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Hungary blames US for European decline

RT | February 23, 2023

The policies of the administration of US President Joe Biden have become a key factor in Europe’s decline amid the Ukraine conflict, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed, as reported by local media.

According to the newspaper Magyar Nemzet, Orban made the remarks at a closed meeting with members of the ruling right-wing Fidesz-KDNP coalition on Wednesday. During the session, he reportedly identified the main opponents of the alliance, which include “pro-war international interest groups, which consist of the Biden administration, pro-war Brussels bureaucrats, and pro-war politicians.”

The report says Orban claimed that “Europe has weakened over the past year because the Biden administration is asserting its interests in Brussels without limits at the expense of European interests.”

The Hungarian prime minister is said to have added that the response to the Ukraine conflict and “the tsunami of sanctions” have taken a toll on Europe’s economy, while the US, which has enough cheap energy, has steered clear of these challenges.

Orban went on to say that Europe has lost its independence, and economic and military power in just one year, insisting that Hungary must protect its own interests to weather the storm, as quoted by the newspaper.

To achieve this, Budapest must “defend the pro-peace position against the Biden administration and Brussels,” protect the Hungarian economy by fighting inflation, and strengthen its military, he reportedly said.

The prime minister is also said to have stated that Budapest does not support anyone in the Ukraine conflict, because “there can be no winner in this war.” Moscow cannot win because of the assistance the West is providing to Kiev, while Russia is a nuclear power, and “a nuclear power cannot be cornered,” he reportedly explained.

Hungary has on numerous occasions urged Russia and Ukraine to immediately agree to a ceasefire, while repeatedly expressing opposition to the sanctions the West has imposed on Moscow. On Sunday, Orban claimed that the restrictions have failed to end the hostilities, but have instead damaged Europe’s economy.

February 23, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Biden & Nuland Are Leading US Into Nuclear Armageddon, Former FBI Agent Says

Sputnik – 22.02.2023

WASHINGTON – US President Joe Biden and senior White House and State Department officials are leading the United States and the world into nuclear annihilation, former FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley told Sputnik.

Russian President Vladimir Putin officially announced Moscow was pulling out of its long-running talks with the United States for a new START treaty during his Tuesday address to the Federal Assembly. He also accused the United States of developing new types of nuclear weapons and considering new nuclear weapons tests.

“The neocons’ hell-bent plans for ‘full spectrum dominance’ have been a long time in the making, having even been publicly announced decades ago, but now… we’ve truly reached the eve of destruction,” Rowley, a Time magazine Whistleblower of the Year, said.

In addition to Biden, senior State Department official Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and White House security aide Jake Sullivan, are leading oblivious Americans right into “nuclear Armageddon,” Rowley added.

The United States was far closer to catastrophic global war than the American people realized, Rowley said.
“The situation is just so 11th hour and 59 minutes’ bad,” she warned.

Earlier in the day, Biden described Russia’s decision as a “big mistake” as the presidents of Romania, Slovakia and Poland greeted him at the Bucharest Nine meeting. This came after Biden earlier in the week delivered a fiery speech in Poland intended to rally NATO to back Ukraine against Russia.

New START, in effect since February 5, 2011, is the last remaining legally binding arms agreement between the United States and Russia – the two countries with the largest nuclear capabilities.

Under the treaty, the United States and Russia have been required to reduce their nuclear arsenal to a total of 700 missiles, 800 launchers, and 1,550 deployed warheads.

February 22, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Details of Clinton aide’s bizarre ‘suicide’ revealed

RT | February 22, 2023

Top Clinton adviser Mark Middleton was found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree with his chest blown out by a shotgun blast last May, in an alleged suicide, but there was no gun found anywhere at the scene, according to a Perry County, Arkansas sheriff’s report made public by the Daily Mail on Tuesday.

Written by Perry County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson, who said he was called to the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas when an employee found Middleton’s vehicle abandoned on the grounds, the report reveals that a gun case and three boxes of 12 gauge buckshot were found in the black BMW SUV – but no gun.

While early reports of his death claimed the businessman hanged himself with the help of a “makeshift gallows,” lugging a table onto the farm owned by animal charity Heifer International some 30 miles from his house, the police report does not mention a table.

Instead, Lawson describes glimpsing “what at first appeared to be a man sitting near a tree,” which gradually resolved to include “a rope of some type going from the tree limb to the male.” The “rope” was determined to be an extension cord.

