Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing an audience of Russia’s business elite, offered a caustic retort to the executives’ previous conviction that it was far safer to hold their assets outside of Russia.

"I used to often hear: ‘Well, it's far safer over there’ (abroad - TASS). How about now?" Putin said to the congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) in Moscow on Thursday.

One of the fascinating things about the COVID pandemic was how it broke down along partisan lines. You could almost tell how a person voted by how they handled the pandemic.

Archbishop Vigano gave a speech the day before yesterday, in video connection, at the Founding Conference of the International Russophiles’ Movement. His focus was the battle against Globalism, which unites – significantly – President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin.

Biden’s Justice Department recently told a federal court to expect more than 1,000 more prosecutions related to January 6.

As previously reported, U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Boardman issued an arrest warrant for Roy McGrath after he failed to appear for his federal fraud trial.

Kamala Harris taped a softball interview with “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert for Wednesday night in New York City. It turned into a complete debacle for Harris.

February was the 43rd straight month gun sales have hit over one million in the United States. This is despite the fact February has only 28 days.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday used a special power to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a vote.

The principal of Bloomfield Hills High School, home to one of the largest Jewish populations in Michigan, has apologized in a letter to the community after a “student-led diversity assembly” became a platform for an anti-Israel, anti-Jewish rant by failed political candidate Huwaida Arraf. Arraf lost to Republican Rep. John James in Michigan’s 10th district.

A political earthquake hit the Netherlands Wednesday in the wake of massive farmer’s protests as the upstart Farmer’s Movement party passed the ruling People’s Party in provincial elections. “Nobody can ignore us any longer,” said Farmer’s Movement leader Caroline van der Plas.

They are spending around $130,000 every day doing nothing with unused border wall panels – this adds up to nearly $50 million a year.

The new Serp-VS5 [Russian for Sickle] anti-drone system has passed tests and is ready for supplies, Andrey Sorokin, deputy CEO for Business Development at the Vektor Research Institute told TASS on March 16.

The Vektor Research Institute is a part of the Ruselectronics Group, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned tech corporation Rostec

“All the tests are over. The system is ready for supplies under orders and currently work is underway to agree upon the delivery timeframe. Orders for the new system are already available,” Sorokin told the Russian news agency.

On March 16, four Palestinians, including a teenager, were killed by undercover Israeli officers during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

The Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security service and police said in a joint statement that members of the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit “neutralized” two wanted Palestinian gunmen inside Jenin after receiving intelligence about their whereabouts.

The gunmen were identified as Yusuf Shreim, 29, a member of the Hamas Movement, and Nidal Khazem, 28, a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The other two casualties were named as Omar Awadin, 16, and 37-year-old Luay al-Zughair.

Democrat senators, led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bob Mendez, are calling on the departments of the Treasury and Justice to take action after credit card companies' refusal to track gun purchases.

Last year, following pressure from gun control activists and progressive lawmakers, Visa announced that it would track gun purchases through a new merchant category code. Mastercard and other credit card companies also said they would track gun and ammo purchases.

Earlier this month, we reported that Discover would start tracking gun and ammo purchases through a new MCC beginning April. The report led to pushback from conservatives, gun rights activists, and privacy supporters.

Twenty years ago on March 16, the world got a tragic glimpse into what the state of Israel was going to become. Given the green light in the Oval Office by President George W. Bush, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – “a man of peace," Bush said at the time – started the now-inevitable march to apartheid and the murderous treatment of the Palestinians against whom the main battle would be waged.

That glimpse was the senseless murder of a passionate, 23-year-old woman whose laudable purpose at the time was simply the protection of Palestinian homes being bulldozed by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). On that day, Rachel Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, was brutally murdered by an IDF armored bulldozer as she tried to interject herself between it and its merciless destruction of yet another Palestinian home in the southern Gaza Strip.

It has now been two decades since the United States launched its war on Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. Americans have largely moved on, but Iraqis are not so lucky.

