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Abandon the Fetish for ‘Unconditional Surrender’

By Ryan McMaken | The Libertarian Institute | October 27, 2022

On Monday, thirty members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus called on the Biden administration to pursue a negotiated peace settlement or cease-fire with Ukraine. The letter from the Progressive Caucus is careful to praise the administration for its ongoing efforts to fund Kyiv’s war effort, but also concludes that not enough is being done to encourage a negotiated settlement.

This position is heretical in Washington where the narrative is well dominated by the center-left militarist coalition that currently dominates the Democratic Party and the fading neoconservative wing of the Republican Party. In fact, so complete is the hawks’ domination of Democratic Party leadership, the Progressive Caucus was forced to withdraw its letter in less than twenty-four hours. The progressives ended up embarrassingly apologizing for suggesting diplomacy is a good thing.

Indeed, there is certainly no end in sight for U.S. intervention in Ukraine, and little support for a negotiated end to the war among foreign policy elites. The U.S. has sent more than sixty-five billion taxpayer dollars to Ukraine, and given Ukraine’s famously high levels of corruption, there’s no telling where that money ends up. Meanwhile, the U.S. has now deployed the 101st Airborne Division to Europe for the first time in almost eighty years. The division is now conducting training exercises mere miles from the Ukraine border.

The administration is now being pressured by the Democratic leadership in Congress to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. This would further hobble efforts to open negotiations with Moscow and would also trigger even more sanctions against the Russian people. Even worse, Washington insiders and pundits continue to push regime change in Russia. Although he later backpedaled on his comments, President Biden declared in March that “for God’s sake, [Vladimir Putin] cannot remain in power.” Earlier this month, Republican foreign policy advisory John Bolton called for regime change. Even the dismemberment of Russia has long been a stated goal of many American Russophobes.

These calls for regime change tend to steer clear of explicitly pushing military intervention, but a brief look at Iraq, Syria, and Libya makes it clear that when American and agents call for regime change, military interventions tend to follow.

Moreover, American foreign policy hawks have been remarkably casual about the prospects for an accidental escalation into war between nuclear powers. Biden himself has admitted that the risk of “Armageddon” is the highest it’s been since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, but the administration has done nothing to change course. A disturbing number of pundits have declared that nuclear war is worth the risks, and a Pew poll shows a full one-third of Americans polled want U.S. intervention in Ukraine even if it risks nuclear war. It seems we’re a far cry from the days of the height of the nuclear disarmament movement in the 1980s when marches against nuclear war could boast hundreds of thousands of people.

The Sane Position Is in Favor of Negotiation

If the U.S. regime actually cared about its alleged constituents, of course, it would withdraw from the conflict entirely. But since Washington insists on partnering with the Ukraine regime in its war, the only sane thing to do is for Washington to push hard for negotiations and to pursue a cease-fire rapidly. This position, of course, is routinely denounced by the usual hawkish suspects as being “pro-Russia.” Thus, war dissenters in Washington such as Rand Paul must state what should be obvious: that preferring negotiations to World War III hardly makes one a Putin sympathizer. Although most American foreign policy elites tend to have no problem at all with spilling copious amounts of blood and treasure in the name of Washington’s global ambitions, many Americans fortunately disagree. A recent poll shows nearly 60 percent of Americans support negotiations with Russia “as soon as possible” and want an end to the Ukraine conflict even if it means Ukraine giving up territory.

Ukraine hawks will decry such a position as a matter of Americans bargaining away Ukraine’s “sacred” territory, and thus have no “right” to do so. Yet, the Ukraine regime forfeits its right to unilaterally decide for itself what concessions must be made so long as Kyiv continues to call for American taxpayers to hand over cash. Moreover, by involving the U.S. in the conflict as a supplier of weaponry, training, and as a potential nuclear backstop, Kyiv is also demanding that Americans be placed in the line of nuclear or conventional fire should the conflict escalate. So long as the U.S. is viewed as a party to the conflict—which it obviously is—this puts Americans in harm’s way. So, yes, Americans have every right to demand a swift end to the conflict, and if necessary—as Henry Kissinger has suggested—that includes Ukraine giving up territory.

If Kyiv doesn’t like those terms, it can start refusing the money and weapons supplied by the American taxpayer.

It’s Time to End the American Preference for “Unconditional Surrender”

The American maximalist no-peace-until-total-defeat-of-Russia has its origins in the now longstanding American obsession with “unconditional surrender.” This is the idea that a military victor is only the victor when it totally dictates terms of surrender and peace. The model for this is often assumed the Japanese surrender to the U.S. at the end of the Second World War. The basic operating procedure in this case is simply to keep bombing the enemy country until its regime gives the victor everything it wants without any conditions. It was the stated policy of the Roosevelt administration during the War.

Of course, as international relations school Paul Poast has noted, “unconditional surrender” wasn’t even the case in the U.S.-Japanese conflict. The Japanese refused to surrender unless the U.S. pledged to not attempt to abolish the Japanese monarchy. Another potential “model” is the Versailles Treaty of 1919 in which the victorious Allies dictated that the defeated parties would accept “war guilt” and that Austria would be dismembered.

The fact that the terms of Versailles treaty were a leading cause of the rise of Hitler and of the Second World War should be reason enough to abandon this model.

But the Japanese surrender and the Versailles treaty are extreme cases. The fact is that very few wars are ended along the lines of anything we would call “unconditional surrender.” This has been known for a long time, and was explored in detail by Coleman Phillipson in his 1916 book Termination of War and Treaties of Peace. Phillipson notes that in cases where total “subjugation” of another state occurs, there was no reason for concluding a negotiated settlement, as the imposition of the conqueror’s will on the conquered nation involved merely a unilateral arrangement.” The normal, far more common mode of bringing about peace in international conflicts, however, is a “compromise ad hoc, involving an agreement as to demands made on both sides, and settling all the matters in dispute.”

Indeed, many military personnel in World War II were alarmed by the administration’s adoption of the new doctrine with General Dwight Eisenhower’s naval aide Captain Harry Butcher stating privately that “any military person knows that there are conditions to every surrender.”

