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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in the middle of a "fundamental transformation" and planning a massive military buildup along Russian borders.
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO will undergo a major "reset" and plans to put enough troops in states that border Russia to repel an invasion. The alliance currently has 40,000 troops in eastern member states.
NATO considers its forces in Eastern Europe a deterrent against Russia but insufficient to actually stop incoming forces. The "tripwire" policy believes Moscow would be unwilling to kill American soldiers and provoke a larger war. Stoltenberg did not say how many troops would be needed in states like Latvia and Estonia to fight off a Russian invasion.
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War is a human horror, the best evidence possible for the existence of evil, the role of Original Sin, and the depravity of man. And so it has ever been.
The mad slaughter, ferocious bloodlust, and brutal violence of ancient combat is difficult to imagine. The killing was up close and personal. Today, in a supposedly more advanced and civilized age, the sophisticated tools that murder and maim are more distant.
Explosives kill on industrial scale, with nuclear weapons able to incinerate entire cities. Aircraft and missiles inflict death from afar, on unseen lands continents and oceans away. Two countries at least, and potentially nine, possess the ability to end most life on the planet. That number is likely to increase in the future.
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Late last year, a Gallup poll showed that Americans' trust in the mainstream media has fallen to its second lowest level on record. Only seven percent of Americans responded that they have a "great deal" of trust in the media.
That loss of trust has been well-earned by the mainstream media, and it explains the massive growth of independent media and alternative voices on social media. The response to the rise of independent media voices has been a rush to "cancel" any voice outside the accepted mainstream narrative.
Citizens of the Soviet Union would read manipulated media like Pravda not because the regime reported facts, but because truth was hidden between the lines of what was reported and what was not reported. That seems to be where we are in the US today.
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The Senate on Wednesday night passed a bill that would revive the lend-lease program for Ukraine, which was used to give weapons to the Soviet Union, China, the UK, and other US allies during World War II.
The Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 passed in the Senate by voice vote. The legislation would give President Biden the authority to send more weapons to Ukraine with less red tape.
The legislation would allow the US to give weapons to Ukraine free of charge while requiring payment at a later date. According to a summary of the bill, it would temporarily waive "certain requirements related to the President's authority to lend or lease defense articles if the defense articles are intended for Ukraine's government and necessary to protect civilians in Ukraine from Russian military invasion."
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On Sunday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US would ultimately like to see an "independent" Ukraine and would like to see Russia "weakened and isolated."
"Our policy is unequivocal that we will do whatever we can to help Ukraine succeed," Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press. He said to achieve that goal, the US will continue to keep arming Ukraine and taking action to hurt Russia's economy.
"We need to keep giving them support - military support and strong economic sanctions to improve their position, their posture at the negotiating table," Sullivan said. "But at the end of the day, what we want to see is a free and independent Ukraine, a weakened and isolated Russia, and a stronger, more unified, more determined West."
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While legislation aimed at Russia has been overwhelmingly passing through Congress, each bill has seen "no" votes from a small handful of Republicans in the House. The opposition to the measures has led to Democrats smearing the GOP members as "pro-Putin."
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is the only House member to vote against every piece of legislation targeting Russia, including a resolution expressing support for Ukraine that was voted on shortly after the invasion began. Massie, Rep. Gosar (R-AZ), and Rep. Rosendale (D-MT) were the only ones to vote against the resolution, which was passed on March 2.
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