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Borrell’s symbolic parting gesture is mired in hypocrisy

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | November 20, 2024

Diplomats and parting gestures are nothing new. As the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell comes close to ending his tenure, he has called for EU member states to stop political dialogue with Israel. “After a year of unheeded pleas, we cannot continue with business as usual,” said Borrell. Make that a year of doing nothing but upholding Israel’s security narrative, thus becoming complicit in genocide.

The EU is neither blameless nor naïve. Borrell’s last ditch attempt at steering EU diplomacy towards at least a veneer of abiding by international law is meaningless, especially when Israel’s atrocities are still not described as genocide by the bloc. Furthermore, proposing an import ban on illegal settlement products is hardly going to dent or end Israel’s genocidal intent and actions in Gaza.

Borrell’s stance has been weak throughout the genocide, and the end of his term as the EU’s high representative was never going to see him leaving an honourable legacy in this respect. In his blog which detailed a timeline of events and EU involvement since Israel’s genocide began (although the g-word is not mentioned once), Borrell makes the case for Israel’s security more than he does for protecting the Palestinians.

“When self-defence started looking more and more like revenge, our appeals grew louder, but we doubled down on our commitment to Israel’s security,” he wrote. The EU’s primary concern, therefore, was to protect Israel’s security narrative at the expense of Palestinians in Gaza. Borrell also described ethnic cleansing and genocide as “some of these illegal and immoral ideas”.

Predictably, the EU foreign ministers rejected Borrell’s proposal. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski declared that, “We know that there are tragic events in Gaza, huge civilian casualties, but we do not forget who started the current cycle of violence.”

Does Sikorsky remember who started the settler-colonialism in Palestine and who started the genocide, though? Clue: It wasn’t the Palestinians.

Cause and effect are clear, so let’s not forget the initial cause: the creation of the Zionist state of Israel in Palestine.

However, it was not just Sikorski who clearly believes that history began on 7 October 2023, and so uses the shortest timeframe to justify his stance; Borrell did the same. “Looking back, we need to acknowledge that the approach we have used for over a year with the Israeli government has failed,” he wrote. Look back even further, and see how many times the EU failed in terms of upholding international law, because the profits reaped by maintaining ties with Israel are too considerable to lose. Every time, Palestinians were forced to suffer the consequences of international diplomacy with Israel. And let’s not forget the EU’s obsession with maintaining the two-state paradigm’s relevance in rhetoric only.

Business as usual should never have happened. The EU knows it is dealing with a colonial enterprise and that it made human rights secondary to any deals between the bloc and Israel, despite the association agreements actually stipulating otherwise. Borrell’s weak stance is just a symbolic departure trinket, of purportedly having realised too late what was at stake.

The EU – Borrell included – prioritised pleading with Israel as its first diplomatic overture, and ongoing genocide is the result. Even if the EU foreign ministers decided to heed Borrell’s proposals of suspending dialogue and banning settlement products, neither are anywhere near being a tool to bring about an end to the genocide in which Europe and the US are complicit, and which most EU countries are still refusing to acknowledge, never mind stop.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli jets strike Syria’s Palmyra from US-controlled airspace

The Cradle | November 20, 2024

Israeli jets bombarded the outskirts of the central Syrian city of Palmyra with violent airstrikes on 20 November, launched from within the airspace of Washington’s Al-Tanf military base in eastern Syria.

“Israeli warplanes launched a number of missiles from the airspace of the [US] base in the Al-Tanf area on the Syrian–Iraqi–Jordanian border, in the far southeastern countryside of Homs, targeting the vicinity of the city of Palmyra,” Sputnik’s correspondent reported, citing exclusive information.

The correspondent added that casualties were reported and that many ambulances were transporting the wounded to Tadmur National Hospital.

Nine members of the Syrian army’s auxiliary forces were wounded. Firefighting teams managed to contain the blaze that resulted from the Israeli attack. Images circulating on social media show large clouds of smoke in the area.

The US Al-Tanf base is surrounded by what is referred to as the 55-kilometer area.

According to numerous reports in the last couple of years, including Syrian and Russian officials, ISIS and other extremist groups receive training inside the Al-Tanf base, and are given logistical support to carry out hit-and-run attacks against Syrian military forces in the country’s desert region.

Earlier this month, Syrian troops foiled an ISIS ambush that originated from the 55-kilometer area in the vicinity of the US military base.

According to Israel, it has recently stepped up its violent and illegal campaign of airstrikes against Syria, particularly Syrian–Lebanese border crossings, in order to cut off the flow of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, where it is waging a brutal and deadly campaign.

The Al-Tanf base lies approximately 218 kilometers from where Israel struck in Palmyra on Wednesday. In May 2015, ISIS launched a massive offensive against the Syrian government and captured the ancient city.

Moscow and Damascus announced the full liberation of Palmyra in March 2017.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

CIA Democrats and Other Party Hawks Win Races in 2024 Election

By Jeremy Kuzmarov | Covert Action Magazine | November 17, 2024

In March 2018, Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site published a political pamphlet entitled “The CIA Democrats.”

In it, he wrote that “an extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department” were “seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.”

This is a departure from the 1960s and 1970s when Democrats like George McGovern, Leo Ryan and Frank Church were against wars like Vietnam and sought to reign in the CIA.

Some of the Class of 2018 CIA Democrats, like Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, were recruited as part of a “red-to-blue” program targeting vulnerable Republican-held seats.

In the 2018 race, there were far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than for the Republicans. Martin wrote that there were so many “spooks” that with a “nod to Mad Magazine,” one might call the primaries “spy vs. spy.”

CovertAction Magazine has kept tabs on the “spook-soldiers” who were elected as part of the Class of 2018 and followed their careers in Congress. (According to Martin, 30 spook-soldiers won primaries and 11 were elected to Congress.)

