US opposes Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project, trying to halt its construction: Official
Press TV – March 21, 2024
The US assistant secretary of State for South and Central Asia says the United States opposes the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project.
Speaking to congressmen during a congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday, Donald Lu said the US is exerting maximum efforts to prevent the construction of the IP project.
He added that the US is concerned about the strain in Pakistan’s relations with neighboring Iran, particularly on the IP gas pipeline project.
The US official noted that Washington was in contact with Islamabad on the matter.
Emphasizing the importance of monitoring the funding for the mega energy project, Lu said the US is keeping a close watch on it.
“Washington has not received any request from Islamabad regarding sanctions relief, so our efforts to stop Pakistan from Iran’s gas project will continue,” the diplomat added.
Lu claimed that the project was not in the interest of Pakistan as international companies would not invest in it.
Back in February, Pakistan gave the green light for advancing much-delayed work on the joint gas pipelines project with Iran within its territory in a significant step towards enhancing energy cooperation between the two countries.
Pakistan’s Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCoE) granted its approval to start construction on the 80-kilometer pipeline from the Pak-Iran border to Gwadar.
The project, launched in 2013, had initially required Pakistan to finish the construction of the pipeline on its territory by the end of 2014.
However, the project faced prolonged delays due to the potential challenges it posed for Pakistan amid international sanctions targeting Iran.
Pakistan is likely to face an $18-billion fine if it terminates the gas pipeline agreement.
Russia’s Geopolitical Prospects in the Middle East
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 21.03.2024
With Russia able to withstand – and virtually defeat – the combined military strength of NATO in Ukraine, its foreign policy and its diplomatic outreach to the rest of the world is bound to gain not only confidence but also become a lot more assertive than it was during the first year of this conflict when Washington launched its so-called “isolate Russia” project. Translating its military gains in Ukraine, Moscow, for instance, recently hosted Palestinian factions to unify them not only for a durable solution to the longest-lasting conflict in the Middle East but also for developing a strong position vis-à-vis Israel. This approach towards Palestine – which also exhibits a visible anti-Israel position – is directly motivated by Moscow’s broad Middle East outreach at a time when the political opinion in the region has turned against Israel and Washington, leaving Israel virtually isolated despite having established ties with several Muslim states in the recent past.
At the same time, this opinion has also become more favourable towards Russia. A recent survey by the Washington Institute showed that a majority of respondents in the UAE (66%), Saudi Arabia (67%), Kuwait (62%), Egypt (57%), Bahrain (68%), Qatar (63%), and Lebanon (72%) agree that the US is no longer a reliable partner and that the Middle Eastern countries “must look more to other nations like Russia and China as partners”.
On top of that is the strong credentials Moscow carries as a security guarantor. Since at least the end of the Cold War, Washington has dominated the region as its key security guarantor, both through its direct military presence and its supply, i.e., sale, of weapons worth billions of dollars to the region. But Moscow dismissed Washington’s dominance via the key role it played in Syria to defeat the US-backed “regime change” operation. Subsequently, it has been successful in helping Syria’s relations with several Arab states, including Saudi and the UAE, to become normal. Moscow, in other words, was successful in translating its military gains into diplomatic victories by becoming a peacemaker in the Middle East. Washington, on the other hand, has not been able to bring peace to the Middle East and/or prevent Israel from committing genocide.
Russia’s Middle Eastern forays are, therefore, in part motivated by Washington’s failures. At the same time, Russia also sees itself as a great military power and a great power needs to have a strong foothold – which does not have to be a military presence – in the region.
If the ultimate objective of any superpower policy is to advance its core interests, non-military means can be very useful too. In the recent past, Russia’s engagement with several Middle Eastern states via the OPEC+ framework has served its key interests well. Via OPEC+, Russia has been able to not only withstand a US-led assault on its economy but also inflict a lot of economic damage on the Western economy. Washington’s inability to break OPEC+ has led to a high inflation rate throughout Europe and North America.
While a lot of Russian ability to accomplish this depended upon the cooperation of other OPEC countries, the latter, including Saudi Arabia, also see Russia as an alternative to Washington. Plus, the partnership with Russia is also paying off. Despite a global growth rate of less than 3 percent in 2023, Saudi’s Aramco earned US$121 billion in 2023, thanks to the careful management of oil supply and prices.
Turkey is another major player in the Middle East that continues to have strong ties with Russia, primarily because of the ways that these ties serve mutual interests. The trade turnover between them increased by more than 80 percent in 2022 to reach US$62 billion. Russia is already Turkey’s biggest source of imports. But this relationship is not costly. On the contrary, Turkey saved US$2 billion on oil imports from Russia by purchasing discounted oil. Ankara was able to do this because it refused to join the US-led regime of sanctions on Russia. As a result, Russia became Turkey’s biggest supplier of energy in 2023. In 2023, Turkey imported 49.93% of its oil from Russia. A year earlier, the share of Russian oil in the Turkish market was 40.74%. Due to this, the US has been trying for the past few months to impose fresh sanctions on Russia to make Turkey-Russia [trade] difficult. But whether it will have any real impact is not hard to guess due to the increasing availability of alternative channels, i.e., using Central Asian States, to conduct trade and transfer payments.
Still, US efforts to put restrictions on entities from Russia and the Middle East to prevent them from doing trade with Russia itself shows the success Russia has achieved in the Middle East. The US fears that if Russia, like China, continues to expand its relationship with this energy-rich region, it could accelerate US exit from the region, leaving Washington’s efforts to revamp its ties, including via offering strategic defence partnerships to countries like Saudi Arabia, meaningless vis-à-vis Russia.
If even, speaking of a hypothetical scenario, the political opinion in the Middle East were to see a dramatic change to become pro-US, it does not mean an ‘end’ of Russia’s presence in, and relationship with, the Middle East. A core reason for this is the Middle Eastern states’ own desire to reposition themselves in the emerging global order as autonomous players capable of influencing global politics – something that these states can accomplish by, first and foremost, diversifying their foreign policy and reducing, if not fully eliminating, their historical dependence on the US. In this sense, Russia’s engagement with the Middle East is not simply a short-term phenomenon that would just die out the moment Washington offers a deal to the Gulf states that they cannot refuse. It is here to stay, with its prospects of growing brighter than ever.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
CIA Further Discredits ‘Uyghur Genocide’ by Admitting Covert Influence Campaign
By Patrick Macfarlane | The Libertarian Institute | March 21, 2024
On March 14, Reuters released a bombshell report: in 2019 the Donald Trump White House began a clandestine CIA influence campaign to smear China’s international reputation.
According to three former U.S. officials with direct knowledge, “the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets.” The information releases “targeted public opinion” both internationally and in China itself. Along with influencing public opinion, the campaign sought to “foment paranoia among top leaders [in China]” as they tried to trace the leaked information.
