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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Crowded Road to Kyiv To retain our deterrence abroad, we must tighten our belts at home, pump oil and gas, start to balance our budget, junk wokeism as a nihilist indulgence, and recalibrate our military.  By Victor Davis Hanson *****

By on February 28th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/27/the-crowded-road-to-kyiv/

One of the oddest commentaries about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the boilerplate reaction that “borders can’t change in modern Europe” or “this does not happen in the 21st century.” 

But why in the world should the 21st century be exempt from the pathologies of the past 20 centuries? Are we smarter than the Romans? More innovative than Florentines? Do we have more savvy leaders than Lincoln or Churchill? Are they more mellifluous than Demosthenes? Does anyone now remember that some 130,000 were slaughtered just 30 years ago in the former Yugoslavia, as NATO planes bombed Belgrade and nuclear America and Russia almost squared off? 

Has globalization, the “rules-based order,” the Davos reset elite, the “international community” so improved the very way humans think that they have rendered obsolete the now ossified ancient idea of deterrence? Will the Kardashians and Beyoncé tweet our pathway to global peace? 

How about transnational NGOs? NATO? WHO? The UN? Are all their recent records of service proof of our more exalted modern morality? Will some new engineered Wuhan virus alter human nature, end its innate ancient pathologies, and so eliminate war as we knew it? Are we not the League of Nations because Putin is now chair of the Security Council? 

In truth, anything can happen to anyone, anywhere,  at any time—and has and will until the end of time. 

So let us walk down the crowded road to Kiev. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Islamic Infiltration and the Death of Richard Higgins By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/islamic_infiltration_and_the_death_of_richard_higgins.html

America has lost too many good men lately.  Rush Limbaugh, Angelo Codevilla and Colin Flaherty come to mind, and now, sadly, another good man’s voice has been silenced. 

In his 2020 book titled The Memo, Rich Higgins was one of the first to sound the alarm of the Deep State coup to remove President Trump and of the subversives within the ranks.  Yet after three short months in 2017 serving on the National Security Council under President’s Trump national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, Rich was fired for telling the truth.

At the time, Rich was labeled as a “conspiracy theorist,” but with all the recent information that has since emerged, Rich has been fully vindicated. 

The Memo recounts how Rich Higgins’s twenty-year career fighting for America First within the bowels of the DoD and Pentagon bureaucracy enabled him to discern — well before anyone else — the Deep State’s efforts to stop and ultimately remove the president from office.  He was frighteningly accurate in anticipating the ferocity of the Deep State’s assault on the Constitution and President Trump.

Rich Higgins was the vice president of Unconstrained Analytics.  He served on the National Security Council in the Trump administration as the director for strategic planning.

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HISTORY, MEDIA Comments turned off

The New York Times Hasn’t Always Cared About Ukrainians By Jack Cashill

By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/the_new_york_emtimesem_hasnt_always_cared_about_ukrainians.html

At his CPAC speech on Saturday, former President Donald Trump could not have been clearer in his denunciation of Vladimir Putin. “The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling,” said Trump. “it’s an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.”

Yet the fact that Trump called Putin “smart” and “savvy” is, for the New York Times, prima facie evidence of his affection for Mother Russia. Indeed, the Times had the nerve to run a delusional op-ed on Sunday headlined, “How the American Right Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Russia.”

Earth to the New York Times: No one on the right is pulling for Putin. The Times is pushing this Russia-love narrative both to salvage some political gain from Biden’s catastrophic foreign policy and to cover for its own historic indifference to the Ukrainian people.

The truth is that British and American conservatives have long cared about the Ukraine. Most still do. The international left, the New York Times in particular, cared more about the success of Josef Stalin’s lethal policies than it did the millions of Ukrainians those policies killed.

The New York Times Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, admitted to being “pleased as punch” when Stalin announced his Five-Year Plan in the fall of 1928. Stalin, as Duranty observed in his well-titled book, I Write as I Please, was the world’s “greatest living statesman.” A pioneer in the art of fake news, Duranty saw signs of greatness in Stalin’s plan “to socialize, virtually overnight, a hundred million of the stubbornest and most ignorant peasants in the world.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical Thinking Must Replace Critical Race Theory CRT promotes conflict instigation instead of conflict resolution. Michael Cutler

By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/critical-thinking-must-replace-critical-race-michael-cutler/

It is becoming all-too apparent that proponents of Critical Race Theory seek the demise of our great Republic. They are using the age-old “divide and conquer” strategy to turn Americans against one another, seeking to instigate conflict and violence to undermine our peaceful society.

There are no winners with this strategy in place — only victims.

Racism is defined as:

Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized — the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

Racism is racism, and no matter who bears the brunt of it, is wrong-headed and dangerous. It is inherently and supremely unfair and leads all people, of all races, down a dangerous path of resentment and hostility that likely will ultimately result in violence. Critical Race Theory, or CRT, actually promotes racism.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Beating Republicans By Disqualifying Them Democrats look to Iran and Barack Obama for how to deal with their opponents. Matthew Vadum

By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/beating-republicans-disqualifying-them-matthew-vadum/

In an effort to kick Republican candidates off the ballot for the crime of supporting Donald Trump, Democrats are reaching back more than 150 years to a rarely invoked constitutional provision designed to prevent Confederates from serving in Congress.

Democrats and a handful of Trump Derangement Syndrome-suffering Republicans claim the disturbance on January 6, 2021, that delayed formal congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results for several hours, was an insurrection or rebellion aimed at overthrowing the United States government.

Facts are no impediment to this durable leftist fantasy.

The facts are that the crowd carried no guns, that police invited many of the alleged trespassers into the facility, that no hostages were taken, and that only minor damage was done to the United States Capitol building.

Although the democratic process was assaulted relentlessly by leftist election officials and judges from coast to coast throughout the 2020 election cycle and its aftermath, it was never under threat on January 6 a year ago.

When the mainstream media falsely reported what happened January 6 was a coup attempt, instead of an anguished cry for help by the unjustly disenfranchised, the news must have come as a surprise to the vast majority of Americans who innocently visited the Capitol that day. And the only person who was actually killed, Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, was martyred by Michael Byrd, an overzealous policeman who claims the senseless murder he committed somehow “saved countless lives.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin Places Russia’s Nuclear Forces on High Alert High noon over Ukraine. Joseph Klein

By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/putin-places-russias-nuclear-forces-high-alert-joseph-klein/

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday placed his military’s nuclear forces on high alert – as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its fourth day.

“Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country,” the Russian president said in a televised broadcast as he explained his rationale for the nuclear alert order.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden remained at his private residence in Delaware during the weekend. The U.S. president did not comment directly on Putin’s nuclear forces high alert order as of Sunday afternoon. He left it to White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other senior administration officials to respond. Psaki said that Putin was “manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression — and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism.”

Russia’s military has stepped up its air bombardments across Ukraine this past weekend. The attacks included missile strikes against a burial point of radioactive waste, an oil depot, and a residential complex. Putin has also reportedly deployed at least two-thirds of the estimated 150,000 Russian troops, who had been assembled near the Ukrainian border, to invade Ukraine from multiple directions. In order to take control of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Russia is massing more troops to lay siege to the city in preparation for a major assault inside Kyiv. Russia has also reportedly reinforced its military offensive capabilities with heavy weaponry capable of inflicting enormous casualties, including to civilians.

As of Sunday evening, Russia had not yet achieved complete control over Ukraine’s air space. The Ukrainians have continued to repel Russia’s persistent attempts to take over Kyiv, while bracing for a more massive attack, and have managed to hold on to other key cities as well. The longer it takes the Russian military to achieve Putin’s objectives, the more strain is being placed on Russia’s logistics supply lines.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

JOE BIDEN’S OFFENSIVE MOMENTS OF SELF REGARD

By on February 28th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/28/joe-biden-and-offensive-moments-in-self-regard/

Joe Biden capped off another rotten week of his sinking presidency saying he hopes his legacy “is that I restored the soul of this country.” His dementia might be relatively new, but he’s been a raging narcissist throughout his public life. Who does he think he is, Barack Obama? Or maybe even the Almighty?

In an interview Saturday, Biden also said that he wanted to be remembered for returning “some decency and honor to the office” and bringing “the middle class back to a place where they had real opportunity.” We might take on those delusions another time, but for now we want to focus on his irksome comment about restoring the soul of America. 

First of all, it’s not the president’s job to heal the nation’s spirit. Of course presidents can, and some certainly have, done damage to their country. Count Biden among them.

An embarrassing botched retreat from Afghanistan. Carter-era inflation. Short on jobs. Lagging incomes. Confidence down, dissatisfaction up. Bitter political and cultural divisions. We are without question worse off today in so many ways than we were before he took office last year. Biden has done nothing to boost Americans’ outlooks, but he’s done quite enough to pare them down.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin Gambles That the West Is Weak Both militarily and culturally, we’ve been derelict in our duty to defend our civilization. By Tony Abbott

By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tony-abbott-putin-west-weak-ukraine-russia-invasion-military-fossil-fuels-nuclear-germany-lng-woke-covid-regulations-china-11645977566?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Abbott served as prime minister of Australia, 2013-15.

‘The bullying of small nations by big ones, the trampling of justice and decency in the pursuit of national aggrandizement, and reckless indifference to human life, should have no place in our world.”

Those were my words to the Australian Parliament on the morning of July 17, 2014, when a Russian missile battery had shot down flight MH17, killing 38 Australians among the 298 on board, as Russian proxies seized the Donbas. If it wasn’t yet obvious in 2008, when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, it should certainly have been six years later, when he annexed the Crimea, that Mr. Putin was bent on the restoration of greater Russia—and to hell with the freedom and independence of the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Yet since then, Western democracies have culpably failed to boost their military capability while indulging acts of economic and cultural self-harm.

Take the U.K., the West’s second-strongest military power. The total number of British defense personnel dropped from about 600,000 in the 1950s to 300,000 in the 1960s and about 150,000 now. British forces in Europe declined from 80,000 in the 1950s to 50,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 in 1994 (still including one tank division), before dwindling to zero in Germany by 2020 and 1,000 in Estonia (placed there after 2015 in reaction to Russia’s renewed threat). In response to Russia’s blitzkrieg on Ukraine, the U.K. government has just announced that this force will be boosted to an armored brigade of fewer than 3,000. Given that the U.K. has provided by far the strongest response to the current crisis, it’s little wonder Mr. Putin thinks the West is weak and easily distracted.

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“I See Him as a Modern-Day Pablo Escobar”: Inside Bill Browder’s War Against Putin In a series of revealing new interviews, Putin’s public enemy No. 1 offers scintillating details about his investigation into Russian financial malfeasance, running for his life, and the Helsinki fallout.

By on February 27th, 2022

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/bill-browder-war-against-putin

Perhaps all you need to know to understand the essense of Bill Browder is what he carried with him in his briefcase when he lived in Putin’s Russia. “At all times,” he told me not long after we met, “I had $5,000 in cash in case I had to flee for the border and pay off the guards.”

Bill Browder’s stories are melodramas. They often begin with a ringing phone—or a knock on a door. In May of this year, for example, the American-born financier was bundled into a police car in Madrid by the Spanish police, who, acting on an Interpol warrant at the behest of Russian authorities, simply appeared outside his hotel room and took him away. “I was frightened this wasn’t an arrest but an illegal rendition to Moscow,” Browder said. (He was let go an hour later.) These moments of crisis are familiar to his 180,000 Twitter followers—“the army of Bill,” they are called—who worry about his safety in his adopted role as both human-rights advocate and financial sleuth, taking on Putin and his kleptocrats. “Vladimir Putin wants me dead,” he says almost every time he is interviewed.

Is there anyone, by now, who is unaware of Browder’s relentless crusade? At 54, he circles the globe helping governments recover millions that Russian oligarchs have illegally parked overseas. He has dodged six warrants seeking his arrest. He takes precautions in his daily routine, wary of possible security threats. His weapons are judicial and legislative: sanctions blocking the assets and the international travel of Russian criminals, murderers, and corrupt industrialists who have plundered their companies.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Gangster Who Reigns Over the Kremlin Daryl McCann (JUNE 2012)

By on February 27th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2012/06/deluded-tyrant-in-the-kremlin/

In December 1564, Ivan IV took himself off into exile. From the remoteness of Aleksandrova Sloboda he wrote two letters to officials in Moscow, one announcing his abdication, the other stipulating that he would return to the throne only on condition he be granted absolute power. There were positive aspects to Ivan’s rule, especially in the earlier years, and “Fearsome” rather than “Terrible” might be a better rendering of his popular designation, and yet there is something wretchedly Russian about those obtuse boyars pleading, in the end, for Ivan’s royal restitution. Masha Gessen’s The Man Without a Face and even more so David Satter’s It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway do nothing to disabuse us of the notion that Russia as a whole remains clueless when it comes to addressing the most basic principles of democracy and the rights of the individual.

In August 1999, Boris Yeltsin announced that Vladimir Putin, Head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), was to be the new prime minister of Democratic Russia. Shortly thereafter, contends Gessen, the FSB made Yeltsin an offer he could not refuse. If Yeltsin allowed Putin to replace him as the president of the Russian Federation, Yeltsin could expect to enjoy the full protection of the intelligence service for the rest of his days, along with immunity from prosecution for any transgressions committed during a decade in office. The ailing and politically vulnerable Yeltsin assented. For almost seventy years the Chekists had been the sword and shield of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Now, thanks to the demise of the USSR and Yeltsin’s instinct for self-preservation, a criminal cabal with a lineage dating back to Felix Dzerzhinsky’s Cheka commenced ruling Russia in its own right.

As a consequence, argues Gessen, Vladimir Putin has spent the past twelve years effectively transforming Russia “into a supersize model of the KGB”, the world’s first bona fide mafia state.

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