Moreover, the maximalist hawks underestimate costs likely to be incurred by the United States / North Atlantic Treaty Organization faction. If the goal is truly to impose a unilateral peace on Moscow, this is likely to require far more bloodshed and taxpayer treasure than a negotiated settlement. This may be perfectly fine for many American elites, but for many ordinary people who are forced to fund the war and submit to various trade restrictions and shortages, the cost could be sizable.

For these reasons, among others, Berenice Carroll concludes (in “How Wars End: An Analysis of Some Current Hypotheses”) that it is not actually all that easy to determine the “victor” from the “loser” in an international conflict once all of the costs have actually been analyzed. Or, as Lewis Coser has put it, because of this, “most conflicts end in compromises in which it is often quite hard to specify which side has gained relative advantage.” For this reason, it’s important to think long and hard about doubling down on a “strategy” that’s guaranteed to prolong a conflict indefinitely. This is all the more true when nuclear powers are involved.

Yet, from the point of view of the moralizing hawks, no “sacrifice” is too great for ordinary Americans or Europeans to bear in the name of “containing” Russia and hopefully even ending the regime itself. The hawks are always dreaming of great moral victories, no matter the cost. In real life, however, the bloodshed will likely only stop when we ignore the American advocates of nuclear brinkmanship and more pragmatic heads prevail. The proper position now—especially in a nuclear environment—is not to pine for a global moral crusade but to explore ways to bring about the end of active hostilities. This is done through negotiated settlements and compromise. The hawks seeking to “shame” the advocates of peace are really just agents of more war, more bloodshed, and religious fervor in favor of “territorial integrity” and other nationalist myths.

The foreign policy elites, however, only benefit politically and financially from more war, ongoing ad nauseum. There is as of yet no downside for these elites in more war. The fact that they’ve quashed even some small-scale calls for negotiations on the part of some progressives shows that the war party is a long way from abandoning its fetish for “unconditional surrender.”

October 27, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Pentagon Brought on Both Nuclear Crises

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | October 26, 2022

I fully realize that when it comes to Ukraine, one is supposed to focus exclusively on Russia’s invasion and not on what the Pentagon did to gin up the crisis, a crisis that has gotten us perilously close to a world-destroying nuclear war with Russia.

Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s role in this crisis needs to be emphasized, over and over again, just as the Pentagon’s role in ginning up the Cuban Missile Crisis also needs to be emphasized, over and over again.

Yes, what I am emphasizing is the Pentagon’s role in ginning up both of these crises that have gotten us so close to nuclear war with Russia.

At the end of the Cold War racket, there was absolutely no reason for NATO to remain in existence. Its purported mission of protecting Europe from a Soviet (i.e., Russian) attack had been fulfilled. The Cold War was supposedly over.

The only problem was that it wasn’t over for the Pentagon and the CIA. If they had had their druthers, their Cold War racket would have gone on forever. After all, what better justification for their ever-increasing budgets and power within the federal governmental structure?

That’s why they kept NATO in existence. While they were engaging in their interventionist antics in the Middle East, which led to their war-on-terrorism racket, they were, at the same time, using NATO to provoke Russia, with the aim of reigniting their old Cold War racket. Instead of dismantling their old Cold War dinosaur, they used it to absorb former members of the Warsaw Pact, which enabled the Pentagon and the CIA to move their nuclear missiles and military forces inexorably closer to Russia’s border, over Russia’s vehement objections.

Ultimately, they threatened to absorb Ukraine into their NATO racket, knowing full well that Russia had vowed for some 25 years to invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening. Their scheme succeeded. Once Russia invaded Ukraine, the loyal followers of the Pentagon and the CIA focused exclusively on the invasion and not also on the NATO racket that had provoked the invasion.

It was no different with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The reason that Cuba and the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba was to deter another invasion of the island by the CIA and the Pentagon. Don’t forget that the CIA had already invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and had failed miserably. After that, the Pentagon continually exhorted President Kennedy to initiate a full-scale military invasion of Cuba. That’s what the Pentagon’s fraudulent false-flag operation known as Operation Northwoods was all about, which Kennedy, to his everlasting credit, summarily rejected.

What legal justification did the Pentagon and the CIA have to invade Cuba? None! The fact that Cuba had a communist regime certainly never justified an invasion (or, for that matter, repeated murder attempts against Fidel Castro). Keep in mind that Cuba had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. In the long relationship between communist Cuba and the United States, it has always been the U.S. government that has been the aggressor, including with its old Cold War economic embargo that continues to target the Cuban people with death and impoverishment as a way to achieve regime change on the island.

Cuba and Russia knew full-well that the CIA and the Pentagon were fully determined to invade Cuba again, with the aim of replacing the Fidel Castro regime with another pro-U.S. dictatorship, like the one that preceded the Castro regime. That’s why Cuba and Russia installed those nuclear missiles in Cuba — to deter another illegal U.S. invasion of the island.

Why can’t the loyal acolytes of the U.S. national-security establishment see all this? Because for them, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are their triune god. Who wants to question or criticize god?

But if we are going to put out nation back on the right road — the road to liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world, it is necessary for the American people to not only question this false god but also to toss it and its evil rackets into the dustbin of history and restore America’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.

October 27, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine a test range for Western arms – defense minister

Samizdat – October 26, 2022

The conflict in Ukraine gives Western arms producers a chance to see which products fare best in a real fight against Russia, the country’s defense minister has said.

“We have a combat testing field in Ukraine during this war,” Aleksey Reznikov explained. “We have eight different 155mm artillery systems in the field … so it’s like a competition between systems” to see which one proves best.

The comments came in an interview with Politico published on Tuesday. The testing ground idea was previously expressed by Reznikov’s deputy, Vladimir Gavrilov, who claimed that some American defense contractors were fielding their prototypes in Ukraine.

Kiev expects military aid from NATO members to continue flowing into the country for years and wants to benefit more from it, Reznikov said. For example, Ukraine could start joint ventures with Poland, the UK, or Germany to produce weapons.

“We have to develop a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) industry not only for aerial drones but also on land and in the sea because it’s the future” of warfare, he noted.

