Samizdat | April 12, 2022
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hosted his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, on Monday, calling for closer military ties between the countries and warning of security threats posed by China and Russia.
“We’re meeting at a critical moment in the US-India defense partnership,” Austin told Singh as Monday’s talks began. He added that Washington and New Delhi both believe in a “free and open Indo-Pacific” underpinned by respect for national sovereignty and the rule of law, but “we’re facing urgent and mounting challenges to this shared vision.”
Beijing is undermining security in the region by building “dual-use infrastructure” along its border with India and making unlawful territorial claims in the South China Sea, Austin said. “The United States stands with India in defending their sovereign interests,” he pledged.
Austin argued that like China, Russia is trying to “change the status quo by force,” adding, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the humanitarian devastation that it has created are blatant attempts to undermine the international order that is grounded in the rules and the principles that we share.”
The US defense chief said that as the world’s largest democracy, India is “central to this rules-based order,” and he called for collaboration with “like-minded partners.” Those ties may include co-development of weapons.
Austin and Singh followed their talks by holding a so-called 2+2 meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Indian Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. “This is a momentous moment in global affairs, and I think as a result, this partnership is even more consequential and more vital,” Blinken said.
However, the partnership has been strained in recent weeks amid efforts by the US and its Western allies to punish and isolate Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Late last month, a top US national security official warned India that there will be “consequences” for countries that try to “circumvent” Washington’s sanctions campaign against Moscow.
“We are keen for all countries, especially our allies and partners, not to create mechanisms that prop up the ruble and that attempt to undermine the dollar-based financial system,” deputy national security advisor Daleep Singh told reporters during his visit to New Delhi on March 31.
President Joe Biden’s top economic advisor, Brian Deese, reiterated those concerns last week, saying Washington had warned India that it would face significant and long-term costs if it aligned strategically with Russia. “There are certainly areas where we have been disappointed by both China and India’s decisions, in the context of the invasion,” he said.
India has declined to impose sanctions against Russia and has ramped up purchases of Russian oil. Indian and Russian officials also have discussed a ruble-rupee payment mechanism for trade between the countries, bypassing the dollar and the euro.
Another source of tension between Washington and New Delhi is India’s historic reliance on Russian-made weapons. India has ordered five S-400 anti-aircraft systems from Russia – in defiance of a warning from the US against the $5.5 billion deal – and it reportedly has an option to purchase more of the surface-to-air missiles.
Austin told US lawmakers last week that it’s not in India’s best interests to continue buying Russian weaponry, and the Pentagon is working with New Delhi to reduce its reliance on Moscow.
By Rhoda Wilson – The Exposé – April 7, 2022
Most of us are aware that it’s not only online but also things published by corporate media that aren’t always what they seem. However, a major difference between government or corporate media reports and independent or citizen reports shared online, is the latter allows for public discourse and open debate, providing they are not censored, while corporate media and their fact-checking services do not – they prefer a top-down “above all” approach.
Denying public debate negates the all-important diversity of thought in a liberal and democratic society. Silencing counterarguments that challenge their preferred storyline enables governments and corporate media to create a one-sided narrative. A narrative that, left unchallenged, moves further and further away from the truth. But here’s a fact that you will not find on either GOV.UK or Full Fact: a lie cannot become truth, no matter how often it is repeated.
The SHAREChecklist attempts to provide advice on what to share and what not to share apparently for the good of others. Information that does not originate from their sources could be “harmful to share with our friends and families,” the UK government claims.
It’s important to understand that we, the people, are in the midst of an information war. One which began in earnest at the start of 2020. A battle in the public space for complete and truthful information while governments and their advisors attempt to manipulate our perceptions and behaviours so we obey their instructions, without question, even when those instructions prove to be harmful.
Even the most trusting know that governments and politicians hide the truth, manipulate the truth and even outright lie – it’s merely the extent that varies. We know that governments use mass media – television, radio and online – as tools to roll out their narratives to the public en masse. Additional government tools include initiatives such as their SHAREChecklist campaign.
At the very least corporate media is biased but as they sink deeper into an ever-narrowing storyline it is becoming apparent that reports are being manufactured and that they are activists seeking to implement an agenda, they are not journalists.
Fact-checking services do not provide facts they provide opinions. Last year, Facebook admitted in court that its “fact checks” are nothing more than statements of opinion. Not experts’ opinions but those of the “fact-checkers.” And self-described “fact-checkers” are not independent. They are dependent on donations from large corporations, the same corporations that work to craft a narrative and silence public debate through censorship.
The SHAREChecklist
As we work through the checklist what will become apparent is that in no way does the government advise, or even so much as hint at encouraging: critical thinking, comparing a variety of sources, open dialogue or debate. The checklist leads readers along a path to following a narrative set by a centralised coterie – the government or whoever is “advising” them.
The Government’s first bit of advice is to “make sure information comes from a trusted source.” This is common sense and something we should all be doing, and most likely instinctively are. What each of us believes are “trusted sources” is decisive.
A source that has been proven to lie without remorse is not a source to be trusted. Any source that consistently and persistently promotes Covid injections as “safe and effective” and so roll up your sleeve for another shot, for example, is not to be trusted. Within these sources, the lies are pathological and systemic. Such a source – the BBC, SAGE or UK government, for example – does not suddenly and inexplicably switch from being wanton liars to being truthful.
The second bit of advice the Government has to offer is to read beyond the headline – yet more common sense. A headline cannot contain all the substantive information that an article contains.
Additionally, clickbait headlines, for example, are common practice in all forms of media. To avoid a knee jerk response to the attention-seeking text we should not take an article, or post online, at its headline. Corporate media, as with marketing agencies, are particularly adept at clickbait headlines, texts and thumbnails. And, of course, the UK government has SPI-B and the Nudge Unit to advise them on how to use psychology to maximise public “engagement” and “cooperation.” The checkmark or tick symbol incorporated into the SHAREChecklist logo is an example of typical Nudge Unit behavioural psychology.
Again, in its third bit of advice, the Government advises some additional common sense: “check the facts.” What is notable about this point is that, according to the UK government, there are a limited number of sources that provide these “facts.” Actually, there are only two: themselves, of course, and “fact-checkers,” namely Full Fact.
The BBC frequently and repeatedly tells its viewers that it is a trusted source, bringing you the all facts. Yet, SHAREChecklist does not recommend them as a source to “check the facts.” This may or may not be an indication of how the Government views BBC’s “fact-based” reporting or, possibly, recognition that the public has, by and large, lost its trust in the BBC.
Taking on board the first two bits of advice – “trusted source” and “read beyond the headline,” in this case the Government’s headline – we take a brief look at the Government recommended “fact-checker” Full Fact later in this article.
The fourth bit of the Government’s advice is as true for images and videos shared online as it is for images and videos shown on television. There have been many examples of dubious images and videos published by corporate media over the past two years that deserve to be questioned. There is no source of information, “official” or unofficial, that we should not test for accuracy and reliability. Stay sceptical. Criticism is not only legitimate, it is necessary.
The final bit of advice the Government gives is that typos could be an indication that the information is false. How are those with dyslexia or learning difficulties supposed to feel reading that? For those who find it hard to express their thoughts and ideas in writing, you’re in good company. While Albert Einstein loved mathematics and science, he disliked grammar and had problems with spelling.
After singling out typos, then comes the sneaky bit: “official guidance” – in other words, the Government’s or the centralised coterie’s guidance – has been “carefully checked” presumably for spelling and grammatical errors. So naturally, the Government’s typo-free publications must be true – of course! On that basis, if you want to avoid being censored download Grammarly now!
Who Is Full Fact?
Full Fact’s website states: “We’re developing world-leading technology and new research to spot repeated claims, and find out how bad information can be tackled at a global scale. And we campaign for change that will make bad information rarer and less harmful.”
Who are the people and organisations behind Full Fact? Who are they campaigning for? Who is determining what information is “bad”?