Below is a summary of how some of them fared in the 2024 election:

1. Elissa Slotkin:

Slotkin narrowly defeated Republican challenger Mike Rogers in Michigan on November 5 for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

Slotkin is the one-time assistant to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Prior to her election to Congress, Slotkin put her stamp on the U.S.’s disastrous Ukraine policy as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense following the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014.

Over the past six years as a Member of Congress, Slotkin has continued to fervently support the Ukraine war, telling an NPR reporter: “I think we’ve got to give them [Ukraine] what they need….This is a black and white issue. Our weapons have made a huge difference.”

In reality, the only difference those weapons made is in killing more people while prolonging Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.

Described as a “moderate” or “conservative” Democrat of the kind the CIA and the plutocratic elite that it serves like, Slotkin is one of only five Democratic House members who voted against an amendment to prohibit support to and participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s military operations against the Houthis in Yemen—a genocidal operation.

Endorsed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) because of her strong pro-Israel stance, Slotkin further voted against H.Con.Res. 21, which directed President Joe Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days.[1]

When asked by a reporter about her favorite CIA movie, Slotkin tellingly named Zero Dark Thirty, which glorified the use of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

In the same interview, Slotkin praised the CIA’s Hollywood liaison office, which she said helps Hollywood to “really understand what is going on”—comments that are in line with the CIA’s official cover story for their PR operations in Hollywood, and make it seem like the Agency is merely concerned with greater accuracy, not covering up its crimes or trying to rehabilitate its public image.

2. Andy Kim:

The seat of disgraced New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has now been filled by Class of 2018 CIA Democrat Andy Kim (D-NJ), an adviser to former CIA Director David Petraeus who served as director for Iraq on Barack Obama’s National Security Council (NSC).

A graduate with degrees in political science from the University of Chicago and Oxford University who was a member of the progressive congressional caucus, Kim has been a staunch supporter of massive U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The first person of South Korean descent elected to the U.S. Senate, Kim voted for a congressional bill declaring that the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is anti-Semitic, and referred to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny as a “murder”—absent any proof that this was the case.

Predictably, Kim adopts alarmist rhetoric regarding North Korea that could lead directly into a war. He claimed that “there’s a madman with his finger on the button that can send nuclear weapons to annihilate my family.” However, it is the U.S. that precipitated the development of North Korea’s nuclear program as a security blanket after it bombed North Korea nearly back to the Stone Age during the Korean War and has tried for decades to overthrow its government.

3. Jared Golden:

Class of 2018 CIA Democrat Jared Golden narrowly defeated Republican Austin Theriault to retain his seat in Maine’s 2nd congressional district on November 5.

Golden is a tattooed Iraq and Afghan war veteran who served as a policy adviser on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

A conservative Blue Dog Democrat who was named Vice Chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Golden has urged President Biden to give F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and bragged about voting for more than $78 billion in border security funding during his time in Congress.[2]

Additionally, he has championed record military budgets that provided funding for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and for developing new naval destroyers and F-35 jets and CH-53K helicopters, which will benefit Pratt & Whitney’s factory in North Berwick, Maine, and the Hunting Dearborn factory in Fryeburg, Maine.

According to Opensecrets.com, Golden took in $375,091 from AIPAC in 2023-2024 and more than $439,999 in total from pro-Israel lobby groups in the same period.[3] Not surprisingly given these totals, Golden has supported every U.S. military aid package to Israel while opposing calls for a cease-fire.

Golden showed himself to be totally deluded from reality when he claimed that Israel was not committing war crimes in Gaza, when they have been widely documented on the pages of mainstream newspapers.

4. Jason Crow

Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, handily defeated John Fabbricatore on November 5 to win a fourth term in Congress.

Holding a childish view of world affairs out of the 1950s McCarthy era, Crow promotes on his website his role in securing provisions within the National Defense Authorization Agreement (NDAA) to help finance Buckley Space Force base in Colorado as part of his goal of making Colorado a global aerospace leader.

Buckley Space Force Base is headquarters of the U.S. Space Command, which follows a Nazi blueprint of trying to dominate the world by militarizing and controlling outer space.[4]

Space expert Bruce Gagnon has warned that exhaust from escalating numbers of rocket launches by the U.S. Space Force is diminishing the ozone layer, and the growing space debris could even cause the Earth to go dark as collisions become more likely.

Since Ukraine has been a key theater for testing new space-based weapons, it is no surprise that Jason Crow is a staunch supporter of that war and has established close friendships with Ukrainian military and political leaders who have turned their country into a neo-colonial vassal.

Crow claims that “Taiwan will eventually fall if we’re not able to help Ukraine win.”

To avert this outcome, he has called for increased military training to Ukraine and sending more long-range weapons and missiles to hit inside Russia, which he wants to sanction even more than it already is.[5]

A hawk on Israel, Crow supported legislation with Mike Walz (R-Fl), Trump’s new National Security adviser, to strengthen U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing in the Gaza war, stating that his years fighting terrorism taught him that “intelligence is the key to effective counter-terrorism.”

One of Crow’s biggest donors is Palantir Technologies, a data-analytics company founded with CIA seed money, which signed a major cooperative agreement with the Israeli Defense Ministry while providing artificial intelligence (AI) software used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for bomb-targeting and for accumulating data on Palestinians in the occupied territory.

Palantir has also played a key role in the Ukraine War by tracking Russian military movements and helping Ukraine to coordinate battlefield maneuvers along with bomb-targeting and there is concern that the company’s AI software platform also is being weaponized against ordinary Americans.

5. Mikie Sherrill:

Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot with an intelligence background and Class of 2018 CIA Democrat, defeated Republican Joe Belnome on November 5 to win a fourth term in the 11th congressional district of New Jersey.

The New Jersey Globe reported that Sherrill might not serve out her full term if her gubernatorial campaign takes off.

Sherrill has served on the House Armed Services Committee and Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, a relic of the Cold War which promotes Sinophobia and confrontation with China.