Sheriff Scott Montgomery admitted at the time he had no idea why Middleton would have “picked that location to commit suicide,” telling Radar Online that “to our knowledge, he had never been there before.” Nor did the businessman leave a suicide note, Montgomery said.

Still, the sheriff initially stated the cause of death was suicide. “He found a tree and he pulled a table over there, and he got on that table, and he took an extension cord and put it around a limb, put it around his neck and he shot himself in the chest with a shotgun.”

Middleton’s family also insists he killed himself, arguing he was suffering from depression. They successfully sued to stop the release of photos depicting the scene of death.

However, one former business associate told Radar Online it was “physically impossible for Mark to have killed himself,” insisting “He knows nothing about guns! He hated guns; he couldn’t have tied a noose to save his life.”

Middleton is known to have signed sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein into the Clinton White House on at least seven of the 17 occasions he was known to have visited, and also flew on the pedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ private plane.

Update, Feb. 23:

Police change story on Clinton aide ‘suicide’

A shotgun was found near the body of former Bill Clinton aide Mark Middleton, who was discovered hanging from a tree at the Heifer Ranch last May with his chest blasted out, a report seen by the Daily Mail on Thursday claims. This contradicts an earlier report seen by the paper which said no firearm was found at the scene.

According to the Mail, Perry County Sergeant Keenan Carter, said a Stoeger 12-gauge coach shotgun, was discovered 30 feet from Middleton’s body. They also say that the former Clinton aide had texted his wife Rhea shortly before pulling the trigger to say he had found “the perfect place for a nap in the sun” and reassure her she was “a great Mom and wife.”

According to Sergeant Carter’s report, Middleton “pulled the trigger on the firearm casing [sic] it to discharge and strike him in the chest and then he fell from the bench causing the extension cord to become tight cutting off his breathing.”

The gun was found so far from the body “due to recoil from the discharge and the height and angle of the ground,” Carter explained, insisting there was no “evidence to indicate that there was anyone present with Mr. Middleton at this scene or any evidence that there was any type of struggle and/or foul play.”

In the original report, Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson writes that he and an employee of the property owner discovered Middleton’s dead body hanging from a tree by an electrical cord. Searching Middleton’s vehicle turned up boxes of ammo and a gun case, but no gun. The initial report did not mention any gun found at the scene.

The Arkansas state medical examiner concluded that Middleton died by “suicide” from a “contact shotgun wound of chest and hanging” in his autopsy report, the first page of which was published by the Daily Mail on Thursday. The nine-page report reportedly mentions Middleton’s “history of depression.”

Middleton, a special adviser to Bill Clinton during his first term as US president, infamously signed sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein into the Clinton White House at least seven of the 17 times he was known to have visited and flew with Clinton on the pedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ private plane.

February 22, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Brzezinski’s Confession

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 22, 2023

While American interventionists remain stone-cold silent about the way that the Pentagon, operating through its old Cold War dinosaur NATO, knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, it’s instructive to remind ourselves that this wasn’t the first time that the Pentagon provoked Russia into invading another country.

Let’s go back to 1979, when the Pentagon was still waging its old Cold War racket. That was the year that U.S. officials devised a successful plot to provoke the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. 

Now, before you exclaim, “Conspiracy theory, Jacob!” which is the standard official response whenever someone criticizes dark-side activities on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, permit me to disclose something important: There is a confession. 

Yes, you read that last part correctly. There is a confession on the part of the national-security establishment that that is precisely what they did. Even for those who are loath to ever acknowledge that the national-security establishment engages in evil, dark-side activity, a confession is rather persuasive evidence that takes matters out of the realm of “conspiracy theory” and places them squarely in the realm of an actual conspiracy.

The confessor was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter’s national-security advisor in 1979. He confessed that the U.S. knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally provoked the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. 

Mind you, Brzezinski didn’t confess until 1998, some 20 years after the Soviet invasion. Therefore, it stands to reason that if anyone raised the possibility in 1979 that the U.S. provoked the invasion, the standard response would have been “Conspiracy theory!” This is especially true given that U.S. officials were playing the innocent after the invasion. With the same degree of indignation and outrage they are displaying with respect to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they castigated and condemned the Russians for their act of aggression against Afghanistan. They even canceled U.S. participation in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Russia, as a way to punish the Russians for invading Afghanistan.

