Maria Katchmar was 7 when the troops came to her farm.
The soldiers entered her home in Cherkasy Oblast — a region of Ukraine along the Dnieper River — and immediately began to break everything. Windows and doors. Paintings and linens. Even pots for cooking. Her father was ordered to drown his livestock. When he refused, he was sent to Siberia — and the Soviet troops confiscated the animals anyway.
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Joe Biden, the military-industrial-congressional complex, State Department neocons, the War Party comprised of all Democrats and many corporate Republicans, and Western globalist elites have the United States and NATO in a Ukrainian proxy war against Russia. The warmongers are obsessed with destroying Russia. To achieve it, they are determined to fight to the last Ukrainian.
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There’s lots not to like about the war in Ukraine, and people should be allowed to argue the case without being demonized by those who have a different opinion. But the more those who urge caution are demonized as pro-Putin by the pro-war people, the more they, and probably their audience, become suspicious, or should become suspicious, of the pro-war faction.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signaled a willingness to consider negotiations with Russia after it was reported Washington has urged Ukraine to ease up on its hard line against negotiations with Russia on Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Speaking ahead of his video address to the global climate summit held in Egypt, Zelenskyy laid out several conditions for returning to the negotiating table with Moscow, including respecting Ukraine’s pre-war borders, offering reparations for the damage done to Kyiv and prosecuting those who have committed war crimes, according to the WSJ. The U.S. urged Kyiv to maintain a public appearance of openness to negotiating with Russia, even while acknowledging Russian leaders will not agree to withdrawal from occupied areas of Ukraine, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
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The U.S. has troops on the ground conducting inspections and tracking the final destination of U.S.-provided weapons, a defense official confirmed Monday.
A contingent under the Defense attache and the Office of Defense Cooperation teams operating out of the embassy in Kyiv have initiated what are called “end-use” inspections to ensure some of the $17 billion in weapons the U.S. has provided to Ukraine are accounted for, the official, who spoke on a the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said at a press briefing Monday. The personnel monitor weapons stocks “whenever and wherever the security conditions allow” inside of Ukraine, far from the front lines where Ukrainian troops remain heavily reliant on U.S.-provided arms assistance.
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The European Union (EU) announced Thursday that it will be outlawing the sale of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035 even though EU countries are already struggling to fight soaring electricity costs.
EU member states and the European Commission agreed to force all new cars and vans registered in the EU to be electric by 2035, according to an EU press release. Europe is currently embroiled in an energy crisis and is preparing for blackouts as electricity prices remain more than seven times higher than they were in 2020, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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On Tuesday, a coalition of progressive Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives announced that it would be withdrawing its letter to Joe Biden calling for the White House to lead peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
As reported by Axios, the move comes just one day after the group of 30 lawmakers first released the letter, with signatories including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.). The sudden about-face appeared to be the result of backlash against the lawmakers, who suggested that negotiations between Russia and Ukraine might be the only option left for bringing about an end to the war that has now been raging for eight months.
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On Monday, a group of 30 progressive members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to the Biden White House, asking that Joe Biden consider negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a means for bringing about a peaceful resolution to the war in Ukraine.
The New York Post reports that the letter’s signatories include Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Yvette Clark (D-N.Y.). The letter asks Biden to consider beginning a “proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.”
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It’s a distinct possibility, though there are too many variables to predict it, that if the Republicans take the House there will be some sort of conclusion to the war in Ukraine.
This column has called for just that. Not in a shameful betrayal of the freedom-loving people who’ve fought by our side, like, for example, what the Democrats did to the South Vietnamese after an honorable peace was reached in Paris, but rather in a way that preserves our interests and keeps Joe Biden’s much-ballyhooed nuclear Armageddon away.
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American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten is in Ukraine this week to meet with Ukrainian students and teachers and “to offer solidarity and support” to Ukrainian students and teachers “amid heinous attacks on Democracy,” according to the AFT website.
