Why Putin should ignore Biden’s pathetic ATACMS provocation
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 18, 2024
As provocations go, the latest by President Joe Biden to permit the use of long-range missile strikes on Russia is certainly audacious. But, ultimately, in practice, it is a pathetic gesture by a lame-duck president that will have no impact on Russia’s anticipated military victory against the NATO-armed Kiev regime.
Biden’s reported decision is a desperate last-bid gamble to incite an escalation with Russia and to sabotage incoming plans by President-elect Trump to end the conflict in Ukraine. Biden’s move is reckless, reprehensible, and odious. But it should not be given any credibility as a serious threat.
Russia would be best to ignore it. Of course, Russia has to defend itself against any increased potential threat to its territory that such weapons may pose. Nevertheless, Moscow should continue exercising the strategic restraint that President Putin is renowned for, and not retaliate over the provocation.
Understandably, Russian politicians and media have reacted furiously to U.S. media reports that Biden gave the Ukrainian military the green light to deploy American-made ATACMS for striking deep into Russian territory. The ground-launched Mach-3 supersonic missiles have a range of up to 300 kilometers.
The audacity and arrogance of the American ruling class knows no bounds. It has sanctioned Russia to the hilt (to no avail mind you), it has weaponized a NeoNazi regime in Kiev, it has killed civilians in the Russian territory of Crimea already with ATACMS, and so on. Now Biden is ramping up the assault capability deep into Russia.
Two months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that if the U.S. took such a move, then it would dramatically alter the very essence of the conflict in Ukraine, one where Moscow would see the United States and its NATO partners as “direct participants” in a war against Russia.
Putin’s reasoning was correct. The deployment of ATACMS and other sophisticated long-range missiles against Russia would inescapably mean that American and NATO personnel were manning these systems. The Ukrainian military – riven with desertion, in disarray, and suffering from poor morale – would not be capable of targeting and operating such munitions. The use of ATACMS, or air-launched JASSMs, and the British and French Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles to hit Russia is tantamount to NATO’s direct involvement in a war against Russia.
The implication of what Putin said was grave and potentially catastrophic. If the Western states took that step, the result could mean an all-out war between nuclear powers.
When Putin issued his stark warning in September, Biden and other Western leaders, including Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, appeared at the time to heed it and back down from considerations to permit the Ukrainian regime to use long-range missiles against Russia.
Now, however, Biden has flipped to finally give his approval, according to reports. The style of anonymous U.S. officials briefing the New York Times, Washington Post, and Associated Press has all the hallmarks of an orchestrated psychological operation.
What has changed?
Simple. Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election on November 5 with a resounding victory in defiance of the political establishment that wanted Kamala Harris to win. The Republican president-elect takes over in two months when he is inaugurated on January 20. Trump has repeatedly said he will negotiate an end to the nearly three-year conflict in Ukraine, which has seen the U.S. and NATO allies bankroll a corrupt regime in Ukraine to the tune of $200 billion.
And yet after all that obscene wasting of Western public money to bloat the war machine, Russia is going to defeat the NATO proxy. The stakes for NATO’s future and the Western imperialist war machine could not be higher.
The impressive electoral mandate for Trump suggests that the American public wants the U.S. warmongering to stop and for their mounting economic and social needs to be taken care of as a priority.
Under Trump, the war racket could well be over. His nomination last week of Tulsi Gabbard – an outspoken critic of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine – as his Director of National Intelligence is a major sign of his bold intentions of negotiating a diplomatic settlement to the conflict. That means the end of the blood money flowing into the coffers of the Western military-industrial complex and Wall Street. Biden and the Democrat candidate Kamala Harris were the puppets of the war racket. To perform well, they mouthed endless Russophobia, making negotiations impossible with Moscow, and they swore to keep the conflict in Ukraine going “for as long as it takes.” European leaders like Starmer, Macron, and Scholz are equally contemptible.
As Biden packs his bags for his overdue retirement, he is rendering desperate last-minute services to the war racket that lies at the putrid heart of American capitalism. Last week, his Secretary of State Antony Blinken (another non-entity puppet) said the Biden administration would release a further $9 billion in military aid to Ukraine so that it could keep fighting the war well into next year.
Likewise, the reported green light from Biden on the use of long-range missiles is another ploy to keep the war racket going. Trump could reverse the decision when he enters the White House, but over the next two months, the Biden administration seems to be trying to sabotage Trump’s peace intentions by escalating the conflict to a dangerous point of no return.
Russia should not take the bait. For a start, the United States does not have a large supply of ATACMS to give to Ukraine. Any use of these missiles will be limited. The Kiev regime’s so-called president Vladimir Zelensky – he canceled elections months ago and rules by decree – has no chance of stopping the rapidly advancing victory of Russian forces, even with a few ATACMS.
No, this is not about defending Ukraine or enabling Zelensky’s ridiculous “victory plan”. It’s all about the American-led Western imperialist deep state wanting to provoke Russia into a dreadful escalation to keep the war profits churning.
Biden’s gesture is reckless, but it is something that should be treated with contempt. As he wanders off to the oblivion of his retirement dementia, people will soon forget about this failed politician. His 50-year career was one long shift of prostituting for U.S. imperialism.
Legally, Russia could respond to Biden’s provocation with reciprocal attacks on U.S. and NATO sites. But such an escalation is exactly what the imperialist deep state of the U.S. and its NATO lackeys are betting on.
The provocative gesture is more symbolic than a substantive threat. Russia should ignore it and focus on demolishing the NATO proxy regime in Kiev, and with that, thereby deal a fatal blow to U.S. and NATO credibility.
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Former Biden Press Sec. Psaki Demands New Laws to Curb Online “Disinformation” After Harris Loss
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 18, 2024
Former White House press secretary, notorious for saying that the Biden administration had been flagging social media posts for “misinformation” recently voiced concerns on the Next Question podcast with Katie Couric about the pervasive spread of “disinformation” on social media, attributing it as a significant factor in Vice President Kamala Harris’s electoral defeat to President-elect Donald Trump. Psaki called for legislative changes to enhance accountability for social media platforms.
“One of the things that’s changed even since I got involved in politics is just the rise of the percentage of people who get their information off of platforms that have no fact-checking mechanism and no accountability for having disinformation spread,” Psaki said.
During their discussion, Psaki lamented the evolution of information dissemination, noting the increasing reliance on platforms free of legacy control. She highlighted the discrepancy in standards between local TV and social media, stating, “Local TV is held to a higher standard of accountability than social media platforms in terms of accurate information on their platforms. That is crazy!”
Psaki added, “Laws have to change. I don’t even know the entire answer to it but that seems to me to be a core issue.”
Psaki didn’t mention the First Amendment.
Iranian engineer quits Google over tech giant’s collaboration with Israel amid Gaza genocide
Iranian software engineer Alireza Zakeri
Press TV – November 18, 2024
Iranian software engineer Alireza Zakeri has announced his resignation from Google over the American tech giant’s collaboration with Israel amid the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed over 43,000 people in the territory since early October last year.
“I’m happy to announce that I have left Google!” he wrote in a post published on his Linkedin account on Monday, adding that “this decision reflects my values.”
“After learning about Google’s involvement in Project Nimbus, I voiced my concerns for several months. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of many employees, leadership chose to maintain its stance and dismiss our collective concerns,” he added.
Project Nimbus is reportedly a $1.2 billion deal between the Tel Aviv regime and Amazon and Google to provide artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services that are also used by the Israeli military.
“Living in a way that conflicts with your core values is incredibly challenging. Choosing to step away was not easy, but it was necessary. For anyone facing similar situations, I hope you find the courage to prioritize your principles. What good is it for man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” Zakeri pointed out.
Back on May 14, hundreds of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protesters demonstrated against Google’s relationship with Israel and the regime’s army at the tech company’s annual developer conference in Mountain View.
The protesters chained themselves together near the entrance to the conference, and carried a large banner reading “Google stop fueling genocide.”
A particular point of contention for the demonstrators was Project Nimbus. The project enables Israeli cabinet ministries and other entities to transfer servers and services into cloud data centers provided within the occupied territories.
The protesters, among whom were former and current Google employees, argued that the system is being lethally deployed in the Gaza war.
“We are here to say that we cannot stand by while this company fuels this genocide and profits off of it,” former Google employee Ariel Koren told The Guardian at the protest.
“[Google] not only creates the infrastructure for the Israeli military to scale out their crimes against humanity, but these tools are being tested and trained in Palestine to be exported out to militaries around the world, who can then commit the same types of violence,” she said.
Koren added she was fired from Google for opposing Project Nimbus.
To secure peace in Ukraine, Trump must review misguided western sanctions
By Ian Proud | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 17, 2024
Following Trump’s election, there has been much speculation about how the war in Ukraine might end. But to understand how it might end, it’s vital to understand how it started.
The origins of the war in Ukraine can be traced back to the ouster of Ukrainian President Yanukovych in February 2014. Russia labelled it a coup, realists would say it was unconstitutional change in power, and U.S. & British officials would shrug their shoulders.
After Russia occupied Crimea and as insurgency broke out in the Donbas, the French and Germans launched a peace process involving the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine. From this so-called ‘Normandy format’ emerged two peace deals named the Minsk agreements. But the UK was sidelined from the peace process and the Americans suspicious of it.
Left out, Britian, supported by the U.S., pushed sanctions as the primary vehicle to contain Russia, running counter to what the French and Germans were trying to achieve. By the summer of 2015, the Minsk agreements had become sidelined, and sanctions were set in stone.
Since that time, Russia has become the most sanctioned country on the planet. Thirty-three western countries, led by the USA, imposed more than twenty thousand sanctions against Russian people and companies. That’s fifteen times more sanctions than Iran in a distant second place.
If we could completely cut Russia’s economic ties with the west, so the theory went, then that would be so damaging that Russia would have to withdraw from Ukraine. Western powers therefore sanctioned everything that they could, from money, ships, oil, gold, diamonds, weapons and all manner of hi-tech components. But from a very early stage, it was clear that sanctions weren’t altering Russian policy to Ukraine, quite the opposite.
When I left the Foreign Office in 2023, the UK government with its western partners, had gone through all the sanctions that they thought might weaken Russia. The west could probably find more people or entities to sanction. But policy makers never really gripped Russian gas, as some European countries still rely on it. And anyway, the destruction of the Nordstream pipeline solved that conundrum. Russian oligarchs that had political connections in the west were spared as were Russian companies that owned factories in the USA, to prevent American job losses. But we hit most things and neared the bottom of the barrel.
Yet, Russia’s economy always seemed to bounce back. That’s partly because, sanctions were never as big a deal as other events that moved the global economy, such as the oil price collapses in 2014 and 2016 and Covid. But it was also because Russia continually adapted its macroeconomic policy to absorb and, in the end, profit from sanctions. Following an immediate post-sanctions contraction of economic growth in 2022, Russia has grown more strongly than the western countries that imposed sanctions.
Western powers therefore needed something stronger, so sanctions evolved into a political tool to isolate Russia on the world stage. The USA, European Union and other countries including Japan and Australia sanctioned every possible type of economic, social and cultural activity involving Russia. Western academics no longer collaborate with Russian academics. Russian airliners can’t pass over western airspace and vice versa. Border posts have been closed or minimised. Russia can’t compete in international sporting events or even the Eurovision song contest.
Russian Ministers are subjected to indignant walkouts by western diplomats and ministers at international gatherings. Ordinary Russian people were denied a weekend ParkRun. Ukraine did its part, cancelling the Russian Orthodox church and going on a propaganda offensive with any western company that sold goods with the word ‘Russia’ in their branding.
And yet, outside of the west, Russia’s standing on the global stage doesn’t seem to be in decline. In a process accelerated by the Ukraine war, Russia, with China, has spearheaded a rapid shift by the developing world to create their own formats for dialogue and cooperation. There are over 200 countries on this planet, so the wealthy ‘west’ is in a minority. The BRICS group has grown rapidly, with a long queue of countries waiting to join, including NATO member Turkey. Vladimir Putin has an International Criminal Court arrest warrant out on him, yet he still travels freely to ‘friendly’ countries, where he receives the red-carpet treatment. He recently hosted a successful BRICS summit in Kazan while war continued to rage in Ukraine.
War started in February 2022 a few days after the Ukrainian government finally signalled the death knell of the Minsk peace agreements. But the point is that the Minsk agreement was [not] necessarily bad; it’s simply that the U.S. and UK invested significant efforts in ensuring its failure.
Sanctions never looked likely to prevent war, nor force its end, despite the death or injury to over one million people and a vast exodus of Ukraine’s population. War in Ukraine became reduced to the brutal, bloody town by town fighting in Europe after D-Day, while life in the west, and in Russia, carried on almost as normal. Fighting alone, Ukraine has never had sufficient resources to survive and never will.
There is a strong case that sanctions created the conditions for war to erupt, by undermining the very peace process – the Normandy Format – that was established to prevent it. And that the west’s continued blind faith in sanctions took us to the brink of a doomsday scenario, more horrific than the use of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Western leaders, not wanting war themselves, focussed blindly on supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. But the notion of ‘as long as it takes’ became tarnished with increasing numbers of western politicians started complaining that it is taking too long. Not least as the economics and demographics of war still show that Russia can continue fighting for as long as it takes, and that Vladimir Putin has the domestic political support to do that.
So, beyond the hype, if Trump is serious about ending the war in Ukraine, he must look at its origins. A ceasefire alone won’t cut it with Putin. There needs finally to be a peace proposal that includes targeted sanctions reduction. That, and a final reckoning with the NATO membership issue, the brightest red line of all.
Your Local Epidemiologist is worried. This is reassuring…
Mainstream “experts” are panicking about what is in store for public health with vaccine realists at the helm. Here’s my response.
By Madhava Setty | An Insult to Intuition | November 10, 2024
Katelyn Jetelina, PhD is an epidemiologist, biostatistician and mother of two little girls. She writes the “Your Local Epidemiologist” newsletter on substack which boasts over a quarter million subscribers. Those familiar with her content know that while well-intending, she serves as a mouthpiece for the CDC, explaining in easy to follow language what “the experts” are saying.
Her followers are passionate about her work. This is evident from the preponderance of comments which paint her as a true hero of the pandemic. Notably, she only allows comments from paid subscribers. She has created a massive echo chamber and one that pays her some serious dividends. If I remember correctly she has well over ten thousand paying subscribers, earning her an income that far exceeds mine as a full-time anesthesiologist.
I don’t mean to imply that she is a shill who exploits her audience by creating content that she knows is misleading or false. She believes in what she is doing, but she is suffering from the same cognitive blocks that many did four years ago: the experts know the most, we need to listen to them and grant them leniency when they get things wrong.
I have been a paid subscriber to her newsletter for almost two years. I pay to leave comments, hoping to encourage her audience to regard her position with a more critical eye. I have occasionally made some arguments that received a great deal of support from her non-paying readers. Those who contribute materially to her substack, on the other hand, usually respond with rebuke.
She has often derided the work of Children’s Health Defense. A year ago, I outed myself in her comment section, informing her that I was involved with the content RFK Jr’s organization produces as the science editor for The Defender. I expected that she would respond to my questions and critiques. What an excellent opportunity to dismantle the biggest “misinformation spreader” in front of her large audience. She never did.
Not surprisingly, her camp is in full crisis mode now. Here’s her latest:
In this brief article she encourages her audience to be strong, citing the following strategies:
- Building bridges instead of manning the barricades by finding common ground, which requires active engagement and humility. (It always helps me focus on one fact: No one wants to die. Then I move from there.)
- Recognizing what you say matters. That is, if you want people to hear you. Through literally the words we use, the framing, and the approach.
- Communicate with empathy, as anger and shame will only drive people further away.
- Listening (not simply hearing) so we can respond better to the needs on the ground. Americans need their questions answered, not to be told what to believe.
- Making strategic choices about which battles to fight, at what time, and at what level of government. Political capital is as scarce as financial resources—and needs to be allocated carefully.
This is a sensible strategy for everyone on both sides of the public health/vaccine debate. However she continues to double down on her basic hypothesis: The rise of vaccine skepticism is the direct result of misinformation.
I think she is wrong. Vaccine hesitancy and distrust of the medical orthodoxy is the direct result of true information that has finally percolated into public discourse despite the greatest effort to censor dissent I have ever witnessed.
Here is the comment I left on her article:
“Please don’t panic folks. We are witnessing a shift towards transparency and rigor from our agencies of public health. I understand why this readership is freaking out. This is an echo chamber. The real voices of clarity do not pay for a subscription here so you haven’t heard from them, and you don’t seek them out. You are only listening to voices like Katelyn’s who echo CDC PSA’s and their data as if it cannot be questioned.
I am a physician and an engineer. I left my practice in 2021 to work for RFK Jr’s Children’s Health Defense as the Senior Science Editor for The Defender, CHD’s on-line publication. I have since left, but I still stand behind every single article I have written and edited for that organization. I have been leaving comments on this substack for two years. Katelyn has never responded to any of my questions and critiques.
Isn’t that odd? One would think that she would be able to dismantle everything I share here in this public forum for the greater good.
Let me explain why there is such a growing “antivax” movement championed by Bobby and highly published physicians like Joe Ladapo. It has very little to do with so-called misinformation spreaders. It has to do with the public finally being informed about some difficult truths. The public is a lot smarter than you think.
1) Vaccine manufacturers cannot be sued if their products are found, even in an isolated case, to have caused harm. There is no other product like that. Obviously, there is much less incentive to do the proper safety testing if there are no consequences. The public knows this.
2) Nobody can deny that there has been an explosion of childhood diseases concomitant with the expansion of the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule following the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. OF COURSE correlation doesn’t equal causation. But if there was some causation, this is EXACTLY what we would be seeing. The public knows this.
3) The CDC could easily dispel all suspicion by doing a large retrospective study examining the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated children with regard to chronic disease rates. They have the data. They have not done the study and they refuse to release the data. Why?? There is no reasonable answer to this question except for the obvious: They don’t want to know the answer. The public knows this too.
4) During the Covid pandemic, the mRNA shots were authorized after an initial observational period of only six weeks on average. Note that the median observational period was two months. Mathematically, that means that half of the 40,000 participants were observed for less than four weeks at most. There is NO WAY to make any claim about long term safety yet the CDC simply states that these shots have been rigorously tested for safety. That is a lie. The public knows this now.
5) I have never met a single person, scientist or otherwise, who has read RFK Jr.’s “The Real Anthony Fauci”, who could debunk any of his claims. That book was released at the height of the pandemic and excoriates the record of the pandemic czar, yet no defamation lawsuit was ever filed. Why is that? Obviously it is because everything is true and the receipts are there for all to see. The last thing the CDC and vaccine manufacturers want would be to have the evidence for Kennedy’s claims appear in open court. Their strategy is to keep the evidence out of the public’s eye. It is an extremely effective strategy that has worked for decades.
6) RFK Jr.’s message is finally getting out, and he is making sense. Why on earth would anyone be against having vaccines tested by the same standards we use for medicines? Instead of pointing out the obvious, that that is an excellent idea for public health, the media runs hit piece after hit piece on this man. For every person who reads those character attacks and smiles a knowing smile, there are two more that see this as a desperate attempt to squelch some difficult truths.
7) Every other commercial on legacy media is for some sort of pharmaceutical product. It’s a joke. These companies don’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars to run ads to sell more product. They are buying good media coverage. People are seeing this too.
8) The idea that the pharmaceutical industry is out to improve public health is ridiculous. These are for profit companies and their executives’ first priority is to the shareholders. They don’t make the most money curing diseases. That eliminates demand for their product. They aren’t trying to kill everybody. That also decreases demand. Whether you are willing to consider it or not, the most profit is made when the public suffers from a chronic disease epidemic. That is what we have. Our Covid mortality rates were among the highest of any country despite access to the shots and our overpriced health care system. This is staring us in right in the face.
I have no animosity towards those who disagree with me. I am just calling it as I see it. This is the way the public is starting to see it too. Every effort to discredit the movement towards a healthy America with pejoratives like “antiscience” and “antivax” is going to backfire more and more. The public is waking up. Relax and give people like Kennedy and Ladapo a chance. Let’s see what happens. We all want our kids to grow up healthy and happy.
Madhava Setty, MD
Against Rubio
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | November 17, 2024
Marco Rubio’s foreign policy vision is the antithesis of America First as he advocates for wars and increased military spending in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific. During the 2015/2016 GOP presidential primaries, Rubio was a fervent supporter along with Hillary Clinton, of a no-fly-zone in Syria which could have sparked World War III. “The United States should work with our allies, both Arab and European, to impose a no-fly zone over parts of Syria,” Rubio said.
Rubio has been on the America Last side of every foreign policy issue since he took office, he was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton’s disastrous regime change war in Libya and he opposed Barack Obama’s modest troop withdrawal in Afghanistan after his surge accomplished nothing besides making the Taliban stronger and getting more American soldiers killed.
More recently, Rubio has insisted that Israel should attack Iran “disproportionately” which is a direct call for an all out war with Iran and risks the safety of US troops in the region.
Rubio co-authored an amendment to the 2024 NDAA with Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, that would prevent Donald Trump or any future president from exiting the free-riding, war-seeking NATO alliance without Senate approval or an Act of Congress.
Regarding Beijing, he has boasted, “We need a military focused on blowing up Chinese aircraft carriers.”
Moreover, Rubio supports keeping American troops in harm’s way in Iraq indefinitely and even opposed repealing the outdated 2002 AUMF which unconstitutionally authorized the catastrophic Iraq War. Likewise, he backs the open-ended illegal US occupation of roughly a third of Syria, launched by Obama, which Trump attempted to end and finally bring our troops home.
Biden Authorizes Ukrainian Long-Range Strikes Into Russia Using ATACMS Missiles – Reports
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.11.2024
The US and its allies spent months debating whether or not to give Ukraine the go-ahead to use its NATO-provided long-range strike systems to target Russia. In September, President Putin warned that allowing Kiev to use its Western long-range missiles on Russia would mean NATO’s direct participation in a war against the Russian Federation.
President Biden has signed off on the Ukrainian military’s use of US-made ATACMS missiles to try to help defend its faltering positions in Ukrainian-occupied areas of Russia’s Kursk region, the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing US officials apprized of the situation.
Officials told the newspaper that they “do not expect the shift” in policy “to fundamentally alter the course of the war” (NYT’s phrasing), and indicated that Biden could further authorize Kiev to use the weapons in directions besides Kursk in the future.
Washington reportedly expects the ATACMS to be used to strike troop concentrations, military equipment, logistics, ammunition depots and supply lines, all with the goal of “blunt[ing] the effectiveness” of the ongoing Russian military operation to clear Kursk of Ukrainian forces.
According to NYT’s information, some Pentagon officials opposed delivering the missile systems to Ukraine in the first place due to the US Army’s limited supply. Others reportedly expressed fears that their delivery and use could escalate the conflict and even prompt direct Russian retaliation against US and NATO forces – something President Putin has explicitly warned about.
The ATACMS go-ahead also appears to be connected to to the increasingly dire situation for Ukrainian forces across the front, with US officials said to have become “increasingly concerned” about the Ukrainian army being “stretched thin by simultaneous Russian assaults in the east, Kharkov and now Kursk.”
President-elect Trump’s statements about seeking to quickly end the conflict have also reportedly weighed in the outgoing administration’s decision, NYT said.
What Are ATACMS?
The Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) is a solid-fuel, surface-to-surface ballistic missile with an effective firing range of up to 300 km, and a maximum velocity during boost phase of up to Mach 3, or 1 km/second.
The weapon’s ordinance varies wildly depending on model and block number, and can include 500 pound (230 kg) penetrating high-explosive blast fragmentation warheads, or other explosives weighing between 160 and 560 kg, including anti-personnel and materiel cluster ‘bomblets’. ATACMS also vary in terms of the guidance systems they carry, which can include inertial guidance and/or built-in GPS.
An unspecified number of ATACMS were ‘quietly’ shipped to Ukraine in the spring of 2024, with the US restricting their use to the local battlespace, and the Russian military regularly reporting on the downing scores of the weapons in fighting over the summer.
President Putin’s September warning about the implications of NATO countries freeing Kiev’s hand to use long-range missiles to target areas deep inside Russia seemed to have influenced alliance plans to do so, with the bloc publicly backpeddling on its plans later that month.
The CIA/MI6 Skripal Conspiracy Exposed
By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | November 17, 2024
On October 14th, a much-delayed inquiry into the mysterious death of Dawn Sturgess, a British citizen who died in July 2018 after reputedly coming into contact with Novichok nerve agent left in England by a pair of Russian assassins, finally commenced. Already, the public show trial has unearthed tantalising evidence gravely undermining the official narrative of the poisoning of GRU defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, in March that year.
These revelations emerged despite the British state’s best efforts to sabotage the inquiry, and curtail its ability to ascertain the truth. For one, the Skripals have been prevented from testifying, despite formally requesting to do so. Such is the apparent risk of Russian intelligence attempting to target the pair anew, not even their video-recorded police interviews from the time can be entered into evidence. Meanwhile, the urgent question of what British intelligence and security services knew, and when they knew it, will not be explored.
Yet, primary source evidence British spies and their American counterparts were well-aware the two Russians accused of attempting to murder the Skripals were visiting Britain in advance of their arrival has lain in plain sight for years. Whether such foreknowledge implies the CIA and MI6 were in reality behind the abortive hit remains a matter of interpretation – but that the CIA and MI6 sought to exploit the Russian presence in Salisbury for their own malign purposes is beyond doubt.
In January 2021, US watchdog group American Oversight released hundreds of pages of emails sent to and from the personal address of Mike Pompeo, CIA director January 2017 – April 2018. In many cases, the emails were official Agency communications discussing matters of extreme sensitivity, conducted off-books. The records – heavily redacted under the US National Security Act – show that on March 1st 2018, Pompeo was approached by two high-ranking CIA operatives, who asked for a meeting on a “very urgent matter”. They added:
“A very positive opportunity is within reach but requires your engagement because of the urgency…I am convinced that this is a very promising opportunity.”
Pompeo responded in the affirmative, and the meeting went ahead early the next morning. Underlining their covert summit’s importance, the emails indicate CIA staffers were preparing to pitch the “positive opportunity” to the Agency’s chief from the early hours of March 2nd. Eerily, the email requesting Pompeo’s signoff on the proposal was sent less than half an hour after Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, Skripal’s alleged assassins, purchased plane tickets from Moscow to London Gatwick for their Salisbury visit.
‘Strong Option’
Who emailed Pompeo is redacted, although then-CIA deputy director Gina Haspel is an obvious candidate. A longstanding Russia hawk, who cut her Agency teeth recruiting spies in the Soviet Union in the years before its collapse, she twice served as the CIA’s London station chief twice – from 2008 – 2011, and 2014 – 2017. Sergei Skripal arrived in Britain in July 2010 via a grand spy swap during her first tenure, which was negotiated by Haspel’s longtime collaborator Daniel Hoffman, then-CIA Moscow station chief. He was among the very first sources to publicly blame Russia for the Salisbury incident.
During Haspel’s “unusual” second spell in London, Skripal’s enduring connection to his homeland, and yearning to return, would’ve been well-known to British intelligence. Serendipitously, BBC veteran Mark Urban serendipitously interviewed the GRU defector in the year prior to his poisoning. He recorded that Skripal was “an unashamed Russian nationalist, enthusiastically adopting the Kremlin line in many matters, even while sitting in his MI6-purchased house.” Coincidentally, Urban once served in the same tank regiment as Pablo Miller, Skripal’s MI6 recruiter/handler, and Salisbury neighbour.
Moreover, former Kremlin official Valery Morozov, an associate of the GRU defector likewise exiled to Britain, claimed days after the poisoning that Skripal remained in “regular” contact with Moscow’s embassy in London, and met with Russian military intelligence officers there “every month”. He also flatly repudiated any suggestion the purported nerve agent attack on Sergei and Yulia was the work of Russian spies:
“Putin can’t be behind this. I know how the Kremlin works, I worked there. Who is Skripal? He is nothing for Putin. Putin doesn’t think about him. There is nobody in Kremlin talking about former intelligence officer [sic] who is nobody. There is no reason for this. It is more dangerous for them for such things to happen.”
That this information was not shared with Haspel stretches credulity. The Washington Post has reported how her time in Britain made her the personal “linchpin” of the CIA’s relationship with MI6, the Agency’s “most important foreign partner.” Her British colleagues gushed to the outlet, “she knows them so well… they call her the ‘honorary UK desk officer’.” Haspel regularly drew on this experience to “stabilize the transatlantic alliance” between London and Washington, which was frequently strained while she was CIA director May 2018 – January 2021.
This friction resulted in no small part from Trump legitimately accusing British chaos agents of “conspiring with American intelligence to spy on his presidential campaign,” charges that “rattled the British government at the highest levels.” Strikingly, a cited example of Haspel stabilising CIA relations with MI6 provided by WaPo was convincing a highly reluctant President to back the Western-wide expulsion of Russian diplomats, encouraged by London in the Salisbury incident’s wake.
How Haspel pressed Trump over Salisbury was revealed in April 2019. The New York Times reported that the President at first downplayed Skripal’s alleged poisoning and refused to respond, believing the apparent attack to be “legitimate spy games, distasteful but within the bounds of espionage.” However, Haspel successfully lobbied Trump to take the “strong option” of expelling Russian embassy staff in the US, by providing him with British-sourced “emotional images”:
“Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives… Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option.”
‘Operation Foot’
The New York Times exposé caused a stir upon release, not least because the “emotional images” described had never hitherto been published or referred to in the mainstream media. While the Skripals giving bread to three local boys to feed ducks in Salisbury’s Avon Playground on March 4th 2018 was initially widely reported, no media outlet, government minister, spokesperson, health professional or law enforcement official had ever previously claimed children and/or waterfowl were “sickened” after coming into contact with Novichok. The reverse, in fact.
On March 26th that year, the Daily Mail recorded that the boys given bread by the Skripals – one of whom apparently ate some – were “rushed to hospital for blood tests amid fears they’d been poisoned,” but promptly discharged after being given “the all-clear.” Moreover, two days after the New York Times article was published, British health officials issued a statement not only refuting the report entirely, but denying any children were admitted to hospital in Salisbury as a result of Novichok exposure at all.
Subsequently, the New York Times radically amended its piece, removing any suggestion Haspel showed Trump photos of Novichok victims provided by the British. In fact, the newspaper reverse-ferreted, she had “displayed pictures illustrating the consequences of nerve agent attacks, not images specific to the chemical attack in Britain.” The question of whether the aforementioned images did exist, and were forged by British intelligence for the explicit purpose of bouncing Trump into a hostile anti-Russia stance, remains thoroughly open five-and-a-half years later.
After all, British spies had been planning and hoping for a mass defenestration of Russian diplomats globally, as a prelude to all-out war with Moscow, for years by that point. In January 2015, MI6/NATO front the Institute for Statecraft (IFS) a document setting out “potential levers” for achieving “regime change” in Russia, spanning “diplomacy”, “finance”, “security”, “technology”, “industry”, “military”, and even “culture”. One “lever”, which IFS listed thrice, stated:
“Simultaneously expel every [Russian] intelligence officer and air/defence/naval attaché from as many countries as possible (global ‘Operation Foot’).”
Operation Foot saw 105 Soviet officials deported from Britain in September 1971. Several mainstream media outlets referenced this incident when reporting on London successfully corralling 26 countries – including, of course, the US – into expelling over 150 Russian diplomatic staff in response to the Salisbury incident in March 2018. As a result, IFS got one step closer to its longstanding objective of “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Russia, which “Britain and the West could win.”
Fast forward to today, and Britain and the West are on the verge of losing that conflict once and for all. Meanwhile, the Salisbury incident’s ever-fluctuating official narrative continues to shift radically, in ways large and small. Contrary to all prior media reports on the matter, the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry has now been told one boy given bread by the Skripals to feed ducks actually “got sick” as a result, and he and his friends “were unwell for a day or two afterwards.”
This fresh rewriting neatly ties in with the highly controversial claim, unflinchingly clung to by British authorities, that the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok smeared on the doorknob of Sergei’s home on the morning of March 4th 2018, before heading into Salisbury. As subsequent investigations will show, available evidence – including Yulia Skripal’s own hospital bed testimony – points unmistakably to the pair being attacked elsewhere, at another time and by another means entirely, with British and American intelligence square in the frame.
Tulsi Gabbard, the new U.S. intel chief… a brave call to debunk NATO’s war propaganda in Ukraine
Strategic Culture Foundation | November 15, 2024
The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as the United States intelligence supremo has sent shockwaves through the American and NATO establishments. The Western news media – always a dutiful echo chamber for deep-state policymakers – is reverberating with horror at her nomination by President-elect Donald Trump.
That reaction is a good sign that something significant has happened.
The potential appointment of Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) could be the most consequential decision yet by Trump in forming his cabinet.
If one move could signal the foreign policy direction under the 47th president, Gabbard’s nomination is the most salient and potentially the most constructive on the key issue of world peace.
Time magazine headlined with the U.S. intelligence community’s response to Gabbard’s selection. “We are reeling,” it was reported. Reuters reported that the Western “spy world is vexed.” Meanwhile, in The Atlantic, an establishment mouthpiece, Gabbard was denounced as a “threat to the security of the United States.”
That’s a staggering charge to levy on the person who is going to be head of national security.
It is almost hilarious to see the apoplectic reaction in the U.S. establishment and its servile mainstream media.
CNN’s news anchor Jim Sciutto was distraught in sharing his concerns with colleague Richard Quest, remarking that Gabbard’s views “contradict” almost everything about U.S. foreign policies.
If we may paraphrase that exchange, the sentiments were: Oh my God, how terrible! Whatever shall we say now about all the lies we have been spinning for years and getting fat salaries for?
After all, as far as the U.S. corporate media are concerned, especially those channels and newspapers associated with the Democrats, the establishment, and the deep state intelligence apparatus, Tulsi Gabbard has been smeared as a “Russian asset.”
It is indeed profoundly challenging – one might even say, earth-shattering – to the deep state if Gabbard becomes Director of National Intelligence.
As with Trump’s other cabinet picks, the nominations will have to be approved by Senate panels. So there is a while to go before her post is confirmed. A lot can change or be derailed.
Trump’s cabinet picks this week have been keenly watched by observers trying to discern the future foreign policies of the next presidency, which begins in January after his inauguration. Trump’s early call-ups this week of hawkish figures Pete Hegseth for defense and Marco Rubio for secretary of state caused dismay among some critics of U.S. foreign policy who wanted a fundamental break from warmongering and hostility toward Russia, China, and Iran, among others.
Then came Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard. The former Congresswoman has gained wide popular American and international respect for her outspoken and independent criticism of U.S. militarism in the Middle East and Ukraine.
However, the U.S. political establishment and media have slandered her as a “traitor” and a “Russian asset” for her views criticizing Washington’s regime change wars in Syria and the Middle East. In 2017, Gabbard traveled to Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad. She spoke out against Washington’s covert policy of sponsoring terrorist militia for regime change in Damascus. For telling the truth, she was vilified as an “apologist” for Assad.
More recently, the “apologist” slur was thrown at her again after Gabbard opposed the U.S. and NATO’s arming of the Kiev regime and the proxy war against Russia. She said that the conflict in Ukraine could have been avoided if Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s threatening expansion had been taken into consideration. How refreshing to hear that sanity and objectivity.
In a twisted way, the CNN clapping seals are correct. Her views on the conflict in Ukraine do indeed contradict the U.S. establishment and media’s propaganda about “Russian aggression.” Her views unequivocally debunk the wall-to-wall “news” propaganda as false and serve as a warning to the public that NATO’s lies are dragging the world into a nuclear war.
The role of Tulsi Gabbard in the second Trump administration – if she makes it through Senate vetting – cannot be overstated.
In her DNI capacity, she is the intel supremo who oversees the CIA and NSA. Through her daily briefings to the president, Gabbard will play a crucial role in President Trump’s foreign policymaking. Given Trump’s freewheeling style, it can be fairly assumed that Gabbard’s input into policymaking will have much greater influence than the secretaries of defense or state. She will call the shots, and Trump will designate Hegseth, Rubio, and others to follow suit on the policies.
Some critics of Gabbard have pointed out that she is unduly supportive of Israel. That is a valid concern.
Nevertheless, in relations with Russia, China, and Iran, Gabbard has been a trenchant and tenacious voice of reason. She has courageously advocated peaceful negotiations and diplomacy along with historical understanding as a way to avoid military conflicts. Her reasonable emphasis on diplomacy illustrates just how extremist the U.S. “mainstream” has become in its promotion of wars and more wars.
Gabbard is a veteran of the Iraq War and appears to have been deeply affected by the human cost of wars. She has repeatedly condemned endless wars that are endemic to U.S. imperialism. Her honesty in criticizing the failings and faults of American policy, calling it out often as criminal, is admirable.
She quit the Democrat party in 2022, condemning it for its relentless warmongering policies. She endorsed Trump for the White House because, she said, he would prevent World War Three by stopping the reckless proxy war in Ukraine.
President-elect Trump has said that he wants to end the conflict in Ukraine as one of his priorities.
Some commentators have expressed skepticism about the chances of Trump making a peace settlement in Ukraine. Even senior Russian figures have said they do not expect significant change in U.S. policy.
Still, Russia has clearly stated that it is open to dialogue and diplomacy. Moscow has said it will respond positively to Trump’s outreach. And Trump is reported to be ready to appoint an envoy of credible stature to explore a peaceful solution in Ukraine.
Now, there’s the rub. Russia is adamant that its conditions for peaceful settlement must involve its original objectives: no Ukraine membership of NATO, denazification of the Kiev regime, and acceptance of realities on the ground, meaning recognition of Russia’s regained historical territories. Russia will not accept a frozen conflict, and given the rapid military advances it is making against the NATO-backed regime, Moscow is in a position to fully demand its terms.
If Trump is serious about finding a peaceful resolution, he will have to accept Russia’s terms. That will require an understanding of how that conflict started and how to reverse it. No bluster, no bravado, and certainly no browbeating Russia.
Tulsi Gabbard can provide the necessary counsel to Trump upon which a lasting peace settlement can be made because she understands the history of that conflict and has debunked the false propaganda that the U.S. establishment, the Democrats, some Republicans, and the corporate media have peddled for far too long.
In the meantime, Russia must advance towards its righteous goals in Ukraine. And right now, the best contribution to peace is to defeat the corrupt Nazi regime in Kiev in short order.
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From the Archives
World War II Didn’t End The Great Depression
Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | April 4, 2024
A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II (1941-1945) lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression.
This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6 trillion, with interest payments alone on pace to reach $1 trillion a year in 2026, inviting financial catastrophe. … continue
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