In 2012, UK Column published an article about Full Fact, ‘Faux Facts – The disturbing Truth About fullfact.org’, digging a little deeper into “this interesting little non-profit company, headed by Tory Party donor and Anne Freud Centre Chairman Michael Samuel.”
In 2019 Daily Mail wrote that Full Fact was at the centre of an election row with the Tories and was forced to defend its credibility after it stepped into a social media war after an election debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. Daily Mail quoted Dominic Raab: “Who said Final Fact is the final arbiter of what the public gets to see as the truth? There’s no god-given right, set in law.”
“Foundations set up by eBay creator Pierre Omidyar and left-wing investor George Soros have also joined tech giants in giving six-figure sums to London-based Full Fact along with thousands of unnamed individual donors paying between £25 and £5,000 each,” Daily Mail reported.
A 2021 article published in The Critic noted the board of trustees included Labour peer Baroness Janet Royall, Lib-Dem peer Lord John Sharkey and former Conservative Party member Lord Richard Inglewood. These three peers are still trustees and Michael Samuel is still chairman.
The Critic article goes on to note that Full Fact is a charity with a small output of research compared to its size, funded primarily by big-tech and staffed to a large extent by former public sector workers or ex-reporters from left-wing media. “Full Fact’s website reports that they were paid £1.1 million by Facebook and £206,500 by Google in 2019, plus a monthly payment of £7,300 worth of free advertising by the search giant. The funding by big-tech in 2019 makes up roughly 70% of their declared funding for the year,” The Critic wrote.
As you can see for yourself in the table below Full Fact is still predominantly funded, and so their opinions are influenced, by the notorious online censor organisations – Facebook, which includes WhatsApp, and Google, which includes YouTube. In 2021, almost 40% of Full Fact’s “donations” came from Facebook and Google.
Full Fact does not pass the government’s SHAREChecklist test and, according to UK government advice, their articles may be “harmful” if shared with friends and families – do not share them.
| Full Fact Funding 2021 retrieved 6 April 2022 | ||
| £305,119.64 | Third Party Fact Checking programme | |
| £116,352.14 | Framework for collaboration during misinformation crises | |
| £59,634.83 | Health fellowship | |
| Hundreds of individual donors and gift aid | £370,148.00 | Core funding |
| Mohn Westlake Foundation | £250,000.00 | Core funding |
| Google AI for Good Impact Challenge | £235,222.77 | Automated fact checking |
| Nuffield Foundation | £100,000.00 | Fact checking and annual report |
| Luminate | £75,789.87 | Core funding |
| Esmée Fairbairn Foundation | £68,333.33 | Core funding |
| £61,809.84 | WhatsApp fact checking service | |
| International Fact Checking Network & WhatsApp | £53,737.20 | Vaccine Grant Program |
| Baillie Gifford | £50,000.00 | Core funding |
| John Ellerman Foundation | £50,000.00 | Core funding |
| Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust | £50,000.00 | Core funding |
| The Buchanan Programme | £49,801.68 | Core funding |
| The Dulverton Trust | £35,000.00 | Core funding |
| Gill Family Foundation | £30,000.00 | Core funding |
| James Padolsey | £30,000.00 | Core funding |
| International Fact Checking Network & National Endowment for Democracy | £26,576.58 | Fact-Checkers Working Together Research Program |
| Colefax Charitable Trust | £25,000.00 | Core funding |
| The M J Samuel Charitable Trust | £17,500.00 | Core funding |
| International Fact Checking Network & YouTube | £17,064.56 | Fact Checking Development Grant |
| Highway One Trust | £10,000.00 | Policy team |
| William de Winton | £10,000.00 | Core funding |
| Reed Foundation | £9,000.00 | Core funding |
| Good Thinking Society | £8,000.00 | Core funding |
| Dorothy Bishop | £6,000.00 | Core funding |
| Cecil Pilkington Charitable Trust | £5,000.00 | Core funding |
| Tinsley Charitable Trust | £5,000.00 | Core funding |
By Stephen Lendman | April 9, 2022
On Friday, Russia’s Justice Ministry ordered the closure of hostile Western NGOs in the country.
To date, 15 organizations were removed from its registry of international groups for “violations of the current legislation of the Russian Federation” — with no further elaboration.
They include offices of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Institute for International Education, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation, and the Wspolnota Polska Association.
On Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) were added to Russia’s persona non grata list.
Both organizations publish defamatory reports on invented US/Western enemies.
They operate as mouthpieces for their interests.
They’re imperial tools.
HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth is a former US federal prosecutor.
His predecessor Aryeh Neier left to become president of George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
Other past and present HRW staffers are former US officials or have ties to sources and groups representing Washington’s geopolitical interests — including the infamous undemocratic National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Like HRW, AI fronts for powerful US/Western interests.
Both organizations are more concerned about serving their funding sources and publicity to attract more of the same than human rights.
Russia shut down HRW for fake news rubbish like the following, saying:
“Today, Russia is more repressive than it has ever been in the post-Soviet era (sic).”
“(A)uthorities crack down on critical media, harass peaceful protesters, engage in smear campaigns against independent groups, and stifle them with fines (sic).”
In early April, HRW defied reality by falsely accusing Russian forces in Ukraine of “rape… summary execution(s), (along with) committing laws-of-war violations against civilians (sic), (and) looting civilian property (sic).”
HRW provided no verifiable evidence to support what it falsely claimed to document — because none exists.
It falsely claimed that Russian forces “rounded up” men in Ukraine and “executed them (sic).”
Ignoring generous humanitarian aid provided by Russian forces to Ukrainians, HRW falsely accused them of forcibly “taking food, firewood, clothing, and other items” in areas of the country where they’ve operated.
In response to shutting down its office and de-registering the group, HRW’s Roth said the following:
“This new iron curtain (sic) will not stop our ongoing efforts to defend the rights of all Russians and to protect civilians in Ukraine (sic).”
He lied accusing Moscow of “criminalizing” independent war reporting.
There’s nothing remotely “independent” about US/Western NGOs, notably not imperial tools like HRW, AI and other groups that are bribed with big bucks to serve their interests.
Ignoring democracy as it should be in Russia compared to US/Western fantasy versions, Roth falsely accused the country of “turn(ing) toward authoritarianism (sic).”
The above Big Lies were followed by an appeal for donations to continue its bashing of invented US/Western enemies.
Russia shut down AI for falsely accusing its authorities of “violat(ing) the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly…torture…disappearances…deportation of refugees and asylum seekers (along with) failure to address domestic violence (sic).”
It lied accusing Russia of “aggression in Ukraine (sic).”
It lied claiming that Russian forces “extrajudicially executed civilians in” the country (sic).
It lied saying that they’re responsible for “horrifying violence (and) widespread intimidation (sic).”
AI’s head Agnes Callamard turned truth on its head, falsely claiming that Russian forces are “kill(ing) unarmed civilians…in their homes and streets in acts of unspeakable cruelty and shocking brutality (sic),” adding:
“We gathered (so-called) evidence that Russian forces have committed extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings (sic).”
“People in Ukraine are facing a catastrophic human rights crisis.”
“People are dying, including children, and many thousands of lives are at risk.”
“Take action to demand that the Russian authorities stop this act of aggression and protect civilians now (sic).”
All of the above and lots more of the same apply to Nazified Ukrainian forces — clearly not Russia.
Yet HRW and AI falsely accused Moscow of their war crimes and related atrocities — in deference to their US/Western donors.
AI lied accusing Russian authorities of “an unprecedented, nationwide crackdown on independent journalism, anti-war protests and dissenting voices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (sic).”
“The Kremlin remains hellbent on hiding the human cost of its war and has blocked independent news sites and social media (sic).”
The above applies to how US/Western regimes operate, not Russia.
In response to Russia’s shutdown of its office, AI’s Callamard falsely said the following:
“Amnesty’s closing down in Russia is only the latest in a long list of organizations that have been punished for defending human rights (sic) and speaking the truth to the Russian authorities (sic).”
“In a country where scores of activists and dissidents have been imprisoned, killed or exiled (sic), where independent media has been smeared, blocked or forced to self-censor (sic), and where civil society organizations have been outlawed or liquidated (sic), you must be doing something right if the Kremlin tries to shut you up (sic).”
Russia should have shut down imperial tools HRW and AI long ago.
Pretending support for human rights belies how they, in fact, operate.
The rights and interests of US/Western donors alone are served — at the expense of what both organizations falsely claim to stand for.
By Michael Tracey | April 7, 2022
“The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin,” fumed John McCain back in March 2017. His target: Rand Paul, who had committed the unforgivable offense of momentarily delaying the latest round of NATO expansion. Montenegro, a tiny country in southeastern Europe that most Americans have never heard of, was about to join the sprawling military alliance — and McCain was determined to see the final ratification ritual proceed with as little debate as possible. So he hurled the time-honored “working for Putin” accusation, and sure enough, Paul quickly withdrew his minor procedural objection. The glorious ascension of Montenegro to NATO membership status was thereby assured.
Since that episode, a lot has transpired regarding the public perception of McCain. He delighted liberals by feuding regularly with Donald Trump — even going so far as to denounce Trump for engaging in “disgraceful” and “pathetic” flattery of Putin. “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant,” McCain raged. He undermined Congressional Republicans’ legislative agenda during the brief window in Trump’s presidency when the party had unified control of government — famously delivering a dramatic thumbs-down gesture to derail GOP hopes of repealing Obamacare, as a chagrined Mitch McConnell watched powerlessly on.
McCain had returned to his most natural state. After annoying Democrats by running against Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and being surly about his defeat for some time afterwards, he had once again resumed playing the “maverick” role he so relished — reviled by “his own side,” and loved by the “other side.” His death in 2018 brought forth the most effusive display of state-sanctioned grief that any US political figure had received since Ronald Reagan died in 2004, with all the universal media adulation that entails. Trump’s exclusion from the funeral proceedings, at McCain’s posthumous direction, was just the icing on the cake.
But nowadays, if you bring up McCain in certain GOP circles, it will often be claimed that his influence has mercifully dissipated. The Republican Party experienced a bonafide ideological upheaval under Trump, they’ll say, and the McCain worldview — defined mainly by his unwavering commitment to a hyper-interventionist US foreign policy — has since fallen starkly out of favor. (Back when opposing interventionist foreign policy was still considered something of a “progressive” virtue, Mother Jones would routinely mock McCain by merely counting up the comically large number of countries he’d expressed a desire to attack. Did you know McCain once wanted to impose a No Fly Zone in Sudan?)
By “conservative opinion elites,” I refer roughly to the kind of people who write for obscure magazines with obscure funding sources, earnestly enjoy Think Tank social hours, and incessantly convene panels to discuss “the future of conservatism.” These types have a particular incentive to believe that McCain’s foreign policy paradigm has really been purged from the party. They’re deeply invested in the idea that the GOP underwent a genuine transformation in the past decade or so — discarding the outmoded “neocon” dogmas associated with the reign of George W. Bush, and embracing the hardened, nationalist realism associated with Donald Trump.
For a particular kind of ambitious professional conservative, this is a very flattering theory. Because if true, it means the GOP old guard is being slowly but surely displaced, and all kinds of new, innovative ideas are in the offing. Ideally with lots of ambiguous sinecures, TV gigs, and consultant opportunities attached. There’s just one problem though: when it comes to the issue area that always animated McCain the most — which was without a doubt foreign policy — recent events demonstrate that his influence is far from buried. On the contrary, it couldn’t be more alive and well. The year might be 2022, and he might have been physically dead for a while. But it’s still John McCain’s GOP.
A common fallacy heard among conservative opinion-makers who might wish to disassociate from McCain goes something like this: yes, there’s a contingent of the Republican Party that stubbornly hews to McCain-like foreign policy dogma, but it’s really only a limited handful of wackadoodles like Lindsey Graham. In other words, “the neocons” are a small, dwindling faction of the party, and aren’t representative of the typical Republican elected official or rank-and-file voter, who tend to be increasingly skeptical of US interventionism.
That’s a clever little exercise in self-rationalization, but also a bunch of baloney. On the one hand, it’s true that Graham is a… unique figure in various respects. He’s the person currently in elected office who had the closest political and personal association with McCain. Alongside their former cherished colleague, Joe Lieberman, these “three amigos” bonded over a shared, impassioned commitment to omni-directional foreign policy belligerence. (Right on cue, Lieberman was rolled out of semi-retirement last month to demand a “No Fly Zone.”)
But while Graham occasionally blurts out something uniquely insane, such as his tweeted call for the assassination of Putin — he’s far from some kind of wild outlier. In fact, his foreign policy views are comfortably ensconced in the mainstream of the GOP, notwithstanding the popular conceit that “MAGA” has supplanted “neocon” as the party’s dominant sensibility. Because if Graham is the closest living incarnation of the traditional McCain worldview, then perhaps that worldview isn’t nearly as incompatible with “MAGA” as some may want to think.
Recall: even as McCain and Trump brawled over what was essentially a clash of personalities, Graham successfully insinuated himself as one of Trump’s most trusted confidants — regularly hitting the golf links with him, and advising him on key policy matters. This has continued even into Trump’s post-presidency, with Graham operating as one of the most ardent advocates of another Trump run in 2024. “I think he’s the best person in the Republican Party to take up the cause in 2024,” Graham exuberantly told Fox News in January. “I expect him to run… I’ll take bets if anybody wants to bet. I’ll give odds.”
Do you really think Graham would be staking out this position if he viewed Trump’s foreign policy outlook as antithetical to his own?
If there’s some kind of enormous ideological conflict between Trump and Graham — who, remember, proudly carries on the McCain mantle — it has not been at all evident for a long time. It would also be weird to characterize Graham as some kind of aberrational nuisance within the GOP, considering that Graham raked in a record-shattering amount of donations for a GOP Senate candidate during his 2020 re-election campaign in South Carolina. And he accomplished this mostly by utilizing conservative media and direct-mailing lists to hammer home the pledge that he would serve in office as an unflinchingly loyal backer of Trump.
For a vivid illustration of persistent McCain/Graham influence as it relates to current events, take a look at this video that recently resurfaced from December 2016, featuring the esteemed Senatorial pals on a trip to Ukraine. Joined in wonderfully “bipartisan” fashion by Amy Klobuchar, the trio delivered a searing address to a unit of Ukrainian soldiers. If you haven’t seen the video, please do watch, because it confirms the extent to which a vocal faction of the US establishment — with McCain and Graham at the forefront — had invested ideologically and militarily in the cause of Ukraine, and by extension the cause of defeating Russia. Graham proclaims to the assembled soldiers: “Your fight is our fight. 2017 will be the year of offense. All of us will go back to Washington, and we will push the case against Russia.” McCain similarly declared, “I am convinced you will win. And we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need to win.”
While in 2016 the cause of arming Ukraine to defeat Russia on the battlefield was a somewhat more marginal preoccupation, today it’s been sanctified as virtually unshakable consensus in both parties. Funneling weapons to Ukraine was once seen as cranky McCain’s pet cause, a fixation that stemmed from his peculiarly hyper-interventionist worldview. Now, whether the US should be waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is barely even considered a debatable proposition: just another McCain priority eventually consecrated as mainstream orthodoxy. “It’s bringing Congress together in a way, frankly, I haven’t seen in my 12 years,” Chris Coons, the Democratic senator from Delaware and Biden advisor, reverentially told the New York Times. “You’d have to go back to 9/11 to see such a unified commitment.” McCain is no doubt smiling down from the heavens at this great outbreak of “unification.” Because it’s proof of his enduring legacy; with his worldview and geopolitical objectives having arguably become more widely adopted than ever before.
But the coalescence of McCain-like consensus didn’t start with Russia’s invasion in February 2022. For one thing, Graham was proven right when he prophesied that 2017 would be the “year of offense” — because that was the year he, McCain, and other hawks successfully lobbied Trump to sign off on transfers of lethal weapons to Ukraine. Whatever personality conflict existed between McCain and Trump, the actual policy portfolio enacted by Trump vis-a-vis Russia wasn’t all that different from what McCain’s might’ve been. Indeed, when Trump announced the weapons transfers, McCain showered him with praise. And when Trump abrogated the INF Treaty, he was fulfilling another longtime McCain goal.
Listening to Republican politicians comment on Ukraine policy today, you can almost close your eyes and hear McCain’s irascible voice. For an example of how the McCain worldview is far from limited to so-called “neocons,” but instead a feature of entirely mainstream GOP thinking, consider the recent activities of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). If there’s any apt descriptor for Scott, it’s that he’s basically a conventional Republican. Not some kind of overly-ideological “neocon,” but rather a business guy who made a huge fortune defrauding Medicare, somehow leveraged that into becoming Governor of Florida, and is now in the US Senate. He also appears to have higher ambitions, as evidenced by his position running the National Republican Senatorial Committee — the campaign wing of the Senate GOP caucus. Scott isn’t especially bright, but he’s more or less able to articulate the standard bromides aimed squarely at the median Republican, and is thus capable of formulating strategy on behalf of the party for the upcoming midterm elections. He also released a manifesto outlining his bold vision for conservatism, which among other things includes that all Americans be made to pay income tax regardless of their income bracket.
The point is, Scott is situating himself at the center of the party in service of some future gambit, may be to challenge Mitch McConnell for GOP Leader (which Trump has encouraged) or maybe even to launch his own presidential campaign at some point, which I’m sure would be a barrel of laughs.
So what is Rick Scott’s big proposal on the Ukraine issue? You guessed it: demanding a No Fly Zone, or short of that, demanding the US send fighter jets into Ukraine. This is apparently the position that Scott calculates will resonate most potently with the prototypical GOP donor and voter. Again, Scott isn’t intrinsically some sort of deeply ideological McCain-Graham foreign policy fanatic. Yet, he’s espousing views that could have been directly pilfered from the McCain-Graham school of thought — just because that school of thought is so thoroughly mainstream within the GOP, whatever superficial animosities some party members may still harbor against McCain.
Part of this owes to standard partisan reflex. Desperately seeking some angle of attack against Biden in relation to Ukraine, Republicans have settled on denouncing him for not escalating the US proxy war aggressively enough. It’s incredibly easy to imagine the ghost of McCain making the exact same criticisms as, say, Ted Cruz is making at the moment. Days after Biden committed the threshold-crossing act of calling for regime change in Russia — thereby announcing that the policy of the US is to depose Putin — Cruz went on Newsmax and complained that Biden’s “approach to every enemy of America is weakness and appeasement.” Only in a McCain-inflected universe does it make even the faintest sense for a president orchestrating a giant weapons-funneling operation, and waging a proxy war of unprecedented scale — which continues intensifying by the day — to be accused of “appeasement.” But it’s clearly still McCain’s world that the GOP is living in. That was always McCain’s tack: his problem with any given US intervention was of course never the intervention itself, but rather that it wasn’t going far enough, and if you weren’t willing to go as far as he wanted, you were some sort of abject appeaser.
On the subject of Ukraine, this pattern gets repeated over and over by GOP chieftains. Biden proposes the biggest Pentagon budget in US history, and right on cue, Mitch McConnell denounces it as somehow “soft” on Russia and “far-left.” Biden announces yet another massive tranche of missiles, grenades, and heavy artillery being dispatched to Ukraine, and Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, immediately ridicules him for not giving Ukraine fighter jets. “Provide them the planes where they can create a No Fly Zone,” McCarthy demanded in a March 16 press conference. (It’s unclear whether McCarthy is satisfied with Biden’s latest decision to send tanks.)
Though it is now common to characterize Russia as committing “genocide” since footage emerged in the past several days purporting to show Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians, Steve Scalise, the House Republican Whip, led the charge in making that designation weeks ago. “There’s nothing less than genocide going on in Ukraine,” he alleged during that same March 16 press conference, alongside McCarthy. Scalise had been so profoundly moved by Zelensky’s expertly-crafted Zoom address to Congress earlier in the day that he was compelled to issue the “genocide” allegation immediately thereafter. (No word on what independent investigative mission Scalise carried out in order to ascertain the relevant facts.)
Biden may have caused a stir when he condemned Putin as a “war criminal” — thus confirming a complete lack of interest in facilitating any kind of negotiated settlement to the conflict — but first out of the gate in making this accusation was Elise Stefanik, the New York GOP Congresswoman who serves as the chair of the House Republican Conference. Initially viewed as a “moderate,” Stefanik gamely generated big attention in recent years as a bombastic defender of Trump, raising a ton of money in the process. “As a new mom, it is heart-wrenching to watch the video that President Zelensky just played in terms of the bombing of maternity wards,” Stefanik weepily inveighed, also during the March 16 press conference with McCarthy and Scalise. “Make no mistake, there will be consequences on the global stage for Vladimir Putin, who is a war criminal and a thug,” she cried. The pattern is clear: all throughout the run-up to the invasion and ever since, it’s generally been the GOP which employs the most extreme rhetoric and makes the most extreme policy demands, with Biden eventually coming around not long afterwards. In taking this tack, Republicans could hardly pay a more fitting tribute to McCain.
Joni Ernst, the GOP Senator from Iowa, recently debuted a new criticism: apparently, the Biden Administration hasn’t been forthcoming enough about the weapons it’s transferring to Ukraine. But don’t be silly: seeking actual transparency on behalf of the American public is the farthest thing from Ernst’s mind. She totally supports the Biden Administration’s secrecy — she just wants to make sure that the US is dumping what she regards as a sufficient quantity of weapons. “Certainly, we do need to keep it secret, what is being transferred,” Ernst clarified during an appearance on Fox. “And that’s why we’ve asked to have those numbers provided to us in a classified setting.” Explaining the ultimate objective for these efforts, Ernst might as well have been paying direct homage to McCain: “We want to make sure that [Ukrainians] win this war, and they can win this war,” she roared.
But the biggest blow dealt to those conservative opinion elites — the guys who cling to the conceit that the GOP has really and truly changed its foreign policy orientation — comes in the form of Josh Hawley, one of their great hopes for a supposed convention-defying thinker willing to buck party consensus. Because when push comes to shove, it turns out Hawley is just another McCain mini-me.
A central venue for the recurring attempt to “re-imagine conservatism,” or something to that effect, is currently this outfit called “National Conservatism” (NatCon for short) which hosts occasional conferences. I actually attended one in Orlando last October out of morbid curiosity, and the big tell that maybe soaring intellectual heights would not be achieved there was the organizers’ decision to anoint Dave Rubin as a featured speaker. In all honesty, I have never once heard Dave Rubin utter anything resembling an original thought — but there he was, at the podium, sharing his keen insights on behalf of this exciting new GOP faction.
The three GOP elected officials chosen by NatCon to exemplify a re-invigorated “national conservatism” — presumably one which departed from the legacy of old fogies like McCain — were Hawley, Cruz, and Marco Rubio. Few would be surprised that Rubio soon thereafter turned around and started beating the standard war drums. And Cruz will just do whatever best positions him to win the GOP presidential nomination at some point. But Hawley in particular is often touted as a sort of tribune for the emerging “heterodox” wing of the GOP, alienated from the tired ideological construct that weds together military intervention and free markets. Yet, all three NatCon speakers joined the majority of their Senate GOP colleagues in signing a letter last month to demand that Joe Biden send fighter jets into Ukraine — exactly the kind of escalation you’d think these enlightened “NatCons” would be eager to reject. (Surprise! The letter was organized by Lindsey Graham.)
While there are some NatCon types who really do go against the grain, ultimately the larger enterprise functions as an attempt by the same old GOP establishment forces to perpetually re-brand themselves. Kind of like the Tea Party in the early 2010s, which was initially painted as some sort of revolutionary force, but immediately got subsumed into the Republican National Committee and conservative infotainment complex. The NatCon movement’s three elected standard-bearers behaving exactly as McCain would have wanted them to is good evidence that there really has not been any profound break from the past.
Just look at the latest super-serious “Policy Brief” issued by the Heritage Foundation — still the in-house “Think Tank” of official Washington, DC movement conservatism. It’s basically a litany of generic interventionist prescriptions for how the US can “do much more” to ensure Ukraine’s battlefield victory. Suggestions include facilitating “the free and unrestricted transfer of weapons, munitions, and other supplies to the Ukrainians, including a continuous flow of intelligence” — which just translates to an endorsement of the Biden Administration’s status quo, except a degree or two more aggressive. If there really is this wave of insidious anti-interventionism that we’re always being warned is on the brink of taking over the GOP, nowhere is it evident at the GOP’s most influential Think Tank, the place dopey members of Congress — most of whom barely ever thought about the concept of Ukraine before February 2022 — go to receive their talking points.
Then there’s conservative media, which has returned triumphantly to its 2003 heyday as a reliable organ for pro-war agitprop. Republican “id” Sean Hannity is predictably leading the charge. One day he’s calling on NATO to bomb a Russian convoy in Ukraine; the next he’s having a friendly on-air chat with Sean Penn of all people, discussing their mutual support for sending in fighter jets. Meanwhile, in order to keep up the facade that the GOP is somehow nefariously pro-Putin, the non-conservative media continuously seeks out the handful of marginal exceptions who ultimately have no real influence at all on the priorities of the party. (Yes, I’m aware that Tucker Carlson exists, as I appear on his show occasionally. But to whatever extent he’s skeptical of US intervention in Ukraine, this is not reflected in the behavior of the mainline GOP.)
Which brings us to Donald Trump himself. To the degree that Trump appears to have any criticisms of Biden Administration policy in relation to Ukraine, it consists of the retrospective counter-factual whereby Trump claims Putin never would’ve invaded on his watch. Which is possible, but unprovable. With the invasion having happened, though, Trump now assails Biden for “allowing” Putin “to get away with this travesty and assault on humanity.” In a speech shortly after the invasion, Trump insinuated that the US should be threatening to “blow him to pieces” — i.e., threatening nuclear retaliation.
“No president was ever as tough on Russia as I was,” Trump declared on February 28. Those convinced he was compromised by Putin in some sort of extravagant collusion plot never seem to have noticed, but many of the key US actions which precipitated the invasion were committed under Trump: the most obvious being the successful McCain-Graham lobbying effort to get him to start sending Ukraine lethal weaponry. Trump still brags about the decision to this day, stating, “We also gave a lot of the javelins that you’re hearing so much about, we gave those javelins when President Obama was giving sheets and pillows and I guess blankets. That didn’t help too much. But we gave javelins, and a lot of them too, and I guess that’s helping a lot.”
Well, maybe it would’ve been a smarter idea to stick with the blankets. At least if the goal was to avert war. Because for years, Putin warned that these kinds of US weapons shipments were going to drastically heighten tensions. In his speech announcing the invasion, Putin couldn’t have been more explicit about one of his primary motivations to launch the war: “Any further expansion of the North Atlantic alliance’s infrastructure or the ongoing efforts to gain a military foothold of the Ukrainian territory are unacceptable for us.”
It was under Trump that Ukraine was elevated to “Enhanced Opportunities Partner” status within NATO — exactly the sort of military-infrastructural encroachment that Putin denounced. Trump also happens to be the one who formally effectuated the accession of Montenegro into NATO, which McCain had fulminated against Rand Paul for temporarily impeding, as well as the subsequent accession of North Macedonia — thereby continuing the process of NATO expansion which Putin also angrily cites as a central reason for the invasion. When Putin reproaches the US/NATO “military machine” for expanding so much that it is now “approaching our very border” — that’s a process which culminated under Trump!
Even as Democrats screamed that Trump was somehow surreptitiously governing on Putin’s behalf, what he was really doing was enacting a McCain-like policy agenda that cratered US-Russia relations — a trend which proceeded apace under Biden. While the media obsessed over their delusional theory that Trump was collusively enabling Putin, the real issue was always that his Administration did everything in its policy capacity to fray the US-Russia relationship. Hence the diplomatic impasse on bitter display right now.
Oh and by the way, half of the hawks that are constantly on TV demanding more confrontational action against Russia — including Mike Pompeo, H.R. McMaster, Fiona Hill, Kurt Volker, and of course uber-hawk John Bolton — were all hired by Trump.
Unsurprisingly, this McCain-inspired frenzy engulfing Republican elected officials and conservative media is also reflected in the sentiments of rank-and-file GOP voters. During the Trump years, it was Democrats who led the way in declaring Russia a top “enemy,” convinced as they were that Putin had “interfered” in the 2016 election to malevolently install Trump in power. Today, according to recent polling, Republicans now match or surpass Democrats in their antipathy for Russia.
“Crises” such as the one currently underway are always clarifying. One thing they can do is peel back a veneer. And in the case of the GOP, when that veneer is peeled back — beneath all the bogus rhetorical conceits and phony re-branding exercises — what’s revealed is the smiling, satisfied visage of John McCain. Still getting his way in the afterlife.
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | April 8, 2022
Two stories snuck below the radar this week: the U.S. admitted to deploying what up until now has been deplorable and downright wretched “disinformation” in the Ukraine crisis. Furthermore, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs boasted about the effective use of landmines against the Russians — a week after headlines conflated their use by the Russians with civilian atrocities.
First, the disinfo. This week the leading lights of our mainstream media sat on a stage and lectured Americans in front of a banner reading “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy.” They must’ve been too busy to give this stunner from NBC News the treatment it deserves:
It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.
It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance. …
…“It doesn’t have to be solid intelligence when we talk about it,” a U.S. official said. “It’s more important to get out ahead of them — Putin specifically — before they do something. It’s preventative. We don’t always want to wait until the intelligence is 100 percent certainty that they are going to do something. We want to get out ahead to stop them.”
Headlined as a “break from the past” — truly? — the piece is actually a glowing tribute to the administration’s gambit to throw Putin off his game. The only break from the past here is near-past. Aside from the self-serving gasbaggery coming from the aforementioned stage at the University of Chicago this week, the mainstream media has been screeching about disinformation in a sort of trance-like mantra for more than four years. Most recently it has been used to smear critics of a more escalatory policy in Ukraine. Now, according to this NBC News report, it is:
“the most amazing display of intelligence as an instrument of state power that I have seen or that I’ve heard of since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Tim Weiner, the author of a 2006 history of the CIA and 2020’s “The Folly and the Glory,” a look at the U.S.-Russia rivalry over decades. “It has certainly blunted and defused the disinformation weaponry of the Kremlin.”
Get it? The U.S. must use “good” disinformation to combat the “bad” disinformation by the Russians. Just like we engage in “good” military invasions (Iraq, Libya) to overthrow the “bad” guys (Hussein, Qaddafi).
Which brings us to landmines. The U.S. never signed the international ban on landmines, which have a pesky habit of lying around for decades after wars and blowing civilians’ limbs off. We know this. But as always, the Americans want it both ways, pointing to their “desperate” use by bad guys, like the Russians, as akin to atrocities. Like these headlines last week, here and here.
But then it turns out the Ukrainians are using them too, but their use is “effective” and “strategic” and important to the mission. Here’s Joint Chiefs Chair, Gen. Mark Milley, testifying yesterday.
“Land mines are being effectively used by the Ukrainian forces to shape the avenues of approach by Russian armored forces, which puts them into engagement areas and makes them vulnerable to the 60,000 anti-tank weapons systems that we’re providing to the Ukrainians,” Milley said. “That’s one of the reasons why you see column after column of Russian vehicles that are destroyed.”
This reminds us of course of the incident earlier in the invasion when Linda Greenfield, our UN ambassador, tried to rip the Russians for what appeared to be cluster munitions in their convoys marching toward Kyiv. Her statement had to be edited, however, because the U.S. still has such weapons — which too leave little bomblets behind that tend to kill and main unsuspecting civilians — in its own arsenal.
Like the contradictions in Greenfield’s story, Milley’s will no doubt be met by mainstream crickets, too. These threads just don’t fit the proscribed narrative, which at its worst, promulgates a “fine for me, but not for thee” hypocrisy.
BY NICK GRIFFIN | SAMIZDAT | APRIL 5, 2022
“The Bucha Massacre” has now become the driving force for the propaganda push for even more NATO involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.
Yet the claim that this is a Russian war crime is so patently false that a rational observer can only be left astounded by the combination of bare-faced nerve and slapdash incompetence displayed by the media outlets and politicians pushing this disgusting smear.
The latest effort of the Western media to deny Russian rebuttals is the claim that satellite photos show the bodies were there for weeks. Far from ‘proving’ the case against Russian troops, however, this new assertion in fact raises yet more questions which undermine the Western story.
The satellite photos certainly appear to show bodies, but they also show no sign at all of the burnt out cars which are such a prominent feature of the ground photos and videos. Are we supposed to believe that these vehicles were carefully driven in and positioned between the corpses after the shooting spree?
A similar suspension of belief is required when considering the dates involved. The ‘Bucha Massacre’ entry in Wiki (accessed 09.25 on 5th April 2022) reads as follows:
‘On 4 April, satellite images were provided to The New York Times by Maxar Technologies. The Times compared images to video evidence and concluded: “many of the civilians were killed more than three weeks ago, when Russia’s military was in control of the town.” The images of Yablonska Street show at least 11 “dark objects of similar size to a human body” appearing between 9 March and 11 March”.’
Wiki also tells us that Ukrainian troops re-entered Bucha on April 1st, following the redeployment of the Russian force to south eastern Ukraine.
Maxar Technologies, as a major contractor for NASA, is of course an integral part of the NATO military-industrial complex. As such its assertions with regards to the conduct of the conflict in Ukraine have to be regarded with caution. That said, Maxar’s dates of 9th– 11th March seem to be causing some concern in mainstream media outlets promoting the Russian massacre claim.
The Maxar dates should indeed raise eyebrows. The idea that bodies could lie in the open air for three whole weeks without undergoing massive decay is only remotely credible because the average Westerner thinks that Ukraine is in some kind of winter weather deep-freeze in late March.
Yet a look at the weather data for Kiev for March 2022 reveals that there has not been one single day in the city (of which Bucha is a suburb) with temperatures below freezing since March 11th. The average daily temperature in the last few days of the month was 6 degrees centigrade – the same as the English city of Leeds. That average in turn of course includes highs in the spring sunshine. The weather graph for Kiev for the last week in March shows the situation very clearly, with temperatures up to 15 and 17 degrees:
Anyone who has walked past an animal killed and left on the road for a few days under such conditions will be able to imagine the appalling stench which would come from so many human bodies left in the spring sunshine for three weeks, yet not one of the Ukrainian soldiers or police shown examine the bodies can be seen wearing a mask, making any expression of revulsion or mentioning the smell.
As more graphic images have emerged of the victims, the evident freshness of the corpses seems to have prompted a revision of the dates of the alleged ‘Russian massacre’. By 5th April, for example, the UK Daily Mail’s lead story was claiming that the satellite photos showing the bodies on the road were taken on 19th March. No explanation was given for the ten-day change.
But even accepting the revised time-line, there is still the problem that none of the bodies shown in videos or photos has any sign of decay or damage from carrion-eaters. In order to believe the accounts and videos put out by Kiev and the Western media, it is also necessary to believe that Ukraine has no stray dogs, no rats and not one single crow or other carnivorous bird.
Look again at the video footage of the Ukrainian troops driving along the corpse-lined road. Do you see any carrion-eating birds flying up from any of the bodies?
For that matter, why were some of the bodies not crushed by the Russian tanks which withdrew from and through the town? Do you really believe that soldiers brutal enough to slaughter dozens of defenceless civilians would then be considerate enough to slow down their withdrawal from the area by carefully weaving their heavy armour around each corpse?
Returning to the weather, there was of course rain during the three weeks the bodies are supposed to have laid (not) rotting in the road. Looking at the cardboard of the green boxes of the food aid packages lying near some of the (clearly fresh) corpses, it is clear that they have not been subjected to bad weather. The presence of those packages is also, of course, another important pointer as to the truth in this matter – for they are Russian.
Thus, in order to believe the Western propaganda narrative, we must swallow yet another ridiculous tall tale: The ‘analysts’ have spent the last month repeatedly telling us that the Russian army cannot even supply its own troops with fuel or food; but now they would have us believe that the Russians went to all the trouble of taking vast quantities of emergency food parcels to the occupied suburbs of Kiev, handed them out to civilians – and then promptly shot them.
On top of all this, there are four key facts which have already received considerable attention on Telegram (the last uncensored social media platform of any size in the West), though which have predictably enough been routinely ignored by the warmongering mainstream media.
The first of these is the video of the Mayor of Bucha speaking about how the Russian troops have left and that a ‘clean-up’ is now underway. As a non-Russian speaker I cannot judge for myself, but the comments by Russian-speakers accompanying this video on Telegram say that he does not mention the bodies of civilians.
The second fact, closely related to this, is the video which shows a detachment of the paramilitary Ukrainian National Police clearing the roads of burnt out and abandoned vehicles. Again, there is no sign of the bodies which appeared on the streets the following day.
Third, and perhaps most devastating of all, are the white armbands on a number of the bodies. These are clearly shown in the main video of Ukrainian troops driving along the corpse-strewn road, and they are also visible on several of the bodies of victims of torture and murder in cellars in Bucha.
The fact that Ukrainian forces wear blue armbands, while Russian troops wear white ones, is universally accepted. A number of videos from various parts of the conflict zone also show civilians wearing white armbands, as a sign either of sympathy with the Russians or at least neutrality.
Thus the appearance of white armbands on the victims of ‘the Bucha Massacre’ is overwhelming evidence that the victims were ethnic Russians. They were murdered not by Russian troops – who were of course sent in with a key aim of stopping the persecution of Russian-speakers by racist neo-Nazis – but by Ukrainians.
This should come as no surprise, for the whole history of Ukrainian nationalism is based on the mass murder of ‘unclean’ and ‘sub-human’ civilians from other ethnic groups, most notably the Poles of Wolyn and Eastern Galicia, Jews, Hungarians, Romanians and, of course, Russians.
Finally, we come to the video clip from the streets of Bucha, which was posted and then removed from the social media account of the known Ukrainian neo-Nazi ‘Botman’: “There are guys without blue armbands. Can we shoot them?” “F**k, yeah!”
The truth of the massacre is so clear that we can see why Western leaders such as Boris Johnson are so adamant that there should not be a proper international investigation into the crime.
Instead, they are using the most blatant fake news to justify imposing another round of sanctions pain on their own people, and to excuse the sending of billions of pounds, dollars and euros worth of high-tech weapons in order to prolong the war. One has to wonder about the scale of the kick-backs these real war criminals are getting from their military-industrial complex cronies!
Fact checkers strangely AWOL
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 7, 2022
A viral tweet that remains unchecked by “fact checkers” claims to show a Russian-operated ‘mobile crematorium’ in Mariupol, but the image is taken from an 8-year-old YouTube video.
Whoops.
The tweet was posted by news outlet NEXTA, which boasts nearly a million followers on Twitter. The tweet has received over 7,000 retweets and almost 11,000 likes.
“Mobile crematoria in #Mariupol,” states the tweet.
“Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko said today that #Russian mobile crematoria have started operating in the city.”
“According to him, tens of thousands of people could have died in Mariupol and the cremation, “covering up the traces of crimes”.
Except a simple reverse image search reveals the ‘mobile crematorium’ to be a screenshot from an 8-year-old YouTube video.
Much vaunted “fact checkers” are yet to comment on the issue, and Twitter hasn’t placed a ‘warning label’ on the tweet letting users know it is fake news.
Twitter users pointed out that this is recycled propaganda, since the same debunked claim about “mobile crematoriums” was made at the start of the war.
