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As NATO's disastrous proxy war in Ukraine continues to sputter, many in DC seem to be losing interest in "Project Ukraine." Instead of admitting the folly of interventionism, however, they are looking for bigger fish to fry. Like...war with China! Also today: Syria back in the Arab League - what does it mean? Finally...Elon Musk is in hot water and you might be surprised why.
 By Ron Paul NATO’s post-Cold War history is that of an organization far past its “sell-by” date. Desperate for a mission after the end of the Warsaw Pact, NATO in the late 1990s decided that it would become the muscle behind the militarization of “human rights” under the Clinton Administration. Gone was the “threat of global communism” which was used to justify NATO’s 40-year run, so NATO re-imagined itself as a band of armed Atlanticist superheroes. Wherever there was an “injustice” (as defined by Washington’s neocons), NATO was ready with guns and bombs. The US military-industrial complex could not have been happier. All the Beltway think tanks they lavishly fund finally hit on a sure winner to keep the money pipeline flowing. It was always about money, not security. The test run for NATO as human rights superheroes was Yugoslavia in 1999. To everybody but NATO and its neocon handlers in DC and many European capitals, it was a horrific, unjustified disaster. Seventy-eight days of bombing a country that did not threaten NATO left many hundreds of civilians dead, the infrastructure destroyed, and a legacy of uranium-tipped ammunition to poison the landscape for generations to come. Just last week tennis legend Novak Djokovic recalled what it felt like to flee his grandfather’s home in the middle of the night as NATO bombs fell and destroyed it. What a horror! Then NATO got behind the overthrow of the Gaddafi government in Libya. The corporate press regurgitated the neocon lies that bombing the country, killing its people, and overthrowing its government would solve all of Libya’s human rights problems. As could be predicted, NATO bombs did not solve Libya’s problems but made everything worse. Chaos, civil war, terrorism, slave markets, crushing poverty – no wonder Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the neocons don’t want to talk about Libya these days. After a series of failures longer than we have space for here, DC-controlled NATO in 2014 decided to go all-in and target Russia itself for “regime change.” First step was overthrowing the democratically elected Ukrainian government, which Victoria Nuland and the rest of the neocons took care of. Next was the eight years of massive NATO military assistance to Ukraine’s coup government with the intent of fighting Russia. Finally, it was the 2022 rejection of Russia’s request to negotiate a European security agreement that would prevent NATO armies circling its border. Despite the mainstream media and US government propaganda, NATO has been about as successful in Ukraine as it was in Libya. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been flushed away, with massive corruption documented by journalists like Seymour Hersh and others. The only difference this time is that NATO’s target – Russia – has nuclear weapons and views this proxy war as vital to its very existence. So now despite its legacy of failure, NATO has decided to start a conflict with China, perhaps to take attention off its disaster in Ukraine. Last week NATO announced that it will open its first-ever Asia office in Japan. What next, NATO membership for Taiwan? Will Taiwan willingly serve as NATO’s newest “Ukraine” – sacrificing itself to China in the name of blundering NATO’s seemingly endless appetite for conflict? We can only hope that America will elect a president in 2024 who will finally end NATO’s deadly world tour. 
Today's financial hardships stem first, from the Fed's unconstitutional existence, and second from the Fed's decade of near 0% interest rates and QE. Those disastrous policies created a decade's worth of bad and uneconomic investments. Rising interest rates under Powell are the cure to those very bad decisions. But the "hangover" is that all of the bad investments piled up since 2008 become exposed.
Of course, there are calls to turn the printing presses back on, which are calls to perpetuate the original problem and make it even worse. The Fed has no business fixing interest rates in any direction, or counterfeiting even a single dollar, but the big blunder was 0% rates and QE. That made today's hardships inevitable. 
According to a watchdog group, the Internal Revenue Service may be competing to become a new branch of the military: since 2020 the tax collector bureau has spent ten million dollars on weapons, including rifles, shotguns and ballistic shields. Feel safer? Also today, Biden's squirrelly new mortgage tax and foreign aid to teach make-up arts to transgender people overseas.
Whodunit? Two drones appear to have targeted the Kremlin just hours ago, raising the possibility that US-proxy Ukraine was trying to kill the Russian president. With Russian calls for a devastating response, who could be behind this escalation? Ukraine? Russian false-flag? US covert ops? Also today: Biden sends 1,500 active-duty US troops to the border...but what is their mission? Finally: RFK makes his policy toward Assange very clear.
Washington's old guard can't help itself: when it comes to throwing endless streams of our money down a foreign boondoggle they just never refuse. Even if they promise to do so. Speaker Kevin McCarthy is backing off his "no blank check" promise when it comes to Ukraine - even after $100 billion has already been authorized! Also today: House to move to make Iran sanctions permanent and...the Navy's secret recruitment weapon!