In 1998, Brzezinski gave an interview to a French newspaper in which he confessed all. You can read the interview here. (For a full context of Brzezinski’s confession, see an article at Aljazeera entitled “Afghanistan: The Soviet Union’s Vietnam.”) He stated that U.S. officials began arming extremist Muslim elements in Afghanistan who were attempting to oust the pro-Russia regime that was controlling Afghanistan. By doing this, the hope was that the Soviets would invade Afghanistan to put down the anti-Russia Jihadists. 

The planned worked. The Soviets invaded, and U.S. officials were ecstatic. Brzezinski proudly stated that the plan had now given the Soviets their own Vietnam. What he was referring to was the 10-year-plus U.S. intervention in Vietnam, which had sacrificed more than 58,000 American soldiers for nothing. U.S. officials were now celebrating the fact that thousands of Russians soldiers were also now going to get sacrificed for nothing. 

Just as U.S. officials had hoped, over the next 10 years more than 14,000 Soviet soldiers were killed. (Some estimates go as high as 26,000). Another 53,753 were wounded. 

Needless to say, the deaths of Russian soldiers made U.S. officials extremely happy because the deaths were degrading the Soviet regime.

What kind of regime does this sort of thing? What kind of regime provokes another regime into invading a country knowing that this will bring massive death and destruction on both sides? What kind of regime celebrates and revels in the fact that foreign soldiers, all of whom have families or friends back home, are being killed and wounded?

I’ll tell you what kind of regime engages in those sorts of things: An evil regime. There is no better way to describe it. 

When Brzezinski was asked about the potential consequences of arming extremist Jihadist groups in Afghanistan, he replied, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

February 22, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

West unwilling to cooperate on Nord Stream probe: Russian diplomat

Press TV – February 22, 2023

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations has once again accused the United States of being behind the explosions on Nord stream gas pipelines in September last year, saying the national investigations of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden into the sabotage are aimed at protecting Washington.

Vasily Nebenzia made the remarks at a UN Security Council session in New York on Tuesday, stressing that Western countries were showing no intention of cooperating with Moscow in an inquiry into the blasts.

“We have strong reasons to doubt the effectiveness, transparency, and impartiality of investigations that are being carried out under some national jurisdictions,” Nebenzia said, adding, “We do not see our partners being eager to cooperate.”

The senior diplomat also noted that “the so-called investigations by Scandinavian states and Germany into the incident not only lack transparency but are aimed at covering up the tracks and exculpating the big American brother.”

Nebenzia said Russia was not allowed to partake in the probe, and all its requests “are ignored with arrogance.”

Nebenzia further explained that Germany, Denmark, and Sweden had ignored Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s communications last October regarding the participation of Russian energy giant Gazprom and other relevant agencies in the investigations.

He said, “Since we talk about a crime that was committed by means of an explosive device, which makes it subject to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings of 15 December 1997, we expect that all states that have to do with the incident, namely the US, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, will fulfill their obligations under this document.”

“But leadership of these states do not show any political will or rather do not have any,” the Russian diplomat said.

On September 26, 2022, a series of explosions took place on the pipelines, knocking out three of the four strings of the Nord Stream network, off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea.

Two of the pipelines, known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, known as Nord Stream 2, was not yet operational.

Following the blasts, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden conducted investigations into the incident. The preliminary results of a joint probe by Sweden and Denmark showed that the explosions had been “intentional sabotage,” but responsibility was not assigned to any party.

American journalist Seymour Hersh recently claimed that the bombing of the pipelines had been directly ordered by US President Joe Biden and carried out by the CIA with the help of the US Navy.

The White House rejected the report as “utterly false and complete fiction.”

February 22, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ex-minister charged for revealing state secrets

RT | February 22, 2023

Denmark’s former Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen has been charged with divulging state secrets, after claiming Danish military intelligence worked with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on a number of foreign officials, among them ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Frederiksen confirmed the charges in a Facebook post on Tuesday, saying he had been indicted for the “disclosure or passing on of state secrets.” He insisted on his innocence, however, claiming the allegations are motivated by politics

“I deny having exceeded the limits of my far-reaching freedom of speech as a politician, and I have not revealed alleged state secrets. Period,” he said, adding “I will demand a jury trial, as this is a political case.”

Danish officials declined to cite Frederiksen by name in discussing the charges, with prosecutor Jakob Berger Nielsen saying the case “includes highly classified information that cannot be presented openly.”