The 2003 invasion — and the crushing, U.S.-led sanctions regime that preceded it — set into motion a series of events that have torn at the very fabric of Iraq’s society, leaving at least 185,000 of its citizens dead and displacing 9 million more, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. Those who survived their country’s darkest moments now live with mental and physical scars that most Americans can scarcely imagine. “Violence destroys our ability to feel human,” said Ghazi, who now teaches Arabic and courses on peace and conflict at several universities in North Carolina.

Indeed, it is difficult to find any measure by which life in Iraq has improved over the last 20 years. Rolling blackouts have made summers unbearable in much of the south, and the government remains far too weak to do much about it. (The daily high rarely drops below 100 degrees fahrenheit in Baghdad’s warmer months.) Once a regional leader in medicine and education, Iraq has now fallen far behind most of its neighbors. A recent poll found that 37 percent of Iraqis want to emigrate, and 81 percent say their country is headed in the wrong direction.

Last month, a Palestinian rights group filed a federal complaint against George Washington University (GW), alleging the institution allows discrimination against Palestinians to persist unabated on campus.

Palestine Legal filed a federal complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, demanding it investigates what the organization describes as a “years-long, hostile environment of anti-Palestinian racism.”

The legal rights group is representing three students who say they have experienced anti-Palestinian discrimination from fellow classmates, professors, administrators, and GW Hillel, a Jewish campus organization.

Webmaster addition: Now, about anti-white racism...

Nebo School District in Utah has stirred controversy by instructing middle school students to write an essay arguing for the consumption of insects rather than cows as part of an English assignment.

According to Fox News Digital, the assignment was based on the premise that the mass production and consumption of bug-based foods is more environmentally friendly than that of beef. Some students were even given extra credit for actually consuming the bugs, which the District sourced from a commercial site.

Amanda Wright, the mother of one of the students, condemned the assignment, claiming it was part of a concerted effort to indoctrinate children into a "dark climate change religion." After meeting with school administrators, she recorded the principal, Alison Hansen, saying, "the assignment was about finding facts to support" the climate alarmist premise. Kim Cutler, a teacher at the school, told Wright's daughter that there was no evidence to support not eating bugs.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Japan on Thursday as Tokyo and Seoul seek to thaw relations, an initiative backed by the US as it seeks to rally its allies in the region against China.

According to Nikkei Asia, the two leaders agreed to bolster cooperation against North Korea and to resume a working-level bilateral security dialogue that has been on a five-year hiatus.

Yoon announced the “normalization” of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), a pact that allows the two countries to share military intelligence.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Arab countries are offering a deal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that would restore ties between Damascus and most countries in the region.

The report, which cited unnamed Arab and European officials, said in talks initially led by Jordan, the Arab nations have proposed billions worth in aid to help the country rebuild after 12 years of war and to lobby the US and European governments to lift sanctions.

In exchange, the Arab nations want Assad to engage with Syria’s political opposition, allow troops from other Arab states inside Syria to protect returning refugees, crack down on drug trafficking, and prevent Iran from expanding its presence in Syria.

In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting recently, we debated repealing the 2002 Authorization for the Iraq War. The Iraq War ended long ago. You’d think it would be unanimously agreed to end a war that’s already over.    

But, if we stop with just repealing the Iraq War authorization, I fear nothing will change.

We need to take the additional step of also repealing the Authorization for the war in Afghanistan. The 2001 authorization to bring the 9/11 terrorists to justice was warranted, but like the Iraq War, the Afghan War has long ago ended — yet its authorization remains on the books.

Deciding when and where to go to war is Congress’s job. The president has authority to execute the war, but not to initiate it. James Madison wrote that the executive branch was the most prone to go to war and, therefore, the Constitution vested that power in the legislature.

Israeli protesters returned to the streets Thursday to rally against proposed judicial reforms, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a compromise plan touted by the country's president.

The reforms, several provisions of which have already been adopted by parliament, are "the end of democracy," read a placard brandished by demonstrators in Tel Aviv.

According to Israeli media, tens of thousands of Israelis protested across the country.

Some 650 reserve troops from the intelligence and cyber units in the IDF announced on Thursday, that as of Sunday, they would no longer volunteer for service after the coalition rejected the president's proposed compromise.