He was also skeptical about restrictions under which Ukraine’s supporters are shipping arms to Kiev. As the conflict with Russia unfolded, the US and its allies have repeatedly reconsidered previous decisions not to send heavier weapons, the defense minister pointed out.

“I’m really optimistic that Abrams tanks are possible in the future and I am sure that fighter jets like F-16s, F-15s, or Gripen from Sweden will also be possible,” he said.

Washington was initially reluctant to provide lethal aid to Ukraine out of concern that Russia would consider it an escalation but gradually reconsidered and supplied increasingly sophisticated weapons, which Reznikov sees as a favorable trend.

Western officials cited logistical issues with training Ukrainian pilots and maintenance of the fighter jets among the reasons why Ukraine can’t get F-16s or F-15s. But according to media reports, Kiev may get them in the long run.

Reznikov said European NATO allies were looking to the US in their aid decisions, so it was up to Washington to up the ante.

“After the first Abrams [arrives] I’m sure we will have Leopards, Marders, and other types of heavy armored vehicles like tanks,” he told the news outlet.

Among the weapons the US most recently designated for Ukraine are the NASAMS air defense systems. Washington is also reportedly considering sending some old HAWK surface-to-air missiles it has stockpiled to see if they are still effective.

October 27, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

China Urges US to Stop Spreading Myth About Alleged Chinese Threat: Foreign Ministry

Samizdat – 26.10.2022

BEIJING – China calls on the United States to stop spreading the outdated theory of the Chinese threat and better engage in building a new concept of mutually beneficial cooperation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday.

“China is a partner and an opportunity for the development of all countries, not a challenge or a threat,” Wang told a briefing.

China urges Washington to try to build a new concept of openness, inclusiveness, and mutually beneficial cooperation, and do more to promote world peace and development, Wang added.

Earlier in the day, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak agreed during a telephone conversation to jointly respond to challenges from China.

October 26, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Peace Talks: Pathetic U-Turn by 30 Dems & Curious Case of Jeffrey Sachs

By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat –  26.10.2022

On Tuesday, the progressive caucus of the US House of Representatives made an abrupt U-turn and withdrew their letter to US President Joe Biden, which urged him to engage in direct talks with Russia and broker peace between Kiev and Moscow. What’s going on in the Democratic camp?

“Not only was the letter a case of too little, too late, the so-called progressive signatories to the statement made themselves look even more pathetic in its immediate withdrawal,” Max Parry, an independent US journalist and geopolitical analyst, told Sputnik.

“While the letter was a refreshing first step, the Democrats who signed it became victims of the very same McCarthyist political atmosphere they have created in Washington, where any detente or rapprochement with Moscow is criminalized. Instead of digging in their heels and standing by what they said, the 30 lawmakers immediately caved to the political pressure of being branded Putin apologists and retracted the statement. They made it clear their loyalties lie with the party establishment and not with the American people, who are fed up with the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of the war and the economy,” he emphasized.

The American journalist believes that the motivation behind the letter was a response to growing fatigue among the US public regarding the ongoing standoff in Ukraine, “not to mention several recent public incidents of Democratic lawmakers being protested by their own constituents over their vote to arm Kiev which went viral on social media.”

According to Parry, US polls indicate growing support for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. On September 27, a survey, conducted by Data for Progress on behalf of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, indicated that nearly 60% of Americans would support Washington engaging in diplomatic efforts “as soon as possible” to end the conflict in Ukraine, even if that means Ukraine having to make concessions to Russia.

“Surveys of the upcoming midterm elections also forecast the increasing likelihood of GOP gains in congress,” Parry continued. “Although US support for Ukraine has been mostly bipartisan, there have been far more vocal opponents of the Biden administration’s decision to arm Ukraine among Republicans than Democrats, most notably Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

On October 18, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy signaled that Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Kiev if they win back the House majority. According to US media, anti-aid sentiments are also strong among many Republican House and Senate candidates. If they win, the reduction of military assistance to Kiev is more than possible, as former US Senate candidate Mark Dankof told Sputnik on September 25.

While one needs to bear in mind that the anti-Russia consensus in Washington has long been bipartisan, 57 Republicans as recently as May voted against sending more lethal aid to Kiev, Parry underscored. Nonetheless, the independent journalist noted that this trend does not necessarily signal an upcoming departure from the Ukraine policy by the US.

“I am not convinced this will automatically materialize if the Republicans take back the House, because many of the purported adherents to Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda running for office are opportunists and based on historical precedent, some of those GOP lawmakers could turn back on their campaign pledges once they are in office,” he remarked.

When it comes to Democrats, “if they do indeed lose ground over the Ukraine war, it could lead to either a revival in the anti-war movement among the US left or a doubling down on the anti-Russian sentiment among Dems,” Parry presumed.

Jeffrey Sachs: Neoliberal Economist Turned Anti-NATO Rebel

The Dems’ latest flip-flopping on the Ukraine peace issue is not the only attempt at dissent on the left flank of the US political front. Renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs has lambasted the Biden administration’s Russia strategy and urged Washington to mediate a peaceful settlement between Moscow and Kiev from the outset of the Russian special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.

“It was a welcome surprise to see a former neoliberal economist like Professor Sachs become an unexpected dissenting voice and critic of US policies as Washington continues to send a flow of arms to Ukraine,” said Parry.

In May 2022, Sachs wrote an op-ed urging the US to stop the conflict in Ukraine and insisting that the solution reached by Moscow and Kiev in March 2022 remains the only viable option for restoring peace. On June 27, the economist released an article eloquently titled “Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster,” again calling for peace negotiations and ending NATO’s eastward expansion towards Russia’s borders. On August 2, Sachs warned: “The government of Ukraine urges us not to negotiate, but to fight. This is a recipe for the destruction of Ukraine and the possible escalation to a nuclear war.”

Following the sabotage attack on Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, Sachs pointed the finger at Washington as a potential culprit while speaking on air with a US mainstream broadcaster.

“The case of the recent political transformation of Professor Sachs is a curious one,” noted Parry. “After all, we are talking about one of the most prominent economic advisors to Western financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund. In particular, he was one of the preeminent economic aides to former communist governments in their transition to the free market and in the case of Russia, the economic reforms based on his ideas had devastating consequences when mass privatization and ‘shock therapy’ drove the Russian economy into a deep recession and plunged millions into poverty.”

The independent journalist emphasized that for Sachs to “now depart from US policy orthodoxies and criticize the demonization of Russia, even rightly pointing out that the US was the more likely candidate to have been behind the destruction of Nord Stream 2 pipeline, is simply stunning.”

Parry has drawn attention to the fact that Sachs’ “transformation” apparently started a few years ago, “when he criticized America’s dirty war in Syria in 2018.” “Now his ‘road to Damascus,’ or political conversion is complete,” the journalist added.

“Unfortunately, he is one among only a mere handful of public figures voicing opposition to NATO’s proxy war,” Parry continued. “Since the death of Stephen Cohen, America’s foremost scholar of Russian affairs, commentary on US relations with Moscow has been nothing short of monolithic, so the surprising calls for peace talks by Sachs were badly needed.”

“Once upon a time, there used to be something called the fairness doctrine in the media where there was some attempt to ensure that differing viewpoints were evenly reflected in news coverage of world events. Since February, there has been absolutely no attention given to the Russian perspective on the war whatsoever, nor any encouragement of dialogue and diplomacy allowed on major networks or newspapers. Even for corporate media, which has always been heavily biased toward the West, the lack of any diversity of opinions on this conflict is unprecedented,” Parry concluded.

October 26, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Finland to Allow for Deployment of NATO Nuclear Weapons on Its Territory, Reports Say

Samizdat – 26.10.2022

HELSINKI – Finland’s draft legislation on the country’s accession to NATO, which is almost prepared, does not contain any restrictions on establishment of military bases and deployment of nuclear weapons on the its territory, local newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing sources.

The legislation will allow for deployment of nuclear weapons of NATO countries and establishment of the alliance’s military bases on the territory of Finland putting no limits on NATO’s military presence in the country, according to the newspaper.

The draft legislation is expected to be considered by the Finnish parliament in two weeks, newspaper said.

The newspaper also noted citing its sources in the Finnish government that during negotiations with the bloc in July Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto and Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen pledged to avoid any restrictions regarding the country’s participation in military activity of the alliance in the national legislation.

On May 18, three months after Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden submitted their NATO membership applications, abandoning decades of neutrality. With 29 out of 30 NATO members having formally ratified the agreements on Finland and Sweden’s accession, both countries are now in talks with Turkey to allay concerns over their alleged support of organizations designated as terrorist by Ankara.

October 26, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Thirty US Democratic Lawmakers U-Turn Within Hours After Urging Biden To Change Tack on Ukraine

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Samizdat – 25.10.2022

On Monday, 30 Democratic lawmakers from the US House of Representatives – led by Pramila Jayapal, chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to alter his Ukraine strategy and hold direct negotiations with Russia, “redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire”.

The group of progressive House Democrats who urged President Joe Biden on Monday to make fundamental changes to US strategy regarding the security crisis in Ukraine by seeking direct negotiations with Russia, made a U-turn within hours of sending their letter to the POTUS.

Under a wave of pressure from other Democrats, the group, led by Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, released a statement confirming their support for the president’s strategy.

“Let me be clear, we are united as Democrats in our unequivocal commitment to supporting Ukraine in their fight for their democracy and freedom,” Jayapal announced, adding that “nothing in the letter advocates change in that support”.

The statement went on to say that although diplomacy is “an important tool that can save lives,” it is “just one tool”.

“As we also made explicitly clear in our letter and will continue to make clear, we support President Biden and his administration’s commitment to nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” the group of lawmakers concluded.

Before bowing to pressure and backpedaling, the 30 Democrats had initially stated in their letter that it was in the interests of the Biden administration to revise his strategy for Ukraine to avert a protracted conflict fraught with dangerous possibilities.

“We urge you to pair the military and economic support the United States has provided Ukraine with a proactive diplomatic push, redoubling efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire,” the group – which includes Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Ro Khanna of California – said.

The Democrats added in the original letter:

“The alternative to diplomacy is protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks.”

The lawmakers had emphasized how the conflict would spill over into ordinary life and how the sanctions policy introduced by the US, the EU and allies against Moscow over its special military operation in Ukraine were self-harming. Food and gas costs have rocketed all over the world, including in the United States, and the soaring prices for wheat, fertilizer, and fuel have exacerbated global food shortages.

“If there is a way to end the war while preserving a free and independent Ukraine, it is America’s responsibility to pursue every diplomatic avenue to support such a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine,” the letter said.

However, the letter’s call for a negotiation process that could include sanctions relief for Russia and security guarantees for Ukraine contents did not go down well with some other Democrats. Representative Ruben Gallego of Arizona tweeted in response to the progressives’ letter that the way to end a conflict is, “Win it quickly”.

Although the US Congress passed a Bill to send $12Bln in new aid to Ukraine in September, with the Biden administration expected to pledge more aid for the Kiev regime in December, if Republicans win control of the House in the November mid-term elections, this strategy of pumping aid into Ukraine may be put to the test.

A number of GOP House lawmakers such as Florida’s Matt Gaetz have been vociferous in calling for aid to Ukraine to be curtailed. These calls have been echoed by other influential voices in the broader conservative movement, highlighting that the Biden administration has been spending too much to prop up the Kiev authorities and possibly prolonging the conflict. After his home state of Florida was lashed by a hurricane, Gaetz went on Twitter to suggest that aid to Ukraine was diverting assistance from his own constituents.

And Republican representative for Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, tweeted while announcing her vote against a spending resolution that included more funding for Ukraine, that she was opposed to “funding America’s 51st state: Ukraine”.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, hoping that next month’s mid-terms will make him Speaker of the House, said in a recent interview: “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.” He indicated that Republicans would demand tighter oversight of aid to Ukraine if they win the majority.

Earlier, Republican representative for Pennsylvania, Scott Perry, who is chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, reportedly texted members of the group about the potential for investigating the Biden administration over its handling of the Ukraine crisis. Perry suggested, according to screenshots of a text to fellow Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that the president might not have been honest with the American people about his goals in the conflict.

