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The Prince And The Spy

By Whitney Webb | The Last American Vagabond | May 12, 2023 

A TLAV investigation has found that Erik Prince, the man behind the Blackwater mercenary group, recently teamed up with an Israeli spy, creating a front company with her to help Israeli defense technology providers exploit loopholes and sell their products to the American military.

For years, Erik Prince – the founder of mercenary firm Blackwater (now Academi) – has been a major source of controversy. Ever since he left Blackwater over a decade ago, Prince has appeared in the news for pushing to privatize several wars, his ties to former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, his violation of international arms embargoes and his unusually close ties with Project Veritas, among other notable events and connections.

However, some of Prince’s antics in recent years have not yet made it into the news – namely his decision to team up with an Israeli spy to build a very secretive company that has – until now – evaded scrutiny. That company, Comframe Solutions, appears to operate as an intelligence front and explicitly targets parts of the American military involved in highly sensitive combat operations. As this investigation will show, Prince’s partner in Comframe – Lital Leshem – has been tied to a series of apparent, and admitted, Israeli intelligence front companies, several of which have a focus on technology. Yet Prince and his close associate Chris Burgess – Comframe’s supposed president – have done everything they can to hide their association with the incredibly secretive company. Why might that be and what exactly is Comframe up to?

From “Army Brat” to Cyber Spy

Lital Leshem was raised as an “army brat” in Reut, Israel and Pennsylvania, USA. She later enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as she was “truly devoted to safeguarding the State of Israel.” She quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Operations Officer in the IDF of the besieged Gaza Strip and later becoming a Major, a position she continues to hold to this date through her “reserve duty activities.” According to her LinkedIn, she served in Israeli military intelligence from 2005 to 2011 and, more specifically, served in its signals intelligence unit – Unit 8200. She later attended IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university deeply tied to its military and intelligence apparatus. There, she met Amir Elichai and the two would co-create the company Reporty, which later became Carbyne911 – today known only as Carbyne.

Carbyne was originally founded as Reporty in 2014 by Leshem, Elichai and Alex Dizengof. Leshem and Elichai are Unit 8200 veterans, while Dizengof previously worked for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office. Before it was revealed that Jeffrey Epstein had poured at least 1 million dollars into the company at the behest of his close associate Ehud Barak, Cabryne’s board of directors – which Barak chaired – included the former commander of Unit 8200, Pinchas Buchris, as well as Epstein associate turned venture capitalist Nicole Junkermann. In the wake of the Epstein scandal, Buchris, Barak and Junkerman, among others, were removed from the board and were largely replaced with veterans and former heads of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Leshem had left the company in 2017, but has continued to own shares in the company.

Carbyne is a Next-Generation 9-11 (NG911) platform and the explicit goal of NG911 is for all 911 systems nationwide to become interconnected. It is currently active throughout the United States, its main target market. Its software has been criticized due to “serious privacy concerns” about the amount of information it harvests from smartphones that call a 911 call center running Carbyne’s software. For instance, Carbyne’s smartphone app extracts the following information from the phones on which it is installed:

“Device location, video live-streamed from the smartphone to the call center, text messages in a two-way chat window, any data from a user’s phone if they have the Carbyne app and ESInet, and any information that comes over a data link, which Carbyne opens in case the caller’s voice link drops out.”

The potential for Carbyne as a tool for mass surveillance has been extensively reported by Narativ, MintPress News and other outlets. In addition, Carbyne stores all data on past calls and events in order to “enabl[e] decision makers to accurately analyze the past and present behavior of their callers, react accordingly, and in time predict future patterns.” As a result, Carbyne – along with other Israeli intelligence-connected companies seeking to dominate the American “public safety” market – has the potential to facilitate controversial “predictive policing”, i.e. pre-crime, policies.

In addition to Carbyne, Leshem also worked for Black Cube, which has since been removed from her LinkedIn. There, she had been the firms Director of Marketing. Black Cube was specifically outed as an Israeli intelligence front organization in a 2019 article published by Calcalist Tech. That same article also contains the stunning revelation that many Israeli companies, including Black Cube, have been founded as fronts for intelligence operations since 2012. It states that “since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that in some cases were built for this exact purpose.” The article also adds that:

“In some cases, managers of development projects in the Israeli military and intelligence arms were encouraged to form their own companies which then took over the [military and/or intelligence] project.”

With Leshem having worked for one company already known to be a product of this deliberate policy, it is worth scrutinizing Carbyne as being one such front, especially considering the common tie of Ehud Barak to both companies. In addition, Leshem has also worked for another company tied to Barak that has been described as worse than the NSO Group, which produced the notorious Pegasus software. Called Toka, its top executives – like Carbyne – are largely veterans of Israeli’s Unit 8200, where Leshem also served, or former commanders of Israeli military cyber operations.

Toka, which Ehud Barak founded in 2018, is very, very likely to be one of the front organizations produced as a result of the aforementioned 2012 Israeli intelligence policy. The company is directly partnered with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and other Israeli intelligence and security agencies since its founding and the company only sells its products to countries that are considered allies of Israel. It purports to be able to hack, not just smartphones, but any device with internet connectivity, such as doorbell cameras and other “smart” devices. As will be noted later in this article, Leshem herself has noted that Toka has a relationship with the CIA.

After being involved with a series of Israeli intelligence fronts and her enduring ties to Israeli military intelligence through her “reserve duty activities”, Leshem was courted by a surprising figure – Erik Prince, war profiteer and founder of the controversial mercenary outfit Blackwater.

