International
How the US government is thwarting peace efforts in Ukraine and Israel
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh warns of political repercussions for the Biden administration’s handling of the international crises in Europe and the Middle East.
To get to the news these days, you have to look beyond the facade of mainstream media. No major outlet in the West has reported the findings of Seymour Hersh, made in a post on Substack on March 21, which claim that the United States government is determined to prevent peace in Ukraine.
Citing an anonymous “American official,” Hersh wrote “officials of the Biden administration, working with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, continue to rebuff any chances of significant progress in peace talks.” Referring to his earlier report, which documented ongoing talks between the U.S. and Russia, Hersh says his source is “kept abreast” of this dialogue concerning a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine. According to the unnamed mole, peace was within reach, and the U.S. moved to prevent it with a threat to turn off the money supply to Ukraine.
We were on the verge of a reasonable negotiation several months ago before Putin’s re-election and Zelensky’s military degradation.
The U.S. leaders got wind of the possibility and gave Zelensky the ultimatum – ‘No negotiations or settlement or we won’t support your government with the $45 billion in non-military funds.’
This is the amount that Ukraine receives now, aside from military aid, to support its government. Without it, Zelensky’s regime would collapse. This was an ultimatum – but why did the U.S. issue it? The source explained:
Biden has staked his presidency on meeting the Russian threat to NATO and outsmarting the monster, and he will not change course now, under any circumstances, and the end is inevitable.
Does this end justify the means? The source gave a sobering assessment of the Biden administration’s willingness to risk a war with Russia, to save face at home: “There is no road to victory for Ukraine, and it will end with Putin as an historical icon in Russia, having recovered a national jewel [Kharkov] from the West.”
What Russia has gained, it is going to keep, said the source. “The reality,” he said, is “that the lands in dispute” – four oblasts formerly in Ukraine’s control and Crimea – “from north to south and east to west all are Russia’s. So stop talking about it and make a deal.”
This may be news to many “news-believers” in the subject nations of the U.S. Empire, but it is well known in government circles. Aside from Hersh’s report, a grim assessment that “Ukraine could fall very quickly” is reported to have fueled French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent outbursts, which saw him threaten to send French troops to fight Russia.
Panic in the EU
Macron is reported by Politico to have made that remark at a dinner in Paris on Tuesday, March 19. It followed leaks from French intelligence which said Ukraine could not win the war, was running out of men to conscript, and that the French army were “majorettes” compared to that of the Russians.
Germany and other EU nations were quick to distance themselves from Macron’s rhetoric, fearing the direct entry of NATO troops into Ukraine could lead to a nuclear war.
Even Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba downplayed the suggestion, saying Macron’s words were “misinterpreted” by EU leaders who “panicked” over his talk of sending troops to Ukraine.
Added to this picture, again largely excluded from the news, is the obvious fact that the sanctions intended to weaken Russia have backfired. In reality, the one beyond the official narrative, the actions of the Biden administration have been a catastrophic failure.
“This is the world the Biden administration fostered,” says Hersh, quoting an Economist report that shows how Russia has not only weathered the storm of sanctions, but has in the process emerged a champion of a strengthening system, parallel to that controlled by the U.S.
According to The Economist on March 14:
Russia’s economy has been re-engineered. Oil exports bypass sanctions and are shipped to the global south. Western brands from BMW to H&M have been replaced with Chinese and local substitutes… Dissent at home has been strangled.
This last line could apply equally to the situation in the West, whose propaganda apparatus overmatches anything seen in the Soviet Union. Our “hypernormalization” – the state of unreality created by state propaganda – differs in one other important regard. Toward the end, most of the people in the Soviet Union knew their government was lying to them.
Biden, Trump, and the end times
Hersh claims that the predicament created by the Biden administration will likely see its undoing in the next election.
“Its refusal to seek a middle ground in the Ukraine war, along with its inability to check Israel’s continued assault in Gaza, will become a political liability in Biden’s campaign against Donald Trump, who warns of unending violence if he loses the presidential election in November.”
Trump’s own remarks on Israel have caused much concern amongst those convinced of his pledge to “end the forever wars” – a vow he repeated on the campaign trail in January.
Yet his ambiguity on Israel has seen him criticized by Jewish groups, as PBS reported on March 22.
Trump’s stance on both Israel and Ukraine – that neither war would have happened had he been president – is shaded by moves to appease the over 30 million Christian Zionists who PBS says lie at the core of his support. PBS said of Trump’s previous tenure:
Trump pursued policies that were popular among American Christian Zionists and Israeli religious-nationalists, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Jewish settlements in occupied territories.
PBS also noted his family connections to the Jewish community:
His daughter Ivanka is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, and her husband and their children are Jewish. The couple worked as high-profile surrogates to the Jewish community during Trump’s administration.
Finally, the report touched on the evangelical Zionists:
Trump’s core supporters include white evangelicals, many of whom believe the modern state of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy. Prominent evangelicals who support Zionism have also been criticized for inflammatory statements about Jewish people.
This huge constituency includes many Christian Zionists who support the Armageddonist notion of ushering in the “Jewish Messiah” – through the sacrifice of red heifers and the rebuilding of the Jewish Third Temple on the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque.
This process is underway, with five red heifers arriving in Israel in September 2022, expedited by U.S. Zionist Christian group Boneh Israel, and a large altar was constructed in Jerusalem to perform the diabolical ritual to usher in “the End Times.”
CBS News reported from the site on March 5, 2024.
Beyond the end?
With the sitting president mired in a disaster of his own making, and his successor with ties to a group dedicated to sparking Armageddon, the story beyond the mainstream media is all about the end times. The end of the Biden administration, the end of the war in Ukraine, and perhaps the end of the world if the factions of insanity succeed in provoking an escalating war with Russia or in the Middle East.
Hersh’s article ends with what could read as the epitaph for the one-term wonder Joe Biden.
The best that Biden has come up with is continued, if so far empty, talk about a ceasefire in Gaza, and a commitment that no American soldiers will be sent to the front in Ukraine.
The president also promises that the United States will keep on paying for Ukrainians to fight and die in a proxy war that could be ended.
Added to this is the fact that the Biden administration continues to supply Israel with military hardware, without which it could not continue its war. As retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brik said of the U.S. in November, “The minute they turn off the tap you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands we can’t fight this war without the United States.”
Brik has returned with an assessment of Israel’s war which dovetails with that provided by Hersh on Ukraine. It has been a defeat, both in military and in diplomatic terms.
“We have already lost the war with Hamas, and we are also losing our allies in the world at a dizzying pace Brik said to Israeli news outlet Ma’ariv, on March 24.
The realization is growing that the current model of U.S. power is determined to prevent the outbreak of peace. With little promise in the White House but more of the same, the hope is that in November, this will change. Yet, here are forces at work which would prefer that the end times come for us all.
What is needed is a clear statement on the future of Ukraine, of relations with Russia and the state of Israel from a man who once promised he could stop it all. We have a leaderless U.S. in the thrall of an election cycle. Instead of resignation to the end times, we need to hear some serious talk about what comes next. Our future depends upon an alternative to business as usual.
Censorship Industrial Complex
A Democracy That Can’t Take A Joke Won’t Tolerate Dissent
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Collin May
Targeting comedians is a sign of political insecurity
A democracy that fears its comedians is a democracy in trouble. That truth landed hard when Graham Linehan, the Irish writer behind Father Ted and The IT Crowd, stepped off a plane at Heathrow on Sept. 1, 2025, and was met by five London Metropolitan Police officers ready to arrest him for three posts on X.
Returning to the UK from Arizona, he was taken into custody on the charge of “suspicion of inciting violence”, an allegation levelled with increasing ease in an age wary of offence. His actual “crime” amounted to three posts, the most contentious being a joke about trans-identified men in exclusively female spaces and a suggestion that violated women respond with a swift blow to a very sensitive part of the male’s not-yet-physically-transitioned anatomy.
The reaction to Linehan’s arrest, from J.K. Rowling to a wide array of commentators, was unqualified condemnation. Many wondered whether free speech had become a museum piece in the UK. Asked about the incident, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer defended his country’s reputation for free expression but declined to address the arrest itself.
Canada has faced its own pressures on comedic expression. In 2022, comedian Mike Ward saw a 12-year legal saga end when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled five-to-four that the Quebec Human Rights Commission had no jurisdiction to hear a complaint about comments Ward made regarding a disabled Quebec boy. The ruling confirmed that human rights bodies cannot police artistic expression when no discrimination in services or employment has occurred. In that case, comic licence survived narrowly.
These cases reveal a broader trend. Governments and institutions increasingly frame comedy as a risk rather than a social pressure valve. In an environment fixated on avoiding perceived harm, humour becomes an easy and symbolic target. Linehan’s arrest underscores the fragility of free speech, especially in comedic form, in countries that claim to value democratic openness.
Comedy has long occupied an unusual place in public life. One of its earliest literary appearances is in Homer’s Iliad. A common soldier, Thersites, is ugly, sharp-tongued and irreverent. He speaks with a freedom others will not risk, mocking Agamemnon and voicing the frustrations of rank-and-file soldiers. He represents the instinct to puncture pretension. In this sense, comedy and philosophy share a willingness to speak uncomfortable truths that power prefers to avoid.
Aristotle, in his Poetics, noted that tragedy imitates noble actions and depicts people who are to be taken seriously. Comedy, by contrast, imitates those who appear inferior. Yet this lowly status is precisely what gives comedy its political usefulness. It allows performers to say what respectable voices cannot, revealing hypocrisies that formal discourse leaves untouched.
In the Iliad, Thersites does not escape punishment. Odysseus, striving to restore order, strikes him with Agamemnon’s staff, and the soldiers laugh as Thersites is silenced. The scene captures a familiar dynamic. Comedy can expose authority’s flaws, but authority often responds by asserting its dominance. The details shift across history, but the pattern endures.
Modern democracies are showing similar impatience. Comedy provides a way to question conventions without inviting formal conflict. When governments treat jokes as misconduct, they are not protecting the public from harm. They are signalling discomfort with scrutiny. Confident systems do not fear irreverence; insecure ones do.
The growing targeting of comedians matters because it reflects a shift toward institutions that view dissent, even in comedic form, as a liability. Such an approach narrows the space for open dialogue and misunderstands comedy’s role in democratic life. A society confident in itself tolerates mockery because it trusts its citizens to distinguish humour from harm.
In October, the British Crown Prosecution Service announced it would not pursue charges against Linehan. The London Metropolitan Police Service also said it would stop recording “non-crime hate incidents”, a controversial category used to document allegations of hateful behaviour even when no law has been broken. These reversals are welcome, but they do not erase the deeper unease that allowed the arrest to happen.
Comedy survives, but its environment is shifting. In an era where leaders are quick to adopt moral language while avoiding meaningful accountability, humour becomes more necessary, not less. It remains one of the few public tools capable of exposing the distance between political rhetoric and reality.
The danger is that in places where Agamemnon’s folly, leadership driven by pride and insecurity, takes root, those who speak uncomfortable truths may find themselves facing not symbolic correction but formal sanctions. A democracy that begins by targeting its jesters rarely stops there.
Collin May is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a lawyer, and Adjunct Lecturer in Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary, with degrees in law (Dalhousie University), a Masters in Theological Studies (Harvard) and a Diplome d’etudes approfondies (Ecole des hautes etudes, Paris).
Daily Caller
Tech Mogul Gives $6 Billion To 25 Million Kids To Boost Trump Investment Accounts

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, announced Monday that they will give 25 million American children a $250 deposit as an initial boost to President Donald Trump’s new investment program for children.
The Dells’ pledge totals $6.25 billion and will be routed through the Treasury Department. The goal, they say, is to extend access to the federal Invest America program — referred to as “Trump accounts” — established by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by the president in July.
The federal program guarantees a $1,000 federally funded account for every child born from 2025 through 2028, but the Dells’ money will instead cover children 10 years old and younger in ZIP codes where the median household income is under $150,000, according to Bloomberg.
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“What inspired us most was the chance to expand this opportunity to even more children,” the Dells wrote in the press release. “We believe this effort will expand opportunity, strengthen communities, and help more children take ownership of their future.” (RELATED: Trump Media Company To Create Investment Funds With Only ‘America First’ Companies)
Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies with a net worth of about $148 billion, has been one of the most visible corporate leaders championing the Trump accounts. In June, he joined Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and others at a White House roundtable promoting the initiative.
In addition to the new $6.25 billion pledge, Dell Technologies committed to matching the government’s $1,000 contribution for the children of its employees. Other companies, such as Charter Communications, Uber, and Goldman Sachs, have said they are willing to match the government’s contributions when the accounts launch.
“This is not just about what one couple or one foundation or one company can do,” the couple wrote. “It is about what becomes possible when families, employers, philanthropists, and communities all join together to create something transformative.”
Starting July 4, 2026, parents will be able to open one of the accounts and contribute up to $5,000 a year. Employers can put in $2,500 annually without it counting as taxable income.
The money must be invested in low-cost, diversified index funds, and withdrawals are restricted until the child turns 18, when the funds can be used for college, a home down payment, or starting a business. Investment gains inside the account grow tax-free, and taxes are owed only when the money is eventually withdrawn.
The accounts will “afford a generation of children the chance to experience the miracle of compounded growth and set them on a course for prosperity from the very beginning,” according to the Trump administration.
The broader effort was originally spearheaded in 2023 by venture capitalist Brad Gerstner, who launched the nonprofit behind the Invest America concept.
“Starting 2026 & forevermore, every child will directly share in the upside of America! Huge gratitude to Michael & Susan for showing us all what is possible when we come together!” Gerstner wrote on X.
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