Tag: cold war

A New Cold War for a Dying World Order

Washington is more united than is often thought. Despite the ruptures with an imagined past that have been said to have been caused by the chaos agent in the White House, the foreign policy consensus (underwritten by the national religion of American exceptionalism) has shown itself to possess a remarkable resiliency in the three and a half decades since the end of the first Cold War (1946-1988). There today exists a broad consensus across the American political spectrum that it is Washington’s duty (to say nothing of its ability – now for the first time being seriously questioned thanks to Trump’s ongoing debacle in Iran) to suit up and take the field in a global fight to defend ‘democracy’ which, as we have been incessantly informed for a decade starting in 2016, is ‘under attack’ (the starting point of the great ‘democracy panic’ is hardly a coincidence). As the progressive standard bearer Bernie Sanders put it back in 2017, “in the struggle of democracy versus authoritarianism, we intend to win.”

The architect of the Cold War containment doctrine, George F. Kennan, once observed that “there is nothing in nature more egocentric than the embattled democracy.” And the elected (and, perhaps more importantly, unelected) leaders of our own “embattled democracy” with over 2 million men and women under arms; over 5,000 nuclear warheads; surrounded by 3,000 miles of ocean to the east and 12,000 miles of ocean to the west, is widely thought to remain vulnerable to coercion by an ‘Axis of Authoritarianism’ led by China and Russia – with a supporting (and growing) cast made up of Iran, North Korea, and occasionally, depending on the politics of the analyst, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and certain political parties in Germany, Hungary, Italy, and France.

The prevailing narrative has a shapeshifting quality to it: some days we are informed that the global authoritarian threat is driven by shadowy agents of disinformation employed by the Kremlin; at other times, the threat comes in the form of authoritarian oligarchs and authoritarian kleptocrats. But at all times, our democracy – and the right of our “allies” such as Ukraine to practice democracy – is said to be under threat by the authoritarian axis. This, then, is the narrative, and in Washington, as in America at large, it is the narrative that counts, never mind the substance. As the essayist and president of the Simone Weil Center, Paul Grenier, has elsewhere observed, to the extent that there is a debate over foreign policy in this country, “what we universally observe is the substitution of narrative for reality.” Such preferred narratives “either advance the interests of this or that segment of the power elite, or advance the careers of this or that sector of the national security bureaucracy. That these narratives typically ignore what is true and what is in touch with reality turns out to be of little concern.”

Cold Wars, New and Old

The Cold Wars, both new and old, by which I mean those wars of ’necessity’ waged by Washington on behalf of the Western democracies against, respectively, ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘communism,’ have been, from the first, a project of the American elite dating back to the administration of Harry S. Truman.

On January 31, 1968, at the very moment US troops were under furious assault half a world away in Saigon and Hue, a German academic named Hans Magnus Enzensberger was composing a letter of resignation from his position at Wesleyan University in the rather more congenial environs of Middletown, Connecticut. He had seen enough of America; it was time to move on. Enzensberger felt that “most Americans have no idea of what they and their country look like to the outside world.” And Vietnam was not, as many believed, “an unfortunate accident” made by otherwise well-intentioned men; it was, rather, “the most visible outcome… the bloodiest test case of a coherent international policy which applied to five continents.” It was a project of an American “ruling class” which he considered to be “the most dangerous body of men on earth.” “In one way or another,” wrote Enzensberger, “this class is a threat to anyone who is not part of it… its aim is to establish its political, economic, and military predominance over every other power in the world.”

Same as it ever was.

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Leftwing Candidate for French Presidency Is Grandson of an Infamous Soviet Spy

Glucksmann hopes to be the Left’s candidate against favorite Le Pen.

The board is set, the pieces are moving: as we approach next year’s consequential French Presidential elections, a variety of candidates are making their play.

The election has a clear favorite: right-wing Marine Le Pen, from the RN party.

Ever since Jordan Bardella led the RN to a major victory in the June 2024 European elections, the RN ceased being just a competitive power alternative and became the clear leaders of the pack.

That’s over two years of undisputed leadership in the polls that has the left-wing parties and Macronist centrists scrambling to launch a variety of candidates, trying to capture the imagination of the French public.

And there are some ‘beauties’ in this group.

The odious MSM has gone overboard trying to paint right-wingers in France (and Europe) as ‘Putin’s puppets’ – but when facts are revealed, we rapidly find out who is who.

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Trump and Rubio Are Reviving the Old Cold War Racket Against Cuba

President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are making me feel like I’m smack dab back in the middle of the old Cold War racket — the racket that succeeded in making the U.S. national-security state and its ever-growing army of “defense” contractors a permanent feature of American life.

The State Department just issued a report that is straight out of the old Cold War playbook. It states that Cuba’s communist regime is behind the democratic socialist movements and radical leftist groups here in America . Reinforcing the report, Rubio delivered a talk last week at a big event hosted by the State Department in which he stated that Cuba’s “sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere.”

In other words, the Reds are coming to get us … again! Everyone needs to start looking under his bed for a Red … again! And Cuba, which is located only 90 miles away from American shores, is clearly the spearhead of the international communist conspiracy that is determined to take over America … again! Too bad Senator Joseph McCarthy is no longer here when we need him.

First question for Rubio: Is the international communist conspiracy still centered in Moscow or has it moved to Beijing?

Second question for Rubio: Is socialist-communist Cuba also responsible for Rubio’s fervent belief in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, and other socialist programs here in the United States?

The Cold War racket was the best thing that ever happened to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the three principal components of the U.S. national-security state. By striking deep fear of the Reds within the American people after World War II, warfare statists succeeded in converting the federal government from our founding system of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which is a totalitarian-like governmental structure — and they did it without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

That’s how Americans ended up living under omnipotent government — that is, government that wields the power to assassinate, torture, and incarcerate them for life without due process of law and trial by jury.

It’s also how Americans have come to live under forever war and never-ending crises.

It’s also how Americans live like little serfs under a massive, all-powerful, and very expensive military-intelligence establishment and its ever-growing army of voracious “defense” contractors.

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What History Teaches Us About Why So Many Eventually Flee Socialism

History is filled with political movements born from noble promises. Few have been more appealing in theory than socialism. At its heart, socialism promises greater equality, economic fairness, and protection for those who struggle in a competitive marketplace. It speaks to the desire for justice and the belief that no person should be left behind.

Yet history also teaches a sobering lesson: While millions have voted for socialism, millions more have ultimately fled from it.

Why?

The answer is not found in campaign slogans or academic theories. It is found in the lived experiences of ordinary people across generations and continents.

Throughout the 20th century, socialist governments emerged across Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Many came to power promising to eliminate poverty, reduce inequality, and place the needs of the people above the interests of the wealthy. In the beginning, those promises often generated enormous enthusiasm. Citizens were told that government planning would be more efficient than free markets, that collective ownership would create fairness, and that centralized control would produce prosperity for all.

The results, however, frequently fell short of the promises.

One recurring problem was the concentration of power. When governments assume responsibility for directing large portions of the economy, political leaders inevitably gain greater control over employment, investment, production, and distribution. Over time, this concentration of authority often extends beyond economics into other aspects of society.

History shows that when governments acquire greater power, citizens frequently lose a measure of independence. Economic freedom and political freedom are often more closely connected than many realize. When a person’s livelihood depends heavily upon the state, dissent becomes more difficult and individual choice becomes more limited.

Another lesson history teaches is that incentives matter.

Human beings respond to rewards, risks, and opportunities. Free-market systems are far from perfect, but they have consistently demonstrated a remarkable ability to encourage innovation, entrepreneurship, and productivity. When individuals are allowed to benefit from their hard work, creativity, and investment, economies tend to grow.

By contrast, heavily centralized systems often struggle to generate the same level of innovation and efficiency. Bureaucracies can become slow, inflexible, and disconnected from local realities. Over time, shortages, inefficiencies, and declining productivity have plagued many state-controlled economies.

This does not mean capitalism is without flaws. It clearly is not. Free markets can produce inequality, abuse, and economic dislocation. They require regulation, accountability, and moral responsibility. But history suggests that replacing markets with extensive government control often creates a different set of problems—problems that can be even more difficult to solve.

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The World Government That Wasn’t

There are certain episodes in Cold War history that modern conservatives are expected to treat as either sinister fantasy or liberal delusion. The McCloy–Zorin Accords of 1961 occupy a curious place. Explain the concept today and half of the audience assumes you are describing a proto-globalist fever dream hatched in Manhattan conference rooms full of Scandinavian furniture and earnest men in rimless spectacles.

Yet for a brief moment — and this is the part that ought to unsettle both the utopians and the cynics — the United States and the Soviet Union formally agreed that the ultimate goal of international politics should be the abolition of war itself.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

The “Joint Statement of Agreed Principles for Disarmament Negotiations,” better known as the McCloy–Zorin Accords, was negotiated between American statesman John J. McCloy and Soviet diplomat Valerian Zorin in September 1961 and endorsed unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1961. It envisioned phased and verified general disarmament under international control, including the eventual elimination of national military establishments and the creation of a United Nations peace force.

This was not drafted by Woodstock pacifists smoking hashish in Vermont. McCloy was the very model of the American establishment insider: Wall Street lawyer, banker, Assistant Secretary of War, and one of the founding grandees of the postwar Atlantic order. Zorin, meanwhile, was a hard Soviet apparatchik who had spent decades navigating the darker corridors of Kremlin diplomacy.

And yet there they were, at the height of the Berlin Crisis and only a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, jointly sketching a roadmap toward “general and complete disarmament.”

The irony is that the men closest to this project were not starry-eyed internationalists in the modern sense. They were realists in the older and more serious tradition. They had lived through industrial slaughter on a civilizational scale. Twenty-seven million Russians had died in World War Two. They understood that thermonuclear war was not a talking point but an extinction event. The generation that built the United Nations had watched Europe commit suicide twice in thirty years and concluded, however imperfectly, that sovereign states armed to the teeth and gripped by ideological hysteria might not indefinitely coexist.

Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish Secretary-General of the UN, became the moral and administrative face of this ambition. Today he is remembered, if at all, as the Nordic bureaucrat whose name adorns the plaza outside the UN building by the East River in New York and the library inside that skyscraper. In his own time he was treated almost as a secular pope. The press followed him obsessively. In the newsreels, he emerged from turboprop airliners with a mysterious Swedish smile. A new conflict, a new day for Dag. For a few years from the mid-fifties to very early sixties, the UN became a repository for a tired planet’s hopes. Diplomats regarded him with awe, irritation, or both. He believed the UN could become not merely a debating chamber but an actual mechanism for preventing great-power war.

This is the part modern conservatives are supposed to laugh at.

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The Bizarre Soviet Experiments That Attempted To Understand Psychic Powers

Could someone stop a heart with their mind? Could objects move through the use of mental imagery? Could someone communicate from the shore with a submarine through their thoughts? These were the premises of several strange experiments performed under direction of the Soviet Union. Citizens believed to possess unique parapsychological abilities were tested and studied by renowned scientists in an effort to illuminate the supposed physics that were thought to underlie supernatural abilities. Whether “bioplasma” or “psi particles,” brilliant minds were determined to reveal the science behind the paranormal.

The Cold War was a time rife with competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. The nations battled for control of territories left vulnerable in the aftermath of World War II and fought to claim ideological supremacy. Fear and paranoia were stoked in the American public by the declaration of an arms race, although it was later revealed that the Soviet Union did not have access to such destructive weapons as the U.S. had claimed.

Both governments also competed in the realm of scientific advancement, most famously characterized by the Space Race, in which the U.S. managed to land people on the moon. In a time of such fierce competition, it was all hands on deck, including some scientists with rather peculiar beliefs. The U.S. received intelligence that the Soviet Union was attempting to capture the paranormal using the tenets of the scientific method, gaining an upper hand through telekinesis, telepathy, and clairvoyance.

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CIA’s mind-control program in turmoil after scientist’s mysterious death

A congressional hearing to examine the CIA’s secretive mind-control program has been set for this month.

Florida Rep Anna Paulina Luna announced on Wednesday that the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets will hold a hearing on the Cold War-era MKUltra program on May 13.

The CIA’s MKUltra program, conducted from 1953 to 1964, aimed to develop procedures and drugs for interrogations, weakening individuals and forcing confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture.

Luna had pushed to restart congressional hearings on the matter in February, citing a Daily Mail article that reported a newly surfaced document on mind-control experiments had been placed in the CIA’s reading room the year before.

The renewed focus has placed the CIA’s MKUltra program back under the microscope, particularly its use of drugs, hypnosis and psychological testing on human subjects, as well as the death of one of its scientists. 

Dr Frank Olson, a biological warfare scientist, was covertly dosed with LSD at a meeting and died nine days later after falling out of his hotel room in New York City, which was declared a suicide – although some people, including family members, believe he was murdered.

A total of 144 projects were carried out under MKUltra during that period, highlighting the vast scale of the CIA’s secret experimentation program.

One such document from 1956 detailed how the CIA considered testing the substances on foreign nationals, but ultimately concluded that ‘unwitting testing on American citizens must be continued.’ 

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SHOCKING COVER-UP: German Court SLAMS Door on Merkel’s SECRET Stasi Files — Judges Claim She Wasn’t ‘Famous Enough’ in Communist East Germany to Deserve Scrutiny!

Was Angela Merkel or was she not a communist agent during the Soviet era? Did Merkel or did she not remain in contact with/in the service of her former masters after the fall of the Wall, serving Russian interests to the detriment of Germany? Even a child understands that these questions are of considerable historical—and current!—importance. A child. But not the German Deep State.

The Berlin Administrative Court has once again slammed the door shut on efforts to uncover the full truth about Angela Merkel’s early ties to the East German communist regime and its notorious Stasi secret police — delivering a ruling that reeks of legal hair-splitting designed to protect the powerful rather than serve historical transparency.

In a decision handed down on March 13, 2026, the court rejected a lawsuit brought by persistent researcher and Good Governance Trade Union chairman Marcel Luthe, who sought access to all Stasi-related documents concerning Merkel from her youth in the DDR.

The judges dismissed the entire claim, slapping Luthe with €20,000 in court costs (!!) and refusing even to allow an immediate appeal in some aspects.

The core reasoning? Pure semantics: Merkel allegedly wasn’t a “person of contemporary history” (Person der Zeitgeschichte) back when the files were created — before she emerged as a spokesperson for the Demokratischer Aufbruch party around February 3, 1990.

That’s right — the entire judgment hinges on pedantic arguments about whether Merkel qualified as a public figure at the precise moment the Stasi may have documented her activities. The court insisted she was merely a “kleines Licht” (a small light, or insignificant figure) in those years, positioned “very low” in the FDJ (Free German Youth) hierarchy and not prominently involved.

Never mind that no one disputes she became one of the most powerful figures on the planet — the court retroactively shields her pre-1990 life from scrutiny because she wasn’t yet “famous enough” under the narrow terms of the Stasi Records Act.

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CIA accused of secret bioweapon experiments linked to major outbreak in its own people

A biochemist has claimed to have found evidence that the modern Lyme outbreak in the US could have been the result of CIA bioweapon experiments.

Dr Robert Malone, who helped lay the groundwork for mRNA vaccine technology, made the explosive allegations this week after analyzing declassified government documents, historical records from Cold War biological weapons programs and scientific research on tick-borne diseases.

Malone highlighted experiments in the 1960s that allegedly released more than 282,000 radioactive ticks in Virginia and open-air tick research at Plum Island, a federal laboratory located near the Connecticut community where Lyme disease was first identified.

The experiments were designed to track how disease-carrying ticks spread through the environment, with scientists marking the parasites using radioactive Carbon-14 so their movements could be detected with Geiger counters, a portable, gas-filled instrument. 

Malone’s report argued the research was part of a much larger Cold War biological weapons program known as Project 112, which involved dozens of secret tests aimed at studying how insects could be used to spread pathogens.

The program, authorized by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962, oversaw 134 planned tests and included facilities capable of breeding millions of infected insects each week.

According to the report, the same region where these experiments took place later experienced an unprecedented surge in tick-borne illnesses.

Malone’s claims follow calls from US officials to investigate whether federal agencies experimented with pathogen-laden ticks as tools of war.

In December 2025, an amendment by New Jersey Representative Chris Smith called for a review of military, NIH and USDA projects from 1945 to 1972 involving Spirochaetales and Rickettsiales, bacteria linked to tick-borne diseases. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has also suggested Lyme disease may have originated from a failed US bioweapons program in the 1970s tied to research at Plum Island. 

Plum Island is an 840-acre island off the northeastern coast of Long Island, New York, and home to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a government lab used since the 1950s to study infectious animal diseases.

However, the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly said Lyme disease was never studied at the facility.

Malone’s report also claims key research into a second tick-borne pathogen may have been suppressed.

He alleged the government sidelined research on a pathogen known as the ‘Swiss Agent,’ which was detected in Lyme patients in Europe during the 1970s.

Malone, an expert in biology who earned multiple degrees at the University of California, also accused the government of suppressing research on a second disease called the ‘Swiss Agent’ found in Lyme patients in Europe in the 1970s.

Unpublished papers from Willy Burgdorfer, the scientist who discovered the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, suggested the pathogen complicated treatment because it triggered persistent symptoms that did not respond to standard antibiotics. 

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Declassified Documents Link U.S. Bioweapons Program to Lyme Disease Outbreak

An extensive investigation based on declassified government documents and previously suppressed scientific research has uncovered compelling evidence that U.S. biological weapons programs contributed to the emergence of Lyme disease, which now affects hundreds of thousands of Americans annually.

The investigation reveals a pattern of concealment spanning six decades, including the systematic suppression of critical medical research and the release of nearly 300,000 radioactive ticks across Virginia to study how the disease-carrying insects would spread.

CIA Deployed Infected Ticks Against Cuba

Declassified documents and testimony from a CIA operative describe the 1962 deployment of infected ticks against Cuban sugarcane workers as part of Operation Mongoose, the Kennedy administration’s effort to destabilize Fidel Castro’s regime.

The operative, now in his seventies, told researchers that the “strangest thing he ever did was drop infected ticks on Cuban sugarcane workers” using C-123 transport aircraft flying nighttime missions “almost skimming the surface of the Caribbean to avoid Cuban radar.”

After returning from Cuba, the operative’s four-month-old son developed life-threatening fever requiring emergency surgery. His CIA commander advised him to “burn all the clothes you took to Cuba. Burn everything,” indicating contamination concerns.

The deployment was canceled when “Cuba’s shifting winds made accurate payload delivery difficult,” according to the operative’s account.

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