On her website, Sherrill states that, serving on the House Armed Services Committee, she has been able to “significantly increase funding for Picatinny Arsenal—a major military research and manufacturing institute in her district—which remains the Army’s leading research institution for armaments and ammunition.”

Sherrill continues: “Beyond supporting the critical research and development programs at Picatinny, I am also proud to support the many defense technology companies that call NJ-11 home and are on the cutting edge of modernizing our Armed Forces. Many of my provisions in the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act support funding for our local defense industrial base and businesses.”

Sherrill is an anti-Russia and anti-China national security hawk. On her website, she writes:

“Both Russia and China have continued to build their military might and promote their influence across the globe. Neither country shares our values and often they are undermining our interests across the world. We must ensure we modernize our military to meet this threat and provide critical funding for cybersecurity and election protection.

“Putin instigated an unprovoked attack against Ukraine—a sovereign, democratic nation. He has attempted to rewrite history and has unleashed propaganda and disinformation in pursuit of his clear desire to rebuild the Soviet Union’s so-called sphere of influence. [In 2022], I traveled twice to Ukraine, once in January before Putin’s invasion and again in July. I met with President Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials about the support they need from us and imparted to them the fierce support in New Jersey—home to one of the largest Ukrainian American communities in the country—for their independence and democracy.

“We secured emergency funding through a bipartisan package to support the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom. American weapons support has made a tangible difference in the Ukrainians’ ability to hold off Russian aggression, including the M-777 Howitzer, developed here at Picatinny Arsenal.”

The M-777 howitzer, it should be noted, has been used to strike at and kill civilian targets in the Donbass, though has not reversed the failings of Ukraine’s summer 2023 counteroffensive.

Sherrill favors continued military support to Israel and a growing police state at home. She boasts on her website about supporting the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, which she claims would “better equip our law enforcement with information related to possible attacks and their relationship with hate crimes.”

In May 2022, Sherrill and then-Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Chairman of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, participated in a strategic-operational war game, “Dangerous Straits: Battle for Taiwan 2027,” with the Center for a New American Security and NBC’s Meet the Press.

The war game provided important insight into how a potential war with China over Taiwan could develop, and how the U.S. and its allies and partners could defeat an attack on Taiwan by China.

A Party That Years Ago Crossed Over to the Dark Side

The Class of 2018 CIA Democrats are emblematic of the Democratic Party’s support for the warfare and surveillance states, which have made it hated among broad sectors of the population.

Kamala Harris is estimated to have gotten around 9 million fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020 in good part because of her embrace of war-mongering policies.

A key turning point in the history of the Democratic Party was the 1980 election, where many of the progressives of the 1970s were defeated by a big-money offensive and CIA campaign to destroy its congressional enemies.

Bill Clinton (and possibly Hillary too) had a background as a CIA “asset,” as did Barack Obama, who worked for a CIA-linked company that produced economic intelligence reports following his graduation from Columbia University.[6]

During their presidencies, Clinton and Obama helped re-empower the CIA while working to rehabilitate its reputation.

The Class of 2018 CIA Democrats did not come out of nowhere. They fit a historical trajectory by which the Democratic Party has completely crossed over to the dark side.

  1. Slotkin additionally voted to spy on U.S. citizens without warrant, for unconstitutional vaccine mandates and favored deployment of yet more draconian military surveillance technologies at the U.S.-Mexican border. ↑
  2. Opposing policing reform, Golden voted against Medicare for all. He got his start in politics working for Republican Senator Susan Collins. ↑
  3. According to Maine Wire, Golden has also received thousands of dollars in campaign funding from George Soros. Golden disputed the figures presented in Open Secrets. ↑
  4. See Annie Jacobson, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America (Boston: Little & Brown, 2014). ↑
  5. Crow developed a four-step plan for victory in Ukraine, which is delusional, as Ukraine has lost control over much of eastern Ukraine and has zero chance of victory. ↑
  6. See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019); Jeremy Kuzmarov, Warmonger: How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Set the Groundwork for Bush II to Biden (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2024). Obama’s grandfather and mother also appear to have worked for the CIA, with his mother and stepfather supporting the CIA-backed Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia that massacred more than a million suspected communists. ↑

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Sinophobia, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US vetoes UNSC resolution calling for ‘unconditional, permanent’ ceasefire in Gaza

Press TV – November 20, 2024

The United States has vetoed another draft resolution at the United Nations Security Council calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Fourteen member states voted in favor of the draft resolution on Wednesday, but it was blocked by the US, the Israeli regime’s main ally.

The resolution had been put forward by the Security Council’s 10 non-permanent members.

The resolution called for “safe and unhindered entry of humanitarian assistance” including in the besieged northern Gaza. It denounced any attempt to starve the Palestinians.

The Palestinian delegation at the United Nations suggested the text did not go far enough.

“Gaza’s fate will haunt the world for generations to come,” Ambassador Riyad Mansour warned.

The Palestinian diplomat said the only course of action for the Security Council is to call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.

Since the beginning of the Israeli campaign of death and destruction in October 7, 2023, the Security Council has struggled to speak with one voice, as the United States used its veto power multiple times.

The few resolutions that the United States did allow to pass by abstaining stopped short of calling for an unconditional and permanent ceasefire.

In March, the Council called for a temporary end to the hostilities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but this appeal was ignored by the Tel Aviv regime.

In June, the 15-member body pledged to support a resolution that laid out a multi-stage ceasefire that ultimately went nowhere.

Some diplomats had expressed optimism that President Joe Biden might be more flexible in his few remaining weeks in power.

They hope for a repeat of December 2016, when then President Barack Obama’s second term was finishing and the Council passed a resolution calling for a halt to the Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories.

The United States refrained from using its veto then, something seen as a departure from the unqualified support for the Israeli regime.

China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong said each time the United States had exercised its veto to protect Israel, the number of people killed in Gaza had steadily risen.

“How many more people have to die before they wake up from their pretend slumber?”

“Insistence on setting a precondition for ceasefire is tantamount to giving the green light to continue the war and condoning the continued killing.”

“Shocking but not surprising”

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said, “It is shocking that the US has vetoed an effort to save the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.”

“Though perhaps we should not be surprised about it.”

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning

By Leonard C. Goodman | Scheer Post | November 19, 2024

Following its crushing defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party might finally face its day of reckoning. The party markets itself as the champion of the working class and a bulwark against the party of the plutocrats. But this has been a lie for at least three decades.

The Democratic Party has partnered with Wall Street donors since at least the 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, the party overturned Glass Steagall and other New Deal programs that had effectively restrained Wall Street greed for 60 years. It also sold out American workers with so-called trade deals that freed their bosses to ship American jobs overseas. It ended welfare “as we know it” and passed draconian crime bills that destroyed mostly black and brown communities, sending mothers and fathers to prison for decades in the name of a cruel and senseless war on drugs.

Into the 21st century, the Democrats continued pushing the lie that they were fighting for working people. After September 11, 2001, the party put up a token resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime of illegal regime-change wars, black sites, indefinite detention and torture. All the while, it continued soliciting campaign contributions from the arms dealers profiting from Bush’s wars.

In 2008, the party found a Black face to carry on its Wall Street-friendly agenda. Gullible Americans, myself included, were taken in by Barack Obama’s promises to end “dumb wars” and to institute a single payer healthcare system. We ignored the red flags, like the fact that Obama’s campaign broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. It was later revealed by Wikileaks that nearly every member of Obama’s cabinet had been selected by the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup.

It didn’t take long for President Obama to crush our hopes that he was a different kind of Democrat. One of his first acts as president was to funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks that, newly freed by Clinton from FDR-era regulations, had embarked on an orgy of unbridled greed, swindling millions of Americans out of their homes and retirement savings with a scheme to sell worthless mortgage-backed securities.

Adding insult to injury, Obama saw to it that the bailed-out bank executives faced no criminal prosecutions and received their year-end bonuses. In their place, the Obama Justice Department brought federal mortgage fraud charges against thousands of poor people — I represented a half dozen of these folks — who had signed their names to the phony mortgage loans that the Wall Street bankers encouraged, packaged and sold to pension funds and other unwitting investors.

The pipe dream that Obama would be an anti-war president was also quickly dispatched. During his two terms, Obama ushered in a new era of continuous war, envisioned by George Orwell and favored by Wall Street. Obama expanded Bush’s bombing campaigns into Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Today’s Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its ties to war profiteers and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.

Obama also effectively ended the Democrats’ promise to fight for a true national health care system in which all Americans would be able to go to the doctor when sick without fear of bankrupting their families. In its place, Obama pushed through a health care plan developed in right-wing think tanks, that guaranteed profits (and taxpayer subsidies) for the private insurance industry and did little to contain costs.

By 2012, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report was describing the Democratic Party as the “more effective evil” for using its reputation as protector of the working class to neutralize effective opposition and push through right-wing policies that the Republicans could not get passed.

In 2016, the Democrats received a wake-up call when their chosen successor to Obama lost the White House to a crude-talking New York City real estate developer and game show host with no prior political experience. But with the help of its partners in corporate media, the party managed to limp along for another eight years, first by telling the American people that President Trump was an agent of Russia, and then by claiming that Trump was Hitler who was planning concentration camps and firing squads for his political enemies.

Now after the November 2024 elections in which Trump won every swing state and the popular vote, the Democratic party is finally being forced to face some uncomfortable truths. The party’s partners in the corporate media initially tried blaming the election result on the voters for being too misogynist, too racist, or too dumb to vote correctly. But there is little trust that remains in corporate media.

The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital, policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.

Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy.

These contradictions could only be covered up for so long. Even with reliable partners in the corporate press, the internet has given Americans alternative sources for their news. During the last few years, in a desperate effort to keep its scheme afloat, the Democrats embraced censorship and a regime of corporate “fact checkers” to police social media and remove or punish unsanctioned speech. In so doing, the party abandoned the last of its core principles: standing up for free speech and the right to dissent.

Many Democrats argue that they had to go after Wall Street money to compete with the Republicans. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explained the strategy: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” But for this plan to work, the party still needed an actual message to take to the voters.

Forbes Magazine reports that during the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a billion dollars while Trump’s campaign raised $388 million. Harris’s substantial edge in fundraising allowed her to flood the airwaves with commercials. But she had nothing of substance to say to voters.

The Atlantic Magazine reports that early in her campaign, Harris gained ground by attacking Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. But then, suddenly, Harris abandoned her attacks on big business at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.

Many Democrats, especially in swing states, opposed the Biden Administration’s unfailing support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Harris could have gained the support of many of these voters by promising to stop arming Israel during the genocide. But her Party’s donors wouldn’t allow her to even hint at such a change in policy. Two days before the election, while campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, Harris stated, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” But as Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada pointed out on election night, this promise carried no weight because Harris had also promised that she would never do the one thing within her power to stop the slaughter: cut off the flow of bombs to Israel.

After decades of malfeasance and deception, it has become evident that the corporate Democratic Party cannot serve as the lone opposition party to the corporate Republicans. The American people need a viable political party that represents the interests of ordinary working people.

A true workers party will not raise as much money as the corporate Democrats. But it will have an honest message with the potential to appeal to large numbers of Americans. Further, a political party that actually represents workers will press for reforms that begin to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.

For example, one the most effective ways plutocrats game the political system is by flooding campaign contributions to the lawmakers who sit on the key committees that oversee their businesses. Members of Congress covet these committee chairs because they guarantee high fundraising numbers. Lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction over banks and insurance companies and are targeted by those firms with campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sit on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees provide funding for lucrative government contracts and are flooded with war industry cash.

These practices are corrupt and deprive American citizens of their right to be governed by representatives free from conflicts of interest. A judge who has received political contributions from a litigant must be removed from the case. Similarly, the most important functions of government, such as determining tax and how our tax revenue will be spent, should be performed by lawmakers who have not been bribed.

In 2017, the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party, proposed a “Committee Contribution Ban” for Congress. It asserted: “Congress should enact a law to make it unlawful for members of Congress to accept campaign contributions from entities that fall within the jurisdiction of their committees.” Unsurprisingly, this proposal never reached the floor of Congress, that I could find.

Some states have enacted similar conflict of interest rules. And Congress could certainly pass such a law, if it chose. Of course, this will never happen as long as we are ruled by two corporate parties that benefit from the corruption. But if we had a political party that represented ordinary people, countless opportunities for positive change would soon emerge.

Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul University.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Dog Ate My Nord Stream: German Media Doubles Down on Ukrainian Connection Claim

Sputnik – 20.11.2024

Even though the United States has long been identified as the primary suspect in the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines, German media continues peddling the narrative where Ukraine is to blame.

This week, one German magazine presented an account that looks more like a Cold War spy thriller script, detailing an alleged effort by Ukrainian saboteurs to take out Nord Stream.

– The entire operation, codenamed “Diameter” was supposedly carried out by 12 people: 11 men and one woman who was included to help disguise the team as a tourist group

– Five of the group’s members were divers, selected from some 20 candidates

– The bombs – diving tanks loaded with octogen and hexogen explosives – were planted on the seams to ensure maximum damage to the pipelines

– The entire budget of this operation was only $300,000, allegedly donated by some entrepreneur “close to the Ukrainian special forces”

– The plan of this operation was ostensibly presented to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny then-chief of Ukraine’s army, who supposedly liked it so much that he suggested carrying out a similar terrorist act against the TurkStream natural gas pipeline that runs from Russia to Turkiye under the Black Sea. No details of this second operation are provided, save for that it failed

– Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky was allegedly unaware of this entire scheme

– The US purportedly learned of the Ukrainian terrorists’ plan in June 2022, three months before the Nord Stream attack, and demanded that it be called off, to no avail.

In other words, this narrative portrays the US leadership and Zelensky as blameless and pins the blame on a small group of rogue Ukrainian operative, which is very convenient for the US and Ukraine, not to mention Germany who needs to avoid making any uncomfortable discoveries in the Nord Stream affair.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

Ukraine’s 1,000 Days of War

By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | November 20, 2024

Tuesday, November 19 marked 1,000 days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though Ukraine’s civil war has been ongoing for over ten years. President-elect Donald Trump has a clear mandate to try and end the war, but with staffing picks like Marco Rubio as secretary of State, it is not clear that he wants to. Meanwhile, the outgoing Joe Biden administration has agreed to let Ukraine strike into Russia with U.S.-supplied long-range missiles, something which almost everyone seems to agree is a deliberate attempt to sabotage future peace talks. The Biden administration is also trying to run through all the aid for Ukraine before Trump takes power (not feeling confident of his Ukraine policy), while a European political class which deluded themselves into believing Trump had no chance of winning is rapidly adapting to reality. The current Ukraine policy is probably close to dead, but we are left to watch what further destruction will be wreaked on its way out the door.

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that Joe Biden made his infamous “minor incursion” comment during the 2022 State of the Union Address. Then, the Biden administration went around saying that an invasion was imminent. Many commentators didn’t believe them, given the government and media’s long history of lying about all matters, especially Russia. Those commentators were proven wrong, though in my view Biden did a lot to cause the invasion. Once the U.S. government claims you’re going to do a false flag attack as a pretense for an invasion, it is more or less an acknowledgment that they intend to do a terrorist attack against you and say you did it to yourself. The media and government kept calling it “an unprovoked invasion” because that is the opposite of the truth, as the Libertarian Institute’s Executive Director Scott Horton has laid out at great length in his newly published book, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine.

At the start of this conflict it was hard to believe it would last very long, which was partially due to propaganda. From the beginning we saw new information management techniques where the media obfuscated with a constant blare of nonsense instead of reporting anything useful, which indicated the real news wasn’t good for Ukraine. Further, while “Kiev could fall in three days” was just something then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley made up to make any resistance look impressive, at the same time, immediately after the invasion Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was going around telling the public to make their own Molotov cocktails, which gave the impression of imminent collapse. Western governments instantly set up a sanctions regime which seems to have accomplished little but removed their vestigial power over world financial systems. Similarly, NATO countries dumped equipment into Ukraine they persistently showed the shortcomings of their own manufacturing capacities. The debacle over German Leopard tanks, which then had no impact on the battlefield, is just one example. The media continued to paint a rosy picture of brave Ukrainians and their noble fight for freedom, but at the same time, the media has been preparing the public for Ukraine to lose since the late spring of 2022.

What no one can deny is the devastating human cost of this war. Numbers of casualties on either side are unreliable and largely used for propaganda, but people are certainly dying at huge rates, most of all Ukrainian conscripts. Ukraine already had devastating population loss and was the poorest country in Europe, and now much of it is destroyed. Some claim that many Ukrainian refugees will enthusiastically return to rebuild the country when the war is over, but it seems more likely that men will join their wives and children abroad if they are able to. However, Ukrainian refugees are becoming increasingly unpopular in Europe for a variety of reasons, including that the public is being asked to sacrifice much while Ukrainians seek safety instead of fighting for their country. Europe was in many ways in decline before the great increases in energy prices from attempting to refuse Russian gas, and it seems that alone may cause Europe to give up on this conflict.

As it stands, we cannot be sure if the Biden administration has given Ukraine permission to expand strikes in a meaningful sense; there are contradictory reports, but it doesn’t sound good. Once upon a time it was the case that after an election in the United States the president gave a great deal of reverence to the incoming administration’s agenda and didn’t try to make any big changes. But now the norm seems to be to sabotage them. We can’t rely on Trump to be consistent in any efforts to end this war given his support of an enormous financial aid package in the spring, but it is unpopular among his supporters and Trump will want to be seen as the one to bring it to a close.

Since this started, Ukraine has been said to be on the edge of collapse and has held on so far, but Russian advances are picking up speed. It is being reported that the Western powers are coming closer to accepting reality and acknowledging some of Russia’s territorial gains in exchange for peace, but it seems like until then they will continue to climb the escalation ladder and ask men to be among the last to die for a mistake. Still, The New York Times just ran an op-ed titled “Trump Can Speed Up the Inevitable in Ukraine,” which is wholly an argument to accept reality. Regardless, when this grim affair ends, it is likely Ukraine takes a worse deal than it could have gotten in March 2022, and more than 1,000 days of death will have served no purpose but enriching military contractors.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

EU will continue to block €19.2 billion in funds for Hungary

Remix News | November 20, 2024

In a new report from the EU Observer entitled, “Billions of EU funds to remain frozen as Hungary fails to reform,” top EU officials stated that Hungary will continue to be blocked from the €19.2 billion in EU funds owed to the country.

The outgoing European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, while speaking to the outlet, confirmed that Hungary’s funds will remain frozen. He stated that concerns about Hungary still exist because the draft texts submitted by Budapest do not address what he vaguely refers to as “conflicts of interest.”

“The current state of play of relevant developments in Hungary demonstrate that important concerns still persist,” he said.

The EU Observer report also notes that the Child Protection Act from Hungary is a factor in blocking funds. The act stops LGBT topics from being taught in public schools and blocks gender reassignment surgeries to safeguard children.

The outlet notes that on Tuesday, “a hearing at the Court of Justice in Luxembourg saw 16 member states and the European Commission confront Hungary over its anti-LGBTQ law.”

“This is a frontal and serious attack on the rule of law, and more generally on European society,” a lawyer representing the European Commission told the court, according to AFP.

As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined in a speech in January of this year, Hungary’s €20 billion would remain frozen until the country opens its borders. It was one of the clearest references to the fact that Hungary’s strict border policy, which is now increasingly mainstream in Europe, is one of the sole reasons behind the frozen money. However, other issues such as LGBT also remain at the top of the agenda for the EU.

Once the government in Poland was changed and the left-liberal Donald Tusk became prime minister, the country’s money was quickly unfrozen. The EU is now wielding EU funds as a powerful tool to attack governments Brussels deems to be political enemies.

Von der Leyen stated once Tusk came to power, that she was “impressed” by his efforts to “restore the rule of law.”

Tusk has taken over public television stations in violation of Polish law, imprisoned political opponents, and completely ignored court orders.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

German army warning companies of war with Russia – media

RT | November 20, 2024

The German military has begun instructing local enterprises on how to prepare and what to do in the event of a conflict between NATO and Russia, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper has reported.

The Bundeswehr is providing training to the companies based on a 1,000-page document entitled ‘Operational Plan Germany’, which was recently approved by lawmakers, the outlet stated in an article on Monday.

The contents of the plan are classified, but FAZ claimed that it includes lists of buildings and infrastructure facilities that should be protected as a priority in case of an escalation with Moscow. The plan also reportedly details what private businesses should do to help with defense operations.

If the fighting breaks out on NATO’s eastern flank, Germany could become a hub for hundreds of thousands of soldiers, who would have to be transported to the east, as well as for military equipment, food and medical supplies, the article read.

Among other things, the German military urges businesses to draw up specific plans for employees and try to ensure self-sufficiency through diesel generators or wind turbines, FAZ said.

The paper also cited concrete advice given by Lieutenant Colonel Jorn Plischke to companies during a recent meeting at the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce. “For every hundred employees, train at least five additional lorry drivers that you don’t need. [Because] 70 percent of all lorries on Germany’s roads are driven by Eastern Europeans. If there is a war there, where will these people be?” he said.

Similar meetings are taking place across Germany, with the Bundeswehr ordering all state commands to organize them, according to FAZ.

The first joint exercises between civilian forces and the German military, called ‘Red Storm Alpha’, were recently held in Hamburg. They were aimed at protecting the local port from espionage and sabotage attempts, the report read. ‘Red Storm Bravo’ drills are already in preparation, it added.

Plischke told FAZ that, based on Berlin’s intelligence assessments, Russia “will be willing and able” to attack NATO within four or five years.

A few months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected allegations of Moscow planning aggression against NATO as “nonsense” and “bulls**t.” According to the Russian leader, such claims are made by Western politicians to deceive the public in their countries and justify increased spending on defense and aid to Kiev amid the conflict with Moscow. “In Ukraine, we are just protecting ourselves,” Putin insisted.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Germany threatens China with “consequences” for alleged drone supplies to Russia

By Patrick Poppel | November 20, 2024

The federal government is assuming greater Chinese involvement in the Ukraine war. On the sidelines of an EU meeting in Brussels, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke of “Chinese drone support” for Russia and demanded: “This must and will have consequences.”

The European Union’s Foreign Service had previously confirmed that indications are currently being examined that China produces drones for Russia. An EU official said: “We have received reports from intelligence sources about the existence of a factory in China that produces drones that are supplied to Russia and used in the war against Ukraine.”

If direct cooperation between China and Russia in the field of military equipment is confirmed, sanctions could be imposed. According to diplomats, drone production is a joint project between Russia, China and Iran.

Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis demanded that the EU react decisively. Europe should not show weakness because it is afraid of the Chinese reaction, said Landsbergis, referring to Europe’s dependence on raw materials from the People’s Republic.

Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said there could be no “business as usual” in trade with China if Beijing was compromising Europe’s security. A very anti-Chinese sentiment is clearly evident in all of these statements.

China rejects the allegations. With regard to arms exports, China has always taken a responsible stance and has never provided the parties to the conflict with lethal weapons, said a Chinese Foreign Office spokesman. China strictly controls drones for military purposes and those that can be used for civil and military purposes in accordance with the law.

However, this German advance against China must be clearly seen in the context of the current economic war. China is currently a major competitor against the German automotive industry. The fact that the German Foreign Minister in particular is demanding consequences is very interesting.

In this context, consequences mean that sanctions are required. Will such sanctions perhaps also affect the import of Chinese cars? Since the German automotive industry is currently in a major crisis, politicians must of course react.

The high energy prices in particular make it impossible for Germany to remain competitive against Chinese production. The EU and the USA are currently trying to compensate for the difference in production costs with punitive tariffs on the import of Chinese cars.

However, since an even larger difference is now foreseeable due to Europe’s difficult economic situation, these punitive tariffs can only be viewed as a first step. The only way to protect the internal market for cars in the long term would be to stop imports of cars from China.

However, such a situation can only be achieved with sanctions. The current discussion is clearly heading in this direction, but the question is whether the actors in European politics are prepared to follow this path to the end.

Maybe people are just speculating about a warning against China. But in this context, politicians in Europe are too short-sighted. It can be assumed that China is adequately prepared for any economic punitive measures from Europe.

In contrast to companies in Europe, China has been much more successful in finding new markets. For example, due to European sanctions, Russia is quickly becoming a large market for many Chinese companies. This is particularly evident in the automotive industry.

The current discussion about the unproven delivery of drones to Russia is an attempt to take the next step in the economic war against China. And as is usually the case with decisions in European politics, this can immediately become a shot in the foot.

This reality is clearly visible in the example of the sanctions against Russia, as we can analyze it based on the state of German industry. Furthermore, attempting to defend one’s own market with punitive tariffs and sanctions is a sign of weakness.

German politicians have managed to bring the growth of the German economy to a standstill and forecasts even speak of a negative development. The German automobile industry will be overtaken by Chinese cars and this trend will most likely not change in the next few years.

After the next federal election, a new government in Germany must take care of repairing the damage caused to the German economy. The time of the German “economic miracle” from the 1950s, which made Germany a top location for the automobile industry, is over. This reality must be understood by those responsible. The attempts to punish China for its success show that there are currently no other strategies to save the German automotive industry.

Patrick Poppel is an expert at the Center for Geostrategic Studies (Belgrade).

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Obama Fueled Russia Collusion Lies in Secret White House Meeting

By Hans Mahncke & Jeff Carlson | Truth Over News | November 4, 2024

In 2022, Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold obtained a transcript of a secret briefing that Barack Obama held with a group referred to in the transcript as “progressive journalists.” The meeting took place during the final days of the Obama administration on January 17, 2017.

A Bloomberg article regarding the secret meeting focused on the part of the briefing in which Obama alleviated the journalist’s concerns about a potential Trump presidency. Obama stated that a one-term Trump presidency was no big deal because Trump’s breach of the “norms” could be remedied, whereas eight years of norm breaking posed a genuine threat.

Leopold later sent out a tweet promoting the Bloomberg article. It mentioned that he would post the transcript; however, it was only posted a few days ago. Many thanks to our friend Stephen McIntyre for bringing it to our attention.

The transcript, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, spans 21 pages. The most intriguing revelations have, to date, remained unreported. In particular, the transcript reveals a strategy employed by Obama to repeatedly implant the Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. In fact, Obama addressed the Russia collusion hoax on four distinct occasions during the meeting.

Before we delve into an analysis of what Obama said, it is worth noting that approximately six months earlier, on July 28, 2016, Obama was informed by his CIA director, John Brennan, that the Russia collusion narrative was a dirty trick concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign. It is unclear what Obama communicated to Brennan during the closed-door White House meeting in July 2016, which was apparently also attended by FBI Director James Comey. What is known is that within three days of this meeting, the FBI launched its fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign for alleged collusion with Russia, despite the fact that they should have been investigating the Clinton campaign for staging a hoax with significant national security implications.

Instead, the investigation continued to escalate, placing several Trump advisors under surveillance. Notwithstanding the onslaught, Trump managed to secure a victory in November 2016. After Trump’s win, Obama chose to weaponize the Clinton’s dirty trick by commissioning an Intelligence Community Assessment with the aim of entrenching the false narrative that Trump owed his win to Putin. This action by Obama solidified the Russia collusion narrative and, in many ways, undermined Trump’s presidency over the following four years.

With this in mind, it is remarkable that Obama was exceedingly cunning and dishonest with the group of progressive journalists. Instead of extinguishing the flames of a situation he knew to be fabricated, he chose to fan them.

  1. Obama blames media for not embracing Russia collusion narrative

In the first of four instances where Obama discussed the Russia collusion allegations, he stated the following:

“I think the Russian leaks, how that played out, how all this stuff was reported — I mean, I’m just being honest with you, and many of you share this view. You guys weren’t necessarily the culprits, but how that played out. Some failures of polling and analytics leading a leading Democratic candidate never to appear in Michigan or Wisconsin, or show up in a union hall, right? I mean, there’s just a bunch of stuff that could have happened in which we wouldn’t be having this particular conversation.”

In his characteristic crafty manner, Obama intertwined Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings with the media’s failures, particularly lamenting that the media did not promote the Russia collusion narrative with greater intensity. What is often overlooked is that, despite numerous attempts by the Clinton campaign to publicize the Steele dossier, the media did not report on it until just a few days before the election, and the dossier was not published until two months after the election. The most straightforward explanation for the media’s actions is that they may have been more principled eight years ago and refrained from publishing information that seemed fabricated and was entirely uncorroborated. Additionally, most people anticipated Clinton’s victory, which may have led the media to feel less compelled to fully engage with the highly dubious dossier.

By attributing blame to the media, Obama skillfully, albeit subtly, instilled the notion of guilt regarding Trump’s victory, fully aware that the media would subsequently intensify its efforts to compensate for its perceived role in failing to prevent his win.

  1. Obama suggests that Trump uses third parties to communicate with Putin

Having planted the seed of guilt, Obama then turned it up a notch and not so subtly suggested that Trump was communicating with Putin through intermediaries:

“I think the Russia thing is a problem. And it’s of apiece with this broader lack of transparency. It is hard to know what conversations the President-elect may be having offline with business leaders in other countries who are also connected to leaders of other countries. And I’m not saying there’s anything I know for a fact or can prove, but it does mean that — here’s the one thing you guys have been able to know unequivocally during the last eight years, and that is that whether you disagree with me on policy or not, there was never a time in which my relationship with a foreign entity might shade how I viewed an issue. And that’s — I don’t know a precedent for that exactly.”

Notice how Obama addressed the issue by stating that Russia is a problem, but then seamlessly transitions to talking about other countries more broadly, effectively distancing himself while knowing that the audience will primarily remember Russia. In typical Obama fashion, he then established a contrast with himself.

The idea that Trump was secretly communicating with Putin through third-party business leaders appears to directly reference the Alfa Bank hoax, which was included in both the Steele dossier and the broader Clinton dirty tricks campaign. Specifically, the allegation claimed that Trump was in contact with Vladimir Putin via Russia’s Alfa Bank. A few weeks after Obama held his secret meeting, Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann approached the CIA to promote the false Alfa Bank narrative. He had previously pushed the Alfa Bank allegations into the FBI.

  1. Obama implies that Trump received payoffs from Russia

When a reporter asked Obama to “talk a bit more about the Russia thing”, he had this to say:

“And can say less. (Laughter.) This is one area I’ve got to be careful about. But, look, I mean, I think based on what you guys have, I think it’s — and I’m not just talking about the most recent report or the hacking. I mean, there are longstanding business relationships there. They’re not classified. I think there’s been some good reporting on them, it’s just they never got much attention. He’s been doing business in Russia for a long time. Penthouse apartments in New York are sold to folks — let me put it this way. If there’s a Russian who can afford a $10-million, or a $15- or a $20- or a $30-million penthouse in Manhattan, or is a major investor in Florida, I think it’s fair to say Mr. Putin knows that person, because I don’t think they’re getting $10 million or $30 million or $50 million out of Russia without Mr. Putin saying that’s okay.”

Obama’s response seems to reference the unwitting involvement of Sergei Millian in the Russia collusion narrative. Millian is an American realtor who, in 2007, sold condominiums to Trump in Florida, including, reportedly, to Russian buyers. On direct instructions from Clinton campaign operatives, ABC News obtained, under false pretenses, footage of Millian acknowledging that Trump had sold apartments to Russian citizens. While there is nothing inherently wrong with such transactions—Trump has sold numerous apartments to individuals of various nationalities—the ABC footage was utilized by Clinton in an advertising campaign to imply that Trump was indebted to Putin. Setting this aside, the notion that Putin would personally need to approve Russian citizens purchasing apartments appears to be rather implausible. However, this did not concern Obama, whose primary objective was to weaponize Clinton’s dirty tricks campaign in an effort to undermine the President of the United States.

  1. Obama insinuates that Putin has influence over Trump

Later in the briefing, Obama was asked: “if there were somebody with the powers of U.S. President who Russia felt like they could give orders to, that Russia felt like they had something on them, what’s your worst-case scenario?”

Again, Obama’s response was intended to stoke the flames of a scandal he knew to be fabricated:

“What I would simply say would be that any time you have a foreign actors who, for whatever reason, has ex parte influence over the President of the United States, meaning that the American people can’t see that influence because it’s not happening in a bilateral meeting and subject to negotiations or reporting — any time that happens, that’s a problem. And I’ll let you speculate on where that could go.”

With little effort to conceal his true intentions, Obama not so subtly suggested that Trump was under Putin’s influence. What is particularly noteworthy—and once again quite clever on Obama’s part—is that he informed the media that this influence was occurring secretly behind the scenes. This ensured that the media would propagate entirely speculative stories, as Obama had effectively encouraged them to do so.

Lastly, we will engage in some speculation of our own. The 21-page transcript does not indicate who the progressive journalists in attendance were. However, on two occasions, Obama mentions someone named Greg. Greg Miller is a national security reporter for The Washington Post and was part of a group that won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Russia collusion, reporting that was largely false. While we cannot assert with any degree of certainty that Obama was referring to Greg Miller, the familiarity Obama displayed with him, along with Miller’s outlet and area of coverage, suggests a strong possibility that it is indeed Greg Miller. In other words, if our speculation is accurate, Obama directly contributed to the false narratives that led to legacy media winning the Pulitzer Prize.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

Has Biden authorised long-range missiles to save Ukraine or sabotage Trump?

Professor Glenn Diesen on The Spectator | November 18, 2024

I discussed Biden’s decision to strike Russia with long-range missiles with Svitlana Morenets at The Spectator.

My position in this debate was that these missiles are not intended to turn the tide of the war, rather the purpose seems to be to sabotage Trump’s efforts to end the war. Obama similarly escalated tensions with Russia with sanctions, closure of a Russian consulate and expulsion of Russian diplomats before he left office to make it more difficult for Trump to “get along with Russia”. Biden’s actions are much more dangerous as this marks the start of a NATO-Russia War.

Arguing that Ukraine has the right to defend itself is very manipulative, as the main issue is that NATO crosses the line from proxy war to direct war. These are American long-range missiles, their use is entirely dependent on US intelligence and targeting, and American soldiers will operate these weapons and they will be guided by American satellites. This is an American attack on Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power. Putin has warned it will be interpreted as the start of a NATO-Russia War, and he has committed Russia to retaliate.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment