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Ex-Press TV reporter at center of WaPo’s smear campaign against Grayzone

By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | June 11, 2024

The Washington Post reports that Grayzone journalist Wyatt Reed took funds from Iran, and the report is based on testimonies of anti-Iran elements or those linked to US arms manufacturers.

In another desperate bid to muzzle alternative media that has been revealing Western complicity in Gaza and Ukraine, The Washington Post recently published a hit piece targeting The Grayzone news outlet.

The article alleged that The Grayzone is financially backed by Iran and Russia to “spread falsehoods.”

Authored by Joseph Menn, the article claimed to have “exposed” The Grayzone’s journalist Wyatt Reed’s ties with Iran’s state media, relying on what it said were hacked emails and quotes from sources either anti-Iran elements or linked to the US government or arms manufacturers.

The oldest newspaper in Washington, owned by pro-Israel business tycoon Jeff Bezos, insinuated that since Reed, now a managing director at The Grayzone, appeared on Press TV many years ago, he is on the Islamic Republic’s payroll.

The piece went as far as to suggest that he should be jailed for reporting for the Iranian news channel.

The Washington Post report repeated the same claims about Reed’s reporting for Russia’s state-run news agency Sputnik.

Reed, for his part, has never hidden his work for Press TV. At the start of his journalistic career in 2020, Reed appeared on Press TV several dozen times and openly tweeted his reports. The “correspondent @PressTV” was also featured in his Twitter bio at the time.

“For weeks, we’ve been waiting to see how they would target us. Now we know. Congrats to the @washingtonpost’s ‘Digital threats reporter’ on this earth-shattering reporting on my appearances on Press TV years before I edited Grayzone,” Reed wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, last week.

“How could they possibly have figured it out?” he added.

Dan Cohen, an American journalist and filmmaker, also took to X to assert that The Washington Post’s “sloppy attempt” to discredit independent journalism only highlights the media group’s own corruption.

“The Washington Post is targeting Grayzone journalist @wyattreed13 for having previously worked for Iran state media outlet Press TV and Russian state outlet Sputnik, as if that’s somehow a breach of journalist ethics,” Cohen wrote in a post.

He said The Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe has a fellowship at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a permanent war think tank funded by the US State Department and Pentagon.

The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal, responded that supporters of the Israeli war on Gaza and the Western proxy war in Ukraine are angry with The Grayzone and Reed because of their truthful reporting.

“The motive behind this malicious attack is abundantly clear: Wyatt now works for The Grayzone, and The Grayzone’s factual reporting has infuriated boosters of the Ukraine proxy war and members of Israel’s international propaganda network,” he said.

‘Embarrassing’ correction

Stung by the backlash, The Washington Post was forced to retract some of its allegations. While the story initially claimed that editors of The Grayzone had received payments from Iranian media, it soon corrected the story, saying only Reed received such payments.

“Less than 24 hours after @JosephMenn’s hatchet job on @TheGrayzoneNews landed, WaPo has been forced into a massive and deeply embarrassing correction,” Kit Klarenberg, a British investigative journalist and contributor to the Press TV website, wrote in a post on X.

“Other egregious distortions and falsehoods remain extant. But it’s a start. And certainly the foundation of future legal action,” he added.

Reed also said in an X post that more corrections are expected in the coming days.

“The ‘journalists’ attempting to get me jailed for journalism just had to issue a major correction to their hit piece. Expect more in the coming days as we expose the US government cutouts, pro-Israel zealots, and federal informants they relied on to target us.”

Bogus claims

Despite the correction, the piece is still filled with false, twisted, and distorted accounts. For example, the author of the article, Menn, claims Blumenthal did not answer emails seeking comment. However, Blumenthal said in a post on X that he received no emails.

“Unless Menn can prove that he emailed me and I somehow missed it, this is malicious conduct that demonstrates reckless disregard for journalistic ethics,” he said.

Blumenthal added that if he had received any emails from Menn, he would have stated clearly that Reed reported for Press TV three years before he joined The Grayzone and that Wyatt’s position at The Grayzone was created through “a public, grassroots crowd-funding campaign” in which readers pooled together small donations.

“I would have also stated that The Grayzone does not accept funding from any government, unlike nearly every intel front Menn quoted against us,” he added.

According to Blumenthal, these facts would have undermined the entire premise of Menn’s “malicious” smear piece, which may be why he did not email him.

WaPo quotes NATO-backed groups

Blumenthal also revealed that Menn’s key sources for the article included Neil Rauhauser, a “shady online troll” who is also believed to be an FBI informant, and some NATO-backed outfits.

The article cited the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, a Canberra-based think tank funded by Australia’s Department of Defence, NATO, and the US Department of State.

The Atlantic Council, the semi-official DC think tank of NATO, is another source cited by The Washington Post, which has taken in substantial funding from the US Department of State, EU states, and arms manufacturers.

It also quoted Ali Herischi, personal lawyer of Masih Alinejad, a US-based, exiled Iranian rabble-rouser who is on Washington’s payroll for instigating anti-Iran sentiments inside and outside the country.

Alinejad has advocated for Israeli military attacks on Iran and received $305,000 from the US government for her work at Voice of America, the US state broadcaster, between 2015 and 2019.

“At no point did Menn inform his readers that his sources were state-funded pro-war entities,” Blumenthal said.

Misinforming readers

The Washington Post story also alleged that The Grayzone is spreading misinformation by reporting “widespread Israeli attacks against its [settlers] on October 7” when Hamas carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories.

However, the newspaper conveniently failed to inform its readers that Israeli media have corroborated The Grayzone’s assessment that the Israeli military explicitly ordered attacks on Israeli settlers who had been taken captive on October 7, killing many.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last month that Israeli Gen. Barak Hiram ordered an Israeli tank to shell a home in Kibbutz Beeri filled with over a dozen Israeli captives on October 7, killing all but two.

Desperate attempts

According to Hermela Aregawi, a US-based independent journalist, the targeting of American journalists who challenge mainstream narratives is likely to ramp up ahead of the US presidential elections.

“If you read beyond the headline, the ‘editor’s ties’ are that… ‘The files appear to show that the Iranian broadcaster paid [journalist Wyatt] Reed for occasional contributions to its programming’… The reality is US outlets, UK outlets, Qatar (Al Jazeera) etc. pay some of their contributors for their analysis,” she wrote on X.

Journalist Mark Ames also said that the piece was a desperate attempt to trigger a federal investigation against independent journalists.

“This is the second WaPo hit piece against Grayzone this year. Based on the sourcing/media here, you get the sense Langley & DC press corps are so frustrated that their ‘disinformation’ hex cast upon [The Grayzone ] has had no effect, so they’re trying to summon the Feds to shut [The Grayzone ] down.”

The Australia-based anti-war commentator Caitlin Johnstone also said on X that The Grayzone staff worked for foreign media outlets like Press TV because there are no major Western media outlets that platform dissident voices like theirs, who “criticize the Western empire and its actions.”

“The Washington Post is one of the worst propaganda rags ever to exist in any country. If I’d published such an article for such a depraved empire propaganda outlet, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

June 11, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Gaza: child survivors of Nuseirat massacre say Israeli soldiers targeted them deliberately

MEMO | June 11, 2024

Mohammad Matar has told Anadolu news agency of the horrors of the massacre committed by the Israeli occupation army against the Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Miraculously, the 15-year-old child survived the brutal attack.

Matar is being treated for his wounds in the Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Yunis. An Israeli soldier shot him twice at point blank range, hitting him in the shoulder and stomach. The bullets exited his body through his back.

The Israeli occupation army attack on Saturday killed 274 Palestinians and wounded at least 700 others in a massacre committed after a major artillery and air bombardment of the refugee camp. Matar was walking in the street when the explosions began. He did not expect the area where he lived to be turned into a battlefield.

Within seconds, the boy told Anadolu, a number of Israeli helicopters flew overhead and fired randomly into the street where he was walking. He headed quickly to his home and gathered with his family members in the basement to take cover. Minutes later, the family heard the sounds of Israeli tanks in the area, so they ran up to the first floor, where they thought they would be safer.

Soon after, Israeli soldiers burst into his family home. “There were about 10 people in the house, and suddenly the soldiers took my brother, father and grandfather, blindfolded them and put black bags over their heads.” That’s when one soldier approached him without warning and shot him twice. He couldn’t stand up, so the soldier pulled him up forcibly, and then threw him to the floor. “My body was paralysed at that point,” he told Anadolu. “They also shot my younger brother and killed him, and my aunt was also shot.”

Matar pointed out that those who were injured were left to bleed for more than half an hour before they were transferred to hospital. He also said that US Rangers were among the Israeli troops. “The badge was on their shoulders.”

Nine-year-old Mohammad Al-Samouni also survived the Nuseirat massacre. He was wounded in his right hand during the Israeli military operation. “We were sitting in the tent that we were displaced to in the camp, and suddenly we saw tanks and Israeli soldiers in front of us,” he explained. A soldier threw an “explosive ball” at him, which caused the severe wound in his hand. His father and brother were killed instantly, but the youngster was unable to provide further details.

June 11, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas supports UN resolution for Gaza ceasefire

RT | June 10, 2024

Hamas has agreed with the UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Palestinian militant group said on Monday evening.

The Security Council has approved the US-backed resolution, with 14 votes in favor and Russia abstaining. Washington had finalized the text of the draft on Sunday.

“Hamas welcomes what is included in the Security Council resolution that affirmed the permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the complete withdrawal, the prisoners’ exchange, the reconstruction, the return of the displaced to their areas of residence, the rejection of any demographic change or reduction in the area of the Gaza Strip, and the delivery of needed aid to our people in the Strip,” the group said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

Hamas also said it would be willing to take part in indirect negotiations with Israel over implementing  the principles “that are consistent with the demands of our people and resistance.”

According to the White House, Israel has already accepted the ceasefire proposal. US President Joe Biden has claimed that the three-phase plan was an Israeli idea to begin with.

The UN resolution calls on both sides “to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition.”

Phase one of the proposal entails a six-week “pause” in the fighting, during which Israel and Hamas would open negotiations. If the talks continue past the six-week mark, the ceasefire will hold as long as the talks are ongoing, the resolution said.

Israel would also withdraw from the populated areas of Gaza and free some Palestinian prisoners in exchange for some hostages in Hamas captivity.

Phase two would see the return of all the remaining living hostages, while phase three would involve turning over the bodies of dead captives and a US-led “major reconstruction plan” for the Palestinian enclave.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Yemen’s Houthi forces warn all US bases in region now within missile range

MEMO | June 10, 2024

Major General Bakil Saleh Al-Wahbi, commander of the Al-Wahbi Brigades affiliated with the Houthis, confirmed that the Yemeni armed forces have delivered unexpected and painful blows to the US military, particularly the recent targeting of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. He stated: “All American bases in the region and their naval fleets have now, by the grace of God, become within the range of our missiles.”

In a statement to the Yemeni Press Agency, Major General Al-Wahbi explained that Yemen is witnessing rapid advancements in lethal military manufacturing. He pointed out that the recently unveiled locally-made missile “Palestine” is a small part of the missile arsenal and drones produced, which have reached the port of Haifa in the Mediterranean Sea, covering more than 3,000 kilometres.

Al-Wahbi said the Yemeni forces’ goal of producing intercontinental missiles capable of reaching deep into US territory. He asserted that the Pentagon, more than 13,000 kilometres away from Sana’a, should be aware of Yemen’s ambitions.

The comments come as the Houthis claimed to have targeted a British destroyer in the Red Sea and two ships in the Arabian Sea. Military spokesman Brigadier-General Yahya Saree stated that fighters attacked the British destroyer Diamond in the Red Sea with ballistic missiles “in response to the Israeli attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.”

In support of Gaza and amid the “fourth escalation phase,” the Yemeni armed forces targeted the aircraft carrier Eisenhower twice within 24 hours in the Red Sea, using multiple drones. This action was Sanaa’s direct response to Israeli war crimes in Gaza and US-British aggression on Yemen.

The Yemeni armed forces affirmed their commitment to ongoing military operations in support of the oppressed Palestinian people and in response to US-British aggression. They stressed these operations will persist until the aggression ceases and the siege on Gaza is lifted.

Leader of the Houthi movement Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi was quoted as saying it is “a great honour and blessing to be confronting America directly.”

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Russia ready to strike NATO airfields hosting Ukrainian jets – MP

RT | June 10, 2024

F-16 fighter jets and any airfields they are based at will be legitimate targets for the Russian military if they participate in combat missions against Moscow’s forces, the chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, Andrey Kartapolov, has warned.

The comments come as Kiev prepares to receive the first delivery of US-made fighter jets from its Western backers, after Ukrainian pilots were trained to fly them.

In a statement to RIA Novosti published on Monday, Kartapolov clarified that if the F-16s “are not used for their intended purpose” or are simply held in storage at foreign airbases with the intent to transfer them to Ukraine, where they will be equipped, maintained, and flown from Ukrainian airfields, then Russia would have no claims against its “former partners” and would not target them.

However, if the jets take off from foreign bases and carry out sorties and strikes against Russian forces, both the fighter planes and the airfields they are stationed at will be “legitimate targets,” according to Kartapolov.

“As for [our ability] to shoot [them] down, we can shoot down anyone, anywhere,” the MP insisted.

Kartapolov’s statement comes after the chief of aviation of Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Sergey Golubtsov, stated in an interview with Radio Liberty on Sunday that some of the F-16 fighter jets donated to Kiev by the West would be stationed at foreign airbases.

He explained that only a portion of the jets would be stationed directly on Ukrainian territory, corresponding to the number of pilots trained to operate the aircraft. The other jets would be kept in reserve at “safe airbases” abroad so that they are not targeted by the Russian military.

Golubtsov stated that so far four countries have agreed to transfer F-16s to Ukraine, namely Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands. While he did not specify exactly how many aircraft would be donated, he claimed it was between 30 and 40 planes, with potentially more to come in the future.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has also warned that Moscow would perceive the deliveries of F-16 fighters to Ukraine as a nuclear threat, given that the jets have long been used as part of the US-led bloc’s joint nuclear missions.

At the same time, the minister stressed that the US-designed jets would not change the situation on the battlefield, and would be shot down and destroyed like any other foreign weapons supplied to Ukraine.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US defence industry struggles to manufacture basic artillery for Ukraine

By Ahmed Adel | June 10, 2024

The United States arms industry is not producing the basic ammunition required to sustain support for Ukraine and Israel, Bloomberg reported on June 8. This is an extraordinary situation since Russia’s arms industry is booming despite facing major Western sanctions.

According to the outlet, the US defence industry gave priority to the manufacture of high-tech ammunition and halted the production of basic artillery such as 155-millimetre ammunition, the most used in the wars that are being fought today. The US is also facing a shortage of basic products, such as gunpowder or trinitrotoluene (TNT), to produce these munitions and have had to turn to other countries, such as Poland and Turkey, to obtain supplies.

At some point an attempt was made to replace the 155-millimetre ammunition with higher-tech projectiles on the battlefront in Ukraine, but the effort failed because the new weaponry was neutralised by the Russian military.

“Higher-tech shells that were intended to replace the traditional 155mm munitions failed an early test in Ukraine, when their targeting systems were thwarted by Russia,” Bloomberg reported. “The prospect that future wars could resemble the grinding combat taking place there has stirred fears that the US arsenal could someday be stretched to the breaking point.”

