Trump nominee for UN ambassador says Jews have ‘biblical right’ to occupied West Bank
(Photo credit: Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times)
The Cradle | January 22, 2025
Representative Elise Stefanik, recently nominated by President Donald Trump for the position of US ambassador to the UN, said that she supports the claims made by the far right in Israel that Jews have the “biblical right” to take land from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York, made the statement while being questioned during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on 21 January to discuss her confirmation as the new UN Ambassador.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen asked Stefanik whether she supported Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
Stefanik, who is known to be a staunch advocate of Israel and supports its decision to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), refused to answer the question directly, saying, “I think they deserve more than the failures that they have suffered under the leadership of terrorists.”
Van Hollen pressed her further by saying that she had previously stated to him in a private meeting that “Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank.”
“I rarely get surprised by answers in my office, but I asked you if you believe the views of Israeli Finance Minister (Bezalel) Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who believe that Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank. In that conversation, you said to me (yes) that you agree with that view. Is that your view today?”
Stefanik responded with one word, “Yes.”
The term “biblical right” refers to claims by extremist Jews and Zionist Christians that the Torah included a promise from God to give the entire historical land of Palestine to modern-day Jews. It claims that Jews are justified in killing and ethnically cleansing Palestinian Christians and Muslims from their lands and homes.
In June last year, US-Israeli billionaire Miriam Adelson reportedly donated $100 million to Trump for his presidential campaign in exchange for a promise to allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
https://twitter.com/KhalilJeries/status/1874889229815460333
Representative Stefanik was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2014, the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time, at just 30 years old, and represented New York’s 21st Congressional District.
She made headlines in 2024 by questioning the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about what she claimed was antisemitism on college campuses.
At the time, US students at university campuses all across the country were protesting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
After positioning herself as a champion in the fight against the alleged rise in antisemitism, Rep. Stefanik began receiving large donations from Republican Jewish donors.
POLITICO reported that she “raked in more than $7 million during the first quarter of the year [2024] fueled by her support from prominent Jewish Republicans in the wake of her grilling of university presidents over campus antisemitism.”
The claim that Israeli Jews have the biblical right to the West Bank ignores the rights of Palestine’s indigenous Christians, who have lived in the Holy Land continuously since the time of Jesus over 2000 years ago. Palestinian Christians refer to themselves as “living stones,” in reference to Jesus telling his disciple Peter, “On this rock I will build my church.”
https://twitter.com/a_westgate/status/1718710112603283504
Israel’s occupation and Jewish settlement of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 have brought the Palestinian Christian community to the brink of extinction.
In January of last year, Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem stated, “Here in the West Bank, many Palestinian Christian families have already left out of fear. They look at what was happening in Gaza, and they think, ‘Could this happen to us one day?’”
Isaac said it is “impossible to thrive as a community in the midst of conflict, oppression and occupation.”
Who is Trump’s Pick For Pentagon’s Middle East Policy Chief?
Sputnik – 22.01.2025
Former CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer Michael P. DiMino, who advocated for humanitarian aid to Gaza and against escalation with Iran, has been sworn in as the Pentagon’s Middle East policy chief.
He will be responsible for signing off on all foreign military agreements on the supply of weapons to US-aligned countries in the region, including Israel.
Earlier, DiMino criticized Biden’s administration for failing to pressure Israel on opening the humanitarian flow to Gaza; meanwhile, he praised the former administration for refusing to participate in Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iran, Al-Monitor reports.
It’s Official: US Abandoning Ukraine
By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | January 22, 2025
On January 19th, TIME magazine published an astonishing article, amply confirming what dissident, anti-war academics, activists, journalists and researchers have argued for a decade. The US always intended to abandon Ukraine after setting up the country for proxy war with Russia, and never had any desire or intention to assist Kiev in defeating Moscow in the conflict, let alone achieving its maximalist aims of regaining Crimea and restoring the country’s 1991 borders. To have a major mainstream outlet finally corroborate this indubitable reality is a seismic development.
The TIME article’s brief first paragraph alone is rife with explosive revelations. It notes when the proxy war erupted in February 2022, then-President Joe Biden “set three objectives for the US response” – and “Ukraine’s victory was never among them.” Moreover, the phrase oft-repeated by White House apparatchiks, that Washington would support Kiev “for as long as it takes”, was never meant to be taken literally. Instead, it was just “intentionally vague” newspeak, with no implied timeframe or even desired outcome in mind.
Eric Green, a member of Biden’s National Security Council who oversaw Russia policy, states the US “deliberately…made no promise” to President Volodymyr Zelensky to “recover all of the land Russia had occupied” since the conflict’s inception, “and certainly not” Crimea or the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. He said the White House believed “doing so was beyond Ukraine’s ability, even with robust help from the West.” It was well-understood such efforts were “not going to be a success story ultimately” for Kiev, if tried.
According to TIME, the Biden administration’s three key objectives in Ukraine were all “achieved”. Nonetheless, “success” on these fronts “provides little satisfaction” to some of the former President’s “closest allies and advisers.” Green was quoted as saying Washington’s purported victory in Ukraine was “unfortunately the kind of success where you don’t feel great about it,” due to Kiev’s “suffering”, and “so much uncertainty about where it’s ultimately going to land.”
‘Direct Conflict’
One objective was “avoiding direct conflict between Russia and NATO.” Miraculously, despite the US and its allies consistently crossing Moscow’s clearly stated red lines on assistance to Kiev, providing Ukraine with weaponry and other support Biden himself explicitly and vehemently ruled out in March 2022, on the grounds it could cause World War III, and greenlighting hazardously escalatory strikes deep inside Russian territory, so far all-out hot war has failed to materialise. On this front perhaps, the former President can be said to have triumphed.
However, another “was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.” This prospect dwindles daily, as the proxy war’s frontline teeters constantly on total collapse. Kiev is facing an eventual and seemingly inevitable rout of some magnitude, with the conflict likely settled solely on Russia’s terms, and Zelensky – or whoever replaces him – having no negotiating position to speak of. In December 2024, Empire house journal Foreign Policy even openly advocated cutting Kiev out of eventual peace talks.
Biden also “wanted the US and its allies to remain united.” It is this objective that most obviously failed, and quite spectacularly. As this journalist has repeatedly documented, British intelligence has consistently sought to escalate the proxy conflict into all-out war between the West and Russia, and encouraged Kiev in its maximalist aims, to the extent of covertly plotting grand operations for the purpose, and training Ukrainians to execute them. London’s overriding ambition, per leaked documents, is “to keep Ukraine fighting at all costs.”
The Western media has acknowledged Ukraine’s calamitous August 2024 invasion of Russia’s Kursk region was to all intents and purposes a British operation. London provided a vast welter of equipment to Kiev “central” to the effort, and “closely” advised their Ukrainian counterparts on strategy. The aim was to draw Russian forces away from Donbass and boost Kiev’s bargaining position, which has proven a staggering embarrassment on both fronts. But there was a wider, more insidious goal behind the incursion.
