Month: November 2025

Ron Paul’s ‘Real’ Ukraine Peace Plan

Ron Paul’s ‘Real’ Ukraine Peace Plan

Authored by Ron Paul,

Last week’s surprise release of a draft Ukraine war peace plan has raised hopes that the nearly three-year bloody conflict may finally come to an end. Ukraine has suffered horrible losses that may change the demographics of that country for decades to come.

If this peace plan can be negotiated in a way that satisfies all sides and the guns finally go silent, I will be the first to cheer.

However, the continued failure to understand the nature and origin of the current conflict leaves me skeptical that a real peace can be reached this way.

From the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s to the Maidan revolution in 2014, the US and its NATO partners have been interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs in attempt to manipulate the country into a hostile position toward its much larger and more powerful neighbor, Russia.

We must remember how directly coordinated the 2014 coup was by the United States.

US Senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, were on the main square of a foreign capital demanding that the people overthrow their duly elected government. Victoria Nuland was caught on a telephone call planning who would run the post-coup government.

Outside intervention led us to the terrible situation of today. This peace deal is another chapter in that same intervention, with the US and its partners desperately trying to manage and solve a problem that they created in the first place. Can you solve a problem created by outside intervention with more intervention?

For the entirety of this conflict politicians and the media have been unwavering in blaming Russia entirely for what has occurred. I agree that they’re no angels. But the real villains here are the US neocons and their European counterparts who knew it was suicidal for Ukraine to take on Russia but pushed Ukraine to keep fighting anyway. Early in the conflict a deal was on the table and nearly signed that would end the war, but the neocon former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded that Ukraine keep fighting.

Ukraine is the victim here, I agree. But it is as much a victim of the US and European neocons as of the Russians.

They believed they could put NATO on Russia’s doorstep and face no consequences. If the tables were turned and a hostile China set up a new Latin American military alliance with the US as its designated enemy, would we sit by idly as military bases were constructed on our southern border? I don’t think so.

President Trump promised he would end the war 24 hours after he was elected. It was an unrealistic boast, but he actually could have ended it rather quickly. The antidote to intervention Is non-intervention. Biden drug us into the war, that is true. But Trump could have pulled us out by quite simply ending all US involvement. No weapons, no intelligence, no coordination. No need for sanctions or the threat of sanctions, no need for elaborate peace plans.

A real peace deal would realize that it was always idiotic to believe that Ukraine could stand up to Russia’s war machine – even with NATO’s backing.

It is unimaginably cruel to demand that Ukraine keep fighting our proxy war down to the last Ukrainian.

No 28-point plans can fix this. The real fix is much simpler: walk away.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/30/2025 – 08:10

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NATO’s Potential “Anschluss” With Austria Would Be For Purely Narrative Reasons

NATO’s Potential “Anschluss” With Austria Would Be For Purely Narrative Reasons

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,

This would be nothing but “another (faux) victory over Putin” that could be spun as having made the populace’s reduced living standards worthwhile after they dropped due to the anti-Russian sanctions.

Former Russian President and incumbent Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev published a piece at RT in late August about “NATO’s Anschluss” in which he warned about the consequences of Austria joining the bloc like some there want to do. This issue affects his country’s prestige since the USSR was one of the guarantors of Austrian neutrality. Any unilateral moves towards NATO membership in violation of Moscow’s veto would therefore provoke an international legal crisis.

This would accelerate the breakdown of international law that’s been in progress for a while and bring the West closer towards fully revising the post-WWII order in Europe. Germany’s remilitarization plans from 2022 onward arguably made this a fait accompli but Austria’s moves towards NATO membership might finally provoke a long-awaited political crisis over this issue. Medvedev also proposed that international institutions in Vienna be relocated abroad to a truly neutral country in that scenario.

As for the military-security consequences, he warned that “Austria’s Bundesheer units may find themselves included in the Russian Armed Forces’ long-range mission plans. A package of countermeasures was adopted against Sweden and Finland after their NATO accession, and Austria should not expect any exceptions here.” Any NATO-Russian war would likely result in Austria becoming unlivable whether it’s neutral or not, as well as a lot of the Northern Hemisphere, so that’s a moot point.

Nevertheless, it’s important for Austrians to realize that they’d be shattering their country’s neutral reputation and putting a target on their backs in the event of war, but none of that matters for NATO. Its potential “Anschluss” with Austria would be for purely narrative reasons in order to spin it as “another (faux) victory over Putin” to go along with Finland and Sweden’s membership in NATO. The scenario of Serbia sanctioning Russia and Bosnia fast-tracking its NATO membership would complement this notion.

The goal of NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine has always been to inflict a strategic defeat upon Russia, first by using Ukraine as a platform from which Russia could be blackmailed into submission via NATO infrastructure there and then via more direct means after the special operation sought to preempt that. After the special operation, this goal was openly declared and advanced through the dual means of sanctions and then 2023’s counteroffensive, but both failed and a strategic defeat was averted.

Accordingly, any political resolution of the Ukrainian Conflict will therefore be seen as a defeat for the West, ergo the need to engineer faux victories that could be spun as having made the populace’s reduced living standards worthwhile after they dropped due to the anti-Russian sanctions. Formalizing Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO memberships after years of them being de facto members and the bloc’s “Anschluss” with Austria are easy means to this end while the mentioned Balkan ones are a bit tougher.

Circling back to Medvedev’s article, he’s right about the legal-political and military-security consequences of Austria joining NATO, but his piece could have benefited by addressing the question of why this is being discussed right now despite it having no significant impact on the balance of power. The answer is that it’s all for perception management purposes vis-à-vis the Western public after the Ukrainian Conflict failed to result in Russia’s strategic defeat despite the costs that they’ve paid for this.

Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/30/2025 – 07:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/UIvh7pG Tyler Durden

4 Dead, 10 Wounded After Mass Shooting At Stockton, California Banquet Hall

4 Dead, 10 Wounded After Mass Shooting At Stockton, California Banquet Hall

Four people were killed and ten others wounded late Saturday in Stockton, California, after a gunman opened fire inside a banquet hall during a family birthday party. This is a shooting that authorities say appears to have been a “targeted” one.

Authorities say they received calls of a shooting just before 1800 local time near the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue.

San Francisco Chronicle reports: 

The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office said it received reports of a shooting in the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue around 6 p.m., the office said.

Stockton Vice Mayor Jason Lee said, on a social media post, a children’s birthday party was the site of a mass shooting, adding that an “ice cream shop should never be a place where families fear for their lives.”

However, the Associated Press reported that the shooting occurred at a banquet hall, and that the victims were both children and adults.

The sheriff’s office said there are indications that the shooting could have been a targeted attack.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Office wrote on X that they’ve “briefed on the horrific shooting in Stockton.” 

Fox News reported early Sunday that the shooter remains at large, prompting a massive manhunt as authorities work to track down the suspect.

*Developing… 

Tyler Durden
Sun, 11/30/2025 – 06:35

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/ijHWQhg Tyler Durden

They Built a Hemp Business in Good Faith but Washington Is About To Crush It


Cornbread CBD gummies | Pacific Legal Foundation

As the Senate prepared to vote on the funding bill to reopen the federal government earlier this month, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) warned that passing the legislation would “regulate the hemp industry to death.” Buried deep inside the continuing resolution was a provision that would completely reverse nearly seven years of industry progress—and potentially wipe out small hemp-based businesses.

In 2019, after the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, cousins Jim Higdon and Eric Zipperle founded Cornbread Hemp. The Kentucky-based company manufactures and sells hemp-related products directly to consumers nationwide, and it stands out in a highly competitive market thanks to the quality of its organic hemp.

Cornbread pioneered a flower-only production model that uses only cannabis flowers in extraction, yielding higher-quality products. It also enforces a strict set of growing standards.

“We’re farming land that has not had pesticides on it for three years—verified. We’re using non-GMO seeds, no pesticides, and no synthetic fertilizers,” said Higdon. “The only fertilizer input we use is chicken litter…from a certified organic chicken farm.”

That quality has earned Cornbread a loyal and growing customer base, 60 percent of whom are over 66 years old and rely on these products to relieve chronic pain.

It is estimated that the number of licensed growers rose from about 3,500 in 2018 to over 21,000 in 2020. The rush subsided, and by 2021, the market steadied and licenses fell to about 9,700. Even with that correction, the economic impact of industrial hemp is undeniable. Industry estimates suggest the hemp market supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, with one model putting the number at roughly 325,000 workers in farming, biomass processing, product manufacturing, distribution, and retail nationwide. According to Department of Agriculture data, the value of U.S. industrial hemp production was about $824 million in 2021 and approximately $445 million in 2024.

And yet, even before the most recent move by Congress, many small companies, including Cornbread, have been hit by a wave of new state regulations threatening their survival. In 2025, Tennessee passed a law placing the hemp industry under the jurisdiction of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The state’s longstanding three-tier system for policing liquor sales now extends to hemp products as well.

Beginning in January 2026, out-of-state hemp companies, such as Cornbread, wanting to do business in Tennessee must first sell their product to a Tennessee-licensed wholesaler, which must then sell it to a Tennessee retail shop. Only then can customers visit the physical store and purchase the product.

While Cornbread can set up its own wholesaler and retail facilities in Tennessee, doing so would be impractical and prohibitively expensive.

Beyond its practical business burdens, Tennessee’s law infringes on Cornbread and other companies’ fundamental right to earn a living. The law also violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by discriminating against out-of-state businesses and shielding in-state interests from legitimate competition. 

Cornbread Hemp has partnered with my organization, Pacific Legal Foundation, to challenge the Tennessee law. Fighting a legal battle with a state is hard enough, but the federal funding bill has opened another threat to the hemp industry from Washington.

Under the new provision, any consumable hemp product must contain no more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC—not per serving or gram, but per entire container.

Paul is right: This new rule is a death sentence to the hemp industry. If allowed to stand, it could eliminate 95 percent of all hemp-derived cannabinoid products made in the United States.

The government should not destroy the livelihoods of countless Americans, and it most certainly should not pull the rug out from under a burgeoning industry less than a decade after giving hemp its blessing.

States are squeezing hemp from one side, and now Washington is crushing it from the other—and small businesses, like Cornbread, are stuck in the middle.

The post They Built a Hemp Business in Good Faith but Washington Is About To Crush It appeared first on Reason.com.

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Knitters Need Free Trade: Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Crafting Supplies Harder To Get


An illustration of a cargo ship attached to a ball of yarn | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source images: iStock

Dana Chadwell founded Chattanooga Yarn Company three years ago. She envisioned “a place to find fine yarns for hand knitting and crochet, and a place to build community around yarn crafting.” It’s been successful—but her shop is now enveloped in a fog of uncertainty because of Trump’s tariffs.

From knitting needles to garment fabric to bottles of paint, American crafters work with many materials produced abroad. That has left them particularly vulnerable
to Trump’s trade war. Imports from Europe currently face tariffs of 15 percent, and while sky-high tariffs on China are currently subject to a 90-day pause, they still stand at 57.6 percent, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Worse still, Trump has done away with the de minimis exemption, which allowed goods valued at under $800 to enter the U.S. tariff-free.

Over 90 percent of Chadwell’s stock has been affected by tariffs. “Every supplier I have, minus one, from major to minor, has had a price increase,” she says. “Because the tariff situation has been so unpredictable…it has made long term planning impossible.”

Exclusively stocking U.S.-produced materials isn’t an option for most craft stores. “Tariffs impact American-made yarns as well,” pointed out Fibre Space, a yarn store in Alexandria, Virginia. That’s because “American-made goods still rely on materials made in other countries.” Yarn “is an agricultural product,” observes Chadwell, “so certain crops and certain livestock produce the best fiber in very specific climates that aren’t necessarily” found in the United States. Meanwhile, “needles, notions, doodads, [and] bags…can only be produced at much higher prices” here.

Now that the de minimis exemption has expired, even small orders of goods are subject to country-specific tariffs. Several European shippers, including DHL, Britain’s Royal Mail, and France’s La Poste, have announced they will temporarily pause shipments to the U.S., “citing ambiguous policies and the need to establish brand-new logistics systems,” reported NPR. Danish, Swedish, Italian, and Austrian postal companies have also halted U.S.-bound shipments.

Tariffs prevent all sorts of voluntary transactions that shape lives and culture in big—and often inconspicuous—ways. That means shops that won’t be started, gifts that won’t be made by hand, and hobbies that won’t be taken up. And more immediately, tariffs are punishing business owners who want to help Americans fill their lives with more creativity.

“We feel like we have no control over our fates,” says Chadwell. “There is a point at which tariffs will simply put us all out of business no matter how well we manage our shops.”

The post Knitters Need Free Trade: Trump's Tariffs Are Making Crafting Supplies Harder To Get appeared first on Reason.com.

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They Built a Hemp Business in Good Faith but Washington Is About To Crush It


Cornbread CBD gummies | Pacific Legal Foundation

As the Senate prepared to vote on the funding bill to reopen the federal government earlier this month, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) warned that passing the legislation would “regulate the hemp industry to death.” Buried deep inside the continuing resolution was a provision that would completely reverse nearly seven years of industry progress—and potentially wipe out small hemp-based businesses.

In 2019, after the 2018 Farm Bill removed hemp from the Controlled Substances Act, cousins Jim Higdon and Eric Zipperle founded Cornbread Hemp. The Kentucky-based company manufactures and sells hemp-related products directly to consumers nationwide, and it stands out in a highly competitive market thanks to the quality of its organic hemp.

Cornbread pioneered a flower-only production model that uses only cannabis flowers in extraction, yielding higher-quality products. It also enforces a strict set of growing standards.

“We’re farming land that has not had pesticides on it for three years—verified. We’re using non-GMO seeds, no pesticides, and no synthetic fertilizers,” said Higdon. “The only fertilizer input we use is chicken litter…from a certified organic chicken farm.”

That quality has earned Cornbread a loyal and growing customer base, 60 percent of whom are over 66 years old and rely on these products to relieve chronic pain.

It is estimated that the number of licensed growers rose from about 3,500 in 2018 to over 21,000 in 2020. The rush subsided, and by 2021, the market steadied and licenses fell to about 9,700. Even with that correction, the economic impact of industrial hemp is undeniable. Industry estimates suggest the hemp market supports hundreds of thousands of jobs, with one model putting the number at roughly 325,000 workers in farming, biomass processing, product manufacturing, distribution, and retail nationwide. According to Department of Agriculture data, the value of U.S. industrial hemp production was about $824 million in 2021 and approximately $445 million in 2024.

And yet, even before the most recent move by Congress, many small companies, including Cornbread, have been hit by a wave of new state regulations threatening their survival. In 2025, Tennessee passed a law placing the hemp industry under the jurisdiction of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The state’s longstanding three-tier system for policing liquor sales now extends to hemp products as well.

Beginning in January 2026, out-of-state hemp companies, such as Cornbread, wanting to do business in Tennessee must first sell their product to a Tennessee-licensed wholesaler, which must then sell it to a Tennessee retail shop. Only then can customers visit the physical store and purchase the product.

While Cornbread can set up its own wholesaler and retail facilities in Tennessee, doing so would be impractical and prohibitively expensive.

Beyond its practical business burdens, Tennessee’s law infringes on Cornbread and other companies’ fundamental right to earn a living. The law also violates the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by discriminating against out-of-state businesses and shielding in-state interests from legitimate competition. 

Cornbread Hemp has partnered with my organization, Pacific Legal Foundation, to challenge the Tennessee law. Fighting a legal battle with a state is hard enough, but the federal funding bill has opened another threat to the hemp industry from Washington.

Under the new provision, any consumable hemp product must contain no more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC—not per serving or gram, but per entire container.

Paul is right: This new rule is a death sentence to the hemp industry. If allowed to stand, it could eliminate 95 percent of all hemp-derived cannabinoid products made in the United States.

The government should not destroy the livelihoods of countless Americans, and it most certainly should not pull the rug out from under a burgeoning industry less than a decade after giving hemp its blessing.

States are squeezing hemp from one side, and now Washington is crushing it from the other—and small businesses, like Cornbread, are stuck in the middle.

The post They Built a Hemp Business in Good Faith but Washington Is About To Crush It appeared first on Reason.com.

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Knitters Need Free Trade: Trump’s Tariffs Are Making Crafting Supplies Harder To Get


An illustration of a cargo ship attached to a ball of yarn | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source images: iStock

Dana Chadwell founded Chattanooga Yarn Company three years ago. She envisioned “a place to find fine yarns for hand knitting and crochet, and a place to build community around yarn crafting.” It’s been successful—but her shop is now enveloped in a fog of uncertainty because of Trump’s tariffs.

From knitting needles to garment fabric to bottles of paint, American crafters work with many materials produced abroad. That has left them particularly vulnerable
to Trump’s trade war. Imports from Europe currently face tariffs of 15 percent, and while sky-high tariffs on China are currently subject to a 90-day pause, they still stand at 57.6 percent, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Worse still, Trump has done away with the de minimis exemption, which allowed goods valued at under $800 to enter the U.S. tariff-free.

Over 90 percent of Chadwell’s stock has been affected by tariffs. “Every supplier I have, minus one, from major to minor, has had a price increase,” she says. “Because the tariff situation has been so unpredictable…it has made long term planning impossible.”

Exclusively stocking U.S.-produced materials isn’t an option for most craft stores. “Tariffs impact American-made yarns as well,” pointed out Fibre Space, a yarn store in Alexandria, Virginia. That’s because “American-made goods still rely on materials made in other countries.” Yarn “is an agricultural product,” observes Chadwell, “so certain crops and certain livestock produce the best fiber in very specific climates that aren’t necessarily” found in the United States. Meanwhile, “needles, notions, doodads, [and] bags…can only be produced at much higher prices” here.

Now that the de minimis exemption has expired, even small orders of goods are subject to country-specific tariffs. Several European shippers, including DHL, Britain’s Royal Mail, and France’s La Poste, have announced they will temporarily pause shipments to the U.S., “citing ambiguous policies and the need to establish brand-new logistics systems,” reported NPR. Danish, Swedish, Italian, and Austrian postal companies have also halted U.S.-bound shipments.

Tariffs prevent all sorts of voluntary transactions that shape lives and culture in big—and often inconspicuous—ways. That means shops that won’t be started, gifts that won’t be made by hand, and hobbies that won’t be taken up. And more immediately, tariffs are punishing business owners who want to help Americans fill their lives with more creativity.

“We feel like we have no control over our fates,” says Chadwell. “There is a point at which tariffs will simply put us all out of business no matter how well we manage our shops.”

The post Knitters Need Free Trade: Trump's Tariffs Are Making Crafting Supplies Harder To Get appeared first on Reason.com.

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