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Kremlin responds to claim of secret rocket purchases

RT | April 11, 2023

The Kremlin has rejected a claim that it was planning to secretly acquire rockets from Egypt. The allegations were said to have come from leaked US intelligence files.

“This looks like yet another false story, as there are many of them today [in the media]. That is how one should treat such reports,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a phone call with journalists on Tuesday.

The Washington Post cited a US intelligence document on Monday that claimed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had ordered the production of up to 40,000 rockets so they could be discreetly shipped to Russia.

El-Sisi was quoted as telling officials that the operation should be secret “to avoid problems with the West.” He also reportedly mentioned plans to supply Moscow with artillery rounds and gunpowder.

According to the Post, the document was among alleged classified Pentagon files that were dumped online earlier this year and unearthed by news organizations last week.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid told the Post that Cairo remains committed to non-involvement in the Ukraine conflict and to “maintain equal distance with both sides.”

“We continue to urge both parties to cease hostilities and reach a political solution through negotiations,” Zeid said.

Al Qahera News, meanwhile, cited an Egyptian official who claimed that the Post’s story is “nonsense that is not based on truth.”

Egypt has maintained close ties with Moscow since Soviet times and is one of the top buyers of Russian weapons. At the same time, the country has good relations with the US, as the two states share a history of security cooperation. The US has also provided military assistance to Egypt.

The US and its allies have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, aiming to cut its export revenues.

Sergey Chemezov – the head of state-run Russian company Rostec, which oversees the work of several defense manufacturers – said in January that the production of munitions has been substantially increased. He stated that “the talk… about Russia running out of rockets and rounds is complete nonsense.”

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

‘Pentagon Leak’ Shows US Dragging Allies Into War With Russia

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.04.2023

South Korea, the UK, Israel, and Bulgaria have all rushed to deny the veracity of the alleged Pentagon leak. The dump not only exposed Washington’s possible plans and routine spying, but also cast a shadow on its allies, with Seoul, London, Tel Aviv, and Sofia branding the batch as “false.”

The US Justice Department on April 10 opened an investigation into the purported leak of US Department of Defense intelligence documents. The trove of apparently classified files contains the Pentagon’s assessments of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Washington’s efforts to persuade its allies to jump on its proxy war bandwagon.

“I think [the documents are] extraordinary, for a number of reasons,” Professor Joe Siracusa, US political expert and dean of Global Futures, Curtin University, told Sputnik. “Number one, most leaks in the past we’ve learned about in retrospect. These documents are fresh. Some of them are barely 40 days old and tell us exactly the debates that are going on in South Korea. South Korea doesn’t like to pass on ammunition to third parties, for example. And there’s a debate within South Korea about the pressure from the Americans. And there it is. It’s all in the documents. It’s not even in the South Korean media. What’s extraordinary about this is how recent these documents are. And it’s not like Snowden, or Chelsea Manning, or Julian Assange, [where] sometimes the documents are two or three years afterwards, or even in my day, the Pentagon Papers were many years afterwards. These are very fresh and, I think, very embarrassing.”

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

The much-discussed Pentagon docs showed that South Korea found itself between a rock and a hard place after agreeing to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles. The problem was that Seoul was worried that Washington would divert munitions to the Kiev regime. The Asian nation’s official policy prohibits it from providing lethal weapons to countries at war. In addition, the report concerning South Korea’s back-and-forths was based on signals intelligence, meaning the US has been spying on its ally, as per The New York Times.

While the leak risks triggering tensions between Washington and Seoul, it may simultaneously backfire on longstanding relations between South Korea and Russia. Addressing the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Seoul against arming the Kiev regime. The Russian president suggested that Seoul would be similarly disappointed if Moscow had resumed nuclear cooperation with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Likewise, Israel appears to be displeased after the disclosure of potential scenarios in which the US believes Tel Aviv would supply Ukraine with lethal weapons. One of the scenarios, eloquently titled the “Turkish Model,” envisages that Israel could supply defense systems to Kiev through a third party while still calling for dialogue between Ukraine and Russia. The Pentagon’s list of Israeli weapons supposedly includes Barak 8 missiles, the Spyder air defense system, and Spike anti-tank missiles.

The apparently leaked report hypothesized that Tel Aviv would provide lethal weapons to Ukraine in the event of a diplomatic crisis with Moscow stemming from Russia’s growing ties with Iran. Moscow’s reinforcement of Syria’s air defenses resulting in the downing of Israeli aircraft could also drive a wedge between Israel and Russia, as per the document.

Yet another scenario raised by the report envisions US cooperation with Israel to prepare action against Tehran in order to persuade the Israelis to arm the Kiev regime.

While Israeli administrations have avoided sending lethal weapons to Kiev, the Israeli media alleged in November 2022 that Tel Aviv had agreed to fund several million dollars’ worth of supplies of “strategic materials” to Ukraine. The Israeli authorities allegedly asked participants of the deal to keep it on the hush so as not to anger Moscow. Media also suggested that Israel is covertly aiding Ukraine with intelligence and that Tel Aviv had agreed that NATO members could supply the Kiev regime with weapons systems containing Israeli components like electro-optical and fire-control systems.

To frustrate Israeli officials even further, the alleged Pentagon documents suggested that the leadership of the Israeli secret service Mossad had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in protests against the nation’s judicial reform, advocated by the Netanyahu government.

The much-discussed docs further alleged that a Russian fighter jet “nearly shot down” a British spy plane off the coast of Crimea on September 29, 2022. At the time, UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace did not describe the incident as “a near-shootdown,” but called it a “malfunction,” adding that he had spoken with senior Russian defense officials about it.

As per the US press, the apparent episode shows that despite their bellicose rhetoric, Western military officials are trying hard to avoid being drawn directly into conflict with Moscow.

When it comes to Bulgaria, the country allegedly offered to donate its MiG-29s to Kiev, as per “the Pentagon leak.” On April 10, the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense asserted to the public that it had not held any talks on the provision of MiG-29 jets to Ukraine. “Such a decision would lead to a deficit of capabilities which is contrary to the country’s Constitution,” the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense stated.

Who’s Behind the ‘Leak’?

As per the American press, US officials have confirmed that the Pentagon docs “appear to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs” compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, adding that at least one had been modified from the original at some point. Nonetheless, the media highlighted, citing US officials, that the apparent authenticity of the documents “is not an indication of their accuracy.”

“When they first came out, the Pentagon denied they were real,” Siracusa said. “There was a little fairy tale about these may be fake documents. Well, they are not fake documents. Someone might have fooled around with a sentence or two. They’re real documents and they come from the top Joint Chiefs, from various PowerPoint displays or whatever it is. Somebody stole these and passed them out. And so you ask yourself, were these passed on to show that the Ukrainians are probably now losing the war or were they passed on as a signal to other people? I mean, is this somebody who’s trying to bring peace to the region? I’m very interested in why people take this information. Because taking this information and publishing it is treason.”

The US political expert wonders as to who leaked the documents and what goals they are pursuing. According to Siracusa, they could be motivated by a higher humanitarian purpose or “might have just simply been released as a childhood or as a pubescent conflict between two kids who can get into the system who were playing games.” At the same time, someone in the Pentagon may have released these to show the American people that the US proxy war in Ukraine is doomed and they are trying to sweeten the pill, showing in advance that there were preconditions for a defeat, the professor presumed.

“I’m very curious about who released them and why,” he said. “Right now, people say there’s not much importance in them. That’s not true at all, because the very fact that they were released suggests to me that there are leaks at the highest levels of the Pentagon. And when things escape the Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings, I have to ask myself, ‘Well, why did that happen?’ Or maybe it actually happened with somebody on the Joint Chiefs who’s very unhappy about this situation. All kinds of things are whirling on beneath the actual story itself. We don’t know the real story yet. But I think, once we find out, if we find out who leaked this and why, I think we’ll even have a bigger story than we have today.”

Remarkably, the apparent leak followed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s Nord Stream bombshell, which detailed how US and Norwegian operatives axed the underwater pipelines at the request of the Biden administration. In his follow-up articles on Substack, Hersh hinted that disgruntled CIA officials could be behind the leak of the Nord Stream plot. However, the US mainstream press almost completely ignored the veteran journalist’s story, in contrast to the latest Pentagon dump, which has been widely disseminated by the Western press over the past week.

US Proxy War in Ukraine is De Facto Direct Involvement

The NYT called the Pentagon leaks a “nightmare for the Five Eyes” intelligence alliance. However, Siracusa does not believe that the apparent leak will pose a challenge to the Anglophone bloc. As per him, it won’t impact the bloc’s intelligence sharing. However, when it comes to other allies of Washington, the unfolding scandal has definitely hit a raw nerve.

“I think The New York Times saying that this is going to have an enormous impact on the Five Eyes is an exaggeration,” Siracusa said. “I mean, the Five Eyes are on board anyway, and they’ll put up with it. But I think it would be a little disturbing to me if I were a leader of a government to find out that my deepest conversations with my military chiefs was being reported in The New York Times. I would just wonder ‘How reliable is an ally that allows top secret information, these conversations, my words, your words, to be published in print for the world to see and for my enemies to use against me.’ I think if you were a friend of the United States, tonight you’d be a little more nervous than you were yesterday.”

To complicate matters further, the leak pertains to the US and NATO’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine and their attempts to involve more nations in their fold, thus putting the latter in dire straits. According to Siracusa, “these leaked documents (…) show that America is guiding the war, it’s providing targeting information, satellite information” to hit Russian troops and positions. The professor highlighted that he regards “a proxy war as a real war.” “This is direct involvement,” he stressed.

“I do not approve of American proxy involvement in this war. And when I find out that America is playing a leading role, continuing the war, because the longer this war goes on, the more people who are going to die, and it’s going to have no purpose at the end, because Russia will get the Donbass and Crimea, all the rest of it. I mean, there is nothing that Zelensky or the Americans can do to change the outcome, that they could have had one year ago. Now I’m looking at direct American involvement in a war that the United States says it’s not directly involved in. Well, look, that’s a lie,” Siracusa concluded.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Kiev to run out of its anti-air missiles

By Lucas Leiroz | April 11, 2023

Apparently, it is increasingly difficult to hide the catastrophic situation of Kiev’s war arsenal. According to a major Western media outlet, the neo-Nazi regime will run out of most of its anti-air missiles by next month. The source of the newspaper would be an alleged leaked Pentagon’s document. The case shows once again how unfavorable the military scenario of the conflict is for the Ukrainian forces.

The subject was discussed in a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal. According to the outlet, documents leaked on the Pentagon’s official social networks would have exposed an extremely pessimistic forecast about the future of the Ukrainian armed forces, pointing to the nearly total exhaustion of Kiev’s anti-aircraft defense capacity. Anti-air missiles are expected to run out in May, which will further complicate the Ukrainian situation and boost demand for new NATO weapons packages in order to prolong the alliance’s proxy war.

The forecast is based on a calculation taking into account the recent numbers of the Ukrainian army. Currently, Kiev is expending about 69 Buk missiles and 200 S-300 missiles a month to maintain its defense positions against the Russian air attacks. With these numbers, it is most likely that the Buk missiles will run out in early April and that the stock of S-300s will expire by May 3rd, according to Pentagon’s officials in the leaked document.

Indeed, some measures to mitigate the effects of Ukrainian anti-aircraft weakness have already been taken by Western forces. Kiev received three Iris-T anti-aircraft systems from Germany, in addition to eight American NASAMS systems. However, these devices allow a limited number of launches, which do not cover as much territory as the S-300 missiles. This limited aid has made it difficult to efficiently supply new Western missiles to Ukraine, making Kiev still heavily dependent on Soviet-era launch systems.

In this sense, a new wave of broad military support would be needed to overcome the Ukrainian deficit. The US military, according to what is exposed in the revealed paper, estimate that the necessary number will reach 16 Irist-T or NASAMS batteries and up to 12 Patriot or SAMP-T batteries. It is necessary to remember that recently the American president Joe Biden had already authorized the sending of a Patriot battery, at the same time that Germany, France and Italy promised to supply a SAMP-T system to the neo-Nazi regime. However, this equipment has not yet reached Ukraine, which is why the situation of Kiev’s defense has not yet improved.

Since late 2022, requests for military aid focused on anti-aircraft defense have been constant in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s speeches. He considers this type of equipment a “number one priority”, and his advisors have also requested, in addition to anti-missile systems, the well-known US F-16 fighter jets, which have been repeatedly banned by the US government. Some pro-Ukrainian analysts believe that these aid packages would be a kind of “game changer”, but renowned experts rule out any possibility of reversing the military scenario of the conflict, regardless of whether NATO weapons reach the battlefield.

It is important to note that the US government has not yet commented on the case, with the Pentagon being silent on the authenticity of the supposed leak. The matter comes amid a recent wave of releases of classified Pentagon’s documents. Other reports from the department were exposed on social networks, including information on sensitive topics such as China, the Middle East and terrorism. There has been strong distrust on the part of analysts about the veracity of these alleged leaks. Some commentators argue that if the releases were true there would be no room for the Western media to report their existence, with a strong censorship initiative trying to hide the incident.

Although there is not enough information to point out the veracity of these leakages, it is possible to say that at least with regard to the Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles, there is a great possibility that the numbers are real, considering the evident defeat of Kiev’s forces in the battlefield. In a more realistic perspective, it is possible to suspect that in fact there are no “leaks”, but that the Pentagon would be deliberately publishing the numbers to increase the fear of a Ukrainian defeat in public opinion, boosting support for the shipment of new weapons.

What we have seen recently is the absolute failure of the “Ukrainian victory” narrative, as Russian advances have made it clear which side militarily controls the combats. Due to this, there seems to be currently an attempt at “damage control”, with officials and mainstream media partially admitting Ukraine’s defeat. If before the justification for sending weapons was that Kiev would be winning, now it is said that Kiev is losing, but “must win”. The aim is to spread anti-Russian fear in public opinion and to convince ordinary citizens that the shipment of weapons is an urgent measure in order to save the West.

In a rational and strategic analysis, it is possible to see that at no time did Moscow show interest in expanding the limits of its military operation, therefore there is no reason for any kind of fear on the part of Western citizens. On the other hand, the exhaustion of Ukrainian forces seems to be good news, since, faced with the inability to continue fighting, the Kiev regime would be forced to surrender, which would end hostilities. This would be the best-case scenario for all sides except for NATO’s pro-war elites.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

April 11, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Tornadoes, Climate Change, and the Media

By Anthony Watts | American Thinker | April 7, 2023 

After the recent devasting tornadoes in the Midwest and South, some media outlets scrambled to try to link the weather events to climate change, when in fact there is no hard data to support this. In fact, tornado data refute claims that tornadoes are increasing in number, range, or severity. However, Salon, Axios, and the Washington Post among others ran articles suggesting climate change is expanding the length of tornado season and area over which tornadoes commonly form, as well as adding ingredients to the atmosphere to make more and bigger tornadoes.

The Salon article, “How climate change made the Mississippi tornadoes more likely,” (actually a reprint from Grist) claimed, “That added ingredient of more heat and moisture is going to be the big thing that will influence what happens and we can expect potentially worse tornado outbreaks,” said William Gallus, a professor of meteorology at Iowa State University.

Axios piled on with “What we know about how climate change affects tornado outbreaks,” which claims, “We also have expectations that the number of severe thunderstorms (hail, wind, tornado) will probably increase in the U.S.”

The Washington Post article, “Here’s what we know about how climate change is influencing tornadoes,” asserts, “Average global temperatures have risen more than 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s, and the impact is clear: Warmer air provides more energy for storms to develop and intensify, and holds more moisture, which can also fuel storms. Warm, moist air is a key ingredient for developing severe tornadic storms.”

These claims of increased storms due to more heat and moisture are misleading at best and demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of how weather fronts collide to form tornadoes. As Climate at a Glance: Tornadoes points out: “Tornadoes typically form when very cold, dry air clashes with warm, humid air. Climate change warms the Arctic more than the tropics and subtropics, resulting in less of a clash between cold Arctic air masses and warm Gulf of Mexico air masses. As a result, fewer and less violent tornadoes are occurring today than in previous periods, despite media claims that tornadoes are getting more frequent, stronger, or both.”

Plus, all of these articles miss one very important and immutable fact: decades of hard data on tornado activity don’t support these claims.

Despite modest warming of the climate over the past 50 years, data show no trend in increasing tornadoes linked to climate change. Indeed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its most recent report, “There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes.”

These articles all focused on the recent severe storms that caused many deaths and widespread destruction. Yet, looking at the actual data for the trend in strong to violent tornadoes suggest no cause for alarm. Violent tornadoes, those rated EF3 to EF5 on the enhanced Fujita tornado scale, have declined in recent decades, based on actual data supplied by the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.

The hard data on tornado numbers and intensity refute any assertions that tornadoes are worsening due to climate change. The number of strong to violent tornadoes, F3 or higher, has dramatically declined for nearly half a century. Additional evidence shows attempts to tie tornadoes to climate change falls flat. For instance, 2018 was a record-low year for tornadoes in the United States. Even the Washington Post wrote that 2018 was the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States.

Also flying in the face of climate change attribution during the so-called “hottest decade in recorded history” from 2010 to 2019, two record-low years for tornado strikes in the United States occurred, in 2014 and 2018.

Finally, it is important to note that severe tornado outbreaks are not a global (as in global warming) phenomenon, but mostly limited to the United States with its unique topography and weather patterns.

All of these omissions lead one to ask if the media are aware of hard data and previous articles on the topics of tornados and climate change, or did these outlets simply not wish to consider what those articles and data implied, because they presented inconvenient truths that are counter to their attempts to link climate change and tornado behavior?

Even the scientist quoted in the Post article would not commit to the narrative that climate change was changing tornado behavior.

Per the Post, “That suggests more tornadoes may be likely, too. But scientists aren’t ready to declare that yet.”

Also, according to the Post, “There is nothing concrete to say, ‘Yes, we’re going to see more tornadoes,’ Allen said,” as Dance reported.

The willful choice to ignore these facts is indicative of the shoddy state of what passes for journalism today. The Washington Post’s banner reads, “democracy dies in darkness.” Evidently, science dies in darkness, too.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

U.S. Government Has an Accurate Measure of U.S. Temperature That Shows No Recent Warming But It’s Hidden, Says Meteorologist

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 8, 2023

Government-controlled surface datasets, the bedrock of climate thermogeddon fears promoting Net Zero, cannot possibly be accurate, and are only “an estimate with high uncertainty”. The claim comes from the noted U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, who has spent the last decade highlighting the numerous flaws built into global temperature monitoring systems. Data are collected by government bodies from a weather station network, “that was never intended to detect a ‘global warming signal’”, notes Watts. He goes on to call for a new independent global climate database. Given that governments are spending billions of taxpayer dollars on climate mitigation programmes, “doesn’t it make sense to get the most important thing – the actual temperature – as accurate as possible”, he asks.

To date, continues Watts, there is only one network of climate capable weather stations that is accurate enough to fully detect a climate change signal. This is the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), started in 2005 as a state-of-the-art automated system designed specifically to accurately measure climate trends at the surface. It comprises 114 stations across North America sited well away from any non-climatic effects, such as urban heat caused by humans.

The USCRN graph above shows that there has been no significant warming trend over the last two decades in the United States. “Unfortunately, the data from the USCRN network are buried by the U.S. Government, and are not publicly reported in monthly or yearly global climate reports. [The network] has also not been deployed worldwide,” observed Watts.

Watts notes that past temperature records were collected to validate weather forecasting. Temperatures were rounded by volunteers to the nearest whole degree of Fahrenheit. When comparing such “coarsely recorded” data to claims of 1.8°F global warming since the late 1800s, “obvious questions” of accuracy arise. Referring to his own recent work, Watts says that even more concerning is the widespread corruption of data by urbanisation. Many stations are compromised by being placed next to air conditioners, jet exhausts and concrete, asphalt and nearby buildings. This happens not just in the USA but in many other territories, including the U.K.

In the U.K., the state-funded Met Office has become highly politicised in recent years as it relentlessly pushes the collectivist Net Zero project. Despite writing a paper on the temperature standstill between 2000-14, it removed the pause in later retrospective adjustments to its HadCRUT global database. In under 10 years it added 30% extra warming to the recent global record, at a time when accurate satellite measurements suggested global warming started running out of steam about 25 years ago. Last summer, the Met Office confirmed and promoted a new U.K. record temperature of 40.3°C at Coningsby. In fact the record was set halfway down the runway at RAF Coningsby, home of Typhoon fighter jet squadrons, and lasted just 60 seconds. It was achieved with a sudden spike in temperature of 0.6°C followed by an almost immediate drop. To this day, the Met Office has refused to answer questions from the Daily Sceptic asking if jet aircraft movements were a contributing factor.

Watts is not the only scientist raising important concerns about the databases at the heart of the political campaign to promote panic about rising temperatures. Recent work by Dr. Roy Spencer and Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville found that up to a fifth of all warming reported across the planet by around 20,000 weather stations is invalid due to corruption from non-climatic data. The stations form part of the Global Historical Climate Network and are an important constituent of all global datasets. Interestingly, the two scientists noted that the U.S. weather service NOAA claims to remove urban heat distortions, but they found that on average it is “spuriously warming station temperature data trends when it should be cooling them”. The detailed reasons are given in a note published by Dr. Spencer, where he asks why NOAA adjustments are going in the wrong way. “To say the least, I find these results … curious”, he adds.

Lopping off chunks of recent warming at a time when very little ‘heating’ is occurring would be unwelcome in Net Zero extremist circles. Scientists such as Emeritus Professor Richard Lindzen point out that the warming since the ending of the Baroque mini ice age is already tiny. Evidence continues to accumulate that recent periods were much warmer than the present. In February, a group of bio scientists (Brozova et al., 2023) presented evidence showing that the Arctic around Svalbard was 6°C warmer in the early Holocene around 10,000 to 8,000 years ago. Further scientific evidence showing past warming can be found here, here and here.