By Chris Rossini
Ever since 1913, Americans have been suffering under an immoral and unconstitutional monetary system. There are two guilty parties, each with their own interests. First, is the politicians, who love to spend money that they do not have. How wonderful it is for them to have the Federal Reserve just create the money out-of-thin-air to finance all of their destructive, uneconomic and unconstitutional ideas. Money for endless welfare schemes? ... Print it! Endless wars? ... Print it! "Stimulus" checks? ... Print it! Money for Ukraine? ... Print it! Why didn't anyone else ever think of this? What a scheme! Well, it has been thought of (and has been done) plenty of times; and every single time it leads to economic disaster. The politicians start to believe that they are invincible with super-human abilities. They start to convince themselves that they can eliminate poverty, re-make entire civilizations across the world, micromanage everyone else's lives ... and yes ... even control the climate! They delude themselves, and with a little bit of media control and censorship, the masses of people start to become deluded too. So it's easy to see why politicians want this "system." But what's in it for The Fed? What's their angle? Well, the Fed is just a cartel for the big banks. Since the Fed can print money for the government, it also can print money to bailout the big banks. Not all banks, but the BIG banks. So the BIG banks can be as reckless as they want with their financial dealings, and the Fed will print the money to bail them out. In a free market, bad business goes bankrupt. In a Fed market, bad business is rewarded with bailouts. So those are the two major beneficiaries of the Federal Reserve "System" -- The politicians and the BIG banks. Politicians have unlimited money to finance all of their craziness, and the BIG Banks (that should go bankrupt) are kept in business with bailouts. Is it any wonder why this type of "system" must end in economic tragedy? Is it any wonder why freedom in the "land of the free" has been crushed into a fine powder? Is it any wonder why Americans have virtually no say in what government does? The American people have no financial leverage. Americans can't withhold their money from government craziness! We can't say "NO, I refuse to finance your delusions." They just print the money! And because they print the money, we pay, whether we like it or not. The money that we have is now worth less. Its value is diluted. Prices skyrocket. Our standard of living drops like a rock. First slowly....then rapidly. There is a way out of this. It's called sound money. No counterfeiting by anyone. The U.S. Constitution prohibits counterfeiting, but the U.S. Constitution is ignored. The Fed (and commercial banks) have a special privilege to counterfeit. The moment that privilege was granted, was the moment the "land of the free," would face its biggest test yet. It's only a matter of time before politicians with unlimited money will take every last freedom you have. It has only been a little over 100 years, and look at where we are... The upside is that politicians and bankers are not omnipotent and not omniscient; despite what they believe about themselves. Remember, they wanted to have "vaccine passports" to function in society, and for everyone to repeatedly get injections in order to "stay up to date." That's the type of craziness that unlimited money produces. But did they get the "vaccine passports" and endless injections? No. The truth will out. And the truth is, this rotten financial system is unviable. People usually change when the pain is unbearable. Ultimately, the politicians and the Fed will make it unbearable.
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon believes "the system is very, very sound" after his company takes over First Republic Bank in the second largest bank failure in US history. Should we believe him? And...how much is this "deal" going to cost US taxpayers? Also today: Ukraine Defense Contact Group is a scam. Finally - though the House voted down a bill to get out of Somalia, it's actually good news.
By Ron Paul
Last week the House passed legislation increasing the debt ceiling. The bill was supported by all but four Republicans. For some Republicans, this was the first time they had ever voted for a debt ceiling increase. Perhaps the reason they did so this time was because the legislation also promised to reduce federal spending by $4.5 trillion over the next decade. Most of those spending reductions are achieved by rolling back Fiscal Year spending to 2022 levels and then limiting increases in spending to one percent for the next ten years. The bill also returns unspent COVID relief money to the US Treasury and eliminates President Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs. Perhaps the most significant part of the bill is the REINS Act. This legislation requires congressional approval of any new federal regulation that will have an impact of more than $100 million, will have significant harmful impact on the economy, or will increase consumer prices. Even though the bill increases spending and debt, there are reasons a supporter of limited government might vote for it. However even in the unlikely event that this bill is passed in the Senate and signed into law by President Biden, it is unlikely that the one percent spending cap would remain in force for the full ten years. Historically, spending caps imposed as part of a balanced budget or debt ceiling deal do not last for more than one or two Congressional terms. This is because every spending program is “protected” by members of Congress whose constituents and/or donors benefit from the program. This process already occurred with this bill before it was even voted on, as Speaker McCarthy had to remove provisions limiting ethanol subsidies to appease several farm state Republicans. Surely lobbyists for the military industrial complex are already plotting to use hysteria over China, Putin, Iran, or one of the US’s many other designed enemies to justify greater than one percent increase in military spending. The only reason the US government is able to run up such huge deficits without experiencing a complete economic meltdown is the dollar’s world reserve currency status. But the growing de-dollarization movement-fueled by the US government’s fiscal recklessness and hyper-interventionist foreign policy should be a wake-up call to Congress. Sadly, few in DC seem to be paying attention. The government’s fiscal situation will soon worsen, as both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds will likely be bankrupt within the next decade, forcing Congress to find an additional $116 trillion to fully fund them. The looming economic crisis is a symptom of our moral and philosophic crisis. Too many Americans have bought into the lie that government can and should provide them with economic and physical safety while promoting “global democracy” abroad. Therefore, the most important step in the liberty movement now is convincing more people to apply the same moral code to theft and murder committed by government as they apply to those same crimes by private citizens. The government, at the very least, should be held to the same moral codes as the people it governs. Ensuring that government follows the same nonaggression principle as law-abiding citizens is the key to a society of freedom, peace, and prosperity. |
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