Is it collective amnesia? Have people forgotten the lie of WMD's? How about the democracy we brought to Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan? Do people think those countries are better off now than before we destroyed them? Are we so propagandized we've become blind? Sure seems so. The acceptance of absurdity seems systemic to me... down to and including today's time change. As usual, it may be that we're a dollar short and a day late ...but today we're also an hour early
(to give you an extra hour to shop after work)

Martín Espada
Blessed Be The Truth-Tellers
For Jack Agüeros

In the projects of Brooklyn, everyone lied.
My mother used to say:
If somebody starts a fight,
just walk away.
Then somebody would smack
the back of my head
and dance around me in a circle, laughing.

When I was twelve, pus bubbled
on my tonsils, and everyone said:
After the operation, you can have
all the ice cream you want.
I bragged about the deal;
no longer would I chase the ice cream truck
down the street, panting at the bells
to catch Johnny the ice cream man,
who allegedly sold heroin the color of vanilla
from the same window.

Then Jack the Truth-Teller visited the projects,
Jack who herded real camels and sheep
through the snow of East Harlem every Three Kings’ Day,
Jack who wrote sonnets of the jail cell
and the racetrack and the boxing ring,
Jack who crossed his arms in a hunger strike
until the mayor hired more Puerto Ricans.

And Jack said:
You gonna get your tonsils out?
Ay bendito cuchifrito Puerto Rico.
That’s gonna hurt.

I was etherized,
then woke up on the ward
heaving black water onto white sheets.
A man poking through his hospital gown
leaned over me and sneered:
You think you got it tough? Look at this!
and showed me the cauliflower tumor
behind his ear. I heaved up black water again.

The ice cream burned.
Vanilla was a snowball spiked with bits of glass.
My throat was red as a tunnel on fire
after the head-on collision of two gasoline trucks.

This is how I learned to trust
the poets and shepherds of East Harlem.
Blessed be the Truth-Tellers,
for they shall have all the ice cream they want.

Perhaps our greatest truth-teller, Julian Assange, is still being tortured in a maximum security prison at the hands of the UK and US.

https://consortiumnews.com/2020/09/07/editorial-a-trial-begins-in-london/

“A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt, and/or innocence, of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors.” (Wikipedia)

Is there any better way to describe what has been happening to Assange than the above definition?
...
The prosecution’s case against Assange is exceedingly weak, but it doesn’t seem to matter. In the first week, America’s British lawyers didn’t mention the only technicality that Assange can really be charged with: unauthorized possession and dissemination of classified information.

That’s because it’s a charge that directly implicates the rest of the press, which for years has possessed and disseminated secret material and never faced charges. It was an issue so much in the forefront of U.S. thinking that it had its Queen’s Councillor directly address the press gallery at the beginning of February’s proceedings to try to convince the reporters that they were not a target.

We need more truth tellers. There are some, but for the most part they're ignored, sidelined, censored, and silenced. Who do you trust? First trick is to recognize the US government is constantly lying....about war, aggression, the economy, health and disease, and most blatantly its own greatness. Joementia as the titular head of the US is pretty symbolic because our society has become demented....not aware of our own zombie dance to the music of TPTB whose thirst for war, fuel and profits has no bounds.

Here's something you won't hear on MSM, Zelensky's background and origin as Ukrainian President and the relationship of that story and the Bidens. (8.5 min)

10 main reasons why Russia had no choice but to go into Ukraine: inc Bio Labs.
Can you guess all 10? (23 min)

I appreciated Vijay's take on the situation in Ukraine...(36 min)

More from Vijay...
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/272373171/russia-ukraine-war-began-i...

The war between Russia and Ukraine began much before February 24, 2022-the date provided by the Ukrainian government, NATO, and the United States for the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to Dmitry Kovalevich, a journalist and a member of a now-banned communist organization in Ukraine, the war actually started in the spring of 2014 and has never stopped since.

Ukraine: A conflict soaked in contradictions
There are wars in Africa and Asia and some are rarely commented on in the media, so why is Ukraine different?

The Saker has some good pieces up and running. One by Micheal Hudson
The American Empire self-destructs. But nobody thought that it would happen this fast
And another by Pepe Escobar
Russian judo tears the West apart

Glenn has a good piece on the biological labs in Ukraine
Victoria Nuland: Ukraine Has "Biological Research Facilities," Worried Russia May Seize Them

The neocon's confession sheds critical light on the U.S. role in Ukraine, and raises vital questions about these labs that deserve answers....
When asked whether Ukraine possesses “chemical or biological weapons,” Nuland did not deny this: at all. She instead — with palpable pen-twirling discomfort and in halting speech, a glaring contrast to her normally cocky style of speaking in obfuscatory State Department officialese — acknowledged: “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities.” Any hope to depict such "facilities” as benign or banal was immediately destroyed by the warning she quickly added: “we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach”

Much more at the link.
He and Jimmy discussed the story too (31 min)

From the UN security council meeting last Friday. Watch in full here.

Defense Ministry of Russia got hold of documents confirming that Ukraine developed a network of at least 30 biological laboratories that host extremely dangerous biological experiments, aimed at enhancing the pathogen properties of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera, and other lethal diseases with the help of synthetic biology. This work is funded and directly supervised by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) of the United States, i.a. in the interests of Pentagon’s National Center for Medical Intelligence. The key role in these programs was played by a BSL-3 central reference laboratory at the Mechnikov Scientific-Research Anti-Plague Institute in Odessa, Ukraine. Research centers in other cities also played a role – Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Dnipro, Kherson, Ternopol, Uzhgorod, Vinnytsia. Research results were sent to US military biological centers, i.a. to U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infections Diseases, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, US Naval Medical Research, and US Army Biological Warfare Labs in Fort Detrick that used to be the key hubs of the American biological weapons program.
...
The materials that our Defense Ministry got hold of prove that all serious high-risk research in Ukrainian biolabs was directly supervised by US experts who had diplomatic immunity. Our Defense Ministry reports that at this moment the Kiev regime, as demanded by the Western sponsors, hastily covers up all traces so that the Russian side could not get hold of direct evidence of the US and Ukraine violating Article 1 of the BTWC. They rush to shut down all biological programs. Ukraine’s Health Ministry ordered to eliminate biological agents deposited in biolabs starting from 24 February 2022. We infer from the instructions to lab personnel that the order of elimination of collections suggested that they should be destroyed irrevocably. Having analyzed the destruction certificates, we can say that the Lvov lab alone destroyed 232 containers with pathogens of leptospirosis, 30 – of tularemia, 10 – of brucellosis, 5 – of plague. The total of more than 320 containers was eliminated. Pathogens’ titles and excessive amounts give reason to think that this work was done as part of military biological programs.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/12/watch-un-security-council-on-ukrai...
worth the full read...

If you missed George Galloway's conversion with Scott Ritter, it is worth the 20 minutes. They start by looking at the US/Ukraine the labs.

Meanwhile in US news we hear about hospital and kindergarten bombings and the horrors of the Russia invasion. It is important to remember: we lie, we lie, we lie!

This is the Washington playbook. Make up lies to support ongoing crimes, and new lies to justify future crimes. History always starts the day after the opposition reacts, as we saw with Crimea, and there’s no need to consider the enemy’s motivations. It’s much simpler to pretend the US is the indispensable nation, the shining beacon on a hill, and defender of the weak and helpless against the forces of tyranny.

Igor said that in the last days of February, people in uniform came to the maternity hospital where his mother works. He does not know whether they were fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the nationalist battalion "Azov" (banned in the Russian Federation). The military knocked down all the locks, dispersed the staff of the maternity hospital, and set up firing points in the building in order, as they explained to the doctors, to prepare the “fortress of Mariupol” for defense. The reaction of the military to objections is standard: blows with rifle butts, shooting into the air.
...
By our records, 200 thousand civilians are trapped in Mariupol alone and held at gunpoint by the Azov battalion. The humanitarian situation in cities deteriorates rapidly. As for humanitarians who are ready to help, they cannot get in there and prevent the unfolding disaster. People in other regions of Ukraine that have been blocked by nationalist battalions find themselves in the same desperate situation.

Ukrainian radicals show their true face more distinctly by the day. Locals reports that Ukraine’s Armed Forces kicked out personnel of natal hospital #1 of the city of Mariupol and set up a firing site within the facility. Besides, they fully destroyed one of the city’s kindergartens.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/disarming-ukraine-day-15-a-curious...

From https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/12/watch-un-security-council-on-ukrai...

Maternity hospital #1 in Mariupol has become proverbial in this respect. Let me ask – did you listen to what we said here on Monday, 7 March? It was about militants and radicals turning this building in a gun post. We warned about it back then, but you would not listen, and you do not want to listen to what we say. You saw pictures of the maternity hospital allegedly hit by a bomb or missile. I also have them here. They show a building, windowless but not ruined. I bet you can imagine what should have happened to a building hit by a bomb or missile strike, and also to everyone inside. I have photo and video footage from inside the building. It shows a mess, furniture scattered upside down, and intact chairs.

Let me ask again: can you imagine what sort of damage would have been inflicted by a bomb or missile strike? Military experts could tell you. As a matter of fact, they already have. They demonstrated a photo of the crater next to the building. By all indications, it was caused by an underground explosion. In the meantime, we are told about 17 people injured in this building, and none killed. As a proof, we are supposed to accept staged photos of Ukrainian blogger Marianna Podgurskaya taken by AP stringer Evgeniy Maloletka. By the way, web users already discovered that she roleplays different women in different photos.

Americans obviously don't know about the Azov Battalion. (1 min)

Straight from the horse’s mouth, the Nazi Azov battalion is made up of a rag tag group including ex-prisoners, with little or no vetting.

As the propaganda flies strong. we are encouraging more neonazis and other extremist to join the Ukrainian army. Needless to say, this might bite us in the ass the way our creation of ISIS did.
More on how ISIS was created here.

Additionally NATO is flooding Ukraine with weapons, another action we will probably regret as those weapons are likely to find their way back into Europe. The strategy will significantly expand the growth prospects for military companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. ...Responsible Statecraft warned, "Flooding weapons into what the Global Organized Crime Index describes as 'one of the largest arms trafficking markets in Europe' is a recipe for disaster." The index called attention to "Ukraine's role as a key link in the global arms trade,"
https://thedissenter.org/arms-flood-ukraine-us-europe-proxy-war/

Then of course there's the sanctions we've over used for decades. The steroid level sanctions against Russia are another example of how our karma will come back to us. It is amazing how blind we are to what the US is doing around the world... (6.5 min)

Ukraine crisis: Why doesn't the West show the same outrage for wars in the Middle East?

Economic Effects
This conflict will cost people around the world because of the economic effect. Max ask some of our politicians about their support for war as it hurts the US public.

As gas prices and inflation surge, Max Blumenthal heads to Capitol Hill to question members of Congress on the economic toll American workers face from escalating sanctions on Russia, and on their support for escalating the war in Ukraine through a massive new arms package.
Republican Thomas Massie stood against "stand with Ukraine" resolution.
13 min interview with him

The global economy is interconnected and the sanctions are going to effect everyone including the US. However much of our economic problems lie with US policy.
Good 15 min description of the current US economy and future trends.

In this video, I discuss the end of quantitative easing (money printing) by the Fed, and its impact on risk assets like stocks.

Since the Fed remains the buyer of last resort for Treasuries, their stepping away from the table is causing risk assets to sell off sharply, in addition to causing cracks to form in the debt markets, including Treasuries, which have been seeing recent liquidity problems.

Now that sovereign immunity is gone for central banks holding Treasuries, we will see far fewer sovereign purchases of Treasuries, and the Fed will need to return to buying.

Until the Fed returns in an overt or covert manner, risk assets will continue to sell off, and we are at risk of a true financial crisis. It's unlikely that banks and pension funds will be able to help take down much of this Treasury supply, unless the regulators change their rules.

How strange to go to Tucker on Faux News to hear any antiwar discussion on the MSM. (13.5 min) As he points out, driving gas prices higher helps Russia's economy.

A confluence of economic issues are colliding and the sanctions against Russia will exacerbate the pain we're going to experience.

Inflation is busting out. The 7.9% reading the US for a yearly rate of inflation is but a minimum bid on the true reality (which is certain to be much higher than what the US government reports).
The various powers that be are busy pointing their fingers in every direction but the right one; at themselves.
The true source of inflation is excessive money printing and deficit spending. That is, the US Federal Reserve and federal government deserve 99% of the blame here. It was their policies that have brought us all here, not recent event in Ukraine. The past two years have been unlike anything in history on both fronts.
It’s time for everyone to let go of the idea that things will somehow magically revert to how they were before. Instead, we should begin planning as if several decades of really bad decisions and false ideas and fake narratives are finally coming home to roost, which they are.

The US propaganda arm is strong...
From the moment Russian troops invaded Ukraine the entire corporate media apparatus in the US moved to 24-7 coverage, filling airwaves with talking heads relentlessly beating the drums of war. Combined with Big Tech’s sophisticated means for silencing and punishing dissenting voices, the increasingly hostile and propaganda-filled discourse that is taking shape today is eerily reminiscent of the “Russiagate” fervor and the cultural hysteria that permeated the post-9/11 years. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with longtime journalist and activist Abby Martin about how the media’s manufactured “bloodlust” for war makes us all less safe and how we must use independent media to advance the cause of peace. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUVxdM5giKE (53 min)
Transcript here.

Who would have thought a month ago that RT America would shut down and RT itself would be banned on YouTube? Some of RT America's shows are archived at https://www.portable.tv/shows Lee Camp explains what happened with RT America to Jimmy... (9 min)

On March 3rd, with virtually no warning, the entire staff and on-air talent at RT American were informed that the network would be shutting down operations, effective immediately, and they would all be laid off. Show hosts including Dennis Miller, Jesse Ventura and Lee Camp all lost their shows – and jobs – as an indirect consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Lee also discussed the story with George Galloway. (11 min)

This clip at less than four minutes, keeps all this in perspective. It needs to be revisited fairly often. Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot from 1994.

Time to make a shift toward a more peaceful life...as OPOL often said, peace out