"These agencies are not trusted because they are not trustworthy."
- El Gato Malo on "X"

The miasma of anxiety befogging so many brains in our troubled land begins to lift as every narrative served up by the US fascist intel blob goes annoyingly stale and impotent. The worst media meme — that a vicious officialdom is "defending our democracy" — gets laughed out of the room now when repeated incessantly by such shills as Jen Psaki and Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC. Everybody understands they want to "defend our democracy" by cancelling your freedom of speech, pounding you into bankruptcy, and stealing whatever remains of your stuff.

Likewise, everything else, namely: that our doings in Ukraine are a "fight for freedom," that "white supremacy" lurks just out of sight getting ready to pounce on the "marginalized" (who are actually running things, and doing it very badly), that "Joe Biden" turned around the economy, that "voting rights" equals non-citizens getting to vote, that election fraud is a "big lie" (and that the J-6 riot over it was an "insurrection"), and that the Covid vaccines were "safe and effective."

None of these dishonest persuasions work anymore, and all of the persuasion machinery stands in plain sight like so many nauseating carnival rides. One by one, the rides are flying apart, scattering debris and body parts of the poor slobs who were on the rides all over the fairgrounds. And so, the fear rises in the ones running the carnival. The county sheriff stands by looking to round up the sleazeball carnies with their missing teeth and needle tracks inside their elbows. Before long, they will find themselves in the courtroom. . . .

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognizing it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council "reconsider the matter favorably."

The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member — a move that would effectively recognize a Palestinian state — after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.

The assembly adopted a resolution with 143 votes in favor and nine against — including the US and Israel — while 25 countries abstained.

It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognizes them as qualified to join.

Vladimir Putin was sworn in for his fifth term as Russia's President. Mainstream Western Russian "experts" paint Putin as a corrupt autocrat governing over a failed system and nation. Their "reality" couldn't be further from the truth.

In her July 27, 2020, review of Catherine Belton's book, Putin's People, in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum concluded that following his re-election as Russia's President in the Spring of 2018, Vladimir Putin and his cronies had "once again created a calcified, authoritarian political system in Russia," including "a corrupt economy that discourages innovation and entrepreneurship." Years of Putin presidential leadership, Applebaum noted, had left Russia destitute. "Instead of experiencing the prosperity and political dynamism that still seemed possible in the '90s," the Pulitzer Prize-winning author declared, "Russia is once again impoverished and apathetic. But," she concluded, "Putin and his people are thriving — and that was the most important goal all along."

Applebaum is a much sought after speaker on post-Cold War Russia, where she specializes in picking apart Russia's Soviet past while lamenting the rise to power of Vladimir Putin, whom she characterizes as an autocrat, at the end of the decade of the 1990's. In Applebaum's defense, she is not alone in this regard. Indeed, she finds herself in the company of former ambassadors (Michael McFaul), national security experts (Fiona Hill and Angela Stent), and intelligence officers (Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Steve Hall, and John Sipher), all of whom have used their Russian-laden résumés to insinuate themselves into what passes for a national dialogue in the mainstream media over the true nature of Russia and its leadership, and what that means for the United States and its European allies.

Without exception, the cast of characters assembled above have echoed Applebaum's summation of Putin's legacy and future as Russia's leader. There is one important difference, however — while Applebaum has been an observer of Russian events, the others were all players in the game, active participants in the formulation and implementation of American policy regarding Russia in the period immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They helped propagate polices designed to exploit Russian political, economic, and security weaknesses to the sole benefit of the United States and, when Putin's unexpected assimilation to the Russian presidency threatened to undo all that they had accomplished during the decade of ruinous governance under Boris Yeltsin, these same actors actively worked to undermine Russia in hopes of bringing Putin down.

Israel's brutal military assault on Gaza, which has killed over 35,000 civilians, predominantly women and children, has been executed alongside the denial of humanitarian aid since the war's onset last October.

With cases of famine already in evidence, Tel Aviv's utter disregard of the recent International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling demanding immediate access to aid, and Washington's veto of UN Security Council resolutions advocating for a Gaza ceasefire, both Israel and the US have come under significant global fire.

This backlash is notably strong on the campuses of major US universities, a growing student movement that has arguably breathed new life into the Palestinian solidarity movement. Concerns about the Gaza genocide's potential damage to the global image of the US have belatedly reached the White House, with US President Joe Biden only now threatening - in advance of the November elections - to curtail the transfer of large offensive munitions to Israel.

The five objectives that are enumerated in this piece encapsulate what Russia nowadays aims to achieve after over two years of intense proxy warfare with NATO.

Zelensky claimed on Friday that Russia's long-awaited offensive had finally begun following its fresh push into Kharkov Region from which it tactically pulled back in September 2022. This precedes him likely clinging to power on legally dubious pretexts once his term expires on 21 May and aligns with the Ukrainian Intelligence Committee's prediction of political-military troubles heading into his summer. Here are the five objectives that Russia arguably aims to achieve in view of the conflict's larger context:

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1. Create The Conditions For Russia To Control The Entirety Of Its New Regions

While both China and Russia have improved their standing in the world over the past year, the US has seen its approval rating deteriorate in the Middle East and even in Europe, according to respondents from 53 countries.

Dubbed the Democracy Perception Index 2024, the survey was compiled by the German company Latana, on behalf of Alliance of Democracies, an NGO headed by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Russia and China are now viewed as positively as the US in most of the surveyed countries in Asia and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA), as Washington's approval has plummeted due to the conflict in Gaza. Among Europeans, support for the US has also seen a decline.

The defense minister also announced that Berlin had purchased three HIMARS rocket launcher systems for Ukraine

The majority of the Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) will be under NATO command by 2025, with around 35,000 soldiers placed on the "highest levels of readiness," Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced during a keynote speech at Washington's Johns Hopkins University on Thursday.

The announcement comes as Germany struggles to resolve major personnel and equipment shortages in its army, with many replacement items purchased for the Bundeswehr being sent to aid Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. A parliamentary report in March revealed that the army is also "aging and shrinking," with 20,000 unfilled positions and a "very high" dropout rate.

The bloc wants to seize the revenue generated from $200 billion of the frozen funds


The EU has agreed on the expropriation of revenue generated from frozen Russian assets to continue funding and arming Kiev, Brussels announced on Wednesday. The bloc's ambassadors agreed on the course of action "in principle," but the legal text still must be ratified by the EU Council.

The proposal targets the proceeds from €191 billion ($205 billion) in Russian funds currently held in Belgian clearinghouse Euroclear. In total, Western states froze an estimated $300 billion of Moscow's sovereign capital abroad after the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022.

Yemen's Houthi rebels on Thursday claimed responsibility for two missile attacks in the Gulf of Aden on two Panama-flagged container ships that caused no damage. Meanwhile, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader again threatened that Tehran could build a nuclear weapon if it chose to pursue atomic armaments.

The comments by Yemeni military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree and former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi come as the allies of Hamas continue to pressure Israel over its continuing war on the militant group in the Gaza Strip.

The Houthis insist their assaults on shipping through the crucial waterway leading to the Suez Canal and onward to the Mediterranean Sea will continue as long as the war goes on. Meanwhile, Iran already has launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel amid the war, bringing a yearslong shadow conflict between the two nations out into the light.

U.K. foreign secretary's words confirm London's growing involvement in military operations on the side of Kyiv, according to the Kremlin.

"The ambassador was called upon to reflect on the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps by London and to immediately refute the belligerent provocative statements of the head of the Foreign Office in the most decisive and unequivocal way," the ministry said.

Cameron told Reuters last week that Ukraine has the "right" to use British-supplied weapons to strike Russia inside its own territory.