Free Republic

The outrageous prices at the grocery store and gas stations – the highest ever recorded and increasing at rates too fast to calculate with precision – are yet more collateral damage from the initial lockdowns two years ago. The story unfolds over two years but the line of causality is direct. Apparently it’s going to get much worse. I wonder if at some point, no one will remember how this all began. Maybe everyone has already forgotten. I asked a friend: do you think people understand the relationship between the March 2020 lockdowns and the wild price increases two years...

The very fact that Ukraine is out of ammunition per Zelensky’s damning admission to Japanese media proves that the West’s defeat in its self-declared “race of logistics” with Russia might already be a fait accompli by this point since it’s clear that Kiev can’t keep pace with its opponent despite being backed by all of NATO’s military-industrial capacity. The US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) began reporting more accurately [link at URL] on the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine since the start of the year, but the true test of their comparatively improved integrity will be whether...

Starting last month Ukrainian lawmakers began seeking to implement severe consequences for those participating in Russia-sponsored referendums in occupied territories of Ukraine. For example, a law is being pushed through parliament which criminalizes obtaining a Russian passport in temporarily occupied territories, Ukrainian sources reported last week, according to Yahoo News. Proposed possible punishments have included losing Ukrainian citizenship, or even lengthy jail sentences. But other officials have argued for a more compromising approach given the necessity of survival in occupied areas. But now the Ukrainian government has reiterated its willingness to impose steep penalties for even participating in any Kremlin-sponsored...

Multiple pro-Moscow officials in Ukraine on Tuesday announced their intent to stage referendums on joining Russia, including the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Denis Pushilin, as well as the Russia-installed official over the southern Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo. “I think that people have long been waiting for a referendum here and it will probably be a political move that will help ensure the safety of civilians,” Pushillin said Tuesday. ...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his forces have reclaimed 6,000 square kilometers of occupied territory from Russia since starting a major counteroffensive last month. Western media is presenting events near Kharkiv as an absolute rout of Russian forces, with other sources cautioning there’s little that can be verified, also amid the question of whether regained territory can actually be held and permanently controlled by Ukraine. Ukraine’s defense minister Oleksii Reznikov himself admitted in a Monday Financial Times report that a prime worry remains the ability to hold on to the territory amid superior Russian munitions and supplies. “A counter-offensive...

Last week, Halliburton Co.'s CEO Jeff Miller warned hydraulic fracturing equipment is in short supply and could hamper fracking growth. Another oil/gas executive echoed the same warning this week and said bottlenecks could persist through 2023. "Availability of frac fleets is one of main bottlenecks impeding oil and natural as production growth for the next 18 months," Robert Drummond, chief executive officer of fracking firm NexTier Oilfield Solutions, told Reuters. Besides supply chain snarls, Drummond warned that capital constraints would make adding equipment to fields challenging. He said this imbalance could take several years to correct, adding that NexTier has...

New Zealand tech CEO, Kim Dotcom did the math on the United States’ sovereign debt and he tweeted a thread about it, saying it may the most important thread that he may ever make. Kim explains that US spending and debt have spiraled out of control and the Government can only raise the money it needs by printing more of it, which means that hyperinflation is guaranteed. He says this has been going on for decades and there’s no way to fix it and that the US got away with this for so long, because US dollar is the world’s...

The United States has confiscated Iranian oil held on a Russian-operated ship near Greece and will send the cargo to the United States aboard another vessel, three sources familiar with the matter said. It was unclear whether the cargo was impounded because it was Iranian oil or due to the sanctions on the tanker over its Russian nexus. Iran and Russia are facing separate U.S. sanctions. The Iranian-flagged ship, the Pegas, was among five vessels designated by Washington on Feb. 22 – two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – for sanctions against Promsvyazbank, a bank viewed as critical to...

Just months after Elon Musk had a public spat on Twitter about what the true cost of “solving world hunger would be”, the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program is urging billionaires to “step up” and confront the global threat of food insecurity. The WFP boss had previously said “All we need is $6.6B—just .36% of the top 400 US billionaires’ net worth increase last year” in order to control a humanitarian crisis where in 42 million people in 43 countries face famine. Musk had previously offered $6 billion if the World Food Programme could provide him “open sourced...

On March 8, President Joe Biden declared, in a speech announcing a ban on imports of Russian oil and gas, that these and other actions taken by the United States government “to inflict further pain on [Russia President Vladimir Putin]” would “cost us as well, in the United States.” Since then, the US government’s economic sanctions on Russia – as well as spending, military training, intelligence sharing, and weapons transfers to attack the Russian military – have increased as the economic conditions in America have declined. Some of that economic decline is a result of the actions against Russia, as...

In a Monday virtual address before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western countries to impose “maximum economic sanctions” against Russia. “The world is united because of threats, the war, Russian aggression. I don’t want you to lose this unity,” Zelensky stated in the keynote address which was met with enthusiastic applause in approval. He called for measures which he said have still yet to be imposed, including a ban on Western companies operating in Russia. His words came simultaneous to a UN official at the WEF stressing that Russia’s continued blockade on Ukraine ports...

week.They are muddling the sequence of events that got us to the present impasse: Trump ran against the corrupt back-scratching, log-rolling society of the OBushintons—the Clinton pay-to-play schemes, the Biden sales of influence and access, the semi-disguised socialist racism elitism of the Obamas, and the flabby sameness and ineffectuality of the Bush–McCain–Romney–McConnell–Ryan Republicans. Trump sensed the people were dissatisfied with the bipartisan Swamp, and he ran as strenuously against the Bushes and McCain and Romney in 2016 as he did against the Clintons and Obamas. The anti-Trumpers of both parties, in the most legally questionable presidential election in U.S. history,...

The present piece will summarize Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya’s main points before analyzing the bigger picture in order to bring his words to the attention of the Western audience who might not have heard his speech. The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) is propagating the false information warfare narrative that Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine is to blame for the global food crisis, implying that President Putin is a “madman” who wants to kill as many people as possible across the Global South through famine. The truth, as usual, is altogether different as articulated...

An op-ed in CNN this week has called on NATO to expel Turkey if it doesn’t agree to admit new applicants Finland and Sweden into the Western military alliance. Ankara has so far appeared to slam the door on the prospect, calling the Scandinavian nations “terror supporters” over the outlawed Kurdish PKK issue. The piece by David Andelman, a member of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), begins by lashing out at both Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. “Russian President Vladimir Putin has just enough allies in just enough places to throw a wrench in the...

The constant gaslighting of America over whose fault the soaring cost of living just went to ’11’ on the ‘do you think we are all f**king stupid’ scale. As Matt Margolis points out, it has been a wild ride for the blame-shifting until now… In the course of a year, we’ve gone from “inflation will be transitory,” to “inflation is a good thing,” to “inflation started under Trump,” to “it’s Putin’s price hike.” Polls show that no one was buying the blame-Putin strategy, so Biden and the Democrats are now accusing oil companies of price gouging. And now the blame...

Afghanistan’s internal insecurity, border tensions, and the potentially Pakistani-backed US military factor are combining to create yet another storm in the New Cold War that threatens to destabilize the region. Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine and the US-led West’s unprecedented response to it have distracted the international community from Afghanistan, which is once again becoming an issue of regional concern. The foreign occupiers’ chaotic evacuation from that country last August and the Taliban’s return to power in the aftermath haven’t stabilized the situation all that much. The group is still designated as terrorists by most of the world...

Five-time, best-selling financial author James G. Rickards says, “We could be in a recession right now,” but the title of his most recent book “The New Great Depression” says where we are definitely going soon. Rickards says, “The current crisis is not like 2008 or even 1929. The New Depression that has emerged from the COVID pandemic is the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Most fired employees will remain redundant. Bankruptcies will be common, and banks will buckle under the weight of bad debts. Deflation, debt and demography will wreck any chance of recovery, and social disorder will follow...

Five-time, best-selling financial author James G. Rickards says, “We could be in a recession right now,” but the title of his most recent book “The New Great Depression” says where we are definitely going soon. Rickards says, “The current crisis is not like 2008 or even 1929. The New Depression that has emerged from the COVID pandemic is the worst economic crisis in U.S. history…”“Most fired employees will remain redundant. Bankruptcies will be common, and banks will buckle under the weight of bad debts. Deflation, debt and demography will wreck any chance of recovery, and social disorder will follow closely...

The latest example of G-20 countries not bowing down to US pressure to halt trade relations with Russia comes from South America. On Tuesday, in response to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s request for Brazil to increase more food exports, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro asked the WTO not to sever trade flows with Russia. He said there are 27 Russian vessels hauling fertilizer to Brazil. Now, why would Bolsonaro go against the wishes of the US and EU politicians to eliminate trade with Russia? Well, the South American country imports more than 85% of its fertilizer demand....

On April 5, 1933, under the pretext of a national emergency, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 6102, making it illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold. The decree forced Americans to sell their gold at an artificially low “official price.” If they refused, the government could hit them with stiff penalties: a $10,000 fine (equivalent to $205,000 today) and/or up to 10 years in prison. The government blatantly stole wealth from the American people. Many worry the U.S. government might confiscate gold again if it becomes desperate enough. I don’t think those fears are unfounded. The U.S. government’s...