American Pravda: How the CIA Invented “Conspiracy Theories”
BY RON UNZ • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 5, 2016
A year or two ago, I saw the much-touted science fiction film Interstellar, and although the plot wasn’t any good, one early scene was quite amusing. For various reasons, the American government of the future claimed that our Moon Landings of the late 1960s had been faked, a trick aimed at winning the Cold War by bankrupting Russia into fruitless space efforts of its own. This inversion of historical reality was accepted as true by nearly everyone, and those few people who claimed that Neil Armstrong had indeed set foot on the Moon were universally ridiculed as “crazy conspiracy theorists.” This seems a realistic portrayal of human nature to me.
Obviously, a large fraction of everything described by our government leaders or presented in the pages of our most respectable newspapers—from the 9/11 attacks to the most insignificant local case of petty urban corruption—could objectively be categorized as a “conspiracy theory” but such words are never applied. Instead, use of that highly loaded phrase is reserved for those theories, whether plausible or fanciful, that do not possess the endorsement stamp of establishmentarian approval.
Put another way, there are good “conspiracy theories” and bad “conspiracy theories,” with the former being the ones promoted by pundits on mainstream television shows and hence never described as such. I’ve sometimes joked with people that if ownership and control of our television stations and other major media outlets suddenly changed, the new information regime would require only a few weeks of concerted effort to totally invert all of our most famous “conspiracy theories” in the minds of the gullible American public. The notion that nineteen Arabs armed with box-cutters hijacked several jetliners, easily evaded our NORAD air defenses, and reduced several landmark buildings to rubble would soon be universally ridiculed as the most preposterous “conspiracy theory” ever to have gone straight from the comic books into the minds of the mentally ill, easily surpassing the absurd “lone gunman” theory of the JFK assassination.
Even without such changes in media control, huge shifts in American public beliefs have frequently occurred in the recent past, merely on the basis of implied association. In the initial weeks and months following the 2001 attacks, every American media organ was enlisted to denounce and vilify Osama Bin Laden, the purported Islamicist master-mind, as our greatest national enemy, with his bearded visage endlessly appearing on television and in print, soon becoming one of the most recognizable faces in the world. But as the Bush Administration and its key media allies prepared a war against Iraq, the images of the Burning Towers were instead regularly juxtaposed with mustachioed photos of dictator Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden’s arch-enemy. As a consequence, by the time we attacked Iraq in 2003, polls revealed that some 70% of the American public believed that Saddam was personally involved in the destruction of our World Trade Center. By that date I don’t doubt that many millions of patriotic but low-information Americans would have angrily denounced and vilified as a “crazy conspiracy theorist” anyone with the temerity to suggest that Saddam had not been behind 9/11, despite almost no one in authority having ever explicitly made such a fallacious claim.
These factors of media manipulation were very much in my mind a couple of years ago when I stumbled across a short but fascinating book published by the University of Texas academic press. The author of Conspiracy Theory in America was Prof. Lance deHaven-Smith, a former president of the Florida Political Science Association.
Based on an important FOIA disclosure, the book’s headline revelation was that the CIA was very likely responsible for the widespread introduction of “conspiracy theory” as a term of political abuse, having orchestrated that development as a deliberate means of influencing public opinion.
During the mid-1960s there had been increasing public skepticism about the Warren Commission findings that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been solely responsible for President Kennedy’s assassination, and growing suspicions that top-ranking American leaders had also been involved. So as a means of damage control, the CIA distributed a secret memo to all its field offices requesting that they enlist their media assets in efforts to ridicule and attack such critics as irrational supporters of “conspiracy theories.” Soon afterward, there suddenly appeared statements in the media making those exact points, with some of the wording, arguments, and patterns of usage closely matching those CIA guidelines. The result was a huge spike in the pejorative use of the phrase, which spread throughout the American media, with the residual impact continuing right down to the present day. Thus, there is considerable evidence in support of this particular “conspiracy theory” explaining the widespread appearance of attacks on “conspiracy theories” in the public media.
But although the CIA appears to have effectively manipulated public opinion in order to transform the phrase “conspiracy theory” into a powerful weapon of ideological combat, the author also describes how the necessary philosophical ground had actually been prepared a couple of decades earlier. Around the time of the Second World War, an important shift in political theory caused a huge decline in the respectability of any “conspiratorial” explanation of historical events.
For decades prior to that conflict, one of our most prominent scholars and public intellectuals had been historian Charles Beard, whose influential writings had heavily focused on the harmful role of various elite conspiracies in shaping American policy for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, with his examples ranging from the earliest history of the United States down to the nation’s entry into WWI. Obviously, researchers never claimed that all major historical events had hidden causes, but it was widely accepted that some of them did, and attempting to investigate those possibilities was deemed a perfectly acceptable academic enterprise.
However, Beard was a strong opponent of American entry into the Second World War, and he was marginalized in the years that followed, even prior to his death in 1948. Many younger public intellectuals of a similar bent also suffered the same fate, or were even purged from respectability and denied any access to the mainstream media. At the same time, the totally contrary perspectives of two European political philosophers, Karl Popper and Leo Strauss, gradually gained ascendancy in American intellectual circles, and their ideas became dominant in public life.
Popper, the more widely influential, presented broad, largely theoretical objections to the very possibility of important conspiracies ever existing, suggesting that these would be implausibly difficult to implement given the fallibility of human agents; what might appear a conspiracy actually amounted to individual actors pursuing their narrow aims. Even more importantly, he regarded “conspiratorial beliefs” as an extremely dangerous social malady, a major contributing factor to the rise of Nazism and other deadly totalitarian ideologies. His own background as an individual of Jewish ancestry who had fled Austria in 1937 surely contributed to the depth of his feelings on these philosophical matters.
Meanwhile, Strauss, a founding figure in modern neo-conservative thought, was equally harsh in his attacks upon conspiracy analysis, but for polar-opposite reasons. In his mind, elite conspiracies were absolutely necessary and beneficial, a crucial social defense against anarchy or totalitarianism, but their effectiveness obviously depended upon keeping them hidden from the prying eyes of the ignorant masses. His main problem with “conspiracy theories” was not that they were always false, but they might often be true, and therefore their spread was potentially disruptive to the smooth functioning of society. So as a matter of self-defense, elites needed to actively suppress or otherwise undercut the unauthorized investigation of suspected conspiracies.
Even for most educated Americans, theorists such as Beard, Popper, and Strauss are probably no more than vague names mentioned in textbooks, and that was certainly true in my own case. But while the influence of Beard seems to have largely disappeared in elite circles, the same is hardly true of his rivals. Popper probably ranks as one of the founders of modern liberal thought, with an individual as politically influential as left-liberal financier George Soros claiming to be his intellectual disciple. Meanwhile, the neo-conservative thinkers who have totally dominated the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement for the last couple of decades often proudly trace their ideas back to Strauss.
So, through a mixture of Popperian and Straussian thinking, the traditional American tendency to regard elite conspiracies as a real but harmful aspect of our society was gradually stigmatized as either paranoid or politically dangerous, laying the conditions for its exclusion from respectable discourse.
By 1964, this intellectual revolution had largely been completed, as indicated by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the famous article by political scientist Richard Hofstadter critiquing the so-called “paranoid style” in American politics, which he denounced as the underlying cause of widespread popular belief in implausible conspiracy theories. To a considerable extent, he seemed to be attacking straw men, recounting and ridiculing the most outlandish conspiratorial beliefs, while seeming to ignore the ones that had been proven correct. For example, he described how some of the more hysterical anti-Communists claimed that tens of thousands of Red Chinese troops were hidden in Mexico, preparing an attack on San Diego, while he failed to even acknowledge that for years Communist spies had indeed served near the very top of the U.S. government. Not even the most conspiratorially minded individual suggests that all alleged conspiracies are true, merely that some of them might be.
Most of these shifts in public sentiment occurred before I was born or when I was a very young child, and my own views were shaped by the rather conventional media narratives that I absorbed. Hence, for nearly my entire life, I always automatically dismissed all of the so-called “conspiracy theories” as ridiculous, never once even considering that any of them might possibly be true.
To the extent that I ever thought about the matter, my reasoning was simple and based on what seemed like good, solid common sense. Any conspiracy responsible for some important public event must surely have many separate “moving parts” to it, whether actors or actions taken, let us say numbering at least 100 or more. Now given the imperfect nature of all attempts at concealment, it would surely be impossible for all of these to be kept entirely hidden. So even if a conspiracy were initially 95% successful in remaining undetected, five major clues would still be left in plain sight for investigators to find. And once the buzzing cloud of journalists noticed these, such blatant evidence of conspiracy would certainly attract an additional swarm of energetic investigators, tracing those items back to their origins, with more pieces gradually being uncovered until the entire cover-up likely collapsed. Even if not all the crucial facts were ever determined, at least the simple conclusion that there had indeed been some sort of conspiracy would quickly become established.
However, there was a tacit assumption in my reasoning, one that I have since decided was entirely false. Obviously, many potential conspiracies either involve powerful governmental officials or situations in which their disclosure would represent a source of considerable embarrassment to such individuals. But I had always assumed that even if government failed in its investigatory role, the dedicated bloodhounds of the Fourth Estate would invariably come through, tirelessly seeking truth, ratings, and Pulitzers. However, once I gradually began realizing that the media was merely “Our American Pravda” and perhaps had been so for decades, I suddenly recognized the flaw in my logic. If those five—or ten or twenty or fifty—initial clues were simply ignored by the media, whether through laziness, incompetence, or much less venial sins, then there would be absolutely nothing to prevent successful conspiracies from taking place and remaining undetected, perhaps even the most blatant and careless ones.
In fact, I would extend this notion to a general principle. Substantial control of the media is almost always an absolute prerequisite for any successful conspiracy, the greater the degree of control the better. So when weighing the plausibility of any conspiracy, the first matter to investigate is who controls the local media and to what extent.
Let us consider a simple thought-experiment. For various reasons these days, the entire American media is extraordinarily hostile to Russia, certainly much more so than it ever was toward the Communist Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s. Hence I would argue that the likelihood of any large-scale Russian conspiracy taking place within the operative zone of those media organs is virtually nil. Indeed, we are constantly bombarded with stories of alleged Russian conspiracies that appear to be “false positives,” dire allegations seemingly having little factual basis or actually being totally ridiculous. Meanwhile, even the crudest sort of anti-Russian conspiracy might easily occur without receiving any serious mainstream media notice or investigation.
This argument may be more than purely hypothetical. A crucial turning point in America’s renewed Cold War against Russia was the passage of the 2012 Magnitsky Act by Congress, punitively targeting various supposedly corrupt Russian officials for their alleged involvement in the illegal persecution and death of an employee of Bill Browder, an American hedge-fund manager with large Russian holdings. However, there’s actually quite a bit of evidence that it was Browder himself who was actually the mastermind and beneficiary of the gigantic corruption scheme, while his employee was planning to testify against him and was therefore fearful of his life for that reason. Naturally, the American media has provided scarcely a single mention of these remarkable revelations regarding what might amount to a gigantic Magnitsky Hoax of geopolitical significance.
To some extent the creation of the Internet and the vast proliferation of alternative media outlets, including my own small webzine, have somewhat altered this depressing picture. So it is hardly surprising that a very substantial fraction of the discussion dominating these Samizdat-like publications concerns exactly those subjects regularly condemned as “crazy conspiracy theories” by our mainstream media organs. Such unfiltered speculation must surely be a source of considerable irritation and worry to government officials who have long relied upon the complicity of their tame media organs to allow their serious misdeeds to pass unnoticed and unpunished. Indeed, several years ago a senior Obama Administration official argued that the free discussion of various “conspiracy theories” on the Internet was so potentially harmful that government agents should be recruited to “cognitively infiltrate” and disrupt them, essentially proposing a high-tech version of the highly controversial Cointelpro operations undertaken by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
Until just a few years ago I’d scarcely even heard of Charles Beard, once ranked among the towering figures of 20th century American intellectual life. But the more I’ve discovered the number of serious crimes and disasters that have completely escaped substantial media scrutiny, the more I wonder what other matters may still remain hidden. So perhaps Beard was correct all along in recognizing the respectability of “conspiracy theories,” and we should return to his traditional American way of thinking, notwithstanding endless conspiratorial propaganda campaigns by the CIA and others to persuade us that we should dismiss such notions without any serious consideration.
For Further Reading:
Experimental COVID Injections – How Long Will We Continue to Allow Mass Murder by Lethal Injection?
181 Dead in the U.S. During 2 Week Period
By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | January 23, 2021
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.
A 2011 report by Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that fewer than one percent of all vaccine adverse events are reported to the government:
Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs and vaccines that endanger public health. New surveillance methods for drug and vaccine adverse effects are needed. (Source.)
Currently, data from the two experimental mRNA COVID injections that have been voluntarily reported is available for a two week period from the end of December through January 13, 2021.
The data covers 7,844 cases, including 181 deaths.
The largest amount of deaths occurred in people over the age of 75.
There was at least one death recorded of an unborn baby dying just after the mother received an experimental mRNA Pfizer shot while pregnant:
I was 28 weeks and 5 days pregnant when I received the first dose of the COVID19 vaccine. Two days later (12/25/2020 in the afternoon), I noticed decreased motion of the baby.
The baby was found to not have a heartbeat in the early am on 12/26/2020 and I delivered a 2lb 7oz nonviable female fetus at 29 weeks gestation. (Source.)
As we have previously reported here at Health Impact News, the guidelines for emergency use of the experimental mRNA Pfizer injection in the UK warned pregnant women, and women planning to soon become pregnant, to NOT get the experimental jab.
But the FDA guidelines issued in the U.S. for the same experimental Pfizer injection did not include such warnings. See:
Unlike UK, U.S. FDA Allows Pregnant and Nursing Women to Receive Experimental Pfizer COVID Vaccine
When reading the accompanying notes from these cases that were reported to VAERS, it is clear that many healthcare professionals are reluctant to report these cases, probably fearing repercussions for doing so.
In some cases, family members filed the report because the healthcare facility refused to do.
Some examples:
(VAERS ID # 913733) My grandmother died a few hours after receiving the moderna covid vaccine booster 1. While I don’t expect that the events are related, the treating hospital did not acknowledge this and I wanted to be sure a report was made.
(VAERS ID # 914621) Resident in our long term care facility who received first dose of Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine on 12/22/2020, only documented side effect was mild fatigue after receiving. She passed away on 12/27/2020 of natural causes per report. Has previously been in & out of hospice care, resided in nursing home for 9+ years, elderly with dementia. Due to proximity of vaccination we felt we should report the death, even though it is not believed to be related.
(VAERS ID # 914895) Injection given on 12/28/20 – no adverse events and no issues yesterday; Death today, 12/30/20, approx.. 2am today (unknown if related – Administrator marked as natural causes)
Since so few reports are actually recorded in the VAERS reporting system, what is the true number of people being killed by these lethal injections? For those who are not killed, how many will be crippled or suffer autoimmune diseases for the rest of their lives?
If during pre-COVID times less than 1% of all vaccine injuries and deaths were reported to VAERS, let’s make a conservative estimate and say that because it is widely known that the COVID injections were fast-tracked to market and have not yet been approved by the FDA, that a greater percentage are being reported, like 10% of the adverse reactions, including deaths.
We are looking at a pace of nearly 1000 deaths per week by injection due to non-FDA approved mRNA injections among nearly 40,000 cases a week of injuries due to these injections.
This is a public health crisis that is 100% avoidable and 100% caused by Big Pharma and the U.S. Government!
While Almost ALL Deaths in 2020 Were Recorded as COVID Deaths, Here’s Why NO Deaths in 2021 Will be Recorded as Vaccine Deaths
It is well known now that due to federal funding for COVID in 2020 that nearly all deaths were recorded as “COVID” deaths, even in cases where the death occurred by traffic accident, shooting, heart attack, etc.
Now we are seeing the exact opposite happen with the roll-out of the COVID experimental injections. NONE of them are being recorded as vaccine deaths. Why?
Because the CDC does not provide a category for “vaccine deaths” to be used on death certificates. To learn more about this, see an article we published in 2018 from a Death Certificate Clerk whistleblower who revealed the politics behind listing “cause of death” on death certificates.
She wrote:
Our current system for capturing mortality rates can and does provide a mostly uninvestigated and inaccurate picture of what causes a death. The process for creating and registering causes of death for public records is a complicated, convoluted, politicized, completely open to both ignorance and the manipulations of personal, professional, and governmental interests.
I’m the one creating these statistics and I offer you this: If you take one thing away from this, take away a healthier skepticism about even the most accepted mainstream, nationally reported, CDC or other ‘scientific’ statistics.
What most people don’t know is that doctors are not allowed to attest to anything that is not a strictly NATURAL cause of death. (Full article.)
Netanyahu to dispatch Mossad chief to meet Biden & outline Israel’s demands for Iran nuclear deal overhaul
RT | January 24, 2021
Mossad chief Yossi Cohen may become the first top Israeli official to meet new US president Joe Biden amid concerns in Tel Aviv that his administration is set to revive the Obama-era international nuclear pact with Iran.
The head of Israeli secret service and one of PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s most trusted allies, Cohen, is heading to Washington sometime next month to brief the Biden administration on a set of terms regarding any potential nuclear deal with Tehran, Channel 12 reported on Saturday, citing “communications” between Israel and the new US administration.
Cohen is also expected to meet with the CIA chief and once again present an intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear program, which according to Israelis is secretly aimed at obtaining nukes.
Cohen’s team is reportedly set to demand a “radical overhaul” of the agreement, far more strict for Tehran, including a full halt of uranium enrichment and production of advanced centrifuges. On top of that, Israel wants Iran to stop “supporting terror groups” and “end its military presence in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.”
Iran’s president this week reiterated his country’s willingness to return to the terms of deal, but said it’s up to the Biden administration to make the necessary concessions. Cohen’s team is reportedly set to demand a “radical overhaul” of the agreement, with far more strict commitments from Tehran.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed between Iran and the six major global powers in 2015 and put constraints on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions [the Western signatories never honored their commitments since 2015]. Israel lobbied the Obama administration hard against joining the JCPOA, and once Donald Trump took office, continued this effort, this time succeeding in getting Trump to withdraw and reintroduce crippling sanctions against Iran.
Since then, amid ever-escalating tensions with the US while criticizing other JCPOA signatories for their failure to bring Washington to its senses, Tehran chose to gradually renege on their side of the deal too.
In January, Iran began enriching uranium to 20 percent, drifting further away from the parameters of the deal. While higher than the 3.67 percent level agreed in the 2015 pact, the new figure is still below the 90 percent level that is considered weapons-grade.
Iran has also issued a symbolic ultimatum, with an Iranian spokesperson stating that the Biden administration will have one month, until February 21 to reverse sanctions. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is tasked with monitoring Iran’s compliance, warned that time is running out with “only weeks left” to save JCPOA.
Cheerleading Trump’s Upcoming Sham Senate Trial
By Stephen Lendman | January 23, 2021
There’s plenty of domestic and geopolitical wrongdoing to hold Trump accountable for.
Instead, Senate trial proceedings against him — to begin on February 9 — focus on the phony charge of inciting insurrection.
Innocence isn’t a permitted defense under US law of the jungle rules.
Nor do establishment media like the NYT recognize the rule of law over the other way around.
The self-styled newspaper of record is in the vanguard of wanting Trump crucified for the wrong reasons, ignoring justifiable ones.
New Senate Majority Leader Schumer long ago showed his contempt for the rule of law he disdains, the same true for most elected and appointed US officials.
Schumer’s notion of “healing… unity… truth and (justifiable) accountability” is none of the above.
Like many others from both right wings of the one-party state, he’s unfit for any public office.
Yet he’s playing a key role in Trump’s upcoming show trial— what only tyrannical ruling authorities could love.
Hanging trials move quickly. If begins on Wednesday, February 9, as scheduled, it could wrap up by Friday.
Former Trump supporter/now turncoat antagonist Minority Leader McConnell defied reality saying:
“(W)e need a full and fair process where the former president can mount a defense and the Senate can properly consider the factual, legal and constitutional questions at stake (sic).”
What’s upcoming is polar opposite what the rule of law is supposed to be all about.
Instead of being charged with legitimate wrongdoing, Trump faces a phony politicized accusation.
It remains to be seen how many Republicans side with undemocratic Dem unity against him — whether a super-majority can be cobbled together for crucifixion.
If so, it’ll be for the wrong reason, not justifiable ones.
The Times has been screaming for his head since defeating media darling Hillary in 2016.
Since election 2016, its editorial board, correspondents and columnists waged all-out war against him — largely for invented reasons, ignoring most important legitimate ones.
Times editors called him “the greatest threat to American democracy” — ignoring that it exists in fantasy version alone, the real thing tolerated nowhere by its ruling class.
Above all else in its daily editions, Trump bashing was prioritized, making up stuff against him while ignoring the criminality of undemocratic Dems who comprise a far greater menace.
Now empowered, everyone should be terrified about how they’ll grievously abuse the rule of law ahead — a process already begun.
Biden/Harris and their undemocratic Dem co-conspirators want everyone mass-vaxxed with hazardous to health vaccines for seasonal flu-renamed covid.
The newly empowered regime may mandate mask wearing that’s harmful to health when worn longterm.
They may mandate vaccine passports for access to employment, education, air travel, and other public places.
They’ll likely wage preemptive war against one or more invented enemies — along with waging it by other means against nations unwilling to sell their souls to a higher power in Washington.
They already sold their own to Wall Street, the military, industrial, security, Big Media complex, and other favored corporate predators.
Together with Dem controlled congressional members, they’re virtually certain to enact legislation that benefits privileged interests at the expense of most others.
There’s nothing remotely democratic about both right wings of the one-party state.
The next four years may cause more harm to more people at home and abroad than any previous regime in US history.
Mind manipulated Americans who believe that Biden/Harris will deliver for them don’t know that whenever a change of power occurs in Washington, dirty business as usual doesn’t miss a beat.
This time will not be different than before.
It’s just a matter of how bad things will get ahead.
Notably what’s coming is at a time of the Greatest Main Street Depression in US history that will likely worsen and be protracted, perhaps for years.
Times rubbish about the “end of Trump (being) the beginning of America” is defied by the worst of times for ordinary Americans with scant relief in prospect for help when most needed.
President Biden’s New Administration, Old Aggression
Strategic Culture Foundation | January 22, 2021
The day after President Joe Biden’s inauguration this week the White House announced that it was seeking a five-year extension of the New START treaty with Russia. The treaty was set to expire on February 4 after a 10-year run. Russia in recent months repeatedly urged the United States to renew the accord, which the former Trump administration had ignored.
Therefore, the new administration’s willingness to save New START is welcome. (But it is not clear cut, as explained below.) If the treaty had expired, there was a grave risk of relapse into a nuclear arms race. Given that the U.S. has already pulled out of several arms controls treaties, it is of paramount importance to maintain the last remaining pact, which specifically limits the bilateral arsenal of intercontinental warheads.
In announcing the Biden administration’s decision on extending New START, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stated: “Just as we engage Russia in ways that advance American interests, we in the Department will remain clear-eyed about the challenges Russia poses and committed to defending the nation against their reckless and adversarial actions.” (Our emphasis.)
White House spokeswoman Jan Psaki articulated a similar testy rationale, saying that despite the extension proposal the Biden administration would hold Russia to “account for reckless and adversarial actions”. (Our emphasis.)
Please note the casual assertion of provocative claims as if they are proven facts. And this, ironically, from a new administration that has piously proclaimed to bring “facts” to public announcements in place of the Trumpian habit of peddling falsehoods and “alternate facts”.
It was then announced that President Biden has ordered his top intelligence officers to carry out a review into allegations of Russian malign conduct. In particular, allegations of a massive cyber attack – the so-called SolarWinds hack – on American government departments and commerce; the alleged poison assassination of Russian dissident figure Alexei Navalny; allegations of Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election; and, lastly, the allegations of Russian military intelligence running bounty-hunter plots in Afghanistan to murder U.S. soldiers. (We can be sure the conclusions are already foregone, only awaiting new media spin.)
Curiously though, the allegation of Russian interference in the 2020 election seems to be a new one for the archive of outlandish anti-Russian accusations. It is not clear what it refers to specifically. Earlier this week, Biden’s Democratic allies House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton made ludicrous assertions that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have helped Donald Trump in trying to overthrow the electoral process with the violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6.
In any case, Russia has refuted all these absurd allegations as “baseless” and without evidence. This charade of accusing Russia has been intensifying since the 2016 election when Trump was elected. It now looks set to continue under the Biden presidency. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says such fables betray a Cold War mentality of Russophobia which seems to be endemic in the American political establishment.
So Biden’s proposed extension of New START is not the offer of an olive branch to Russia, as it may first appear. It is being done with a cold hand of raw self-interest and in a wider context of continuing and intensifying antagonism towards Russia.
Indeed, in reporting the move on the nuclear pact, the New York Times quoted Biden aides saying that the new administration had no interest in establishing a “reset” in American relations with Russia.
This week also revealed other indications of aggressive mindset in the new administration. During confirmation hearings in the Senate for Biden’s Cabinet and national security team, the recurring theme was how the United States would stand up to purported adversaries. Russia, China and Iran were chief among the targets for American power interest, all described in pejorative terms as enemies.
Avril Haines was confirmed as Director of National Intelligence. Ridiculously, she declared that she would “speak truth to power” and ensure that “intelligence would not be politicized”. This is the same Avril Haines who helped mastermind drone assassinations while formerly serving as deputy director of the CIA and who this week vowed to take a more aggressive stance towards China. Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin are set to become Secretaries of State and Defense. Other members of the Biden team, Victoria Nuland, Wendy Sherman and William Burns (who is to head the CIA) are also alumni of the past Obama administrations (2008-2016) in which Biden himself served as vice president.
All of them are indelibly complicit in propagating illegal wars, regime-change operations and the disastrous 2014 coup d’état in the Ukraine. In fact, Blinken during his Senate hearings this week affirmed that he is in favor of increasing lethal U.S. military supplies to Ukraine.
Joe Biden has a long and sordid record as a former Senator of supporting dozens of U.S. wars and aggressions, going back to the bloody invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989 and the bombing of former Yugoslavia in 1999, among others. But it was his pivotal support for the U.S. war on Iraq in 2003 which marks his most vile act as a warmonger and surrogate for American imperialism.
Biden has indulged the Russophobic fantasies of “Russiagate”, alleging collusion between the Kremlin and former president Trump, which have poisoned U.S.-Russia relations. Biden has even resorted to cheap ad hominem attacks on Putin calling the Russian leader a “thug”. How rich is that for someone who caused over one million deaths in his sponsorship of one war alone in Iraq, never mind dozens of others.
Alas, unfortunately, what we are seeing in Washington is a new administration with old aggression.
The cognitive dissonance afflicting America is something to behold. U.S. media this week were swooning over the inauguration of Democrat President Joe Biden as a “return to normal” after four years of turmoil under Donald Trump. The “adults have returned” goes the saying among pundits. More accurately, that should be the adult psychopaths and imperialist warmongers have returned.
In other matters, Biden announced a “war-time effort” to control the coronavirus pandemic which has devastated the United States. The American death toll from the disease [allegedly] stands at over 400,000 as of this week and is set to reach half a million by next month. The U.S. has the biggest [contrived] death toll in the world, accounting for 20 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths. Concurrent with the U.S. public health crisis is an economic crisis of poverty, unemployment, homelessness and inequality. It makes you wonder how it is that the Biden administration can devote so much interest on “foreign enemies” amid such catastrophe at home.
One dubious blessing perhaps is that United States will be so preoccupied with salvaging its own domestic woes that its warmongering politicians might not have the stomach nor nerve for overseas adventurism and wars. Although, don’t bet on it.
Biden’s Long History of Abusing Power
By Stephen Lendman | January 23, 2021
January 20 was a day of mourning for countless numbers of people harmed by Biden that went on for nearly half a century in public office.
The same holds for misery he’ll inflict on countless more ahead —ordinary people exploited so privileged ones can benefit, including himself and family members.
He built a dishonorable career on a foundation of shilling for powerful interests that included waging wars on humanity at home and abroad.
His record as US senator and vice president reflects virtually everything disturbing about dirty politics as usual in Washington.
It includes endless examples of breaching the rule of law and betraying the public trust.
In 2002, then-Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren slammed him, saying:
“His energetic work on behalf of the credit card companies has earned him the affection of the banking industry and protected him from any well-funded challengers for his Senate seat.”
Even the NYT criticized him in 2005 for “vot(ing) against a proposal to require credit card companies to provide more effective warnings to consumers about the consequences of paying only the minimum amount due each month.”
Throughout his public life, he backed predatory corporate interests and the military, industrial, security complex at the expense of peace, equity, justice and the rule of law — notions he always disdained.
He’s one of the ugliest ugly Americans in Washington — past and present, a figure to be despised, never trusted.
Along with his political record of shame, he was accused many times of acting inappropriately toward women and girls.
At least eight women accused him of inappropriate touching and/or violating their personal space — then refusing to apologize for his unacceptable behavior.
He was criticized for offensive remarks about the physical appearance of young girls when campaigning.
Former staffer in Biden’s Senate office Tara Reade accused him of inappropriate touching and more, saying the following:
He “used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck.”
In 1993, she accused him of pressing her up against a wall, kissing her neck, prying her legs open with his knees, and penetrating her digitally — a serious charge.
She filed a police report in Washington, accusing him of sexual assault.
She also filed a Senate complaint. Around half a dozen former Biden staffers said they were told about the assault incident.
Other women accused Biden of sexual assault and harassment.
Reade’s former neighbor in the 1990s Lynda LaCasse said Biden’s assault “happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it.”
Last May, Biden denied the accusation, claiming it “never happened.”
Around the same time, Reade called on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, adding:
“(I)f Joe Biden takes” a polygraph test, so will she.
Describing the alleged incident, Reade said:
“He’s talking to me and his hands are everywhere and everything is happening very quickly.”
“He was kissing me and he said, very low, ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ ”
“He said, ‘Come on, man. I heard you liked me.’ ”
When Biden entered the presidential race last year, eight women publicly accused him of sexual harassment, including unwanted kissing, hugging and inappropriate touching.
Former Nevada state assemblywoman Lucy Flores earlier accused Biden of making her feel uncomfortable by inappropriate touching and kissing.
He’s “not just a hugger,” she said. He “very clearly was invading women’s spaces without their consent in a way that made them feel uncomfortable.”
“Does he potentially have the capacity to go beyond that? That’s the answer everyone is trying to get at.”
On inauguration day January 20, Reade commented on his ascension to power, saying the following:
Viewing the inauguration was “unspeakably hard to watch.”
“Coming forward about being sexually harassed and assaulted in 1993 when I was Joe Biden’s staffer was excruciating on so many levels.”
“Biden used his power and resources with certain media to erase me and silence me.”
“I stand in solidarity with all survivors coming up against such power.”
“I will not be silenced. Instead of talking about saving the country’s soul he should be held accountable for his actions.”
“The hard part is I believe in many policies that will move forward as I am a progressive independent, but it is unspeakably hard to watch the man who assaulted me go to the most powerful position in the land.”
“I’m sorry that I’m politically inconvenient but my perpetrator was Joe Biden. And people need to deal with it.”
Separately, Reade tweeted:
“Today is yet again another difficult day for survivors of sexual violence.”
“While I’m thankful Trump was defeated, the idea of the man who assaulted me as our president is still terribly painful.”
“I will be sharing resources for survivors today for #Inauguration2021.
“Instead of talking about saving the country’s soul he should be held accountable for his actions.”
“The hard part is I believe in many policies that will move forward as I am a progressive independent, but it is unspeakably hard to watch the man who assaulted me go to the most powerful position in the land.”
Trump once bragged about being able to do whatever he wanted with women with remarks like:
“When you’re a star, they let you do it.”
Draw your own conclusions about the duo.
A Final Comment
Psychology Today earlier called sexual assault “any sexual activity that occurs without consent,” adding:
It’s “a pervasive problem. In America, one in three women and one in four men experience sexual violence in their lifetimes, according to the National Institutes of Health.”
“And those numbers are likely an underestimate due to the shame and fear that prevent many survivors from reporting abuse.”
“Sex and violence are closely linked,” notably by “dominant men forcing themselves on women.”
“(S)exual assault is more about power than…sex…motivation stem(ming) from the perpetrator’s need for dominance and control.”
Children and adolescents are affected like adults.
Biden is a political predator many times over, his long record of shame well documented.
Now in the nation’s highest office.
He got there the old-fashioned way — by stealing it.
Pakistanis hold massive rally against ties with Israel
Press TV – January 23, 2021
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis have held an anti-Israel march in the country’s major city of Karachi, rejecting the possibility of normalizing ties with the occupying Israeli regime.
The “million-man march” organized by opposition Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) was held with participants donning the colors of the JUI-F and raising tall black and white striped flags.
“Israel is involved in the genocide of Muslims in Palestine and we would never allow the federal government to establish diplomatic relations with it,” JUI-F leader Maulana Saleemullah Alwazi told Pakistani daily The News International.
In recent months, the news of deals signed by a few Arab dictatorships to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel under intense US pressure has sparked widespread anger among Pakistani people, who hold strong feelings for the Palestinian cause.
In December, top Pakistani officials fiercely denied rumors publicized by Israeli news outlets that Islamabad was moving towards a similar deal.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan rejected as “baseless” reports of his government officials visiting Israel, insisting why would any of his ministers visit Tel Aviv when Islamabad does not even recognize Israel.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said later in December that he had informed the UAE — one of the US-backed kingdoms that recently normalized ties with Israel — of Islamabad’s “steadfast” policy towards Tel Aviv, insisting that the country will refuse to recognize it until the issue of Palestine is resolved.
The top Pakistani diplomat said he had explained to his Emirati counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan the “depth of emotions and feelings Pakistanis have about Palestine and Kashmir.”
The normalization trend has drawn widespread condemnation from Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital. They say the deals are “a stab in the back” of the Palestinians.
Biden Instructs Intelligence Agencies to Study Reports of ‘Russian Hackers’, US Soldier Bounties
By Asya Geydarova – Sputnik – 21.01.2021
The inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden took place on January 20 and marks the start of the four-year term of Biden as the 46th president of the United States and Kamala Harris as vice president. Since being inaugurated, Biden has already signed a series of executive orders to undo US President Donald Trump’s legacy.
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters that President Joe Biden has tasked the US intelligence agencies with preparing a thorough review of alleged activities undertaken by Russia.
According to Psaki, these include reports of “Russian hackers” concerning the recent cyber attack against IT company SolarWinds, the alleged poisoning of opposition figure and blogger Alexey Navalny, and allegations of bounties on the US soldiers in Afghanistan.
“Even as we work with Russia to advance US interests, so we work to hold Russia to account for its reckless and adversarial actions. And to this end, the president is also issuing a tasking to the intelligence community for its full assessment of the SolarWinds cyber beach, Russian interference in the 2020 election, its use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexey Navalny and the alleged bounties on the US soldiers in Afghanistan,” Psaki said.
The cyberattack against SolarWinds exposed private data from companies and government agencies, including thousands of emails from the US Department of Justice (DoJ).
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov told Sputnik the United States is using the media to spread different versions of what caused the SolarWinds cyberattack, but it never showed any proof that Russia was complicit in it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also denied the allegations: “This talk [of cyberattacks] has nothing to do with us, because Russia is not involved in such attacks generally, including this one specifically. We state this officially and decisively. Any accusations of Russia’s involvement are absolutely unfounded and are a continuation of the kind of blind Russophobia that is resorted to following any incident,” Peskov said in a briefing last month, Sputnik reported.
Bounties Allegations
In June, the New York Times reported that US intelligence officials had informed President Donald Trump about suspected Russia effort to place bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump dismissed the claims as a “hoax” and several senior US military officials said that the intelligence was unconvincing. Russian officials, in turn, have issued multiple denials of the claims, calling them “blatant lies” designed to keep US forces in Afghanistan forever.
US media outlets reported in late December that the president was also briefed of alleged findings that China offered bounties to non-state actors in Afghanistan.
A senior US official told the Politico portal that the allegations lacked “hard evidence,” and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the claims were “nothing but fake news” published with the aim of smearing China. The Taliban has called the bounty allegations “propaganda,” suggesting they may have been put forward for political reasons.
“Of course, countries are competing among themselves. It is possible that accusations against Russia of such cooperation are also for political purposes and so China has been accused of doing the same thing,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said last week.Navalny Case
Navalny returned to Russia on Sunday after receiving treatment in Germany following suspected poisoning. He was detained at a Moscow airport over multiple violations of probation.
On 20 August, Navalny fell ill while aboard a domestic flight. He was initially treated in the Siberian city of Omsk, where the plane had to urgently land. Local doctors suggested metabolic malfunctions as main diagnosis and said there were no traces of poison in his system. Two days later, he was flown to the Charite hospital in Berlin for further treatment.
Berlin claims that German doctors found evidence of poisoning with a nerve agent from the Novichok group in Navalny’s body, which is refuted by Moscow. Navalny returned to Russia on Sunday after receiving treatment in Germany following a suspected poisoning in Siberia. Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport upon arrival over multiple violations of probation.
Moscow insists that Berlin present the biological materials to corroborate the chemical poisoning, so that it could open a criminal case. According to Russian authorities, they have already sent several requests for legal assistance to Berlin, but to no avail.
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By Thomas S. Harrington | CounterPunch | August 19, 2016
… What will almost never be talked about are the many very good reasons a person from the vast region stretching from Morrocco in the west, to Pakistan in the east, have to be very angry at, and to feel highly vengeful toward, the US, its strategic puppeteer Israel, and their slavishly loyal European compadres like France, Germany and Great Britain. … Read full article
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