Syria’s new interim government, led by former Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (previously known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani) has claimed its security services thwarted an attempt by ISIS to bomb the Sayyida Zainab shrine in the southern suburbs of Damascus.
The shrine, attributed to the granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed and daughter of Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib is an especially revered site for Shia Muslims worldwide. Known as the Heroine of Karbala, this year, her martyrdom anniversary was commemorated on 15 January, coinciding with the Islamic date 15 Rajab.
According to news website Shia Waves, “Local sources reported a noticeable decrease in the number of visitors to the shrine compared to previous years, attributed to Syria’s ongoing security challenges and political turmoil.”
However, a closer analysis of the details provided by Syrian state media suggests the plot to bomb the shrine was fabricated. The move appears to be an attempt to present the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led government as a protector of minorities to western audiences. This portrayal contrasts sharply with its ongoing sectarian cleansing campaigns in Alawite areas of the country.
The would-be false flag also serves the interests of the new Syrian government’s external sponsors. By exaggerating the ISIS threat, it provides the US with a pretext to maintain its illegal military occupation in Syria. Such an attack is all the more possible now that Hezbollah fighters and advisory forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have withdrawn from the country, ostensibly to ensure security for the shrine.
US forces currently occupy key oil fields in the north and east of the country and maintain a strategic base at Al-Tanf on the Syria-Iraq-Jordan border. The narrative of an ISIS threat ensures continued justification for these deployments and the exploitation of Syria’s resources.
Additionally, the conspiracy helps establish a narrative of ISIS culpability in advance. This could pave the way for blame to be assigned to the group if any party—whether elements within the Syrian government pursuing the Wahhabi project of targeting Shia and Sufi shrines, or foreign intelligence agencies seeking to destabilize Syria—decides to destroy the Sayyeda Zainab shrine. Such an event would create further chaos, deepening sectarian divides and serving the interests of those looking to fragment and destabilize Syria.
A staged plot
On 11 January, an unnamed official in Syria’s General Intelligence Service claimed four members of the ISIS cell planning an attack on the shrine were arrested.
Syria state TV showed images of the men, blindfolded and standing against a wall in casual civilian clothes, claiming the group consisted of Lebanese nationals and Palestinian-Lebanese. Images also showed a number of grenades and an anti-tank mine that were allegedly to be used for a suicide attack.
However, Karim Franceschi an Italian-Moroccan who fought with the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) against ISIS in Kobane in 2014, gave several reasons why the claimed plot to bomb Sayyeda Zainab was manufactured.
Franceschi observed that ISIS attacks on Sayyida Zaynab in Damascus in the past have used parked vehicles—plastic bags, cars, or motorcycles to plant bombs, rather than suicide bombers.
Further, the TM-57 anti-tank mine allegedly meant to be used in the suicide attack was rigged with the wrong fuse.
“Instead, a crude cord and igniter setup—meant for a suicide vest—is shown. This makes no sense. Using a full mine, with its specific anti-tank explosion radius, is inefficient. HTS knows this, making it clear this setup was staged for propaganda. There is no way ISIS or HTS with their extensive knowledge expertise with explosives would make something this sloppily,” Franceschi writes.
Previous ISIS attacks were not so sloppy. A string of ISIS bombings near the shrine in February 2016 killed 134 people, most of them civilians, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). In January 2016, another attack on the shrine claimed by ISIS killed 70 people.
Julani’s PR offensive
One reason for faking the plot is clear based on the statement issued by the unnamed Syrian intelligence official. He told state media the intelligence service is seeking to protect the country’s minorities, by “putting all its capabilities to stand in the face of all attempts to target the Syrian people in all their spectrums.”
The AP promoted this narrative further, reporting that although HTS leader Sharaa was a former leader in Al-Qaeda, which was notorious for calling for committing massacres against Shia in Iraq, he “has preached religious coexistence since assuming power in Damascus.”
Sharaa needs to preach co-existence and protection of minorities to have economic sanctions lifted. Crippling sanctions were imposed on Syria by the US and EU to strangle the economy and impoverish millions of Syrians in an effort to topple the previous government of Bashar al-Assad. Yet even with Assad gone, the “pointlessly cruel” sanctions remain.
Sharaa has admittedly introduced several reforms to improve life for average Syrians, including ending mandatory military service for Syrian men (which at times lasted up to eight years for meager pay), reducing draconian customs fees on imported products such as cell phones, and removing the checkpoints which slowed travel and forced Syrians to pay bribes or risk being arrested and disappearing into the prison system for arbitrary reasons.
But the lifting of the sanctions and allowing for normal economic activity is crucial for Sharaa to maintain popular support, especially given the unpopularity of his and his government’s efforts to establish a fundamentalist Islamic State in the country.
Maintaining leverage through sanctions
Just as the US and EU used sanctions for leverage against Assad, they are doing the same against Sharaa. The Intercept noted that just hours before Assad fell, and when it was obvious Sharaa and HTS would take power in Damascus, the US Congress moved to extend sanctions, rather than simply let them expire.
“Not considering sanctions relief right now is like pulling the rug out from under Syria just when it’s trying to stand,” The Intercept cited Delaney Simon, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, as saying.
Now, EU governments cite the threat to minorities from Sharaa’s security forces, which are comprised of multiple formerly Al-Qaeda linked groups with records of committing massacres against Syria’s Alawites, Druze, and Christians, as an excuse to keep sanctions in place or to reimpose them as “snapback” sanctions in the future.
Considering that the members of the US Congress most responsible for imposing the sanctions, such as French Hill and Joe Wilson, are also rapid pro-Israel supporters, it can be assumed that Sharaa will be asked in the future to sign a peace deal with Israel giving up the occupied Golan Heights to the Zionist entity in exchange for the sanctions being lifted completely and the possible return of recently occupied Syrian territory under Sharaa’s watch.
The spate of sectarian killings
By preaching religious coexistence and claiming to protect the Sayyeda Zainab shrine, Sharaa is also achieving another goal: providing cover for the ongoing campaign of sectarian cleansing that is taking place in Alawite areas of the country, including parts of Homs and the Hama and Latakia country sides.
The extremist sectarian ideology Sharaa previously embraced when dispatching car bombs to kill Shia civilians in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, is the same ideology which the armed factions under the HTS umbrella supporting his rule still embrace.
Militants affiliated with the new Syrian government, including many foreign jihadists from Uzbekistan, Chechnya, and China (Turkmenistan), are kidnapping and murdering members of Syria’s Alawite community based on their religious identity in various parts of Syria.
As a result, reports of sectarian killings by HTS or affiliated militants in Homs, Latakia, and Tartous continue to flood social media.
Syria expert Joshua Landis wrote on X that “Alawites have been attacked, many who have no history of wrongdoing in military or military service whatsoever. Today, there were demonstrations in the Sunni district of Latakia, cursing Alawites.”
Some Alawites are therefore demanding international protection, Landis notes, which further opens the door to the partition of Syria, a key Israeli goal.
To provide just one example, an Alawite man, Sheikh Ali Deeb, and his wife were killed in rural Salamiyah in the village of Dniba during an HTS search operation on 8 January. Their bodies were found on a side road connecting the village of Dniba to the neighboring village of Snida.
A pretext for US occupation
The new Syrian government’s claim to have thwarted the ISIS attack on Sayyeda Zainab also helps Sharaa remain in the good graces of Washington by giving it a pretext to continue the US military occupation of north and east Syria and its oil fields, which provide crude oil to Israel via Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkiye.
In Iraq, the US perfected the strategy of supporting and even creating Al-Qaeda groups (with Kurdish assistance), to justify its invasion and military occupation of the country.
The Bush administration relied on Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s presence in Iraqi Kurdistan to justify its invasion of Baghdad in 2003. Zarqawi built Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) with help from Kurdish Jihadists from Ansar al-Islam, which fought for the CIA in Afghanistan in the 1980’s and for Masoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) during the Kurdish civil war in the 1990’s.
Zarqawi’s car and suicide bombs targeting Shia pilgrims continued to justify the US occupation after the pretense of Saddam Hussein’s possession of WMDs collapsed.
A decade later, the US military provided weapons to ISIS to conquer large swathes of western Iraq, including Mosul, the country’s second largest city. US officials then used the existence of the so-called ISIS caliphate to return its forces to Iraq that had left after then Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has refused to sign a status of forces agreement with President Barack Obama guaranteeing non-prosecution of US troops in 2011.
Though ISIS has been defeated in Iraq, current Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani has failed to eject US forces from the country. US officials continue to claim they are still needed to fight ISIS, even though Sudani has repeatedly claimed the terror group no longer poses a threat that Iraqi forces cannot deal with on their own.
The Israeli/Wahhabi project
In a more extreme scenario, it is possible that Sharaa and/or his backers in foreign intelligence agencies may facilitate the destruction of the Sayyida Zainab shrine itself, while blaming it on ISIS. By claiming to thwart fake attacks on the shrine now, HTS is establishing a convenient narrative to claim innocence in the future if an attack does take place.
Attacking and destroying important Muslim shrines, important to both Shia and Sunnis, is a hallmark of AQI under the leadership of Zarqawi and ISIS under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Sharaa’s former bosses.
Zarqawi’s AQI is widely viewed as responsible for destroying the golden dome of the Al-Askari Shrine, home to the 10th and 11th Shia Imams, in Samarra in Iraq.
Al Askari shrine (January 2025)
To the delight of the Israelis and neoconservatives in the Bush administration—who sought the partition of the country, as outlined in the Yinon Plan and Clean Break documents—the 2006 attack almost ignited a full-blown sectarian war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities. This catastrophic outcome was narrowly averted, thanks to the influential fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani.
Before his defeat in Mosul in 2017, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ordered the destruction of the Great Mosque of Al-Nuri and its iconic minaret. ISIS also destroyed the Al-Nabi Yunus Mosque, home to a tomb thought to belong of the Prophet Jonah, claiming that revering the shrine was idolatrous.
Blowing up the Sayyeda Zainab Shrine in Damascus, whether for fundamentalist religious goals or for the sake of creating strategic chaos, would help ensure that the sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq and threatens to engulf Syria now, becomes a reality.
The sectarian chaos will again benefit the occupation state, allowing it to expand its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and southern Syria, while incentivizing Syria’s Druze to ask for their territory to be incorporated into a Greater Israel to escape the sectarian fire consuming the rest of the country.
Alawites on Syria’s coast may turn north to Turkiye to request protection, or even annexation, if the extremist threat continues. Ankara will in turn be happy to incorporate Syrian territory, along with its offshore gas fields, as part of its ambitions to advance its neo-Ottoman ambitions and become an energy hub and transit point for West Asia gas headed to Europe.
Above all it is crucial to keep in mind that Israel, the US, Turkiye and others that orchestrated the HTS conquest of Syria do not have the well being of Syrians in mind. Many Syrians are happy to have Assad gone, but the future remains fragile and the risk of sectarian war and partition now looms large.
As the second-largest republic of the former USSR, possessing everything from tank and rocket factories and top research institutes and engaging in intimately close intelligence cooperation with Russia, Ukraine became a virtual goldmine for NATO’s intelligence services after USSR’s collapse in 1991.
But a trickle of leaked military and intelligence secrets turned into a flood after the 2014 Euromaidan coup d’état, with current and former US and Ukrainian officials revealing to US media that Kiev’s post-coup authorities gave away “key intelligence” to the CIA literally by the suitcase-full, and turned Ukraine’s intelligence services into a shadow proxy army against Russia.
‘We Have a Gift’
In 2015, Valeriy Kondratyuk, a career spy then working as chief of the Ukrainian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate, visited Washington to meet with senior American intelligence officials with luggage “stuffed with top-secret Russian military documents.”
“I was like, ‘holy sh*t!’, and he’s like, ‘yes, we have a gift’,” a former US official told ABC News.
The docs were said to include info on top-secret Russian weapons and military capabilities.
Further “gifts,” from classified Russian weapons and electronic warfare tech to the Russian military’s order of battle and decision-making, would come later.
“They went from being zero to one of our most important partners, up in the realm of the Brits,” another ex-US official said.
“Their access was so significant. Here was the best friend of the Russians for many, many years. They knew things we just, frankly, had no idea of,” the official added.
One former official said the information received was worth “hundreds of millions” if not “billions” of dollars.
‘Something to Exploit’
Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, was also quickly compromised after the coup, with its new chief Valentyn Nalivaychenko inviting the US and British to “help” rebuild the agency.
“There were those of us on the agency side who were like, ‘hey, this is something to exploit. We need to change with it. Let’s help, you know, the Ukrainians be Ukrainians,’” a former US official recalled.
Officials said the CIA helped rebuild Ukraine’s intelligence services from the ground up as an anti-Russian proxy army, spending millions on training and equipment, new facilities, “including around a dozen secret forward-operating bases on the border with Russia,” as reported on earlier, and conducting “joint operations together around the world.”
In 2016, the CIA launched a training program known as ‘Operation Goldfish’, providing Ukraine with secure communications tech, combat and espionage training with the CIA and MI6, for operations in Russia and abroad posing as Russians.
“It was a magical time,” a former US official said of the program, saying joint operations began in one year, rather than the ten years it reportedly normally takes to establish such close cooperation.
Terror Ops Inside Russia
Kondratyuk admitted to lobbying Kiev’s newfound American partners to conduct “sabotage operations” in Crimea and elsewhere in Russia, including by “pre-positioning explosives,” long-before the 2022 escalation. This reportedly included a disastrous 2016 attack on a Russian Army base that triggered a shooting battle with Russian special forces.
That attack was carried out by Unit 2245, a group of US-trained commandos made up of officers under 30 with no memories of the Soviet period or sympathies related to Ukraine’s centuries-long history of close cooperation with Russia. Among these officers was Kyrylo Budanov, the current chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate who has bragged openly about the assassination of Russian public figures, and reportedly forged contacts with terrorist actors in Syria.
US officials confirmed that the CIA actively trained Ukrainian special forces for the proxy conflict that began in 2022, with one official boasting that the Main Intelligence Directorate was “able to hit the Russians hard and… in ways that they didn’t expect” thanks to years of “investment” from US intelligence.
Officials further revealed that the CIA had lifted restrictions on operations inside Ukraine after the conflict started, with officers providing assistance with targeting on the ground, and CIA-trained Ukrainian special forces engaging Russian troops from the “first day,” including by detonating pre-planted explosives on rail and logistical lines in eastern Ukraine, and inside Russia.
The international system during the Cold War was organised under extremely zero-sum conditions. There were two centres of power with two incompatible ideologies that relied on continued tensions between two rival military alliances to preserve bloc discipline and security dependence among allies. Without other centres of power or an ideological middle ground, the loss for one was a gain for the other. Yet, faced with the possibility of nuclear war, there were also incentives to reduce the rivalry and overcome the zero-sum bloc politics.
The foundation for a pan-European security architecture to mitigate security competition was born with the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which established common rules of the game for the capitalist West and the communist East in Europe. The subsequent development of trust inspired Gorbachev’s “new thinking” and his Gaullist vision of a Common European Home to unify the continent.
In his famous speech at the UN in December 1988, Gorbachev announced that the Soviet Union would cut its military forces by 500,000 soldiers, and 50,000 Soviet soldiers would be removed from the territory of Warsaw Pact allies. In November 1989, Moscow allowed the fall of the Berlin Wall without intervening. In December 1989, Gorbachev and Bush met in Malta and declared an end to the Cold War.
In November 1990, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe was signed, an agreement based on the principles of the Helsinki Accords. The charter laid the foundation for a new inclusive pan-European security that recognised the principle of “the ending of the division of Europe” and pursuit of indivisible security (security for all or security for none):
“With the ending of the division of Europe, we will strive for a new quality in our security relations while fully respecting each other’s freedom of choice in that respect. Security is indivisible and the security of every participating State is inseparably linked to that of all the others”.
An inclusive pan-European security institution based on the Helsinki Accords (1975) and the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (1990) was eventually established in 1994 with the foundation of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE Bucharest Document of December 1994 reaffirmed:
“They remain convinced that security is indivisible and that the security of each of them is inseparably linked to the security of all others. They will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other States”.
NATO Expansion Cancels Pan-European Security
Yet, security in Europe came in direct conflict with America’s ambitions for global hegemony. As Charles de Gaulle had famously noted, NATO was an instrument for US primacy from across the Atlantic. Preserving and expanding NATO would serve that purpose as the US could perpetuate Russia’s weakness and reviving tensions would ensure that Europe’s security dependence could be converted into economic and political obedience.
Why manage security competition when there is one dominant side? The decision to expand NATO cancelled the pan-European security agreements as the continent was redivided, and indivisible security was abandoned by expanding NATO’s security at the expense of Russia’s security. US Secretary of Defence William Perry considered resigning from his position in opposition to NATO expansion. Perry also argued that his colleagues in the Clinton administration recognised NATO expansion would cancel the post-Cold War peace with Russia, yet the prevailing sentiment was that it did not matter as Russia was now weak. However, George Kennan, the architect of the US containment policy against the Soviet Union, warned in 1997:
“Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom”.[1]
NATO was continuously described as the “insurance guarantee” that would deal with Russia if NATO expansion would create conflicts with Russia. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright explained in April 1997: “On the off-chance that in fact Russia doesn’t work out the way that we are hoping it will… NATO is there”.[2] In 1997, then-Senator Joe Biden predicted that NATO membership for the Baltic States would cause a “vigorous and hostile” response from Russia. However, Biden argued that Russia’s alienation did not matter as they did not have any alternative partners. Biden mocked Moscow’s warnings that Russia would be compelled to look towards China in response to NATO expansion and joked that if the partnership with China failed to deliver, then Russia could alternatively form a partnership with Iran.[3]
Russia Continued to Push for a Greater Europe
When it became evident that NATO expansionism would make the inclusive OSCE irrelevant, President Yeltsin and later President Putin attempted to explore the opportunity for Russia to join NATO. They were both met with a cold shoulder in the West. Putin also attempted to establish Russia as America’s reliable partner in the Global War on Terror, but in return, the US pushed another round of NATO expansion and “colour revolutions” along Russia’s borders.
In 2008, Moscow proposed constructing a new pan-European security architecture. It was opposed by Western states as it would weaken the primacy of NATO.[4] In 2010, Moscow proposed an EU-Russia Free Trade Zone to facilitate a Greater Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which would provide mutual economic benefits and mitigate the zero-sum format of the European security architecture. However, all proposals for a Helsinki-II agreement were ignored or criticised as a sinister ploy to divide the West.
Ukraine was “the brightest of all redlines” for Russia and would likely trigger a war, according to the current CIA Director William Burns.[5] Nonetheless, in February 2014, NATO-backed a coup in Kiev to pull Ukraine into NATO’s orbit. As predicted by Burns, a war began over Ukraine. The Minsk agreement could have resolved the conflict between NATO and Russia, although the NATO countries later admitted that the agreement was merely intended to buy time to arm Ukraine.