The Ukrainian teachers union, the Trade Union of Education and Science Workers, invited the AFT reportedly, “to bear witness and call attention to the effects on children, families and educators and the impact of Russia’s attacks on democracy and democratic institutions.”
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Maybe Vladimir Putin SHOULD get the Nobel Peace Prize after all.
To be sure, Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine is an affront to humanity, given his targeting of civilians. Russia even fired upon medical and humanitarian aid convoys and is using a nuclear power plant as a shield for his military operations.
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Pentagon officials are concerned that U.S. ammunition stocks donated to Ukraine have severely depleted U.S. stocks, weakening U.S. readiness in the event of a conflict, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The Biden administration has drawn much of the over $13 billion in weapons systems and accompanying ammunition the U.S. has provided to Ukraine from existing arsenals, according to the WSJ. While the Department of Defense has declined to disclose the number of ammunition rounds in storage at the beginning of 2022, before the war in Ukraine began, it has taken few steps to replenish depleting stocks, sparking worries that the U.S. may not have the ammunition it needs for its own protection.
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The price of U.S. natural gas futures reached its highest point since 2008 as gas demand continues to spike amid the worldwide energy crisis and the passage of the Democrats’ climate bill, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Natural gas futures for November, December and January each surpassed $10 per million British Thermal Units (BTUs) on Monday, reaching highs that have not been seen since 2008, according to the WSJ. High prices are largely due to the strong demand for gas in Europe amid uncertainty surrounding Russian natural gas flows, the WSJ reported; furthermore, the Democrats’ new climate bill includes regulations that will hike expenses for natural gas producers.
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Per capita murder rates in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis are outpacing Ukraine’s recorded civilian death rate from Russia’s invasion.
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Newly discovered emails prove beyond all doubt that the “true purpose” of Hunter Biden’s lucrative deal with a Ukrainian energy company was for Hunter to get “high-ranking US officials” to visit Ukraine and persuade the nation’s leaders to “close down” all criminal “cases/pursuits against” the firm’s primary owner, a notoriously corrupt oligarch with ties to Russia.
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Five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war is now reduced to one of attrition. The current dirty, grinding slog is fought mostly with artillery and rockets. Everything from Ukraine’s shopping centers to apartment buildings—and the civilians in them—are Russian targets.
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Russia and Ukraine reached an agreement Friday to resume safe passage of grain as fears of global food insecurity spread.
Turkey and the United Nations (UN) mediated negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, hostile after months of brutal fighting, to reopen black sea ports from the Russian blockade, The Wall Street Journal reported. Disruption of Ukrainian grain exports has exacerbated a worldwide food shortage, and UN leaders have warned that soaring fertilizer and food prices will reach crisis levels in the next two years.
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President Joe Biden’s attempts to reduce the cause of high gas prices to the war in Ukraine initially, and corporate greed more recently, are disingenuous.
On day one this president clearly stated his opposition to oil and gas production and development. The president’s words and even more so his actions, have serious impacts on the costs of commodities, including oil.
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White House economic adviser Brian Deese on Thursday told CNN that high gas prices were a necessary inconvenience to preserve the “future of the liberal world order,” amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The average price of gas exceeded $5 per gallon for the first time in U.S. history in early June.
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For a long time now, Sweden has had a history of being impressively ahead of the rest of the West in a number of areas: appeasing Nazis, remaining neutral during the Cold War, exporting porn, legalizing euthanasia, serving meatballs at furniture emporia, capitulating to Islam, putting legitimate Ukrainian refugees into asylum centers where they’re raped by bogus Muslim refugees, etc.
It should not come as a surprise, then, that Sweden was also ahead of the curve on the pronoun front. Way ahead.
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America’s geriatric senators increasingly represent a threat to themselves and to others. Take Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for example. She has filed paperwork to run again in 2024, despite the fact she turns 90 next year and associates say she can’t hold a coherent conversation or remember the names of close colleagues.
