President Joe Biden triumphantly saved world democracy last week (at least according to the White House scorecard). Biden co-hosted another Summit for Democracy, a repeat performance after the December 2021 test run. Biden sounded like a Quaalude Savior as he recycled his “inflection point of history” cliché. But the summit proved again that politicians are perils to freedom regardless of their prattle.
Biden promised that “we are seeing real indications that we are turning the tide” in favor of democracy around the globe. Practically no one who’s not on Biden’s payroll agrees. The president’s boast was like taking a victory lap around the deck of the Titanic.
Last year democracy “declined around the world for the 17th consecutive year,” according to Freedom House. Twice as many nations are veering “toward authoritarianism” as towards democracy, according to The Economist. Most shocking: the United States is now categorized as a less free nation than Mongolia, Mauritius, and 56 other nations says Freedom House (funded by the U.S. government, so they must be trustworthy).
Team Biden believes a big problem with democracy is that politicians don’t have enough power: “Weak state capacity.” In reality, elected rulers around the globe are turning themselves into dictators who increasingly repress their citizens. Rather than representative governments, elected regimes have turned into Leviathan Democracies far superior to the citizenry.
Consider Biden’s record in the Oval Office. Federal judges and/or the Supreme Court have struck down Biden’s eviction moratorium for deadbeat renters, his $400 billion cancellation of federal student debt, his “climate change” decree shutting down power plants, his mask mandate for airline passengers, and his edict compelling all employees of large companies and all federal employees to get COVID vaccine injections. But all of Biden’s decrees are supposedly “pro-democracy” because he won the 2020 election.
“Democracy delivers” was a key talking point for Team Biden at the summit. Presumably, any increase in government handouts automatically increased government legitimacy. Unfortunately, “leashing politicians” is not on the Biden Bingo Card for Saving Democracy™. The American Bar Association recently warned that “the Rule of Law is in Decline Globally” but it is “not a central focus of the U.S. Government’s approach” on democracy. A top ABA official warned, “Discussing sustainable development in the absence of rule of law…is at best delusional and at worst dishonest.” Three-quarters of nations representing almost 85% of the world’s population recently “experienced declines in rule of law,” according to the World Justice Project. In lieu of “government under the law,” Team Biden offers “the People Centered Justice Multistakeholder Cohort’s Declaration and Call to Action.” Sloshing out more government handouts to activist groups who score media headlines was “close enough for government work” to the rule of law.
Rather than a system of informed consent, democracy is degenerating into regimes which blindfold citizens and demand unlimited submission. At the summit, government officials made it clear that freedom of speech is a luxury that democracy can no longer afford. Secretary of Anthony State Blinken declared, “The misuse of technology and the spread of digital authoritarianism must end. We must stand for an affirmative, values-driven, and rights-respecting vision of democracy in the digital era.” “Affirmative” and “values-driven” become code words to legitimize pervasive government censorship. Blinken “proposed a ‘delicate balance’ between ‘openness and security,’ ‘protecting speech and preventing incitement,’ and ‘fostering innovation and limiting the power of Big Tech,’” as Tom Parker observed for Reclaim the Net.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sermonized on a “Countering the Rise of Digital Authoritarianism” panel. He was joined by YouTube CEO Neil Mohan, who could have boasted of how Washington censors his channel. An internal DHS document reveals plans to crack down on “inaccurate” information on “the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.” Any facts which embarrass Team Biden are automatically “inaccurate’ and ripe for suppression. Federally-funded entities spearheaded the censorship of true information on COVID vaccine side effects to bolster Biden’s effort to inject every American.
Eight governments, including Ukraine and Poland, issued a call for more censorship on the first day of the summit. They called for tech companies to take action “against disinformation that undermines our peace and stability” and to suppress posts that “weaken our support to Ukraine amid Russia’s war of aggression.” The letter asserted that “hostile foreign powers are using [social media] to spread false narratives that contradict reporting from fact-based news outlets,” especially the endless reports on the glorious victories of the Ukrainian army. Facebook responded by promising to ramp up its censorship, including relying on “a third-party fact-checking service to determine if posts contain false claims.” Some “third-party fact checking services” have been government fronts. As journalist Aaron Maté scoffed, “We are fueling a proxy war in Ukraine in order to defend freedom, such as the freedom to censor dissenting views on our proxy war in Ukraine.”
Is the “will of the people” so fragile that it can no longer survive exposure to any thoughts that officialdom disapproves? Does winning an election automatically convert tinhorn politicians into minor deities entitled to control the thoughts of any voter? Nullifying freedom of speech converts citizens into vassals that politicians can use and abuse as they please.
Throughout the summit proceedings, piety was thicker than hog slop at an Iowa slaughterhouse. Secretary Blinken declared on March 28, “No woman or girl should face harassment and abuse in-person or online.” The State Department’s effort on this score was propelled by its Global Engagement Center, which previously pressured Twitter to cancel hundreds of thousands of accounts, including vast numbers of hapless Americans. That Center is leading the fight against “gendered disinformation” and whooped up a report on “the need for more research to tackle this scourge.” According to the United Nations, a prime example of this “scourge” is “Zoom Bombing.” That atrocity occurs when uninvited people crash a Zoom meeting and make rude comments. Is it an international human rights crisis because boneheaded Zoom organizers fail to require pass codes to attend a meeting?
As part of its summit festivities, the Biden administration announced new crackdowns to make it “more difficult for corrupt actors to conceal their identities, assets, and criminal activities.” Despite reform promises at the first summit, there has been no worldwide progress. The U.S. ranks #24 on the international corruption index—even worse than France, according to Transparency International. And that score was calculated before the latest revelations of the Biden family pocketing vast sums from smarmy foreign companies.
Biden boasted that his administration plans to spend more than $9 billion to support democracy worldwide by the end of next year. But U.S. foreign aid programs obliterate the anti-corruption initiatives of the U.S. government. An American Economic Review analysis concluded that “increases in [foreign] aid are associated with contemporaneous increases in corruption,” and that “corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United States.” As a Brookings Institution analysis observed, “The history of U.S. assistance is littered with tales of corrupt foreign officials using aid to line their own pockets, support military buildups, and pursue vanity projects.” Torrents of U.S. “aid” helped make Afghanistan one of the most corrupt places on Earth. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), observed, “We need to understand how U.S. policies and practices unintentionally aided and abetted corruption.” The U.S. has been “fighting corruption” in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War, and in those decades Ukraine became one of the most corrupt nations in Europe. Biden administration officials helped defeat a congressional proposal to create an Inspector General to audit and oversee the $100 billion the U.S. government has pledged to the government of Ukraine.
But another handout will fix that problem. The Biden administration is bankrolling foreign journalists to fight “kleptocracy”—government of thieves. There is even an aid program entitled “Empowering the Truth Tellers.” (Julian Assange need not apply.) The Biden administration claims to support “independent media” by effectively putting foreign journalists on the U.S. payroll. Those journalists are “independent” because the U.S. government says so, and anyone who disagrees will be labeled an enemy of democracy. Besides, the United States is no role model: it ranks a pathetic #42 in the World Press Freedom Index, worse than Moldova and Guyana, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Biden is “saving” democracy” with buckets of goofy new acronyms: SHE PERSISTS, one of the rallying cries for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, now stands for Supporting Her Empowerment: Political Engagement, Rights, Safety, and Inclusion Strategies to Succeed Investing. And then there was SHE WINS (Support Her Empowerment: Women’s Inclusion for New Security). The Agency for International Development is whooping up PxP—Powered by the People. Did the White House believe acronyms should look like drug prescriptions? ADD stands for Advancing Digital Democracy but policymakers should have worked in an ‘H’ to reflect their cluelessness. ACRF stands for the Anti-Corruption Response Fund. They should have tweaked that one to make it ARF-ARF, to symbolize officialdom’s cravenness to the powers that be.
To safeguard democracy, the Biden administration is creating “the Global Network for Securing Election Integrity [GNSEI], to align on standards and practices for supporting clean elections.” On that score, the Biden administration touts its ballot expanding efforts here at home. The White House “fact sheet” detailing progress on democracy touts the Biden proposal to spend $5 billion on the Postal Service to “support for vote-by-mail, including making ballots postage-free and reducing the cost of other election-related mail for jurisdictions and voters.” Ballot harvesting and unverified absentee ballots will save democracy everywhere! Who knew that the “will of the people” was so fragile that it could be blighted by requiring citizens to purchase one first-class stamp to send in their ballot?
Comic relief failed to redeem the summit. The State Department wanted Americans to make short videos with the hashtag #SummitForDemocracy whooping up “What has democracy made possible in your own life?” Such as falling living standards, soaring inflation, sporadic financial panic, and a befuddled commander-in-chief who doesn’t know if he is in Canada or China? A search on Twitter indicates that almost all the videos made with #SummitforDemocracy hashtags were done by governments or by government-funded entities. Biden’s democracy spiel can’t compete with cat videos.
Revealing all the levels of hypocrisy at the summit would be on par with peeling an onion. Mexico President López Obrador declared at the gathering, “Many of the great crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of God, or in the name of democracy.” Many of the nations showcased at the summit are dutiful U.S. allies, meaning that Washington ignores their oppression.
In his speech last Wednesday, Biden declared that “the power of these summits” is “not just to speak high-minded words.” But even U.S. government officials feared the summit would be an “inconsequential talk shop,” according to The Washington Post. Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass scoffed, “The summit for democracy is a bad idea that won’t go away… American democracy is hardly a model for others.”
Unfortunately, the Pentagon missed the memo on democracy. Since 2008, foreign soldiers who received training from the U.S. military “attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries,” as journalist Nick Turse reported. The Pentagon denies responsibility for the debacles. But, as Antiwar.com reported, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) declared at a recent congressional hearing, “I think we should at least know how many countries we train the coup plotters.”
Biden concluded his spiel to the Summit, “The great strength of democracy is that it gives us all the tools we need for self-government and self-improvement.” But the tools are controlled by politicians who equate ever greater submission with the triumph of the “will of the people.” Self-government is being defined down to little more than coronating whichever of the rascal’s political parties can offer voters more stuff. With politicians openly championing censorship, Leviathan Democracy is dropping its mask and no longer pretending to give a damn about freedom.
Jim Bovard is the Junior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. He is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
April 3, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | Afghanistan, Ukraine, United States |
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By Uriel Araujo | April 3, 2023
Former US ambassador to Finland, Earle Mack has visited Ukraine several times, on humanitarian missions. He claims, in a March 29 piece for The Hill, that, during his last visit, he could see a lack of morale firsthand, in the voice of the leaders to whom he talked. More importantly, Mack states matter-of-factly that the West has been “propping up Ukraine to fight a proxy war”, which is, in itself, a very important admission from a former US diplomat. He adds, however, that Kiev desperately needs “modern fighting hardware”, and claims that, by the time American Abrams tanks reach the country, in eight to ten months, the conflict could be over already with a defeated Ukraine.
To the general public, this reasoning might appear strange. After all, everyone knows that the US and its allies have been sending tons of weapons, ammunition and lots of cash to Ukraine. The constant sending of aid to Kiev has even caused Washington and European powers to have a hard time replenishing their own stocks of weapons.
It is true that American weapons manufacturers profit tremendously from today’s conflict. Much the same way portions of the sums sent to Ukraine (Europe’s most corrupt nation) are being diverted to shady schemes, the Pentagon, as a matter of fact, cannot account for billions worth of weaponry. Many such weapons appeared in the Middle East and Africa, trafficked through black markets. This however is only part of the story.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington, during a 21 December 2022 joint press conference, his American counterpart, Joe Biden, provided a clearer picture. Regarding the insistent calls for more powerful weaponry being sent to Kiev, the US President said that providing Ukrainians with long-distance missiles “would have a prospect of breaking up NATO”, and “breaking up the EU and the rest of the world.” He added that his NATO allies were “not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third world war.” After saying that much, Biden “reassured” the Ukrainian leader standing next to him, by telling Zelensky this: “as I said, Mr. President, you don’t have to worry — we are staying with Ukraine as long as Ukraine is there.”
Inadvertently, Biden’s December remarks almost paraphrased the cruel joke about Americans being willing to fight “to the last Ukrainian”. More importantly, his blunt answer amounted to an indirect admission that Washington keeps arming and aiding Kiev as part of a proxy protracted war. It would thus appear the West’s strategy is not about giving Ukrainians victory but rather about wearing down Moscow. The conflict, however, is wearing out Ukraine itself – and even the West.
It is not just Ukraine that is in a bad shape, though: de-industrialized Europe is in fact more dependent than ever on the US for security, its military being in an “appalling state”, according to experts. The EU’s defense base lacks a common defense market, as well as the necessary production capacities and supply chains. Moreover, whenever the EU tries to articulate an industrial policy, Washington steps in. This is so because American interests benefit not only from the defense industry, but also from the continent’s own energy crisis and deindustrialization. Washington’s goal of a NATOized Europe is made impossible by the US own economic and industrial policies against Europe, as exemplified by Biden’s subsidies package.
