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Warmongers react to Tucker Carlson’s supposed ‘Putin interview’

By Lucas Leiroz | February 6, 2024

American journalist Tucker Carlson was spotted in Moscow in recent days, generating a series of controversies on social media. There are rumors that Carlson went to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. Although there is no confirmation yet about the case, expectations have been enough to encourage all kinds of negative reactions in the West, with public calls for Carlson to be expelled from the US for “treason”.

After leaving Fox News, Carlson launched a TV show on X (formerly Twitter) and has recently done a series of interviews with political leaders around the world, mainly presidents. Previously, he had already announced his personal interest in interviewing Putin, further stating that American authorities began spying on him and threatening him due to this intention. According to Carlson, the NSA hacked his computer and leaked his emails to the media, revealing his plan to go to Russia to interview Putin.

At first it was believed that the coercion from the American state was enough to stop Carlson’s plans, but recently the journalist finally traveled to Russia, sparking rumors about a possible interview with Putin. There is still no confirmation on the veracity of such allegations. The rumors were strengthened by images and videos circulating on social media showing what is believed to be Carlson team’s car leaving the Kremlin facilities.

However, the situation remains doubtful and unclear for now. Neither Russian authorities nor Tucker’s team confirmed or denied that an interview took place. What is known is that the journalist has actually spent a few days on Russian soil, visiting tourist attractions and having confirmedly attended a ballet performance at the Bolshoi Theatre. If there was any more important event on the journalist’s schedule, it will certainly be revealed soon.

However, it is interesting to analyze the reaction in the West to Carlson’s visit to Russia. Pro-war militants on the American political scenario are absolutely upset by this trip – and seem even angrier about the mere possibility of Tucker interviewing Putin. All sorts of hysterical reactions have arisen among American neoconservatives and liberals. Tucker has been called a “traitor” by several public figures. More than that, in a controversial statement, neoconservative writer Bill Kristol went to the extreme of calling for Tucker’s banishment from American soil, aimed at preventing him from returning to the US from Russia.

There are some special reasons for this reaction. Carlson is currently the most popular American journalist on social media. With more than 11 million followers on his X account and running a show whose audience is continually growing, Carlson represents a “threat” to Western Big Media. For example, Carlson’s recent interview with former American President Donald Trump reached an impressive 267 million views on X alone – having also been broadcast on other digital platforms. Carlson’s popularity is the reason why American elites are so afraid of him interviewing Putin.

The Russian president certainly has a lot to say to Western public. Since 2022, censorship on Russian media has prevented Western citizens from hearing the Russian side in the ongoing conflict. Putin’s words, when they reach an English-speaking audience, come in a distorted and biased way, with ordinary people in Western countries not having the opportunity to really understand Russia’s concerns and reasons.

More than that, Russian denunciations of war crimes, human rights abuses, promotion of neo-Nazism and the production of ethnic biological weapons rarely reach Western public opinion. In a direct interview with the Russian president, this scenario would completely change. This is why, even without any confirmation that the interview happened, the mere possibility of such an event is already causing panic among American warmongers.

Furthermore, even if there is no interview, the visit of a popular American journalist to Russia in current times is also important. Tucker could show his audience the reality on the ground in Russia, showing that there is no effect of the illegal sanctions imposed by the West and that the Russian people are in fact living well, contrary to the scenario of social catastrophe described by the mainstream media. Also, being an election year in Russia, Carlson’s coverage could also show that, contrary to what the big outlets say, the Russian government is actually popular, being supported by the majority of the people – with Putin not being elected in “fraudulent elections“, as said in the West, but in real democratic procedures.

In practice, Tucker has a lot to say to his millions of followers about Russia. Whether or not there is an interview with Putin, it is certain that Carlson’s trip will have a strong impact on Western journalism. The case is serving to unmask the real nature of “American democracy”. More than ever, it seems clear that concepts such as freedom of speech and media no longer mean anything to the decadent political structure of the contemporary US.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist and researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.

February 6, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Meta Oversight Board Member Says There’s “Not Enough” Election Censorship

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | February 5, 2024

An influential member of Meta’s Oversight Board, a group nicknamed the “Supreme Court of Facebook,” Pamela San Martín, has argued that the level of censorship enacted by Meta during the 2020 presidential election was inadequate and that it should be stepped up for 2024.

This viewpoint was criticized by individuals in favor of freedom of expression, who cited a poll conducted by the Media Research Center suggesting that the influence of Big Tech censorship significantly affected the outcome of the election.

In a conversation with WIRED, San Martín argued vociferously in favor of more stringent censorship measures ahead of future elections, including the 2024 one.

San Martín’s ideas for 2024 include “adding labels to posts that are related to elections, directing people to reliable information, prohibiting paid advertisement when it calls into question the legitimacy of elections, and implementing WhatsApp forward limits.”

“No election is exactly the same as the previous one,” San Martín said to the outlet. “So even though we’re addressing the problems that arose in prior elections as a starting point, it is not enough.”

Her proposal centers on pre-emptive actions, which some observers see as a threat to freedom of speech online.

Anti-censorship critics drew attention to San Martín’s suggestion of coordination with election officials, interpreting it as a direct call for collusion between tech giants and government authorities in matters of censorship. They argued that each election is a unique event and that relying on strategies from previous campaigns was insufficient – a sentiment San Martín herself echoed.

San Martín referenced the 2020 and 2022 US and Brazilian elections, criticizing Meta for failing to adequately prevent its platforms from being manipulated for campaigning and disinformation.

February 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Senator Mark Warner Argues “Misinformation or Disinformation” Shouldn’t Have First Amendment Protections

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 5, 2024

Senator Mark Warner has aggressively gone after speech protections, seeking to seemingly single-handedly reinterpret the First Amendment while complaining that courts dealing with White House/Big Tech collusion are now making the Biden administration “very timid.”

The Democrat apparently proceeds from the rule, “disinformation is whatever we say it is” – in itself too arbitrary to be taken seriously. But that doesn’t stop Warner from building a big case for rethinking the First Amendment and facilitating censorship even further, by effectively strengthening, rather than abandoning, the said collusion.

If something is considered “true misinformation or disinformation,” the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee told NPR, then that, along with another favorite yet poorly explained scare – deep fakes – does not qualify for First Amendment protections.

“I think when you’re talking about true misinformation or disinformation, or when you’re talking about utilization of deepfakes where an image…is put up and it’s not us, but it looks like us and sounds like us, I don’t think those are First Amendment protections,” is the full quote from the senator.

And Warner wants to bring some stock market rules into the world of fundamental rights and free speech, suggesting that information labeled as disinformation should be treated as malicious and banned like manipulation is banned from the stock market.

