The CIA, Mossad, and Epstein: Unraveling the Intelligence Ties of the Maxwell Family
By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | August 22, 2025
With speculation mounting that Trump could pardon her, MintPress profiles the family of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. From her media baron father, who acted as a high-level spy for Israel, her sister, working to push Tel Aviv’s interests in Silicon Valley, her brothers, who founded a dubious but highly influential anti-Islamic extremism think tank, and nephews in influential roles at the State Department and White House, the Maxwell clan have wide-ranging ties to U.S. and Israeli state power. This is their story.
Releasing Ghislaine, Burying the Epstein Files
Speculation is growing that Ghislaine Maxwell could soon be freed. Despite campaigning on the promise to release the Epstein Files, there are increasing signs that the Trump administration is considering pardoning the world’s most notorious convicted sex trafficker.
Last month, Trump (who contemplated the idea in his first term in office) repeatedly refused to rule out a pardon, stating to journalists that “I’m allowed to do it.” Just days later, Maxwell was transferred across states to a minimum-security facility in Bryan, Texas—a highly unusual practice. Neither women convicted of sex crimes nor those with more than 10 years remaining on their sentences are generally permitted to be transferred to such facilities. The move sparked equal measures of speculation and outrage.
The decision to relocate Maxwell came after somebody—potentially a source within her team itself—began leaking incriminating and embarrassing evidence linking Trump to Epstein. This included a birthday card Trump sent Epstein, featuring a hand-drawn nude woman, accompanied by the text: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
For years, Maxwell aided her partner Jeffrey Epstein in trafficking and raping girls and young women, creating a giant sex crime ring in the process. Epstein’s associates included billionaires, scientists, celebrities, and politicians, including President Trump, whom he considered his “closest friend.”
In 2021, two years after Epstein’s mysterious death in a Manhattan prison, Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking offenses and was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison.
The news that Trump may soon free such an infamous criminal sent shockwaves through his base and drew charges of blatant corruption from the media. “Is there any reason to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell except to buy her silence?” ran the headline of one article in The Hill. Meanwhile, Tim Hogan, senior Democratic National Committee adviser, denounced what he claimed was a “government cover-up in real time.” “Donald Trump’s FBI, run by loyalist Kash Patel, redacted Trump’s name from the Epstein files—which have still not been released,” he said.
Robert Maxwell: Media Tycoon and Israeli Operative
While many of Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes have come to light, less well-known are her family’s myriad connections to both the U.S. and Israeli national security states. Chief among these are those of her father, disgraced media baron and early tech entrepreneur, Robert Maxwell.
A Jewish refugee fleeing Hitler’s occupation of his native Czechoslovakia, Maxwell fought for Britain against Germany. After World War II, he used his Czech connections to help funnel arms to the nascent State of Israel, weapons that helped them win the 1948 war and carry out the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians.
Maxwell’s biographers, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, write that he was first recruited by Israeli intelligence in the 1960s and began buying up Israeli tech corporations. Israel used these companies and their software to carry out spying and other clandestine operations around the globe.
Maxwell amassed a vast business empire of 350 companies, employing 16,000 people. He owned an array of newspapers, including The New York Daily News, Britain’s Daily Mirror, and Maariv of Israel, in addition to some of the world’s most influential book and scientific publishing houses.
With business power came political power. He was elected to the U.K. parliament in 1964 and counted U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev among his closest friends.
He used this influence to advance Israeli interests, selling Israeli intelligence-gathering software to Russia, the U.S., the U.K., and many other countries. This software included a secret Israeli backdoor that allowed the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, to tap into classified information gathered by governments and intelligence agencies around the world.
At the same time, it was expanding its espionage capabilities, Israel was developing a secret nuclear weapons program. This project was exposed by Israeli peace activist Mordechai Vanunu, who, in 1986, leaked evidence to the British press. Maxwell—one of Britain’s most powerful press barons—spied on Vanunu, passing photographs and other information to the Israeli Embassy—intelligence that led to Vanunu’s international abduction by Mossad, and his subsequent imprisonment.
His death was also surrounded by controversy, similar to Epstein’s. In 1991, his lifeless body was found in the ocean, in what authorities ruled a bizarre accident whereby the tycoon had fallen from his luxury yacht. To this day, his children are split on whether they think he was murdered.
The rumors that Maxwell had, for decades, been acting as an Israeli “superspy” were all but confirmed by the lavish state funeral he received in Jerusalem. His body was interred at the Mount of Olives, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the spot from which Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven.
Virtually the entirety of elite Israeli society–both government and opposition–attended the event, including no fewer than six living heads of Israeli intelligence organizations. President Chaim Herzog himself performed the eulogy. Also speaking at the event was Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who stated that “Robert Maxwell has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
In the United Kingdom, however, he is remembered less fondly. A man with a fearsome reputation, Maxwell ruled his media business with an iron fist, in a similar vein to Rupert Murdoch (another individual with extremely close links to Israel). After his death, it transpired that he had stolen more than $500 million from his employees’ pension fund to bail out other failing companies in his empire, leaving many of his workforce’s retirement plans in tatters. As the newspaper, The Scotsman, remarked ten years later in 2001:
If [Maxwell] was despised in life, he was hated in death when it emerged he had stolen 440 million [pounds] from the pension fund of Mirror Group Newspapers. He was, officially, the biggest thief in British criminal history.”
Isabel Maxwell: Israel’s Woman in Silicon Valley
Even before it had been published, Isabel Maxwell– Robert’s daughter and Ghislaine’s older sister– managed to obtain a copy of Thomas and Dillon’s biography. She immediately flew to Israel, The Times of London reported, where she showed it to a “family friend” and deputy director of Mossad, David Kimche. These actions did little to beat the book’s central allegation that her father was indeed a high-level Israeli “superspy.”
Isabel has enjoyed a long and successful career in the tech industry. In 1992, along with her twin sister, Christine, she founded a company that developed one of the internet’s first search engines.
After the pension scandal, however, she and her siblings shifted their focus to rebuilding every facet of their father’s collapsed business empire. The sisters sold the search engine, netting enormous profits.
As Israeli outlet Haaretz noted, in 2001, Isabel decided to dedicate her life to advancing the Jewish State’s interests, vowing to “work only on things involving Israel” as she “believes in Israel.” Described by former MintPress journalist and investigative reporter Whitney Webb as “Israel’s back door into Silicon Valley,” she has transformed herself into a key ambassador for the country in the tech world.
“Maxwell created a unique niche for herself in [tech] as a liaison between Israeli companies in the initial development stages and private angel investors in the U.S. At the same time, she helps U.S. companies interested in opening development centers in Israel,” wrote local business newspaper, Globes. “She lives intensively, including innumerable flights back and forth between Tel Aviv and San Francisco,” it added.
Israel is known to be the source of much of the world’s most controversial spyware and hacking tools, used by repressive governments the world over to surveil, harass, and even kill political opponents. This includes the notorious Pegasus software, used by the government of Saudi Arabia to track Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, before assassinating him in Türkiye.
Isabel built on her father’s political connections. “My father was most influential in my life. He was a very accomplished man and achieved many of his goals during his life. I learned very much from him and have made many of his ways my own,” she said. This included developing intimate ties to a myriad of Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s closest associates.
During the 2000s, she was a regular participant at the Herzliya Conference, an annual, closed-door gathering of the West’s most senior political, security and intelligence officials, in addition to being a “technology pioneer” at the World Economic Forum.
She was also placed on the board of the Israeli government-funded Shimon Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, two organizations closely associated with those former Israeli prime ministers.
In 2001, she became the CEO of iCognito, taking the job, in her words, “because it [the company] is in Israel, and because of its technology.” The technology in question was aimed at keeping children safe online—highly ironic, given that her sister was actively trafficking and abusing minors throughout that period.
Isabel was a much more serious and accomplished individual than Ghislaine. As Haaretz noted:
While her younger sister, Ghislaine, makes the gossip columns after breakfasting with Bill Clinton or because of her ties with another close friend, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Isabel wants to show photos taken of herself with the grand mufti of Egypt, or with Bedouin in a tent, or of visits to a Gaza refugee camp.”
In 1997, Isabel was appointed president of the Israeli tech security firm, Commtouch. Thanks to her connections, Commtouch was able to secure investment from many of the most prominent players in Silicon Valley, including Bill Gates, a close associate of both the Maxwell family and Jeffrey Epstein himself.
Christine Maxwell: Funded by Israel?
Isabel’s twin sister, Christine, is no less accomplished. A veteran of the publishing and tech industries, she co-founded data analytics firm Chiliad. As CEO, she helped oversee the production of a massive “counterterrorism” database that the company sold to the FBI during the height of the War on Terror. The software helped the Bush administration crack down on Muslim Americans and tear down domestic civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act. Today, she is the leader and co-founder of another big data corporation, Techtonic Insight.
Like her sister and father, Christine has a close relationship with the State of Israel. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), where, her biography states,
She works to promote innovative academic research that leverages enabling technologies to empower proactive understanding and combatting the great dangers of contemporary antisemitism, and enhancing the ongoing relevance of the Holocaust for the 21st century and beyond.”
ISGAP’s board is a who’s who of Israeli national security state officials. This includes Natan Sharansky, former Minister of Internal Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, and Brigadier General Sima Vaknin-Gil, the former Chief Censor for the IDF and Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Diplomacy. Also on the board is Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.
The think tank was a key player in the U.S. government’s decision to repress the 2024 Gaza protests on university campuses nationwide. The group produced reports linking student leaders with foreign terrorist organizations and promoted dubious claims about a wave of anti-Semitism washing over American colleges. It met frequently with both Democratic and Republican leaders, and urged them to “investigate” (i.e., repress) the leaders of the demonstrations.
ISGAP has continually warned of foreign influence on American campuses, producing reports and holding seminars detailing Qatar’s supposed stranglehold over the U.S. higher education system, and linking that with growing anti-Israel sentiment among America’s youth.
Yet if ISGAP wished to investigate other foreign government influence operations, it would not have to look far, as its own funds overwhelmingly come from a single source: the Israeli state. In 2018, an investigation found that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs (then headed by Brigadier General Vaknin-Gil herself) channeled $445,000 to ISGAP, a sum representing nearly 80% of its entire revenues for that year. ISGAP failed to disclose that information to either the public or the federal government.
At the height of the concern over foreign interference in American politics, the news barely registered. Since then, the Israeli government has continued to bankroll the group to the tune of millions. In 2019, for example, it approved a grant of over $1.3 million to ISGAP. Thus, in her role as a fellow at the organization, Christine Maxwell is the direct beneficiary of Israeli government cash.
Third Generation Maxwells: Working In the US Government
While Robert Maxwell’s daughters were close to state power, some of the family’s third generation have taken up positions within the U.S. government itself. Shortly after graduating from college, Alex Djerassi (Isabel Maxwell’s only son) was employed by Hillary Clinton on her 2007-2008 presidential campaign. Djerassi drafted memos, briefings, and policy papers for the Clinton team and helped prepare her for more than 20 debates.
The Clinton and Maxwell families are closely intertwined. Ghislaine vacationed with Hillary’s daughter, Chelsea, and appeared prominently at her wedding. Both she and Jeffrey Epstein were invited multiple times to the Clinton White House. Long after Epstein was jailed, President Bill Clinton invited Ghislaine to an intimate dinner with him at an exclusive Los Angeles restaurant.
Although she failed in her bid for the White House, President Obama named Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, and one of her first actions was to appoint Djerassi to her team. He quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Chief of Staff at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In this role, he specialized in developing the United States’ policy towards Israel and Iran, although he also worked on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and accompanied Clinton on visits to Israel and the Arab world.
While at the State Department, he served as the U.S. government representative to the Friends of Libya and the Friends of the Syrian People Conferences. These were two organizations of hardline, hawkish groups working towards the overthrow of those two governments, and their replacement with U.S.-friendly regimes. Washington got what it wanted. In 2011, Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown, killed and replaced by Islamist warlords. And last December, longtime Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, fled to Russia and was replaced by the founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.
Djerassi was later appointed an associate at the U.S.-government-funded think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. While there, he again specialized in Middle East policy, his bio noting that he “worked on matters relating to democratization and civil society in the Arab world, the Arab uprisings, and Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Today, he works in Silicon Valley.
While Djerassi’s fortunes were tied to the Clinton faction of the Democratic Party, his cousin Xavier Malina (Christine Maxwell’s eldest son) backed the right horse, working on the Obama-Biden 2008 presidential run.
He was rewarded for his good work with a position in the White House itself, where he became a Staff Assistant at the Executive Office of the President. Like his cousin, once his time in office was over, Malina also secured a position at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace before pursuing a career in the tech world, working for many years at Google in the Bay Area. He currently works for Disney.
While the actions of parents and grandparents should not determine the careers of later generations, the fact that two individuals who come from a multi-generational family of unrepentant spies and operatives of a foreign power secured positions at the center of the U.S. State is at least worthy of note.
The Maxwell Brothers: From Bankruptcy to Counterterrorism
Much of the Maxwell clan is most influential in American and Israeli politics. However, brothers Ian and Kevin also hold considerable sway over affairs in their native Great Britain. Although being acquitted of charges over widespread allegations that they helped their father, Robert, plunder over $160 million from his employees’ pension fund, the brothers kept a low profile for many years. Kevin, in particular, was known for little more than being Britain’s largest-ever bankrupt, with debts exceeding half a billion dollars.
However, in 2018, they launched Combating Jihadist Terrorism and Extremism (CoJiT), a controversial think tank pushing for a far more invasive and heavy-handed government approach to the question of radical Islam.
In his organization’s book, “Jihadist Terror: New Threats, New Responses,” Ian writes that CoJiT was set up to play a “catalyzing role in the national conversation,” and to answer “difficult questions” arising from the issue. Judging by the content of the rest of the book, this means pushing for even more extensive surveillance of Muslim communities.
Within Britain, CoJiT was a highly influential organization. Its editorial board and contributors are a who’s who of high state officials. Individuals participating in its inaugural conference in London in 2018 included Sara Khan, the government’s Lead Commissioner for Countering Extremism, and Jonathan Evans, the former Director General of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency.
Like so many Maxwell projects, CoJiT appears to have wrapped up its affairs. The organization has not updated its website or posted anything on its social media channels since 2022.
In fairness, in the past few years, the brothers have had other priorities, leading the campaign to free their sister Ghislaine from prison, insisting that she is entirely innocent. In a manner reminiscent of Robert Maxwell, however, it appears that Kevin may have failed to pay the defense team; in 2022, Maxwell’s lawyers sued him, seeking unpaid fees of nearly $900,000.
The Infamous Mr. Epstein
For years, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein ran a sex trafficking ring that exploited hundreds of girls and young women. They were also connected to vast networks of the global elite, including billionaire business owners, royalty, star academics, and foreign leaders, among their closest acquaintances, leading to intense speculation about the extent of their involvement in their many crimes.
It is still unclear when Epstein first met with the Maxwells, with some alleging that he was recruited into Israeli intelligence by Robert Maxwell. Others state the relationship only began after Robert’s death, when he saved the family from penury following its financial problems.
Only one month after his 2019 arrest, Epstein was found dead in his New York City prison cell. His death was officially ruled a suicide, although his family has rejected this interpretation.
Perhaps the two most powerful individuals in Epstein’s circle of confidants were Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton, already infamous for the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him, is known to have flown at least 17 times on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” and was accused by Epstein victim, Virginia Giuffre, of visiting Little St. James Island, the multimillionaire’s private Caribbean residence, where many of his worst crimes took place.
Trump, arguably, was even closer to the disgraced financier. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” he said in 2002, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it.” Like Clinton, Trump flew on the Lolita Express. Epstein attended his wedding to Marla Maples in 1993, and claimed to have introduced him to his third wife, Melania.
Unfortunately, while Epstein’s ties incriminate the entire political spectrum, coverage has often been framed as a partisan issue. A MintPress study of over one year of Epstein coverage on MSNBC and Fox News found that each network downplayed his connections to their preferred president, while emphasizing and highlighting the links to the leader of the other major party. As a result, many in the United States see the affair as an indictment of their political rivals, rather than of the political system as a whole.
There also remains the question of Epstein’s links to intelligence, something that has been openly speculated about in the media for decades, even years before any allegations against him were made public. Throughout the 1990s, Epstein’s biographer Julie K. Brown noted, he openly boasted about working for both the CIA and Mossad, although the veracity of his claims remains in doubt. As Britain’s Sunday Times wrote in 2000, “He’s Mr. Enigmatic. Nobody knows whether he’s a concert pianist, property developer, a CIA agent, a math teacher or a member of Mossad.” It is possible that there is at least a grain of truth to all of these identities.
Epstein met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns three times in 2014. Burns would later be named director of the CIA. Burns’ proximity to Epstein, however, pales in comparison to that of former Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Between 2013 and 2017 alone, Barak is known to have traveled to New York City and met with the convicted criminal at least 30 times, sometimes arriving at his Manhattan mansion incognito or wearing a mask to hide his identity.
Numerous sources have commented on Epstein’s connections to Israeli intelligence. A previous girlfriend and victim of his, referred in court documents as Jane Doe 200 to hide her identity, testified that Epstein boasted about being a Mossad operative and that, after he raped her, she could not go to the police because his position as a spy made her fear for her life.
“Doe genuinely believed that any reporting of the rape by what she believed to be a Mossad agent with some of the most unique connections in the world would result in significant bodily harm or death to her,” reads the court filing.
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former senior official in Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, claimed that Epstein was a spy and that he and Ghislaine Maxwell were running a honeytrap operation on behalf of Israel. Four (anonymous) sources told Rolling Stone that Epstein had directly worked with the Israeli government.
Unlike much of the Maxwell family, however, his Israel and intelligence connections are based largely on testimony and unverified accounts. His only known trip to the country was in April 2008, just before his sentencing, a move that sparked fears he would seek refuge there.
Nevertheless, there has been intense public speculation that he could have been working for Tel Aviv. At the Turning Points USA Student Action Summit 2025, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson stated that there is nothing wrong, hateful or anti-Semitic about asking questions about Epstein’s foreign connections. “No one’s allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel, because we’ve been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” he said, before expressing his exasperation about the media’s silence on the issue.
What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house, you have had all this contact with a foreign government, were you working on behalf of the Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?”
Carlson’s comments drew harsh condemnation from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false. Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel,” he wrote.
“This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t,” he added, concluding that Israel was under attack from a “vicious wave of slander and lies.”
Whatever the truth about Epstein, it is indisputable that the powerful Maxwell family holds wide-ranging connections to U.S., British and Israeli state power. It is also beyond doubt that if the full story of their activities were ever to reach the public, it would incriminate a significant number of the world’s most powerful people and organizations. Perhaps that is why Trump has, in short order, gone from promising to release the Epstein Files to potentially releasing his accomplice.
Ukraine stripped of USAID billions
RT | August 20, 2025
Ukraine has lost billions of dollars in aid from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington’s primary funding channel for political projects abroad. Most USAID programs have been shut down in the country, with only a handful set to continue beyond 2025, according to data reviewed by RT.
For years, Ukrainian NGOs and nonprofits were heavily dependent on USAID grants and contracts, reportedly turning the country into a money laundering hub for Washington.
Vladimir Vasilyev, chief research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for US and Canadian Studies, told RT that the financial flows, including from Ukraine, eventually returned to the US.
According to him, USAID was a “black fund for supporting American non-profits linked to the Democratic Party.”
“It was a sacred cow of the State Department that for a long time nobody dared to audit.”
Upon taking office, US President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of most foreign aid to review whether the programs fit his ‘America First’ agenda. Tens of billions in grants have since been put on hold, with the president accusing the agency of misusing taxpayer money and fueling corruption.
In Ukraine alone, where more than $400 billion had once been earmarked for reconstruction, over a hundred projects have already been scrapped. Only 30 USAID initiatives have been preserved, but most are set to expire in 2025, the data shows.
A scandal erupted earlier this year over billions of USAID dollars lost in Ukraine. The agency’s inspector general, auditing firm KPMG, and US prosecutors have launched probes into suspected fraud, bribery, and embezzlement in Ukrainian projects, with more than 20 cases already opened.
Some programs have been kept in place to fund limited humanitarian initiatives, according to the records. Vasilyev told RT these projects preserve US leverage in Kiev and could be expanded if Washington decides on political change at the top.
Not Just Voice of America: Deep State Mouthpieces Shut Down?
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 16.03.2025
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order dissolving the US Agency for Global Media, which funds Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Radio Free Asia (RFA).What are US government-funded media known for?
VOA, RFE/RL and RFA routinely echoed US Democratic Party narratives, targeting not only overseas but also domestic audiences.
Russia
- RFE/RL spread unverified claims that Moscow poisoned dissidents with “exotic toxins,” from Polonium to Novichok, naming Viktor Yushchenko, the Skripals, Alexei Navalny among victims—without giving evidence.
- VOA and RFE/RL peddled Ukraine’s false claims that Russian troops committed a massacre in Bucha in April 2022, despite all Russian forces leaving the area by March 30.
Eastern and Central Europe
- VOA and RFE/RL praised Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and the violent 2014 Euromaidan coup, providing highly favorable coverage of regime change efforts.
- RFE/RL has often targeted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. On March 15, it reported protests against his government—but failed to mention that thousands of his supporters rallied on the national holiday.
Trump
- VOA actively pushed allegations that Trump ‘colluded’ with Russia, which were debunked by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2019.
Asia
- RFA’s coverage revolves around China’s alleged ‘threat’ to Taiwan and promotes the militarization of the island.
- RFA paints China as a regional menace, accuses it of ‘cultural genocide’ in Tibet and stokes fears about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities against the US.
Cold War Roots and CIA Covert Operations via VOA, RFE/RL and RFA
The media’s dependence on the US foreign policy establishment – predominantly led by Democrats – has deep historical roots.
Voice of America
- Established in 1942 during World War II, the Voice of America (VOA) later became a Cold War propaganda tool against the USSR.
- A July 1950 CIA document revealed that the agency supported VOA in overcoming “Soviet jamming.” Another CIA document from 1953 discussed similar efforts in Czechoslovakia.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
- Launched in 1950 as part of psychological operations, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) was covertly funded by the CIA until 1971. Historians document how it employed former Nazi collaborators from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
- In 1977, The New York Times and Rolling Stone exposed the CIA’s “worldwide propaganda network,” which included at least 400 US journalists working for the agency. RFE/RL was specifically named as part of that network.
Radio Free Asia
- While the founding of Radio Free Asia (RFA) is often credited to Bill Clinton in 1994, CIA documents reveal that it had been targeting China and other Asian nations since the 1950s.
- RFA began broadcasting to mainland China in 1951 from the Philippines, Japan and Pakistan, operating under the CIA’s control until 1955.
- The agency halted RFA’s broadcasts in the mid-1950s due to low home radio ownership in China. It was later replaced by the Radio of Free Asia (ROFA), operated jointly by US and South Korean intelligence services.
For decades, the US-funded media functioned as extensions of Washington’s intelligence agencies, running psychological operations even after the Cold War ended.
Spring is in the air in US-Russia ties as Trump’s revolution gains momentum
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | February 16, 2025
What emerges from the dramatic happenings of the past week is that the 3-year chronicle of US-Russia rivalry and the NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine was a crisis engineered with great deliberation by the Anglo-American nexus per a pernicious agenda conceived by the neocon liberals wedded to globalism ensconced in the Washington and London establishment to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.
In less than a month since President Donald Trump returned to Oval Office, in a series of bold moves, he began dismantling the Iron Wall that descended on Central Europe. Its impact is already visible, as communication channels with Moscow have been flung open, as evident in the new US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s call to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Saturday and their agreement to meet at delegation level in Saudi Arabia next week.
The Trump administration will allow the resumption of normal diplomatic work as well as discuss the early return of diplomatic properties unilaterally seized by the Obama – Biden administrations in wanton acts of motiveless malignity and hubris, in violation of Vienna accords. Trust Russia to reciprocate!
The downstream salience of the readouts in Moscow and Washington, here and here, on the Rubio-Lavrov phone conversation is the mutual agreement between the two leaderships — Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin — for US-Russian interactive exchanges at various levels is being followed through with a view to improve bilateral relations as well as “on key international issues, including the situation in Ukraine, developments in Palestine and the broader Middle East, as well as other regional matters.”
Furthermore, a team designated by the White House comprising apart from Rubio, the US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and the president’s Middle East envoy (who also works on Ukraine-Russia issues) Steve Witkoff will meet a Russian team led by Lavrov as early as this week ahead. The inclusion of Witkoff, a ‘result-oriented’, pushy negotiator and old friend of Trump is particularly interesting. Witkoff flew into Moscow for an unpublicised solo visit last week, which appears to have been productive.
Clearly, Trump has drawn lessons from his first term and is determined not to get emasculated again in the Washington ‘swamp’. This is where Witkoff comes in.
Trump’s approach and political style is utterly fascinating. Trump began shifting gear no sooner than he managed to put together a team of like-minded people who are “loyalists” to head the Justice Department, Pentagon, the Treasury, etc. — and, importantly, to forcefully regenerate the authority of the attorney general and the national intelligence agency to serve his agenda.
Thus, in the final analysis, it is immaterial that his administration is packed with pro-Israel figures or has a sprinkling of hardliners on China. For, it is Trump who will call the shots. Surprises could be in store in policy twists and turns.
This should already give sleepless nights to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom Trump has sensitised apropos his intention to improve relations with Iran. To my mind, Trump may not even follow through his dramatic announcement of “taking over” Gaza, et al.
The pattern appearing with regard to relations with Russia is that Trump levels with Putin first and passes down decisions to the state department and other agencies to follow through. Equally, the mechanism of summitry is being revived as the locomotive of big power relations. There is already talk of Trump holding summit meetings with Putin in Saudi Arabia and with Xi Jinping. Trump will likely look for a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping at some point.
Such an approach necessitates cutting down the role and influence of the Deep State which had throttled Trump’s presidency through the 2016-2020 period. The challenge facing Trump is formidable, given the nexus between the Democratic Party and the Deep State, and the mischief potential of mainstream media which is largely under their control and hostile towards Trump.
In a glaring instance this week, the Wall Street Journal deliberately misrepresented certain remarks by Vice-President JD Vance to vitiate the air in the nascent US-Russia tango. According to the story, Vance allegedly stated that the US might use economic and military leverage against Russia, and the option of sending the US military to Ukraine “remains under consideration” in case Moscow refuses to resolve the conflict in good faith. Moscow immediately sought clarification and a rebuttal had to be issued by Vance himself to set the record straight.
Vance wrote on X: “The fact that the WSJ twisted my words in the way they did for this story is absurd, but not surprising considering they have spent years pushing for more American sons and daughters in uniform to be unnecessarily deployed overseas.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed distrust of US intelligence agencies. According to CNN, all employees (approx. 22,000 people) at the CIA have received letters whereby they are given two options: to continue his/her service without guarantees of job retention in the future or to leave under the so-called deferred dismissal program at own request, while retaining salary and additional preferences until end-September.
Interestingly, a code was sewn inside these letters that tracks the re-sending of the letter by the recipient, as a guarantee against leaks which was the practice used when dismissing employees of the former Twitter after its acquisition by billionaire Elon Musk, who is now considered one of Trump’s closest advisers and heads the quasi-Department of Government Efficiency overseeing the reduction of federal government!
Again, the disbandment of USAID, which traditionally worked as the “B Team” of the CIA to promote colour revolutions and regime changes, etc. can also be seen in the light. According to Vladimir Vasiliev, chief researcher at the Institute of USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who closely studies this topic, Trump has declared war on the CIA, which he blames for his electoral defeat in 2020.
Vasiliev estimates that so far, the fight against the deep state in foreign and domestic intelligence is proceeding steadily, but will now “accelerate” with the confirmation of former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for the post of head of national intelligence, and Kash Patel for the post of FBI director.
On the other hand, the Delhi grapevine, which is dominated by fellow travellers of the defunct Biden regime is that the Deep State will ultimately have the last laugh and Trump may not even be allowed to complete his 4-year term. But to my mind, that is wishful thinking.
Trump’s grit should not be underestimated. Nor the seamless resources and tools at his command to queer the pitch of the disarray within the Democratic Party, which traditionally provided the requisite political cover for the Deep State.
There is, conceivably, a method in Trump’s provocative moves, with some able help from Elon Musk and Steve Bannon, to stir up the pot in European politics, including Germany and Britain, who constitute the high ground of Euro-Atlanticism in the continent, which serves to prevent a coalescing of liberal-globalist cliques within the transatlantic system.
Patel has hinted that sufficient incriminating evidence of misuse of power is available to damn the Old Guard all the way up to Biden himself. Trump cannot be unaware of the high importance of pre-empting a Democratic backlash. The federal judges in Democrat-ruled states are openly challenging Trump’s methods. Suffice to say, Trump’s credibility to entrap the Old Guard in a cobweb of protracted litigation will be a game changer.
The latest poll shows that Trump enjoys a soaring 77% support for cleaning up the swamp. The optic of this crusade is going to be hugely consequential to Trump’s ability to push both his domestic and foreign policy programme.
US government’s deep involvement in European journalism
By Anne-Laure Dufeal | Brussels Signal | February 10, 2025
The US government, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has been funnelling millions of dollars into student and professional media outlets across Europe mainly in Eastern and Central Europe, data from US government spending has shown.
This long-term financial support has been framed as part of Washington’s “commitment to supporting democratic values and civil society in the [European] region” under the Assistance to Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia/Economic Support Fund (AEECA/ESF PD) programmes.
The scale and scope of the funding have raised questions about the extent of US influence in shaping media narratives and civil society in these regions.
Democracy or Influence? Moldova case study
In the heart of Eastern Europe, in Moldova, a former Soviet Union country strategically located between Ukraine and Romania, the US has quietly poured millions of dollars into the nation’s media sector.
The funding, directed toward media organisations such as Internews Network Moldova, the journalist association Asociația Presei Independente (API), the Media Alternativa Association and investigative outlet Rise Moldova, has played a pivotal role in transforming Moldova’s media landscape. It has undone, little by little, the deep-rooted influence of Russia in the country television networks replacing that with its own Biden administration American influence.
Between 2019 and 2024, the Media Alternativa Association — owner of TV8, the fourth most-watched television channel in Moldova —received $1.85 million (€1.7 million) from Washington.
Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, Western sanctions resulted in the suspension and cancellation of licences for several Russian-owned TV stations in Moldova, creating a vacuum.
US-funded media outlets quickly moved in, filling the space once occupied by Kremlin-aligned broadcasters.
According to the Media Alternativa Association, until 2022 Moldova’s broadcast landscape remained heavily influenced by Russian networks, with political parties leveraging media holdings to shape public opinion.
That influence is now waning — replaced by institutions receiving direct financial backing from the US.
US-funded investigative outlet Rise Moldova has exclusively focused on exposing Russian influence within Moldova.
It is also a member of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international investigative network with close ties to US agencies.
Critics have argued this funding has fostered a media environment more aligned with Washington’s strategic goals rather than true editorial independence.
A key architect of Moldova’s evolving media landscape is Internews Network Moldova, a US-backed organisation which has played a similar role in reshaping media environments in other Eastern European nations such as Ukraine.
Members of Internews Network Moldova – Ziarul de Gardă and NewsMaker – two of Moldova’s leading investigative media outlets, have frequently published reports linking Moldovan corruption to Russian interests.
In 2017, Internews launched a new initiative in Moldova titled “Media Enabling Democracy, Inclusion, and Accountability in Moldova” (MEDIA-M) — a project bankrolled by USAID and the UK government.
Officially, MEDIA-M sought to develop an independent, professional press sector resilient to political and financial pressures.
Its impact has been unmistakable: a media environment increasingly aligned with Western narratives and a weakened Russian presence in Moldova’s information space.
The US has also funded democratic programmes fostering the Western identity of Moldovans.
Washington’s $20 million (€19.4 million) “Moldova Resilience Initiative,” initially planned to run from 2022 to 2023 but extended to 2026, was designed to “strengthen popular support for a democratic, European Moldova” by “uniting Moldovans around a shared European identity.”
In 2024, the US government gave $83,602 to the US billionaire George Soros Moldova Foundation.
According to the website, the Soros Moldova Foundation has been supporting the European integration process of the Republic of Moldova for almost fifteen years.
These developments seemed to bear fruit when, in October 2024, Moldova held a decisive presidential election and a referendum on European Union accession.
With voters asked to choose between a pro-European future or maintaining ties with Russia, the election outcome — narrowly favouring EU integration — was attributed by some analysts, at least in part, to sustained US influence.
The monitoring of the election was entrusted to Promo-LEX, a think-tank heavily funded by the US government. In 2024 alone, Promo-LEX secured $1.7 million (€1.6 million) in US grants.
The scale of US financial involvement in Moldova’s political and media ecosystem has been significant.
According to USAID records — some of which are no longer publicly accessible —the US has invested over $640 million (€620.6 million) in Moldova since 1992.
The actual financial commitment through grants and indirect funding mechanisms has probably hit the several billions in payments for the whole country.
USAID “backbone” of the Ukrainian media landscape
Across the Moldovan border in Ukraine, USAID’s influence is, perhaps, even more pronounced.
Via Internews Network Ukraine, USAID funded a network of social media-driven news platforms in Ukraine, including New Voice of Ukraine, VoxUkraine, Detector Media and the Institute of Mass Information.
These outlets have published reports targeting figures including US economist Jeffrey Sachs, Republican commentator Tucker Carlson and journalist Glenn Greenwald, portraying them as part of a “Russian propaganda network”.
According to Wikileaks, Internews Network globally has ties with the Democratic Party in the US.
Oksana Romaniuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information in Ukraine, said an estimated 80 per cent of Ukrainian media outlets have collaborated with USAID in some capacity.
While this support has been instrumental in sustaining independent journalism during the ongoing conflict with Russia, it has also raised questions about the extent of US influence over Ukraine’s media environment
A report by the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), titled US Aid Freeze Numbs Ukraine, revealed that USAID was “reaching deep into areas of the state and civil society” in Ukraine.
Funding for independent media has been drawn from a $290 million (€281 million) pool allocated for democracy, human rights and governance initiatives.
These efforts, framed as support for democratic values, have also underscored the significant leverage the US holds over Ukraine’s media and civil society sectors.
USAID’s involvement in the media landscape has intensified following the outbreak of the war with Russia in 2022.
Since 2021, the organisation has provided technical support to 66 local media outlets in Ukraine, aiming to bolster independent journalism in the face of Russian disinformation and propaganda.
In the UK, the publicly-owned BBC acknowledged that USAID contributed to 8 per cent of its BBC Media Action charity funding in 2023-24.
“Like many international development organisations, BBC Media Action has been affected by the temporary pause in US government funding, which amounts to about 8 per cent of our income in 2023-24. We’re doing everything we can to minimise the impact on our partners and the people we serve,” the charity stated on its website.
While it is not directly linked to the BBC’s core news operations, that has raised questions about foreign funding in public media-led enterprises.
Similarly, it was revealed that US-owned international news outlet Politico received money via subscription to its Politico Pro platform from the US government.
Although this funding is not directly allocated to Politico’s journalism activities, subscriptions to Politico Pro — used by policymakers and industry leaders — are a source of revenue for the media organisation.
Politico is owned by Axel Springer, the media giant that also publishes the German Bild, Bild am Sonntag, Welt, Welt am Sonntag, as well as the TV channel Welt, Business Insider and the US newsletter Morning Brew.
Washington’s involvement in European media has extended beyond direct funding to local outlets.
Perhaps the most explosive revelation came in December 2024, when French investigative outlet Mediapart exposed the extent of US control over the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).
According to Mediapart, Washington has supplied half of OCCRP’s budget, retained veto power over senior staff appointments, and directed investigations targeting political regimes opposed by the US, such as those in Russia and Venezuela.
OCCRP’s 2023 audit report confirmed $11 million (€10.6 million) in funding from US agencies.
This revelation has sparked concerns about the independence of OCCRP and the potential for US influence to shape its investigative priorities.
The White House’s involvement in European media and civil society appeared to be part of a broader strategy.
A paper from the US Congressional Research Services published in 2022 argued that US foreign assistance was an essential instrument of the country’s foreign policy.
“Foreign assistance is the largest component of the international affairs budget and is viewed by many Members of Congress as an essential instrument of US foreign policy,” the document stated.
It revealed that in the 2019 financial year, US foreign assistance totalled an estimated $48.18 billion (€46.7 million) of the federal budget authority.
The report said that meant US foreign assistance served the United States’ soft power and sharp power ambitions around the globe. It likened it to the Marshall Plan after the Second World War that was designed to rebuild European economies so they could resume trade with the US, benefiting US industries.
In Albania, for instance, the US has recently committed $20,000 to initiatives aimed at preventing hate speech and discrimination.
While modest compared to other regions, the funding reflected a broader pattern: Washington’s use of financial support to advance its foreign policy interests or liberal ideals.
Observers ask, where does support for democracy end and influence begin?
The US government’s funding of media and civil society organisations has reshaped narratives and counteracted Russian influence in Eastern and Central Europe.
But at what cost? Critics have argued this financial involvement risked undermining the very independence it was designed to protect.
On February 3, USAID worldwide funding was officially halted for 90 days.
Trump can use corruption scandals to get out of Ukraine conflict and blame Democrats
By Ahmed Adel | January 20, 2025
Since entering the electoral campaign, Donald Trump has criticised the military and financial aid provided to Kiev. As Trump takes office on January 20 and has the right to appoint officials at the highest level of justice, the new American leader could use corruption scandals to pull support from Ukraine and open investigations into the Biden administration.
Even before assuming the presidency of the United States, Trump already boasted a major achievement: a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian militant movement Hamas. During the election campaign, the then-candidate for a second term stressed that he would continue to support Israel. However, officials and diplomats involved in brokering the ceasefire highlight the pivotal role Trump played in putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop his military incursion into Gaza.
On January 11, Trump’s envoy for Middle East affairs, Steve Witkoff, arrived in Israel. Four days later, the billionaire announced that the parties had reached an agreement. If Trump so quickly achieved a truce in one of the most horrific conflicts of today, without even making it a campaign promise, then there are good prospects to end the Ukrainian conflict, one of the main issues of his election campaign.
The new Oval Office occupant has previously expressed his desire to meet personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss this and other issues of global importance. The Kremlin, however, stressed that it believes the conflict is too complex for an easy solution. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said the same, estimating a period of 100 days for the creation of a peace plan.
Military and financial aid could be one strategy Trump uses to pressure Ukrainian leaders into entering into peace negotiations with Moscow. This stems from a very clear issue – Ukraine’s dependence on Western support to continue the war. Without this support, Kiev’s capabilities to sustain the war effort would be substantially reduced.
Permanent aid is the main factor in the continuation of the conflict and has delayed possible peace negotiations. In particular, it is because of the desire of the US and the Western bloc to inflict this strategic defeat on Russia at any cost.
It is recalled that Russian and Ukrainian delegates met in Istanbul to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict, and they even drafted a peace agreement. However, Kiev was under pressure from its Western sponsors to abandon the negotiations. In October 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky banned any peace negotiations with Russia by decree, thus preventing diplomatic approaches to ending the conflict.
For this reason, reducing aid to Ukraine will help resolve the conflict.
Trump has shown his dissatisfaction with the high costs of supporting Ukraine, arguing that the US should not bear the brunt of this burden. Endless taxpayer money flowing into Ukraine’s treasury is extremely unpopular, evidenced by the strengthening of international parties with inspiration from Trump, whose campaign slogan is the end of this aid. The most notable case now is that of Germany.
Nonetheless, Kiev’s reputation for embezzlement and corruption only worsened when Zelensky admitted in an interview with Russian-American computer scientist Lex Fridman’s podcast that half of the announced $177 billion never reached Ukrainian coffers.
“If we had $177 billion and if we get the half, where is the second half? If you find the second half, you will find corruption,” he said.
This statement is worrying since instead of exclusively meeting the country’s needs, international resources appear to be generating profits for private individuals or foreign companies. This scenario reinforces the debates about the real interests behind international aid.
Late last year, award-winning Ukrainian journalist Diana Panchenko reported on her social media accounts that as Ukrainians suffer from the severe economic crisis, 13 Rolls-Royce luxury cars, each worth $650,000, were purchased by members of parliament and government officials in 2024.
The conflict is extremely lucrative, not only for the companies of the US military-industrial complex in Ukraine and their executives but also for the Pentagon budget. It is a “black box” that cannot explain where its resources have been allocated. For this reason, it cannot be discounted that there is also corruption on the American side.
Suspicions of improper relations between members of the Democratic Party and Ukrainian officials increased after former US President Joe Biden granted a presidential pardon to his son, Hunter Biden, for all crimes committed since 2014 when he began working with Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company. In this regard, Trump can use these corruption scandals to distance the US from the conflict and to associate these cases with the Democratic Party.
Trump reclaiming his place in the White House also marks the arrival of his nominees to the highest level of justice in the US, such as the new head of the FBI, Kash Patel, and the new attorney general, Pam Bondi. With so many tools in his favour, there is a real possibility that Trump will use the judicial system to investigate any Democrat’s corruption relating to the Ukrainian conflict.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Key Revelations Slain Gen. Kirillov Exposed About Pentagon’s Biolabs Scheme
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 17.12.2024
General Kirillov, head of Russia’s Radiological Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, gained prominence due to his regular appearances at military briefings, accusing the Kiev regime and its US patrons of operating biolaboratories and using chemical weapons.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense troops of the Russian armed forces, was killed in a blast triggered by an improvised explosive device planted near his residence in Moscow. He leaves behind a legacy of eye-opening findings.
On Illegal US Bio-Research
Revelations by Russia’s Defense Ministry on illegal biological experiments at the Prestige Biotech’s California laboratory touched off a US Congressional investigation. The US Department of State played a direct role in the Biosecurity Engagement Program, which was initiated by ex-President Barack Obama, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov revealed in one of the Ministry of Defense briefings.
The program’s priority areas for implementation include the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Ukraine, and Africa.
Third-party contractors, intermediaries, and NGOs—such as Metabiota, CH2M Hill, and EcoHealth Alliance—are utilized to serve the interests of clients like the State Department, Pentagon, FBI, and CIA, as well as for military biological research.
“Unconditional deterrence of adversaries” from using weapons of mass destruction against Washington and its allies has become one of the points of the new US national strategy, it was noted.
On US Biolabs in Ukraine
The US State Department is directly involved in these biological programs, despite the federal foreign agency’s denials, Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov repeatedly underscored.
The United States aims to exert global control over biological matters, he noted in one of his reports. He added that under Barack Obama, US biological programs in other countries were promoted at the recommendation of the State Department, with supporting documents available as evidence.
Pentagon’s Deadly Biological Warfare Program
Slain Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov regularly exposed the Pentagon’s biological warfare program. Recent developments indicate that the United States has embarked on preparations for a new pandemic by looking into virus mutations, he said at a briefing in August 2023.
Commenting on the establishment of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, led by Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biosecurity at the National Security Council, retired Air Force Major General Paul Friedrichs, in July 2023, Kirillov told reporters:
“The priority areas of this department include work on the creation of vaccines and drugs for stopping viruses and their genetically modified variants, as well as the introduction of advanced technologies in bioproduction. Thus, the United States, as it was in 2019, began preparing for a new pandemic by implementing search for virus mutations.”
The newly established Office is prioritizing the creation of vaccines and drugs said to combat viruses and their genetically modified variants, Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops warned.
Furthermore, documents uncovered during the special military operation in Ukraine have confirmed that the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases is involved in accumulating dangerous pathogens across various regions of the world.
US Officials Linked to Hazardous Vaccines
The Russian Ministry of Defense released the names of American officials connected to the development and production of dangerous vaccines, General Igor Kirillov told reporters in 2023.
This list includes former Johnson & Johnson Board member Mark McClellan, Pfizer Board member Scott Gottlieb, and Stephen Hahn, the CEO of Flagship Pioneering Inc.
He underscored that officials from regulatory agencies have been lobbying and prioritizing the commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies to the detriment of existing safety and quality standards.
US Democratic Party’s Role in Military Biological Research
Investment funds belonging to prominent figures such as the Clintons, the Rockefellers, Soros, and Biden, along with other NGOs affiliated with the Democratic Party in the US, are bankrolling military biological research, documents and analytical materials studied by Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops have revealed.
Multinational corporations often referred to as “Big Pharma” are involved in this scheme, including Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, as well as Gilead, a US military-affiliated company. Furthermore, US experts are working on testing new medicines, bypassing international safety standards.
The involvement of non-governmental and biotech organizations enables the leaders of the Democratic Party to pocket additional financial revenue for election campaigns and to conceal cash flows.
Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops warned in January 2024 that Washington’s goals in the military-biological domain are multifold, ranging from the creation and manipulation of the causative agents of “particularly dangerous infections in regions of the world that are strategically important for the United States,” to efforts to achieve global “superiority” in biomanufacturing, biological monitoring, and the expansion of potentially unethical and illegal military biological research outside US jurisdictions.
Obama and Russiagate: The Untold Story
Part 2 of our series on how Barack Obama undermined U.S. democracy
By Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke | TRUTH OVER NEWS | November 15, 2024
One of the least known aspects of the Russiagate affair is the central role that Barack Obama played in it. For years, the focus has been on individuals such as James Comey, Peter Strzok, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. And those names are indeed central to the plot, with Clinton being the one who devised the nefarious scheme to portray her opponent as a Russian agent. However, there was someone in the background, pulling many strings, who was even more crucial to the entire scheme: the then-sitting president, Barack Obama.
In this installment of our series on how Obama undermined U.S. democracy, we take a closer look at his role in both promoting and weaponizing the Russiagate hoax, which fraudulently linked Trump to Russia.
July 28 disclosure
We know from emails released by WikiLeaks that early discussions regarding the Clinton campaign’s dirty trick to associate Trump with Russia—what Clinton called the Swiftboat plan—were in full swing by February 2016. Over the following months, various components of this nefarious project came together. These included the hiring of campaign operatives Fusion GPS, commissioning the dirty dossier from Christopher Steele, and enlisting a group of IT specialists tasked with creating a false data trail linking Putin and Trump. We do not know whether Obama was privy to these early efforts. The earliest documented date we have for Obama’s involvement in the scheme is July 28, 2016. On this day, Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, came to the Oval Office and briefed Obama on Clinton’s Swiftboat project. Thus, we can say with certainty that, at the very latest, it was on this day that Obama became aware that the allegations of Russian collusion were nothing more than a fraudulent scheme concocted by Hillary Clinton.
As president, voters had entrusted Obama with the solemn responsibility of keeping the United States safe and secure. For this reason, Obama had a critical duty on July 28, 2016, to promptly put an end to the fraudulent allegations of collusion with Russia. The nominee of a major political party for president being falsely portrayed as a Russian agent posed numerous national security concerns. The fact that the entire scheme had been orchestrated by his opponent, arguably constituted an even more significant national security threat. In simple terms, of the two individuals who could become president, one was falsely accused of being a Russian agent while the other was the one who had cooked up the scam.
However, consistent with the theme throughout our series on Obama, he opted for treachery instead of truth. He wanted the country to tear itself apart, which is why, instead of telling Clinton to put an end to her devious scheme or, better yet, asking his Justice Department officials to investigate her campaign for creating a national security nightmare, Obama went full steam ahead in helping to perpetuate the hoax. Within 72 hours of the Oval Office meeting, the FBI launched its fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump.
No peaceful transfer of power
It was a terrible betrayal of the American public who voted Obama into office, and the situation would only worsen. Over the coming months, the fraudulent Russia collusion investigation intensified. Numerous members of Trump’s campaign team were surveilled and monitored by the FBI. When an FBI analyst raised alarm bells about the fabricated Alfa Bank story—a tale concocted by Clinton’s IT operatives to link Putin to Trump—the analyst was promptly sidelined, and the matter was handed over to more pliant agents. However, it was all to no avail. Clinton lost, and Trump was suddenly the president-elect. At this point, it was once again Obama who intervened to undermine Trump and, consequently, American democracy.
The media incessantly discusses the so-called peaceful transfer of power, lamenting that Trump refused to hand over the reins in January 2021. Leaving aside that this assertion is demonstrably false—he did transfer power and retreated to his Mar-a-Lago estate—it is often overlooked in the debate about the peaceful handover of power that it was Obama who did not peacefully hand over power in 2017. Instead, he weaponized the Russia collusion hoax to undermine the incoming Trump administration. He did so fully aware that it would jeopardize Trump’s presidency, and in many ways, it indeed did. It is remarkable how much Trump accomplished despite the persistent cloud of Russia collusion allegations that loomed over him daily.
The specifics of Obama’s actions are relatively straightforward, yet they are seldom discussed. Immediately after Trump won the election, Obama, in collaboration with the intelligence community, initiated an effort to publish an official report, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that would claim that Trump had only won because of Putin’s help. This strategy served two purposes. First, it absolved Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party of accountability for a humiliating defeat. Second, and far more significantly, it created a huge roadblock for the incoming Trump administration. In addition to the persistent inquiries regarding Trump’s alleged connections to Putin, which hindered the administration’s ability to focus on other matters, Obama understood that his plan would effectively criminalize diplomatic relations with Russia. It was sabotage.
Trump’s hands were tied. He could not engage with Russia without provoking an immediate and loud outcry from Democrats, the intelligence community, and the media. Even something as mundane as meeting the Russian ambassador—an event that would ordinarily never make the news—was immediately portrayed as an act of treason. When Trump met Putin in person, the media had a massive meltdown, even accusing Putin of secretly bugging a soccer ball that had been gifted to Trump’s son, Barron. The hysteria knew no bounds, and this was catastrophic, especially given that all of this was occurring against the backdrop of escalating hostilities in Ukraine and the warming of relations between Russia and China—something that the United States should have done everything possible to prevent.
Secret meeting with journalists
And if all of that wasn’t enough, on January 17, 2017, Obama invited a group of journalists to a secret White House meeting. A 21-page transcript, which was only recently released, reveals that Obama used this meeting to carefully plant the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. He did this despite knowing that the entire situation was a hoax. But Obama ensured that the media perceived things otherwise, providing not only the presidential seal of approval to the Russia collusion hoax but also the impression of confirmation from someone with access to all the relevant secret intelligence. In other words, Obama abused the presidency to ensure that his successor would be burdened with the incessant Russia collusion narrative.
Obama’s central role in promoting the Russia collusion hoax was partially revealed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who in 2020 disclosed details of the July 2016 meeting between Obama and Brennan. Other intelligence officials within the Trump administration, including his first Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, had access to the same information as Ratcliffe. However, instead of speaking out, they actively sought to undermine the president they were supposed to serve. Ratcliffe’s recent nomination as CIA Director represents not only a significant step toward reforming the intelligence community but also suggests that accountability for Obama may finally be on the horizon.
Ukrainians have stolen up to half of US aid – ex-Polish deputy minister
RT | November 22, 2024
Ukraine did not receive as much foreign aid as claimed by the administration of US President Joe Biden, and whatever help it did get was largely embezzled, a former Polish deputy minister has claimed. Up to a half of the funds that reached Kiev was stolen by Ukrainian officials, Piotr Kulpa has alleged.
The political commentator previously held several posts in the Polish government, serving as deputy labor minister in the mid-2000s, and is currently a regular contributor on Ukrainian online shows. Kulpa is a vocal supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump, as evidenced by his remarks to Ukrainian journalist Lana Shevchuk on Thursday.
“Everyone understands that war-related corruption is linked not only with Ukraine, but also the supplier nation,” he said. “Who would ever believe that the US burned through $2 trillion in Afghanistan? It’s delusional!”
US aid programs are a mechanism to “write off large sums of money that finance shady systems under the Democratic Party’s control,” he alleged. The incoming Trump administration could review government finances and discover the truth that “Ukraine got very little” compared to the amounts mentioned in public statements, Kulpa claimed.
“But they will also find something else: that a huge portion of the funds was stolen in Ukraine. From 30% to 50%, regardless of the nature of the aid,” he added.
If Kiev were to recover all the embezzled money for the Ukrainian budget, the country would have enough for a year, Kulpa said. He denounced senior Ukrainian officials, whose regular salaries and bonuses he believes are outrageously high.
“It’s a spit in the face of every Ukrainian,” the former minister asserted. “To every European and American taxpayer. This system is criminal from start to finish.”
Trump and his allies have been highly critical of the amount of assistance that the Biden administration has sent to Kiev. The president-elect has argued that EU nations should assume the burden of propping up Ukraine, while the American government should focus on its own priorities.
US concerns about graft in Kiev have been reflected in some government documents, such as a report that Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch’s office released last week. It said corruption “continues to complicate Ukraine’s efforts to achieve its EU and NATO aspirations.”
CIA Democrats and Other Party Hawks Win Races in 2024 Election
By Jeremy Kuzmarov | Covert Action Magazine | November 17, 2024
In March 2018, Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site published a political pamphlet entitled “The CIA Democrats.”
In it, he wrote that “an extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department” were “seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.”
This is a departure from the 1960s and 1970s when Democrats like George McGovern, Leo Ryan and Frank Church were against wars like Vietnam and sought to reign in the CIA.
Some of the Class of 2018 CIA Democrats, like Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative with three tours in Iraq, were recruited as part of a “red-to-blue” program targeting vulnerable Republican-held seats.
In the 2018 race, there were far more former spies and soldiers seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party than for the Republicans. Martin wrote that there were so many “spooks” that with a “nod to Mad Magazine,” one might call the primaries “spy vs. spy.”
CovertAction Magazine has kept tabs on the “spook-soldiers” who were elected as part of the Class of 2018 and followed their careers in Congress. (According to Martin, 30 spook-soldiers won primaries and 11 were elected to Congress.)
Below is a summary of how some of them fared in the 2024 election:
1. Elissa Slotkin:
Slotkin narrowly defeated Republican challenger Mike Rogers in Michigan on November 5 for a seat in the U.S. Senate.
Slotkin is the one-time assistant to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. Prior to her election to Congress, Slotkin put her stamp on the U.S.’s disastrous Ukraine policy as Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense following the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014.
Over the past six years as a Member of Congress, Slotkin has continued to fervently support the Ukraine war, telling an NPR reporter: “I think we’ve got to give them [Ukraine] what they need….This is a black and white issue. Our weapons have made a huge difference.”
In reality, the only difference those weapons made is in killing more people while prolonging Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.
Described as a “moderate” or “conservative” Democrat of the kind the CIA and the plutocratic elite that it serves like, Slotkin is one of only five Democratic House members who voted against an amendment to prohibit support to and participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s military operations against the Houthis in Yemen—a genocidal operation.
Endorsed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) because of her strong pro-Israel stance, Slotkin further voted against H.Con.Res. 21, which directed President Joe Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days.[1]
When asked by a reporter about her favorite CIA movie, Slotkin tellingly named Zero Dark Thirty, which glorified the use of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
In the same interview, Slotkin praised the CIA’s Hollywood liaison office, which she said helps Hollywood to “really understand what is going on”—comments that are in line with the CIA’s official cover story for their PR operations in Hollywood, and make it seem like the Agency is merely concerned with greater accuracy, not covering up its crimes or trying to rehabilitate its public image.
2. Andy Kim:
The seat of disgraced New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has now been filled by Class of 2018 CIA Democrat Andy Kim (D-NJ), an adviser to former CIA Director David Petraeus who served as director for Iraq on Barack Obama’s National Security Council (NSC).
A graduate with degrees in political science from the University of Chicago and Oxford University who was a member of the progressive congressional caucus, Kim has been a staunch supporter of massive U.S. weapons supplies to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.
The first person of South Korean descent elected to the U.S. Senate, Kim voted for a congressional bill declaring that the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is anti-Semitic, and referred to the death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny as a “murder”—absent any proof that this was the case.
Predictably, Kim adopts alarmist rhetoric regarding North Korea that could lead directly into a war. He claimed that “there’s a madman with his finger on the button that can send nuclear weapons to annihilate my family.” However, it is the U.S. that precipitated the development of North Korea’s nuclear program as a security blanket after it bombed North Korea nearly back to the Stone Age during the Korean War and has tried for decades to overthrow its government.
3. Jared Golden:
Class of 2018 CIA Democrat Jared Golden narrowly defeated Republican Austin Theriault to retain his seat in Maine’s 2nd congressional district on November 5.
Golden is a tattooed Iraq and Afghan war veteran who served as a policy adviser on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
A conservative Blue Dog Democrat who was named Vice Chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Golden has urged President Biden to give F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and bragged about voting for more than $78 billion in border security funding during his time in Congress.[2]
Additionally, he has championed record military budgets that provided funding for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and for developing new naval destroyers and F-35 jets and CH-53K helicopters, which will benefit Pratt & Whitney’s factory in North Berwick, Maine, and the Hunting Dearborn factory in Fryeburg, Maine.
According to Opensecrets.com, Golden took in $375,091 from AIPAC in 2023-2024 and more than $439,999 in total from pro-Israel lobby groups in the same period.[3] Not surprisingly given these totals, Golden has supported every U.S. military aid package to Israel while opposing calls for a cease-fire.
Golden showed himself to be totally deluded from reality when he claimed that Israel was not committing war crimes in Gaza, when they have been widely documented on the pages of mainstream newspapers.
4. Jason Crow
Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, handily defeated John Fabbricatore on November 5 to win a fourth term in Congress.
Holding a childish view of world affairs out of the 1950s McCarthy era, Crow promotes on his website his role in securing provisions within the National Defense Authorization Agreement (NDAA) to help finance Buckley Space Force base in Colorado as part of his goal of making Colorado a global aerospace leader.
Buckley Space Force Base is headquarters of the U.S. Space Command, which follows a Nazi blueprint of trying to dominate the world by militarizing and controlling outer space.[4]
Space expert Bruce Gagnon has warned that exhaust from escalating numbers of rocket launches by the U.S. Space Force is diminishing the ozone layer, and the growing space debris could even cause the Earth to go dark as collisions become more likely.
Since Ukraine has been a key theater for testing new space-based weapons, it is no surprise that Jason Crow is a staunch supporter of that war and has established close friendships with Ukrainian military and political leaders who have turned their country into a neo-colonial vassal.
Crow claims that “Taiwan will eventually fall if we’re not able to help Ukraine win.”
To avert this outcome, he has called for increased military training to Ukraine and sending more long-range weapons and missiles to hit inside Russia, which he wants to sanction even more than it already is.[5]
A hawk on Israel, Crow supported legislation with Mike Walz (R-Fl), Trump’s new National Security adviser, to strengthen U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing in the Gaza war, stating that his years fighting terrorism taught him that “intelligence is the key to effective counter-terrorism.”
One of Crow’s biggest donors is Palantir Technologies, a data-analytics company founded with CIA seed money, which signed a major cooperative agreement with the Israeli Defense Ministry while providing artificial intelligence (AI) software used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for bomb-targeting and for accumulating data on Palestinians in the occupied territory.
Palantir has also played a key role in the Ukraine War by tracking Russian military movements and helping Ukraine to coordinate battlefield maneuvers along with bomb-targeting and there is concern that the company’s AI software platform also is being weaponized against ordinary Americans.
5. Mikie Sherrill:
Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot with an intelligence background and Class of 2018 CIA Democrat, defeated Republican Joe Belnome on November 5 to win a fourth term in the 11th congressional district of New Jersey.
The New Jersey Globe reported that Sherrill might not serve out her full term if her gubernatorial campaign takes off.
Sherrill has served on the House Armed Services Committee and Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, a relic of the Cold War which promotes Sinophobia and confrontation with China.
On her website, Sherrill states that, serving on the House Armed Services Committee, she has been able to “significantly increase funding for Picatinny Arsenal—a major military research and manufacturing institute in her district—which remains the Army’s leading research institution for armaments and ammunition.”
Sherrill continues: “Beyond supporting the critical research and development programs at Picatinny, I am also proud to support the many defense technology companies that call NJ-11 home and are on the cutting edge of modernizing our Armed Forces. Many of my provisions in the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act support funding for our local defense industrial base and businesses.”
Sherrill is an anti-Russia and anti-China national security hawk. On her website, she writes:
“Both Russia and China have continued to build their military might and promote their influence across the globe. Neither country shares our values and often they are undermining our interests across the world. We must ensure we modernize our military to meet this threat and provide critical funding for cybersecurity and election protection.
“Putin instigated an unprovoked attack against Ukraine—a sovereign, democratic nation. He has attempted to rewrite history and has unleashed propaganda and disinformation in pursuit of his clear desire to rebuild the Soviet Union’s so-called sphere of influence. [In 2022], I traveled twice to Ukraine, once in January before Putin’s invasion and again in July. I met with President Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials about the support they need from us and imparted to them the fierce support in New Jersey—home to one of the largest Ukrainian American communities in the country—for their independence and democracy.
“We secured emergency funding through a bipartisan package to support the Ukrainian people in their fight for freedom. American weapons support has made a tangible difference in the Ukrainians’ ability to hold off Russian aggression, including the M-777 Howitzer, developed here at Picatinny Arsenal.”
The M-777 howitzer, it should be noted, has been used to strike at and kill civilian targets in the Donbass, though has not reversed the failings of Ukraine’s summer 2023 counteroffensive.
Sherrill favors continued military support to Israel and a growing police state at home. She boasts on her website about supporting the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, which she claims would “better equip our law enforcement with information related to possible attacks and their relationship with hate crimes.”
In May 2022, Sherrill and then-Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Chairman of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, participated in a strategic-operational war game, “Dangerous Straits: Battle for Taiwan 2027,” with the Center for a New American Security and NBC’s Meet the Press.
The war game provided important insight into how a potential war with China over Taiwan could develop, and how the U.S. and its allies and partners could defeat an attack on Taiwan by China.
A Party That Years Ago Crossed Over to the Dark Side
The Class of 2018 CIA Democrats are emblematic of the Democratic Party’s support for the warfare and surveillance states, which have made it hated among broad sectors of the population.
Kamala Harris is estimated to have gotten around 9 million fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020 in good part because of her embrace of war-mongering policies.
A key turning point in the history of the Democratic Party was the 1980 election, where many of the progressives of the 1970s were defeated by a big-money offensive and CIA campaign to destroy its congressional enemies.
Bill Clinton (and possibly Hillary too) had a background as a CIA “asset,” as did Barack Obama, who worked for a CIA-linked company that produced economic intelligence reports following his graduation from Columbia University.[6]
During their presidencies, Clinton and Obama helped re-empower the CIA while working to rehabilitate its reputation.
The Class of 2018 CIA Democrats did not come out of nowhere. They fit a historical trajectory by which the Democratic Party has completely crossed over to the dark side.
- Slotkin additionally voted to spy on U.S. citizens without warrant, for unconstitutional vaccine mandates and favored deployment of yet more draconian military surveillance technologies at the U.S.-Mexican border. ↑
- Opposing policing reform, Golden voted against Medicare for all. He got his start in politics working for Republican Senator Susan Collins. ↑
- According to Maine Wire, Golden has also received thousands of dollars in campaign funding from George Soros. Golden disputed the figures presented in Open Secrets. ↑
- See Annie Jacobson, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America (Boston: Little & Brown, 2014). ↑
- Crow developed a four-step plan for victory in Ukraine, which is delusional, as Ukraine has lost control over much of eastern Ukraine and has zero chance of victory. ↑
- See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019); Jeremy Kuzmarov, Warmonger: How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Set the Groundwork for Bush II to Biden (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2024). Obama’s grandfather and mother also appear to have worked for the CIA, with his mother and stepfather supporting the CIA-backed Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia that massacred more than a million suspected communists. ↑
The Democratic Party Faces Its Day of Reckoning
By Leonard C. Goodman | Scheer Post | November 19, 2024
Following its crushing defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party might finally face its day of reckoning. The party markets itself as the champion of the working class and a bulwark against the party of the plutocrats. But this has been a lie for at least three decades.
The Democratic Party has partnered with Wall Street donors since at least the 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, the party overturned Glass Steagall and other New Deal programs that had effectively restrained Wall Street greed for 60 years. It also sold out American workers with so-called trade deals that freed their bosses to ship American jobs overseas. It ended welfare “as we know it” and passed draconian crime bills that destroyed mostly black and brown communities, sending mothers and fathers to prison for decades in the name of a cruel and senseless war on drugs.
Into the 21st century, the Democrats continued pushing the lie that they were fighting for working people. After September 11, 2001, the party put up a token resistance to the Bush/Cheney regime of illegal regime-change wars, black sites, indefinite detention and torture. All the while, it continued soliciting campaign contributions from the arms dealers profiting from Bush’s wars.
In 2008, the party found a Black face to carry on its Wall Street-friendly agenda. Gullible Americans, myself included, were taken in by Barack Obama’s promises to end “dumb wars” and to institute a single payer healthcare system. We ignored the red flags, like the fact that Obama’s campaign broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. It was later revealed by Wikileaks that nearly every member of Obama’s cabinet had been selected by the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup.
It didn’t take long for President Obama to crush our hopes that he was a different kind of Democrat. One of his first acts as president was to funnel trillions of dollars to the big banks that, newly freed by Clinton from FDR-era regulations, had embarked on an orgy of unbridled greed, swindling millions of Americans out of their homes and retirement savings with a scheme to sell worthless mortgage-backed securities.
Adding insult to injury, Obama saw to it that the bailed-out bank executives faced no criminal prosecutions and received their year-end bonuses. In their place, the Obama Justice Department brought federal mortgage fraud charges against thousands of poor people — I represented a half dozen of these folks — who had signed their names to the phony mortgage loans that the Wall Street bankers encouraged, packaged and sold to pension funds and other unwitting investors.
The pipe dream that Obama would be an anti-war president was also quickly dispatched. During his two terms, Obama ushered in a new era of continuous war, envisioned by George Orwell and favored by Wall Street. Obama expanded Bush’s bombing campaigns into Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Today’s Democratic Party is indistinguishable from the Republicans in its ties to war profiteers and trillion-dollar Pentagon budgets.
Obama also effectively ended the Democrats’ promise to fight for a true national health care system in which all Americans would be able to go to the doctor when sick without fear of bankrupting their families. In its place, Obama pushed through a health care plan developed in right-wing think tanks, that guaranteed profits (and taxpayer subsidies) for the private insurance industry and did little to contain costs.
By 2012, Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report was describing the Democratic Party as the “more effective evil” for using its reputation as protector of the working class to neutralize effective opposition and push through right-wing policies that the Republicans could not get passed.
In 2016, the Democrats received a wake-up call when their chosen successor to Obama lost the White House to a crude-talking New York City real estate developer and game show host with no prior political experience. But with the help of its partners in corporate media, the party managed to limp along for another eight years, first by telling the American people that President Trump was an agent of Russia, and then by claiming that Trump was Hitler who was planning concentration camps and firing squads for his political enemies.
Now after the November 2024 elections in which Trump won every swing state and the popular vote, the Democratic party is finally being forced to face some uncomfortable truths. The party’s partners in the corporate media initially tried blaming the election result on the voters for being too misogynist, too racist, or too dumb to vote correctly. But there is little trust that remains in corporate media.
The party’s corporate consultants have put the blame on the party’s excessive focus on identity politics. But the issues for the Democrats run much deeper than bad messaging. The real problem is that the party takes direction from plutocrats whose interests are antagonistic to the needs of the working people it pretends to represent. Both Democrats and Republicans are financed by the same corporate interests. Thus, there is general agreement and support for policies that guarantee high rates of return on investment capital, policies like continuous war, for-profit health care, and outsourcing jobs. This leaves few issues for the parties to fight about other than abortion and identity politics.
Fifty years ago, American capitalists still relied on American workers to build everything from cars and televisions to sneakers and light bulbs. These titans of industry had to care about things such as functioning schools, decent wages, cities and public transportation. But the times have changed. Today’s plutocrats support outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries and have little concern for the condition of American workers. And while ordinary Americans want the country’s resources to be spent at home, plutocrats are heavily invested in foreign wars, and they shun diplomacy.
These contradictions could only be covered up for so long. Even with reliable partners in the corporate press, the internet has given Americans alternative sources for their news. During the last few years, in a desperate effort to keep its scheme afloat, the Democrats embraced censorship and a regime of corporate “fact checkers” to police social media and remove or punish unsanctioned speech. In so doing, the party abandoned the last of its core principles: standing up for free speech and the right to dissent.
Many Democrats argue that they had to go after Wall Street money to compete with the Republicans. In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explained the strategy: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” But for this plan to work, the party still needed an actual message to take to the voters.
Forbes Magazine reports that during the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised a billion dollars while Trump’s campaign raised $388 million. Harris’s substantial edge in fundraising allowed her to flood the airwaves with commercials. But she had nothing of substance to say to voters.
The Atlantic Magazine reports that early in her campaign, Harris gained ground by attacking Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. But then, suddenly, Harris abandoned her attacks on big business at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.
Many Democrats, especially in swing states, opposed the Biden Administration’s unfailing support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million residents. Harris could have gained the support of many of these voters by promising to stop arming Israel during the genocide. But her Party’s donors wouldn’t allow her to even hint at such a change in policy. Two days before the election, while campaigning in the swing state of Michigan, Harris stated, “I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza.” But as Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada pointed out on election night, this promise carried no weight because Harris had also promised that she would never do the one thing within her power to stop the slaughter: cut off the flow of bombs to Israel.
After decades of malfeasance and deception, it has become evident that the corporate Democratic Party cannot serve as the lone opposition party to the corporate Republicans. The American people need a viable political party that represents the interests of ordinary working people.
A true workers party will not raise as much money as the corporate Democrats. But it will have an honest message with the potential to appeal to large numbers of Americans. Further, a political party that actually represents workers will press for reforms that begin to even the playing field between the haves and the have nots.
For example, one the most effective ways plutocrats game the political system is by flooding campaign contributions to the lawmakers who sit on the key committees that oversee their businesses. Members of Congress covet these committee chairs because they guarantee high fundraising numbers. Lawmakers who sit on the House Financial Services Committee have jurisdiction over banks and insurance companies and are targeted by those firms with campaign contributions. Lawmakers who sit on the Armed Services and Appropriations Committees provide funding for lucrative government contracts and are flooded with war industry cash.
These practices are corrupt and deprive American citizens of their right to be governed by representatives free from conflicts of interest. A judge who has received political contributions from a litigant must be removed from the case. Similarly, the most important functions of government, such as determining tax and how our tax revenue will be spent, should be performed by lawmakers who have not been bribed.
In 2017, the Center for American Progress, a think tank aligned with the Democratic Party, proposed a “Committee Contribution Ban” for Congress. It asserted: “Congress should enact a law to make it unlawful for members of Congress to accept campaign contributions from entities that fall within the jurisdiction of their committees.” Unsurprisingly, this proposal never reached the floor of Congress, that I could find.
Some states have enacted similar conflict of interest rules. And Congress could certainly pass such a law, if it chose. Of course, this will never happen as long as we are ruled by two corporate parties that benefit from the corruption. But if we had a political party that represented ordinary people, countless opportunities for positive change would soon emerge.
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense lawyer and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at DePaul University.
DNC still whines about Russia
By Drago Bosnic | November 9, 2024
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This old saying, usually (mis)attributed to Albert Einstein, perfectly encompasses two very prominent mental health conditions of our time – the infamous Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and Russia Derangement Syndrome (RDS). Symptoms of either of these can be disastrous if left unchecked. However, when combined in a single person or an organization, the consequences of TDS and RDS are virtually guaranteed to be catastrophic. The absolute failure of the DNC has left it without both the presidency and US Congress, giving the Republicans an unprecedented political advantage.
Obviously, numerous top-ranking GOP officials are assets of the Deep State, particularly unadulterated warmongers and war criminals such as Lindsey Graham and John Bolton. Their hatred for Russia and particularly President Vladimir Putin is also quite obvious. However, this animosity is strangely “rational”, based on the simple idea that they consider Moscow a threat that keeps US aggression against the world in check, preventing its so-called “full-spectrum dominance”. Thus, surprisingly enough, it cannot be said that every Russophobic Republican suffers from RDS. However, the same cannot be said about the Democrats, who are still obsessed with the “evil hand of Putin and the Kremlin”.
Namely, the DNC simply refuses to take responsibility for its countless shortcomings (there are so many of them that it’s virtually impossible to name a single good thing about the Democratic Party). Cities, counties and states they run are in such a horrible condition that the United States now has millions of “blue-state refugees”, i.e. people who left DNC-run states to escape the absolute chaos resulting from the neoliberal/woke extremist policies and so-called “values” that are absolutely repulsive to any remotely sane and decent person. Thus, the definition of insanity mentioned at the beginning fits perfectly into this, as the Democrats simply keep refusing to change the way they do things.
Worse yet, it seems they’re even more overzealous in defending the policies that have now left them politically impotent. It should be noted that this defense is based not on any sustainable logic or viable reasoning, but on constant whining, screaming and crying. This sort of behavior is more adequate for toddlers and preschool kids, as it’s pretty embarrassing to see grown people throwing hissy fits instead of facing their shortcomings. However, it’s far worse when those same people keep blaming the same phantoms for those flaws. This is where TDS and RDS come in again, as the DNC is still trying to recover from the election loss “shock” (only they didn’t really see it coming).
Thus, they simply won’t stop talking about the “evil hand of the Kremlin” and its alleged “role in electing Trump”. The sheer disparity between their various ludicrous propaganda narratives concerning Russia is truly mind-boggling. Namely, the Democrat-run mainstream propaganda machine has spent the last well over two and a half years trying to convince everyone that Moscow is “losing in Ukraine”, while simultaneously claiming that Russia is “so powerful” it can actually “elect” US presidents (including “through Facebook ads”, of all things). This doesn’t strike the DNC as completely illogical. Quite the contrary, to them, it’s not only “completely sensible”, but the “only explanation” on how they could’ve lost.
CNN, the neoliberal mouthpiece infamous for its pathological hatred for Trump, couldn’t wait a single day after the election and immediately (re)launched the so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory. To that end, it invited Bob Woodward, a Deep State-controlled “investigative journalist” who is usually cited as the “man who uncovered the Watergate scandal”. Woodward himself immediately proved that he’s a Deep State asset by claiming that “Putin might be blackmailing Trump”. He failed to explain how exactly the Russian president is doing that, but alas – the narrative simply needs to be kept alive somehow. The DNC has been fighting tooth and nail to push “Russiagate” for nearly a decade at this point.
It seems that this remains its flagship “strategy” in fighting Trump and the Deep State is entirely in line with it. However, the majority of the American people remain unconvinced. In fact, it can even be argued that the narrative has become a meme of sorts, as virtually anything can be “blamed” on those “evil Russians”. The Democrats also seem to think it can be a good way to shift attention away from their numerous corruption and financial scandals, the latest of which involves a $20 million debt they managed to accrue during their failed election campaign. According to multiple sources, the Kamala Harris campaign burned through over a billion dollars, even leaving the aforementioned $20 million in debt.
According to Politico’s Christopher Cadelago, “after raising over $1 billion and left with $118 million in the bank as of October 16, the Harris campaign ended the 2024 election season with at least $20 million in debt”. Cadelago, the California bureau chief for Politico, shared the information on X, citing “two separate sources familiar with the situation”. Breitbart CEO Matt Boyle confirmed this, adding that “a Kamala campaign staffer said there is a massive scandal here worthy of an audit” and that Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris campaign chair, “blew through a billion dollars in a few months”. It seems the largest amount of that money was wasted on celebrity concerts organized precisely by O’Malley Dillon.
According to Zero Hedge, which cites data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Harris campaign received over a billion dollars up until October 16, including when the incumbent Joe Biden was still campaigning for reelection. Over the same period, the Trump campaign got $392 million and spent $345 million, meaning that it managed to save nearly $50 million and also win the election. In addition, the Democrats wasted another $1.1 billion on “aired advertising and associated reservations”, according to AdImpact – a website that monitors the cost and content of ads. The DNC’s financial appetites are very well known, as evidenced by numerous scandals involving the funneling of the so-called “Ukraine aid”.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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