Tucker Carlson makes shocking revelation about Moscow trip
RT | February 27, 2024
Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday that US spies had monitored him while he was in Russia earlier this month, and leaked to a ‘friendly’ outlet that he had met with Edward Snowden. This is despite the American journalist’s claim that he had tried to keep his meeting with the NSA whistleblower a secret.
Carlson went to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. During his eight days in Moscow, he also met with Snowden – and US spies found out about it, he told podcaser Lex Fridman in the course of a three-hour conversation.
“I was being intensely surveilled by the US government,” Carlson told Fridman, noting that US spies had thwarted his plans to interview Putin in 2021 and that he received confirmation that he was being intensely monitored ahead of his Moscow trip. “Then, I’m over there, and of course I want to see Snowden, whom I admire.”
Snowden allegedly accepted Carlson’s invitation to have dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel, but declined the interview as well as a photo request, saying that it would be better to tell no one.
“I didn’t tell anybody,” Carlson told Fridman, however the meeting was leaked. “Semafor runs this piece – reporting information they got from the US intel agencies, leaking against me, using my money, in my name, in a supposedly free country – they run this piece saying I met with Snowden, like it was a crime or something.”
“If you have a media establishment that acts as employees of the national security state, you don’t have a free country. And that’s where we are,” Carlson added.
Carlson revealed that he did not fear getting arrested in Russia at any point, but was warned by his lawyers that the US might arrest him depending on the content of the Putin interview.
“I felt not one twinge of concern for the 8 days that I was there,” he told Fridman about being in Moscow.
Before he left for Russia, his team of attorneys counseled him to “not do this… A lot will depend on the questions you ask of Putin. If you’re seen as too nice to him you could be arrested when you come back,” Carlson quoted the lead lawyer as saying, to which he said he replied, “You’re describing a fascist country, OK?”
In 2013, Snowden revealed that the NSA was systematically engaged in mass illegal spying on American citizens. Fearing for his safety, he fled to Hong Kong with the intent to reach Ecuador, which did not have an extradition treaty with the US, but was stopped during a layover in Moscow after Washington canceled his passport. Russia ended up granting him asylum and reportedly, eventual citizenship.
One of the founders of Semafor, the outlet to which Carlson claims US spies leaked his dinner with Snowden, is Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of the now defunct BuzzFeed newsroom. In 2017, Smith notoriously published the ‘Steele Dossier,’ a sham document leaked by US spies to discredit incoming President Donald Trump.
Leaked Gaza ceasefire proposal US ‘psychological warfare’: Hamas
The Cradle | February 27, 2024
Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi stated on 27 February that a leaked proposal for a ceasefire deal in Gaza is part of a “psychological warfare” campaign being carried out by the US.
Details of the alleged proposal were leaked to Reuters on Monday, the same day US President Joe Biden said he hoped a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas could be reached by 4 March.
“My national security adviser tells me that they’re close. They’re close. They’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden claimed during an appearance on a late-night US talk show.
But Abdul Hadi, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, stated that the resistance movement is not satisfied with the proposal and will not compromise on any of its demands, particularly “on a ceasefire and reaching an honorable, serious deal.”
Hamas is seeking a permanent end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel is seeking the release of the 136 captives held by Hamas in Gaza and a temporary ceasefire that would allow it to resume the war after a pause.
“We are open to any ideas posed by mediators but are also keen on preserving our key demands,” Abdul Hadi told Al-Mayadeen, adding that Israel is “seeking to hold Hamas accountable for any later failures in talks, planning to use this as an excuse to pave the way for the invasion of Rafah.”
He said the leaks were not part of the Paris negotiations but a US and Israeli attempt to give the public an illusion that Hamas had approved of them. He reiterated that “everything being shared is not serious, but a ploy to maneuver and press on the Resistance.”
The proposal leaked to Reuters outlined plans for a 40-day truce during which Hamas would free around 40 captives – including female soldiers, those under 19 or over 50 years old, and the sick – in return for about 400 Palestinians held captive in Israel.
Israel would withdraw its troops from populated areas of Gaza. Displaced Gaza residents, excluding men of fighting age, would be permitted to return to their homes. Israel would be required to allow additional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the strip are on the verge of starvation.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also responded to leaked Paris proposal.
“The leaks are an attempt to pressure the Palestinians and incite them against the resistance.
They are pushing for a ceasefire before Ramadan in anticipation of what might happen in Al-Quds.
The enemy believes that it can deceive the resistance with different methods in order to achieve a victory it has failed to achieve on the ground,” PIJ Political Bureau member Ihsan Ataya told Al-Mayadeen.
In Gaza, residents speaking to Reuters expressed mixed feelings about possible outcomes.
“We don’t want a pause, we want a permanent ceasefire, we want an end to the killing,” said Mustafa Basel, a father of five from Gaza City, now displaced in Rafah.
“Unfortunately, people’s conditions are so grim that some may accept a pause, even [just] during Ramadan,” he said. “They want a permanent end to the war, but the dire conditions make them want a pause even for a month or 40 days in the hope it becomes permanent.”
Here’s How Russia Could Hit Back If West Seizes Assets
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.02.2024
Some $300 billion in Russian assets were trapped abroad in 2022 after the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis into a full-on NATO-Russia proxy war. Western officials have threatened to seize these funds and transfer them to Ukraine for “reconstruction.” A pair of leading Russian economists tell Sputnik why that’s a very bad idea.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called on nations of the Western “coalition” against Moscow to “find a way to unlock the value of [Russia’s] immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction.”
“I believe there is a strong international law, economic and moral case for moving forward. This would be a decisive response to Russia’s unprecedented threat to global stability,” Yellen said at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday.
Tackling the question of the potential threats to the dollar’s status as the de facto world reserve currency that such an unprecedented move would entail, Yellen said that it it’s “extremely unlikely” that the greenback would be negatively affected. “Realistically there are not alternatives to the dollar, euro and yen,” she assured.
Yellen is the latest senior Western official to propose moving forward with the seizure of Russian assets as Western countries’ own desire to continue fueling the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia falters. Earlier this month, the European Union adopted a law allowing Brussels to bank windfall profits from Russian assets trapped in European banks and use them in Ukraine, a move characterized by Moscow as blatant “theft” which will be met with legal action.
Russian officials and independent economic observers alike have warned of the possible consequences stemming from what Yellen is proposing, with Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov saying Moscow has the means to issue a “symmetrical” response to this form of Western financial aggression.
“We have no fewer frozen [assets than Western countries],” Siluanov said in an interview with Sputnik on Monday. “Any actions taken against our assets would receive a symmetrical response.”
Mechanism for Tit-For-Tat Response Already Exists
“Russia has already taken conservatorship of assets of a number of foreign companies which refused to operate in Russia,” Dr. Andrei Kolganov, a professor of economics at Moscow State University and chief researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economics, told Sputnik, commenting on the folly of the West’s asset seizure plans.
This instrument was already used against foreign investors with an ownership stake in the Baltika Beer Company, as well as the assets of Finnish energy concern Fortum, the professor noted.
“So in principle, the mechanism for the confiscation of foreign assets has already been worked out. Moving from conservatorship to confiscation is, in principle, a fairly simple technical procedure. The amount of assets that are ‘frozen’ on the territory of the Russian Federation, or which may be frozen, is now estimated at approximately $288 billion,” Kolganov explained.
In other words, the professor said, Russia has control over a big chunk of Western assets which, if the US and its allies proceed with confiscation, “will not escape to the West, but will work here in Russia, because we are talking about investment, first and foremost, in the manufacturing sector.”
From there, these assets could become the property of the Russian state, or be transferred to Russian private owners and continue to work as before.
Confiscation of assets of Western companies in Russia would seriously impact their respective bottom lines, meaning they could try to put pressure on governments, both in their home countries and in Russia, to try to avoid having their capital seized.
“We have a lot of foreign companies working in Russia, including those from so-called unfriendly countries. We have more than 50 decently-sized American firms alone working here, and plenty of European companies,” Dr. Georgy Ostapkovich, director of the Center for Market Research at the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, told Sputnik.
Sorry Yellen, Seizing Assets Won’t Crash Russian Economy
Kolganov says that as unpleasant as a seizure of Russia’s assets abroad might be it would not serve to tank the country’s economy, with Moscow able to continue its international payments using its sizable and healthy foreign exchange earnings after reorienting its trade toward developing countries. The money frozen in Western banks constitutes reserves, which “were not actively used for international trade and international payments” anyway, the professor explained.
“For private businesses, the confiscation of assets would create a pretty big hole in their earnings and budgets. Therefore, it would be a rather sensitive measure if Russia had to resort to it in response to the confiscation of its assets,” the economist added.
Dr. Ostapkovich emphasizes that Moscow will have to be strategic and precise in the foreign assets it may choose to seize, to avoid the risk of friendly countries and companies doing business in Russia feeling threatened.
“Every operation” on Russia’s part “must take place with the help of legal services, that is, through the courts,” the veteran economist said. “We are a state based on the rule of law, and cannot just go ahead and close them, because they will naturally go to court. Moreover, they will file in the London court, which judges according to Anglo-Saxon law. This is case law. They will look for a precedent.”
In other words, Ostapkovich stressed, Moscow should expect a tug of war on the international stage regarding the seizure of assets by the West and Russia’s tit-for-tat response.
Pandora’s Box of Damage to the Dollar
In his interview with Sputnik, Russia’s finance minister mentioned the promising transition away from Western currencies in favor of new currencies among the world’s rising economies, especially China.
“The Chinese are reducing their holdings of American securities. This is a consequence of what’s happening [to Russia, ed.] The reliability of the dollar and the euro has been undermined,” Siluanov said.
And while it may be too early to speak about the collapse of the dollar or euro as a result of a decision to seize the assets of a sizable economy like Russia, Kolganov confirmed that it has the potential to seriously undermine Western reserve currencies’ reputation in a big way.
“The yuan’s share in international transactions has doubled over the past two years, but doubled to only about 4.6 percent of the total. This is not a huge amount, but still, an upward trend exists. The share of rubles in international payments has also increased, mainly in the form of payments with our country… Nevertheless, a gradual move away from the dollar will of course take place. Because here we’re talking not only about the confiscation of assets, which will undermine confidence in payments made in reserve currencies. Because any country and any central bank may feel threatened that if the geopolitical situation changes, they could be treated in a similar way.”
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the United States and Europe are facing a loss of economic confidence at home, with the former facing debt levels that are off the charts, which in the future could cause serious shocks to the entire global dollar system, Kolganov noted.
Recipe for Action
Russia can already move forward with tit-for-tat measures against the Europeans over Brussels’ law allowing the seizure and use of the interest earned on Russian assets frozen in Western banks, Ostapkovich says, noting if the EU moves forward with the seizures, Moscow could similarly start shaving dividends and interest on European companies operating in Russia.
Nuland accidentally reveals the true aim of the West in Ukraine
By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 27, 2024
US State Department fixture and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, aka “Regime Change Karen,” apparently woke up one day recently, took the safety off her nuclear-grade mouth, and inadvertently blew up the West’s Ukraine narrative.
Until now, Americans have been told that all the US taxpayer cash being earmarked for Ukrainian aid is to help actual Ukrainians. Anyone notice that the $75 billion American contribution isn’t getting the job done on the battlefield? Victory in military conflict isn’t supposed to look like defeat. Winning also isn’t defined as, “Well, on a long enough time axis, like infinity, our chance of defeat will eventually approach zero.” And the $178 billion in total from all allies combined doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, either. Short of starting a global war with weapons capable of extending the conflict beyond a regional one, it’s not like they’ve been holding back. The West is breaking the bank. All for some vague, future Ukrainian “victory” that they don’t seem to want to clearly define. We keep hearing that the support will last “as long as it takes.” For what exactly? By not clearly defining it, they can keep moving the goal posts.
But now here comes Regime Change Karen, dropping some truth bombs on CNN about Ukrainian aid. She started off with the usual talking point of doing “what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world.” Conveniently, in places where they have controlling interests and want to keep them – or knock them out of a global competitor’s roster and into their own. “And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the US to make those weapons,” Nuland said, pleading in favor of the latest Ukraine aid package that’s been getting the side eye from Republicans in Congress.
So there you have it, folks. Ukrainians are a convenient pretext to keep the tax cash flowing in the direction of the US military industrial complex. This gives a whole new perspective on “as long as it takes.” It’s just the usual endless war and profits repackaged as benevolence. But we’ve seen this before. It explains why war in Afghanistan was little more than a gateway to Iraq. And why the Global War on Terrorism never seems to end, and only ever mutates. Arguably the best one they’ve come up with so far is the need for military-grade panopticon-style surveillance, so the state can shadow-box permanently with ghosts while bamboozling the general public with murky cyber concepts that it can’t understand or conceptualize. When one conflict or threat dials down, another ramps up, boosted by fearmongering rhetoric couched in white-knighting. There’s never any endgame or exit ramp to any of these conflicts. And there clearly isn’t one for Ukraine, either.
Still, there’s a sense that the realities on the ground in Ukraine, which favor Russia, now likely mean that the conflict is closer to its end than to its beginning. Acknowledgements abound in the Western press. And that means there isn’t much time left for Europe to get aboard the tax cash laundering bandwagon and stuff its own military industrial complexes’ coffers like Washington has been doing from the get-go. Which would explain why a bunch of countries now seem to be rushing to give Ukraine years-long bilateral security “guarantees,” requiring more weapons for everyone. France, Germany, Canada, and Italy have all made the pledge. Plus Denmark, which also flat-out said that it would send all its artillery to Ukraine. If security for Europe is the goal, that sounds kind of like the opposite. Particularly when Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told the EU that “Russia has gotten closer to your home” in the wake of the most recent defeat in Avdeevka. He sounds like one of those guys in TV ads trying to peddle burglar alarms. Seems like Russia only exists in the minds of the West these days to justify sending weapons to Ukraine to get blown up, while also justifying to taxpayers why they should continue funding this whole charade.
Meanwhile, the West’s drive towards peace seems to be taking the scenic route. “As we move forward, we continue our support to Ukraine in further developing President Zelensky’s Peace Formula,” G7 leaders said after a recent meeting with Zelensky in Kiev. Nice to see that he’s devoting all his time to this magic peace formula instead of running around extorting his friends for cash by threatening them with Putin.
It was already a pretty big hint of what’s really been going on when the EU decided to use the taxpayer-funded European Peace Facility to reimburse EU countries for the unloading of their mothballed, second-hand weapons into Ukraine, where Russia can then dispose of them before anyone could be accused of overcharging for clunkers. Now, with the clunker supply running dry, they just have to make more weapons. Maybe funneling cash into weapons for themselves will be the Hail Mary pass that saves their economies that they’ve tanked “for Ukraine”?
Thanks to Nuland’s nuking of any plausible deniability on Ukrainian “aid” not going to Washington, it’s now clear that Ukrainians continue to die so poor weapons makers don’t end up shaking tin cans on street corners. She has also removed any doubt about the ultimate US goal being Russian regime change, calling Putin’s leadership “not the Russia we wanted,” and sounding like someone who chronically sends back a meal to kitchens of a dining establishment. “We wanted a partner that was going to be Westernizing, that was going to be European. But that’s not what Putin has done,” she told CNN. That’s exactly what Putin has done, actually. It’s the West that’s moved away from itself and is becoming increasingly unrecognizable by its own citizens. Pretty sure that it goes beyond just wanting a country to be “European,” too. Because Germany’s European, and an ally, and Nuland wouldn’t shut up about how much she hated its Nord Stream gas supply — until it mysteriously went kaboom.
Regime Change Karen saying the quiet part out loud has decimated the Western establishment’s narrative so badly that it’s a miracle no one has yet accused her thermonuclear mouth of being an asset of Russia’s weapons program.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
Biden regime wants to put the US on permanent war footing
The new ‘defense industrial strategy’ is a boon for the arms makers, not so much for regular Americans
BY JULIA GLEDHILL | RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT | FEBRUARY 23, 2024
The White House is steering the United States into a budgetary ditch it may not be able to get out of.
The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget. Its new National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out a plan to “catalyze generational change” of the defense industrial base and to “meet the strategic moment” — one rhetorically dominated by competition with China, but punctuated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Instead of reevaluating its maximalist national security strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down. It is proposing a generation of investment to expand an arms industry that, overall, fails to meet cost, schedule, and performance standards. And if its strategy is any indication, the administration has no vision for how to eventually reduce U.S. military industrial capacity.
When the Cold War ended, the national security budget shrank. Then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and deputy William Perry convened industry leaders to encourage their consolidation in a meeting that later became known as the “Last Supper.” Arms makers were to join forces or go out of business. So they ended up downsizing from over 50 prime contractors to just five. And while contractors needed to pare down their industrial capacity, unchecked consolidation created the monopolistic defense sector we have now — one that depends heavily on government contracts and enjoys significant freedom to set prices.
In the decades since, contractors have leveraged their growing economic power to pave inroads on Capitol Hill. They have solidified their economic influence to stave off the political potential for future national security cuts, regardless of their performance or the geopolitical environment.
Growing the military industrial base over the course of a generation would only further empower arms makers in our economy, deepening the ditch the United States has dug itself into for decades by continually increasing national security spending — and by doling about half of it out to contractors. The U.S. spends more on national security than the next 10 countries combined, outpacing China alone by over 30%.
Ironically, the administration acknowledges in the strategy that “America’s economic security and national security are mutually reinforcing,” stating that “the nation’s military strength depends in part on our overall economic strength.” The strategy further states that optimizing the nation’s defense needs typically requires tradeoffs between “cost, speed, and scale.” It doesn’t mention quality of industrial output — arguably the biggest tradeoff the U.S. government has made in military procurement.
Consider, for instance, the B-2 bomber, the F-35 fighter jet, the Littoral Combat Ship, the V-22 Osprey, and many other examples of acquisition failures that have spanned decades. More recently, the Government Accountability Office has reported that while the number of major defense acquisition programs has fallen, both costs and average delivery time have risen.
So what is the military really getting from more and more national security spending? Less for more: Fewer weapons than it asked for, usually late and over budget, and, much of the time, dysfunctional. Acquisition failures are a major reason the Congressional Budget Office projects that operations and maintenance spending will significantly exceed the rate of inflation for the next decade — a considerable budgeting issue for a military that seemingly has no plans to reduce either its force structure or its industrial capacity. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Biden’s new National Defense Industrial Strategy specifically states there is a need for the U.S. to “move aggressively toward innovative, next-generation capabilities while continuing to upgrade and produce, in significant volumes, conventional weapons systems already in the force.” Ironically, the military has spent over two decades developing the F-35, next-generation technology that the Pentagon still hasn’t greenlit for full-rate production.
Throwing more money at an industrial base comprised of businesses too big to fail won’t increase the quantity or quality of its output. But that’s exactly what the strategy urges. One of the priorities is to “institutionalize supply chain resilience.” It’s an important goal, but one the administration proposes the Pentagon tackle, in part by investing in “spare production capacity,” what the strategy defines as “excess capacity a company or organization maintains beyond its current production needs.”
But building factories to sit empty is not supply chain resilience. It’s wasting money on unnecessary infrastructure, creating a profit motive for arms makers to make more weapons. And for an industry constantly sounding the alarm about the need for consistent “demand signals” from Congress, the Pentagon’s plans to invest a generation of U.S. taxpayer money in “spare production capacity” sounds a lot like throwing the demand-supply principle out the window. In that case, the U.S. might as well consider nationalizing the defense industry, which already lacks competition and relies almost entirely on the government. Why not eliminate the profit motive? It’s not like making money drives contractors to produce quality products on time or within budget.
Besides supply chain resilience, another priority laid out in this strategy is “flexible acquisition.” The stated goal is to reduce costs and development times while increasing scalability. In pursuit of that goal, the administration proposes “a flexible requirements process” for multiyear contracts, and the expansion of multiyear contracting writ large. It reasons that as priorities shift in an “evolving threat environment,” so too should contractors’ deliverables. But pairing flexible requirements with an increasing number of multiyear contracts is a recipe for disaster.
Before Russia attacked Ukraine, multiyear contracts were relatively rare — limited to major aircraft and ships. The Congressional Research Service notes that estimated savings on these programs have historically fallen within the range of 5% — 10%. But those are estimates, and they may not apply to other munitions now produced under multiyear contracts. The report also confirms that actual savings are “difficult to observe,” in part because the Pentagon does not track the cost performance of multiyear contracts.
Just because multiyear contracting is more common doesn’t mean it’s cheaper. And while the Pentagon argues that multiyear contracts give contractors the so-called demand signal they need to ramp up production, contractors don’t usually spend their extra money on identifying efficiencies or making capital investments to increase output at a lower cost — and the Pentagon isn’t checking.
The strategy also proposes “aggressive expansion of production capacity.” It notes that during peacetime, weapons acquisition tends to focus on “greater efficiency, cost effectiveness, transparency, and accountability.” Taking caution not to assert that the United States is in wartime, the strategy contrasts peacetime acquisition policy with “today’s threat environment,” calling for “crisis period acquisition policy” that revitalizes the industrial base and shifts focus from efficiency and effectiveness to ensuring that military contractors are “better resourced.” But contractors don’t have a resource problem, and “crisis acquisition policy” puts the United States on a “permanent war footing.”
Lawmakers must challenge the administration’s maximalist national security strategy by interrogating its push to expand military industrial capacity so drastically. It’s critical that they do, not only because the U.S. is limited in what it can produce and provide to other countries but also because arms industry greed is boundless — and without off-ramps or constraints, the U.S. government may find in 20 or 30 years that it’s in a ditch it can’t get out of.
Julia Gledhill is an analyst in the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. Before joining POGO, she was a foreign policy associate at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
US Army calls Russia ‘the enemy’
RT | February 27, 2024
The US Army has branded Moscow the “enemy” while promoting a newly-published manual on the Russian military on social media.
The Combined Arms Doctrine Directorate’s (CADD) new 280-page manual gives a detailed overview of Russian military strategy and tactics, and tries to predict how the country would conduct itself in future conflicts. The CADD promoted the manual in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, asking, “Do you know your enemy?”
The primary focus is on Moscow’s ground forces, which would be pitted against the US Army in a hypothetical direct war.
The document, known as ATP 7-100.1 and released last week, is part of a series that the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) has been developing for years. Previous publications provided similar studies of the militaries of other potential near-peer and peer opponents: North Korea, China, and Iran. The materials are not classified and intended for professional US and allied military officers.
With Russia currently involved in the Ukraine conflict, US military researchers stressed that they are still examining data gathered there and would revise their instructions accordingly. They said it was “too early to assess the structure and equipping of any Russian unit for the next 5 to 10 years” with hostilities still ongoing.
Discussing Russia’s relations with the US and its NATO allies, the manual says they are defined “by a perpetual state of competition and self interest.” The country seeks recognition as a world power and it is “highly likely” that future Russian leaders will pursue policies similar to that of the current government “for the foreseeable future,” it said; Russia will “challenge the relative position of US influence in the global order while avoiding direct confrontation with the US military.”
The Russian leadership views NATO as an instrument of American geopolitical hegemony and has called its expansion in Europe a threat to national security. The Ukraine conflict, according to Moscow, is part of a wider US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainian troops are sacrificed in the name of containment.
”The core of the problem is not in Ukraine but in those who are trying to destroy Russia with Ukrainian hands,” President Vladimir Putin said last month while visiting a military hospital. “Even though they have been pursuing this goal of tackling Russia for ages, we will sooner tackle them.”
By making war threats against China, Ukraine proves to be US vassal state
By Lucas Leiroz | February 27, 2024
The statement was made by deputy Aleksey Goncharenko during an interview with CNN on February 23. On the occasion, Goncharenko emphasized calls for the US to continue sending military aid, criticizing American politicians who are focused only on domestic issues and ignoring Ukraine. According to him, the US needs to “fulfill the promises” made to Kiev about permanent military support.
The legislator’s words, however, were not just about demands from the US. He also made it clear that his country is willing to cooperate militarily with the US in a broad and unrestricted manner – even willing to go to war with other states if Washington deems it necessary. In the interview, he stated that Kiev could fight directly against countries such as China, Iran and North Korea, with no fear regarding the consequences of a conflict of such scale. For him, Ukraine must be prepared to face any US adversary, showing “true friendship” between both countries.
“[If there’s a war, the US] will need people who will stand shoulder to shoulder with them (…) Ukrainians are ready… We are ready to stand with the United States shoulder-to-shoulder, either in trenches near Tehran, or in North Korea, or near Beijing. [There is] no difference (…) Because we appreciate your support,” he said during the interview.
Goncharenko also praised Ukraine’s combat potential, stating that Kiev has “the second strongest army in the free world” – after the US only. This alleged Ukrainian power is the reason why he considers Kiev a “valuable ally” of the US. Obviously, he did not show any data to prove this claim about his country’s military capacity. Kiev is currently severely weakened by the consequences of the conflict with Russia, definitely not being among the most powerful armies in the world.
As bold and controversial as Goncharenko’s statements are, they do not sound surprising considering the parliamentarian’s personal history. He is known for his unrealistic and bellicose positions. For example, he had previously made a declaration saying that Kiev should receive nuclear weapons in order to guarantee its “national security”. According to him, NATO should give Ukraine weapons of mass destruction to prevent a new conflict with Russia from happening in the future. In other words, instead of providing security guarantees to Moscow to prevent war, Goncharenko simply prefers to escalate tensions and create a scenario of possible nuclear confrontation.
“Once again I will say directly and openly: I support the return of nuclear weapons to Ukraine. And I believe that this is our only option for survival,” he said at the time.
In fact, extremist and bellicose statements have become commonplace in Ukraine. However, it is notorious how the regime’s officials no longer even disguise Kiev’s subservience to American interests. By stating that Ukraine is ready for war with China, Iran and North Korea, Goncharenko is not only threatening these countries, but also making it clear that Ukraine is willing to do whatever the US tells it to do, regardless of the national interests and well-being of the Ukrainian people.
Goncharenko is showing that his country is a vassal state, without sovereignty or decision-making power, being completely submissive to the American political will. In practice, this means that the Ukrainian people will never be safe under the Kiev regime, since at any time Ukrainian citizens could be sent to battlefields around the world to defend American interests. Indeed, Goncharenko is proving that the Kiev Junta sees the Ukrainians as mere NATO cannon fodder.
The deputy’s threats are especially controversial at a time when the US is in fact close to engaging in a real conflict situation with the multipolar powers. The crisis in the Middle East could lead to a war between the US and Iran, just as growing tensions in the Pacific could culminate in a military confrontation between Washington and Beijing – or Pyongyang. The possibility of such wars actually occurring makes Goncharenko’s threats a real problem, with the countries he mentioned in the interview having sufficient reasons to be cautious and take measures such as military preparation.
In addition to threatening other nations and demoralizing his own country, Goncharenko is also making Ukraine diplomatically isolated by proving the bellicosity of the neo-Nazi regime.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
After Two Years, Neocons Desperate For More War in Ukraine
By Ron Paul | February 26, 2024
In a recent CNN interview, the normally very confident US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland sounded a little desperate. She was trying to make the case for Congress to pass another $61 billion dollars for the neocons’ proxy war project in Ukraine and she was throwing out the old slogans that the neocons use when they want funding for their latest war.
Asked by CNN whether she believes that Congress will eventually pass the bill, Nuland responded that she has confidence that, “we will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world…”
What Nuland is attempting here is what the neocons always do. They try to wrap their terrible policies up in the American flag and sell it to the American people as something reflective of “our” values. If you oppose another neocon war, well then you are unpatriotic according to their trickery.
But Americans are waking up to the lies of the neocons and more and more are realizing that there is no “we” when the neocons are trying to sell another war. It is “them.” The “we” in the equation are the people who are being robbed to pay for what will inevitably be another neocon failure.
Does any American still believe that Washington was “defending democracy and freedom” when it used a pack of lies to get us into Iraq, where a country was destroyed and perhaps a million people were killed? How about when, after 20 years in Afghanistan, we managed to replace the Taliban… with the Taliban? And Syria and Libya and all the other interventions?
Was Washington “defending democracy” when Nuland and the rest of the neocons successfully overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014?
It’s getting harder and harder for the American people to choke down the war lies of the neocons. That is something that should make us feel optimistic. In the same interview, Nuland said she was confident that when House Members return to session next week, “after they’ve been out in their districts hearing from the American people,” they will vote to send the $61 billion to Ukraine.
Looking at public opinion polls, however, it is far more likely that any Member meeting with constituents during the break will hear the opposite. It is likely they will hear a demand that not another penny be spent on the brutal, futile, and disastrous Ukraine war. According to a Harris poll taken earlier this month, some 70 percent of Americans want talks to end the Ukraine war!
Americans no longer support the neocon war project in Ukraine. That is something to celebrate.
Perhaps in a last show of desperation, Victoria Nuland debuted another argument for keeping the war money flowing for Ukraine. She said, “we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into this economy to make those weapons…”
Is this supposed to be attractive to the American people? The middle class and the poor are being destroyed by inflation and squeezed by a debased currency so that the wealthy, politically-connected weapons manufacturers can get even richer? Instead of money to rebuild this country and protect its borders, Americans should be thrilled to see their hard work go up in smoke, literally, in Ukraine?
Kremlin comments on Denmark dropping Nord Stream probe
RT | February 26, 2024
The Danish decision to end its investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea was probably motivated by Copenhagen’s unwillingness to establish the truth about the crime, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has suggested.
The energy links built to bring Russian natural gas directly to Germany were ruptured by unknown perpetrators in a series of explosions in September 2022. Germany as well as Denmark and Sweden, in whose economic zones the sabotage took place, had each launched separate inquiries. Sweden closed its probe earlier this month.
The Copenhagen Police do not see “sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case in Denmark” over the incident, they said on Monday in a statement announcing the development. The probe, conducted jointly with the Danish Security and Intelligence Services (PET), was “complex and comprehensive” and resulted in a conclusion that the incident was deliberate sabotage. Nothing was said about possible suspects in the press-release.
The situation is “close to absurd,” Peskov told journalists when asked about the news.
“Apparently, they were getting closer to, as they call it, outing their closest allies,” he suggested. “One can only express absolute astonishment and nothing else.”
Denmark said investigators cooperated with “relevant foreign partners,” but Peskov stressed that Russian law enforcement was not among those.
“In the early stages of the investigation, we consistently asked the Danes for information about what had happened, but the requests were rejected,” he said.
A German government spokesman said Berlin remained very interested in getting to the bottom of the crime.
Western media initially rushed to accuse Russia of disabling its own critical infrastructure. Subsequent reports said European investigators found no evidence to support this theory. Leaks to the press identified a “pro-Ukrainian group” and a specific Ukrainian officer currently held in Kiev’s custody under a separate case as potential culprits.
Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed the finger at the CIA, claiming that the Americans were behind the sabotage, when he discussed Nord Stream with journalist Tucker Carlson in a recent interview. He declined to say what evidence led him to that conclusion.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said in February of 2023 that, according to his source, US President Joe Biden personally ordered the bombing of the pipelines. The journalist claimed Biden was seeking to cement Germany’s antagonism towards Russia in the Ukraine conflict and ensure the EU’s long-term reliance on Western energy. The White House denied the allegation, but Putin has said he found Hersh’s reasoning plausible.
China lashes out at latest Russia sanctions
RT | February 26, 2024
Beijing firmly opposes restrictions placed on its companies as part of the latest sanctions imposed on Moscow by Western countries, the Chinese Commerce Ministry said on Monday.
The US announced a new batch of sanctions against Russia on Friday, ahead of the second anniversary of the Ukraine conflict. The measures include trade curbs which target 63 entities from Russia, and 30 companies from China, Türkiye, the UAE, Kyrgyzstan, India, and South Korea for allegedly supporting Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.
According to the statement published on the Chinese Commerce Ministry’s official website, Washington’s new measures “damage the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains.”
“The US approach is a typical example of unilateral sanctions, ‘long-arm jurisdiction’ and economic coercion, which undermines international economic and trade rules and order. China is firmly opposed to this,” the ministry said, adding that Beijing will take steps to “safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises.”
In a separate statement, the ministry commented on the latest sanctions imposed by the EU and UK, warning that they would also have a “negative impact” on global economic and trade ties. Brussels came up with its own Russia-linked sanctions package last week, which included restrictions on four Chinese companies, while the UK sanctioned three Chinese electronics firms.
The sanctions targeting non-Russian entities are designed to prevent companies around the world from aiding Moscow in circumventing Western restrictions adopted in previous packages. Moscow has criticized the sanctions policy as a whole, while noting that they have failed to destabilize the Russian economy, and have instead backfired on the countries that imposed them.
According to the latest official figures, Russia’s GDP expanded by 3.6% in 2023, outpacing both the US and EU. The sanctions have resulted in the country reorienting most of its trade to Asia, while many Western states have lost access to cheap Russian energy, facing soaring inflation and cost-of-living crises as a result.
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From the Archives
Neocons confess: “We did 9/11-anthrax”
By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | September 6, 2014
As the 13th anniversary of the crimes of September, 2001 approaches, the neoconservatives are shrieking from the rooftops – and effectively confessing that they were the real perpetrators of the 9/11-Anthrax false flag operation. (The neocons, you may recall, openly called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in September, 2000 – and got one exactly one year later.)
Every year at this time, the neocons orchestrate and hype a series of public relations stunts designed to magnify fears of “radical Islam” and reinforce their crumbling 9/11-Anthrax cover story. But this year’s propaganda campaign is so extreme that it represents a tacit confession: The neocons know that the truth about the 9/11-Anthrax operation is slowly closing in on them; so they are over-reacting by desperately trying to stoke the dying embers of the so-called War on Terror, in order to maintain the myth that Muslims (rather than neoconservative Zionists) attacked America in the autumn of 2001.
When a hysterical person exhibits guilty demeanor by trying too hard to blame a crime on someone else, that person is almost certainly the real perpetrator. As the neocons try much too hard to blame Islam for 9/11 and “terrorism” in general, their hysteria inadvertently reveals their own culpability. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth, the neoconservative movement has blood on its hands and “doth protest too much.” … continue
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