Partnering with Prince

Leshem says that she met Prince after she “randomly stumbled across his path and joined his team.” There, per her website, she “managed his business portfolio and his global investments.” Her LinkedIn lists her as serving as the executive director of global business development of Frontier Resource Group (FRG) from 2018 to 2021. Frontier Resource Group was founded by Prince and is “an Africa-dedicated investment firm partnered with major Chinese enterprises, including at least one state-owned resource giant that is keen to pour money into the resource-rich continent,” according to the South China Post. It not only operates in Africa, but also other countries due to its contracts to support China’s One Belt One Road initiative, which were signed in 2019.

FRG is a subsidiary of Frontier Services Group (FSG), which Prince also founded. In 2013, he sold a majority share of FSG to the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC), a state-owned Chinese investment company that is among the largest of the country’s state-run conglomerates. CITIC, during the mid-1990s, was chaired by Wang Jun, who doubled as China’s chief arms dealer and was a key figure in the “Chinagate” scandal of the Clinton White House. As detailed in One Nation Under Blackmail, that scandal involved the illicit transfer of American military technology to China and the illicit transfer of Chinese weapons, whose sale in the US was banned during this time, into the United States. Mark Middleton, a White House aide, and Jeffrey Epstein are some of the names apparently involved with those activities. “Chinagate” appears to have been a joint venture between factions of the CIA and Israeli intelligence and has never been properly investigated by federal authorities. It seems that Prince, who was (and may still be) a CIA asset, and Leshem have engaged in similar activities via FRG/FSG. For example, TRTWorld reported that Leshem is “speculated” to have transferred Carbyne’s technology to China via her role at FRG and her connection to Prince. China launched an app that was nearly analogous to Carbyne, but more explicitly focused on surveillance, at the same time that Carbyne launched its first 911 call system in the United States.

In addition, TRTWorld notes, the company DarkMatter, a UAE surveillance and intelligence group that employs former US intelligence operatives, attracted the attention of Chinese officials at a smart cities conference in 2015. DarkMatter, which was launched to modernize Emirati intelligence and military operations, signed a Global Strategic Memorandum of Understanding with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant. The middle man in this sale was none other than Erik Prince. Leshem and another Prince associate, Dorian Barak, also have business ties to the UAE via their prominent roles at the UAE-Israel Business Council.

As TRTWorld concluded:

“With similar technology being used, and the same mercenary middle-man between Carbyne and China who brought together UAE’s DarkMatter surveillance technology with China, indications point to a likely transfer of surveillance technology from Epstein’s Israeli company [Carbyne] to China.”

Comframe – Secretive Company or Intelligence Front?

Prince’s and Leshem’s joint activities after Leshem left FRG suggest that this pattern of behavior has not only continued, but deepened. According to Leshem’s website, a year and a half after she started working for Prince, she and Prince “joined forces to found Comframe, a company that takes the best of Israeli defense technology providers, and helps them penetrate the American market by bridging prevalent gaps.” Leshem also says Comframe was assisted by her “premier integrator and business development platform for deploying advanced military, special operations, public safety and HLS solutions in the United States, and a wide network of partnership, both government and civilian.”

In discussing Comframe elsewhere, Leshem writes that the company she co-founded with Prince “is led and staffed by Special Operations and defense procurement veterans with billions of dollars of successful sales to USG and foreign government to their names.” She says that Comframe has a “track-record of success implementing complex procurement and integrations programs from intelligence gathering & analysis, to contracting, program sales and personnel deployment, is exceptional.”

What Leshem says of the company clashes with Comframe’s threadbare public presence. For instance, its website, which is notably short on content, lists the following companies as partners – TomCar, BlueBird Aero Systems, General Robotics, SafeStrike, Ops-Core (now part of Gentex Corp) and Axon. On its partners page, Comframe says that this is “a small sampling of our current partners we have chosen to work with.” Most of these companies were created by Israeli military/military intelligence veterans.

Aside from the partners page, there is little other information available on the Comframe site. It describes its mission as “to source cutting-edge, innovative technologies that safely and securely solve articulated U.S. government problems” and touts its “get it done” commitment and how its employees “wake up every morning wanting to find solutions that keep the U.S. government safe and more lethal.” It lists the company’s president as Chris Burgess. Burgess, a former NAVY Seal who trained with Erik Prince, does not list Comframe on his LinkedIn or in any other site discussing his work history. He is currently the CEO of military contractor Regulus Global. Burgess previously ran a mercenary firm he founded, Greystone Ltd., that was previously affiliated with Prince’s Blackwater and was originally intended to be Blackwater’s “sister company.”

Both Blackwater (now Academi) and Greystone have been accused of sending mercenaries to fight in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Both companies deny this. The accusations came after Prince had planned to create a “private army” in Ukraine, something he has attempted to do (and sometimes succeeded) in various conflict zones, such as Afghanistan. Prince has also attempted to offer “lethal services” to Russia’s Wagner group.

Aside from Burgess’ apparent unwillingness to associate himself publicly with Comframe, there is also the fact that the only employee publicly associated with Comframe at all is Lital Leshem. Indeed, even Erik Prince has declined to publicly affiliate himself with the company. Another oddity is the fact that Comframe’s website has an “Industry News” page that contains several blog posts with titles discussing oil markets and geopolitics. However, the content of the posts themselves are all filler generated by WordPress. Was Comframe also intended to work in commodities markets? The odd and sparse nature of the website seems to clash with Leshem’s characterization of the company.

So, what is Comframe exactly and what is it intended to do? Why are the only people associated with the company two professional mercenaries, one of whom is a known CIA asset, and an Israeli spy? A 2020 article published in the Jerusalem Post seems to highlight Comframe’s mysterious inner workings and likely purpose.