“If these nitwits in this jackwagon administration are blundering us or intentionally marching us to war with Russia, nuclear or otherwise, we’d better start to preserve the evidence so there can be accountability,” Perry said.

Russia has sent out repeated reminders that channeling military assistance to the Kiev regime will only prolong the conflict and is fraught with the risk of a further dangerous escalation of the crisis.

October 25, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

The Mirage of Washington Intelligence

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | October 24, 2022

“You can send a man to Congress but you can’t make him think,” quipped comedian Milton Berle in the 1950s. To update Berle for our times: You can spend $60 billion a year on intelligence agencies but you can’t make politicians read their reports. Instead, most politicians remain incorrigibly ignorant and hopelessly craven when presidents drag America into new foreign fiascos.

Congressional docility has been paving the way to war since at least the Vietnam era. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson invoked an alleged North Vietnamese attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin to ram a resolution through Congress giving LBJ unlimited authority to attack North Vietnam. LBJ had decided earlier that year to attack North Vietnam to boost his reelection campaign. The Pentagon and White House quickly recognized that the core allegations behind the Gulf of Tonkin resolution were false but exploited them to sanctify the war.

When the official story of the Gulf of Tonkin attacks begin unraveling at secret 1968 Senate hearings, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara proclaimed that it was “inconceivable that anyone even remotely familiar with our society and system of government could suspect the existence of a conspiracy” to take America to war on false pretenses. But indignation was no substitute for hard facts. Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) declared, “In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them.” The chairman of the committee, Sen. J. William Fulbright (D-AR), declared that if senators did not oppose the war at that point,  “We are just a useless appendix on the governmental structure.” But other senators blocked the release of a staff report on the lies behind the Gulf of Tonkin incident that propelled a war that was killing 400 American troops a week. Sen. Mike Mansfield (D-MT) warned, “You will give people who are not interested in facts a chance to exploit them and to magnify them out of all proportion.” The same presumption has shielded every subsequent U.S. military debacle.

Lazy, cowardly congressmen perpetually paved the way for foreign carnage. In October 2002, prior to the vote on the congressional resolution to permit President George W. Bush to do as he pleased on Iraq, the CIA delivered a 92-page classified assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to Capitol Hill. The classified CIA report raised far more doubts about the existence of Iraqi WMDs than did the 5-page executive summary that all members of Congress received. The report was stored in two secure rooms—one each for the House and the Senate. Only six senators bothered to visit the room to look at the report, and only a “handful” of House members did the same, according to The Washington Post. Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W VA) explained that congressmen were too busy to read the report: “‘Everyone in the world wants to come to see you’ in your office, and going to the secure room is ‘not easy to do.’”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans were sent 6,000 miles away because congressmen could not be bothered to walk across the street. Congressmen acted as if going to a secured room to peruse a 92-page document was the equivalent of reading the entire 38 volume Encyclopedia Britannica by candlelight in a musty closet. Most congressmen had ample time to give speeches seconding Bush’s saber rattling, but no time to sift the purported evidence for the war. The only relevant evidence for many congressmen were the polls showing strong support of the president.

More details of the path to the Iraq War have been exposed in Sen. Patrick Leahy’s new memoir, The Road Taken. Leahy was one of the few senators who went to the classified room to read some of the confidential material on the war.  As he and his wife were out on a Sunday walk in their ritzy McLean, Virginia neighborhood in September 2002:

Two fit joggers trailed behind us. They stopped and asked what I thought of the intelligence briefings I’d been getting… I went through a requisite disclaimer that if I was in briefings and if they were classified, I could not acknowledge that they even occurred and could not talk about them if they had. They told me they understood that, but asked whether the briefers had showed me File Eight.

It was obvious from the look on my face that I had not seen such a file. They suggested I should and that I might find it interesting. Quickly thereafter I arranged to see File Eight, and it contradicted much of what I had heard from the Bush administration.

A happy ending? No, not quite.  A few days later, Leahy and his wife were out walking and the same joggers reappeared and asked what he thought of that secret file. Leahy commented, “It was the eeriest conversation I’d experienced in Washington. I felt like a senatorial version of Bob Woodward meeting Deep Throat—only in broad daylight.” The joggers then asked if Leahy “had also been shown File Twelve, using a code word… The next day, I was back in the secure room in the Capitol to read File Twelve, and it again contradicted the statements that the administration, and especially Vice President Cheney.”

The following Sunday, Leahy and his wife were walking past Robert Kennedy’s former estate when black cars with multiple antennas and darkened windows pulled up. Leahy wrote:

“A member of the presidential inner circle leaned out from the back window, greeting both myself and [his wife] Marcelle, and asked if he could talk with me… I got in the car with him while the security people got out of the car. We sat there and talked, and he said, ‘I understand you’ve seen File Eight and Twelve.’ I said I had, and I knew of course that he’d seen them. He said, ‘I also understand you’re going to vote against going to war.’ I said, ‘I am, because we all know there are no weapons of mass destruction and the reasons for going to war are just not there.’ He asked if he could talk me out of that, and I said no, and we ended the conversation. I started to get out of the car, and he said they would give me a ride home. ‘Thanks—let me tell you where I live.’”

The unnamed top Bush administration official replied: “We know where you live.” Leahy didn’t ask the dude whether he also knew all of Leahy’s computer passwords.

Leahy voted against the Bush resolution to use military force against Iraq. But Leahy waited 20 years to reveal the inside shenanigans he had seen on the road to war. And Leahy still refuses to disclose the name of the “member of the presidential inner circle” who was stalking him that morning in McLean. Podcast host Jimmy Dore scoffed that Leahy’s story was “just like a political thriller but at the end nothing happens and nothing is resolved.” Dore commented, “There’s a war anyway and he says nothing for 20 fucking years. The end. Did they even bother testing that ending with audiences?” Edward Snowden tweeted on Leahy’s story: “How could Leahy sit on classified information he knew could stop a war?”

