All My Trials...

It has been a week of trials...Julian in the UK, the ICJ case on Israeli occupation of Palestine, Trump's trumped up cases, and many trials in the court of public opinion like the case of Navalny vs Gonzalo and Epstein, all our unnecessary wars, and mass migration. All these and more below the fold.

"All My Trials" was a folk song during the social protest movement of the 1950s and 1960s. it is based on a "Bahamian" lullaby that tells the story of a mother on her death bed, comforting her children...The message --- that no matter how bleak the situation seemed, the struggle would "soon be over" -- propelled the song to an anthem by many of the leading artists of the era."

Let's start with Julian's ridiculous trial. In any sane world this would have never happened. It proves to me we are run by the intel agencies.

(17 min) As they lecture us endlessly about human rights in other countries, the Biden administration is trying to kill journalist Julian Assange for the crime of embarrassing the CIA. His wife Stella joins us from his extradition hearing.

If Assange is Extradited No Journalist in World Is Safe (Ex-UN Expert)

By the afternoon the video link, which would have allowed Julian Assange to follow his final U.K. appeal to prevent his extradition, had been turned off. Julian, his attorneys said, was too ill to attend, too ill even to follow the court proceedings on a link, although it was possible he was no longer interested in sitting through another judicial lynching. The rectangular screen, tucked under the black wrought iron bars that enclosed the upper left hand corner balcony of the courtroom where Julian would have been caged as a defendant, was perhaps a metaphor for the emptiness of this long and convoluted judicial pantomime. The arcane procedural rules — the lawyers in their curled blonde wigs and robes, the spectral figure of the two judges looking down on the court from their raised dais in their gray wigs and forked white collars, the burnished walnut paneled walls, the rows of lancet windows, the shelves on either side filled with law books in brown, green, red, crimson, blue and beige leather bindings, the defense lawyers, Edward Fitzgerald KC and Mark Summers KC, addressing the two judges, Dame Victoria Sharp and Justice Johnson, as “your lady” and “my lord” — were all dusty Victorian props employed in a modern Anglo-American show trial.

Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s Day in Court

...there is documented evidence that the CIA plotted to kill Julian Assange in 2017 which revealed their intentions. “Here’s a guy, even if you believe everything is true that they’re charging him with, he is not charged with any violent crime. There’s no reason for him to be in jail while he awaits extradition… They’re holding him so that he’ll die,” Kovalik said. The US government would like to avoid an actual trial with Assange, Kobalik contended, because their misdeeds would come to light. “[Defense lawyers] could call a former secretary of state [or] a former secretary of defense. It would be a circus and it would not go well for the United States.” “People would be called from the US government, present and past, to talk about their crimes, to talk about the war crimes, the things that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have exposed. So they don’t want any part of that,” Kovalik predicted.

US ‘Always Planned’ For Assange to Die in Prison
That was plan for Gonzalo too. Let's hope they are not successful killing Julian.

Julian Assange’s Grand Inquisitor (Chris Hedges)
"By the end of the day, it seemed likely that, probably by April, since requested written briefs have to be turned into the judges in March, the two judges will permit an appeal on at least a few of the points. This will, conveniently for the Biden administration — which I expect does not want to take on the contentious issue of extraditing Julian while fueling the genocide in Gaza — mean that any extradition would occur after the election."

ASSANGE'S LAST STAND? - Chris Hedges & Alexander Mercouris
A review of Julian Assange's Renewal Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice

What is the likely outcome?
George and Joe Lauria (11 min)

Joe suggests there will be no ruling till after the November election. I hope he's wrong.

Since a pack of lies about Alexei Navalny won last year’s Oscar for the best documentary film of the year when he was alive, there’s no doubt he can win another Oscar when he’s dead. But alive or dead, the prize-winning propaganda of Navalny’s story bears no resemblance to the truth. This is what happens in wartime, especially when the side which is losing the war on the battlefield – that’s the US, NATO and the Ukraine – claims to be winning the war of words against Russia. The Navalny story is now in two parts: Part 1, the Novichok in his airport cup of tea, in his hotel water bottle, and then in his underpants which causes Navalny’s collapse, but fails to be detected by Russian doctors in Omsk, by German doctors in Berlin and Munich, and then by Swedish and French state laboratories. Part 2, Navalny’s sudden death after he had taken a walk in the IK-3 penal colony in the village of Kharp, in the Russian Arctic region of Yamalo-Nenets.

What Happened To Alexei Navalny This Time Round (Helmer)

"Was Navalny an intelligence asset of MI6 or CIA, or both?"
Scott Ritter: "Both... we tried to put lipstick on this pig and turn him into the symbol of democracy, but he was never a democrat. He was always a disruptive force, trained, funded and directed by the CIA."

Is Truth As Mighty As Evil? (Paul Craig Roberts)

It has been my great distress to see the widening gap between agenda-controlled narratives and truth. Evil is a powerful force, and truth alone is not a match for it. The pen is mightier than the sword, but it doesn’t seem to be mightier than Evil. As I have previously noted, there is nowhere in the West a countervailing power to the Evil that is engulfing us.. Try organizing one, and the FBI will arrest you or the CIA will assassinate you. No one will come to your defense.

Using COVID as his example PCR lays out a sad but convincing case.

Ukraine Has Lost - Is Putin Wrong? - Netanyahu's Policy | Paul Craig Roberts (1 hour)
Wide ranging thoughtful conversation.

Here's a nice overview of Tucker's interview with Mike Benz which I featured last week.

Trump's trumped up case in NYC

DONALD TRUMP AND GOVERNMENT THEFT PURE AND SIMPLE (24 min)
Gerald and the Judge look at the absurdity of the case.

4 min clip

New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Feb. 20 that she’s prepared to seize former President Donald Trump’s buildings and assets if he can’t pay the penalty imposed in the state’s civil fraud case. The former president was recently ordered to pay nearly $355 million and barred from doing business in New York state for three years by state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron. During an interview with ABC News, Ms. James said that it was “really not my business” if President Trump doesn’t have the money to pay the penalty, while also noting that she has her eyes on the Trump Building in Lower Manhattan. “If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek, you know, judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets,” she said.

NOTE - BANKRUPTING TRUMP: If you haven't been paying attention, Donald Trump currently owes $87,500 in daily interest on a half-billion-dollar fine in his Manhattan case.
This interest will continue to accrue until he settles the half-billion-dollar penalty. In other words, every day when you wake up, another $87,500 is added, and the same will happen the following day until he can pay it off. Even if he appeals, he will still have to pay upfront and only potentially get his money back if he wins.

Oscar Wilde wrote that “moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” Justice Arthur Engoron took that line to heart with his absurd imposition of $455 million in fines and interest against Donald Trump and his corporation. It succeeded wonderfully with New Yorkers, who celebrated the verdict like a popular public execution. It also worked wonderfully to make it difficult to appeal. Much of the criticism of the decision focused on the unprecedented use of the law and the excessive size of the fine. The New York statute has been on the books for decades and has always been something of an anomaly in not requiring an actual victim or loss to justify disgorgement or fines. Even the New York Times agreed that it could not find a single case in history where this statute was used against an individual or a company that did not commit a criminal offense, go bankrupt, or leave financial victims.
Engoron then combined that unprecedented application with an equally extraordinary penalty, which is greater than the gross national product of some countries. He disgorged hundreds of millions in a case where not one dollar was lost by anyone. Indeed, the “victims” wanted to get more business from Trump and are now being prevented from doing so by Engoron.

JONATHAN TURLEY

Mass Migration...

A Stunning 10 Million Illegals Have Entered The US Under Biden

Shockingly, that (7.2 million) total does not include an estimated additional 1.6 million illegals who entered the US at other locations, nor 1.8 million known "gotaways" who evaded law enforcement, which would make the total bigger than the population of New York.
Taken together, over 10 million migrants have crossed into the U.S. illegally during the Biden administration, a record Biden's critics assert could only be achieved by intentionally refusing to enforce the law.

Why are we caught in this endless cycle of war? Because we've built our economy on it. What sad situation to depend on war and death for profit. (55 min)

Renowned economic forecaster Martin Armstrong believes that the global economy hinges on the outcome of wars being waged and the inevitable expansion of global conflict to feed the neocons and the military industrial complex. Martin explains the reasoning behind the geopolitical transition currently facing the world and why precious metals and commodities could provide investors with a shelter from the storm.
Armstrong Economics: https://www.armstrongeconomics.com
00:00 Introduction
01:11 Everything Hinges on Outcome of War
10:19 What Drives the Neocons to War?
23:14 Could a Gold Standard Fix Our Problems?
32:03 How to Protect Your Wealth
41:52 Opportunity in Commodities
46:30 Central Bank Digital Currencies
An interesting conversation.

‘A War-Making Machine’: Why NATO Should Be Abolished w/ Vijay Prashad (18 min)
Last week, the two war-mongering factions in the US argued over the future of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as a tool for maintaining US global hegemony. Trump touted at a campaign rally that when he was president he told an unidentified NATO leader that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” with member countries that were “delinquent.” The comments provoked a firestorm, with a range of Western officials, including Biden, rushing to denounce the remarks while reaffirming their unwavering loyalty to the imperialist alliance. Vijay Prashad, the Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute, joins the show to expose how the Democrats’ Pro-NATO position and Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, which calls for the US to pull out of NATO, are merely two sides of the same imperialist coin. Prashad explains why abolishing NATO is an urgent necessity to save the global population from more destructive wars.

Ex-NATO Official REVEALS The Lies Of Neocon Warmongers To German Public (45 min)
You are about to see a public lecture by retired General Harld Kujat, who served in the German Airforce and even was the chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 2002 to 2005. He has emerged in Germany as another outspoken critic of the way NATO and the Europeans are abusing Ukraine for the geopolitical benefit of the US. General Kujat is so outspoken that Wikipedia “knows” that he belongs to the inner circle of Vladimir Putin. Ha!

Dr. Gerald Horne told Sputnik on Tuesday that the decline of mainstream Western media was accelerated by the press’ narratives on the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine. “I think that an astute historian would point out that the Ukraine crisis helped to trigger or helped to accelerate the continuing decline of the news media,” Horne said, adding that the media crisis was “accelerated on October 7, 2023, because it’s no secret that the Zionist lobby has a stranglehold over a good deal of the US media.”

Horne also noted the US media coverage of the death of Alexey Navalny, particularly its lack of coverage of his documented Islamophobia. “We want to get an account of what happened when we pick up a newspaper or tune into CNN, but instead we oftentimes just get the current line of the neocons, or the neoliberals,” he explained, adding that there is “no guarantee” that CNN will be around by the end of the decade. The crisis goes beyond just the media, Horne argued, saying it is a crisis of “the entire capital system” and is part of “the inevitable demise of capitalism.”

Ukraine
Scott Ritter said that Ukraine lost the battle of Avdeyevka for several reasons, the most dominant of which is that they simply don’t have the firepower necessary to stabilize the battlefield. “They [Ukrainian forces] have no more artillery rounds that enable them to flood the battlefield, break up Russian attacks, and support counterattacks. They don’t have air defenses to stop Russian air power from coming in and dominating the battlefield. They have insufficient drones to replace artillery fire support. Simply put, the Ukrainians are unable to hold their own on the battlefield,” Ritter pointed out, describing the situation as “the Avdeyevka end game.”
Ukrainian Forces Failed to ‘Hold Their Own in Avdeyevka’ -Scott Ritter

Perhaps reality is setting in on NATOstan...

“On February 16-18, the 60th Munich Security Conference was held, which was reduced to discussing the situation in Ukraine with a focus on how to forestall the complete collapse of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We noted the dispirited atmosphere that permeated the meeting. There is no trace of the former optimism among the Western [cheerleaders for Ukraine],” the diplomat noted. “If just a year ago they were brimming with confidence in the imminent victory of their Kiev puppets, this time around they could barely conceal their skepticism and pessimism. Apparently, Europe and the United States are beginning to understand the impossibility of defeating Russia,” Zakharova stated.

Munich Conference Shows Evaporating Western Optimism On Ukraine

"Insanity" – John Mearsheimer on the US role in Ukraine (45 min)

NATO Will Allow Ukraine To Attack Inside Russia With F-16s – Stoltenberg (RT)

Gaza, Israel, and the ICJ as the war expands...
AaronMaté : Netanyahu Wants to Own Gaza (28 min)

The slow steady erosion of the Palestinian state. The last image is 2020. It is worse today.

Tel Aviv’s mounting threats to destroy Beirut as it has done to Gaza, coupled with growing Israeli public support for aggressive military action against Lebanon, have spiked tensions on the northern battlefront in recent days. Furthermore, the precarious game at play in Washington – which has done absolutely nothing to impede Israeli occupation forces from launching an assault on Rafah and uprooting more than a million Palestinians from their last refuge on the Egyptian border – is driving the war to a volatile, dangerous brink. Adding fuel to this already incendiary mix are two critical factors. First, Israel’s targeted strikes on Lebanese civilians, exemplified by the recent attacks in Nabatiyeh and Al-Sowanah, have provoked a stern response from Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who vowed retribution, declaring that “the price of civilian blood will be blood.”

As Ramadan Approaches, Israel Threatens War On Lebanon
War and more war.

In a speech on Tuesday, Hizbullah leader Seyed Nasrallah said that the Party will continue the border offensive until at least the Gaza massacre stops. The war in Gaza however, is far from over. And Nasrallah warned that even were a ceasefire to be reached in Gaza, “should the enemy perform any action, we will return to operating according to the rules and formulas that existed before. The purpose of the resistance is to deter the enemy, and we will react accordingly”. Israel’s Defence Secretary Gallant has underlined that contrary to international consensus expectations, he too expects the war in Lebanon to continue. Gallant said the military has stepped up its attacks against Hizbullah by one level out of ten: “The Air Force planes flying currently in the skies of Lebanon have heavier bombs for more distant targets. Hizbullah went up half a step, whilst we, a full one … We can attack not only at 20 kilometres [from the border], but also at 50 kilometres, and in Beirut and anywhere else”.

It is not clear what ‘red line’ Hizbullah would have to cross for Israel to significantly escalate its response to much higher levels; Israeli leaders have suggested that an attack on a strategic site; or an attack leading to major civilian casualties; or a substantive barrage on Haifa might constitute the breaking point. Nonetheless, with three military divisions rather than the usual one now deployed in the north of Israel, the IDF has more forces poised for action on the northern border than it has preparing for an incursion into Rafah – at this point.

The Resistance Has a Plan for Israel (Alastair Crooke)

Will the inaction of the other Arab nations spell their own demise? PCR sugests that's the case.

...the Israeli/American intention is to expand the war against Hamas to Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The expansion has begun. The latest news is that Israel has struck deep into Lebanon: “War Expands With Massive Israeli Airstrikes 60km Deep Into Lebanon.” The Arabs, likely restrained by Putin, have once again sat on their butts while Israel picks them off one by one. Only the Houthis but not a single Arab or Muslim country came to Hamas’ help. Consequently, the Arabs sat sucking their thumbs while Gaza and Hamas were destroyed. The arabs accepted Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Evil prevails when it is left unopposed. If Hezbollah, Syria, the Iraqi militias, and Iran had joined Hamas’ attack, Israel today would not exist. Having missed their chance, they will now be knocked off one at a time by Israel and Washington.

The Ever Expanding War (Paul Craig Roberts)

Israel Wants to Replace UNRWA with a CIA Front Group (7 min)
Israel’s Foreign Ministry created a task force to replace UNRWA with USAID. Kei Pritsker explains how USAID acts as an extension of the national security state and how it might be used to meddle in Palestinian politics

"...If you choose to continue sending weapons to Israel as it annihilates the Palestinian of Gaza, then you do not get to ever pretend again that you support international law, care about human life, or have moral convictions that apply universally".

In front of a room filled with states from around the world, she exposes the racist ideology that underpins Western support for Israel. (6 min)

Let's wrap it up with a chuckle...
Will they roll out the $hill to replace ByeDone?

(3 min)

I'm out of town this weekend, and won't be around today. I hope you find a clip or two to watch, and will use the comments to discuss items on interest below. It is an open thread after all.