Global surface temperatures recorded and compiled by government agencies are said by Watts to be a mishmash of rounded, adjusted and compromised readings, rather than being an accurate representation of Earth’s temperature. “Given the Government’s monopoly on use of corrupted temperature data, questionable accuracy, and a clear reticence to make highly accurate temperature data from the USCTN available to the public, it is time for a truly independent global temperature record to be produced,” Watts concludes.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Time to Revisit the Viktor Bout Case

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 10, 2023

With Russia’s arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, U.S. officials are accusing Russia of using Americans as “political hostages.” That may well be true, but the fact is that while the U.S. government acts like an innocent, the fact is that it plays the political-hostage game as well as Russia. In fact, the U.S. government might well be the one that started this vicious political game with Russia.

On March 6, 2008, a Russian arms dealer named Viktor Bout was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, on criminal charges brought by the U.S. government. The U.S. government sought Bout’s extradition to the United States, which he fervently opposed. The extradition proceedings took two years, during which time Bout was incarcerated in a Thai jail.

A Thai district court denied the U.S. extradition request, but the ruling was overturned by a Thai appellate court. On November 10, 2010, Bout was extradited to the United States to stand trial.

The Russian government vehemently objected to Bout’s prosecution, much as the U.S. government is vehemently objecting to Evan Gershkovich’s prosecution. But U.S. officials steadfastly ignored Russia’s objections to Bout’s prosecution as much as Russia is ignoring U.S. objections to Gershkovich’s prosecution.

Bout was an international arms dealer. He sold weaponry to all sorts of groups around the world. U.S. officials condemned him for his profession, while ignoring one great big important fact: The U.S. government is the biggest arms dealer in the world, also selling arms to all sorts of groups around the world, including tyrannical regimes that use such arms to suppress their own citizenry. 

It’s worth noting that Bout wasn’t the only international arms dealer. There were lots of them around the world. 

Nonetheless, U.S. officials decide to target him with criminal prosecution. Why would they select him out of all the other international arms dealers? My hunch is that there were two reasons: (1) As the biggest arms dealer in the world, the U.S. didn’t like the competition that Bout provided; and (2) More important, Bout was a Russian citizen, and it was during this period of time — 2008 — that the Pentagon was proceeding apace with its long-term plan of reinvigorating its old Cold War racket against Russia. By targeting a Russian citizen — especially one with close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin — with arrest, prosecution, and incarceration, the Pentagon knew that that could go a long way toward reestablishing hostile relations and a renewed Cold War with Russia.

But there was one big problem: Bout hadn’t violated any U.S. laws.

So, what does a regime do when it wants to target a person who hasn’t committed a crime? Answer: It simply makes up a crime. And that is precisely what the U.S. government did to get Russian citizen Viktor Bout. U.S. officials used a concocted, made-up crime to get him.

Here’s how their scheme worked. U.S. officials assigned the dirty deed to the DEA. Yes, you read that right — the DEA. Now, keep in mind that the DEA stands for the Drug Enforcement Administration. The operative word in the title is “Drug.” The DEA is charged with enforcing one of the U.S. government’s biggest and oldest failed and destructive government programs — the war on drugs. 

Thus, notwithstanding that the DEA’s balliwick is drug enforcement and not arms enforcement, the DEA was charged with the task of coming up with a concocted, made-up crime relating to the sale of weapons in order to get Viktor Bout. 

The DEA enlisted the assistance of two Colombians to serve as secret agents of the DEA. Acting as agents of FARC, the Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group in Colombia that U.S. officials have designated as a terrorist organization, the secret DEA agents contacted a man named Andrew Smulian, who was a friend of Bout. The secret DEA agents falsely told Smulian that FARC wanted to purchase arms from Bout.

Smulian contacted Bout and told him about the proposed deal. Bout agreed to meet with the secret DEA agents in Bangkok. During that meeting, which was being secretly recorded, Bout and the secret DEA agents struck a deal in which Bout agreed to sell them a large quantity of armaments. At that point, the Thai police, which were working with the DEA, swooped in and arrested Bout.

U.S. officials charged Bout with “conspiracy” to sell armaments to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. During the negotiations, the secret DEA agents had said that they planned to use the weapons to kill U.S. drug-enforcement officials operating in Colombia. Bout remarked something to the effect that he didn’t care, given that the U.S. was an enemy to him as well. Based on that remark, which was made in the context of sales negotiations in response to what the secret DEA agents had said to Bout, U.S. officials ended up charging Bout with a “conspiracy” to kill U.S. officials. 

There are few things that stick out in this scenario. 

One, Bout never entered the United States. His actions in attempting to sell arms to what he was led to believe was FARC took place entirely in Thailand, which is about 8,500 miles from the United States.

Two, there is no legal reason why any Russian citizen is bound by some designation by the U.S. government that some foreign entity is a terrorist organization. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Russian citizens, like other foreign citizens, are not bound by laws or edicts issued by the U.S. government, any more than U.S. citizens are bound by laws or edicts issued by the Russian government or some other foreign government.

Three, Bout never sold any arms to FARC because FARC wasn’t part of this deal. It was the DEA that was secretly acting like it was FARC.

The question naturally arises: Why does the U.S. government have criminal jurisdiction over a Russian citizen’s decision to sell weapons to a group in Colombia, especially given that the Russia citizen never sets foot in the United States?

Knowing that they would have problems proving that Bout sold weapons to FARC, which he clearly didn’t, U.S. officials decided to rely on a “conspiracy” charge against him. A “conspiracy” is an agreement to perform a criminal act. It has long been an easy way for U.S. officials to win convictions when all else fails. 

But a “conspiracy” requires an agreement between two or more people. It is difficult to understand who Bout supposedly agreed with to sell the armaments. He couldn’t be charged with conspiring with those secret DEA agents to sell arms because conspiracy law requires that he enter into an agreement with someone else — i.e., not the government — to perform a criminal act. That is, under the law of conspiracy, Bout cannot be charged with conspiring with those secret DEA agents to sell the arms. 

Moreover, he didn’t conspire with his friend Smulian because Smulian wasn’t selling the armaments. He was simply acting as a go-between who got the two parties together, much like a real-estate broker does in a sale of a home. When Bout met with those secret DEA agents in Bangkok, he agreed on his own to sell them the weapons. Thus, who did he conspire with?

Of course, none of this mattered when Bout was brought to trial. He was a Russian and an international arms dealer. He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in jail. Not surprisingly, his sentence was upheld on appeal. 

It was all based on a made-up crime, one concocted by the DEA. But it served its purpose in helping to fulfill the Pentagon’s long-term aim of bringing about hostile relations between the United States and Russia and reinvigorating the Pentagon’s old Cold War racket against Russia.

After being forced to serve some 12 years of his life in a federal penitentiary (and two additional years in a Thai jail) for committing a made-up, concocted, fake crime, on December 8, 2022, Bout was traded for U.S. citizen Brittney Griner, who, ironically, was caught in Russia violating the war on drugs, which the Russian government enforces as fiercely as the DEA does here in the United States. As far as I know, the DEA has never issued an official opinion on the Griner-Bout trade. 

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Chinese Media Reveals Why Russia Unlikely to Have Leaked Sensitive Ukraine Docs

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 10.04.2023

The FBI and the Pentagon have kicked off investigations after the leak of a damning US intelligence assessment on the Ukrainian conflict. US officials and media immediately blamed Russia, while Kiev characterized the leak as “Russian propaganda.” The Kremlin said the docs show the dramatic extent to which NATO is entrenched in the conflict.

Russia is not likely to be behind the leak of the top secret US intelligence assessment of the situation in Ukraine, since it would prefer to keep the information under wraps and use it to its advantage, a major Chinese outlet speculates.

“If Russia has obtained these classified documents, it would not post them online, because this will make Russia lose the source or sources that had provided these documents,” an anonymous Chinese international security and intelligence expert told the Global Times. “The leak is unlikely caused by Russian intelligence agencies, because this does not make sense,” the expert said.

The source argued that there was “no reason for Russia to let its enemies know that it has obtained this intelligence, because this will also make its enemies change plans, making the hard-won military intelligence useless.”

Instead, GT noted, the leak goes to show to the world the “disunity, distrust and divergences” between the US, its allies and Kiev, and to demonstrate that Washington “is the biggest obstacle for the international community to promote a ceasefire and peace talks” to ending the Ukrainian crisis.

The documents demonstrate the precarious state of the Ukrainian military, and will both demoralize the Ukrainian military and reduce Western countries’ confidence in supporting Kiev against Russia, whether or not they are genuine, the Chinese newspaper suggested.

Whodunit?

US and Ukrainian officials immediately blamed Russian intelligence for the leak of the classified documents, and suggested that the assessment seems to combine a “statistical analysis of supplies, possible operational and tactical plans, as well as a large volume of fictitious information.”

The documents serve to confirm Russia’s public assessment on the state of the Ukrainian conflict, showing that Ukrainian air defenses have been depleted by months of strikes, and that Ukrainian casualties are over four times higher than those of the Russian side (contrasting sharply with public estimates by the Pentagon and the Ukrainian military of six-figure Russian losses).

The Pentagon’s reported efforts to scrub the documents from the internet were met with trolling by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who sarcastically quipped that it was “totally” possible to “delete things from the internet,” and that doing so definitely wouldn’t “draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the leaks “quite interesting,” and said it was not surprising that Moscow has been blamed. “You and I know that there is a tendency to always blame everything on Russia. It is, in general, a disease,” the spokesman told reporters Monday.

Commentators speaking to Sputnik expressed a healthy measure of a skepticism over the documents’ authenticity, saying that although they serve to confirm Russia’s internal assessments on the state of the Ukrainian military, they provide Moscow “no benefit” as far as the strategic situation is concerned. Others pointed out that it would be highly unlikely for the documents to be published in legacy media outlets without the approval of the national security state.

April 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

British ex-soldier turned journalist charged with spying in Afghanistan

The Cradle | April 9, 2023

The Afghan government detained three British nationals under suspicion of spying for their country; one of those accused was a former soldier stationed in Afghanistan, now supposedly working as a journalist, according to TOLOnews.

According to a source cited by the news site, the former soldier was stationed in the southern province of Helmand, a deeply contested area of Afghanistan, during the occupation.

“If they come here illegally, or violated the laws of Afghanistan or worked as spies for other countries, it is considered a crime, and any country has the right to detain such foreign nationals and introduce them to the relevant organizations,” said Sarwar Niazai, a military analyst.

The former soldier Kevin Cornwell and another British national were detained by the Taliban-led government on 11 January 2023, both supposedly carrying illegal firearms. A total of three UK citizens are currently detained in Afghanistan.

Toryalai Zazai, a Taliban combat veteran, told the Afghan news channel that “the country should be rescued from the spies, the country should be rescued from the intelligence circles. The Islamic Emirate should not allow these invader countries to send their intelligence representatives to our country.”

Meanwhile, UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman said, “If there are British citizens abroad, then the UK government is going to do whatever it takes to ensure that they are safe,” in response to the arrests.

Journalists around the world face increasing endangerment as the profession has become intertwined with foreign intelligence services to carry out their work.

Operation Mockingbird is perhaps the most well-known activity undertaken by the CIA during the cold war to manipulate news organizations to shape the coverage of events.

In addition, the CIA program aimed to collect intelligence via journalists by either infiltrating news organizations or bribing individuals.

Carl Bernstein unveiled the secret operation by the CIA in 1977, uncovering the depth of the program, which included the recruitment of journalists in various institutions around the world.

Following the damning revelations, the CIA admitted to having recruited at least 400 Journalists and 25 organizations worldwide.

“To this day, the CIA still attempts to monitor and manipulate public opinion through this despicable practice. The so-called truth that underpins a news story, from the perspective of the U.S. government, is not worth mentioning at all, with news media just being used as a tool to safeguard the country’s hegemony in the world,” writes the People’s Daily Online.

Meanwhile, a Russian court charged Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich with espionage on 7 April.

Gershkovich, who denied the charges, said he only maintained journalistic activities in Russia and did not work as a spy for a foreign intelligence service.

The White House commented on the situation, saying it will “do everything we can” to ensure his release.

Evan is not a spy; Evan has never been a spy,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Chad Expelled The German Ambassador A Month After The US Claimed Russia Was Meddling

By Andrew Korybko | April 9, 2023

Chad’s expulsion of the German Ambassador for his “impolite attitude and the non-respect of diplomatic customs”, which reports suggested was a euphemism for his meddling in its internal affairs, wasn’t what the US expected when it reportedly passed along intelligence about Russia in late February. The Wall Street Journal wrote at the time that American officials informed their Chadian counterparts about Moscow’s alleged plots to arm anti-government rebels and even assassinate the president.

There were reasons to be skeptical of this at the time, not least because the Russian Embassy in N’Djamena warned in January about Western efforts to divide these two states, especially after Moscow shared its expectation that the Chadian President will attend summer’s second Russia-Africa Summit. To be sure, bilateral relations have come a long way since their low point in September 2021 when the Chadian Foreign Minister claimed that Wagner posed a threat to his country’s interests.

Its presence in the neighboring countries of the Central African Republic (CAR) and Libya was allegedly being exploited to arm anti-government rebels, according to him, hence why US spies probably thought that Chad would fall for a remixed version of this narrative. His words led to the conclusion that “Chad Wants To Lead The Charge Against Russia’s Inroads In Françafrique” for several self-interested reasons, not least of which was to ensure Paris’ continued support for the authorities amidst rising discontent.

Everything radically changed in Africa over the last 18 months since then, however. France’s “sphere of influence” in the Central and Western parts of the continent has been shattered as a result of Russia’s successful “Democratic Security” policies in the CAR and Mali, with Paris now needing N’Djamena much more than the inverse. Furthermore, not a single African country complied with the West’s demands to sanction Moscow for its special operation in Ukraine, thus exposing the limits of its influence nowadays.

These interconnected developments contributed to changing Chad’s perceptions of Russia’s rising role in Africa, hence the possibility of its president attending summer’s second Russia-Africa Summit. It also accounts for why this country didn’t fall for the US’ claims that Moscow is meddling in its affairs, instead choosing to expel the German Ambassador a little over a month later instead of the Russian one like Washington likely expected would happen after sharing its so-called “intelligence”.

To be clear, there’s still a chance that some influential forces in Chad could do the geopolitical bidding of their country’s traditional French patron by lobbying for decisionmakers to authorize an anti-Russian provocation of some sort, but it’s important to point out that this hasn’t yet happened. The preceding observation extends credence to the conclusion that Chad’s perceptions of Russia are changing for the better, so much so that it didn’t fall for the US’ latest attempt to divide-and-rule them.

This is admittedly impressive since Chad is a bastion of French influence in Africa, but as was earlier written, it’s nowadays the case that France needs Chad more than the inverse after Paris’ “sphere of influence” in the Central and Western parts of the continent was shattered over the last 18 months. N’Djamena can now at least in theory consider demanding more aid and other sorts of benefits from France in exchange for continuing to host its forces without having to do its regional bidding like before.

Chadian officials can also more confidently confront the West since the scenario of the latter initiating any serious deterioration in their ties is no longer all that troubling because their country could just shift towards Russia in that event like the CAR, Mali, and a growing number of others are presently doing. In fact, this pivot could be held above their heads as a Damocles’ sword for squeezing more benefits from that de facto New Cold War bloc, which fears the consequences of pushing Chad into Russia’s arms.

Expelling an ambassador is a major move, however, let alone a traditionally Western-aligned African country doing this to one who represents the EU’s de facto leader. For that reason, this  development probably wasn’t the result of a failed effort by Chad to get more money from Germany. Rather, it’s most likely the case that reports about that official’s meddling in his host state’s internal affairs are accurate, hence why N’Djamena took this unprecedented step.

The authorities want to avoid a repeat of last October’s deadly unrest that was officially driven by discontent over them delaying their country’s democratic transition but was exploited by certain forces to carry out a spree of violence across the capital. The West specializes in organizing Color Revolutions so it might have been the case that the recently expelled German Ambassador was trying to initiate another round of similar unrest to pressure the Chadian President against possibly visiting Russia in July.

His attendance at the second Russia-Africa Summit would be a coup de grace for Moscow by proving that its pragmatic engagement with the continent has succeeded in turning the leaders of traditionally Western-aligned countries like Chad into important partners who refuse to do third parties’ bidding. It would be Russia’s top diplomatic victory over the West since NATO began waging its proxy war in Ukraine to have him and other such leaders all meet with President Putin in the latter’s hometown.

Moscow has no reason to meddle in any of these countries’ affairs and thus risk spoiling this opportunity, especially not with Chad, which previously positioned itself as France’s vanguard force for pushing back against Russia all across Paris’ “sphere of influence”. The West, however, has every reason to meddle via disinformation disguised as “intelligence” and the cultivation of Color Revolution pressure in a desperate attempt to preemptively avert its rival’s impending diplomatic victory.

That’s why it was ultimately the German Ambassador that was expelled from Chad and not the Russian one despite the US claiming a little over a month ago that Moscow was plotting to kill its president. He didn’t extend credence to those reports otherwise Russia’s representative would have already been kicked out of the country. By ordering the German Ambassador’s expulsion, however, Chad just signaled that it now fears that its traditional Western partners are the ones who are truly conspiring against it.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

FBI targeting Russians on Facebook

RT | April 9, 2023

The FBI has launched a social media campaign seeking to convince Russian nationals to provide sensitive information about the activities of their home country’s authorities, Fox News reported on Friday. The ad, which was first posted in February, was said to have been appearing on Twitter, Facebook and Google.

“Do you want to change your future?” Alan Kohler, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, says in the video shared online. “The FBI values you. The FBI can help you. But only you have the power to take the first step.”

Fox News cited a source as saying that, although the Bureau has run ads targeting Russians in the past, this year it decided that “a video was more effective.”

The FBI’s website encourages Russians willing to offer information to visit the bureau’s main office in Washington, DC, to call the FBI hotline, or to send a message online.

The US stepped up efforts to recruit informants in recent years as Moscow and Washington have been locked in a diplomatic row over Ukraine. In 2019, the Bureau posted a series of ads on Facebook, urging Russians to come forward, although this message, written in Russian, contained typos.

In 2020, the FBI’s online campaign aimed at potential Russian informants included images of popular Soviet actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky, known for portraying a police detective on screen. The CIA, meanwhile, has been publishing job postings for people who speak Russian.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Journalists Should Be Mad At Evan Gershkovich For Exploiting His Profession To Spy On Russia

By Andrew Korybko | April 9, 2023

Western journalists are furious at Russia for arresting their colleague from the Wall Street Journal, Evan Gershkovich, on charges of espionage. They’re now wildly fearmongering that all journalists in that country are at risk of being arrested on that pretext after he became the first one to experience this since the dissolution of the USSR. In reality, “Russia Had Every Right To Arrest That Wall Street Journal Employee For Espionage”, and journalists should therefore be mad at Gershkovich and not the Kremlin.

What he did violated the top principle of his profession, which isn’t supposed to ever be exploited for espionage since doing so could place genuine journalists at risk if the spied-upon government or others overreact to this by arbitrarily detaining others on that pretext. Russia has no intention to do this since those journalists who remain faithful to their profession’s top principle don’t pose a security threat, unlike Gershkovich, who tried to obtain secret information about its military-industrial capabilities.

That said, it can’t be taken for granted that other countries might not harass journalists on this pretext, whether those working for the Wall Street Journal or other Western outlets. The US crossed the unspoken red line related to exploiting this profession for espionage, which can be concluded with a very high degree of confidence since Russia wouldn’t have arrested Gershkovich if it didn’t have irrefutable proof of his crimes.

The Kremlin knew very well what sort of information warfare narratives would follow its first arrest of a journalist since the Old Cold War, but it took this step in order to defend its legitimate national security interests and expose the US’ dirty game that was just explained. It’s with this in mind that Western journalists should be furious at Gershkovich for agreeing to this intelligence assignment, since he could simply have refused it.

By spying on Russia under the cover of journalism, he betrayed his profession’s top principle and put his colleagues at risk all across the world. He doesn’t deserve any of their sympathy, but some of those rallying around him have ulterior motives and aren’t just misled by fake news about the reason for his arrest. These figures might also be operating as spies under the cover of journalism, hence their interest in lying that it’s impossible for anyone in their profession to ever carry out such crimes.

Genuine journalists should remember that Russia wouldn’t have taken this step with the expectation of all the weaponized information warfare narratives that would follow if it didn’t have irrefutable proof that Gershkovich was exploiting his profession for espionage. He and his handlers are the ones who deserve everyone’s ire, not Russia for defending its legitimate national security interests. Gershkovich put journalists at risk all across the world, which he should be condemned for, not shown sympathy.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

‘Awfully Convenient’: Leaked NATO Plans for Ukraine Should Be Taken ‘With Grain of Salt’

Sputnik | April 8, 2023

While the sudden leak of numerous classified US documents related to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine reportedly prompted the Pentagon to launch an investigation into the matter, the way the “revelation” was covered by the media makes it look somewhat suspect.

Classified documents that purportedly outline US and NATO plans for the Ukrainian military were leaked to the public this week, and if US media is to be believed, the Pentagon has already rushed to investigate this apparent breach of security.

During an interview with Sputnik, international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda pointed out that the story was broken by the New York Times. According to him, given that US officials are now claiming that part of the story is true and part of it is not, it begets the question: “why was it leaked and what did they want us to believe?”

The leak, Sleboda suggested, likely comes “from the American side or someone within the American side,” with the analyst noting that some of the leaked papers “confirm information that we really already knew,” such as the data about the newly-formed Ukrainian brigades. He suggests taking the leaked information “with a grain of salt.”

Regarding the rationale behind the sharing of the leaked information on social media, Sleboda argued that “a lot of it maybe [was] buttressing the public knowledge of US support for the offensive that is about to be launched.”

“We know that NATO considers it their last-ditch effort, they do not have the ability to continue to sustain the Kiev regime in terms of ammunition, artillery shells, other gear, and for them this is all or nothing,” he mused. “So they’re expecting success out of this and they do not appear to have a plan B in that regard. Plan B might default the Plan D, which is NATO troops enter Western Ukraine or some NATO member-states enter West Ukraine, say Poland and the US, possibly Romania.”

He also observed that the leaked information does not include any specific battle plans, “which seems awfully convenient.”

For more in-depth analysis, check out the latest episode of Sputnik’s podcast Fault Lines.

April 9, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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