Kaja Kallas stood at the 62nd Munich Security Conference, at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof where the Atlantic Empire had assembled not to project power but to perform its own autopsy while the patient was still breathing - and delivered what she imagined was a prosecutor's closing argument against Russian weakness.
Let's pause here because this matters: Kallas. Kaja Kallas.
By Betwa SHARMA
The first free election in Bangladesh in years saw the Islamists, courted by the U.S., losing to the secular Bangladesh National Party, reports Betwa Sharma.
Bangladesh has elected a new government in a peaceful election roughly a year and a half after mass demonstrations forced the elected, but autocratic ruler Sheikh Hasina to flee to India after her government tried to crush the uprising with a violent police crackdown.
Stephen Karganovic
There scarcely is any need to point out the degree to which judicial practice in what is commonly known as the dark ages coincides with the contemporary modus operandi of the Hague Tribunal.
On 4 February, the Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY], transformed into the ominously sounding "Residual Mechanism," in disregard of its established practice, declined to grant early release to Serbian prisoner Milan Martić.
Lucas Leiroz
What role does Kallas really have within the European bureaucracy?
In recent days, videos of Europe's chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, have gone viral on social media, showing her making statements marked by disconnected reasoning, weak associations, and conclusions that do not logically follow from the premises presented. At the same time, she delivered yet another of her "unusual" speeches, declaring that Europe would demand a reduction in the size of the Russian Army - an assertion made without any reference to legal, logistical, or strategic foundations to support such a measure, making the inconsistency of her position evident.
Maria and Jo Ann Cavallo review Amir Naderi's film The Runner, which explores themes of self-resilience, innovation, and voluntary exchange through the story of eleven-year-old Iranian orphan Amiro.
By Maria Giménez Cavallo and Jo Ann Cavallo
Libertarianism.org
February 18, 2026
The Criterion Channel's recent streaming of Amir Naderi's The Runner (1984) http://www.newsnet.fr/1 offers North American viewers the opportunity to experience a classic of Iranian cinema.
By Ryan McMaken
Mises.org
February 18, 2026
Inflation, bailouts, and ultra-low interest rates have widened the wealth gap in the United States. This is no natural market phenomenon, but is driven largely by monetary inflation which always benefits some groups at the expense of others. This has become more apparent during our current age of cronyist interventionism which accelerated following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.
By Larry C. Johnson
Sonar21
February 18, 2026
US policymakers, particularly under the current Trump administration (as of February 2026), consistently describe Iran as the world's leading or foremost state sponsor of terrorism. This characterization has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy toward Iran for decades, with Iran designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism by the U.S.
By Tom Mullen
Talks Freedom
February 18, 2026
Libertarians are often characterized as a fringe movement, advocating limiting government far beyond what most Americans would even consider, and prone to promoting conspiracy theories.
All of that is true.
That doesn't mean we aren't right, even about the conspiracy theories. We almost always are. We were right about the war on terror. We were right about Obamacare.
By Sheryl Collmer
Crisis Magazine
February 18, 2026
Something big is happening, an earthquake. More than an earthquake, it's an asteroid slamming to earth. And we might be the dinosaurs, depending on what we do about it.
The Epstein Files: a short name referring to a huge phenomenon, and it's so much bigger than one player. The disclosures mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act expose a fraction of the global network of evil: satanism, child abduction and sacrifice, and even more monstrous acts committed by very powerful people at the heads of nations and industries.
Finian Cunningham
The Brits are past masters in the dark arts of propaganda. The poison frog is their style. But this time, it's croaking with contrivance.
If Russia wanted to kill Western intelligence asset Alexei Navalny while in prison, it could have used all sorts of devious methods to simply bump him off.
Russian state agents could have laced his prison rations or water with the notorious Soviet-era chemical weapon Novichok, or faked a suicide by self-strangulation.
Martin Jay
Trump may pretend that Israel is a client state of Washington which has to toe the line, but in reality, it is clear that Israel is calling the shots.
Trump has the option of going to war with Iran and receiving much-needed campaign funds from Israel for the midterms - or opting to defy Bibi and facing certain defeat by losing both houses and facing certain impeachment.
Lorenzo Maria Pacini
Black paid a very high price in terms of his image, but not in terms of his wealth, as his personal fortune is still estimated to be in the billions of dollars.
The billionaire and the shadow
Millions paid to a convicted pedophile, murky relationships, devastating accusations, and high-profile resignations. The public parable of Leon Black, co-founder of Apollo Global Management, is the story of how the American financial elite coexisted with Jeffrey Epstein for years-and how much it cost to turn a blind eye.
Pepe Escobar
The path towards 5th Generation War will accelerate. We are entering the next stage of an "omnipresent battlefield."
No one ever lost money betting on major farce taking over every Munich (In)Security Conference. But the 62nd edition this past weekend did send the Stupidity-O-Meter off the charts.
First of all, the context:
The "rules-based international order" was always a sham and it has now collapsed, as announced in Davos.
By Ron Unz
The Unz Review
February 17, 2026
Over the last few years I've begun spending a considerable amount of my time on some YouTube channels, notably those of Judge Andrew Napolitano, Nima Alkhorshid, and Prof. Glenn Diesen, as well as that of the Grayzone.
The videos they offer have been most useful for the many excellent guests regularly featured. These include leading academics such as Jeffrey Sachs and John Mearsheimer, former senior government officials such as Chas Freeman and Larry Wilkerson, former intelligence officers such as Ray McGovern and Jacques Baud, and a host of others.
By Larry C. Johnson
Sonar21
February 17, 2026
This will be a rather lengthy article, but you need to know what Russia and China are doing in a closely coordinated series of actions that show a serious commitment to counter US actions to punish and isolate Iran and Cuba. Let's start with Iran... Since the June 2025 12-day Iran-Israel war (which ended with a US-brokered ceasefire on 24 June 2025), Russia and China have provided Iran with a combination of diplomatic, economic, military-technical, and strategic support.
By Milan Adams
Preppgroup
February 17, 2026
If things go sideways in a really bad way and I'm talking about the kind of bad that a region or country doesn't quickly or ever bounce back from, more than likely you and your family will die if you're not prepared. Are you prepared enough to ensure your family can weather a major catastrophe?
I tend to try and be as optimistic as I can when I consider possibilities involving an SHTF scenario.
By Theodore DALRYMPLE
Being in England at the moment, I suffer not so much from a state of cognitive dissonance as from a state of emotional dissidence.
On the one hand, I have nothing but contempt for the prime minister, Keir Starmer. He is dull and humorless and has the soul (or perhaps I should say he appears in public to have the soul, since I do not know him personally) of an apparatchik advanced to the rank of the nomenklatura.
An attendee told The Grayzone that oil industry heavyweights were less excited about Trump's Venezuela policy, privately complaining about the President's aggressive push to restart their operations.
When the American Petroleum Institute (API) gathered oil industry leaders and lobbyists for a youtube on January 16, 2026, the geopolitical landscape seemed to be shifting dramatically in their favor.
Ian Proud
The original Olympic games were opportunities for warring city states to come together under the conditions of a truce to compete in sports.
The death or injury of hundreds of thousands of people since the war in Ukraine started in 2022 is a fact that everyone should mourn.
My heart goes out to the families whose lives have been devastated by the irrecoverable loss of loved ones on all sides, not least because the war should have ended within weeks of it starting,
Alastair Crooke
The Witkoff negotiation enterprise is distancing Russia from its security imperatives.
It is not a glitch (that nothing gets resolved). It's a feature. For it opens rather, a path for 'Business' to be done - for 'stakeholder' deals to be cut, and for billions to be shared out in payoffs. This is Trump's geo-political transactional model: Business displaces traditional negotiation (at least while the money flows); Money is the politics.