Today marks the second and final day in what could very well be Julian Assange’s last extradition trial in front of the British High Court. For almost five years now, the United States government has been working to get the Wikileaks founder extradited to the US to face charges that he violated the Espionage Act.

Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
by Allen C. Guelzo
Alfred A. Knopf, 2024; 247 pp.

Alexei Navalny – seen as a pro-democracy, transparency, anti-corruption Russian nationalist gadfly – died while on a walk in his Siberian prison.  He was serving a long sentence, one the Biden administration raged about:  the Russian judiciary had convicted him of several crimes including fraud, embezzlement, “inciting extremist activities” and “rehabilitating Nazi ideology.”

Vladimir Putin isn’t a hero, but his interview with Tucker Carlson brings out some basic truths that we would do well to consider. In contrast to brain dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers, Putin isn’t dominated by an ideological vision that requires world hegemony. He is a nationalist who aims to advance the interest of Russia. This enables him to have a realistic perception of world politics. In what follows, I’ll discuss some of the vital points we can learn from him.

Protecting democracy and the Constitution from Donald Trump and the “MAGA extremists” is a major theme of President Biden’s reelection campaign. As is often the case in American politics, President Biden is just as, if not more, guilty of posing an “existential threat” to the Constitution as those he smears as “extremists.” For example, President Biden and members of his administration have waged a campaign to undermine the First Amendment by “encouraging” companies to suppress the expression of “unapproved” views online.

The euphoria with the fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figure makes no sense. The headline champions say that real GDP increased at an annual rate of 3.3% in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the Bureau of Economic Statistics (BES). An increase in real GDP of $1.5 trillion with an increase in public debt of more than $2 trillion is not a strong economy. It is a bloated economy.

Big corporations and global leaders adhere to and assume the growing interventionism and the advance of socialism because, for politicians, it is an excellent way of perpetuating their power and control over citizens, while multinationals tolerate it because they have enough financial muscle and size to absorb the pernicious effects of the massive rise in public debt and monetary imbalances, public spending, taxes, barriers to trade, and progress.