In early summer 1992 I caught the documentary film Manufacturing Consent when it opened in San Francisco’s Castro Theater. That film changed my life. It showcased Noam Chomsky, an accomplished linguistics professor, and his analysis of corporate media propaganda. Manufacturing Consent convinced me that the American academy could tolerate, and indeed celebrate, serious social criticism. If Chomsky, a radical opponent of America’s most powerful institutions, could not only survive but thrive in academia, speaking truth to power and building a huge audience along the way, why couldn’t others do the same?
Before that screening, I had been a profoundly alienated bohemian haunting the margins of academia, so disgusted by all of America’s institutions that I could scarcely have imagined working for them. (Learning the facts about the JFK assassination at age 16 can do that to a person.) But Chomsky’s example inspired me. It made me want to join him and the other academic critics of US empire, convince our colleagues of the truth of our arguments using logic and evidence, and help the USA return to its anti-imperial roots and then some.
So it was largely thanks to Chomsky that I entered a Ph.D. program in 1995. But by then I had noticed two glaring anomalies in his political thought. The first, and most important, was that his analysis of the JFK assassination seemed insane. Chomsky argued that the assassination was obviously a conspiracy, and not the work of a lone nut as the official story has it—but that it didn’t matter who killed JFK, because the assassination didn’t change any policies! Since he felt it was so utterly unimportant that the president was murdered by conspirators powerful enough to force their ludicrous cover story on the world, Chomsky evinced no interest whatsoever in identifying the perpetrators, and discouraged his followers from further interest in the topic.
“Take for example all this frenzy about the JFK assassination. I mean I don’t know who assassinated him and I don’t care, but what difference does it make?” – Noam Chomsky
The other anomaly involved the question of Palestine. Though Chomsky has verbally sympathized with Palestinian suffering, and admitted the justice of the Palestinian cause, he has vociferously obstructed the two most promising strategic efforts that could help Palestine defeat Zionism: The boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement, and the campaign to expose Zionist control over US Mideast policy.
Alison Weir once asked Chomsky why he opposed BDS and why he had falsely claimed that it was bad for Palestinians (who almost unanimously support it). “The reason is very simple. It’s so utterly hypocritical that it’s basically a gift to the hardliners. They can say, ‘Look, you’re calling for a boycott of Israel, but you’re not calling for a boycott of the United States which has a much worse record…’”
Would Israeli hardliners ever actually say such a thing? And would it matter even if they did? Of course not. Here again, Chomsky is spouting sheer nonsense, prefaced by the obligatory disclaimer “it’s very simple.” When someone as seemingly intelligent as Chomsky says such things, there are really only two possible interpretations: Either he is suffering from some bizarre mental dysfunction, or he is lying and gaslighting us.
Chomsky’s occasional habit of emitting streams of discombobulated blather repeatedly surfaces when he is asked about Israel’s control of US Mideast policy. As James Petras writes, “Noam Chomsky has long been one of the great obfuscators of AIPAC and the existence of Zionist power over US Middle East policy.” The nonsensical gnome ludicrously argues that US policymakers’ enslavement to Israel actually serves US national and imperial interests. For him, Israel is basically a powerless appendage of US empire. Chomsky’s implicit subtext is that anyone who notices Israel’s death grip on US foreign policy, including Walt and Mearsheimer, Alan Hart, James Petras, J. William Fulbright, James Abourezk, Paul Findley, and indeed every honest and informed analyst who has considered the question, must be “anti-Semitic.”
My issues with Chomsky’s repeated bouts of apparent insanity came to a head after 9/11. In November 2001, Chomsky published a “surprise” bestseller. Entitled 9/11 and republished ten years later as 9/11: Was There an Alternative?, the book basically repeats Chomsky’s vacuous diatribes about the JFK coup d’état—“it doesn’t matter who did it, do NOT look behind the curtain”—and applies them to 9/11.
“If if it were true [9/11 conspiracy theories], which is extremely unlikely, what difference does it make? I mean, it doesn’t have any significance.” –Noam Chomsky, interview with David Barsamian
While I was participating in the rise of the 9/11 truth movement from 2004 onwards, I noticed that Chomsky was growing ever-more-strident in attacking truth-seekers and insisting that it didn’t matter who did 9/11. In 2008 I invited him on my radio show, which led to an exchange of emails culminating in his last-minute refusal to appear. I was flabbergasted by Chomsky’s seemingly insane statements and positions. When he finally started lying outright, I concluded that he must be acting in bad faith. I published the private emails in their entirety because I thought the world needed to know the truth about the evident gross immorality (or, charitably, insanity) of America’s most celebrated (fake) dissident.
Then in 2016 I gave a talk at the Left Forum on “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11.” Though my criticisms of Chomsky were quite restrained in tone, given his appalling betrayals, I was banned from the Left Forum the following year. Apparently going to the Left Forum to criticize Chomsky is like going to the Vatican to criticize the Pope.
Read the full text of “Why Chomsky Is Wrong About 9/11”
Over the years, it dawned on me that if Chomsky were deliberately leading people astray, there would have to be some sort of method in his apparent madness. Why would he herd the critical thinkers and idealists of the left away from the truth about the JFK assassination, 9/11, Zionist control of US policy, and the best strategy for saving Palestine? Whose interests would be served by those four acts of deception?
The question, of course, answers itself. As Michael Collins Piper, Laurent Guyénot, Ron Unz, Alan Hart, and so many others have suggested, the leading suspect in both the JFK and 9/11 coups is the state of Israel and its “American” acolytes. Chomsky has been consistently, systematically gaslighting his followers on the four issues most crucial to the preservation and expansion of Zionist power. As Jeffrey Blankfort writes:
“At the end of the day, it is evident that Chomsky’s affection for Israel, his sojourn on a kibbutz, his Jewish identity, and his early experiences with anti-Semitism to which he occasionally refers have colored his approach to every aspect of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and explain his defense of Israel. That is his right, of course, but not to pretend at the same that he is an advocate for justice in Palestine.”
Since our ill-starred 2008 email exchange I have leaned towards acknowledging the likelihood that Chomsky is a lying, gaslighting Zionist scumbag. But I wasn’t sure until a few days ago, when the news broke that Chomsky had repeatedly hobnobbed with then-convicted-sex-criminal Jeffrey Epstein, including meeting Epstein together with pervert and 9/11 suspect Ehud Barak, apparently even flying on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express. Characteristically, Chomsky dissembled: “If there was a flight (with Epstein), which I doubt…” If Chomsky hadn’t flown with Epstein, of course, he would just say so. His mealymouthed evasions of the truth, whether of JFK, 9/11, Israeli occupation of America, or his relations with Epstein and Barak, have a vacuously passive-aggressive tone that is inimitably Chomsky-esque, but jarringly incommensurate with his reputation as one of the world’s greatest linguists.
Chomsky’s response to journalists’ questions about his relationship with Epstein began: “First response is that it is none of your business. Or anyone’s.” That is, of course, exactly what many people would say when questioned about their sexual activities with consenting adults. So why is Chomsky proffering a stock “don’t ask me about my sex life” response when questioned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his stable of underage prostitutes?
Methinks the gnome doth protest too much.
More troubling than whether Chomsky (statutorily) raped young girls is the question of why he was meeting with Israel’s top blackmailer of American leaders, Jeffrey Epstein, alongside the likely mastermind of 9/11, Ehud Barak. Barak resigned as Prime Minister of Israel in May of 2001 and disappeared from public view, presumably spending June through early September working on plans to demolish the World Trade Center, attack the Pentagon, and blame the carnage on Israel’s enemies. Barak’s work on the lead-up to 9/11 recalls Ben Gurion’s resignation as Israeli Prime Minister and disappearance from public view in June, 1963, after which he went underground and presumably orchestrated the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November. The moral: When Israeli PMs resign in the spring, get ready for something big come fall.
Ehud Barak was conveniently pre-placed in BBC’s London studios so he could go live an hour after 9/11, where he recited what would become the official story:
Barak’s coercion was aimed at the masses, who were traumatized by the horrific images they had just seen on TV and open to hypnotic suggestion—which Barak obligingly provided, implanting the pre-scripted official version deep in their subconscious minds. Chomsky, by contrast, was deployed a few months later against leftists and intellectuals, who were understandably suspicious and predisposed to mistrust the Bush Administration and its rush to war against Israel’s enemies. (That Chomsky’s coverup-propaganda broadside 9/11 shot up the bestseller lists in November 2001 was hardly surprising, given the realities of power in America’s media, book publishing and distribution industries.)
Many languages have one or more proverbs that roughly translate as “A man is known by the company he keeps.” By simultaneously meeting Epstein and Barak, Noam Chomsky has unmasked himself as a top-level Zionist sheepdog tasked with keeping the dumb American goyim cattle blind, ignorant, and cooped up in their pens, bleating out the platitudes they are taught by their Zionist betters. To say that the scandal will tarnish Chomsky’s legacy is inaccurate, because there is no legacy to tarnish. Chomsky is a charlatan and a fraud. He stands revealed as an agent of the world’s most genocidal and most systematically terrorist state—a state that has attacked the United States of America repeatedly since 1954, assassinating its best leaders, murdering its sailors and civilians, looting its nuclear arsenal and its treasury, and generally assuming much of the responsibility for its impending destruction.