Britain openly and eagerly advertised its fundamental role in the Kursk misadventure to bolster public support at home for continuing the proxy war, and “persuade key allies to do more to help.” In other words, to normalise open Western involvement, and create the “direct conflict” the Biden administration was so keen to avoid. London was also at the forefront of pressuring NATO member states to permit Ukraine to use foreign-supplied weaponry and materiel inside Russia, which could likewise produce their long-sought hot war against Moscow.
Several Western countries – including the US – have offered such authorisation. Yet, Russia has consistently responded to strikes deep inside its territory with heavy duty counterattacks, which Kiev has been unable to repel. Meanwhile, London’s invitation to its allies to become more overtly involved in the proxy war was evidently rebuffed. In November 2024 too, pro-government outlet Ukrainska Pravda published a startling investigation, documenting in forensic detail how the October 2023 – June 2024 Krynky operation was, à la Kursk, essentially British.
Never spoken of by Ukrainian officials today, the nine-month effort saw wave after wave of British-trained and equipped marines attempt to secure a beachhead in a river-adjacent village in Russian-controlled Kherson. Poorly prepared, many died attempting to reach Krynky, due to relentless artillery, drone, flamethrower and mortar fire. Of those that survived the nightmarish journey, most were then killed under a constant and ever-intensifying blitz, in marsh conditions. Russia’s onslaught grew so inexorable, evacuating casualties or providing forces with even basic supplies became borderline impossible.
Survivors of the Krynky catastrophe – one of the absolute worst in military history – who spoke to Ukrainska Pravda revealed it was hoped the beachhead would be a “game-changer”, opening a second front in the conflict, allowing Kiev’s invading marines to march upon Crimea and all-out victory in the proxy war. They hoped to recreate the June 1944 Normandy landings – D-Day. It is all too easy to envisage British intelligence filling the heads of their Ukrainian trainees with such fantasies.
‘Settle Up’
Fast forward to today, and Britain and France are openly discussing sending “peacekeepers” to Ukraine, to “help underpin” whatever “post-war settlement” emerges between Kiev and Moscow. This is after in February 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested formally deploying his country’s forces to Ukraine to halt Moscow’s advance. The proposal was summarily dropped and forgotten when Russian officials made abundantly clear each and every French soldier dispatched to the frontline would be killed without hesitation, and Paris could become a formal belligerent in the war.
It appears the “peacekeeping” plan is likely to suffer the same fate. On January 20th, coincidentally or not the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, CIA-created Radio Free Europe published an explainer guide on why sending European troops to Ukraine is “a nonstarter”. Among other things, as the Russians are unambiguously winning, they are unlikely to offer many concessions, particularly allowing foreign soldiers to occupy Kiev’s territory. Furthermore, “as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Moscow can block any peacekeeping mission.”
As if the message to London and Paris wasn’t emphatic enough, two weeks earlier, at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump made numerous comments reiterating his commitment to ending the proxy war. “We’re going to have to settle up with Russia,” he declared. Notably, the President sympathised with Moscow’s “written in stone” determination Kiev not be enrolled into NATO, warned the situation “could escalate to be much worse,” and stated his hope the conflict could be wrapped up within six months.
Markedly, Zelensky was not invited to Trump’s inauguration. In a January 6th interview with Newsweek, the Ukrainian President – typically never one to shy away from international jollies – said he was unable to attend, as it wasn’t “proper” to do so “during the war”. Amusingly, Trump’s son Donald Jr. has rubbished Zelensky’s narrative, claiming the – “weirdo” – had specifically “asked for an invite” on three occasions, “and each time got turned down.”
For Berlin, Kiev, London, Paris, and NATO more widely, the writing couldn’t be on the wall any more plainly. Whatever reveries they may have of maintaining the proxy war any longer – Britain recently signed a 100-year-long partnership with Ukraine, under which London will “explore” building military bases on Kiev’s soil – they all ultimately remain imperial vassals, wholly dependent on US financial and military support to exist. Save for a major false flag incident, Trump’s message can only be received among the military alliance.
Ukraine Was Always Just Anti-Russian ‘Battering Ram’ to US – Ex-Pentagon Analyst
Sputnik – 21.01.2025
The Trump administration has little interest in wasting money on Ukraine, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, former analyst for the US Department of Defense, tells Sputnik while commenting on Trump’s decision to suspend US foreign aid programs.
Withholding monies to Ukraine is a “starting point in explaining to Zelensky that the gravy train is over,” the expert thinks.
It has become increasingly obvious that the United States “doesn’t care for Ukraine,” regarding the latter merely as a “battering ram,” a “tool” to be used against Russia, Kwiatkowski remarks.
“So if Ukraine is a tool, it’s now a tool that is no longer very useful. It’s a tool that is hard to maintain. It’s not worth it. So we’re going to throw that tool away,” she says.
US Senator Lindsey Graham’s declaration about fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” however heartless it may sound, “reflects how the Senate and how the politicians and the oligarchy in the United States really feel about Ukraine,” she added.
Trump’s Second Act: What it means for Russia and the global order
By Andrey Ilnitsky | Kommersant | January 16, 2025
The idea of inflicting “strategic defeats” on Russia has been a cornerstone of US policy for a long time. It transcends party lines and is implemented regardless of which administration occupies the White House. The only real differences lie in the methods used to achieve this objective. In this era of global transformation, it is critical for Moscow to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of its opponents. By understanding the nuances of US President Donald Trump’s administration – now back in power – Russia must craft its own strategy of resilience and development, rooted in sovereign interests.
This is not a new game. In 2014, Foreign Affairs published an article by John Mearsheimer, the renowned American political scientist behind the theory of offensive realism. In his piece, Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault, Mearsheimer argued that NATO’s strategic ambitions in Eastern Europe provoked Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine. His insights, dismissed at the time, have since been vindicated by events.
Fast forward to December 2024: Mearsheimer’s skepticism resurfaced in an interview with Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, published by UnHerd. Mearsheimer doubted that Trump, despite his unconventional rhetoric, would bring meaningful change to US policy. “Trump is surrounded by hawks with deeply entrenched Russophobia,” he observed. While Trump’s personal views might differ from Washington orthodoxy, the forces shaping his administration remain aligned with America’s long-standing ambitions of hegemony.
Trump’s first term demonstrated this paradox clearly. Despite his campaign promises to “get along with Russia” and even consider recognizing Crimea, little changed. While Trump and President Vladimir Putin met six times and engaged in what seemed like constructive dialogue, US policy continued to push Russia out of global energy markets, impose sanctions, and arm Ukraine. At a 2023 rally, Trump himself dismissed accusations of being “soft on Russia,” boasting that he had sent “hundreds of Javelins” to Ukraine while the Obama administration sent “pillows.”
Expecting Trump’s second term to usher in a multipolar and equitable global order would be naive. The real power behind Trump’s administration – interest groups, corporations, and donors – has little incentive to pursue peace. His 2023-2024 campaign received significant backing from military-industrial giants like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, as well as Silicon Valley’s venture capital elite. These forces thrive on perpetual conflict, where war is repackaged as “peace through strength.”
Trump’s geopolitical priorities are clear: undermine China’s rise as an economic and technological powerhouse while maintaining pressure on Russia. Elbridge Colby, a key figure in Trump’s foreign policy team, has articulated this strategy bluntly. Writing in May 2024, Colby argued that America must prioritize Asia – specifically China – over Europe and Russia. “The logic of Cold War strategy,” he wrote, “once led America to Europe; today it suggests that America should focus on Asia. China is the main rival.”
The inclusion of Marco Rubio in Trump’s foreign policy apparatus reinforces this anti-China focus. Rubio, a staunch critic of Beijing, has long warned of China’s ambitions to become the world’s dominant power “at the expense of everyone else.” Trump’s pivot to Asia is clear, but his strategy remains rooted in American exceptionalism and hegemony.
Domestically, Trump’s team envisions America as a “subcontinental fortress,” invoking a modernized Monroe Doctrine. This vision includes greater control over Canada, Greenland, and Panama, and a tighter grip on Central and South America. The goal? To secure America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere while sidelining external powers like China and Russia.
Technology and military innovation are central to this vision. Trump’s administration aims to leverage artificial intelligence and cutting-edge dual-use technologies to maintain global superiority. This requires a complete reboot of the US military-industrial complex and a closer alignment between civilian industries and defense objectives. However, the question remains: can Washington, with its internal divisions and waning influence, successfully implement such an ambitious strategy?
For Russia, this geopolitical landscape poses serious challenges but also offers opportunities. The unipolar world order led by the US is undeniably weakening. Multipolarity is no longer just an aspiration; it is becoming a reality. However, the US and its allies are not retreating quietly. Instead, they are intensifying hybrid warfare against nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – countries labeled as “revisionist regimes.”
Trump’s rhetoric may appear bold and unconventional, but his administration’s actions are predictable. The MAGA doctrine of 2024 is less about genuine transformation and more about reasserting US dominance at any cost. Whether through economic coercion, military intervention, or ideological posturing, the goal remains the same: enforce a world order dictated by Washington.
For Russia, the path forward is clear. We must remain steadfast in defending our sovereignty and values. Unlike the West, which prioritizes hegemony, Russia stands for a multipolar world where nations have the right to determine their own destinies. The challenges are immense, but so are the opportunities. In this new era of great power competition, Russia’s resolve will be tested, but our commitment to our people and our principles will guide us through.
Andrey Ilnitsky is a member of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy and senior research fellow at the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
This article was first published by the newspaper Kommersant and was translated and edited by the RT team.
Trump Orders U.S. to Withdraw From World Health Organization
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 21, 2025
Within roughly 8 hours of taking his oath of office, President Donald Trump on Monday signed an order to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Trump’s executive order cited numerous reasons for pulling the U.S. out of the WHO, including:
“The organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic … and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”
The WHO also “continues to demand unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S., the order stated. “China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.”
Commenting on the news, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland told The Defender:
“I applaud President Trump’s decision to leave the World Health Organization. It hasn’t been transparent, based on science, or serving the U.S. interest in public health.
“The World Health Organization is not a reformable institution. Its proposed Pandemic Treaty is a nightmare and would lead to more gain-of-function research and pandemics.”
Holland said she hopes the move “will lead to a global reconsideration of how to handle public health and international crises.”
Public health physician and biotech consultant Dr. David Bell told The Defender, “WHO needs a radical shake-up.”
Bell, a former medical officer and scientist at the WHO, said the WHO needs a “massive downsizing” and “to return to basic public health rather than the profit-driven false agenda of rising pandemic risk that WHO has embarked on.”
For instance, Bell criticized recent WHO efforts to push the mpox vaccine in Africa, diverting resources from addressing far more deadly health issues, such as malaria, malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
“If WHO does not respond by a total reversal of direction and values,” Bell said, “then we should hope that this withdrawal goes forward and others join.”
Trump’s move came as no surprise. As early as December 2023, his transition team was pushing for an exit from the WHO on day one of the new administration.
U.S. law requires a one-year notice and the payment of any outstanding fees when the country withdraws from the WHO. That means the final full withdrawal will take effect in early 2026.
Monday’s executive order came as a follow-up to Trump’s efforts during his first presidential term to withdraw from the WHO.
In July 2020, Trump moved to officially withdraw the U.S. from the WHO by submitting a notice of withdrawal to the United Nations’ (U.N.) secretary-general.
The withdrawal would have taken effect July 6, 2021. However, Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, who on Jan. 20, 2021, retracted Trump’s withdrawal notification letter.
Monday’s executive order revoked Biden’s letter. It also said the secretary of state would immediately inform the U.N.’s secretary-general — again — of the U.S. intention to withdraw.
The order also revoked another order Biden issued in January 2021 that called for a U.S. federal response to COVID-19 that included “engaging with and strengthening the World Health Organization.”
U.S. government personnel or contractors working “in any capacity” with the WHO will be recalled and reassigned, the order stated.
Investigative journalist Whitney Webb cautioned against reading too much into Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO.
She wrote in an X post:
“To be fair, Trump also left the WHO in mid-2020 and then just redirected what was once WHO funding to the Gates-funded GAVI vaccine alliance. While leaving the WHO is positive, it is not the slam dunk some are advertising, especially considering Gates’ recent comments on Trump’s enthusiasm for his ‘vaccine innovation’ proposals.”
U.S. is WHO’s biggest funder
The U.S. is by far the WHO’s largest financial backer, Reuters reported, providing roughly 18% of the organization’s overall budget.
The WHO’s most recent budget, for 2024-2025, was $6.8 billion.
The next-largest state donor — when combining mandatory fees and voluntary contributions — is Germany, which provides around 3%, Reuters said.
Germany’s health minister today said that leaders in Berlin will try to talk Trump out of his decision.
When asked about Trump’s order, Guo Jiakun — a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry — said today at a regular press briefing that the WHO’s role in global health governance should be strengthened, not weakened.
“China will continue to support the WHO in fulfilling its responsibilities, and deepen international public health cooperation,” Jiakun said.
The WHO said in a statement that it regrets Trump’s decision. “We hope the United States will reconsider.”
WHO pandemic treaty would have ‘no binding force’ in U.S.
Although the full withdrawal by the U.S. from the WHO won’t take effect until January 2026, Monday’s executive order said U.S. negotiations on a WHO-led pandemic treaty or amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) will cease immediately.
Independent journalist James Roguski pointed out on Substack that there aren’t any negotiations underway.
Negotiations stopped last May when negotiators failed to submit final texts for the two documents before the May 24 deadline.
Instead, member states on June 1, 2024, agreed to a smaller package of amendments.
Monday’s order closes the door to the possibility that the U.S. might resume negotiations during the next year — or implement the few IHR amendments passed last June. Trump’s order stated:
“While withdrawal is in progress, the Secretary of State will cease negotiations on the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the amendments to the International Health Regulations, and actions taken to effectuate such agreement and amendments will have no binding force on the United States.”
Roguski said Trump should go further by issuing a letter that revokes the amendments the WHO adopted on June 1, 2024, and clarifies that the U.S. “is also exiting the International Health Regulations.”
In May 2024, 22 state attorneys general said in a letter that they would refuse to comply with a WHO-led pandemic treaty or IHR amendments. They cited concerns about national sovereignty and civil liberties.
Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst told The Defender she was “delighted” by Trump’s announcement.
Terhorst said that she and other international lawyers who worked to stop the WHO’s “power grab” discovered that the U.S. delegation had been the “primary force behind the power grab.”
Trump also signs order to end gov’t censorship
Other orders signed Monday include one that restores free speech and ends federal censorship of U.S. citizens.
“Over the last 4 years,” the order said, “the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.”
It continued:
“Under the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.
“Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.”
That can’t happen anymore, the order said.
Citing the First Amendment, the order outlined what will now be the policy of the federal government when it comes to free speech. The government’s job is to:
(a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
(c) ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and
(d) identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.
No federal agency, department or worker can use government resources for an activity that contradicts that job, the order said.
The order also called on state attorneys general to investigate whether the Biden administration engaged in censorship of Americans’ views. It directed them to write a report about its findings that includes “recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings.”
It is unclear how the order may affect ongoing litigation related to federal censorship.
That’s because the order’s final clause states that the order is not intended to — and does not — “create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”
On Jan. 6, CHD petitioned the Supreme Court to hear its case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
“The record in CHD v. Meta,” Holland said, “clearly shows Facebook’s close collaboration with the White House to censor vaccine-related speech, even pre-COVID.”
CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg told The Defender she is “certainly pleased” to see the new administration take quick action to address the “rampant censorship by the government over the past four years and to investigate governmental wrongdoing.”
“However,” Rosenberg said, “CHD’s censorship cases will continue. We have provided the courts with substantial evidence of wrongdoing by the government and by social media companies against CHD.”
“The executive order — while a significant positive step — does not remedy the harms done to CHD,” she added.
Related articles in The Defender:
- Is Trump Transition Team Pushing for WHO Exit on Day One?
- WHO Approves First Mpox Vaccine for Adults in Africa — Then Says Babies Can Get It, Too, Despite No Clinical Trials
- WHO Passes ‘Watered-down’ IHR Amendments, Plans to Revisit Pandemic Treaty ‘Within a Year’
- 22 AGs Oppose WHO Pandemic Treaty, Citing Threats to Sovereignty and Civil Liberties
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
The Budapest Memorandum: The Fake Narrative Supporting a Long War in Ukraine
By Professor Glenn Diesen | January 21, 2025
Narratives have been constructed to support a long war in Ukraine. For example, the narrative of an “unprovoked invasion” was important to criminalise diplomacy as the premise suggests negotiations would reward Russian military adventurism and embolden further Russian aggression. Meanwhile, NATO escalating the war creates costs that outweigh the benefits to Russia.
Russia’s violation of the Budapest Memorandum is a key narrative that supports a long war. It is constantly referenced as a reason why Russia cannot be trusted to abide by a peace agreement, and why the war must keep going. The argument is that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees for its territorial integrity. Russia’s breach of this agreement suggests it cannot be trusted and that the only reliable security guarantees must come from NATO membership. Furthermore, the West must continue to send weapons to Ukraine to honour the security guarantees of the Budapest Memorandum.
In February 2022, a few days before the Russian invasion, Zelensky referred to the Budapest Memorandum: “Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability. We don’t have that weapon. We also have no security.” The Budapest Memorandum was again used by Zelensky in October 2024 to support the argument that Ukraine must either have NATO or nukes: “Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and then it will be a defence for us, or Ukraine will be in NATO”.
This article presents facts and arguments that challenge the false narrative of the Budapest Memorandum, which aims to delegitimise diplomacy. Criticising the narrative of the Budapest Memorandum does not entail “legitimising” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is a common tactic to smear and censor criticism against the narratives supporting a long war.
No Security Guarantees and No Ukrainian Nuclear Weapons
The Budapest Memorandum does not offer any security “guarantees”, rather it provides “assurances”. Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer, who was part of the US negotiation team in 1994, argues the US was explicit that “guarantees” should not be confused with “assurances”. Pifer also confirms this was understood by both the Ukrainians and the Russians:
“American officials decided the assurances would have to be packaged in a document that was not legally-binding. Neither the Bush nor Clinton administrations wanted a legal treaty that would have to be submitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification. State Department lawyers thus took careful interest in the actual language, in order to keep the commitments of a political nature. U.S. officials also continually used the term “assurances” instead of “guarantees,” as the latter implied a deeper, even legally-binding commitment of the kind that the United States extended to its NATO allies”.[1]
Ukraine also did not have any nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons in question were former Soviet nuclear weapons that were stationed in Ukraine, but under the control of Moscow. Kiev did not and could not operate or maintain these weapons, which is usually left out of the narrative. Furthermore, in the Minsk agreement of 1991, Ukraine had already committed itself to the “destruction of nuclear weapons” on its territory.[2]
The Not-So-Sacred Memorandum
In December 1994, the US, UK, and Russia met in the Hungarian capital and offered security commitments in three separate agreements with Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. These three countries agreed to relinquish the nuclear weapons that had been left on their territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in return, the US, UK and Russia offered commitments to not undermine their security. The Budapest Memorandum outlined key principles such as “to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind”, and to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine”. In a display of cherry-picking, NATO countries constantly ignore the first commitment but constantly refer to the second commitment.
The US claims its use of economic coercion and violation of Ukrainian sovereignty was in support of democracy and human rights as opposed to advancing its own interests. Thus, the US freed itself from its commitments under the Budapest Memorandum. Under the so-called rules-based international order, the US and its allies claim the prerogative to exempt themselves from international law, norms and agreements under the guise of supporting humanitarian law and liberal democratic norms.[3]
When the US imposed sanctions on Belarus in 2013, Washington explicitly stated that the Budapest Memorandum was not legally binding and that US actions were exempted as the US was allegedly promoting human rights:
“Although the Memorandum is not legally binding, we take these political commitments seriously and do not believe any U.S. sanctions, whether imposed because of human rights or non-proliferation concerns, are inconsistent with our commitments to Belarus under the Memorandum or undermine them. Rather, sanctions are aimed at securing the human rights of Belarusians and combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other illicit activities, not at gaining any advantage for the United States”.[4]
The Western-backed coup in 2014 had been an even more blatant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The West interfered in the domestic affairs of Ukraine, imposed economic sanctions, and finally toppled the Ukrainian president to pull the country into NATO’s orbit. The commitments under the Budapest Memorandum were cast aside as the West claimed to support a “democratic revolution”, despite being an unconstitutional coup that did not even enjoy majority support from the Ukrainians and only a small minority of Ukrainians supported NATO membership.
International law imposes rules and mutual constraints that limit foreign policy flexibility, but in return deliver reciprocity and thus predictability. Once the West freed itself from mutual constraints in the Budapest Memorandum, Russia also abandoned it. US Ambassador Jack Matlock who participated in negotiating an end to the Cold War, questions the validity of the Budapest Memorandum after the coup in 2014. According to Matlock, the principle in international law of rebus sic stantibus means that agreements should be upheld “provided things remain the same”. Matlock argues that Russia “strictly observed its obligations in the Budapest Memorandum for 13 years” even as NATO expanded towards its borders, although the coup of 2014 created “a radically different international situation”. Matlock thus concludes that Russia was “entitled to ignore the earlier agreement”.[5]
Learning the right lessons
An honest assessment of why the Budapest Memorandum collapsed is important to assess how new agreements can be improved. NATO’s demand for hegemony in Europe and rejection of a common European security architecture inevitably led to the collapse of common agreements as the West would no longer accept the principle of mutual constraints and obligations. Liberal hegemony entailed that the West could exempt itself from international law and agreements, while Russia would still abide by them. The narrative of Ukrainian nuclear weapons, security guarantees, and ignoring the US and UK violation of the Budapest Memorandum serves the purpose of sowing distrust in any future security agreements with Russia. A mutually beneficial peace is possible if we first return to the truth.
[1] S. Pifer, 2011. The Trilater Proce The United States, Ukraine, Russia and Nuclear Weapons, Foreign Policy at Brookings, Arms Control Series, Paper 6, May 2011, p.17. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/05_trilateral_process_pifer.pdf
[2] Agreement on Strategic Forces Concluded between the 11 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States on December 30, 1991. https://www.bits.de/NRANEU/START/documents/strategicforces91.htm
[3] G. Diesen, ‘The Case for Dismantling the Rules-Based International Order, Substack, 23 December 2024.
[4] US Embassy in Belarus, ‘Belarus: Budapest Memorandum’, U.S. Embassy in Minsk, 12 April 2013.
[5] J. Matlock, ‘Ambassador Jack Matlock on Ukraine, Russia, and the West’s Mistakes’, Nuova Rivista Storica
Behind ‘Salt Typhoon’ – US intelligence agencies’ mass surveillance of its citizens
Global Times | January 17, 2025
Following the US hype of the so-called “Volt Typhoon” false narrative to discredit China in the first half of 2024, by the end of 2024, the US fabricated another so-called “hacker group associated with the Chinese government” – the “Salt Typhoon,” promoting the narrative of “Chinese cyber threats.” However, professionals in the field of cyberspace told the Global Times that the so-called “Salt Typhoon” not only lacks any substantial evidence but also exposes the fact that US intelligence agencies are conducting large-scale surveillance and espionage against their own citizens.
On Friday, the Global Times learned from a source that during discussions with their American counterparts, China’s diplomats on cyber affairs firmly rejected the US accusations against China regarding the individual cases such as “Salt Typhoon” and “Volt Typhoon” in the absence of evidence. They also expressed concerns about the US large-scale cyber espionage activities targeting China and the threats posed to China’s critical information infrastructure.
On the same day, China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Center of China (known as CNCERT) released two investigative reports, exposing two recent cyberattacks by US intelligence agencies targeting major Chinese technology firms to steal trade secrets.
‘Salt Typhoon’ – new farce to smear China
On September 25, 2024, an “exclusive” report by Wall Street Journal claimed that “hackers linked to the Chinese government have broken into a handful of US internet-service providers in recent months in pursuit of sensitive information” for preparation of future cyberattacks.
Then on October 25, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) sent a joint statement, claiming that the US government is investigating the unauthorized access to commercial telecommunications infrastructure by actors affiliated with China.
However, a separate report by American media on October 27 denied the aforementioned hype and revealed the underlying motives behind the US media’s sensationalism regarding “Salt Typhoon.” A report by The Washington Post said, “the Salt Typhoon group is also thought to have targeted the system that tracks lawful requests for wiretaps made by the federal government of carriers. The motive there could be to figure out who the FBI and other federal agencies have under surveillance.”
It is not difficult to see that the key behind the “Salt Typhoon” is the “private eavesdropping and surveillance system” that American telecommunications companies have specifically established for federal law enforcement agencies, Li Yan, director of Institute of Technology and Cybersecurity, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.
The essence of the so-called “Salt Typhoon” is the large-scale wiretapping and intelligence-gathering activities conducted by US intelligence agencies on its own citizens, including political figures. The breadth and scale of the surveillance targets are astonishing, Li Yan said.
Ironically, the US government has never been able to provide solid and credible evidence linking the “Salt Typhoon” to the Chinese government, and the various pieces of information in the media are vague, Li Yan noted.
The expert said that it is not difficult to see that their goal is to muddle the public discourse and divert attention because once the accusation is substantiated, the US government cannot escape responsibility. The key issue is that the authorization and legality of domestic surveillance by US intelligence agencies would provoke backlash both domestically and internationally.
Li Yan added that in this context, diverting attention and shifting blame is of utmost urgency for the perpetrators. Moreover, US intelligence agencies could continue to hype the so-called national security threats under the pretext of “Chinese hackers,” carry out large-scale surveillance, and seek to gain more departmental interests.
Zuo Xiaodong, a professor at the School of Cybersecurity at the University of Science and Technology of China, told a Global Times that the so-called “Salt Typhoon” incident is a complete fabrication with no substantial evidence, and it is suspected to be a self-directed and self-performed operation by the US.
In simple terms, “Salt Typhoon” refers to claims made by US media that hackers have stolen data from US telecommunications agencies regarding surveillance on American citizens, which precisely exposes “the tip of the iceberg” of the large-scale surveillance conducted by US intelligence agencies, Zuo Xiaodong said.
The expert believed the US fabricating and sensationalizing the “Salt Typhoon” is to elevate the “China threat theory” to the “China cyber threat theory,” attempting to isolate China globally and create momentum for establishing international rules in cyberspace that are favorable to the US.
Latest reports: US cyberattacks China’s tech firms
Despite the US’ ongoing efforts to smear China by accusing it of “cyberattacks,” the fact is that the US is the largest source of cyberattacks in the world. According to media reports, on December 18, 2024, China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Center of China (known as CNCERT) reported two incidents of cyber espionage by US intelligence agencies targeting large technology enterprises in our country. On Friday, the CNCERT released detailed investigation findings regarding these incidents.
In one case, it said that starting from August 2024, a certain advanced materials design research unit in China was suspected to have been targeted by a cyberattack from US intelligence agencies. Analysis revealed that the attackers exploited a vulnerability in a domestic electronic document security management system to infiltrate the company’s software upgrade management server. Through the software upgrade service, they delivered control trojans to over 270 host machines of the company, stealing a large amount of commercial secrets and intellectual property.
“The attacks mainly occurred from Monday to Friday US time, with no attacks reported during major US holidays,” the report stated. “The five proxy IPs used by the attackers were completely unique and located in Germany, Romania, and other places, reflecting their high awareness of anti-tracing and a rich reserve of attack resources.”
In addition, starting from May 2023, a large high-tech enterprise in China specializing in smart energy and digital information was suspected to have been attacked by US intelligence agencies. Analysis revealed that the attackers used multiple overseas proxies to exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange, infiltrating and taking control of the company’s email server and implanting backdoor programs to continuously steal email data. At the same time, the attackers used the email server as a springboard to attack and control more than 30 devices belonging to the company and its subsidiaries, stealing a large amount of the company’s trade secrets.
Multiple facts indicate that documents previously disclosed by Snowden further reveal that the US has conducted the broadest range of cyber espionage and surveillance operations against China and the entire world to date. According to reports from Chinese security agencies and enterprises, the US has been conducting cyberattacks and espionage globally, including against China and the US’ own allies. Furthermore, it has deliberately inserted strings in Chinese and other languages to mislead attribution analysis and frame other countries, Zuo Xiaodong said.
‘US should maintain cybersecurity with responsible attitude’
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated at Friday’s press briefing that the report by CNCERT brought to light again the attempts by the US government to conduct cyberattacks and theft of trade secrets and intellectual property targeting China.
Guo expressed serious concerns about such attempts, and urged the US to immediately stop the malicious activities. China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own cyber security and interests, Guo said.
Cyberspace bears on national security and economic prosperity of all countries. The US should reflect on what it’s doing, and stop its political smears. The US should live up to its standards first before asking other countries to do the same, responsibly observe the same international rules respected by other countries, and work with the international community to maintain peace and security in cyberspace, Guo said.
Failed State America. Joe Biden’s absolute destruction of freedom of speech
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 20, 2025
Sometimes the internet seems to be overbrimming with video clips showing hilarious examples of what a failed state actually looks like. One of the most common is MPs, or ‘deputies’ actually fighting in their own parliaments against one another. The irony of these clips is that they are usually uploaded by westerners who use to them as a tool to boost or gentrify the reality of western countries’ democratic models.
But no more.
Thanks to Joe Biden’s genocidal maniacs club, the last days of his rule gave us a gem in the form of a press conference where the limit of just how America is anything but a functioning democracy was stretched to breaking point in what appeared to both be deeply sad yet comical at the same time.
As the odious Anthony Blinken gave his patronizing speech to the so-called journalists amassed before him which felt a little like an aristocrat who had gathered the servants in the library to congratulate them on finding an item of lost jewelry of her ladyship’s, we witnessed in real time what America and what these State Department’s press briefings really are: a fraud.
Blinken thanked those present for asking difficult questions, when in fact, none had really been asked in 4 years. Why? Because that is not part of the unwritten rules of how these press briefings work. But the moment he had mentioned the “difficult questions” he was, perhaps appropriately, delivered a series of difficult questions by the Jewish American journalist Max Blumenthal. What was not so surprising was how none of those questions were answered as Blinken, being a smart operator, knew if he kept composed and didn’t rise to the bait it would probably anger Blumenthal even more allowing the tirade to look on camera at least like a rant which had got out of control. Seconds passed and Blumenthal was ushered away by officials which he didn’t offer any resistance to. Moments passed before the veteran Arab journalist Sam Husseini also asked more difficult questions to an increasingly startled Blinken before we see the extent of how far America has abandoned its own free speech doctrine which it used to espouse to the rest of the world: Husseini was actually physically removed by overweight, armed police officers who you can see quite clearly feel uncomfortable about what they are doing, which most people would associate with a tin pot West African country’s ruling junta and not the American government at a press conference.
But the really shocking part of this story was yet to come: the absolute refusal by colleagues in the press room to even verbally object will have stunned journalists all over the world. It provokes many questions about journalism and what these individuals in the room think they are actually doing. We were given though a clue to quite how far journalism has died in the West and been replaced by a cheaper, easy wipe brand called ‘pseudo journalism’ – where actors take one function of journalists but who effectively work for the ruling elite rather than previously for the masses who used to fund the model by buying the actual publications. CNN reporting of the fiasco was very telling. They lost no time putting the boot into Blumenthal, who, naturally they must despise as he functions as a real journalist and they have long forgotten what this entails years ago, opting for the new model of fake news operator. They referred to Blumenthal as an “activist” – a typical slur from big media to individual journalists who carry out stellar work.
The truth about this incident is that such press conferences at the state department or indeed in the European Commission in Brussels are entirely staged. They are a theatre concocted by the elite and the press themselves as part of a dirty deal whereby the journalists ask the softball questions which allow the top figures to deliver the prepared spiel. The so-called journalists sign up to this and in return get access to individuals and scoops – although it’s important to note that the scoops are nearly always new items which serve the state’s purpose. It’s a game which has been going on for a long time and the humble masses don’t understand how they are being taken for a ride by the magicians’ allusion of something which might look credible. In these press gatherings some journalists are even asked to present certain questions which are even suggested by those holding the conference, something I witnessed myself a lot in Brussels.
It was not that the questions put to Blinken were so harsh, or even unconventional. The point is that both Blumenthal and Husseini broke the house rules when they went rogue and did what most people would view to be the role of real journalists: ask unscripted questions. Look what happens when journalist do this. We are treated to a debacle which we would expect to see in the global south, or certainly in Nazi Germany in the 30s. And this is America?
The cat is out of the bag. The whole world can see now how America has lost all its links with the democratic model and become and autocracy, run, financed and ruled by Israel’s cash. Netanyahu and his cronies must have had a really good laugh watching those journalists being removed like that. Presumably their press accreditations will be removed and certainly the worry that both of them will have is that they now mysteriously find themselves being investigated for tax irregularities, theft, fraud or even having child porn on their computers. Journalists like Blumenthal are the biggest threat to the deep state as they will never be part of the establishment and therefore will always be the most dangerous guy to tackle. The one who has nothing to lose is your biggest threat. I don’t imagine Trump and his cabal will be any kinder to him despite The Grayzone taking a more grown-up approach to Russia and how the Ukraine war is reported, as opposed to CNN’s stenographic reproduction of the State Department’s narrative, seasoned by fake news on occasion.
The real enemy for western elites is the feral truth. All pretense of a functioning democracy were eradicated in a matter of minutes with this press conference calamity which has now replaced those MPs in that central European country throwing chairs at one another in their own parliament. Great job, Joe.
The Competency Crisis Proliferating The West
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 20, 2025
The essayist and military strategist, Aurelien, has written a paper entitled: The Strange Defeat (original in French). The ‘strange defeat’ being that of Europe’s ‘curious’ inability to understand Ukraine or its military mechanics.
Aurelien highlights the strange lack of realism by which the West has approached the crisis —
“ … and the almost pathological dissociation from the real world that it displays in its words and actions. Yet, even as the situation deteriorates, and the Russian forces advance everywhere, there is no sign that the West is becoming more reality-based in its understanding – and it is very likely that it will continue to live in its alternative construction of reality until it is forcibly expelled”.
The writer continues in some detail (omitted here) to explain why NATO has no strategy for Ukraine and no real operational plan:
“It has only a series of ad hoc initiatives, linked together by vague aspirations that have no connection with real life plus the hope that ‘something [beneficial] will occur’. Our current Western political leaders have never had to develop such skills. Yet it is actually worse than that: not having developed these skills, not having advisers who have developed them, they cannot really understand what the Russians are doing, how and why they are doing it. Western leaders are like spectators who do not know the rules of chess or Go – and are trying to figure out who is winning”.
“What exactly was their goal? Now, responses such as ‘to send a message to Putin’, ‘complicate Russian logistics’, or ‘improve morale at home’ are no longer allowed. What I want to know is what is expected in concrete terms? What are the tangible results of their ‘messaging’? Can they guarantee that it will be understood? Have you anticipated the possible reactions of the Russians – and what will you do then?”
The essential problem, Aurelien bluntly concludes, is that:
“our political classes and their parasites have no idea how to deal with such crises, or even how to understand them. The war in Ukraine involves forces that are orders of magnitude larger than any Western nation has deployed on operations since 1945 … Instead of real strategic objectives, they have only slogans and fanciful proposals”.
Coldly put, the author explains that for complex reasons connected with the nature of western modernity, the liberal élites simply are not competent or professional in matters of security. And they do not understand its nature.
U.S. cultural critic Walter Kirn makes rather similar claims in a very different, yet related, context: California Fires and America’s Competency Crisis –
“Los Angeles is in flames, yet California’s leaders seem helpless, unmasking a generation of public investment in non-essential services [that leaves the Authorities floundering amidst the predicted occurrence of the fires]”.
On a Joe Rogan podcast earlier this month, a firefighter goes: “It’s just going to be the right wind and fire’s going to start in the right place and it’s going to burn through LA all the way to the ocean, and there’s not a f***ing thing we can do about it”.
Kirn observes:
“This isn’t the first fire or set of fires in Malibu. Just a few years ago, there were big fires. There always are. They’re inevitable. But having built this giant city in this place with this vulnerability, there are measures that can be taken to contain and to fend off the worst”.
“To fob it off on climate change, as I say, is a wonderful thing to tell yourself, but none of this started yesterday. My only point is this, has it done everything it can to prepare for an inevitable, unavoidable situation that perhaps in scale differs from the past, but certainly not in kind? Are its leaders up to the job? There’s not a lot of sign that they are. They haven’t been able to deal with things like homelessness without fires. So the question of whether all those things have been done, whether they’ve been done well, whether there was adequate water in fire hydrants, whether they were working at all, things like that, and whether the fire department was properly trained or properly staffed, all those questions are going to arise”.
“And as far as the competency crisis goes, I think that there will be ample material to portray this as aggravated by incompetence. California’s a state that’s become notorious for spending a lot of money on things that don’t work, on high-speed rail lines that never are constructed, on all sorts of construction projects and infrastructure projects that never come to pass. And in that context, I think this will be devastating to the power structure of California”.
“In a larger sense though, it’s going to remind people that a politics that has been for years now about language and philosophical constructs such as equity and so on, is going to be seen as having failed in the most essential way, to protect people. And that these people are powerful and influential and privileged is going to make that happen faster and in a more prominent fashion”.
To which his colleague, journalist Matt Taibbi, responds:
“But pulling back in a broader sense, we do have a crisis of competency in this country. It has had a huge impact on American politics”. Kirn: “[Americans] They’re going to want less concern for the philosophical and/or even long-term political questions of equity and so on, I predict, and they’re going to want to lay in a minimum expectation of competence in natural disasters. In other words, this is a time when the priorities shift and I think that big change is coming, big, big change, because we look like we’ve been dealing with luxury problems, and we’ve certainly been dealing with other countries’ problems, Ukraine or whoever it might be, with massive funding. There are people in North Carolina right now still recovering from a flood and having a very difficult time as winter comes, which it doesn’t in LA in the same way, or as winter consolidates itself, I guess”;
“So looking forward, it’s not a question of blame, it’s what are people going to want? What are people going to value? What are they going to prize? Are their priorities going to shift? I think they will shift big time. Los Angeles will be a touchstone and it will be a touchstone for a new approach to government”.
So we have this ‘divorce from reality’ and consequent ‘Competency Crisis’ – whether in California; Ukraine or Europe. Where lie the roots to this malaise? U.S. writer David Samuels believes this to be the answer:
“In his last days in office … President Barack Obama made the decision to set the country on a new course. On Dec. 23, 2016, he signed into law the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act, which used the language of defending the homeland to launch an open-ended, offensive information war, a war that fused the security infrastructure with the social media platforms – where the war supposedly was being fought”.
However, collapse of the 20th-century media pyramid and its rapid replacement by monopoly social media platforms, had made it possible for the Obama White House to sell policy – and reconfigure social attitudes and prejudices – in entirely new ways.
During the Trump years, Obama used these tools of the digital age to craft an entirely new type of power centre for himself – one that revolved around his unique position as the titular, though pointedly never-named, head of a Democratic Party which he succeeded in refashioning in his own image, Samuels writes.
The ‘permission structure’ machine that Barack Obama and David Axelrod (a highly successful Chicago political consultant), built to replace the Democratic Party was in its essence a device for getting people to act against their beliefs by substituting new and ‘better’ beliefs through the top-down controlled and leveraged application of social pressure – effectively turning Axelrod’s construct into ‘an omnipotent thought-machine’, Samuels suggests:
“The term ‘echo chambers’ describes the process by which the White House and its wider penumbra of think tanks and NGOs deliberately created an entirely new class of experts who mutually credentialed each other on social media in order to advance assertions that would formerly have been seen as marginal or not credible”.
The aim was for a platoon of aides, armed with laptops or smart phones, to ‘run’ with the latest inspired Party meme and to immediately repeat, and repeat it, across platforms, giving the appearance of an overwhelming tide of consensus filling the country. And thus giving people the ‘permission structure’ of apparent wide public assent to believe propositions that formerly they would never have supported.
“Where this analysis went wrong is the same place that the Obama team’s analysis of Trump went wrong: The wizards of the permission structure machine had become captives of the machinery that they built. The result was a fast-moving mirror world that could generate the velocity required to change the appearance of “what people believe” overnight. The newly minted digital variant of “public opinion” was rooted in the algorithms that determine how fads spread on social media, in which mass multiplied by speed equals momentum—speed being the key variable”.
“At every turn over the next four years, it was like a fever was spreading, and no one was immune. Spouses, children, colleagues, and supervisors at work began reciting, with the force of true believers, slogans they had only learned last week. It was the entirety of this apparatus, not just the ability to fashion clever or impactful tweets, that constituted the party’s new form of power”.
“In the end, however, the fever broke”. The credibility of Élites imploded.
Samuels account amounts to a stark warning of the danger associated with distance opening up between an underlying reality and an invented reality that could be successfully messaged, and managed, from the White House. “This possibility opened the door to a new potential for a large-scale disaster – like the war in Iraq”, Samuels suggests. (Samuels does not specifically mention Ukraine, although this is implied throughout the argument).
This – both the Obama tale, as told by David Samuels, and Walter Kirn’s story of California – augment Aurelien’s point about Ukraine and European military incompetence and lack of professionalism on the field: It is one of allowing a schism to open up between contrived narrative and reality – “which”, Samuels warns “is to say that, with enough money, operatives could create and operationalize mutually reinforcing networks of activists and experts to validate a messaging arc that would short-circuit traditional methods of validation and analysis, and lead unwary actors and audience members alike to believe that things that they had never believed; or even heard of before: Were in fact not only plausible, but already widely accepted within their specific peer groups”.
It constitutes the path to disaster – even risking nuclear disaster in the case of the Ukraine conflict. Will the ‘Competency Crisis’ reaching across such varied terrain trigger a re-think as Walter Kirn – a writer on cultural change – insists?
Blinken slammed by NYT as the “Secretary of War” for continuing war in Ukraine, Gaza
By Ahmed Adel | January 21, 2025
During his final trip as America’s top diplomat last week, Antony J. Blinken was described by French President Emmanuel Macron as “an eminent servant of peace” at a ceremony at the Élysée Palace in Paris before being awarded the country’s highest tribute, the Legion of Honour medal. However, Blinken’s reception in the US during the last few days as Secretary of State has been the polar opposite, with the New York Times describing him as the “Secretary of War” and protestors slamming him for having a “legacy” of genocide.
“Secretary Blinken! Your legacy will be genocide! You will forever be known as ‘Bloody Blinken, Secretary of Genocide,’” shouted a protester who had infiltrated an Atlantic Council event on January 16. Security officers led the protestor out of the room, as well as a man who waved a sign that read “Blinken: War Criminal.”
The founder and editor of the Grayzone website, Max Blumenthal, also interrupted the press conference, telling Blinken: “In Gaza, 300 journalists have been targeted by your bombs. We all know there was an agreement in May. Tony, you didn’t stop the flow of bombs. Why have you sacrificed a rules-based order for your commitment to Zionism?”
The Biden administration faced consistent criticism for its military and political support for Israel through its war against Hamas, which has only elevated since US President Donald Trump, days before he entered the Oval Office, managed to coerce Israel to accept a peace deal that had been on the table for most of 2024.
However, beyond activist-journalists, even the mainstream media in the US began slamming Blinken, but only days before stepping down as Secretary of State.
Blinken’s term began with the disorderly withdrawal of US personnel from Afghanistan, where Washington had accumulated forces and assets for 20 years and left everything in only a few days in August 2021. The situation was so precarious that some Republican Party congressmen demanded that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken resign, recalls the New York Times.
In a recent interview with the same newspaper, Blinken admitted that Washington began discreetly arming Kiev even before the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, specifically in September and December 2021.
In the new article, the newspaper said that the US Secretary of State was more of a war strategist than a peacemaker in the Ukrainian conflict.
“When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark A. Milley, suggested in late 2022 that Ukraine should capitalize on battlefield gains by seeking peace talks with Moscow, Mr. Blinken insisted the fight should go on,” the New York Times reported.
However, it was a new armed conflict that significantly damaged the reputation of the former head of US diplomacy. After the attack by Hamas against Israel on October 7, 2023, Blinken stressed not only the historic alliance between Tel Aviv and Washington but also his Jewish ethnicity on this issue.
But the more frightening Israel’s methods of warfare in Gaza became, the more public disillusionment with the Secretary of State grew against the backdrop of the declining effectiveness of his numerous visits to the Middle East.
“Of everyone in the cast of characters at the top, Antony Blinken has been the most disappointing,” the newspaper quoted diplomat and Iraq war veteran Michael Casey, who resigned last year from his State Department post in Jerusalem, where he worked on Gaza.
In fact, Blinken’s propensity for war has led to the New York Times finally acknowledging, albeit too late since Trump is already in power, as the “Secretary of War.”
“So entwined are Mr. Blinken’s work and his reputation with conflict that he could just as easily be called by a retired cabinet title that is still on office plaques in the old State Department building — secretary of war,” the newspaper added.
Following the chorus condemning Blinken’s passion for war, Hala Rharrit, a diplomat who resigned from the US State Department in April, said that the former Secretary of State’s choice to support Israel would “haunt” him for the rest of his life.
“When I became a diplomat, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. They are circumventing the process to continue the flow of arms, knowing how catastrophic that is. For me, it’s really unforgivable, and it is criminal,” Rharrit said.
“This will haunt him for the rest of his life. History, for sure, will judge him, and it is already doing so today,” she added.
Blinken’s legacy is tarnished, and he will forever be remembered for encouraging the continuation of war in Ukraine and Gaza when he had the power and influence to establish peace deals.
This was completely exposed when Trump managed to achieve an agreement between Israel and Gaza even before he returned to the presidency, confirming that prolonged war, and therefore the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, was because of Blinken’s decision.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Featured Video
Iran War Confusion & Mixed Messaging /Lt Col Daniel Davis
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Iran War Confusion & Mixed Messaging /Lt Col Daniel Davis
- Israel threatens Gaza flotilla activists with death after abduction
- Met refuses to probe British nationals accused of war crimes in Gaza
- Hezbollah denies activity in Syria amid persistent and false claims
- Melkite bishops concerned over Israeli demolitions in South Lebanon
- Israel’s Obliteration Ecocide from Gaza to Lebanon and Beyond
- UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report
- Wheels Down in Tbilisi: Was a Routine U.S. Military Stopover a Deliberate Signal to Iran?
- Trump’s second strike on Iran would be suicidal. But that’s not the reason why he won’t go ahead with it
- Palantir touts record expansion and ‘battlefield’ AI value
- If Americans Knew
- An All-American Retort to Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon
- How Dr. Adam Hamawy’s experience as a surgeon in Gaza inspired him to run for Congress
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- With World Distracted by War, Extremist Settlers Intensify Attacks in West Bank
- Israel’s brutality toward Gaza flotilla activists – 3 articles
- “Spitting and humiliation are daily. People are afraid to walk in Jerusalem with Christian symbols.”
- How the US-Israel Relationship Weakens America and Harms the World
- 1 in 5 amputees in Gaza is a child, UN warns amid prosthetic care crisis
- 6,000 Gazans lack prosthetic and/or rehabilitation care – Daily Update
- As in Gaza, Israel is targeting rescue workers in South Lebanon, killing more than 100 since March
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
Aletho News 