Showdown in Ukraine
Hobbled US Turns to War to Preserve its Waning Primacy
BY MIKE WHITNEY • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 26, 2023
The future of humanity will be decided on a battlefield in Ukraine. That’s no exaggeration. The conflict between the United States and Russia will determine whether global economic integration will expand within an evolving multi-polar system or if the “rules-based order” will succeed in crushing any opponent to its Western-centric model. This is what’s taking place in Ukraine today, in fact, all of the recent government-prepared documents related to national security identify Russia and China as the greatest threats to US hegemony. For example, take a look at this brief clip from the 2021 Congressional Research Service Report titled Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress:
The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia… is a policy choice reflecting two judgments: (1) that given the amount of people, resources, and economic activity in Eurasia, a regional hegemon in Eurasia would represent a concentration of power large enough to be able to threaten vital U.S. interests….
From a U.S. perspective on grand strategy and geopolitics, it can be noted that most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia.” (“Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US Congress)
That sums up US foreign policy in a nutshell; “prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon” at all cost. Now check out this summary of the 2022 US National Defense Strategy by Andre Damon at the World Socialist Web Site :
These documents, which were not seriously discussed in the US media, make clear the fundamental falsehood that the massive US military buildup this year is a response to “Russian aggression.” In reality, in the thinking of the White House and Pentagon war planners, the massive increases in military spending and plans for war with China are created by “dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment.”
These documents make clear that the United States sees the economic rise of China as an existential threat, to be responded to with the threat of military force. The United States sees the subjugation of Russia as a critical stepping stone toward the conflict with China.” (“Pentagon national strategy document targets China”, Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site )
These two excerpts are by no means a comprehensive summary of US foreign policy objectives, but they are a pretty effective thumbnail sketch. Bottom line: The war in Ukraine is not about Ukraine. America’s clearly articulated strategic objectives are as follows: To weaken Russia, topple its leader, take control of its vast natural resources and move on to containing China. Simply put, Washington’s escalating aggression in Ukraine is a Hail Mary pass aimed at containing emerging centers of economic power in order to preserve its waning position in the global order.
This is the geopolitical chess match that is being played behind the cover of “a war against Russia’s unprovoked aggression.” People should not be hoodwinked by that absurd deception. This war was concocted as a desperate attempt for the United States to defend its flickering global hegemony. That’s what Ukraine is really all about. It’s a clash between the warmongering western oligarchs who have a stranglehold on the US media and political establishment and the emerging economies that are using the market system to link their resources and manufactured goods to countries around the world through “high-speed” infrastructure and cooperative development.
So, the question everyone must ask themselves is this: Do you want to see more economic integration, lower prices, more shared prosperity and less war or another 80 years of onerous and arbitrary sanctions, color-coded revolutions, regime change operations, genocidal interventions and bioweapon warfare (Covid-19)? Which do you want?
Perhaps, you are one of the millions of Americans who believe that China is an enemy of the United States. Perhaps, you are also unaware of the role the US played in creating modern China. Here’s a question for you: Did the US and western corporations move their operations en masse to China to escape the high costs of production in the US?
answer– Yes, they did.
And, did they betray US workers because they didn’t want a fair wage to interfere with their excessive profit-making?
answer– Yep.
And, did they offshore their businesses, outsource their product manufacturing and do everything in their power to make themselves winners while robbing American workers of the opportunity of making a decent wage so they could put food on the table?
answer– They sure did.
Then who is actually responsible for the rise of China?
answer– Western corporations are responsible. If Americans want to blame someone, blame them!
But now the corporate mandarins and other elites are unhappy with China because China will not allow them to take control over their markets, financial system and currency as they have in America. So now these same cutthroat corporations want us to fight a war with the monster that they created?
Can you see that? Can you see that the relentless provocations against China have nothing to do with US national security or US interests. We are being led by the nose to fight and die for the cadres of voracious western oligarchs who have settled on China as the next target of their grand looting operation.