While the details of the state secrets indictment remain under wraps, after facing preliminary charges last year Frederiksen suggested the case was linked to public comments he made regarding joint surveillance missions involving Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service and the NSA. In multiple media interviews in 2020 and 2021, Frederiksen said the Danish agency helped the NSA eavesdrop on high-level officials in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden – including Germany’s then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and several of her political rivals.

Though the NSA’s part in the spying was revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden – who leaked a massive trove of classified documents while working as a private contractor in 2013 – Denmark’s role only came to light in subsequent media reports, which cited a confidential Danish intelligence review carried out following the Snowden revelations.

Frederiksen served as defense minister between 2016 and 2019 and later entered politics under Denmark’s Liberal Party. He retired from public life last year, however, meaning his parliamentary immunity has lapsed and he can now be prosecuted.

No trial date has been set for the former official, who faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted.

February 22, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

UK government funded unit that created demonetization blacklist of news publishers

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | February 21, 2023

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office is funding London-based think tank the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which creates a blacklist of websites it thinks advertisers should avoid that are mostly right-of-center news websites.

GDI states that its objective is to “disrupt their advertising-funded business models by encouraging brands, suppliers and ad tech vendors to blocklist them.”

The GDI is also funded by the US State Department.

Recently, the think tank published a list of 10 “least risky” and “riskiest” news websites in the US. The New York Times, Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, and AP News were among the list of “least risky.” Among the 10 “riskiest” websites were the New York Post, Newsmax, the American Spectator, and The Federalist.

GDI also wants anything that challenges scientific consensus on vaccines and climate change to be blocked. For instance it is disinformation to describe the COVID-19 vaccines as “experimental.”

The GDI is on a mission to “defund online sources of disinformation.”

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Evidence of US guilt for Nord Stream ‘more than a smoking gun’ – Russia

RT | February 21, 2023

The destruction of Nord Stream pipelines was an act of international terrorism and needs to be addressed to avoid “chaos” on the high seas, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday. Russia has accused Germany, Sweden and Denmark of a cover-up to shield the US, and said it would only trust a UN investigation.

The two pipelines carrying Russian natural gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea were damaged by a series of blasts in September 2022. While Moscow has stopped short of openly accusing the US of carrying out the bombing, journalist Seymour Hersh did just that in an article published earlier this month.

Nebenzia referred to Hersh’s article and statements by multiple US officials threatening the pipeline – from president Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to “godmother of the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine,” Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. He also brought up the infamous tweet by former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski and an alleged text by Liz Truss, the UK prime minister at the time – all suggesting the US and its allies had the motive, as well as means and opportunity, to destroy Nord Stream.

“We’re not going to do ‘highly likely’ here,” said Nebenzia, referring to the British accusations against Russia in the Security Council chamber in 2018. The publicly available evidence is “more than a smoking gun” that Hollywood is so fond of, but all Moscow wants is an independent international investigation into the claims in Hersh’s article, the Russian diplomat added.

The attack on Nord Stream involved explosives and qualifies as international terrorism under a convention signed in 1997, Nebenzia noted. Unless its perpetrators are found and brought to justice, the attack may well usher in an epoch when transnational undersea infrastructure becomes a legitimate target, which would cause “chaos and terrible damage to all of humanity,” he added.

According to Nebenzia, Russia does not trust the investigations currently conducted by Sweden, Denmark and Germany, as they all refused to share their findings or outright ignored Moscow’s inquiries. “It is quite clear,” he said, that they are “covering up for their American big brother.” If Western countries block Russia’s request for a UN investigation, that will “only shore up our suspicion,” he added.

Before Nebenzia addressed the Security Council, former US diplomat Rosemary DiCarlo – currently the under-secretary-general for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs – argued the world body was “not in position to verify or confirm” anything, urging everyone to “show restraint and avoid accusations that could escalate the already heightened tensions in the region.”

The Security Council also heard from professor Jeffrey Sachs and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who both testified to Hersh’s bona fides. While the US government rejected Hersh’s narrative as false, it “did not offer any information contradicting Hersh’s account, and did not offer any alternative explanation,” said Sachs. He also called Nuland’s comments about Nord Stream “not at all appropriate in the face of international terrorism.”

February 21, 2023 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

State Department globalists responsible for Ukraine coup – Trump

RT | February 21, 2023

Former US president Donald Trump has blamed “warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists” at the State Department for pushing Ukraine toward conflict. Trump, who is running for office in 2024, promised to rid Washington of “warmongers, frauds and failures” if elected again.