The Collapse of Pan-European Security
Gorbachev concluded that NATO expansionism betrayed the Helsinki Accords, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, and the OSCE as agreements for pan-European security:
NATO’s eastward expansion has destroyed the European security architecture as it was defined in the Helsinki Final Act in 1975. The eastern expansion was a 180-degree reversal, a departure from the decision of the Paris Charter in 1990 taken together by all the European states to put the Cold War behind us for good. Russian proposals, like the one by former President Dmitri Medvedev that we should sit down together to work on a new security architecture, were arrogantly ignored by the West. We are now seeing the results.[6]
Putin agreed with Gorbachev’s analysis:
We have done everything wrong…. From the beginning, we failed to overcome Europe’s division. Twenty-five years ago, the Berlin Wall fell, but invisible walls were moved to the East of Europe. This has led to mutual misunderstandings and assignments of guilt. They are the cause of all crises ever since.[7]
George Kennan predicted in 1998 that when conflicts eventually start as a result of NATO expansionism, then NATO would be celebrated for defending against an aggressive Russia:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war… There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves…. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are —but this is just wrong.[8]
Within the West, it has been nearly impossible to warn against the predictable collapse of European security. The only acceptable narrative has been that NATO expansion was merely “European integration”, as countries in the shared neighbourhood between NATO and Russia were compelled to decouple from the largest state in Europe. It was evident that redividing the continent would recreate the logic of the Cold War, and it was equally evident that a divided Europe would be less prosperous, less secure, less stable, and less relevant in the world. Yet, arguing for not dividing the continent is consistently demonised as taking Russia’s side in a divided Europe. Any deviation from NATO’s narratives comes with a high social cost as dissidents are smeared, censored and cancelled. The combination of ignorance and dishonesty by the Western political-media elites has thus prevented any course correction.
[1] G.F., Kennan, ‘A Fateful Error’, The New York Times, 5 February 1997.
[2] T.G. Carpenter and B. Conry, NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality. Cato Institute, 1998, p.205.
[3] G. Kaonga, ‘Video of Joe Biden Warning of Russian Hostility if NATO Expands Resurfaces’, Newsweek, 8 March 2022.
[4] G. Diesen and S. Wood, ‘Russia’s proposal for a new security system: confirming diverse perspectives’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol.66, no.4, 2012, pp.450-467.
[5] W.J. Burns, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, New York, Random House, 2019, p.233.
[6] M. Schepp and B. Sandberg, ‘Gorbachev Interview: ‘I Am Truly and Deeply Concerned’’, Spiegel, 16 January 2015.
[7] N. Bertrand, ‘PUTIN: The deterioration of Russia’s relationship with the West is the result of many ‘mistakes’’, Business Insider, 11 January 2016.
[8] T.L. Friedman, ‘Foreign Affairs; Now a Word From X.’, The New York Times, 2 May 1998.
Scott Ritter pointed out that Antony Blinken has facilitated the Ukraine conflict because “peace with Russia was never an option, only war.”
Outgoing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is “a war criminal in every sense of the word,” former American Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter wrote on X, commenting on Blinken’s video, in which he praised the Biden administration’s work.
Ritter accused Blinken of being “singularly responsible for the deaths of more than a million people” as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.
“You took advantage of a mentally diminished president to take our nation to the brink of nuclear war with Russia, violating the Constitution’s due process,” the ex-intelligence officer wrote, referring to the outgoing US President Joe Biden.
Ritter voiced hope that Blinken would be “investigated, charged, and found guilty of betraying” his country. “And I hope you are given the justice you so richly deserve,” the ex-intelligence officer concluded.
Blinken earlier told the New York Times that when it comes to the Biden administration, there’s allegedly “a very strong record of achievement, historic in many ways.”
These claims are clearly out of sync with Biden’s plummeting approval rating, which hit a new low in December, when just 34% of respondents OK’d his job as POTUS, according to a Marquette Law School national poll.
The present severed from the past is easily misunderstood. In discussions of the Russia-Ukraine war, not enough is made of the historical fact that, at the end of the Cold War, the newly independent Ukraine promised not to join NATO, and NATO promised not to expand to Ukraine.
Not enough is made of the fact that Article IX of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, “External and Internal Security,” says that Ukraine “solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs…” That promise was later enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, which committed Ukraine to neutrality and prohibited it from joining any military alliance; that included NATO.
Nor is enough made of the fact that in 1990 and 1991, the George H.W. Bush administration gave assurances to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev—assurances that arguably reached the level of a deal—that NATO would not expand east of Germany, including to Ukraine.
But even less is made of what the Bill Clinton administration later promised Russian President Boris Yeltsin, nor what the United States already knew at the time of where plans of NATO expansion to Ukraine would lead.
Recently declassified documents clearly show that, between 1993 and 2000, the U.S. already knew that a cornered Boris Yeltsin was distraught about NATO expansion and about the West’s broken promise, that expansion to Ukraine was a red line, and that if Russia ever enforced that red line, the U.S. would respond forcefully.
Though the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were invited to begin accession talks in 1997 and joined NATO in 1999, a secret October 1994 policy paper, written by National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and entitled “Moving Toward NATO Expansion,” makes it clear that the decision to expand NATO had already been made by that time. The paper explicitly keeps “the membership door open for Ukraine.”
Interestingly, though Russia is always publicly painted as a predatorial nation with imperial ambitions, a confidential 1993 cable states that most Eastern European states seek NATO membership “not [because they] feel militarily threatened by Russia” but because they believe “that NATO membership can help stave off the return of authoritarian forces” in their own countries. Though the cable makes the exception that Ukraine and the Baltic states may feel threatened by Russia.
By September 1994, Clinton had explicitly told Yeltsin that NATO would expand. While visiting Yeltsin in the hospital on December 16, 1994, Vice President Al Gore clarifies that “What Clinton told you in September was that eventually NATO will expand.”
But Gore promised Yeltsin that “the process will be gradual and open and we will consult carefully with you.” He added, “The process will be conducted in parallel with a deepening of the U.S.-Russia partnership and your partnership with NATO.”
Though less than a week later, a secret NSC memorandum clarifies that Russia will not be given “a veto or right of prior consultation over NATO decisions,” this promise of a deepening “institutionalized relationship between NATO and Russia—possibly in the form of a Treaty (“alliance with the Alliance”) or Charter” that will be established in parallel with NATO expansion is repeatedly mentioned. A secret memorandum written by Anthony Lake to Clinton on July 17, 1995 identifies “plans to develop a formalized NATO-Russia relationship in parallel with enlargement.” The spirit of this promise would be broken.
Importantly, it is evident that the Clinton administration was very aware of Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion and of their feeling of betrayal. Knowing that expansion is an impossible sell in Russia, Gore promised Yeltsin that expansion wouldn’t occur before 1996 because “[w]e understand you have parliamentary elections in mid-1995 and it would be hard for you if we moved forward then.”
In the July 17, 1995 memorandum, Lake informed Clinton of a “hardening Russian opposition to NATO expansion.” In a section called “Intensifying Russian Opposition,” Lake said that “opposition to NATO enlargement appears to be hardening across the political spectrum among the Russian political elite.” He reported that key Russian officials insist “that NATO enlargement and NATO-Russia cooperation are incompatible.” He recognized that Yeltsin had “approved…a strategy for delaying and possibly derailing NATO enlargement.” Lake forecast little hope of the position softening because “Russia’s opposition is deep and profound.”
Though much has been made of William Burns’ important 2008 warning that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” it was not the first such warning.
In a 1991 appeal cited in M.E. Sarotte’s Not One Inch, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Robert Strauss warned that “the most revolutionary event of 1991 for Russia may not be the collapse of Communism, but the loss of something Russians of all political stripes think of as part of their own body politic, and near to the heart at that: Ukraine.” An internal 1991 draft paper recommended leaving “the possibility of Ukraine joining the NATO liaison program” for “a later time.” Sarotte reports that Richard Holbrooke, who aggressively pushed expansion, called NATO in a briefing paper “an Alliance [Ukraine] can probably never enter.”
A secret/sensitive memorandum dated July 29, 1996 clearly states that Russia sought to “draw red lines around certain countries (e.g. the Baltics and Ukraine) to prevent their ever being considered for NATO membership.”
The declassified documents make it clear that, at the time of the decision to expand NATO east toward Russia, the Clinton administration knew that Russia vehemently opposed expansion and especially expansion to Ukraine. They also knew that crossing that red line could lead to trouble.
The July 29, 1996 memo shows, not only knowledge of Russian opposition, but understanding of it: “From a Russian perspective, they cannot (and probably should not ever want to) endorse formally NATO enlargement.”
An August 23, 1996 draft memorandum written by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot says, “The Russians are saying that they will not ‘negotiate’ on the issue of Baltic and Ukrainian eventual membership in NATO.” Using the language of conflict for, perhaps, the first time, Talbot says that “[t]his has the distinctly ominous implication of a warning to us…”
Remarkably, having recognized that Russia had drawn a red line at NATO expansion to Ukraine, the United States proceeded to invert that red line: “An important part of our job will be to make sure our red lines stick—and that the Russians’ <sic> don’t cross ours (i.e., trying to label UNACCEPTABLE Ukrainian and Baltic membership.”
Enlarging on the new language of conflict, the memo then says that if Russia’s “nasty implication [of a warning] becomes explicit, we should slam back hard…” This is the most prescient line in the declassified documents, forecasting a “hard” American response if Russia asserts its red line at NATO expansion to Ukraine.
And it is clear that the Clinton administration had no illusions about Russia’s serious concerns or about their resentment of Bill Clinton’s breaking the promise that was made to them at the end of the Cold War. In a memorandum to Strobe Talbot, Dennis Ross said that the Russians “see NATO expansion” as their being “humiliated,” but “worse,” that it confirms that “they will face potential threats closer to their borders.” Ross added that the Russians “feel they were snookered at the time of German unification” by the breaking of “[Secretary of State James] Baker’s promises on not extending NATO military presence into what was East Germany” which was “part of a perceived commitment not to expand the Alliance eastward.”
In an important meeting between Clinton and Yeltsin in Helsinki on March 21, 1997, Yeltsin’s frustration and anger are made clear. Discussing the NATO-Russia Founding Act, Yeltsin makes sure that Clinton knows that Russia’s “position has not changed. It remains a mistake for NATO to move eastward.” He then says, “But I need to take steps to alleviate the negative consequences of this for Russia. I am prepared to enter into an agreement with NATO not because I want to but because it is a forced step.”
Yeltsin then personally told Clinton, “But one thing is very important: enlargement should also not embrace the former Soviet republics. I cannot sign any agreement without such language. Especially Ukraine.”
Yeltsin implored Clinton that “[d]ecisions by NATO are not to be taken without taking into account the concerns or opinions of Russia.” He also demanded that “nuclear and conventional arms cannot move eastward into new member to the borders of Russia.” Clinton then promised Yeltsin “to make sure that we take account of Russia’s concerns as we move forward.” Another broken promise.
Interestingly, as an indication that the United States recognizes that objections to NATO expansion are not just Vladimir Putin’s objections but Russia’s, in a November 16, 2000 meeting, Talbot suggests that “the next round of NATO enlargement might be easier under Putin than it had been under Yeltsin.”
Reuniting the present with the context of its past is crucial—not for condoning Russia’s war against Ukraine, but for understanding it. More importantly, it will be crucial when it finally comes to resolving and ending it.
Human clinical trials are underway to use mosquitoes to vaccinate people against malaria, cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough reported on his Substack.
McCullough cited a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in November reporting results from a double-blind, controlled clinical trial at two university medical centers in the Netherlands.
The trial evaluated the safety, side effects and efficacy of immunizing people via mosquito bites, using mosquitoes infected with a genetically engineered version of the parasite that causes malaria.
“It seems as if the world of vaccinology has ramped up to a feverish pitch with amplified research, massive funding, and no limit to the extent in which vaccines could be injected into humans,” McCullough wrote.
Researchers have been trying to develop a malaria vaccine since the 1960s, but they have been largely unsuccessful. It wasn’t until October 2021 that the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the first malaria vaccine, made by GSK, for children living in sub-Saharan Africa and other high-transmission regions.
The vaccines, given to small children in four doses, offer only modest and short-lived protection — 50-80% efficacy for less than a year — and are even less effective in infants in high endemic areas.
Malaria is caused by plasmodium parasites, which spread to humans through bites from infected mosquitoes.
Given the limited efficacy of existing vaccines, researchers continue researching alternative vaccination strategies, including using genetically modified versions of the malaria parasites to elicit an immune response.
“In a simplified view, the innovation may seem like a good idea,” Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender. “Malaria commonly afflicts those in poorer countries with limited access to healthcare. If we could make a change to the environment that improves the lives of all and diminishes the lives of none, in theory that would be progress.”
“The problem,” he said, “is that every detail of it looks like a bad idea.”
Researchers call results ‘promising,’ critics say research should be banned
The researchers, from two Dutch universities, previously engineered the “GA1” version of the parasite to stop developing 24 hours after being introduced into the human body.
Theoretically, these parasites wouldn’t cause malaria but would prime the immune system to recognize non-genetically modified pathogenic malarial parasites and trigger an immune response.
However, GA1 showed poor efficacy.
The NEJM study tested their next version of the genetically modified parasite, GA2, which halts development later — six days post-infection — when the parasite is replicating inside of human liver cells.
Jablonowski said this is not necessarily safe. The genetic modifications are intended to stop development in the liver stage before the parasite can proceed to the blood stage and become infective, he said. However, “The protozoa can still replicate, both sexually and asexually. This means the genetically modified protozoa can reproduce with wild-type to produce an infective genetically modified organism not bound by the original design.”
The study tested GA2 against GA1 and placebo in a small number of healthy adults 18 to 35 years old. The genetically modified parasites were injected into the human subjects via mosquito bites rather than through a shot like most vaccines currently available.
“The mosquitoes act like a vaccine syringe and then inject that modified parasite in the case of malaria into the human body,” McCullough explained in an interview on Substack.
In the first phase of the study, participants received either 15 or 50 bites from mosquitoes infected with GA2 to identify the highest dose without harmful side effects.
Next, researchers randomly assigned healthy adults who had not previously been infected with malaria to one of three groups. One was exposed to 50 bites from GA2, another to 50 bites from GA1, and the third to 50 bites from uninfected mosquitoes, the placebo group. There were nine participants in the GA2 group, eight in the GA1 group and three in the placebo group.
The researchers completed three sessions of 50 bites per session — to simulate a three-dose vaccine regimen. Three weeks later, all test subjects were exposed to five bites from mosquitoes carrying non-genetically engineered malarial parasites.
Before being exposed to the non-genetically engineered parasites, the researchers reported that the subjects in both GA1 and GA2 groups had some anti-malarial antibodies. They found that GA2 provided greater efficacy (89%) against malaria and induced a higher immune response than either GA1 or placebo. They also said the vaccine was “safe” with no significant difference in adverse events within the groups.
Adverse events included skin redness and itchiness from the bites, which most participants experienced and treated with antihistamines or topical corticosteroids. Some also reported muscle aches and pains and headaches.
Two participants had elevated troponin T levels, which indicates heart damage, or even a heart attack. However, investigators assessed these incidents as unrelated to the vaccination. One participant also showed elevated liver-function tests that researchers said were related to the antihistamines.
“The authors took a lot of liberties in identifying adverse events they considered related and unrelated to the experiment,” Jablonowski said. “When 40% of your trial group have abdominal pains, 45% have a headache, 50% have malaise and fatigue, and 60% have nausea and vomiting — these are not small relative numbers.”
The researchers concluded that the results were promising, but noted that more and larger studies would be necessary to understand the safety profile, the durability of protection and the efficacy against a greater variety of Plasmodium falciparum strains — the deadliest and most prevalent form of malaria — found in regions where malaria is endemic.
Last week, the same researchers published additional results in Nature Medicinefrom a second trial with the same GA2 genetically engineered parasite. In this trial, they exposed 10 research subjects to a single, “one-dose regimen” of the parasite.
That means the trial participants were exposed to one 50-bite session by mosquitoes infected with GA2. They reported that after six weeks, nine of the 10 subjects showed no breakthrough infections. They called the results “promising” and again called for further studies.
McCullough said he believes “there should be a moratorium, a ban, on all mosquito vector research right now for human conditions.”
He added, “No Institutional Review Board would agree to, you know, mass populating, mass vaccinating a population without their consent with mosquitoes.”
There would also be serious problems with tracking the effects of the vaccines themselves. “There would be no control on the dose or the inoculum, as an example. There would be no control over recognizing side effects,” McCullough said.
Jablonowski noted that 14 of the 75 originally assessed participants were excluded for medical reasons. If such a vaccine were released, “not only would a person not have foreknowledge of vaccination, they wouldn’t have after-knowledge of it either. If a medical condition arose, they would have no idea if they were infected with the genetically modified protozoan.”
He noted that in this study alone, 11 of the 75 persons initially assessed for participation declined to participate. “If this strategy is implemented, they won’t be asked if they wish to participate. Informed consent is the only power we have over our own medical autonomy,” he said. “Neither the mosquitoes nor the governments who use them are going to ask for consent.”
When British kings wanted to dispose of troublesome enemies — real or imagined — they often had them or their colleagues arrested on pretextual charges and then brutally tortured until confessions were extracted. The confessions were then read aloud during so-called trials; and, of course, the defendant was convicted of whatever crime was the subject of the confession.
All this was done in order to satisfy the political, and in many cases the personal, desires of the monarch by creating the impression of due process.
Often the torture occurred in remote places, so remote that there was no government there, and the king and his counselors could argue that the protections of the British traditions of fair play — the British do not have a written Constitution, but rather a set of traditions — was not violated because the torture occurred in a place where the traditions did not apply.
When one of the victims of this practice was an official who had previously engaged in perpetrating it, the House of Commons, many of whose members feared becoming victims of the monarch’s desires, adopted the principle of habeas corpus. That ancient right compelled the jailer of any person anywhere to bring the jailed person before a neutral magistrate and justify the confinement.
Due process has numerous definitions and aspects, but for constitutional purposes it basically means that all charged persons are presumed innocent and entitled to a written notice of the charges, a speedy and fair hearing before a neutral fact finder, a right to appeal; and the entire process imbued with fairness and a profound recognition of personal innocence until guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Due process also explicitly prohibits the use of torture.
In order to ensure that due process and habeas corpus would trump the whims of government officials — stated differently, to ensure that the British system of torture and confession and conviction did not occur here — James Madison and the Framers crafted protections in the Constitution to which all in government needed to swear allegiance and support.
Fast forward to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and you can see the constitutional system turned on its head.
This George W. Bush-crafted American Devil’s Island, which costs $500 million a year to operate, once held 780 prisoners, allegedly there due to their personal involvement in the war on terror against the United States. Not a single one of them has been convicted of 9/11-related crimes, and only one former detainee is currently serving time in an American federal prison.
Nearly all the prisoners were tortured, and most were captured by roving militias and sold to American forces for bounties. Last week, under cover of darkness, the Biden administration released 11 detainees, all of whom had been at Gitmo for 20-plus years and none of whom had been charged with a crime.
The best known of the remaining 15 prisoners is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the government claims was the mastermind of 9/11. Mohammed was scheduled for trial when the military judge in his case retired. The new judge — the fifth on the case — was confronted with the daunting task of reading 40,000 pages of transcripts and documents concerning the torture of Mohammed by U.S. personnel.
At the same time, a new team of military and civilian prosecutors was assigned to the case and the new prosecutors told their bosses in the Pentagon and the new military judge that unlike their predecessors — who sought to mitigate the 183 torture sessions U.S. personnel administered to Mohammed — they were prepared to acknowledge it and decline to use any evidence obtained from it in the courtroom.
This remarkable turnaround — one that rejected the premises upon which Gitmo came into being — resulted in the prosecutors commencing plea negotiations.
The Bush-inspired premises of Gitmo were that since it is located in Cuba, federal laws don’t apply, the Constitution doesn’t apply and federal judges can’t interfere. In five landmark decisions, the Supreme Court rejected all these premises, and the new team of prosecutors and the new judge recognized as much.
The prosecutors basically said that they cannot ethically defend torture, they will not offer evidence derived from it in the case, and the case is difficult to prove without evidence derived from torture. This is a remarkable lesson to be learned. Instead of cutting holes in the Constitution, follow it. Instead of using torture, use acceptable investigative techniques. Instead of crafting a Devil’s Island, use the systems in place that have basically worked.
The settlement negotiations produced an agreement for a guilty plea that removed the death penalty from the case, required Mohammed to answer truthfully all questions put to him under oath and in public by prosecutors, defense counsel and lawyers for 9/11 victims’ families, and life in prison at Gitmo; not America’s hellhole in Florence, Colorado.
The plea was approved in writing by all, including the retired general in the Pentagon in charge of Gitmo prosecutions — herself a former military appellate judge. When Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin learned of the plea agreement, he instructed the military prosecutors to move to vacate the agreement they had instigated. The trial judge denied this unique request. Last week, a military court of appeals upheld that denial. Mohammed’s courtroom plea will now take place before President Joe Biden leaves office.
None of this jurisprudential mess would have occurred if Bush had allowed the criminal justice structure to proceed unimpeded. The use of torture, rotating judges and prosecutors, and incarceration for 20 years without charges or trial are all hallmarks of an authoritarian government. If justice consists in convicting the guilty using established norms and fair procedures, Gitmo has been an unjust unhumanitarian disaster. But if justice consists in the king getting whatever he wants, then the Constitution is useless as a protector of freedom.
To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
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The film exposes how terrorists took advantage of the massive weapons surplus following the end of WWII and created lucrative black-markets for illegal arms trafficking many of which went to the blood thirsty ethno-stater lunatics who created the state of Israel. The weapons theft would escalate to Highly Enriched Uranium for nuclear bombs and the assassination of a US president. The gun running routes doubled as human trafficking routes as the post war climates had created millions of refugees and nations of women with little or no opportunities who were easily exploited. This in turn gave rise to international forced prostitution and pedophile rings that targeted state figures and businessmen for blackmail. The press and policing agencies were forced to capitulate because challenging Zionist power right after the horrors of the Holocaust was political suicide. WWII’s own justification for nuking cities and murdering millions of civilians through bombing and starvation was the made for TV images of the Holocaust, even though Palestine had nothing to do with that, they paid the ultimate price. And by allowing Israeli power to grow out of control the US effectively lost its sovereignty. Especially in regards to foreign policy, Zionist partisans most recently the Neocons have thrown the US into one conflict after another against its own interests to further the personal interest of a criminal cabal. This film, like any Dawson film, names the names and gives the details and documents. The criminal networks of organized crime, sexual blackmailers, arms smugglers, financiers, and political cover up have all been mapped out, literally. Help us at the Anti-Neocon report reach our goal and once again put the establishment and donor class psychopaths under the spot light. The truth will set you free. But Freedom isn’t Free.
“By far the best production value ANC has ever created”- Pug
“When you think having your greatest ally attack you is the worst thing they have done, Dawson drops this bomb” – Oliver
“I think I wet my pants, but I had my underwear on so I couldn’t have raped that girl” -Alan Dershowitz did not say
“With an entire room full of people who have been drinking all night and done a 3 and a half hour conference with Ron Paul and eaten a big meal, not a single person fell asleep, that’s impressive” -Reed Coverdale
Whether it’s Greenland, Ukraine, West Africa or East Asia, rare earths are an element of the global geopolitical competition hiding just below the surface. What are the rare earth elements, where are they concentrated, and what are their major uses? Check out our explainer for a detailed breakdown.
Basic Facts
Rare earth minerals are a group of 17 silvery-white soft heavy metals, mostly consisting of the lanthanides, a family of 15 elements grouped together in the Periodic Table, plus scandium and yttrium, which have similar chemical properties and are often found in deposits alongside the others.
Despite their name, rare earths aren’t especially rare, with one of the rarest – lutetium, some 200 times more common than gold. Rather, what makes the resources rare is finding them in large, easy to find and mine clusters.
Rare Earths and Their Uses
Lanthanum (La): Used in nickel-metal hydride batteries for hybrid vehicles, lighting, camera lenses and other special glass, and as a catalyst for petroleum refining.
Cerium (Ce): Added to an array of alloys for increased strength and corrosion protection, magnets, for burn treatments, glass polishing agents, lightbulbs and household wares including ceramics.
Praseodymium (Pr): Key component for aircraft engine-grade high-strength alloys, powerful magnets (including for use in wind turbines), tough didymium glass, and fiberoptic cables.
Neodymium (Nd): Used for everything from magnetotherapy to magnetic motors, microwave communications, microphones, headphones, loudspeakers, hard drives, automotive electronics, fluorescent and energy-saving lamps and lasers.
Promethium (Pm): Key component for luminous paint, portable X-rays, and atomic batteries for critical electronics, from the military and aerospace to pacemakers.
Samarium (Sm): Active ingredient in a popular cancer-cell killing agent; used in combination with other elements in magnets, lasers and nuclear reactor control rods for neutron absorption.
Europium (Eu): Another excellent neutron absorber, as well as red phosphor for TVs, blue color in LEDs, and therapeutics tool.
Gadolinium (Gd): Active ingredient for MRI drugs. Also used in nuclear propulsion systems, metallurgy, microwave and magnetic refrigeration.
Terbium (Tb): Key tool for chemical screening; green phosphor for TVs and monitors, used in lighting, military grade sonar and other sensors.
Dysprosium (Dy): Used to make powerful permanent magnets, lasers and lighting, electric drive motors for EVs and wind turbines, transducers, resonators, and dosimeters for measuring ionizing radiation.
Holmium (Ho): Another neutron-absorber useful for radioimmunotherapy, magnets, as well as optics, microwave, medical, dental and laser surgery equipment.
Erbium (Er): Added to lasers and optics used in medicine, as well as optical communications, with strong neutron-absorbing qualities. Also useful for chemical analysis and crystal growth.
Thulium (Tm): Used in military and industrial-grade lasers, as a source of radiation for portable X-rays, for meteorology and high-temperature superconducting tools, and popular anti-counterfeiting agent.
Ytterbium (Yb): Key element in X-ray components, memory devices, tunable lasers, amps and displays; metal-strengthening component and burnable poison for controlling nuclear reactions.
Lutetium (Lu): Used in petroleum refining, polymerization, lithography, tomography, as a phosphor for some light bulbs. Also used for tumor treatment, and to build the world’s most accurate atomic clocks.
Scandium (Sc): Key ingredient for high-grade lightweight alloys for everything from military and commercial aircraft to sporting equipment, small arms, high intensity discharge lamps, dentistry, and as an oil refinery tracing agent.
Yttrium (Y): Another metal-strengthening alloy. Also used for high-temperature superconducting, a surprising array of medical applications (from drug labeling and cancer treatment to surgical needles) as deoxidizer and nodulizer, the red color in cathode ray tubes, radar and synthetic gems.
According to an article in the Washington Post, Gene Mills, a U.S. citizen who was one of the top amateur wrestlers in the world, stated, “He stole my life. That was my life. He took it away from me.”
Mills was referring to President Jimmy Carter, who recently passed away at the age of 100. It was Carter who ordered U.S. athletes to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Russia. The reason? Carter used the boycott to protest the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
There were two at least two big problems with Carter’s order, however.
One problem is that in a genuinely free society, people have the right to travel wherever they want and interact with anyone they want. If people want to compete in sporting events in foreign lands or just be spectators, that’s part of living the life of a free person. It’s none of the government’s business.
That wasn’t Carter’s mindset. His order reflected the reality of the American condition in modern times. In the United States, citizens no longer have the God-given, natural right of freedom of travel or freedom to interact with people in foreign lands. American citizens are subject to the orders, dictates, and edicts of their political masters. Once the president issued his order prohibiting them from competing in the Olympics, American citizens were expected to obey. I’ve sometimes wondered what U.S. officials would have done to U.S. athletes who decided to disobey Carter’s edict. No doubt Carter and his federal henchmen would have figured out ways to smash them.
Thus, the irony was that in issuing his boycott order to protest Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, Carter was demonstrating that the United States was now founded on at least one of the principles of the communist Soviet Union — that freedom of travel is not a fundamental, God-given right here in the United States any more than it is in communist, totalitarian nations.
Of course, things haven’t changed a bit. If American citizens travel to Cuba, for example, and spend money there without the official permission of their U.S. masters, they are immediately indicted upon their return to the U.S., prosecuted, convicted, fined, and sentenced to prison.
Another big problem is that it was Carter and his national-security establishment who intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately provoked the Soviets into invading Afghanistan in the first place. Yes, you read that right. While Carter pontificated about the evil Soviet empire’s invasion of Afghanistan — and used American athletes as pawns in his protest against the invasion — the fact is that Carter himself, as well as the U.S. national-security establishment, wanted the Soviets to invade Afghanistan and, in fact, provoked them into doing so.
This evil little scheme was later confirmed by Carter’s national-security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. The scheme called for supporting Afghanistan opponents of Russia in the hopes of provoking the Soviets into invading the country. The scheme worked brilliantly. And when Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Carter, Brezinski, and other U.S, officials were as exultant as U.S. officials would be many years later when they succeeded in provoking Russia into invading Ukraine.
Why such exultation? As Brezinski put it, they had now given the Soviets their “own Vietnam.” In other words, Russia would now be bogged down in a war that would entail the killing of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, just like the 58,000 American soldiers that U.S. presidents, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA sacrificed in Vietnam for nothing. What a warped and perverted thing to be excited about.
Thus, here you had Carter protesting against the invasion of Afghanistan by those evil Russians when it was Carter himself who desired the invasion, provoked it, and was exultant about it when it happened. He then had the audacity to use innocent U.S. athletes, who had nothing to do with any of these machinations, as pawns to protest against the invasion that Carter wanted, provoked, and got. Is it really difficult to understand why so many people around the world, including here in the United States, hate the hypocrisy of the U.S. government so much?
From 2013: The specter of Operation Choke Point 2.0 has just been raised in a recent House Financial Services Committee meeting. But what was Operation Choke Point 1.0? And why should we be concerned about this latest attempt to debank “disfavoured individuals,” anyway? Find out all the details in this week’s edition of The Corbett Report podcast.
Pro-Israel Lobby contributions sourced from opensecrets.org. The numbers are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more. All the numbers are for all the election cycles since 1990 and based on Federal Election Commission data released on March 20, 2023.
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | July 23, 2017
Israeli Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu seems to have picked up where the late Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef left off. The Israeli army, Eliyahu said, must slaughter the Palestinians “and leave no one alive.” The Palestinians, the good rabbi continued, must be “destroyed and crushed in order to end violence.” Here is Eliyahu’s algorithm:
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop we must kill 100,000, even a million.”
There is more to this “logic” than meets the eye and ear. Eliyahu even postulated that the Israeli army ought not to get involved in arresting Palestinians because “If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people. We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”
You may say that this is just an isolated case. No Israeli official believes that, right? … continue
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