But let’s forget the past for a minute and focus on the future, after all, that’s what really matters, right?
Well then, which country has a more “positive vision” for the future: China or the United States?
Have you ever heard of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive, multi trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that is the centerpiece of China’s foreign policy? It is the biggest infrastructure program in history and more 150 countries have invested in the plan already. It is a development-oriented project aimed at increasing connectivity through high-speed rail, shipping lanes and ports, skyscrapers, railroads, roads, bridges, airports, dams, power stations, and railroad tunnels. By increasing the speed of travel, China’s products and merchandise will get to markets faster generating greater prosperity for itself and for the other countries involved. And, keep in mind, the BRI will link countries around the world in a high-speed system that will not require its participants to follow a specific economic model dictated by Beijing. In other words, the Belt and Road Initiative is free market economics without the politics. It’s a “win-win” situation for everyone, a guarantee of mutual prosperity absent political manipulation, coercion or exploitation.

The venal oligarchs that run the US can’t even imagine a project of this scale or potential. In fact, they can’t even pony-up enough money to keep the trains on the rails in America. The profits these billionaire parasites extract from their activities invariably come from stock buybacks, tax evasion, and other sleight-of-hand, debt-layering ponzi-scams that benefit no one and merely shift more of the nation’s wealth into their own bulging bank accounts. Of course, ripping off the country would be bad enough, but now we see how this same class of miscreants have settled on public health as a means for amplifying their political power so they can impose repressive, police-state measures that greatly curtail the freedom of the entire population. In short, they want absolute social control and they aren’t going to let-up until they get it.
Where is the “positive vision” in this behavior?
There isn’t one. America used to be a country of ideas, ideals and vision. Now it is an oligarch-run detension center in which all hope for the future has been ruthlessly extinguished by a handful of mercenary billionaires.
At least, in the case of China, we can imagine a better, more prosperous world that is interconnected and more accessible to everyone. But what about the United States? Are we supposed to believe that fighting a war in eastern Europe is going to improve our lives? Are we supposed to believe that the only way “we can stay on top” is by pushing everyone else down? Are we expected to hate China and Russia even while our own government demonizes 80 million of us for voting for the wrong presidential candidate or for not supporting the terrorists who burn and loot our cities or for believing that the people in East Palestine are more deserving of our support and assistance than the Nazi stormtroopers in Kiev?
The fact is, our leaders cannot imagine devoting public resources to a giant interconnected infrastructure project like BRI, because that would mean less lucre for themselves. So, they’ve decided to destroy it just like they destroyed Nord Stream. Just read the press reviews on this groundbreaking project. Western journalists can’t find a ‘good word’ to say about it. A vast area in the center of America was fiendishly nuked with vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate and isobutylene, but the western media would rather criticize China’s ambitious BRI project than hold their paymasters accountable. Go figure.
The same rule applies to Russia. The Biden team and their wealthy allies don’t want closer relations between Germany and Russia because closer relations mean more prosperity for both countries, and Washington can’t have that, which is why they blew up the pipeline that was Germany’s lifeline to cheap fuel. That’s how Washington solved the problem. It pushed Germany and Russia down so the US could remain on top. Who doesn’t see this?
In contrast, the Belt and Road Initiative provides a positive vision for the future, which is an idea that the majority of the world supports. It puts us on a path to an interconnected world in which people can raise their standards of living, make a meaningful contribution to their communities, and enjoy their own culture and traditions without fear of being sanctioned, incarcerated or bombed to death. This is an excerpt from China’s Global Times :
The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has already become a well-received international public good and an important platform for international cooperation…
“BRI transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games, and created a new model of international cooperation. It is not an exclusive group that excludes other participants but an open and inclusive cooperation platform. It is not just China’s solo effort, but a symphony performed by all participating countries….
Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed in 2013, the initiative has always been development-oriented, and consistent efforts have been made to ensure that it is high-standard, sustainable and people-centered….
By August, China’s goods trade with countries participating in the BRI had reached around $12 trillion and the country’s non-financial direct investment in those countries surpassed $140 billion. … By the end of 2021, Chinese enterprises had invested $43 billion in the construction of economic and trade cooperation zones in BRI countries, creating more than 340,000 local jobs, official data showed…
China is open to other countries’ and regions’ participation in the BRI and is considering connecting with infrastructure initiatives proposed by other nations to provide more good-quality public goods for the world…. China hopes to join hands with all partners to advance the high-quality development … stressing that China aims to strive for global connection rather than fragmentation, for mutual opening-up rather than shutting doors, for mutual integration rather than zero-sum games. (“BRI remains open, inclusive for all, transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games“, Global Times )
What is the American-led project that rivals the Belt and Road Initiative?
There isn’t one. The US allocates over $1 trillion per year for lethal weaponry and war-making, and trillions more to bail out the Wall Street banksters, and trillions more to shut down all the businesses across the country that were forced to comply with the diktats of billionaire elites who wanted to inject the population with their toxic slurry, but zero for any global infrastructure project that would peacefully bring the world’s people closer together through commerce and recreation.
No one is saying that China is perfect, at least, I’m not. Nor do I want to live in China. I don’t. I’m an American and I plan to die here.
But I’m not blind. It’s easy to see that this war with Russia has nothing to do with “unprovoked aggression.” That is merely a smokescreen that’s being used to conceal the real objective, which is to preserve America’s global hegemony. What we need to do now, is honestly analyze ‘what is happening’; try to understand ‘why it is happening’, and, then, figure out what the outcome will be if the United States prevails. In other words, do we want to perpetuate an oligarch-controlled system that crushes Russia, contains China, starves Europe of the energy it needs, sabotages the Belt and Road infrastructure plan and reinforces the same failed policies that brought us Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq?
Do we want that? Do YOU want that?
The American people want their government to cooperate with other nations in order to create a more prosperous and peaceful world. They don’t want a new world order and they certainly don’t want a Third World War.
U.S. Government Has Paid $0 in COVID Vaccine-Injury Claims Despite $11 Trillion in Spending on Pandemic Response
By Jefferey Jaxen | February 25, 2023
The Counter Measures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) is a string of words most Americans have never heard of. A program described as a ‘black hole’ where people disappear alternatively called ‘the payer of last resort.’
Its existence, and its negligence, is the biggest story left to be told throughout the failed Covid response. A ‘safety net’ only activated during emergencies to compensate Americans for injuries and deaths experienced from the use of countermeasures such as vaccines and anti-virals.
A broken promise of transparency from federal agencies during a rushed vaccine development and rollout sans any real semblance of safety testing gave way to a billion-dollar full-court pressure campaign from every conceivable angle. Get the shots in arms at any cost, double down on mistakes along the way was the unofficial motto of agencies like the CDC and FDA.
“Take the shot” commanded Biden through his trademark whisper and distressed face struggling to read his loaded teleprompter.
262,908,216 million Americans have walked blindly into another medical experiment unlikely to ever have full knowledge or informed consent to the medical procedure they agreed to.
Their only redress is at the mercy of an admittedly antiquated Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) well-known for over a decade to vastly underreport true injuries and deaths from vaccination. In fact, HHS has known from an analysis by Harvard Pilgrim that less than 1% of adverse events occurring after vaccination are reported to VAERS.
The statute of limitations to file an injury or death claim is one year for CICP. Harms from the vaccines are still being discovered years after the first shot went into an American arm. Doesn’t matter in the CICP. Another barrier to claim fulfillment is stated on HRSA’s website:
“Temporal association between the administration or use of the covered countermeasure and onset of the injury (i.e., the injury occurs a certain time after the administration or use) is not sufficient, by itself, to prove that an injury is the direct result of a covered countermeasure.”
