U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken took to the stage to perform with a Ukrainian band at a bar on Tuesday night during a surprise trip to Kyiv, drawing mixed reactions on social media.

Before performing a rendition of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" with Kyiv punk band 19.99, Blinken told his audience that the U.S. would continue to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia in the ongoing war.

Footage of Blinken's performance has been circulated widely on social media, with users divided on his trip to the music bar in central Kyiv, Barman Dictat, which also serves as a war bunker. Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine's Kharkiv region, as recently approved U.S. aid trickles into the war-torn country.

"If you're gonna rock out in Kyiv while thousands of civilians flee Kharkiv and the ZSU [Ukrainian army] suffer losses caused in part by US aid delays, you better be seriously going to the mat for #Ukraine now. Otherwise this will age very, very badly," wrote Jessica Berlin, a nonresident senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) think tank, on X, formerly Twitter.

Some social-media users defended Blinken's move to perform in Kyiv, while others said it may come across as "tone-deaf."

"He began by acknowledging his awareness of the current hardships faced by the soldiers and the country, which is why he chose to play this specific song. It serves as both a protest song and a political statement," one X user commented.

https://www.newsweek.com/antony-blinken-bar-guitar-performance-kyiv-ukraine-1900746

 

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Next Up, Realism!

By Karen Kwiatkowski

Realism seems to have fallen out of favor in the West, but it just might be ready for a brilliant return to the stage.

I’m expecting an abrupt end of the Zelensky regime in Kiev, followed by cessation of hostilities. A settlement on what is left of, and for, Ukraine, will be conducted between the two neighbors.  The people of Ukraine, and much of the world, already hold NATO and the US — incoherent cheerleaders of war, and under-impressive suppliers of weapons – responsible for starting and extending an unwinnable war, delaying and derailing peace, and permanently ruining their landscape and economy.   Because no one east or west of Washington, DC can figure out exactly who controls or speaks for the US government, Blinken, Biden and Boy Wonder Jake will not be involved or invited to the table.  Blinken will frown very, very, very seriously, Jake will try a CIA workaround (or maybe a reach-around, I won’t judge), and Biden will have another bowl of ice cream.

Following this settlement between Kiev and Moscow, we will learn the real reasons for the neocon and NATO obsession with Ukraine.  Not surprisingly, they are:

1) US and NATO desire to completely control the Black Sea – even though (or perhaps because) many of their ships can’t even get there without multiple maintenance stops;

2) US and EU desire to hide, and continue, their involvement in money laundering, illicit weapons and terrorism export, human smuggling, as well as the dirty money being made by western politicians and their families and companies via Ukraine;

3) Ukraine’s natural resources, including underground mineral deposits, hydroelectric potential and agriculture – not for the energy, construction or food output but to better profit in the fake economy of carbon offsets, credits and green energy subsidies; and

4) to gain a new free-for-all zone for NATO exercises, weapons system testing, military airspace, and biological and nuclear research and development, far removed from regulatory restrictions and NIMBY attitudes that exist in Western Europe and the US.  Sadly, we won’t find out that neoconservatives hate Russia and love snuff films, because we already knew that.

I’m expecting to see what happens to Zionism as a theory when the world it imagined, promoted, and advertised – an angry, hateful world that refuses Israel trade, respect, or legitimacy – suddenly becomes real. The idea of dangerous, powerful enemies united against Israel has, seemingly overnight, become a global anti-Zionist golem, and not a particularly predictable one.  Israel’s leaders and many Zionist believers entered into the destruction of Gaza with rage and contempt, a pre-existent plan for the whole accession of Gaza, and plenty of military capability, bombs and bulldozers. What they discovered was that we live in a world filled with people who watch wars in real time on their phones, who recognize brutality, who think land theft and colonial attitudes are bad, who have been taught bullying is wrong, and that the wealthy should lift up and aid the impoverished, not kill and starve them.  The Gaza strategy – for over 70 years – has been a misjudgment, and a mistake, one that will be continued to the end by Israel, because its very Zionism insists upon it, and cannot stop, much less reverse course.

A new phase of Israel’s evolution is coming, where the price of being a tiny, aggressive, paranoid state has risen substantially, almost overnight. Zelensky had visions of creating for NATO and the US a new Israel in Europe, a bristling, shining, militaristic sword for the will of the West.  That’s not going to work out as planned, but we might instead see what a new North Korea in the eastern Mediterranean looks like.  When no one trades with you, or wants your products, and your socialist system is too expensive, and people try leave, and the state tries to prevent that, the fraying and the poverty of soul and pocketbook accelerates.  Totalitarianism emerges as the state’s last ditch survival mechanism.  The state becomes even more belligerent, at home and abroad, and even more isolated.  Preventing this requires Israel admit that a Zionist democracy is impossible, and work on being a better neighbor.  This would first require humility, among the people, and within the state apparatus.  I’m not sure that is realistic, but it is realism.

When we speak of Israel, we speak necessarily of the United States, where the government operates as a military-corporate-industrial-pharmaceutical-surveillance entity, with elected representatives residing in a political Congress and White House all functioning as directed.  When those representatives fail to function in accord with the needs of the state, they are first hysterically vilified, and then replaced, imprisoned or have fatal accidents. The Israel lobby is significant – so powerful that it cannot be registered under FARA – but it is by no means the only driver of US policy and direction.  We take pride in the state’s self-licking ice cream cone, but like Israel’s Zionism, neither works as advertised.  The US economy, as with Europe’s, has been warped beyond functionality by politically powerful corporate interests. We see this in most major industries, but the once popular US defense industry illustrates this trend well.  Profits are far bigger, and the work far easier, when you have just a few massive competitors who are literally interchangeable, and you build long lead time, expensive systems, that are even more expensive to maintain and operate.  It’s easier to control and lobby politicians in these circumstances, due to sunk cost fallacies, inertia, and “everyone agrees.”  When new money and new debt is created on demand and by command, this system appears to work.

But it doesn’t actually improve our defensive capability, or increase our security, or even make us strong. This fly in the ointment – almost overnight – has become obvious to the whole world.

As with the dysfunctional Zionist state, the US pseudo-republic will be stopped by forces outside its control.  It will be stopped, then corrected, and then transformed by trillions of choices made by billions people – most of whom are not Zionists and not Americans, and many of whom couldn’t care less about what we do or how we do it.

It’s called reality.  What isn’t working gets thrown out, and if necessary replaced with something that does work.  What can’t go on forever, doesn’t….

…which brings us to the US 2024 election.  Barring nuclear war, a government biowarfare agent let loose by accident on purpose, or an asteroid strike, people living in the territory of the US will cope with their insane government as best they can, and they will constrain it through quiet-quitting the state, calm disobedience of state authority, and rejuvenation of community. Actually, nuclear explosions, bio-warfare, and asteroids will be dealt with in much the same way.  The problem is that our extremely vulnerable ruling class, and the state itself, are both wholly unprepared for emergencies, and have all the cohesion of a wet Kleenex.

Realism requires we recognize that the ruling classes and the US government have no durable community and no internal integrity.  The state is a pirate gang writ large.  It is unified by criminal circumstance, functions by fear and tribute, and is surrounded by enemies who would see it stripped, drawn and quartered at first opportunity.  It’s almost enough to make one pity the state, and mourn the ruling classes!

Realism reminds us that desperate, declining states don’t fix themselves.  They quickly become dangerous to innocent bystanders, enemies, and its own citizens – and these three categories become indistinguishable just as quickly.  It’s happening right now in Ukraine, in Israel, and ready or not, in the United States.

 

The Best of Karen Kwiatkowski

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia's 6th district in 2012, is a Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, and an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute. ----------------------------------- Ukraine War EXPOSES 30 Years Of Western Double Standards | Prof. Dr. Alfred de Zayas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwwfF74gqeA

Part 2 of 2]. In this second part Professor Alfred de Zayas talks about all the mistakes that were made in the 30 year lead-up to the war in Ukraine and how little the international community and the Europeans cared about the Russian Speaking minorities in the eastern regions as well as the failures to hold Ukraine responsible for implementing the Minsk-Agreements. The most striking failure is of course the double-standards that the Europeans are setting when it comes to Kosovo and the way they handled the wars in Yugoslavia. Rules for thee, but not for me. In conjunction with the decline of US hegemony and the utter depravity of the mass-murder in Gaza, the moral bankruptcy of the West is as glaringly obvious as it has never been before or after the Cold War.

 

Dr. Dr. Alfred de Zayas is a Professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy, who used to work as a senior lawyer in the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and later became the first UN Independent Expert on International Order, serving in that capacity from 2012 to 2018.

 

Born in Cuba, Dr. de Zayas holds a Doctorate in Jurisprudence from Harvard Law School and a PhD in modern history from the German University of Göttingen.

 

Dr. de Zayas is also a member of the Geneva International Peace Research Institute where he and his team are currently working on a legal case against Ursula v.d.L., Charles Michel, and Josep Borrell.

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bt9sAo8cME

The Proxy-War Is COLLAPSING! | Prof. Nicolai Petro

 

[Part 1 of 2] As the front lines of Ukraine are disintegrating and the political leadership in Kiev is in disarray, the west still refuses to seriously contemplate talking about a realistic peace (or at least cessation of hostilities) in Ukraine. Rather, the wizards in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Warsaw contemplate NATO boots on the ground or—at least the germans—motivating Rumania and Poland to start using their air defence systems to shoot down Russian missiles and drones over Ukraine from the safety of their states. Crazy ideas and escalatory to say the least. This and the recent cabinet reshuffle are the topics of this first interview part with Nicolai N. Petro.

Nicolai's Homepage: https://www.npetro.net

Nicolai Petro is a Professor of Political science at the University of Rhode Island and the author of “The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict”.

Nicolai has ties to both Russia and Ukraine and has been analysing their internal political developments for decades. Today we want to do an update on the political developments in both countries and talk about the Foreign Affairs article by Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko that a few weeks ago contributed another puzzle peace to the question about the failed Istanbul-peace process back in 2022.

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AND TALKING ABOUT FREEDOM: