least with Kiev. The Ukrainian government claims that a “just peace” requires a military victory over Russia and that it would agree to nothing short of that.

Moscow has said that its strategic goals in the military operation against Kiev will be achieved one way or another. The US and its allies, who continue to arm Ukraine, cannot change that outcome and are only prolonging the suffering of the country’s people, Russian officials have stated.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

If I Interviewed Trump About Covid…

By Debbie Lerman | Brownstone Institute | August 22, 2023

It’s too late to propose questions to Tucker Carlson for his interview with Donald Trump, scheduled to air on Wednesday, August 23, 2023, because that interview has already been recorded.

In a fantasy world, here’s what I wish Carlson would ask:

  • Before Covid, your Presidency was going pretty well. You had a good shot at winning another term. Would you agree that the pandemic pretty much reversed that?
  • Actually, it wasn’t just the pandemic. It was your government’s response to the pandemic. The Democrats won by claiming you had botched the whole thing. They said hundreds of thousands of people died because you didn’t lock down soon enough and refused to wear a mask. They said the US should have behaved more like China than like Sweden. Do you agree?
  • A lot of Republicans now think you should have run the pandemic more like DeSantis did in Florida (even though they might not have said it at the time). It seems to me that before March 10th, 2020, you were planning to run it that way. And you were listening to your public health advisors from the CDC and NIH. Is that correct?
  • What was shocking to me was when you seemed to pivot 180 degrees in just a few days, from saying that it would not be worse than a bad flu season, to announcing that we would throw everything we had at it, locking down the whole country, and investing trillions of dollars in keeping the economy shut down. It was especially surprising that you agreed to the economic shutdown. What made you change your mind?
  • I’m going to be more specific on this, because a lot of information has come out suggesting that you changed your mind because your National Security Council, and related military and intelligence operatives, told you the virus was a potential bioweapon that leaked from a Chinese lab. Is that what you were told? Did they tell you millions of people would die and you would be responsible, if you didn’t follow their plan?
  • In a Time Magazine article you were quoted saying “I can’t tell you that” when you were asked about why you thought the virus came from a lab in Wuhan. You said “I’m not allowed to tell you that.” Who was not allowing you to speak openly about the possibility that it was a lab leak? Can you speak about it openly now?
  • Can you tell me who made the decision in the middle of March to invoke the Stafford Act in all 50 states at the same time (which had never been done before), and to put FEMA in charge as the Lead Federal Agency for pandemic response, when FEMA had no warning and no experience in this area at all? Who decided to remove HHS from the role of Lead Federal Agency, which it was supposed to have according to every single pandemic planning document before Covid? Did you make those decisions or did the NSC or other military or intelligence advisors tell you to take those steps?
  • When you brought Scott Atlas in, he advised you to open the country back up immediately. It seems like you really wanted someone in the White House with an opinion that was different from the one you were hearing in favor of lockdowns. But, for some reason, there was enormous resistance to bringing any experts in. There was even supposed to be a meeting at the end of March (long before Atlas arrived) with top epidemiologists that mysteriously got canceled. Why did you have so little control over who advised you about the pandemic? Why didn’t you follow the advice of Scott Atlas if, as he reported in his book, you pretty much agreed with him that the lockdowns were disastrous?
  • Most people think Fauci was in charge of the pandemic response. But in his book, Dr. Atlas reports that you said the main problem wasn’t Fauci, it was Deborah Birx. Is that because Birx was in charge of coordinating the NSC/DHS response, and Fauci was just a front to make it seem like a public health response?
  • A few months into the lockdowns, you sounded as if you had lost control of the situation, like in the tweet from May 18th 2020 when you wrote in all caps: REOPEN OUR COUNTRY! You’d think if anyone could have ended the lockdowns, it would have been the President. But you seemed to feel helpless to reverse what was happening. Is that because there had been a sort of silent coup of the NSC and Department and Homeland Security?
  • If the answers to all the previous questions are classified, that would confirm that the response to Covid involved secret machinations of national security entities. Can you at least confirm that much?
  • Some have suggested that the entire Covid response was launched as a way to make you look bad and make sure you did not get a second term. Do you agree? If so, who do you think was behind that plan?
  • Were you aware of the massive censorship and propaganda that were happening to make people accept the lockdowns and vaccines? Do you feel like you were part of that campaign to convince people? Or do you feel like you were somehow forced to participate in it?
  • Were you in touch with leaders of other allied countries to coordinate the response to the pandemic? It’s pretty astonishing how all our closest allies ended up doing exactly the same thing at the same time. If you were not the one who was coordinating with foreign leaders, were you aware of that type of coordination going on – especially with the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Germany, and other European allies?

And, of course, the most important question of all: Would you ever do such a thing again?

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The Questions Crying Out for Answers

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | August 22, 2023

The conspiracy of silence is obvious. Both political parties like it. The media likes it too because it was a main participant. Academia is compromised as much as the social media companies. Government bureaucrats want the entire fiasco to be a thing of the past, except to the extent it can serve as a template for the future. That leaves only independent voices to raise ever louder questions of the entire establishment.

We are of course speaking about the calamity commonly called Covid that robbed us all of liberty and rights, and kicked off this national and global crisis. All the major national problems the US faces today – inflation, learning loss, ill-health, cultural confusion, demographic disruption, professional instability, tech censorship, widespread substance abuse, and the loss of all trust in the commanding heights including the whole of government and every connected institution – trace to the lockdowns that began that fateful day of March 16, 2020 (oddly, the day following the Ides of March, when Caesar was killed).

It was a decision for the ages. Shouldn’t we know more about what led to it and why all of this happened? The person who wants all questions to go away the most is the person who hopes to reinhabit the White House, namely Donald Trump. Whether or not you support his return to power, the reality is that he presided over the largest and fastest loss of liberty in the history of this country.

No other president can compare, not Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Carter, or Obama. His administration, particularly in the last year, embarked on a new age of censorship, administrative state control over all our lives, astonishing levels of spending and redistribution, and massive invasion of our communities and homes. It attacked small business on a scale we’ve never seen, and seriously compromised even our basic rights to associate. The Biden administration was more of the same with new mandates.

Incredibly, Trump has somehow avoided questions about this. His supporters don’t want it discussed. This is likely why he is skipping the debate: fear that DeSantis will call him out. Neither do his opponents on the Democratic side want this discussed because they fully approve of what he did. His opponents in the primary are compromised too, particularly Mike Pence who led the charge within the Trump administration for lockdowns, mass purchases of PPE from China, nationwide distribution and deployment of killer ventilators, and being the biggest champion of Fauci/Birx, which we know because he wrote this in his book.

There are a whole host of questions about those fateful days leading to lockdowns. We are not getting answers because no one is asking the questions. All the people who are in a position to end the silence have a strong interest in perpetuating it for as long as possible, in hopes that mass amnesia takes hold and grants them all amnesty. Fauci is the model here: in his deposition in Missouri v. Biden, he testified that he could hardly remember anything. His hope is that everyone else will follow.

We have a small window in which to get answers during the primary season. Perhaps there will be a breakout at some point. There simply must be. Until there is some honesty and truth about what happened and why, we risk perpetuating all the crises of our times. And let’s be clear: there is not one credible study from anywhere in the world that demonstrates that lockdowns, and everything associated with them, were worth the astronomical cost. Indeed, every bit of evidence shows that the entire Covid response was a disaster. It will be repeated if there is no accountability and radical reform.

We know about the “germ games” of Event 201 and Crimson Contagion. The plans for locking down were already in the works. Covid was the excuse but did they seriously believe that this was the killer bioweapon for which they had prepared? We have documented proof that everyone knew that this virus was not massively deadly. We knew this from January 2020. If that wasn’t enough, we have data from the Diamond Princess that suggested that the infection fatality rate was nowhere near the 3-4 percent that the World Health Organization predicted.

What unleashed all this mania to end liberty as we know it? Tucker Carlson visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago on March 7, 2020. His message to Trump was to take the coronavirus seriously because it could be a bioweapon export from China. Tucker had heard this from a trusted source within the intelligence community whom he has yet to name. Tucker has since said that he very much regrets his role.

Trump listened and yet seemed unpersuaded. On March 9th, Trump tweeted out his intuition that this bug was flu-like and did not require extraordinary efforts by government. Two days later, however, Trump evidently changed his mind. “I am fully prepared to use the full power of the Federal Government to deal with our current challenge of the CoronaVirus,” he wrote in a complete about-face.

Whatever changed his mind likely happened on March 10, 2020. What was that? To whom did he speak and what did they say? By chance, was he told that this was indeed a bioweapon from China and yet the pharmaceutical companies were working on the antidote and all he needed to do was lock down until it arrived and then he could be the hero? Was that his thinking?

If that was not his thinking, what precisely did he hope to achieve by locking down the entire country by executive edict? How did he imagine that he was personally going to stop the spread of a virus in the US that was already everywhere on both coasts and likely had been for the prior six months? Did it ever occur to him to call up some independent experts on infectious disease? If not, why not?

Two days later, he ordered a stop to all flights to and from Europe, the UK, and Australia. He announced this in a televised address that evening. When he was giving this address – which looked like a hostage video – did it ever occur to Trump that he was embarking on an exercise of government power never before seen? Millions of families and travel plans were shredded and panic ensued throughout the world. What led him to believe that it was within his legal rights as president to do that?

On March 13, Trump’s own Health and Human Services issued a document on the pandemic plans. It was marked confidential but came to be released months later. Incredibly, this policy document not only declared a national emergency but made it very clear that the rule-making power for pandemic management would rest with the National Security Council. That’s the intelligence community. The public health agencies of the CDC and NIH were reduced in power to deal with implementation and operations but they were not in charge.

Did Trump know what was happening around him? Did anyone come to him and tell him of this large document, which, to this day, is the only blueprint we have for what government was trying to do with its Covid response? Had he ever seen this before publishing? If so, did it not strike him as odd that the National Security Council would be given primacy over the public health agencies themselves?

That weekend, March 14-15, 2020, every report we have says that Trump huddled in the White House with son-in-law Jared Kushner, two of Jared’s college buddies, Anthony Fauci, Deborah Birx, and Mike Pence. Whom else did he consult on this weekend? At this point, national security had already been given primacy in policy, so surely the military and intelligence community were represented at the White House. Who and what did they say?

According to Kushner, the decisive voice in putting together the lockdown plans was Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb, who had previously headed Trump’s own FDA. He is said to have been on the phone with Trump. According to Kushner, Gottlieb told him: “They should go a little bit further than you are comfortable with… When you feel like you are doing more than you should, that is a sign that you are doing them right.”

How much did Gottlieb’s opinion matter to Trump and did Trump ever consider perhaps that Gottlieb, as the voice of Pfizer, might have had a conflict of interest? What else does Trump remember about this weekend?

All of this really matters because on Monday, March 16, Trump held a national press conference together with Fauci and Birx. At this event, they handed out a PDF to the press which in turn was issued to every public health agency in the country. It read in part: “Bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

That sounds like a federal edict to close churches, schools, and essentially put the entire country under house arrest. Indeed, the restrictions on human association also pertained to houses, which in many states were restricted in the number of people who could gather inside them. Only one state, South Dakota, refused to go along.

During the press conference, Trump waffled a bit on whether he was shutting everything down but Fauci stepped in to clarify that, yes, the Trump administration was in fact shutting down the whole country, Bill of Rights be damned. 

At the very moment when Fauci was reading these sentences from the microphone, Trump was standing to his side but was suddenly distracted by someone or something in the audience. He waved and smiled, almost as if he either did not want to hear what Fauci was saying or did not care. To whom was he waving and why?

Did Trump even know about the edict that was being issued that day, that he was effectively using his power as president to close churches and impose universal quarantine on the population? If so, how was this consistent with his promise to make America great again?

The next day, the Trump team got busy on hospital protocols, which amounted to the mass production and distribution of ventilators plus giving out the deadly drug Remdesivir. Who was it that told Trump that intubating people was the best way to deal with this virus? Why did they believe that, given that people who are intubated are very likely to die either from the procedure or the secondary bacterial infection that likely followed?

Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to force companies to make more ventilators, which they did. Today these are mostly scrap metal, of course, and most hospitals and doctors abandoned the practice once it became clear that it was killing thousands. Why did Trump seize on this whole idea to begin with? Who was advising him and why did it not occur to him to call any one of thousands of people with hands-on specializations in respiratory viruses for a second opinion?

As late as April 30, 2020, Trump was still pushing lockdowns as the solution. He even criticized Sweden for not locking down. As the summer approached and many people violated lockdown orders to protest the George Floyd killing, it seems like Trump began to wonder if he had been hoodwinked.

If Fauci and Birx tricked him into wrecking his presidency and the country, why not just admit that? If he swears that he was right to greenlight lockdowns, why should voters trust that he would not do it again? What does he believe the limits to government power are?

Even as late as July 20, 2020, Trump was still claiming that he would “defeat” the virus, this time with facemasks. “It is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance,” he wrote.

Moving to the fall, Trump wisely allowed himself to be schooled in medical realities by Scott Atlas, who arrived at the White House to talk some sense into the crazy people who were running the show. Trump seems to have been convinced. But meanwhile, the whole country was in ruins with millions of businesses closed, the kids not in school, and the whole population in a state of trauma at the loss of liberty.

There were two months remaining before the November 2020 election. During his campaign stops, he dropped the lockdowns, called for openings, but largely left the subject off the stump speech entirely, as if nothing had ever happened. Going into the election, Covid was largely off the agenda but for the media and Democrats who urged further lockdowns, which they implemented once in power.

Trump should explain what was going through his head during these months. Did he know what was actually going on in the country, how many businesses had been boarded up, how many kids denied in-person education, how many churches were closed, how many families had been broken up with travel restrictions? Further, did he worry that his spending and money-printing policies, plus trillions in stimulus payments, would fuel inflation after he left office?

We still cannot get a fix on how it came to be that the shots were widely mandated on people who never needed them. Nor is there an honest discussion of the resulting job losses, injuries, and deaths that resulted. Did these mandates come about simply because too many Americans thought better than allowing a stranger to inject them with a mystery potion ginned up in a lab and deployed ten times faster than any vaccine in history? Was there an industrial interest in forcing compliance? If so, that’s next-level corruption.

As for masking that all science knew for certain would be ineffective for stopping the spread of a respiratory pathogen, were they merely symbols imposed to scare the public? This is truly dystopian.

This is just the start of the unanswered questions. The Norfolk Group has raised many more.

Some independent journalists with access to the candidates, and this includes even Biden but certainly also every Republican who expects to earn votes, must get up to speed on the details of this calamity. It is simply unthinkable that this country, born of the ideal of freedom, would have undergone a quiet coup against liberty and the Constitution, and yet there be no serious discussion of what happened, much less reform efforts to restore what we lost.

All of this is more important than January 6, election doubting, or tribal partisan bickering. As curious as these topics are, they are distractions from that which should interest us all: the status of freedom in America and the enforcement of the Bill of Rights. Every day, the censorship continues and every day the plots against the common good are ongoing. The kids are suffering as never before. The economic crisis still surrounds us and can get much worse. All the agencies that did this enjoy more funding than ever before.

We are supposed to live in an age of information. It takes herculean efforts to bring about silence on the most important questions of our time. But thus far, all the major institutions are managing to pull it off. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute. He is also Senior Economics Columnist for Epoch Times, author of 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

August 23, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Audio of Classified War Plans Show Trump Refused Decades-Long Push to Attack Iran

By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 27.06.2023

A veteran of the US state apparatus told Sputnik that the most significant part of the story about former US President Donald Trump holding onto still-classified plans for war with Iran after he left office is that Trump refused to give in to pressure to launch such a conflict, which Washington has sought for decades.

US media has obtained the audio of an alleged conversation between Trump and his aides in which prosecutors said he described showing them files he knew were still classified.

The conversation, which allegedly occurred in the summer of 2021, was previously reported based on a partial transcript cited in a criminal complaint against Trump that was filed in a federal court earlier this month.

In the two-minute-long audio clip, Trump can seemingly be heard referencing top secret plans regarding an attack against Iran that he says were prepared by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has become a sharp critic of Trump after the former president’s term ended.

“These are the papers,” Trump is heard saying. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

“See as president I could have declassified it,” Trump continues as others in the room laugh, adding: “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

Trump faces 37 charges related to the classified files, which the FBI seized in a raid last August at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Many of the charges each carry a potential 20-year prison sentence, if Trump were to be convicted.

Larry Johnson, a retired CIA intelligence officer and US State Department official, told Sputnik that Trump’s administration was by no means the first to consider a war against Iran, and that the focus on the war plans conceals a greater truth: that Trump didn’t want to launch such an attack.

“The war plans against Iran have existed since 1980, since the mullahs took power. And those plans exist and have been revised and updated over time. So I wouldn’t read too much into his discussing one plan.”

“I think the key point is that Trump did not act on these plans,” Johnson asserted. “He resisted the pressure from advisors who wanted to start a war with Iran, but he refused. He refused to go along with them. And that’s I think that’s really part of the anger directed at him as well.”

However, Johnson said there was actually a greater chance of war with Iran under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

“During the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States was more actively engaged in supporting intelligence operations that were leading to the assassination of Iranian scientists. They were backing this terrorist group, the MEK, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq. So, Trump is really sort of a problem for the defense establishment in Washington, DC, who were eager for that conflict. Trump tried to avoid conflict. He was always looking to cut a deal as opposed to go to war.”

Johnson predicted that if Trump manages to dodge the charges against him and win the 2024 US election, for which he has already declared his candidacy, that Trump would “cut a deal” with Tehran.

“He would find a way to de-escalate the tensions. But unfortunately, you’ve got a war party. There’s not just one political party. It’s bipartisan. We’ve got Republicans and Democrats alike who are promoting conflict, insisting on conflict. [US President Joe] Biden is not keen upon actually getting a real agreement with these guys. Trump was. I think Trump genuinely believed in and tried to promote those kinds of agreements,” the former CIA officer said.

June 27, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

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