But cover-ups are often unnecessary in Washington because few members of Congress are paying attention regardless. After four U.S. soldiers were killed in Niger in 2017, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) admitted they did not know that a thousand U.S. troops were deployed to that African nation. Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, admitted, “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world militarily and what we’re doing.” U.S. troops were engaged in combat in 14 foreign nations at that time, purportedly fighting terrorists. But most members of Congress probably could not list list more than 2 or 3 nations where U.S. troops are fighting.

As the U.S. government has become far more secretive in recent decades, congressional intelligence committees supposedly provide a check-and-balance for agencies hiding behind iron curtains. But “intelligence committee” is perhaps Washington’s biggest oxymoron.

Congressional intelligence committees lead the charge to kowtow to the CIA and other agencies. The Senate Intelligence Committee effectively absolved all of the Bush administration’s lies on the path to war with Iraq. When its report was released in mid-2004 (just in time to boost Bush’s re-election campaign), committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) announced, “The committee found that the intelligence community was suffering from what we call a collective groupthink.” And since everyone was wrong, no one was at fault—especially conniving Vice President Dick Cheney. (Antiwar.com was right long before the war started). The CIA also paid no price when it was caught illegally spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of CIA torture during the Obama administration.

And then there are the official bootlicking awards. The CIA publicly awards its Agency Seal Medal to members of Congress who boost its budget, coverup its crimes, and refrain from asking embarrassing questions. Pat Roberts got one—along with Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), Sen. John Warner (R-Virginia), and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)—all reliable stooges for the agency. The Founding Fathers would spin in their graves at the notion of federal agencies giving awards to congressmen who were supposed to be holding the leash on the agency. This is akin to a judge bragging about receiving a Public Service Award from a mobster who he connived to find not guilty.

There are some smart, dedicated, principled members of Congress who overcome the prevailing lethargy and bureaucratic roadblocks to learn enough to recognize the follies of proposed interventions. But those stalwart souls will probably always be outnumbered by the herd of senators and representatives far more likely to skim the latest polls than to read any official report longer than a tweet thread.

Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.

October 24, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

US elites wrong that aggression against Russia can be unlimited – intelligence chief

Samizdat | October 24, 2022

The fact that discussions about the possible use of nuclear weapons have become part of Western rhetoric is worrisome, Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has said.

Contrary to claims by Western leaders, Russia is “absolutely” not threatening to deploy nuclear weapons, the senior official explained. But Kiev has openly claimed that it wants to become a nuclear power, an outcome that Naryshkin called on the world to prevent.

The Russian intelligence chief was referring to a speech that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky delivered during the Munich Security Conference in February. The Ukrainian leader lamented that Kiev had given up nuclear weapons stationed there during the Soviet era and said that his country could break its promise to stay a non-nuclear state.

Naryshkin was speaking on Monday in his capacity as head of the Russian Historical Society at the opening of an exhibition marking the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The current stand-off between Russia and the US over Ukraine has been compared by many to the events that happened six decades ago.

“The American elites today believe that they can maintain the aggression against our nation for as long as they want, feuling military action with thousands of lives of Ukrainian citizens and mercenaries,” the official remarked, drawing a parallel to how the Cuban Missile Crisis started.

The stand-off back then was triggered by the US decision to deploy missiles to Turkey, threatening the Soviet Union, he explained. When Moscow reciprocated, “the reaction of the US political elites, who had convinced themselves of being exceptional, was painful, nervous and acute,” he noted.

The administration of President John F. Kennedy recognized that there were red lines that neither the US nor the USSR should cross, Naryshkin said. There were people in the US government who “thought rationally, were able to calculate the consequences of their actions, and kept their word.”

It’s not clear that the same approach can be found in the Joe Biden administration, Naryshkin stated.

“Today, we will not be able to find a politician in a Western nation of the same magnitude as Kennedy,” he added.

The Russian official also suggested a way to discourage nuclear powers from deploying their arsenals for goals other than deterrence. He told the audience that holding the US accountable for the 1945 nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have had a cold shower effect.

October 24, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Reports about Putin’s threat are false – Scholz

Samizdat | October 22, 2022

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.

When asked about the issue during an interview with Die Welt newspaper on Saturday, Scholz said the media had been too loose in its interpretation of official reports from Berlin on its discussions with Moscow.

“For good reasons, I don’t speak about the negotiations that I have with the Russian president. But here’s what I can say: The reports that I read about the alleged threats during these negotiations are false,” the chancellor said.

The Russian and German leaders last talked on the phone in mid-September. According to Berlin, Scholz urged Putin to find a diplomatic solution for the conflict in Ukraine based on a ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Russian troops during their 90-minute conversation. He also “emphasized that any further Russian annexation steps would not go unanswered and would not be recognized under any circumstances.”

According to the Kremlin, Putin told Scholz about the incessant shelling of cities in Donbass by Ukraine, which had led to civilian deaths and the destruction of infrastructure. The Russian leader called it a “gross violation of humanitarian law” by Kiev.

A few weeks after that, referendums on joining Russia were held in Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, and in the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the territories being officially incorporated into the Russian state in early October.

Earlier this week, Scholz told Deutschlandfunk outlet that the tone of his conversations with Putin “is always friendly, even if we have very different views on the matter.”

“I think it’s important that we have this conversation,” the chancellor said, but added that one shouldn’t “harbor any illusions” about those contacts bringing swift results.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Hungary criticizes ‘pro-war’ EU

Samizdat – October 22, 2022

The Hungarian Foreign Ministry has rejected EU calls for Russia to be defeated in Ukraine, saying the bloc needed peace, not a prolonged conflict.

EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson made several statements on the hostilities this week, stressing the bloc’s “determination, resolve and unity to stand by Ukraine as long as it takes.” She also insisted that “to end this crisis, first, Putin must lose.”

Responding on Friday, Tamas Menczer, State Secretary at Hungary’s Foreign Ministry, accused Johansson of making “a very dangerous statement because it links the end of a crisis with a military event, about which we don’t know when will it happen or if it happens at all.”

“This pro-war stance of Brussels extends the conflict and suffering. This is extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” he insisted.