You read that right. Having an injury after the shot isn’t enough. What other obstacle is one up against when filing a claim? Aaron Siri, lead lawyer for the Informed Consent Action Network told Reuters :
“The CICP is not a court,” he said, noting that it’s part of the “same federal health department that licensed, recommended, and mandated Covid-19 vaccines, and then sits as an investigator and ‘judge’ of any CICP claim. That is a mockery of the term justice.”
Simply put, it’s a place you don’t want to find yourself. You versus the government – no courts, no public attention, and no transparency. Up against the very same well-funded bureaucratic apparatus that has only doubled down on warp-speeding shots into bodies as the science to justify it evaporates and the safety signal compound.
Now let’s investigate CICP’s funding. Keep in mind that a total of $11 trillion has been distributed in the form of federal spending, tax cuts, loans, grants, and subsidies authorized in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis. A Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA) from author and researcher Wayne Rohde uncovered these numbers regarding CICP’s funding:


A total of $20M was set aside for claim compensation and budget when it was all said and done for the fiscal year 2023 or 0.00018% of government spending during the failed COVID response. For an unproven product rushed through safety testing and aggressively targeting, often through unconstitutional mandates, every adult, adolescent, child, and infant.
Rohde’s FOIA also uncovered that the CICP estimated that the allotted $15M would “be used to initiate the review of an estimated 1,500 medical reviews of claims and provide compensation to eligible individuals for injuries and deaths directly resulting from the use of covered countermeasures.” In other words, they expected 1,500 injury claims. What did they actually receive?
The latest update from the U.S. Health Resources & Services Administration, which administers the CICP, shows the following numbers:

[SOURCE: Aggregate Data from HRSA as of February 1, 2023]
Expected 1,500 claims…received 11,196…in an underreported system. Yet that’s not the most shocking piece of information. For nearly 3 years, HRSA has paid out zero claims. Not a penny to Covid vaccine-injured Americans waiting for assistance.
To get an idea of the potential backlog we are talking about, we go to VAERS where the first records of possible vaccine injuries are recorded before potentially moving onto a CICP claim. Here are the most recent number and types of reports filed after Covid shots:


From past behavior and current trajectory, the U.S. government will try at all costs to avoid taking accountability, financially, ethically, and legally, for the vast amounts and types of injuries caused by the rushed Covid shots. It is up to the media, politicians, and people everywhere to keep this story front and center in an effort to seek justice for those harmed.
How US’ False Flags Record Prompts Public to Trust Hersh’s Nord Stream Bombshell Even More
Sputnik – 24.02.2023
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh previously teased about unveiling the mechanism of Nord Stream’s destruction. Despite the media silence surrounding his latest expose, the journalist’s research keeps attracting the public’s attention, as the US and its Nordic allies remain tight-lipped about the incident.
“In my view, Hersh is facing a reality which he has never faced before in his long and distinguished life,” Hans Mahncke, a US investigative journalist and lawyer, told Sputnik. “His life-long audience of traditional leftists has dissolved. Whereas a Hersh expose in the past would immediately cause a big furor both in media and politics, he is now being ignored. That is an entirely new situation for him. But it is not just Hersh. If the entire Edward Snowden story would play out now in 2023 instead of in 2013, no one would report it or care. This is the new reality we live in.”
Mahncke drew attention to “the complete disappearance of the old, anti-war left in the United States,” which he called “an extraordinary event which historians will study long into the future.”
“Some say that hatred of Trump caused this shift in that if Trump wanted peace, the left wanted war just to spite Trump, but the trend started under Obama and also captured Europe, where even the German Green Party, which used to be fervently anti-war, is now extremely hawkish. The exact reasons remain unclear, but there is no question that the Western anti-war movement is largely dead. In turn, the prospect of slithering into World War III is much higher now than at any time during the Cold War.”
Earlier this month, Hersh released a bombshell report on Nord Stream’s destruction on September 26, 2022, claiming that US Navy divers, with assistance from Norway, planted explosive charges at the pipeline under the cover of a NATO military exercise in the Baltic during summer 2022.
Observers warn that the destruction of the Nord Stream could be equated to a declaration of war, and yet it appears that Western leaderships are not interested in getting to the bottom of it.
West Surprisingly Uninterested in Investigating Nord Stream Sabotage
Earlier this week, Russia presented a UN Security Council draft resolution requesting that the secretary-general conduct an independent international investigation to verify the facts brought forward by Hersh. Moscow’s request for an independent investigation was prompted by doubts about the integrity and transparency of Denmark, Germany, and Sweden in their ongoing inquiries.
Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya has repeatedly noted that Moscow hasn’t been allowed to take part in the investigations by any of the three countries. He insisted they were “not only not transparent, but it is quite clear that they seek just to cover the tracks and stick up for their … American brother.”
For its part, the US reiterated its “concerns” with regard to the Nord Stream attack, and, simultaneously, bashed Hersh’s account of events as “false” and “fiction.” Sweden, Denmark, and Germany have yet to complete their separate probes into the blast: they signaled recently that “at this point, it is not possible to say when they will be concluded.”
When asked what they had found so far, the investigators told the UN Security Council on February 21, that they had established “that there has been extensive damage” to the pipelines “and that the damage was caused by powerful explosions due to sabotage.” Actually, this was already known roughly five months ago. Probably, the nations are keeping other findings close to their chests.
Sachs and McGovern: UN Probe is Global Priority
Remarkably, two American experts who testified at the UNSC meeting openly said that they do not buy into the West’s Nord Stream narrative. Jeffrey D. Sachs, a professor at Columbia University and specialist in global economy, stated on February 21 that “the investigation by the UN Security Council of the Nord Stream explosions is a high global priority.”
“There is only one detailed account to date of the Nord Stream destruction, the one recently put forward by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, ostensibly based on information leaked to Hersh by an unnamed source,” stated Sachs. “The White House has described Hersh’s account as ‘completely and utterly false,’ but did not offer any information contradicting Hersh’s account and did not offer any alternative explanation.”
Retired CIA officer and political activist Raymond McGovern, who also participated in the UNSC summit, said that he “associate[d] [himself] completely with Sachs’ comments.”
Sachs was one of the first prominent American figures to suggest in the wake of the blasts that the Biden administration could potentially have been involved in the attack.
Growing Mistrust Towards US Government Machine
In his latest Substack report, Hersh shed some light on US-Norwegian military cooperation which started after the Second World War. He also shed light on the special role played by the CIA during the War in Vietnam and, especially, prior to the Gulf of Tonkin “false flag.”
“The problem of rogue US intelligence agencies has been around for a long time, as even John F. Kennedy noted,” Mahncke said. “After Nixon’s forced resignation, there was an effort to clean up these agencies, but not much changed in the short term and in the long run, we now have a situation where these agencies not only create mischief overseas, but also target domestic groups. That is what might bring real change, as at least half the country no longer trusts these agencies. While claims of Iraqi WMDs might have been readily accepted in the past, people now ask questions. Ironically, had US intelligence agencies not started targeting its own citizens, the fake narrative that Russia bombed its own pipeline might have prevailed.”
Indeed, it seems that Americans’ trust in their security services and federal government has been shattered by the Trump-Russia hoax, Big Tech’s collusion with the feds to censor free speech in the US, and the manhunt for January Sixers, to name but a few.
Earlier this month, extensive research by Jeff Gerth debunked the US media’s journalistic malpractice in covering Russiagate, while the Twitter Files released by Elon Musk last year told the story of information manipulation and machinations by the FBI and other agencies in coordination with Big Tech and Big Media. Apparently, the potential release of 41,000 hours in footage from January 6, 2021 protests would answer the question whether the crackdown against January Sixers was justified.
However, the reported “fakes” and “hoaxes” created and peddled by the feds did not start with Trump’s ascendance to power. Back in 2015, Seymour Hersh played down the “glorious” Obama-era story of the capture and elimination of “Terrorist No 1” Osama bin Laden.
Osama Bin Laden’s Death
According to the US government’s account of events, the US tracked Bin Laden to a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan; conducted a secret Navy Seal raid which resulted in the terrorist’s death; after that, Bin Laden’s body was treated with respect and buried at sea. Still, Hersh suggested, citing his sources, that in reality, Pakistani intelligence services captured Bin Laden in 2006 and kept him in prison.
In 2010, Pakistan agreed to give Bin Laden away to the US under the guise of a staged military raid. US Navy Seals met no resistance at Abbottabad on May 2, 2011 and killed Osama in his bedroom in cold blood. His body was “torn apart with rifle fire” and his remains were “tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains” by Navy SEALs during their flight home. There was no burial at the sea since “there wouldn’t have been much left of Bin Laden to put into the sea in any case.”
Hersh’s version of Bin Laden’s death looks especially tragic given that 18 years earlier, on December 6, 1993, Osama bin Laden was described as “every inch the mountain warrior of mujahedin legend”; a “shy man” dressed in “his gold-fringed robe”; a man who helped the Afghans win a war against the USSR. This is how Osama was portrayed by The Independent at the time.
Khan Sheykhoun False Flag
In 2017, Hersh challenged the US official narrative about a chemical incident in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that was used by the Trump administration to justify the April 6, 2017 US cruise missile strike on Syrian government forces’ al-Shayat air base.
Hersh’s account of events showed that not only was there no evidence to back Washington’s claims about Syrian government forces’ alleged “chemical attack” on Khan Sheikhoun, but that the US military and intelligence apparatus were not aware of such an “attack” before the cruise missile strike was ordered. In reality, the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident was staged by al-Nusra* terrorists, according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
The aforementioned cases raise the question: what else could the US government and its agencies be hiding?
Meanwhile, Hersh’s latest expose describes a case that appears to be far more dangerous than the My Lai massacre or the Khan Sheykhoun false flag.
“We are now in a far more dangerous situation than at any time in the Cold War,” warned Mahncke. “Western elites claim that Russia in 2023 is akin to Germany in the 1930s. That is nonsense. The situation we are facing is far more akin to the pre-World War One situation in Europe. It’s as if reason has been abandoned and the entire Western establishment is itching for war.”
Broadcaster sacks host after external influence probe
RT | February 23, 2023
French broadcaster BFMTV has fired an anchor following a probe into alleged external meddling into his work, AFP reported Thursday, citing an internal company email it had seen.
The host in question, Rachid M’Barki, was found not to have followed due editorial process in multiple news segments aired between 2021 and 2022, BFMTV Marc-Olivier Fogiel reportedly said in the correspondence. The faulty news segments included false information on assorted topics, ranging from Russian “oligarchs” to the situation in the Middle East and Western Sahara.
The anchor was suspended early in January, after the company became aware of the potential misconduct on his part. The affair became public this month, when the Forbidden Stories collective released an investigation into a secretive Israeli contractor group, dubbed ‘Team Jorge,’ which had specialized in assorted malign cyber activities to manipulate the outcomes of elections worldwide. To expose the group, the journalists fancied themselves as prospective clients seeking electoral meddling, while covertly recording hours of footage during meetings with the members of the clandestine contractor unit.
The group, run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli secret services operative, operated a vast social media bots network it used to affect public opinion in different countries. The team also reportedly used legitimate news outlets to plant the information it needed for its activities, with M’Barki identified among presenters which had been fed the misinformation.
