How Soviet-era doctrine and weapons trump American warfighting
By Drago Bosnic | September 29, 2023
Since the very start of Russia’s special military operation (SMO), there have been several persistent overhype tropes that the mainstream propaganda machine has been pushing relentlessly. One of those is that American/NATO weapons and fighting doctrine are far superior to Russian/Soviet equivalents and that this was the reason why Moscow has such “huge losses”. Obviously, these assessments are based on multilayered lies and half-truths designed to support each other with endless media self-quoting. These propaganda tropes have been largely successful when it comes to convincing the Western public that Russia is supposedly “weak”, resulting in laughable claims that Moscow’s forces “rolled into Ukraine as the world’s second most powerful military, but ended up being the second most powerful in Ukraine”, among other things.
On the other hand, behind the scenes, the Pentagon has been in quiet panic mode, as it sees hundreds of billions worth of NATO-sourced weapons burning in Ukraine, while Russia’s investments in the SMO have not only been “surprisingly low,” but also extremely cost-effective. This is without even considering the fact that the casualty ratio of the Kiev regime forces vs. the Russian military is close to 10:1, which is absolutely atrocious given that the former has been training with NATO for over two decades now (intensively for well over a decade). In fact, according to Western sources quoting American veterans currently fighting for the Neo-Nazi junta troops, it’s precisely the Western training and equipment that’s the issue and that the sole reason why the Kiev regime has been able to hold at all is that its commanding cadre has switched back to their Soviet-era training.
Namely, according to a recent report, Ukrainian soldiers would have far higher casualties if they fought the way American forces do. A United States Army veteran, callsign Jackie, told the Business Insider that “Ukrainians would be worse off if they followed American battlefield doctrine and that they were actually better at understanding some types of modern fighting”, adding that “if we use[d] American doctrine here, we would definitely have a bad time”. Jackie took part in US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq before becoming a training contractor for the US military. After Russia launched the SMO, he decided to join the Neo-Nazi junta “to help train its troops and to fight alongside them”. Apart from the usual propaganda tropes (mandatory at this point), Jackie made several admissions, including the claim that Ukrainians are “ahead of the US in some obvious ways”.
“We don’t even have a clear doctrine for small drone use really at this time,” he told the Business Insider, adding: “The Ukrainians are quite advanced in that fact. The Ukrainians are quite ahead of us on integration of these small drone systems and small, medium drones.”
Jackie also stated that “Ukrainians had to operate in ‘guerilla stealth mode’ even when doing big operations” and that this was because their troops are “so disadvantaged as to be considered insufficient by any NATO country standard to breach the forces on that part of the line“. Ukrainians themselves are also saying the same, insisting that “they have to adjust [Western/NATO] training to survive on the battlefield”. The Business Insider claims that “Jackie’s comments mirror those made in September by a Ukrainian commander trained by US, British, and Polish soldiers”.
“If I only did what [Western militaries] taught me, I’d be dead,” the commander stated back then.
The Ukrainian conflict shares little to no resemblance to countless US aggressions against countries around the world, as the belligerent thalassocracy is very careful not to invade any remotely capable opponents. What Washington DC usually does is enforce sanctions and isolate the targeted country first. Only then it calls upon a pack of its vassals and satellite states to invade directly. The Business Insider itself admitted this, using Afghanistan and Iraq as examples where Western troops had significant equipment and weapons advantages. It also quoted a former US Army Ranger who fought in Ukraine and said that “the fighting there was far worse than what [he] experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan“. US Army veteran Jackie also insisted that “training Ukrainian soldiers ‘from the ground up’ was not appropriate given how much the soldiers had already fought”.
These rather unusual admissions by Western combat veterans are also reinforced by the Kiev regime’s far more successful usage of Soviet-era weapons and equipment than was ever the case for NATO-sourced equivalents. Namely, the Neo-Nazi junta certainly doesn’t shy away from allowing its forces to use the Soviet military doctrine, weapons and equipment. These have proved to be a far greater threat to the Russian military, particularly on the tactical level. And yet, the successes based solely on the Soviet way of fighting were unashamedly attributed to Western systems, such as the grossly overhyped HIMARS. In the early days of the SMO, Ukrainian ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), such as the “Stugna-P” (based on a long line of Soviet/Russian ATGM types), performed significantly better than Western ATGMs such as the “Javelin”, NLAW, AT4, etc.
The same can be said for a plethora of other weapon systems, including regular and rocket artillery, as well as missile strikes. According to Russian military sources, even the recent attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was carried out by using the R-360 “Neptune” missile (essentially a deep Ukrainian modernization of the Soviet-era Kh-35). And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine was quick to attribute the strike to the Anglo-French “Storm Shadow/SCALP EG” cruise missile. However, Russian SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems have been quite successful in shooting down both ballistic and cruise missiles provided by the political West. In other words, Soviet/Russian warfighting is superior because it was built/conceptualized for war, while its Western equivalent is extremely efficient during military fashion weeks and in Hollywood.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
RT surges after X (aka Twitter) removes censorship – ‘disinformation’ lobbyist
RT | September 27, 2023
NewsGuard, a self-proclaimed disinformation watchdog, has lamented the rise in popularity of RT and 11 other news outlets after Elon Musk relaxed censorship on X (formerly Twitter).
Among 12 media accounts analyzed, RT experienced the highest engagement growth in the 90 days following Musk’s decision in April to remove ‘government-funded’ and ‘state-affiliated’ labels from certain outlets, NewsGuard said on Tuesday. The number of ‘likes’ and reposts for RT’s account increased to 2.5 million in the period studied, up from 1.3 million.
The analysis focused on Chinese, Iranian, and Russian media outlets, which NewsGuard branded “state-run disinformation sources” and purveyors of “propaganda.”
NewsGuard cited political memes posted by Iranian news accounts as purported examples of disinformation. Another instance was supposedly a link shared by Iran’s PressTV to an article on remarks made by US presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who argued that Americans “created” the Islamic State terrorist group. Kennedy made the claim during an election rally in Boston, where he accused Washington of decades of misguided foreign policy.
The self-described disinformation watchdog advocates imposing strict moderation on online platforms to protect users from supposed foreign influence. NewsGuard’s rating of news outlets generally labels mainstream Western media as trustworthy, while outlets linked with governments opposed by the US are branded deceitful.
Among NewsGuard’s advisers is Michael Hayden, a former head of the CIA and the NSA. He was notably one of the more than 50 former intelligence officials who claimed in 2020 that the factual New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Others include former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former US Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, and former US Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel. The latter stated publicly that his job in the Obama administration was jokingly described as “chief propagandist” by others.
The Pentagon and Microsoft have contracted NewsGuard services.
The report heavily implied that the lack of X labels for the likes of RT was to blame for the rise in engagements, as it is now “impossible for users to know whether an account is government-affiliated” simply by looking at posts.
NewsGuard claimed that the 12 accounts in question are attempting to conceal their associations, such as when RT rebranded from its previous name Russia Today. The report described the move as taking place “several years ago,” although the rebranding was implemented in 2009.
Musk, who formally stepped down as CEO of X (then Twitter) in June, ordered the ‘government-funded’ and ‘state-affiliated’ labels to be removed amid a row with America’s NPR, which exited the platform after being branded. Around the same time, X ended its ‘shadow-ban’ on RT and others, lifting a restriction imposed under the previous executive leadership.
The subsequent publication of the ‘Twitter Files’ has detailed extensive US government oversight and pressure on the social media company to amplify Pentagon talking points over dissenting voices.
NewsGuard conceded that Musk’s move to end restrictions on X, which it described as “pushing” undesirable accounts, may have benefited them.
In August, NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence blamed Musk for a “dramatic rise” in the visibility of Russian government and media accounts.
US meddling in EU state’s election – Russian intelligence
RT | September 28, 2023
The US is willing to go to any lengths, including blackmail and bribery, to ensure the incumbent government wins the upcoming election in Slovakia, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed.
In a press release issued by the SVR on Thursday, director Sergey Naryshkin accused the White House of increasingly meddling in Slovakia’s internal affairs as the Central European country approaches the parliamentary election this weekend.
The opposition in Slovakia has made it abundantly clear that it would not unquestioningly follow the US lead if elected, and according to the SVR, stands a good chance of coming out on top in the vote.
To prevent this from happening, “the US State Department sent instructions to several of its European allies to conduct targeted work with local political and business circles,” the Russian intelligence agency claimed. It further alleged that Washington has sanctioned the use of methods such as blackmail, threats, and bribery.
The SVR also claimed that the US has already instructed the leader of the Progressive Slovakia party, Michal Simecka, who also serves as the European Parliament vice-president, to form a “cabinet completely loyal to Washington,” should his party triumph.