Menczer reiterated the position of the Hungarian government, which is that “we need immediate peace instead of a longer war. Peace requires an immediate ceasefire and dialogue.”

Hungary has remained relatively neutral since the outbreak of fighting in Ukraine in late February. It has refused to send arms to Kiev unlike many fellow EU members and consistently criticized the sanctions imposed by Brussels on Moscow. Budapest, which is heavily dependent on Russian fuel, was also able to negotiate an exemption for itself from the bloc-wide ban on Russian oil.

Moscow, which has repeatedly invited Kiev to come to the negotiating table, has blamed the Ukrainian side for undermining any potential for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a declaration that officially made it “impossible” to hold any negotiations with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The move followed the inclusion of the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, into Russia as result of referendums in those territories. Kiev and its Western backers have labeled September’s votes a “sham” and continue to view the areas as parts of Ukraine.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

‘Gearing Up to Fight Biological Weapons?’ White House Launches $88 Billion National Biodefense Strategy

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 20, 2022

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new $88 billion national biodefense strategy that outlines the government’s plans for how to respond to future pandemics, public health emergencies and biological threats.

The launch of the “National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan for Countering Biological Threats, Enhancing Pandemic Preparedness, and Achieving Global Health Security” included the signing of National Security Memorandum-15 (NSM-15).

Key elements of the new strategy include the rapid production and distribution of vaccines and diagnostic tests, and enhancing global health security.

The strategy also includes a new framework for the federal government’s role during a future crisis, which places the White House at the center of any such response, coordinating the actions of multiple federal agencies.

The White House said the new strategy adopts lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with The Defender, University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said:

“It appears that the enormous amount of money here, $88 billion over five years, when you add it on to well over, I would say, maybe $130 billion [in biodefense spending] since Sept. 11, 2001, means that they are gearing up to fight biological weapons warfare around the world.”

Boyle told The Defender that between October 2001 and October 2015, the federal government spent $100 billion “on biological warfare purposes.”

“To put that into perspective,” he said, “in constant dollars, the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb was $40 billion.”

Plan calls for development, distribution of new vaccines within 130 days

Biden’s new biodefense strategy includes the rapid development and deployment of new vaccines and diagnostics that it foresees in response to any future “biological threats.”

According to the White House’s plan, these “biological threats” may be “naturally occurring, accidental [or] deliberate,” “with the potential to significantly impact humans, animals (domestic and wildlife), plants, and the environment, and to negatively affect health, the economy, society, and security.”

According to STAT, the plan’s targets include:

  • Being able to test for new pathogens within 12 hours.
  • Making rapid tests available to the public within 90 days.
  • Repurposing existing drugs within 90 days.
  • Developing vaccines within 100 days.
  • Manufacturing enough of the new vaccine for the entire U.S. population within 130 days and “for the high-risk global population” within 200 days.
  • Developing new treatments within 180 days.

In justifying the new strategy, an unnamed senior Biden administration official quoted by The Hill said:

“We … know that the risk of another pandemic as bad or worse than COVID is a real threat. The new National Biodefense Strategy therefore outlines a bold vision … towards a world free of pandemics and catastrophic biological incidents.”

According to Defense One, other goals contained within the plan include “detecting the spread of pathogens before patients even begin to show symptoms like fever” and “scaling up the number of diagnostic test kits by tens of thousands within a week.”

A further element of the plan is “restoring community, the economy and the environment after a pandemic or biological incident,” The Hill reported.

The Biden administration’s plan also includes provisions for preparedness against the “accidental release of biological agents, and threats posed by terrorist groups or adversaries seeking to use biological weapons.”

Noting that COVID-19 “has highlighted that the United States and the world are vulnerable to biological threats, whether naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberate,” the plan states:

“It is a vital interest of the United States to prepare for, prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from biological threats at home and abroad.

“Therefore, countering biological threats, advancing pandemic preparedness, and achieving global health security are top national and international security priorities for the United States.

“Moving forward, the United States must fundamentally transform its capabilities to protect our Nation from biological threats and advance pandemic preparedness and health security more broadly for the world.”

According to STAT, an unnamed senior Biden administration official said Tuesday, “One of the important things that COVID has taught us is that we need to be able to move much faster to counter pandemic threats, and we also need to be prepared for completely unknown threats.”

The same official said the plan includes “moonshot” targets that are not scientifically feasible presently, but potentially could be within a decade.

According to the official, these new developments can target the 26 families of viruses that infect humans, “many of which we are far less prepared for than coronaviruses.”

Will Congress fund it?

Some questioned the plan’s price tag and the willingness of Congress to approve its funding.

One of the elements of the new strategy is its connection to a March 2022 request to Congress for $88 billion in funding over five years for “pandemic preparedness and biodefense,” a request that has thus far “stalled.”

These monies are intended, in part, “to fund new research to predict outbreaks before they become pandemics,” and “accelerate rapid testing to get ahead of where viruses are moving,” Defense One said.

Some of this money will come from the baseline funding of the federal agencies involved in this strategy, but it’s unclear whether Congress has “much of an appetite for additional public health spending,” according to STAT, which noted that “Republicans in Congress have balked at recent requests for funding the ongoing monkeypox and COVID-19 responses.”

According to the White House, the new strategy “builds on USAID’s [U.S. Agency for International Development] announcement earlier this year committing $150 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to accelerate the development of life-saving vaccines and countermeasures against biological threats.”

The White House also included the $1.4 billion in “seed funding” it provided earlier this year to the “groundbreaking new Financial Intermediary Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response at the World Bank.”

Boyle described the $88 billion in projected funding over the next five years as “a dramatic escalation” with “no justification from legitimate scientific reasons.”

He noted that since 2015, the federal government has “allocated anywhere from $5 to $6 billion per year on biological warfare purposes, which, being conservative, would mean a sum total from Sept. 11, 2001, until now, of $135-$140 billion.”

In his view, this money is being allocated “into further expanding the U.S. biological warfare industry … for the purpose of waging biological warfare,” and instead “should have been spent on the public health of the American people.”