The presenter had previously acknowledged receiving information from shady anonymous sources, but denied a deliberate spread of fake news on his part. Speaking with Politico after the investigation came out, M’Barki acknowledged that he “used information… received from sources” and that “they did not necessarily follow the usual editorial process.”
“They were all real and verified. I do my job… I’m not ruling anything out, maybe I was tricked, I didn’t feel like I was or that I was participating in an operation of I don’t know what or I wouldn’t have done it,” the journalist stated.
Details of Clinton aide’s bizarre ‘suicide’ revealed
RT | February 22, 2023
Top Clinton adviser Mark Middleton was found hanging by an electrical cord from a tree with his chest blown out by a shotgun blast last May, in an alleged suicide, but there was no gun found anywhere at the scene, according to a Perry County, Arkansas sheriff’s report made public by the Daily Mail on Tuesday.
Written by Perry County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson, who said he was called to the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas when an employee found Middleton’s vehicle abandoned on the grounds, the report reveals that a gun case and three boxes of 12 gauge buckshot were found in the black BMW SUV – but no gun.
While early reports of his death claimed the businessman hanged himself with the help of a “makeshift gallows,” lugging a table onto the farm owned by animal charity Heifer International some 30 miles from his house, the police report does not mention a table.
Instead, Lawson describes glimpsing “what at first appeared to be a man sitting near a tree,” which gradually resolved to include “a rope of some type going from the tree limb to the male.” The “rope” was determined to be an extension cord.
Sheriff Scott Montgomery admitted at the time he had no idea why Middleton would have “picked that location to commit suicide,” telling Radar Online that “to our knowledge, he had never been there before.” Nor did the businessman leave a suicide note, Montgomery said.
Still, the sheriff initially stated the cause of death was suicide. “He found a tree and he pulled a table over there, and he got on that table, and he took an extension cord and put it around a limb, put it around his neck and he shot himself in the chest with a shotgun.”
Middleton’s family also insists he killed himself, arguing he was suffering from depression. They successfully sued to stop the release of photos depicting the scene of death.
However, one former business associate told Radar Online it was “physically impossible for Mark to have killed himself,” insisting “He knows nothing about guns! He hated guns; he couldn’t have tied a noose to save his life.”
Middleton is known to have signed sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein into the Clinton White House on at least seven of the 17 occasions he was known to have visited, and also flew on the pedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ private plane.
Update, Feb. 23:
Police change story on Clinton aide ‘suicide’
A shotgun was found near the body of former Bill Clinton aide Mark Middleton, who was discovered hanging from a tree at the Heifer Ranch last May with his chest blasted out, a report seen by the Daily Mail on Thursday claims. This contradicts an earlier report seen by the paper which said no firearm was found at the scene.
According to the Mail, Perry County Sergeant Keenan Carter, said a Stoeger 12-gauge coach shotgun, was discovered 30 feet from Middleton’s body. They also say that the former Clinton aide had texted his wife Rhea shortly before pulling the trigger to say he had found “the perfect place for a nap in the sun” and reassure her she was “a great Mom and wife.”
According to Sergeant Carter’s report, Middleton “pulled the trigger on the firearm casing [sic] it to discharge and strike him in the chest and then he fell from the bench causing the extension cord to become tight cutting off his breathing.”
The gun was found so far from the body “due to recoil from the discharge and the height and angle of the ground,” Carter explained, insisting there was no “evidence to indicate that there was anyone present with Mr. Middleton at this scene or any evidence that there was any type of struggle and/or foul play.”
In the original report, Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Lawson writes that he and an employee of the property owner discovered Middleton’s dead body hanging from a tree by an electrical cord. Searching Middleton’s vehicle turned up boxes of ammo and a gun case, but no gun. The initial report did not mention any gun found at the scene.
The Arkansas state medical examiner concluded that Middleton died by “suicide” from a “contact shotgun wound of chest and hanging” in his autopsy report, the first page of which was published by the Daily Mail on Thursday. The nine-page report reportedly mentions Middleton’s “history of depression.”