The tweet emerged at the same time Ukrainian authorities in Mariupol started claiming that Russian troops are “burning the bodies of tens of thousands of civilians” as part of a “new Auschwitz.”
Seizing on the outrage sparked by alleged war crimes in Bucha, Mariupol City Council said, “Russian mobile crematoriums have been launched” in the city.
“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the existence of Nazis concentration camps,” claimed Mayor of Mariupol Vadim Boychenko.
There have been innumerable fake news incidents either staged entirely or fabricated by Ukrainian officials which have gone unchecked by “fact checkers” since the start of the war.
They include the ‘Ghost of Kiev’ farce, the supposed ‘slaughter’ of Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island and the ‘attack’ on a Holocaust memorial in Kiev that never happened.
By Tom Luongo | Gold Goats N’ Guns | April 5, 2022
Fungal President Joe Biden openly declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in a recent outburst while speaking at NATO. He’s repeated this in the wake of the initial images coming out of the town of Bucha, Ukraine where an alleged massacre of civilians by Russian soldiers took place.
Like many incidents similar to this in the past it is hard to take any of these claims of blame seriously. The US and UK have staged many a ‘false flag’ operation in the past at convenient times to gin up diplomatic outrage to advance a particular political agenda.
That agenda is always to justify more war to deal with the villain du jour. Today it’s Putin. In the past it’s been Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic or Bashar al-Assad. The playbook is always the same. Shocking images and film of honest-to-god atrocities against civilians and an endless back and forth of accusations and suppression of real information about the event.
Sadly, that becomes the focus not the fact that civilians were murdered for political gains.
Bucha seems to fit this pattern quite well, if more crudely implemented than events like this in the past.
The censorship is nearly total to support the ‘current thing,’ in this case Bucha. But it is no different than the campaigns against certain medications to fight COVID-19.
When it comes to foreign policy objectives, there is always a common denominator in these events to frame that villain and Putin, in particular, as some evil madman… British intelligence.
From the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, to the downing of MH-17 over Ukraine, to the ammonia gas attack in Douma, at the center of these allegations is always some arm of the Brits.
All the roads to RussiaGate lead through Ukraine and British Intelligence. At some point you just have to face the face of the agitator. Every one of those stories have logical inconsistencies wide enough to drive a column of tanks through.
These are painstakingly worked through by investigative journalists pushed to the fringe by the technocrats’ willing partners in Silicon Valley to minimize their influence over the narrative.
That, in itself, should be considered prima facia evidence of malfeasance but sadly it isn’t.
From the moment Russia’s troops crossed the border into Ukraine on February 24th there has been a clear strategy by the Russian Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs to head off potential false flags publicly before they could be pulled off.
The Russian Foreign Ministry singled out the UK for its histrionics saying if they wanted to lead the charge, they’ll get the worst treatment.
With the pullout of Russian troops from around Kiev however, they have little control over the preparing of the stage. You believe what you want to believe about Bucha, I don’t care.
Given the track record of Russia’s accusers here I’m taking the position that these allegations have to be incontrovertibly proven publicly for me to believe a word of them. Here’s one version of the story (warning: very graphic).
That is how low the credibility of the sources on this are. The UK government has been, along with Biden’s Dept. of State and National Security Council, the most belligerent in their response to Russia’s military operation. Their history and naked hatred of all things Russian stretches back multiple centuries.
In short, they have motive, means and opportunity to stage a false flag to push public sentiment further towards NATO’s intervention into Ukraine officially, therefore a false flag is the most likely scenario.
Complaints about how Russia waged the initial part of this war have centered on their unwillingness (but not opposition) to target civilians. Kiev could have easily been taken if the Russians wanted to commit massive atrocities against civilians.
They did not do so. That flies in the face of what’s being alleged about Bucha. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen the way it is being alleged, but the burden of proof lies with the accuser (Ukraine) and their allies (The US and UK).
And the main amplifier of this story, the UK, blocked not one but two proposals by the Russian Federation to investigate what happened in Bucha. We can’t have that, there’s a war to escalate.
Remember this story is only possible because the Russians first got repulsed from taking Kiev and then pulled back from the areas surrounding it. They are redeploying forces and regrouping for a major push against Ukrainian forces trapped in the eastern part of Ukraine.
That operation will likely wipe out what’s left of the UAF troops there and push the next phase of this war on the ground to its natural state of equilibrium for the next few months.
There are so many people whose crimes in Ukraine would be exposed by a Russian win there that it is truly existential to keep that from happening. It goes deeper than even the ideology of the West which needs to subjugate Russia if the Davos plan for global governance is going to have any hope of succeeding.
This is also personal for everyone from Joe Biden himself to hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the various schemes, plots and crimes committed in the petrie dish of corruption they’ve staged their attacks on common decency from.
So, when I say they have motive, means and opportunity, I mean it. These are the same people who impeached Donald Trump over a phone call. Of course they will say the quiet parts out loud about what they want to do to Putin for screwing up their grand plans.
This brings me back to my article from the other day handicapping the Hungarian elections. Because Hungary is now in a very strong position I posited they’d be in if Viktor Orban won the election, which he did, emphatically. And that means the EU is in a very precarious position to continue supporting an anti-Russia policy stance.
With a fiscally, monetarily (they are not on the euro) and energy independent Hungary there is little argument for them staying in the EU if Brussels is going to treat them as second class members. Orban and his government have been resolute in their refusal to get involved in the Russia/Ukraine conflict even though there has been serious pressure applied by NATO.
In anticipation of any resistance to the EU’s new set of draconian and frankly insane sanctions on Russia the European Commission wasted no time in announcing they are beginning ‘rule of law’ procedures against Hungary to cut them out of any monetary distributions within the bloc.
The European Commission will soon trigger a powerful new mechanism to cut funding to Hungary for eroding the bloc’s rule-of-law standards, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.
The announcement comes two days after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán won a fourth consecutive term in an election that international observers said was marred by an uneven playing field benefiting the ruling Fidesz party…
… Von der Leyen said her team informed Hungary of its decision on Tuesday after reviewing Budapest’s responses to an informal letter the Commission sent last November asking for information on its rule-of-law concerns.
“We’ve carefully assessed the result of these questions,” von der Leyen said, speaking to the European Parliament. “Our conclusion is we have to move on [to] the next step.”
There’s nothing ‘careful’ about the EU’s assessment here. Hungary and Poland were forced to accept these new rules in a major political battle with the EU in 2021 over their Green New Deal. He wasn’t in a strong enough position to stop this and it meant then we would wind up here today if he won re-election.
The EC’s formal charges against Hungary over their furry law is just like other such moves, namely against Poland for its hated Supreme Court recall law. They are forcing the ultimate choice on Hungary because all the EU really has is Article 7 censure and expulsion from the Union as a threat.
The amount of money they are holding as a carrot to Orban in COVID relief funds is just 30 pieces of silver and he knows it.
So, if you play this out to the end, this is where Orban has to go. He must force the EU to do what Mark Rutte said last month, kick them out or back down.
Today the European Commission is staring at the real threat: that Hungary has no intention of going along with the new sanctions and Orban actually welcomes Von der Leyen’s move to censure and cut off Hungary’s funds from the EU budget.
They will be a country that now pays in but gets nothing in return other than the stick.
But as long as they are a member of the European Commission they can and will veto anything else Von der Leyen cooks up to punish Russia with as a political cudgel to beat vulnerable EU members into going along with.
The EC thinks they will be making an example of Hungary but what they will really be doing is giving Orban an even stronger hand to play on the European Council. Now he can stay in Budapest and tell Hungarians that the EU no longer works for Hungarians and they would be better off free from their yoke.
Hung-exit, anyone?
Elections have consequences when you don’t control the outcome of them. This is why the neocons and war criminals like Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden are all screaming that something or someone has to do something to stop Putin whose operation in Ukraine still has the potential to expose everything.
It’s why Bucha was so haphazardly staged and ham-fistedly packaged up to us.
The blow out results in Hungary on Sunday were a major blow to EU confidence and solidarity. Twelve years of calling Orban a Nazi while supporting real 4th generation Nazis in Ukraine landed with a whimper.
Von der Leyen is a certifiable idiot for invoking the ‘rule of law’ weapon against Orban here using the alleged events at Bucha. She’s using it as an excuse to purposefully destroy the European economy per the directive of her Davos handlers. Their calculus is simple, burn the entire global economy down to punish Putin, Xi and everyone else not down with the Comintern.
It exposes the EU’s complicity in the war on Russia as willing partners with the US and UK because if they wanted to continue virtue signaling they would propose crazy new sanctions and let Hungary veto them.
But now we can only conclude this is exactly what they wanted.
That puts things into stark relief as we look ahead to the increasingly likely probability that French President Emmanuel Macron loses to Marine LePen in France who would be in a far stronger position to break up EU solidarity, freezing it politically at a time when Europe’s financial vulnerability has never been higher.
Meanwhile Putin keeps saying “Got Gold or Rubles?” and Orban is preparing a cold dish of political revenge on the nastiest people in Europe. When this mouse roars, they may finally have to listen.
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 5, 2022
There are many backstories surfacing from what is going on in Ukraine and Washington that have been largely ignored amid the drumbeat of casualty counts combined with claims and counter-claims from the two sides. Two stories that I believe have received insufficient attention are the US government’s three decades long obsession with weakening and de facto destroying the Russian state and the dominant neocon plus associate liberal democracy promoter role in what has become American foreign policy.
To be sure, anyone who doubts that the US is currently on a course to not only replace President Vladimir Putin but also to crash the Russian economy is delusional. Washington has been trying to deconstruct the former Soviet Union ever since 1991, beginning with President Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe in spite of a pledge not to do so and his unleashing the oligarchs who looted the country’s natural resources under President Boris Yeltsin. The pressure continued under the beatified President Barack Obama, who appointed as Ambassador Michael McFaul, who saw his mission as connecting with dissidents and opposition forces inside Russia, a role incompatible with his promotion of US interests and protecting US persons.
And then we had the redoubtable President Donald Trump undoing confidence building agreements with Russia followed by the current disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes. One should not ignore the fact that the fighting in Ukraine came about largely because the Biden Administration refused to negotiate seriously regarding the mostly reasonable demands that the Kremlin was making to enhance its own security. Former US arms inspector Scott Ritter cites a reported comment by a senior Biden Administration official which sums up the current policy, such as it is: “The only end game now is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations.”
Indeed, President Joe Biden’s recent disastrous trip to Europe can likely be characterized as one wishes to see it and the media has certainly done considerable spinning, but Biden left behind a legacy of various gaffes and lapsus linguae that made clear that the US is in the game to defeat Russia however long it will take to play out. And Biden has considerable support from brain dead congressmen like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who has called for someone to murder Putin, lamenting “Is there a Brutus in Russia?”
On his trip, Biden revealed that he expects US combat troops to go to Ukraine’s assistance and he has also taken delight in denouncing Putin as a “killer,” a “thug,” a “murderous dictator” and a “man who cannot remain in power.” In so doing, he has openly called for Putin’s removal from office, i.e. regime change, while also opening the door to an obvious false flag operation in his unwillingness to reveal when questioned by a reporter how the US might respond if Russia were to use chemical weapons in Ukraine. That he has taken those positions means that it will be impossible to restore manageable relations with Moscow post Ukraine. It is a heavy price to pay for something that is little more than posturing.
The chemical weapon issue is particularly important as President Donald Trump bombed Syria with cruise missiles in the wake of a fabricated report that Bashar al-Assad had used such weapons in an attack on Khan Shaykhun in 2017. It turned out that the anti-regime terrorists who were occupying the city at the time had themselves staged the attack and deliberately blamed it on the Syrian government to produce an expected US response.
Based on what I am seeing and hearing, I would conclude that the neoconservatives and their liberal democracy promoting friends are working hard from the inside to make something like a war with Russia happen. Note in particular that we are talking about war with shooting and deaths, not just a reincarnation or extension of the Cold War of yore. News on April 1st, admittedly April Fools’ Day, suggests that Ukraine has staged helicopter launched missile attacks on a fuel storage depot inside Russia, which, if true, could produce a massive escalation from the Kremlin. It would be a typical neocon maneuver to dramatically increase the level of the fighting and draw the United States into the conflict.
In addition to that, I know I am not the only one who has noticed the pace and focus of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskys’ widely promoted appeals to groups and world governments to come to his country’s aid, to include establishment of a no-fly zone. The appeals are slick, convincing and carefully focused, with Zelensky being framed as a “hero” fighting valiantly against savage invaders. To put it mildly they are way beyond the capabilities and experience level of a former comedian, whose performances featured erotic dancing and playing a piano with his penis, corruptly placed on the presidential hotseat by a billionaire oligarch Israeli citizen.
The US media is, of course, lavishly praising Zelensky, but I would bet that he has a cadre of American and possibly Israeli neoconservatives working diligently behind him to get it right, coaching him on what to say and do. There might be US government players also in on the act, to include NED (National Endowment for Democracy), CIA information specialists, State Department media consultants and observers from the National Security Council. Indeed, there is as much a war going on over the airwaves and internet to influence thinking internationally as there is fighting taking place on the ground.
One should conclude that the CIA is playing the central role in the “Russia Project” because of its ability to shield what it is doing from scrutiny. Based on previous operations to overthrow governments in various places, one might assume that the so-called covert action approach is multi-level. It consists of media placements that are intended to sway opinion both inside and outside Russia and produce unrest, the identification and recruitment of Russian government officials when they travel overseas, and the support of dissidents both internally and externally who share a negative view of Moscow and its policies. A major component in the approach is to obtain Western liberal support for harsh sanctions and other repressive measures against the Kremlin based on the fraudulent proposition that Putin and his associates are out to destroy “democracy” and “freedom.” Ironically, Americans are less “free” and also poorer because of the actions of their own government since 2001, not because of Vladimir Putin.
As was the case with Iraq, Afghanistan and the long list of American interventions, it is the neocons who are in front demanding a powerful military response, both to Russia and, inevitably, to Iran. What is particularly noticeable is how the neocons and their liberal democracy promoting counterparts have in several areas dominated the foreign policies of both parties. Leading neocon Bill Kristol, who called the Biden speech “a historic call to action on par with Ronald Reagan[‘s] ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall speech,’” recently also contributed “There would be no real prospect of an awakening in the United States and Europe were it not for the stand the Ukrainians have made. We would still be denying the threats we face. We would still be turning away from the urgency of the task we face. We would even, I daresay, still fail to appreciate the preciousness of the freedom and decency we have the obligation—and the honor—to defend. It is the Ukrainians who have shown us what free men and women can do, and what they are sometimes required to do, in defense of that freedom. It is the Ukrainians who have shown the world that we are in a new period of consequences. It is the Ukrainians who have given us the example of what it means today to fight back against brutality, and to fight for freedom.”
Kristol is, as so often, full of flag waving, chest puffing nonsense, peddling the notion that the United States has an obligation to police the world. Another leading neocon and regular Washington Post and The Atlantic contributor Anne Applebaum puts it this way and in so doing expands the playing field to include much of the world: “Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others.”
It would be nice, for a change, to end an article on a high note, but high notes are hard to find these days. If there is anything beyond Ukraine to demonstrate the insanity of US foreign policy it would have to be, inevitably, recent news out of Israel. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was recently in Israel trying in part to sell the possibility that the Biden Administration might actually come to a non-proliferation agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Israel strongly opposes any such move and its lobby in the US led by various neocon think tanks has been working hard to kill any deal. So, what did Blinken do? He asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for suggestions of what might be done in lieu of an actual agreement. Naftali reportedly suggested harsher sanctions on Iran. Cut it any way you want, but the renewal of 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is beneficial for both the United States and all of Iran’s neighbors, and here the US senior-most representative involved in the negotiations is asking the head of a foreign government to tell him what to do. Something is very wrong in Washington.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
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By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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