The report specifically stated that CIA operatives “promoted [corruption] allegations” against Chinese government officials and “slammed as corrupt and wasteful China’s Belt and Road Initiative.” Although these specific efforts were identified, the former U.S. officials declined to name additional narratives that were advanced.
Reuters did not confirm that the campaign has continued into the Joe Biden presidency however two “unnamed intelligence historians” told Reuters that such “presidential findings” often remain in place across administrations.
The existence of this CIA influence campaign is probable given the broader historical context.
The Trump Administration marked the extreme acceleration of the United States’ new cold war against China. This began when the Pentagon issued its 2018 National Defense Strategy, which declared a refocus from Middle East “counter-terrorism” to “Great Power Competition” with Russia and China.
Subsequently, 2019 was a banner year for Western escalation against Beijing. In October 2019, the Department of Defense created a new office focused solely on confronting China, called the “deputy assistant secretary of defense for China.” In December 2019, NATO named China as an emerging “challenge.” In 2019 and 2020, the Trump administration doubled U.S. naval transits of the Taiwan Strait over previous years and conducted approximately 1,000 reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea. Of course, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, it was immediately blamed on China.
The above efforts notwithstanding, the main thrust of America’s new cold war against China was informational. America sought to isolate China on the world stage by shredding its international reputation, justifying sanctions, and inhibiting trade. This was clear even before the CIA’s new revelation.
Aside from blaming that nation for COVID-19, the “Uyghur Genocide” narrative was the most prominant vehicle for achieving that goal. But just what focus, if any, does the CIA’s revelation provide to the facts of that narrative as we already know them?
Well, the CIA was there every step of the way.
2019 is the same year that an NGO called the “China Tribunal” began petitioning the UN Human Rights Council, accusing the Chinese Communist Party of conducting an industrial organ harvesting operation that preyed upon Chinese dissidents and Uyghur muslims.
In January 2021, the Trump administration weaponized this claim when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, fresh off his post as CIA director, formally accused China of committing genocide against Uyghur muslims in its Westernmost provice, Xinjiang. To back this claim, Pompeo referred to the findings of a 2020 report written by a German sociologist named Adrian Zenz. The report was titled “Setilizations, IUDs, and Mandatory Birth Control: The CCP’s Campaign to Suppress Uyghur Birthrates in Xinjiang.” In March 2021, Zenz published an additional report, “The Uyghur Genocide: An Examination of China’s Breaches of the 1948 Convention.”
News outlets the world over declared that these reports were being made by “independent third parties.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The China Tribunal has direct connections to the fringe religious group Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritualist cult that runs The Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty. Furthermore, Zenz’s reports were published by neoconservative think tanks, including the Jamestown Foundation, the Newlines Institute, and the Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. The Jamestown Foundation itself was founded by the late CIA Director William Casey. The Newlines Institute is led, inter alia, by former employees of the “shadow CIA” private spying firm Stratfor.
Myself and others, including Max Blumenthal, Gareth Porter, and Ajit Singh have demonstrated significant statistical errors, credibility issues, mistranslations of source material, and propagandistic misrepresentations present in each report. These analyses are available elsewhere.
Each of Zenz’s reports rely in part on “leaked PRC government document[s]” to support its findings. These documents are cited by Zenz as the “Karakax List,” the “Aksu List,” and the “China Cables.”
The Karakax lists allegedly shows the reasons why 311 Uyghur individuals were interned in “reeducation camps” in Xinjiang.
The China Cables purportedly consist of “an operations manual for running mass detention camps,” four “secret intelligence briefings” from a mass Chinese Uyghur data collection system, and a regional court sentencing document where a Uyghur man was ordered 10 years’ imprisonment for telling coworkers to practice “Halal.”
According to Zenz, the Karakax List was leaked by the same source that leaked the China Cables. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the organization that published the China Cables, says it received the leaks “via a chain of exiled Uyghurs,” but confirmed the document’s authenticity with several leading experts, including James Mulvenon, vice-president of Defense Group Inc, Zenz, and several intelligence sources who cannot be identified.
In 2019, the leaker identified herself as Ms. Asiye Abdulaheb, an exiled Uyghur living in the Netherlands. Ms. Abdulaheb told Dutch newspapers that she moved from China in 2009, though the documents she leaked were dated from 2017. She did not reveal how she obtained the documents.
As for the Aksu List, Human Rights watch admits it was leaked to them by Radio Free Asia, a Cold War era CIA cutout created to disseminate American propaganda across the continent.
In July 2022, Zenz jointly published a leak with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, an anti-communist cold war project co-founded by President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbiegniew Brzezinski. Zenz gave it the ominous title “the Xinjiang Police Files.”
Zenz claims the documents are “unprecedented evidence” that “proves [the] prison-like nature of re-education camps [and] shows top Chinese leaders’ direct involvement in the mass internment campaign.” The release consists of what is claimed to be “2,800+ Images of Detainees, 300,000+ Personal records, 23,000+ Detainee Records, and 10+ Camp Police Instructions.” According to Zenz, the documents were obtained through hacking by “a third party” who broke into the computer systems of local Chinese government officials.
When the documents were made available for public scrutiny, some anomalies were detected.
For instance, some of the documents’ metadata indicated they had been edited by Zenz and a national security contractor named Ilshat Kokbore. As it turns out, Kokbore was also the president of the American Uyghur Association and was the Director for China Affairs for the World Uyghur Congress—an NGO based in Washington that receives funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED was referred to as the “second CIA” by one of its founders, Allen Weinstein, because it openly performs the work that the CIA used to do covertly.
Others questioned visual anomalies in the detainee images, which suggested they may have been computer generated.
Together, Zenz used the leaks as the centerpiece of his reports accusing China on the international stage. They were cited by every major news outlet, the U.S. State department, and even by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Zenz’s reports were sold internationally as being “unbiased” and “independent,” but the Reuters revelations place CIA operatives in China “leaking intelligence” for the admitted purpose of destroying China’s international reputation. This operation ran during the primary years of the Uyghur Genocide allegations.
The full weight of this revelation cannot be overstated.
“It’s Not About Trump”: American CJ Hopkins, Charged Again in Germany, Describes Global Censorship Effort
Acquitted on German hate speech charges in January, American playwright CJ Hopkins is being charged again for the same offense.
By Matt Taibbi | Racket News | March 20, 2024
The German people are famous for putting everything in print, even things they shouldn’t, and in this instance at least, American playwright and author CJ Hopkins is glad. “The irony,” he says, laughing. “The Germans, always documenting everything.”
In a letter from the Berlin Prosecutor’s file on Hopkins, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA, analogous to our FBI) acknowledges receipt of a document from a government office describing an effort to have tweets deleted. “The Hessen Gegen Hetze reporting office,” the highlighted portion reads, “has already initiated measures to delete the relevant post on the social network”:

Hopkins reached out to me after listening in disgust to the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court hearing Monday. Standing was a big issue: our government said plaintiffs like Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Aaron Kheriaty lacked definite proof that the government was responsible for suppressing their speech. No such issue exists in CJ’s case, as you can see.
Hopkins also wanted Americans who might be up in arms about the specter of legalized censorship in their own country to see that the phenomenon has also spread to virtually every Western democracy, often in more extreme forms than we’ve seen so far in the United States.
CJ’s unique insight involves his ludicrous German case, which as you’ll read in the Q&A below has taken bizarre turns since we last checked and will now go to trial yet again. As an expat following the American situation from afar, he’s seen how the authoritarian tide is rising in similar or worse ways all around the globe.
Hopkins is facing the business end of the German version, among the worst. As detailed last June, he was charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.” The crime? Using a barely detectible Swastika in the cover image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. Far from “furthering the aims” of Nazism, he was criticizing them by comparing Nazi methods and laws to those of modern health authorities. The offending image:

Hopkins went to trial in January and delivered an impassioned plea to the court. “Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in this courtroom, understands what this prosecution is actually about,” he said. “It has nothing to do with punishing people who actually disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing dissent, and making an example of dissidents in order to intimidate others into silence.”
Though the judge was clearly not a fan of Hopkins — a courtroom account by Aya Velázquez, which I recommend reading, described how the judge said CJ’s statements were “ideological drivel,” just “not punishable by law” — he won on the law.
After acquittal, he was made aware that technically the case wasn’t over, because thanks to a quirk of German jurisprudence, the prosecutor had a week to file an appeal. Hopkins was unconcerned. “I doubt he will [re-file]. He made a total fool of himself in front of a large audience yesterday,” he wrote. “I can’t imagine that he will want to do that again.”
Bzzt! Wrong. The prosecutor re-filed charges. The prosecutorial theory in the Hopkins case was based on a bizarre interpretation of hate crime, essentially asserting that if you have to think about an image to realize it’s satire, it can’t be allowed. If that idea spreads, it would make comedy or even sharp commentary impossible. This is why his indictment, and the similar investigation of Roger Waters, are really serious moments. Not to be heavy-handed, but eliminating the loophole for satire or mockery is exactly what Waters meant by “Another Brick in the Wall.” Before you know it, it’ll be too high to see over:
MT: You got charged again?
CJ Hopkins: No… I got acquitted. I went to trial on the 23rd of January, and I wrote this up and I’ll send it to you so you can just look at the whole account. But at the trial I made a big aggressive statement that people republished all over the place. The judge acquitted me, and then called me all kinds of names and then put on her covid mask and stalked out of the courtroom. She called me a Schwurbler, which in German is kind of an idiot, I guess a babbler or someone.
Anyway, I read that statement, which pissed them all off, but she said, “Okay, you’re an idiot, but that’s not against the law, so you’re acquitted.” So I thought, “Great. This is over. I’m acquitted.” The prosecutor had no case whatsoever, and it was really embarrassing, and I figured it was all done, but my attorney reminded me: oh no, the prosecutor can appeal. Which he did. So now I’m facing another trial in appeals court. It’s not new charges, it’s the same charge, but the prosecutor’s appeal of my acquittal.
MT: The double jeopardy thing isn’t big in Germany, I take it?
CJ Hopkins: No.
MT: Are they going to make a different argument?
CJ Hopkins: I have no idea what they’re going to do. They have no argument… I mean, they put my tweets up on an overhead projector, like we were back in high school, and interrogated me about whether the Swastika was on top of the mask or behind the mask, that sort of thing. The prosecutor’s argument was basically, “We don’t believe that Mr. Hopkins is a Nazi, or pro-Nazi, we don’t believe he was trying to spread Nazi propaganda, but he nonetheless spread Nazi propaganda. because his tweet” – and this is a great part of their argument – “because if people saw his tweets, they would have to stop and think for a minute to figure out what they meant.”
MT: Essentially you can’t have satire, because that requires a person to have at least one thought.
CJ Hopkins: You can’t make people think. You’ve got to have beat-you-over-the-head messaging. I think the whole point of this… I’m sure it’s like the plea-bargain thing in the States. They figure if they hit you with a 3,600 Euro fine, you’re going to pay three times that much to fight it in court, so you’re just going to pay the fine and go away. I don’t think they ever expected to end up in court, and I have no idea what the prosecutor is doing with this appeal. The judge a few weeks later submitted a written verdict, which is strongly in my favor. She pretty much reiterated my attorney’s arguments and made it absolutely clear that what I did falls under the exceptions to the statute, and there’s nothing here to prosecute. Nonetheless, the prosecution’s going ahead.
MT: Did you have much Western news coverage?
CJ Hopkins: Right before the trial I had you, then Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which is the big paper of record in Switzerland, and James Kirchick at The Atlantic, who was a big help. I think it put a lot of pressure on the judge. My lawyer made her aware that Germany was being portrayed as a laughingstock in the international press. Aside from The Atlantic, it was all independent alternative media.
MT: In the Murthy Supreme Court case in the States Monday, there was an issue with what they call “traceability.” I see you don’t have a traceability issue, with this document from your case file?
CJ Hopkins: Exactly. That’s why I sent it to you. Unquestionably, this is a government office, directly involved with removing the tweets. The other thing that I was going to say, is that I’m looking at things like the Supreme Court case from a non-U.S. perspective. I’m outside of it. I’m watching the legislation that’s getting rolled out in Ireland and the UK and what’s happening to me here and what’s going on in the States, and it’s so obviously much broader than just a red-blue political story in the US. This is happening throughout the Western democratic countries.
I’m just desperate to get that across to people. I think it’s so easy for people to get locked into what’s going on in their own country and not see the bigger picture.
MT: What’s an example?
CJ Hopkins: There was just a piece in The Herald, in Scotland. The police were being trained there on how to crack down on abusive hate speech. According to this new legislation that’s rolling out and in the training manual, they were saying this could take place in comic performances or stage plays. People are being arrested in the UK for protest signs.
If I can just put one little bug in your head, Matt, to whatever degree you can tweak people and let them know: “Hey, it’s not just Trump and the Democrats and the liberals and the woke people and all that.” This is happening all over the West, in all these different countries. I think that’s one thing that my case does, it provides folks with an opportunity to remind them that this is happening all over. The old rules don’t apply.
MT: Good luck with your case.
CJ Hopkins: Take care.
Western media ‘coverage’ of Russia is incredibly dangerous, and it’s getting worse
By Glenn Diesen | RT | March 20, 2024
Western media coverage of every Russian election is bad. But this time it was even worse than usual.
Instead of lashing out at the incompetence on display, it’s more constructive to explore why rational discussions about the country continue to appear impossible.
Not to mention the dire consequences of the ongoing self-delusion.
Reason versus conformity to the group
One of the first things we learn in sociology is that humans are in a constant battle between instincts and reason. Over tens of thousands of years, we have developed the instinct to organise in groups as a source of security. This is the result of evolutionary biology as survival demands that we organise into “us” versus “them”. In-group loyalty is augmented by assigning contrasting identities of the virtuous “us” versus the evil “other”, which helps stop an individual from straying too far from the pack.
Yet, human beings are also equipped with reason and thus the ability to assess objective reality independent of their immediate circle. In international relations, it’s imperative to place yourself in the shoes of the opponent. The rationality required to see the world through the perspective of the “other” is vital for reaching mutual understanding, reducing tensions, and pursuing a workable peace.
Every successful peace process and reconciliation in history – from Northern Ireland to negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa – has been based on this.
We expect journalists to be objective in their reporting of reality, which is especially important during war. But this seems to be almost impossible, especially during conflicts. When human beings experience external threats, their herd instincts are triggered as society demands group loyalty and we punish those who deviate. The political obedience demanded during war time usually results in the weakening of freedom of speech, the role of journalism, and democracy.
Why did Russians vote for Putin?
So, how can we understand the reasons for President Vladimir Putin’s immense popularity in Russia and his landslide victory?
If we use our reason and resist our tribal instincts, it should not be difficult to understand the popularity of Putin. While the 1990s was a golden period for the West, it was a nightmare for Russians. The economy collapsed and society disintegrated with truly horrific consequences.
The country’s security also collapsed, as NATO expansion meant there was no chance to agree an inclusive European security architecture. This had been outlined in the Charter of Paris for a New Europe in 1990 and the OSCE founding documents.
A weakened Russia meant that its interests could be ignored, and NATO was able to invade Moscow’s ally Yugoslavia, in violation of international law.
When Putin took over the presidency on 31 December 1999, it was commonplace in the West to predict that Russia would share the fate of the Soviet Union. That is eventual collapse.
However, Russia has instead become the largest economy in Europe (by PPP), its society has healed from the disastrous 1990s, its military might has been restored, and new international partners have been found in the East and Global South, as evidenced by the growing role of BRICS.
Furthermore, most Russians believe it’s not a good idea to have major disruptions to leadership in the middle of a NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine that is deemed an existential threat. Don’t change horses in midstream as the American proverb, often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, advises.
Speaking of the US, the late Mikhail Gorbachev – who was immensely popular there – did not shy away from criticising Putin, when he was still with us. However, he nevertheless argued that Putin “saved Russia from the beginning of a collapse”.
Today, any Western journalist repeating this would be immediately branded as a “Putinist” – implying a betrayal of the “us”. Western journalists cannot acknowledge the immense achievements of Russia since 1999 as it could be interpreted as lending legitimacy and signalling support for the “bad” side.
The price of self-delusion
Arguments are not judged by the extent they reflect an objective reality, rather they are assessed by how they are seen to express support or condemnation of Russia. Conformity to a narrative signals in-group loyalty, and the desire to deprive opponents of legitimacy limits what is allowed to be discussed.
Acknowledging Putin’s achievements over the past 25 years is treated as expressing support for him, which is tantamount to treason.
Meanwhile, journalists hardly ever discuss Moscow’s security concerns and the extent to which our competing interests can be harmonised. Instead, Russian policies are conveyed by referring to derogatory descriptions of Putin’s character.
As in our other wars, conflicts are explained by the presence of a bad man and if we could just make him go away, then the natural order of peace would be restored. Putin, the narrative contends, is our most recent reincarnation of Hitler and we constantly live in the 1940s where an adversary must be defeated and not appeased.
How can journalists then explain to their audience Putin’s popularity and the reasons for his huge personal vote when it is not allowed to say anything positive about the Russian president? Unable to live in reality and unable to place ourselves in the shoes of the opponent – how are we supposed to have sensible analysis and policies? As I always warned my students of international relations: Do not hate your rivals, it produces poor and dangerous analysis!
Making self-delusion virtuous comes at a high price. How can the West pursue diplomacy and work with Putin when he is presented as the embodiment of evil and an illegitimate leader? Even explaining Russian policies is condemned as legitimising Russian policies, which is deemed to be propaganda that must not be given a platform. People conform to the good versus evil mantra as it feels virtuous and patriotic to signal that they support the in-group and loathe the out-group. But how can we pursue our interests when we have committed ourselves to self-delusion and have banned reality from our analysis?
I have attempted to explain for two years why the anti-Russian sanctions were doomed to fail and why Russia will win the war, only to be told that it is Russian propaganda to undermine support for sanctions and to challenge the narrative of a pending Ukrainian victory. Reality be damned! Ignoring reality results in a distorted picture of Russia which predictably leads to miscalculations. How could Russia as a “gas station masquerading as a country” defeat the most draconian Western sanctions and see its economy not only survive, but by some measures even thrive? Why would Russians unite under an existential threat when we cannot acknowledge the role played by NATO in that regard?
Sigmund Freud explored the extent to which instinctive group psychology could diminish the rationality of the individual. Freud’s ideas were further developed by his nephew, Edward Bernays, who became the father of modern political propaganda. Over a century ago, Walter Lippman cautioned group psychology, managed with propaganda, as it came with a heavy price. Yielding to the instinct of viewing conflict as a struggle between the virtuous “us” versus the evil “other” implies that peace requires defeating the adversary, while a workable solution becomes tantamount to appeasement.
What better explains the current failure of rational analysis and the resulting collapse of diplomacy?
Glenn Diesen is a Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal.
Israel deploys army of bots to spread anti-UNRWA propaganda: Report
The Cradle | March 19, 2024
Israel is executing an online influence campaign using hundreds of fake social media accounts to advance “Israeli interests” among progressive western audiences, including US lawmakers, Haaretz reported on 19 March, citing an investigation by Israeli media watchdog group Fake Reporter.
The campaign is focused specifically on amplifying reports claiming the involvement of UNRWA workers in the 7 October attack on Israel. As The Cradle has reported previously, Israel provided no evidence for its claims, which were part of a campaign to compel western nations to cut funding to the agency. UNRWA plays a crucial role in delivering aid to Palestinians amid Israel’s campaign to impose famine in Gaza.
Researchers at Fake Reporter pinpointed three fake ‘news sites’ specifically created for the operation. The sites amplified reports copied from other real news outlets, such as CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Jerusalem Post, and The Times of Israel, which promoted Israel’s narrative about the war.
Hundreds of fake social media accounts then intensively promoted the “reports” from the specially-created websites and other news outlets.
The three websites at the center of the campaign were established before the war in Gaza but became active only after it began.
The fake social media accounts seemed to be ‘cyborgs,’ meaning they operate using a combination of artificial intelligence and real people with fake online personalities. The avatars claimed to portray average US citizens, including white, Jewish, and African–American ones.
The avatars were all created on the same date, used the same profile photos and naming conventions, and shared other characteristics that indicate they are all part of the same network, Fake Reporter found.
Over 500 fake accounts were opened for the campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and X.
Their avatars began to post messages about a wide array of topics, including the alleged lack of safety for Jewish Americans on college campuses, discrimination against Jewish students, and false allegations Hamas committed mass rape on 7 October.
At the end of January, after acquiring tens of thousands of followers, the fake accounts pivoted toward spreading Israel’s false allegations about UNRWA employees participating in the 7 October attack.
The avatars worked to inorganically amplify the ‘shocking’ and ‘disturbing’ allegations about UNRWA.
They responded to social media posts by US lawmakers, influencers, and prominent news outlets.
The campaign’s avatars targeted posts by African–American Democratic lawmakers, including Ritchie Torres, Cori Bush, and Jamal Bowman, who received the most such comments.
Haaretz noted that targeting Democratic African–American lawmakers seemed to be an attempt to counter the wave of support they have given to Palestinians amid Israel’s ongoing campaign of Genocide in Gaza.
The TikTok Totalitarians
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | March 18, 2024
On Wednesday, March 13th, a bipartisan group of US Representatives voted to give the US president the power to remove any website, computer or mobile application, or even service provider that the president determines – without due process – is run by “a person subject to the direction of control of a foreign person or entity” as long as that foreign person or entity is declared an “adversary” of the US.
And who gets to decide who is an “adversary”? The US President.
Cut through the hollow propaganda about the Chinese using it to spy on and subvert Americans – another “Saddam’s got WMDs” lie – and it is the most dangerous and un-American piece of legislation since the PATRIOT Act.
In fact it may be arguably worse. While the PATRIOT Act was a fig leaf for the government to spy on Americans, this demon of a bill will actually allow the US Government to determine what Americans can read and thereby what they will think. Isn’t that just what supporters of this bill claim the Chinese government is doing?
Take all the massive evidence of US government collusion and censorship of Americans’ “wrongthink” exposed by the heroic Matt Taibbi and the rest of the “Twitter Files” investigators and multiply it by a million and you won’t even then begin to understand the damage this law will do once it’s passed in the Senate and signed by Biden.
Twitter/X and its owner Elon Musk are routinely claimed to be biased toward (or sometimes against) Russia. Obviously “foreign adversary controlled.” Shut it down.
The video hosting and streaming service Rumble minimizes restrictions on what can be uploaded. It rightly calls itself the free-speech platform. They even allow Russian media RT and Iran’s PressTV to give a perspective different than that given by the US government and mainstream media. Shut it down. “Foreign adversary controlled.”
How about the Ron Paul Liberty Report? We often take positions at odds with the policies of the US Administration and criticize, for example, sending hundreds of billions to fight a proxy war in Ukraine. Obviously “foreign adversary controlled.” Shut it down.
Every single independent conservative media outlet that is sympathetic to Donald Trump will be in the crosshairs of President Biden when this bill becomes law, as Biden and his crew consistently accuse Trump – even after all these years – of being in Putin’s back pocket. That is why right-winger Federalist CEO Sean Davis is horrified by the move, writing on Twitter/X:
“It’s not that the U.S. government wants to protect you from spying and data theft and manipulation. If only. No, the people behind the Russian collusion hoax, and the Kavanaugh hoax, and the natural origin COVID hoax, and the illegal warrantless spying, and the forced transing of your children—they want to be the ones spying on you and stealing your data and poisoning the minds of your children.”
Those on the Left should take heed: Be assured that if Donald Trump is elected president this fall, the bill will become the same political cudgel used by the Right to silence your alternative media outlets as well.
Libertarian-minded progressives like Glenn Greenwald see the danger – and the pattern – clearly, as he writes:
“The TikTok bill is how rights erosions always always always work: Pick a target to start with that everyone hates or fears, so that everyone unites in support, nobody wants to defend. Then the precedent is set, so when it expands inward, nobody can object any longer.”
See where this is going? It’s not about China. It’s about our freedom to consume whatever media we wish to consume. No one is forced to use TikTok. If an American exercising his or her First Amendment rights determines that any risk of using TikTok is one worth taking, that is his or her right.
Tucker Carlson – no friend of China – rightly deemed it, “the most far reaching act of censorship in the history of the United States.” He added, “it’s an attack on the right of American citizens to receive their information from any source they choose.”
After the ignominious House vote, Tucker had Sen. Rand Paul on his program to explain how the “we are protecting Americans from the Chinese Communists” explanation for attacking the US Constitution is nothing but a ruse. Watch that episode on Twitter/X here.
Sen. Paul himself pointed out the hypocrisy in the US government taking such an authoritarian approach to censorship, writing on Twitter/X, “Emulating Chinese communism is not the way to combat Chinese communism.”
There is a mafia element to the legislation as well. The bill demands that TikTok be sold to avoid being banned.
Remember when Michael Corleone told this then-girlfriend Kay Adams how his father, Don Vito Corleone, “encouraged” the bandleader that had Johnny Fontaine under contract to let him out of the contract when Johnny started to become a star:
- Michael Corleone: My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
- Kay Adams: What was that?
- Michael Corleone: Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract. That’s a true story.
This is exactly what the US government is doing with this legislation. It’s hardly surprising that now that this US government threat against TikTok has likely seriously devalued the company, deep state denizens like former US Treasury Secretary Steven “Goldman Sachs” Mnuchin is sniffing around ready to pick up TikTok for a song.
Either TikTok’s signature or its brains will be on Mnuchin’s contract.
This is gangsterism and authoritarianism on steroids, yet the uniparty running Washington DC lapped it up like mother’s milk. Perhaps that is why they lapped it up so enthusiastically.
When this bill becomes law, a big part of America will have died. That’s not an exaggeration.
Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.
How the Democrats Plan to Steal the Election
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | March 18, 2024
Biden and Trump have clinched the nominations of their parties for President. Everybody is gearing up for a battle between them for the election in November. It’s obvious that Biden is “cognitively impaired.” In blunter language, “brain-dead”. Partisans of Trump are gearing up for a decisive victory. But what if this battle is a sham? What if Biden’s elite gang of neo-con controllers won’t let Biden lose?
How can they stop him from losing? Simple. If it looks like he’s losing, the elite forces will create enough fake ballots to ensure victory. Our corrupt courts won’t stop them. They have done this before, and they will do it again, if they have to.
I said the Democrats have done this before. The great Dr. Ron Paul explains one way they did this in 2020. The elite covered up a scandal that could have wrecked Biden’s chances:
“Move over Watergate. On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal.
The problem was that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and the explosive contents of the computer were leaking out. The details of the Biden family’s apparent corruption and the debauchery of the former vice-president’s son were being reported by the New York Post, and with the election less than a month away, the Biden campaign needed to kill the story.
So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign – using their high-level government titles – to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. A letter signed by dozens of the highest-ranking former CIA, DIA, and NSA officials would surely carry enough weight to bury the Biden laptop story. It worked. Social media outlets prevented any reporting on the laptop from being posted and the mainstream media could easily ignore the story as it was merely “Russian propaganda.”
Asked recently by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) why he agreed to draft the false sign-on letter, Morell testified that he wanted to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.” Morell also likely expected to be named by President Biden to head up the CIA when it came time to call in favors.
The Democrats and the mainstream media have relentlessly pushed the lie that the ruckus inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6th 2021 was a move by President Trump to overthrow the election results. Hundreds of “trespassers” were arrested and held in solitary confinement without trial to bolster the false narrative that a conspiracy to steal the election was taking place.
It turns out that there really was a conspiracy to steal the election, but it was opposite of what was reported. Just as the Steele Dossier was a Democratic Party covert action to plant the lie that the Russians were pulling strings for Trump, the “Russian disinformation campaign” letter was a lie to deflect scrutiny of the Biden family’s possible corruption in the final days of the campaign.
Did the Biden campaign’s disinformation campaign help rig the election in his favor? Polls suggest that Biden would not have been elected had the American electorate been informed about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop. So yes, they cheated in the election.
The Democrats and the mainstream media are still at it, however. Now they are trying to kill the story of how they killed the story of the Biden laptop. This is a scandal that would once upon a time have ended in resignation, impeachment, and/or plenty of jail time. If they successfully bury this story, I hate to say it but there is no more rule of law in what has become the American banana republic.” See here.
But the main way the election can be rigged is by fraudulent “voting.” It’s much easier to do this with digital scanning of votes than with old-fashioned ballot boxes.
Dr. Naomi Wolf explains how electronic voting machines make it easier to steal elections:
“People could steal elections in this ‘analog’ technology of paper and locked ballot boxes, of course, by destroying or hiding votes, or by bribing voters, a la Tammany Hall, or by other forms of wrongdoing, so security and chain of custody, as well as anti-corruption scrutiny, were always needed in guaranteeing accurate election counts. But there was no reason, with analog physical processing of votes, to query the tradition of the secret ballot.
Before the digital scanning of votes, you could not hack a wooden ballot box; and you could not set an algorithm to misread a pile of paper ballots. So, at the end of the day, one way or another, you were counting physical documents.
Those days are gone, obviously, and in many districts there are digital systems reading ballots.” See here.
This isn’t the first time the Left has stolen an election. It happened in the 2020 presidential election too. Ron Unz offers his usual cogent analysis:
“There does seem to be considerable circumstantial evidence of widespread ballot fraud by Democratic Party forces, hardly surprising given the apocalyptic manner in which so many of their leaders had characterized the threat of a Trump reelection. After all, if they sincerely believed that a Trump victory would be catastrophic for America why would they not use every possible means, fair and foul alike, to save our country from that dire fate?
In particular, several of the major swing-states contain large cities—Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—that are both totally controlled by the Democratic Party and also notoriously corrupt, and various eye-witnesses have suggested that the huge anti-Trump margins they provided may have been heavily ‘padded’ to ensure the candidate’s defeat.” See here.
In a program aired right after Biden’s pitiful State of the Union speech, the great Tucker Carlson pointed out that Biden’s “Justice” Department has already confessed that it plans to rig the election. It will do this by banning voter ID laws as “racist.” This permits an unlimited number of fake votes:
“If Joe Biden is so good at politics, why is he losing to Donald Trump, who the rest of us were assured was a retarded racist who no normal person would vote for? But now Joe Biden is getting stomped by Donald Trump, but he’s also at the same time good at politics? Right.
Again, they can’t win, but they’re not giving up. So what does that tell you? Well, they’re going to steal the election. We know they’re going to steal the election because they’re now saying so out loud. Here is the Attorney General of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer of this country in Selma, Alabama, just the other day.
[Now Carlson quotes the Attorney General, Merrick Garland:]
“The right to vote is still under attack, and that is why the Justice Department is fighting back. That is why one of the first things I did when I came into office was to double the size of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. That is why we are challenging efforts by states and jurisdictions to implement discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary restrictions on access to the ballot, including those related to mail-in voting, the use of drop boxes and voter ID requirements. That is why we are working to block the adoption of discriminatory redistricting plans that dilute the vote of Black voters and other voters of color.
[Carlson then comments on Garland:]
“Did you catch that? Of course, you’re a racist. That’s always the takeaway. But consider the details of what the Attorney General of the United States just said. Mail-in balloting, drop boxes, voter ID requirements. The chief law enforcement officer of the United States Government is telling you that it’s immoral, in fact racist, in fact illegal to ask people for their IDs when they vote to verify they are who they say they are. What is that? Well, no one ever talks about this, but the justification for it is that somehow people of color, Black people, don’t have state-issued IDs. Somehow they’re living in a country where you can do virtually nothing without proving your identity with a government-issued ID without government-issued IDs. They can’t fly on planes, they can’t have checking accounts, they can’t have any interaction with the government, state, local, or federal. They can’t stay in hotels. They can’t have credit cards. Because someone without a state-issued ID can’t do any of those things.
But what’s so interesting is these same people, very much including the Attorney General and the administration he serves, is working to eliminate cash, to make this a cashless society. Have you been to a stadium event recently? No cash accepted. You have to have a credit card. In order to get a credit card you need a state-issued ID, and somehow that’s not racist. But it is racist to ask people to prove their identity when they choose the next President of the United States. That doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s a lie. It’s an easily provable lie, and anyone telling that lie is advocating for mass voter fraud, which the Attorney General is. There’s no other way to read it. So you should know that. You live in a country where the Attorney General is abetting, in fact calling for voter fraud, and that’s the only chance they have to get their guy re-elected.” See here.
Because of absentee ballots, the voting can be spread out over a long period of time. This makes voting fraud much easier. Mollie Hemingway has done a lot of research on this topic:
“In the 2020 presidential election, for the first time ever, partisan groups were allowed—on a widespread basis—to cross the bright red line separating government officials who administer elections from political operatives who work to win them. It is important to understand how this happened in order to prevent it in the future.
Months after the election, Time magazine published a triumphant story of how the election was won by “a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” Written by Molly Ball, a journalist with close ties to Democratic leaders, it told a cheerful story of a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes,” the “result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
A major part of this “conspiracy” to “save the 2020 election” was to use COVID as a pretext to maximize absentee and early voting. This effort was enormously successful. Nearly half of voters ended up voting by mail, and another quarter voted early. It was, Ball wrote, “practically a revolution in how people vote.” Another major part was to raise an army of progressive activists to administer the election at the ground level. Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg’s help to Democrats is well known when it comes to censoring their political opponents in the name of preventing “misinformation.” Less well known is the fact that he directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an organization led by Zuckerberg’s wife Priscilla, gave more than $400 million to nonprofit groups involved in “securing” the 2020 election. Most of those funds—colloquially called “Zuckerbucks”—were funneled through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a voter outreach organization founded by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. All three had previously worked on activism relating to election rules for the New Organizing Institute, once described by The Washington Post as “the Democratic Party’s Hogwarts for digital wizardry.”
Flush with $350 million in Zuckerbucks, the CTCL proceeded to disburse large grants to election officials and local governments across the country. These disbursements were billed publicly as “COVID-19 response grants,” ostensibly to help municipalities acquire protective gear for poll workers or otherwise help protect election officials and volunteers against the virus. In practice, relatively little money was spent for this. Here, as in other cases, COVID simply provided cover.
According to the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), Georgia received more than $31 million in Zuckerbucks, one of the highest amounts in the country. The three Georgia counties that received the most money spent only 1.3 percent of it on personal protective equipment. The rest was spent on salaries, laptops, vehicle rentals, attorney fees for public records requests, mail-in balloting, and other measures that allowed elections offices to hire activists to work the election. Not all Georgia counties received CTCL funding. And of those that did, Trump-voting counties received an average of $1.91 per registered voter, compared to $7.13 per registered voter in Biden-voting counties.
The FGA looked at this funding another way, too. Trump won Georgia by more than five points in 2016. He lost it by three-tenths of a point in 2020. On average, as a share of the two-party vote, most counties moved Democratic by less than one percentage point in that time. Counties that didn’t receive Zuckerbucks showed hardly any movement, but counties that did moved an average of 2.3 percentage points Democratic. In counties that did not receive Zuckerbucks, “roughly half saw an increase in Democrat votes that offset the increase in Republican votes, while roughly half saw the opposite trend.” In counties that did receive Zuckerbucks, by contrast, three quarters “saw a significant uptick in Democrat votes that offset any upward change in Republican votes,” including highly populated Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb counties.
Of all the 2020 battleground states, it is probably in Wisconsin where the most has been brought to light about how Zuckerbucks worked.
CTCL distributed $6.3 million to the Wisconsin cities of Racine, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, and Kenosha—purportedly to ensure that voting could take place “in accordance with prevailing [anti-COVID] public health requirements.”
Wisconsin law says voting is a right, but that “voting by absentee ballot must be carefully regulated to prevent the potential for fraud or abuse; to prevent overzealous solicitation of absent electors who may prefer not to participate in an election.” Wisconsin law also says that elections are to be run by clerks or other government officials. But the five cities that received Zuckerbucks outsourced much of their election operation to private liberal groups, in one case so extensively that a sidelined government official quit in frustration.
This was by design. Cities that received grants were not allowed to use the money to fund outside help unless CTCL specifically approved their plans in writing. CTCL kept tight control of how money was spent, and it had an abundance of “partners” to help with anything the cities needed.
Some government officials were willing to do whatever CTCL recommended. “As far as I’m concerned I am taking all of my cues from CTCL and work with those you recommend,” Celestine Jeffreys, the chief of staff to Democratic Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich, wrote in an email. CTCL not only had plenty of recommendations, but made available a “network of current and former election administrators and election experts” to scale up “your vote by mail processes” and “ensure forms, envelopes, and other materials are understood and completed correctly by voters.”
Power the Polls, a liberal group recruiting poll workers, promised to help with ballot curing. The liberal Mikva Challenge worked to recruit high school-age poll workers. And the left-wing Brennan Center offered help with “election integrity,” including “post-election audits” and “cybersecurity.”
The Center for Civic Design, an election administration policy organization that frequently partners with groups such as liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, designed absentee ballots and voting instructions, often working directly with an election commission to design envelopes and create advertising and targeting campaigns. The Elections Group, also linked to the Democracy Fund, provided technical assistance in handling drop boxes and conducted voter outreach. The communications director for the Center for Secure and Modern Elections, an organization that advocates sweeping changes to the elections process, ran a conference call to help Green Bay develop Spanish-language radio ads and geofencing to target voters in a predefined area.
Digital Response, a nonprofit launched in 2020, offered to “bring voters an updated elections website,” “run a website health check,” “set up communications channels,” “bring poll worker application and management online,” “track and respond to polling location wait times,” “set up voter support and email response tools,” “bring vote-by-mail applications online,” “process incoming [vote-by-mail] applications,” and help with “ballot curing process tooling and voter notification.”
The National Vote at Home Institute was presented as a “technical assistance partner” that could “support outreach around absentee voting,” provide and oversee voting machines, consult on methods to cure absentee ballots, and even assume the duty of curing ballots.
A few weeks after the five Wisconsin cities received their grants, CTCL emailed Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, to offer “an experienced elections staffer that could potentially embed with your staff in Milwaukee in a matter of days.” The staffer leading Wisconsin’s portion of the National Vote at Home Institute was an out-of-state Democratic activist named Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein. As soon as he met with Woodall-Vogg, he asked for contacts in other cities and at the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
Spitzer-Rubenstein would eventually take over much of Green Bay’s election planning from the official charged with running the election, Green Bay Clerk Kris Teske. This made Teske so unhappy that she took Family and Medical Leave prior to the election and quit shortly thereafter.
Emails from Spitzer-Rubenstein show the extent to which he was managing the election process. To one government official he wrote, “By Monday, I’ll have our edits on the absentee voting instructions. We’re pushing Quickbase to get their system up and running and I’ll keep you updated. I’ll revise the planning tool to accurately reflect the process. I’ll create a flowchart for the vote-by-mail processing that we will be able to share with both inspectors and also observers.”
Once early voting started, Woodall-Vogg would provide Spitzer-Rubenstein with daily updates on the numbers of absentee ballots returned and still outstanding in each ward—prized information for a political operative.
Amazingly, Spitzer-Rubenstein even asked for direct access to the Milwaukee Election Commission’s voter database: “Would you or someone else on your team be able to do a screen-share so we can see the process for an export?” he wrote. “Do you know if WisVote has an [application programming interface] or anything similar so that it can connect with other software apps? That would be the holy grail.” Even for Woodall-Vogg, that was too much. “While I completely understand and appreciate the assistance that is trying to be provided,” she replied, “I am definitely not comfortable having a non-staff member involved in the function of our voter database, much less recording it.”
When these emails were released in 2021, they stunned Wisconsin observers. “What exactly was the National Vote at Home Institute doing with its daily reports? Was it making sure that people were actually voting from home by going door-to-door to collect ballots from voters who had not yet turned theirs in? Was this data sharing a condition of the CTCL grant? And who was really running Milwaukee’s election?” asked Dan O’Donnell, whose election analysis appeared at Wisconsin’s conservative MacIver Institute.
Kris Teske, the sidelined Green Bay city clerk—in whose office Wisconsin law actually places the responsibility to conduct elections—had of course seen what was happening early on. “I just don’t know where the Clerk’s Office fits in anymore,” she wrote in early July. By August, she was worried about legal exposure: “I don’t understand how people who don’t have the knowledge of the process can tell us how to manage the election,” she wrote on August 28.
Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich simply handed over Teske’s authority to agents from outside groups and gave them leadership roles in collecting absentee ballots, fixing ballots that would otherwise be voided for failure to follow the law, and even supervising the counting of ballots. “The grant mentors would like to meet with you to discuss, further, the ballot curing process. Please let them know when you’re available,” Genrich’s chief of staff told Teske.
Spitzer-Rubenstein explained that the National Vote at Home Institute had done the same for other cities in Wisconsin. “We have a process map that we’ve worked out with Milwaukee for their process. We can also adapt the letter we’re sending out with rejected absentee ballots along with a call script alerting voters. (We can also get people to make the calls, too, so you don’t need to worry about it.)”
Other emails show that Spitzer-Rubenstein had keys to the central counting facility and access to all the machines before election night. His name was on contracts with the hotel hosting the ballot counting.
Sandy Juno, who was clerk of Brown County, where Green Bay is located, later testified about the problems in a legislative hearing. “He was advising them on things. He was touching the ballots. He had access to see how the votes were counted,” Juno said of Spitzer-Rubenstein. Others testified that he was giving orders to poll workers and seemed to be the person running the election night count operation.
“I would really like to think that when we talk about security of elections, we’re talking about more than just the security of the internet,” Juno said. “You know, it has to be security of the physical location, where you’re not giving a third party keys to where you have your election equipment.”
Juno noted that there were irregularities in the counting, too, with no consistency between the various tables. Some had absentee ballots face-up, so anyone could see how they were marked. Poll workers were seen reviewing ballots not just to see that they’d been appropriately checked by the clerk, but “reviewing how they were marked.” And poll workers fixing ballots used the same color pens as the ones ballots had been filled out in, contrary to established procedures designed to make sure observers could differentiate between voters’ marks and poll workers’ marks.
The plan by Democratic strategists to bring activist groups into election offices worked in part because no legislature had ever imagined that a nonprofit could take over so many election offices so easily. “If it can happen to Green Bay, Wisconsin, sweet little old Green Bay, Wisconsin, these people can coordinate any place,” said Janel Brandtjen, a state representative in Wisconsin.
She was right. What happened in Green Bay happened in Democrat-run cities and counties across the country. Four hundred million Zuckerbucks were distributed with strings attached. Officials were required to work with “partner organizations” to massively expand mail-in voting and staff their election operations with partisan activists. The plan was genius. And because no one ever imagined that the election system could be privatized in this way, there were no laws to prevent it.
Such laws should now be a priority.” See here.
Let’s do everything we can to publicize the steal. That way, we have a chance to prevent it.
Niger broke military pact with US after being ‘warned’ about Iran, Russia ties
Press TV – March 19, 2024
Niger’s junta decided to suspend a military agreement with the United States after a delegation of senior US military officials visited the Western African country and “expressed concerns” about its growing relations with Russia and Iran.
The Pentagon said on Monday that the officials traveled to the Nigerien capital Niamey last week to discuss the matter with the country’s military leadership, seeking clarification about the way ahead.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh asserted that the US government had “direct and frank” conversations in Niger, and was continuing to communicate with the country’s ruling military council – known as the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP).
“The US delegation was there to raise a number of concerns. … We were troubled (about) the path that Niger is on. And so these were direct and frank conversations, to have those in person, to talk about our concerns and to also hear theirs.
“US officials expressed concern over Niger’s potential relationships with Russia and Iran,” Singh said.
Niger’s junta announced on Saturday that it had canceled a 2012 defense cooperation agreement with the US.
“The government of Niger, considering the aspirations and interests of its people, responsibly decides to denounce with immediate effect the agreement that permitted US military personnel and civilian employees from the American Department of Defense on Niger’s territory,” Nigerien government spokesman Amadou Abdramane said in a statement on national television.
The move followed a visit to Niamey by a delegation of senior US military officials led by Under Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee.
Abdramane accused US officials of not following diplomatic protocol and not informing Niger about the composition of the delegation.
He added that Niger regretted the “intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right of choosing their partners and partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism.”
High-level Russian military officials, including Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov, have visited Niger and met with the country’s military leadership.
The prime minister of the ruling junta, Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, visited Iran in January.
Foreign Minister of Niger, Bakary Yaou Sangare, visited Tehran in October 2023 to explore opportunities for strengthening political and economic ties, as well as boosting cooperation in scientific and technological sectors between the two countries.
Commending Iran’s skills in various economic, scientific, and technological sectors, the Nigerien diplomat underscored that Iran’s capabilities are well-matched to cater to Niger’s requirements in the energy and industrial domains.
Russia Considers US Proposals to Start Arms Control Talks ‘Hypocrisy’
Sputnik – 18.03.2024
Moscow considers Washington’s proposals to hold arms control talks “hypocrisy,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Sputnik on Monday.
“American officials are declaring their alleged desire to enter into arms control discussions with Russia without preconditions but they clearly did not bother to read the February 29 address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly, which has our fundamental assessments of this kind of hypocrisy and demagogy amid Washington’s desire to inflict ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia,” the ministry said.
Earlier in the day, US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the United States stands ready to engage in bilateral arms control talks with China and Russia without any preconditions.
“The United States is willing to engage in bilateral arms control discussions with Russia and China right now, without preconditions. All they have to do is say ‘yes’ and come to the table in good faith,” Thomas-Greenfield said during a UN Security Council meeting.
Russia’s policy has not changed, and the country is ready to discuss arms control altogether with focus on issues that directly involve Moscow’s security interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry added.
“In the meantime, we are invited to conduct dialogue exclusively on US terms and only on those issues that are of interest to Washington,” the ministry said.
Deputy Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy in turn said that the strategic dialogue between Russia and the United States on arms control is only possible if the US and NATO revise their anti-Russian course.
“Any interaction will only be possible if the United States and NATO review their anti-Russian course and when they show that they are ready to participate in comprehensive dialogue taking into account all of our strategic stability factors and removing all of the concerns that we have,” Polyanskiy said at the UN Security Council meeting.
He stressed that the strategic dialogue between the US and the Russian Federation cannot be separated from the general and military context.
At the same time Russia stands ready to negotiate on the issue of nuclear disarmament with interested countries during the new Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) Review conference, Polyanskiy added.
“We expect that our Western colleagues will abandon their very dangerous and destructive course. We are open within the new NPT Review conference to a constructive dialogue with all countries interested in reaching a consensus understanding on how we can create preconditions for further nuclear disarmament,” he said.