Middleton, a special adviser to Bill Clinton during his first term as US president, infamously signed sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein into the Clinton White House at least seven of the 17 times he was known to have visited and flew with Clinton on the pedophile’s ‘Lolita Express’ private plane.
West unwilling to cooperate on Nord Stream probe: Russian diplomat
Press TV – February 22, 2023
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations has once again accused the United States of being behind the explosions on Nord stream gas pipelines in September last year, saying the national investigations of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden into the sabotage are aimed at protecting Washington.
Vasily Nebenzia made the remarks at a UN Security Council session in New York on Tuesday, stressing that Western countries were showing no intention of cooperating with Moscow in an inquiry into the blasts.
“We have strong reasons to doubt the effectiveness, transparency, and impartiality of investigations that are being carried out under some national jurisdictions,” Nebenzia said, adding, “We do not see our partners being eager to cooperate.”
The senior diplomat also noted that “the so-called investigations by Scandinavian states and Germany into the incident not only lack transparency but are aimed at covering up the tracks and exculpating the big American brother.”
Nebenzia said Russia was not allowed to partake in the probe, and all its requests “are ignored with arrogance.”
Nebenzia further explained that Germany, Denmark, and Sweden had ignored Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s communications last October regarding the participation of Russian energy giant Gazprom and other relevant agencies in the investigations.
He said, “Since we talk about a crime that was committed by means of an explosive device, which makes it subject to the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings of 15 December 1997, we expect that all states that have to do with the incident, namely the US, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, will fulfill their obligations under this document.”
“But leadership of these states do not show any political will or rather do not have any,” the Russian diplomat said.
On September 26, 2022, a series of explosions took place on the pipelines, knocking out three of the four strings of the Nord Stream network, off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea.
Two of the pipelines, known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, known as Nord Stream 2, was not yet operational.
Following the blasts, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden conducted investigations into the incident. The preliminary results of a joint probe by Sweden and Denmark showed that the explosions had been “intentional sabotage,” but responsibility was not assigned to any party.
American journalist Seymour Hersh recently claimed that the bombing of the pipelines had been directly ordered by US President Joe Biden and carried out by the CIA with the help of the US Navy.
The White House rejected the report as “utterly false and complete fiction.”
SKRIPAL SALISBURY CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK 2018
In This Together | January 27, 2019
Skripal Salisbury Chemical Weapons Attack 2018. An Investigation (2019 Update.) This video explores the nonsense that passes as the official narrative of 2018 Salisbury chemical weapons attack. T has been updated to include recent revelations about Colonel Alison McCourt. Using stock news footage of the Skripal poisoning and mainstream media reports about the supposed Salisbury attack, we consider, with tongue firmly in cheek, if what we are told about the UK chemical weapons attack is remotely plausible.
On March 4th 2018 Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were allegedly poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok by two suggested Russian GRU agents. Both Sergei and Yulia thankfully recovered, as did PC Nick Bailey who was also contaminated. However, the British government maintained that Novichok was the most deadly nerve agent ever created. 5 times more Deadly than VX and 8 times more deadly than Sarin. Scientists at Porton Down stated that there was no known antidote. The Skripal’s recovery is therefore just one of the many aspects of the official government narrative that makes no sense whatsoever.
The lack of evidence about the Skripal’s movements in Salisbury, the bizaar tale of how the two GRU agents discarded the Novichok and its later discovery by Charlie Rowley. The sad demise of Rowley’s partner Dawn Sturgess following first response that did not identify the presence of Novichok. The odd route taken by the alleged assassins and their seeming willingness both to leave evidence at the scene of the crime and remain at the crime scene for unfathomable and totally unnecessary reasons.
Hopefully amusing at times but based upon the available evidence I hope you find Skripal – An Investigation a worthwhile watch.
Take it easy.


