The Long Shadow of Versailles It’s time to abandon the “new world order” happy talk. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/long-shadow-versailles-bruce-thornton/

Or we can continue with diplomatic bluster, “new world order” happy talk, and feeble sanctions, in which case we will just be managing our decline.

In 1919 the Versailles Treaty established in international law and global institutions two ideals that have framed Western foreign policy ever since. The first is the elevation of national self-determination and democratic government as the default goods for all the world’s peoples. The other is the notion that supranational institutions, international laws, and multinational treaties and covenants are the best means for adjudicating peacefully international disputes and conflicts.

Russia’s current violent, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is merely the latest example of a century’s worth of repudiation of these ideals that still shape modern foreign policy––a challenge that, if we’re lucky, may lead to a long-needed revision of this ideal of a “rules-based international order” and its dubious foundational assumptions.

American president Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points and speeches during World War I articulated these ideals. In 1918 he told Congress, “National aspirations must be accepted; peoples may now be dominated only by their own consent.” This principle perforce was opposed to colonial empires, as Wilson made clear in the Fourteen Points: “The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the objects it has in view.”

Of course, as we’ve seen over the past century, what the great diversity of global peoples and cultures mean by “justice” differs considerably, especially regarding the use of force to realize national ambitions at the expense of other nations. Such ideals have been vulnerable as well to the duplicitous diplomacy, propaganda, and aggression of ambitious states. Hitler brilliantly turned this ideal against its champions like France and England during the Sudetenland crisis of September, 1938. After all, didn’t the 3 million alleged ethnic Germans stranded in the new state of Czechoslovakia after the war deserve their “national aspirations” to be “accepted”? Why should they, as Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels lied during the crisis, have to tolerate the “brutal treatment of women and children of German blood” at the hands of alien Czechs?

Puppeteers and Puppets: America’s Dark Money Masquerade and Other Questionable Conduct by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18282/puppeteers-puppets-dark-money

Are union moguls, puppeteers, power-players and profiteers assaulting the Constitution and US election laws?

“Dark money groups,” according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks political campaign financing and lobbying, “spends millions to shape our elections without revealing where their money comes from.”

About lobbying, they wrote, “Companies, labor unions, trade associations and other influential organizations spend billions of dollars each year to lobby Congress and federal agencies. Some special interests retain lobbying firms, many of them located along Washington’s legendary K Street; others have lobbyists working in-house.”

The freedom to give unlimited amounts to elections began with the Supreme Court in 2010, with the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The justices decided that, according to the First Amendment, political spending is an extension of free speech, and that corporations and unions could therefore give unlimited amounts to political campaigns.

Regrettably, nine years later, the Brennan Center for Justice wrote:

“The justices who voted with the major­ity assumed that inde­pend­ent spend­ing cannot be corrupt and that the spend­ing would be trans­par­ent, but both assump­tions have proven to be incor­rect.

Black Lives Matter’s True Colors The malicious, self-serving criminal agendas of a racial hoax. David Horowitz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/black-lives-matters-true-colors-david-horowitz/

It’s been almost two years since the summer of violent Black Lives Matter insurrections and cop-hating crusades. The actions of that summer inflicted $2 billion in property damage in 220 American cities, killed scores of people, and spiked record homicide rates in a dozen municipalities run by Democrat politicians and supporters. This unprecedented eruption of hatred and violence was fueled by a racial hoax claiming that there was an “open season” on black lives, despite the fact that there is no evidence to support this claim, whether statistical or circumstantial.

Apart from affirmative action, which was given a pass by the Supreme Court, and despite the false claims of the president, there is no systemic racism in America today. If police departments, for example, were systemically racist, there would be massive lawsuits invoking the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which specifically outlaws institutional and systemic racism. There are no such massive lawsuits because there is no systemic racism in police departments. Although the accusation of systemic racism is the main currency of the Black Lives Matter hate campaign — and, shamefully, of the rhetoric emanating from the White House itself — there is no factual basis for this slander. None.

The time that has elapsed since the launch of the left’s racial witch hunt has provided ample opportunity to expose the malicious, self-serving criminal agendas of the Black Lives Matter movement. These have nothing to do with the welfare of black communities, which have not received a penny of the tens of millions of dollars raised in their name. Contributions to Black Lives Matter have gone to line the pockets and enhance the real estate portfolios of its leaders. Meanwhile, the chief victims of the homicides unleashed by their actions have been poor black inner-city communities — with no show of concern by Black Lives Matter and its allies.

Slow Joe digs in against opening up US energy production to checkmate Russia By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/slow_joe_digs_in_against_opening_up_us_energy_production_to_checkmate_russia.html

It’s the easiest thing in the world: cut off Russia’s oil earnings and watch its war against Ukraine collapse.

A U.S. oil embargo on Russia would destroy its cash stream which is financing 30% of its government, including its attack on Ukraine.

In a war, at least one you want to win, you cut off supply lines.  Grant and Sherman understood this.  But General Biden is a little different.  He wants to keep Putin getting that money until Bad America reforms to a green energy system to his liking.  He has a live war in front of him; he has the solution on the table; and instead of taking that solution, he sticks to his green energy “priority.”

Here’s how bad it’s gotten:

Transferring the entire economy to unreliable green energy, number one, is never going to happen.  Scott Johnson at Power Line explained that clearly in 2020: it won’t happen because there aren’t enough rare earth minerals out there to create all the batteries and greenie retrofits, even if China would gladly sell to us, to get the job done.

Top Democrat Begs For More Oil…From a Foreign Country Katie Pavlich

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/02/28/top-democrat-begs-saudi-arabia-to-pump-more-oil-n2603855

As oil prices continue to skyrocket thanks to leftist climate change policies, Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman is begging Saudi Arabia to ramp up drilling and exports.

The pathetic plea comes months after the Biden administration also begged OPEC to increase oil production abroad, while limiting and cutting off oil resources in the United States.

“Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery. The price of crude oil has been higher than it was at the end of 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. While OPEC+ recently agreed to production increases, these increases will not fully offset previous production cuts that OPEC+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022. At a critical moment in the global recovery, this is simply not enough,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan released in an August 2021 statement.

“President Biden has made clear that he wants Americans to have access to affordable and reliable energy, including at the pump. Although we are not a party to OPEC, the United States will always speak to international partners regarding issues of significance that affect our national economic and security affairs, in public and private,” he continued. “We are engaging with relevant OPEC+ members on the importance of competitive markets in setting prices. Competitive energy markets will ensure reliable and stable energy supplies, and OPEC+ must do more to support the recovery.”

Here’s the Thread That Shreds the Obama-Clinton ‘Tough on Russia’ Narrative Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/02/28/heres-the-thread-that-shreds-the-obamaclinton-tough-on-russia-narrative-n2603845

I’m sorry, but I think that $30 million in crack pipes was really for the liberal media. Newsrooms needed scores of them to deal with the endless stream of bad news that emanates from the Biden White House. They can’t spin it. They can’t polish it. Every time one wave of bad news exits a cycle, a new one begins. Joe Biden is literally Mr. Magoo only he crashes into everything. It’s a disaster. Now, with war breaking out in Ukraine, Democrats and their allies in the media are in overdrive with their anti-Russian antics. It’s not to support the Ukrainians. It’s to attack Donald Trump who they’ve been obsessed with like OJ Simpson was with his ex-wife. They’re also beating the war drums. They were joined by some of their Republican colleagues as well. Yeah, World War III is just what we need from Congress.

Yet, Hillary Clinton resurfaced from her darkened lair to address the GOP directly, calling on the party to stand up to Russia and stop those from giving “aid and comfort” to Vladimir Putin. Here’s where the hits of the crack pipe come into play. When did the Democratic Party become tough on Russia? The Russian collusion hoax was not that—that’s long ventured into the realm of psychosis. It wasn’t that long ago that we learned that Hillary Clinton pretty much gave the Russians ownership of our uranium mines in the United States. Remember the Uranium One deal. Remember the $500,000 check the Clintons received from a Russian bank selling Uranium One futures. And this woman has the stones to lecture about being tough with Moscow. Please.

Kyle Becker, a former Fox News producer and promoter of Becker News, had a mega-thread that gutted this narrative with a hot knife. I mean, he charts it from Ted Kennedy’s collusion with the Russians during the Reagan administration to the Obama administration’s pervasive fecklessness when it came to our Eurasian adversary.

The Government From Hell By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/28/the-government-from-hell-n1562382

The trucker convoy has come and gone. The bouncy castles have been put away, the hot tubs dismantled, the 18-wheelers towed, the party atmosphere vanished into air, into thin air. They are such stuff as dreams are made on.

The convoy’s main accomplishment was to force the government to show its autocratic hand to the observant and the doubtful. The invoking of the Emergencies (or War Measures) Act was a groundless abuse of power and its hasty withdrawal a sign of an authoritarian government caught with its pants down. But in the aftermath of the Freedom Convoy’s magnificent display of resolute patriotism and good faith, the federal vaccine mandates it protested remain in place, a finance minister of dubious antecedents bears the fasces, and the administration of a petty and vindictive tyrant is still intact. The partial triumph of the truckers turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory, for it is the truckers who have suffered most.

Our blue-collar benefactors now face the consequences of the scorched-earth policies adopted by the anointed class. Many have lost their rigs. Operating licenses have been revoked. Criminal charges have been laid. Bans on trucker commerce have proliferated. Bankruptcy looms for many. Livelihoods have been demolished. Families have been obliterated. Marriages are bound to collapse. And I suspect that suicides will mount as desperation sees no escape from ruination. In effect, Justin Trudeau declared war on those who kept the goods and services flowing through the ersatz pandemic and who enabled the populace to weather the government-induced travesty. Gratitude is not in the dwindling catalogue of common virtues. The casualties, though hidden by the Soviet-style media, are devastating.

The Woke Weapon on Campus: ‘Danger’ By Carine Hajjar

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/the-woke-weapon-on-campus-danger/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

The cause of sparing anybody discomfort over anything is making college life miserable — for everybody.

C ollege students face “danger” everywhere they turn. A comment that makes you uncomfortable, an unsavory name on a building, a mask that fell under the nose, a nonprogressive comment in class.

Danger to college students (the woke ones in particular) is subjective — danger to me is danger to all.

The most recent and obvious such danger on college campuses is Covid. Even as the less-virulent Omicron wanes, hospitalization rates plummet, and state and municipal mask advisories are lifted, college students continue to face intolerable levels of Covid precautions.

One Harvard student and former classmate, Julie Hartman, decided to bravely question Harvard’s overzealous Covid policing. On Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, she wrote about pandemic-related changes to Housing Day, a Harvard tradition put on hold for the past two years:

Sophomores, juniors and seniors storm freshman dormitories to tell first-year students which of the 12 “houses,” essentially big dorms for upperclassmen, they will live in for their remaining time on campus. Having lost two of these days during the 17 months that Harvard sent us home, I was excited to participate in one more traditional Housing Day my senior year. Instead, the student government said it would likely be a modified outdoor event.

Remember When Inflation Was Just Going to Be Transitory? By George Leef

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/remember-when-inflation-was-just-going-to-be-transitory/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

So said President Biden last year. I don’t think many people believed it then and they sure don’t now.

It’s bad and will get worse, argues Timothy Nash of Northwood University’s McNair Center in this TownHall article.

Get ready for “Higher prices for basketballs, lipstick, pacemakers and automobiles — brought to you by the U. S. Federal Reserve Bank, the Biden Administration’s Green Energy policies and Putin’s foreign policy,” Nash writes.

Under Obama, Trump, and now Biden, the federal government has been creating money to cover its prodigious spending at an unprecedented pace. That’s actually what inflation is — the loss of value in the currency is just one of the consequences.

One of Nash’s key points is that Biden’s “green” energy policies have made a bad situation much worse. He observes, “If U.S. oil markets had remained less regulated under the Biden Administration, domestic and global oil supplies would be higher today. The price of oil per barrel on the global exchanges would be lower and Vladimir Putin’s ability to fund the acts of a tyrannical despot would be greatly reduced, while simultaneously validating that freedom and free enterprise is the best way to allocate resources globally.”

The American people are suffering as a result of our ravenous federal government, led by politicians who apparently believe that there are no adverse effects from their unbridled lust for spending and  control. Of course, Biden and his minions will try to pin the blame elsewhere, but I’m optimistic that more and more Americans are starting to realize that the problem is the Leviathan on the Potomac.

Stealth Hunter: Biden’s tangled business dealings are becoming hard to ignore: Edward Helmore

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/27/hunter-biden-joe-biden-president-business-dealings

Influence-peddling is Washington’s ‘spectator sport’ – but now there’s an interest in taking a closer look at the president’s son.

To the political right in America, Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been the gift that keeps on giving, with his public struggles with addiction, scandalous private life and tangled business life. To the left, Hunter’s travails are dismissed as a Republican political obsession and a talking point for tabloid journalism and internet gossip.

But last week, two witnesses called before a federal grand jury seated in Wilmington, Delaware, which is looking into the tax affairs of the president’s son, made the subject harder to avoid.

First there was Lunden Roberts, with whom Biden has a three-year-old unacknowledged child. Then Zoe Kestan, an ex-girlfriend and lingerie and textile designer, spent five hours giving testimony on Biden’s spending, including – reportedly – stays at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, where, in 2018, allegedly, Biden was preoccupied with cooking crack cocaine.

Wretched and salacious as that sounds, much of Hunter Biden’s story, detailed at length in his autobiography Beautiful Things, published last year, tends that way. “I’m not a curio or a sideshow to a moment in history,” Biden claimed in his book. “I’ve worked for someone other than my father, [I] rose and fell on my own.”

 

But that’s not how Joe Biden’s political enemies see it.

Donald Trump tried to make issue out of Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine, Russia and China, which included high paid consultancies and gifts, and allegations that, as vice-president, Joe Biden had shaped American foreign policy in Ukraine to benefit his son.

For Trump, it backfired, when efforts to uncover information about the Bidens and Ukraine helped to trigger his first impeachment. Then came the surfacing of Hunter Biden’s missing laptop, with its library of decadent pictures and business email chains, mysteriously left at a Wilmington repair shop, which found its way to Republican political operatives including Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon, plus the rightwing press and the FBI.

On the political flip-side, House intelligence committee chair Adam Schiff said the laptop was a “smear” from Russian intelligence, and 50 former intelligence officials said it was probably Russian disinformation. Now, however, almost no one disputes its authenticity.