Earle Mack describes the current conflict as attrition warfare, that is one which seeks military victory by wearing down the enemy. On a larger scale, also including the realms of financial and economic warfare, one could very well argue that the political West has indeed been trying to “wear down” the Russian Federation in all manners, by arming Kiev plus imposing unprecedented sanctions on Moscow. The sanctions have boosted Eurasian integration and largely backfired. Alas, the same could be said about Washington’s military attrition strategy, which normally aims for the long run. If this is an attrition war, it seems Ukraine is bound to tire out first – and is tiring out already. Hence, Earle Mack’s sense of urgency.
With that in mind, the former diplomat writes that the US and its allies should urgently send Kiev “military modern weaponry, including more Patriot missiles and many more Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks.”
In his piece, Earl Mack, also rightly reminds readers that although the current Russian military campaign in Ukraine is just a year old, that nation “has been in almost continuous conflict” since 2014 – this, one might add, is a situation that has been largely promoted and fueled by the West and by NATO’s expansion. During these years, Kiev’s human rights violations against the Donbass population have been covered-up by Western press, to the point of, more recently, whitewashing the Azov Regiment’s neonazism. In a July 2020 piece, I described the then Donbass combat as Europe’s forgotten war – and in a way it remains so, because the large public still thinks of military conflict in Ukraine as being only a year old phenomenon.
Ukranians are thus approaching “a decade of death and chaos”, in Earle Mack’s words. Over 10 million Ukrainians left their country. Interestingly, over 5.5 million, from Ukraine and Donbass, have fled to Russia. The loss of populations plus badly damaged infrastructure is exhausting the country.
Good diplomacy and lots of table talks are needed more than ever. Instead, Mack claims that to obtain victory, “Ukraine needs everything, everywhere, all at once” – and urgently. In any case, one can only give so much. It remains to be seen how much the US-led West is willing to give, while the Washington world system collapses.
Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.
April 3, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism | NATO, Ukraine, United States |
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An explosion that rocked the ‘Street Bar’ café in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday has claimed at least one life and left 19 people injured, authorities have reported.
Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maksim Fomin), a military correspondent and blogger, was killed in the incident, according to emergency services.
Tatarsky joined the Donbass militias back in 2014 in the wake of the Maidan coup in Kiev. He has since become known in Russia as a blogger and a correspondent reporting on the situation in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Tatarsky has also authored several books.
According to Readovka news outlet, the man was hosting a live event for supporters of his work when an explosion ripped through the building, blowing the café’s glass front into the street.
Emergency services have reported that an improvised explosive device was detonated near the stage in the cafe.
The incident is reminiscent of another attack on a Russian journalist. In August 2022, Darya Dugina was assassinated in a car blast. She was the daughter of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who Western media have described as an ideologue of Russian nationalism. According to some reports, he might have been the real target of the attack. The Russian security services later claimed that Ukrainian agents were behind it.
April 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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This excerpt is from a very important book on the conflict in Ukraine: To the Last Ukrainian: An American War. It is written by Régis Le Sommier, who was embedded in both the Ukrainian and Russian armies. The account that he gives in this riveting chronicle tells of the perfidy of politicians and the tragedy of ordinary soldiers caught up as pawns in the machinations of geopolitics.
Régis Le Sommier is one of France’s great journalists whose work, spanning thirty years, has received several awards. He is the only war reporter who went to both sides of the front line with the Ukrainian and Russian armies for a year. This is his story.
You may purchase a copy of To the Last Ukrainian: An American War either from Amazon, or from Barnes and Noble.
The Strange Carl Larson
The bus stopped in the center of a village.
“This is the place,” Max announced.
We, the Frenchmen, picked up our luggage and walked about two kilometers to a place designated by the GPS on Max’s smartphone. At a bend in the road, Ukrainian soldiers came to meet us.
“We are French. We’ve come for the Ukrainian legion.”
One of the soldiers made a phone call. A few minutes later, a man of athletic build, dressed in grey and wearing a commando cap on his head, got out of a vehicle.
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“You have a military training?” He asked after shaking hands.
Max and Sabri nodded in response. This soldier was American.
“They call me the Grinch,” he said to the Frenchmen who had no idea what this nickname was supposed to mean. Neither did the Ukrainian soldiers around them.
The Grinch is the American bogeyman, a grumpy, greenish character from a Theodor Seuss Geisel cartoon, whose goal is to ruin Christmas. This cultural reference reflected the mindset of this American who naturally believed that the whole world knew about the Grinch. He announced that he was part of a team of American instructors who had come to train foreign volunteers.
“I’m here to put the internationals in order,” he told the Frenchmen. “I am in charge here. Too many people showed up at the center and they had no business being there.”
The French volunteers listened to him without saying a word. Then he moved on to instructions and declared:
“If you have international phones, you’ll have to cut them off or get local SIM cards.”
It was at this point that I told him that Noël, my sidekick, and I were journalists. Until then, he naturally thought we were volunteers. His face tightened immediately. What? Journalists who’ve dared to come out here?
The American was upset, or perhaps he realized that he had said too much? He chose to deal with the problem in a radical way:
“You don’t belong here,” he told me in an icy tone.
I protested by invoking the right to information:
“The French public has the right to know what is happening to their fellow-
citizens who’ve come to fight alongside the Ukrainians.”
The man was embarrassed. As a good American, and even though his presence here fell in the realm of clandestine operations, he believed that the right to information was sacred, that it was a virtue of his country.
Technically, he had no right to ask us to leave. So, he called his Ukrainian counterparts on the phone and, as if to pass the buck, asked them:
“You don’t want reporters, do you?”
Then he turned to me and with his white teeth gleaming announced:
“They don’t want reporters.”
He then explained his approach in a more conciliatory tone. He had come to help the Ukrainians. He was fighting for the freedom of the people, the great American classic line which I’ve hear since Iraq. However, from the way he spoke to us earlier, this individual clearly had far greater responsibilities. I’ve been around the US military in Iraq so much that I know by instinct who’s in charge, regardless of what they’re wearing.
Judging from the docile behavior of the Ukrainians around him, this man was no simple volunteer filled with good will. He could have just said that he was an instructor, that he was in charge of training, and that he was from the United States, and that would have been enough. But his commanding tone, that “I’m in charge here,” left no doubt.
I did some research on him. I found an interview he gave to the Seattle Times. His name is Carl Larson and he admits to being one of the American instructors who came to help the Ukrainian army against Russia.
But when we were listening to him with the volunteers, everyone was thinking the same thing. The scene was worthy of being in the Hall of Legends. There were also curious elements in his background. He was an Iraq War veteran. He was part of a military contingent that participated in the initial phase of the invasion. Then, he was no longer in the news. And today, was he still in the military? Was he on a mission for the Pentagon? I can’t say for sure. I tried to verify this through contacts in the American army and in French intelligence, but I did not get any answers. Cover-up is big part of the war in Ukraine.
What I can confirm is that in the recruitment of foreign volunteers to fight in Ukraine, an American veteran was in charge. Another Seattle Times article appeared about him on October 25. It said that after his assignment to select international recruits, Carl Larson trained a unit deployed to the Kharkiv front. Then he returned home. On his role in the selection of volunteers for the Ukrainian Legion, it is written that he was reluctant at the beginning, partly because of the recruits who were “unstable or without military experience.” The article went on to say that he himself was reluctant to join the Legion for fear of not being properly utilized.
“Finally, after discussions with Ukrainian officials, he agreed to select and train a unit before it went to the front.”
We had to leave quickly after we revealed ourselves to the American. We were not allowed to wish our friends well. Just a look, a little wave before they boarded an Opel Corsa, to my great surprise, registered in Essonne and driven by the American. The day after this hasty departure, Sabri explained to me in a text message that they had left by bus for a front line where they had to relieve a unit. They signed a commitment to stay until the end of the war.
April 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Book Review | Ukraine, United States |
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Ukraine has spearheaded a collective call to action, joining forces with seven other Central and Eastern European nations to combat “disinformation” on social media platforms.
In an open letter, the prime ministers of these nations urge prominent tech companies, such as Meta, to implement effective measures that curb the spread of misleading content and foreign interference, which threatens peace, stability, and democracy.
The letter, signed by the leaders of Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, alleges a danger of disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilizing their countries and undermining the European Union‘s support for Ukraine amidst Russia’s aggression.
Tech giants are implored to remain vigilant and avoid inadvertently advancing hostile goals.
Specific steps recommended in the letter include refusing payments from sanctioned individuals, increasing algorithmic transparency, and adjusting algorithms to prioritize accuracy over user engagement.
Furthermore, the leaders insist that platforms dedicate adequate resources to content “moderation” and address the growing challenges posed by deep fakes and AI-generated disinformation.
In response, Meta has stated that it has expanded its fact-checking capabilities in Eastern Europe and implemented measures to combat alleged misinformation related to the conflict in Ukraine.
The company has also restricted access to Russian state-controlled media and added labels to related posts, informing users of the source before they click or share.
April 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | European Union, Human rights, Ukraine |
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MOSCOW – Russia is calling for an independent investigation into the last year events in the city of Bucha, near Kiev, and calls on the United Nations to publish a list of the victims, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
“We are saying it once again. In order to find out the truth, it is necessary to carry out a fair, impartial, independent investigation, which should be focused on giving answers to four questions: identification of bodies, time and cause of death, signs of possible transportation of the bodies,” Zakharova said during her press conference.
Russia has requested the full list of Bucha’s residents, who died at the time of the events, from the UN, but the organization has not provided such a list yet, Zakharova added.
The UN referred to the lists of victims available on the Internet and in social media, but Moscow would like to deal with official information, the official said, adding that the events in Bucha were a provocation aimed at scuttling the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, as well as imposing new anti-Russia sanctions.
In April, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that no residents of Bucha suffered from any violent actions while the city was under Russian control.
March 31, 2023
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism | Russia, Ukraine, United Nations |
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This year’s twentieth anniversary of the illegal Iraq invasion paradoxically coincided with major international events. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was in Moscow on the day, while a Russia-Africa Parliamentary Forum opened at the same time.
In 2003, at the height of its power, the US proclaimed its “unipolar moment” in which it would dominate unchallenged, needing no allies and tolerating no objections from adversaries. History, it was believed, had a single purpose, and they would stop at nothing to achieve it. Indeed, American military, political and economic dominance seemed total at the time, echoing the sentiments of Henry Kissinger, who a few years earlier had written “America at the Apex.” Twenty years later, we are witnessing the flowering of multi-polarity: in Moscow, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was talking to the Russian President, two countries contributing to a change the world has not seen in a hundred years. This transience of world history shows how quickly historical cycles change, but it is also important that the US itself, through its actions in different parts of the world, is accelerating its course.
One of the most important strategic mistakes made by Washington was the invasion of Iraq. Based on a false pretext and the deliberate misleading of the international community, it led to a series of significant war crimes, a catastrophic civil war, the shattering of Iraqi statehood and enormous repercussions for the entire Middle East. Just a few years of American presence in Iraq resulted in huge numbers civilian deaths, indiscriminate use of force, and the destruction of several cities, including Mosul. During the evacuation of the Russian embassy amid the 2003 US invasion, a convoy of diplomats came under American fire and several were injured. US private military contractors, who at one point had the same presence in the country as official troops, committed a number of war crimes. The abuse of prisoners by the US military at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad has been well documented. When the International Criminal Court raised the question of American citizens being charged over offenses in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US responded that it would prosecute the judges who raised the issue and that they should withdraw their initiatives immediately.
Arguably the greatest crime of the US in Iraq has been to create a civil war that has resulted in a terrible number of casualties with estimates ranging from 600,000 to one million.
From 2005 to 2007, the country’s population curve flattened, despite the fact that it has always had one of the highest birth rates in the region. The dismantling of the central government triggered geopolitical processes in the region and power in the formerly Sunni-ruled country fell into the hands of the Shia Arab majority, which began a rapprochement with Shia Iran. Since then, Tehran’s strategic position in Iraq has remained significant.
Some of the consequences of the US invasion have backfired as well. For example, the fight against terror led to an increase in the influence of ISIS, an organization banned in Russia, in Iraq. Unexpectedly, Iran’s strengthened role in the country meant that 150,000 US troops were unable to control the situation in Iraq, while a few dozen Iranian diplomats in the embassy in Baghdad were quite capable of doing so. The metastasis of the Arab Spring, which began to spread to various countries in the region, was also one of the consequences of the Iraq war.
Meanwhile, US financial costs for the war are estimated at several trillion dollars. Overall, the politically unsuccessful operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a decline in American influence and status in the region, as evidenced by the recent restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, mediated by China.
The Americans formulated a reasonable objective for the military operation as early as 2007. It was voiced by General David Petraeus at a US congressional hearing. In response to a question about American interests in the country, he said, “Our purpose is not to create a Jeffersonian democracy, our purpose is to create the conditions for our troops to withdraw.” The implication was that pulling out should not look like defeat. At the time, this reasoned objective was well in line with American interests and showed the depth of the strategic error the Americans had made in preparing for the 2003 invasion.
Today, many of those responsible for that war – and their media and academic cheerleaders – are now loudly supporting Washington’s position on Ukraine.
It’s unlikely that the impact of their actions will be any different this time.
Andrey Sushentsov is the Valdai Club program director.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | China, Iraq, Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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By Ahmed Adel | March 30, 2023
The US should bluntly tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Kiev will eventually have to accept territorial concessions, former CIA Counterterrorism Center chief Robert Grenier said. This comes as Zelensky admitted that his people are becoming weary of conflict.
“The time is fast approaching when a senior representative of the Biden administration will need to begin a similarly tough, realistic — and empathetic — dialogue with Zelensky,” he wrote in The Hill, adding that although the US president is “a great friend” of Kiev, “his ability to deliver on his implicit and explicit promises of support for Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ is likely to be curtailed in the near future.”
“Zelensky must be pushed in the direction of a negotiated solution, likely to include territorial concessions on Crimea and the Donbass,” the former CIA official said.
In the expert’s opinion, the Ukrainian conflict does not threaten Washington’s national security, and therefore the total defence of every inch of Ukrainian territory is not on the list of vital interests of the West.
“Now is the time for the administration to engage in some hard critical thinking, followed by tough talk in Kyiv, in NATO capitals, and yes, in Moscow,” Grenier said. He caveated that by saying it is important for NATO to make Ukraine an impregnable fortress to deter Russia in the future, but that the West does not need the whole country for this purpose.
Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, are inseparable parts of Russia. At one point in the future, these regions will be completely liberated by Russia and this will be a bitter reality for Kiev and the West to accept.
For his part, US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter recently said that the Ukrainian army would eventually lose Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), which will in turn lead to the country’s defeat and the downfall of Zelensky. He argued that Zelensky still has a chance to avoid further catastrophe if he decides to follow the plan proposed by China. The former intelligence officer said if Zelensky followed China’s peace plan, Ukraine would survive as a nation, its army would be preserved, and it keeps the door open for EU membership.
Known for decades as Artyomovsk, and still called that in Russian, the city has recently been the scene of bloody fighting due to its importance for supplying Ukrainian troops in the Donbass region. When the town is captured by Russian forces, large swathes of Donbass will be opened for liberation.
It is for this reason that Zelensky said in an interview with the Associated Press on March 28 that Russia may begin building international support for a peace deal that could require Ukraine to compromise on promises already made, adding that if Russian President Vladimir Putin “will feel some blood – smell that we are weak – he will push, push, push.”
Zelensky also admitted that he is worried that the war could be impacted by shifting political forces in Washington, which is why in desperation he also extended an invitation for Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Kiev.
“We are ready to see him here. I want to speak with him. I had contact with him before full-scale war. But during all this year, more than one year, I didn’t have,” he said.
Zelensky also begrudgingly acknowledged “our society will feel tired” if the Ukrainian military were defeated in Artyomovsk. “Our society will push me to compromise with them.”
Although he expressed confidence in finally prevailing over Russia, Zelensky is leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to perhaps slowly normalise the idea that a compromise must be made, one that very well could be unpopular for Ukrainians, especially after all the boastful and arrogant comments made by their president about a final victory.
The war in Ukraine will continue to be a difficult grind, in which Russia will ultimately prevail in, but a realistic mindset by Washington and Kiev can avoid a lot of unnecessary bloodshed. Although there are a lot more voices urging for an acceptance of Russia’s terms, there is still little indication from the Biden administration that they will wind back their support for Kiev.
So long as this flow of Western support does not end, the war will drag out longer than necessary but will still reach the same conclusion. Many US experts are pushing for a swift conclusion to the war as they would rather focus on the deteriorating economic situation at home, especially as the next US presidential election is next year.
Although the economic situation in the US is worsening, Biden continues to blindly send billions to Ukraine, something that cannot be sustained as the election comes closer and closer and criticism becomes harsher. Zelensky perhaps senses that not only his own people are tired of the war, but also Westerners, who are feeling the indirect impact of it, which is why now he has placed such great importance on Artyomovsk.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
March 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Russia, Ukraine |
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Russia and China are determined to hold the American perpetrators of the Nord Stream sabotage to account. Uncle Sam’s days – indeed decades – of wanton criminality are over. There’s going to be hell to pay as the imperialist tyranny in Washington hits a wall of reality.
Several weeks have gone by with the United States and its Western lackeys stonewalling at the United Nations Security Council, squirming and resisting calls from Moscow and Beijing for an international criminal investigation into the sabotage of the Baltic Sea pipelines that were blown up in September.
A swathe of independent observers, such as American economics professor Jeffrey Sachs and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, have concurred with the investigative report published on February 8 by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh which claims that U.S. President Joe Biden and his senior White House staff ordered the Pentagon to take out the natural gas pipeline that runs along the Baltic Sea bed from Russia to Germany.
Russia and China are adamant about not letting this vital subject be ignored. They want a proper investigation, international accountability and criminal prosecution. Moscow and Beijing are right to insist on this. Washington and its Western allies’ presumption of impunity has gone on for too many decades. The buck stops here and both Russia and China are strong enough to ensure that the United States cannot threaten, blackmail, or arm-twist its way out of scrutiny.
The Nord Stream project is a major international civilian infrastructure, costing in excess of $20 billion to construct over more than a decade. At 1,200 kilometres in length under the Baltic Sea, it is an impressive feat of engineering, symbolizing the mutual benefits of good neighborliness and cooperative trading.
For the United States to blow this pipeline up in order to knock Russia out of the European energy market so that it could muscle in with its own more expensive gas supplies is a shocking act of state terrorism and criminality. It is also potentially an act of war against Russia and callous sabotage against supposed European allies whose citizens are now suffering economic misery from soaring energy bills. German workers have this week shut down the entire economy from industrial protests over collapsing businesses and unbearable cost of living.
Of course, the Nord Stream sabotage is an urgent matter of basic justice, accountability for an atrocious crime, as well as massive international financial reparations. It’s almost hilarious how the self-proclaimed American protagonist of “rules-based global order” is desperately procrastinating over a glaring incident of dereliction and chaos.
But more than the essential obligation of justice is the legacy of impunity. For the perpetrators of such a wanton terrorist act not to be held accountable sets a perilous precedent. Otherwise, what is stopping the state terrorists from repeating equally brazen acts of sabotage and warmongering? The very concept of international law and the United Nations Charter is demolished, not simply undermined.
The Nord Stream incident potentially opens an era of rampant lawlessness and state banditry – by a nuclear superpower, the United States, using its Western minions for cover. The Western news media, in their reluctance to investigate, are also exposed as nothing more than propaganda channels in the service of imperial masters.
The present is reminiscent of the 1930s during a time of fascist expansionism by Nazi Germany and other imperialist nations, including the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Japan, and others. Nazi Germany was not the unique culprit during that earlier time of barbarism, notwithstanding the official Western revisionism of history to absolve itself.
After the Second World War amid the ashes of international destruction and up to 85 million deaths, the United Nations and its Charter were founded to ostensibly enshrine the stricture that there would be no repetition of the 1930s-style lawlessness and state terrorism.
That lofty aspiration was always a pathetic illusion. The decades after WWII saw no halt to the imperialist warmongering and subterfuges carried out primarily by the United States and its Western allies, in particular Britain. What a mockery that the U.S. and Britain were afforded permanent member states of the UN Security Council given that these two rogue powers have been largely responsible for countless wars post-1945. The decades-long wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are but the most notorious war crimes of the Anglo-American “special relationship”.
During the Cold War decades, the Soviet Union provided a limited check on the worst depredations by Western imperialists. The People’s Republic of China was not strong enough to act as a deterrent force.
For about two decades after the Cold War officially ended in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States rulers perceived a license for “full-spectrum dominance”. Washington embarked on a frenzy of endless wars that up till recently have prevailed.
The first reality check on the unbridled violence of the U.S. imperialists and their NATO henchmen was Russia’s military intervention in Syria in late 2015 to put an end to the Western machinations for yet another regime-change operation. Washington and its accomplices failed in their nefarious goals in Syria, albeit the Americans persist in illegally occupying part of the Arab country and stealing its oil resources.
Ukraine is the full manifestation of the end to impunity for the United States.
Russia under Vladimir Putin has recovered the military strength that was lost with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In some ways, present-day Russia is even more formidable owing to the development of new forms of weapons, such as hypersonic missiles and S-500 air defenses. Also, Russia’s economy is on a sounder footing than the Soviet Union which relied excessively on militarism. Hence, Moscow has been able to withstand the economic assault that Washington and its allies have tried to mount over the Ukraine conflict.
Just as important, too, China has risen to economic and military superpower status. Together, Russia and China now present an invulnerable countervailing force to the United States and its Western allies.
For nearly eight decades after World War Two, the United States was relatively free to run amok, trashing international law and nations’ sovereignty, racking up death tolls by the millions, and terrorizing the planet with its “benign”, narcissistic tyranny.
The conflict in Ukraine, where Russia has said “enough is enough” to years of U.S.-led NATO aggression, is demonstrating that the days of impunity are finally over for the would-be American hegemon.
Washington has recklessly raised the stakes to an unsustainable height in Ukraine. It has bet the house – and farm – on subjugating Russia for its next insatiable imperial move against China. But Moscow and Beijing are calling Uncle Sam’s bluff. The buck stops here.
The edifice of American imperial power has never been challenged at its foundation. It is now.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, China, Iraq, Russia, Syria, UK, Ukraine, United States |
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Acting at the behest of its political controllers and paymasters, the racist International Criminal Court [ICC], whose principal activity since its founding in 2003 has been the malicious persecution of black African leaders, now, for a change, targets for judicial abuse a distinguished Eurasian figure.
Observers with an attention span of more than fifteen minutes (which would exclude the vast majority in the bamboozled Western countries) should have noticed immediately several glaring anomalies in ICC’s “arrest warrant.”
The warrant purports to be based on humanitarian concern for the welfare of children allegedly transferred illegally from the Donbas. The court officers’ public rationale, however, omits widely known facts regarding the systematic bombardment of civilians in Donetsk and Lugansk since 2014. It ignores the demonstrated death toll of that crime amounting to at least 14,000 victims, including several thousand children. Neither this manifest offence against humanity nor the desire to call to account its obvious perpetrators, the military and political structures of the Kiev Nazi regime, seem to have played any role in the court’s deliberations.
Why not? How can meticulous adherence to the provisions of the Geneva Convention which requires the evacuation of civilians from areas affected by armed conflict (Article 49) be deemed grounds for the issuance of a criminal warrant, while widespread, systematic, and indiscriminate lethal shelling of civilians is passed over in silence, without triggering any prosecutorial reaction?
For that matter, a further question can also be raised with regard to another anomaly, just as glaring. Why have the alleged atrocities in Bucha and Kramatorsk last year apparently been memory holed, to be replaced now by another that has been obviously contrived? If criminal charges were to be pressed, why have the Bucha and Kramatorsk incidents, which at the time of their alleged occurrence were the subject of extraordinary propaganda campaigns, suddenly disappeared from the radar screen? And precisely when they could have served as the most credible foundation for an arrest warrant, assuming there ever was any evidence to support those allegations? Might the fact that both false flag operations were efficiently exposed in the early stages have anything to do with this strange reticence?
How incompetent – or politically corrupt – must a prosecutor be to forego a supposedly open and shut case in favor of a case, and that is putting it very charitably, that is at best legally ambiguous and highly dubious? This question is addressed to the ICC Prosecutor, colonial lackey and consummate opportunist Karim Khan, of course.
Two additional considerations must also be submitted to the judgment of that part of the public whose brains have not yet been fried by propaganda. If the welfare of children is foremost on the minds of ICC staff, what have they got to say about the tsunami of reports that the Kiev junta, desperate to replenish its supply of cannon fodder, is now detaining and kidnapping underage children and with virtually no military training sending them to war, where they have an estimated life expectancy of about four hours?
Rule 136 0f the Convention on the Rights of the Child holds plainly that “Children must not be recruited into armed forces or armed groups.” Additional Protocols I and II, the Statute of the International Criminal Court itself [Art. 8 (b) (xxvi)] and of the Special Court for Sierra Leone put the minimum age for recruitment in armed forces or armed groups at 15, as does the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Are ICC prosecutors capable of reading their own court’s regulations, or do they even care?
Should credible reports of such odious practices, unquestionably in contravention of international conventions which govern the use of child soldiers, not merit at least a full scale ICC investigation?
An equally grave question should be raised concerning the imminent dispatch of hazardous and banned depleted uranium munitions by Great Britain to the armed forces of the Ukrainian junta.
Contrary to the rationalisations of the British Government, depleted uranium munitions are provably detrimental to the environment, as well as to human beings and all forms of animate life in the proximity of their impact. That includes children, of course, who are particularly vulnerable and subject to genetic deformations and painful and lethal illnesses. The catastrophic impact of the use of such munitions in Yugoslavia and Iraq has been extensively studied and well documented over the past several decades. Former UN arms control inspector Scott Ritter has exposed the evils of this practice professionally and competently. It is prohibited by international humanitarian law and if allowed it will constitute a grave threat to life and health both of children and adults in the Ukraine. Would not the warning of arrest warrants for the relevant authorities in the United Kingdom be a suitable response by the ICC in the face of a potential disaster of such magnitude?
It is important to note that the International Criminal Court is a linear extension of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY] and that its conduct cannot be fully understood without reference to the pattern of lawless behaviour previously exhibited by its model. Indeed, the word “conduct” is in this case a more appropriate terms than “jurisprudence” because neither court has bothered to develop a body of law and legal interpretation in the conventional sense. It is of no significance that ICTY is a manifestly illegal outfit, set up in contravention of the UN Charter, while ICC arguably was properly constituted by international treaty. In their practical operation they have both served as tools of the arrogance of power of global hegemons. Their joint task has been not to uphold the principles of international law, but to demolish them in order to provide a legalistic veneer for the execution of the hegemons’ criminal undertakings.
It is therefore scarcely surprising that the preposterous grounds cited by the ICC for issuing warrants against Russian officials for an alleged act of gross turpitude consisting of the safe evacuation of children from the war zone in the Donbas had an exact analogue in the past behaviour of ICC’s infamous model, the ICTY.
In a nutshell, Serbian defendants in the ICTY Srebrenica trials were routinely charged with a grave breach of international humanitarian law, forced deportation of the civilian population. In mid-July of 1995, three meetings were held between the commander of the UN Protection Force in Srebrenica, Col. Thom Karremans, and the Serbian Commander Gen. Ratko Mladic to consider the issue of civilian refugees assembled in a nearby village. The Serbian side made complete video recordings of those meetings which leave no doubt as to what had in fact transpired. Although the video evidence unambiguously shows that Col. Karremans came to Mladic to convey the request of the UN Command that the refugees be evacuated to safety onto territory where military operations were not taking place, ICTY Prosecution charged Mladic with ordering the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the refugees. What actually happened is that Gen. Mladic acceded to UN Command’s request, as he had the duty to do under international law since fighting around Srebrenica was still in progress, and as a result the refugees were properly evacuated, as agreed.
For acting in good faith to protect civilians in a zone of conflict, Gen. Mladic was indicted, among other things, for genocide and crime against humanity, deportation.
The exculpatory video evidence was never presented in court in its totality. Snippets taken out of context and appearing to favor the prosecution case were the only parts allowed to be introduced into the evidence. Live testimony by Col. Karremans, who obviously would have been a key witness, was obstructed at every turn by the prosecution with the connivance of the Chamber. Technically, the judges could not be faulted for not taking into account evidence that had not been put before them. In the end, they washed their hands and calmly drew conclusions that were contrary to the facts, but with grave consequences for the defendant.
The Russian targets of ICC’s warrants will never, of course, be in the position of General Mladic. However, the cowboy style of ICTY´s corrupt proceedings, fully assimilated by its subsequent clone, ICC, gives a foretaste of what awaits anyone unlucky enough to fall in its clutches.
ICC, like its precursor ICTY, is a disgrace to law in all its civilised forms. State parties should be encouraged to withdraw from it while it is still possible for them to avoid embarrassment by association.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite | Africa, ICC, Ukraine |
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The end of the last week was shaken by an unreal announcement. The ICC tribunal, which has its headquarters in The Hague, announced that it issued a warrant arrest against the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
For those who have not any familiarity with this court, it does not have any jurisdiction in Russia due to the simple fact that Russia never signed the treaty that instituted the ICC.
Moreover, the ICC does not have a good reputation at all. We are talking about the court that was illegally prosecuting, according to several jurists, former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic with the charge of genocide.
Milosevic was very close to getting an acquittal because he was demolishing the case against him in court. Unfortunately, he could not get one because he died in never clarified circumstances before the end of his trial.
Some observers hold The Hague accountable for his death because Milosevic could have unmasked years of lies spread by NATO against him.
Nevertheless, the ICC prosecutor, Kharim Khan, showed himself before the world press and claimed that Putin was “guilty” of having trafficked Ukrainian children to Russia.
For those who don’t know much about Ukraine before the current war, the truth is quite simple. Ukraine was a world children supermarket. People from every part of the world ordered organs that were harvested from the bodies of innocent Ukrainian children.
Certainly, we are not talking about ordinary people. We are talking about people who travel in private jets. People who attend the WEF and who preach about pseudo-environmentalism while they’re the first to breach the rules of the insane and dystopian world that they imagine.
Therefore, if there is someone here who is guilty of child trafficking that would be the Ukrainian establishment, which is completely corrupt and handled by the foreign puppeteers who installed it in power.
The Euromaidan coup that was defined by Stratfor (a think tank quite close to the US deep state) as the “most blatant coup in history” is the “best” example of how the Ukrainian establishment is fully dependent upon the Anglosphere.
And the ICC has been silent for years about this horrendous traffic. It has not been saying a word about it. So if the ICC is really seeking who is responsible for the abuses suffered by the Ukrainian children, it should look at itself in the mirror. This trafficking has been taking place on the ICC’s watch, which has never lifted a finger to put an end to it.
However, this grotesque and provocative move has nothing to do with juridical issues. As we will see later, this is a political move that is deeply connected with two other announced arrests: that of Donald Trump and the one of the former Pakistani PM, Imran Khan.
The bogus case against Trump
On Friday 17th, Trump announced on Truth Social that the NY’s DA office was planning to arrest him for the Stormy Daniels case.
Basically, the case is founded upon the quite shaky legal grounds that Trump allegedly paid hush money to a pornstar, Stormy Daniels, in order to keep her quiet about his alleged affair with her.
Firstly, we should give a brief introduction about the US legal system and its developments in the latest years.
As many readers probably already know, the DAs in the US are elective assignments. They usually run for the Democratic or the Republican Party and they receive funds for their campaigns. And in recent years, a magnate who has spent a lot of money for getting elected DAs is George Soros. Soros has a very particular type of DA in mind to fulfill his “open society”.
Soros’ idea of a DA is an official who does not prosecute crimes and who allows the streets of his city to be ruled by criminals. The Open Society is literally allowing the dregs of society to have a free hand in harassing, raping, stealing and killing honest citizens.
The globalist world is where everything is upside down and where good is bad and right is wrong.
Therefore, if you happen to live in one of the cities where Soros DAs were elected and you’re a good citizen, you could be in trouble.
As a law abiding citizen, you’re not part of the open society. And you’re even more in trouble if you have political ideas keen to the principles of loving your country and defending it from foreign and domestic enemies.
And this is certainly the case of Donald Trump, who’s the target of never-ending political witch hunts.
In this case, the Soros DA who’s persecuting Trump is Alvin Bragg. Bragg would like to indict Trump for the 130,000 $ of hush money allegedly paid to Daniels. Money that was allegedly transferred to former Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, who, in turn, gave it to Stormy Daniels.
This round of transactions would constitute a falsification of Trump’s business records, according to the NY’s DA. But there’s a problem with all this theory. It is crumbling under the proofs to the contrary that are emerging in these days.
We are talking about crucial exculpatory evidence here like the letter signed by Cohen in which he clearly states that Trump never paid or reimbursed him for the money that he had given to Stormy Daniels in the first place.
In a normal world, the case would have been closed but in Soros’ world, it is not. Bragg’s probe seems to be falling under the blows of this evidence and the Grand Jury that should decide to proceed or not with Trump’s indictment keeps being postponed.
And this is happening because everyone in the legal arena, including Trump’s enemies, knows that Bragg does not have a case, and if he keeps overplaying his hand, he could be the one ending up indicted for abuse of power and for hiding crucial evidence who would immediately exonerate Trump from this bogus probe.
Therefore, Trump’s arrest seems to be less likely as the days go by. Never in the history of the United States, have we seen a President persecuted like Donald Trump.
From the very first moment when he went down the escalator of Trump Tower, he became enemy number one for the deep state.
Immediately, those powers who ruled Washington for decades tried to bar his way to the White House.
They started with the Russiagate hoax, also known as Spygate, which is an international plot that sees involved also British and Italian secret services in order to frame Trump by falsely accusing him of being a “Russian agent”.
They did not stop there. They even tried to physically remove him from the White House with at least two assassination attempts in August 2020 and with another at Mar-a-Lago in January 2021.
They even tried to oust him with the 2020 election fraud, which could be defined as the most blatant electoral fraud in history. Not to mention two attempted and failed impeachments against him, which were both based on preposterous and false accusations.
A war machine was clearly put in motion. It is the machine of those secret powers that have ruled the United States for far too long. Powers that hijacked the history of this country in order to subvert foreign leaders who were not obeying the orders of NATO and of the Israeli lobby. Powers that harmed and killed so many Americans and many other people all around the world.
The American people elected Trump to halt the exploitation of the United States. American people were fed up with seeing their country used to fulfill a global agenda whose only purpose is to establish a world totalitarian government.
And Trump is the political leader who has incarnated that spirit – the spirit of making America great again and of freeing this nation from the chains of her enemies.
The Bragg probe is just the latest attempt of this war against Trump and the American people. Trump is just inches away from officially returning to the White House and, as a result, the deep state launched this bogus investigation. It is an investigation that remains unclear if it will lead to an indictment and an eventual arrest.
The system has a very weak hand and Trump knows it. Most likely, his announcement aimed to expose this plot even if its probabilities of success are very low.
Imran Khan: the man who the deep state wants dead
Someone who is also running the risk of being arrested is former Pakistani PM, Imran Khan. Khan denounced last year a plot that was hatched by NATO’s circles to oust him from power.
Khan was and still is a very dangerous threat for the US deep state powers. The Pakistani leader aimed to establish relations with BRICS and, by doing so, Pakistan would have left the Anglosphere.
If this would come to fruition, NATO would lose another key strategic country in Asia.
That’s why he was removed with a confidence vote that was heavily swayed by foreign influences. But Khan didn’t throw in the towel.
He kept fighting for Pakistan. He keeps gathering massive crowds at his rallies. For the deep state, the risk was too high. They tried to kill him and if Khan is alive today, it is only for the result of miraculous circumstances.
On Saturday 18th, the police stormed his residence. Khan is facing a trial in Islamabad where the charge is of having sold watches that he received as gifts when he was still in charge. It’s not known what is the evidence of this “crime” but this case seems to be quite weak as the one against President Trump.
Therefore, the Pakistani leader could have the opportunity to run at the next election scheduled for this coming October. It’s a nightmarish scenario for the Anglozionist powers because Pakistan would definitely shift towards the multipolar world.
However, there are still some traps set on the way and Khan knows it. This is why he urged his supporters not to engage in any kind of violence because he knows that Sharif, the current PM, is seeking a way to frame him.
So we can see how all these three attempted arrests are connected to each other. Trump, Putin and Khan belong to the international patriotic alliance that is fighting against the globalist side.
On the one hand, we have a side of leaders who are fighting to preserve the sovereignity of their countries. On the other, we have unelected powerful banking families like the Rothschilds who have been trying to destroy the independence and prosperity of every country in the world.
What we saw in the last 14 days is just the latest chapter of this current war between these two sides.
And the globalist side is being inflicted tremendous blows.
Only in this week, Putin received more than 40 African leaders in a conference about the multipolar world. And why he was attending this event, he also received the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
The BRICS are changing the lines of international politics. The world is shifting from the rule of the Anglosphere empire towards the restoration of the national States.
When Xi Jinping states that the changes that Russia and China are driving are unprecedented in the last 100 years, he’s quite right.
Even Saudi Arabia, a country forged by British and Zionist powers, understood that things went south and restored diplomatic relationships with Iran.
The world is changing at a tremendous speed. We are moving from the old globalized and centralized world towards one when there are no ruling powers. The age of the empires has died. The age of the nations has begun again.
After the defeat of NATO in Ukraine, which is running out of ammunitions, we will have passed the point of no return. NATO’s crisis will be so deep to the point that it could dissolve itself.
At that point, the EU, the last frail bulwark of globalism will be encircled. The crisis of the European establishment will aggravate and people in the EU countries will demand the end of neoliberal austerity and the normalization of relations with Russia.
Italy still seems to be the ideal candidate to run this process considering the fact that she has the most euro skeptical and most pro-Russia people in Europe.
And this is a perspective that scares a lot of members of both the Italian and EU deep state.
The old world of despotism is dying. The new world of free nations is being created.
We are certainly living in one of the most exciting and important times in history.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | European Union, ICC, NATO, Pakistan, Ukraine, United States |
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The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) should not be considered as a target during current hostilities, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday, commenting on Kiev’s statement about capturing the plant by force.
During his visit to the territory of the ZNPP, Grossi pointed to the need to agree on one important thing — the nuclear power plant should not be attacked and used for attacks in the other direction.
The idea is the basis of a new concept, currently being developed to protect the ZNPP, the IAEA chief said, adding that it envisages narrowing the safety zone around the plant. He insists that new measures have to be taken in order to protect the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant as situation here is not getting better. According to Grossi, hostilities around the area are intensifying so the agency is developing a new protection concept for the plant, and discusses this issue with Russia and Ukraine.
Rosenergoatom, a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom supports the stance of IAEA head Rafael Grossi that the ZNPP should not be used as a target or for blackmail, Rosenergoatom spokesman Renat Karchaa said on Wednesday.
“We fully support the position of the IAEA and Mr. Grossi on the inadmissibility of using the ZNPP as a target, but we are also categorically against the use of the plant as an instrument of blackmail and manipulation,” Karchaa told reporters after inspecting the plant’s territory with Grossi.
The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, under the control of Russian forces since March, is persitently shelled by Ukrainian militants. Moscow has repeatedly warned that such attacks should be considered as acts of nuclear terrorism.
March 29, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Nuclear Power, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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