That article notes that Comframe acted as a middleman in forging an agreement to create an assembly line in El Paso, TX in order for the Israeli company Tomcar to “offer its latest models to the US Armed Forces.” The agreement was made between Tomcar and Prince Manufacturing, a major contract manufacturing company that works with Ford, General Motors and Tesla, among others. Prince Manufacturing was notably founded and run for many years by Edgar Prince, Erik Prince’s father. Notably Tomcar, its founder – Yoram Zarchi – and his son (works for Tomcar) – Ram Zarchi – appear in the Panama Papers as does the former holding company that owned Tomcar from 2004 to 2011.

The article notes that Comframe “is focused on recognizing needs in the US defense industry and matching them to possible solutions, usually involving innovative Israeli companies.” However, the article notes, “to meet the demands of American security needs, one must have an American entity.” Leshem is then quoted as saying, “Ram [Zarchi of Tomcar] had been living in Phoenix for 15 years, but he can’t do that [sell to the American military because he is not a US citizen]. We can.”

In other words, per Leshem, Comframe utilizes Prince and presumably Burgess to sell Israeli defense technology and products to the American military that would otherwise not happen due to national security concerns around buying foreign-made products for sensitive defense and military operations. Leshem goes on to state Comframe sells “to the US Special Forces and other branches of the service [i.e. US military],” noting that Comframe is specifically targeting Special Ops. She also suggests that, aside from the US military, another intended market for the company is NATO – she told the Jerusalem Post that the US “controls 70% of NATO’s defense industry.”

The article ends by stating that, for Comframe, when sales are related to national security, one still has to have “boots on the ground,” suggesting why Comframe has such a minimal web and online presence. This is similar to another company Leshem has been working for while at Comframe, Ehud Barak’s Toka. Notably, at the end of this very article, Leshem uses Toka as an example regarding Comframe’s “boots on the ground” sales approach. She states:

“Hi-tech companies like Toka with clients like the CIA, can’t discuss what they do using Zoom.”

A New Pattern for Prince

Comframe is a very suspect company – it is highly, highly secretive, targets sensitive American military agencies with foreign technology, and its known employees are apparent spooks and intelligence-linked mercenaries. Not only that, but the history of Israeli espionage in the United States – from Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS to Comverse and beyond – shows a concerted effort to target the American military and security agencies, often with bugged or “backdoored” technology.

In addition to the above, Prince has also recently engaged in efforts to market a very suspect smartphone to MAGA Republicans as being “unhackable” and “unsurveillable.” That phone was “designed in Israel” and the company that produces it is called Unplugged. According to reports, Unplugged’s “day-to-day technology operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former employee of CommuniTake, the Israeli start-up that gave rise to the now infamous hacker-for-hire firm NSO Group.” Karpen, like Leshem, is also a veteran of Unit 8200.

Notably, DarkMatter, the UAE private intelligence company that was mentioned earlier due to its association with Prince, once marketed an “ultrasecure” phone called Katim, only to be later outed for hacking dissidents and journalists. In addition, Prince debuted Unplugged’s phone on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program. Both Prince and Bannon have controversial relationships with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo.

That Prince would help market this phone specifically to MAGA Republicans is disturbing given that his associate Leshem and other Israeli intelligence veterans and operatives have played a major role in developing the infrastructure for the US’ “War on Domestic Terror,” which is mainly targeted at the political right and has already utilized mass surveillance through smartphones and other technologies to justify arrests, including “pre-crime” arrests. Given the content of this investigation, Prince’s ties to foreign governments and intelligence agencies should be heavily scrutinized, especially Comframe – whose secretive activities may be drastically undermining American national security.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran Unveils New Precision-Guided Kheibar Ballistic Missile

Al-Manar – May 25, 2023

Iran’s Ministry of Defense has unveiled the newest version of the domestically-manufactured Khorramshahr ballistic missile, a medium-range precision-guided projectile named Kheibar.

Kheibar (Khoramshahr 4) was unveiled Thursday morning in the presence of Defense Minister Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Ashtian during a ceremony marking the 41st anniversary of the liberation of the southwestern city of Khorramshahr.

The missile’s extended range, advanced guidance and control system, and improved structural features further solidify Iran’s status as a formidable missile power.

Kheibar is one of the most advanced missiles designed by the experts of the Ministry of Defense’s Aerospace Industries Organization.

It is a liquid-fueled missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers and a warhead weighing 1,500 kilograms with impressive strategic and tactical capabilities.

The Khorramshahr class of missiles is known for its unique guidance and control system during the mid-flight phase.

This feature allows the missile to control and adjust its trajectory outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and to deactivate its guidance system upon entering the atmosphere, giving it complete immunity against electronic warfare attacks.

Thanks to this advanced control system, Kheibar’s warhead does not require the typical thin-wing arrangement, which in turn allows the missile to pack up a heavier explosive load.

The Kheibar missile also boasts an incredibly short preparation and launch time.

The use of self-igniting (hypergolic) fuel and the absence of the need for fuel injection and horizontal alignment after the verticalization phase have cut Kheibar’s launch time to less than 12 minutes.

Thanks to its powerful engine, the Kheibar missile possesses an exceptional impact force, with a ground impact force of 280 and a vacuum impact force of 300 seconds.

The high speed at which the warhead makes impact with the designated target prevents enemy air defense systems from detecting, tracking, and taking action to shoot down the missile.

Additionally, the engine enables the missile to reach speeds of 16 Mach outside the atmosphere and 8 Mach within the atmosphere.

The unveiling of Kheibar marks a significant advancement in Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities and demonstrates the country’s commitment to enhancing its defense and deterrent power.

Iranian officials have long asserted that the country’s military capabilities are entirely meant for defense, and that its missile program will never be up for negotiations.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Chinese War Simulation Finds Top US Carrier Group Could Be ‘Destroyed With Certainty’

By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 25.05.2023

War games conducted by Chinese researchers found the US military’s most prized aircraft carrier could be reliably sunk with relative ease in the event of a hot war in the South China Sea.

A volley of hypersonic missiles could reliably sink the US military’s most powerful aircraft carrier group in a potential conflict, according to war game simulations carried out by a team of Chinese military planners.

Using 24 of their most advanced anti-ship missiles, Chinese forces consistently destroyed a carrier fleet led by the USS Gerald R. Ford over the course of 20 mock battles in simulations which were run on a war game platform employed by the People’s Liberation Army.

In the simulation, the US ships came under fire after ignoring multiple Chinese warnings not to approach an island in the South China Sea controlled by Beijing.

For test purposes, the war games’ designers used a carrier group made up of six surface ships which were selected for their “unparalleled strength and advanced technology.”

A major Hong Kong-based newspaper reported that the military planners “selected vessels deemed the US Navy’s most superior – the CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford, accompanied by a CG56 Ticonderoga-class cruiser the San Jacinto, and four DDG-103 Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyers.”

Led by Cao Hongsong from the North University of China, the researchers found that virtually every US surface vessel was ravaged by the attack and eventually sank.

According to researchers, the Ford carrier group – which was once thought to be all but unsinkable – could actually be “destroyed with certainty” using just a handful of hypersonic missile strikes.

Chinese military planners placed a number of constraints on themselves in the simulation, including cutting their access to space-based spy satellites and limiting the number of hypersonic missiles available.

The basic principle underlying the exercise was to be “lenient with the enemy and strict with oneself,” Cao explained.

As the Hong Kong-based outlet explained, “during the simulation, the PLA used its sea-based surveillance network to detect and identify the US carrier group before firing eight of the less-reliable hypersonic missiles simultaneously from southern and central sites in China.”

Though “some of the missiles were intercepted, the attack depleted the US fleet’s SM-3 munitions, paving the way for the PLA to launch “eight of its more accurate hypersonic missiles from northern and western China, with four focused on the aircraft carrier while the others targeted the destroyers,” the outlet noted.

“After the attack, four ships survived from the blue [US] team, with the destroyers having the most remaining, on average.”

A “mop-up” operation with six of the less accurate hypersonic missiles was able to dispatch with the remaining vessels, the research paper determined.

After the simulation was run 20 times to allow for different variables which could affect the outcome of the engagement, the team’s strategy was ultimately able to eliminate an average of 5.6 out of 6 surface vessels – effectively meaning the “total destruction” of the carrier group.

The release of a paper detailing the war game in May marked “the first time the results of simulated hypersonic strikes against a US carrier group have been made public” by China’s military, the Honk Kong outlet noted.

But it’s likely to be seen as a warning to Washington against any provocations in the South China Sea.

An anonymous Beijing-based researcher interviewed by the outlet suggested that “greater transparency about China’s military capabilities and intentions could help to reduce misunderstandings and miscalculations on both sides, which could in turn help to reduce the risk of conflict.”

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Re-Election Hinges On The Success Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 25, 2023

Senior Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak told Italian media that his country’s much-hyped counteroffensive already began a few days ago, which is curious since that timeframe coincides with its proxy invasion of Russia’s Belgorod Region that was just copium for deflecting from Artyomovsk’s loss. That media-driven stunt tremendously failed to achieve any tangible gains, however, thus raising even more questions than ever before about whether the counteroffensive will succeed at all.

The Washington Post raised awareness in March about how poorly Kiev’s troops were faring in the NATO-Russian proxy war, which was followed by Politico citing unnamed Biden Administration officials a month later who worried about the consequences of it failing to meet the public’s expectations. Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov then concocted a conspiracy theory wildly speculating that Kremlin agents infiltrated the White House and sabotaged the counteroffensive before it even began.

This popular pro-Kiev figure seemed to have been spooked by Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul telling Bloomberg that “I think there’s going to be a lot riding on the line with this counteroffensive. If Ukraine is successful in the eyes of the American people and the world, I think it will be a game-changer for continued support. If they are not, that will also have an impact, in a negative way, though.” In other words, its failure could lead to the US severely curtailing aid to Kiev.

Therein lies the real reason why the counteroffensive is still going ahead despite the overwhelming odds against its success that were detailed in the preceding months by the Washington Post and Politico. Biden’s re-election hinges on the success of this campaign after NATO already sent over $165 billion in taxpayer-provided aid to Kiev, the vast majority of which came from the US. He needs anything that his perception managers can spin as a victory to justify this ahead of next year’s election.

It’s not just for the sake of placating taxpayers either in this increasingly partisan conflict that’s seen a rising number of Republicans calling for more pragmatism and restraint as opposed to their Democrat rivals who remain gung-go about going all in for as long as it takes. Biden presided over the US’ most humiliating military loss in history after August 2021’s chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, which infamously resulted in leaving a large number of Americans and allied locals behind to an unknown fate.

He and his team don’t care how many tens of thousands of Ukrainians have to be sacrificed in this conflict so long as they can achieve something that the Democrats can distort as having made the most geostrategically significant conflict since World War II worth provoking. A failed raid into Russia and an unsuccessful assassination attempt against President Putin aren’t considered by most Americans to be worth the risk of a Third World War by miscalculation.

After 15 months of fighting, Kiev has only managed to reconquer part of the territory that it claims as its own, which is unimpressive when considering that it has the full backing of what the US portrays as supposedly being the world’s most powerful military alliance in history. The NATO chief’s self-proclaimed “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia that he declared in February inadvertently proved that Russia’s military-industrial complex can compete with the entire West’s.

That was an unintended self-inflicted blow to this de facto New Cold War bloc’s reputation of being a military superpower and also thus discredited their information warfare narrative that the Russian economy is collapsing. In late January, the New York Times admitted that the West’s sanctions failed, and then they admitted at the end of February after the NATO chief’s dramatic declaration that they also failed to isolate Russia too.

The abovementioned facts already make Biden look like a bumbling fool for provoking this conflict, which only proved just how limited the US’ influence and power have become in recent years, but he looks even worse when considering the bigger picture. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former US National Security Council member Fiona Hill, and Goldman Sachs’ President of Global Affairs Jared Cohen all acknowledged earlier in May that multipolarity is now a geopolitical reality as a result of this conflict.

It’s only the Biden Administration and allied propagandists abroad that remain in denial about this, which places even more pressure on their proxies in Kiev to achieve something tangible throughout the course of its counteroffensive that they can then spin as having made it worth provoking this conflict. The clock is ticking too since there’s a growing consensus across the globe that this is their side’s “last hurrah” prior to likely commencing ceasefire and peace talks by year’s end or early 2024 at the latest.

The West’s military-industrial crisis will inevitably limit the pace, scale, and scope of armed aid to Kiev, not to mention the US’ election season that’ll see this conflict unprecedentedly politicized. Instead of soberly admitting his side’s shortcomings and proactively trying to reach some sort of peace agreement that could then be exploited as the pretext for him winning the Nobel Peace Prize and thus boosting his re-election prospects, Biden is gambling against the odds that the counteroffensive will succeed.

Even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley foresaw in late January that it’ll likely be impossible for Kiev to remove Russia from all the territory that it claims as its own by this year, which means that Biden and his team are trying to prove the US’ top military official wrong. This in turn confirms that they’re prioritizing politics over military advice, thus extending credence to the claim that this counteroffensive is all about Biden’s re-election and not pushing Russia back to its pre-2014 borders.

If it fails to achieve this maximum objective as expected by Milley and the earlier cited US media, then the Republicans will rightly pounce on Biden to accuse him of cooking up the worst conflict since World War II in a desperate bid to win re-election by deflecting from his humiliating loss in Afghanistan. With his back against the wall, it can’t be discounted that his team will advise him to escalate to unthinkable levels, though Russia’s hypersonic missiles will likely keep him from crossing the ultimate red line.

Whichever way one games it out, there’s close to no chance that Kiev’s counteroffensive will meet the Western public’s expectations absent some black swan event, which means that Biden will be running for re-election with two losses under his belt in Afghanistan and Ukraine. It’s difficult to imagine that Americans will give him and his team another four years in office after they humiliated the US so badly, but tens of thousands more might still die before these warmongers are removed from power.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US military aid to Ukraine could be suspended due to debt ceiling – media

By Ahmed Adel | May 25, 2023

The Hill reported that US military funding to Ukraine could be suspended indefinitely due to proceedings in Washington over the public debt ceiling. Effectively, the public debt situation will force the US to reduce its financial support to Ukraine since it is no longer possible to expect as much support as before.

Congressman Andy Kim, a House Armed Services Committee (HASC) member, was quoted by The Hill as saying that lawmakers had conversations about what needs to be a part of the following package but expressed doubts about the timing of the legislation and highlighted that the ongoing fight over the debt ceiling was putting Ukraine aid at risk.

“It’s delaying our ability to focus on these issues,” Kim said. “That really shows that it has national security implications because we’re not able to have that kind of earnest conversation about Ukraine or the [National Defense Authorization Act] until they’re done with that.”

For his part, Congressman Bill Keating said aid to Ukraine would ultimately depend on its counteroffensive, something that will seemingly miss its long-anticipated spring deadline.

“It’s not a precise science to say what because it could be gains that were made that make more support less necessary,” Keating said. “Or there could be damage inflicted where there has to be more” assistance.

Ukrainian authorities have been promoting its upcoming counteroffensive, and NATO officials have indicated Ukraine has nearly all the promised weapons and equipment needed. Last year’s support was phenomenal, but sustaining such aid at this level is difficult. The public debt situation has affected and will continue affecting public opinion because out of all the spending, people will sacrifice those least sensitive to American society, and not such huge expenses as funding a war in Eastern Europe.

Congress is determined to cut spending, making funding difficult for Ukraine. The only thing that was announced by Congress Speaker Kevin McCarthy and confirmed by the White House was the spending cuts. Military spending is not discussed, but the funding for Ukraine now is many times less than last year. Ukraine can hardly expect the same funding it received as in the past.

The Treasury Department warned in a letter to Congress that as early as June 1, the US may not be able to fully meet its obligations if lawmakers do not authorise an increase in the borrowing limit by that time. Normally, Congress almost automatically raises the borrowing limit, but this time, the Republican opposition, who controls the House, has demanded that it reduce spending by several trillion dollars. The Republican bill passed the House of Representatives but has no chance of being approved in the Senate by Democrats, and even if the document reaches Biden, he will most likely veto the bill.

At the same time, the US finds it very difficult to accept the loss of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). With Ukrainian forces losing control of Artemovsk, the long-mooted counteroffensive becomes more politically urgent than ever for Kiev.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to keep his promise to launch a counterattack and for this reason, he continually requested the West for more weapons. As they lost control of Artemovsk, launching an offensive operation is the best way for Kiev to restart its plea for weapons from its NATO allies.

Zelensky is clearly in a difficult situation because the Ukrainian army is not ready for a counterattack and desperately needs ammunition. However, the Russian army almost immediately destroys any weapon concentration, which is starting to raise a series of questions about the success or failure of the Ukrainian counterattack.

This comes as many high-ranking military officials, including Polish Chief of the General Staff Rajmund Andrzejczak and US General Christopher G. Cavoli, acknowledged Russia’s ability to continue fighting without significant loss. Meanwhile, 40% to 60% of Ukrainian soldiers who completed their training in France in 2022 have no contact with their trainers and have likely died in battle or abandoned the battlefield.

Despite the propaganda pushed by the Kiev regime and Western media, Ukraine is clearly unable to launch its long-awaited spring offensive, and instead this is all a show to procure more weapons. The desperate situation for Ukraine coincides as Republicans and Democrats face off over the debt ceiling, proving problematic for Kiev’s quest to rearm.

House Republicans insist on spending cuts before they approve raising the nation’s debt ceiling past $31 trillion. Democrats claim Congress has already spent the money and must be allowed to repay America’s debtholders without leading to an economically disastrous default.

Negotiations are continuing to unfold to reach a debt limit deal, but the US default clock is ticking down despite it not being entirely clear when the US will officially run out of cash. When seen through this context, it is understandable why massive and reckless funding of the Ukrainian military is increasingly scrutinised.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

MISSOURI VS BIDEN: “ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LAWSUITS OF OUR LIFETIME”

The Highwire with Del Bigtree

HighWire Editorial Contributor and Editor-in-Chief at UncoverDC, Tracy Beanz, describes Missouri vs. Biden as, “one of the most important lawsuits of our lifetime.” Attorney General of Missouri, Andrew Bailey, and Attorney General of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, take on the Office of the President and other federal offices for colluding with social media to suppress speech countering their narrative regarding COVID-19.

May 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , | Leave a comment

Crimea referendum result was ‘legitimate’ – Le Pen

RT | May 25, 2023

The 2014 referendum accurately reflected the will of the people living in Crimea to join Russia, Marine Le Pen said on Wednesday, addressing an inquiry before the French National Assembly.

“I fully support the referendum,” Le Pen told the lawmakers. “I think that Crimea’s residents expressed their will freely by a vote, in order to reunite with Russia. I think that it was absolutely legitimate.”

Le Pen explained that her position on the peninsula has consistently remained that it was Russian long before it was “given away” to Ukraine “at the whim of a dictator” for sixty years, in reference to the decision of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to redraw internal borders in 1954. The Russian Empire had acquired Crimea from the Ottomans in the 18th century.

She also pointed out that there were no refugees from Crimea after the referendum, that Crimean residents themselves freely told her their preference when she visited, and that the West never offered to organize another plebiscite to verify the result of the one they challenged.

Crimeans organized a referendum in March 2014, shortly after a US-backed coup installed a government of Ukrainian nationalist in Kiev. The result showed overwhelming support for rejoining Russia, which Moscow accepted. Meanwhile, the Kiev government violently crushed dissent in Odessa and Kharkov regions, and sent troops against Donetsk and Lugansk.

The National Rally leader appeared before a parliamentary commission investigating “Russian influence” in France, to address accusations that her party took two loans from a Russian bank. Le Pen explained that she turned to Russian banks because no French or EU banks wanted to work with her party, and that the purely business arrangement did not make her an agent of Moscow.

President Emmanuel Macron brought up the loans to attack Le Pen during the 2022 re-election campaign. She lost the runoff by a 17-point margin, but last month’s polls showed her 10 points ahead of Macron in a hypothetical rematch.

Le Pen’s insistence that the Crimean return to Russia was not an “illegal annexation,” expressed in January 2017 to France’s BFMTV and in February to CNN, earned her a ban on entering Ukraine by the government in Kiev.

The current government has vowed to ban the Russian language and expel anyone suspected of “collaboration” with Moscow once it seizes Crimea, which Kiev has announced as one of its war aims.

“As soon as we enter, we must eradicate everything Russian in Crimea,” Mikhail Podoliak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, told the US government-controlled RFE/RL last month.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

AUSTRALIAN SENATE VOTES NOT TO INVESTIGATE EXCESS DEATHS!

Now it should be clear… they don’t even want to know the truth

PHILLIP.ALTMAN | MAY 23, 2023

In one of the most grotesque votes ever taken in the Australian Senate, a majority of Senators voted NOT TO INVESTIGATE THE UNEXPLAINED NON-COVID EXCESS DEATHS WHICH HAVE OCCURRED SINCE THE INTRODUCTION OF THE COVID-19 “VACCINES”. This is horrifying and terrifying.

If there was any doubt whatsoever that our government is wilfully blind to the death and destruction they have caused… this is it. The vaccine linked deaths amount to a 737 planeload of passengers unexpectedly falling from the sky every week since January 2021 and our government is not even curious as to why.

As documented by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 10,000 Australians above historical averages are dying of heart attack, stroke, cancer, diabetes, dementia and other neurological diseases since the COVID “vaccines” were released near the start of 2021. These numbers do not include COVID declared deaths. This is the worst death rate since WWII and our government has not offered a credible explanation for the deaths. This is more than incompetence and dereliction of duty. In my view, this is sinister.

This vote has astounded many including Dr. Philip McMillan. CLICK HERE to view short video.

Our local heroes who have fought to expose the truth about the dangers of the COVID “vaccines” include: Senators Antic, Babet, Hanson, Rennick and Roberts and Russell Broadbent MP. Remember their names. Remember.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Kissinger behind 3 million civilian deaths – report

RT | May 24, 2023

Henry Kissinger, the foreign policy eminence grise who has advised half a dozen presidents, has caused the deaths of over 3 million people, according to an Intercept report published Tuesday in observation of the realpolitik strategist’s 100th birthday.

While critics of the Nixon-era secretary of state and national security adviser often describe him as a war criminal for his pivotal role in numerous US-backed genocides and coups, the report argues Kissinger’s body count has been widely underestimated, particularly regarding the secretive, highly illegal expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia in the 1970s.

Between the genocides he sponsored in East Timor and Bangladesh, the continent-wide terrorism, coups and death squads of Operation Condor in Latin America, the fomenting of civil wars in Southern Africa, and his carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Laos under the guise of chasing the Vietnamese, Kissinger is believed to be responsible for over 3 million civilian deaths – more if one counts the casualties that have resulted from advice he gave the private sector.

Kissinger has ‘only’ acknowledged that his actions caused the deaths of 50,000 Cambodians and blames the Vietnamese, the supposed targets of the US’ bombing campaign (the coordinates of which were logged incorrectly so as to be recorded as legal strikes within Vietnam). Intercept reporter Nick Truse argues the number is closer to 150,000, pointing to numerous documented examples of egregious and deliberate undercounting of civilian casualties. The figure represents more than six times more civilians than the US has killed in airstrikes since 9/11.

Transcripts from the Intercept’s “exclusive archive” of declassified US military documents from a secret Pentagon war crimes task force reveal it was Kissinger’s decision to relay then-president Richard Nixon’s drunk, belligerent trash talk about Cambodia into coherent instructions to the Pentagon to begin a “massive bombing campaign” in the country in 1970.

Kissinger’s now-infamous directive to shoot “anything that flies on anything that moves” exploded the secret war, tripling the number of bombings by the end of the year. He allegedly approved all 3,875 individual bombings of the war, and the bombers dropped over 257,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia in 1973 alone.

The Intercept’s archive also revealed numerous brutal ground raids on Cambodian villages that have since been all but memory-holed; Truse confirmed via interviews with survivors that the raids were far deadlier than reported. While the airstrikes were frequently hushed up as “pilot error” – “errors” that were nevertheless repeated thousands of times – the US Army, in an internal investigation, actually blamed its press corps when ground troops were caught looting a village they had just raided.

Kissinger’s carpet-bombing of Cambodia paved the way for the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal dictatorship that killed 2 million Cambodians – 20% of the country’s population – which he privately (and approvingly) referred to as “murderous thugs” while helping them secure regional allies.

Kissinger has never been prosecuted – or even officially charged – with war crimes, nor has the US military made any systemic efforts to hold accountable the troops who actually did the killing.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bottom Line On Epstein

By Karl Denninger – 2023-05-23

Let’s make it simple, since now there are rumors flying around that he tried to blackmail Bill Gates regarding an affair he might — or might not — have had with a young but of legal age woman who was very good at playing chess.

Nobody has explained how Epstein made his money.  He had a lot of it; you don’t buy an island and outfit it, never mind a nice big jet aircraft which is expensive to buy and also very expensive to maintain, fuel and staff without some source of income.

We all know, for example, how Elon Musk got his money.  And Bernie Ebbers.  And Ken Lay.  And any one of myriad other very wealthy people.  Whether ultimately it was discovered they were doing foul things or not the fact is that it was trivially easy to know exactly how they made their money, in the main.

Except for Epstein.

Therefore, by simple deduction, Epstein got his money because someone, or a group, were paying him and had the means to hide it from ordinary, routine surveillance that “outs” everyone else.

That in turn means one or more governments were doing it and none of them who had actual knowledge were adversarial to the others.

How do we know this?

Because it would have been to the adversary’s tremendous advantage, and a nation-state is immune to “mere arrest” for some trumped-up offense, to blow the lid off of it had that been the case.

Therefore it wasn’t.

Since the activities took place in and around the United States it is also therefore clear that one of the funding conduits was one or more agencies of and in the United States.  There may be others but our government was one of them.

That is conclusive.

What is also conclusive is that all of the 535 members of Congress know this and none of them have done anything about it.

That includes your Congressperson and both of your Senators, in each and every case.

To restate just in case your IQ is smaller than your shoe size: One or more of our agencies suborned and used the sexual abuse of underage girls, along with the sexual coercion of women who had reached the age of consent, for reasons we do not have knowledge of but which can be reasonably believed to be underhanded, illegal or likely both.  Such acts are criminal felonies even if the government performs them; there is no immunity for a US Government agency or instrumentality to fund activity leading to the rape of children.

This clearly did occur.

Whatever other gripes you may have with our government we, the people, clearly are willing to permit this to stand.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

First COVID Vaccine Injury Lawsuit in U.S. Targets U.S. Government, Social Media Giants

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 23, 2023

Five people injured by COVID-19 vaccines, along with a father whose 16-year-old son died from vaccine-induced cardiac arrest, are suing the Biden administration and top U.S. public health officials.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, the plaintiffs — including Brianne Dressen who suffered severe nerve damage after taking the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine — allege the U.S. government colluded with social media companies to censor them when they posted stories about their personal vaccine injury experiences.

Defendants include President Biden and top-ranking White House officials, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

This is the first lawsuit brought by U.S. citizens injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.

Dressen — a preschool teacher from Saratoga Springs, Utah — volunteered to participate in AstraZeneca’s clinical trial for its COVID-19 shot. Now, she says, she is “collateral damage of the pandemic.”

Dressen co-chairs React19, a “science-based non-profit offering financial, physical, and emotional support for those suffering from longterm COVID-19 vaccine adverse events globally.”

After receiving the AstraZeneca shot, Dressen experienced extensive adverse effects — including doubled and blurry vision, severe sensitivity to sound and light, heart and blood pressure fluctuations and intense brain fog — that worsened over time.

She said Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, GoFundMe, Reddit and Instagram removed content she posted about her injuries.

According to Dressen, the plaintiffs’ experiences of censorship “pale in comparison to the thousands of Americans we know who all have experienced the same thing.”

“There is nothing scarier than reaching out for help only to be silenced,” Dressen told The Defender. “It was as scary as the vaccine reaction itself.

“Our constitutional freedoms must be protected, regardless of whether or not we are in a national emergency,” Dressen added.

Dressen — who now experiences “permanent disability” with “ups and downs” — said she and the other plaintiffs are “not fighting this fight for a select few” but are fighting on behalf of the “tens of thousands who are experiencing the same kind of censorship.”

The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) filed the suit on behalf of Dressen and the other plaintiffs, who include Kristi Dobbs, Nikki Holland, Suzanna Newell and Ernest Ramirez.

All but Ramirez experienced COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries. Ramirez received the Moderna vaccine with no adverse effect  — but his 16-year-old son died of vaccine-induced cardiac arrest five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.

Newell is a former triathlete from St. Paul, Minnesota, who was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after she got the vaccine and who now relies on a walker or cane to get around.

Case challenges ‘shocking’ government mass-censorship

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs experienced “heavy and ongoing censorship” on social media platforms — including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and GoFundMe — “when they attempted to share “ their personal experiences after they, or a loved one, were medically harmed after taking the vaccine.”

For instance, TikTok on multiple occasions removed Holland’s video posts in which she shared her personal experiences related to her COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries and recovery process.

TikTok said the videos violated “Community Guidelines” for posting “violent and graphic content” and for “integrity and authenticity” concerns.

According to the complaint:

“This case challenges the government’s mass-censorship program and the shocking role that it has played (and still plays) in ensuring that disfavored viewpoints deemed a threat to its agenda are suppressed.

“This sprawling censorship enterprise has involved the efforts of myriad federal agencies and government actors (including within the White House itself) to direct, coerce, and, ultimately, work in concert with social media platforms to censor, muffle, and flag as ‘misinformation’ speech that conflicts with the government’s preferred narrative — including speech that the government explicitly acknowledges to be true.”

Kim Mack Rosenberg, the Children Health Defense’s (CHD) acting outside general counsel, said the new lawsuit is important because it exists “at the intersection” of COVID-19 vaccine injury and COVID-19 censorship.

“The complaint here alleges — as have other cases — a massive censorship program to control the narrative and promote the government’s COVID-19 propaganda,” Mack Rosenberg told The Defender.

She added:

“Silencing those who have been injured, like the plaintiffs in this case, by the very product promoted — and in some cases mandated — by the government is particularly egregious and causes further, albeit, different injury to those individuals, whose First Amendment rights have also been violated.

“Moreover, censoring these injured individuals injures the public, depriving them of important information and discourse on these issues.”

Missouri and Louisiana in May 2022 filed a landmark lawsuit against top-ranking Biden administration officials for allegedly colluding with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security.

Former Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt alleges the Biden administration led “the largest speech censorship operation in recent history” by working with social media companies to suppress and censor information later acknowledged as truthful.”

In March, CHD Chairman on Leave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CHD filed a class action lawsuit against Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies, alleging they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech, including facts and opinions about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Commenting on the new lawsuit, Peggy Little, senior litigation counsel for NCLA, said in a statement:

“Americans injured by experimentally approved Covid vaccines are being deplatformed, silenced, suppressed, defamed and cancelled by their own government for reaching out to others simply to share and receive information critical to their physical and mental well-being.

“Government actors have bullied, threatened and coerced social media companies to strip these plaintiffs of their First Amendment rights of association and speech. Suppression of speech critical of the government by the very government actors mandating the vaccine is frightening.

“NCLA’s lawsuit seeks to restore these plaintiffs’ civil liberties and the free flow of information guaranteed by the First Amendment for all Americans. We must never again lose our constitutional bearings in a pandemic.”

Casey Norman, one of the NCLA lawyers representing Dressen and the other plaintiffs, agreed. He said that the government claims it suppresses “so-called misinformation” for the sake of “public safety and welfare.”

“Fortunately,” Norman added, “the First Amendment says otherwise: the government may neither censor our clients nor induce others to do so.”

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iranian President: US Claims to Promote Democracy Are ‘Fake’

By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 24.05.2023

Claims by the US government that it pursues the promotion of democracy abroad are simply “fake,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Tuesday.

“The United States and [some] Western countries are not after democracy, but domination and plundering of other countries’ wealth,” Raisi said during an official visit to Indonesia, according to Iranian media.

“With the rise of emerging powers, the era of US domination has come to an end, said Iran’s chief executive,” media summarized.

Raisi pointed out that if Western powers are really after democracy and self-determination, they can start by guaranteeing Palestinians the right to choose their own destiny.
“Let the Yemeni and Afghan people decide for themselves,” he concluded, asking: “Why are you interfering in their affairs?”

The statements, delivered during a speech urging unity among Muslims at an Islamic center in Jakarta, came as Raisi seeks to bolster bilateral relations on his first official trip to Indonesia.

During a meeting with Indonesian House Speaker Puan Maharani, Raisi said the “expansion of ties between the Islamic Republic and Indonesia holds great promise for the progress of the two nations, the region, and the broader Muslim community,” state media reported.

“Despite the unjust threats and sanctions, the Islamic Republic of Iran has made significant progress and has achieved capabilities that have created good opportunities for the development of bilateral relations,” Raisi is quoted as saying.

On Tuesday, the two countries’ presidents and high-ranking officials met to sign off on 11 cooperation agreements.

The deals relate to “preferential trade, visa waivers, cultural exchanges, cooperation on supervising the production of pharmaceutical products, collaborations in scientific, technological, and innovative arenas, and bilateral cooperation in oil and gas sectors,” media indicated.

May 24, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

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