Up to 4.5 Million Dead in ‘Post-9/11 War Zones’ – Study
By Will Porter | The Libertarian Institute | May 16, 2023
The far-reaching effects of America’s War on Terror may have contributed to the deaths of some 4.5 million people, according to new research by Brown University’s ‘Costs of War’ project. While many of the fatalities were the direct result of violent conflict, indirect causes such as economic collapse and food insecurity have taken a far greater toll.
Published on Monday, the study examines the long-term impact of the “post-9/11 wars” and the “devastating indirect toll” inflicted in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Somalia – all nations subject to US military intervention since 2001.
“Some of these people were killed in the fighting, but far more, especially children, have been killed by the reverberating effects of war, such as the spread of disease,” the paper said. “These latter indirect deaths – estimated at 3.6-3.7 million – and related health problems have resulted from the post-9/11 wars’ destruction of economies, public services, and the environment.”
Though the researchers acknowledged that the true total figure remains unknown, the study reviews a wide range of factors contributing to mortality. Those include economic collapse and the resulting loss of livelihood for local residents, the destruction of health infrastructure and public services, environmental contamination, as well as other cultural effects of war that can lead to further violence down the line.
“While this research does not ascribe blame to any single warring party or factor, and neither does it suggest the full death count is quantifiable, a reasonable and conservative estimate suggests that at least 4.5 million people have died in the major post-9/11 war zones,” the study concluded.
It went on to stress that “body counts are complicated and controversial,” and that tallying deaths from indirect causes is even more difficult, suggesting its figures are merely a tentative estimate based on a variety of sources.
The researchers found staggering levels of child malnutrition in some of the affected countries, with Afghanistan and Yemen topping the list. In the wake of Washington’s two-decade military occupation, more than 3 million Afghan children are now experiencing wasting, a symptom of severe, potentially life-threatening malnutrition.
Last year, Doctors Without Borders warned of a “worrying increase” in Afghanistan’s malnutrition rates, citing “the suspension of international aid” as among the primary causes. A special representative for the United Nations, Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, described the situation as “almost inconceivable,” adding that up to 95 percent of Afghans were “not eating enough food, with that percentage rising to almost 100 percent for female-headed households.”
UN emergency aid coordinator Martin Griffiths has also attributed the crisis in Afghanistan, in part, to international sanctions and the seizure of government bank accounts following the Taliban’s sudden rise to power in the summer of 2021.
The study found that more than 2 million children in Yemen were also suffering from wasting following eight years of brutal bombings by Saudi Arabia and its allies, which have all but crippled the country’s healthcare sector. Riyadh has received indispensable support from the United States throughout the conflict despite countless reports of attacks on civilians and infrastructure, including hospitals, clinics, homes, factories, farms and bridges. A UN estimate in late 2021 suggested some 377,000 people had been killed in Yemen since the war erupted in 2015, with 70 percent thought to be children under the age of 5.
The Costs of War authors said the study aimed to “convey the scale of the suffering” in the war-torn nations, stating the “urgent need to mitigate the damage” inflicted by US military interventions and their long-term and indirect consequences. They added that additional research is needed on the subject, voicing hopes such work could “prevent further loss of life,” as America’s post-9/11 wars “are ongoing for millions around the world who are living with and dying from their effects.”
Ukraine’s top spy admits killing Russian public figures
RT | May 16, 2023
Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) chief General Kirill Budanov has claimed responsibility for assassinating “many” Russian public figures. The spy boss made the bombshell admission in an interview with Ukrainian blogger Sergey Ivanov on Tuesday.
Asked whether top Russian “propagandists,” such as prominent journalist Vladimir Solovyov or RT’s Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, are prime targets for his organization, Budanov responded that the GUR had already “gotten” multiple high profile targets.
“We have already gotten many, including public and media personalities,” Budanov said, without providing any names.
Pressed further by the blogger on the potential involvement of the GUR in the assassination of Darya Dugina, a journalist and the daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, or the recent car bombing of Russian author and political activist Zakhar Prilepin, the spy boss said he could “neither confirm nor deny” the involvement of his service.
Budanov’s remarks were condemned by Moscow, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stating that they were a clear admission of wrongdoing.
“Terrorists. Those who provide excuses for the Kiev regime and sponsor it are accomplices of terrorists,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram. “Will the UN not notice that again?”
The remarks are the latest in a string of bloodthirsty statements made by the GUR boss amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Earlier this month, Budanov declared, “We’ve been killing Russians, and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”
The pledge received an equally poor reception in Russia, with multiple top officials branding it an admission of engaging in state-level terrorism by Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for instance, said Budanov’s statement was “unprecedented in its essence,” and it was “strange” to not hear any condemnation “from European capitals and from Washington.”
“It’s evident that the Kiev regime is behind the killings, not only sponsoring them but organizing, inciting, and carrying them out. De facto, we’re talking about a state sponsor of terrorism,” Peskov concluded, warning that Russia’s “special services know what to do after such statements.”
Iran claims successes in its air defense
By Alexandr Svaranc – New Eastern Outlook – 16.05.2023
Despite decades of sanctions imposed by foreign powers, the Islamic Republic of Iran has garnered tremendous experience surviving and thriving in isolation. Given Tehran’s political system, which is not so much a theocratic form of government as an independent course, is under attack by Iran’s adversaries, the Iranian authorities have prioritized the strengthening of their army and navy. In order to do this, a lot of attention is put on the development of key technologies, mainly in the defense industry, as well as the advancement of education and research.
For many foreign experts it was a revelation that it turns out that Iran has achieved a major breakthrough in the development and production of unmanned aerial vehicles. At the same time, the spoils of the Iranian UAVs on some “hot conflict” fields have allowed experts to also discover advanced Western technology. The Iranian capabilities, meantime, created a stir in a number of international newspapers, raising the question of how the Persians acquired these outlawed and sanctioned technologies from the West or Israel.
Some believe that the Iranians simply ordered products through the AliExpress channel to fictitious addresses, disassembled them, and had local engineers create new inventions (such as joining a water line to a gas line in the hopes of creating carbonated water). Others argue that Iranian replicas of Western technologies are the result of successful scientific, technological, and industrial espionage by Iranian foreign intelligence agencies, specifically the Ministry of Information, IRGC intelligence units, and the Ministry of Defense.
How can one, however, recognize such enemy intelligence triumphs when it also indicates counterintelligence support failures for sanctioned technology and products from NATO nations and their partner Israel? At the same time, their opponents cannot admit (whether out of envy or for other reasons) that Iran simply had to spend a lot of money over the years to build its own education and research, rather than encouraging corruption, as is the situation in other post-Soviet countries. However, the real condition of the arms of the Iranian army should be accepted as a fact.
The commander of the Iranian Army’s Air Defense Force, Brigadier General Alireza Sabahi-Fard recently stated in an interview with Al-Alam News Network, an Arabic news channel, that Iran now has absolute power in the region due to significant technological progress in the production of military equipment, particularly air defense weapons. Moreover, Iran relies 100 percent on its own high-tech production. Tehran now has more opportunities to export domestically produced weapons therefore.
Any army and every war place a high priority on an effective air defense. By assuming control of aerial combat, the army is able to conduct effective defensive and offensive operations during combat operations.
Iranian air defense forces are structurally a combination of the army and IRGC air defense units. Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarter of General Staff of Armed Forces is in charge of coordinating joint military operations within the Iranian forces. It should be mentioned that the Iranians build their own air defense systems and have previously tested several of them in live combat.
Iran’s air defense system includes: Radar systems (Nazir, Fath-14, the Matla ul-Fajr and Kashef, Meraj-4, etc.); medium-range SAMS (100-240 km) Bavar-373, Khordad-15, Talash, 3rd Khordad, Mersad-16 and short-range SAMS (up to 100 km) Ya Zahra-3 and Herz-9. In fact, the Bavar-373 is an enhanced version of the Russian S-300PMU-2 Favorit. Iran makes a variety of combat and reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), including the Karrar, Ababil, and Mojaher as well as upgraded ballistic Shahab, Sajil, and the Meskat medium-range cruise missiles.
In addition to using outdated but still functional U.S. systems left over from the Shah regime, trophy French equipment from the experience of the war with Iraq, Iran still has to combine its own production of air defense equipment with imports of relevant military equipment from Russia, China, and India. Some of Iran’s most recent innovations in this field involve modifying the equipment bought from China and Russia.
Air defense facilities cover the sky, administrative and political centers, troop concentrations, and critical facilities such as defense-industry enterprises, Natanz nuclear facility and the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant.
Iran, despite its reliance on domestic production, cannot yet match the world leaders in the development and production of air defense systems, particularly Russia and the United States. Nonetheless, the Iranian military-industrial complex’s success is becoming noticeable in the Middle East. According to Russian experts such as Ruslan Pukhov, developing air defense systems is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. The process of testing one type of equipment at army ranges to placing it on combat duty in the troops can often take up to ten years.
However, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has had to deal with improving its own defense industry for more than four decades. We only possess a portion of the information available in public, since no one discloses all of their accomplishments and technological characteristics.
Furthermore, the current political and military environment and tensions with Israel, the NATO bloc, and the United States encourage Iran to accelerate its military development. For Iranian topography, the east, south, and west have always had a high level of military escalation. On Iran’s northern borders with Azerbaijan and Armenia, a new hotbed of military conflict developed in the post-Soviet era. Of course, this is about the unresolved Karabakh issue, the two conflicts that took place there from 1991 to 1994, 2016, and 2020, as well as the ongoing provocations across the line of contact.
Given the accomplishments of the domestic military-industrial complex, Iranian air defenses undoubtedly have a certain advantage over some nations in the region, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Qatar, the KSA, and even Turkey, which is a NATO member. Nonetheless Iranian missile and air defense systems are unlikely to be more advanced than those of Israel, let alone the United States, in terms of technology.
Turkey started paying more attention to import substitution and modernizing the country’s military-industrial complex throughout the years of President Recep Erdoğan’s rule. Ankara was able to supply the army and navy’s weaponry with 80% of its own manufacturing thanks to this strategy for boosting the country’s independence. The development and manufacture of Turkey’s Baykar Bayraktar Kızılelma reconnaissance and combat unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Hisar surface-to-air missile and SIPER air defense missile, TCG Anadolu with unmanned combat aerial vehicles on board, Altay tank, BMC Kirpi, etc. are all being observed around the world.
The Turkish government holds regular events practically every day to showcase the aforementioned and additional products of the military-industrial complex, especially during current election campaigning days. Some of the military equipment on display in Turkey might still be purely for show, and it will take some time before testing and real breakthrough is made. Even so, Turkey is making an effort to keep up with Iran and its neighbors in terms of the military-industrial complex.
There is always hope for the army because of the generals’ faith in their own air defense systems and airspace control forces. However, public statements frequently don’t match reality (or don’t match it completely), which can further the goals of misleading the direct and potential enemy or fostering diplomacy during the negotiation process.
Anyway, Iran is expanding its military-technical cooperation with Russia, China, and India to produce air defense systems in all circumstances, keeping up with new advancements, and testing them not only on army ranges but also in combat theaters, where it takes part in varying degrees.
Hungary outraged by leaked Ukrainian plans to blow up vital oil pipeline
Hungary’s energy security would take a major hit if Ukraine went through with a plan to destroy a key Russian pipeline
MANDINER | May 15, 2023
Hungarian media is abuzz with angry reactions after a leak obtained by The Washington Post revealed that Ukraine was planning to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline that transports crude from Russia to Hungary.
According to the leaked documents, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed at a February meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Yuliya Svyrydenko that Ukraine should blow up the pipeline in order to incapacitate the part of the Hungarian energy infrastructure reliant on Russian oil.
Government spokesman Zoltán Kovács reacted in a tweet with a short question: “How is it possible that Ukraine is plotting against a NATO country??”
Hungarian security analyst Péter Tarjányi said in a Facebook post that this would be a “very unfriendly, mistaken and stupid move.”
He added: “I understand that Ukraine does not like many Hungarian government actions and communications, but this does not justify such a plan or idea.”
Tarjányi then recalled that “on the one hand, Hungary has helped hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees over the past 15 months, despite all the differences of opinion. We have to understand, our country sent aid, medicine AND!!! in the end voted for ALL sanctions against Russia.
He then pointed out that “in addition to this, and this is not a negligible FACT, Hungary is a NATO member, so such a plan makes no sense at all. This is a huge self-deception on the part of Ukraine, and Kyiv must explain itself very quickly. The main question is: Why did the Ukrainian president think that such a plan could be justified???? Why did he think he could risk NATO support by launching such an attack? I await further information on the matter.”
While the Russian invasion of Ukraine severely reduced Russian crude imports to the European Union, according to Eurostat data, last year Hungary imported 4.8 million tons of crude from Russia, 1.4 million more than in 2021.
The leak was part of a trove of military intelligence documents posted on a Discord server by 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who served as an airman at a National Guard unit in Massachusetts. Teixeira was taken into custody over the leaks and faces substantial prison time if convicted.
Khrushchev Exposed the Hypocrisy of U.S. Interventionists
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | May 16, 2023
For American interventionists living today, all that one needs to know is that Russia invaded Ukraine. End of story. Black and white. Russia bad. Ukraine good. Support Ukraine with U.S. taxpayer-funded cash and armaments. America good.
If we go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, we find that things are not so simple, especially for American interventionists, even if they don’t realize it.
The Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba that had the capability of hitting U.S. cities along the Eastern seaboard, including Washington, D.C., and New York City. The crisis lasted from October 16 through October 29, 1962.
President Kennedy demanded that the Soviets remove their nuclear missiles from Cuba and take them back to the Soviet Union. The Pentagon was exerting enormous pressure on Kennedy to immediately initiate a surprise bombing attack on the suspected missile sites, followed by a full-scale regime-change military invasion of the island. In other words, they were pressuring Kennedy to do to Cuba what Russia has done to Ukraine. In fact, the pressure they placed on Kennedy was so intense that Robert Kennedy, the president’s brother, secretly told Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin “If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power.”
On October 27 — two days before the crisis was resolved — Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote a letter to Kennedy stating the following:
But how are we, the Soviet Union, our Government, to assess your actions, which are expressed in the fact that you have surrounded the Soviet Union with military bases; surrounded our allies with military bases; placed military bases literally around our country; and stationed your missile armaments there? This is no secret. Responsible American personages openly declare that it is so. Your missiles are located in Britain, are located in Italy, and are aimed against us. Your missiles are located in Turkey.
You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you because it is 90 miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But Turkey adjoins us; our sentries patrol back and forth and see each other. Do you consider, then, that you have the right to demand security for your own country and the removal of the weapons you call offensive, but do not accord the same right to us? You have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us. How then can recognition of our equal military capacities be reconciled with such unequal relations between our great states? This is irreconcilable.
Do you see the problem? Khrushchev was pointing out the hypocrisy of the U.S. position, a position that American interventionists today simply cannot recognize, owing to their blind allegiance to the U.S. national-security establishment.
The fact is that the Soviets had the legal authority to place their nuclear missiles in Cuba, just as Ukraine has the legal authority to join NATO. Cuba, like Ukraine, is a sovereign, independent country and, therefore, had the legal authority to permit the Soviets to install their missiles in Cuba, just as Ukraine has the legal authority to permit the U.S. and NATO to install their nuclear missiles in Ukraine.
But even though such legal authority exists, no one, including both Russians and Americans, likes to have nuclear missiles pointed at himself, especially from just a few miles away. This is the point that Kennedy was making when he stood fast during the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the full support of the Pentagon and the CIA, he was willing to risk all-out nuclear war to force the Soviets to remove those missiles, even though he knew that the Soviets had the legal authority to install them in Cuba. He, the Pentagon, and the CIA simply did not like the fact that those missiles were so close to the United States.
But that’s precisely how the Soviets felt as well, which is what Khrushchev was expressing in his letter to Kennedy. He was essentially saying, “Hey, you don’t like our missiles in Cuba because they are so close to your country. That’s exactly how we feel as well, not only about your missiles over here that are painted at us but also about all your military bases with which you have surrounded us. How come you can’t understand that?”
Well, Kennedy did come to understand that. That’s how he and Khrushchev were able to strike a deal, one that infuriated the U.S. national-security establishment as well as American interventionists.
The deal consisted of two major parts: First, Kennedy vowed that he would not permit the Pentagon and the CIA to again invade Cuba and, second, Kennedy agreed to withdraw U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey that were pointed at Russia.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff were livid. They considered Kennedy’s resolution of the crisis to be the worst defeat in U.S history. They compared his actions during the crisis to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich.
For their part, American interventionists were also furious over Kennedy’s resolution of the crisis. As far as they were concerned, the Pentagon and the CIA had the “right” to install their nuclear missiles wherever they want and the Soviets did not have the “right” to do the same. It’s a position that American interventionists still hold today.
Can you see why American interventionists hated Kennedy so much and why the Pentagon and the CIA ultimately concluded that he constituted a grave threat to “national security”?
Ukraine neighbor disputes pro-Russian election result – media
Moldova’s autonomous region of Gagauzia has voted in a new governor
© Telegram/gagauzinfo
RT | May 16, 2023
Moldovan police raided the central election commission of Gagauzia on Tuesday, alleging irregularities after a politician championing better relations with Russia won the gubernatorial vote.
Gagauzia, an autonomous region in southern Moldova, elects its own bashkan – governor – and Sunday’s run-off saw the victory of Yevgenia Gutsul, with 52.36% of the vote. Gutsul represents the Shor party, which the government in Chisinau has tried to ban.
The operation at the election office in Comrat was “part of a criminal investigation into bribing of voters,” a spokesperson for the National Anti-Corruption Center (NAC) in Chisinau said in a statement. The NAC had executed search warrants for eight individuals on Saturday, just before the election, alleging that Shor had offered bribes of 15,000 lei ($3,200) each to some 30 voters. No arrests were made.
On Tuesday, NAC officials and police reportedly sought to confiscate the ballots from Sunday’s election. The Gagauzian election commission told them the ballots had already been forwarded to the court in Comrat, in charge of verifying the results. According to local media outlets, commissioners were told to report for interrogation on May 18.
“Residents of Gagauzia made their choice, and our opponent conceded. But Chisinau doesn’t want to recognize a Shor victory,” said Aleksandr Panov, a spokesman for Gutsul’s campaign. “These are orders from the center, to remove all documents so the elections can be annulled.”
Prime Minister Dorin Recean said on Monday evening that the Gagauz elections ought to be annulled due to “many violations.” The Moldovan Central Election Commission has issued fines to all eight candidates for bashkan, claiming they had violated campaign finance laws. However, the Gagauz CEC responded that the election was conducted according to the autonomy’s own laws, without issues.
Moldova is a former Soviet republic, with a population that is mostly ethnic Romanian. The Russian-speaking Gagauz are Orthodox Christians of Turkic origin, who live in four enclaves in the south of the country. Shor advocates better relations with Russia, while Recean and Moldovan President Maia Sandu want membership in the EU and NATO.
‘Entire Investigative Team’ Removed From Hunter Biden Tax Probe
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 16.05.2023
Since 2018, Hunter Biden has been under a series of investigations into tax-related crimes, drug use, money laundering and illegal business dealings in foreign countries, including Ukraine and China.
On Monday, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) removed the investigative team from their protracted tax fraud probe of Hunter Biden, in an apparent retaliation against a whistleblower who raised concerns about the handling of the case.
The whistleblower’s lawyers Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt wrote to Congress that the IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent they represent “was informed that he and his entire investigative team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high-profile, controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress. He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice.”
The two also recalled that on April 27, 2023, IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel appeared before the House Committee on Ways and Means to testify “without any hesitation there will be no retaliation for anyone making an allegation or a call to a whistleblower hotline.”
“However, this move [by the IRS] is clearly retaliatory and may also constitute the obstruction of a congressional inquiry,” the lawyers added.
They added that they “respectfully request that you [the IRS] give this matter your prompt attention” and that “removing the experienced investigators who have worked this case for years and are now the subject-matter experts is exactly the sort of issue our client intended to blow the whistle on to begin with.”
This comes a few weeks after insiders revealed that US District Attorney of Delaware David Weiss is close to making a decision on whether to charge Hunter Biden with a crime over tax and gun-related offenses.
The First Son is reportedly being investigated by Weiss for two misdemeanor tax filing charges, one pertaining to a felony tax evasion and other – to a false statement about a gun purchase.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland — appointed by former President Bill Clinton in 1995 and blocked as a Supreme Court nomination in 2016 by Senate Republicans — said his office would respect the outcome of Weiss’ investigation. “I stand by my testimony and I refer you to the attorney for the District of Delaware, who is in charge of this case and capable of making any decisions that he feels are appropriate,” Garland said.
The federal probe into Hunter Biden’s “tax affairs” is said to have been partly based on Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) detailing fishy foreign transactions, with another insider claiming that these SARs were linked to money exchanges with “China and other foreign nations.”
The probe was launched by US Attorney’s Office in Delaware as early as 2018, but Hunter Biden said in December 2020 that he had learned about the investigation into his business deals only that month.
The son of then-president-elect Joe Biden said at that time that he was taking the matter “very seriously” and was “confident” that he had always managed his affairs “legally and appropriately.”
Apart from “tax affairs”, Hunter Biden is being probed over a drug use, money laundering and illegal business dealings in foreign countries including Ukraine and China, with investigators specifically looking into the content of Hunter Biden’s so-called “laptop from Hell“.
“TREASON!”: Trump Responds To Report Concluding FBI Russia Probe Was Unfounded
By Steve Watson | Summit News | May 16, 2023
President Trump has called for everyone involved in the Russian collusion ploy, including Hillary Clinton, to “pay a heavy price,” after a report from Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI investigation into the 2016 Trump presidential campaign was totally unfounded.
“After extensive research, Special Counsel John Durham concludes the FBI never should have launched the Trump-Russia Probe! In other words, the American Public was scammed, just as it is being scammed right now by those who don’t want to see GREATNESS for AMERICA!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Trump added “The Durham Report spells out in great detail the Democrat Hoax that was perpetrated upon me and the American people. This is 2020 Presidential Election Fraud, just like ‘stuffing’ the ballot boxes, only more so. This totally illegal act had a huge impact on the Election. With an honest Media, we are looking at the Crime of the Century!”
Trump also called for Hillary Clinton, James Comey and the Democrats to be punished for “treason”.
In a further interview with Fox News, Trump said “I, and much more importantly, the American public have been victims of this long-running and treasonous charade started by the Democrats, started by Comey.”
“Public anger over this report is at a level that I have not seen before…there must be a heavy price to there pay for putting our country through this,” Trump added.
The Durham report notes that “Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report.”
It adds that “Our investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities,” presumably a reference to the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Fusion GPS “pee dossier.”
Responding to the findings, Republicans have called for a complete overhaul of the FBI, with Senator Josh Hawley declaring “we need to end the FBI as we know it.”
“People need to be prosecuted for this,” Hawley asserted, adding “The Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton herself — is it any coincidence that she is tweeting about collusion at exactly the same time her campaign operatives are feeding this BS to the FBI? I don’t think so. There needs to be consequences for her and also for the FBI.”
“FBI leadership has clearly got to be changed,” he continued during an interview with Jesse Watters, adding “I’m of the mind we need to end the FBI as we know it. It needs to be broken up. I mean, clearly, it has become corrupt. The leadership is corrupt… This leadership has become totally radically politicized, and we have got to change it.”
Meanwhile, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz declared that the FBI agents involved should be fired and prosecuted, stating “This report is an insufficient consequence for the malfeasance and corruption that we have seen here.”
“We need to defund and deauthorize government entities that are converted from the just cause of defending our nation into enforcement wings of political parties,” Gaetz also asserted.
Rep. Jim Jordan also called for FBI funding to be cut, declaring that “This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”
Special Counsel John Durham Exonerates Donald Trump of “Russiagate”
By Paul Craig Roberts | Institue for Political Economy | May 16, 2023
Durham’s long awaited Justice Department report concludes that the FBI investigation was politically motivated and that the FBI should never have investigated Trump. Durham concludes that The Justice Department and FBI “failed to uphold their mission” when they created a false narrative for the purpose of discrediting the President of the United States. But Durham didn’t indict the criminals who “failed to uphold their mission.”
In other words the FBI’s creation of a false narrative in order to severely influence an election is “devastating to the FBI,” but there is no accountability for the FBI criminals.
In his investigative report, Special Counsel Durham said: “the government possessed no verified intelligence reflecting that Trump or the Trump campaign was involved in a conspiracy or collaborative relationship with officials of the Russian government. Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”
What, then, explains the “investigation”? Durham’s report concludes that there was “a predisposition to open an investigation into Trump.” Among those predisposed to get Trump, Durham mentions Peter Strzok, who was deputy director of the counter-intelligence division of the FBI, and Andrew McCabe, who was Deputy Director of the FBI and CNN’s senior law enforcement analyst.
There you have it. As I reported, Russiagate was an organized plot to destroy the President of the United States who was disapproved by the ruling establishment.
Even CNN’s Jake Tapper, who I regard as among the most corrupt of the presstitutes, said that Durham’s report was “devastating to the FBI” and “does exonerate Donald Trump.” Well, has Tapper apologized for hyping the fake narrative?
Have any of the presstitutes apologized for the lies they repeated over and over and over? No.
Will the presstitutes apologize? No. The way they see it, it is OK to lie in order to get Trump.
No real American believes one word about the failed impeachment charges, the false narrative “insurrection” charges, the Documentgate charges,” the false narrative NY prosecution charges, or the false rape charge.
Americans need to ask how they can survive as a people when their political system and media organizations can consistently mount false charge on top of false charge for the sole purpose of influencing US elections by lying about Donald Trump, a President twice elected by the American people who had their chosen leader stolen from them.
Special Counsel John Durham’s Report Released
New York Times especially revolting in perpetration of massive and ridiculous fraud
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | May 16, 2023
On Sunday, June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in an interview on the British political show, ITV Peston: “We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton … We have emails pending publication, that is correct,” Assange said.
Just two days after Assange made this statement, the Washington Post published a report titled “Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump.”
As soon as I saw this Washington Post report, I suspected it was a fraud perpetrated by Hillary Clinton’s friends in the U.S. government and mainstream media. Prima facie, it was pretty clear that the “Russian DNC” hack story was a way to distract attention away from the embarrassing content of the leaked DNC E-mails.
One of the oldest dirty tricks in the political playbook is to speak of the treachery of foreigners whenever a country’s rulers perceive that their power if threatened. As James Madison put it:
The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.
The E-mail correspondence of Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta, contained numerous expressions of a duplicitous, cynical, and Machiavellian nature. Clearly they felt threatened by the publication of these documents that showed their true colors. They therefore felt compelled to take strong action to change the subject. And what better way to change the subject than to speak loudly about Russian perfidy?
And so the Russian-Collusion Hoax was born. At the time I was astonished that such a huge swath of the permanent political class and mainstream media were all—in a perfectly coordinated fashion—talking such patently mendacious nonsense. I remember thinking that such orchestrated lying revealed extraordinary centralized control of our institutions. I also remember thinking that if this network of power could get away with telling—for months on end—such a whopper about President Trump, there was no telling what other colossal, organized frauds were going to be committed in the years ahead. “Wow, what’s next?” I asked my younger brother in one of our conversations about the hoax.
I am about 1/3 through reading the just-released report by Special Counsel John Durham titled REPORT ON MATTERS RELATED TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND INVESTIGATIONS ARISING OUT OF THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN.
The first 100 pages contain nothing particularly surprising. Mostly it provides the meticulous details of what I already knew to be the case in the summer of 2016. However, on page 104, I ran across the following section:
iii. What the FBI knew from its intelligence collections as of early 2017. As the record reflects, as of early 2017, the FBI still did not possess any intelligence showing that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was in contact with Russian intelligence officers during the campaign. Indeed, based on declassified documents from early 2017, the FBI’s own records show that reports published by The New York Times in February and March 2017 concerning what four unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials claimed about Trump campaign personnel being in touch with any Russian intelligence officers was untrue.
These unidentified sources reportedly stated that (i) U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted communications of members of Trump’s campaign and other Trump associates that showed repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election; (ii) former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been one of the individuals picked up on the intercepted “calls;” and (iii) the intercepted communications between Trump associates and Russians had been initially captured by the NSA. However, official FBI documentation reflects that all three of these highly concerning claims of Trump-related contacts with Russian intelligence were untrue. Indeed, in a contemporaneous critique of the Times article prepared by Peter Strzok, who was steeped in the details of Crossfire Hurricane, all three of the above-referenced allegations were explicitly refuted. Strzok’s evaluation of the allegations included the following:
• The FBI had not seen any evidence of any individuals affiliated with the Trump team in contact with Russian intelligence officers. He characterized this allegation as misleading and inaccurate as written. He noted that there had been some individuals in contact with Russians, both governmental and non-governmental, but none of these individuals had an affiliation with Russian intelligence. He also noted previous contact between Carter Page and a Russian intelligence officer, but this contact did not occur during Page’s association with the Trump campaign.
• The FBI had no information in its holdings, nor had it received any such information from other members of the Intelligence Community, that Paul Manafort had been a party to a call with any Russian government official. Strzok noted that the Intelligence Community had not provided the FBI with any such information even though the FBI had advised certain agencies of its interest in anything they might hold or collect regarding Manafort.
• Regarding the allegation that the NSA initially captured these communications between Trump campaign officials and Trump associates and the Russians, Strzok repeated that if such communications had been collected by the NSA, the FBI was not aware of that fact.
In other words, in its Russian-Collusion reporting, the New York Times published assertions from “four unnamed current and former U.S. intelligence officials” that were entirely false. Thus, the practice of using “unidentified sources”—a practice that was once heavily frowned upon by respectable journalists—enabled the commission of a giant deception that inflicted untold damage to our political system.
Even at that time (in early 2017) I told anyone who would listen that if it was possible to take down a sitting President of the United States by publishing the assertions of anonymous sources from within the state bureaucracy, then our government by elected officials was over, and our true masters were the “unnamed intelligence officials.”
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TV Drama Review
Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
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