Today, Iraqis mark the 20th anniversary of the horrific U.S.-U.K. bombing of Baghdad, dubbed “Shock and Awe.” In rapid succession, “coalition forces” dropped 3,000 bombs, including many that weighed 2,000 pounds, on Baghdad in what The New York Times called “almost biblical power.”

Although they launched an illegal war of aggression and committed war crimes in Iraq, 20 years later the leaders of the U.S. and the U.K. have never faced criminal accountability. By contrast, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has already charged Russian President Vladimir Putin with war crimes just one year after his unlawful invasion of Ukraine. He is the first non-African leader to be charged by the ICC, which frequently succumbs to pressure from the United States.

In what came to be called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” 173,000 troops from the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq. During the eight-year war, about 300,000 Iraqis and 4,600 Americans were killed. The United States spent $815 billion on the war, not counting indirect costs. It plunged the country into a civil war and millions of Iraqi refugees remain displaced. Two decades later, not one of the officials responsible has been brought to justice.

The U.S. State Department released an updated report on Human Rights in Ukraine and it honestly reads like a big bag of excuses. This is a report the State Department releases every year and every year they admit that Ukraine is a serious offender of human rights. Only this year, it is because of Russia. We go over this joke of a report and ask: Why is the U.S. supporting this corrupt place?

‘System Update’ host Glenn Greenwald discusses how the White House shut down a possible ceasefire in Ukraine a second time on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’

Both houses of the New York legislature passed an alarming bill (A4132/S837) on Wednesday. The bill itself is not especially dangerous. What is very alarming though is the fact that it was passed indicates that the legislature is getting ready to try and pass another bill (S1531) that will make mandatory reporting of all adult vaccines, and perhaps vaccines refused, to the New York State Immunization Information System or the New York City Citywide Immunization Registry. Currently, if a medical worker follow the law, permission must be obtained to put a person’s information in the database.

We believe that S1531 has the best chance of passing this session out of all the many very bad vaccine-related bills.

The State wants this database for two simple reasons: to know who is and who is not complying with vaccine directives, and, therefore, identify targets for enforcement measures. As we all know, this is exactly what school vaccine databases are used for.

Here is a news video from May 15, 2014. A coup d’état, called Euromaidan, had already happened in Kiev. Crimea held a referendum and became part of the Russian Federation. Numerous nationalists flocked to Russian-speaking regions in eastern Ukraine to seize local power. Donbass rose up. Fighting broke out between supporters of the “Russian World” and Ukrainian armed formations near the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk.

This video shows what happened in just one day, May 15, 2014. The armed conflict in Ukraine has been going on for nine years. It did not begin in February 2022, but in April 2014, when the so-called transitional government of Ukraine, led by Turchynov, began an “anti-terrorist operation” against the Russian-speaking residents of the country’s eastern regions.

Today, the battle between Ukrainian fighters and the DPR people’s militia broke out near Kramatorsk. Military formations of the Kiev regime used heavy armored vehicles and aviation. As a result of the clash, the Ukrainian militants lost 2 armored personnel carriers, 2 Kamaz trucks and 30 personnel killed and wounded. One member of the DPR militia was killed and another was wounded.

Earlier today, the Ukrainian militants retreated after the attack of the DPR militia near Slavyansk. The people’s militia continues the onslaught to free the corridor necessary for supplying the city.

Valery Bolotov, the people’s governor of the Luhansk region survived the assassination attempt in the morning. He was hospitalized with a gunshot wound. But this did not prevent the start of negotiations on the possible unification of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

Irish member of the European Parliament Clare Daly recently excoriated her parliamentary colleagues for pushing for the conflict in Ukraine to continue with no effort at negotiation. An entire generation of Ukrainian men are being lost, she pleaded, noting that “recruits” are now being violently seized off the streets.

How a US delisted terror organization still threatens China...

As US-Chinese tensions rise ahead of a feared conflict, it should be noted that the US has been waging a violent proxy war against China both within its borders and along them for years.

This includes direct and indirect support for terrorist organizations including the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Despite admittedly being a terrorist organization, the US delisted it from its FTO list, allowing support to flow to the group.

She needs to understand that all NATO top brass, all those three-four star generals, do not know what real war is. Yes, they are that incompetent. Secondly, most of them are compromised and are not so much military men as politicos protecting their careers, including by toeing "a party line" formulated by even more incompetent and even more corrupt and cowardly West's political top. As I am on record--the only thing they can do is PR. Now, some of them begin to feel that they fucked up royally and some may face down the road some serious legal, forget about moral, they long ago lost morals, issues. 

Here Larry explains a bit the issue. 

For over 500 years, each saeculum saw America’s power, prestige, and wealth increase. The ravages of war, which ended each prior saeculum, left us stronger. World War II ushered in what friend and foe alike call “The American Century.”

Strauss and Howe warned in their 1997 book, The Fourth Turning, that history offers no guarantee that the next turning, about 2026, will be a continuation of that progression.

American society will be transformed into something different. The emergent society may be something better, a nation that sustains its Framers’ visions with a robust new pride. Or it may be something unspeakably worse. The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.2

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow is not just symbolic as his first foreign excursion after being re-elected to an unprecedented third term. The trip is particularly important because of the wider context in which it is taking place. The global situation calls for a further upgrade in Sino-Russian relations to address the external challenges that both countries face. 

The international system is going through a crisis on the scale of a world war. It began nearly a decade ago when the Western-supported "Euromaidan" coup in Kiev, and Russia’s response by taking control of Crimea, prompted a prolonged US-Russian confrontation.

This was followed three years later by the US abruptly replacing its former China policy of ‘engage and hedge’ with a trade and technology war, resulting in a confrontation between Washington and Beijing.

When Daniel Schleider and his wife, Lior, leave Israel next month, it will be for good — and with a heavy heart.

“I have no doubt I will have tears in my eyes the whole flight.” said Schleider, who was born in Mexico and lived in Israel for a time as a child before returning on his own at 18. Describing himself as “deeply Zionist,” he served in a combat unit in the Israeli army, married an Israeli woman and built a career in an Israeli company.

Yet as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power, assembled a coalition that includes far-right parties and started pushing changes that would erode hallmarks of Israeli democracy, Schleider found himself booking plane tickets and locating an apartment in Barcelona. Spain’s language and low cost of living made the city a good fit, he said, but the real attraction was living in a place where he wouldn’t constantly have to face down the ways that Israel is changing.

Former US President Donald Trump rallied his supporters with a video posted on Monday night to his Truth Social platform, condemning the “four horrible, radical left Democratic investigations” that have not yet managed to sink his political career. 

The video came days after Trump warned he would soon be arrested on charges stemming from the Stormy Daniels scandal, in which his former lawyer Michael Cohen allegedly paid hush money to the porn actress.

In the video, the 2024 presidential candidate described how previous lengthy, well-funded investigations against him had failed to prise him from the White House. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Russian collusion” probe, the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, and the “Stormy Horseface Daniels extortion plot” were all “sick” and “fake news,” he said.

"I'm ready to do it" says UK PM frontrunner Liz Truss when asked if she would "press the button & unleash nuclear annihilation".

On Tuesday, March 21, the Israeli Knesset passed the second and third readings for changing the 2005 Disengagement and Implementation Plan’s name and repealing specific clauses that ban Israeli settlers from establishing new outposts in the north of the West Bank.

The bill was sponsored by rightwing Likud MK Yuli Yoel Edelstein and Jewish Power MK Limor Sonn Har Melech. The Knesset approved it with 31 votes in favor and 18 opposed.

The new amendments to the bill allow for Israeli settlers to remain in areas taken north of the West Bank and deny the ability for Israeli security forces to remove personal property and evacuate settlers from these areas.

Nebraska's politicians started debating a bill on Tuesday to ban surgery for transgender children and young adults - after an opponent of the bill spent three weeks blocking a vote with a filibuster.

Machaela Cavanaugh, a Democrat representing an Omaha district in the state senate, launched her obstruction after Kathleen Kauth, a Republican also representing Omaha, introduced the bill.

The bill, LB574, was introduced on January 17 and 'would forbid gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries for those under 19.' 

China's President Xi Jinping told a grinning Vladimir Putin 'change is coming' in an ominous parting message as he departed Moscow on Tuesday evening following talks with his Russian counterpart.

'Change is coming that hasn't happened in 100 years. And we are driving this change together,' Xi told Putin via his interpreter - words sure to set alarm bells ringing in the West. 

'Please, take care, dear friend,' he added, gripping Putin's hand warmly before being waved off by the Russian despot, who bid Xi a 'safe journey'. 

Moscow has recovered components of the US surveillance drone that was destroyed by two Russian fighter jets last week, according to intercepted military radio traffic.

Just hours after the March 14 incident, radio traffic from the Russian scramble to salvage the MQ-9 Reaper drone was captured by amateur hobbyists on unencrypted channels, according to the New York Times. 

