Authored by Michael Tracey, op-ed via Newsweek.com,

On June 4, a group referring to itself as the “Polish Volunteer Corps” issued a boastful announcement confirming its participation in a series of cross-border ground offensives into Russia.

News of these audacious raids was jarring enough, given the many prior assurances of U.S. and Ukrainian war planners, who insisted no attacks would be carried out inside Russian territory. It was all the more conspicuous that the incursion units were apparently comprised of Polish soldiers.

Poland, of course, is not only a NATO member state, but the NATO member state with which the U.S. has most assiduously aligned itself since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Polish government officials deny any formal connection to the “Polish Volunteer Corps”).

So the raids raised an obvious, yet oft-neglected question: Just what the hell is U.S. policy in Ukraine?

If you turn on the TV, you’ll find pundits on every channel loyally reciting from memory the broad parameters of the U.S. mission—at least as it’s being conveyed in daily rhetorical flourishes by Biden Administration officials, assorted Congressional chest-thumpers, and brave think tank warriors. Freedom and autocracy are locked in a great cosmic battle of good versus evil, or so goes the usual storyline—most often narrated with a degree of moral complexity that can be generously compared to a lower-tier Marvel Movie.

But apart from this steady stream of heavily recycled platitudes, was it ever plainly disclosed to Americans—the chief financial sponsors of the Ukraine war effort, after all—that the scope of the war effort they’ve found themselves subsidizing would eventually expand to include platoons of Polish soldiers marching straight into Russia? Did anyone back in Washington, D.C. sign off on this, or was there ever an opportunity granted for public consideration of its potentially foreboding implications?

At least in theory, the U.S. is treaty-bound to come to the defense of Poland in the event of armed attack. And while Poland may nominally disavow the Polish Volunteer Corps, a Polish journalist writing for Poland’s largest digital publication says he was in attendance at a founding organizational meeting in Kyiv this past February, during which the unit was established not as a ragtag group of untested amateurs, but as an elite “sabotage and reconnaissance” force—which from the get-go was “reporting directly to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.” Per this account, the unit was to consist of Poland’s “most experienced soldiers,” with notable imprecision as to where specifically those soldiers hailed from.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a BM-21 ‘Grad’ multiple rocket launcher towards Russian positions near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region on June 13, 2023. Ukrainian forces have now begun their long-awaited counteroffensive at several points along the front.ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Then there’s the fact that shortly before the formation of the “Polish Volunteer Corps,” a cross-coalition bill was submitted to the Polish parliament which would make it legal for Polish nationals to fight in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The war against Russia was to be recognized as “a special situation from the point of view of the national security of the Republic of Poland,” the text reads, “requiring non-standard political and legislative actions on the part of the state.”

The “Polish Volunteer Corps” has been conducting joint operations with the “Russian Volunteer Corps,” another fully integrated “special unit within the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine”—euphemistically referred to in “Western” media headlines with plausible-deniability monikers like “Pro-Ukraine group of partisans.” Given how these ostensibly unattached “partisans” have been bragging about taking Russian hostages and otherwise getting themselves involved in increasingly spectacular, provocative attacks, one understands why Ukraine might wish to sustain plausible deniability.

“The ground war has come to Russia,” proclaimed one Polish state-backed media organ at the news that their soldiers had breached the border.

For many, the footage provided an occasion for rapturous joy, awash as they are in the primal euphoria of armed retribution. Meanwhile, these elite soldiers billed as “volunteers” have been razing Russian border settlements with U.S.-provided weaponry, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. The units “lobbed shells and missiles on residential areas,” the Times reported, and they appeared to be aiming their attacks at “no apparent military target.”

Convoys of armored vehicles called MRAPs, initially produced for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, were observed barreling into Russia from Ukraine, with still no explanation forthcoming as to how precisely they wound up there. Maybe someone in Kyiv just happened to leave a garage full of U.S. supplied armored vehicles unlocked. Either way, the Ukraine military was conclusively shown to have used U.S. weapons to attack Russia—the very thing President Biden and other administration officials have emphatically maintained they do not support and are not enabling.

Strangely though, this revelation of systematic government deception doesn’t seem to have moved the needle much in terms of the wider debate over U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Donald Trump could misstate the temperature outside by half-a-degree Farenheit and the entire U.S. media would be falling over themselves to piously accuse him of “lying”—but pile up mounds of incontrovertible evidence that Americans have been chronically deceived about a sprawling U.S. military intervention, and you’ll mostly get eye-rolls from the savvy-minded commentariat. That is, if you’re fortunate enough to be spared the standard sneering accusations of “Russian propagandist.”