This is a woman who has the power to vote to send Americans to war. Just this past spring, she helped pass legislation that sent billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, a country currently at war with a nuclear power. America’s senators have enormous power to harm the country. They have access not just to firearms but to the world’s most powerful military force and even nuclear weapons.
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The U.S. depends on Russia to supply key minerals used in technology and defense industries, but the Russia-Ukraine war and Western economic punishment of Russia have suppressed supply lines, according to a report from Defense News.
Russia and Ukraine supply a large percentage of minerals like neon and aluminum that the U.S. uses in civilian and military applications, Deborah Rosenblum, a Pentagon acting spokesperson who works on industrial base policy, told Defense News. Sanctions levied on Russian companies and a war-related drop in mineral production have put these supply chains in jeopardy, she said.
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Food prices in the U.S. may get worse in the coming months as European Union countries predict a dismal wheat harvest on top of the loss in Ukraine’s wheat exports, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The EU may produce 5% less wheat than 2021 because of dry weather, agriculture consulting firm Strategie Grains told the WSJ.
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Staffers in President Joe Biden’s White House are struggling to control public messaging and gain ground in the media amid internal dysfunction, according to a CNN report.
Tensions have arisen between older staffers and younger aides over media strategies, and staff believe they are unable to improve Biden’s public image or change their strategy, according to CNN. Staffers described conflict and frustration within the White House over their inability to put forward an effective communications strategy, CNN reported, citing multiple anonymous staff members.
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Most Americans believe President Joe Biden’s policies are the leading contributor to inflation in the U.S., a recent poll found.
The poll, conducted by the Trafalgar Group and the Convention of States Action from May 25 – 29, asked respondents to choose whether they believed Biden’s policies and spending or the war between Russia and Ukraine contributed more to inflation. The survey found that 59.9% of respondents blamed Biden’s policies and spending for inflation, compared to 31.6% who blamed the war between Russia and Ukraine and 8.5% who were unsure.
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The Russian Ministry of Defense announced the buildup of forces in the nation’s Western Military District as a response to the mounting NATO forces near its borders.
“Twelve military units and subunits will be formed in the Western Military District by the end of the year,” said Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who highlighted the Swedish and Finnish bids to join NATO as factors in the buildup, according to Russian state media outlet Tass.
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With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine now in its third month, the demonization of all things Russian continues in the West. Russian athletes are prohibited from participating in sporting events, Russian artists prevented from performing, and an Italian university even “postponed” a course on Dostoevsky. As Tal Fortgang observes, “cancel culture is directed not at Russia the violent invader, but at people who have been made into avatars for Russianism.”
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Last week, President Biden gave a speech listing everyone and everything allegedly responsible for record high inflation. His list included corporate greed and price gouging, Vladimir Putin, and “ultra-MAGA” Republicans. The president said that his policies, and the nearly $7 trillion in spending he authorized, have nothing to do with inflation.
None of this holds up under scrutiny. While President Biden claims that corporations are ripping off Americans, the costs of their supplies have been increasing at a record rate. In reality, many companies that Biden claims are stiffing consumers have actually lost money because they don’t want to alienate their customers by raising prices too quickly.
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In the month of April, at least 234,088 illegal aliens crossed the border into the United States, smashing all previous records for the highest monthly total of illegal border crossings in modern history.
As reported by the Washington Examiner, the over 234,000 figure comes from successful interceptions by border authorities, and thus does not account for so-called “gotaways” who evaded the Border Patrol. The numbers were reported by a court document obtained by the Examiner on Monday.
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The federal government has assembled a 21-agency working group to study and assess the environmental impacts of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The “Interagency Working Group on Environmental Damage in Ukraine” — which was assembled by the Department of State and includes officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Department of Defense — has met weekly for about a month, Axios first reported Friday.
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The Biden Administration last June unveiled its “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” Despite its anodyne-sounding name, the “national strategy” was anything but anodyne. The pamphlet represented the logical culmination of the Left’s cynical use of the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot as a means of ginning up large-scale, nationwide anti-Republican/anti-Trump voter sentiment.
The result, evinced again by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s disgraceful October 2021 memo directing the FBI to intrude on local school board meetings and crack down on anti-critical race theory parental revolts, has been a roiling cold war waged by the ruling class against us “deplorables” and our political “wrong-think.”
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Thursday threw a wrench in the Senate’s plans to swiftly pass the $40 billion Ukraine package this week, delaying the vote until at least next week, and possibly beyond.
According to the Hill, Paul wanted to include language in the bill to expand the Afghanistan inspector general’s role to include oversight of the Ukraine funds. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) offered him a deal that would have set up votes Thursday afternoon on the funding bill and on an amendment from Paul.
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President Joe Biden is promising to boost U.S. production of wheat to offset the loss of Ukrainian and Russian exports from the Black Sea thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that has shut down the ports there, stating at a farm in Illinois on May 11 that he would extend crop insurance for farmers who double crop in a bid to get more wheat to market this year.
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Former President Donald Trump issued a plea for peace last week. “It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement,” Trump said in a statement on the war in Ukraine.
“If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage,” he added. “This is a war that never should have happened, but it did. The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now—not later—when everyone will be DEAD!”
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If the coronavirus pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare the precarious state of global food security. While inflation and sanctions on Russia have pushed up the price of food and fuel, the latest U.N. climate report provides a further urgent warning to change the status quo for the sake of our planet. It claims that global CO2 emissions must peak by 2025 to avoid catastrophic effects.
But there is an alternative to the uncomfortable choice between economic sacrifice, moral compromise, and ecological ruin. It’s called the bioeconomy, and it has the potential to address the existential challenges posed by climate change, global pandemics, and growing economic inequity. Imagine bio-based antiviral face masks, or carbon-neutral cement produced in facilities located in America’s former industrial hubs.
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From 1936 to 1939, the civil war in Spain became a European laboratory of new tactics, strategies, logistics, wartime morality, and weapons. Right-wing nationalists under General Francisco Franco finally defeated loyal supporters of an evolutionary socialist republic—but only after much of the Western world had variously weighed in.
The cost to the Spanish people of such brutal and vicious strife was horrific. Over 500,000 Spaniards would die in a little over two-and-a-half years. The country was left in shambles.
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Russia’s invasion not only poses an existential threat to Ukrainian sovereignty, but it also represents a direct challenge to American power and credibility globally. If Vladimir Putin prevails, the promise of the United States to act as a security guarantor through NATO in Europe or on its own anywhere will be in shambles.
Moscow is clearly pursuing two goals simultaneously: territorial gains in Ukraine as part of the revanchist ambition to restore the Soviet-era sphere of influence and, more importantly, degrading American strategic prominence, with the goal of driving the United States out of Europe.
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Soaring inflation is leaving Americans battered and bruised—and not just inflation in prices. Inflation in rhetoric is also doing a number on the people of our republic.
We’ve seen it unfold with depressing regularity. Donald Trump was a “fascist dictator,” we were told. The Capitol riot was a “coup” and an “insurrection.” Climate change poses an “existential threat” to all life on earth. And, just this past week, after failing to get the legislative redistricting map he wanted from the state Supreme Court, Wisconsin’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers declared: “At a time when our democracy is under near-constant attack, the judiciary has abandoned our democracy in our most dire hour.”
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Americans, like the planet’s other 7.5 billion people, are not prone to talk or think much about nuclear weapons.
Of course, some of us are old enough to remember how “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD, was supposed to ensure the general peace.
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Even a truncated Russian Federation has four times the pre-war population of Ukraine. It enjoys well over 10 times the Ukrainian gross domestic product. Russia covers almost 30 times Ukraine’s area.
And how does Ukraine expel Russian troops from its borders when its Western allies must put particular restrictions on their life-giving military and financial aid?
The interests of Europe and the United States are not quite the same as those of a beleaguered Ukraine. NATO also wants Vladimir Putin humiliated, but only if the war can be confined within the borders of Ukraine.
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects U.S. food prices to increase by at least another 5% on average this year as the majority of Americans surveyed in a new poll cite cost of living increases as a top concern and lack of confidence in President Joe Biden’s ability to do anything about it.
Rising prices are due to inflation, the Federal Reserve increasing interest rates, and consequences of Russia invading Ukraine, the USDA states in its most recent monthly Food Price Outlook, which forecasts retail food inflation.
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Michigan consumers considering the purchase of a new or used car or truck may be wise to put off replacing their current vehicle, according to University of Michigan-Flint Economics Professor Christopher Douglas.
An iSeeCars analysis of 1.8 million car sales in February 2022 concluded prices for used cars are up 35% nationally. In Detroit, used car prices were up 31%, or $7,442.77 over last year.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed veteran Washington reporter and editor John Solomon about the stories he broke about corruption in Ukraine, many of them involving the Biden family, for The Hill newspaper.
Although, there was a newsroom protest against Solomon, who as a news columnist had more latitude than staff reporters, an editorial review of his articles showed that all of them were factual.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed veteran Washington reporter and editor John Solomon about the stories he broke about corruption in Ukraine, many of them involving the Biden family, for The Hill newspaper.
Although, there was a newsroom protest against Solomon, who as a news columnist had more latitude than staff reporters, an editorial review of his articles showed that all of them were factual.
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There are several historical referents we should keep in mind about the Ukraine war.
First, no-fly zones. Lots of Westerners are calling for NATO aircraft to establish a no-fly zone above Ukraine to stop Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities.
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I am grateful that The Hill has published an update to its review of my Ukraine reporting and other articles. This points out what I have said that I did not engage in a conflict of interest by quoting Joe diGenova or Victoria Toensing in 2017 because they were not my attorneys at the time.
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In August 2005, the U.S. entered into a little known agreement with Ukraine that included America aid to upgrade security at Ukrainian facilities in which microbes were kept.
Now, almost 17 years later, questions about the deal – and the United States’ broader support for biodefense laboratories in Ukraine – have surfaced amid concerns about chemical or biological weapons being used in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Formin said Tuesday his country will “reduce military activity” in the Ukraine cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv in pursuit of an agreement to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The announcement follows what Russians are calling a productive day of diplomatic talks in Istanbul, Turkey, with the invasion now roughly four-weeks old.
Russian state media quoted Formin saying: “Due to the fact that negotiations on the preparation of an agreement on the neutrality and non-nuclear status of Ukraine, as well as on the provision of security guarantees to Ukraine, are moving into practice, taking into account the principles discussed during today’s meeting, by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing on the signing of the above agreement, a decision was made to radically, at times, reduce military activity in the Kiev and Chernihiv direction.”
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Former Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette suggested that President Joe Biden’s recent gas deal with the European Union (EU) wouldn’t be enough to help the continent wean itself off Russian energy.
Brouillette — who served as deputy energy secretary between 2017-2019 and energy secretary between 2019-2021 — noted that the U.S. wouldn’t be able to fill the gap left by Russian energy during an interview with CNBC on Monday. He added that the EU cannot expect to consume less total energy as part of its plan to ditch Russian gas.
“Frankly, I’m not quite sure that everyone can make up that shortfall,” said Brouillette, according to CNBC. “That’s an enormous amount of gas.”
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pump prices have climbed throughout his tenure.
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has destabilized global energy markets, causing an historic supply crunch, high gasoline prices have been the norm throughout Biden’s first 14 months, federal data showed. Experts have blamed the high prices on the administration’s energy and climate policies disincentivizing domestic fossil fuel production.
Since Russia’s invasion, gasoline prices have increased more than 20%, from $3.53 per gallon to $4.24 per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. However, pump prices increased a whopping 48.4% between Biden’s January 2021 inauguration and Feb. 21, three days before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine.
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