“The writing has been on the wall for a while,” Stacie Pettyjohn, a senior fellow and director of the defense program at the independent and bipartisan Center for a New American Security, told Bloomberg. “It has just taken the war in Ukraine to really shock Pentagon officials and members of Congress out of their complacency.”

Since the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the Pentagon has divested or neglected facilities once used to manufacture everything from projectiles to gunpowder, focusing instead on transforming warfare with high-tech weaponry.

“What’s left is crumbling infrastructure, outdated machinery and a tiny workforce that can’t keep up with growing international demand,” the outlet highlights.

Before the special military operation in Ukraine, American production was 14,400 shells per month. Now, the US is spending more than $5 billion to overhaul aging factories across the country with the goal of producing 100,000 155mm shells a month by the end of next year.

As the agency stresses, it is a mobilisation that, due to its speed and breadth, is unlike anything since World War II.

As part of this effort, Congress has appropriated $650 million for a TNT production plant that will take two years to build, according to Doug Bush, the Army’s top weapons buyer. And Washington will have to finance purchases of whatever the renovated facilities produce, possibly for many years.

But, as Bloomberg noted, getting the money may also be the easiest obstacle to overcome.

“The US must bring old buildings up to snuff, build new ones, buy updated machinery and hire and train workers. Environmental regulations stand in the way. And the Pentagon will need to ensure that plants can be run safely — munitions-making is prone to fires, explosions and other accidents,” the outlet noted.

Bloomberg concludes, “Boosting munition production is a costly and time-consuming business, and the US is playing catch-up at a time of growing tension in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific region.”

Washington naively believed that the sweeping sanctions against Moscow would collapse the Russian economy and therefore its military operation against the Kiev regime. Instead, Russia not only overcame the sanctions but is now producing artillery shells at a rate that the West cannot keep up with.

It is recalled that Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur admitted in November 2023 that Russia was firing 70,000 rounds a day, meaning that an equivalent of a year’s worth of European production at the time was fired by the Russian military every 10 days. The crippling shortage of artillery was also referred to by Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov in January, who revealed that Ukraine was unable to fire more than 2,000 shells per day.

Due to a severe worldwide shortage of artillery shells, Western analysts admit Ukraine will likely be outgunned by Russia for at least the remainder of the year, but even with Kiev’s allies ramping up production, realistically Russia will hold the advantage for the duration of the war.

Even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said recently there were no reports of artillery shortages, in an interview on May 21 with Reuters, he called on Western allies to speed up aid, saying every decision they’ve made on military support for Ukraine has been “late by around one year.” Even in this most desperate stage of the war, from Kiev’s perspective, Zelensky cannot but be ungrateful and entitled, even when the West struggles to overcome its industrial failures, particularly since Russia’s military industry is a resounding success despite the sanctions.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Scholz and Macron belong to ‘ash heap of history’ – Medvedev

RT | June 10, 2024

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron should abandon politics after their respective parties suffered damaging setbacks in the European Parliament elections, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev believes.

Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is projected to finish third in the key ballot, behind the center-right Christian Democrats and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Macron’s Besoin d’Europe coalition is expected to win less than half of the votes received by the right-wing National Rally party associated with Marine Le Pen, prompting the French president to call a snap parliamentary election after preliminary results emerged on Sunday.

In a social media post on Monday, Medvedev claimed the outcome proves that Scholz and Macron are “respected by no one.” The former Russian leader linked the poor performance at the ballot box with the “idiotic economic and migration policy” pursued by the two leaders and their support for Ukraine “at the cost of [their] own citizens.”

“Time to retire. To the ash heap of history!” said Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, earlier called on Scholz and Macron to resign and to “stop victimizing the citizens of their states.”

Officials in Moscow have accused leaders of EU nations of betraying the interests of their populations in favor of US geopolitical goals. Responding to the Ukraine crisis in 2022, the bloc vowed to support Kiev militarily for “as long as it takes,” and imposed an array of economic sanctions against Russia. Most notably, Brussels has pushed EU countries to stop buying Russian natural gas.

Large consumers such as Germany have struggled to substitute cheap Russian pipeline fuel with other sources, including renewables and expensive liquified natural gas. American LNG producers have since taken over a large share of the European market. A hike in energy prices has forced many energy-intensive businesses to either move out of the EU or shut down entirely.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

The Jewish Hand in World War Three

By Thomas Dalton | Inconvenient History, Vol. 14, No. 2 | June 23, 2022

Thanks to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, we indeed seem to be rushing headlong into a major war—possibly a World War Three, possibly the world’s first (and perhaps last) nuclear war. Ukraine leadership and their Western backers seem hell-bent on fighting to the last man, and Vladimir Putin, as an old-school Cold Warrior, seems equally determined to press ahead until achieving “victory.” The cause seems hopeless for Ukraine, who cannot reasonably expect to prevail in an extended conflict with one of the largest militaries on Earth. At best, they may bleed Russia over a period of months or years, but only at the cost of massive blood-letting themselves. It seems that Ukraine will be the loser in this struggle, no matter what comes.

In the Western media, we are presented with a remarkably simplified storyline: Putin is an evil warmonger who simply wants to extend Russian territory; to this end, he is exploiting events in Ukraine, deploying his military ostensibly to support the Russian-speaking districts of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. But this is just cover, they say, for his mad quest to rebuild the Russian empire. In pursuit of his goal, he is willing to inflict any amount of material damage and kill any number of civilians. Fortunately, say our media, Putin has thus far been largely contained; the brave Ukrainian fighters are constantly “reclaiming” land, Russia’s advance has “stalled,” and indeed, Russia seems to be in danger of losing.

Consequently, the US and its allies must do all they can to “aid” and “support” the brave Ukrainians and their beleaguered but heroic leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. No amount of money, no assortment of deadly weaponry, no military intelligence, is too much. Like World War Two, this “war” is an unconditional struggle of Good versus Evil; therefore the West, as the moral paragon of the world, must step up, undergo sacrifice, and ensure that Good prevails.

And indeed, the financial support from just the United States is breathtaking: As of early May, Congress has approved $13.6 billion in aid, much of it for direct Ukrainian military support. And yet this would only cover costs through September. Thus, president Biden recently called for an additional package of $33 billion, which would include over $20 billion in military and security aid, and, surprisingly, $2.6 billion for “the deployment of American troops to the region,” in order to “safeguard NATO allies.” Incredibly, Congress responded by approving $40 billion, bringing the total aid thus far to $54 billion. For perspective, this represents over 80% of Russia’s annual defense budget of $66 billion. (By contrast, America allocates well over $1 trillion—that is, $1,000 billion—annually in direct and indirect military expenditures.)

Notably, such unconditional support and defense of Ukraine is a virtually unanimous view across the American political spectrum, and throughout Europe. Right and left, conservative and liberal, working class or wealthy elite, all sectors of society are apparently united in opposition to the evil Putin. In an era when virtually no issue garners unanimous support, the Ukrainian cause stands out as an extremely rare instance of bipartisan, multi-sector agreement. The rare dissenters—such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and a handful of alt-right renegades—are routinely attacked as “Russian assets” or “tools of Putin.” There is no room for disagreement, no space for debate, no opposing views allowed.

In fact, though, this is yet another case of what I might call the “unanimity curse”: when all parties in American society are united on a topic, any topic, then we really need to worry. Here, it seems that the reality is of a potent Jewish Lobby, exerting itself (again) in the direction of war, for reasons of profit and revenge against a hated enemy. There is, indeed, a Jewish hand at work here, one that may well drive us into another world war, and even a nuclear war—one which, in the worst case, could mean the literal end of much of life on this planet. The unanimity comes when all parties are subject, in various ways, to the demands of the Lobby, and when the public has been misled and even brainwashed by a coordinated Jewish media into believing the standard narrative.

The best cure for this catastrophic situation is unrestricted free speech. The Lobby knows this, however, and thus takes all possible measures to inhibit free speech. Normally, such a struggle ebbs and flows according to the issue and the times; but now, the situation is dire. Now more than ever, a lack of free speech could be fatal to civilized society.

