The United States and its allies have spent years and billions of dollars providing weapons assistance and training support for Kiev, with aid ramped up dramatically since the escalation of the long-embering crisis in February.

New Zealand will deploy an additional 120 troops to provide training to their Ukrainian counterparts across four bases in the UK, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

Have you noticed the latest coming out of Eastern Europe—the Estonians, the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Czechs, and let us not forget the Ukrainians? Suddenly everyone thinks it is a good idea to begin shutting Russians, as in all Russians, out of Europe. That’s it: No more Russians in Europe because…because they are Russian. End of story, as some people like to say. 

This is a sick business. There is a pathology at work in these proposals. We are listening to the utterances of desperate, insecure, frustrated people. I detect, beneath all the immediate animosity to do with the Ukraine crisis, a case of post-traumatic stress disorder lingering on from the Soviet era. 

By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/14/law-and-disorder/

AS THE FIRST COMMENT SAYS:

huh. I thought he was going to say ‘if we actually adhere to the rule of law and follow through with the prosecution of donald trump and serve justice and prove that our system of government isn’t just a mechanism to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority we’ll also have to prosecute bush, cheney, both clintons, obama, many bidens, a few pelosis…where would it end?!’

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t think many Americans appreciate just how tense and tenuous, how very touch and go the energy situation in Europe is right now.

For months, as news of the Ukraine war receded a bit, it was possible to follow the energy story unfolding across the Atlantic and still assume an uncomfortable but familiar-enough winter in Europe, characterized primarily by high prices.

The Business Council of Australia has released a discussion paper designed to kickstart a nationwide conversation about the best ways to shift Australia into the fast lane of growth.

The world is changing around us. Australia finds itself in the crosshairs of several major shifts including the rise of Asia, technological and digital advances and the global adoption of green energy sources.

Our failure to tackle the obstacles holding us back has left the nation out of pocket from where it could have been. That’s the ultimate opportunity cost we all pay for inaction.

With the prospect of a slower growing economy, record public debt, weak population growth and a tax system that will struggle to fund future spending demands, something has to give.

Both parties agree on one thing: More money for the military 

Political divisions stand in the way of most legislation, but both sides of the aisle are happy to keep feeding the beast at the Pentagon.

It was quite a week last week. Forest fires and floods testified to the devastating, inexorable march of global warming.

— Record high inflation, led by food and gas, continued to strike at American pocketbooks. (I’ll take the gas price increase if it incentivizes a more rapid move toward renewables, but it is a financial disaster for consumers, farmers, and shippers and a political disaster for the Democrats in the fall.)

On the day that the death of Sempé (one of the best cartoonists in the world) has been announced — he was 90 something — Gus Leonisky carries on with his crass nasty mischief — stealing other people's works and adding more nasty stuff, than less. 

He was seen in France as revealing amusing and sometimes caustic truths about the world – making people smile without resorting to cruelty or mockery.

The kindness that Sempé showed the diminutive characters that he placed in an outsized world was in contrast to the misery of his own upbringing. “You never get over your childhood,” he said when well into his 80s, having avoided the subject for decades. “You try to sort things out, to make your memories prettier. But you never get over it.”

After Russia invaded Ukraine last February, the European Union moved to block RT and Sputnik, two of the Kremlin's top channels for spreading propaganda and misinformation about the war.

Nearly six months later, the number of sites pushing that same content has exploded as Russia found ways to evade the ban. They've rebranded their work to disguise it. They've shifted some propaganda duties to diplomats. And they've cut and pasted much of the content on new websites — ones that until now had no obvious ties to Russia.

By DAVID KLEPPER

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” — President Harry S. Truman

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has launched a legal bid to get back funding for his office and staff. The privileges were withdrawn in May by the Bundestag’s budget committee, his lawyers told broadcaster NDR on Friday.

Democrats have completely forgotten about a public health insurance option, choosing instead to deliver expensive subsidies to their industry donors.

President Joe Biden has, not once since his inauguration, mentioned the public health insurance option he and every single competitive Senate Democratic challenger promised voters during the 2020 election.

The US tax authority has sparked an uproar after posting a job offer warning that new agents must be prepared to wield “deadly force” against suspects, amid heightened concerns about heavy-handed tactics by the IRS as it seeks to hire thousands of new enforcers. 

Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch have reportedly finalised their divorce – despite last-minute reports the actress filed court documents seeking to dismiss the action.

Lawyers for the former couple confirmed on Thursday morning (Australian time) that their divorce proceedings had concluded.

“Jerry Hall and Rupert Murdoch have finalised their divorce. They remain good friends and wish each other the best for the future,” Mr Murdoch’s lawyer, Robert S. Cohen, and Ms Hall’s lawyer, Judy Poller, told Britain’s Mirror newspaper in a joint statement.

Other books on Jeffrey Epstein focus on the depraved nature of his crimes, his wealth and his most famous/politically-connected friends and acquaintances. This book, in contrast, reveals definitively that Epstein's activities were state-sponsored through his intelligence connections. The book is scheduled October 2022.

Whitney delivered an incredible book. Around 900 pages. We have had to split it in to two volumes. There will be a bundle available where you can get both books for $34.95.

READ MORE:

https://www.trineday.com/products/one-nation-under-blackmail

What kind of Justice Department official would sign off on a FBI raid on a former US president’s home when the president is fully cooperating with the spurious “investigation” of him?

What kind of judge would issue the warrant and then hide it from view by sealing it?

What kind of FBI agent would invade a president’s home instead of resigning over the assignment?

BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS