John T. Reed’s news blog

For decades, I have been hearing that the existence of NATO really outrages the Russians. They are also really pissed that the nations on their border with western Europe are not vassal buffer states. They punished for a while with the Warsaw Pact. We never gave a rat’s rump about the Warsaw Pact. Russia is two miles away from us in the Bering Strait. Mexico borders on us and it is a bad place with cartels and a Marxist government and letting illegal immigrants cross our border. Russia borders Finland, an enemy. Now, also the now NATO Baltic states that used...

I saw a video clip of about 10 or12 armed Russian Soldiers walking in the middle of a street. That was a great opportunity to dispatch them back home in a bag. Where were the armed citizens?  They should have simultaneously delivered a projectile to each visitor coordinated by a leader on a cell phone counting the three. That would have simultaneously resulted in each of the visiting foreigners going to the ground voluntarily or involuntarily. Then, those who were able, would have run for their lives. If the citizens are so equipped, and make normal use of the equipment...

Tulsi just did a big overhype of the nuclear power plant now being attacked in Ukraine.  1. The Chernobyl plant was really old and used obsolete technology when it was built. Although it was in Ukraine, it was a Soviet reactor. It was lousy reactor. Their nuclear bombs or some of them may be as screwed up. 2. At the time it failed, they said 40,000 people downwind would die from fallout. How many did? 12 children from thyroid cancer. 3. More died at the Chernobyl plant, but they were physically in the plant trying to stop the reactor. 4....

American owners of Russian securities—stocks and bonds—individuals and pension funds and index and targeted funds—are belatedly selling them—or trying to. Who wants to buy them? Maybe no one. And they may become worthless by Russia simply confiscating the stock value and directing the Russian bond issuers to default on the bonds. That, in a sense, “solves” the problem of selling them. You may not have to sell them because they no longer exist. I have never owned “emerging market” stocks or bonds. Corrupt banana republics. johnreed@johntreed.com

We need to rethink our avoid nuclear war at all costs policy. Russia and China and North Korea constantly threaten us with nuclear war and we alway shy away. But the present Ukraine situation essentially says that the US and the rest of the civilized world will let Putin murder every single Ukrainian if that is what he wants to do—because he has nukes and frequently threatens to use them. This is not an acceptable position either morally or practically. Putin must be stopped. It need not be NATO. Indeed non-NATO countries have already gotten involved—Switzerland, Sweden, the EU, Finland....