Context and Run-Up

To fully understand the Jewish hand in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we need to review some relevant history. Over the centuries, there have been constant battles over the lands of present-day Ukraine, with Poles, Austro-Hungarians, and Russians alternately dominating. Russia took control of most of Ukraine in the late 1700s and held it more or less continuously until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991; this is why Putin claims that the country is “part of Russia.”

For their part, Jews have experienced a particularly tumultuous relationship with Russia, one that ranged from disgust and detestation to a burning hatred. As it happened, Jews migrated to Russia in the 19th century, eventually numbering around 5 million. They were a disruptive and agitating force within the nation and thus earned the dislike of Czars Nicholas I (reign 1825 to 1855), Alexander II (1855 to 1881, when he was assassinated by a partly-Jewish anarchist gang), and especially Nicholas II (1894 to 1917)—the latter of whom was famously murdered, along with his family, by a gang of Jewish Bolshevists in 1918. Already in 1871, Russian activist Mikhail Bakunin could refer to the Russian Jews as “a single exploiting sect, a sort of bloodsucker people, a collective parasite”.[1] The assassination of Alexander initiated a series of pogroms that lasted decades, and which set the stage for a lingering Jewish hatred of all things Russian.[2]

For present purposes, though, we can jump to the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election (I note that Ukraine also has a prime minister, but unlike most European countries, he typically has limited powers). In 2004, it came down to “the two Viktors”: the pro-Western V. Yushchenko and the pro-Russian V. Yanukovych. The first round was nearly tied, and thus they went to a second round in which Yanukovych prevailed by around three percentage points. But amid claims of vote-rigging, Western Ukrainians initiated an “Orange Revolution”—backed by the Ukrainian Supreme Court—that annulled those results and mandated a repeat runoff election. The second time, the tables were turned, and the pro-West Yushchenko won by eight points. The West was elated, and Putin naturally mad as hell.

The following years witnessed financial turmoil and, unsurprisingly, constant harassment from Russia. By 2010, Ukrainians were ready for a change, and this time Yanukovych won handily, over a Jewish female competitor, Yulia Timoshenko—notably, she had “co-led the Orange Revolution.” Russia, for once, was satisfied with the result.

But of course, in the West, Europe and the US were mightily displeased, and they soon began efforts to reverse things yet again. Among other strategies, they apparently decided to deploy the latest in high tech and social media. Thus in June 2011, two of Google’s top executives—Eric Schmidt and a 30-year-old Jewish upstart named Jared Cohen—went to visit Julian Assange in the UK, then living under house arrest. It is well-known, incidentally, that Google is a Jewish enterprise, with Jewish founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page running the ship.[3]

The nominal purpose of the trip was to conduct research for a book that Schmidt and Cohen were working on, regarding the intersection of political action and technology—in plain words, how to foment revolutions and steer events in a desired direction. As Assange relates in his 2014 book When Google Met Wikileaks, he was initially unaware of the deeper intentions and motives of his interviewers. Only later did he come to learn that Schmidt had close ties to the Obama administration, and that Cohen was actively working on political upheaval. As Assange wrote, “Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s ‘director of regime change’.” Their immediate targets were Yanukovych in Ukraine and Assad in Syria.

By early 2013, the American Embassy in Kiev was training right-wing Ukrainian nationalists on how to conduct a targeted revolt against Yanukovych. It would not be long until they had their chance.

In late 2013, Yanukovych decided to reject an EU-sponsored IMF loan, with all the usual nasty strings attached, in favor of a comparable no-strings loan from Russia. This apparent shift away from Europe and toward Russia was the nominal trigger for the start of protest actions. Thus began the “Maidan Uprising,” led in large part by two extreme nationalist groups: Svoboda and Right Sector.[4] Protests went on for nearly three months, gradually accelerating in intensity; in a notable riot near the end, some 100 protestors and 13 police were shot dead.

As the Uprising reached its peak, at least one American Jew was highly interested: Victoria Nuland. As Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State (first under Hillary Clinton, and then under the half-Jew John Kerry), Nuland had direct oversight of events in eastern Europe.[5] And for her, it was personal; her father, Sherwin Nuland (born Shepsel Nudelman), was a Ukrainian Jew. She was anxious to drive the pro-Russian Yanukovych out of power and replace him with a West-friendly, Jew-friendly substitute. And she had someone specific in mind: Arseniy Yatsenyuk. On 27 January 2014, as the riots were peaking, Nuland called American Ambassador to Ukraine, Jeff Pyatt, to urgently discuss the matter. Nuland pulled no punches: “Yats” was her man. We know this because the call was apparently tapped and the dialogue later posted on Youtube. Here is a short excerpt:

Nuland: I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step? […]

Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

It was clear to both of them, though, that the EU leadership had other ideas. The EU was much more anxious to be a neutral party and to avoid direct intervention in Ukrainian affairs so as to not unduly antagonize Russia. But in time-tested Jewish fashion, Nuland did not give a damn. A bit later in the same phone call, she uttered her now-famous phrase: “Fuck the EU.” So much for Jewish subtlety.[6]

But there was another angle that nearly all Western media avoided: “Yats” was also Jewish. In a rare mention, we read in a 2014 Guardian story that “Yatsenyuk has held several high-profile positions including head of the country’s central bank, the National Bank of Ukraine… He has played down his Jewish-Ukrainian origins, possibly because of the prevalence of antisemitism in his party’s western Ukraine heartland.” For some reason, such facts are never relevant to Western media.

As the Maidan Uprising gave way to the Maidan Revolution in February 2014, Yanukovych was forced out of office, fleeing to Russia. Pro-Western forces then succeeded in nominating “Yats” as prime minister, effective immediately, working in conjunction with president Oleksandr Turchynov. This provisional leadership was formalized in a snap election in May 2014 in which the pro-Western candidate Peter Poroshenko won. (The second-place finisher was none other than Yulia Timoshenko—the same Jewess who had lost to Yanukovych in 2010.)

It was under such circumstances that Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, in February 2014. It was also at this time that Russian separatists in Donbass launched their counter-revolution, initiating a virtual civil war in Ukraine; to date, eight years later, around 15,000 people have died in total, many civilians.

With this American-sponsored coup finished, Ukrainian Jews began to reach out to the West to increase their influence. Thus it happened that just a few months after Maidan, the wayward son of the American vice president got in touch with a leading Ukrainian Jew, Mykola Zlochevsky, who ran a large gas company called Burisma. In this way, Hunter Biden incredibly found himself on the board of a corporation of which he knew nothing, in an industry of which he knew nothing, and which nonetheless was able to “pay” him upwards of $500,000 per year—obviously, for access to father Joe and thus to President Obama. Hunter carried on in this prestigious role for around five years, resigning only in 2019, as his father began his fateful run for the presidency.[7]

Despite a rocky tenure, Yatsenyuk managed to hold his PM position for over two years, eventually resigning in April 2016. His replacement was yet another Jew, Volodymyr Groysman, who served until August 2019. The Jewish hand would not be stayed. All this set the stage for the rise of the ultimate Jewish player, Volodymyr Zelensky.

This situation is particularly remarkable given that Jews are a small minority in Ukraine. Estimates vary widely, but the Jewish population is claimed to range from a maximum of 400,000 to as low as just 50,000. With a total population of 41 million, Jews represent, at most, 1% of the nation, and could be as small as 0.12%. Under normal conditions, a tiny minority like this should be almost invisible; but here, they dominate. Such is the Jewish hand.

Enter the Jewish Oligarchs

In Ukraine, there is a “second government” that calls many of the shots. This shadow government is an oligarchy: a system of rule by the richest men. Of the five richest Ukrainian billionaires, four are Jews: Igor (or Ihor) Kolomoysky, Viktor Pinchuk, Rinat Akhmetov, and Gennadiy Bogolyubov. Right behind them, in the multi-millionaire class, are Jews like Oleksandr Feldman and Hennadiy Korban. Collectively, this group is often more effective at imposing their will than any legislator. And unsurprisingly, this group has been constantly enmeshed in corruption and legal scandals, implicated in such crimes as kidnapping, arson and murder.[8]

Of special interest is the first named above. Kolomoysky has long been active in banking, airlines and media—and in guiding minor celebrities to political stardom. In 2005 he became the leading shareholder of the 1+1 Media Group, which owns seven TV channels, including the highly popular 1+1 channel. (The 1+1 Group was founded in 1995 by another Ukrainian Jew, Alexander Rodnyansky.) Worth up to $6 billion in the past decade, Kolomoysky’s current net wealth is estimated to be around $1 billion.

Not long after acquiring 1+1, Kolomoysky latched on to an up-and-coming Jewish comedian by the name of Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky had been in media his entire adult life, and even co-founded a media group, Kvartal 95, in 2003, at the age of just 25. Starring in feature films, he switched to television by the early 2010s, eventually coming to star in the 1+1 hit show “Servant of the People,” where he played a teacher pretending to be president of Ukraine. Then there was the notable 2016 comedy skit in which Zelensky and friends play a piano with their penises—in other words, typical low-brow scatological Jewish humor, compliments of Zelensky and Kolomoysky.

By early 2018, the pair were ready to move into politics. Zelensky registered his new political party for the upcoming 2019 election, and declared himself a presidential candidate in December 2018, just four months prior to the election. In the end, of course, he won, with 30% of the vote in the first round, and then defeating incumbent Poroshenko in the 2nd round by a huge 50-point margin. Relentless favorable publicity by 1+1 was credited with making a real difference. Notably, the third-place finisher in that election was, yet again, the Jewess Yulia Timoshenko—like a bad penny, she just keeps coming back.[9]

Zelensky, incidentally, has dramatically profited from his “meteoric rise” to fame and power. His Kvartal 95 media company earned him some $7 million per year. He also owns a 25% share of Maltex Multicapital, a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands, as part of a “web of off-shore companies” he helped to establish back in 2012. A Ukrainian opposition politician, Ilya Kiva, suggested recently that Zelensky is currently tapping into “hundreds of millions” in funding that flows into the country, and that Zelensky himself is personally earning “about $100 million per month.” A Netherlands party, Forum for Democracy, recently cited estimates of Zelensky’s fortune at an astounding $850 million. Apparently the “Churchill of Ukraine” is doing quite well for himself, even as his country burns.

In any case, it is clear that Zelensky owes much to his mentor and sponsor, Kolomoysky. The latter even admitted as much back in late 2019, in an interview for the New York Times. “If I put on glasses and look back at myself,” he said, “I see myself as a monster, as a puppet master, as the master of Zelensky, someone making apocalyptic plans. I can start making this real” (Nov 13). Indeed—the Kolomoysky/Zelensky apocalypse is nearly upon us.

Between rule by Jewish oligarchs and manipulations by the global Jewish lobby, modern-day Ukraine is a mess of a nation—and it was so long before the current “war.” Corruption there is endemic; in 2015, the Guardian headlined a story on Ukraine, calling it “the most corrupt nation in Europe.” An international corruption-ranking agency had recently assessed that country at 142nd in world, worse than Nigeria and equal to Uganda. As a result, Ukraine’s economy has suffered horribly. Before the current conflict, their per-capita income level of $8700 put them 112th in the world, below Albania ($12,900), Jamaica ($9100), and Armenia ($9700); this is by far the poorest in Europe, and well below that of Russia ($25,700 per person). Impoverished, corrupt, manipulated by Jews, now in a hot war—pity the poor Ukrainians.

Hail the American Empire

Enough history and context; let’s cut to the chase. From a clear-eyed perspective, it is obvious why Zelensky and friends want to prolong a war that they have no hope of winning: they are profiting immensely from it. As an added benefit, the actor Zelensky gets to perform on the world stage, which he will surely convert into more dollars down the road. Every month that the conflict continues, billions of dollars are flowing into Ukraine, and Zelensky et al. are assuredly skimming their “fair share” off the top. Seriously—who, making anywhere near $100 million per month, wouldn’t do everything conceivable to keep the gravy train running? The fact that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are dying has no bearing at all in Zelensky’s calculus; in typical Jewish fashion, he cares not one iota for the well-being of the White Europeans. If his soldiers die even as they kill a few hated Russians, so much the better. For Ukrainian Jews, it is a win-win proposition.

Why does no one question this matter? Why is Zelensky’s corruption never challenged? Why are these facts so hard to find? We know the answer: It is because Zelensky is a Jew, and Jews are virtually never questioned and never challenged by leading Americans or Europeans. Jews get a pass on everything (unless they are obviously guilty of something heinous—and sometimes even then!). Jews get a pass from fellow Jews because they cover for each other. Jews get a pass from media because the media is owned and operated by Jews. And Jews get a pass from prominent non-Jews who are in the pay of Jewish sponsors and financiers. Zelensky can be as corrupt as hell, funneling millions into off-shore accounts, but as long as he plays his proper role, no one will say anything.

So the “war” goes on, and Zelensky and friends get rich. What does Europe get from all this? Nothing. Or rather, worse than nothing: They get a hot war in their immediate neighborhood, and they get an indignant Putin threatening to put hypersonic missiles in their capital cities in less than 200 seconds. They get to deal with the not-so-remote threat of nuclear war. They get to see their currency decline—by 10% versus the yuan in a year and by 12% versus the dollar. They get a large chunk of their gas, oil, and electricity supplies diverted or shut off, driving up energy prices. And they get to see their Covid-fragile economies put on thin ice.

But perhaps they deserve all this. As is widely known, the European states are American vassals, which means they are Jewish vassals. European leaders are spineless and pathetic lackeys of the Jewish Lobby. Judenknecht like Macron, Merkel and now Scholz, are sorry examples of humanity; they have sold out their own people to placate their overlords. And the European public is too bamboozled and too timid to make a change; France just had a chance to elect Le Pen, but the people failed to muster the necessary will. Thus, Europe deserves its fate: hot war, nuclear threat, cultural and economic decline, sub-Saharan and Islamic immigrants—the whole package. If it gets bad enough, maybe enough Europeans will awaken to the Jewish danger and take action. Or so we can hope.

What about the US? We could scarcely be happier. Dead Russians, the hated Putin in a tizzy, and the chance to play “world savior” once again. American military suppliers are ecstatic; they don’t care that most of their weapons bound for Ukraine get lost, stolen or blown up, and that (according to some estimates) only 5% make it to the front. For them, every item shipped is another profitable sale, whether it is used or not. And American congressmen get to pontificate about another “good war” even as they approve billions in aid.

And perhaps best of all, we get to press for an expansion to that American Empire known as NATO. We need to be very clear here: NATO is simply another name for the American Empire. The two terms are interchangeable. In no sense is NATO an “alliance among equals.” Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Albania have absolutely nothing to offer to the US. Do we care if they will “come to our aid” in case of a conflict? That is a bad joke, at best. In reality, what such nations are is more land, more people, and more economic wealth under the American thumb. They are yet more places to station troops, build military outposts, and run “black sites.” NATO always was, and always will be, the American Empire.

The push for Ukraine to join NATO by the West-friendly Zelensky was yet another blatant attempt at a power grab by the US, this one on Russia’s doorstep. Putin, naturally, took action to circumvent that. But of course, now the push moves to Sweden and Finland, both of whom are unwisely pursuing NATO membership in the illusory quest for security, when in reality they will simply be selling what remains of their national souls to the ruthless Judeo-American masters. For their sake, I hope they are able to avoid such a future.

And all the while, American Jews and a Jewish-American media play up the “good war” theme, send more weapons, and press ever further into the danger zone. Ukrainian-American Jews like Chuck Schumer are right out front, calling for aid, for war, for death.[10] “Ukraine needs all the help it can get and, at the same time, we need all the assets we can put together to give Ukraine the aid it needs,” said Schumer recently, eager to approve the next $40 billion aid package. As Jews have realized for centuries, wars are wonderful occasions for killing enemies and making a fast buck. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the present proxy war against Jewish enemies in eastern Europe began not long after the 20-year war against Jewish enemies in Afghanistan ended. Life without war is just too damn boring, for some.

Public Outrage?

If more than a minuscule fraction of the public knew about such details, they would presumably be outraged. But as I mentioned, the Jewish-controlled Western media does an excellent job in restricting access to such information, and in diverting attention whenever such ugly facts pop up. The major exception is Tucker Carlson, who is able to reach some 3 million people each night; this is by far the widest reach for anything like the above analysis. But Carlson falls woefully short—pathetically short—in defining the Jewish culprit behind all these factors. Jews are never outed and never named by Carlson, let alone ever targeted for blame. This crucial aspect is thus left to a literal handful of alt-right and dissident-right websites that collectively reach a few thousand people, at best.

And even if, by some miracle, all 3 million Tucker viewers were enlightened to the Jewish danger here, this still leaves some 200 million American adults ignorant and unaware. The mass of people believes what they see on the evening news, or in their Facebook feeds, or Google news, or on CNN or MSNBC, or in the New York Times—all Jewish enterprises, incidentally. This is why, when polled, 70% of the American public say that current aid to Ukraine is either “about right” or even “too little.” This, despite the fact that around 50% claim to be “very concerned” about nuclear war; clearly they are unable to make the necessary connections. And for many, it is even worse than this: around 21% would support “direct American military intervention” against Russia, which means an explicit World War Three, with all the catastrophic outcomes that this entails. Our Jewish media have done another fine job in whipping up public incitement.

In sum, we can say that our media have cleverly constructed a “philo-Semitic trap”: any mention or criticism of the Jewish hand in the present conflict is, first, highly censored, and then, if necessary, is dismissed as irrational anti-Semitism. Sympathy toward the (truly) poor, suffering Ukrainians is played up to the hilt, and Putin and the Russians relentlessly demonized. Leading American Jews, like Tony Blinken and Chuck Schumer, are constantly playing the good guys, pleading for aid, promising to help the beleaguered and outmanned Ukrainian warriors. Who can resist this storyline? Thus, we have no opposition, no questioning, no deeper inquiries into root causes. Jews profit and flourish, Ukrainians and Russians suffer and die, and the world rolls along toward potential Armageddon.

The reality is vastly different. Global Jews are, indeed, “planetary master criminals,” as Martin Heidegger long ago realized.[11] They function today as they have for centuries: as advocates for abuse, exploitation, criminality, death and profits. This is self-evidently true: if the potent Jewish Lobby wanted true peace, or flourishing humanity, they would be actively pushing for such things and likely succeeding. Instead, we have endless mayhem, war, terrorism, social upheaval and death, even as Jewish pockets get ever-deeper. And the one possible remedy for all this—true freedom of speech—recedes from our grasp.

On the one hand, I fear greatly for our future. On the other, I feel that we get what we deserve. When we allow malicious Jews to dominate our nations, and then they lead us into war and global catastrophe, well, what can we say? Perhaps there is no other way than to await the inevitable conflagration, exact retribution in the ensuing chaos, and then rebuild society from scratch—older and wiser.

Notes

[1] Cited in Wheen, Karl Marx (1999), p. 340.

[2] Russia’s recent defense of Assad in Syria, against Israel, has obviously not made things better. Nor has the fact that Putin, once thought to be a tool of Jewish-Russian oligarchs, has been able to turn the tables and hold them in check.

[3] Google has been particularly tenacious in altering its search engine results to censor (‘de-rank’) critics of Jewish power and stifle alternative voices. And Google owns Youtube, another force for censorship, which is currently run by the Jewess Susan Wojcicki. For their efforts, Brin and Page have become among the wealthiest men in the world; each is currently worth in excess of $100 billion.

[4] Svoboda began its existence as the “Social-National Party of Ukraine”—a not-so-subtle allusion to National Socialism. This is, in part, why both Svoboda and their allies have been called ‘neo-Nazi.’

[5] Nuland is currently “Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs” in the Biden administration.

[6] Another Jew likely involved in this incident was the Hungarian-American investor George Soros. In late 2019, the lawyer Joseph diGenova appeared in the news, openly charging Soros with direct intervention in American policy: “Well, there’s no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the career Foreign Service at the United States State Department. … But the truth is George Soros had a daily opportunity to tell the State Department through Victoria Nuland what to do in the Ukraine. And he ran it, Soros ran it.”

[7] For what it’s worth, Hunter seems to have a “thing” for Jewesses. In 2016, while married, he took up with his dead brother’s Jewish widow, Hallie Olivere Biden. The marriage failed and the illicit affair died out after a year or so, but then the ever-industrious Hunter latched on to another Jewess, “filmmaker” Melissa Cohen, in 2018. They married in 2019.

[8] In a revealing quotation, Ukrainian nationalist Dmytro Yarosh once asked this question: “I wonder how it came to pass that most of the billionaires in Ukraine are Jews?” Criminal activity is surely a large part of the answer.

[9] Not long after winning the presidency, Zelensky named another Jew, Andriy Yermak, as “Head of Presidential Administration.” (The current prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, seems not to be Jewish.)

[10] Other Ukrainian-American Jews, like Steven Spielberg and Jon Stewart, and the heirs to the Sheldon Adelson fortune, are assuredly equally elated about the course of events.

[11] Cited in P. Trawney, Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (2015), p. 33.

June 10, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Biden to Offer Saudi Arabia Treaty In Exchange for Official Ties with Israel

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 9, 2024

The White House is prepared to roll out a plan that will make Saudi Arabia a Japan-style ally in exchange for Ryiadh developing official ties with Tel Aviv. While the Biden administration has invested substantial effort to get the deal inked, it is likely dead on arrival because Saudi Arabia refuses to normalize with Israel unless Tel Aviv agrees to the creation of the Palestinian state.

According to American, Israeli, and Saudi officials speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Washington is prepared to sign an agreement to defend Saudi Arabia if Riyadh establishes regular ties with Tel Aviv. However, it would not be a peace agreement as the two countries are not at war.

Several hurdles must be cleared before the deal can be finalized, and it is unlikely that will happen. As Biden is seeking to make Saudi Arabia a treaty ally, it would need the approval of two-thirds of the Senate. Additionally, the deal would require Tel Aviv to end the onslaught in Gaza and take permanent steps toward a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to take either step.

Despite the obvious obstacles to the agreement, the Joe Biden administration has pressed forward with negotiations. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan explained last month, “We should not miss a historic opportunity to achieve the vision of a secure Israel, flanked by strong regional partners, presenting a powerful front to deter aggression and uphold regional stability.” He added, “We are pursuing this vision every day.”

If it went through, it would make Riyadh Washington’s only treaty ally in the Arab world, a status that even Tel Aviv does not have. The deal would also give the US access to Saudi airspace. The treaty is also part of negotiations of a larger deal that would also see the US transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

For President Biden, the deal could be politically problematic. As a candidate, Biden promised that he would treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah state for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

To add to the potential domestic resistance to the agreement, there are widespread protests in the US against Biden’s support for Israel amid its war on Gaza. As the treaty is a bribe to Riyadh to accept official relations with Tel Aviv, Americans may object to becoming an ally with Saudi Arabia to secure Israel’s regional interests.

June 9, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO ‘crossed red line’ – Austria

RT | June 9, 2024

Ukraine’s Western sponsors have crossed a boundary when they allowed Kiev to use their weapons to strike at targets in Russia, Austrian Defense Minister Klaudia Tanner said in an interview to Die Presse published on Saturday.

Several NATO members have openly supported the use of Western-produced armaments for cross-border strikes against Russia in recent weeks, ostensibly in a limited manner. The West insists that it is still not a party to the conflict, and only supports Kiev’s efforts to stall Russia’s push into the Kharkov Region, which Moscow launched to move the line of contact away from the border to prevent further Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians.

“A red line has been crossed,” Tanner stated when asked about the US, France and Germany’s permission to use their weapons in cross-border strikes. When the interviewer asked how else Kiev could stall the Kharkov operation, the Austrian Defense Minister replied that “as a militarily neutral state, it is not our place to judge.”

The Austrian defense chief added that at least she was “very pleased that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has clarified that NATO will not be sending troops to Ukraine.”

Stoltenberg claimed that the US-led military bloc has no plans to deploy ground forces to Ukraine in a press conference on Thursday. Despite this, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday he was almost ready to finalize an international coalition to officially send Western military “instructors” to train Kiev’s forces in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has stressed that Moscow has long been aware that Western military personnel are already fighting in Ukraine, under the guise of “mercenaries” and “volunteers.”

Western-produced long-ranged armaments used by Kiev in cross-border strikes are also often controlled and serviced by these foreign troops, the Russian president said last month. And even if Ukrainians are pulling the trigger, the US and its allies are the ones providing Kiev intelligence on Russian targets, Putin noted.

Moscow has warned that Western-backed long-range attacks on Russian territories will amount to direct Western participation in the conflict, and that Russia can respond in kind. “We can respond asymmetrically,” the Russian leader said on Wednesday, suggesting that Moscow could supply similar weapons around the world, where they could be used against Western

READ MORE: ‘Stop playing with fire’ on Ukraine – German left-wing icon (VIDEO)

June 8, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter Silenced by Liberal Authoritarians

By Patrick Lawrence | ScheerPost | June 8, 2024

It is not difficult to be astonished these days, given how many things going on around us warrant astonishment. To pull something out of a hat at random, the Democratic apparatus has openly, brazenly politicized the judicial system—weaponized it, if you prefer—in its determination to destroy Donald Trump and now has the temerity to warn in the gravest terms that a second Trump term would mean… the politicization of American justice.

Again at random, in The Washington Post’s June 7 editions George Will tells us President Biden “has provided the most progressive governance in U.S. history.” Yes, he wrote that. Give in to your astonishment.

It is interesting in this case to note that, during the reign of Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, our George thought big government was bad, bad, bad. Now it is a fine thing that Biden is “minimizing the market’s role by maximizing the government’s role in allocating society’s resources and opportunities.” Apart from turning his own argument hourglass upside-down, this assessment of our swiftly declining president is preposterously, right-before-your-eyes false.

You cannot tell the AC’s from the DC’s these days. But this is not the half of it in the way of astonishing events, things done, things said and such like.

Last week, as many readers will have noticed, Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector and now a widely followed commentator, was about to board a plane bound for Turkey when armed police officers stopped him, confiscated his passport and escorted him out of Kennedy International Airport. Ritter was booked to transit through Istanbul for St. Petersburg, where he planned to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual gathering.

Here is Ritter recounting this incident in an interview with RT International:

I was boarding the flight. Three officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said, “Orders of the State Department.” They had no further information for me. They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.

No passport, no freedom to travel, no explanation. I have it on good authority that Ritter subsequently advised other Americans who were to attend the St. Petersburg events not to risk it.

I have had countless conversations over many years in which the question considered has been “Is this as bad as the 1950s?” The matter has been especially vital since the Russiagate fiasco began during the Clinton–Trump campaign season in 2016. It was in the ensuing years that the authoritarianism implicit in American liberalism from the first burst upon us like some weird grotesque out of a Dr. Seuss book.

I always urge caution when invoking comparisons between our corruptions and ideological extremes and those of the McCarthy era. Hyperbole and exaggeration never serve one’s understanding or one’s argument. But the confiscation of Scott Ritter’s passport on the instructions of Antony Blinken’s State Department seems to me a radical step too far. The liberal authoritarians now in command of the nation’s major institutions, the House of Representatives among the only exceptions, have just signaled they are quite prepared to act at least as undemocratically as the House Un–American Activities crowd, the FBI and the rest of the national-security state did during the 1950s to preserve their political hegemony.

When I think of confiscated passports I think of Paul Robeson, the gifted singer, the courageous political dissenter, the civil rights advocate — here he is singing his famous Water Boy — whose documents were seized in 1950 because he refused to indulge in the Cold War paranoia that was already prevalent. His performing career collapsed and he nearly went broke before a Supreme Court decision restored them in 1958. Or I think of all the screenwriters, novelists, poets, painters and activists whose papers were canceled while they were in Mexico — or in France or in Sweden or in England — to avoid HUAC and expatriation turned into exile.

And when I am finished thinking of these people, about whom there is a rich, inspiring literature, I think of how far America descended into a derangement we tend to look back upon in some combination of wonder, derision and contempt.

We can no longer look back in this fashion. The revocation of Scott Ritter’s passport, along with the destruction of the judicial system, the myth-spinning about our purported leaders and all the rest pushes this in our faces. Let us give this a moment’s thought to see if we can determine what is likely to be in store.

Why Scott Ritter, I have wondered these past few days. Of all the dissident commentators of too many stripes to count, why Scott? I reply to myself, “Because Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, a former U.N. arms monitor in Iraq and he enjoys big-time credibility as a patriotic American.” His voice, in short, is the sort that can carry weight in sectors of the voting public that may well prove key in determining the outcome in the Trump–Biden election this Nov. 5.

Viewed in this context, I take the full-frontal suppression of Ritter’s rights last week as very likely tied to the liberals’ political prospects, other than brilliant as they are at this point. Censorship, suppression of various kinds taking various forms, “canceling”—these are nothing new, of course. But I sense things may get a great deal worse from here on out.

This is a year of global elections, as has often been remarked. The Associated Press counted 25 major national elections in a piece published at the start of the year. Taiwan, El Salvador, Indonesia, Russia, Slovakia, India, Mexico: These are among the big ones that have already taken place. The European Union is holding parliamentary elections June 6–9, cited in liberal quarters as the most important in decades. When Americans vote Nov. 5, it will be in this context.

In many of these elections — not all but many — the core issues are variants on a theme. The liberal order, such as we have it, is cast as defending itself against the onslaughts of —take your pick — populists, authoritarians, here and there a dictator. This is certainly how liberal media encourage American voters to view the Biden – Trump contest. And it is for this reason I think we must all brace ourselves for what may turn out to be a very major disaster for what remains of American democracy — and by extension the West’s.

Cast your mind back to 1992, when the Soviet Union was no more, an incipient triumphalism was taking hold in the U.S. and Francis Fukuyama published his famous (or infamous) The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press). Fukuyama, then a middling bureaucrat at the State Department, made the case that liberal democracy had won out and would stand as the ultimate, unchallenged achievement of humankind. A sort of happy political monoculture was destined to prevail eternally across the planet.

However sophomoric you may find this thesis, and I find it almost juvenile in its silliness, it came to define the expectations of all righteous American liberals. There was the Bush II administration, a major setback for the liberal narrative, although at the horizon this was merely a variation on the liberal theme. Then came the Obama years. And the Obama years set up the Democrats for a kind of fateful consummation in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s ascendancy that November was incontrovertibly the surest of outcomes because it was… what is my phrase?… a matter of historical destiny.

This is why Clinton’s defeat landed so hard among the mainstream Democrats. It was more, much more, than a loss at the polls. Trump’s victory contradicted what had become a prevalent consciousness among American liberals. Biden’s win in 2020 was a kind of salvage job: It put the liberal narrative back on track. But something had happened in the years after Clinton’s November 2016 loss. Liberals had assumed an uncompromising ideological righteousness such that we can now legitimately call them authoritarians—soft despots in de Tocqueville’s terminology, apple-pie authoritarians in mine. The cause is upside-down to the Cold War cause, but these people are at least as dangerous as the McCarthyites, and, as I have suggested, maybe more so.

We learned something important during those years. Deprived of what they considered their right as conferred by the force of history, liberals demonstrated that they would stop at nothing in the cause of retrieving it. Even those institutions that must stand above the political pit if a democracy is to have any chance of working, notably but not only the judiciary, were intruded upon in the liberal authoritarian project. Nothing was off limits.

Here we are again. We are headed into another confrontation of the kind that set liberals on the path of destruction they began to walk in 2016. We are already seeing a new wave of preposterous, utterly unsubstantiated charges of Russian or Chinese interference. Trump will turn America into a dictatorship. Trump will go on a rampage of retribution. Trump—we hear this already, as noted—will corrupt the courts, our courts, the courts we have kept pristine.

The Scott Ritter affair astonishes me yet more than any of the other astonishing developments of late. I read it as a warning of how extreme things may get, what irreparable damage to the American polity may be done, if liberal authoritarian cliques determine that a broad campaign to suppress dissent will be necessary if Biden is to have a chance of winning a second term and they are to fulfill their end-of-history destiny.

Let me put it this way. Liberal media now routinely bait Trump to say whether he will automatically accept the outcome this Nov. 5. One would have to be naïve in the extreme to make any such commitment as things now stand.


Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a media critic, essayist, author and lecturer. His new book, Journalists and Their Shadows, is out now from Clarity Press. His website is Patrick Lawrence. Support his work via his Patreon site.

June 8, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

So Much for Lawfare? Trump Found Guilty and So What

By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 5, 2024

A New York jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with buying the silence of a porn star. He is the first American president to become a felon. The verdict is not unexpected from the deep blue Democratic enclave of Manhattan; the larger question is if lawfare will defeat Trump on November 5.

The jury found Trump faked records (hiding hush payments as “legal expenses”) to conceal the purpose of money given to the onetime attorney Michael Cohen. Trump was actually reimbursing Cohen for a $130,000 hush-money deal struck with porn star Stormy Daniels, to silence her account of an affair with Trump. The affair was in 2006, a decade before Trump was elected president. The falsification of business records took place in 2017, after Trump was already in the White House and thus could not have influenced the election. He was found guilty nonetheless.

For the jury to reach its unanimous decision of guilt on all 34 charges, the key was believing two witnesses over Trump.

There are only two people on earth who know if an affair actually took place between Stormy and Trump. Trump said no, Stormy said yes and the jury agreed with her, fully absent of any further actual evidence. Daniels benefitted greatly from her claims to having the affair, and violated a nondisclosure agreement she voluntarily signed and accepted money for, to achieve her goals. “Proving” the affair was the base upon which the rest of the case to find Trump guilty was made.

It is important to understand that having an affair and paying off someone to remain quiet about it are not crimes, even for a presidential candidate. Nonetheless, the prosecutor claimed in closing arguments Trump “hoodwinked the American voter” with a conspiracy to influence the 2016 election. In addition to those who may have benefitted from the plan, “all roads lead to the man who benefited the most: Donald Trump,” Joshua Steinglass told the jury.

But the witness whose testimony was fully believed by the jury, and whose testimony will see Trump receive a criminal penalty when he is sentenced on July 11 (four days before the Republican National Convention!) is Michael Cohen. In the total absence of physical evidence and in the face of Trump’s claims to the contrary, Cohen served as connective tissue for many disparate elements. It was Cohen who claimed Trump masterminded the plan to hide the payments to Stormy. It was Cohen who said the 34 checks and invoices, only nine of which were signed by Trump himself, were not for legal expenses as they were labeled but were to reimburse Cohen for paying off Stormy. Stormy’s name appeared on none of the 34 documents, a fact which instead of exonerating Trump became under Michael Cohen’s testimony the linchpin of the conspiracy to falsify business records. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, told jurors the case hinged on the testimony of Michael Cohen, whom he called “the greatest liar of all time.”

Nearly incredibly (Trump’s defense team called Cohen a “walking reasonable doubt”) the jury believed Cohen based on nothing but his good word. This is despite Cohen having gone to jail for perjury, been caught lying to Congress, being disbarred, and actually telling a lie during his testimony at the instant trial. It remains difficult to understand how a jury could objectively grant so much credence to Cohen in the face of his record of lying to his own advantage. Every critical element of the case came down to whether his word could be trusted. That is what convicted Trump. You might have thought Robert De Niro was leading the deliberations.

There’s more. For jurors to have found Trump guilty of all 34 counts, they must have concluded beyond a reasonable doubt not only that Trump falsified or caused the falsification of business records “with intent to defraud” but also that he did so with the intent to commit or conceal another crime. That second element — the intent to commit or conceal another crime — elevates the charges to felonies and got around the statue of limitations that usually governs misdemeanors such as false business records. To reach this conclusion the jury had to also believe Cohen that Trump’s primary intent in all this was election influence and not, as Trump claimed, to hide the affair from his family.

There are many questions surrounding the jury’s verdict, and the fact pattern of the case itself, all of which should come out in Trump’s inevitable appeal. With that in mind, the actual legal conclusion of this case is far into the future, almost certainly after the November 5 election. But that begs the more important question: does any of this matter to voters? This is lawfare, not justice, after all. “The real verdict is going to be November 5, by the people,” said Trump.

CNN, for example, concluded “Donald Trump, who built a mystique as the brash epitome of power, has never been more powerless to dictate his own fate. His reputation, future, and even perhaps the White House’s destiny, [was] placed in the hands of 12 citizens of his native New York City, proving that not even once-and-possibly future commanders in chief are above the law.”

So a victory for Democratic lawfare? Maybe not. Trump remains eligible to campaign for the presidency and serve if elected. None of the other lawfare shots is likely to conclude before November.

So does it matter? A majority of registered voters said a guilty verdict in Trump’s trial would make no difference in their vote in the 2024 presidential election. Across all registered voters, 67 percent said a guilty verdict would have no effect on their vote, while 17 percent say they would be less likely to vote for him and 15 percent say they would be more likely, according to the NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll released before the verdict. An ABC News poll earlier this month showed 80 percent of Trump’s supporters say they would stick with him even if he’s convicted of a felony in this case. Some say they would either reconsider their support (16 percent) or withdraw it (four percent.) Similar polls followed Trump’s defeat in New York courts over supposed real estate fraud.

And Biden knows it. A Biden campaign spokesman said Trump’s conviction showed “There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president.”

As in other Third World countries where the judiciary is used to smite political opponents, let us hope the people can see the truth, as they still hold the final card to be played. The Deep State has tried from day one to destroy Donald Trump — Russian collusion and dossier hoax, pee tape accusation, Mueller hearing and report, Emoluments Clause, various calls for extra-legal interventions and coups, Alfa Bank hoax, Impeachment I, Impeachment II, demands Mike Pence invoke the 25th Amendment, MSM blackout of Hunter Biden laptop story, Twitter purge of conservative accounts, FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Letitia James prosecution “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” with no victims, no monetary loss but an effort to bankrupt Trump with civil judgment, Colorado attempt to remove Trump from state ballots over the 14th Amendment, and false statements Trump will “take revenge,” “demand retribution,” ensure a “bloodbath,” and “end democracy” (America’s last election if he wins.)

Trump meanwhile has characterized this trial, and the others, as unjust, rigged, lawfare pure and simple. He has kept the voters’ eyes not on who he is (his personal life has been baked-in to the vote long ago) but on what he represents to the electorate. As such, it is hard to see this guilty conviction, however unfair, as mattering too much come November.

June 8, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment