Puppet MastersS

MAGA

Darkness dying

coffin
© CopyrightDeath of Democracy! Can it be revived?
The exorcism of the USA just keeps revving up. You can tell by the number of revolutions-per-minute Elizabeth Warren's head spins while she spews pea soup at the cameras. Who knew what a demon-infested slough USA Management Central was? And yes, I would like some insight as to how humble civil servants like Liz Warren accrue a $12-million fortune . . . and $30-million for Samantha Power (ex-USAID-chief) . . . and more than $150-million for Nancy Pelosi. Could it be as simple as just good stock-picking? (Is that how they spend their time?)

You have reason to suspect that what goes on in Washington DC is the greatest racketeering operation ever run on God's green earth. "A threat to our democracy!" the Party of Chaos spouted incessantly during the election campaign in re: Donald J. Trump. "Democracy Dies in Darkness," The Washington Post still declares on its name-plate. Yet, who exactly kept the lights off the past four years? Who scrambled the brains of the nation's management and thinking classes? Who made mental illness aspirational?

Big Bomb

Hegseth drops bombshell of realism on Europe, rules out NATO membership for Ukraine

HegsethNATO
© US Mission to NATOUS Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (L)
Trump's Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has definitively poured cold water on Ukraine's hopes of gaining Washington backing to join NATO, at a moment he's visiting the alliance's headquarters.

Hegseth issued firm words on this crucial question directly to the faces of top Ukrainian officials in opening remarks before the Ukraine Defense Contact Group - the alliance of 50+ countries and the European Union who support Ukraine's military - which is meeting in Brussels this week.

The US defense chief not only ruled out NATO membership, but laid out that it is "unrealistic" to expect Ukraine's borders to revert to pre-2014, in reference to Russian rule over Crimea.

Arrow Up

'Anti-globalists are winning': Fico party MP speaks to RT

Fico and crowd
© RT/RT
A close ally of the Slovak prime minister talks about the unrest in the country, attempts to oust the current government, and shifts in European politics.

For over a month, protests have been taking place in cities across Slovakia, where demonstrators brandishing the slogan "Slovakia is Europe" (which suspiciously echoes a similar phrase used during the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine in 2014) are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Robert Fico's government.

The controversial figure of Fico, who survived an assassination attempt by a pro-Ukrainian activist in May 2024, has sparked divisions within the European Union. His views on Russia largely diverge from the European mainstream. In December, he traveled to Moscow to discuss with President Vladimir Putin the implications of Kiev's cessation of Russian gas transit to the West. He has halted military assistance to Ukraine, criticized EU sanctions against Russia, and opposes Ukraine's NATO membership.

RT spoke with Lubos Blaha, vice-president of Fico's Smer party and a member of the European Parliament, about the situation his country finds itself in.

Telephone

Here's what comes next after Putin and Trump just agreed to start peace talks

Ringadingding
© unknownUS President Donald Trump โ€ข Russian President Vladimir Putin
The path ahead will be very difficult due to the sensitive issues that Russia and the US must resolve.

12 February 2025 will go down in history as the day when the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine officially began to end. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth started everything off by declaring that:
Ukraine won't join NATO; the US doesn't believe that Ukraine can restore its pre-2014 borders; the US won't deploy troops to the conflict zone; the US wants the Europeans to assume some peacekeeping responsibilities there instead; but the US won't extend Article 5 guarantees to EU forces there.
This was followed by Trump and Putin talking for the first time since the former returned to office. They agreed to begin peace talks without delay, which was followed by Trump calling Zelensky to brief him about this and likely coerce the concessions from him that he presumably promised Putin. Trump also suggested that he'll soon meet Putin in Saudi Arabia and that each of them might then visit each other's countries as part of the peace process.

Attention

Will the EU ever learn to make more friends?

As the EU shivers over what America's new president will or will not do, policymakers in Brussels consider continuing catastrophic economic warfare on Russia.
Sanctions
© New Eastern Outlook
News that a draft proposal for the 16th round of sanctions is circulating in the halls of power in the EU comes as Moscow rivals London in property values. Russia's Putin declared that Europe would "wag its tail" and follow Donald Trump's commands. Ordinary citizens in the Eurozone can only pray that the Russian statesman is correct again.

Who was it who said, "The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing?" I believe it was legendary industrialist Henry Ford who was being interviewed along with Thomas Edison by Alexander Graham Bell (1929). A word of advice arises from this old interview, where the wizards of the European Union are concerned. If the most innovative and most successful people who ever lived caution against something, it's a wise policy for all leaders to follow. Only the European Union has exactly ZERO wise persons running that show. More Russia sanctions! Now, there's a genius stroke for a continent out of gas, on the ropes, and an air raid siren away from nuclear destruction.

Attention

Why US-Russia relations matter more than anyone knew?

Hegel prophesized, that, America is the land where, in the ages that lie before us, "the burden of the World's history shall reveal itself." Those ages have begun.

Shortly after I published my last article, "Is a US-Russia Grand Bargain in the works?", President Trump posted a statement on his TruthSocial platform that he had a "lengthy and productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia." Among other things, Trump stated that he and Putin, "each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together." This came as a surprise, but certainly a welcome development. My last article provoked a lively discussion in the comments sections and these comments reflect, perhaps, the way this news impacted the public.
US-Russia Relationship
© Alex Krainer's Substack
Many pointed out that the US is not agreement-capable and that Russia would be wrong to ever trust commitments by any US president. This may be true, but having relations is certainly better than having no relations, which is what we had during the last three years of the Biden criminal cabal. Having good relations makes a lot of things possible and I believe that even if the road ahead is difficult, the relationship between Russia and the US is so important, it is worth giving it a level best from both sides.

Former German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel stated in an interview with Bild am Sontag in 2018 that, "The completely shattered relationship between Russia and the US was the greatest threat to peace across the globe," and that unless the two powers find common ground, "our children would inherit a dangerous and very uncertain world increasingly armed with nuclear weapons." Today we know what Gabriel meant by his statement.

Bad Guys

Western media ignores Kiev's war crimes in Kursk Region - Moscow

Kursk Region, Russia
© Getty Images / Anadolu / Contributor
Foreign outlets do not provide balanced coverage of alleged atrocities by Ukraine in the occupied Russian territory, the Kremlin spokesman has said.

Western media outlets have been deliberately ignoring reported atrocities by Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk Region, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said.

Accusing the Western media of biased reporting, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday condemned what he called a lack of balanced coverage of alleged atrocities by Ukrainian forces. Responding to a TASS inquiry about the purported massacre in the recently liberated village of Nikolayevo-Daryino, he criticized the media for ignoring these incidents.

Almost all of the male residents of the village near the Russian-Ukrainian border have been killed since Ukrainian forces took control during a cross-border offensive in August 2024, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. People were held hostage for more than six months until Russia recaptured the settlement on January 27, the ministry reported.

Broom

DOGE team reviewing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren's personal shakedown racket

trump warren alcohol
If you thought the USAID revelations were alarming sunlight, just wait until you see the apoplectic fits of rage about to come out from the Democrats, the DNC affiliated community activist groups, and the professional leftists who all rely upon the financial mechanism of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

According to a Politico article (also funded by USAID money), written with stunning amount of anger and apoplexy itself, Elon Musk's DOGE team has just entered the CFPB to do a review and audit. This one is going to be beyond bananas.

Jumpin' ju-ju bones, tell Ma, to fire up the coffee pot, we are in for a delicious treat. There's no way for the DC outrage machine to handle this dose of Trumpian nitrous oxide directly into the intake manifold. The machine will explode.

Comment: Indeed she was:
elizabeth warren protest usaid shutdown satire
© CopyrightDemocrat Elizabeth Warren melts down at protest over Republicans actually trying to govern America
CPFB has been a useful little construct: A clip of from the Marc Andreassen interview with Joe Rogan:




Bad Guys

The Empire strikes back: Judge rules CDC, FDA, and other agencies must restore woke webpages

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered U.S. health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore data and webpages that were taken down in recent days to comply with a Trump administration order on gender ideology and diversity rules.

Numerous webpages operated by the CDC were removed after President Donald Trump took office, a spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times last week. Other webpages belonging to the FDA and other agencies operated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were taken down as well, a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration said.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, with the federal court in Washington, on Tuesday issued a temporary order in favor of Doctors for America (DFA), an advocacy group that filed a lawsuit. He agreed with the group's arguments that the removal of the pages appeared to violate a provision that mandates federal agencies to provide notice before they end information portals and products.

Comment: The Twitterati swung into action regarding the good judge:








Green Light

Putin-Trump summit on the way - Kremlin

Trumpputin
© Steffen Kugler/Getty ImagesUS President Donald Trump โ€ข Russian President Vladimir Putin
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has welcomed the US administration's desire to reach peace in Ukraine.

It is hard to overestimate the significance of the recent phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He also noted that the presidents have instructed their teams to lay the groundwork for the summit.

The call on Wednesday marked the first known conversation between the US and Russian leaders since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Trump has since signaled that he is "okay" with keeping Ukraine out of NATO and suggested that it is "unlikely" that Kiev could regain all of the territory it has lost to Russia over the past decade. Trump also noted that the presidents had exchanged invitations to visit each other's countries.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Peskov described the phone call as "a very important conversation":
"Against the backdrop of what has been happening for several years, there have been no contacts at the highest level between Moscow and Washington. This landscape did not contribute to solving the Ukraine crisis.

"Unlike the administration of ex-US President Joe Biden, which believed that everything must be done to ensure that the war continues, the Trump team apparently holds the view that everything must be done to stop the war and for peace to prevail. We are much more impressed by the position of the current administration, and we are open to dialogue."
Peskov added that the leaders would remain in touch regarding a summit.
"They will focus on a separate meeting; they also agreed that instructions would be immediately given to the relevant assistants so that they would begin the relevant work."