In a campaign video released on Tuesday, Trump warned that “World War III has never been closer than it is right now,” and laid the blame on “all the warmongers and ‘America Last’ globalists in the Deep State, the Pentagon, the State Department and the national security industrial complex.”

The former president singled out Victoria Nuland, the US Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs, whom he said was “obsessed with pushing Ukraine towards NATO.”

Trump declared that Nuland and “others just like her” at the State Department supported the 2014 “uprisings” in Ukraine that saw democratically-elected former president Viktor Yanukovych replaced with the pro-Western Petro Poroshenko, who then began a campaign of military repression against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Nuland met with rioters in Kiev in 2014, where she promised pro-Western politicians a billion dollar loan guarantee program and military assistance. In an infamous leaked call between Nuland and the US’s then-ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, the pair discussed selecting a leader to replace Yanukovych from a list of opposition politicians.

Trump claimed, as he has on several occasions over the last year, that the conflict in Ukraine would have “never happened if I was your president.”

“I was the only president who rejected the catastrophic advice of many of Washington’s generals, bureaucrats and so-called diplomats who only know how to get us into conflicts,” he continued, adding that “we need to get rid of the corrupt globalist establishment that has botched every major foreign policy decision for decades.”

“The State Department, Pentagon, and national security establishment will be a very different place by the end of my administration,” Trump said, claiming that “the warmongers, frauds and failures in the senior ranks of our government will all be gone.”

Opposition to America’s “forever wars” was a core component of Trump’s 2016 platform. Although Trump was the first president in decades not to involve the US in a new foreign conflict, he was criticized by his base for briefly hiring noted war-hawk John Bolton as his national security adviser, and for authorizing missile strikes on Syria.

While President Joe Biden has pledged to indefinitely supply Kiev with weapons, Trump has claimed that he would call Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin if elected and “have a deal made in 24 hours.”

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

How Long Did Americans Support America’s Longest War?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 21, 2023

In an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times, Alexander J. Moytyl, a professor of political science at Rutgers, asks, “How long will Russians tolerate Putin’s costly war?” After pointing out the many negative consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moytyl makes a pointed observation: “And yet, almost a year after the invasion of Ukraine, Russians continue to support strongman Putin and the war.” Moytyl just cannot understand how this can be.

Well, maybe if we look inward, which Moytyl certainly does not do in his op-ed, we can figure out the answer. 

Let’s consider, for example, the U.S. government’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. There were lots of negative aspects of those two wars, beginning with the fact the U.S. invasions of both countries were illegal, both under International law and U.S. law.

It is undisputed that neither Afghanistan nor Iraq ever attacked the United States. That means that the U.S. was the aggressor in both wars.

Yes, I know, defenders of the Afghanistan invasion point to the fact that Osama bin Laden, who was accused of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, was supposedly living in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, under International law, the U.S. had no legitimate legal authority to invade Afghanistan to arrest or kill him. 

It is also undisputed that there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States. Therefore, when President Bush demanded that the Afghan government extradite bin Laden to the U.S., under international law Afghanistan had the legitimate authority to say no. Under international law, Bush had no legitimate authority to invade the country simply because Afghanistan rejected his unconditional extradition demand. 

It is also undisputed that neither the Iraqi people nor the Iraqi government had any connection to the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. invasion of that country was a pure war of aggression, one based on the flagrant and fraudulent pretense of uncovering non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” 

It is also undisputed that there was no declaration of war issued by Congress against either Afghanistan or Iraq, as required by the U.S. Constitution. That made both invasions illegal under our form of constitutional government. 

It is impossible to know exactly how many people in Afghanistan and Iraq were tortured, injured, or killed by U.S. forces in those two wars of aggression. That’s because, early on, the Pentagon announced that it would not keep track of enemy dead. That’s because the lives of Afghans and Iraqis didn’t count. 

However, according to the Watson Institute at Brown University, “Nearly 20 years after the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan, the cost of its global war on terror stands at $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths.”

That is a lot of money. And that is a lot of dead people. I would estimate that 99 percent of those dead people had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. 

Yet, many Americans supported their government throughout all this mayhem, just as the Russian people are standing with their government during its current mayhem. In fact, I remember church ministers all across the United States beseeching their congregations for years to “support the troops, especially those in harm’s way in Afghanistan and Iraq.” I also recall how we were all encouraged to “thank the troops for their service” whenever we saw them in uniform. I also remember all those critical things that were said against those of us who opposed these wars of aggression and resulting occupations. 