Clips of the radio traffic reveal conversations between multiple Russian ships and aircraft about attempts to recover the drone's engine casing, nose, wing and gas tank.

The White House on Tuesday said that Ukraine will be able to receive powerful Abrams tanks months sooner than expected under a new plan that will put an older model into action sooner.

The move, confirmed by White House national security spokesman John Kirby, comes amid reports that Ukraine will seek to begin a new push to regain territory lost to the Russian invasion even amid the hard-fought stand-off in Bakhmut. 

'The Pentagon is working as fast as they can, and I think they'll have more to say here soon about adjustments they're making to try to see if we can get Abrams tanks to Ukraine a little bit faster than previously expected,' Kirby told MSNBC Tuesday.

A 'bomb cyclone' slammed into San Francisco Tuesday evening in the latest severe storm to hit the West Coast, devastating the region with hurricane-force winds and torrential rainfall. 

The weather front is the latest major storm to hit the region this year, where it unleashed flash floods and blistering wind gusts throughout the Golden State.  

At least one person died after the gusts - which reached upwards of 78mph - caused a tree to fall near Portolla Valley. Meanwhile, more than 230,000 residents across California had their power wiped out in the storm.

The Justice Department successfully convinced a judge in Washington DC overseeing the Mar-a-Lago classified documents inquiry that Donald Trump used his lawyer to help him commit a crime.

Judge Beryl Howell on Friday stepped down as the chief judge of the court, after serving her seven-year term.

In one of her final decisions she ruled that Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Trump, should be forced to appear again before the grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago documents saga. 

The Pentagon has blocked attempts by the US federal government to share alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, according to a March 8 report by the New York Times.

The rationale behind this decision, according to the paper, is that “American military leaders oppose helping the court investigate Russians because they fear setting a precedent that might help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans.” This has now spawned an intra-agency battle within the administration of President Joe Biden over what’s right and wrong.

According to the NYT and officials they spoke to, “the rest of the administration, including intelligence agencies and the State and Justice Departments, favors giving the evidence to the court.” President Biden has yet to make a decision as to whether the US will stick to its commitment to help the European initiative to prosecute alleged Russian war criminals or avoid opening that can of worms altogether.

So much for weapons deemed inhumane and banned under UN-backed international treaties... apparently it's OK if they are used against Russians or other official enemies of the United States - at least according to the logic of some US lawmakers.

A group of four Republican members of Congress are urging President Biden to send Ukraine cluster munitions as part of the next major weapons package approval . "Ukraine is seeking the MK-20, an air-delivered cluster bomb, to release its individual explosives from drones, and 155 mm artillery cluster shells," according to prior reporting in Reuters. These Republican hawks want to provide it.

Given the damage the Left and the Left’s political party, the Democrats, are doing to America, you would think conservatives would understand that defeating the Left is by far their most important task. 

The Left’s damage includes, to name but a few examples, doing incalculable damage to America’s children by supporting and advocating mutilating surgeries, prescribing hormone blockers, promoting innocence-robbing “nonbinary” cross-dressing shows and discussions, and having ordered inexcusable school lockdowns; printing trillions of dollars, which in turn has led to devastating inflation, unprecedentedly high national debt, and a weakened dollar; and ruining every institution in the country including, but not limited to, the universities, the military, medicine, the arts, sports, journalism, religion, marriage, and free speech.

Yet, apparently, millions of conservatives, including some leading ones, do not understand that defeating the Left is their most important task. For many conservatives, it appears that whether to aid Ukraine or whether to support former President Donald Trump overshadows defeating the Left.

Let’s begin with Ukraine. 

Last week, the other shoe dropped on the Biden crime family. James Comer, chairman of the committee investigating the most disturbing scandal in the history of the White House, finally received the records from a bank—one of 12—that the Bidens have used to stash their payoffs from China’s Communist dictatorship. Comer had previously been stonewalled for two years by the corrupt and incompetent Biden Treasury head, Janet Yellen.

This first Biden bank record to be surrendered showed three members of the Biden family, including Beau Biden’s widow Hallie and one person identified only as “Biden,” received payments amounting to $1 million from a Chinese Communist State energy company. 

What were the payments for? Forget asking the Bidens, who have a long history of silence and denial on such material questions. When asked, Joe Biden denied he ever discussed Hunter Biden’s Chinese business affairs with him, even though he flew with Hunter on Air Force Two to China and met with his business associates. Never at a loss for brazen lies to extricate himself from difficult circumstances, Biden, without a second thought, denied that the bank records were “true.” 

To date, there hasn’t been one attempt by the Biden camp to try to explain what service the Bidens actually supplied to the Chinese Communists to earn such ample rewards. At the lowest levels of this corruption, Hallie Biden, who is a school counselor, received $25,000 from the Chinese Communist Party. For what?

When you have no answers to such material questions, when you lie continually about the operations themselves (“I never discussed Hunter’s business with my son!”) when you suborn your intelligence services to carry out an elaborate and expensive effort to suppress the story of an incriminating laptop, and do it right before a presidential election, you are in fact telling us that you are guilty of the obvious crime you are covering up. In this case, treason: colluding with an enemy power to hurt your own country.

Joe Biden recently released his proposed fiscal year 2024 federal budget, a budget he knows is dead on arrival. In a purely political move, Biden submitted a $6.8 trillion budget he claims will reduce the deficit by approximately $3 trillion over 10 years by raising taxes on Americans who earn more than $400,000, per Reuters. The truth, however, is that Biden’s budget is too woke, too expensive, and favors big government over the ingenuity of the American population.

At a time when we are experiencing stagflation, rising unemployment, and bank failures, Biden’s budget proposal mentions climate change 148 times, equity—which is never defined—63 times, environmental justice 25 times, and transgenderism eight times. The budget calls for $2.6 billion to advance gender equity and equality. He calls for an additional $1.45 billion to “bolster the EPA’s environmental justice efforts, $3.3 billion to support clean energy projects, and looks to include a $3.2 billion loan to the Clean Technology Fund to “finance clean energy projects in developing countries,” per the proposal. In addition, he wants to spend $367 million to support so-called police reform and efforts to “provide equitable access to justice.”

Biden also seems to love the word “free.” Not as in freedom, or live free, but as in no cost. It is apparent, however, that he does not understand the word. He calls for free “high-quality preschool and up to two years of free community college,” among other programs. Yet, unless the preschool and college teachers will volunteer their time, a benefactor donates land, buildings, books, and utilities, it will not be free. It will be paid for, but  by taking money from you and giving it to someone else.

The FBI and the Department of Energy have evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic began in a laboratory. The most likely place of origin is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, a collaborator with the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL) from 2009 to 2021 headed by James LeDuc. For anyone investigating the COVID origin, LeDuc is a person of interest. 

The Californian earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Cal State Long Beach, a masters of public health in infectious and tropical diseases from UCLA, and a Ph.D. in epidemiology, also from UCLA. LeDuc began his professional career as a field biologist with the Smithsonian Institution’s African Mammal Project in West Africa, then served for 23 years in the U.S. Army’s Medical Research and Development Command. 

In 1992, LeDuc joined the Centers for Disease Control and the CDC assigned him to the World Health Organization (WHO) as a medical officer. LeDuc later became associate director for global health at the CDC’s National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), where his research interests included the epidemiology of arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers. 

In 2006, LeDuc joined the faculty of the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), home to the Galveston National Laboratory (GNL), a creation of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci since 1984. Some officials thought Galveston Island, constantly threatened by hurricanes, was not the best place to contain the world’s deadliest and most contagious viruses. 

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is talking about ideas to bring racial reparations to the Bay Area.

The proposals discussed during a recent board hearing, if adopted, would come with a significant financial cost for taxpayers. More on that in a bit.

The entire reparations plan is predicated on the idea that black residents of San Francisco need to receive massive financial benefits from the city to make up for slavery and systemic racism.

Now, plenty of arguments can be made against reparations. As a matter of justice and improving “equity,” which the Left obsesses over, these proposals leave a lot to be desired.

“Legal or not, reparation plans are deeply flawed and often create new injustices in implementation,” I wrote in September. “In the end, they are based on the premise that the only way to get ahead in society is to claim victimhood and shake down your neighbors.”

The case for reparations in California for U.S. slavery is particularly tenuous. California famously entered the Union as a free state. The number of black slaves brought to California before its statehood was marginal. 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged a question about whether President Joe Biden supported reparations for slavery Tuesday.

“We understand that there’s a legislation on the Hill currently on this, on the study of reparations … and we think Congress is the appropriate venue for consideration on such action,” Jean-Pierre said in response to a reporter’s question during Tuesday’s White House press briefing. “And so, we’re going to leave it there for Congress to decide to let them go through their process that they’re taking at this moment, but I would — I would lay out and speak to what the president has done.”