The 450 intelligence members of intelligence units and 200 members of the IDF reserve cyber force said that after the Knesset began voting on a bill that prevents the removal of a prime minister for any reason other than physical or mental incapacity, and blocks any judicial review of the law, they had decided to stop volunteering.

Parking lots today are no-go zones where savages with low impulse control often prey on vulnerable people.

• Sherry Smith Sain, 64, died after being intentionally struck by a car in a Walmart parking lot [Source].
• 17-year-old Ian Hagerty was fatally shot while attending a candlelight vigil in an apartment parking lot [Source].
• Andy Billinger, age 38, was fatally shot in a McDonald’s parking lot [Source].
• Ashley Nicole Chambers, 29, was fatally shot in an apartment parking lot [Source].
• Jacqueline Mixon, 78, died after being pushed to the pavement and run over in a hospital parking lot [Source].
• Stormy Clere, 28, was fatally shot in a parking lot [Source].
• Elsa Mikeska, 62, was fatally shot in a gym parking lot [Source].

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said that he would welcome any Russian proposals to set up new military bases and boost troop numbers in the Middle Eastern country, suggesting Moscow’s military presence there should become permanent.

When Russia intervened in the war in Syria in 2015, four years after protests began in the country, it helped tip the balance in al-Assad’s favour, ensuring the Syrian leader’s survival despite Western demands that he be toppled.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Thursday $150 million in new humanitarian assistance for Africa's Sahel region, saying it would provide life-saving support to refugees and others impacted by conflict and food insecurity.

Making the announcement during a visit to Niger, Blinken said the aid would address needs in Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania. The package also included funding to support Sahelian refugees in Libya and Niger, he said.

The Pentagon will soon make its first awards under the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract as interest in commercial cloud services booms, according to a Defense Information Systems Agency official.

The Defense Department in December selected Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle for the closely watched JWCC contract, a follow-up to the failed $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure arrangement.

Lawmakers argued this week that too many potential recruits are being barred from military service if they admit to seeking mental health treatment.

“We disqualify young men and women if they’ve seen a psychiatrist or if they’ve been on medicine for mental health and yet we want them to try to improve themselves,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, questioning Pentagon personnel officials during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday.

During this decade’s still-ongoing “racial reckoning,” assaults by university administrations on the academic freedom of tenured professors have gotten ever more blatant. Beside the Amy Wax case at Penn, Charles Negy was fired from his tenured post at the University of Central Florida for retweeting my Taki’s column from the first week of the Mostly Peaceful Protests in which I concluded:

Instead, the Establishment views blacks as our Sacred Cows, above criticism, but beneath agency.

An arbitrator later reinstated Professor Negy.

And Cleveland State fired tenured professor Bryan Pesta after he co-authored a breakthrough study of one of the oldest and most controversial questions in psychology: Is the racial gap in IQ between whites and blacks narrower on average among self-identifying blacks with more white genes?

Pesta has now filed a lawsuit against Cleveland State, and let’s just say, he doesn’t pussyfoot around or rely on a lot of legal technicalities, but instead calls out the huge issues raised by his case:

In a report covering covid-19 period from March 2020 to March 2021 OXFAM’s research bring home some hard facts that are camouflaged by words & terms. IMF Fiscal consolidation is nothing but austerity upon low-income & middle class populations while IMF reforms means cutting social welfare & subsidies. OXFAM says that these measures which cover taxing, wage bill cuts or freezes, pension cuts, subsidy elimination, cuts to public spending have over period of time brought countries to great difficulty as they have to continue taking loans & paying back taken loans with interest while people suffer consequences of IMF recommendations. OXFAM claims IMF austerity increases income of the wealthiest 10% at the expense of the bottom 80% which include the middle class who face the most burdens.

IMF Consolidation = austerity

IMF reforms = elimination of subsidies/cuts/freezes etc.

How does the wealthiest 10% increase their income.

IMF while recommending to slash state subsidies to the people, also promote privatization & when state entities are privatized while state increases prices/taxes which have to be borne by the poor – the private owners naturally gain more income as they hold most avenues of revenue.

Within 9 months in 2020, 1000 billionaires wealth had increased by $3.9trillion but workers had lost $3.7trillion in labor income. This showed the gap between top 10% & bottom 80% widening.