As Europe appears to be falling apart. Germany is now officially in recession as de-industrialisation follows its green energy policies and the catastrophic damage to the Nord Stream pipelines. As Bloomberg put it last week: ‘Europe’s economic engine is breaking down’. France remains in uproar as protests continue nationwide. And any idea that that it is trying to free itself from the shackles of carbon neutrality is wishful thinking at best, naïve at worst. Dutch farmers are still under attack from their own government after the EU approved a farm buy-out plan to meet their climate goals.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the European Parliament hosted an event a couple of weeks ago titled ‘Beyond Growth‘, as that is the clear direction of travel for much of Europe.
What is surprising, however, is that this EU event in Brussels expressed so little concern about the impact on its citizens, let alone for the economic prospects of the Union. Bizarrely, the event even appeared to be celebrating the decline of European economies which had previously brought growth and prosperity to their citizens. It was as if the European Parliament has been captured by eco-terrorists who regard industrialisation as a cancer which requires removal. They seem to have all fallen under the spell of a doom cult which repeats the mantra that we live on a planet of finite resources, and so economic growth based on consumption is not only unethical but ultimately doomed.
The EU president and High Priestess of this cult, Ursula von der Leyen, reminded the EU conference of an earlier iteration of this mantra when in 1972 the Club of Rome published its ‘Limits to Growth’ report. What she failed to mention is that this belief in limited resources, which has been drip-fed into the minds of the masses for more than 50 years, is based on the erroneous assumptions of the Rev Malthus in the 18th century that population growth would inevitably outstrip food supply. But both the Club of Rome and Malthus have been proved wrong: the planet has shown that it is more than capable of feeding its current population of eight billion.
Yet the belief in overpopulation runs deep, with tragic consequences as a ghostly infanticide now infects the planet. A new documentary, Birthgap, reveals that because so many women have denied themselves children, at some point global population levels will collapse dramatically. Which means that those who have consciously chosen not to have children to ‘save the planet’ have made a pointless gesture. This is a message that eco-terrorists do not want to hear. Indeed, students in Cambridge recently tried to prevent the Birthgap documentary from being screened.
Whatever eco-terrorists might claim, the Earth has plenty of resources. Even oil isn’t running out any time soon. A problem for the West is that much of the raw materials on the planet (the oil, the rare earths etc etc) happens to be in the ‘wrong’ hands. It is not without irony that those countries which the West has shunned, banned and sanctioned are the ones with the raw materials.
There was another but much less reported European economic conference last week. It was held in Moscow and brought together the Eurasian economies. By contrast with the earlier Brussels event, this gathering will have taken growth as an a given, and therefore looked at ways to boost the prosperity of their populations. Amongst the topics considered were ensuring energy and food security, technological and financial independence, speeding up digital transformation, eliminating trade barriers, and transport infrastructure development. Furthermore, there will be a meeting of 81 nations in St Petersburg this month to discuss a gold-backed alternative to the dollar. All these countries can look forward to rising living standards, while we in the virtue-signalling West have a bleak future. Trapped in our 15-minute cities, if Just Stop Oil and the other eco-fascists have their way, we won’t even be allowed out to collect wood while it is more than probable that wood burners will be banned in urban areas – to save the planet, of course. ‘Beyond growth’ is not a welcome prospect if you want to stay alive on planet Earth.
There are signs, nevertheless, that a backlash in the West is beginning. In the last few weeks a group of state attorneys from 23 states in the US have threatened members of the UN’s Net Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) with legal action because they risk violating US anti-trust laws. As a consequence many high-profile members, including Lloyd’s of London, have pulled out of the alliance. Is common sense is beginning to return? We have to pray it is.
Lucy Wyatt is an author based in Somerset. Her book Approaching Chaos: Could an ancient archetype save C21st civilisation? is available on Amazon.
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr recently said that if he becomes president, he will ban pharmaceutical advertising on US television.
“It’s not good to have pharmaceutical advertising on TV,” said Kennedy. “It’s good for the television stations, it’s good for the pharmaceutical companies, but it’s not good for public health.”
The US and New Zealand are the only two nations globally that allow drug companies to promote their products directly to the consumer – known as direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA).
Kennedy said that because of pharmaceutical advertising in the US, Americans use more prescription drugs than anywhere else in the world, and yet, they have the worst outcomes.
Americans have the lowest life expectancy compared to other wealthy nations and the highest rate of avoidable deaths, despite spending nearly 18% of GDP on healthcare in 2021.
Kennedy told me he blames “the influence of the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington, and indirectly, the influence of media companies that earn some $18 billion in revenue annually from direct-to-consumer drug advertising.”
Drug advertising in the US
In the 80s, there were few prescription drug ads broadcast on US TV because the regulatory standard made it difficult to provide adequate information about drug labelling to consumers. David Kessler, FDA Commissioner between 1990 and 1997, also vigorously opposed DTCA.
But when Kessler left the agency, the new administration eased regulatory restrictions and the floodgates opened. Within a decade, DTCA went from US$2.1 billion in 1997 to US$9.6 billion in 2016.
“They do it because it works,” said Barbara Mintzes, professor of evidence-based pharmaceutical policy at the University of Sydney. “Drug companies would not be spending the money if it did not lead to expanded sales.”
Proponents argue that DTCA empowers the consumer with information about diseases and drug treatments by encouraging informed discussions between patients and their medical providers. But Mintzes is not convinced.
“I totally agree that people need information on medicines but getting that information from advertising is not the same as getting it from an unbiased source,” said Mintzes.
Mintzes has long argued against DTCA saying, “There is no public health rationale and no reliable evidence that it leads to better care, public or patient empowerment, or to the type of information needed for shared informed treatment choices.”
Many Americans are unaware of the persuasiveness of DTCA. A national FDA survey found that 29% of consumers believed that only completely safe medicines could be advertised on TV. In California, it was 42% of consumers.
Advertised drugs offer little benefit
The decision about which drugs are advertised is not made on public health grounds, but on what will maximise profits.
“It’s a marketing decision,” says Mintzes. “Often, it’s a small, select group of drugs that are very expensive, on patent, and are not necessarily the best available treatments in terms of effectiveness or safety.”
According to a recent study published in JAMA, most of Big Pharma’s spending (68%) on the top-selling prescription drugs in 2020, were of ‘low added benefit’ for patients.
The study’s lead author Michael DiStefano, a researcher at Johns Hopkins said it’s probably a strategy of the pharmaceutical industry to “drive patient demand for drugs that clinicians would be less likely to prescribe.”
“When a consumer sees these advertisements on TV or social media, they should really question if it’s the best drug for them and have a conversation with their provider,” said DiStefano.
Poor FDA oversight of DCTA
The FDA regulates the promotion of medicines and the content of DTCA, under the authority of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). It requires that advertising is accurate, and only promotes the drug for approved conditions, clearly stating harms and ways to get more information.
However, the agency lacks the resources to police it properly.
A 2002 Government Accountability Office report found the FDA’s oversight of DTCA was lacking. The agency had allowed some drug companies to repeatedly disseminate new misleading advertisements for the same drug.
Further, a change in the FDA’s procedures for reviewing draft regulatory letters led to a significant lag in issuing letters to demand the removal of misleading advertising – some regulatory letters were not even issued until after the advertising campaign had run its course.
Vioxx ads led to unnecessary deaths
From 1999 to 2004, Vioxx was among the most aggressively advertised medicines in the US. Merck spent more than US$100 million per year in advertising to consumers and generated annual sales of more than US$1 billion.
But Merck ran a deceptive advertising campaign, which misrepresented the safety of Vioxx and improperly concealed the drug’s increased risk of stroke. Vioxx was estimated to have caused 88,000–140,000 heart attacks in the USA alone – 44% of which were fatal.
A significant proportion of those people who died, took Vioxx after seeing it advertised on TV.
FDA promoted covid products
During the pandemic, the FDA began promoting covid-19 products – antivirals and vaccines – something that is not in the agency’s remit.
FDA commissioner Robert Califf, for example, repeatedly advertised the benefits of Pfizer’s antiviral drug paxlovid and covid-19 vaccines for reducing the risk of long covid.
“The FDA commissioner can’t tweet like this,” wrote Vinay Prasad, a practicing haematologist-oncologist at the University of California San Francisco. “How does the FDA preserve the authority to regulate truthful marketing, when the FDA commissioner is a billboard for Pfizer? These claims are not validated by the highest methods. This is unbelievable.”
In addition, director of the FDA’s vaccine division Peter Marks, featured in multiple videos on the FDA’s website, encouraging people to take the newly authorised bivalent boosters.
“It always feels odd to see the FDA promote products,” said Jessica Adams, a regulatory affairs expert. “The agency used to go out of its way to respect patient-provider decision-making and not interfere with the practice of medicine.”
In fact, the FDA’s own homepage was promoting the covid-19 vaccines.
“The FDA acts like a cheerleading or marketing arm of pharma companies, not a regulatory agency” said Aaron Siri, attorney at Siri & Glimstad law firm. “By promoting these shots, the FDA has hopelessly conflicted itself from later admitting these products have serious issues.”
“It is not the role of the FDA to promote vaccines or advise people to get them. Its role is to objectively assess whether they are safe and effective to its standard,” added Siri.
FDA’s revolving door
Kennedy has renewed calls to put an end to the FDA→Big Pharma “revolving door” which leads to undue influence over the agency.
Ten of the last 11 commissioners have gone on to secure roles with the pharmaceutical or biotech industries they once regulated – most within a year or two of leaving the FDA (see table).
Califf was announced as FDA commissioner on 17 Feb 2022 (his second time). SEC filings indicate that he resigned from the board of directors of Centessa Pharmaceuticals, the day before the announcement.
“That is an indication of just how completely industry has captured this agency,” said Kennedy vowing to shake up the system if he becomes president.
“We will institute new rules extending the waiting period before former officials can enter industry, consulting, and lobbying. We want real public servants in positions of public trust,” he added.
Kennedy believes the key to reforming the FDA will be to put qualified people in positions from outside the pharmaceutical industry, and to call on whistle-blowers, dissidents, and other people of integrity from within the FDA.
The FDA did not comment on the agency’s ‘revolving door’, nor did it answer whether the agency had considered instituting an extended waiting period between the time officials leave the FDA and enter industry.
We are told that, in a world of multiplying health emergencies, it has become necessary to give up some independence in return for safety. It is a tribute to those backing this agenda through the World Health Organization (WHO) that this message continues to gain credence. If humans are important, then we should also understand its flaws, and decide whether they matter.
1. The World Health Organization is not independent, and is significantly privately directed.
Early WHO funding was dominated by ‘assessed’ contributions from countries, based on national income, and the WHO decided how to use this core funding to achieve the greatest impact. Now, WHO funding is mainly ‘specified,’ meaning that the funder may decide how and where the work will be done. The WHO has become a conduit through which a funder can implement programs from which they stand to benefit. These funders are increasingly private entities; the second largest funder of the WHO is the foundation of a software entrepreneur and Big Pharma investor.
In ceding power to the WHO, a state will be ceding power to the funders of it. They can then profit by imposing the increasingly centralized and commodity-based approach that the WHO is taking.
2. People in democracies cannot be subject to dictatorships.
The WHO rightly represents all countries. This means that member states run by military dictatorships or other non-democratic regimes have an equal say at the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO’s governing body.
In ceding power to the WHO, democratic States are therefore sharing decision-making power over the health of their own citizens with these non-democratic states, some of whom will have geopolitical reasons to restrict a democratic state’s people and harm its economy. While equal say in policy may be appropriate for a purely advisory organization, ceding actual power over citizens to such an organization is obviously incompatible with democracy.
3. The WHO is not accountable to those it seeks to control.
Democratic states have systems through which those allowed to wield power over citizens wield it only at the citizens’ will, and are subject to independent courts for malfeasance or gross and harmful incompetence. This is necessary to address the corruption that always arises, as institutions are run by humans. Like other branches of the United Nations, the WHO is answerable to itself and the geopolitics of the WHA. Even the UN secretariat has limited influence as the WHO operates under its own constitution.
No one will be held accountable for the nearly quarter-million children that UNICEF estimates were killed by policies that the WHO promoted in South Asia. None of the up to 10 million girls forced into child marriage by WHO Covid policies will have any path for redress. Such lack of accountability may be acceptable if an institution is simply giving advice, but it is completely unacceptable for any institution that has powers to restrict, mandate or even censor a country’s citizens.
4. Centralization through the WHO is poor policy by incompetent people.
Before the influx of private money, the WHO’s focus was high burden endemic infectious disease, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS. These are strongly associated with poverty, as are those arising from malnutrition and poor sanitation. Public health experience tells us that addressing such preventable or treatable diseases is the best way to lengthen lives and promote sustainable good health. They are most effectively addressed by people on the ground, with local knowledge of behavior, culture and disease epidemiology. This involves empowering communities to manage their own health. The WHO once emphasized such decentralization, advocating for the strengthening of primary care. It was consistent with the fight against fascism and colonialism within which the WHO arose.
Centralized approaches to health, in contrast, require communities and individuals to comply with dictates that ignore local heterogeneity and community priorities. Malaria is not an issue to Icelandic people, but it absolutely dwarfs Covid in Uganda. Both human rights and effective interventions require local knowledge and direction. The WHO pushed mass Covid vaccination onto sub-Saharan Africa for nearly 2 years through their most expensive program to date, whilst knowing a large majority of the population were already immune, half were under 20 years, and deaths from each of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs absolutely dwarfed Covid-19 mortality.
The WHO staff are rarely experts. Experience in the 2009 Swine flu and West African Ebola outbreaks demonstrated that. Many have spent decades sitting in an office with minimal experience in program implementation or practical disease management. Country quotas and the nepotism associated with large international organizations mean that most countries will have far greater expertise within their borders than exists in a closeted bureaucracy in Geneva.
5. Real pandemics are not common, and are not becoming more common.
Pandemics due to respiratory viruses, as the WHO pointed out in 2019, are rare events. They have occurred about once per generation over the past 120 years. Since the advent of antibiotics (for primary or secondary infections), mortality has dropped dramatically. An increase in mortality recorded during Covid-19 was complicated by definitions (‘with’ versus ‘of’), average age of death was over 75 years, and death was unusual in healthy people. The global infection mortality rate was not greatly different to influenza. Tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS and most other common infections kill at a much younger age, imparting a greater burden in life years lost.
In summary
It makes no sense to grant a foreign-based, poorly unaccountable institution powers that contradict democratic norms and good public health policy. More so when this institution has limited expertise and a poor track record, is directed by private interests and those of authoritarian governments. This is obviously counter to what a government in a democracy is supposed to do.
This is not a matter of domestic political rivalries. However, the public relations departments of the prospective beneficiaries of this perpetual health emergency project would like us to believe it is.
We are currently funding the dismantling of our own independence and ceding our human rights to a small group which stands to benefit from our impoverishment, financed from a war chest accrued through the pandemic just ended. We don’t have to. It is as straightforward to see through this as it should be to stop it. All that is needed is clarity, honesty and a little courage.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
UK counter-terrorism police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival in his home country from Belgrade, Serbia, on 17 May, subjecting him to an extended interrogation over his “political views” and his reporting.
Klarenberg has written extensively for The Cradle, exposing London’s many covertoperations in West Asia.
According to The Grayzone, six plainclothes police were waiting for him outside his plane, promptly moving him to a back room and informing him of his detention under Schedule Three, Section Four of the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act.
Klarenberg was questioned for over five hours about his journalistic work, including “his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The counter-terrorism police seized his electronic devices and SD cards, took DNA swabs, fingerprinted him, and photographed him multiple times. He was threatened with arrest if he failed to comply.
Klarenberg’s most recent investigation for The Cradle exposed how UK government-affiliated contractors have been training Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces using US funding.
He made waves in recent months by exposing London’s use of Yemeni NGOs to covertly undermine the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa as well as Jordan’s use of UK intel techniques known as “digital media exploitation … used to monitor, manipulate, and disrupt dissent in the kingdom.”
Klarenberg has also ruffled feathers in London with his reporting for The Grayzone, exposing “major British and US intelligence intrigues,” including a report on how at least two of the hijackers who carried out the 11 September attacks in New York had been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation.
Another of his major exposés was a report revealing that journalist Paul Mason worked as a UK security state collaborator tasked with discrediting alternative media outlets, academics, and peace activists critical of NATO’s role in the Ukraine war.
Last year, The Cradle’s Arabic editor Radwan Mortada was sentenced in an irregular Lebanese military court hearing to one year and one month in prison for “the offense of insulting the military establishment.”
Moreover, one of our Turkish contributors, a former editor at Cum Hurriyet and a radio interview show personality, Ceyda Karan, has been eluding imprisonment for her journalism.
Another frequent correspondent, Hedwig Kuijpers, a Belgian national who often reports on contentious Kurdish issues in Iraq, Iran and Syria, has been missing for several months, sparking concerns about her safety.
Klarenberg’s detention sets a dangerous precedent for free speech in the UK, a country that since 2019 has kept Wikileaks founder Julian Assange locked up in a maximum security prison pending extradition to the US for reporting on the secret activities of western governments and their war crimes. US officials have even publicly encouraged his assassination.
… Klarenberg has been a regular contributor to Press TV, with one of his major exposes revealing how Britain used ambulances during the conflict in Syria to aid foreign-backed terrorists.
Among Klarenberg’s notable contributions are his pieces on the role of Western governments in the 2022 foreign-backed riots in Iran.
Protests erupted in September last year over the death of a young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini first in her native province of Kordestan and later in several cities, including the capital.
The foreign-backed violent riots claimed dozens of lives from both security forces and innocent people as the Western media and Persian-language news networks continued to induce riots in Iran. … Full article
… Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a UK security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.
Because Klarenberg’s reporting on Mason relied heavily on leaked emails, Mason falsely accused him of “assisting a Russian state-backed hack-and-leak disinformation campaign.” Mason has also reported the leak of his emails to the British police.
Emma Briant, a self-styled disinformation expert who participated in Mason’s campaign to sabotage NATO critics, dispatched lawyers to demand Klarenberg remove all of his articles that mention her from the internet. The lawyer letters also threatened costly super injunctions to prevent further reporting, and challenged the “authenticity” of the emails’ content.
The cease-and-desist letters additionally leveled false and defamatory allegations against Klarenberg, including that he was personally involved in hacking her email and Twitter account.
Did the bogus and obviously malicious complaints by Paul Mason or Emma Briant prompt the UK police to detain and investigate Klarenberg?
Klarenberg’s reports contain neither falsehoods nor anything approaching “disinformation,” which is precisely why intelligence-linked figures like Mason are so frustrated by their existence. Despite Mason and Briant’s allegations, there is not even hard evidence that Russian hackers were the source of the leaks.
While reporting on leaked material, Klarenberg engaged in the same journalistic practice that the West’s most prominent legacy newspapers, from The New York Times to The Washington Post, depend on to break news themselves. In fact, Thomas Rid, a self-styled disinformation expert and professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, has stated that journalists “should not shy away” from covering the leaks first reported by Klarenberg.
It therefore appears that British authorities did not detain Klarenberg for any legal breaches, but because he reported factual stories that exposed the national security state’s own violations of both domestic and international law, as well as the malign plots of its media lackeys. … Full article
A militant wearing the insignia of Mexico’s notorious Gulf Cartel (Cartel Del Golfo, CDG) was filmed in the state of Tamaulipas carrying a US-made anti-tank missile launcher. Milenio TV identified the weapon as a Javelin, thousands of which were sent to Ukraine by the Pentagon.
Footage filmed in Matamoros on Monday and aired on Tuesday evening by the news channel Milenio TV showed a man with CDG patches armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and a missile they said was the Raytheon-made FGM-148.
Over 10,000 Javelins from Pentagon stockpiles have been sent to Ukraine since last February, to the point where the US military has begun to run out of the missiles itself.
Milenio presenter Azucena Uresti noted on Twitter that the estimated value of a Javelin launcher on the black market was anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000, while the average cost of a missile was about $30,000.
#AzucenaALas10 | En #Tamaulipas, un presunto miembro del Cártel del Golfo fue grabado portando una de las armas más exclusivas y poderosas, un "javelín", que ha sido utilizado durante la invasión a Ucrania con un valor de entre 20 mil y 60 mil dólares pic.twitter.com/2BGtJMc2Xl
Keen-eyed military experts believe the weapon in the Milenio footage may actually be the AT-4, a Swedish-made disposable anti-tank launcher, which is also in use by the US military and likewise supplied to Ukraine by the thousands.
Russia has repeatedly warned the US and its allies not to “stuff” Ukraine with weapons and ammunition, both because this risked a direct confrontation and since nonexistent controls would result in the weapons ending up in the criminal underworld.
A RT investigation in July 2022 found a variety of Western-supplied weapons, including anti-tank rockets, for sale on the “dark web.” Several months later, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that $1 billion a month worth of Western weapons was ending up in the hands of “terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia.”
Kiev has denounced this as “propaganda” and insisted all were accounted for.
The US outlet CBS censored their documentary on weapons supplies to Ukraine after the government in Kiev objected. Last month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said the West was aware its weapons were ending up on the black market, but that most governments did not care because arming Ukraine mattered more to them.
The Gulf Cartel is based in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, specifically in the border city of Matamoros, just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. It dates back to the 1930s, but gained in notoriety in the late 1990s, when it spun off a notorious militia called Los Zetas. The group has since broken off on its own. Though primarily known as a drug smuggling cartel, CDG has also been accused of racketeering, abductions, money laundering, and trafficking of people, sex slaves and weapons.
In March, the cartel apologized for one of its factions kidnapping four Americans and killing two of them, in what they said was a case of mistaken identity. Five members of that faction were handed over to the Mexican police.
Hillary knew. She knew her campaign paid for Russian disinformation (including the alleged pee tape accusations) to be washed through a report by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. She knew the information was false but could potentially allow her to win the election. Hillary lied to the FBI about all this, and lied to the American public. Such was her appetite.
The FBI knew. They knew none of the information in the Steele Report could be corroborated, and they knew most of it was false. They turned a blind eye, purposefully and with the intent to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 election, to basic investigative and tradecraft rules to use the corrupt information to surveil the Trump campaign via the FISA court. When Trump won the election anyway, the FBI continued to use this information to assault the loyalty and viability of President Trump and ultimately tried to use the information via the Robert Mueller investigation to impeach or indict Trump.
Only one person went to jail for all this, a minor player named Kevin Clinesmith for provided false info to the FISA court. No changes are planned for the FBI. No charges are to be brought against Hillary Clinton. The Deep State came within an eyelash of bringing down an unwanted president as surely as they are believed to have done in Dallas ’63. Words were the weapon this time, not bullets.
These are the conclusions of the final Durham Report released last week. The report was written by former Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was chosen in 2019 to examine the FBI probe known as “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.” Durham provides the only comprehensive review of what came to be called Russiagate, and shows how close to the edge our democracy came to falling into the abyss at the hands of the Deep State. It all sounds dramatic, as those terms have been bandied about so often and in so many contexts they may have lost some of their meaning. But make no mistake about it — the FBI tried to shape the 2016 election and failing, tried to run Trump out of office. If you thought the “Hunter Biden Letter,” the one signed by dozens of intelligence professionals calling the Biden Diaries potential Russian disinformation was just wrong, you should find the conclusions of the Durham report a horror show.
There was nothing true in the Steele Report, for example, this key paragraph: “Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared.”
The FBI had no intelligence about Trump or others associated with the Trump campaign being in contact with Russian intelligence beyond Steele. Despite being unvetted and uncorroborated and coming from a single source with direct political ties to Trump’s opponent, the FBI used such accusations to justify a full-spectrum surveillance operation against the Trump campaign, the first known such operation in American history. The FBI omitted the fact from its FISA application that Carter Page was in fact not a Russian agent but a paid source for the CIA who had been vetted by the Agency as loyal and reliable. They just lied and even when the lie could not be ignored the FBI lied more times to keep the surveillance application alive before the FISA court.
Durham found investigators “ignored exculpatory evidence, put too much stock in information provided by Trump’s political opponents, and carried out surveillance without genuinely believing there was probable cause to do so.” “Throughout the duration of Crossfire Hurricane, facts and circumstances that were inconsistent with the premise that Trump and/or persons associated with the Trump campaign were involved in a collusive or conspiratorial relationship with the Russian government were ignored or simply assessed away,” Durham wrote. The FBI acted “without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power.”
It could not be more clear. The FBI knew what it was doing was wrong and did it anyway because the ends, defeating Trump, appeared to justify the means. No surprise, that has been the slogan behind every democratic election U.S. intelligence agencies have overthrown overseas, so why not follow the same logic when the tools of war came home to attempt to drive the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton.
We now know that almost all of the disinformation in the Steele Report came from one man, Igor Danchenko (whom the FBI had until 2011 investigated as a Russian spy.) Danchenko also fed disinfo to a Clinton supporter and registered foreign agent for Russia, Charles Dolan (who was known to but never interviewed by the FBI) to pass on the Steele to further obscure its origin. But according to the Durham report “The failure to identify the primary sub-source [Danchenko] early in the investigation’s pursuit of FISA authority prevented the FBI from properly examining the possibility that some or much of the non-open source information contained in Steele’s reporting was Russian disinformation (that wittingly or unwittingly was passed along to Steele), or that the reporting was otherwise not credible.”
Everyone knew. The Durham Report confirms on August 3, 2016, the Russiagate allegations were briefed to President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and FBI Director James Comey by CIA Director John Brennan at an Oval Office meeting. None of the men briefed, and none of the agencies involved, did anything to intercede in the FBI’s efforts alongside the Clinton Campaign to manufacture collusion between Trump and Russia. Indeed, everyone allowed the falsehoods to linger into the Mueller Report and when that document concluded publicly there was no collusion between Trump and the Kremlin, pivot the same pile of falsehoods to claim Trump somehow obstructed an investigation which actually exonerated him, concluding without indictment as it did.
As for the FBI, the Durham report brutally tells us “the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.” That they “displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness.” That the Bureau “disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination… there were clear opportunities to have avoided the mistakes and to have prevented the damage resulting from their embrace of seriously flawed information that they failed to analyze and assess properly.” And that “senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities.” That “important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient.” The Report concludes “although recognizing that in hindsight much is clearer, much of this also seems to have been clear at the time.” As for recommendations, the Report states “more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of “Protect[ing]the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States.”
Without the help of the FBI Russiagate would have been nothing but a flimsy Clinton campaign scam. Thus the Durham Report offers one over-arching implied conclusion: Be skeptical of the FBI and watch accusations of collusion and foreign interference closely around the 2024 election. Treason is indeed a twisty path.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi has proposed a five-point plan to help ensure safety and security at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. Renowned nuclear expert Chris Busby says Grossi’s concerns about the plant’s safety are fully justified, but that much more needs to be done.
In an address before the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, Rafael Grossi outlined measures which should be taken to prevent a deadly incident at the ZNPP – key among them an immediate halt to attacks of any kind against the facility.
Other necessary measures, he said, include a commitment that the plant won’t be used to store heavy weapons or launch attacks, the preservation of the safety of onsite backup cooling systems and offsite power connections, and assurances that no actions are taken which could undermine these principles.
Grossi characterized the situation at the plant as “extremely fragile and dangerous,” and urged for the measures to be implemented immediately. As usual, he did not attribute responsibility for the deterioration of the security situation around the plant, which has been controlled by Russia since March 2022, and regularly shelled by Ukrainian forces since then.
Ukrainian Permanent Representative to the UN Serhiy Kislitsa disingenuously assured the Security Council that Kiev had “never resorted and will never resort to any steps that could lead to a nuclear incident” at the ZNPP.
Russian Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzya told the body that the Russian side is already in compliance with Grossi’s recommendations, having implemented them independently “in accordance with decisions taken at the national level.”
“Thus, there have never been any attacks from the territory of the ZNPP [by Russia]. Heavy weapons and ammunition have never been deployed at the plant. There are no military personnel at the Zaporozhye NPP which could be used to carry out attacks from the territory of the plant,” Nebenzya said. Furthermore, he said, Moscow has taken “concrete steps” to protect the plant’s most sensitive structures and systems from sabotage and attack.
‘Absolutely Right to Be Freaking Out’
The IAEA chief “is fully aware” of the dangers associated with the deteriorating security situation at the ZNPP, is “understandably panicking,” and is “absolutely right to be freaking out,” says Chris Busby, a veteran chemical physicist with decades of experience studying the health effects of internal ionizing radiation, who currently serves as the scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk.
Speaking to Sputnik and commenting on Grossi’s recommendations, Dr. Busby said that the “common sense” proposals are really just “a list of things that everyone must have been aware of from the very beginning” of the Ukraine crisis, but that regular shelling and missile attacks, and the possibility of the ZNPP becoming a direct battleground in a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive, makes them all the more pressing.
“The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Kislitsa, apparently stated [that] ‘we have never resorted and never will resort to steps that could lead to a nuclear incident.’ Well, one problem I have with this is the pronoun ‘We.’ I am a scientist, not a political commentator, but it seems to me that there are many different groups fighting in this war, and all kinds of attacks occur in all kinds of places, people are assassinated, bridges are blown up, undersea pipelines are destroyed, and no one seems to blame the Ukrainian government. Maybe there are a lot of independent nationalist groups (Terrorists? Assassins?) who take matters into their own hands and devise independent strategies,” Busby quipped.
‘Controlled Nuclear Bomb’
“Nuclear energy is a very dangerous technology,” the scientist emphasized, pointing out that at their core, nuclear power plants are “effectively a controlled nuclear bomb.”
“The enormous energy released when a nuclear bomb is detonated—and we have seen the pictures of Hiroshima—is released all at once. Bang! But the chain reaction in uranium that levelled Hiroshima and killed all those people is the same neutron-controlled reaction that occurs in nuclear power plants, except that the reaction is controlled with materials that moderate the rate of production of neutrons, so that the uranium fuel remains at a temperature where it can turn cooling water into steam which in turn turns the turbines that make the electricity,” Dr. Busby explained.
“The problem is, that if the cooling system is damaged, so that the water cannot circulate, the neutrons heat up the uranium fuel very quickly, and there is a meltdown. When the uranium fuel rods melt, they fall to the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel, and at that point, the neutron density increases, a chain reaction occurs and the reactor turns into a bomb and explodes, as happened at Fukushima, and as happened at Chernobyl. Other bad things can also happen: the enormous increase in temperature and radiation can produce hydrogen and this can also explode,” he added.
The same thing could happen to spent fuel, the scientist said, with these elements continuing to contain all of the fission products of uranium, and will continue to be radioactive for thousands of years.
“These spent fuel rods are still very hot, and have to be kept apart and cooled, just as in the reactor. So, they are stored in spent fuel ponds and cooled with water, or else dry stores and cooled with air and heat exchangers. If the cooling to the spent fuel fails, you have another nuclear bomb scenario,” Busby said.
The scientist estimates that there are about 20,000 tons’ worth of spent fuel rods at the ZPP, plus 60 tons in each of its reactors.
“If one component goes up, they all will, because the radiation levels will, just as with Fukushima and Chernobyl, prevent anyone getting near the plant,” he stressed, noting that this includes even robots – whose electronic circuits would be “wiped out” by the radiation.
The radioactive fallout from a disaster at the ZNPP would “make Europe pretty much uninhabitable,” in Dr. Busby’s estimation, leading to skyrocketing rates of premature deaths from cancers, fertility loss, congenital defects and a host of other illnesses. According to the scientist, the Ukrainian forces shelling the plant probably don’t “have the faintest idea” of what they’re doing, and “what Grossi has termed ‘the rolling of the dice.'”
What Can Be Done?
Dr. Busby believes the best thing that can be done to ensure the ZNPP’s safety is putting the Ukraine crisis to bed. “Failing that, the integrity of the [plant’s] lake must be ensured,” which means protecting the dam feeding it.
“It is water from the lake that is at the base of the cooling system. A buffer zone capable of protecting the power station from attacks should be organized, and this must constitute a no-fly area for missile attacks or personnel incursions. What else? Prayer. It is as bad as you can imagine,” Busby summed up.
The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, with its six reactors capable of generating up to six gigawatts of power – enough to power over 1.8 million average European homes.
A bipartisan group of Senators sent a letter to the Defense Department chief calling for an investigation into major American arms dealers accused of systemic “price gouging,” on Wednesday, according to The Hill.
The letter, signed by the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mike Braun (R-IN) Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), cites former Pentagon officials, auditors, and other insiders who spoke to CBS and accused military-industrial complex giants, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, of ripping off the US taxpayer.
During a recent 60 Minutes report, Shay Assad, who worked as a Pentagon contract negotiator for 40 years, cites numerous examples while explaining to the outlet that these firms overcharge the DOD for “[everything from] radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”
The report said these “astronomical price increases” have worsened sharply amidst Washington’s exponentially rising demand for weapons systems to both bolster Taiwan – in a thinly-veiled effort to destabilize China – and support NATO’s proxy Kiev during its war with Russia.
“Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and TransDigm are among the offenders,” the senators asserted. Their letter continues, “[these contractors are] dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the letter’s recipient, sat on Raytheon’s board of directors before accepting his current post. The lawmakers charge that these companies are securing profits ranging from 40% to even as high as 4,000%.
The military budget will soon surpass the once unthinkable $1 trillion mark. The DOD has requested a record $842 billion for the next fiscal year, roughly half of which will go to “the offenders,” just such private defense contractors.
While the Joe Biden administration has asked Congress to approve a nearly $900 billion military budget. The hawkish legislature will almost certainly add tens of billions more to Biden’s proposed budget. For 2023, Congress added another $45 billion to Biden’s already mammoth request for $813 billion, resulting in a finalized $858 billion annual military spending bill.
Even these eye-opening numbers do not tell the whole story, because the real national security state budget is already fast approaching $1.5 trillion.
The lawmakers’ letter also expresses concerns about the Pentagon’s ability to audit, track and mitigate fraud risk. The DOD’s accountability system is completely “broken.” Assad said, “No matter who they are, no matter what company it is, they need to be held accountable. And right now that accountability system is broken in the Department of Defense.”
The Senators complained that, for decades, this obscene, unaccountable spending has been ongoing. The letter cites a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which found the Pentagon failed to implement any comprehensive solution to combating this “unconscionable” fraud, as Assad has described it.
“The DOD can no longer expect Congress or the American taxpayer to underwrite record military spending while simultaneously failing to account for the hundreds of billions it hands out every year to spectacularly profitable private corporations,” the Senators declared. These firms “have abused the trust government has placed in them…exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin,” the letter continued.
“It’s not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly,” retired DoD auditor Mark Owen told CBS.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.
President Joe Biden has confirmed the US is still mulling over whether to send MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) ballistic missiles to Ukraine. What are these weapons? What are their characteristics? And why has Russia warned that their delivery to Kiev might drag Washington into a direct confrontation with Moscow? Sputnik explains.
“That’s still in play” was Joe Biden’s four-word answer to a reporter outside the White House on Monday after being asked whether the US plans to deliver ATACMS to Ukraine. He did not elaborate.
Made to be used by the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System road-mobile multiple rocket launchers which the US began to send to Ukraine last summer, and older M270 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (M270s) sent by Germany, Italy, Norway, and the UK, ATACMS have been touted by US media and politicians as one of the most fearsome conventional weapons in America’s arsenal.
What are ATACMS Used For, What is Their Range, How Fast Can They Fly, and How Accurate are They?
Created in the mid-1980s at the twilight of the Cold War and entering into service with the US Army in early 1991, just in time for a US-led war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, ATACMS are a solid-fuel, surface-to-surface ballistic missile with an effective firing range of up to 300 km, and a maximum velocity during boost phase of up to Mach 3, or 1 km/second, making them difficult to intercept using older air defense systems.
ATACMS’ characteristics vary wildly depending on model, block number, and configuration. For example, while they can be armed with 500 pound (230 kg) penetrating high explosive blast fragmentation warheads, they can also be fitted with other explosives weighing anywhere from 160 and 560 kg, including anti-personnel and material cluster “bomblets.”
There are also notable differences in the weapons’ guidance systems, with older variants relying on inertial guidance, while newer missiles include built-in GPS.
Where Have ATACMS Been Used Before and What Countries Have Them?
Along with the 1991 Gulf War, ATACMS were used extensively during the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s.
Besides the US military, the missiles are operated by just a handful of US partners and clients, including NATO allies Greece, Turkiye, Poland, and Romania, as well as South Korea, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Australia, Taiwan, Lithuania, Estonia, and Morocco have either signed contracts on the purchase of the weapons, or submitted formal requests to do so.
How Much Do ATACMS Cost?
ATACMS are pricey. So pricey that the Netherlands decided to shop around for and find an alternative earlier this year. Finland made a similar move in 2014. The US Army – the ATACMS’ main user, decided to wind the program down in 2007, citing high costs, and penning a life extension contract with Lockheed Martin to upgrade the remaining stock of missiles. A specialized “cross-domain” ATACMS proposed in 2016 was also killed off in the fiscal 2021 defense spending bill, due to unspecified “technical problems.”
ATACMS have an estimated cost of over one million dollars (the Pentagon provided an $820,000 per missile price tag in the late 1990s – which would be equivalent to over $1.5 million today, with no newer valuations made available since).
Over 3,700 ATACMS of various modifications were produced between the late 1980s and 2007, with about 600 expended by Washington in its wars over the past 30 years.
What is the Russian Equivalent of the ATACMS?
About half-a-dozen non-US missile systems have been compared to the ATACMS, including the OTR-21 Tochka, a Soviet-made tactical ballistic missile, the 9K720 Iskander, a Russian-made missile, the Fateh-313 – an Iranian-made tactical missile design, and the P-12 variant of China’s B-611 missile. North Korea, India, Israel, and Ukraine have also tinkered with comparable systems, with varying degrees of success.
Iskanders boast superior range and payload characteristics to the ATACMS, but their launchers are only capable of firing their specially designed missiles, whereas ATACMS can be fired from HIMARS and MLRS launchers.
What System is Expected to Replace the ATACMS?
Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missile is expected to succeed the ATACMS. In development since 2016, the missile is expected to have a longer maximum range (500 km or more), and be slim-lined to allow for two to be fitted per carrier.
Why Would ATACMS Deployment in Ukraine Be a Major Escalation?
In light of Kiev’s propensity to use its Western-provided weapons to attack targets inside Russia – including civilian infrastructure in Donbass, Moscow has warned repeatedly that sending ATACMS to Ukraine would dramatically increase the danger of an escalation, and possibly even lead to direct military clashes between Russia and the US.
Earlier this year, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov blasted lawmakers in Washington over their calls to ship ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for strikes against Crimea, calling such proposals “an element of psychological warfare,” and warning that the West’s escalation of the proxy war could have unpredictable consequences.
In late 2022, US media reported that Pentagon officials had urged the White House not to send ATACMS to Ukraine, similarly citing their potential use “against targets inside Russian territory,” and the danger that they could “potentially set off a wider war with Russia.”
The strengthening of ties between the BRICS bank and Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer, is undesirable for the West as it again signals another advancement in the de-dollarisation of the global economy. In the last week of May, Saudi Arabia held talks to join BRICS’ New Development Bank as its ninth member, a decision that is not only economic but also with political motive.
Saudi Arabia’s benefit from joining the NDB is clear, given the potential for increased trade, especially Saudi exports. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s largest oil suppliers, and BRICS countries produce many different goods. Therefore, such cooperation can be considered mutually beneficial. Saudi membership in the NDB will expand the internal market of the BRICS countries, which means opening new opportunities for economic development in these countries.
As Bloomberg reported on May 30: “The New Development Bank, the lender created by the BRICS group of nations, will widen its membership as it seeks to boost its capital and counter the influence of Western-dominated multilateral banks.”
Saudi Arabia is the biggest economy in the region, and its neighbour, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is already a member of the NDB. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has also expressed interest in joining BRICS. The BRICS summit in South Africa in August will discuss expanding the grouping, which could open the path for the Arab country to join.
“In the Middle East, we attach great importance to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and are currently engaged in a qualified dialogue with them,” the NDB told the Financial Times in a statement.
Talks with Saudi Arabia come as the NDB prepares to formally evaluate its funding options, which were questioned after the West imposed sanctions on Russia following the launch of its special military operation in Ukraine.
Membership will likely be granted as it would strengthen Saudi Arabia’s bonds with BRICS countries, especially when the country is pursuing closer relations with all powers, particularly China. Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed a “new era” in the countries’ ties when he visited Saudi Arabia in 2022. Most importantly, Beijing in March brokered a historic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to resume diplomatic relations, something which irked Washington.
The NDB has lent $33 billion to more than 96 projects in the five founding members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — but the bank has expanded its membership to include the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bangladesh. Although Egypt and Bangladesh represent major emerging markets and economies, Saudi Arabia, like the UAE, would represent another rich shareholder in the NDB.
“[Fundraising options are] the most important thing at the moment,” said Ashwani Muthoo, director-general of the NDB’s independent evaluation office, which was established last year.
Muthoo declined to comment on the Saudi accession talks but said the board wanted to examine alternative instruments and currencies to bring in resources, something that Saudi Arabia can offer.
It is recalled that Mikhail Mishustin said on a visit to China in May that Moscow saw “one of the bank’s main goals” as defending the bloc from “illegitimate sanctions from the collective West”. This fact interests Saudi Arabia as it breaks from servitude to the US to become a sovereign Middle/Regional power instead.
It is recalled that China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in October 2022 that BRICS leaders agreed on expanding the bloc and expressed support for the discussion on the standards and procedures of expansion. Wang also noted that China would work with other BRICS members to jointly advance the expansion process so that more partners will join the BRICS family.
By being first accepted into the NDB, Saudi Arabia’s path to joining BRICS would be opened. As said, Saudi Arabia will likely join the NDB as the banks have a strong will to expand their membership, which will signal the Arab country’s eventual accession into the bloc.
Dilma Rousseff, the bank’s president, said at the NDB’s annual meeting in Shanghai on May 30, “The world is going through a transformation process and it’s not about one currency against any another one. NDB will continue seeking funds in the dollar market but also in the Asian market.”
The fact that the NDB is comprised of the most powerful and richest countries outside of the Western bloc has Washington concerned as it poses the greatest challenge to dollar hegemony. With the current level of the NDB project funding in local currencies at 22%, the bank is well on course to meet its goal of 30% by 2026. This percentage will only continue to grow as the years pass, and the addition of Saudi Arabia will contribute to this effort. Thus, the Middle Eastern country will actively participate in de-dollarisation.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
The FBI has again refused to turn over documents subpoenaed by the US Congress regarding bribery accusations against President Joe Biden, prompting House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer to warn that he will seek to hold the agency’s director in contempt for “obstructionist” tactics.
“The FBI’s decision to stiff-arm Congress and hide this information from the American people is obstructionist and unacceptable,” Comer said on Tuesday in a statement.
The Kentucky Republican added that the committee will take steps to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a lawful subpoena.
“Americans deserve the truth, and the Oversight Committee will continue to demand transparency from this nation’s chief law enforcement agency,” Comer added.
At issue is an FBI informant file detailing allegations that Biden accepted $5 million in foreign bribes in exchange for policy favors when he worked as vice president under then-President Barack Obama. The FBI received the tip in June 2020. The allegations came to light earlier this year, when a whistleblower informed Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of their existence.
FBI officials have missed multiple deadlines to comply with the subpoena, including Comer’s latest demand that the documents be handed over by Tuesday. Wray has claimed that the allegations against Biden were unverified and that the so-called FD-1023 file in the case must be kept private to protect FBI informants.
House Republicans have sought the documents to weigh the substance of the allegations against Biden and examine whether the FBI has handled the case properly. Comer argued earlier this month that the agency has had the evidence for years and has apparently “done nothing” with it.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said on Tuesday that he will lead members of his party in voting to hold Wray in contempt if the FBI director refuses to turn over the FD-1023. He added that any sensitive information on the informant could be redacted.
The FBI issued a statement saying any discussion of pursuing contempt proceedings against Wray is “unnecessary.” The agency said it had offered in a letter to Comer to provide information to the committee “in a format and setting that maintains confidentiality and protects important security interests and the integrity of FBI investigations.” Wray is scheduled to discuss the issue with Comer on Wednesday in a phone call.
Comer has said the allegations “fit a pattern” of then-Vice President Biden flying to various countries, taking an unusually active role in US foreign policy decisions, then receiving wire transfers from those nations into bank accounts linked to his family members.
The House Oversight Committee released documents earlier this month showing evidence of the bank transfers. Biden, meanwhile, argued that the committee’s findings were “not true.”
The Durham Report fails to identify the ringleader of the Russiagate fiasco, John Brennan. It was Brennan who first reported “contacts… between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign”. It was also Brennan who initially referred the case to the FBI. It was also Brennan who “hand-picked” the analysts who cobbled together the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which said that Putin was trying to swing the election in Trump’s favor. And, it was also Brennan who hijacked the “Trump-Russia-meme” from the Hillary campaign in order to prosecute his war on Trump. At every turn, Brennan was there, massaging the intelligence, pulling the strings, and micromanaging the entire operation from behind the scenes. So, while it might seem like the FBI was ‘leading the Russiagate charge’, it was actually Brennan who was calling the shots. This is from an article by Aaron Mate:
“…it is clear that Brennan’s role in propagating the collusion narrative went far beyond his work on the ICA. (Intelligence Community Assessment) A close review of facts that have slowly come to light reveals that he was a central architect and promoter of the conspiracy theory from its inception... Brennan stands apart for the outsized role he played in generating and spreading the (collusion) false narrative.” The Brennan Dossier: All About a Prime Mover of Russiagate, Aaron Mate, Real Clear Investigations
Mate is right, Brennan was “central architect and promoter” of the Russiagate fraud. The alleged Trump-Russia connection may have started with the Hillary campaign, but it was Brennan who transformed it into an expansive domestic counterintelligence operation aimed at regime change. That was Brennan’s doing; he was the backroom puppetmaster overseeing the action and guiding the project towards its final conclusion. What the Durham Report confirms, is that the plan was put into motion sometime after Brennan’s Oval Office meeting with Barack Obama in July, 2016. Check out this clip from an article by Lee Smith:
The only genuine piece of Russian intelligence that US spy services ever received about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was intelligence that Russia knew Hillary Clinton backed a 2016 campaign plan to smear Trump as a Russian agent.
According to John Durham’s 300-page report, the information reached the CIA in late July 2016. Brennan told Durham that on August 3 he briefed President Barack Obama at the White House on what the special counsel refers to as the Clinton Plan intelligence. Others in attendance at the meeting were Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey.” The Durham Coverup, Lee Smith
So, now we know that Brennan told Obama, Biden, Lynch and Comey that the Russia-Trump nonsense was part of a smear campaign cooked up by the Hillary campaign to divert attention from her email problems. We also know that Brennan conducted the briefing on August 3, 2016.
So, if Brennan knew that the Russia-Trump claims were false back in July, then how do we explain the fact that Brennan went ahead and published a damning Intelligence agency report 5 months later strongly suggesting a link between Trump and the Kremlin?
Here’s a brief excerpt from Brennan’s Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which was released on January 6, 2017 and which clearly states the opposite of what Brennan told Obama five months earlier:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump..…
Further, a body of reporting, to include different intelligence disciplines, open source reporting on Russian leadership policy preferences, and Russian media content, showed that Moscow sought to denigrate Secretary Clinton.
The ICA relies on public Russian leadership commentary, Russian state media reports, public examples of where Russian interests would have aligned with candidates’ policy statements, and a body of intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump.The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA)
Let’s summarize the findings in the report:
Vladimir Putin was directly involved in the US 2016 presidential election
Putin’s goal was to “denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability
Putin and the Russian government supported Donald Trump
Brennan knew that none of this was true because , as we said earlier, he had already told Obama that the Russia-Trump smear was part of a “dirty tricks” operation generated by the Hillary campaign.
So, why would Brennan use Hillary’s spurious allegations against Trump when the election was already over? What did he hope to gain?
Three things:
To call-into-question the results of the election thereby undermining Trump’s legitimacy as president
To derail Trump’s political and foreign policy agenda
(Most important) To build a case against Trump that could be used in impeachment proceedings.
This was an attempt to depose the president of the United States. There can be no doubt about that. Why else would a man in Brennan’s position try to frame Trump as a Russian agent?
To remove him from office, that’s why. And there’s more, too. Here’s what Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee during his testimony in 2017:
“I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind about whether Russia was able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.”
We know now that Brennan had no “information or intelligence” that revealed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia because there weren’t any. He lied. More importantly, Brennan delivered this testimony more than a year after he had told Obama that he knew the Trump-Russia theory was ‘Opposition Research’ concocted for the Hillary campaign. So, he knew what he was saying was false, but he said it anyway. In short, he lied to Congress which is a felony.
Check out this ‘smoking gun’ excerpt from page 86 of the Durham Report. According to the report, the CIA sent a Referral Memo to the FBI on September 7, 2016, in which they stated the following:
An exchange … discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server..…
The Office did not identify any further actions that the CIA or FBI took in response to this intelligence product as it related to the Clinton Plan intelligence. The Durham Report, Page 86
They knew. They all knew.
Durham merely confirmed what independent analysts have been saying from the start, that both the CIA and the FBI knew that the Trump-Russia allegation was a fraud from the get-go. But they decided to use it anyway in order to scupper Trump’s political agenda and pave the way for his impeachment. Isn’t that what we typically call a “regime change” operation?
It is. Here’s more background from an article by Stephen Cohen at The Nation :
In testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017, John Brennan, formerly Obama’s head of the CIA, strongly suggested that he and his agency were the first, as The Washington Post put it at the time, “in triggering an FBI probe.” Certainly both the Post and The New York Times interpreted his remarks in this way. Equally certain, Brennan played a central role in promoting the Russiagate narrative thereafter, briefing members of Congress privately and giving President Obama himself a top-secret envelope in early August 2016 that almost certainly contained Steele’s dossier…..
In short, if these reports and Brennan’s own testimony are to be believed, he, not the FBI, was the instigator and godfather of Russiagate.” “Russiagate or Intelgate?”, Stephen Cohen, The Nation
There it is in black and white; it all began with Brennan. Brennan is the “godfather of Russiagate” just as Cohen says.
Here’s more from Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton at artvoice.com :
“Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid reportedly believed then-Obama CIA Director Brennan was feeding him information about alleged links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in order to make public accusations:
According to ‘Russian Roulette,’ by Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff and David Corn… Brennan contacted Reid on Aug. 25, 2016, to brief him on the state of Russia’s interference in the presidential campaign. Brennan briefed other members of the so-called Gang of Eight, but Reid is the only who took direct action.
Two days after the briefing, Reid wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey asserting that ‘evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount.’ Reid called on Comey to investigate the links ‘thoroughly and in a timely fashion.’
Reid saw Brennan’s outreach as ‘a sign of urgency,’ Isikoff and Corn wrote in the book. ‘Reid also had the impression that Brennan had an ulterior motive. He concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russian operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign.’
According to the book, Brennan told Reid that the intelligence community had determined that the Russian government was behind the hack and leak of Democratic emails and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind it. Brennan also told Reid that there was evidence that Russian operatives were attempting to tamper with election results. Indeed, on August 27, 2016, Reid wrote a letter to Comey accusing President Trump’s campaign of colluding with the Russian government.” “The John Brennan-Harry Reid Collusion to ‘Get Trump’”, artvoice.com
Comey didn’t want to go along with the charade, but what choice did he have, after all, didn’t he open an investigation into Hillary’s emails 11 days before the November balloting which cost Clinton the election?
He did, which means they probably had him over a barrel. Either he did what they said, or he’d be driven from office in disgrace. Of course, I’m speculating here, but I find it hard to believe that an old-school bureaucrat like Comey suddenly decided to throw caution to the wind and agree to go along with a hairbrained scheme to frame the president of the United States as a Russian agent. That’s just too wacky to believe. I think it’s much more likely that he simply caved-in to the pressure he was getting from Brennan.
In any event, it’s clear that Brennan whipped Reid into a frenzy which prompted the credulous senator to urge Comey to open an investigation into Trump’s (fabricated) links to the Kremlin. The Durham Report confirms that the FBI opened the probe without sufficient hard evidence, but the report does not clarify the role that Brennan played in putting the wheels in motion. This is from an article at The Hill :
(Attorney General Bill) Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director. …
… the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources (“assets,” in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious “government investigator” posing as Halper’s assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case.” “James Comey is in trouble and he knows it”, The Hill
Repeat: “legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case.”
So, The Hill has arrived at the same conclusion that we have, that Comey was merely a pawn in Brennan’s sprawling regime change operation. In fact, according to former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi, Brennan’s tentacles may have extended all the way to the FISA courts that improperly issued the warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Take a look:
“Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee.” “The Conspiracy Against Trump”, Philip Giraldi, Unz Review
Giraldi’s piece makes Brennan look like the ultimate “fixer”. If you needed warrants, he’d get you warrants. If you needed spies, he’d get you spies. If you needed something planted in the media, or someone to start a rumor, or maybe even an “official-sounding” document that’s been dolled-up to look like ‘the consensus view of the entire US Intelligence Community’; he could do that too. He could do it all because he’s a virtuoso spymaster who knew the system from the ground-up. He understood how all the levers worked and which buttons to push to get things done. He also knew how easy it is to bamboozle the American people who trust whatever spurious accusations they read in the media or hear on the cable news channels. He had a keen grasp of that.
Brennan is the consummate uber-spook, a deft and capable professional who conducts his business mainly in the shadows and whose influence on events is never entirely known. That’s why I think Brennan played the key role in the Russiagate scam, because he’s a man of many talents who would not be opposed to using his power to advance his own leftist agenda by crushing a political rival that he viscerally despised.
THE DURHAM WHITEWASH
And, that’s my problem with the Durham Report, because even though it is a powerful indictment of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, it fails in its most important task, which is to identify the architect and ringleader of the Russiagate hoax. The report doesn’t do that, instead, it diverts attention away from the prime suspect to the footsoldiers who merely implemented his battleplan. That’s not just a bad outcome. That’s a whitewash.
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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