‘You find Tony Fauci behind all of it’

Part of the price tag for the new biodefense strategy appears to be directed toward “recruiting, training and sustaining a robust, permanent cadre of health workers in all 50 states,” in the words of a senior Biden administration official quoted by Reuters.

Referring to it as a “public health army,” STAT reported that this “cadre of health workers” will include “laboratory technicians, veterinarians, and community health workers — to not only better detect emerging diseases but respond to them.”

In turn, Defense One reported that the strategy “aims to boost the number of local healthcare workers” and “traditional frontline healthcare workers,” but also, many new positions “related to research and data collection,” including “expanding the CDC’s epidemiology field officer program” and “bringing more epidemiologists to every state.”

The Biden administration also said it is “committed to helping at least 50 countries strengthen their own local capacities,” “strengthening public health workforces both in the United States and globally” and “establishing international mechanisms to bolster laboratory safety,” according to STAT.

For some, “international mechanisms” may bring to mind the recent and ongoing efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) to establish a renewed “global pandemic treaty” — efforts in which the United States under the Biden administration has played a leading role.

As previously reported by The Defender, the Biden administration expressed broad support for a “pandemic treaty” and previously headed negotiations on this issue.

In his interview with The Defender, Boyle also drew connections between the Biden administration’s new strategy, and efforts to develop the “pandemic treaty.”

Referring to the Biden administration’s recently signed executive order on “advancing biotechnology and biomanufacturing,” Boyle remarked that it makes mention of “dual-use research of concern, and research involving potentially pandemic and other high-consequence pathogens.”

For Boyle, “dual-use research” refers to the development of both “offensive and defensive biological weapons of warfare,” noting that “when it comes to biological warfare, defense means offense.”

“If they are saying they are doing all this for defensive purposes, it’s because they are also planning offensive use of biological warfare weapons, with the defense to defend themselves in the event that adversaries respond in kind,” Boyle added.

This then connects to the “pandemic treaty,” according to Boyle, noting that Dr. Anthony Fauci has close ties to the WHO’s executive committee:

“If you recall, Trump pulled us out of the WHO. The first act Biden did was to put us back into the WHO … and he appointed Tony Fauci as the U.S. government’s representative on the WHO executive committee.

“So the same guy supporting this ‘dual research of concern’ … is also implementing, supervising this new WHO treaty.”

Biden’s strategy also “calls for international mechanisms that can help strengthen lab safety and biosecurity practices around the world,” especially in light of “questions about the risks and benefits of research into potentially dangerous viruses,” including the COVID-19 Wuhan lab-leak theory.

This may indicate that Biden is seeking to expand gain-of-function research globally. As recently reported by The Defender, facilities conducting such research — including a facility where a purportedly “more lethal” strain of the COVID-19 Omicron variant was developed — are currently being expanded in the U.S.

Gain of function refers to the “manipulation of pathogens to make them more dangerous,” in the hope of “getting ahead of a future outbreak.”

As part of the new strategy, a “policy coordination structure for biodefense among government agencies with oversight by the White House” was signed, Reuters reported.

According to The Hill, this memorandum “outlines the coordination structure for biodefense across federal agencies, directs agencies to prioritize biodefense, directs the intelligence community to track evolving threat landscapes and ensures the government is continuously reviewing and adjusting priorities.”

Boyle, an outspoken critic of gain-of-function research, said it appears such research will be an integral part of the Biden administration’s new biodefense strategy. He told The Defender :

“It’s clear in the language that they are going full steam ahead on abusing DNA, genetic engineering, gain-of-function, synthetic biology, gene splicing, CRISPR-Cas9, to develop biological warfare weapons.”

He said that the proposed WHO pandemic treaty includes language on “measures to provide oversight and report on laboratories that do work to genetically alter organisms in order to increase pathogenicity and transmissibility.”

For Boyle, “this means gain-of-function work, using and abusing DNA engineering, synthetic biology, CRISPR-Cas9. That’s in the WHO treaty.”

“It all ties up,” Boyle added. “The executive order, the biodefense strategy, the WHO treaty. You find Tony Fauci behind all of it.”

Boyle added:

“When you add all this up together, it seems to me they’re gearing up to prepare to wage offensive biological warfare and preparing for the defense, for other states to respond with biological warfare weapons.”

Plan calls for coordination across federal agencies under White House control

The administration’s new biodefense strategy will utilize more than 20 federal agencies, while “oversight for the strategy will be at the White House, under the national security advisor.”

According to a  senior Biden administration official, the new strategy “directs the U.S. intelligence community to monitor for threats and ensure the United States ‘continuously adapts to this evolving threat landscape’ by holding annual exercises,” to “prevent epidemics and biological incidents before they happen,” Reuters reported.

This may bring to mind exercises and simulations that took place just prior to the COVID-19, monkeypox and anthrax outbreaks, which appeared to predict, with remarkable similarity, what was to follow.

According to Biden’s new strategy, the heads of the relevant federal agencies “shall implement the Biodefense Strategy, as well as related strategies such as the U.S. Global Health Security Strategy, and include biodefense-related activities … within their strategic planning and budgetary processes.”

Federal agencies also will be expected to coordinate with each other and with non-federal agencies on matters pertaining to “the biodefense enterprise.”

Is new strategy a ‘moonshot,’ or ‘pie-in-the-sky’?

In addition to questions about funding, some also questioned the feasibility of the new plan.

Defense One wrote that meeting some of the “moonshot” goals of the strategy “will require scaling up data-collection efforts at research facilities around the globe,” in addition to significantly ratcheting up a host of other research-related efforts, noting that the administration “did not specify exactly what technologies they will invest in.”

According to Defense One, “new approaches to RNA research” to “ease pandemics” may need to be developed, in addition to “new forms of plant-based vaccines” that could “allow for the scaling up of vaccine production by orders of magnitude.”

An unnamed senior Biden administration official quoted by Defense One acknowledged that the “moonshots” foreseen by the plan “are not possible today, but these capabilities can be achieved and are within our reach with the right resources over the next five to 10 years.”

Hiring more health workers may also prove challenging for the Biden administration due to a shortage of nurse practitioners that is expected to grow by 2025, along with looming “shortages of other healthcare workers.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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