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Zelensky Announces Talks with Russia as Putin Ups Nuclear Saber-Rattling, Fighting Drags On By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/zelensky-announces-talks-with-russia-as-putin-ups-nuclear-saber-rattling/

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that a Ukrainian delegation would participate in talks with a Russian delegation on the Ukrainian–Belarusian border “without preconditions.”

Zelensky announced the talks on his official Telegram channel following a phone call with President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus on Sunday, according to several news outlets.

Lukashenko has “taken responsibility for ensuring that all planes, helicopters and missile stationed on Belarusian territory remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation’s travel, talks and return,” the Ukrainian president said.

Zelensky had previously declined an earlier request for talks in Belarus, saying it was not neutral territory.

News of the talks came as Russian president Vladimir Putin said Sunday that he had placed Russia’s nuclear-deterrent forces on high alert in response to recent sanctions and “aggressive statements” from NATO countries.

Putin said in a televised statement that he had ordered the nuclear deterrent forces in a “special regime of combat duty.”

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Joe Biden says delusional Americans are imagining inflation By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

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

Hard-left podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen interviewed Biden. The topics were what would expect—Biden’s race- and sex-based Supreme Court nominee, claims that Trump and other Republicans support Putin, boasts about his strategic genius, etc.—but the real surprise was Biden’s claim that COVID has made Americans so psychologically unstable they can’t understand that the Biden economy is wonderful.

Here’s what Americans know: They are facing hard times. The economy is creeping back, but it’s nowhere near what it was under Trump before COVID. In 2019, unemployment was 3.6%. It went up to 6.7% in 2020. It’s now 4%, still short of the pre-COVID rate.

That 4% doesn’t even include the millions of people who dropped out of the workforce. CBS blames long COVID but it’s a good bet stimulus checks have also depressed the workforce. If people are paid not to work, they won’t work. When government money finally ends, they might come back.

Inflation is a problem, too. While wages have increased, those increases haven’t kept pace inflation’s 40 year high. A 3.5% raise is meaningless if life’s necessities (food, shelter, energy costs) increase in price by 7% or more.

Reagan rightly said of inflation that it’s “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hitman.” People don’t care whether the inflation is because of the supply chain problem or because Biden’s green energy (or, really, green lack-of-energy) policies have dramatically bumped up the price of fuel. What matters is that their money is losing value daily.

People also feel despair because it’s frightening to live in the shadow of a potential third world war. They worry that an increasingly desperate, angry Putin, rather than retreating from Ukraine may, instead, go on the attack against Sweden and Finland. They also understand that other tyrants are watching. China, Iran, and North Korea (which just launched a ballistic missile) are gaining courage because they recognize that Biden is weak.

This is why 62% of Americans say Putin would never have attacked Ukraine if Trump were still in the White House. Perhaps they remember Trump’s 2019 threat to Erdogan. In a jovial letter, Trump said work with me for a good deal or I’ll destroy Turkey’s economy. The media sneered, but Erodgan retreated. Biden, however, invited Putin to engage in a “minor incursion.” Putin took that invitation and ran with it.

Things really are bad and Americans know it. Biden’s theory, though, is that everything is great. The problem, he says, is that Americans have become delusional thanks to COVID stress.

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Migrants Desecrate More Than 2,000 Churches Just in Greece by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18270/migrants-desecrate-churches-greece

“As a deeply religious society, these attacks on churches are shocking to the Greek people and calls to question whether these illegal immigrants seeking a new life in Europe are willing to integrate and conform to the norms and values of their new countries.” — Greek City Times, May 16, 2020.

While the report most likely has the 1453 sack of Constantinople (today Istanbul) in mind — when countless Greek churches, including Hagia Sophia, were desecrated, destroyed, or turned into mosques — that pattern is a century older.

Before Christmas, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, where more than a million Muslim migrants reside, some 50 public statues of Jesus and other Christian figures were beheaded and crucifixes broken.

According to a new report published by Greece’s Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, there were 2,339 incidents of church desecrations in the country between 2015 and 2020, when tiny Greece, seen as Europe’s eastern gateway, was flooded with migrants from the Islamic world. Greek City Times wrote regarding the report:

“There appears to be a correlation between the increase in illegal migration and the incidents of attacks on Greek Orthodox religious churches and religious spaces during the five year period which occurred during the peak of the migration crisis.”

In the most recent year recorded, 2020, there were 385 incidents against Christian churches and buildings, including “vandalism, burglary, theft, sacrilege, necromancy, robbery, placement of explosive devices and other desecrations.”

Over the years, a few of these desecrations made it to English-language media.

In April 2021, Muslim migrants entered into and utterly desecrated a small church. Proud of their handiwork, they videotaped portions of the incident and uploaded it on TikTok. It shows a topless migrant dancing to rap music as he walks towards and inside the church. The next clip shows the aftermath: devastation inside the church, with smashed icons and the altar overthrown.

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‘The Saboteurs’: Stopping Hitler’s Atomic Bomb Joe Dolce

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/01/the-saboteurs-stopping-hitlers-atomic-bomb/

The six-part television series The Saboteurs (2015, originally titled Kampen om Tungtvannet, “The Heavy Water War”) was directed by Per-Olav Sørensen, written by Petter S. Rosenlund and produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. The story focuses on the Nazis’ efforts to develop an atomic bomb during the Second World War and how they were foiled by a small group of Norwegian resistance fighters.

The series is told from four different perspectives: the German side, the Allies’ side, the saboteurs’ point of view, and that of Norsk Hydro, the plant ordered to produce the rare and essential component for the construction of an atomic weapon: heavy water, or deuterium oxide.

The series begins in Berlin in 1938. Hitler has been in control of Germany since 1933. Professor Werner Karl Heisenberg, recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, is invited to lecture at Columbia University but he refuses to leave Germany. He is visited by the SS and interrogated about his refusal to join the Nazi Party or participate in the 1938 Nuremberg Rally, and for quoting Jews, such as Max Born and Albert Einstein, in his research papers.  

As a chastisement, he is ordered to report for army duty but a last-minute letter from Himmler (whose mother was a friend of Heisenberg’s mother) gains him an exemption from fighting because, as Himmler states, “Germany
needs its scientists.”

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The Failure of Biden’s ‘Friends and Allies’ Strategy Salvatore Babones

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/02/the-failure-of-bidens-friends-and-allies-strategy/

For two years, from the campaign trail through to the White House, all of Joe Biden’s foreign policy pronouncements have been punctuated with one phrase: the pledge to “work with friends and allies”. It’s a mantra that everyone associated with his administration has clearly been instructed to repeat, ad nauseum. Biden and his minions have pledged to “work with friends and allies” to solve the border crisis, to protect Taiwan, to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal, to contain the Taliban, to promote democracy, to prevent global warming—you name it, and you can Google it.

But not with Russia. In response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Biden administration updated its catchphrase to allies and partners. Boris Johnson apparently missed the memo, sticking with friends and allies. So did the Ukrainian ambassador in Washington, Oksana Markarova. So the friends are out, and the partners are in. Maybe that’s because the friends failed to deliver.

Biden claims to have imposed “profound sanctions” on Russia that “exceed anything that’s ever been done” before. These include a prohibition on Russia raising dollar-denominated debt, penalties on Russia’s leading banks, personal restrictions on the travel of influential Russians, and a re-suspension of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Russia directly to Germany under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine (a Trump suspension that Biden lifted last May at the behest of erstwhile friend and ally Angela Merkel). Unspecified further sanctions await the cooperation of allies and partners.

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‘This Happy Breed of Men’ There seems to be some deep connection between the English language and that most uncommon virtue, common sense. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/26/this-happy-breed-of-men/

“There’s a deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith wrote to a young correspondent who contemplated with alarm British losses in the American War of Independence. As it happened, Britain absorbed the parturition of the United States with aplomb, growing ever stronger for more than a century. Where are we now? There’s lots of ruin about: no one disputes that. But how are we—we, the English-speaking peoples of the world?—

I am not sure who coined the term “Anglosphere,” but James Bennett gave it currency in his book The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Nations Will Lead the Way in the Twenty-first Century. Bennett’s book was published in 2004. A paperback edition, with a new Afterword, appeared in 2007. The Anglosphere Challenge endeavored to make good on its optimistic subtitle. The 19th century had been the British century. The 20th century belonged to America. Today, the conventional wisdom predicts that the 21st century will belong to China.  But, Bennett argued, “If the English-speaking nations grasp the opportunity, the twenty-first century will be the Anglosphere century.”

“If.” A tiny word that prompts large questions. What were those opportunities that needed grasping? How sure was our grip? And who, by the way, were “we”? What was this Anglosphere that Bennett apostrophized? Winston Churchill’s opus on the English-speaking peoples, published in four volumes in the mid-1950s, principally included Britain, Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. He commenced his story in 55 B.C., when Julius Caesar first “turned his gaze” upon Britain, and concluded as Victoria’s long reign ended. By 2006, when Andrew Roberts extended Churchill’s work in his magisterial History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, the Anglosphere had expanded to include Commonwealth Caribbean countries and, more to the point, India with its 1.4 billion people and the burgeoning capitalist dynamo that is its economy.

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CANADA: THE CRISIS IS NOT OVER DAVID SOLWAY

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/25/canada-the-crisis-is-not-over-n1561994

The news cycle today is dominated by Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the cognitive absence of the American president. Canada has been all but forgotten, but the situation in this country threatens to destabilize a Western democracy that shares a border with the U.S. It still requires to be addressed.

As long as Justin Trudeau and his inner cabinet remain intact, Canada will always live under the shadow of potential or imminent crisis. With the sudden and, for many, inexplicable revoking of the Emergencies Act, the country—or the best part of it—breathed a collective sigh of relief. But there is no guarantee against further irruptions to civic and political life. Our whirling dervish of a prime minister, like his favorite totalitarian regime, changes his mind “on a dime.” A man so labile and shallow cannot offer stability and democratic governance to his country, only insecurity, upheaval, and rule by edict.

It is by no means clear why Trudeau needed to invoke the Emergencies Act to dismantle and criminalize a peaceful, blue-collar trucker convoy protesting the vaccine mandates or why a brief interval later he saw fit to revoke it. One day it was necessary; the next day it was not. One theory is that Trudeau saw the polls were turning against him. Another hypothesis, as the Conservative Treehouse explains, is that the undermining of the banking system, caused by the targeting of accounts of those involved with the Freedom Convoy could not be allowed to stand because it obstructed the plans of the World Economic Forum and the collaborative use of the Canadian Bankers Association to create a digital ID system. This assumption seems implausible to me as Trudeau and his finance minister Chrystia Freeland must surely have been on the same page as their WEF masters.

A third possibility, which seems to me the most likely, is that the obligatory Senate vote, judging from the powerful speeches against the legitimacy of the Act, would have been an embarrassing rebuke to Trudeau’s dictatorial and unjustifiable actions, which may have ultimately caused a vote of no confidence in his government.

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Energy, Russia and American Power Biden’s war on fossil fuels helps Putin, as the Ukraine crisis shows.

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-and-american-power-vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-joe-biden-fossil-fuels-energy-11645902803?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a 3 a.m. wake-up call to President Biden and America’s liberal political class: Cease your war on U.S. energy. Europe’s climate obsessions have rendered it vulnerable to Vladimir Putin’s extortion, and the U.S. is in danger of repeating that tragic mistake.

No less than Igor Sechin, CEO of Russia’s state-owned Rosneft, warned Europe last summer: “Some ecologists and politicians urge for a hasty energy transition, yet it requires an unrealistically fast launch of renewable energy sources and faces issues with storage, ensuring reliability and stability of power generation.”

Europe’s hefty renewable subsidies have rendered nuclear and coal power economically uncompetitive. Governments have also forced loads of nuclear and coal plants to retire prematurely, believing wind and solar could replace them. Hello? Renewables don’t provide reliable power 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Europe has been left to rely increasingly on natural gas to keep the lights on. But governments have effectively banned hydraulic fracturing, which would have let them charge their economies with domestically produced gas. Europe now imports almost all of its gas, with 40% coming from Russia.

Sluggish wind last summer sent natural gas demand and prices soaring. Some manufacturers had to shut down. Then Russia slowed gas deliveries, limiting Europe’s supply heading into the winter. Strategic advantage: Putin.

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Joe Biden is obviously incapacitated: What is to be done? By Rajan Laad

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

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

A few days back, Texas GOP rep. Ronny Jackson, who was the White House physician during the Obama and Trump administrations, dared to state the obvious, which is an act of bravery in current times.

Jackson called for Biden to take a cognitive test because Biden is “not fit to be our president right now” amid the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

The following are key excerpts from his remarks during an interview:

The whole country is seeing his mental cognitive issues on display for over a year now, and there’s really no question in most people’s minds that there’s something going on with him, that he’s not cognitively the same as he used to be and, in my mind, not fit to be our president right now.

Every time he gets up and talks to the American people, it’s not just the American people that are watching him speak, it’s the whole world, and that’s part of what the problem is here.

He looks tired, he looks weak, he looks confused, he’s incoherent, and it sends a message of weakness all over the world, and they’re seizing up on that.

Jackson provided an easy way for even regular people to verify Biden’s decline.

He’s got 40 years of tape, go back and look at this man, it’s not like we don’t have anything to compare it to. He’s always made gaffes but never like this. This is something different. These aren’t gaffes. This is something much more serious.

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First Round to Putin, What Next? by Amir Taheri

Posted By on February 27th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18274/first-round-to-putin

Initially, aware that he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] must cast himself as victim in order to win sympathy in Western public opinion that warms up to figures like Saddam Hussein or George Floyd, he presented Russia as a victim of NATO “expansion” and his saber rattling as an act of self-defense.

Never mind that NATO is a defensive pact and not allowed to attack anyone unless one of its own members is first attacked. Even then, Article V under which military action is allowed is not automatically applicable and hasn’t been applied since the alliance was created. In contrast, led by the now defunct Soviet Union, the rival Warsaw Pact was used for military interventions in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia to crush popular uprisings against Russian domination.

[U]nder NATO rules, a country that has unsettled irredentist disputes with its neighbors cannot be admitted as a member. That rule applies to both Ukraine and Georgia, another country invaded by Putin, both of which are barred from NATO membership because of their territorial disputes caused by Russian aggression.

Thus, Putin was making a song and dance about something that couldn’t happen under NATO’s own rules.

[Putin] can no longer play wolf disguised as sheep. Even his apologists, not to say mercenaries among Western politicians and journalists, are able to defend his latest move let alone presenting him as a victim of “Imperialism”.

Putin would be wrong to think that with the passage of time the rest of the world will endorse his “conquest”, just as no one ever recognized the annexation of the Baltic republics by Stalin.

The spectacle of ancient Russian tanks and armored vehicles creeping into Donbass showed how antiquarian Putin’s arsenal is.

At first glance, the latest twists and turns in the Ukraine poker game might present Russian President Vladimir Putin as the winner.

After all, he is reaping what he sowed eight years ago, when he incited ethnic Russian secessionists to set up breakaway “people’s republics” in parts of Ukrainian territory, in Donetsk and Lugansk. By stationing troops in the two enclaves, Putin makes official an occupation that he had indirectly exercised through Wagner mercenaries and local militias. Imposing two “cooperation treaties” on the breakaway “republics,” he also shows their annexation in all but name by Russia.