A George Soros-linked St. Louis prosecutor is facing possible removal from office over "willful neglect of cases."

Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey released a statement tearing into St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, saying he's taken steps to remove her from office regarding "years of willful neglect" for the cases she was responsible for prosecuting.

"As Attorney General, I want to protect the people of St. Louis, and that includes ensuring prosecutors protect the public. We gave Circuit Attorney Gardner the chance to do the right thing and resign, she has refused to do so, and my office filed a quo warrant at 12:01 PM to remove her from office immediately."

Bailey's office said in a press release:

"On February 18, 2023, Janae Edmonson, a sixteen-year-old athlete, was walking back to her hotel in downtown St. Louis when she was run down by a speeding vehicle and lost both her legs. One was severed, and the other maimed. Ms. Edmonson survived the crash due to her father's quick action and emergency medical training, but both of her legs were amputated."

French President Emmanuel Macron has got the Americans in a flap with his comments advocating greater European strategic autonomy and for the old continent to avoid becoming embroiled in a U.S.-China confrontation over Taiwan.

Macron made his remarks while traveling back from China where he appeared to have been well received by President Xi Jinping. The trip reportedly garnered several lucrative trade deals for French businesses at a time when Élysée Palace is assailed with nationwide public protests and strikes over economic woes.

The American chagrin over Macron's musings about European strategic autonomy is revealing in at least two ways.

The New York Times sniffily accused Macron of playing the "Gaullist card" while the Wall Street Journal censured the French leader for "blundering on Taiwan", adding, "He weakens deterrence against Chinese aggression and undermines U.S. support for Europe".

Republican Senator Marco Rubio was palpably miffed and demanded that Macron should clarify "quickly" whether he was speaking for Europe as a whole or for France alone. In a huff, Rubio said, "You guys [European leaders] handle Ukraine" because the U.S. would henceforth focus its attention on "China's threats".

You have to laugh at the misplaced sense of American chivalry. This is the usual American trope of believing that they are once again salvaging Europe from conflict, as in the First and Second World Wars. Uncle Sam, as Rubio suggests, is going to abandon Europe to its bloody squabbling while getting on with "dealing" with purported "Chinese aggression".

The reality is diametrically opposite. Europe is embroiled in the worst war since the Second World War precisely because its supine leaders are slavishly following Washington's agenda of waging a proxy against Russia and destroying the strategic Russian-European energy trade. U.S.-led NATO expansionism over decades - under the guise of "protecting Europe - has produced this dangerous juncture. The war in Ukraine is driven by Washington's need to shore up its unwieldy hegemonic ambitions. Confronting Russia and China are an integral part of Washington's imperial game, as is the American need to subordinate Europe as a colony of vassals.

(Readers sensitive to discussion of inappropriate adult behavior toward children may want to skip this one.)

There's a really gross video going around of the Dalai Lama kissing a young boy on the lips and telling him to suck his tongue while an adult audience looks on approvingly. A tweet from Tibet.net last month shows a video clip of the Tibetan spiritual leader with the child and says the encounter took place during his "meeting with students and members of M3M Foundation," though Tibet.net's clip cuts out the sexually inappropriate part of the encounter.

Here is a hyperlink to a video of the interaction. For those who understandably do not wish to see such a thing but are comfortable with a text description, here's a new write-up from News.com.au:

Western arms meant for Kiev are also falling into the hands of organized crime and terrorists, Moscow's UN envoy has said.

Weapons being sent to Ukraine by its Western backers often end up benefitting malicious actors across the globe, Moscow's permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said on Monday.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on risks associated with weapons exports, Moscow's envoy claimed that while Western countries had been trying to promote "responsible behavior" over arms trafficking, the Ukraine conflict proved "how insincere their claims" on the matter actually were.

Nebenzia recalled that Russia has "long been stressing that pumping up of the Kiev regime with weapons would bring those weapons in black markets and also in the hands of organized crime and terrorists."

China has called on the US to make more significant efforts to resolve debt issues faced by African countries, following allegations by Washington that Beijing was hindering financial relief on the continent.

Speaking in the Chinese capital on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin dismissed accusations that his country was responsible for a debt trap in Africa, arguing instead that China had always engaged with African nations based on mutual benefit and equality.

Wang accused "some Western politicians" of attempting to sabotage China's cooperation with developing countries.

"Their tricks have been seen through by developing countries and the international community, and there is no market for them," the official told reporters.

The US believes that elements of Ukraine's intelligence service carried out a cross-border attack on a Russian spy plane in Belarus without approval from the Ukrainian government, Breaking Points journalist Saagar Enjeti reported on Monday, citing leaked documents.

The attack saw a drone inflict minor damage to a Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft stationed at the Machulishchy air base in Belarus last month. Belarusian authorities arrested a number of suspects, one allegedly linked to the Ukrainian secret police organization, the SBU, which Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused of orchestrating the attack with help from the CIA.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry "categorically" denied any involvement by Kiev, while Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podoliak blamed the attack solely on "local partisans."

Chinese military drills simulated a blockade to "seal off" Taiwan.
China's military declared it's "ready to fight" after wrapping up three days of combat drills simulating a blockade to "seal off" Taiwan.

The large-scale land and sea exercises follow last week's meeting by Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the United States.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province and hasn't ruled out taking the self-governed island by force.

The Taiwanese Defense Ministry said on Monday it tracked a record 91 Chinese fighter jets in the final day of the exercises, with dozens of warplanes crossing over the sensitive maritime median line of the Taiwan Strait.

The drills involved Su-30 and J-11 fighters, navy destroyers and missile speedboats, practicing to "encircle" Taiwan. China said it was simulating attacks on key targets, with the People's Liberation Army even releasing an animation of what hitting those targets would look like.

In observing cat-and-mouse games, the rule of thumb is — if observers of the war in the Ukraine have a thumb — to recognise the difference between the cat and the mouse.

On the Ukrainian battlefield, it is now the Russian cat who is waiting for the US, NATO and Ukrainian mouse to break out of his hole and make his run. When he does, the mouse is going to get the surprise of his life. That last noun is the wrong one.

These are the real strategic secrets which have been revealed in the battle plans which spilled into the internet last month, and which the Pentagon arranged for the New York Times to discover and then publish for the attention of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev on April 6. Not to mention the Russian General Staff if they didn't already know and could be persuaded to misinterpret.

Neocon control of America has led to the collapse of American global hegemony and the shredding of our nation's moral authority, according to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

"The collapse of U.S. influence over Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom's new alliances with China and Iran are painful emblems of the abject failure of the Neocon strategy of maintaining U.S. global hegemony with aggressive projections of military power."

Kennedy said Monday on Twitter, sharing an article from Reuters on OPEC+ cutting production to spike the price of oil in defiance of the Biden regime.

"China has displaced the American Empire by deftly projecting, instead, economic power. Over the past decade, our country has spent trillions bombing roads, ports, bridges, and airports. China spent the equivalent building the same across the developing world.

"The Ukraine war is the final collapse of the Neocon's short-lived 'American Century.' The Neocon projects in Iraq and Ukraine have cost $8.1 trillion, hollowed out our middle class, made a laughingstock of U.S. military power and moral authority, pushed China and Russia into an invincible alliance, destroyed the dollar as the global currency, cost millions of lives and done nothing to advance democracy or win friendships or influence."

Moscow wants to send atomic weapons to Belarus, but the US has already deployed such assets in Europe, Dmitry Peskov has said...

Western countries are hyping up hysteria around Russia's plan to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov suggested in an interview released on Sunday.

Speaking to Russia 1 TV, Peskov blasted what he called the West's "extremely unrestrained" reaction to President Vladimir Putin's decision to deploy nukes in Belarus this summer, which followed repeated requests from his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.

"The collective West is not inclined to recall... [that] American nuclear weapons are stationed here, in Europe, around our country," the spokesman said. He also claimed that the West "is prone to hysterical reaction" in relation to Moscow's plans to build a nuclear storage facility in Belarus, which is widely regarded as a key Russian ally.