So what did Chomsky talk about with Israel’s top blackmailer Epstein and 9/11 perp Barak? Did the conversation sound like Netanyahu’s talk with his cronies at Fink’s Bar in Jerusalem in 1990?
At the head of the table was Netanyahu. The group at the table had just stolen 5 American KG 84 cryptographic devices with the help of Canadians serving with the UNTSO on the Golan Heights, giving this Israeli-led cabal real-time access to all US State Department, Naval and NATO communications. This is a transcribed quote taken from an audio recording of Netanyahu at that meeting:
“If we get caught they will just replace us with persons of the same cloth. So it does not matter what you do, America is a golden calf and we will suck it dry, chop it up, and sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world’s biggest welfare state that we will create and control. Why? Because it is the will of God, and America is big enough to take the hit so we can do it again and again and again. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly and make them suffer for refusing to be our slaves.”
Chomsky’s contempt for Americans, and for the intelligence of his American audience, is every bit as palpable as Netanyahu’s. And Epstein’s. And Barak’s.
Maybe it’s time for him to make aliyah… and thank Yahweh that Israel won’t sign extradition treaties.
By Whitney Webb |
Unlimited Hangout| May 3, 2023
Recent revelations that the renowned linguist and political activist met with Jeffrey Epstein several times have surprised and confused many. Why was Epstein interested in meeting with Noam Chomsky? And why did Chomsky agree to meet him despite his past? The answer may surprise you.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published a report detailing information contained within a “trove” of previously unreported documents of the deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Those documents, which have not been publicly released and appear to have been passed solely to the Journal, included Epstein’s private calendar and meeting schedules. The documents, per the Journal, contain “thousands of pages of emails and schedules from 2013 to 2017” and – as the report notes – detail Epstein’s dealings with several prominent individuals whose names were not on his flight logs or his infamous “little black book” of contacts. One of these individuals is the renowned linguist, political commentator and critic of capitalism and empire, Noam Chomsky.
Chomsky, who has previously discussed the Epstein case in interviews and who has maintained that Epstein’s ties to intelligence agencies should be considered a “conspiracy theory,” had not previously disclosed these meetings. Chomsky, when confronted by Journal reporters, was evasive, but ultimately admitted to meeting and knowing Jeffrey Epstein.
Many, largely on the left, have expressed dismay and confusion as to why someone with the political views of Chomsky would willingly meet, not once but several times, with someone like Jeffrey Epstein, particularly well after Epstein’s notoriety as a sex trafficker and pedophile. As this report will show, Epstein appeared to view Chomsky as another intellectual who could help guide his decisions when it came to his scientific obsessions – namely, transhumanism and eugenics. What Chomsky gained in return from meeting with Epstein isn’t as clear.
Why Did Chomsky Meet with Epstein?
According to the Journal, Chomsky’s meetings with Epstein took place during the years 2015 and 2016, while Chomsky taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. Chomsky told the Journal that he met with Epstein to discuss topics like neuroscience with other academics, like Harvard’s Martin Nowak (who was heavily funded by Epstein). On a separate occasion, Chomsky again met with Epstein alongside former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, allegedly to discuss “Israel’s policies with regard to Palestinian issues and the international arena.” A separate date saw Chomsky and his wife invited by Epstein to have dinner with him, Woody Allen and Allen’s wife Soon-Yi Previn. When asked about the dinner date with Woody Allen and Epstein, Chomsky referred to the occasion as “an evening spent with a great artist.”
When confronted with this evidence, Chomsky initially told the Journal that his meetings and relationship with Epstein were “none of your business. Or anyone’s.” He then added that “I knew him [Epstein] and we met occasionally.”
Before continuing further, it is important to note that aside from Epstein, both Ehud Barak and Woody Allen have been accused of having inappropriate sexual relationships with minors. For instance, Barak was a frequent visitor to Epstein’s residences in New York, so often that The Daily Beast reported that numerous residents of an apartment building linked to Epstein “had seen Barak in the building multiple times over the last few years, and nearly half a dozen more described running into his security detail,” adding that “the building is majority-owned by Epstein’s younger brother, Mark, and has been tied to the financier’s alleged New York trafficking ring.”
Specifically, several apartments in the building were “being used to house underage girls from South America, Europe and the former Soviet Union,” according to a former bookkeeper employed by one of Epstein’s main procurers of underage girls, Jean Luc Brunel. Barak is also known to have spent the night at one of Epstein’s residences at least once, was photographed leaving Epstein’s residence as recently as 2016, and has admitted to visiting Epstein’s island, which has sported nicknames including “Pedo Island,” “Lolita Island” and “Orgy Island.” In 2004, Barak received $2.5 million from Leslie Wexner’s Wexner Foundation, where Epstein was a trustee as well as one of the foundation’s top donors, officially for unspecified “consulting services” and “research” on the foundation’s behalf. Several years later, Barak put Harvey Weinstein in contact with the Israeli private intelligence outfit Black Cube, which employs former Mossad agents and Israeli military intelligence operatives, as Weinstein sought to intimidate the women who had accused him of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
In addition, Barak previously chaired and invested in Carbyne911, a controversial Israeli emergency services start-up that has expanded around the world and has become particularly entrenched in the United States. Barak had directed Epstein to invest $1 million into that company, which has been criticized as a potential tool for warrantless mass surveillance. Leslie Wexner also invested millions in the company.
In Woody Allen’s case, he has been accused of sexually assaulting his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7 years old. That abuse claim has been corroborated by witnesses and other evidence. Furthermore, Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by state police in connection with the investigation and lost four exhaustive court battles related to child custody and his abuse of Dylan Farrow. One of the judge’s in the case described Allen’s behavior towards Dylan as “grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.” Actress Mia Farrow, Dylan’s mother, alleged in court that Allen took a sexual interest in her adopted daughter when she was between the ages of two and three years old.
Allen subsequently “seduced” and later married another adopted daughter of Farrow’s, Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen first met when Previn was a child. However, Previn has stated that her first “friendly” interaction with Allen took place when she was a teenager. In 1992, Mia Farrow found nude photos of Previn in Allen’s home and has stated that this was her motive for ending her relationship with Allen.
In the case of Allen and Epstein, and potentially Barak as well, their sexual proclivities and scandals were well known by the time Chomsky met with these men, making a strong suggestion that this type of behavior was not seen by Chomsky as taboo or as a barrier to socialization. It is more likely than not that there was some other major draw that led Chomsky to overlook this type of horrendous behavior toward vulnerable minors.
In terms of reaching a deeper understanding about why Epstein would have been interested in Chomsky – and vice versa, it is important to review – not just the information recently reported by the Wall Street Journal, but also what Epstein himself said of Chomsky before his 2019 death. According to an interview conducted in 2017, but later published in 2019 when Epstein was a major news topic, Epstein openly stated that he had invited Chomsky to his townhouse and he also explicitly stated why he had done so. Oddly, this early acknowledgement of Epstein’s regarding his relationship with Chomsky was left out of the Journal’s recent report.
In that interview, which was conducted by Jeffrey Mervis and later published in Science, Epstein stated that following about Chomsky:
[…] Epstein readily admitted to asking prominent members of the scientific establishment to assess the potential contribution of these so-called outcasts [i.e. MIT students Epstein described as being “on the spectrum”].
“So, I had Jim Watson to the house, and I asked Watson, what does he think about this idea,” a proposal to study how the cellular mechanisms of plants might be relevant to human cancer. Watson is a Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. “Likewise with [Noam] Chomsky on artificial intelligence,” he said, referring to one of the pioneers in the field.
In fact, Epstein expressed great respect for the opinions of these elder statesmen. “It’s funny to watch Noam Chomsky rip apart these young boys who talk about having a thinking machine,” Epstein noted. “He takes out a dagger and slices them, very kindly, into little shreds.”
Thus, per Epstein, his interest in inviting Chomsky to his house was explicitly related to the “artificial intelligence,” which was a major scientific interest of Epstein’s. This also provides a major clue as to how Chomsky and Epstein might have first been introduced.
Chomsky, Epstein and MIT
Chomsky is most widely viewed as a famous linguist, political commentator and critic of modern capitalism and imperialism. So, why did Epstein seek to meet with him instead on Artificial Intelligence matters?
Well, an admitted “friend” of both Chomsky’s and Epstein’s was the AI pioneer Marvin Minsky. Like Chomsky, Minsky was a long-time professor and academic at MIT. It is very possible that Minsky connected the two men, especially considering the fact that Epstein was a major donor to MIT. Epstein described himself as being “very close” to Minsky, who died in 2016, roughly a year after Epstein began meeting with Chomsky. Epstein also financed some of Minsky’s projects and Minsky, like Ehud Barak, was accused of sexually abusing the minors Epstein trafficked.