The senator then proceeded to talk about 2020 “election deniers” while in the same breath denying the integrity of the 2016 election, by once again fear-mongering about the supposed impending doom, “a perfect storm in terms of election interference.”

To stop that from happening, and to keep the current administration in power, Warner wants to make its ability to censor and keep “in contact” with the likes of Google and Facebook intact, if not stronger.

That is why he has made extra effort – penned an amicus brief – in a bid to get the Supreme Court to reverse an injunction concerning the government/Big Tech collusion, brought up in the NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton case and issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The senator went on to say that he “doesn’t believe” collusion of that kind has to do with free speech suppression. Instead, according to him, it has to do with “the ability of the government to be able to at least talk to Facebook and Google to say, hey, if you see misinformation – or can we share evidence of Russian activity? How do we cooperate together?”

But it seems Warner believes the US legal system, or parts of it, trying to put some breaks on this oddly undemocratic practice, are making Biden’s White House “very timid” – whereas he is “trying to push the Biden administration to be a little more aggressive.”

“But – rest assured that there is not the level of communication (with Big Tech) that existed in 2020 or 2022 or 2018,” the senator lamented.

February 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

CNN Staffers Say Network Has ‘Systemic and Institutional Bias Toward Israel’

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 5, 2024

Several employees of CNN spoke out against the outlet’s bias towards Israel in its reporting on the war on Gaza. Other US corporate media outlets have shown significant favoritism toward Tel Aviv.

The Guardian reports speaking with six staffers from different newsrooms who said that there is growing backlash against the leadership’s pro-Israel slant. “The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice.”

“There’s a lot of internal strife and dissent. Some people are looking to get out,” the CNN staffer explained. “Senior staffers who disagree with the status quo are butting heads with the executives giving orders, questioning how we can effectively tell the story with such restrictive directives in place.”

A staffer speaking with the Guardian explained how systemic censorship occurs. “Many have been pushing for more content from Gaza to be alerted and aired.” The source continued, “By the time these reports go through Jerusalem and make it to TV or the homepage, critical changes – from the introduction of imprecise language to an ignorance of crucial stories – ensure that nearly every report, no matter how damning, relieves Israel of wrongdoing.”

The CNN employees say the bias starts at the top, with CEO Mark Thompson. The Guardian obtained emails and members that backed up the accusations made by the CNN staff members. The employees say the slant is causing a backlash.

In one memo obtained by the Guardian, Thompson gave orders that all stories mentioning the atrocities committed by the Israelis in Gaza must mention the war is only occurring because of the Hamas attack on October 7.

The memo reads, “We must continue always to remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of civilians.” One staffer confirmed that the memo was interpreted “as an instruction that no matter what the Israelis do, Hamas is ultimately to blame.”

CNN’s bias towards Tel Aviv is matched by the Washington Post and New York Times. Writing at FAIR, Julie Hollar explains,” At the New York Times and Washington Post, opinion editors have skewed the Gaza debate toward an Israel-centered perspective, dominated by men and, among guest writers, government officials.”

“While both papers did include a few strong pro-Palestinian voices—their pages leaned heavily toward a conversation dominated by Israeli interests and concerns.” She continued, “That was due in large part due to their stables of regular columnists, who tend to write from a perspective aligned with Israel. As a result, the viewpoints readers were most likely to encounter on the opinion pages of the two papers were sympathetic to, but not necessarily uncritical of, Israel.”

February 5, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Is a New Korean War in the Offing?

BY GREGORY ELICH | COUNTERPUNCH | FEBRUARY 5, 2024

In recent days, U.S. media have been proclaiming that North Korea plans to initiate military action against its neighbor to the south. An article by Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, neither previously prone to making wild assertions, created quite a splash and set off a chain reaction of media fear-mongering. In Carlin’s and Hecker’s assessment, “[W]e believe that, like his grandfather in 1950, Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” They add that if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is convinced that engagement with the United States is not possible, then “his recent words and actions point toward the prospects of a military solution using [his nuclear] arsenal.” [1]

U.S. officials have stated that while they do not see “an imminent risk of a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula,” Kim Jong Un “could take some form of lethal military action against South Korea in the coming months after having shifted to a policy of open hostility.” [2] How do these sensationalist claims stack up against the evidence?

It is no secret that lately, the stance of the United States and South Korea has hardened against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea). Since the centerpiece for suggesting that war may be on the horizon is Kim’s speech at the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly, its content is worth examining in some detail. [3] What strikes one when reading the text is that mainstream media have taken quotes out of context and ignored much of the content of Kim’s speech, creating an impression of unprovoked belligerence.

Also generally absent from media reporting is the speech’s relationship to the backdrop of events since the far-right Yoon Suk Yeol became president of South Korea in May 2022. Yoon came into office determined to smash every vestige of the improved inter-Korean environment established during his predecessor’s term. Instead, Yoon prioritized making South Korea a subordinate partner in the Biden administration’s hyper-militarized Indo-Pacific Strategy.

To fully understand Kim Jong Un’s speech, one must also consider the nature of the Biden administration’s rapid military escalation in the Asia-Pacific. The United States conducts a virtually nonstop series of military exercises at North Korea’s doorstep, practicing the bombing and invasion of that nation. One South Korean analyst has counted 42 joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises conducted in 2023 alone, along with ten more involving Japan. [4] Those totals do not include exercises that the U.S. and South Korea engaged in outside of Northeast Asia, such as Exercise Talisman Sabre in Australia and Exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand. Moreover, U.S. actions on the Korean Peninsula must also be situated within the broader geopolitical framework of its hostility towards China.

Last year, in an act of overt intimidation, the United States conducted seven exercises with nuclear-capable bombers over the Korean Peninsula. [5] Additional flights involved the B-1 bomber, which the U.S. Air Force says “can rapidly deliver massive quantities of precision and non-precision weapons.” [6] Through its actions, the United States sends far more provocative messages than anything that could be honestly construed in Kim’s speech. But then, we are led to see nothing amiss in such aggressive behavior from the United States. Nevertheless, the threat is real and unmistakable from the targeted nation’s perspective.

It also has not gone unnoticed in Pyongyang that U.S. and South Korean military forces regularly conduct training exercises to practice assassinating Kim Jong Un and other North Korean officials. [7] Just this month, U.S. Green Berets and soldiers from South Korea’s Special Warfare Command completed training focused on the targeted killing of North Korean individuals. [8] The Biden administration avers that it harbors no hostile intent toward the DPRK, but its actions say otherwise, loud and clear.

North Korea, with a GDP that the United Nations ranks just behind that of Congo and Laos, is considered such a danger that the U.S. must confront it with substantial military might. An inconvenient question that is never asked is why the DPRK is singled out for punishment and threats when the other nuclear non-members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – each armed with ballistic missiles — are not. What distinguishes North Korea from India, Pakistan, and Israel? How is it that North Korea is regarded as a threat to peace but not Israel, notwithstanding mounting evidence to the contrary? The essential distinction is that North Korea is the only one of the four that is not a U.S. ally; moreover, one which the U.S. wishes to retain the ability to bomb, whether or not it ever exercises the option to do so.

It is a tribute to the persuasiveness of propaganda that the United States, with its record of multiple wars, bombings, and drone assassinations in recent decades, can convince so many that the DPRK, which has done none of these things during the same period, is a danger to international peace and stability. Yet, such towering hypocrisy goes largely unnoticed. It would appear that there is no principle involved in targeting only North Korea and not the other nuclear-armed non-members of the NPT — unless outrage over a small nation following an independent path being able to defend itself can be regarded as a principle.

Predictably, Washington think tank analysts and media commentators are throwing more heat than light on the subject of Kim’s pronouncements, and they are always ready with a cliché at hand. Some, like Bruce W. Bennett of RAND Corporation, let their imagination run wild, conjuring bizarre absurdities. Bennett suggests that armed with more nuclear weapons in the years ahead, North Korea “could threaten one or more U.S. cities with nuclear attack if the United States does not repeal its sanctions against North Korea.” Or perhaps, he suggests, the DPRK could threaten the U.S. with a limited nuclear attack “unless it abandons its alliance with [South Korea]” or “disengage from Ukraine.” As for South Korea, Bennett warns that Kim might insist that it “pay him $100 billion per year and permanently discontinue producing K-pop…” [9] This is what passes as expert analysis in Washington.

The military section of Kim’s speech was at root defensive, pointing out that North Korea’s “security environment has been steadily deteriorated” and that if it wants to take “the road of independent development,” it must be fully prepared to defend itself. Kim quotes specific threats made by U.S. and South Korean leaders to emphasize his awareness that his nation is in the crosshairs.

At one point in his speech, Kim suggested that the constitution could specify “the issue of completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming the ROK [Republic of Korea, the formal name for South Korea] and annex it…in case war breaks out…” He added, “There is no reason to opt for war, and therefore, there is no intention of unilaterally going to war, but once a war becomes a reality facing us, we will never try to avoid it.” Such a war, he warned, “will terribly destroy the entity called the Republic of Korea and put an end to its existence” and “inflict an unimaginably crushing calamity and defeat upon the U.S.” Kim continues, “If the enemies ignite a war, our Republic will resolutely punish the enemies by mobilizing all its military forces including nuclear weapons.” Harsh language, indeed, intended to remind the war hawks in Washington and Seoul not to imagine that their nations are invulnerable if they attack the DPRK. Note also the conditional phrasing, which tends to get downplayed in Western media.

Even less attention is paid to more direct clarifying language, such as Kim’s statement that the DPRK’s military is for “legitimate self-defense” and “not a means of preemptive attack for realizing unilateral reunification by force of arms.” And: “Explicitly speaking, we will never unilaterally unleash a war if the enemies do not provoke us.”

It was entirely predictable that Western media would put the worst spin on Kim’s blunt language that mirrored earlier South Korean pronouncements. The month before Kim’s speech, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik warned, “North Korea has only two choices – peace or destruction. If North Korea makes reckless actions that harm peace, only a hell of destruction awaits them.” [10] A few days later, Yoon ordered his military to launch an “immediate and overwhelming response” to any provocation by the DPRK. [11] Yoon and South Korean military officials use the term ‘provocation’ so loosely as to encompass almost any action the DPRK takes that they do not like, including what is normal behavior for other nations – or for South Korea itself, for that matter. South Korean and North Korean rhetoric identifying each other as enemies and destruction in the event of war differ in that the former preceded the latter. By ignoring the fact that North Korea is reacting to prior South Korean statements, mainstream media can portray Kim’s language as unprovoked.

Last December, Yoon heightened the risk of conflict when he visited an infantry division near the border and gave them an order: “In case of provocations, I ask you to immediately retaliate in response and report it later.” [12] Vague in defining neither “provocation” nor the appropriate response level and delegating to lower-level commanders to decide those questions, this formula potentially can transform a minor clash of arms into a conflict of wider impact.

Kim’s statements are presented in Western media as tantamount to a plan to start a war. Earlier statements of a similar nature by the Yoon administration that created an acrimonious atmosphere are rendered invisible or uncontroversial. It is fair to say that given North Korea’s longstanding practice of responding in kind, Kim may have adopted more restrained phrasing without South Korean officials setting the tone.

Western media have raised concerns over Kim’s labeling of South Korea as a “principal enemy.” We are not reminded that nearly one year before, South Korea had re-designated the DPRK as “our enemy” in its Defense White Paper. [13] Under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, the defense paper dropped the reference to North Korea as an enemy. [14] The general pattern has been for liberal presidents to shun that tag in the interests of inter-Korean relations and for conservative presidents to embrace it as one element in their project to undo progress. Yoon himself frequently refers to North Korea as the enemy, and his administration’s National Security Strategy document describes the Kill Chain system, which is designed to launch preemptive strikes on North Korea. [15] In omitting such details, cause and effect are inverted, reinforcing the media-constructed Orientalist image of an irrational leader at the helm of the DPRK, prone to unpredictable statements and rash acts.

Patience has run thin in Pyongyang, as Biden’s trilateral alliance with South Korea and Japan, “buoyed with war fever,” as Kim put it, sharply escalates military tensions in the region. In a sharp reversal, North Korea has abandoned its longstanding policy of seeking improved inter-Korean relations and working toward peaceful reunification. Any headway achieved in the past has quickly been undone in South Korea whenever the conservative party came to power. Still, Yoon has taken matters further than the norm, not only willfully dynamiting inter-Korean relations but also deliberately raising the risk of military conflict. Inter-Korean relations have reached such a nadir under Yoon that the DPRK sees no hope of progress in the current circumstances. The North Koreans are not wrong in that perception.

Sadly, in a clear signal of its exasperation with Yoon, North Korea demolished the Arch of Reunification in Pyongyang, and all governmental bodies responsible for reunification planning and projects were shut down. The latter steps are not inherently irreversible, however. But as long as Yoon remains in power, there is no conceivable possibility of progress on reunification. Yoon has slammed the door shut on inter-Korean relations.

One would never know it from Western reports, but more than two-thirds of Kim’s speech focused on economic development. “The supreme task,” Kim announced, “is to stabilize and improve the people’s living as early as possible.” Peace is an essential prerequisite for the realization of that goal. North Koreans are well aware of American and South Korean military capabilities, and a war would not only wipe out new economic projects but most of the existing infrastructure as well.

Immense damage has been done to the DPRK’s economy by sanctions designed to target the entire population and inflict as much suffering as possible. [16] The period when North Korea closed its border with China in response to the COVID-19 pandemic added to economic challenges. Reversing direction is imperative. In his speech, Kim called for “a radical turn in the economic construction and improvement of the people’s living standard” and said that progress is being made “despite unprecedented trials.” Kim enumerated industrial, power, housing, and other ongoing projects.

Kim admitted there have been internal challenges in economic development. “It is a reality that the Party and the government yet fail to meet even the simple demand of the people in life…” In particular, regional and urban-rural economic imbalances have plagued the North Korean economy for decades. “At present,” Kim continued, “there is a great disparity of living standards between the capital city and provinces and between towns and the countryside.” Kim acknowledged that these issues have not been adequately addressed in the past, but it “is an immediate task” to do so now.

Kim took the occasion to officially unveil the launch of the Regional Development 20×10 Policy. This ambitious plan calls for substantially raising material and cultural standards in twenty counties over the next ten years, including constructing regional industrial factories and establishing advanced educational institutions. In particular, emphasis is to be given to scientific and technological development. The aim is to even out regional imbalances and to accelerate overall development.

None of this can be achieved if the U.S. and South Korea are showering the DPRK with high explosives, and the Regional 20×10 Policy makes nonsense of Western scaremongering that Kim has decided to go to war. As usual, though, when it comes to reporting on North Korea, assertion substitutes for evidence, and we can expect Washington think tanks, U.S. media, military contractors, and the Biden administration to capitalize on the manufactured image of a war-mad Kim Jong Un to accelerate the military buildup in the Asia-Pacific, aimed against the DPRK and the People’s Republic of China. For his part, Yoon can be expected to amplify military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and sharpen his war on South Korean progressives. What is not in the cards is militarism abating in the foreseeable future.

Notes.

[1] Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker, “Is Kim Jong Un Preparing for War,” 38 North, January 11, 2024.

[2] Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. is Watching North Korea for Signs of Lethal Military Action,” New York Times, January 25, 2024.

[3] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Policy Speech at 10th Session of the 14th SPA,” KCNA, January 16, 2024.

[4] http://www.minplusnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=14494

[5] Chae Yun-hwan, “S. Korea, U.S. Stage Joint Air Drills with B-52H Bombers Over the Yellow Sea,” Yonhap, November 15, 2023.

[6] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104500/b-1b-lancer/

[7] Jeongmin Kim, “Drills on Assassinating Kim Jong Un Remain an ‘Option,’ ROK Defense Chief Says,” NK News, December 19, 2023.

[8] Lee Yu-jung and Esther Chung, “Kim Jong-un Instructs North Korea’s Navy to Prepare for War,” JoongAng Ilbo, February 2, 2024.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJF7tbzwfY

Donald Kirk, “U.S. to Enrage Kim Jong Un with Assassination Dry Run,” Daily Beast, August 19, 2022.

[9] Bruce W. Bennett, “Is North Korea Really Getting Ready for a War Against America?” The National Interest, January 17, 2024.

[10] Chae Yun-hwan, “Defense Chief Warns N. Korea of ‘Hell of Destruction’ in Event of Reckless Acts,” Yonhap, December 13, 2023.

[11] “Yoon Orders Swift, Overwhelming Response to N. Korean Provocation,” KBS World, December 18, 2023.

[12] Kim Han-joo, “Yoon Orders Military to Retaliate First, Report Later in Case of Enemy Attacks,” Yonhap, December 28, 2023.

[13] Kwon Hyuk-chul, “S. Korea’s First Defense White Paper Under Yoon Defines N. Korea as ‘Enemy’”, Hankyoreh, February 17, 2023.

[14] Yosuke Onchi, “South Korea No Longer Calls Pyongyang ‘Enemy’ in Defense Paper,” Nikkei Asia, January 16, 2019.

[15] https://www.nknews.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Yoon-Suk-yeol-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-June-2023.pdf

Josh Smith, “South Korea Doubles Down on Risky ‘Kill Chain’ Plans to Counter North Korea Nuclear Threat,” Reuters, July 25, 2022.

[16] https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/trumps-war-on-the-north-korean-people/

https://gregoryelich.org/2017/10/04/punishing-a-nation-how-the-trump-administration-is-waging-a-merciless-economic-war-on-north-korea/

Gregory Elich is a Korea Policy Institute board member. He is a contributor to the collection, Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy (Haymarket Books, 2023). His website is https://gregoryelich.org  Follow him on Twitter at @GregoryElich.  

February 5, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Big Pharma Is Fooling You Again, and You Don’t Even Know It

Tucker Carlson | February 3, 2024

Is this drug too good to be true? Tucker Carlson and Calley Means discuss.

Follow Tucker on X: https://x.com/TuckerCarlson

February 5, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Germany’s energy crisis deepens further due to Biden’s halt of U.S. LNG projects

Germany has dug itself into an energy hole

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | February 4, 2024

Due to the environmental and climate hysteria over the past decades, Germany has steadily moved to shut down its vast  fleet of nuclear reactors, coal power plants, and even natural gas supplies (a major supply line from Russia got blown up).

Moreover, Germany is moving to ban fossil fuel heating systems for homes, and mandating electric cars by 2035.

Now in an energy crunch

Since the supply of natural gas from Russia got cut off, it became necessary to find an alternative source quickly – from USA in the form of imported LNG. The German government approved the construction an LNG terminal at the north German coast in record time. This would help secure Germany’s energy supply. Surely the USA could be viewed as a reliable partner.

That was the plan – until President Joe Biden unexpectedly put a stop to further LNG projects. Now, Germany suddenly risks finding itself in energy isolation. It’s panic time in Berlin.

“Devastating energy crisis”

“Germany is facing a devastating energy crisis that seriously threatens its security of supply,” reports Germany’s Blackout News. “Biden’s decision now has far-reaching consequences that could pose serious problems for German energy policy.”

Also see. berliner-zeitung : 26.01.24

The USA is the world’s largest exporter of LNG, but because of climate protection, Biden bowed to pressure from climate radicals and stopped plans to build new export terminals. This development has sent shockwaves through energy-starved Germany.

According to US government officials, four U.S. terminal projects are directly affected by Biden’s decision.

Berlin has backed itself into a corner with its years of misguided green energy policy. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Wealthy Zionists Are Defunding the Left… Or Are They?

ERIC STRIKER • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 4, 2024

“October 8th Jews,” as the New York Times’ Bret Stephens baptized them, have been drafted to take Israel’s war on the Palestinians global as both generic Republican and Democrat voters sour on the Zionist project.

Members of the “New Right” have been enthusiastically reading into this. These conservative figures have interpreted high profile incidents, like the donor revolt against universities deemed insufficiently pro-Israel, as a sign that wealthy Jews are finally done financing the cultural left.

There are circumstantial reasons to believe this. One of the vectors for spreading Gen Z wokeness, Tik Tok, is feeling the gust of the flexing Jewish bicep. It was announced that Lucien Grainge’s Universal Music Group was banning the use of songs from its massive catalogue of pop stars from being accessed on the world’s most popular social media platform. It just so happens that this superficially bad business decision boycotting the music-driven app sensation came after protest from Jewish groups that Tik Tok was allowing anti-Zionist sentiment to flourish among the youth following October 7th.

On the surface, a person operating within a typical universalist or analytical frame could assume that billionaires who spend lavishly to take away Americans’ guns like Michael Bloomberg are having a change of heart when they dispatch 10s of millions to aid a foreign state that hands out military grade assault rifles to random pedestrians. But there is no incongruity or cognitive dissonance here. Just as the Israeli state forbids giving these guns to its minority of non-Jewish citizens on strictly racial grounds, Mr. Bloomberg insists that he and his should have the privilege to possess as many firearms as they want while stripping everybody else of this right.

It is increasingly common knowledge that the American anti-white/DEI/Woke left and its non-profits are funded largely by Jewish asset managers on Wall Street. When billionaires funnel big money to an institution, they feel entitled to set the beneficiary’s agenda, as Rabbi Nolan Lebovitz explained in a piece on the hedge fund Jews waging war on the Ivy Leagues.

In some instances, this money has been clashing with the morals of those employed by leftist organizations. Non-profit workers generally want to uphold their mission statements supporting racial equity and human rights in respects to Israel.

One casualty of this conflict between donors and the grassroots is the Democratic Socialists of America. Following the DSA’s decision to support Gaza without qualifications, an array of wealthy Jewish supporters and elected officials associated with the group resigned in unison. Just three months after the Jewish money walkout, the largest and most politically successful Marxist organization in recent American history is now ghettoized, approaching insolvency, and forced to lay off its staff.

In a separate instance, a pro-open borders NGO called CASA published a statement calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine war. The group’s panicked executive quickly retracted the statement and apologized to the Jewish community when lawmakers in Maryland opened a retaliatory investigation threatening their funding. CASA’s top donors, like The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, announced that they were going to pull a six-figure donation earmarked for them in 2024 while sending more millions to support the virulently anti-immigrant state of Israel instead.

At woke Starbucks, Charles Schultz filed a SLAPP lawsuit against his stores own labor union because one of their Twitter accounts wrote “Solidarity with Palestine!” Artforum, which specializes in battling “whiteness” in art, canned its top editor for the same. In progressive-except-Palestine Hollywood, several actresses known for their loud support of trendy left-wing causes who have dared to remark on Israel’s crimes have been suddenly removed from movie sets and blacklisted. Radical pro-criminal New York public defender organizations aggressively suppressed any inkling of pro-Palestinian sentiment. The list of purged people in the broader world of the DEI/Woke activism, culture, media, university, law and foundation complex is so vast it would be safe to say every corner of the liberal and left-wing world has been visited by the Zionist inquisition.

For this reason, the perception that there is a “vibe shift” on wokeism could be a mirage. Many society-wrecking leftist groups are facing financial and staff problems due to the conflict of interests in the Israel-Palestine war, but this could be a temporary lull as both donors and greedy liberals recalibrate to continue to do what they were doing before except in a way Jewish “philanthropists” find more palatable on Israel.

One Marxist entity that appears to be weathering the storm is The Jacobin, a communist magazine with millions of dollars in assets closely tied to the DSA. The publication is registered as a non-profit and overwhelmingly funded by dark money, including major donations from the Jewish Communal Fund.

The Jacobin has been critical of Israel’s war, however, much of their reporting and commentary has fixated on posing a contradiction between the far-rightness of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and “left-wing” Zionists, all while framing Gaza’s elected government and official army, Hamas, as blood thirsty terrorists. The purpose of this tightrope walk seems to be to pander to their staunchly anti-Zionist readers while also appeasing their donors by welcoming the strain of Jewish racialism that is more critical of capitalism.

A stark example is the publication of a paper by Hayim Katsman, a left-wing Kibbutz Zionist critical of Netanyahu, who the Jacobin claims was “murdered by Hamas” on October 7th.

Omitted in this eulogy of the “good Zionist” martyr is the context in which Katsman lived and died. Katsman is an American Jew who, after getting his Ph.D in international studies at the University of Washington, moved to an illegal settlement near Gaza that was established as a civilian-military frontier outpost built in 1978 with the specific intent of killing Arabs. For this reason, Katsman likely died in the crossfire during a shootout between the IDF and Hamas that occurred in his Kibbutz/Settlement on October 7th, with growing mounds of evidence pointing to the Israeli military itself as culpable for the dead Jewish civilians. The Jacobin does not comment on the ludicrous contradiction of celebrating an American born adult choosing to move to land recently stolen from local Arabs in a militarized Israeli settlement being promoted as an enlightened Israel-Palestine peace activist.

It remains to be seen if this politicking will work for The Jacobin. Their coverage has been pressured into being more critical of Israel than the magazine’s editors have previously been comfortable with, which could put their yearly injection of Jewish Communal Fund cash for 2024 in jeopardy anyway.

By and large, most groups supporting anti-white and DEI causes quickly learned their lesson after the initial post-October 7th wave of firings of vocally pro-Palestine workers and activists. Organizations operating in this sphere are more reliant than ever on big donations from billionaires due to the rapid shrinking of the American middle class, which has subsequently caused a collapse in overall grassroots charitable giving.

The deafening silence of America’s self-described humanitarian and racial equity watchdogs on the genocide in Gaza has become a catalyst for antagonism between leaders and young, lower-level true-believers.

In an article published in late October in Devex, the author describes what she has been hearing from the NGO sphere on the matter,

“Philanthropy leaders tell Devex they are being very careful in how they discuss the heavily politicized war out of concern for how it might affect their relationships with colleagues, funding partners, or their careers.

Many people within the sector who historically have been vocal about equity and human rights are horrified by what is happening in Gaza but aren’t speaking publicly because they worry they will be labeled antisemitic if they criticize Israel’s airstrikes, one U.S.-based philanthropy leader told Devex.

Meanwhile, Jewish philanthropy leaders say their community feels abandoned and their trauma not taken seriously, as some liberal groups loudly line up behind Palestinians and their rights.”

An opinion piece in Non-Profit Quarterly complained that despite NGO activists privately supporting a ceasefire in Palestine, the majority have adamantly refused to use their money and influence to support the cause. It also added that Muslim-led “racial justice” outfits are largely avoided by donors and foundations. The cop out from these cowardly pro-immigration, anti-police, non-white racial advocacy parties is to become strategically myopic, suddenly claiming that they don’t want to focus on issues beyond their suddenly narrow missions. One of the only important leftist institutions that has held a full-throated anti-Zionist line is The Intercept, which is also exceptional in that it is the project of Arab businessman Pierre Omidyar.

In NonProfit AF, the furious author adds more fuel to the fire,

“Grassroots donors are pouring in, but the philanthropy community is basically absent. With very few exceptions, major funders are absent. The foundations sitting on billions are doing mostly nothing. Those that are doing something are making gifts of a few hundred thousand at best. Not nothing, but also nowhere near what they’re capable of. [Regarding] Funders 4 Ceasefire: what seemed like a noble effort at first is apparently a feel-good statement with no actual money behind the words. Only a small handful of foundation signers (out of ~150) seem to be funding anything remotely related to Palestine or related advocacy.”

There is no sign that groups supporting the rights and humanitarian needs of Palestinians are unpopular with the general public. People from all walks of life who are outraged at the systematic murder of women and children in Palestine are flooding aid and protest organizations with record amounts of small donations.

But even here, Palestine activists cannot avoid the foxes guarding the hens. It was recently reported in the Jewish Telegraph Agency that virtually all of the money donated to pro-Palestinian demonstrations and advocacy in the United States is managed by a single Orthodox Jew who is an Israeli citizen, Howard Horowitz. Horowitz’s support for Palestinians is couched in attacks on the legitimacy of Gaza’s leadership and the fundamental right of Palestinians to resist occupation by militant means.

Rather than America “turning the corner” on wokeness, what we are seeing could instead be an illusion. The brief reprieve from the left-wing social onslaught against normal people may be more to do with the fact that the organized Jewish community in the US has quickly produced an astonishing $638 million dollars to directly support the Israeli war effort out of their pockets, leading a Jerusalem Post opinion writer to rhetorically ask, “Is there enough left to go around?”

Perhaps key to the question of whether this will take the winds out of wokeness’ sails is what effect this experience will have on the zeal and energy of rank-and-file social justice warriors after realizing their generals are more barbaric, amoral, and unapologetically genocidal than the “Nazis” and MAGAs they have been trained to attack and hate. A person sound of mind would realize that they are being cynically and maliciously used to undermine the collective white West, just as Zionists do to Arab Palestine. Will this earth-shattering hypocrisy disenchant the Gen Z left?

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Flashpoints for War!

Where will WW3’s “Archduke Ferdinand moment” happen?

BY KEVIN BARRETT | FEBRUARY 4, 2024

I remember learning in school that the flashpoint for World War I was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Like most people, I never quite understood how the first-ever World War, involving over 30 nations and leading to almost 20 million deaths, resulted from a gratuitous murder by a handful of radical students. Apparently universities should keep a very close eye on student organizations!

I later encountered the realist school of geopolitics, which argues that the Great War was a disaster waiting to happen. The actual cause of the war, according to realists, was not a random assassination, but the rise of German (and to a lesser extent Russian and American) economic and military power, which threatened the then-British-dominated world order.

Realists say this pattern is not uncommon. A number one power, alarmed at the rise of a number two challenger, allies itself with the number three power, but ultimately fails to maintain its position. The shifting power dynamics, in which the number one power no longer has the economic and military might to back up its top ranking, produces a major war, whose aftermath establishes the new international pecking order. In the case of the two World Wars, which were really one war with two major episodes, the thalassocratic British empire exhausted itself fighting Germany, allowing the US to seize the number one spot.

Today, the US empire is in a position not unlike Britain’s circa 1914. Having industrialized first, built a huge navy, and developed the necessary skills to “rule the waves” and colonize the wogs, the Brits had benefitted from a huge head start; but by 1914 the Germans, Russians, and Americans were catching up, and the Brits no longer had enough relative power to enforce unipolar world domination.

Likewise, 2024 America is still coasting on the fumes of its gigantic post-World War II head start on the rest of the world. The US emerged from World War II with roughly 50% of global GDP. In 1960 it was still 40%. But the decline since then has been steady. Today the US only controls 13% of global GDP. But it still imagines itself as the global Goliath it was in 1960—or maybe even bigger, since the Soviet ideological challenger has disappeared, and the grandiosely narcissistic neocons have seized the helm of the ship of state.

A major war that will reset power relations and take the US down several notches seems almost inevitable.* The question remains, where will the flashpoint be?

The neocons, in their infinite wisdom, have made it difficult to guess, having alienated so much of the world that the coming take-down-the-US World War could break out practically anywhere. Russia and its borderlands…China and its southern sea and/or its errant province of Taiwan… and now, with the genocide of Palestine making the Islamic world even angrier than Russia and China, the whole middle belt of Eurasia and North Africa is equally hostile territory.

But before we start globetrotting in search of flashpoints, why not begin imagining the transforming event a bit closer to home? If the assassination of heir-presumptive Archduke Ferdinand, attributed to allegedly state-supported radical fanatics, could set off World War I, could an assassination of presumptive 2024 president Donald Trump, attributed to radical Iran-supported fanatics, unleash World War III?

Flashpoint Florida

Imagine: It’s October 2024. Trump is leading in the polls 55%-45% nationwide, with a clear edge in all the swing states. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a drone swoops down on Mar-a-Lago, smashes through a plate glass window like a supermosquito on steroids, and stings Trump with its explosive charge just as he’s breaking open his seventh can of diet coke. (Cinematographically, we cut from a close-up of the pssssssst as Trump opens the can to a medium shot of the almost simultaneous explosion.)

Fortunately, almost before what is left of Trump is declared dead, the media tells us who did it. A radical Iranian-Palestinian terrorist named Lee Harvey Atta is arrested on the seventh floor of the Palm Beach School Book Depository and accidentally defenestrated before he can be questioned. Luckily, on the floor of the book storeroom, authorities discover an Iranian-made Manlicher-Carcano drone control rig complete with instructions written in Farsi, signed by the Supreme Leader of Iran.

President Biden, whose cognition has been revived to functionality thanks to an Elon Musk (TM) brain implant, appears on television extravagantly praising the late and much-lamented Trump, canceling the election, declaring that all Americans are united in their thirst for vengeance, and calling for an all-out war on Iran to be personally commanded by a certain Bibi Netanyahu, who will be Lear-Jetted and then helicoptered in from Tel Aviv to take charge in the White House Situation Room. With the mutterings of conspiracy theorists silenced by the new AI-driven censorship algorithms, the US and the world are off to the races.

Other Potential Flashpoints

The above scenario, or some only slightly-less-ludicrous variation, may not be quite as unlikely as it sounds. Removing Trump, inciting Trump supporters to war hysteria, and blaming Iran—a plausible patsy given its stated desire for revenge for the assassination of General Soleimani—would kill three birds with one drone. The neocons may even have thought ahead to such a scenario when they conned Trump into approving the murder of Gen. Soleimani.

But don’t bet on Flashpoint Florida. It’s a big world out there, and—thanks to the neocons—most of it hates the US empire with a passion. The list of war-trigger possibilities is so long that guessing right would be like winning the lottery.

Another Mideast flashpoint, of course, is the Red Sea, especially the Bab al-Mandab. Yemen’s Houthi-led government, backed by everyone in the region, is continuing to attack Israel-bound ships in an effort to enforce the World Court’s anti-genocide order, despite the presence of a US armada unofficially known as Operation Genocide Guardian.

US ships are sitting ducks due to the proliferation of advanced anti-ship missiles. Instead of the long-awaited Persian Gulf of Tonkin incident, one iteration of which was thwarted in 2007 by US 5th Fleet advisor Gwenyth Todd, we could see a Red Sea Gulf of Tonkin incident… only it might involve an actual attack, albeit a false flag one, as in “remember the Maine.”

Another escalatory flashpoint could involve Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has demonstrated an ability to penetrate Israeli defenses to hit heavily-guarded military targets even under conditions of highest alert. The Israelis clearly want all-out war with Hezbollah, in order to drag the US into the ensuing war with Iran. Only a very firm “no” from the American side prevented Israel from going to all-out war with Hezbollah after October 7. Given subsequent US ineffectuality at restraining the mad-dog Zionists, it isn’t hard to imagine Israel getting its wish and setting off World War III via an all-out war with Hezbollah and the rest of the Resistance Axis and Muslim world.

Flashpoint Palestine

As the above examples suggest, there are many ways that the continuing Israeli genocide of Palestine could indirectly lead to World War III. But could Palestine become a direct flashpoint? The Palestinians don’t seem to have enough military power. But if the war goes badly enough for the Palestinian Resistance, other branches of the Axis of Resistance will escalate their support, with unpredictable consequences. Additionally, there is massive covert support for Palestine among wealthy and powerful elements of regional nations, in some cases among high-ranking members of the state apparatus who wouldn’t be caught dead—or rather would be caught dead—if they uttered their real feelings about the Zionists in public.

One nightmarish potential flashpoint is the specter of a no-return-address WMD attack on Israel. The technology of WMD—micronukes, bioweapons, and the like—has been advancing since the days of the Davy Crockett backpack nukes of the 1950s, and even since the US-developed COVID bioweapon attack on China and Iran of a few years ago (which turned out to be a pretty good proof-of-concept for deniable, no-return-address bioattacks in general). Anger at Israel, in light of the current genocide, has reached the point that it’s virtually inevitable that people will try such things within the next few decades, assuming Israel is still around, and barring unforeseen changes in Zionist behavior.

Flashpoint Ukraine

Zionist fanatics on the wrong side of history have made Palestine and its region a potential WW3 flashpoint. Likewise Ukrainian nationalist fanatics, also on the wrong side of history, have created a parallel danger.

Just as 10 million Zionist Jews cannot defeat two billion Muslims, 40 million Ukrainians cannot defeat 140 million Russians. But the fanatics insist on trying. They know that their only hope is to drag the US into their war in an ever-bigger way. The result would be the destruction of the US empire, which, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, is grossly overextended given its 13%-and-shrinking share of global GDP.

Currently the fanatic faction, led by Zelensky, is fighting the realist faction, led by Zaluzhny. If the fanatics win, their only hope is to false-flag the US into bringing NATO directly into the war. Which means, of course, World War III.

Flashpoint Taiwan

Though we didn’t talk about Taiwan in the latest FFWN broadcast, it’s clear that the anti-China faction of neocons is trying to turn Taiwan into China’s Ukraine, by stoking the forces of fanatical Chinese nationalism and trying to goad Beijing into direct hostilities. If they succeed, World War III could start in the “cleanest” possible way: An immediate, direct war between the sinking #1 power and the rising #2 power.

Other Flashpoints?

This brief discussion certainly doesn’t exhaust the list of potential WW3 flashpoints. I’m sure my readers can think of others. 

*At least if you are a realist. Since I am an idealist, accepting as I do the arguments of Bernardo Kastrup and the Holy Qur’an, not necessarily in that order, I reserve the right to believe that with God’s help we can avert World War III.

Rumble link Bitchute link

In our new “Flashpoints for War” episode of False Flag Weekly News, Cat McGuire and I began with the latest crisis: more than 85 US attacks on Iraq and Syria, threats of more to come, and counterattacks from the Resistance. With geriatric Biden under pressure from his right to act tough, it isn’t hard to see how a miscalculation, and/or a false flag by Israel, could set the dominoes falling in the direction of global war.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New wave of US, UK strikes target Yemen

The Cradle – February 4, 2024

US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.

The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”

According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.

The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.

Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.

Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.

The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.

“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.

The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.

US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”

Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.

Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kata’ib Hezbollah: Iraq strikes stem from US statesmen’s criminal mindset

Press TV – February 4, 2024

Iraqi anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah has roundly denounced the latest US military airstrikes against several sites used by resistance groups in the country, stating that the attacks emanate from the US administration’s criminal mindset and its craving for more bloodshed.

“We extend our condolences to our proud and steadfast nation for the martyrdom of several compatriots, who were targeted while protecting the homeland against the evils of American forces and the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group,” it said in a statement.

It added that criminality is deeply ingrained in the mindset of American politicians, and they long for relentless bloodletting as well as starvation and massacre of ordinary people in pursuit of their interests and advancement of their malicious agendas.

“US officials do not shy away from the occupation of other countries, plundering others’ national assets, influencing their decision-making and their humiliation.

“Under the American mindset, the first solution is murder. Such an attitude has historically been responsible for the extensive destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is now behind the deadly attacks against sites in al-Qa’im,” Kata’ib Hezbollah pointed out.

Separately, the Yemeni Ansarullah resistance movement censured the US aggression against areas in Iraq and neighboring Syria, terming them as barbaric, in breach of international law, and a serious violation of the two countries’ sovereignty.

“The aggression falls within the context of US support for the Zionist enemy as it continues its crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza,” it added.

Ansarullah warned that US moves will drag the entire region into a more complex conflict, and will jeopardize international peace and security.

“Washington could have compelled the Tel Aviv regime to halt its aggression on Palestinians and lift the siege on Gaza. It, however, decided to target the countries and nations of the region.

“We reiterate that Muslim nations reserve the right to defend themselves and protect their security and sovereignty against repeated US acts of aggression,” the Yemeni movement underscored.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its military forces struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria “with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States”.

“The air strikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it added in a statement.

US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday that the strikes were the first in a series of actions by Washington in response to a drone attack that killed a number of soldiers at a remote US base in Jordan.

“Our response began today,” Biden said. “It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he stated.

Three US soldiers were killed and about 40 others injured in the assault on the military base known as Tower 22 near the Jordan-Syria border on Sunday.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, in a statement published on its Telegram channel claimed responsibility for the drone strike.

In retaliation for the flurry of US aerial assaults on several locations in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced that it had conducted missile strikes against the Ain al-Asad Airbase, housing US occupation forces in the western Iraqi province of al-Anbar.

The group also said it had staged missile and drone strikes against the strategic al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria near the border with Jordan and Iraq, as well as the al-Khadra Village in Syria’s northeastern province of al-Hasakah.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nuland leaves sense of foreboding in Kiev

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 4, 2024 

The commencement of political upheavals in world affairs sometimes lies with a seemingly obscure event. This is not to say that the shooting down of a Russian Ilyushin-76 military transport plane carrying dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war over the territory of Belgorod Region by two missiles fired from the area of Liptsy, in Kharkov Region (Ukraine) on January 24 is anything like the spark that set off World War I when a Serbian patriot shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the city of Sarajevo in 1914 and within a month, the Austrian army invaded Serbia.

That said, the downing of the Russian plane would have far-reaching consequences now that Russian investigators found irrefutable proof that the plane was shot down with a US-made Patriot surface-to-air system. President Vladimir Putin disclosed this himself. 

Russia sought an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in the matter but France as the president disallowed the request, which would have cast the West in bad light. The fact of the matter is that the US and Russia are not at war and the Americans would have no hesitation to call such an outrageous incident as an act of war if a Pentagon plane were to be shot down with a Russian missile in the US airspace. 

To be sure, Russia will draw appropriate conclusions and formulate a measured reaction. This is an escalation spiral as Russia’s election approaches.  

Indeed, all indications are that the US strategy through this year is to ‘hold, build and strike’ at Russia, as outlined in an article in the War on the Rocks co-authored by Michael Kofman, a leading American military analyst and the director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for a New American Security.  Basically, the strategy is predicated on the premise that Russia is still far from its official goal of seizing the entire Donbas and therefore, what happens in 2024 is likely to determine the future trajectory of the war. 

Kofman identified three elements as crucial: one, a well- fortified frontline in Ukraine which stalls Russian offensives; two, pressing ahead with reconstituting the battered Ukrainian military; and, three, most important, degrading the Russian advantages and “creating challenges for Russian forces far behind the front lines”, while doubling down on rebuilding capacity to resume offensive operations. In a nutshell, the strategy is to reach a level of capability where Ukraine can absorb Russian offensives while minimising casualties and positioning itself to retake the advantage over time. [Emphasis added.] 

Russia is unlikely to remain passive without a counter-strategy. In fact, there is a perceptible acceleration of Russian operations lately. The factors of advantage largely lie with Russia which holds material,  industrial, and manpower advantages, and therefore, recreating another opportunity to deal Russia a battlefield defeat is virtually impossible. 

Washington should be aware that there is very little realistic chance of the West being able to outlast Russia and force it to accept peace on Ukrainian terms. Time is not on Ukraine’s side, either, militarily or economically. The noted American strategic thinker of the realist school and Harvard academic Prof. Stephen Walt is to the point when he wrote in FT recently, “Both [Biden and Trump] administrations will try to negotiate an end to the war after January 2025, and the resulting deal is likely to be a lot closer to Russia’s stated war aims than Kyiv’s.”

But that is the whole point. The new war strategy — which was outlined in a recent article in the Washington Post — takes into account the  possibility of Ukraine becoming a dysfunctional state. But so long as Ukraine remains a cauldron boiling with nationalism that lends itself as a base for hostile moves to destabilise Russia and lock it in permanently in a confrontation with the West, the purpose is served —from Washington’s viewpoint.  

The final act of the power struggle playing out in Kiev is, therefore, of decisive importance and is being supervised by none other than Biden’s agent in the administration ever since the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014 — Victoria Nuland, Undersecretary of State. Nuland’s two-fold mission has been, first, to put in place a calculus of power in Kiev that is firmly under US control and, second, to steer the transition from war to insurgency when the need arises.

The probability being talked about is that President Zelensky who has burnt his bridges with Moscow will remain in power while the army chief Valeri Zaluzhni may be replaced. That said, the outcome of high-stakes power struggles, as the one Kiev is witnessing, is also hard to predict. Gen. Zaluzhni’s nuanced op-ed in the CNN on the day after Nuland left Kiev leaves no one in doubt that the redoubtable general is in a defiant mood.

Chief of Defense Intelligence Kyrylo Budanov’s biggest qualification is that although a man of very limited military experience, his forte is intelligence and covert operations who did brilliantly well to create a network of field operatives within Russia for subversive work — just the man to navigate Ukraine’s transition from attritional war to a full-bodied insurgency against Russia. 

The US agenda to weaken Russia in a long-drawn out insurgency is very much in the cards. This agenda enjoys the support of the transatlantic alliance, is “cost-effective” and allows the US to focus on Asia-Pacific, while keeping Russia down for the foreseeable future. No doubt, Russia’s reaction to the downing of the IL-86 military plane by Patriot missiles in Russian air space was anything but an accident. 

Moscow’s best option would be to create a buffer that keeps Russian territories out of reach of game-changing western medium and long-range missiles that are capable of degrading Russian logistics and command and control nodes and make large swathes of territories in the east and south of Ukraine, including Crimea, untenable for Russian forces. 

But that necessitates a full-fledged Russian offensive to take control of the entire region to the east of Dnieper river. Russia may face the same dilemma that Americans faced in Vietnam stemming from the requirement to expand the theatre of operations into Laos and Cambodia (aside North Vietnam.) For Russia, that involves colossal drain of human and material resources and the erosion of its international standing. 

The only feasible alternative will be to end the war — through negotiations or militarily — in 2024. But Biden’s interest in negotiations is zero. That leaves the military option as the only choice. The strategy to degrade the Ukrainian military in the meat grinder was highly successful, but going forward, in reality, the US-led western alliance, especially key functionaries like Nuland (an ex-ambassador to NATO) with a long record of being Russophobic, are showing no signs of attrition.

Now that the US has broken the glass ceiling by enabling a military attack on Russian territory, Moscow should brace for more incidents like the downing of the IL-76 plane. The authorities will be keeping a beady eye. Nuland’s sudden appearance in Kiev as a psychopomp from Greek mythology at this inflection point needs to be factored in. 

While in Kiev, Nuland forecast Ukrainian military successes in 2024 and that Moscow “is going to get some nice surprises on the battlefield”. The day before Nuland’s arrival in Kiev, Budanov had said that the Ukrainian military is in “active defence” but somewhere in the spring, Russia’s ongoing offensive “will be exhausted completely… and I think ours will start.” The tone of triumphalism is unmistakable, but how far it is rooted in reality time only can tell.

February 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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