The founder of the Wagner private military company, Yevgeny Prigozhin said that Russian forces are located 1.2 kilometers from the administrative center of Artemovsk (Ukrainian name - Bakhmut).

"That's about a five-story building where the smoke comes from - the building of the city administration, the administrative center of the city. It's one kilometer and two hundred meters away," Prigozhin said in a video from the positions of Russian forces in Artemovsk, published on Saturday in the telegram channel of his press service.

The founder of the Wagner private military company also attached a video showing the former main fortified areas of the Ukrainian armed forces, from where they controlled the north-eastern part of Artemovsk. He also noted that the Ukrainian armed forces will try to conduct a counteroffensive from the north of the city.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned on Friday that Western leaders appear “very close to suggesting in all seriousness” that NATO troops be sent to Ukraine. Orban’s comments come amid growing concerns in Washington that the alliance’s Ukrainian client state is losing in the proxy conflict against Russia.

Any Western officials seriously considering deploying NATO military personnel to Ukraine should rethink the “insane” idea before plunging the planet into a nuclear war, Kentucky progressive Democrat Geoffrey M Young has urged.

“These ‘Western countries’ better think again about doing anything like that. Then they’d better think again and again. It’s insane. It could lead to the destruction by Russia of any country that sends troops; or it could lead to a nuclear war that could kill everyone on earth,” Young, a candidate in the Democratic primaries in the upcoming Kentucky gubernatorial race, tweeted in response to a tweet addressing Orban’s warning.

The FDA Commissioner Robert Califf and the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky teamed up to issue a strong rebuke to Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo for issuing a health alert that his state’s surveillance system reported a major uptick in adverse events in concert with the rollout of the Covid mRNA shots.

“In Florida alone, there was a 1,700% increase in VAERS reports after the release of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to an increase of 400% in overall vaccine administration for the same time period,” the alert added and provided a graphic.

North Korea launched two missiles from a submarine in waters off its east coast over the weekend, according to state media, and vowed to take “the toughest counteraction” against the largest joint military drills by the United States and South Korea in years that kick off Monday.

Pyongyang’s official KCNA news agency said the “strategic cruise missiles” were launched on Sunday morning from a “8.24 Yongung” submarine in the Sea of Japan, also known in Korea as the East Sea. The same vessel was used to test North Korea’s first submarine-launched ballistic missile in 2016, CNN previously reported.

The launches Sunday came some 24 hours before Washington and Seoul initiated their springtime joint military exercise on Monday, the biggest war games the two allies have put on in five years.

The 11-day Freedom Shield exercise “will integrate elements of ‘live exercises’ with constructive simulations,” US Forces Korea (USFK) said in an earlier statement.

More than $250 billion in Covid-19 relief funds were lost to “fraud” and “waste,” the directors of three US government agencies testified before the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on Thursday.  

Compounding what Deputy Inspector General Sheldon Shoemaker of the Small Business Administration (SBA) called “the biggest fraud in a generation,” the officials stressed that the figures they gave represented an extremely conservative estimate of the total amount lost as they did not include the amount defrauded from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.

Officials traveling with the Israeli prime minister told an Israeli online newspaper that Washington has been suspected of funding mass protests against Benjamin Netanyahu's judicial reforms that have been rocking the country for over two months.

A senior government official accompanying Netanyahu on his trip to Italy told the daily this week that the protests seemed to be well organized and amply funded with what he estimated to be millions of dollars.

"We are following what is happening. This is a very high-level organization. There is an organized center from which all the demonstrators branch out in an orderly manner," the unnamed official was quoted as saying.

Public health experts are warning that the ‘air testing’ being carried out in East Palestine by a for-profit company hired by Norfolk Southern is “almost like smoke and mirrors.”

The ‘air testing’ recently conducted in East Palestine residents’ homes was deficient in a number of key ways and was actually carried out by a company contracted by the rail company Norfolk Southern, a new report has revealed.

East Palestine, Ohio was smothered in toxic fumes last month when the authorities intentionally burned off huge quantities of vinyl chloride following a train derailment in the village.

Residents fled the area in the immediate aftermath. However, after an evacuation order was lifted, many have returned, with some reportedly citing ‘air testing’ results which apparently determined that they could return home without danger.

But on Saturday, an explosive new report seemed to confirm what many have come to suspect: “the air testing results did not prove their homes were truly safe.”

The US mainstream media is continuing to peddle the story of a "pro-Ukrainian group" destroying the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022. However, the narrative does not hold water and looks more like an attempt to divert the public attention from the real culprits, US counter-terror expert Scott Bennett told Sputnik.

"The Nord stream pipeline destruction was a terrorist act that was orchestrated and planned with the United States, Britain and other countries playing crucial roles. They may have dressed up sailors and divers in Ukrainian uniforms to pretend or rather delude themselves into believing their own lies that somehow this could be used to escape accountability," said Scott Bennett, former US Army psychological warfare officer and US State Department counterterrorism analyst.

"Additionally the technical requirements of such a mission essentially disqualify Ukraine and point to a few countries as responsible; and indeed the NATO vessels that were conducting drills in the area indicate are most likely the culprits," the counter-terror expert continued.

The official start of spring is just ten days off….right?
Well, apparently that’s true only in other parts of the country but not here in the Northland.

Old Man Winter is telling Mother Nature  he wants more time and to prove it we’re receiving more snow.

The snow in Duluth started lightly enough just after the lunch hour but it fell on melted snow which turned into slush which is now ice underneath the new snow.

It’s making driving more difficult and will likely be the cause of some very sore backs tomorrow.

Russians are now ensuring they don’t waste anything on the battlefield, including weapons from the United States that they acquire.

When Russians receive military equipment left on the battlefield, they send it to Iran.

CNN says, “Over the last year, U.S., NATO and other Western officials have seen several instances of Russian forces seizing smaller, shoulder-fired weapons equipment including Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft systems that Ukrainian forces have at times been forced to leave behind on the battlefield, the sources told CNN.”

It’s believed that they are taking apart the equipment and studying it. This would allow them to make their own version of our weapons and use them against us. Or, they could make and sell them to Russia, giving them a hand against Ukraine.

Webmaster addition: Analyzing the enemy's captured weapons is as old as war itself! 

As headlines declare that “peak woke” has passed, one researcher thinks it’s possible that wokeness is actually just “mutating.”

“The jury is still out in terms of whether the Great Awokening is winding down,” wrote Associate Professor David Rozado in a Feb. 24 Twitter post.

Rozado’s research in computational social science at the New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology is shaping an ongoing debate over whether wokeness is in decline.

“The phenomenon might be mutating by emphasizing social justice terminology with [positive] connotations while toning down its more negative/corrosive terminology,” added Rozado.

Rozado’s Feb. 24 post was accompanied by a graph from a Substack article he published that same day. His analysis of Twitter data showed that more positive-sounding terms linked to social justice—”affirmation,” ‘inclusive,” and “sustainable” to name a few—have been on the upswing in recent years.

During the recent “Twitter Files” House hearings, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz used her six minutes not to explore the matter at hand, but rather to accuse journalist Matt Taibbi of hypocrisy, behaving unethically, and doing it all for personal enrichment. That’s right, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who had to resign in disgrace in 2016 from her position as head of the DNC after rigging the primary for Hillary Clinton, is accusing others of lacking ethics.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which informed their audience that the growing trend of those two using national or third-party currencies like the UAE’s is something significant for everyone to pay attention to. To that outlet’s credit, it also reminded readers that IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath foresaw in the month after Russia’s special operation began that the West’s sanctions “could erode the dollar’s dominance”.

Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened, with India of all countries accelerating de-dollarization through its non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia. About them, Russia has since become India’s largest supplier over the past year and now provides a whopping 35% of that country’s needs, which is also the world’s third-largest oil importer and fifth-largest economy. Their new energy ties, and particularly the growing de-dollarization dimension of their deals, are thus globally important.

None of what was just described is driven by any anti-American animus on India’s part since everything is purely motivated by the pursuit of that country’s objective national interests. Delhi had no choice but to gradually diversify away from dollar-denominated energy deals with Moscow due to Washington’s illegal sanctions. Its multipolar leadership wasn’t going to let the world’s most populous country slip into an economic crisis just to please the US by eschewing the import of discounted oil from Russia.

Hugh Auchincloss served as Anthony Fauci's right hand man for almost two decades, and he is currently the top bureaucrat at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). With the Biden Administration showing seemingly no interest in appointing a new NIAID chief, Auchincloss has inherited his post in semi-permanent fashion. His role now includes being the chief decision maker for directing billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of research institutes and pharmaceutical companies. And with all of the attention turned to the semi-retired Dr Fauci, Auchincloss has been able to operate as the NIAID’s new head honcho without even a hint of a vetting process.

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, tweeted for the release of Jacob Chansley, also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” after new footage emerged from the January 6 Capitol riot.

According to the Post Millennial, Chansley was arrested and served a four-year prison sentence.

Recently, security footage from the January 6th event was provided to Fox News host Tucker Carlson from the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy. The video was telling, showing Chansley being escorted by police rather than being a rioter around the Capitol.

Musk’s tweet was simple, “Free Jacob Chansley.”

It all started back in the 1950s with “these drugs will make you feel better, just try them.” And people did.

Over the years it morphed into “WE RECOMMEND these drugs if you don’t want to be sick, depressed or dead.” Almost everyone listened and accepted that drugs were the answer and there was no way to live without them.

Over the past three years it’s been “YOU MUST TAKE these drugs or else you endanger your own life and the lives of those around you.” By this point, people were so conditioned to take drugs that they thought nothing of submitting to an experimental mRNA gene therapy that the experts promised would keep them “safe”.

Within the next couple of years, it will be “YOU ARE REQUIRED to take these drugs by law and if you don’t, you will go to prison for endangering the planet.” Having been consistently brainwashed for all these years, most people will unquestioningly comply. Those who don’t, will be informed on by neighbors, coworkers, even their own family members, for the safety of the planet.

Too radical, you say. Read on and see.

Webmaster addition:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he would appoint an “Independent Special Rapporteur” who will be tasked with a “wide mandate and will make expert recommendations on combating interference and strengthening our democracy.”

Adding to what he meant by that, Trudeau said that $5.5 million would be invested to “build capacity of civil society organizations to combat disinformation,” noting that “disinformation often generated abroad can be a real threat to our elections, and it's a threat that the federal government cannot combat alone.”

The announcement came amid reports that the government ignored warnings from the CSIS about candidates' ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Trudeau said that the government has been protecting the values of “freedom, openness, and dialogue,” noting that not all governments respect those values. He noted that foreign interference had an impact in the 2016 election in the US and in France in 2017.

A U.S. judge on Thursday ordered JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) to hand over more documents concerning Chief Executive Jamie Dimon to the U.S. Virgin Islands for the territory's lawsuit accusing the bank of aiding in Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said the bank must turn over requested documents from 2015 to 2019, a period after JPMorgan had dropped Epstein as a client. Rakoff did not explain his reasoning in his one-sentence order.

The U.S. Virgin Islands is seeking damages from JPMorgan for allegedly aiding in Epstein's sex trafficking by keeping him as a client, and missing red flags about his misconduct on Little St. James, a private island he owned.

Epstein had been a JPMorgan client from 2000 to 2013. He killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The U.S. Virgin Islands has called Dimon "a likely source of relevant and unique information" about why JPMorgan kept Epstein on, and discussions on Epstein's referrals of prominent and wealthy potential clients.

Webmaster addition: Aiding in child sexual abuse, worried more about global warming and LGBTQ+ than about customers is why banks are in trouble now!

The Nord Stream pipelines connect Russia to Germany, and while the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline was never activated - prior to Russia's special operation in Ukraine - the Nord Stream 1 pipeline provided billions of cubic meters of natural gas to Europe. Both pipelines were destroyed on September 26, 2022.

The CIA reportedly warned its German counterpart, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, better known as BND, about a potential attack on the Nord Stream pipelines months before an attack was carried out in late 2022.

Citing anonymous intelligence officials, the Wall Street Journal, reported that the warnings were sent by the CIA in June and July of 2022, months before the pipeline exploded in an apparent sabotage in September.

Webmaster addition: Okay, so the CIA knew the pipeline was going to be destroyed, and warned Germany, possibly so they could prepare for the loss of Russian gas, but nobody thought to send a naval presence to patrol the pipeline route, or declare an exclusion zone around the pipeline? That fits the pattern of a US act, rather than some rogue Ukrainians in a Chinese weather balloon snorkeling down 260 feet with a box of fireworks! The US destroyed that pipeline, as Biden stated he intended to do on many an occasion (indeed that may be one of the very few promises Biden made that he actually kept!)

Under the guise of stopping mass shootings, a surveillance system backed by top Mossad, CIA and FBI officials is being installed in schools, houses of worship, and other civilian locations throughout the country, much of it thanks to the recent donation of an “anonymous philanthropist.”

Launched in 2016 in response to a Tel Aviv shooting and the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, Gabriel offers a suite of surveillance products for “security and safety” incidents at “so-called soft targets and communal spaces, including schools, community centers, synagogues and churches.” The company makes the lofty promise that its products “stop mass shootings.” According to a 2018 report on Gabriel published in the Jerusalem Post, there were an estimated 475,000 such “soft targets” across the U.S., meaning that “the potential market for Gabriel is huge.”

Gabriel, since its founding, has been backed by “an impressive group of leaders,” mainly “former leaders of Mossad, Shin Bet [Israel’s domestic intelligence agency], FBI and CIA.” In recent years, even more former leaders of Israeli and American intelligence agencies have found their way onto Gabriel’s advisory board and have promoted the company’s products.

While the adoption of its surveillance technology was slower than expected in the United States, that dramatically changed last year, when an “anonymous philanthropist” gave the company $1 million to begin installing its products throughout schools, houses of worship and community centers throughout the country. That same “philanthropist” has promised to recruit others to match his donation, with the ultimate goal of installing Gabriel’s system in “every single synagogue, school and campus community in the country.”

Federal regulators will safeguard all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank, including money that isn’t normally covered by federal deposit insurance, the Treasury Department announced Sunday evening, a rare and sweeping move designed to prevent the tech-focused bank’s rapid collapse from infecting the rest of the U.S. financial system.

Webmaster addition: And just where do they plan to get that kind of money? Maybe we can ask Ukraine's Zelensky for a refund?

As companies that kept their money with Silicon Valley Bank race to find payroll solutions for the upcoming week, Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras was spending the weekend working the phone to get into the lending business — at least temporarily — to try to help.

The San Francisco-based fintech unicorn announced on Saturday that it had already received more than $1 billion in requests for an emergency credit line it announced on Friday.

In an interview, Dubugras told Forbes that Brex was still in the process of securing lenders and setting terms with them on rates, but planned to do so by the close of the weekend. “We’re 24/7 here, agreeing on terms and raising the money from lenders so we can start funding on Monday,” he said.

Yesterday, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Their testimony, and the risible reactions of Democrats on the subcommittee, are well worth watching; I watched the entire hearing, which lasted 140 minutes. Kim Iverson has an excellent summary here which lasts about 23 minutes. As Iverson notes, the Democrats on the subcommittee demonized the journalists while supporting censorship of ordinary Americans for political advantage, a clear violation of freedom of speech and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Clearly, the Twitter Files have revealed government-directed censorship of lawful speech. The reactions and strategy of the Democrats on the subcommittee were as follows:

1. To smear the two journalists who volunteered to appear before Congress as “so-called” journalists; as being biased witnesses in favor of the right (even though Shellenberger testified he’d voted for Biden, and Taibbi described himself as a traditional ACLU liberal); as having the basest of motives, such as taking payments and otherwise profiting from their journalism; and of being willing or unwilling dupes of Elon Musk.

2. To repeat, again and again, that Russia massively interfered in the 2016 and 2020 elections, therefore government-directed efforts to suppress “foreign interference” in US elections was both legitimate and praiseworthy.

Webmaster addition: It's the Bill of Rights, not the Bill of Suggestions! 

Israel launched more airstrikes in Syria on Sunday morning, wounding at least three Syrian soldiers. According to the Syrian news agency SANA, missiles were launched at targets in the western provinces of Tartus and Hama, two regions that were hit by the devastating February 6 earthquake.

“At around 7:15am (04:15 GMT), the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack, firing missiles from the direction of north Lebanon with targets in the Tartus and Hama countryside,” SANA reported, according to Al Jazeera.

“The attack wounded three soldiers and caused some material losses,” SANA said. The report did not specify what facilities were targeted and said some missiles were intercepted by air defense systems.

Republican leadership in Congress has blasted President Biden’s massive $886 billion military budget request for 2024 as “inadequate” even as House GOP members claim they want to cap spending, Defense News reported Friday.

House Republicans favor a plan to cap discretionary spending for the fiscal year 2024 at 2022 levels. But military spending accounts for about half of the discretionary spending each year, and few Republicans favor rolling back the Pentagon’s budget.

“A budget that proposes to increase non-defense spending at more than twice the rate of defense is absurd,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement in response to Biden’s request. “The President’s incredibly misplaced priorities send all the wrong messages to our adversaries.”

Webmaster addition:

As 2023 unfolds, we fear that American policy will continue to be characterized by both mission creep and the absence of any sort of diplomatic engagement with Russia.

Throughout the course of the war, the Biden administration has slowly, steadily, even stealthily increased America’s involvement. Calls from Kiev for more and more weapons have, at every turn, been met with President Biden’s acquiescence. Meantime, Congress has continued in its decades-long abdication of its constitutional responsibilities, opting instead to act as a rubber stamp on ever-increasing amounts of financial and military assistance to Ukraine. All the while, Kiev’s appetite has grown larger with the eating.

First went the Javelin anti-tank missiles, sent to Ukraine by President Donald Trump. Then came the Russian invasion and demands for M777 Howitzers; and Bradley fighting vehicles; and Patriot missiles; and HIMARS; and NSAMS; and M1 Abrams tanks; and long-range GLSDBs.

Kiev is now demanding the delivery of F-16s fighter jets.

Will we soon see the demand for American ground troops? If so, will we witness any political will in Washington to refuse such a request?

Russia plans to equip several Navy vessels using Kalibr missiles, a weapon with which one naval policy expert predicts the country will more widely arm its fleet.

Russia recently attacked Ukraine using Kalibr cruise missiles, among other projectiles.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced Tuesday the future Lada-class submarine Kronstadt, which is under construction, will be able to fire Kalibr cruise missiles. That same day, state-run news agency Tass reported the corvette Steregushchiy will receive a new Kalibr-NK missile system during modernization work at the Kronstadt Marine Plant.

And Mikhail Budnichenko, CEO of the shipyard Sevmash, said earlier this month the nuclear missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov will be armed with Kalibr-NK missiles, following repairs and modernization work.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi apologized Sunday evening after he had been quoted as saying that “a safe dictatorship is preferable to unprotected anarchy.”

"I said a sentence that I should not have said and that does not reflect my worldview at all,” he said speaking at a ceremony at Tel Aviv University honoring reservists who participated in Operation Breakwater — Israel’s months-long counterterrorism operation in the West Bank.

This is what Avigdor (Avi) Maoz has been waiting for since he established the Noam party, at the behest of his rabbi, Zvi Yisrael Thau, in July 2019. Noam withdrew from the race for the 22nd Knesset, which was elected that same September, nor did it run in the election for the 23rd Knesset, in March 2020. That changed a year later, and when the “government of change,” led by Naftali Bennett, took office during the term of the 24th Knesset, Noam was part of the opposition.

Now, following the November 1 election, and the convening of a new, fully right-wing government – the real test has arrived. As Maoz has stated, “The relationship between the beit midrash [institution of Torah study] and politics will be measured when we are part of the coalition.” Maoz (who constitutes a one-man Knesset faction, although Noam ran on a joint list with the Religious Zionism party) has been appointed a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office by Benjamin Netanyahu, and he will establish the “authority for identity security.”

The tactical controller looked up the valley, watching the trees sway in the winter breeze. A small dark speck, silhouetted against the sky, rapidly grew to full size.

A Eurofighter Typhoon flashed overhead with a roar, scattering a crowd of curious civilians who had gathered around a crashed Apache attack helicopter.

"Show of force complete," radioed the controller. Two feet to his right, the jet pilot was flipping a switch to turn off the Typhoon’s lights as he flew up Lake Windermere, briefly scratching his nose under the VR headset.

The conflict scenario that played out at BAE Systems' Warton base this week involved no boots on the ground, no helicopters, no jets and no civilians. Instead it took place inside a metaverse with all but a handful of roles being played by computers.