“Taking these realities into consideration, the upcoming election in Slovakia can hardly be viewed as a democratic expressing of the will of the people, and free from external influence,” the SVR concluded.
Citing an anonymous European Commission official, Politico reported in June that Brussels feared a potential victory for former Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Direction – Slovak Social Democracy party would spell “disaster” for the EU’s position on Russia sanctions and continued defense aid for Ukraine.
NATO member Slovakia has supplied Kiev with armored personnel carriers, howitzers, and its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. However, Fico has made it clear that he will terminate the aid if he returns to power. He has also called into question the need for economic measures against Moscow.
A recent poll commissioned by Slovakia’s TV JOJ 24 broadcaster indicated that Progressive Slovakia and Direction – Slovak Social Democracy are neck and neck, with 18% and 17.7% of support respectively.
House Panel Releases Emails Showing US Attorney Blocked FARA Probe Into Joe Biden
Sputnik – 28.09.2023
WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives Oversight Committee released redacted emails it claims show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf blocked federal agents from conducting a FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) investigation into then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in August 2020.
“Newly released emails and documents show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf did not allow agents to investigate Joe Biden as part of a FARA probe,” the Oversight Committee said via X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.
In the email, dated August 7, 2020, it appears Lesley told federal investigators they made a mistake in their search warrant request by including Biden. Lesley purportedly claims Biden falls outside of the scope of their FARA investigation.
The House Oversight Committee will hold the first hearing of the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden on Thursday to begin further examining alleged criminal activity involving Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.
The committee has been investigating alleged foreign bribery and influence peddling involving the Biden family and entities in countries including Ukraine and China. Biden denies ever having discussed foreign business affairs with his son.
Citing bank records, the committee on Tuesday revealed that Hunter Biden in 2019 received two payments wired from China totaling $260,000 with President Joe Biden’s Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address.
McCarthy, in light of the new findings, said the Republican impeachment inquiry against Biden will uncover the whole truth.
Fauci Secretly Met With CIA to ‘Influence’ COVID Origins Investigation, House Republican Alleges
By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | September 27, 2023
Dr. Anthony Fauci visited CIA headquarters to “influence” its COVID-19 origins investigation, according to allegations disclosed Tuesday by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio).
Wenstrup, in a letter to Inspector General Christi Grimm at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said he had information suggesting Fauci was “escorted” into CIA headquarters “without a record of entry.”
Wenstrup is chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. A subcommittee spokesperson told the Daily Mail the committee “has received information from multiple sources across multiple agencies regarding Dr. Fauci’s movements to and from the CIA.”
Neither Wenstrup nor any subcommittee member or spokesperson identified specific date(s) Fauci is alleged to have visited the agency.
Tuesday’s press release from the Committee on Government Oversight and Accountability, which is overseeing the subcommittee’s investigation, called attention to allegations by six CIA whistleblowers that they received “significant financial incentives” to change their stance that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.
In light of evidence uncovered earlier this year establishing Fauci’s involvement in the “Proximal Origin” paper claiming to disprove the lab leak theory, the subcommittee said it found Fauci’s presence at the CIA “questionable,” alleging it “lends credence to heightened concerns about the promotion of a false COVID-19 origins narrative by multiple federal government agencies.”
Wenstrup asked Grimm to send the subcommittee by no later than Oct. 10 any documents and communications related to Fauci’s movements between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2022, into any facilities owned, operated or occupied by the CIA.
Wenstrup also requested the pay and bonus history of all past and current members of HHS’ “COVID Discovery Team(s)” and information about staff and contractors at HHS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the U.S. Marshals Service who may have been involved.
“Our goal is to ensure the scientific investigative process regarding the origins of COVID-19 was fair, impartial, and free of alternative influence,” Wenstrup stated.
Wenstrup did not reveal the source of the information on Fauci’s CIA visit, but the letter mentioned HHS’ Special Agent Brett Rowland, requesting Grimm make him available for a “voluntary transcribed interview.”
CIA whistleblower and intelligence community reports on COVID origins
A joint letter from the subcommittee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio), sent Sept. 12 to CIA Director William Burns, outlined the testimony of a “multi-decade, senior-level, current agency officer” alleging six of the seven analysts investigating the COVID-19 origins were given a “significant monetary incentive to change their position.”
According to the unidentified whistleblower — a decorated and long-serving CIA officer with expertise in Asia, according to the Substack Public — the six analysts, all with significant scientific expertise, were paid off in order to bury their findings that COVID-19 most likely originated from the Wuhan lab.
The seventh and most senior member of the team was alone in believing the virus had a zoonotic origin, the letter stated.
The CIA whistleblower said, “Fauci’s expert opinions were a significant consideration and were part of our classified assessment … His opinion substantially altered the conclusions that were subsequently drawn,” Public reported today.
“He came multiple times and he was treated like a rockstar by the Weapons and Counter-Proliferation Mission Center. And, he pushed the Kristian Anderson [‘Proximal Origin’] paper,” the whistleblower added.
In a separate letter, the subcommittee also requested Andrew Makridis, former COO at the CIA who was known to have taken part in the investigations, participate in an interview.
Democrats from both committees told ABC News they “were given no prior notice of a whistleblower’s existence, let alone testimony. Without further information regarding this claim from the Majority, we have no ability to assess the allegations at this time.”
CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp told the New York Post, “At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them.”
In June, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified a 10-page report on its investigation into the links between the Wuhan lab and COVID-19. In the report, the ODNI admitted the lab performed genetic engineering of coronaviruses, that people working at the lab got sick in December 2019 “consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19,” and that they found a lack of “adequate biosafety precautions.”
However, the ODNI report stated the CIA remained “unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic,“ but that “almost all IC [intelligence community] agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered” and that “all IC agencies” determined the virus “was not developed as a biological weapon.”
In February, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a “low confidence” assessment that the virus most likely originated from the leak at the Wuhan lab.
Several days later, FBI Director Christopher Ray, during an interview with Fox News, said the bureau believed the pandemic was likely the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.
‘Proximal Origin’ lab-leak-denying paper linked to Fauci
Fauci’s alleged visit to the CIA is the latest data point in a growing body of evidence gathered by the subcommittee investigating the pandemic showing the former NIAID director played a central role in directing and influencing the official COVID-19 origin narrative, chiefly by suppressing the lab leak theory.
Tuesday’s announcement included a link to the subcommittee’s July report, “The Proximal Origin of a Cover-Up: Did the ‘Bethesda Boys’ Downplay a Lab Leak?”
In the “Proximal Origin” paper, prompted by Fauci in early 2021 and written by Kristian Anderson, Ph.D., professor of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, Anderson and his co-authors argued the virus was not laboratory-made or purposefully manipulated, and that the lab leak scenario was implausible.
The subcommittee report stated the “Proximal Origin” paper has been accessed 5.84 million times and was “one of the single most impactful and influential scientific papers in history” that was used to “downplay the lab leak hypothesis and call those who believe it may be true conspiracy theorists.”
The report further alleged Fauci was aware of the monetary relationship between NIAID, EcoHealth Alliance, and WIV, and that he funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the WIV.
After reviewing more than 8,000 pages of documents and 25 hours of testimony, the subcommittee concluded that “‘Proximal Origin’ employed fatally flawed science to achieve its goal … to kill the lab leak theory.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children’s Health Defense’s chairman on leave, explores Fauci’s longtime involvement in gain-of-function research in his new book, “The Wuhan Cover-up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race,” due for release Nov. 14.
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Iran Boasts of Hybrid Drones’ Capability, Warns of Hair-Trigger Response to Any Aggression
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 25.09.2023
The Islamic Republic has developed dozens of increasingly sophisticated turboprop and rocket-powered unmanned aerial vehicles over the decades, designed for missions ranging from reconnaissance to long-range precision strikes against land and sea targets.
Iran has reportedly developed a new hybrid aerial and sea-based drone capable of landing on and taking off from water, with senior military officials calling on Persian Gulf nations to ensure security collectively, while warning Washington and its allies of the consequences any aggressive moves.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy has built drones that can take off from and land on the water,” IRGC Commander Ali Reza Tangsiri said in an interview with local media over the weekend, pledging that more details about the drone will be provided at a later date.
“The IRGC Navy has also built hybrid drones that fly with one engine, with the second engine serving as a propelling engine,” Tangsiri said. That UAV is said to have the capability to carry out reconnaissance missions lasting up to 15 hours.