Speaking of claims that might arguably be considered “propaganda,” almost exactly one year ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on a U.S. media tour promising Americans from the bottom of his heart that “We are not planning to attack Russia.” These claims were echoed simultaneously by President Biden, who insisted that “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.”

Yet here we are a year later, and there’s no longer any reasonable doubt that Ukraine is “striking beyond its borders,” and in increasingly aggressive fashion—from the cross-border raids to the drone-strike on the Kremlin to the bombing barrage on a residential Moscow neighborhood. And that’s only a smattering of examples from the past several weeks.

Still, it’s harder than one might expect to rouse much critical interest—especially among a media that has been politically, ideologically, and emotionally invested in Ukraine’s glorious war-fighting cause from the outset. One perfect example of late was a CNN article in which “senior U.S. officials” were reported confiding that while they had “condemned the strikes inside Russia,” they of course privately “believe the cross-border attacks are a smart military strategy.” A state official saying one thing in public but another in private used to be the most surefire sign of official deceit a journalist could hope to uncover. Yet CNN seemed to just let it flow by like a gentle spring breeze, almost as though they were actually impressed with the guile of the “senior U.S. officials” they’d been given the honor of anonymously paraphrasing.

As it stands, the U.S. government continuously pelts the American people with provable untruths in service of maintaining a war policy that bears almost no resemblance to how it was initially presented. And in the sectors of society allegedly tasked with scrutinizing government conduct, this is mostly met with a shrug.

How much more extreme does the deception need to get before sustained pushback is no longer avoidable?

If Polish soldiers launching a self-proclaimed “ground war” in Russia isn’t enough to rattle off the complacency, one shudders to think how severe of a shock would be necessary.

*  *  *

Michael Tracey is an independent reporter with Substack. Follow him on Twitter @mtracey.

Toronto’s mayoral race is so robust with candidates, Bloomberg is reporting that even a dog is running.

While candidate Olivia Chow is widely recognized to be the front-runner in the race, there is no shortage of people who want to compete for the spot. And among the 102 candidates is even one man, Toby Heaps, who is running on behalf of his dog named Molly.

Their official campaign page says: “It may sound strange to run for the highest office of North America’s fourth-largest city alongside a dog (to be clear, I am the human candidate on the ballot and Molly would be Toronto’s first honorary dog mayor, following in the footsteps of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and cities in California, Colorado, Kentucky and Minnesota), but I have always fought for the underdog and I believe we make more compassionate decisions with animals in the room.”

Chow on the other hand is focused on a multitude of issues. On housing, she recently told Bloomberg: “The market is completely skewed. It’s just sad. There’s no affordable housing — hardly any rental units, no co-operative housing.”

The report runs down her list of proposed solutions, which include “25,000 new rental homes over eight years; a higher tax on luxury homes and vacant properties; a fund that would take thousands of homes off the private market and give them to not-for-profits and community land trusts.”

66 year old Chow is the widow of former New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton and, while she is the current front-runner, anything still seems possible. Her top two competitors are city councilors Josh Matlow and Ana Bailao.

Myer Siemiatycki, professor emeritus of politics at Toronto Metropolitan University, told Bloomberg: “To some observers, it looks like they’ve seen this movie before: Olivia Chow gets an early lead but can’t sustain it, and gets overtaken by someone else in the field.”

“I think that’s going to be harder this time around. The issues are just more complicated and wide ranging,” Siemiatycki continued.  

Another concern is that conservative candidates Toronto police chief Mark Saunders and ex-city councilor Brad Bradford could have a path to victory if progressives wind up splitting the vote. 

Siemiatycki added: “As we approach the finish line of this election, and depending on what the polls look like, there will be pressure within those different ideological camps to drop out and support another candidate whose orientation is fairly similar. And that could happen both on the right and the left.”

But hey, we don’t expect Molly to bend to anyone’s will. Unless, of course, they’ve got treats. Regardless, she gets our vote…

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

It’s fascinating to see how Russian war correspondents are now playing a role similar to the former political commissars in the USSR.

President Putin’s meeting with a group of Russian war correspondents and Telegram bloggers – including Filatov, Poddubny, Pegov from War Gonzo, Podolyaka, Gazdiev from RT – was an extraordinary exercise in freedom of the press.