Chomsky’s views on linguistics and cognition, for those who don’t know, is based very much on evolutionary biology. Chomsky was also a pioneer in cognitive science, described as “a field aimed at uncovering the mental representations and rules that underlie our perceptual and cognitive abilities.” Some have described Chomsky’s concept of language as based on “the complexity of internal representation, encoded in the genome, and their maturation in light of the right data into a sophisticated computational system, one that cannot be usefully broken down into a set of associations.” A person’s “language faculty”, per Chomsky, should be seen as “part of the organism’s genetic endowment, much like the visual system, the immune system and the circulatory system, and we ought to approach it just as we approach these other more down-to-earth biological systems.”
Despite their friendship, Minsky greatly diverged with Chomsky in this view, with Minsky describing Chomsky’s views on linguistics and cognition as largely superficial and irrelevant. Chomsky later criticized the widely used approach with AI that focuses on statistical learning techniques to mine and predict data, which Chomsky argued was “unlikely to yield general principles about the nature of intelligent beings or about cognition.”
However, Chomsky’s views linking evolutionary biology/genetics with linguistics/cognition were notably praised by the aforementioned Martin Nowak, who had attended one of the meetings Epstein had with Chomsky. Nowak, a professor of biology and mathematics and head of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard, later stated that he had “once broke out a blackboard during dinner with Epstein and, for two hours, gave a mathematical description of how language works,” further revealing that Epstein was interested in aspects of linguistics. It is unclear if this particular meeting was the same that Chomsky had attended alongside Nowak to discuss “neuroscience” and other topics.
However, given the importance of evolutionary biology and genetics to Chomsky’s theories, it is hardly surprising that Jeffrey Epstein would have gravitated more towards his views on AI than those of Minsky. Epstein was fascinated by genetics and, even per mainstream sources, was also deeply interested eugenics. Take for example the following from an article published in The Guardian in 2019:
Epstein was apparently fixated on “transhumanism”, the belief that the human species can be deliberately advanced through technological breakthroughs, such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.
At its most benign, transhumanism is a belief that humanity’s problems can be improved, upgraded even, through such technology as cybernetics and artificial intelligence – at its most malignant though, transhumanism lines up uncomfortably well with eugenics.
Thus, Epstein’s interest in AI, genetics, and more was tied into his documented obsession with “transhumanism,” which – as several Unlimited Hangout reports have noted – is essentially a rebranding of eugenics. Indeed, the term transhumanism itself was first coined by Julian Huxley, the former president of the British Eugenics Society and the first head of UNESCO who called to make “the unthinkable thinkable again” with regards to eugenics.
Aside from transhumanism, Epstein also had an avowed interest in “strengthening” the human gene pool, in part by impregnating as many women as possible with his “seed” in order to widely disperse his genes. These views may also explain Epstein’s interest in associating himself with people like James (Jim) Watson. As noted earlier in this article, Epstein stated in 2017 that he had invited both Watson and Chomsky to his home on separate occasions.
Watson has been a controversial figures for years, particularly after he openly stated that people of African descent are genetically inferior and less intelligent than their European counterparts. He also previously promoted the idea that women should abort babies that carried a “gay gene,” were such a gene ever discovered. He also felt that gene editing should be used to make all women “prettier” and to eradicate “stupidity”. Notably, Watson made all of these comments well before Epstein invited him to his home.
Watson was also praised, controversially, after these same comments by another Epstein-funded scientist, Eric Lander. Lander, who was recently Biden’s top science advisor, was forced to resign from that post last year after being accused of harassing those who worked under him in the Biden administration’s Office of Science and Technology. Prior to joining the Biden administration, Lander had collaborated with Watson on the Human Genome Project and later ran the Broad Institute, a non-profit born out of collaboration between MIT and Harvard.
Returning to Chomsky, though he may not have been aware of Epstein’s interests in eugenics and transhumanism, it has since become clear that Epstein’s main interest in Artificial Intelligence – his stated purpose for courting Chomsky – was intimately tied to these controversial disciplines. However, Chomsky did know of Epstein’s past, and likely also knew of Woody Allen’s similar past before meeting him as well. He turned a blind eye on those matters, telling the Journal that Epstein had “served his sentence” and, as a result, had been granted a “clean slate”. In saying this, Chomsky is apparently unaware of Epstein’s controversial “sweetheart deal” that resulted in an extremely lenient sentence and non-prosecution agreement. That “deal” was signed off on by then-US Attorney Alex Acosta because Acosta was told to “back off” Epstein because Epstein “belonged to intelligence.” Chomsky had previously told several people, including an Unlimited Hangout reader, that an Epstein-intelligence agency connection is a “conspiracy theory.”
Given Chomsky’s odd views on Epstein’s past and the fact that Epstein frequently discussed transhumanism and eugenics around other prominent scientists, it is possible, though unproven, that Chomsky may have known more about Epstein’s true interests in AI and genetics.
Would Chomsky have been willing to overlook these ethical conundrums? Given his political views on capitalism and foreign policy, many would likely say that he would not. However, finding ways to circumvent these ethical conundrums with respect to AI may have been one of Epstein’s main reasons for heavily funding MIT, particularly its Media Lab. Epstein, in addition to his own donations, also funneled millions of dollars from Bill Gates and Leon Black to the Media Lab.
According to former Media Lab employee Rodrigo Ochigame, writing in The Intercept, Joi Ito of MIT’s Media Lab – who took lots of donations from Epstein and attempted to hide Epstein’s name on official records – was focused on developing “ethics” for AI that were “aligned strategically with a Silicon Valley effort seeking to avoid legally enforceable restrictions of controversial technologies.” Ito later resigned his post at the Media Lab due to fallout from the Epstein scandal.
Ochigame writes:
A key group behind this effort, with the lab as a member, made policy recommendations in California that contradicted the conclusions of research I conducted with several lab colleagues, research that led us to oppose the use of computer algorithms in deciding whether to jail people pending trial. Ito himself would eventually complain, in private meetings with financial and tech executives, that the group’s recommendations amounted to “whitewashing” a thorny ethical issue. “They water down stuff we try to say to prevent the use of algorithms that don’t seem to work well” in detention decisions, he confided to one billionaire.
I also watched MIT help the U.S. military brush aside the moral complexities of drone warfare, hosting a superficial talk on AI and ethics by Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state and notorious war criminal, and giving input on the U.S. Department of Defense’s “AI Ethics Principles” for warfare, which embraced “permissibly biased” algorithms and which avoided using the word “fairness” because the Pentagon believes “that fights should not be fair.”
Ochigame also cites Media Lab colleagues who say that Marvin Minsky, who worked with the Lab before his death, was known to say that “an ethicist is someone who has a problem with whatever you have in your mind.” Also troubling is the fact that Ito, and by extension the Media Lab, played a role in shaping White House policy with respect to AI. For instance, Obama called Ito an “expert” on AI and ethics during an interview with him in 2016. Ito, on his conversation with Obama, said the following: “[…] the role of the Media Lab is to be a connective tissue between computer science, and the social sciences, and the lawyers, and the philosophers […] What’s cool is that President Obama gets that.”
If you are Jeffrey Epstein, with a history of illegal and criminal activity, and interested in avoiding the regulation of controversial technologies you feel are necessary to advance your vision of transhumanism/eugenics, financing groups that greatly influence “ethics” policies that helps limit the regulation of those technologies would obviously benefit you.
Ochigame goes on to write:
Thus, Silicon Valley’s vigorous promotion of “ethical AI” has constituted a strategic lobbying effort, one that has enrolled academia to legitimize itself. Ito played a key role in this corporate-academic fraternizing, meeting regularly with tech executives. The MIT-Harvard fund’s initial director was the former “global public policy lead” for AI at Google. Through the fund, Ito and his associates sponsored many projects, including the creation of a prominent conference on “Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency” in computer science; other sponsors of the conference included Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.
Notably, Epstein was tied into these same circles. He was very, very close, not just with Bill Gates, but with several other top Microsoft executives and was also known to have a close relationship with Google’s Sergey Brin, who has recently been subpoenaed in the Epstein-JPMorgan case, as well as Facebook/Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg. Notably, many of these same companies are currently pioneering transhumanist technologies, particularly in healthcare, and are deeply tied to either the military or intelligence, if not both.
The MIT-AI-Military Connection
Chomsky is just one of several prominent academics and intellectuals who were courted by Epstein in an attempt to supercharge the development of technologies that could help bring his controversial obsessions to fruition. Notably, many of these characters, including Chomsky, have had their work – at one point or another – funded by the U.S. military, which has itself long been a major driver of AI research.
For example, Minsky and Danny Hillis, a close associate of Epstein’s in his own right, co-created a DARPA contractor and supercomputer firm called Thinking Machines, which was aimed at creating a “truly intelligent machine. One that can see and hear and speak. A machine that will be proud of us,” according to one company brochure. Minsky was Hillis’ mentor at MIT and the pair sought out Sheryl Handler, who worked for a genetic-engineering start-up at Harvard called the Genetics Institute, to help them create their supercomputer firm.
Thinking Machines, which made poor business decisions routinely from the beginning, was only able to function for as long as it did due to multi-million dollar contracts it had secured from the Pentagon’s DARPA. With the close of Cold War, DARPA sought to use its clout with Thinking Machines to push the company to develop a product that could deal with things like modeling the global climate, mapping the human genome and predicting earthquakes. Subsequent reporting from the Wall Street Journal showed that the agency had been “playing favorites” and Thinking Machine’s “gravy train” abruptly ended due to the bad publicity, subsequently leading to the collapse of the company.
