Sympathy for the Devils...

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blindpig
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sun Mar 27, 2022 4:33 pm

Biden Slips: Calls Openly for Removal of Putin
by Ray McGovern Posted onMarch 26, 2022

Feeling his oats after effusive adulation from leaders of NATO – and Japan at the G-7 summit – Biden gave us the Mother of All Faux Pax this afternoon in Poland. (No, sadly, it was not some kind of Polish joke.)

Echoing imperious King Henry II of England, Biden uttered the equivalent of "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest" … or troublesome president? The priest, of course, was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. The president is Vladimir Putin, who had already warned a complete break in Russia-U.S. relations.

Referring in all but name to President Putin, Biden said, "This man cannot remain in power." Reminder that should not be necessary: Prudent presidents have been reluctant to say that of the leader of other countries – sometimes even when the two are at war. Nor do I need to point out the inevitable hurdle to the cooperation necessary to negotiate a halt to invasions and introduce a ceasefire. Is it all the same to Biden that the carnage continue, with rhetorical promises of support, weapons that are blown up as soon as they cross the border into Ukraine, and crocodile tears.


This will not end well. Among other things, it amounts to public confirmation, at the chief-of-state level, no less, that U.S. involvement in Ukraine (particularly since the U.S.-arranged coup d’etat on Feb. 22, 2014) has been "regime change" in Russia.

That coup has been accurately labeled "the most blatant coup in history". The main orchestrator, caught on tape arranging for a new Ukrainian prime minister, was Victoria Nuland – now number three at the State Department telling her nominal boss Tony Blinken what to say and do on Ukraine.) See Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine Salon.

Coup No Surprise: Neither Was Russia’s Reaction

After Nuland openly bragged in Dec. 2013 of the US having invested $5 Billion in Ukraine’s aspirations to join the West, and then orchestrated the coup two months later, one agency of the US intelligence community, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) got it right, presaging what slipped out of Biden’s lips earlier today. In an annual "National Security Strategy" report mandated by Congress, DIA Director LT Gen. Vincent Stewart on Dec. 2015 signed off on the following text:

"The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts."

For some reason, the mainstream media gave no play to that key finding. Let’s see how they play Biden’s confirmation of it.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/03/26 ... -of-putin/

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Biden’s reality check in Europe

Image
Russian General Staff dy head Gen. Sergey Rudskoy during briefing on special operation in Ukraine, Moscow, Mar. 25, 2022

The takeaway from the US President Joe Biden’s European tour on March 25-26 is measly. Dissenting voices are rising in Europe as western sanctions against Russia start backfiring with price hikes and shortages of fuel and electricity. And this is only the beginning, as Moscow is yet to announce any retaliatory measures as such.

The unkindest cut of it all is that the Russian Defence Ministry chose Biden’s trip as the perfect backdrop to frame the true proportions of success of its special operation in Ukraine. The US and NATO’s credibility is perilously close to being irreparably damaged, as the Russian juggernaut rolls across Ukraine with the twin objectives of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ in its sights.

The Russian General Staff disclosed on Friday that the hyped up Ukrainian Armed Forces, trained by the NATO and the US, have sustained crippling losses: Ukrainian air force and air defence is almost completely destroyed, while the country’s Navy no longer exists and about 11.5% of the entire military personnel have been put out of action. (Ukraine doesn’t have organised reserves.)

According to the Russian General Staff’s deputy head Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, Ukraine has lost much of its combat vehicles (tanks, armoured vehicles, etc.), one-third of its multiple launch rocket systems, and well over three-fourths of its missile air defence systems and Tochka-U tactical missile systems.

Sixteen main military airfields in Ukraine have been put out of action, 39 storage bases and arsenals destroyed (which contained up to 70% of all stocks of military equipment, materiel and fuel, and more than 1 million 54000 tons of ammunition.)

Interestingly, following the intense high-precision strikes on the bases and training camps, foreign mercenaries are leaving Ukraine. During the past week, 285 mercenaries escaped into Poland, Hungary and Romania. Russian forces are systematically destroying the Western shipment of weapons.

Most important, the mission to liberate Donbass is about to be accomplished. Simply put, the main objectives of the first phase of the operation have been achieved.

Apart from Kiev, Russian troops have blocked the northern and eastern cities of Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov and Nikolaev, while in the south, Kherson and most of Zaporozhye region are under full control — the intention being to not only to shackle Ukrainian forces but to prevent their grouping in Donbass region. (See my article Dissecting Ukraine imbroglio, Tribune, March 21, 2022)

“We did not plan to storm these cities from the start, in order to prevent destruction and minimise losses among personnel and civilians,” Rudskoy said. But, he added, such an option is not ruled out either in the period ahead.

It stands to reason that Washington and European capitals are well aware that the Russian operation is proceeding as scheduled and there is no stopping it. Thus, the NATO’s extraordinary summit on March 24 confirmed that the alliance is unwilling to get into a military confrontation with the Russian Army.

Instead, the summit decided to strengthen the defence of its own territories! Four additional multinational NATO combat groups of 40,000 troops will be deployed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia on a permanent basis. Poland’s proposal to deploy NATO military units in Ukraine was outright rejected.

However, Poland has certain other plans, namely, to deploy contingents to the western regions of Ukraine to support the ‘fraternal Ukrainian people” with the unspoken agenda of reclaiming control over the historically disputed territories in the those regions. What Faustian deal has been struck in Warsaw on March 25 between Biden and his Polish counterpart Duda remains unclear. Clearly, vultures are circling Ukraine’s skies. (See my blog Biden wings his way to the borderlands of Ukraine, March 24, 2022)

Indeed, if Poland makes a bid for Ukrainian territory (with Biden’s tacit support), would Belarus be far behind to take control of the regions of Polesie and Volyn in Ukraine? Possibly not. Suffice to say, in the period since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 when the US moved into the driving seat, Ukraine has lost its sovereignty and is now perilously close to vanishing altogether from Europe’s map!

Washington — Biden personally, having been the Obama administration’s point person in Kiev in 2014 — should carry this heavy cross in history books.

As for European leaders, they find themselves in a surreal world, out of touch with the stunning realities of a new world order. Eighty-year old Biden with limited grasp of the torrential flow of events, made an astounding proposal in his press conference in Brussels on Thursday that Ukraine should replace Russia in the G20!

But Biden has a soulmate in the European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen whose latest threat is that Russian oil and gas companies “will not be allowed to demand payment for fuel in rubles.” She is blissfully unaware that the EU has no more effective means to pressure Russian companies!

Russian President Vladimir Putin caught the western leaders huddled in Brussels by surprise with his announcement that Russia will promptly start charging “unfriendly” countries in rubles for gas supplies. There are over 45 unfriendly countries on the list — the US and EU members plus the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Montenegro and Switzerland. (See the RT’s explainer What buying gas in rubles means for Russia and the West.)

Effectively, Moscow is on the one hand strengthening the weakened ruble, while on the other hand, messaging that it is pioneering a new wave internationally to bypass the dollar as commodity currency.

Yet, Moscow is also continuing to routinely supply Russian gas for transit to Europe through Ukraine to meet the requests of European consumers (109.5 mln cubic meters as of March 26!) The point is, despite rhetoric and grandstanding, Europe recently increased its gas purchases from Russia significantly against the backdrop of astronomically high spot prices!

The European Council meet at Brussels on March 25 with Biden in attendance failed to adopt any concrete measures to address the energy price growth, and could not come up with a unified approach to Russia’s decision to receive payments for its gas only in rubles.

Apropos the European Commission’s proposal to establish a new system of common purchase of gas to prevent outbidding, the final statement of the European Council merely says that the leaders agreed to “work together on voluntary common purchase of gas, LNG and hydrogen,” meaning that common purchases may be carried out only by those EU countries who are willing to unite. [Emphasis added.]

It is a long haul for Europe to dispense with Russian gas. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said yesterday: “There are gas shortages, and that is why we need to talk to Russians. Europe will move towards reducing its dependence on the Russian gas, but can this happen in the coming years? This is very difficult.”

“Europe consumes 500 billion cubic meters of gas, while America and Qatar can offer 15 billion, up to the last molecule… That is why German and Austrian politicians told me: “We cannot just destroy ourselves. If we impose sanctions on Russia in the oil and gas domain, we will destroy ourselves. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot before rushing into a fight.” This is how certain rational people in the West see it today.”

With the doomsday predictions of Russian military failure in Ukraine coming unstuck and the blowback from Russia sanctions beginning to bite, Europeans are caught in a bind. They will be resentful as time passes.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/bidens- ... in-europe/

**********************************************

A few more quotes from Scott Ritter's Twitter account:
Our President calls for regime change in Russia the same week he promulgates policy that embraces preemptive nuclear strikes in non-nuclear situations. His administration is planning on deploying Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles in Europe later this year. A madman rules America.

***

The absurdity of a President of one country, sitting on an approval rating of 40% which is trending lower, calling for the removal of the President of a second nation, who has an approval rating of 71% that is trending higher, should be evident to all. Biden is not a serious man.
https://twitter.com/RealScottRitter?ref ... r%5Eauthor

***************************

Who’s the war criminal?
March 25, 2022 Stephen Millies

Image
The smoldering wreckage of a passenger train in Serbia after being hit by two missiles launched from a NATO F-15, April 12, 1999. At least 20 commuters were killed.

On March 16, President Joe Biden called Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin a war criminal. How is this different from the white-supremacist Sen. Lindsey Graham demanding Putin’s assassination?

One week later, Biden ordered flags lowered to half-mast across the United States upon the death of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Albright has been called an unindicted war criminal. Albright was known as the Butcher of Serbia.

In the former Yugoslavia, the 1998-1999 conflict there is called by some “Madeleine’s War.” Albright, a key member of the Clinton administration, championed the 78-day bombardment of Yugoslavia by NATO — which started exactly 23 years ago this month.

Before that in Iraq. Here’s what Albright, then Clinton’s Secretary of State, said in 1996 on the CBS show “60 Minutes” in an interview with Lesley Stahl:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”

Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it”.

The actual figure given by a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report in 1995 was that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the U.S. sanctions. But to war criminal Albright, “the price is worth it.”

Children died because Iraq was forbidden by sanctions to import so-called dual-use items like chlorine, which is used to purify water and treat sewage. As a result typhoid and other water-borne diseases soared.

The notorious interview is known around the world for its defense of mass murder. But you won’t find any mention of it in the New York Times’ obituary of Albright.

This is the great, liberal New York Times, that claims to include “all the news that’s fit to print.” Nobody should trust its coverage of the war drive against Russia.

The 81 million people who voted against Trump and racism shouldn’t trust Joe Biden, either. Racist Lindsey Graham is trying to stop Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson from becoming the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But when it comes to Russia, Biden and Graham see eye-to-eye.

Why aren’t Kissinger, Cheney & Bush arrested?

If Biden is so concerned about war criminals, why hasn’t he had Henry Kissinger arrested? The former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor committed war crimes on three continents.

Millions more people were killed in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam because Kissinger and Nixon refused to sign a peace treaty until 1973. If they had signed the same treaty in 1969 ― as Vietnam asked them to ― 20,000 less GIs would have come home in a box.

Kissinger gave the go ahead for the original 9/11, the bloody overthrow of the elected socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973.

“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people,” said Kissinger. “The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

That’s self-determination according to the U.S. State Department and Wall Street.

“You did a great service to the West in overthrowing Allende,” Kissinger told the dictator Pinochet, who had thousands tortured to death.

Kissinger also gave a green light for the Indonesian dictator Suharto to invade East Timor. One out of three people in East Timor were killed.

Kissinger wanted to invade Cuba for its military support of the People’s Republic of Angola in defeating the Nazi army of then-apartheid South Africa.

Angola saved thousands of African lives by sending the CIA mercenary Costas Georgiou to the firing squad and thus intimidating other killers for hire.

U.S. and NATO-paid mercenaries have flocked to Ukraine. Alongside fascist gangs like the Azov Battalion, they are propping up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has banned every political party except his own.

Let’s not forget the war crimes of Dick Cheney and the Bush family. Former Vice President Cheney called the torture of thousands of Muslims to be “enhanched interrogation.” Cheney’s sidekick ― befuddled White House occupant George W. Bush ― presided over a million people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

George’s daddy ― President George H.W. Bush ― invaded Panama. The Pentagon never revealed the number of people killed there.

Earlier as CIA director, Daddy Bush had Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 bombed on Oct. 6, 1976. All 73 people on board were killed; it was a revenge murder for Cuba’s support of African liberation.

Capitalism built on war crimes

War crimes made America “great.” Over a hundred Indigenous nations were invaded.

Massacres started with the Pilgrims and extended beyond Wounded Knee. Keeping the political prisoner-of-war Leonard Peltier in jail for 46 years is a war crime.

The African Holocaust never stopped either. U.S. and world capitalism was built upon it.

Wall Street became the country’s financial center by being the banking house for Southern slave owners. While today New York City has municipal green markets, it once operated a slave market on Wall Street.

By recognizing Belgian King Leopold’s “Congo Free State,” U.S. President Chester Arthur provided political cover for murdering 8-to-15 million Africans for rubber profits. President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.

Locking up 2.2 million people is a war crime. As a U.S. Senator, Joe Biden pushed through the 1994 “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act” that guaranteed imprisoning hundreds of thousands more Black, Indigenous and Latinx people.

Stealing half of Mexico was a war crime. In the so-called Mexican-American War of 1846-48, a slave-holders’ army invaded Mexico, which was an abolitionist nation. General Zachary Taylor’s artillery pounded the city of Matamoros, killing hundreds of civilians. Villages were pillaged and plundered. In the end the U.S. occupied and took all or parts of the current states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona. Millions of acres of Mexican land were stolen from the Indigenous Peoples and Mexican farmers who lived there; more than a hundred thousand died. South Carolina’s John Calhoun, speaking in praise of the seizure of Mexican land, declared, “Ours is the government of the white man!”

A rerun of Yugoslavia?

President Biden was directed to call President Putin a war criminal because the Pentagon wants a rerun of the Yugoslavia tragedy.

NATO planes bombed Yugoslavia, the last socialist country in Europe, for 78 days in 1999. Yugoslavia’s elected President Slobodan Milošević was kidnapped and framed on war crimes charges because he resisted NATO.

Milošević died suddenly just as it looked like he could win an appeal. For some observers this was reminiscent of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassin Jack Ruby dying suddenly after he was granted a new trial.

The Pentagon wants to give President Putin the same treatment or just be assassinated. To the banksters that run the United States, it’s intolerable that the six million square miles of the Russian Federation isn’t occupied by U.S. and NATO troops.

Neither Joe Biden nor the New York Times has ever denounced the deaths of over 14,000 people in the Donbass. This real war crime was committed at the hands of a Ukrainian regime supported by the U.S. and NATO.

The Russian Federation is giving indispensable help to anti-fascists in Ukraine. Don’t be fooled by the capitalist media. Hands off Russia and the Donbass!

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... -criminal/

Well, THANK GOD IT"S NOT TRUMP!"

"We always knew he was a lying sack of shit, possibly senile, but we never thought it would come to this because he wasn't Trump."

This guy is like Ronald Raygun all over again: thru a strategy of 'compromise suicide' he has stymied anything progressive in this country just as Ronnie did from the other side while taking us to the brink of nuclear annihilation. The former prez, obnoxious, venal, ignorant and corrupt(those no bar to success in capitalist society) was unreliable in the foreign affairs field, an obstacle to the imperial program. He tried bribing his fellow Owners with the people's money to go along with his ego-driven behavior, but it was never enough. But Joe, he's the Man, he'll get the job done even when he doesn't really know what he is doing.

We owe a great debt to Ford and the BAR crowd, besides alerting us to the scam that was Obama they were the first to point out that the 'lesser evil' wasn't so 'lesser' at all...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 28, 2022 4:43 pm

Biden Confirms Why the US Needed This War
March 27, 2022

In a moment of candor, Joe Biden has revealed why the U.S. needed the Russian invasion and why it needs it to continue, writes Joe Lauria.

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President Biden departs Brussels en route to Poland early Friday morning. (White House)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News



The U.S. got its war in Ukraine. Without it, Washington could not attempt to destroy Russia’s economy, orchestrate worldwide condemnation and lead an insurgency to bleed Russia, all part of an attempt to bring down its government. Joe Biden has now left no doubt that it’s true.

The president of the United States has confirmed what Consortium News and others have been reporting since the beginnings of Russsiagate in 2016, that the ultimate U.S. aim is to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said on Saturday at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The White House and the State Dept. have been scrambling to explain away Biden’s remark.

But it is too late.

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “As you know, and as you have heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter,” the last words inserted for comic relief.

Biden first gave the game away at his Feb. 24 White House press conference — the first day of the invasion. He was asked why he thought new sanctions would work when the earlier sanctions had not prevented Russia’s invasion. Biden said the sanctions were never designed to prevent Russia’s intervention but to punish it afterward. Therefore the U.S. needed Russia to invade.

“No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden said. “That has to sh- — this is going to take time. And we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about.” It is all about the Russian people turning on Putin to overthrow him, which would explain Russia’s crackdown on anti-war protestors and the media.

It was no slip of the tongue. Biden repeated himself in Brussels on Thursday: “Let’s get something straight … I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter. You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter. The maintenance of sanctions — the maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain … we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.”

It was the second time that Biden confirmed that the purpose of the draconian U.S. sanctions on Russia was never to prevent the invasion of Ukraine, which the U.S. desperately needed to activate its plans, but to punish Russia and get its people to rise up against Putin and ultimately restore a Yeltsin-like puppet to Moscow. Without a cause those sanctions could never have been imposed. The cause was Russia’s invasion.

Regime Change in Moscow

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Biden’s speech in Warsaw. (Office of the President/Wikimedia Commons)

Once hidden in studies such as this 2019 RAND study, the desire to overthrow the government in Moscow is now out in the open.

One of the earliest threats came from Carl Gersham, the long-time director of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Gershman, wrote in 2013, before the Kiev coup: “Ukraine is the biggest prize.” If it could be pulled away from Russia and into the West, then “Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post in 1999 that the NED could now practice regime change out in the open, rather than covertly as the C.I.A. had done.

The RAND Corporation on March 18 then published an article titled, “If Regime Change Should Come to Moscow,” the U.S. should be ready for it. Michael McFaul, the hawkish former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been calling for regime change in Russia for some time. He tried to finesse Biden’s words by tweeting:
On Putin, Biden expressed what billions around the world and millions inside Russia also believe. He did not say that the US should remove him from power. There is a difference.


On March 1, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said the sanctions on Russia “we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime.” No. 10 tried to walk that back but two days earlier James Heappey, minister for the armed forces, wrote in The Daily Telegraph:

“His failure must be complete; Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored, and the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surround him. He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union and throughout the 1990s Wall Street and the U.S. government dominated Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, asset-stripping former state-owned industries and impoverishing the Russian people. Putin came to power on New Year’s Eve 1999 and starting restoring Russia’s sovereignty. His 2007 Munich Security Conference speech, in which he blasted Washington’s aggressive unilateralism, alarmed the U.S., which clearly wants a Yeltsin-like figure to return. The 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Kiev was a first step. Russiagate was another.

Back in 2017, Consortium News saw Russiagate as a prelude to regime change in Moscow. That year I wrote:

“The Russia-gate story fits neatly into a geopolitical strategy that long predates the 2016 election. Since Wall Street and the U.S. government lost the dominant position in Russia that existed under the pliable President Boris Yeltsin, the strategy has been to put pressure on getting rid of Putin to restore a U.S. friendly leader in Moscow. There is substance to Russia’s concerns about American designs for ‘regime change’ in the Kremlin.

Moscow sees an aggressive America expanding NATO and putting 30,000 NATO troops on its borders; trying to overthrow a secular ally in Syria with terrorists who threaten Russia itself; backing a coup in Ukraine as a possible prelude to moves against Russia; and using American NGOs to foment unrest inside Russia before they were forced to register as foreign agents.”


The Invasion Was Necessary

The United States could have easily prevented Russia’s military action. It could have stopped Russia’s intervention in Ukraine’s civil war from happening by doing three things: forcing implementation of the 8-year old Minsk peace accords, dissolving extreme right Ukrainian militias and engaging Russia in serious negotiations about a new security architecture in Europe.

But it didn’t.

The U.S. can still end this war through serious diplomacy with Russia. But it won’t. Blinken has refused to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Instead, Biden announced on March 16 another $800 million in military aid for Ukraine on the same day it was revealed Russia and Ukraine have been working on a 15-point peace plan. It has never been clearer that the U.S. wanted this war and wants it to continue.

NATO troops and missiles in Eastern Europe were evidently so vital to U.S. plans that it would not discuss removing them to stop Russia’s troops from crossing into Ukraine. Russia had threatened a “technical/military” response if NATO and the U.S. did not take seriously Russia’s security interests, presented in December in the form of treaty proposals.

The U.S. knew what would happen if it rejected those proposals calling for Ukraine not to join NATO, for missiles in Poland and Romania to be removed and NATO troops in Eastern Europe withdrawn. That’s why it started screaming about an invasion in December. The U.S. refused to move the missiles and provocatively sent even more NATO forces to Eastern Europe.

MSNBC ran an article on March 4, titled, “Russia’s Ukraine invasion may have been preventable: The U.S. refused to reconsider Ukraine’s NATO status as Putin threatened war. Experts say that was a huge mistake.” The article said:

“The abundance of evidence that NATO was a sustained source of anxiety for Moscow raises the question of whether the United States’ strategic posture was not just imprudent but negligent.”

Senator Joe Biden knew as far back as 1997 that NATO expansion, which he supported, could eventually lead to a hostile Russian reaction.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1500782351831662592


The Excised Background to the Invasion

It is vital to recall the events of 2014 in Ukraine and what has followed until now because it is routinely whitewashed from Western media coverage. Without that context, it is impossible to understand what is happening in Ukraine.

Both Donetsk and Lugansk had voted for independence from Ukraine in 2014 after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych. The new, U.S.-installed Ukrainian government then launched a war against the provinces to crush their resistance to the coup and their bid for independence, a war that is still going on eight years later at the cost of thousands of lives with U.S. support. It is this war that Russia has entered.

Neo-Nazi groups, such as Right Sector and the Azov Battalion, who revere the World War II Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, took part in the coup as well as in the ongoing violence against Lugansk and Donetsk.

Despite reporting in the BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN on the neo-Nazis at the time, their role in the story is now excised by Western media, reducing Putin to a madman hellbent on conquest without reason. As though he woke up one morning and looked at a map to decide what country he would invade next.

The public has been induced to embrace the Western narrative, while being kept in the dark about Washington’s ulterior motives.


The Traps Set for Russia

Six weeks ago, on Feb. 4, I wrote an article, “What a US Trap for Russia in Ukraine Might Look Like,” in which I laid out a scenario in which Ukraine would begin an offensive against ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass, forcing Russia to decide whether to abandon them or to intervene to save them.

If Russia intervened with regular army units, I argued, this would be the “Invasion!” the U.S. needed to attack Russia’s economy, turn the world against Moscow and end Putin’s rule.

In the third week of February, Ukrainian government shelling of Donbass dramatically increased, according to the OSCE, with what appeared to be the new offensive. Russia was forced to make its decision.

It first recognized the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, a move it put off for eight years. And then on Feb. 24 President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country.

Russia stepped into a trap, which grows more perilous by the day as Russia’s military intervention continues with a second trap in sight. From Moscow’s perspective, the stakes were too high not to intervene. And if it can induce Kiev to accept a settlement, it might escape the clutches of the United States.

A Planned Insurgency

Image
Biden and Brzezinski (Collage Cathy Vogan/Photos Wikimedia Commons)

The examples of previous U.S. traps that I gave in the Feb. 4 piece were the U.S. telling Saddam Hussein in 1990 that it would not interfere in its dispute with Kuwait, opening the trap to Iraq’s invasion, allowing the U.S. to destroy Baghdad’s military. The second example is most relevant.

In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Jimmy Carter’s former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the C.I.A. set a trap four decades ago for Moscow by arming mujahiddin to fight the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan and bring down the Soviet government, much as the U.S. wants today to bring down Putin. He said:

“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

He then explained that the reason for the trap was to bring down the Soviet Union. Brzezinski said:

“That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.’ Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”

Brzezinski said he had no regrets that financing the mujahideen spawned terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?,” he asked. The U.S. today is likewise gambling with the world economy and further instability in Europe with its tolerance of neo-Nazism in Ukraine.

In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski wrote:

“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”

Thus U.S. “primacy,” or world dominance, which still drives Washington, is not possible without control of Eurasia, as Brzezinski argued, and that’s not possible without control of Ukraine by pushing Russia out (U.S. takeover of Ukraine in the 2014 coup) and controlling the governments in Moscow and Beijing. What Brzezinski and U.S. leaders still view as Russia’s “imperial ambitions” are in Moscow seen as imperative defensive measures against an aggressive West.

Without the Russian invasion the second trap the U.S. is planning would not be possible: an insurgency meant to bog Russia down and give it its “Vietnam.” Europe and the U.S. are flooding more arms into Ukraine, and Kiev has called for volunteer fighters. The way jihadists flocked to Afghanistan, white supremacists from around Europe are traveling to Ukraine to become insurgents.

Just as the Afghanistan insurgency helped bring down the Soviet Union, the insurgency is meant to topple Putin’s Russia.

An article in Foreign Affairs entitled “The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency” was published Feb. 25, just one day after Russia’s intervention, indicating advanced planning that was dependent on an invasion. The article had to be written and edited before Russia crossed into Ukraine and was published as soon as it did. It said:

“If Russia limits its offensive to the east and south of Ukraine, a sovereign Ukrainian government will not stop fighting. It will enjoy reliable military and economic support from abroad and the backing of a united population. But if Russia pushes on to occupy much of the country and install a Kremlin-appointed puppet regime in Kyiv, a more protracted and thorny conflagration will begin. Putin will face a long, bloody insurgency that could spread across multiple borders, perhaps even reaching into Belarus to challenge Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s stalwart ally. Widening unrest could destabilize other countries in Russia’s orbit, such as Kazakhstan, and even spill into Russia itself. When conflicts begin, unpredictable and unimaginable outcomes can become all too real. Putin may not be prepared for the insurgency—or insurgencies—to come.

WINNER’S REMORSE

Many a great power has waged war against a weaker one, only to get bogged down as a result of its failure to have a well-considered end game. This lack of foresight has been especially palpable in troubled occupations. It was one thing for the United States to invade Vietnam in 1965, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003; likewise for the Soviet Union to enter Afghanistan in 1979. It was an altogether more difficult task to persevere in those countries in the face of stubborn insurgencies. … As the United States learned in Vietnam and Afghanistan, an insurgency that has reliable supply lines, ample reserves of fighters, and sanctuary over the border can sustain itself indefinitely, sap an occupying army’s will to fight, and exhaust political support for the occupation at home.'”

As far back as Jan. 14, Yahoo! News reported:

“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.

The CIA-trained forces could soon play a critical role on Ukraine’s eastern border, where Russian troops have massed in what many fear is preparation for an invasion. …

The program has involved ‘very specific training on skills that would enhance’ the Ukrainians’ ‘ability to push back against the Russians,’ said the former senior intelligence official.

The training, which has included ‘tactical stuff,’ is “going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,’ said the former official.

One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. ‘The United States is training an insurgency,’ said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how ‘to kill Russians.’”


Hillary Clinton laid it all out on Feb. 28, just four days into Russia’s operation. She brought up the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, saying “it didn’t end well for Russia” and that in Ukraine “this is the model that people are looking at … that can stymie Russia.”

What neither Maddow nor Clinton mentioned when discussing volunteers going to fight for Ukraine is what The New York Times reported on Feb. 25, a day after the invasion, and before their interview: “Far-right militias in Europe plan to confront Russian forces.”

The Economic War

Along with the quagmire, are the raft of profound economic sanctions on Russia designed to collapse its economy and drive Putin from power.

These are the harshest sanctions the U.S. and Europe have ever imposed on any nation. Sanctions against Russia’s Central Bank sanctions are the most serious, as they were intended to destroy the value of the ruble. One U.S. dollar was worth 85 rubles on Feb. 24, the day of the invasion and soared to 154 per dollar on March 7. However the Russian currency strengthened to 101 on Friday.

Putin and other Russian leaders were personally sanctioned, as were Russia’s largest banks. Most Russian transactions are no longer allowed to be settled through the SWIFT international payment system. The German-Russia Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was closed down and become bankrupt.

The U.S. blocked imports of Russian oil, which was about 5 percent of U.S. supply. BP and Shell pulled out of Russian partnerships. European and U.S. airspace for Russian commercial liners was closed. Europe, which depends on Russia gas, is still importing it, and is so far rebuffing U.S. pressure to stop buying Russian oil.

A raft of voluntary sanctions followed: PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix and McDonalds have been shut down in Russia. Coca-cola will stop sales to the country. U.S. news organizations have left, Russian artists in the West have been fired and even Russian cats are banned.

It also gave an opportunity for U.S. cable providers to get RT America shut down. Other Russia media has been de-platformed and Russian government websites hacked. A Yale University professor has drawn up a list to shame U.S. companies that are still operating in Russia.

Russian exports of wheat and fertilizer have been banned, driving the price of food in the West. Biden admitted as much on Thursday:

“With regard to food shortage … it’s going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia, it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well. And — because both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat, for example — just to give you one example.”

The aim is clear: “asphyxiating Russia’s economy”, as French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian put it, even if it damages the West.


The question is whether Russia can extricate itself from the U.S. strategy of insurgency and economic war.

To be continued: How Russia Can Escape the US Traps.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/27/c ... e-us-trap/
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EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden DID help secure millions in funding for US contractor in Ukraine specializing in deadly pathogen research, laptop emails reveal, raising more questions about the disgraced son of then vice president

*The Russian government held a press conference Thursday claiming that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine
*However the allegations were branded a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US
*But emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop show the claims may well be true
*The emails show Hunter helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases
*He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a 'science project' involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine
*The president's son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners
*They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... raine.html

All in a day's work....The VP was just helping his boy out, not only fracking Ukraine but a bio-weapons contract with a Pentagon cut out. What more could a son ask for? Seems like gramps couldn't give a fuck about the grand kids though....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 29, 2022 2:32 pm

THE SUCCESSION OF THE THIRD REICH VIA THE AMERICAN
CONFIRMED: BIDEN CONNECTION TO MILITARY BIO-LABS IN UKRAINE
28 Mar 2022 , 6:33 p.m.

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Hunter Biden helped Metabiota (operating biolaboratory in Ukraine) win a multi-million dollar contract with the US government (Photo: AP)

The revelation of the Russian Ministry of Defense about a military biological program of the Pentagon in Ukraine, of an unprecedented scale, has once again given rise to talk, now that it is known that the financing was carried out through structures associated with the son of the US president, Joe Biden.

It is not a minor fact that the details were published by the newspapers The New York Post and The Daily Mail , after the US government treated Russia's accusations as conspiracy theories.

HUNTER BIDEN PARTICIPATED IN UKRAINIAN BIOLOGICAL LABORATORIES

Ukraine has featured in Hunter Biden's shady dealings for several years. In 2014, the son of the then vice president of the United States became part of the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. The case soon escalated into a corruption scandal, and in 2016 Biden Sr. demanded the removal of Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma's activities.

But Hunter Biden's financial interests affected not only the oil and gas sector, but also secret military developments.

The New York Post and the Daily Mail confirmed the Russian allegation that Hunter Biden was involved in funding secret US biological laboratories in Ukraine. He, according to emails and letters obtained from his laptop (the authenticity of which was recently confirmed by the New York Times ), helped the medical company Metabiota conclude a multi-million dollar contract with the US government. Metabiota provided services to Black and Veatch, another Pentagon contractor who built a series of bio-laboratories in Ukraine to "study infectious agents or toxins that can become airborne and cause life-threatening infections," according to documents reviewed by Western newspapers.

Other data that exposes Hunter Biden:

*President Biden's son and his partners invested $500,000 in Metabiota, through Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP), a subsidiary of investment fund Rosemont Capital, which was founded by Hunter and the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry. , Chris Heinz, in 2009. RSTP helped funnel millions of dollars during Metabiota's first round of funding.
*Hunter also brought together Metabiota representatives with the Burisma leadership to implement a "scientific project" involving high-level biosafety laboratories in Ukraine.
*In 2014 (after the annexation of Crimea to Russia), one of Metabiota's senior managers approached Hunter Biden suggesting that the company could contribute to the "cultural and economic independence of Russia", which, as the Daily Mail , is "an unusual target for a biotech company."

PENTAGON CONTRACTORS FREE TO EXPERIMENT WITH DANGEROUS PATHOGENS

At least three foreign private laboratories are known to operate in Ukraine and are linked to the Pentagon: Metabiota Inc., Black & Veatch, and the Southern Research Institute. These also lead federal biological research projects for other government agencies such as the CIA. An article from the Sputnik news agency expands on the details of how they work.

The biological laboratories are operated by the military program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the United States, or DTRA for its acronym in English. In addition, the civilian personnel of these private companies may operate on behalf of the US government under diplomatic cover.

Metabiota is a company specialized in the identification, monitoring and analysis of possible disease outbreaks. In 2014, it signed an $18.4 million federal contract as a subcontractor for Black & Veatch in Georgia and Ukraine. The company received an additional $3.1 million (2012-2015) for its work in Sierra Leone, one of the countries most affected by severe Ebola virus infection.

Metabiota was also linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the PREDICT project of the Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The institute published together with Metabiota and the EcoHealth Alliance a collaborative study in 2014 on the transmission of infectious diseases from bats in China.

The EcoHealth Alliance and Metabiota have returned to work on other occasions on investigations linking infectious disease outbreaks to the wildlife trade.

Black & Veatch Special Project Corp. signed a contract with DTRA in the amount of 198.7 million dollars to create and equip biologists in Ukraine, as well as in Germany, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Thailand, Ethiopia, Vietnam and Armenia. The company, specialized in mining, data centers, smart cities, banking and financial markets, has always been linked to the military sector and US intelligence agencies.

In 2020, Black & Veatch generated revenues of 3.7 billion dollars and was positioned as the seventh largest company in the United States. It has more than 100 offices deployed throughout the world.

Southern Research Institute has been the main subcontractor for the Ukraine program since 2008. The company was founded as a nonprofit organization in Alabama in 1941, and has been working on research related to national defense for 70 years. Between 1951 and 1962 it signed 16 contracts with the United States Biological Weapons Program. In addition, the Southern Research Institute was a subcontractor to the military's anthrax research project in 2001.

According to the Sputnik publication , the DTRA "funds about 15 biological laboratories in Ukraine." Information has been collected from 10 of them.

Ukraine has no control over military biological laboratories on its territory, according to an agreement between the US Department of Defense and the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, signed in 2005. The terms of the agreement include that the Ukrainian government has no right to publicly disclose "confidential information" about the US program and agree to send pathogens to the US Department of Defense for biological research. For its part, the Pentagon has access to Ukraine's state secrets.

Another agreement between Washington and kyiv is the establishment of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU), an international organization whose main financier is the US government, and has diplomatic status. STCU officially sponsors the projects of scientists who were part of the Soviet Biological Weapons Program. Over the past 20 years, the center has awarded $285 million to the projects of 1,850 scientists involved in the past in the production of weapons of mass destruction.

ABOUT BIOLOGICAL AGENTS IN UKRAINIAN LABORATORIES

Jeffrey Kaye, a researcher and author of The Guantanamo Cover -Up , reviews what is known so far about bioagents and pathogens found in biolabs in Ukraine in an extensive article , thereby exposing Western media outlets that have tried to subtract importance to the revelations made by Russia falsely arguing that the pathogens found in the laboratories are not dangerous and do not imply the development of biological weapons.

Most are based on an open letter from "biologists, graduates of Russian universities" sent to RIA Novosti and other Russian media that published the list of strains destroyed in the Kharkov laboratory. The "scientists" maintain that the tests for the pathogens are false and that what was in the laboratory was completely harmless. There is no information about the people signing the open letter, but Kaye notes that it "was started as a petition on Change.org by Dr. Eugene V. Koonin, who graduated from Moscow State University and is now a distinguished researcher." of the National Institutes of Health [U.S. government agency] at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

In the article, Kaye examines the data on bioagents destroyed at the Oblast Laboratory Center in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. "Five of these are considered Category B bioterrorism agents or diseases by the US Centers for Disease Control, just below Category A pathogens such as anthrax, plague, and smallpox," the author says.

The research offers a list of the pathogens listed in the RIA Novosti document . Of all of them, these are the ones that Kaye indicates that they are potentially dangerous (marked with an asterisk) or that they belong to the category B of bioterrorism agents (marked with two asterisks).

**Shigella sonnei: According to the World Health Organization , "all Shigella species cause acute bloody diarrhea by invading and causing irregular destruction of the epithelium of the colon" (p. 2). S. sonnei causes a relatively mild form of the disease shigellosis, also known as bacterial dysentery. Shigella are all highly infectious. There is no vaccine for any serotype of shigella.

**Shigella flexneria: S. flexneria is the second most virulent form of Shigella. While Shigella dysenteriae causes the most severe disease, one source states, "Shigella flexneria serotype 2a [is] the most common species and serotype causing bacillary dysentery or shigellosis in man." Shigella species are considered Category B bioterrorism threats. According to the WHO , S. flexneria "is the leading cause of endemic shigellosis in developing countries" (p. 2). According to the military textbook Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare[MABW] (2018, p. 4), Shigella was one of the pathogens that Japan's Unit 731 used in their attack on Chinese cities during World War II. The same source states that Shigella "causes about 165 million cases [of shigellosis] per year," with "25,000 cases of illness each year in the United States" (p. 74).

**Salmonella typhimurium: S. typhimurium was investigated at [Pentagon lab] Fort Detrick in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The pathogen was infamously used by the Rajneesh cult in several biological agent attacks in Wasco County, Oregon, in the summer of 1984. A series of attacks in September 1984 on eating establishments in The Dalles "resulted in 751 cases of enteritis and at least 45 hospitalizations" (p. 13, MABW). Salmonella outbreaks are relatively common in the United States, with "1.4 million salmonellosis infections…annually in the United States, resulting in 15,000 hospitalizations and 400 deaths" (p. 44, MABW). Its use as a biological weapon dates back to at least World War II, when Japan's Biological Warfare Unit 731 used S. typhimurium and many other bacteria and viruses to experimentally poison prisoners, in addition to "wells contaminated with S. typhimurium along the Russian border in Mongolia" (p. 73, MABW). Salmonella is considered a category B bioterrorism threat. A strain of S. typhimurium is being investigated as a vaccine against plague. But this does not appear to be the type found in the Kharkov lab. In addition, S. typhimurium infects wild birds, and "infected birds can transmit the infection to humans, either directly as a result of handling or, more commonly, as a result of exposure to infected domestic cats by preying on diseased birds and dying," according to a 2004 article in typhimurium and many other bacteria and viruses to experimentally poison prisoners, as well as "wells contaminated with S. typhimurium along the Russian border in Mongolia" (p. 73, MABW). Salmonella is considered a category B bioterrorism threat. A strain of S. typhimurium is being investigated as a vaccine against plague. But this does not appear to be the type found in the Kharkov lab. In addition, S. typhimurium infects wild birds, and "infected birds can transmit the infection to humans, either directly as a result of handling or, more commonly, as a result of exposure to infected domestic cats by preying on diseased birds and dying," according to a 2004 article in typhimurium and many other bacteria and viruses to experimentally poison prisoners, as well as "wells contaminated with S. typhimurium along the Russian border in Mongolia" (p. 73, MABW). Salmonella is considered a category B bioterrorism threat. A strain of S. typhimurium is being investigated as a vaccine against plague. But this does not appear to be the type found in the Kharkov lab. In addition, S. typhimurium infects wild birds, and "infected birds can transmit the infection to humans, either directly as a result of handling or, more commonly, as a result of exposure to infected domestic cats by preying on diseased birds and dying," according to a 2004 article in typhimurium that is being investigated as a vaccine against plague. But this does not appear to be the type found in the Kharkov lab. In addition, S. typhimurium infects wild birds, and "infected birds can transmit the infection to humans, either directly as a result of handling or, more commonly, as a result of exposure to infected domestic cats by preying on diseased birds and dying," according to a 2004 article in typhimurium that is being investigated as a vaccine against plague. But this does not appear to be the type found in the Kharkov lab. In addition, S. typhimurium infects wild birds, and "infected birds can transmit the infection to humans, either directly as a result of handling or, more commonly, as a result of exposure to infected domestic cats by preying on diseased birds and dying," according to a 2004 article inAvian medicine and exotic animal seminars .

*Proteus vulgaris: P. vulgaris can cause disease in humans. It exists in the intestinal tract and can cause serious urinary tract infections. Because tularemia antibody assays can be confused with those of P. vulgaris, it is possible that their presence in the laboratory has something to do with the study of tularemia. Although tularemia was not listed by RIA Novosti, it is known from published literature that Kharkov and other laboratories in Ukraine were conducting research on wild tularemia. According to a Canadian government fact sheet, Proteus can also cause other infections, including sepsis and wound infections.

*ME. coli O55: Less virulent and non-toxigenic, unlike its deadlier cousin E. coli O157:H7, E. coli O55 can still cause serious illness. In 2014 and 2015, there were a series of small outbreaks in Dorset, England, with some children hospitalized. While most E. coli are harmless, the O55 strain is one of those that cause intestinal and other diseases, including, rarely, kidney failure. E. coli is usually spread through contaminated food or water.

*Proteus mirabilis: According to Jules J. Berman, in the Taxonomic Guide to Infectious Diseases (Second Edition) , 2019, P. mirabilis is the "species most commonly found in Proteus infections." It is transmitted by contact with infected materials. P. mirabilis is most commonly associated with urinary tract infections and kidney stone formation, but can also cause peritonitis and, rarely, blood poisoning.

*Klebsiella pneumoniae [pneumoniae]: K. pneumoniae is often associated with healthcare settings. It lives in the intestines and feces, and can be spread by personal contact or through contaminated materials, such as a catheter in a hospital. It can cause urinary tract infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections (also called sepsis); wound or surgical site infections; and meningitis. Healthy people are less prone to infections, but if they do get infected, the pathogen can even be fatal if it enters the bloodstream. Recently, multidrug-resistant Klebsiella began showing up in some US hospitals in the early 2000s. An article of a medical journal in 2019 flatly stated that K. pneumoniae "has high levels of antibiotic resistance." So far, this pathogen has no known history as a possible biological weapon. However, a list of biological weapons agents in a 2003 Fort Detrick presentation , "Real-time PCR Diagnostics to Detect and Identify Potential Biological Weapons," lists Klebsiella pneumoniae, as well as other pathogens on the Kharkov list discussed in this article, including Proteus mirabilis, Corynebacterium species, and Shigella flexneri and sonnei. It would appear that the US Army Infectious Diseases Medical Research Institute at Fort Detrick has at least considered K. pneumoniae to be a biological weapon.

*Corynebacterium xerosis 12078: The UK Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) has listed C. xerosis as a Category 2 pathogen. “It can cause human illness and may be a hazard to employees; it is unlikely to spread to the community and effective prophylaxis or treatment is usually available." C. xerosis is found on human skin and mucous membranes. A 2016 article in BMC Research Notes comments : "It is considered an unusual pathogen and is rarely found in human and animal clinical samples." further, "has been reported as a rare but serious cause of bacteremia, septicemia, pneumonia, septic arthritis, vertebral osteomyelitis, meningitis, and, most commonly, endocarditis in adults." More recently , there was a report of C. xerosis causing subcutaneous abscesses in sheep and thus could present "a zoonotic risk factor for human infection in sheep farms". I have not seen it listed in any bioweapon related research or document.

**Corynebacterium diphtheriae, var gravis: According to the CDC , "Diphtheria is a serious infection caused by strains of bacteria called Corynebacterium diphtheriae that produce toxins (poison). It can cause difficulty breathing, heart failure, paralysis, and even death. CDC recommends vaccines for infants, children, adolescents, and adults to prevent diphtheria." It is a category B bioterrorism agent. "Gravis" is the most severe form of C. diphthereriae. It has been associated with past instances of bioterrorism or biocrime ( see link, P. 16). It was also one of the diseases studied by biological warfare scientists in Imperial Japan (p. 480). Diphtheria toxin has been the subject of research at Fort Detrick in the past, as this 1978 report attests . Interestingly, diphtheria was the first documented case of a laboratory-acquired infection, way back in 1898 ( see link , pp. 4-8).

**Corynebacterium diphtheriae, var mitis: C. diphtheriae mitis can cause a mild form of diphtheria disease.


Kaye's report only confirms in detail the fact that a biological program was being developed on Ukrainian soil that has already had prequels in other facilities dominated by the United States, and whose research was militarized by the Pentagon for use in other conflicts and contexts. favorable to their warmongering interests.

In the near future, the Russian Defense Ministry will present new data on the American experiments. And the Russian parliamentary commission to investigate the activities of bio-laboratories in Ukraine will give priority to the participation of institutions associated with Hunter Biden in them.

THE SUCCESSION OF THE THIRD REICH VIA THE AMERICAN

This Monday, March 28, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, after meeting with the general director of the Directorate of Foreign Security and Documentation of Algeria, Major General Noureddine Mokri, declared that "at the moment, we are finishing the work to gather the evidentiary base on the military-biological activity of the United States in Ukraine The entire civilized world will end up seeing that the United States has become a 'worthy' successor to the traditions of the Third Reich, where inhumane experiments were practiced on people ".

He reiterated that "the United States and Ukraine were the only countries in the world that voted against the UN General Assembly resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism and other similar initiatives."

"In addition, the development of the nationalist movement in Ukraine was also under the coordination and general support of the United States," Patrushev stressed. This movement in Ukraine "spilled as a result into open hate demonstrations in 2014, when the Ukrainian Nazis repressed the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine with particular cruelty and cynicism."

The biological weapons dossier will be an important reason when judging war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Ukraine with US backing, and even with direct support from the other side of the Atlantic. The information that the Russians are collecting has barely been shown in the media and through political spokespersons. The chronology offered by María Zajárova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, in a recently published opinion note is just a button of the participation of the Biden family in these criminal practices that have opened an unprecedented geopolitical Pandora's box.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/co ... en-ucrania

Google Translator

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Hunter Biden's Toxic Laptop
colonelcassad
March 29, 11:37

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While Joseph Biden is voicing fears about the possibility of a Russian chemical attack in Ukraine, the scandal around his son, Hunter, who performed so unsuccessfully in Ukraine, is gaining momentum again in the United States. The toxicity of this story is so great that it calls into question the chances of Democrats in the elections to Congress, and therefore the ability of President Biden to conduct his policies in the second half of the term.

While Joseph Biden is voicing fears about the possibility of a Russian chemical attack in Ukraine, the scandal around his son, Hunter, is gaining momentum again in the United States. This is due to the upcoming congressional elections, in which the Democrats are expected to suffer a sensitive defeat. In fact, there were many scandals around Hunter, but one of them became especially sensitive. Then the data from a laptop belonging to the son of the then presidential candidate turned out to be public. They were handed over to the New York Post by Donald Trump's aide Rudolph Giuliani, which caused an election scandal called "Ukrainegate". The fact is that the information received could draw conclusions about corruption in the environment of the future president, as well as conclude that Joseph Biden, when he was Vice President of the United States, influenced the domestic politics of Ukraine in his own selfish interests. From the point of view of American society, this is absolutely unacceptable for a civil servant to exceed his powers.

The toxicity of the Ukrainian story for the American president was so great that some commentators even allowed themselves to suggest that Joe Biden was deliberately provoking the outbreak of war in Ukraine in order to bury all the evidence against his son in the subsequent chaos. We do not believe that such a motive, worthy of comics, actually took place, which was mentioned in the material in which we analyzed the objective benefits of the war for the American administration. Moreover, the data at the disposal of the grand jury is already enough to outrage the Americans. However, to make the tone of the scandal clearer, we decided to bring a fresh article from the same New York Post.

For 17 months, Joe Biden and his aides ignored the scandal, which The Post reported three weeks before the 2020 election. They denied our revelations, refused to answer our questions, told lies, and relied on their media and Big Tech allies to censor and cover up credible allegations of corruption involving the president and his family.

However, the dam is about to burst as more Americans learn of the scandal and draw conclusions about Biden's honesty. The Post received the results of a poll conducted by the Rasmussen group, which showed that 65% of voters believe that Joe Biden was "likely" to involve his son Hunter in foreign business deals and also that he could profit from them. At the same time, 48% believe that this is “very likely”.

The consequences for the White House are likely to be even worse. The possibilities for the Democrats, who use deceit, intelligence agencies and false accusations of “Russian collusion” to bury history, are not unlimited. Last week, the New York Times broke its silence and admitted that the laptop exists. The Washington Post has also woken up from its slumber and launched its own investigation by calling sources The Post has been interviewing for a long time.


As a Delaware grand jury moves closer to indicting the 52-year-old Hunter on tax evasion, money laundering and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the pressure on the president is mounting. He is being asked to finally explain his role in the international influence-peddling scheme run by his son and brother Jim Biden during his time as vice president.

The laptop, as well as evidence provided by Hunter's former business partner Tony Bobulinski, and Treasury documents provided to the Senate investigation, reveal millions of dollars flowing into the Biden family and their associates from dubious foreign sources. The most important of these sources were Russia, Ukraine and China, three countries at risk and vital to US national security.

There is also evidence that Joe Biden profited financially from his son's overseas business dealings, who was suffering from a drug addiction at the time. We are talking about several million dollars. Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki played dumb and refused to answer questions from The Post's Stephen Nelson about how the president handles conflicts of interest during the Ukraine-Russia war when sanctions target people who did business with his family.

Specifically, Nelson asked about Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, who was not sanctioned but allegedly transferred $3.5 million on February 14, 2014 to a firm associated with Hunter's former business partner Devon Archer. The transfer was flagged in a suspicious activity report provided by the Treasury Department to a Republican Senate investigation chaired by Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson.

New evidence was found in the laptop that Baturina transferred $118 million to various branches of Rosemont Seneca Partners, a consulting firm co-founded by Hunter, Archer and John Kerry's stepson Chris Heinz. Most of this money is believed to have been used to purchase real estate in Brooklyn and Chelsea for Baturina, as well as stakes in office centers around the country.

Yelena Baturina, wife of former corrupt Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, was living in London at the time after her husband fell out with the Kremlin. Perhaps because of this, she did not fall under the sanctions of the Biden administration. At the same time, at the funeral of Luzhkov, which took place in 2019 in Moscow, Vladimir Putin sat next to Baturina and hugged her as a sign of support.

Biden, as vice president, met Baturina on April 16, 2015, at a small dinner hosted by Hunter in a private room at Cafe Milano, a Georgetown restaurant. The guest list also included Hunter's Ukrainian treasurer Vadim Pozharsky, then Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Masimov (now in prison for treason), and fellow oligarch Kenes Rakishev.

Joe Biden spent the entire evening dining with Hunter and his "investors," despite the White House telling The Washington Post last year that the vice president only came in briefly.

Vice President Biden is also believed to have attended an "investor dinner" hosted by his son in late March 2016. It happened during another visit to Washington by Vadim Pozharsky, head of the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Entries from Hunter's laptop also show that Pozharsky was in Washington on March 30 and 31, 2016. Burisma was paying Hunter $83,333 a month at the time.

Pozharsky's visit coincided with the dismissal of Ukraine's Chief Prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Shokin was investigating Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, a fugitive energy minister from Ukraine's previous pro-Russian government.

A month before he was removed from office, Shokin issued warrants for the arrest of Zlochevsky and seized all of his "movable and immovable property." Two weeks later, Shokin was fired by then-president Petro Poroshenko, although it took the Ukrainian Parliament another month to approve this decision.

Vice President Biden later admitted in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations that he forced Poroshenko to fire Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in US aid to Ukraine. According to Biden, the attorney general was corrupt. In turn, Shokin said that he was forced to resign due to the persecution of Zlochevsky, who at that time was Hunter's boss.

In a 2019 interview with Ukraine's Strana, Shokin said he planned to "interrogate [Hunter] Biden Jr." before he was fired. This is just one of dozens of interesting stories that pop up when you examine Hunter's laptop with any honesty.

Perhaps the president has plausible explanations for what looks like massive corruption during his vice presidency. However, until now, he and his defenders have simply tried to hush up the matter. This tactic doesn't work because the American people are quick to get to the bottom of the laptop scandal.

According to the Rasmussen poll, which was conducted on March 21st and 22nd, more than two-thirds of voters "closely" followed news reports about Hunter. Nearly half consider the story "very important" and another 18% "somewhat important."

But the poll's most politically deadly point showed that 48% of voters thought Joe Biden would most likely not have been elected president "if the media had fully covered the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election." That's over 45% who still think he would most likely have been elected. This fact shows that the media's refusal to cover the laptop story was, in fact, election interference and speaks to Biden's legitimacy as president. This is an epic scandal that refuses to die down.

https://liberal.com.ua/2022/03/27/white ... top-stink/ - zinc
https://nypost.com/2022/03/23/the-white-house-cant- just-wash-away-the-stink-of-hunter-bidens-laptop/ - original in English

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1

Google Translator

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Biden's new budget ditches FDR-style spending ambitions
Hans Nichols

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President Biden listens as OMB Director Shalanda Young speaks about his FY23 federal budget. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

When President Biden released his first budget, he drew comparisons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His second appears designed to keep him from becoming Herbert Hoover.

Why it matters: The budget blueprint Biden released Monday is an attempt to address the deep economic uncertainty caused by inflation, and avoid an electoral wipeout in the midterm elections. Instead of transformational social spending, there's a smaller placeholder — for projects to be named later.

*By focusing on deficit spending as a cause of inflation, administration officials are starting to parrot an argument Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) made in rejecting Biden’s Build Back Better agenda: new programs that aren’t fully offset can drive up prices.
*The president also wants to assure Americans he'll increase defense spending in the face of new threats from Russia, and fund the police to keep Americans safe at home.
*A year ago, historians Biden hosted at the White House spoke of an election mandate they saw propelling a new New Deal. "I'm no FDR, but … " Axios co-founder Mike Allen quoted him as telling Doris Kearns Goodwin.

What they are saying: In previewing the FY23 budget, officials took credit for the $1.3 trillion deficit drop in 2022.

They also promised to reduce deficit spending by another $1 trillion over the next 10 years.

*“A lower deficit will help ease long-term inflationary pressures and make our fiscal trajectory more sustainable,” Council of Economic Advisers chair Cecilia Rouse told reporters Monday morning.
*“Last year, they were going to pay for their investments over 15 years, and only start to reduce the deficit in the ninth year,” said Joel Friedman, a senior vice president for federal fiscal policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
*“And now, they are reducing the deficit in every year.”

But, but, but: The White House still cites the pandemic, broken supply chains and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the primary drivers of inflation.

*“We see this inflation across the developed world,” Rouse said.
*And Biden officials say the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill will make delivering goods easier while lowering inflation.
*They’re also confident Congress will pass a China competitiveness bill to transform America's semiconductor industry — another legacy accomplishment for the president.

The intrigue: Biden has a placeholder — which officials described as a “deficit-neutral reserve fund” — for any revised climate and social spending bargain he may be able to strike with Manchin and fellow 2022 holdout Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).

*The president said in a tweet Monday: "My father had an expression: 'Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget — and I’ll tell you what you value.'”
*But Manchin has told colleagues he wants half of any new taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans to go toward deficit reduction — not fresh spending.

The big picture: Even with the unemployment rate below 4% and GDP above 5%, voters appear to be blaming Biden for the higher prices they encounter in everyday life.

*Gas is over $5 a gallon in many places and grocery bills are up week after week.
*Biden’s overall approval rating fell to 40% in a new NBC News poll, with only 33% of respondents giving him good marks for his handling of the economy.
*62% of voters think their family’s income is falling behind.

Between the lines: Biden’s plan to impose a 20% minimum tax on the income and unrealized capital gains of households with more than $100 million in assets is a nod toward both progressives and deficit hawks.

*The proposal has echoes of the signature wealth tax pushed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), even though Biden is only targeting income.
*He’s also dedicating the additional $360 billion in revenue for deficit reduction — a priority for centrists.

Go deeper: The president's move to the center extends beyond deficit spending.

*He also proposed more than $32 billion in new spending to fight crime, putting a price tag on his State of the Union call to fund — not defund — the police.
*He's also calling for some $813 billion for military spending, a 4% increase from this year, and additional money for Ukraine.

https://www.axios.com/bidens-new-budget ... 75f38.html

Well, my progressive friends, you can kiss your 'pie-in-the-sky'(cause that's all it was given capitalism, Biden)pro-human agenda cause the US gotta save our Nazi bait from the Bear we baited.(and if they fight to the last Ukrainian they will no doubt consider it 'worth it'.)

Biden is in his comfort zone now, don't you dare contradict him after you've already squandered what minuscule 'agency' you had playing footies with him. What are ya, a Putinist?

The voters are not wrong to reject both parties of capital. That scum like Biden and Trump are the best the bourgeoisie can offer just another indication that the wheels are falling off.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 31, 2022 3:37 pm

Biden’s budget cements turn towards war, police
Nicholas StenderMarch 30, 2022
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/103617

On Monday, President Joe Biden unveiled his 2023 budget, calling for dramatically increased funding for war and the police while allocating all-too-little funding for social services. Out of the total $1.58 trillion of spending outlined in the budget, $813 billion is allocated to the military while $769 billion is allocated for non-military spending. This is a $31 billion increase in funding for the war machine.

There is nothing “defensive” about this spending. The United States has over 1,000 open and secret military bases across the globe. Despite labeling China and Russia the main threats to U.S. “security,” the United States spends close to three times as much on its armed forces than China and Russia combined. In fact, the United States accounts for nearly half of all military spending worldwide.

This threatens to set off a dangerous arms race around the globe. Other nations cannot allow the United States to increase its military spending without a reaction. The working class of the United States would be better served by a policy of peace based on cooperation and respect for the right of nations to self-determination.

Domestically, Biden’s budget promises major increases for the repressive agencies of the government. Federal law enforcement will see an 11% increase in funding to $17.4 billion. The brutal and unaccountable police forces unleashed against the anti-racist protest movement in 2020 will feel emboldened to commit greater repression against social justice movements. Funding for Customs and Border Protection (border patrol) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will rise to $15.3 and $8.1 billion respectively. This represents a massive slap in the face to voters who supported Biden out of opposition to Trump’s racist anti-immigrant policies. Both capitalist parties are united behind an anti-immigrant agenda.

The pro-war, anti-working class budget represents a total retreat from the social spending proposals outlined in Biden’s 2021 “Build Back Better” plan. Pressure from Republicans and right-wing members of Biden’s own party caused the crucial social spending bill to crash and burn late last year. Biden, unwilling to continue (or really even begin) the fight, has abandoned the Build Back Better plan by choosing to not include the proposals in his budget recommendation.

The vast majority of Biden’s climate change proposals, included in the Build Back Better plan, will be left to gather dust. There is no way that $48.2 billion for the Department of Energy and $11.9 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency will make a substantial impact in the struggle against climate change. These numbers make a mockery of the scale of the crisis facing humanity and illustrate clearly how the capitalist system’s logic of quarterly profit above all else threatens billions of people with catastrophe.

The budget plan is essentially a political statement of the Biden administration’s priorities going into the midterm elections in November. It is not legally binding and will be modified by Congress – if history is any guide in the direction of even more funding for the cops and the Pentagon. But with the midterm election in mind, Biden has included a proposal to impose a 20 percent minimum tax rate on the ultra-rich. Of course, it is obscene that billionaires pay little to nothing in taxes, and any policy to address this should be welcomed. But how effective enforcement of this tax would be if it is in fact enacted remains an open question. And at 20 percent, the policy would still leave many workers paying a bigger portion of their income in taxes than billionaires.

The tax proposal aside, Biden’s budget overall represents a hard tack to the right. Ironically, the Republicans may stand the most to gain since bowing to the pressure of the war-hawks, racists, and fossil fuel industry will not strengthen the Democrats’ prospect of electoral victory – a lesson they consistently refuse to learn. Biden’s disgusting concessions to the right wing need to be met by an alternative vision of peace, climate justice, and working class power.

https://www.liberationnews.org/bidens-b ... rationnews

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Biden Means What He Says
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 30 Mar 2022

Biden Means What He Says
President Biden speaking in Warsaw, Poland on Marc 27, 2022
Joe Biden may appear to be a confused old man when he blurts out whatever comes to mind. But his outbursts shouldn't be ignored. They always reveal his plans.

“I mean what I say when I say it!” Those words were spoken by president elect Joe Biden in December 2020 during a meeting with a group described as “civil rights leaders.” Video of the meeting was leaked and Biden’s insulting and dismissive attitude towards Black people was clear even to those who ignored this tendency he has shown throughout his 50 years of public life.

Biden did us a favor by revealing himself and by telling us to pay attention when he speaks. That advice should be followed no matter how strange his words may seem. Even in his bad tempered confusion, Biden always reveals what he is doing.

He recently made news for all the wrong reasons during his recent trip to Europe where he attended a combination G7 summit and NATO meeting in Brussels followed by a trip to Poland.

At the NATO meeting he rather nonchalantly informed the people of the world that they will all suffer because of the misguided effort to punish Russia with sanctions. “With regard to food shortages, yes we did talk about food shortages and it’s going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It's imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well. And because both Russia and Ukraine have been the bread basket of Europe in terms of wheat for example.” Ukraine won’t have a good harvest in the near future and Russia won’t be able to sell what it grows. That means rising prices for those scarce wheat products that may still be available. Biden’s casual tone is an indication he thinks people and governments all over the world should accept the oncoming disaster he created without complaint.

Not content to disrupt global food supplies he also announced his future plans for Ukraine. He said this to 82nd Airborne troops stationed in Poland. "And you’re going to see when you’re there. And you — some — some of you have been there. You’re going to see — you’re going to see women, young people standing — standing the middle of — in front of a damn tank, just saying, 'I’m not leaving. I’m holding my ground.' They’re incredible." Why are U.S. troops going to see anything in Ukraine? He tried to clean it up with “you may have already seen it” but he was saying that he intends to have US troops deployed in a country where Russia already has forces. His photo opportunity turned into the announcement of a hot war.

The most remarkable Biden statement that his apologists call a “gaffe ” also took place in Poland. He gave what was supposed to be a conventional speech portraying the U.S. as the beacon of freedom and democracy while Russia is really bad. His remarks should have been fairly standard and unexceptional but as always Biden told us what he was up to. In referring to Vladimir Putin he said, "This man cannot remain in power."

The clarifications and backpedaling were immediate, but no one could unhear Biden’s words. Despite all denials to the contrary, Biden is after regime change against the Russian government and his actions prove it. The very idea that Russia’s government will fall because of sanctions pressure is ludicrous. But once again, Biden gave a heads up in July 2021 .

“When I was with Mr. Putin, who has a real problem. He's sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else. Nothing else. Their economy is, what, the eighth smallest in the world now, largest in the world? He knows he's in real trouble, which makes him even more dangerous, in my view."

The trope of Russia being a “gas station masquerading as a country” or some other such insult is untrue and a sign that this country’s foreign policy is run by people who are out of touch with reality. It explains why Biden thought he could instigate a proxy war between Ukraine and the Donbas region which would be used to kill the NordStreamII project and sanction Russia. Biden told us that on January 19, 2022 . "And so, I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, etc." Biden and his team of amateurs actually thought they could create a limited crisis in Ukraine that would not result in a serious response from Russia.

Biden does not have the Bill Clinton or Barack Obama gift of gab. They could finesse their way through war crimes in Serbia or Libya with great eloquence. Only those paying close attention could see the havoc and devastation they brought to the world. Biden is often confused but he is focused when he talks about foreign affairs. His delivery may be reminiscent of a crazy old relative that one wants to ignore, but he is deadly serious. From his own words we can see that he believes the U.S. can do whatever it wants and consequences be damned.

The peril of the Biden presidency is unlike any created by an administration in the past few decades. Of course, each administration builds on the work of its predecessor. It would be a mistake to see Biden as being unique. He is unique only in his frankness and shows his hand with every utterance.

He does mean what he says when he says it but what he says must be confronted. If this country were the great democracy that it claims, any president would be afraid to do what Biden has done. Money that covered the uninsured for covid tests is now gone, while Ukraine and the military industrial complex are flush with cash. The saddest thing of all is that the people go along without so much as a peep in protest. Unless that changes Joe Biden’s words will become a terrible reality.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/biden ... at-he-says

He is confused, just not totally out to lunch. It's like the drunk's lament, "I didn't mean to say it but I meant what I said."

It occurs to me that this administration combines the most destructive aspects of the Reagan and Obama administrations. Slick, 'intersectional', senile and dedicated to the supremacy of US capital whatever the cost. Nothing is off the table in this pursuit, nuclear holocaust, environmental catastrophe, it's 'our' way or the highway to hell.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 04, 2022 2:44 pm

New Evidence Links Hunter Biden to Ukrainian Bio Laboratories

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Emails from Hunter Biden’s now-verified laptop show that he worked to secure millions of dollars for a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor connected to research on dangerous pathogens in Ukraine. | Photo: Twitter @EnragedCo

Published 1 April 2022

The Russian parliamentary commission of inquiry into the activities of biological laboratories in Ukraine reported that it considers inviting U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and the son of U.S. President Hunter Biden to testify.


The Russian Ministry of Defense reported to be in possession of the correspondence of Hunter Biden, son of the American president, which confirms his important financial link with the biolaboratories for military use in Ukraine.

The head of the radiological, chemical and biological defense forces of Russia, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, said the documents show his relationship with employees of the U.S. Department of Defense Threat Reduction Agency and Pentagon contractors in Ukraine.

Kirillov told reporters that the content proves that Hunter Biden contributed to creating a financial opportunity to carry out work with pathogens in Ukraine by ensuring the attraction of funds for Black & Veatch and Metabiota.

On Thursday, the Russian State Duma commission in charge of probing the activities of biological laboratories in Ukraine announced that it is considering inviting U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and the son of the U.S. President, Hunter Biden, to testify.

Earlier, State Duma (Lower House) Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin demanded an explanation from U.S. President Joe Biden about his son’s links to Ukrainian biolaboratory military experiments.

The politician wrote on Telegram that it is not just any person involved in the creation of biolabs in Ukraine, but the very President of the United States.

He stressed that the investment fund run by his son is one of the financiers of research and implementation of the U.S. military-biological program in that country. Obviously, Joe Biden, both as a father, and as a head of State, knew about these activities, Volodin said.

According to the deputy, the U.S. president is obliged to explain to the international community the facts discovered by the Russian forces in Ukraine, while the U.S. Congress should conduct its own investigation.

Nuland, for her part, speaking at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on March 9, admitted there are facilities in Ukraine where research in the field of biology is being conducted, and Washington is trying to prevent them from falling under the control of Russian forces.

However, evidence of an emergency cleanup by Kiev of traces of the military biological program implemented in Ukraine and financed by the U.S. Department of Defense was revealed.

According to Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, they received intelligence from employees of Ukrainian biological laboratories about the emergency destruction of particularly dangerous pathogens on February 24, including plague, anthrax, tularemia, and cholera.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/New ... -0001.html

Looks like hubris in US politicians is not limited to those of the Orange Hair kind. But hey, it's just Business, and any restriction is impinging upon the FREEDOM of some scumbag to make gobs of money regardless of the 'fallout'.

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Scoop: FEC fines DNC and Clinton for Trump dossier hoax
by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist | | March 30, 2022 11:27 AM

The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory.

The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm.

A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.

Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term.


The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated.

It added that neither the campaign nor the party conceded to lying but won’t contest the finding. “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, respondent[s] does not concede, but will not further contest the commission's finding of probable cause to proceed” with the probe, said the FEC.

The FEC, in a memo to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which filed its complaint over three years ago, said it fined Clinton’s treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000.

The memo, shared with Secrets, is to be made public in a month.

Dan Backer, who brought the complaint on behalf of the foundation, which focuses on free speech and the First Amendment, told Secrets, “This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I'm proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation proved that with pluck and grit, Americans who stand with integrity can stand up to the Clinton machine and other corrupt political elites.”

Clinton has in the past defended her campaign’s spending for the information and the work of her campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, with Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier and hired former British spy Christopher Steele to dig further on Trump.

Trump has assailed the dossier as full of lies, and the FBI has called it fake, but only after the damage settled in on the president.

Republicans have continued to press for charges against Clinton.

Backer, with Washington’s Chalmers & Adams law firm, held out hope for further action against the former first lady. He said, “Hillary Clinton and her cronies willfully engaged in the greatest political fraud in history — destroying our nation's faith in the electoral process, and it’s high time they were held accountable. I hope this is only the beginning.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... ssier-hoax

Whadda party....'the lesser evil'....

All of the bad shit Donald Trump has done over the course of his too long life and they had to go and make up shit. There ar two reasons for this:

1) Much of the evil he has done is perfectly legal in the Bourgeois States of Amerika. Most of the rest while technically or even outright illegal is the kind of stuff the rich employ shoals of lawyers for. Prosecuting people for doing what rich people do will never fly in the bourgeoisie state. So they had to find another reason.

2) The people managing the imperial project had Russia in their sights and Trump was then thought and proved subsequently to be 'unreliable' in the field of foreign affairs. Indeed, he doesn't understand a goddamn thing from any viewpoint other than his own self-aggrandizement. And so, an alliance of the Dems and the Spooks, a recurring situation, a 'twofer' combining foreign affairs and domestic politics.

Not only the greater evil but stupid and means too.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 13, 2022 3:24 pm

Black Political Distraction
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 06 Apr 2022

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Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama at the White House, April 5, 2022 (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)

Having a new Black SCOTUS justice or bringing Barack Obama out of retirement for a photo opportunity won't raise Joe Biden's poll numbers or stave off defeat in the mid-term elections. Only fulfilling campaign promises and giving the people what they need will help Biden and the democrats.

The Black political class and the democratic party are once again infantilizing Black voters instead of giving them what they need and want. They pass useless legislation and stage political performances because they have lost the trust of the people. Biden’s poll numbers continue to drop. He now has a lackluster 40 percent approval rating for the simple reason that he hasn’t done what he promised during his 2020 presidential campaign.

Biden said he would provide student loan debt relief, raise the minimum wage, and improve the government response to the covid crisis. His friends in corporate media covered for him by claiming that stimulus and child tax credit payments would “cut child poverty in half.” That claim was never true and now that tax credit is gone along with the much touted Build Back Better legislation. Not only does covid continue to kill, with 1 million dead in the past two years, but the millions of Americans who are uninsured no longer have free treatment, testing, or vaccinations.

The Black political class have so little to show for their efforts that they now resort to passing legislation so meaningless that it insults the collective intelligence of Black people. One example is the passage of the Emmett Till Anti Lynching bill. Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation when the public murder of Black people was a common occurrence. But now the lynchers are not local white citizens councils and Ku Klux Klan members. It is the police who kill an average of three people every day, and one of those persons will be Black.

Despite this continuing bloodshed committed against their constituents, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has never even attempted to pass legislation which would protect the public from summary police execution. There is plenty of kente cloth and posturing but the CBC go along with Biden’s plan to add $30 billion in funding to states and localities to hire more police, the people who actually commit lynch law in this country.

When they aren’t virtue signaling about lynching, Black politicians are passing legislation about hairstyles. The legislation, Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN Act) would prohibit discrimination against people with natural hair. The House of Representatives passed the CROWN Act but it faces what is called an uncertain future in the Senate. That means it probably won’t be taken up at all.

No Black person is in favor of hair based discrimination, but there are far more important issues that need to be addressed. The democrats are rightfully worried about the November 2022 mid-term elections and are in danger of losing control of the House. Their response is what one would expect from a faux leftish party.

They bring out their faux leftish former president, Barack Obama . Obama appeared at the white house to celebrate the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as Obamacare. Obamacare enshrined corporate control over health care and gave people the right to purchase insurance which is too expensive. Medicaid expansion was the most important aspect of Obamacare but it was never accepted by most of the southern states, the region with the largest Black population.

Pulling out the Barack Obama card didn’t help Hillary Clinton secure votes where she needed them in 2016. Similarly, his presence is unlikely to help Biden in 2022. Biden and the democrats are hamstrung by their reliance on the oligarchic class, the people he promised, “Nothing will fundamentally change.” They won’t allow Build Back Better or student loan debt relief or universal health care and so the people go without what they need the most. Thus the CROWN Act is born.

The problem for Biden and the democrats is that the entire political system is in disrepute. They post on Twitter about expensive health care and give the impression they will actually do something about this crisis. But they can’t fool all the people all the time. Inflation is eating away at the well being of millions of people. The party in power takes a hit when times are hard. Ridiculous propaganda about “Putin’s price hike” won’t get the votes they need.

Senator Cory Booker may wax elegiac about the CROWN Act, or move Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown-Jackson to tears with maudlin oratory, but those performances won’t move the needle as much as democrats hope. Booker and his colleagues are joined at the hip with Biden and none of them even go through the motions of asking a hard question.

Ultimately the people are the losers, getting none of what they need while being fed very obvious propaganda. It is true that nothing has fundamentally changed. Black voters know it and they will not fall for the charade on Election Day.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/black ... istraction

The Democratic Party thinks it owns the Black vote, about par for crackers. Naming a Black woman to the Supremes is mere window dressing, I honestly haven't paid much attention to her history or views but can be sure she will not seriously challenge anything to do with economic justice else she wouldn't have gotten the nod. No doubt will concern herself with culture war distractions, keeping the pot stirred.

Liberal Russophobia and War Propaganda
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 13 Apr 2022

Image

U.S. liberals are the worst perpetrators of Russophobic behavior. They are most likely to follow the dictates of corporate media and the democratic party and proudly take part in discriminatory acts. But foolish bans of anything Russian are just the most visible indication that war propaganda is at the root of the hysteria.

The city of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts prohibit discrimination based upon race, color, gender, disability, religion, and national origin. Such discrimination is prohibited by most cities, states, and the federal government as well. But one wouldn’t know that due to a plethora of discriminatory acts carried out against Russian nationals. The latest perpetrator is the Boston Athletic Association (BAA) , which announced that citizens of Russia and Belarus who reside in those countries will be barred from participating in the Boston marathon taking place on April 18, 2022. The war in Ukraine, years of Russiagate hysteria, and corporate media demonization of Vladimir Putin and all Russians have led to this moment of dubious distinction.

The weaknesses of what passes for a left wing movement have been fully exposed ever since Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Of course many people who are called leftists and even those who consider themselves as such are in fact just liberals. They do not stand against imperialism as any leftist ought to do. The eight-year long U.S./NATO scheme to use Ukraine as a weapon against Russia should be universally condemned by anyone claiming to be in that cohort. Leftists can have principled disagreement about Putin’s decision, but they should not ignore the culpability of the U.S. and NATO and their support for the 2014 coup which overturned an election and put neo-Nazi groups in power.

Their confusion on Russia and Ukraine is emblematic of their confusion about so many other issues. The faux left are a highly problematic group, making common cause with the democratic party wing of the war party, and ignoring the war crimes committed by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden. Not only do they fail to ask, “What about?,” but they have no critique of the U.S. role which instigated this crisis. They say nothing about the U.S. and its NATO allies refusing to engage in negotiations which might end the suffering of the Ukrainian people they claim to care about so much.

So deep is the rot that they say nothing about increasingly blatant and bizarre examples of Russophobia. Russian cats cannot enter international cat shows, a Russian singer was fired from the Metropolitan Opera when she refused to denounce her government, an orchestra canceled a festival featuring the music of Russian composer Tchaikovsky, and a tribute to space exploration removed the name of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin from the program.

It is tempting to snicker about the denial of recognition to Russian cats, but the lack of opposition to the Boston marathon action is shameful indeed. People who see themselves as enlightened, and even intellectually and morally superior to others are silent in the face of an obviously unfair and illegal act.

The BAA is typical of U.S. elite organizations. It makes a big show of proving itself diverse and equitable by establishing a Boston Runners Collaborative whose mission is “... expanding access to running and walking in Boston with a focus on communities of color.” The outreach was in part motivated by the murder of Ahmaud Arbery , whose memory is not certainly not honored by phony shows of racial solidarity. So the BAA used the cold blooded murder of a Black man to jump on a superficial liberal bandwagon and illegally banned people who live in a country their government is telling them to hate.

Of course the BAA is not alone. Politicians, pundits and corporate media all tell us to “stand with Ukraine” and to call Putin a war criminal. American presidents are never connected to war crimes, even when they invade Iraq and kill thousands of people, destroy Libya and kill thousands of people, or enact sanctions and steal government assets that kill thousands of people. The war criminal category is only deemed appropriate for leaders the U.S. doesn’t like.

U.S. liberal elites are as much in the thrall of the dictates of their leadership as the members of January 6th mob who attacked the capital. Their critical thinking skills are practically non-existent, or they go along to get along, or silence themselves due to cowardice. The end result is much worse than a Russian missing a race.

The blue and yellow flags and whipping up of hysteria have a very important and dangerous aim. The goal of the propagandists is to get the country in the mood for war. When the slippery slope gets steeper and the public are convinced that the use of “tactical nukes” or other such nonsense is acceptable, the entire world will be at risk.

Perhaps the plight of Russian and Belarusian athletes isn’t viewed as an important human rights issue. Of course world leaders do much worse to millions more people. But every acceptance of what may seem to be a minor slight can lead to major implications. Liberalism itself is a great danger. The censoring of left voices in media and the conscious effort to disappear all but the state narrative are liberal led efforts and lead to dehumanizing whomever the president and his friends in corporate media may choose to target.

So let the Russians run. Acquiescing to this misguided effort will lead to greater dangers in the future.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/liber ... propaganda

The excuse is always that they fear being portrayed as 'weak on defense', this a legacy of the Vietnam War at which time some Dems came out against the war only after it was clearly a losing proposition, post-Tet. But they have historically been the greater warmongers among the parties of capital. JFK and Hube Humphrey were 'McCarthy-ites' par excellance. Yet since LBJ folded the anti-war movement has been owned by the Dems. Obama and Clinton were both war criminals but were hardly criticized by the mainstream movement. Funny how that mainstream only gets involved when a Republican is in the White House. Like Serbia, like Fallujah, like now.

Now who is the 'lesser evil'?

********************************

A LIFE OF LUXURY AND CORRUPTION: HUNTER BIDEN'S USE OF UKRAINIAN MONEY
11 Apr 2022 , 1:45 pm .

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President Biden's son's laptop contains hundreds of thousands of text messages, emails, photos and videos that narrate his controversial past (Photo: EFE)

Around this time last year, the British newspaper Daily Mail reported that it had acquired a copy of Hunter Biden's laptop hard drive, which had previously been discovered in a Delaware repair shop.

As of October 2020, the US media had already published several stories based on correspondence found on Hunter's computer. But at the time its authenticity was not confirmed, so Democrats called the information an alleged Russian campaign to discredit then-candidate Joe Biden.

The New York Post , which first published the story about the computer, received an outright boycott. Social platforms flagged all stories as fake and removed them from search engines. The media followed that same line of denying its veracity.


After Joe Biden was elected president, he and his son went on the counterattack. Hunter published an autobiography with the poignant title Beautiful Things . In it, Hunter plays the victim. He confesses a few things, since he couldn't deny the wild lifestyle, but leaves out most of the details.

Immediately after the appearance of the book, the British Daily Mail began to publish the verified content of letters and photos of Hunter Biden that evidenced his involvement in criminal activities of drug trafficking and prostitution. A massive archive of 103,000 text messages, 154,000 emails, more than 2,000 photos and dozens of videos is packed with shocking revelations.

In the United States, it's not uncommon to get that kind of content on a person's computer because under that system, drug addiction, prostitution, and alcohol are normal behavior for too many people. However, being the son of the president of the United States and knowing the war context to which the US government has led against Russia, it is good to remember what Hunter did with the money he got for his corrupt and criminal ties ( Burisma and biolaboratories ) in Ukraine .

HUNTER HIGH, HUNTER DRUNK, HUNTER WITH PROSTITUTES

Hunter created a method that allowed him to divert money from foreign businessmen who tried to ingratiate themselves with Joe Biden, when the latter was vice president of the United States. In addition to receiving money from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, The Washington Post published an investigation that confirmed key details of Biden's son's business relationship with Chinese partners. He is accused of accepting millions of bribes in 2017-2018 from the energy company CEFC.

Hunter spent all the money from the corruption on ostentatious consumption: a luxurious Porsche, an Audi, a Ford Raptor truck, a Range Rover, a Land Rover, a BMW, a Chevrolet truck, an $80,000 yacht and club memberships. of Elite. Hunter also spent thousands of dollars on prostitutes, alcohol and drugs.

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Photos of him with prostitutes abound on Hunter Biden's hard drive (Photo: Hunter Laptop/Daily Mail)

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A Ford Raptor model pickup truck was on Hunter's bill for payment (Photo: Hunter Laptop/Daily Mail)

He wrote numerous women offering to "go out and party" in exchange for money. Photos of scales on which Hunter weighed crack , photos of him with naked girls, and other details were found on the computer. There are messages from Biden's son to a woman listed in her address book as "Oksana Russian" about paying her and another lady $2,000. And two other Russians, "Kristina Matveeva and Rimma Elmeeva", sent him text messages asking for money.

The Daily Mail photos show Hunter naked, Hunter on drugs, Hunter drunk, Hunter with a prostitute, Hunter with a crack pipe, Hunter with two prostitutes and a dog . On the other hand, they show him with a completely damaged mouth and teeth reminiscent of those of crack addicts who have been consuming it for years.

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Photo of Hunter Biden's ruined teeth (Photo: Hunter Laptop/Daily Mail)

The son of the president of the United States uploaded videos of his orgies on the most popular porn websites and for a while these were in the public domain. Around five hundred videos were recorded and uploaded by Hunter Biden.

In 2019, Hunter was completely broke. He had 44 cents in his bank account. An email from his accountant in October 2018 shows that for that year his tax debt had totaled $804,000, including $600,000 in personal taxes and $204,000 for one of the businesses from which he received related money from the company. Ukrainian gas Burisma.

When he could no longer withdraw money from his account due to debts, he approached bankers for $20,000 from his daughter's college savings account, but was turned down.

UKRAINE FIGHTS TO DEFEND THE VICES OF PRESIDENT BIDEN'S SON
The emails show that Hunter was worried he "could go to jail." According to the Daily Mail, her laptop contains an email in which she pleads with his father to run for president of the United States to save his reputation.

"If you don't run for election, I'll never have a chance to save myself," reads the text of the February 2019 message, the screenshot of which cites the Daily Mail . This also shows that the American president knew everything about his son. He regularly pulled him out of parties, he covered it up, he lied to reporters.

Hunter once had an affair with his older brother's wife, who was dying of cancer right at the time. Joe Biden then endorsed Hunter's lie that the relationship began only after his brother's death. Messages recovered from his computer hard drive show that while he was dating her sister-in-law, he was also having sexual conversations with her sister.

As vice president overseeing Ukraine, Biden Sr. was aware of Hunter's appointment to a high-paying position at Burisma. And when the corrupt company was questioned by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, the US Vice President flew to kyiv and forced the Ukrainian authorities to remove the Prosecutor General.

So Hunter is not just a personal problem for President Biden. He is a major factor in the last two Democratic administrations, which has made Washington's foreign policy a financing channel for the purchase of drugs, prostitutes and extravagant luxuries.

Now that the Ukrainian government is dutifully heeding the U.S. order to confront Russia militarily, one has to wonder if it's really worth sacrificing just so Hunter can buy another crack shot and share it with a prostitute on his 80-year-old yacht. One thousand dollars.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/un ... -ucraniano

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Scandalous...and not uncommon behavior among rich and powerful junkies and sots. What's really scandalous is that the press is blase' about it, tho were it a Trump the ruling class's keyboard warriors would be blowing 60 amp fuses to whip up hysteria. I guess they're too busy doing that for the 'Ukraine project'.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Apr 14, 2022 2:23 pm

Selling Albright as a ‘Feminist Icon’: Was the Price Worth It?
BRYCE GREENE

When Clinton-era Secretary of State Madeleine Albright died of cancer last month, a stream of fawning obituaries hailed her as a hero of NATO, a feminist icon and a “champion of human rights and diplomacy” (CNN, 3/24/22).

Most coverage failed to levy any criticism at all of Albright’s actions in government, despite her presiding over a critical turning point in the American Empire. For the foreign policy establishment, the ’90s under Albright solidified the US self-image as the “indispensable nation,” ready and able to impose its will on the world, a position with repercussions that still echo today. Instead of critically exploring this legacy, corporate media opted for celebration and mythmaking.

‘Icon’ and ‘trailblazer’
Reuters: Madeleine Albright, former U.S. secretary of state and feminist icon, dies at 84
Reuters‘ obituary (3/23/22) for “the first female US secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon.”

Some of the coverage focused on Albright as a “feminist icon” (Reuters, 3/23/22; USA Today, 3/23/22) breaking the glass ceiling. A commonly used term was “trailblazer” (e.g., NPR, 3/24/22; Washington Post, 3/23/22).
Madeleine Albright Was the First ‘Most Powerful Woman’ in US History.” CNN (3/24/22) went as far as to call Albright an early progenitor of “feminist foreign policy.”
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Reuters‘ obituary (3/23/22) for “the first female US secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon.”

NPR (3/24/22) claimed that Albright “left a rich legacy for other women in public service to follow.” BuzzFeed (3/23/22) found time to discuss the meaning of the jewelry she wore when meeting foreign leaders.

There is nothing wrong with remarking on the significance of a woman taking charge in the historically male-dominated halls of US power. However, it is far more important to take a critical look at her policies, including whether they jibe with the tenets of feminism as generally understood—something few in the media chose to do.

Media fell into this same trap when praising Gina Haspel as the first female head of the CIA, or when they applauded the top military contractors for having female heads (FAIR.org, 6/28/20). Similarly, Albright’s violent legacy is being obscured by seemingly progressive language.

‘More children than died in Hiroshima’
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Madeleine Albright telling 60 Minutes (5/12/96) that half a million dead children is a price worth paying.
One of the first things many progressives think of when they think of Albright is her championing of the sanctions against Iraq during the ’90s. In between the two US wars on Iraq, Albright presided over crushing sanctions aimed at turning the Iraqi population against the Ba’athist government. These sanctions cut off crucial supplies to the nation, starving its people. A UN survey found that the sanctions led to hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children.

When Albright was confronted with this figure in an interview with CBS‘s Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes (5/12/96; Extra!, 11–12/01), Albright’s response was cold:

“We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima,” Stahl said. “And, you know, is the price worth it?”

“I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”


The UN numbers have since been revised downward, but the unavoidable fact is that Albright accepted the number she was given, took willful responsibility for the deaths and concluded that they were “worth it” for the purpose of turning the Iraqi people against their government.
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I'm an Iraqi and I Remember Madeleine Albright for Who She Truly Was
Ahmed Twaij (Al Jazeera English via Common Dreams, 3/27/22): “The most prominent memory of Albright that I have in my mind is from an interview she gave to CBS 60 Minutes in 1996.”
While so many Americans seem to have forgotten this shameful display, the rest of the world has not. Ahmed Twaij, an Iraqi writing in Al Jazeera (3/27/22), said that his “most prominent memory of Albright” was that notorious interview:

As an Iraqi, the memory of Albright will forever be tainted by the stringent sanctions she helped place on my country at a time when it was already devastated by years of war.

Despite its resonance around the world, the quote wasn’t even referenced in many of the retrospectives FAIR reviewed. USA Today (3/23/22) mentioned that Albright received “criticism” for calling the deaths “worth it,” and Newsweek (3/23/22, 3/25/22, 3/23/22) mentioned the quote in some of its coverage. But it went missing from the New York Times (3/23/22, 3/25/22), Washington Post (3/23/22), NBC.com (3/23/22), CNN.com (3/24/22, 3/26/22), New Yorker (3/24/22) and The Hill (3/24/22).

Guaranteed shootdown

Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recounts in his book how Albright suggested to him that the US fly a plane over Iraqi airspace low enough to be shot down, thus giving the US an excuse to attack Saddam Hussein. Shelton recalls Albright’s words:

What we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event—something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough—and slow enough—so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?

Albright was quickly rebuffed, but she was later able to get her wish of war in Iraq. Her efforts culminated in the Iraq Liberation Act, signed in October 1998, which made seeking regime change in Iraq official US policy.

As the New York Times (3/23/22) mentioned in its obituary, Albright threatened the Ba’athist leader with bombing that year if he didn’t open the country to weapons inspectors. Even though Kofi Annan brokered an agreement on the inspectors, the US bombed anyway in December 1998.

The Times didn’t explore these events further—not mentioning that the administration justified the bombing using the debunked pretext of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction—and instead continued ahead with its largely positive obituary.

Rewriting Yugoslav history
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When Time magazine (5/9/99) called Kosovo “Albright’s War,” it meant that as a compliment.
One of Albright’s most notable moments during her tenure as secretary of state was the 78-day bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999. Today, the bombing is hailed as a major victory by the forces of democracy, and Albright’s role is cast in a positive light.

NPR’s three sentences (3/24/22) on the subject show the dominant version of the events:

As chief diplomat in the late ’90s, Albright confronted the deadly targeting of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Time magazine dubbed it Madeleine’s War. Airstrikes in 1999 eventually led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces.

Americans were told at the time that the war solidified the US as “an indispensable nation asserting its morality as well as its interests to assure stability, stop thugs and prevent human atrocities” (Time, 5/9/99). The Washington Post (3/23/22) seized on this myth, calling Albright “an ardent and effective advocate against mass atrocities.” In this story, she is a hero for mobilizing the timid American giant to use its military might on behalf of humanitarian and democratic ideals.

But the truth is that the bombing Albright advocated was motivated less by humanitarian concerns and more by the US goal of breaking up Yugoslavia and establishing a NATO-friendly client state via the Kosovo Liberation Army. Indeed, the US’s negotiating tactic with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was to offer the choice of either occupation by NATO or destruction. As a member of Albright’s negotiating team anonymously told reporters (Extra!, 7–8/99): “We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that’s what they are going to get.”

Exacerbating bloodshed

One fact that quickly debunks the humanitarian pretext is that the US-led bombing greatly exacerbated the bloodshed. According to Foreign Affairs (9–10/99), 2,500 died during the preceding civil war, but “during the 11 weeks of bombardment, an estimated 10,000 people died violently in the province.” And while Albanian civilians bore the brunt of the violence during the NATO attacks, in the year preceding the bombing, British Defense Secretary George Robertson told the Parliament that the NATO-backed KLA “were responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav authorities had been” (Monthly Review, 10/07).

As Edward Herman and David Peterson wrote in their detailed essay on Yugoslavia in the Monthly Review (10/07), the US and NATO

were key external factors in the initiation of ethnic cleansing, in keeping it going, and in working toward a violent resolution of the conflicts that would keep the United States and NATO relevant in Europe, and secure NATO’s dominant position in the Balkans.

The concern for ethnic minorities was merely a pretext offered to the American people, and lapped up wholeheartedly by a compliant mass media.

Along with liberal hawks like Samantha Power, Albright helped weaponize human rights and legitimize unsanctioned “humanitarian interventions” around the world. This showcase of unilateral and illegal violence has had direct repercussions around the world, paving the way for US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya—to say nothing of the current Russian attack on Ukraine.

Promoting hawkish policy
CBS: Madeleine Albright, first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state, dies at 84
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CBS (3/23/22): “Albright and [President Bill] Clinton clashed with then-UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali as she advocated fiercely for U.S. and democratic interests.”
Much of the coverage framed Albright’s Clinton-era career arc as one in which she repeatedly failed to get the US to play a larger role in advancing its ideals in the post-Cold War world. This fight included taking on international institutions that didn’t understand American exceptionalism.
Albright clashed with then–UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali “as she advocated fiercely for US and democratic interests,” in the words of CBS (3/23/22). She and Boutros-Ghali butted heads over the US role in peacekeeping operations during crises in Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia.

In the end, Albright dissented against the entire UN Security Council, using the US veto power to deny Boutros-Ghali a second term as secretary general. His ouster paved the way for the more US-friendly Kofi Annan, as the “Albright Doctrine” took center stage.

In its cover story on “Albright’s War,” Time (5/9/99) described the Albright doctrine as

a tough-talking, semimuscular interventionism that believes in using force—including limited force such as calibrated air power, if nothing heartier is possible—to back up a mix of strategic and moral objectives.

In other words, Albright advocated a policy of unilateral intervention instead of an global order based on international law and mutual obligations. The US could assert itself whenever and wherever it determined the “strategic and moral objectives” were of sufficient importance.

The diplomat was more blunt about the US chauvinism imbued in the doctrine when she spoke to NBC (2/19/98) in 1998:

If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.

‘Albright was right’
The West would be wise to heed Madeleine Albright’s lessons on foreign policy
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A CNN op-ed (3/24/22) positively cited Albright’s comment to Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Colin Powell: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”
The media reflect positively on this mindset that “blended her profound moral values from her childhood experience in Europe with US strategic interests,” according to the New Yorker (3/24/22). Some suggested that this mindset should continue to animate American policy.

CNN.com (3/24/22) published an opinion by Elmira Bayrasli that claimed, “The West would be wise to heed Madeleine Albright’s lessons on foreign policy.” She embraced Albright’s hawkish label, saying that “advocating the oppressed and actively upholding human rights…sometimes meant using the might of the American military.”

Hillary Clinton, whose “trailblazing” also obscured the deadly cost of her foreign policy initiatives, published a guest essay in the New York Times (3/25/22) under the headline “Madeleine Albright Warned Us, and She Was Right.” To Clinton, the world still needs Albright’s “clear-eyed view of a dangerous world, and her unstinting faith in…the unique power of the American idea.”

While some pieces were clear in calling her a hawk (e.g., Washington Post, 3/23/22), CNN (3/24/22) wrote, “It is a mistake to see Albright exclusively as a hawk,” because she sat on the board of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and supported the activities of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The Hill (3/24/22) also highlighted her support for these organizations, noting that for Albright, “democracy and human rights…were integral to American foreign policy.”

The NDI exists under the umbrella of the National Endowment for Democracy, a deceptively named organization that spends tens of millions of dollars annually promoting and installing US-friendly governments around the world. USAID has long been used as a front for intelligence and soft power initiatives. During Albright’s time in office, USAID was heavily involved in facilitating the further destruction of Haitian democracy, among a myriad of similar activities around the world.

These organizations have been well-documented as extensions of US power and bases for subversive activities, but this history is dismissed in favor of the government’s line that they are genuine conduits for democracy. The methods of empire have evolved, but the Albright coverage continues to obscure this fact. Regime change efforts can be recast as efforts to spread democracy around the world if the press refuses to scrutinize the official line.

NATO expansion
Madeleine Albright's NATO expansion helped keep Russia in check
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“Madeleine Albright’s NATO expansion helped keep Russia in check,” argued MSNBC’s Noah Rothman (3/24/22)—even as NATO expansion, as predicted, had sparked a bloody Russian invasion of Ukraine.
NATO expansion, a major initiative during Albright’s tenure, has come to the forefront of US discussion in recent months. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is in part a result of the decades-long expansion of the NATO military alliance, despite the warnings of US foreign policy veterans that the expansion was a “policy error of historic proportions.” (See FAIR.org, 3/4/22.)

In 1998, legendary diplomat George Kennan (New York Times, 5/2/98) called NATO expansion “a tragic mistake.” He predicted, “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies…and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.”

Kennan’s words have proven prophetic, but most articles on Albright’s passing wrote fondly of her role in NATO expansion and the accompanying anti-Russian politics. CNN.com (3/23/22), in an article headlined “Albright Predicted Putin’s Strategic Disaster in Ukraine,” declared that the former top diplomat “died just as the murderous historic forces that she had spent her career trying to quell are raging in Europe again.”

MSNBC.com (3/24/22) declared that “​​Madeleine Albright’s NATO Expansion Helped Keep Russia in Check.” Columnist Noah Rothman explained that “only the compelling deterrent power of counterforce stays the hand of land-hungry despots.”

The New Yorker (3/24/22) described NATO expansion as one of Albright’s “major achievements,” despite acknowledging that in the wake of the policy, “​​​​US interests are indeed threatened more than at any time in three decades by Russian aggression in Europe.”

Some pieces were more reflective. The Conversation (3/24/22) went into detail on her role in expanding NATO, acknowledging that “Albright’s curt dismissal of Russia’s security concerns might seem to have been ill-judged…in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

A time for reflection

In the United States, political figures are merged with the culture of celebrity. Too many judge politicos by their force of personality or lines on their resume, rather than the material changes that occurred on their watch. The substantive history of US policymaking is rarely brought up, and political discussion remains surface-level and incomplete.

This celebrity culture is on full display whenever a venerated member of the Washington establishment passes away. We’ve seen similar soft media coverage after the deaths of George H.W. Bush (FAIR.org, 12/7/18), Colin Powell (FAIR.org, 10/28/21) and Donald Rumsfeld (FAIR.org, 7/2/21).

By now, the idea of the United States as the global policeman has been discredited enough to warrant at least some pushback in the corporate press. The passing of one of America’s leading interventionists should be a time for reflection. How did this person’s policies contribute to what is going on now?

Instead, the media decided to use Albright’s death to reinforce the myths and legitimize the policies that have led to so much destruction around the world.

https://fair.org/home/selling-albright- ... -worth-it/

She was Bill Clinton's monster, a Democratic monster. That she was and is considered a role model by establishment 'feminists' speaks volumes about establishment feminism. She was selected because she guaranteed continuity of policy, that glass ceiling thing a bonus for the Owners who care about such things.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 20, 2022 10:27 pm

Who cares about climate change? Biden brings back E15 gas
E15 is no better than gasoline for climate change, and it lowers fuel efficiency.
JONATHAN M. GITLIN - 4/12/2022, 12:51 PM

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Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

The US looks set to use so-called "E15" gasoline throughout the summer. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden will announce that the US Environmental Protection Agency will issue a national emergency waiver allowing the use of the ethanol-gasoline blend between June 1 and September 15 as Americans complain about high fuel prices. Currently, the use of that fuel is illegal because of smog regulations.

Ethanol-gasoline blends became popular during the 2000s as a potential panacea for solving US energy dependence on the Middle East as well as a way to clean up the climate. It also always played well in the Iowa caucuses, as it gives us something to do with our immense corn surplus.

E85 fuel—a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline—rapidly fell out of favor. But 98 percent of US gas stations offer E10, a blend of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. At this concentration, the ethanol oxygenates the fuel and increases its octane rating; it also stretches the country's supply of gasoline by diluting it.

As the name suggests, E15 is a mix of 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline. It's much less common in the US due to the EPA's restriction on summer sales (because of the greater evaporation during hot weather), but in 2019, former President Donald Trump approved its use year-round. In 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the EPA had exceeded its authority in doing so.

The White House says that it is making the move "to address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump as a result of Putin’s Price Hike," despite a 15 percent fall in oil prices over the past three weeks. The administration also says that "E15 can save a family 10 cents per gallon of gas on average," although the reduction in fuel efficiency due to the lower energy density of E15 might make it difficult for anyone to actually notice.

It's also bad news for anyone concerned about climate change. Although biofuel blends were supposed to save us, growing energy-intensive corn to dilute gasoline is probably worse than just burning the gas itself, as Ars' Tim de Chant covered in February. Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest report with the finding that we have to massively cut carbon emissions within the next three years if we want to have a chance at limiting warming to even just 2°C globally.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/04/wh ... k-e15-gas/

At least Biden's better than Trump.....................................................

**********************************

The Ukraine Crisis Can't Save Biden
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 20 Apr 2022

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ABC News Video, April 4, 2022

The U.S. propaganda victory over Russia will do Joe Biden and the democrats little good. Their willingness to act on their promises and meet the people's needs will be the deciding factors in determining their political fate.

The United States, its NATO allies, and their partners in corporate media are engaging in an unprecedented war propaganda effort. Their goal is to get and maintain public support for their actions against Russia which are playing out in Ukraine. The messaging is constant and isn’t at all subtle. One cannot go online for any purpose without seeing exhortations to help Ukrainian children, buy products colored in blue and yellow, or somehow “stand with Ukraine.”

What passes for news about Ukraine is usually little more than anti-Russian screeds, sourced by “anonymous officials” eager to reveal claims that Vladimir Putin has untold billions of dollars stashed away, or that Russians are protesting, refusing to fight, or fleeing their country. In these stories Putin has been fooled by his aides, is purging the intelligence apparatus and is either depressed or in fits of rage, depending on the source of the anti-Putin invective. We are told that the Russian economy is crumbling, every atrocity is committed by Russians only, and that Ukraine’s president Volodomyr Zelensky is a perfect human being. Documented proof that he has a fortune in offshore accounts has been disappeared by the media which once reported on these activities.

Joe Biden and his foreign policy team of incompetent ideologues hope to convince Americans to accept food shortages, rising gas prices, and the risk of a hot war. The steady diet of dangerous nonsense is a necessity for them. The game is up if the people begin to question what they are being told.

Then again, while there may not be mass rejection of the Ukraine narrative there is certainly a mass rejection of Biden himself. The latest opinion poll shows him with a very low 33% approval rating. The average person may not be well versed in the history of U.S. policy towards Russia, but they know when things don’t add up and they know that the president is not a well man. Rambling, incoherent speeches punctuated by shouts of “war criminal” and “genocide” don’t cut it when working people can barely afford to put gas in the tank. We are left with a mass gaslighting effort that has created the desired effect of generating fear and or hatred towards Russia, but that hasn’t increased satisfaction about the country’s direction.

Biden’s actions aren’t very surprising. He was the Ukraine point person after the Barack Obama coup in 2014. He was always one of the most hawkish democrats and came into the presidency with Antony Blinken, Victoria Nuland and the same cast of characters who first violated Ukraine’s sovereignty. He hoped to instigate Russia and kill the NordStreamII pipeline and sanction Russia. He didn’t expect the full incursion that he spent months saying would happen.

Now he is hoisted on his own petard, trying to bully other nations into condemning Russia when it isn’t in their interests to do so, and causing world wide suffering in a futile effort to destroy Russia’s economy. Sanctions against Russia have increased fuel prices all over the world. Disruptions in wheat production will reduce Ukraine’s harvest and decrease supplies in places that had no connection with this ginned up conflict. The anti-Russian propaganda is working but the pro-Biden effort is not, hence the public disapproval.

Millions of Americans are now convinced that Putin is evil and Zelensky is good, but they still have doubts about their own president. The corporate media pro-Biden propaganda said that he was the most progressive president since Franklin Roosevelt and had cut child poverty in half. Now the child tax credit is gone, Build Back Better is up in the air, and promises to relieve student loan debt are a distant memory. Biden and his team think that spin about “Putin’s price hikes” will help to minimize political damage but the polls are an indication of a sour national mood.

Biden is mistaken if he thinks that Putin hatred is enough to save his and the democratic party’s political fortunes. They will sink or swim based on how well they meet needs here at home. Right now, public money that we’re told can’t be used for a child tax credit is going to the military industrial complex to “save” Ukraine.

What Ukrainian people need are good faith peace talks to end their suffering. The American people need public money to stay here at home. It should not be sent overseas to fight a war meant to fulfill neocon fantasies about breaking up Russia. Biden may have thought that Putin had nothing but “nuclear weapons and oil wells” but he is wrong, and the time will come when the propaganda is so threadbare that it doesn’t elicit the desired reactions. Biden and his people may think they can ride the Russia hatred to ensure public buy-in, but the odds are not in their favor.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/ukrai ... save-biden
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 23, 2022 3:09 pm

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Above: Syria’s Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra. Obama officials now back in office under President Biden coordinated with the jihadist franchise in an effort to topple the Syrian regime – while claiming they backed only the “moderate opposition.”

‘Al Qaeda is on our side’: how Obama/Biden team empowered terrorist networks in Syria
Posted Apr 23, 2022 by Aaron Maté

Originally published: RealClearInvestigations on April 20, 2022 (more by RealClearInvestigations)

Hours after the Feb. 3 U.S. military raid in northern Syria that left the leader of ISIS and multiple family members dead, President Biden delivered a triumphant White House address.

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Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi: Before he was killed by U.S. forces in February the ISIS leader operated from an Al Qaeda safe haven in Syria.
(Photo: U.S. Government/Reuters)

The late-night Special Forces operation in Syria’s Idlib province, Biden proclaimed, was a “testament to America’s reach and capability to take out terrorist threats no matter where they hide around the world.”

Unmentioned by the president, and virtually all media accounts of the assassination, was the critical role that top members of his administration played during the Obama years in creating the Al Qaeda-controlled hideout where ISIS head Abu Ibrahim al-Qurayshi, as well as his slain predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, found their final refuge.

In waging a multi-billion dollar covert war in support of the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, top Obama officials who now serve under Biden made it American policy to enable and arm terrorist groups that attracted jihadi fighters from across the globe. This regime change campaign, undertaken one decade after Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11, helped a sworn U.S. enemy establish the Idlib safe haven that it still controls today.

A concise articulation came from Jake Sullivan to his then-State Department boss Hillary Clinton in a February 2012 email:

AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria.

Sullivan, the current national security adviser, is one of many officials who oversaw the Syria proxy war under Obama to now occupy a senior post under Biden. This group includes Secretary of State Antony Blinken, climate envoy John Kerry, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, NSC Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, and State Department Counselor Derek Chollet.

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Jake Sullivan: “AQ [Al Qaeda] is on our side in Syria,” the then-State Dept. official–and current national security adviser–told Hillary Clinton in a Feb. 2012 email.
(Photo: AP)

Their efforts to remake the Middle East via regime change, not just in Syria but earlier in Libya, led to the deaths of Americans–including Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. officials in Benghazi in 2012; the slaughter of countless civilians; the creation of millions of refugees; and ultimately, Russia’s entry into the Syrian battlefield.
Contacted through their current U.S. government agencies, none of the Obama-Biden principals offered comment on their policy of supporting an Al Qaeda-dominated insurgency in Syria.

The Obama-Biden team’s record in Syria resonates today as many of its members handle the unfolding crisis in Ukraine. As in Syria, the U.S. is flooding a chaotic war zone with weapons in a dangerous proxy conflict with Russia, with long-term ramifications that are impossible to foresee. “I deeply worry that what’s going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons told CBS News on April 17.

Based on declassified documents, news reports, and scattered admissions of U.S. officials, this overlooked history of how the Obama-Biden team’s effort to oust the Assad regime–in concert with allies including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey–details the series of discrete decisions that ultimately led the U.S. to empower terror networks bent on its destruction.

Seizing Momentum–and Munitions–From Libya to Pursue Regime Change in Syria
The road to Al Qaeda’s control of the Syrian province of Idlib actually started hundreds of miles across the Mediterranean in Libya.

In March 2011, after heavy lobbying from senior officials including Secretary Hillary Clinton, President Obama authorized a bombing campaign in support of the jihadist insurgency fighting the government of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Backed by NATO firepower, the rebels toppled Gaddafi and gruesomely murdered him in October.

Buoyed by their quick success in Libya, the Obama administration set their sights on Damascus, by then a top regime change target in Washington. According to former NATO commander Wesley Clark, the Assad regime–a key ally of U.S. foes Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia–was marked for overthrow alongside Iraq in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A leaked 2006 U.S. Embassy in Damascus cable assessed that Assad’s “vulnerabilities” included “the potential threat to the regime from the increasing presence of transiting Islamist extremists,” and detailed how the U.S. could “improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising.”

The outbreak of the Syrian insurgency in March 2011, coupled with the fall of Gaddafi, offered the U.S. a historic opportunity to exploit Syria’s vulnerabilities. While the Arab Spring sparked peaceful Syrian protests against the ruling Ba’ath party’s cronyism and repression, it also triggered a largely Sunni, rural-based revolt that took a sectarian and violent turn. The U.S. and its allies, namely Qatar and Turkey, capitalized by tapping the massive arsenal of the newly ousted Libyan government.

“During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the [Gaddafi] regime in October 2011,” the Defense Intelligence Agency reported the following year, “…weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya, to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria.”

The redacted DIA document, obtained by the group Judicial Watch, does not specify whether the U.S. was directly involved in these shipments. But it contains significant clues. With remarkable specificity, it detailed the size and contents of one such shipment in August 2012: 500 sniper rifles, 100 rocket-propelled grenade launchers with 300 rounds, and 400 howitzer missiles.

Most tellingly, the document noted that the weapons shipments were halted “in early September 2012.” This was a clear reference to the killing by militants that month of four Americans–Ambassador Christopher Stevens, another State Department official, and two CIA contractors–in Benghazi, the port city where the weapons to Syria were coming from. The Benghazi annex “was at its heart a CIA operation,” U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal. At least two dozen CIA employees worked in Benghazi under diplomatic cover.

Although top intelligence officials obscured the Benghazi operation in sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, a Senate investigation eventually confirmed a direct CIA role in the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria. A classified version of a 2014 Senate report, not publicly released, documented an agreement between President Obama and Turkey to funnel weapons from Libya to insurgents in Syria. The operation, established in early 2012, was run by then-CIA Director David Petraeus.

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Ambassador Stevens allegedly facilitated arms transfers from the Benghazi compound where he died.
(Photo: AP)

“The [Benghazi] consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms” to Syria, a former U.S. intelligence official told journalist Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books. “It had no real political role.”

The Death of a U.S. Ambassador

Under diplomatic cover, Stevens appears to have been a significant figure in the CIA program. More than one year before he became ambassador in June 2012, Stevens was appointed the U.S. liaison to the Libyan opposition. In this role, he worked with the Al Qaeda-tied Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and its leader, Abdelhakim Belhadj, a warlord who fought alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. After Gaddafi’s ouster, Belhadj was named head of the Tripoli Military Council, which controlled security in the country’s capital.

Belhadj’s portfolio was not limited to post-coup Libya. In November 2011, the Al Qaeda ally traveled to Turkey to meet with leaders of the Free Syrian Army, the CIA-backed opposition military coalition. Belhadj’s trip came as part of the new Libyan government’s effort to provide “money and weapons to the growing insurgency against Bashar al-Assad,” the London Telegraph reported at the time. On September 14, 2012–just three days after Stevens and his American colleagues were killed–the London Times revealed that a Libyan vessel “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria since the uprising began,” had recently docked in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. Once unloaded, “most of its cargo is making its way to rebels on the front lines.”

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Abdel Hakim Belhadj: Warlord who cut his teeth fighting alongside Osama bin Laden reportedly worked with Ambassador Stevens to funnel cash and arms to the anti-Assad insurgency. (Photo: AP)

The known details of Stevens’ last hours on September 11 suggest that shipping weapons was at the top of his agenda. Although based in Tripoli and facing violent threats, he nonetheless made the dangerous trek to Benghazi around the fraught anniversary of 9/11. According to a 2016 report from the House Intelligence Committee, one of Stevens’ last scheduled meetings was with the head of al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services Company, a Libyan firm involved in ferrying weapons to Syria. His final meeting of the day was with Consul General Ali Sait Akin of Turkey, where the weapons were shipped. Fox News later reported that “Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer.”

With the Libyan channel shut down by Stevens’ murder, the U.S. and its allies turned to other sources. One was Croatia, where Saudi Arabia financed a major weapons purchase in late 2012 that was arranged by the CIA. The CIA’s use of the Saudi kingdom’s vast coffers continued an arrangement from prior covert proxy wars, including the arming of the mujahideen in Afghanistan and of the Contras in Nicaragua.

Although the Obama administration claimed that the weapons funneled to Syria were intended for “moderate rebels,” they ultimately ended up in the hands of a jihadi-dominated insurgency. Just one month after the Benghazi attack, the New York Times reported that “hard-line Islamic jihadists,” including groups “with ties or affiliations with Al Qaeda,” have received “the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition.”

Covertly Arming An Al Qaeda-Dominated Insurgency

The Obama administration did not need media accounts to learn that jihadists dominated the Syrian insurgency on the receiving end of a CIA supply chain.

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Michael Flynn: The intelligence chief said the Obama administration pushed back on warnings that jihadists dominated the Syrian insurgency. (Photo: AP)

One month before the Benghazi attack, Pentagon intelligence analysts gave the White House a blunt appraisal. An August 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report, disseminated widely among U.S. officials, noted that “Salafi[s], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency.” Al Qaeda, the report stressed, “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning.” Their aim was to create a “Salafist principality in eastern Syria”–an early warning of the ISIS caliphate that would be established two years later.

General Michael Flynn, who headed the DIA at the time, later recalled that his staff “got enormous pushback” from the Obama White House. “I felt that they did not want to hear the truth,” Flynn said. In 2015, one year after Flynn was forced out, dozens of Pentagon intelligence analysts signed on to a complaint alleging that top Pentagon intelligence officials were “cooking the books” to paint a rosier picture of the jihadi presence in Syria. (The Pentagon later cleared CENTCOM commanders of wrongdoing.)

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the main CIA-backed insurgent force, also informed Obama officials of the jihadi dominance in their ranks. “From the reports we get from the doctors,” FSA officials told the State Department in November 2012, “most of the injured and dead FSA are Jabhat al-Nusra, due to their courage and [the fact they are] always at the front line.”

Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front) is Al Qaeda’s franchise in Syria. It emerged as a splinter group of Al Qaeda in Iraq after a falling out between AQI leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and his then-deputy, Mohammed al-Jolani. In 2013, Baghdadi relaunched his organization under the name of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Jolani led his Syria-based Al Qaeda faction under the black flag of al-Nusra.

“[W]hile rarely acknowledged explicitly in public,” Charles Lister, a Gulf state-funded analyst in close contact with Syrian insurgent groups wrote in March 2015, “the vast majority of the Syrian insurgency has coordinated closely with Al-Qaeda since mid-2012–and to great effect on the battlefield.” As one Free Syrian Army leader told the New York Times: “No FSA faction in the north can operate without al-Nusra’s approval.”

According to David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst who covered Syria in the war’s early years, U.S. officials knew that “al-Qaeda affiliated groups and Salafi jihadist groups were the primary engine of the insurgency.” This, McCloskey says, was “a tremendously problematic aspect of the conflict.”

In his memoir, senior Obama aide Ben Rhodes acknowledged that al-Nusra “was probably the strongest fighting force within the opposition.” It was also clear, he wrote, that U.S.-backed insurgent groups were “fighting side by side with al-Nusra.” For this reason, Rhodes recalled, he argued against the State Department’s December 2012 designation of al-Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization. This move “would alienate the same people we want to help.” (Asked about wanting to help an Al Qaeda-dominated insurgency, Rhodes did not respond).

In fact, designating al-Nusra as a terror organization allowed the Obama administration to publicly claim that it opposed Al Qaeda’s Syria branch while continuing to covertly arm the insurgency that it dominated. Three months after adding al-Nusra to the terrorism list, the U.S. and its allies “dramatically stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels” to help “rebels to try and seize Damascus,” the Associated Press reported in March 2013.

‘There Was No Moderate Middle’

Despite being privately aware of Nusra’s dominance, Obama administration officials continued to publicly insist that the U.S. was only supporting Syria’s “moderate opposition,” as then-Deputy National Security Adviser Antony Blinken described it in September 2014.

But speaking to a Harvard audience days later, then-Vice President Biden blurted out the concealed reality. In the Syrian insurgency, “there was no moderate middle,” Biden admitted. Instead, U.S. “allies” in Syria “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.” Those weapons were supplied, Biden said, to “al-Nusra, and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”

Biden quickly apologized for his comments, which appeared to fit the classic definition of the Kinsley gaffe: a politician inadvertently telling the truth. Biden’s only error was omitting his administration’s critical role in helping its allies arm the jihadis.

Rather than shut down a CIA program that was aiding the Al Qaeda-dominated insurgency, Obama expanded it. In April 2013, the president signed an order that amended the CIA’s covert war, codenamed Timber Sycamore, to allow direct U.S. arming and training. After tapping Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar to fund its arms pipeline for insurgents inside Syria, Obama’s order allowed the CIA to directly furnish U.S.-made weapons. Just as with the regime change campaign in Libya, a key architect of this operation was Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s upgraded proxy war in Syria proved to be “one of the costliest covert action programs in the history of the C.I.A.,” the New York Times reported in 2017. Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed a budget of nearly $1 billion per year, or around $1 of every $15 in CIA spending. The CIA armed and trained nearly 10,000 insurgents, spending “roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program,” U.S. officials told the Washington Post in 2015. Two years later, one U.S. official estimated that CIA-funded militias “may have killed or wounded 100,000 Syrian soldiers and their allies over the past four years.”

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An alleged victim of the Latakia massacres. (Photo: Human Rights Watch)

But these militias were not just killing pro-Syrian government forces. As the New York Times reported in April 2017, U.S.-backed insurgents carried out “sectarian mass murder.”

One such act of mass murder came in August 2013, when the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army joined an al-Nusra and ISIS offensive on Alawite areas of Latakia. A Human Rights Investigation found that the insurgents engaged in “the systematic killing of entire families,” slaughtering a documented 190 civilians, including 57 women, 18 children, and 14 elderly men. In a video from the field, former Syrian army general Salim Idriss, head of the U.S.-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC), bragged that “we are cooperating to a great extent in this operation.”

The Latakia massacres came four months after the U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, hailed Idriss and his fighters as “the moderate and responsible elements of the armed opposition.” The role of Idriss’s forces in the slaughter did not cancel the administration’s endorsement. In October, the Washington Post revealed that the “CIA is expanding a clandestine effort … aimed at shoring up the fighting power of units aligned with the Supreme Military Council, an umbrella organization led by [Idriss] that is the main recipient of U.S. support.”

[After this article was published, RCI received Ford’s email response to our request for comment. Ford wrote that there was “no question” that the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army engaged in war crimes but noted, “We denounced [them] publicly at the time and in private.” Ford said the administration’s official stance that moderates were engaged in the fight was accurate in light of the facts on the ground. “Our definition of moderates in the armed opposition,” he wrote, “were people willing to negotiate a peaceful end to the war.”]
Officially, the upgraded CIA program barred direct support to al-Nusra or its allies in Syria. But once U.S. weapons arrived in Syria, the Obama administration recognized that it had no way of controlling their use–an apparent motive for waging the program covertly. “We needed plausible deniability in case the arms got into the hands of al-Nusra,” a former senior administration official told the New York Times in 2013.

One area where U.S. arms got into al-Nusra’s hands was the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. Al Qaeda leaders would ultimately control and–though the group disputes it–provide ISIS leaders sanctuary there.

‘Al-Qaeda’s Largest Safe Haven Since 9/11’

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Al-Nusra helped capture the Syrian province of Idlib in 2015 with de facto U.S. support. (Photo: Al-Nusra Front social media account via AP, File)

In May 2015, an array of insurgent groups, dubbed the Jaish al-Fatah (“Army of Conquest”) coalition, captured Idlib province from the Syrian government. The fight was led by al-Nusra, and showcased what Charles Lister, the D.C.-based analyst with contacts to insurgents in Syria, dubbed “a far improved level of coordination” between rival militants, including the U.S.-backed FSA and multiple “jihadist factions.”

For Lister, the conquest of Idlib also revealed that the U.S. and its allies “changed their tune regarding coordination with Islamists.” Citing multiple battlefield commanders, Lister reported that “the U.S.-led operations room in southern Turkey,” which coordinated support to U.S.-backed insurgent groups, “was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation” led by al-Nusra. While the insurgents’ U.S.-led command had previously opposed “any direct coordination” with jihadist groups, the Idlib offensive “demonstrated something different,” Lister concluded: To capture the province, U.S. officials “specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.”

The U.S.-approved battlefield cooperation in Idlib allowed al-Nusra fighters to directly benefit from U.S. weapons. Despite occasional flare-ups between them, al-Nusra was able to use U.S.-backed insurgent groups “as force multipliers,” the Institute for the Study of War, a prominent D.C. think tank, observed when the battle began. Insurgent military gains, Foreign Policy reported in April 2015, were achieved “thanks in large part to suicide bombers and American anti-tank TOW missiles.”

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Charles Lister: The conquest of Idlib proved a turning point as U.S. officials “specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.” (Photo: Twitter)

The jihadist-led victory in Idlib quickly subjected its residents to sectarian terror. In June 2015, al-Nusra fighters massacred at least 20 members of the Druze faith. Hundreds of villagers spared in the attack were forced to convert to Sunni Islam. Facing the same threats, nearly all of Idlib’s remaining 1,200 Christians fled the province, leaving a Christian population that reportedly totals just three people today.

In a 2017 post-mortem on the Obama administration’s covert war in Syria, the New York Times described the insurgents’ conquest of Idlib as among the CIA program’s “periods of success.” This was certainly the case for Al Qaeda.

“Idlib Province,” Brett McGurk, the anti-ISIS envoy under Obama and Trump, and now Biden’s top White House official for the Middle East, said in 2017, “is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.”

U.S. Allows ISIS Takeover
Al Qaeda is not the only sectarian death squad that managed to establish a safe haven in the chaos of the Syria proxy war. Starting in 2013, al-Nusra’s sister-turned-rival group, ISIS, seized considerable territory of its own. As with Al Qaeda, ISIS’ land-grab in Syria received a significant backdoor assist from Washington.

Before Al Qaeda captured Idlib, the first ISIS stronghold in Syria, Raqqa, grew out of a similar alliance between U.S.-backed “moderate rebels” and jihadis. After this coalition seized the city from the Syrian government in March 2013, ISIS took full control in November.

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ISIS got a backdoor assist from Washington in the takeover of its first Syrian stronghold in Raqqa. (Photo: AP Photo/Militant Website)

When ISIS declared its caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq in June 2014, the U.S. launched an air campaign against the group’s strongholds. But the Obama administration’s anti-ISIS offensive contained a significant exception. In key areas where ISIS’s advance could threaten the Assad regime, the U.S. watched it happen.

In April 2015, just as al-Nusra was conquering Idlib, ISIS seized major parts of the Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, marking what the New York Times called the group’s “greatest inroads yet” into the Syrian capital.

In the ancient city of Palmyra, the U.S. allowed an outright ISIS takeover. “[A]s Islamic State closed in on Palmyra, the U.S.-led aerial coalition that has been pummeling Islamic State in Syria for the past 18 months took no action to prevent the extremists’ advance toward the historic town–which, until then, had remained in the hands of the sorely overstretched Syrian security forces,” the Los Angeles Times reported in March 2016.

In a leaked conversation with Syrian opposition activists months later, then-Secretary of State John Kerry explained the U.S. rationale for letting ISIS advance.

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John Kerry: The former Secretary of State and current climate czar said the U.S. let ISIS advance in a bid to topple Assad–drawing Russia into the war. (Photo: FNC)

“Daesh [ISIS] was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus and so forth,” Kerry explained. “And we know that this was growing. We were watching. We saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage, that Assad would then negotiate” his way out of power.

In short, the U.S. was leveraging ISIS’s growth to impose regime change on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.S. strategy of “watching” ISIS’s advance in Syria, Kerry also admitted, directly caused Russia’s 2015 entry into the conflict. The threat of an ISIS takeover, Kerry said, is “why Russia went in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government.”

Russia’s military intervention in Syria prevented the ISIS government in Damascus that Kerry and fellow Obama administration principals had been willing to risk. Pulverizing Russian airstrikes also dealt a fatal blow to the Al Qaeda-dominated insurgency that the Obama team had spent billions of dollars to support.

From U.S. Enemy to ‘Asset’ in Syria

With U.S.-backed fighters vanquished and one of their main champions, Hillary Clinton, defeated in the November 2016 election, the CIA operation in Syria met what the New York Times called a “sudden death.” After criticizing the proxy war in Syria on the campaign trail, President Trump shut down the Timber Sycamore program for good in July 2017.

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Christopher Miller: “When President Trump said ‘I want everybody out of Syria,’ the top brass at Pentagon and State had aneurysms,” the former Acting Secretary of Defense recalls. (Photo: Defense.gov via AP)

“It turns out it’s–a lot of al-Qaeda we’re giving these weapons to,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal that month.

With the exit of the Obama-Biden team, the U.S. was no longer fighting on Al Qaeda’s side. But that did not mean that the U.S. was prepared to confront the enemy that it had helped install in Idlib.

While Trump put an end to the CIA proxy war, his efforts to further extricate the U.S. from Syria by withdrawing troops were thwarted by senior officials who shared the preceding administration’s regime change goals.

“When President Trump said ‘I want everybody out of Syria,’ the top brass at Pentagon and State had aneurysms,” Christopher Miller, the Acting Secretary of Defense during Trump’s last months in office, recalls.

Jim Jeffrey, Trump’s envoy for Syria, admitted to deceiving the president in order to keep in place “a lot more than” the 200 U.S. troops that Trump had reluctantly agreed to. “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey told Defense One. Those “shell games” have put U.S. soldiers in harm’s way, including four servicemembers recently wounded in a rocket attack on their base in northeastern Syria.

While thwarting a full U.S. troop withdrawal, Jeffrey and other senior officials have also preserved the U.S. government’s tacit alliance with Idlib’s Al-Qaeda rulers. Officially, al-Nusra remains on the U.S. terrorism list. Despite several name changes, the State Department has dismissed its rebranding efforts as a “vehicle to advance its position in the Syrian uprising and to further its own goals as an al-Qa’ida affiliate.”

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James Jeffrey: President Trump’s Syria envoy admitted administration officials played “shell games” with troops to thwart Trump’s efforts to leave Syria, and that Al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra was an “asset” to U.S. strategy there. (Photo: AP)

But in practice, as Jeffrey explained last year, the U.S. has treated Al-Nusra as “an asset” to U.S. strategy in Syria. “They are the least bad option of the various options on Idlib, and Idlib is one of the most important places in Syria, which is one of the most important places right now in the Middle East,” he said. Jeffrey also revealed that he had communicated with al-Nusra leader Mohammed al-Jolani via “indirect channels.”

Jeffrey’s comments underscore a profound shift in the U.S. government’s Middle East strategy as a result of the Syria proxy war: The Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, the terror group that attacked the U.S. on 9/11, and which then became the target of a global war on terror aimed at destroying it, is no longer seen by powerful officials in Washington as an enemy, but an “asset.”

Since retaking office under Biden, the Obama veterans who targeted Syria with one of the most expensive covert wars in history have deprioritized the war-torn nation. While pledging to maintain crippling sanctions and keep U.S. troops at multiple bases, as well as announcing sporadic airstrikes, the White House has otherwise said little publicly about its Syria policy. The U.S. military raid that ended ISIS leader al-Qurayshi’s life in February prompted the only Syria-focused speech of Biden’s presidency.

While Biden trumpeted the lethal operation, the fact that it occurred in Idlib underscores a contradiction that his administration has yet to address. By taking out an ISIS leader in Al Qaeda’s Syria stronghold, the president and his top officials are now confronting threats from a terror safe haven that they helped create.

https://mronline.org/2022/04/23/al-qaed ... -our-side/

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Biden and the Void
April 23, 10:19

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Biden continues to try to shake hands with invisible people.

This is what gerontocracy looks like.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1

Google Translator

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Trump’s Asylum Ban Hasn’t Disappeared—but Media Outrage Over It Has
DOROTHEE BENZ

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Facing coronavirus pandemic, Trump suspends immigration laws and showcases vision for locked-down border
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The Washington Post (4/3/20) reported that Trump “shelved safeguards intended to protect trafficking victims and persecuted groups” and “created a pilot test for the impact of the more draconian measures he has long advocated.”
“Facing Coronavirus Pandemic, Trump Suspends Immigration Laws and Showcases Vision for Locked-Down Border,” a Washington Post headline (4/3/20) announced in April 2020, reporting on the administration’s invocation of Title 42, a public-health code provision that allows the government to take emergency action to prevent communicable disease. The lead explained:

President Trump has used emergency powers during the coronavirus pandemic to implement the kind of strict enforcement regime at the US southern border he has long wanted, suspending laws that protect minors and asylum seekers.

Almost exactly two years later, the same paper (3/24/22), including one of the same authors of the 2020 article, reported on the coming end of the same policy restrictions with this headline: “Biden Faces Influx of Migrants at the Border Amid Calls to Lift Limits That Aided Expulsions.” Here the lead said that increasing numbers of migrants and refugees at the border were “stirring fears that the Biden administration will face an even larger influx if it lifts pandemic restrictions next week.” An end to Title 42 deportations was announced the following week, to go into effect May 23.

It’s hard to even recognize it as the same policy in these two pieces.

I looked at the Washington Post’s coverage of Title 42—from its introduction to its effects, calls for its end as well as for its continuation, to its announced end—to track how the paper’s reporting changed from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. The differences, which were stark and consistent, reveal something about how the Post views the two administrations, but also a lot about how they analyze —or don’t—US immigration policy.

From pretext to pandemic policy
Biden faces influx of migrants at the border amid calls to lift limits that aided expulsions
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Two years later, the Post (3/24/22) said the number of people crossing the border was “stirring fears that the Biden administration will face an even larger influx if it lifts pandemic restrictions.”

Under the Trump administration, the Washington Post consistently framed Title 42 as a pretext for severe restrictions on immigration, rather than presenting it at face value as a legitimate public health measure. The April 3, 2020, article described the use of Title 42 as “a pilot test for the impact of the more draconian measures [Trump] has long advocated.” An April 21 Post piece spoke of “the pandemic as the reasoning,” not the reason, for the restrictions. On May 13, it attributed to “some experts” the belief that Title 42 was “an excuse to implement the kind of blanket closures President Trump has sought for years.”

Moreover, the 2020 coverage regularly included damning evidence supporting the view that the pandemic was merely a pretext for shutting the border, namely the fact that Covid was much worse in the US than anywhere else, and in particular, much worse than in Mexico and Central America. “Mexico has confirmed fewer than 1,500 positive cases of the virus so far, less than 1% of the number in the United States,” one report (4/3/20) noted. “Though Trump administration officials have tried to emphasize the external threat of the virus, the United States continues to have the worst outbreak in the world,” another (5/7/20) explained. “Despite the administration’s claims of an external threat, the United States remains the world’s worst coronavirus hot spot, by far,” the Post (5/13/20) told readers.

By contrast, in 2021 and 2022, with a different occupant in the White House, Title 42 restrictions were generally contextualized as a response to the pandemic.

In a July 2021 piece (7/28/21) headlined “Along Mexico Border, Covid Spike and More Migrant Families Stall Plans to End Title 42 Expulsions,” the claim that public health concerns were driving decisions about whether/when to end Title 42 is taken at face value. The piece goes so far as to relay a story from local Joya, Texas, police about a migrant mother “sneezing and coughing” walking into a fast-food restaurant, where the USians promptly called the police on the family. “This is day after day. We get hundreds of people, and they could all be sick,” the cop is quoted.

On the day this article ran, Mexico had 13,911 new Covid cases while the US logged 84,961—more than twice as many even on a per capita basis. These numbers, however, were missing from the account.

Similarly, in the March 24, 2022, piece, the Washington Post framed the upcoming decision on whether to continue or end Title 42 restrictions as a public health decision. If the administration chose to continue them, it noted,

it would not be the first time the Biden administration…opted to renew them as another wave of infection looms. The emergence of the omicron variant of the coronavirus last winter quashed speculation that an end to Title 42 was imminent.

Danger to migrants and refugees

In April 2020, the Washington Post (4/3/20) reported that Title 42 “bypassed court-ordered due process protections for minors, asylum seekers and others,” and said that Trump “has shelved safeguards intended to protect trafficking victims and persecuted groups.” That May (5/13/20), it revealed:

The Trump administration’s emergency coronavirus restrictions have shut the US immigration system so tight that since March 21 just two people seeking humanitarian protection at the southern border have been allowed to stay.

Such blunt statements about the devastating human rights impact of Title 42 were absent from the coverage in 2021 and 2022, however. In their place, the paper sometimes attributed concerns about dangers to migrants to critics of the policy. “Advocates for immigrants have repeatedly sued over the policy, saying it endangers migrants and violates federal law,” it reported in March 2022 (“Democratic Lawmakers, Civil Liberties Groups Demand End to Title 42 Border Expulsions,” 3/10/22). It mentioned that a federal appeals court had days earlier ordered the Biden administration to stop sending families to countries where they face persecution, “citing reports that migrants have been raped, tortured and killed after being expelled.”

In the March 24 article, objective dangers were again couched as partisan opinions: “Democrats and immigrant advocates…say that the order is denying victims of persecution the right to seek asylum under US law.” On March 30, it was “activists” who “argue” that Title 42 is “an inhumane way to treat people seeking refuge.”

I dunno—rape, torture and murder seem objectively inhumane to me.

And while Trump’s use of Title 42 was described with words like “draconian” (4/3/20) and “crackdown” (5/7/20), such normative terms were absent when it came to explaining Biden’s border policy. In 2020, Title 42 was used to “summarily expel” migrants (5/7/20), but in 2022 it was used to “rapidly deport” them (3/24/22).

‘Migration pressures’ and ‘unprecedented strains’
Biden officials bracing for unprecedented strains at Mexico border if pandemic restrictions lifted
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Reporting on the prospect of Biden relaxing Title 42 restrictions, the Post (3/29/22) recalled “mass migration events…that placed severe strains on US agents, holding facilities, transportation networks, humanitarian shelters and border communities.”
In 2020, the Washington Post (5/13/20) was concerned that the border was shut “so tight” by Title 42 that only two people had gotten humanitarian protection. But in 2022 (3/30/22), it worried “lifting the policy could swell the border with migrants who view it as easier to come to the United States and claim asylum.” Apparently there’s such a thing as too much humanitarian protection.

Indeed, the biggest theme of the Biden-era coverage of Title 42 has been the perception that ending the restrictions would result in too many people seeking asylum or otherwise trying to immigrate to the US. “The quantity of border-crossers is now so large that if Title 42 were lifted, agents would not be able to safely detain migrants, especially if large numbers seek asylum,” “analysts” told the Post (7/28/21). In “Biden Officials Bracing for Unprecedented Strains at Mexico Border if Pandemic Restrictions Lifted,” the Post (3/29/22) talked about “a possible post–Title 42 border rush.”

“Biden officials insist the CDC renewal decision is driven by public health,” the March 24 article noted, “but in private, border authorities and others say it has become a management tool to cope with the historic migration pressures they have faced since early last year.” Under Trump, Title 42 was a pretext to implement “draconian” immigration policies, but under Biden it’s a “management tool” to deal with a legitimate problem.

Barely unspoken is that the Washington Post now considers it a necessary management tool to stem the “influx” of people migrating to the US. Thus 2020’s concern over “shelved safeguards” has dissipated, and in its place we have justifications for continuing the very same policy that two years ago was viewed as extreme.

Return to normalizing
Talking Turkey About Impeachment Hearings
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“Because of the myth of objective journalism, reporters’ and editors’ views of how Trump is a bad president or a terrible human being have no legitimized expression” (FAIR.org, 11/26/19).
As I’ve argued earlier (FAIR.org, 11/26/19), I believe that most of the neoliberal media did dislike Trump and that bias influenced their coverage of the administration. The Washington Post—with its pretension to be the defender of democracy (“democracy dies in darkness”)—was fine with implying that Trump’s policies were beyond the pale, but is less inclined to paint the same policies the same way under the return-to-normal administration of Biden. What they disliked about Trump was not really his policies, but the fact that he said the quiet part out loud—in the case of immigration, the overt racism, xenophobia and undisguised cruelty—and his unpredictability. With Biden, there is a return to a predictable bipartisan range of politics and policy.

And equally predictably, the Post has returned to its habit of legitimizing and stabilizing the US presidency, and framing immigration policy as part of a chess match between Democrats and Republicans.

Underlying the reflex to defend the administration is an unexamined bias in favor of our racist immigration and border policies, policies that have overall been the same before, during and after the Trump administration. As border crossings increased in the second year of the pandemic, Republicans, Democrats and the Washington Post are all in agreement that shelving human rights concerns is the price of keeping unwanted refugees and migrants out of the US.

https://fair.org/home/trumps-asylum-ban ... er-it-has/

Well, I hope that's what ya'll voted for.

Oh, you say you just voted against Trump?

Did that work out for ya?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 27, 2022 3:19 pm

Obama Wants Censorship
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist 27 Apr 2022

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Former U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a keynote address on the Stanford campus on Thursday, April 21, 2022. (Image credit: Andrew Brodhead)

Barack Obama and his ruling class bosses are losing legitimacy with more and more people. They have decided that censoring information will resolve their problems.

On April 21, 2022 former president Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford University on the subject of social media. In typical Obamaesque fashion, he didn’t state his point plainly. He used a lot of time, more than an hour, to advocate for social media censorship. He only used that word once, in order to deny that it was in fact what he meant, but the weasel words and obfuscation couldn’t hide what Obama was talking about.

In 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, the candidate she thought easiest to beat, Obama first presented his lament about “disinformation” and “fake news.” His real concern was that Trump’s victory proved that millions of people paid no attention to or even scorned, corporate media. No major newspaper endorsed Donald Trump, the television networks enjoyed the ratings increases he created, but ultimately believed that a second Clinton presidency was in the offing. None of them knew that some 60 million people would go to polling places and give their votes to Trump. Hence the disquiet in November 2016, when Obama realized that having buy-in from establishment corporate media meant little if their narratives were rejected by people across the country.

Now Obama has to live with his handiwork in Ukraine. He and Joe Biden began the crisis when they partnered with right wing forces there in 2014 and overthrew the elected president. They are struggling to prop up the Ukrainians with billions of dollars while also trying to keep the American people from asking why they don’t have child tax credits, minimum wage increases, or student loan debt relief.

Obama’s answer is to cut off debate. It took him a long time to say he wants big tech to censor their social media platforms. Instead he trotted out the usual tropes of authoritarian strongmen, China, Russia, and Trump, as threats to democracy. Of course, the lack of democracy in this country has nothing to do with any one individual or foreign government but they are useful targets and everyone is fair game. Lest anyone forget, Trump’s Twitter account was removed while he was still in the white house.

The only way out for discredited liberalism is to shut down anyone who might utter inconvenient truths. They have been doing just that for quite some time, and while their targets are ostensibly right wingers such as Trump supporters who claim he didn’t lose, it is radical Black and other leftists who bear the brunt of the attack. RT and Sputnik are branded “Russia state affiliated,” and they have been disappeared from many platforms. Programs such as By Any Means Necessary, which present a Black left point of view, are disappeared along with them.

Obama’s angst is proof that getting rid of RT and Sputnik won’t be enough for him and the ruling class he still works for. Biden is in trouble, with low approval ratings, and the non-stop effort to give legitimacy to U.S. actions in Ukraine are proof that Obama has cause for concern.

While Facebook and Twitter are already arms of the state, and restrict access to anyone who strays from their narratives, Obama would like them to do more harm. “But while content moderation can limit the distribution of clearly dangerous content, it doesn’t go far enough.” The algorithms and opaque rules that kick accounts off of Twitter and Facebook won’t do when wholesale censorship is being proposed. Obama openly talks about government regulation of big tech. “... these big platforms need to be subject to some level of public oversight and regulation.”

Of course they should be regulated, but as public utilities which guarantee access to everyone. But that isn’t what Obama wants. So he uses Vladimir Putin as the all-purpose villain, or China, which he excoriates for conducting the kind of censorship he now proposes.

Of course he still has friends in high places, as the European Union (EU) adopted a law, the Digital Services Act , which requires “illegal” content to be removed from online platforms. “Hate speech” is banned, as is “terrorist content.” But how are those criteria defined? It is particularly troubling that an article was added regarding Ukraine: “In the context of the Russian aggression in Ukraine and the particular impact on the manipulation of online information, a new article has been added to the text introducing a crisis response mechanism."

The EU already banned RT and Sputnik. They cannot be accessed in any member nation. The war in Ukraine is definitely a crisis for nations which are lying to millions of people about why it is taking place and about the fact that it could end if the instigators wanted that to happen. They have to lie because they can’t punish Russia with sanctions without harming people all over the world. No wonder censorship is in such high demand.

Obama and the European Union and whomever else wants to limit our ability to speak and communicate freely will use every ruse that they can to get approval for undermining the free speech they allegedly respect so much. They will conjure up images of the January 6th mob at the capitol, or Putin, or Trump, or Putin and Trump together to get the public to agree to censor themselves. They’ll talk about freedom of speech while doing away with our ability to exercise it in public forums. These are very dangerous times, and former presidents and their partners in crime crawl out of the woodwork with evil intent, all the while claiming to work for our good.

Just know that whatever Obama and the EU want is not good for the public. Their goal is to silence those who oppose them, and long-winded speeches shouldn’t fool anyone into thinking otherwise.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/obama ... censorship

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Biden’s New Arms Czar for Ukraine Has a Lot of Blood on His Hands—They Are Likely to Get Even Bloodier
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - April 26, 2022 5

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Terry Wolff, New Arms Czar for Ukraine. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Terry Wolff oversaw training of Iraqi forces for deadly siege of Mosul and coalition fighting dirty war in Syria
President Joe Biden’s new appointee as arms czar for Ukraine, Terry Wolff, has a lot of blood on his hands.

The three-star general’s new job is to coordinate arms shipments to Ukraine that are designed to bog down the Russians, including a new $800 million weapons package that President Biden authorized last Thursday.

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Military volunteers loading magazines with ammunition in February at a weapons storage facility in Fastiv, Ukraine. [Source: nytimes.com]

A native of Elk Grove, California, who graduated from West Point in 1979, Wolff previously trained Iraqi forces for a deadly siege of Mosul in 2016, and helped plan operations in the illegal war on Afghanistan as a National Security Council senior director for the country.

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Terry Wolff, second from the right, with Martin Dempsey, left, and Steven Townsend, the current AFRICOM commander, as they fly over Afghanistan in a C-130 in February 2012. [Source: defense.gov]

Between November 2015 and February 2019, Wolff directed the global coalition fighting ISIS in Syria, which served the ulterior goal of overthrowing the nationalist regime of Bashar al-Assad.

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Terry Wolff [Source: nesa-center.org]

Working for a period as a deputy to Brett McGurk, a liaison to Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki, Wolff helped recruit Kurdish Peshmergas that were implicated in extrajudicial assassinations of suspected ISIS fighters.

In 2014, Wolff traveled to Israel as part of a program to further U.S.-Israeli military cooperation. In 1999, as commander of the 1st Armored Division, he coordinated the deployment of U.S. troops to Kosovo.

This was part of Operation Noble Anvil, whose goal was to empower the Kosovar Albanians at the expense of the Serbs—who were led by a socialist, Slobodan Milošević, intent on keeping the Yugoslav Federation together—and establish a giant U.S. military base at Camp Bondsteel. At least 500 civilians were killed in bombing attacks and 480 schools and 33 hospitals destroyed.[1]

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Aftermath of Operation Noble Anvil in Kosovo. [Source: rferl.org]

“Relentless and Unlawful Attacks”

In the siege of Mosul that Wolff helped prepare Iraq troops for, residents were subjected to “relentless and unlawful attacks” according to Amnesty International.

The U.S.-backed proxy forces had become enmeshed in a sectarian war between Shia and Sunni triggered by the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.[2]

Thousands of civilians were killed, including more than 400 from rocket-assisted munitions and the use of powerful explosive weapons by the U.S. led coalition which caused blast-related injuries.[3]

The New York Times described a “panorama of destruction in the neighborhood of Judida so vast one resident compared the destruction to that of Hiroshima, Japan [after the dropping of the atomic bomb at the end of World War II]. There was a charred arm, wrapped in a piece of red fabric poking from the rubble, rescue workers in red jumpsuits who came wore face masks to avoid the stench, some with rifles slung over their shoulders, searching the wreckage for bodies.”[4]

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Terry Wolff, left, with his boss Brett McGurk, far right, and Najim Jabouri, the Iraqi commander who led Iraqi forces during the Battle of Mosul. Jabouri was chosen for the position not because of his military expertise but because of his close ties to U.S. officials. [Source: twitter.com]

Five Operational Lessons from the Battle for Mosul

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Iraqi troops, whose training Wolff had overseen, walk through ruins of Mosul after 2016-17 battle. [Source: armyupress.army.mil]

Chillingly in an interview with an Australian journalist, Wolff presented Fallujah as a great model for the “liberation of Mosul.”

Back in 2004, in retaliation for the killing of some Blackwater contractors, the U.S. military turned the entire city into “a desolate world of skeletal buildings, tank-blasted homes, weeping power lines and severed palm trees,” in the words of New York Times journalist Erik Eckholm.[5]

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Angry man points to ruins in Fallujah resulting from the deadly U.S. siege. Terry Wolff though presented Fallujah as a model for the “liberation of Mosul.” Who knows what this man has in store for Ukraine and Russia—the same devastation probably. [Source: bbc.com]

Wolff had direct personal experience with the slaughter as a key army commander in the 2003-2007 Al-Anbar campaign, which relied heavily on urban warfare to pacifiy the Sunni-dominated province in which Fallujah was located.

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General Terry Wolff in Iraq in 2010. [Source: stripes.com]

Earlier, Wolff had gained appointment as a special adviser to President George W. Bush on Iraq because of his success in training Iraqi security forces, which evolved in many cases into Shia death squads.

In a briefing broadcast on C-SPAN in March 2010, Wolff, then serving as Commanding General of the U.S. Division Center in Baghdad, heralded Iraq’s recent elections when more than 500 candidates had been banned from running for parliament because of their links to the Ba’ath Party (Saddam Hussein’s party) by a commission headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a crook who had peddled disinformation in support of the U.S. invasion.

Only 14% of Iraqis wanted the winner, Nouri al-Maliki, to remain in power—though al-Maliki’s opponent in the election, Ayad Allawi, was a CIA-connected thug who personally executed Saddamist POWs before he had been appointed interim prime minister in 2004.[6]

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Nouri al-Maliki, right, embraces Ayad Allawi. Wolff heralded an election where Iraqis had to choose between two awful candidates—a Shia Saddam versus a CIA thug who had murdered prisoners of war with his own hands. [Source: wsj.com]

Wolff’s Hands Will Get Even Bloodier

Wolff’s hands will get even bloodier as he oversees the massive arms pipeline to Ukraine that is reminiscent of the Contra supply line in the 1980s, Croat arms pipeline in the 1990s, and Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria that Wolff may have been involved with.

A prime recipient of the arms bazaar in Ukraine will be far-right and neo-Nazi militias like the Azov Battalion, which has been integrated into the Ukrainian army.

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Azov regiment fighters in Kharkiv. [Source: ft.com]

Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a former special adviser to the Defense Secretary, told a reporter that the Ukrainian people “are almost incidental to the [whole] operation in the sense that they are there to impale themselves on the Russian army and die in great numbers, because the real goal of this entire thing is the destruction of the Russian state and Vladimir Putin.”

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Retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor [Source: cnn.com]

A senior defense official said that assistance to Ukraine that Wolff will be overseeing can be deployed incredibly fast: in as little as 48-72 hours.

One of the featured weapons is the Phoenix Ghost drone—developed by California-based AEVEX Aerospace—which is comparable to the Switchblade drone that crashes into a target and explodes on impact.[7]

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Phoenix Ghost drone. [Source: bloomberg.com]

Other key weapons that the U.S. is shipping include: a) lightweight howitzers that can shoot projectiles and precision-guided missiles with long trajectories, b) armored vehicles, c) more Javelin anti-tank missiles (a Biden favorite), d) Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, e) M-17 helicopters, and f) the Switchblade drones.

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Lightweight howitzers being shipped by the U.S. to Ukraine. [Source: cbsnews.com]

So far, the Ukrainians claim to have destroyed more than 800 tanks and 2,000 other Russian vehicles thanks to U.S. and other foreign weapons.

Under the new shipments, five new Ukrainian artillery battalions will be outfitted with 18 rapid-fire guns and nearly 37,000 rounds of ammunition to fight the Russians in Donbas.

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Ukrainian soldier with U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missile. [Source: bbc.com]

The Russians for their part issued a note calling on the U.S. and its allies to stop the “irresponsible militarization of Ukraine which implies unpredictable consequences for regional and international security.”

Wolff’s appointment unfortunately signifies that this latter demand will not be met, and that more blood will be spilled—following a pattern from Wolff’s own career.


1.See David Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009).

2.Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019), 181. ↑

3.Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 181. ↑

4.Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 182. ↑

5.See Michael Schwartz, War Without End: The Iraq War in Context (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2008). ↑

6.Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 178, 179. ↑

7.John Ismay, “U.S. to Send Howitzers and Custom Drones to Ukraine as Part of $800 Million in Aid,” The New York Times, April 22, 2022, A8. ↑

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/0 ... -bloodier/

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File this one under 'Fat Fucking Chance'

HEY, BERNIE, MAKE IT A REAL SINGLE PAYER BILL…NO PROFITS

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BY KAY TILLOW
April 22, 2022 CounterPunch



Senator Bernie Sanders has announced that he is going to introduce his Medicare for All bill in the Senate—and hold a hearing. This is most welcome news.

As Bernie campaigned for the presidency, he elevated national single payer health care, an improved Medicare for All, into the public spotlight and onto the nation’s agenda.

His advocacy for Medicare for All informed millions and lifted spirits building hope that a universal single payer plan is possible in the US.

He has not done that well at writing legislation. His most recent bill, the Medicare for All Act of 2019 (S. 1129), falls short of essential single payer principles and lets stand billions in profits that will undermine care and steal public funds.

With a majority of people in the U. S. now delaying care because of cost and life expectancy sinking to 5 years below other wealthy countries, the crisis is too great and the life or death urgency too immediate for half measures.

Here are the issues in Sanders’ 2019 Medicare for All Act (S. 1129) that need to be resolved prior to introduction of Medicare for All in 2022.

1. S. 1129 leaves institutional long term care to the states under Medicaid instead of including it in the national Medicare for All program. Leaving long term care to the states means that it will continue to be means-tested, and people will have to become impoverished to be eligible. The rules and care will vary from state to state leaving the fragile elderly and disabled persons dependent on state budgets that are continually being cut.

2. S. 1129 allows the investor-owned hospitals, nursing homes, dialysis centers—all the for-profit facilities–to continue to exploit patients and drain the public treasury. Objective research consistently shows that investor-owned entities have both lower quality care and higher costs. That’s why a sound single payer bill must convert those facilities and ban for-profit health care institutions, ending the waste of public funds on facilities that subject patients to inferior care.

3. S. 1129 does not provide for global budgeting, lump sum payment to hospitals and similar institutions to cover operating expenses, that would eliminate wasteful per-patient billing. Global budgeting, separating operating budgets from construction, expansion, and modernization, is essential to assure that funds are not wasted. Separate capital budgets will guarantee that facilities are built where they are needed.

4. S. 1129, in section 611(b), adopts the payment systems of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), basing payments on an unworkable, unfair, and wasteful system supposedly rated according to value. Such payment schemes have proven to discriminate against those physicians who serve the poorest patients and minority communities while adding massively to the administrative tasks and burn out of physicians. These alternative payment models (APM) or value-based payments (VBP) in S. 1129 embed risk and profit into the payment system and should be banned. They impose schemes that incentivize denial of care to enhance profit. These payment systems are the basis of the current privatization of Medicare through the direct contracting entities (DCE) program, recently renamed ACO REACH.

5. While S. 1129 removed most copays and deductibles, it keeps a copayment on certain drugs.Copayments have been proven to deprive patients of necessary care and are detrimental to health.

6. S. 1129 inserts supposedly incremental steps of public options and Medicare buy-ins for four years prior to arriving at a real single payer plan. Because the plan expands care while maintaining the private insurance companies, costs will skyrocket before the savings of single payer kick in. The incremental steps will become a roadblock rather than a path to single payer. Perhaps the worst part of this inclusion of the public option and the Medicare buy-in is the reinforcement of the false notion that there should or must be incremental steps to single payer. Neither the public option nor the Medicare buy-in are based on sound policy. To place them in the bill endangers the single payer goal.

7. S. 1129 is silent on the establishment of a progressive taxing mechanism that would shift the tax burden from working class Americans onto the corporate elite and the billionaires.

8. While S. 1129 provides for up to 1% of the budget to be used for temporary worker assistance programs for those who experience economic dislocation as a result of implementation of Medicare for All, there is no specific annual compensation for a specific period that could win the support of workers in the insurance industry.


Ricky Goldwasser, managing director at Morgan Stanley just announced that there will be even more consolidation in the healthcare industry in the coming year with more Wall Street mergers and acquisitions and more takeovers of physician practices by private equity. Some highly-respected health policy experts are now asserting that Medicare for All is not enough and that the nation must move to a national health service to escape control by the profit-takers. The introduction of health care legislation reflecting that opinion would also be welcome.

The very least that Congress can do is propose a real single payer bill, stripped of the profits, and covering us all.

https://mltoday.com/hey-bernie-make-it- ... o-profits/

"There he goes again..." Good ole Bernie, the past master of 'talking truth to power', of dramatic proposals that he knows are no danger of being passed even by 'his' party, of roping in decent people to support the hideously indecent Democratic Party. How many times will he go to the well and come back empty handed? How long will it take for people to tire of this serial deceiver?

Well, at least he ain't Trump.....

But as bad as that piece of shit was, for the environment, for non-white people, but most importantly for the delicate sensibilities of liberals who insist that the bloody-handed hegemon not have Front Man who was a vulgar imbecile but someone(anyone!) who could put a mask of respectability on the imperialist agenda.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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