There were among them seriously independent journalists who can be very critical of the way the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense (MoD) are conducting what can be alternatively defined as a Special Military Operation (SMO); a counter-terror operation (CTO); or an “almost war” (according to some influential business circles in Moscow).

It’s fascinating to see how these patriotic/independent journalists are now playing a role similar to the former political commissars in the USSR, all of them, in their own way, deeply committed to guiding Russian society towards draining the swamp, slowly but surely.

It’s clear Putin not only understands their role but sometimes, “shock to the system-style”, the system he presides actually implements the journalists’ suggestions. As a foreign correspondent working all over the world for nearly 40 years now, I have been quite impressed by the way Russian journalists may enjoy a degree of freedom unimaginable in most latitudes of the collective West.

The Kremlin transcript of the meeting shows Putin definitely not inclined to beat around the bush.

He admitted there are “operetta Generals” in the Army; that there was a shortage of drones, precision munitions and communication equipment, now being addressed.

He discussed the legality of mercenary outfits; the necessity of sooner or later installing a “buffer zone” to protect Russian citizens from systematic Kiev regime shelling; and he stressed that Russia will not answer Bandera-inspired terrorism with terrorism.

After examining the exchanges, a conclusion is imperative: Russian war media is not staging an offensive even as the collective West attacks Russia 24/7 with its massive NGO/soft power media apparatus. Moscow is not – yet? – fully engaged in the trenches of information warfare; as it stands Russian media is only playing defense.

All the way to Kiev?

Arguably the money quote of the whole encounter is Putin’s concise, chilling evaluation of where we now stand in the chessboard:

“We were forced to try to end the war that the West started in 2014 by force of arms. And Russia will end this war by force of arms, freeing the entire territory of the former Ukraine from the United States and Ukrainian Nazis. There are no other options. The Ukrainian army of the US and NATO will be defeated, no matter what new types of weapons it receives from the West. The more weapons there are, the fewer Ukrainians and what used to be Ukraine will remain. Direct intervention by NATO’s European armies will not change the outcome. But in this case, the fire of war will engulf the whole of Europe. It looks like the US is ready for that too.”

In a nutshell: this will only end on Russia’s terms, and only when Moscow evaluates all its objectives have been met. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Back on the frontlines, as pointed out by the indispensable Andrei Martyanov, first-class war correspondent Marat Kalinin has conclusively laid out how the current Ukrainian metal coffin counter-offensive has not been able to reach even the first Russian line of defense (they are a long – highway to hell – 10 km away). Everything NATO’s top proxy army ever assembled was able to accomplish so far was to get mercilessly slaughtered on an industrial scale.

Meet General Armageddon in action.

Surovikin had eight months to place his footprint in Ukraine and from the beginning he understood exactly how to turn it into a whole new ballgame. Arguably the strategy is to completely destroy the Ukrainian forces between the first line of defense – assuming they ever breach it – and the second line, which is quite substantial. The third line will remain off limits.

Collective West MSM is predictably freaking out, finally starting to show horrendous Ukrainian losses and giving evidence of the utter accumulated incompetence of Kiev goons and their NATO military handlers.

And just in case the going gets tough – for now a remote possibility – Putin himself has delivered the road map. Softly, softly. As in, “Do we need a march on Kiev? If yes, we need a new mobilization, if not, we do not need it. There is no need for mobilization right now.”

The crucial operative words are “right now”.

The end of all your elaborate plans

Meanwhile, away from the battlefield, the Russians are very much aware of the frantic geoeconomic activity.

Moscow and Beijing increasingly trade in yuan and rubles. The ASEAN 10 are going all out for regional currencies, bypassing the US dollar. Indonesia and South Korea are turbo-charging trade in rupiah and won. Pakistan is paying for Russian oil in yuan. The UAE and India are increasing non-oil trade in rupees.

Everyone and his neighbor are making a beeline to join BRICS+ – forcing a desperate Hegemon to start deploying an array of Hybrid War techniques.

It’s been a long way since Putin examined the chessboard in the early 2000s and then unleashed a crash missile program for defensive and offensive missiles.

Over the next 23 years Russia developed hypersonic missiles, advanced ICBMs, and the most advanced defensive missiles on the planet. Russia won the missile race. Period. The Hegemon – obsessed by its own manufactured war against Islam – was completely blindsided and made no material missile advances in nearly two and a half decades.

