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Iraqi resistance vows to assist Hezbollah if new Israeli war on Lebanon waged

Press TV – June 22, 2024

Fighters from Iraqi anti-terror resistance groups have expressed their full solidarity with Hezbollah, stressing they will fight alongside their comrades in the Lebanese group in case the Tel Aviv regime decides to wage a new war on Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Akhbar daily newspaper, citing unnamed sources at the Islamic Resistance in Iraq – an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, reported that Kata’ib Hezbollah, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba groups have announced their readiness to participate alongside Hezbollah in confronting any possible Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

The sources added that the Iraqi resistance groups are awaiting Hezbollah’s approval.

Kadhim al-Fartousi, the spokesman for the Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada anti-terror resistance group, stated that Hezbollah enjoys great prowess, powerful and effective weapons, and large numbers of fighters, which are sufficient to repel Israeli aggression irrespective of its extent.

“Should the need arise for Iraqi fighters in southern Lebanon, we will be the first to face up to the Zionist enemy’s act of aggression [alongside Hezbollah]. This is a Muslim and Arab issue,” he pointed out.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned that “no place” in the Israeli-occupied territories would be spared from the group’s weapons in case of a full-blown war.

Nasrallah emphasized that an incursion into the Galilee region remains an option on the table should Israel invade southern Lebanon.

He also said they would attack any other country in the region that assisted Israel in the war effort, citing Cyprus, which has hosted Israeli forces for training exercises.

Hezbollah has been carrying out almost daily rocket attacks on Israeli positions in retaliation for the regime’s aggression against Lebanon and in solidarity with Palestinians.

The genocidal war in Gaza has killed at least 37,551 Palestinians, predominantly women and children so far.

At least 455 people have also been killed on the Lebanese border, including more than 80 civilians, according to a tally by AFP.

Two Israeli wars waged against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006 were met with strong resistance from Hezbollah, resulting in the retreat of the regime in both conflicts.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US magazine: ‘Hamas is winning’

MEMO | June 22, 2024

US Foreign Affairs magazine confirmed on Friday: “Hamas is stronger today than it was on October 7. Its cause is more popular and its appeal stronger than before October 7.”

The magazine wrote in a report: “After nine months of gruelling war, it is time to recognize the stark reality: there is no military-only solution to defeat Hamas,” adding that “Hamas is neither defeated nor on the verge of defeat.”

It also noted: “Israel has invaded northern and southern Gaza with approximately 40,000 combat troops, forcibly displaced 80 percent of the population, killed over 37,000 people, dropped at least 70,000 tons of bombs on the territory (surpassing the combined weight of bombs dropped on London, Dresden, and Hamburg in all of World War II), destroyed or damaged over half of all buildings in Gaza, and limited the territory’s access to water, food, and electricity, leaving the entire population on the brink of famine.”

According to the magazine: “Although many observers have highlighted the immorality of Israel’s conduct, Israeli leaders have consistently claimed that the goal of defeating Hamas and weakening its ability to launch new attacks against Israeli civilians must take precedence over any concerns about Palestinian lives. The punishment of the population of Gaza must be accepted as necessary to destroy the power of Hamas.”

However, Foreign Affairs states: “The central flaw in Israel’s strategy is not a failure of tactics or the imposition of constraints on military force—just as the failure of the United States’ military strategy in Vietnam had little to do with the technical proficiency of its troops or political and moral limits on the uses of military power. Rather, the overarching failure has been a gross misunderstanding of the sources of Hamas’s power. To its great detriment, Israel has failed to realize that the carnage and devastation it has unleashed in Gaza has only made its enemy stronger.”

“Despite its losses, Hamas remains in de facto control of large swaths of Gaza, including those areas where the territory’s civilians are now concentrated,” it added. “According to a recent Israeli assessment, Hamas now has more fighters in the northern areas of Gaza, which the IDF seized in the fall at the cost of hundreds of soldiers, than it does in Rafah in the south.”

The report also pointed out that Hamas: “Could still strike in Israel; Hamas likely has some 15,000 mobilized fighters—roughly ten times the number of fighters who carried out the October 7 attacks. Further, more than 80 percent of the group’s underground tunnel network remains usable for planning, storing weapons, and evading Israeli surveillance, capture, and attacks. Most of Hamas’s top leadership in Gaza remains intact.”

The magazine explained that the Israeli bombing and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip did not lead to a decline in Palestinian popular support, and: “Support for armed attacks against Israeli civilians appears to have risen especially among Palestinians in the West Bank, which is now rightly on par with the consistently high levels of support for these attacks in Gaza, showing that Hamas has made extensive gains across Palestinian society since October 7.”

A US official told television broadcasting company CBS that Israel is not close to achieving its goal of destroying Hamas, given the lack of an Israeli plan for the day after the war in Gaza.

According to Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari: “This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear — it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” adding that the group will remain in control of the Gaza Strip unless Israel “develops something else to replace it.”

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

USS Eisenhower ordered back to US from Red Sea amid YAF attacks

Al Mayadeen | June 22, 2024

US officials have greenlit the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was dispatched to the Red Sea to counter the Yemeni Armed Forces’ operations in support of Gaza, to return home.

The Eisenhower will be returning to Norfolk in the state of Virginia, the US Naval Institute’s news service mentioned, citing an anonymous official.

The reports added that the warship would be replaced by an aircraft carrier that would operate in the Pacific, with the closest known to be operating in Asia being the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

In early June, the spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF), Brigadier General Yahya Saree, confirmed that USS Eisenhower was subject to two attacks by the YAF within 24 hours.

Commenting on the announcement, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Sanaa government, Hussein al-Ezzi, considered the withdrawal of the Eisenhower from the Red Sea a positive sign, whether it was for maintenance or a permanent move.

On his account on X, al-Ezzi also vowed that the Roosevelt would not fare better than the Eisenhower, which has been significantly damaged, calling on the US, UK, and their allies to immediately end the militarization of the Red Sea and to change the aggressive behavior toward Arab and Muslim countries, especially Yemen.

This follows a report on Wednesday by ABC News that fatigue has begun to set in aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea.

As the carrier and its 7,000-strong crew near their ninth consecutive month at sea—the most prolonged naval engagement since World War II—questions arise about sustaining such an intense combat operation.

The carrier’s deployment has already been extended twice, leading to growing fatigue among its crew.

At the Pentagon, leaders were grappling with whether to heed Navy calls to bring the carrier home or US Central Command’s plea for an extended stay – hinging on the carrier’s role in supporting “Israel.”

A recent report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency revealed that the YAF have conducted no fewer than 175 operations on US naval vessels, coalition ships, and commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November 19.

In early June, the leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, warned that the YAF would launch an even larger and more potent attack on the USS Eisenhower whenever possible.

It is crucial to note that the YAF has repeatedly stated that it does not intend to disrupt maritime routes for all, but instead is specifically targeting ships and vessels affiliated with the Israeli occupation or facilitating its genocide of the Palestinian people by shipping goods and equipment to the Israeli occupation.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | 2 Comments

A new multipolar security system based on ‘Pax Rossiya’

Strategic Culture Foundation | June 21, 2024

For several years now, Russia, China and other members of the expanding BRICS alliance have been formulating progressive trade and financial relations of the emerging multipolar world order. That order is based on mutual respect and partnership grounded in international law and the UN Charter.

The BRICS concept is rightly the zeitgeist of our time. It is rallying more nations to its fold especially those of the so-called Global South which for decades have been subjected to the unilateralism of Western hegemony.

The trouble is that for a new world order based on equality and fairness to succeed in practice, it needs to be secure from arbitrary military aggression and imperialist tyranny. In other words, a new security architecture is required to underpin the development of a multipolar world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been advocating for a new indivisible international security system. This week saw the plan for a new security arrangement put into action.

The Russian leader embarked on state visits to North Korea and Vietnam during which he signed new strategic partnership and defense accords.

Ahead of his trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Putin outlined the integrated vision thus: “We are also ready for close cooperation to make international relations more democratic and stable… To do this, we will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time – to build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.”

The concept of indivisible security is by no means limited to Eurasia. Russia has signaled the same principles apply to Latin America, Africa and indeed every other corner of the world.

During Putin’s meetings with Chairman Kim Jong Un of the DPRK and President Lo Tam of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the strategic partnerships agreed were not merely about military defense and security. They involved comprehensive partnerships for the development of trade, transport, technology, education, science and medicine.

Nevertheless, it was clear that the commitment to strategic partnership was underpinned by new mutual defense accords. This was most explicit in the treaty signed with the DPRK which furnished “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties”.

This is a game-changer. It totally upends the geopolitical calculations of the United States and its NATO partners who have been unilaterally expanding military force and provocations in Eurasia and elsewhere.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has ramped up aggression in the Asia-Pacific against China and North Korea with impunity. Under his watch, the US has increasingly moved nuclear forces into the region to intimidate not only Beijing and Pyongyang but also Moscow. The Biden administration has been assiduous in forming hostile military formations in the region with its NATO partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.

Year after year, the United States has built up weapon systems in Taiwan to provoke China and on the Korean Peninsula to threaten North Korea.

This unilateral aggression and “might is right” arrogance underpin the notion of Pax Americana that prevailed for decades after the Second World War. That notion was always a cruel euphemism for American imperialist violence to impose its economic and political interests. The Korean and Vietnam Wars in which millions of civilians were annihilated were the real-world grim translations of Pax Americana and its fraudulent “rules-based order”.

Geopolitical perceptions have dramatically changed in a few short years. The U.S. and its Western partners – a global minority – have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law through illegal wars and unilateral bullying with economic sanctions. The U.S. dollar and Washington’s relentless debt spending are seen as instruments of imperialist looting.

The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system. The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement. But such principles must be reinforced with military defense and security for all. This is far from the one-sided “defense and security” of the United States and its NATO partners, which in reality is an Orwellian cover for aggression.

The defense commitments given by Russia to the DPRK this week can be seen as long overdue. One may wonder how the U.S. and its allies got away with threatening the people of North Korea for so long and denying Pyongyang the sovereign right to self-defense. Admittedly, Russia did previously support UN sanctions on North Korea over its missile program. That’s over.

The U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine against Russia that erupted in February 2022 was a wake-up call for Moscow and many people around the world.

Patently, the Western hegemonic system will stop at nothing to assert its neocolonialist privileges, even to the point of antagonizing a nuclear world war.

There is only one language that the U.S. and its minions understand – and that is the threat of devastating countervailing force.

Washington and its NATO lackeys think they can put missiles in Ukraine to hit Russia or in South Korea and Japan to hit North Korea – at no cost to their own security. Well, now, they might want to think again. There’s a new sheriff in town, as this week’s developments show.

A new global security system is being incarnate. Russia’s vision of indivisible, mutual security is shared by China and many other nations because it is fully compliant with international law and nations’ sovereignty.

Russia, China and other supporters of a multipolar world are not preemptively threatening anyone. But it takes the guarantee of unassailable nuclear powers, Russia and China, to make a new security system viable by restoring the deterrence towards the rogue states of the United States and NATO accomplices.

The defense accords between Russia, the DPRK and Vietnam are installments of the new security architecture that is needed in Eurasia and globally. The has-been American hegemon has been served notice that from now on its presumption of belligerence with impunity, to destroy nations, and to have a license to murder en masse is null and void.

Welcome to the new multipolar order and Pax Rossiya. All are welcome – except hegemonic rogue states.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | 2 Comments

US forces Russia to close visa centers – ambassador

RT | June 22, 2024

US authorities are closing both Russian visa center offices in the country and will deprive Russia’s diplomats of tax exemption, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, has revealed.

The Russia Visa Application Center operates in Washington and New York, assisting those looking to get permits to travel to Russia with preparing the necessary papers and submitting them to the Russian consular offices.

“The Americans notified us that the visa center is closing,” Antonov told the journalists on Saturday. The move by Washington creates a “serious extra burden for us given the fact that our consulate general offices in Houston and New York are drained of blood” due to expulsions of Russian diplomats from the US, he stressed.

The decision to revoke tax exemption status from Russian embassy workers is another “petty, nasty attack” by Washington, the ambassador said. The cards are common practice and handed out to diplomats in all countries, he explained.

US officials didn’t provide any reasoning for their actions, Antonov noted. As for a possible response by Moscow, he said that “there is no need to make any rash moves. We need to consider what the specific consequences of what we will have to do.”

According to the ambassador, the Americans “are trying to break [Russia], trying to change [its] foreign policy, trying to force our diplomats to hide behind the walls of the embassy, to stop communicating and working,” he said.

“This will not happen. Until the last diplomat, while we remain here, we will keep performing our duties,” the ambassador assured.

Relations between Moscow and Washington have steadily deteriorated over the past decade, with the administration of former US President Barack Obama shutting down several Russian consulates after accusing Moscow of “interference” in the 2016 presidential election. The diplomatic row has only escalated since Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, prompting a wave of Western sanctions and several tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats by both countries.

Last month, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that Moscow may well downgrade its diplomatic ties with Washington if the West “continues on the path of escalation” in terms of supporting Ukraine or making hostile economic moves.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Debt Disaster: Why Global South Increasingly Sidelines the US Dollar

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 22.06.2024

Soaring US national debt may translate into a real disaster when supercharged by internal political fighting or de-dollarization among top emerging economies, US observers warn.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that the US national debt will hit $50.7 trillion by 2034, but the true figure “surely will be much bigger,” wrote William Pesek, an award-winning journalist and author, for the Asia Times.

The CBO projected on June 18 that US debt would reach 122 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2034, far surpassing the nation’s record-high public debt-to-GDP ratio of 106 percent in the aftermath of World War II. The watchdog also expects that interest costs for maintaining the debt will climb to $892 billion in 2024 (from $352 billion in 2021).

Pesek named defense funding, social safety net outlays and tax cuts unmatched by revenue increases as being the major drivers behind the debt growth, adding that they would become even costlier in the future.

He also quotes Goldman Sachs economists as predicting that the US debt-to-GDP ratio will hit 130 percent by 2034, i.e. 8 percentage points higher than the CBO estimates. Judging by the present dynamics, it could be far higher than that, according to the journalist.

The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald F. Seib appears to share Pesek’s concerns: “Over the centuries and across the globe, nations and empires that blithely piled up debt have, sooner or later, met unhappy ends.”

The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage echoes his counterparts in referring to the spending spree under the Trump and Biden administrations, which included huge tax cuts, various social programs and increasing defense expenditures.

“[Most recently], besides the annual appropriations, lawmakers approved a $95 billion foreign aid bill to support Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and make investments in the US industrial base, and Biden announced plans to forgive billions of dollars in student loans,” the correspondent noted.

When it comes to Ukraine, Congress has approved nearly $175 billion of funding and military assistance to support the Kiev regime and allied nations since 2022, as per the Committee for the Responsible Federal Budget. This spending has been repeatedly questioned by some US lawmakers, who referred to Kiev’s corruption, non-transparency and military failures. To complicate matters further, American lawmakers are complaining about US primary defense contractors tremendously overcharging the US government.

Meanwhile, Ukraine funding constitutes a fraction of the US growing military spending that rose by 2.3 percent from 2022 to reach $916 billion in 2023, or 68 percent of total NATO military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). These expenditures only add to America’s bloated national debt.

According to Pesek, “this slow-motion economic disaster” related to Washington’s inability to balance its spending “could be sped up by political squabbling or by de-dollarization efforts among top emerging markets.”

He particularly refers to Biden’s economic policies and protectionist measures which are not making the US economy more resilient. According to the journalist, the White House’s latest 100 percent tariffs on China-made electric vehicles have hurt “global faith in the dollar or US Treasury securities” (of which the People’s Republic holds around $700 billion).

He warns that Global South countries are “viewing the US less and less as an adult in the room when it comes to economic and geopolitical affairs.”

“The most obvious example of disillusionment over US fiscal excesses is the pivot away from the US dollar,” Pesek notes, adding that there is no sign that the US government is ready to overhaul its economic approach.

“Nor is it safe to bet on the US debt only rising to $50 trillion a decade from now. As the real figure exceeds even the worst expectations, global markets could be in a world of hurt. And Washington will make it easy for Global South nations hoping to sideline the dollar,” he concludes.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

BIRD FLU PANIC RISES

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 20, 2024

The bird flu vaccine is now in full development for not just humans but for cattle as well. Watch as we break down the COVID-like pre-positioning and how a critically-thinking public may not fall in line this time around.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Video | | Leave a comment

Hamas plans a legal response to ICC arrest warrants

Palestinian Information Center – June 21, 2024

GAZA – The Hamas Movement declared that it is planning a legal response against the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against three of its top leaders.

Calling the war crimes accusations against three of its top leaders – Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haneyya and Mohammed Deif – “baseless”, Hamas said it would argue Palestinians have “the right, indeed the duty, to resist occupation by all means available, including armed resistance.”

The ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan said in May the three Hamas leaders bore responsibility for the attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed at least 1,139 people with 250 captives taken to Gaza.

The same day, Khan announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war minister Yoav Gallant.

In its statement, Hamas described Khan as biased in Israel’s favor.

It said the prosecutor “erred in considering that the state of conflict began on October 7,” asserting it began in 1948 with Israel’s establishment.

The Movement pointed out that the Public Prosecutor believed the Israeli sexual assault accusations, although the occupation was unable to provide a single piece of evidence for its claims.

“The bias of the Public Prosecutor appeared blatantly when he brought charges and requested the issuance of an arrest warrant against the head of the Movement, who is a political figure residing outside Gaza.,” the statement reads.

However, the Public Prosecutor, the statement continued, did not direct any charges against the Israeli Chief of Staff, who ordered all killing, destruction, and genocide operations in the Gaza Strip.

The Movement further affirmed its respect for international law, while the Israeli occupation rebels against it and against the resolutions of international legitimacy.

The Public Prosecutor and the International Criminal Court are facing a historical test of their credibility, it concluded.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | 6 Comments

Nothing to worry about? South Korea sounds the alarm

By Gilbert Doctorow | June 21, 2024

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday’s Financial Times informed readers about the red carpet that was rolled out for Vladimir Putin at his various stops in and around the North Korean capital during his two-day stay there. They spoke of the Russian folk songs which local artists performed in Putin’s honor. They mentioned that various state to state agreements were signed but said almost nothing about the contents.

Today the FT has taken a very different approach to Putin’s visit in a feature article entitled “Japan and South Korea sound alarm over Putin-Kim military pact.” Lo and behold, Seoul has read the text of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that North Korea issued and discovered that it contains: “a pledge to deploy ‘all means at its disposal without delay’ to provide ‘military and other assistance’ in the event that one of the signatories was invaded or in a state of war.”

The FT goes on to cite the South Korean foreign ministry’s expression of regret over the strategic partnership: “… co-operation between Russia and North Korea ‘should not undermine regional peace and stability’.” Seoul warns “that their co-operation on military technology would violate UN Security Council resolutions.”

Those resolutions, by the way, are up for renewal in the not-too-distant future, and Putin has said from Pyongyang that Russia will veto any extensions.

The fact is that this barking from the South Koreans is frustrated by the very opacity of the wording of both the texts and of Putin’s spoken remarks after the signing and at a meeting with Russian journalists before his departure for Vietnam.

One thing is certain: the Russian-North Korean deal is not just transactional: it is a genuine alliance, the first and only one that Russia has at this moment.

What kind of military assistance will the sides provide to the other in case an act of aggression is declared? What kind of military technical cooperation do the parties have in mind?

For example, will Russia be providing North Korea with ICBMs capable of reaching all of the United States, as some American experts believe? Or is Russia just extending its nuclear umbrella over North Korea, with a pledge to destroy any attacker? Will Russia provide North Korea with its ship sinking hypersonic missiles that could be very useful if this or any future American president sends an aircraft carrier task force to Korean shores to threaten Pyongyang with instant destruction as Trump once did?

Turned around the other way, what can and will North Korea do to help if Russia declares that an act of aggression has been committed against it by NATO in the midst of the Ukraine conflict? Last evening’s edition of the authoritative Russian talk show, The Great Game, moderated by Duma member and Kremlin insider Vyacheslav Nikonov provided an intriguing insight into what people close to Putin are thinking in this regard.

For some time, Russia’s chattering classes have speculated about possibilities for enlisting some of North Korea’s one million man army to help their forces in the ground war in Ukraine. Now, under conditions of the newly signed military alliance with Pyongyang, these same Russians are saying that should NATO forces enter Ukraine to join the fight against them, as Emmanuel Macron has been urging, then Russia may invite 50,000 or more North Koreans to lend a hand to their cause. Moreover, they note that the North Koreans have some very impressive artillery pieces to bring with them to the fight.

If that kind of talk on Russian television is being ignored by the military attaché in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow I would be very surprised.

In closing, I mention that the fuss raised by Seoul over the Russian-North Korean military alliance was the subject of a 10-minute interview I gave to Iran’s Press TV this morning.

The link is here:  https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/129882

As I was alerted by one very attentive reader, this link is usable if you ignore the warnings about possibly compromising security of your computer and opt to proceed at your own risk. The warning is malicious, a bit of disinformation from Iran’s detractors, nothing more.

An alternative link that works directly, without unnerving warnings is here: https://odysee.com/PressTV-2024-06-21:8

Enjoy the show!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Hunter Biden’s Charge of Lying Under Oath

The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.

By Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News | June 19, 2024

This is the fifth in Consortium News’ series on the congressional investigation into President Joe Biden’s allegedly corrupt involvement in the business affairs of his son Hunter. We publish these reports whenever new developments warrant them. Our earlier reports can be read here,  here, here and here . 

One reads regularly in the mainstream media, when events force them to report on the question, that the U.S. House Oversight Committee has hit a wall as it investigates Hunter Biden’s schemes to leverage his father’s power and Joe Biden’s potentially impeachable role in his son’s unseemly doings.

The House hearings have stalled, or fizzled, or reached a dead end: This has been the standard theme in corporate media for months now.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” Michael Goodwin asked in The New York Post as far back as March, “CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico and others on the left all reached exactly the same conclusion at the same time.”

Let us put aside the notion that the above-named media are “left” and consider the implications of what Goodwin, a conservative columnist and relentless critic of the Biden regime, means to imply with this remark. There are three points to consider.

One, U.S. media’s brazen rush to slam shut the door on the House proceedings puts their bias in favor of the president and his family well beyond dispute.

Two, liberal newspapers and broadcasters — repeatedly claiming that the House hearings have produced no proof or indication of wrongdoing on the president’s part — can do so only by ignoring very substantial evidence of criminal and impeachable offenses.

Finally and not least, whatever the final outcome of the House proceedings, the nation’s most powerful media have already sustained considerable self-inflicted damage by way of the negligence that is perfectly legible in their coverage of the investigations and its interim findings.

To be noted in this connection: More than two-thirds of Americans, according to a poll conducted earlier this year, think the House hearings should continue; half of these respondents — 34 percent of those surveyed — “think Joe Biden is guilty of corruption and should be impeached.”

These figures cannot land as a surprise to anyone who has paid careful attention to the House hearings. Among much else, they have already produced substantive evidence establishing in considerable outline the operations of what is called, with justification, the Biden crime family:

— Payments of $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden by Mykola Zlochevsky, the founding chairman of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company. Zlochevsky sought (and enjoyed) Vice–President Biden’s protection from Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma on charges on suspicion of extensive corruption.

— Gross payments to the Biden family, chiefly Hunter and Joe’s brother James, of more than $20 million during the years (2009–2017) when Joe was vice-president.

— A dense network of 20–odd shell companies the Biden family set up to disguise payments received from influence-peddling schemes Hunter conducted in Ukraine, Russia, China and elsewhere.

— The detailed testimony, so far not credibly refuted, of government investigators — from the F.B.I. and the IRS — providing granular evidence of the Biden family’s illegal financial operations.

— The covert, corrupt efforts of David Weiss, during his tenure as federal attorney for the Delaware District, to protect Hunter Biden from the above-noted investigators and, in addition, to negotiate a plea bargain on gun and tax charges that would immunize Hunter Biden from all subsequent criminal liabilities. This plea deal collapsed a year ago next month.

— Voluminous evidence of Joe Biden’s often intimate involvement in Hunter’s business dealings, many of these illicit, as lodged in the infamous laptop computer Hunter left at a repair shop in Wilmington, the contents of which were obtained by The New York Post.

— A check for $240,000 James Biden wrote his brother shortly after he and Hunter consummated a transaction with a Chinese associate worth many times this figure. James Biden continues to contend that this was repayment of a loan from Joe Biden, but he and the Biden White House refuse to provide documentation substantiating the nature of the transaction.

Consortium News reported on these and other matters earlier in this series. Now there is evidence that Hunter Biden compounded his legal liabilities when he testified at length and under oath to Congress on Feb. 28 — an appearance Biden refused until he was threatened with contempt of Congress.

The House Ways and Means Committee, which also has an investigative function in the Biden case, voted on May 22 to release 100 pages of new evidence showing that Hunter Biden lied three times during that testimony. The evidence of this was provided, once again, by Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, the IRS investigators who had previously presented the Oversight Committee with evidence of the Biden family’s corruption.

The Ways and Means Committee is chaired by Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican. Here is part of Smith’s official statement as he released the new evidence:

“Hunter Biden has shown once again he believes there are two systems of justice in this country — one for his family, and one for everyone else. Not only did Hunter Biden refuse to comply with his initial subpoena until threatened with criminal contempt, but he then came before Congress and lied….

The documents released today are not part of a personal vendetta against Hunter Biden, but are meant to ensure the equal application of the law.

Lying during sworn testimony is a felony offense that the Department of Justice has prosecuted numerous individuals for in recent years…. Hunter Biden’s lies under oath, and obstruction of a congressional investigation into his family’s potential corruption, calls into question other pieces of his testimony.

The newly released evidence affirms, once again, the only witnesses who can be trusted to tell the truth in this investigation are the IRS whistleblowers.”

Ways and Means presents the three instances when Shapley and Zeigler caught Biden lying in a succinct format, the rigorous tone of which suggests the committee’s strong determination to hold the president’s son to the letter of the law.

Each entry is headed, “Lie #1,” #2, or #3, followed by a section headed “Hunter Biden’s Sworn Testimony” and another called simply “The Truth.”

In the first case, Biden is shown to have lied about who he was texting, in a now- famous incident, when he warned a Mr. Zhao that his father was with him as he demanded an immediate wire transfer of $5 million.

Biden, hiding behind his drug and alcohol addictions, claimed in testimony, “I sent the text to the wrong Zhao.” The committee produced What’sApp telephone records showing there was only one “Zhao” in Hunter Biden’s universe, and it was Raymond Zhao, the chairman of CEFC, a Chinese energy company that, shortly after the exchange of texts, wired $5 million to accounts Hunter Biden controlled.

In the second case, Biden claimed to have no beneficial association with or control of the bank accounts of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a financial entity Biden operated with a business partner named Devon Archer.

The committee revealed evidence that Biden in fact used Rosemont Seneca to receive his monthly stipend from Burisma, where he sat on the board during his father’s vice-presidency, as well as funds from other foreign enterprises and people to whom he was selling influence.

Lie #3 concerned Biden’s intervention to secure a U.S. visa in behalf of Mykola Zlochevsky, the Burisma founder (who is misidentified in the Ways and Means statement as “Nicolay.”) Asked about this during his Feb. 28 testimony, Biden asserted, “I’d never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.” The committee produced email traffic demonstrating that Biden “was actively using his name and father’s influence to aid foreign nationals in obtaining visas from the U.S. government.”

Zlochevsky in 2010. (Svetlana Pashko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Scant Coverage

It is shocking — or perhaps not in view of the media’s record — to consider how little coverage these revelations received at the time. On June 5, Jason Smith, Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, who chairs Oversight, sent criminal referrals to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, recommending the Justice Department charge Biden, and James Biden as well, with making false statements under oath.

David Weiss, who now serves as a special prosecutor, also received the three chairs’ letter. Neither Garland nor Weiss has so far responded publicly. It is difficult to see how either the DoJ, the White House, or the media can ignore, spin, or distort these charges — open-and-shut matters documented on paper and in digital records.

Tangentially related but closely so, after a trial of of seven days, June 4 to June 10, the jury on June 11 found Hunter Biden guilty on all three charges related to his purchase and possession of a gun in 2018, during a time he was drug addicted and lied about this condition on his application to purchase a .38 Colt revolver.

Biden now awaits sentencing by Maryellen Noreika, the district court judge in Delaware who rejected the objectionably lenient plea bargain to which Weiss agreed in July 2023.

Much has been made of the Biden family’s displays of unity and compassion before and during Hunter Biden’s trial. President Biden flew to Wilmington for a late-night visit with Hallie Biden a few days before the trial began.

Even The New York Times suggested this risked leaving the president open to charges of witness tampering, given Hallie Biden was scheduled to testify for the prosecution. Hallie Biden is the widow of Beau Biden, Joe’s oldest son, and, during Hunter Biden’s years as an addict was for a time after Beau’s death Hunter’s paramour.

During testimony, Hunter’s chronic indulgences in cocaine and alcohol were almost ostentatiously played out for the jury and, it seemed, the public. The First Lady, Jill Biden, attended the trial daily but for the days she was at the Normandy beaches to join the president in marking the 80th anniversary of the D–Day landings.

The Biden clan was notably stoic when the verdict was announced. Evidently for the cameras, Hunter Biden took his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, by the shoulders, leaned to kiss her, and audibly whispered with a faint smile, “Hey.”

It is not possible to interpret these evidently rehearsed-for-the-public family displays with anything like certainty. But questions inevitably arise. They turn, almost inevitably on David Weiss’ role as the prosecutor in the gun case.

Weiss is a highly problematic figure. As earlier noted, he was deeply compromised when, during federal investigations into Hunter Biden’s tax records and the broader matter of his foreign business dealings, he, Weiss, acted covertly on numerous occasions to shield Hunter Biden from the lawful scrutiny of federal investigators.

Many were astonished — and many Republican political figures objected — when, the plea deal of July 2023 having collapsed, Attorney–General Garland promoted Weiss to the rank of special prosecutor.

This was ostensibly to give Weiss broader powers to direct investigations into the corruption allegations Hunter Biden faced — an array that threatened to lead to the White House door.

As many critics immediately charged, the Weiss appointment seemed intended not to extend his powers but to keep in place a federal attorney who had just demonstrated his willingness to protect the president’s son — and by extension the president, let us not miss — as a matter of partisan loyalty.

Hunter Biden’s trial on various charges related to his handling of his federal taxes is to begin on Sept. 5, two months to the day before the presidential elections.

Weiss will again be the prosecutor. This leaves us now with two questions.

One, were Hunter Biden’s attorneys in the gun trial in essence shadow-boxing? Their defense strategies — it could not be proven Hunter was using when he purchased the gun, a guilty verdict would infringe on his Second Amendment rights — were flimsy and unpromising.

Was the guilty verdict, in other words, what is called in intelligence circles a limited hangout?

Has a decision been made at top levels of the Democratic- controlled federal judiciary to find Hunter Biden guilty on the lesser crime of illegal gun possession — on the argument he had to be convicted of something — so as to prepare a skeptical public for an innocent verdict in the much more consequential trial on charges of financial corruption — a trial that could directly threaten the Biden presidency?

Two, where are the House hearings likely to go from here, and what will be the next step? The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.

As previously noted in this series, it seems clear they have enough sound evidence to support a vote to impeach President Biden.

But it remains to be seen whether the House committees will have the political will to press the case they appear to have, just as the outcome in California, where Weiss will prosecute the tax and corruption cases, is for now not at all certain.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s terrorist designation of IRGC ‘utter servility’ to Israel: Iran

Press TV – June 21, 2024

The spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry says Canada’s unlawful decision to designate the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group is “utter servility” to the Israeli regime.

In a social media post on Friday, Nasser Kan’ani said the Canadian government’s move against the IRGC is not under recognized principles of international law and will bear no fruit.

It is not strange that the agents and allies of the Israeli regime designate the world’s largest anti-terror force as a terrorist group at a time when the criminal regime is conducting the largest genocide against the people of Palestine in Gaza, he wrote.

“History and awakened human consciences will remember these self-proclaimed defenders of human rights and real accomplices to crimes against humanity along with the Zionist criminals and terrorists,” the Iranian spokesman said.

Kan’ani expressed confidence that the IRGC will become more powerful and honorable and will remain a “thorn in the eyes of the enemies of Iran and Islam.”

In a hostile move against Iran, Canada’s Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc Ottawa on Wednesday listed the IRGC as a “terrorist entity” under the Criminal Code and called on Canadians in Iran to leave.

Last month, the Canadian House of Commons adopted a non-binding resolution calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to blacklist the IRGC and expel an estimated 700 Iranians.

The move makes Canada the second country in North America after the United States to blacklist the IRGC.

Iran’s Interim Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani said on Thursday that the Canadian government’s move against the IRGC was a senseless gift to the bloodthirsty Israeli regime, terrorists and enemies of peace and stability in West Asia.

His comment came after Kan’ani in a statement said that Iran reserves the right to reciprocate with a “proper” response to Canada’s unlawful act.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Trump names cause of Ukraine conflict

RT | June 21, 2024

Russia’s intervention in Ukraine was triggered by the irresponsible and provocative rhetoric which US President Joe Biden and his administration used about Ukraine joining NATO, Donald Trump has said.

Trump, who is seeking a rematch with Biden for the presidency in November, appeared on the ‘All-In’ podcast posted late on Thursday. The comments about Ukraine came during a conversation on foreign policy with co-host David Sacks.

“For 20 years, I heard that if Ukraine goes into NATO, it’s a real problem for Russia. I’ve heard that for a long time. And I think that’s really why this war started,” Trump said.

The Republican presidential candidate pointed out that there had been no talk about armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine when he was in the White House, but as soon as Biden replaced him, things began to deteriorate.

“I thought that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin may be – well, look, he’s a good negotiator, I thought he was going to be doing that for negotiation purposes,” Trump said. “Then all of a sudden, they attacked, and I said, ‘what’s going on here?’”

According to the former president, one of the key issues was the rhetoric coming out of the White House.

“Biden was saying all of the wrong things. And one of the wrong things he was saying [was] ‘no, Ukraine will go into NATO’,” Trump said.

Sacks pointed out that in January 2022 or thereabouts, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Moscow that Ukraine would join NATO and that Washington thought it was OK to put nuclear weapons there. “So no wonder the Russians hit the roof,” he noted.

“Well, let’s say you were running Russia. You wouldn’t be too happy,” Trump replied. “And that’s always been off the table. It’s always been understood that that was a no-no,” he added, addressing Kiev’s potential NATO membership.

Floating the idea of Ukraine in NATO was “very provocative,” Trump said. “And now it’s even more provocative. I hear routinely they’re now talking about Ukraine entering NATO. And now I hear France wants to go in and fight. Well, I wish them a lot of luck!”

Putin has specifically pointed to Western statements about Ukraine’s possible membership in the US-led bloc as a security threat Moscow could not ignore. Ukraine’s neutrality has been one of the non-negotiable Russian conditions for the conflict to end.

NATO has argued that its “open door” policy is essential and that no one had the right of veto over it, but also that its expansion eastward was not the cause of the conflict.

In an interview with Time magazine earlier this month, Biden claimed that the US is “the strongest nation” because of NATO expansion, and that he told Putin he would get “NATOization of Finland” instead of “the Finlandization of NATO” during their June 2021 summit in Switzerland.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 1 Comment

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