Hillis, around this time, met Jeffrey Epstein. The introduction may have been brokered by former Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold, a friend of Hillis’ who grew close to Epstein in the 1990s and even took Epstein on an official Microsoft trip to Russia. Myhrvold, who was also named as an abuser of the minors Epstein trafficked, was one of the other top Microsoft officials who was close to Epstein beginning in the 1990s. Another was Linda Stone, who later connected Jeffrey Epstein to Joi Ito of MIT’s Media Lab. As previously mentioned, Epstein would later direct the long-time head of Microsoft, Bill Gates, to donate millions to the Media Lab.
Chomsky’s own history at MIT brought him into contact with the military. For instance, during the early 1960s, Chomsky received funding from the Air Force, which aimed to program a computer with Chomsky’s insights about grammar in an attempt to endow it “with the ability to recognize instructions imparted to it in perfectly ordinary English, thereby eliminating a necessity for highly specialized languages that intervene between a man and a computer.” Chomsky later stated of the military funding of his early career that “I was in a military lab. If you take a look at my early publications, they all say something about Air Force, Navy, and so on, because I was in a military lab, the Research Lab for Electronics.”
Chomsky has since denied that military funding shaped his linguistics work in any significant way and has claimed that the military is used by the government “as a kind of a funnel by which taxpayer money was being used to create the hi-tech economy of the future.” However, reports have noted that this particular project was very much tied to military applications. In addition, the man who first recruited Chomsky to MIT in the mid-1950s, Jerome Wiesner, went on to be Chomsky’s boss at MIT for over 20 years as well as “America’s most powerful military scientist.”
To Chomsky’s credit, after this program ended, he became fully, and publicly, committed to anti-war activism. This activism led him, at one point, to consider resigning from MIT, which he declined to do – likely because he was rather quickly granted professorship. As Chris Knight writes, “this meant that instead of resigning, Chomsky’s choice was to launch himself as an outspoken anti-militarist activist even while remaining in one of the US’s most prestigious military labs.”
By staying at MIT, Chomsky chose to maintain his career, in relative proximity to the centers of power he would later become an icon for denouncing. However, it shows that Chomsky, from this time onward, began to make some choices that undermined his radicalism to an extent. Chomsky may have rationalized his decision to stay at MIT in the 1960s because it gave him a better platform from which to espouse his political and anti-war views. It is not unheard of for prominent public figures to make such compromises. However, in light of the recent Epstein revelations and what they appear to signal, it seems that Chomsky, particularly in his later years, may have become too comfortable and too willing to make these types of compromises – ones that a much younger Chomsky would have surely rejected.
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond and Unlimited Hangout.
Antony Blinken and others have much to answer for
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 2, 2023
The corruption engaged in by the Democratic Party leadership appears to be never-ending and no one is ever held accountable. A recent report described how Michael Morell, the former acting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, colluded with Antony Blinken, who was then a senior official in the 2020 Joe Biden presidential campaign, to prepare and find signatories to a letter to discredit those seeking to exploit the emerging Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which was threatening to do real damage to the Biden electoral prospects. Following in the footsteps of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, which sought to use fabricated information from the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump and some of his advisors, Blinken suggested that Morell promote the argument that the laptop story involved Russia and should be dismissed as little more than a disinformation operation ordered by President Vladimir Putin. At the time, there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Russia had had anything to do with spreading fabricated information regarding Hunter Biden or his laptop, but that was regarded as immaterial.
The conspiracy to use a false narrative to corruptly influence the outcome of the election, for that is what it was, was recently revealed in testimony by Morell to the House Judiciary Committee, led by Republican Representative Jim Jordan. Morell described how he had been instrumental in convincing 50 other former colleagues in the intelligence and national security community to sign on to the letter that he had drafted. Morell told the committee that Blinken acting for the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the timing and distribution for the public release of the letter and he described how his two objectives in drafting and releasing the statement was “to help then-Vice President Biden in the upcoming presidential debate and assist him in winning the election.”
Presumably Morell, known for his ambition and ruthlessness, may have expected Biden to appoint him head of the CIA when it came time to hand out rewards after the election was over. Concerning his own political ambitions and inclinations, one recalls how in 2016 Morell wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that was picked up nationally which headlined “I ran the CIA: now I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton.”
By virtue of exploiting his own top level connections inside the Agency, five of Morell’s letter’s signatories were former Directors of the CIA. The letter included the assertion by the signatories that they were “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case… If we are right this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.” It concluded that the laptop allegations exhibited “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
After the letter was prepared, Blinken advised Morell on its most advantageous timing, selecting a date close to the election so it would have maximum impact. The laptop story itself had appeared in the New York Post on October 14th, revealing emails demonstrating how the Vice President Joe Biden appeared to have pressured Ukrainian officials into firing a prosecutor who was investigating corruption in the energy company Burisma. Joe met with a top company official, which led to the granting of a sinecure position on the Burisma board to his influence peddling son Hunter, which paid him $50,000 per month. Material also included on the laptop revealed Hunter’s moral turpitude and drug use.
The Morell rebuttal appeared in Politico five days later, two weeks before the election, on October 19th, and was picked up by the mainstream media all over the United States. Joe Biden also used the material in his debate with Trump on October 22nd, accusing Moscow of targeting his son in an elaborate propaganda operation, claiming that the laptop story was “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan.” Biden referred to the many signatures on the intelligence community letter to declare that “nobody believes” that the laptop is real. And the denial did have a genuine impact on the campaign. After the Morell letter appeared, nearly all major social and news media platforms that had allowed linking to or discussion of the Hunter laptop story either censored the material completely or limited access to it while also posting warnings that the tale had been debunked by knowledgeable experts. Also to be considered is how the Blinken-Morell letter fueled the false perception that Russia and Putin were supporting Trump through clandestine and underhanded means.
Investigative journalist Jim Bovard, writing in the New York Post, reports ironically how Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the closing speech at last month’s Summit for Democracy “piously proclaimed” that “As President Biden has said, democracy doesn’t happen by accident. ‘It requires constant effort.’” And shortly after he became Secretary of State, Blinken had had the nerve to claim that the US government doesn’t sweep problems “under the rug… We deal with them in the daylight, with full transparency.” Indeed, Blinken may have been rewarded by Biden with his cabinet position after his successful plausibly illegal intervention. Also apparently rewarded was a signatory on the Morell letter – Avril Haines who is now Director of National Intelligence.
To be sure, the “honorable” Secretary of State Antony Blinken should now be instead offering his resignation over the exposure of his blatant and possibly successful attempt to change the outcome of an election by conspiring to corrupt the electoral process with false information to sway voters. Bovard opines how the Morell letter defused what had become “the biggest threat to the Biden presidential campaign … Polls show that Biden would have lost the election if the media had accurately reported the contents of that laptop.”
And there’s more to the Hunter Biden story and the corrupt hand of government. An IRS employee has recently turned whistleblower and stated that his Agency has been moving sluggishly on an investigation of Hunter regarding tax evasion relating to foreign income derived largely from Ukraine and China. And he claims that another senior Biden appointed official is involved in the politically motivated foot dragging. No less than Attorney General Merrick Garland has been identified as the unnamed senior official whose sworn testimony to a congressional committee is being challenged in a letter from the whistleblower’s attorney alleging a cover-up of the Hunter Biden criminal investigation. Attorney Mark Lytle wrote that the longtime IRS employee would like to provide information to congressional leaders to “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee” — now identified as Garland — and also to provide details of claimed “preferential treatment” in the criminal probe of Hunter.
One more tale just might illustrate where this country is going under Joe Biden and company, where party and personal interests are all that matter to a leadership which regards “integrity” as a dirty word. In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech or writing that in any way challenges its power, exposes its corruption, reveals its lies, and encourages the citizenry to resist government overreach. The Biden Administration has recently indicted four Americans and charged them with conspiracy to spread Russian propaganda and acting as unregistered Russian agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938. The four are members of the African People’s Socialist Party, which has criticized and opposed US foreign policy since 1971 and currently is against Washington’s promotion of the war against Russia in Ukraine. They potentially face 15 years in prison. This exploitation of quite plausibly unconstitutional “lawfare” is nothing new, as in my own experience the Justice (sic) Department has been moving to silence Americans who write for Russian news sites by threatening them with huge fines or even imprisonment. It is a tendency that is unfortunately not unique to any particular presidential administration which has been building since 9/11, though it has become far worse under Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. In no cases that I know of have any of those pressured or accused actually been receiving direction or secret benefits from the Russian government.
That all means that the definition of illegal speech or writing has been considerably broadened of late. The Biden Administration has been actively waging a campaign to eradicate what it chooses to call “disinformation,” to include those who allegedly share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” with terrorists. It is, in fact, the United States government that is the world’s largest purveyor of disinformation, to include adopting the Israeli practice of defining anyone who resists US hegemony as a terrorist. For example, that is how the Justice Department labels white so-called supremacists as “domestic terrorists.”
And, of course, the government is being assisted and protected due to the fact that nearly all the negative stories about Biden and his crew have predictably been suppressed by the mainstream media, which has become a de facto a partner of the White House disinformation program. Consider, for example, the Seymour Hersh revelations about the hideous “act of war” Nord Stream pipeline destruction and the corruption in Ukraine, or the revelation of disinformation regarding the war in Ukraine itself exposed by leaker Jack Teixeira, or the biolabs in Ukraine, or the incessant lies denigrating Russia and its leadership. And where does one go to for any legitimate criticism of the reckless White House driven direct engagement in Ukraine that could go nuclear even though it is in support of no real national interest? Or the thoughtless threatening of China over Taiwan? And how about the State Department using overseas Embassies to promote “woke-ism” rather than protecting American travelers and interests? All these stories are targeted and diminished deliberately, gone or going, never to be seen again.
So it should surprise no one that the White House and media are right now trying to kill the exposure of how Blinken and Morell turned around the story of the Hunter laptop because that would confirm suspicions that Joe Biden may have actually stolen the 2020 election. And the back story is that the fabricated material planted by the Clinton and Biden campaigns in 2016 and 2020 only succeeded because of the media’s surrender of its traditional role as an exposer of government crimes and evasions. The phony Morell intelligence letter and its possible consequences is a scandal of huge proportions that would once upon a time have ended in resignations, impeachment, and plenty of jail time for all of those involved but Michael Morell and Antony Blinken have not even been touched or even interviewed by the FBI. Nor have the other fifty national security puppets who signed off onto claims made in a document that they must have known to be fabricated for political reasons experienced any discomfort. They have no shame and are all disgraces to the oath of loyalty to the Constitution that they once swore. And the real danger is that if the clueless government and media continue to be able to bury stories they do not approve of, the United States will cease to be a functioning democracy and every election will be little more than a farce.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 2, 2023
More speculation as to the reason behind Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News is raging after it was revealed that Rupert Murdoch held a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weeks beforehand.
Some have argued that Carlson’s vehement opposition to the United States’ deepening involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict was a primary reason as to why he left the network.
Indeed, as we highlighted last week, members of the military-industrial complex celebrated the Fox News host’s departure, with one senior DoD official declaring, “good riddance!”
Now it turns out that Murdoch had been in communication with Zelenskyy back in March.
“Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch held a previously unreported call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this spring in which the two discussed the war and the anniversary of the deaths of Fox News journalists last March,” reports Semafor.
“The Ukrainian president had a similar conversation with Lachlan Murdoch on March 15, which Zelenskyy noted in a little-noticed aside during a national broadcast last month.”
“The conversations came weeks before the Murdochs fired their biggest star and most outspoken critic of American support for Ukraine, Tucker Carlson. Senior Ukrainian officials had made their objections to Carlson’s coverage known to Fox executives, but Zelenskyy did not raise it on the calls with the Murdochs, according to one person familiar with the details of the calls.”
The report also notes that Carlson had previously described Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and that him leaving Fox has now relieved pressure on Republicans who have vehemently supported Ukraine.
As Chris Menahan points out, at around the same time of the Murdoch-Zelensky phone call, Tucker told Redacted host Clayton Morris that he felt he may be fired for his stance on Ukraine.
“I’m saying what I really think and I think it really really matters and if I get fired for it, I don’t know what to say, I’m not going to change,” Carlson said.
He also revealed that a top boss at Fox News texted him to say, “For the record, I really disagree with you on Ukraine!”
Carlson’s opposition to big pharma corruption has also been cited as a reason for his dismissal, given the jaw-dropping amount of advertising money news networks make from pharmaceutical companies.
By Ken Paxton, Attorney General of Texas | May 1, 2023
Attorney General Paxton launched an investigation into the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson concerning whether they engaged in gain-of-function research and misled the public about doing so.
Paxton is also investigating whether the companies misrepresented the efficacy of their Covid-19 vaccines and the likelihood of transmitting Covid-19 after taking the vaccines in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The investigation will also look into the potential manipulation of vaccine trial data. This investigation concerns potentially fraudulent activity that falls outside the scope of legal immunity granted to manufacturers of the Covid-19 vaccine. It will also review the companies’ controversial practice of reporting the metric of “relative risk reduction” instead of “absolute risk reduction” when publicly discussing the efficacy of their vaccines.
In recent years, certain pharmaceutical companies have had record-breaking financial success, driven in part by sales made from products related to the Covid-19 pandemic. This vested interest in the success of these Covid-19 products, combined with reports about the alarming side effects of vaccines, demands aggressive investigation.
Texas’s investigation will force these companies to turn over documents the public otherwise could not access. Attorney General Paxton is committed to discovering the full scope of decision-making behind pandemic interventions forced on the public, especially when a profit motive or political pressure may have compromised Americans’ health and safety. Efforts by the federal government to coerce compliance with unjust and illegal pandemic interventions, even at the cost of citizens’ employment, means this investigation into the scientific and ethical basis on which public health decisions were made is of major significance.
Given the unprecedented political power and influence over public health policies that pharmaceutical companies now wield, it is more important than ever that they are held accountable if they take dangerous, illegal actions to boost their revenues.
“The development of the Covid-19 vaccine, and the representations made by and knowledge of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, are of profound interest to the public’s health and welfare. This investigation aims to discover the truth,” said Attorney General Paxton. “This pandemic was a deeply challenging time for Americans. If any company illegally took advantage of consumers during this period or compromised people’s safety to increase their profits, they will be held responsible. If public health policy was developed on the basis of flawed or misleading research, the public must know. The catastrophic effects of the pandemic and subsequent interventions forced on our country and citizens deserve intense scrutiny, and we are pursuing any hint of wrongdoing to the fullest.”
To read the CID for Pfizer, click here.
To read the CID for Moderna, click here.
To read the CID for Johnson & Johnson, click here.
Strategic Culture Foundation | April 28, 2023
It has become patently obvious to the world that the conflict in Ukraine is a dirty and desperate geopolitical confrontation, despite massive Western media efforts to portray it as something else more noble – the usual charade of chivalry and virtue to disguise naked Western imperialism.
The death and destruction in Ukraine is nothing but a proxy war by the United States and its NATO partners to defeat Russia in a strategic gambit. But the unspoken objective does not end with Russia. The U.S. and its Western imperialist lackeys are driven to push for confrontation with China too.
As if taking on Russia is not reckless enough! The Western powers want to double down on their warmongering with China. This is all because the underlying impetus is for Washington and its Western minions to promote U.S.-led dominance of the global order. Russia and China are the main obstacles to that path of would-be dominance, and hence we see this manic drive for aggression stemming from Washington, the executive power of the Western order.
It should be obvious that while the U.S.-led NATO axis has stoked the war in Ukraine to calamitous heights, this same axis is wantonly inciting tensions with China. This observation alone should be enough to condemn the criminality of Western powers.
This week saw the NATO powers deliver depleted uranium weapons to the Kiev regime, while the United States announced that it would be docking submarine nuclear warheads in South Korea, a move that infuriated China which pointed out that Washington was violating decades-old commitments to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Of course, such perverse provocation is par for the course as far as Washington is concerned. It is done deliberately in a conscious effort to exacerbate tensions and escalate militarism. Peace and security are anathemas to the U.S. (and its minions) whose whole ideological raison d’être is to aggravate war to gratify corporate capitalist addiction – a system that is increasingly bankrupt and dysfunctional, and hence the insane desperation for craving “war-fixes”.
In a scathing speech to the United Nations Security Council this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the conflict in Ukraine cannot be properly resolved without an understanding of the geopolitical context. In other words, the war in the former Soviet republic which erupted last February has bigger causes than what the Western powers and their compliant news media would try to pretend otherwise.
Defense of Ukraine? Defense of democracy? Defense of international law? Defense of national sovereignty? These are some of the laughable claims made by Washington and its allies. One only has to consider the decades of total trashing of the UN Charter and democratic principles by the United States and its rogue partners in their pursuit of criminal wars to realize that their virtue-signaling over Ukraine is a vile joke.
Lavrov’s address to the Security Council was a stunning rebuke of the hypocrisy and criminality of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers, as well as the European Union. His speech was akin to the scene in the classic old movie The Wizard of Oz when the curtain was pulled back on the buffoonish villain for all to see. Any objective observer would agree with the Russian foreign minister’s excoriating survey of modern history and why the war in Ukraine has tragically manifested. Lamentably, if we fail to understand history and the real causes of conflicts, then we are condemned to repeat the horrors.
Ironically, Western leaders have at times revealed the bigger geopolitical agenda with their own misspoken arrogant words. U.S. President Joe Biden had previously blurted out a call for regime change in Moscow while his senior aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, have succumbed to the intoxication of their narcissism and hubris by saying that the purpose of the war in Ukraine is the “defeat of Russia”.
Other NATO senior figures, such as the stupid, conceited Polish leaders and their Baltic buddies, have also come out and stated that the war’s ulterior agenda is to vanquish Russia. The fascist skeletons of their Nazi-collusion past have resurrected their deathly rattles, uncontrollably.
As Lavrov’s address to the Security Council intimates, the systematic violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western partners is a deplorable continuation of the Nazi fascism and imperialist barbarism that was supposed to have been defeated in World War Two. The culmination of the constant, unbridled Western imperialist criminality and its state terrorism is the current war in Ukraine and the growing aggression toward China over Taiwan as a pretext.
In all of this, woefully, the Western public has been flagrantly lied to by their governments and media as to the real nature of the war in Ukraine. American and European citizens have been bilked for hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev whose function is to act as a NATO spear-tip against Russia, and ultimately China when the NATO powers feel they are done with Ukraine. (The latter is a futile ambition, as is becoming increasingly evident.)
Journalists and antiwar activists in the West who highlight the malfeasance over Ukraine are either sacked, vilified, censored, or sanctioned into poverty, or even imprisoned.
Nevertheless, the Western public and the rest of the world are increasingly becoming aware of the odious charade. By definition, charades are inevitably untenable.
The Global South – the majority of the 193 nations at the UN – has had it with Western capitalist hegemony and its outrageous neocolonialist privileges. The incremental dumping of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency for trade is a testament to the historic shift towards a multipolar order in defiance of Western unipolar elitism. The nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia understand that the U.S.-led NATO war in Ukraine is a desperate last-ditch bid to preserve an imperialist global order which should have been eradicated after World War Two with the establishment of the United Nations, but which, regrettably, was not. Because the root cause of imperialism is the AngloAmerican-led Western capitalist order. The end of World War Two, as with World War One, was but a pause in the historical killing machine.
It is now increasingly evident in the light of leaked documents from the Pentagon that the war in Ukraine is a disaster. The Kiev regime is facing defeat at the hands of superior Russian forces even though that regime has been flooded with weapons by the United States and NATO. Great expectations of a Ukrainian victory that were widely predicted by Western leaders and media have been shown to be empty, contemptible lies.
The side-show of this war is a gargantuan racket. Western arms companies have raked in unprecedented profits, while the NATO-backed cabal in Kiev has skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the same Kiev regime that is burning down Orthodox Christian churches, exterminating the Russian language, lionizing World War Two Nazi criminals, and locking up any critical opposition and media.
But the main takeaway is the lies that the United States and Western lackeys, including the entire media industry, have been telling about the proxy war in Ukraine. This war is an imperialist adventure that has been financially ruinous, has destroyed Ukraine, and is driving a dangerous all-out war with Russia and China that could turn into a nuclear armageddon.
We should not be surprised by such blatant lying and deception. President Joe Biden and his administration have been telling barefaced lies to conceal the corruption oozing out of Biden’s own family. Biden and his son Hunter have exploited Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 for personal enrichment. The president has even reportedly got his senior aides to do his bidding to censor intelligence agencies and media from revealing to the public the corruption at the heart of his family. (Risibly, the truth is smeared as Russian or Chinese disinformation!)
The lies that Biden and his administration tell about personal corruption are indelibly coupled with the lies told about the proxy war in Ukraine.
It is increasingly clear that the American public, the European public, and the rest of the world have been duped in multiple ways. The phony war in Ukraine is exposing the deep, stinking well of corruption in this White House. There will be hell to pay.
Press TV – April 29, 2023
Top Democratic lawmakers in the US are holding a fundraising meeting with major arms companies on Thursday as Washington plunges into a budget battle in which concessions to the Pentagon and the defense industry could mean cuts to welfare programs such as food stamps.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, his deputy Pete Aguilar, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair Rep. Suzan Delbene have been selected as the honorees to be invited to the event. The downtown D.C. function ― dubbed a “defense and national security dinner” ― is set to raise funds for the committee, which is the campaign arm for House Democrats and is central to their hopes of regaining the lower chamber of Congress.
Dozens of representatives of Pentagon contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, SpaceX, Palantir, and General Dynamics will attend the event.
The group includes figures who previously worked for congressional Democrats, such as Shana Chandler, director of government relations at General Dynamics. Chandler spent 15 years as chief of staff for Rep. Adam Smith, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and another co-host of Thursday’s event.
The event could provide a significant signal about the priorities of the House Democrats as they prepare for the 2024 elections and battle Republicans who are demanding spending cuts in exchange for passing critical legislation. It could be a disappointing message to those who want the party to support social justice and progressive reform.
A senior congressional aide said news of the fundraiser set off alarm bells among staffers, and the event could be a stark example of senior Democratic leaders saying one thing but doing another. Democrats claim to support reining in out-of-control defense spending and criticize Republicans for serving America’s most powerful corporate interests while doing exactly that themselves.
In the coming months, Democratic lawmakers are expected to make key decisions that will affect the US defense industry as they fight Republican efforts to cut government spending.
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he wants comprehensive cuts. But signals from influential Republicans and analysis by budget experts suggest that McCarthy will protect the Pentagon budget.
Democrats can also demand limits on Pentagon spending to protect other government agencies. However, the defense industry will lobby hard to prevent such a development.
The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 percent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender.
The 0.7 percent real-terms increase in US spending in 2022 would have been even greater had it not been for the highest levels of inflation since 1981.
“The increase in the USA’s military spending in 2022 was largely accounted for by the unprecedented level of financial military aid it provided to Ukraine,” said Dr Nan Tian, SIPRI Senior Researcher. “Given the scale of US spending, even a minor increase in percentage terms has a significant impact on the level of global military expenditure.”
US financial military aid to Ukraine totaled $19.9 billion in 2022. Although this was the largest amount of military aid given by any country to a single beneficiary in any year since the cold war, it represented only 2.3 percent of total US military spending.
In 2022 the USA allocated $295 billion to military operations and maintenance, $264 billion to procurement and research and development, and $167 billion to military personnel.
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 27, 2023
A former US Army psychological warfare officer says that Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News because of the regime’s agenda to maintain an “uninformed semi lobotomized quasi retarded population.”
The remarks were made by US counter-terror expert Scott Bennett.
Carlson and Fox News “parted ways” on Monday with speculation still raging as to the specific reason why the network canned its highest rated and most popular host.
According to Bennett, Carlson posed too much of a threat to institutional power because he turned Americans into proper “researchers and thinkers”.
Carlson offered an “intellectualism, truthfulness, and an analytical depth that no other news personality has ever done in the history of the United States as far back as I can remember,” said Bennett.
Tucker needed to be “silenced” because he represented too big a threat to the “powers and principalities, institutions and agendas that seek an unenlightened uninformed semi lobotomized quasi retarded population that do not question, do not research, do not analyze but simply digest and follow instructions,” according to Bennett.
“Tucker Carlson also exposed the fraud and money laundering racketeering crimes of FTX and the Democrat Party in Ukraine involving the United States government. He exposed the US biochemical labs in Ukraine and their connection to the Democrat Party, President Barack Obama, Vice President Biden, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates, and other US government agencies and pharmaceutical companies,” Bennett told Sputnik.
The ex-host’s anti-regime rhetoric “could no longer be tolerated by the corrupt American media and political establishment,” said Bennett, adding that his exit signals “the death of American media”.
The former US army psyops officer suggested that Senator Chuck Schumer had threatened to utilize the CIA and the FBI to deploy secret government operations against Tucker to get him off air unless he was fired.
Schumer previously called for Carlson to be taken off air after he broadcast footage showing the January 6 ‘riot’ leaders were actually allowed into the Capitol and chaperoned around by authorities.
As we highlighted earlier, one of the reasons behind Tucker’s dismissal is a lawsuit fired by former show producer Abby Grossberg, who claims she was bullied and subjected to sexist and anti-semitic harassment.
However, Grossberg’s own lawyer revealed that she has never even met Carlson.
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 26, 2023
Andrew Bridgen, a U.K. member of Parliament this month warned his fellow parliamentarians that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) proposed new pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) represents “a huge grab of power” by “unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.”
The WHO is promoting a pandemic treaty and IHR amendments to its existing members to increase the global health organization’s power during health emergencies.
In Bridgen’s 18-minute speech — since viewed by almost 100,000 people — delivered April 17 during a parliamentary debate, Bridgen called for a referendum, or public vote, on the WHO’s proposals.
People in the U.K. “do not want to be ruled” by an unelected group of people, Bridgen said. “We should have a referendum, because sovereignty belongs to the people. It’s not ours to give away.”
The debate was triggered after 156,086 U.K. constituents signed a petition calling for the U.K. government “to commit to not signing any international treaty on pandemic prevention and preparedness established by the WHO, unless this is approved through a public referendum.”
Bridgen pointed out that WHO employees are exempt from taxes and have diplomatic immunity — meaning they are protected from prosecution.
He said the WHO pandemic treaty and its IHR amendments seek to take “huge powers” away from “this Parliament and every other Parliament around the world.”
“These two instruments would fundamentally reset the relationship between citizens and sovereign state — not only in this country but also around the whole world,” he added.
The proposals would empower “unelected, unaccountable, top-down, supernational” officials to “impose sweeping, legally binding” orders on member states — including forcing companies to manufacture and export certain medical treatments or shutting companies down “regardless of what the local people think,” Bridgen said.
Bridgen said the WHO’s proposals are skewed toward aggregating power in the hands of WHO officials — rather than the hands of democratic governments — because they would grant the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ph.D., the power to decide “when the pandemic or the emergency is over and when he’ll possibly give us the power back.”
Bridgen said he had “grave” concerns about who is “actually running and controlling” the WHO and its current initiatives.
The WHO consists of its 192 member states — “basically the whole of the U.N. membership, excluding Liechtenstein and the Holy See” — but it now receives 86% of its funding from non-member states, Bridgen said.
The WHO’s second-largest donor is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the fifth-largest donor is Gavi.
“You have to think: Why are they doing this?” Bridgen said, adding:
“They [the Gates Foundation and Gavi] are also the biggest donors — or biggest investors — in pharmaceuticals and the experimental mRNA technology which was so profitable for those who produced it during the last pandemic.”
Bridgen urged his fellow lawmakers to review the WHO proposals in great detail.
“They [the proposals] need to be considered very strongly. Sticking your head in the stand isn’t going to do it,” he said. “It won’t do for my constituents,” he added.
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.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 25, 2023
As the opioid crisis in the U.S. grew, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, an advisory group that helped shape the federal government’s response to the crisis, accepted millions of dollars in donations from the Sackler family — owners of Purdue Pharma, the producers of OxyContin.
The donations occurred despite ongoing legal battles — and a number of settlements — involving Purdue Pharma in recent years, and as other public health entities, including the World Health Organization (WHO), severed ties to the drugmaker, The New York Times reported.
The new revelations come as questions emerge about the lack of transparency regarding how money from several opioid-related settlements has been used by state governments, and the federal government’s lack of oversight in connection to this issue.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 564,000 Americans died as a result of opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2020. The opioid epidemic costs the U.S. economy approximately $78.5 billion each year, according to the CDC.
Strong ties between the National Academies and the Sacklers
Several members of the Sackler family, including Dr. Raymond Sackler and his wife, Beverly Sackler, the couple’s foundation, and Dame Jillian Sackler and her husband Arthur, contributed about $19 million to the National Academies since 2000, according to the Times.
The National Academies’ treasurer report for 2021 stated that these funds were invested and had grown to more than $31 million.
The donations, however, appeared to remain under the radar for members of the National Academies — and the general public — until recently.
According to the Times, the Sackler donations emerged as “an internal issue for the advisory group in 2019, when members of the governing council were briefed about the money” and were reportedly “outraged.”
After internal meetings, the National Academies “quietly removed the Sackler name” from conferences and awards the family had sponsored.
Also in 2019, an article in The BMJ stated that the National Academies had “not disclosed that one of its presidents, and members of a panel it convened to advise on prescribing opioids, had recent links to the drug industry.”
Potential conflicts of interest between Purdue Pharma and public health organizations are not limited to the National Academies. The WHO, for instance, was accused of such a conflict of interest and as a result, in 2019, retracted two opioid policy reports.
However, the Times reported that, unlike the WHO, “the National Academies has not conducted a public review to determine if the Sackler donations influenced its policymaking, despite issuing two major reports that influenced national opioid policy.”
One of those reports, issued in 2011, continues to be used by federal public health agencies as the basis for opioid policy decisions — even though, according to the Times, the report is “now largely discredited.”
According to the Times, the report “described chronic pain that limited function and cost the nation billions of dollars in lost salary and wages.” Later estimates from the CDC, “defined chronic pain by different categories of severity, saying the condition affects 7% to 21% of Americans.”
“Regulatory, legal, educational and cultural barriers inhibit the medically appropriate use of opioid analgesics,” the report argued.
The report claimed that approximately 100 million Americans suffered from chronic pain, “an estimate that proved to be highly inflated,” the Times stated.
However, this report helped influence aggressive opioid sales campaigns on the part of drugmakers and influenced the approval of “at least one highly potent opioid” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The 2011 report was issued even as the White House stated that the U.S. was facing an opioid addiction crisis.
In the years preceding the publication of the report, Purdue Pharma lobbied for legislation — which passed in 2010 — that would recognize pain as a significant public health problem. Purdue also called for the National Academies to issue similar recognition. Meetings between Purdue Pharma lobbyists and members of the academies followed.
A 2014 investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today found that within three years of working on the report, nine of the 19 people on the panel that produced it had financial connections to makers of narcotic painkillers.
According to the Times, the report did not disclose any conflicts of interest involving its author — nor did a 2014 article published by the National Academies in the JAMA journal, explaining how the committee arrived at the “100 million Americans” figure.
Several members of the committee that produced the 2011 report directly or indirectly received money from Purdue Pharma — including Dr. Richard Payne, then-president of the American Pain Society, who received more than $900,000, and Myra Christopher, whose nonprofit received $934,770.
Separately, in 2016 — months after the National Academies received a $10 million donation from members of the Sackler family and with opioid-related deaths on the rise — the FDA, under pressure from Congress, called on the Academies to “form a committee to issue new recommendations on opioids,” according to the Times.
Dr. Robert Califf, FDA deputy commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco in 2016 (now FDA commissioner), turned to the National Academies for guidance. Notably, Califf was elected to the National Academy of Medicine later that year.
According to the Times, Califf cited the “100 million” figure in an article he and other FDA officials published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which stated that the National Academies bring “an unbiased and highly respected perspective on these issues that can help us revise our framework.”
Members of the committee subsequently formed had multiple conflicts of interest, which were first identified by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in a 2016 letter to Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine. The BMJ also examined those conflicts of interest, in a 2018 article.
One member of the committee, for instance, who had received funding from Purdue, characterized opioid addiction using the term “pseudoaddiction.”
Ultimately, four members of the committee were replaced, but the final document produced by the committee remains a cornerstone of the opioid policy currently pursued by the FDA and Califf.
The “100 million” figure was previously invoked by then-FDA commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg in 2014, upon the agency’s approval of a “controversial and potent opioid called Zohydro,” according to the Times. Zohydro was later pulled from the market.
And in 2012, Purdue’s lawyers used the “100 million” figure as part of a Senate inquiry, citing it as evidence that pain was “untreated or under-treated,” the Times reported.
According to the Times, this is not the only instance in which the National Academies have “come under criticism for lapses over disclosing conflicts of interest,” citing similar instances involving reports on biotechnology, genetically engineered crops and pharmaceutical pricing.
Similarly, donations that were provided by the Sacklers to other institutions drew scrutiny — and in several instances, action on the part of those entities.
For instance, Tufts University released a review of possible conflicts of interest pertaining to pain research funded by Purdue Pharma, as part of a broader relationship with the institution which included Purdue executives delivering lectures to Tufts students.
According to the Times, Tufts and other academic institutions, such as Brown University, have redirected financial donations received from the Sacklers, now using them “to address the prevention or treatment of addiction.”
Billions of dollars in settlements from opioid producers
Multiple pharmaceutical companies and drug store chains have reached settlements stemming from their production and marketing of opioids and painkillers — and their subsequent contribution to the opioid addiction crisis.
Information provided by OpioidSettlementTracker.com reveals that these settlements involve companies such as Johnson & Johnson ($26 billion), the “big three” drugstore chains — CVS, Walgreens and Walmart ($13.8 billion), Teva ($4.25 billion), Allergan, now part of AbbVie ($2.37 billion), Mallinckrodt ($1.7 billion) and Endo ($450 million).
According to the Times, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine “continued to accept funds from some members of the Sackler family, including those involved with Purdue Pharma,” even as the opioid crisis raged on and its impacts on American society became increasingly apparent.
The donations totaled approximately $19 million — but the National Academies “have kept quiet” about their decision to accept these funds, the Times reported, adding that they have “largely avoided such scrutiny” and continue to advise the federal government on opioids and painkillers.
This is despite the fact that Purdue Pharma has twice pled guilty to federal criminal charges connected to its marketing of OxyContin, in 2007 and 2020, and has faced a spate of lawsuits. While none of those lawsuits has gone to trial, many of those cases have been settled out of court.
Purdue Pharma continued to promote OxyContin to doctors as recently as 2018. By then, the Sackler family had amassed an estimated $10.7 billion from sales of the drug. However, the family has repeatedly denied any responsibility for the nation’s opioid crisis.
The National Academy of Medicine — formerly known as the Institute of Medicine — is a nongovernmental institution chartered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to independently advise the nation on issues related to science and medicine, according to the Times. New members are elected each year.
Despite the nongovernmental status of the National Academies, the White House and Congress rely on its advice to help shape the federal response to the opioid crisis. This advice is delivered via policy recommendations, the drafting of reports and the organizing of expert panels, the Times reports.
Moreover, according to the Times, the National Academies “receives 70 percent of its budget from federal funding.” Some of the remaining 30%, however, comes from prescription drug makers like Purdue Pharma.
In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $225 million settlement with Purdue Pharma regarding a program through which Purdue representatives “intensified their marketing of OxyContin to extreme, high-volume prescribers … causing healthcare providers to prescribe opioids for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion.”
However, other lawsuits against Purdue Pharma regarding OxyContin have taken a circuitous route through the courts. The same October 2020 DOJ statement also announced an $8.3 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma for its role in perpetuating the opioid epidemic.
At the time, the Times noted “it is unlikely the company will end up paying anything close to the $8 billion negotiated in the settlement deal” because “it is in bankruptcy court and the federal government will have to take its place in a long line of creditors.”
This prediction appears to have been confirmed by later developments in the case.
A Sept. 1, 2021, settlement would have required members of the Sackler family to pay $4.5 billion over nine years to resolve civil lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, but did not require the family to admit any responsibility for the crisis. It also included a compensation fund that would pay victims of the opioid epidemic between $3,500 and $48,000.
Immunity would extend to members of the family and to hundreds of foundations, trusts, business partners, attorneys, lobbyists, Purdue subsidiaries and other entities. Purdue would be dissolved and re-established as a public benefit corporation, with profits from sales of OxyContin and other products used to fund addiction treatment and prevention programs.
As part of that settlement, Dr. Richard Sackler, the longtime president and board member of Purdue Pharma, was deposed — in what may be the only instance where he or other family members have testified under oath in relation to the opioid crisis.
Throughout the eight-hour deposition, Sackler denied any wrongdoing on the part of his company or his family.
In December 2021, a federal court threw out this settlement on the basis that the bankruptcy court hearing the case lacked the authority to grant the Sacklers future legal immunity.
In March 2022, the Purdue settlement amount increased to $6 billion after nine state attorneys general agreed to drop their objection to an immunity deal, with the additional funds to be directed to programs designed to tackle the opioid crisis. However, the immunity provided to the Sacklers would remain in place for civil cases.
The federal government would still be able to pursue criminal charges against members of the Sackler family if it wished, NPR reported.
However, some plaintiffs challenged his settlement. They included Canadian local governments and First Nations; two mothers of sons who died of opioid overdoses; and the U.S. Trustee Program, an arm of the DOJ responsible for overseeing the administration of bankruptcy cases and private trustees.
In April 2022, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held a hearing connected to these appeals. Few developments have followed since. The case is still pending and may ultimately end up before the Supreme Court.
The $225 million settlement reached in 2020 with the DOJ remains in place. Separately, the Sackler family contributed $75 million to Oklahoma in 2019 as part of a settlement, and reached a $24 million settlement with Kentucky in 2015.
Questions over how opioid settlement funds are being allocated
Despite settlements totaling many billions of dollars, questions remain over how these funds are actually being allocated — and about the federal government’s lack of oversight on this matter.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the Biden administration “promised to play a key role in ensuring opioid settlement funds went toward tackling the nation’s addiction crisis,” including a plan to appoint an “opioid crisis accountability coordinator.”
However, according to the KFF, “as billions of dollars actually start to flow and state and local leaders make crucial decisions on how to spend the more than $50 billion windfall to tackle this entrenched public health crisis, the federal government has gone mostly quiet.”
For instance, no opioid crisis accountability coordinator has been hired. KFF also notes that “The Office of National Drug Control Policy has not released public statements about the settlements in over a year” and “the settlement funds are mentioned just twice in a 150-page national strategy to reduce drug trafficking and overdose deaths.”
Even though, according to KFF, “the federal government is not legally obligated to engage in the discussion,” as lawsuits against opioid makers have been filed by states, “there is an expectation that the federal government, including the nation’s leading agencies on mental health and addiction, should play a role.”
Parallels are drawn with previous settlements with Big Tobacco. According to KFF, tobacco companies agreed in 1998 “to pay states billions annually for as long as they continued selling cigarettes.”
However, no restrictions were placed on how the funds would be used, “and much of it went to plugging state budget gaps, filling potholes, and even subsidizing tobacco farmers.” KFF notes: “Today, less than 3% of the annual payouts support anti-smoking programs.”
Questions about transparency at the state level are also raised by KFF, which states that “governments are required to report only on the 15% of the money that can be used for things unrelated to the epidemic, like offsetting budget shortfalls or fixing old roads,” and noting that as of March 28, “only three states and counties had filed such reports.”
The same KFF report, citing OpioidSettlementTracker.com, notes that “only 12 states have committed to detailed public reporting of all their spending.”
Even though the opioid settlements, unlike previous settlements with tobacco companies, contain a provision that at least 85% of the money states will receive must be spent on “opioid-related expenses,” defining such expenses has proven to be vague and confusing.
For example, KFF states, citing real-world examples, that “defining those concepts depends on stakeholders’ views — and state politics. To some, it might mean opening more treatment sites. To others, buying police cruisers.”
Moreover, “enforcement of the 85% standard is, oddly, left to the companies that paid out the money,” KFF stated, adding that “They are unlikely to be vigilant,” according to legal experts.
It also remains unclear whether the federal government will still attempt to claim repayment for Medicaid expenses that have been linked to opioid addiction, according to KFF. In 2019, these expenses were estimated to total $23 billion.
That same year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services attempted to recoup part of Oklahoma’s $270 million settlement with Purdue Pharma. However, it remains unclear if there will be a broader push on the part of the federal government for such repayments.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | April 26, 2023
The mood in Germany has become outright ugly as citizens reel from high inflation and fear government policy initiatives that would bankrupt many if enacted. Business sentiment among small to medium companies is souring rapidly.
Among these initiatives is the current green-socialist government’s plan to force citizens and businesses to wean themselves off oil and gas heating beginning already next year. All the despair now risks morphing into anger and civil unrest, warns one opposition leader.
Uprisings among the poplulation
According to the new, rapidly emerging Austrian alternative media news site AUF 1, Saxony’s Minister President Michael Kretschmer of the CDU Christian Democrats warns of potential unrest and vehemently criticized the government’s current climate policy.
Saxony’s Kretschmer even explicitly warned of “uprisings among the population” and that “the government’s new plans would lead to ‘deindustrialisation and riots’,” AUF 1 reports. “His criticism was aimed above all at the Building Energy Act pushed by the Green Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck.”
Currently Habeck is sharply under attack for cronyism as his ministry funnels funds and influential positions to friends and family, many of whom are professionally unqualified for the positions.
“Ecological madness”
AUF 1 reminds that the proposed government‘s green policies “will force ruinous retrofitting on millions of homeowners.” and that many citizens would simply not be able to afford the required renovation of their house or apartments. Homeowners would face renovation costs of at least tens of thousands of euros.”
Kretschmer called the Greens’ policy “ecological madness”.
The Austrian AUF 1 calls the governments policies “completely misguided” and that they will lead to “massive relocations of companies away from Germany.”
By Kyle Anzalone | Libertarian Institute | April 26, 2023
Legislation introduced by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) which calls on the White House to release documents related to the war in Ukraine passed a voice vote on Wednesday. With debate on the resolution divided along party lines, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to vote on the measure on Friday.
The bill, H.Res.300, would urge President Joe Biden to grant lawmakers access to “all documents indicating any plans for current or future military assistance to Ukraine,“ as well as any material “indicating whether any United States Armed Forces, including special operations forces, are currently deployed in Ukraine.”
Since Russia invaded its neighbor 14 months ago, Congress has authorized over $100 billion in aid for Ukraine. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Washington has provided $80 billion in military and financial aid throughout the conflict.
Though support for the resolution was limited to Republicans, it passed a voice vote and is set for a full committee vote on Friday. Several Democrats attacked the legislation during Wednesday’s debate.
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) blasted the measure as “divisive and ill-advised,” claiming “It is a partisan political ploy, and the height of legislative irresponsibility that jeopardizes the national security of the United States, of our Europe allies and partners as well as the courageous Ukrainian people.”
Manning took issue with the resolution because it threatened a consensus in Congress that support for Kiev must be unwavering and indefinite. “The entire Congress has remained resolutely bipartisan for Ukraine as it fights against Russian aggression,” the lawmaker continued, adding “Measures like this put bipartisanship in jeopardy.”
She also asserted that the bill amplified Russian propaganda and claimed that reporting on legislation “favorably“ would be “irresponsible.”
“It plays directly into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s hands by seeking to force the disclosures of all present and future military plans,” Manning said. “Passage of this measure would represent a gift to Putin and his Kremlin cronies and provide visibility into the plans our military and intelligence leaders strive to protect at all costs.”
However, she failed to explain how increased congressional oversight for US military policy in Ukraine could actually help the Russians on the battlefield. Congressman Daryl Issa (R-CA) said any documents provided to the House would not be made public, and that “every bit of the information requested could be and would be held at the Select Intelligence Committee.”
Further, dozens of documents detailing weak points in Ukraine’s defenses were alleged to have been leaked by a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman over the course of several months on Discord.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said that it was not an appropriate time for transparency regarding the billions in US tax dollars pouring into Ukraine. “Timing matters when this committee actions,” he argued. “There will be a time in insisting [on oversight], but now is not that time.”
Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL) argued in favor of the resolution, saying it could prevent “mission creep,” referring to a phenomenon in which military or policy objectives gradually shift over time, often becoming vague, ill-defined or impossible to achieve. The concept was frequently used to describe the US occupation of Afghanistan, which began as a counterterrorism operation and later expanded into a sprawling, poorly supervised nation-building project.
Mills went on to say that the bill is not about preventing support for Ukraine or empowering Putin, but merely better oversight.
When Gaetz introduced H.Res.300 earlier this month, he emphasized transparency. “The Biden Administration and other allied countries have been misleading the world on the state of the war in Ukraine,” he said, calling for “total transparency from this administration to the American people when they are gambling war with a nuclear adversary by having special forces operating in Ukraine.”
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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