Now the “strategy” is to invent a Taiwan Question out of nothing, which is configuring the chessboard as the ante-chamber of no holds barred Hybrid War against Russia-China.

The proxy attack – via Kiev hyenas – against Russophone Donbass, egged on by the Straussian neocon psychos in charge of US foreign policy, murdered at least 14,000 men, women and children between 2014 to 2022. That  was also an attack on China. The ultimate aim of this Divide and Rule gambit was to inflict defeat on China’s ally in the Heartland, so Beijing would be isolated.

According to the neocon wet dream, all of the above would have enabled the Hegemon, once it had taken over Russia again as it did with Yeltsin, to blockade China from Russian natural resources using eleven US aircraft carrier task forces plus numerous submarines.

Obviously military science-impaired neocons are oblivious to the fact that Russia is now the strongest military power on the planet.

In Ukraine, the neocons were hoping that a provocation would cause Moscow to deploy other secret weapons apart from hypersonic missiles, so Washington could better prepare for all-out war.

All those elaborate plans may have miserably floundered. But a corollary remains: the Straussian neocons firmly believe they may instrumentalize a few million Europeans – who’s next? Poles? Estonians? Latvians? Lithuanians? And why not Germans? – as cannon fodder as the US did in WWI and WWII, fought over the bodies of Europeans (including Russians) sacrificed to the same old Mackinder Anglo-Saxon power grab.

Hordes of European 5th columnists make it so much easier to “trust” the US to protect them, while only a few with an IQ over room temperature have understood who really bombed Nord Stream 1 and 2, with the connivance of the Liver Sausage German Chancellor.

The bottom line is that the Hegemon simply cannot accept a sovereign, self-sufficient Europe; only a dependent vassal, hostage to the seas that the US control.

Putin clearly sees how the chessboard has been laid out. And he also sees how “Ukraine” does not even exist anymore.

While no one was paying attention, last month the Kiev gang sold Ukraine to $8.5 trillion-worth BlackRock. Just like that. The deal was sealed between the Government of Ukraine and BlackRock’s VP Philipp Hildebrand.

They are setting up a Ukrainian Development Fund (UDF) for “reconstruction”, focused on energy, infrastructure, agriculture, industry and IT. All remaining valuable assets in what will be a rump Ukraine will be gobbled up by BlackRock: from Metinvest, DTEK (energy) and MJP (agriculture) to Naftogaz, Ukrainian Railways, Ukravtodor and Ukrenergo.

What’s the point in going to Kiev then? High-grade toxic neoliberalism is already partying on the spot.

Mercedes-Benz rolled out a new beta program for over 900,000 US vehicles equipped with the MBUX infotainment system. Drivers can activate the new voice assistant that integrates Microsoft’s “generative artificial intelligence” on Friday.

By adding ChatGPT, voice control via the “Hey Mercedes” MBUX Voice Assistant will be like talking to a chatbot. Some of those conversations include asking “for details about their destination, to suggest a new dinner recipe, or to answer a complex question” — all “while keeping their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.”

The rollout of the beta program will happen over the air on Friday. It’s as simple as saying, “Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.”

We’re surprised other automotive manufacturers like Tesla didn’t first integrate AI language models that power systems like ChatGPT into its voice assistant software. The Mercedes update indicates vehicles are getting more intelligent and will be able to hold conversations with their drivers. There’s a clear benefit to this technology: Keep the driver’s eyes on the road instead of fumbling through a smartphone. 

The Verge noted the update would be free of charge and comes at a time when automakers have been finding new ways to make money via in-car subscriptions, such as charging for heated seats and accelerator mode. 

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley predicted Thursday that Ukraine’s counteroffensive will be long and “very violent” following a meeting of military officials in Brussels.

Milley made the comments when asked how long he expects the counteroffensive to last, saying it was “premature” to put a timeline on the battle. “This is a very difficult fight. It’s a very violent fight, and it will likely take a considerable amount of time and at high cost,” Milley said.

The Biden administration has been pushing for the violent counteroffensive as it’s explicitly opposed to a ceasefire and peace talks, a position Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined earlier this month.

Milley claimed Ukraine has been making “steady progress,” but the battle lines have not changed much since Ukraine launched the assault early last week. According to The New York Times, it’s been three days since Ukraine claimed any gains, and Ukraine’s deputy defense acknowledged it was “very difficult to advance” in the southeast.

Asia Times reported on June 10 that American and European military observers in Ukraine described Ukraine’s attempted counteroffensive as a “suicide mission” because of the way they were attacking Russia’s positions.

“If you want to conduct an offensive and you have a dozen brigades and a few dozen tanks, you concentrate them and try to break through. The Ukrainians have been running around in five different directions,” a senior European officer told Asia Times.

“We tried to tell them to stop these piecemeal tactics, define a main thrust with proper infantry support and then do what they can,” the officer added. The report said Ukraine lost 38 tanks, including numerous German-made Leopard 2 tanks, on June 8 by sending them into minefields without deploying mine-clearing vehicles first.

The US has already announced a new weapons package to replace Bradley and Stryker armored vehicles that Ukraine has lost in the offensive, and Ukraine has been asking for more tanks, including the Leopard 2.

Speaking alongside Milley on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin downplayed Ukraine’s losses, claiming that Russia was showing different pictures of the same damaged vehicles. “This is a war, so we know that there will be battle damage on both sides … I think the Russians have shown us that same five vehicles about a thousand times from 10 different angles. But quite frankly, the Ukrainians have — still have a lot of combat capability — combat power,” he said.

At the conference in Brussels of military officials from more than 50 countries, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Austin stressed the need to support Ukraine for the long-term. He said the Netherlands and Denmark shared the progress they’ve made on training Ukrainians on F-16s, but it’s still unclear how many of the US-made fighter jets Ukraine will receive.

While much media reporting on the June 6th destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine has focused on the ‘whodunnit’ aspect to the explosion, many thousands of people downriver continue to suffer, after an nearly five cubic miles of water has submerged villages and farmland in the Kherson oblast. 

Basic infrastructure and utilities have been destroyed in much of the region, leaving an estimated 700,000 people in the broader area in need of clean water.

Al Jazeera writes that “Among displaced communities along the banks of Ukraine’s Dnipro River, bottled water has become the most coveted commodity.”

“It is all poisoned,” a representative with the NGO Project Hope told the publication, describing the impacted population as “very tired” and “very stressed” due to the ongoing humanitarian disaster.

Al Jazeera observes that “The man-made flood washed away chemical fertilisers from cultivated fields, flushed away pollutants from the riverbed, submerged cemeteries and released at least 150 tonnes of machine oil from the breached dam with additional fuel and industrial waste likely to have been discharged from plants around it.”

There are growing fears the floodwaters could bring waterborne diseases based on decomposing bodies – both human and animal – which were killed during the initial massive flooding. Health workers are concerned over possible cholera outbreaks in particular.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has continued to maintain that Russia had deliberately blown up the dam as “an act of terrorism”, calling it a “brutal ecocide”. 

But the Kremlin has pointed out it would have no reason to blow up a critical piece of infrastructure vital to sending water to the Crimea. Western officials and media reports too have grown largely quiet in terms of any potential “investigation” into which side was behind the sabotage.

Authored by Jacob G. Hornberger via the Future of Freedom Foundation,

June 10 was the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University. Reading or listening to the speech today, it is not difficult to see why the U.S. national-security establishment deemed Kennedy to be a grave threat to national security, just as it did with certain foreign leaders, such as Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, Congo leader Patrice Lumumba, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz and, later, President Salvador Allende of Chile. 

For some 150 years, the federal government had been a limited-government republic. After World War II, however, the federal government was converted to a national-security state. 

The difference was day and night.

With a limited-government republic, there was openness and transparency in governmental operations. Moreover, there was only a relatively small, basic military force. No Pentagon, no vast military-industrial complex, no CIA, no NSA, and no empire of foreign military bases. Governmental powers were limited and tightly constrained. No power to assassinate, kidnap, torture, or indefinitely detain people. No power to initiate coups or regime-change operations in foreign countries. No power of mass secret surveillance. 

With a national-security state, dark-side secrecy became everything. “National security” became the two most important words in the American political lexicon. A large, permanent military establishment, along with the CIA and the NSA, came into existence. This vast national-security establishment vested itself with omnipotent, totalitarian-like powers, including assassination, torture, coups, secret surveillance, kidnapping, and indefinite detention. It established a vast empire of military bases, both foreign and domestic, and initiated a program of regime change in foreign nations. Foreign wars in faraway lands, such as Korea and Vietnam, became the norm.

The Cold War was actually one great big racket, one that became a cash cow for the vast military-intelligence complex and its ever-growing army of “defense” contractors who loved feeding at the public trough. This enormous racket was justified under the rubric of keeping America safe from a supposed vast communist conspiracy that supposedly was based in Moscow, Russia. Yes, that Russia!

There was no possibility whatsoever of a peaceful resolution of the forever war between the United States and Russia, U.S. oficials said. There could never be peaceful coexistence, they maintained. The war against the Russian Reds, U.S. national-security officials held, was a war to the death. That was why the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended to Kennedy that the United States initiate a surprise nuclear attack against the Russians, a recommendation that Kennedy indignantly rejected.

Having achieved a “breakthrough” after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy had decided that he was going to lead America in an entirely different direction from that of the national-security establishment. In his Peace Speech, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet against what had now become his enemy — the national-security establishment. Kennedy essentially declared an end to the Cold War racket and announced that henceforth Russia and the United States would live in peaceful coexistence. He declared an end to to the extreme anti-Russia hostility that the national-security establishment had inculcated in the American people, and he even praised the Soviet Union.

The very next night — June 11 — Kennedy delivered a nation-wide speech expressing support for the civil-rights movement, which the national-security establishment was convinced was controlled by the Russian Reds. That’s why the FBI wiretapped Martin Luther King and used blackmail with the aim of inducing him to commit suicide.

Kennedy then followed up his words with actions. Over the fierce opposition of the Pentagon and the CIA, he negotiated the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets. He also ordered a pull-out of troops from Vietnam. He proposed a joint trip to the moon with the Russians, which would have meant sharing U.S. rocket technology with the Reds. On the day he was killed, he had an emissary having lunch with Fidel Castro with an intent to normalize relations with Cuba, which was anathema to the national-security establishment. 

What would have happened if Kennedy had lived? The national-security establishment would have immediately become irrelevant and immaterial. They would have been left twiddling their thumbs, with nothing to do. Remember, after all, that the supposed threat from the Russian Reds was why the federal government was converted to a national-security state in the first place. Peaceful coexistence with the communist world would have meant no more justification for a national-security state. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA would have been dismantled and America’s founding system of a limited-government republic would have been restored.

Keep in mind something else. Kennedy would never have permitted the Pentagon and the CIA to go into the Middle East and begin killing people, as they did after the Cold War finally came to an end in 1989. That would have meant that there never would have been terrorist retaliation for U.S. interventionism and, therefore, there never would have been a “war on terrorism.”

In other words, if Kennedy had lived, we’d be living in a totally different society today, one characterized by a limited-government republic rather than a national-security state — one without the militarism, forever wars, conflicts, hostilities, crises, chaos, coups, assassinations, torture, and indefinite detention that have become regular and permanent features of American life.

For its part, the military-intelligence establishment considered Kennedy to be a weak leader — a coward — an appeaser — Neville Chamberlain —  a traitor — a president who was leading America to doom at the hands of the communists. Kennedy was deemed to be a grave threat to national-security. As far as it was concerned, the national-security establishment had no choice but to do what was necessary to save America.

Kennedy knew the danger that he faced in the war between him and the national-security establishment for the future direction of America. He had listened to President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, when Ike warned the American people of the dangers that the national-security state apparatus posed to the rights and liberties of the American people and to America’s democratic processes. 

The war between President Kennedy and the national-security establishment came to an end on November 22, 1963. And Americans have been paying the price for that “victory” ever since.

See:

An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story by Jacob Hornberger

JFK’s War with the National-Security Establishment by Douglas Horne

The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger

The Kennedy Autopsy 2 by Jacob Hornberger

AT&T is preparing to close its flagship store in downtown San Francisco, citing ‘changing consumer shopping habits,’ according to local news website SFGATE.

“Consumer shopping habits continue to change, and we’re changing with them. That means serving customers where they are through the right mix of retail stores, digital channels, and our phone-based care team,” said AT&T spokesperson Chris Collins. He said the store at 1 Powell St. will close on Aug. 1.

AT&T will have eleven remaining stores in the metro area, including one on Market and Fremont streets. So not a total exodus. 

Last month, T-Mobile closed its flagship store in the downtown area. It told SFGATE, “We recently reshaped our retail strategy.” 

The main reason why AT&T, T-Mobile, and many other stores, such as Office Depot, The Container Store, Anthropologie, Whole Foods, Disney Store, Armani Exchange, CB2, Saks Off 5th, and others, are closing up shop is that progressive city leadership failed to enforce law and order, sparking a tsunami theft wave. 

A combination of remote work, companies scaling back office footprints, and no one wanting to have operations based in a Marxist shit (covered) city have forced some of the highest office vacancy rates in the country. The local economy can’t thrive without office workers, a doom loop that crushes retailers. 

As retailers leave because of a lack of sales and theft, this hits building owners who can’t find tenants, forcing some to default on the buildings (see: here). You can see the chain of events is creating a perfect storm. 

Earlier this week, Westfield and its partner Brookfield Properties stopped making payments on the metro area’s largest shopping mall after “challenging operating conditions.” 

Wow, ABC actually admitted San Francisco is falling apart due to rampant crime and drug use.

The network failed to mention that the city’s purely leftist policies are the source of the problem.

Read more from @NickFondacaro https://t.co/OLubnnzhzV pic.twitter.com/qrLVVK95s0

— Media Research Center (@theMRC) June 15, 2023

This comes after Nordstrom, which occupies 312,000 square feet in the mall at 865 Market St, isn’t renewing its lease in August after nearly four decades of operations. When Nordstrom closes, the mall only be 55% leased, well below the average 93% of other Westfield malls across the US. 

Bloomberg obtained a letter to employees from Jamie Nordstrom, the retailer’s chief stores officer, who said the closing of Nordstrom is due to a slump in sales because of lower foot traffic, adding “dynamics of the downtown San Francisco market have changed dramatically over the past several years.” We suspect Nordstrom is referring to the out-of-control crime.

Listen to the homeless. They’ll tell you they are on the streets for the drugs, and that assault is commonplace. San Francisco attracts addicts from across the US because it lets them buy and use drugs openly. Video by @lwoodhouse pic.twitter.com/Rx7iJWPoL2

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) June 16, 2023

And on Thursday, Cinemark Theater announced it would be closing its location at the mall. 

Can you see how failed progressive policies have sparked a vicious doom loop, forcing businesses to shut down and subsequently putting pressure on property owners? In these high-interest-rate environments, these owners struggle to find financing and tenants, leaving some with no alternative but to default.

What a mess the Democrats have created. 

FAILURE: The collapse of San Francisco is accelerating at an alarming pace. Each day another employer shuts down. Today AT&T announced it is closing its downtown San Francisco flagship store. London Breed is presiding over a failed city. https://t.co/NGSnfuYUJs pic.twitter.com/3RWPoYx0pa

— @amuse (@amuse) June 16, 2023

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Walt Nauta is a 10-year-Navy veteran and served as an aide to former President Trump both in and out of office.

Special Counsel Jack Smith has now indicted him for allegedly “making false statements in interviews with the FBI.” The indictment’s subtext is that Nauta refused to cooperate with, and turn state’s evidence to, the special counsel in its efforts to convict the former president.

But why stop the indictments with a man who loyally served and followed the orders of the former president of the United States, was a Navy veteran, and a hard-working immigrant from Guam?

Are there not far bigger fish to fry to remind Americans that justice is blind?

After all, when Special Counsel Smith announced his indictments of Trump, he lectured America on the rule of law and the cherished notion that no one is above it.

So let us start with the former interim director of the FBI itself, Andrew McCabe.

McCabe admittedly lied four times about his illegally leaking sensitive information to witnesses and mishandling classified information.

Have those crimes suddenly ceased being felonies?

Or is it now the policy of the United States government that an FBI director can lie with impunity, and leak, and mishandle sensitive classified information?

Yet Walt Nauta may be sent to prison while McCabe will continue to earn a fine salary at CNN as a paid “expert” to deplore . . . what exactly?

What McCabe knows best from his own experience with the deed—the “mishandling of classified information”?

Nauta reportedly is being indicted for claiming he “did not know” what he supposedly did know in relation to the movement of the president’s papers.

His denial was proffered with nearly the exact phraseology that another FBI director, James Comey, used under oath when he stonewalled congressional inquisitors on 245 occasions.

Was the FBI director ever indicted for feigning ignorance or amnesia before Congress?

Did Nauta ever record a private, and likely classified, conservation he had with the president of the United States in the White House, and then leak it to the New York Times?

That is precisely what James “Higher Loyalty” Comey bragged about doing.

Most recently, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm admitted that she, too, recently lied while under oath to Congress when she denied owning private stocks.

Was Nauta’s “I don’t know” a greater threat to the rule of law and the security of the republic than the lies of the secretary of Energy? She deliberately misled Congress about potential conflicts of interest involving her stock portfolio.

Then we come to Joe Biden, the current president of the United States. He has sworn that he never discussed business with his son, Hunter Biden, currently under suspicion for tax improprieties and leveraging foreign governments by selling them supposed Biden influence.

Yet plenty of witnesses have contradicted Joe Biden’s statement. Photos even reveal him side-by-side with his son’s business associates.

For nearly 20 years, Senator, Vice President, private citizen, and President Joe Biden has concealed the fact he unlawfully took classified documents home and moved them about in various unsecured locations.

Was Mr. Biden’s movement of classified documents for the last 20 years less egregious than what Nauta is accused of having done?

Was the Biden Corvette garage more secure than the closets and bathrooms inside the Mar-a-Lago gated estate?

Biden’s lawyers, after nearly two decades, only came forward because of the media hype surrounding the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents.

Is there some law that states that a senator, vice president, and president can improperly remove classified documents, move them about to various unsecured locations, and avoid the sort of felony indictments now facing Nauta and Trump?

Let us end with the greatest exemptions of all—those accorded to Hillary Clinton.

She has variously committed the following likely major felonies.

One, she illegally transmitted classified information involving national security over her own unsecure server while secretary of state.

Two, she destroyed both email records and communication devices that were under government subpoena.

Three, she was untruthful about both the use and destruction of said subpoenaed items.

Four, she illegally hired a foreign national, Christopher Steele, to work on her campaign as an opposition researcher.

Five, she conspired to disseminate false documents among top government intelligence and investigatory agencies as well as the media, for the sole purpose of destroying her presidential opponent Donald Trump and thereby warping the 2016 election process.

And?

Clinton—like self-confessed liars or dissimulators John Brennan, former CIA Director,  James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, and former FBI Directors James Comey and Andrew McCabe—was exempted from all legal jeopardy. She, too, continues to monetize her past notorieties and controversies.

The last thing this country needs is any more bottled-piety lectures on the rule of law from Special Counsel Jack Smith, Joe Biden, and the array of admitted lying former high government officials.

They, not Walt Nauta, should be ashamed.

Putin is hitting back in retaliation after Western governments have frozen some $300 billion in Russian central bank assets since the Ukraine war began. The Russian president told an audience at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday that it was theft and reveals a “medieval” mindset on the part of the Western allies.

“Many businessmen were stunned to see that their accounts in the West were frozen. It never crossed anyone’s mind. This is simply robbery! They closed it, took it away and won’t even explain why. It’s shocking. It’s like the Middle Ages,” Putin stated, according to a translation in RT.

He also underscored the growing risks for Russians who held their assets abroad, “Our people have a good saying: ‘Where you were born is where you should conduct your business’,” he said.

But Moscow is doing more than just issuing threats and condemnations, as last week the Kremlin took definitive legal action against Western companies still doing business in Russia, in retaliation for US and European sanctions. 

The FT reported this week:

Russia is to adopt powers to seize assets of “naughty” western companies and will make it harder for them to exit the country, as Vladimir Putin seeks ways to retaliate against US and European sanctions. The Kremlin last week secretly ordered legislation to enable western assets to be appropriated at knockdown prices and is discussing even more draconian measures to fully nationalize groups, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The push is being described as a carrot-and-stick approach which chiefly uses the threat of nationalization.  According to more from FT: “The confidential Kremlin decree, seen by the Financial Times, would give the Russian state priority rights to buy any western asset for sale at a ‘significant discount’ so they could later be sold at a profit.”

Additionally, “Putin’s order to his cabinet, signed last week, also requires all private Russian buyers of western assets to be fully Russian-held or in a process to exclude all foreign shareholders, further complicating any exit procedure.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has described that Western companies had in many cases exited the country altogether at a huge loss, or else in some cases they simply stopped paying salaries.

The Russian government is launching mechanisms to return the assets of foreign companies owned by Russians – Putin

The President of Russia focused on the fact that Western countries do not release Russian businesses to Russia. Nevertheless, special zones for such companies have… pic.twitter.com/ZNHyFMZneE

— Sprinter (@Sprinter99880) June 16, 2023

“If a company doesn’t fulfil its obligations, then, of course, it goes in the category of naughty companies,” Peskov told the FT. “We say goodbye to those companies. And what we do with their assets after that is our business.”

A senior businessman with holdings in Russia told the publication, “I think nationalization is inevitable. It is only a matter of time” as the way things are going: “The state will need money.”