Supporting their government in time of war is what most citizens do in every nation, including Russia, the United States, and Germany. Most citizens are forced into the state’s educational system at a very young age, where their minds are molded to blindly come to the support of their regime during wartime. Children are inculcated with mindsets of deference to authority and blind trust in their political, military, and intelligence officials. That mindset continues well into adulthood. In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I recall many people, including commentators in the mainstream press, exclaiming, “We need to trust our officials. They have access to information that we don’t have.”

So, what befuddles me is why Alexander J. Moytyl is befuddled by the overwhelming support by Russian citizens of their regime during wartime. If American citizens blindly support their regime during wartime, why would anyone expect that Russian citizens would respond differently?

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Kiev trip ‘a slap in the face’ to America – US Congressman

RT | February 21, 2023

US President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine was “a slap in the face to every American,” Republican Rep. Paul Gosar declared on Monday. Already under fire over the hundreds of billions of dollars he’s handed Kiev, Biden is now being savaged by Republicans for his handling of a disastrous chemical accident on US soil.

Biden made an unannounced visit to Kiev on Monday, where he told Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that his administration was readying a $500 million military aid package for his forces. Biden’s administration has handed Zelensky almost $30 billion in military aid since last February, and has set aside more than $110 billion for continued military and economic assistance to Ukraine.

“Joe Biden visiting Ukraine is a slap in the face to every American, especially the people of East Palestine, Ohio,” Gosar tweeted. “Ukraine is not our friend, and Russia is not our enemy.”

Gosar has bitterly opposed Biden’s bankrolling of Ukraine, and sponsored a resolution earlier this month that would halt US aid to Kiev. The resolution, signed by 11 members of the anti-interventionist ‘Freedom Caucus’, calls on Russia and Ukraine to reach a peace agreement.

Republicans from the Freedom Caucus and beyond have hammered Biden for his handling of the East Palestine chemical spill. A train carrying vinyl chloride and other hazardous chemicals derailed in this small Ohio town earlier this month, and a controlled burn of these substances blanketed the town in a cloud of black smoke.

Biden has not visited East Palestine, nor has he approved a disaster declaration. Biden’s transportation secretary blamed the derailment on former President Donald Trump, and although Biden has sent Environmental Protection Agency and Health and Human Services officials to the location to declare it safe, residents have complained of alarming physical symptoms as well as dead pets, livestock and fish.

“That was the biggest slap in the face,” East Palestine Mayor Trent Conway said of Biden’s trip to Kiev. “That tells you right now he doesn’t care about us. He can send every agency he wants to, but I found out this morning that he was in Ukraine giving millions of dollars away to people over there and not to us…on President’s Day in our country, so I’m furious,” he told Fox News.

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Russia issues warning about future of Ukraine conflict

RT | February 21, 2023

Western elites “intend” to transform the conflict in Ukraine from a regional to a global one, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Moscow perceives this as an existential threat and will react accordingly, he said.

The goal of those in power in the US and other Western nations is to “end us once and for all,” the Russian leader stated during a keynote speech on Tuesday. They are using Ukraine as a “battering ram” against Russia and don’t care how many people will die as a result, he said.

“They intend to turn a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation. That is how we understand things and will react accordingly. Because the issue here is the existence of our state,” Putin said.

The Ukraine conflict was unleashed by the West when it supported an armed coup in Kiev in 2014, the Russian president noted. Western powers then poured resources into the new regime, even as it used the military against its own population and became increasingly nationalist and extreme.

Western elites “don’t care who they are betting on in their fight against us, their fight against Russia. They just want them to go to war,” Putin observed. The current Ukrainian government is “alien” to the people it governs and serves Western interests, he believes.

“Nobody among them counts the loss of human lives and tragedies, because trillions of dollars are at stake, an opportunity to keep robbing everyone under the cover of rhetoric of democracy and freedoms,” the Russian leader warned.

He said that ultimately Russia’s opponents must realize that the country cannot be defeated on the battlefield. That is why they target it in different ways, trying to undermine its unity via historical revisionism and attacks on Russian traditional values, Putin explained.

The remarks were part of the president’s address to the Federal Assembly, as both chambers of the Russian parliament are called, as well to as senior Russian officials and public figures.

February 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment