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The Geopolitics of Peace
Thanks to all of you for the chance to be together and to think together. This is indeed a complicated and fast-changing time and a very dangerous one. So, we really need clarity of thought. I’m especially interested in our conversation, so I’ll try to be as succinct and clear as I can be.
I’ve watched the events very close-up in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, very closely for the last 36 years. I was an adviser to the Polish government in 1989, to President Gorbachev’s economic team in 1990 and 1991, to President Yeltsin’s economic team in 1991 to 1993 and to President Kuchma’s economic team in Ukraine in 1993 to 1994.
I helped introduce the Estonian currency. I helped several countries in former Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia. After the Maidan, I was asked by the new government [in Ukraine] to come to Kyiv, and I was taken around the Maidan, and I learned a lot of things firsthand.
I’ve been in touch with Russian leaders for more than 30 years. I also know the American political leadership close-up. Our previous secretary of treasury, Janet Yellen, was my wonderful macroeconomics teacher 52 years ago. We have been friends for a half century.
I know these people. I say this because what I want to explain in my point of view is not second-hand. It’s not ideology. It’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes and experienced during this period. I want to share with you my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe in many contexts and I’ll include not only the Ukraine crisis, but also Serbia 1999, the wars in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, the wars in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Libya. These are to a very significant extent the result of deeply misguided U.S. policies. What I will say may well surprise you, but I speak from experience and knowledge of these events.
Wolves, Hyenas and Legislators Run in Packs
At an early age, we taught our kids to learn from others and to think for themselves. I still remember telling one child, “Truth doesn’t fly in flocks. You need to seek and find it on your own. And never be afraid to test and re-examine what you believe is true. Belief has no value if you close your mind to the ideas and arguments of others. Living in truth involves not only faith, but also the courage to think for yourself.”
Unthinking animals either herd up for security, or run in packs to pull other creatures down. Politicians do both. In the worst example I have seen in 48 years in Montana, the cowardly pack mentality has been on full display in the sixty-nineth session of the Montana State Legislature.
Most of us are aware by now of the hostile takeover of the Montana State Senate by a coalition of every Democrat plus a wolf pack of liberal Republicans, who locked claws on vote after vote to deliver a functional majority for the Democratic Party. At one point, twenty separate pro-Democrat floor votes were recorded, all by 27-23 margins – an impressive show of Pack Power over their own Republican leadership. The nine GOP deserters are senators Vance, Gillespie, Kassmier, Lammers, Loge, McKamey, Tempel, Hunter and Ellsworth.
First, the Pack held the Senate hostage for many days, eventually forcing leadership to change its own rules so that liberal Republicans could be inserted onto key committees to shift committee control.
Then came the Jason Ellsworth affair. Sen. Ellsworth was caught arranging a sweetheart contract for a buddy of his by quietly diverting, at the last moment, over $170,000 from the unspent budget of the Judicial Reform Interim Committee, over the objections of its members. The project made no sense and would be performed from the friend’s home. When discovered, auditors were shocked, and the Senate Ethics Committee began an investigation, as was its constitutional duty. But the nine-member GOP wolf pack again locked arms with the Democrats and stopped the investigation in its tracks – thus assuring that the liberal Ellsworth would remain in the Senate for the entire session, doing the Democrats’ bidding.
Other reports of Ellsworth throwing his political weight around started coming out. Clearly, he should have resigned, but the “the Pack” continued to give him protective cover, and he remains there still – larger than life – seemingly incapable of shame or contrition.
German Leftist Party Chants Antifa Slogan Before Entering Parliament
Members of the far-left Die Linke party proudly chanted an Antifa slogan before they entered the Bundestag parliament in Berlin after the German elections.
At one point, Die Linke (The Left) looked like they wouldn’t even make it into parliament by failing to achieve 5 per cent of the vote, but a late rally driven by fearmongering over the Afd helped them to garner 8.8 per cent thanks to a last minute surge.
Left leaders Jan van Aken and Ines Schwerdtner and former chancellor candidate Heidi Reichinnek gathered for a photo-op with other MPs to chant, “alerta, alerta, antifascista!” outside the Bundestag.
“The phrase — “attention, attention, anti-fascists” — originated in 1920s Italy among leftist opponents of the Mussolini regime before being picked up in the Weimar Republic by the German leftist-extremist Antifascist Action group, the predecessor of the modern Antifa movement. The phrase is often heard at Antifa rallies worldwide to this day,” reports Breitbart.
In other words, literal Communists who support a movement that has been defined as a domestic extremist organization by some countries now have a foothold in German politics.
Die Linke was the most popular party among voters between the ages of 18 and 24 at 25 per cent, while the young female vote was crucial to them entering parliament.
34 per cent of women who voted in that age bracket cast their ballot for Die Linke, with their nearest challengers being the Afd on just 14 per cent in that demographic.
Massie Teases Senate Run – Jewish GOP Group Threatens ‘Unlimited’ Spending To Stop Him
Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie is teasing a potential run for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat in 2026, and a Jewish Republican group is already threatening to unleash “unlimited” spending to thwart any such bid, given his frequent opposition to legislation pushed by the pro-Israel lobby.
On Thursday, Massie posted a poll on X, asking if he should stay in the House, run for Senate in 2026, or run for governor in 2027. A Senate campaign was the choice of 67% of the respondents.
The libertarian-minded Massie opposes all foreign aid. At his own political peril, he dares to make no exception for the State of Israel, which is among the world’s richest countries. He has also voted against legislation that would infringe on free speech by, for example, punishing colleges that allow students and professors to say the wrong things about Israel.
Add it all up — and stir in the fact that he’s a member of a party whose legislators almost universally toe the pro-Israel line — and Massie is likely the House representative the pro-Israel lobby would most like to eliminate. The idea of him ascending to the Senate has pro-Israel forces racing to DEFCON1.
The Inside Story of DOGE’s State Department Reforms
The DOGE tsunami is about to strike the U.S. Department of State, as well as other agencies. Let’s see what that means.
The day the music died was January 28, when nearly everyone at State, along with over two million other federal civilian employees, received an email referring to “A Fork in the Road.” The email offered qualifying diplomats and civil servants a choice ahead of planned Reductions in Force (RIFs, layoffs): resign now under a special program, don’t come to work for a few months while being paid, and then in September become eligible for whatever retirement benefits you would otherwise be eligible for, if any. State offers its diplomats a full retirement with pension after age 50 and 20 years of service, similar to the military, and after 30 years for civil servants, all with exceptions of course.
Despite the general sense that the buyout was some sort of trick (workers questioned what legal authority allowed State and other federal agencies to pay people who technically resigned, then bring them back into the system to retire), across the government some 77,000 people signed up for the deal before it was brought to a pause by court action. For those with a long way toward formal retirement, it seemed like good enough; ahead of being RIFed, they’d pocket some seven months’ salary on top of whatever severance package might await them when actually let go. The Fork program, as it was commonly now called (alongside the new expression “to get forked”), acquired a formal name, “deferred resignation,” and the paid time off without working became “administrative leave.” An involuntary retirement is called the Orwellian “Discontinued Service Retirement.”
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and others sued to block the “deferred resignation” program, arguing that its chaotic rollout and shifting legal justifications constituted violations of the Administrative Procedure Act’s protections against “arbitrary and capricious” decision-making, and the promise to pay employees past the March 14 possible government shutdown deadline could constitute an Anti-Deficiency Act violation.
On February 12 the federal judge who had temporarily blocked the plan reversed course, ending the temporary restraining order upon concluding he lacked jurisdiction in the case. The deferred resignations would be allowed to go forward (though the sign-up deadline has now passed) reducing headcount at State and other federal agencies if everything went as planned. In his decision, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole wrote that the unions’ challenges are of the type Congress “intended for review within the statutory scheme,” referring to the need to file administrative appeals before going to court. There were doubts the Trump administration would or legally could follow through as stated. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, called the plan “an unfunded IOU from Elon Musk.”
Then things started to get really interesting at State.
House Lawmakers Form First-Ever Official Congressional Jewish Caucus
Jewish lawmakers in the House of Representatives have formed the first-ever Congressional Jewish Caucus.
According to a report by The Hill, Jewish politicians in the United States House of Representatives have founded the Congressional Jewish Caucus, which will serve as an official platform to address rising antisemitism and concerns facing the American Jewish community.
“In response to unprecedented rising antisemitism in the United States and the challenges the American Jewish community has faced in the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, the need for this Caucus is understandable,” said Representative Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), a founding co-chair.
“I am confident this caucus will bring Jewish members together to strive to achieve unity, not unanimity, and will be a productive forum to discuss issues of import to the American Jewish community,” he added.
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who initiated the program, emphasized the significance of education and cross-community linkages in resolving Jewish American concerns.
“With antisemitism reaching record levels in the United States, it is more important than ever before that Jewish members of Congress have a formal Caucus to represent the unique perspective of the Jewish American community,” she said.
Nadler will be co-chairing the caucus along with Representative Brad Schneider (D-Ill.).
Rummaging through the Democrats’ moldy old toolbox
First, we find character assassination. Near the beginning of Barack Obama’s meteoric rise to the top of the heap, we find a sneaky trick played in 2004 against his Republican senatorial opponent, Jack Ryan. He got a crooked judge to unlawfully unseal the records of Ryan’s divorce. Well, after all, it was in Illinois. Much the same was tried against Pete Hegseth, but this time with disappointing results, as with the phony outrage over Elon Musk’s “Nazi” salute. My, how the world has changed.
Another shopworn tool is pandering to identity. In a socially fluid society such as America’s, identities ultimately tend to become blurred. It is often said that the identity that is growing fastest is “mixed.” When I come to “race” while filling out the Census form, I write in “human.” Haven’t gotten the knock on the door…yet.
Fear has traditionally been one of the most useful tools in the box. Fear of the unknown is particularly effective, since the unknowing audience can be easily tricked into taking the speaker’s word for describing the problem. Take “climate change” for example. Weather is typically chaotic, with various forces such as jet streams, ocean currents, high-pressure domes, and low-pressure cyclones constantly interacting to produce daily conditions, whatever they may be. Climate history, however, is forbidden knowledge. Ice ages and giant reptiles wandering all over the planet can only confuse the masses.
The mother of recent fear campaigns has to be the COVID “crisis.” A virus that escaped from a test tube promptly unleashed a plethora of formerly closeted dictators. Edicts were spewed left and right. Twenty-second hand-washing, “social” distancing, and masking, just to name a few, somehow had the force of law. Children, who were the least at risk, had their education and social development perhaps permanently retarded. Why? Because fear really works when it comes to controlling the behavior of even otherwise unruly individuals.
Herein lies the rub. Being deceived over and over again — into higher taxes, devalued money, and increasingly dangerous local conditions — has begun to seriously influence the voting population. Last year’s debacle has finally caused some within the Democrat universe to start making apt criticism. None other than Rahm Emanuel, in nowhere else but the Washington Post, has laid out some serious issues. Following is Jonathan Chait in The Atlantic. This phenomenon can be described as being mugged by reality.
DOGE Subcommittee Chair Rep. MTG Summons NPR and PBS Chiefs to Testify Over ‘Systemically Biased News Coverage’ Funded by Taxpayers
The leaders of NPR and PBS are set to be grilled on Capitol Hill as the newly formed Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), demands answers on why taxpayer dollars continue to fund these far-left media outlets.
Letters sent to NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS President Paula Kerger on Monday morning accused the outlets of producing blatantly biased content while still receiving millions in federal funding.
The move signals a direct challenge to what conservatives have long criticized as taxpayer-funded propaganda for the left.
In her letter to Maher, Rep. Greene highlighted NPR’s refusal to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal in 2020, citing the outlet’s now-infamous statement:
“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”
Outgoing DNC Chair Unveils Democrat Party’s Rules for Leadership Positions – And It Will Make Your Head Spin
The Democrats still don’t understand why they lost.
The Democrat Party voted for a new DNC Chairman on Saturday after
Outgoing DNC Chair Jaime Harrison laid out the ground rules for leadership positions and he even confused himself.
“Because of our gender balance provisions on this next ballot, you will be able to vote for two candidates of any gender on the next ballot,” Jaime Harrison said. “Okay, so on this next ballot, you will be able to vote for two candidates of any gender on the next ballot.”
“The rules specify that when we have a gender non-binary candidate or officer, the non-binary individual is counted as neither male nor female and the remaining six offices must be gender balanced. With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two male and two female,” Jaime Harrison said.
He continued, “In order to be gender balanced, we must elect one male, one female and one person of any gender. So again, this is what we have to do for this vice chair race. To ensure our process accounts for male, female and non-binary candidates, we conferred with our RBC Co-Chair, our LBGT Caucus Co-Chair and others to ensure that the process is inclusive and meets the gender balance requirements in our rules.”
“After a candidate is elected on the first ballot, we’ll have one officer of the three so then we will know which position is filled of the one male, one female, and one Vice Chair of any gender. Our second ballot will also be for any candidate of any gender,” Jaime Harrison said.
Got it?
Hellbound and Down 
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