The water-landing drones, reportedly designed to be able to carry missiles and bombs, would dramatically enhance the IRGC Navy’s already substantial naval and coastal defense capabilities in the defense of the nation’s vast coastlines in the Persian Gulf, along the crucial world energy transportation chokepoint in the Strait of Hormuz, and in the Gulf of Oman.
Tangsiri reiterated Tehran’s long-standing diplomatic stance that Persian Gulf security can be assured by regional countries, without any interference from non-Gulf countries, and proposed the creation of an eight-nation pact of Persian Gulf-adjacent countries to ensure regional security, including Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The opportunities to forge such a regional security pact shot up dramatically this spring after Iran and Saudi Arabia signed a surprise normalization of relations deal mediated by China. Washington, Riyadh’s longtime traditional partner in the region, was forced to begrudgingly accept the warming of relations between the traditional Gulf foes, while expressing skepticism over the agreement’s ability to last, and leveling new sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Separately, at a military ceremony outside Qom, central Iran on Monday, Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Baqeri warned Iran’s potential enemies that the nation’s military is on a hair-trigger alert to respond instantaneously to any aggression.
“The Iranian Armed Forces have set up a unified body to establish security in the country,” Baqeri said. “State of readiness is a familiar concept for our armed personnel. That is, every moment we have our hands on the trigger and our eyes on the radar screen, along with surveillance and intelligence equipment so that no conspiracy is organized against the country and the enemies do not wish to launch aggression and undermine our security,” the top commander added.
Also speaking at the event, Iranian Army Ground Forces Commander Kioumars Heidari warned that “if the enemies put a foot wrong and commit a foolish or mischievous act” against Iran, they “will receive a decisive response from the Army’s ground forces.”
“If the enemies attack Iran from the air, they will have no place to sit on the ground, and if they attack Iran from the ground, we will annihilate them within seconds by God’s grace,” Heidari added.
Iran unveiled a new ultra-long range drone last week at a military parade dedicated to the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, with the UAV, named the Mohajer-10, capable of flying up to 2,000 km with a weapons payload of up to 300 kg, able to stay airborne for up to 24 hours at a time.
Regional tensions flared between the Iran and the US have recent months amid Washington’s decision to dramatically ramp up its naval, air and troop presence in the Persian Gulf following Iran’s crackdown on oil smuggling and maritime navigation violators.
Last month, IRGC Navy Commander Tangsiri stressed that the large US warships traversing Persian Gulf waters have been forced to obey Iran’s maritime rules.
Armed with an impressive and technically advanced military-industrial complex, Iran’s military design philosophy seems aimed at providing the country with David vs. Goliath-type asymmetric warfare capabilities against larger and technically more powerful adversaries, with the country building up mosquito fleets of fast boats armed with machineguns and artillery, hundreds of coastal defense batteries, dozens of drone designs, and maritime power projection capabilities using old tanker ships converted into mobile support platforms to save on costs. Iran’s strategy has enabled it to become one of the top 20 militarily most powerful countries in the world, while spending just a fraction of what the US does on defense ($6.8 billion vs $877 billion in 2022).
US Aid to Ukraine May Dry Out, But Not Because of House GOP
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 27.09.2023
The US may run out of money to support Ukraine “in a few weeks,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has warned. However, it’s not the potential government shutdown that could shrink the Ukrainian aid, former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski has told Sputnik.
The Biden administration wants the US Congress to pass a $24 billion package for Ukraine along with other spending initiatives as soon as possible. Washington has already committed over $110 billion in Ukraine assistance to date.
While House Republicans appear skeptical about further financial and military assistance to the Kiev regime, which has failed to succeed with its summer counteroffensive, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed to pass a stopgap measure to avoid a looming government shutdown. September 30 is the deadline. GOP lawmakers have signaled that they won’t include any funds for Ukraine in their stopgap bill.
On September 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Capitol Hill to lobby for a hefty multi-billion package. Even though McCarthy (unlike his predecessor Nancy Pelosi) did not provide the Ukrainian president with an opportunity to address the House, he held a conversation with Zelensky.
The day after the meeting with Zelensky, McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol that he had decided to keep the $300 million in Ukraine aid in the Pentagon funding bill, adding that another spending measure set for the State Department and foreign operations would also include money for Kiev. The development is by no means surprising, according to retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense.
“The Pentagon has stated that Ukraine funding and aid would continue unabated by any government shutdown, and this includes the payment of salaries for tens of thousands of Ukrainian government employees and bureaucrats – even as paychecks for US government employees, and bureaucrats can and likely would be held back in the event of a shutdown,” Kwiatkowski told Sputnik. “I think this is a Pentagon and administration attempt to remove the ability of the Congressional GOP Freedom Caucus to argue that they desire to pay American salaries, before they pay Ukrainian ones – by saying we (the Biden admin) are paying Ukrainian salaries no matter what you (the House America First-types) do.”
When it comes to the larger $24 billion package, the former Pentagon analyst has a sense that “if serious negotiations are forced on Speaker Kevin McCarthy, they will find a way to reduce this amount, or to separate this aid out for separate and subsequent Congressional consideration.” The Biden administration has publicly promised this aid to Ukraine, but they do not control the appropriations – the House does, she emphasized.
“However – the Pentagon could simply provide it to Ukraine using a recalculation ‘trick’ and devaluing of past aid in the amount of $24 billion. I give this a 50% chance of happening in some way,” Kwiatkowski said.
For example, in late June, the Pentagon said that it had overestimated the value of the arms it supplied to Kiev by $6.2 billion over the past two years. Four weeks earlier, the US Department of Defense cited an accounting error of at least $3 billion. Eventually, the “surplus” simply went back into the Pentagon’s pot allocated for Ukraine within the president’s drawdown authority (which allows providing Kiev with weapons directly, without Congressional approval).
“I think there is a good chance Ukraine will be able to wring out much of the promised $24 billion – but that the political battle, here in the US, to make that happen will reveal much to Congress and the American people about both the shady accounting ‘principles’ of the Pentagon and the honest situation in Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski said.
Still, trouble is brewing for Kiev: it seems like many in Congress on both sides of the political aisle are beginning to understand the practical and political need for Kiev and Washington to end the conflict immediately, according to the former Pentagon analyst.
She suspects that “the truth about the terrific loss on the battlefield and in Ukrainian military capability in the past 18 months is getting to the various committees in both the House and the Senate.”
“It appears that many otherwise hawkish Congressmen and Senators want to put Ukraine behind them politically, and develop massive new spending for some idea of ‘containing’ China in the Pacific,” the retired lieutenant colonel pointed out. “If the CIA and DIA are influencing our Congress, which they do by design, we may see Ukraine aid one-for-one shifted to that China ‘effort’ as part of a negotiation. The cold reception of Zelensky in US political circles portends that much of Congress wishes to extricate themselves from the dangerous proxy war Biden and his advisors, left over from the Obama days, have contrived, and incidentally, have lost.”
In August, a majority of US respondents told pollsters they oppose more aid for Ukraine. In September, another survey indicated that 41% now say the United States is doing too much to support Ukraine, up from 33% in February and 14% in April 2022. Remarkably, even Democratic voters now appear to hold this stance, despite previously being staunch supporters of more US spending on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific topic has steadily been getting hotter this year: first, the Pentagon announced about speeding up the provision of weapons to Taiwan island; then, in August, the White House signaled that it would ask Congress to fund arms for Taiwan as part of a supplemental budget request for Ukraine; in mid-September, the mainstream press reported that the US plans to redirect $85 million in military aid allocated for Egypt to Taiwan. If the pivot to Asia becomes the main focus of US lawmakers, the flow of funds to Kiev may soon start drying out.
Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can’t Name the Culprit
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 26.09.2023
Exactly a year ago three out of four Nord Stream pipelines running from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea to provide Western Europe with natural gas were destroyed. Western investigators have so far failed to find the saboteurs behind the blast.
Gas leaks from the Nord Stream pipeline system were detected on 26 September 2022, with the EU leadership admitting that this could be the result of a “deliberate attack”.
Two days later, on 28 September, the Kremlin announced that Russia was ready to consider applications from EU countries for a joint investigation into the Nord Stream incident.
However, not only did the West snub Moscow’s request but also blamed Russia for destroying its own pipelines. Later, European and American officials backtracked on their accusations but fell short of naming a potential perpetrator.
On 12 October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident “an act of international terrorism”. Meanwhile, as gas prices soared and US energy producers secured lucrative liquefied natural gas (LNG) contracts with European countries, it became clear that Washington had been the major beneficiary from the Nord Stream destruction.
Furthermore, the US leadership had previously issued several threats that it would destroy the pipelines.
“We know that the United States President Joe Biden, threatened openly that he would stop Nord Stream 2 if the Russians were to militarily intervene in Ukraine,” Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief and now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. “That was repeated by Victoria Nuland, who was Number Three at the State Department. She said basically the same thing. So we had the President and a senior official both saying that they would stop the pipeline if this were to happen. So we have a statement coming from the government itself saying it would do this.”
“And then I would say on top of that, the United States – given its military capabilities – had the capability to do this. They sent divers down to attach explosives and to arrange for a drone satellite that would ignite the charges and blow up the pipelines. It had the capability to do it. And it also had the motive, which was basically to weaken Russia’s ability to use its energy resources to affect politics in Europe. So this is what it was all about,” Giraldi continued.
On 8 February 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell, detailing an apparent plot by Team Biden and the US intelligence community to blast the Nord Stream pipelines with the help of Norwegian operatives.
Reflecting on Hersh’s version, Giraldi said that he feels that Hersh’s narrative is “correct in every detail.”
“And I can confirm to you that Sy Hersh, whom I know somewhat, has excellent sources inside CIA and inside the Pentagon. So what he’s telling us comes straight from people who know about it,” the CIA veteran said.
Blame Game Time: The Andromeda Yarn
On 7 March, the US and German mainstream sources published two separate articles claiming that international investigators had managed to trace the 26 September 2022 sabotage attack to a “pro-Ukrainian” group operating from the Andromeda, a 15-meter chartered yacht. The story immediately prompted a lot of controversy.
German media, for example, asked how a 15-meter chartered yacht could carry the 1,500-2,000 kilograms of explosives needed to destroy the pipelines, adding that the Andromeda does not have a crane to hoist such quantities safely into the water. It was also unclear how the group of volunteers managed to transport that amount of explosives across Europe.
Another problem, cited by the press, was that at the site of the explosion, the depth of the Baltic Sea is about 80 meters, requiring special diving equipment which the private vessel lacked. On top of this, the gang of saboteurs returned the yacht in bad condition and even left a couple of fake passports on board which made the story even fishier.
Hersh ridiculed the mainstream media yarn while discussing it with an anonymous CIA operative familiar with the issue. According to Hersh, it’s not just a “bad” media story but a deliberate “parody” fed by the CIA to the US and German media.
“In the world of professional analysts and operators, everyone will universally and correctly conclude from your story that the devilish CIA concocted a counter-op that is on its face so ridiculous and childish that the real purpose was to reinforce the truth,” the investigative journalist wrote on 5 April.
The most recent Western media stories alleging Ukraine’s involvement don’t hold water, either, according to Giraldi:
“Look, when you’re doing things in the intelligence world, you look for corroborative details – details that tell you that this story is coming from a good source or that it is fundamentally correct. And I saw none of that in this story. There have been a number of stories, of course, about people from Ukraine having done this, or people even from Germany renting boats and going over there, and they didn’t know what nationality they were. I mean, these are repeated stories. I have no reason to assume that this story is correct.”
The CIA veteran goes on to say that at present there is no story that sounds as credible as Hersh’s version. Besides, the US had the motive; it had the capability to do it; and it also had the objective to do it as a way of weakening Russia’s ability to influence Western Europe, Giraldi summarized.
“So I think that a lot of the background or the backstory supports the fact that the United States basically did it, though, apparently with the assistance of the Norwegians, and I would imagine some of the other NATO allies were also briefed in a certain fashion. In other words, not all the details, but given some indication that something might be happening in the near future in the Baltic.”
Why Couldn’t EU Investigators Name the Culprit?
It’s hardly surprising that despite official investigations in three countries – Sweden, Denmark, and Germany – the question of who is responsible for the sabotage remains unanswered, according to Giraldi.
“The fact that there have been three investigations carried out means nothing because the three countries that carry out the investigation are all NATO members. So they would have no motive whatsoever to challenge the argument that this was carried out by the Russians themselves or by the Ukrainians,” the CIA veteran said.
However, Giraldi suspects that the German investigation probably came closest to the truth. However, what they told the public was essentially a narrative acceptable to the United States and to NATO. The former CIA field officer pointed out that Germany suffered the most from the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines.
“Their economy is in trouble. They were dependent on Russian energy and so they are paying a price for it, and I’m sure that many Germans – I do know that many Germans are aware of this and are complaining that this ever took place. I was in Eastern Europe about two months ago, and I heard this a lot from Europeans, how stupid this whole thing was to destroy a resource that was very good for Europe as well as being good for Russia.”
According to Giraldi, it’s interesting to examine who else – apart from the US and Norway – was aware of the Nord Stream plot and was foolhardy enough to get involved in it. Giraldi doubted whether Berlin had been in collusion with the US and Norway from the beginning and said that it did not make sense for a country to sacrifice its own economy willingly.
Furthermore, the Nord Stream pipelines weren’t just a Gazprom asset, Giraldi emphasized: there were other countries – other companies from Western Europe – that participated in the project that had been worth billions of dollars. And because of the US plot, their money had been squandered and their infrastructure had suffered incalculable damage.
But the financial aspect is only half the story: the most worrying part is that those who blew the pipelines up risked escalating the crisis dramatically.
“The destruction of the pipeline was an act of war,” stressed Giraldi, “… so this is an interesting story if we ever find out the truth.”
On 17 September 2023, the First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said that Russia was calling for the UN Security Council to meet to discuss the Nord Stream gas pipelines and the council will gather on Tuesday, 26 September – a year after the sabotage occurred.
On 27 August, the Prime Minister of the German federal state of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, announced the need to repair the damaged gas pipelines which he said will help to ensure the country’s energy supply for another five to 10 years.
The US Military Is Laying the Groundwork to Reinstitute the Draft
By Zachary Yost | Mises Wire | September 25, 2023
The most recent edition of the U.S. Army War College’s academic journal includes a highly disturbing essay on what lessons the U.S. military should take away from the continuing war in Ukraine. By far the most concerning and most relevant section for the average American citizen is a subsection entitled “Casualties, Replacements, and Reconstitutions” which, to cut right to the chase, directly states, “Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription.”
An Industrial War of Attrition Would Require Vast Numbers of Troops
The context for this supposed need to reinstate conscription is the estimate that were the U.S. to enter into a large-scale conflict, every day it would likely suffer thirty-six hundred casualties and require eight hundred replacements, again per day. The report notes that over the course of twenty years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. suffered fifty thousand casualties, a number which would likely be reached in merely two weeks of large-scale intensive combat.
The military is already facing an enormous recruiting shortfall. Last year the army alone fell short of its goal by fifteen thousand soldiers and is on track to be short an additional twenty thousand this year. On top of that, the report notes that the Individual Ready Reserve, which is composed of former service personnel who do not actively train and drill but may be called back into active service in the event they are needed, has dropped from seven hundred thousand in 1973 to seventy-six thousand now.
Prior to the Ukraine war, the fad theory in military planning was the idea of “hybrid warfare,” where the idea of giant state armies clashing on the battlefield requiring and consuming vast amounts of men and material was viewed as out of date as massed cavalry charges. Instead, these theorists argued that even when states did fight, it would be via proxies and special operations and would look more like the past twenty years of battling nonstate actors in the hills of Afghanistan. In a recent essay in the Journal of Security Studies, realist scholar Patrick Porter documents the rise of this theory and the fact that it is obviously garbage given the return of industrial wars of attrition.
As military planners have woken up from the fevered dream of imagining that modern war consisted of chasing the Taliban through the hills with complete and overwhelming airpower, they have similarly started to wake up to the idea that industrial war has vast manpower requirements and that seemingly the only way to fill these requirements is by forcing young people into the ranks. That has certainly been the only way Ukraine has been able to maintain its forces, although it has required increasingly draconian measures to do so as conscripts face attrition rates of 80 to 90 percent by Ukraine’s own admission.
Obviously, the reintroduction of conscription is an extremely disturbing prospect given America’s propensity for getting involved in meaningless wars that accomplish nothing other than empowering our enemies, killing and maiming our soldiers, and wasting vast resources.
This is especially true given the unstated assumptions implicit in this paper. Who is the enemy that would be inflicting thirty-six hundred casualties a day? A war in the Pacific against China would primarily be a naval and airpower war with an extremely limited role for the army (even the current inept regime seems unlikely to be stupid enough to try and wage a land war against China) which obviously leaves Russia as the main adversary that would require the U.S. Army to round up conscripts to feed into the attritional meat grinder.
There Is No American National Interest That Requires a Standing Army
However, while these manpower shortages may be a valid concern for someplace like Russia, Ukraine, or Poland, we here in the U.S. are quite fortunate that we have no compelling national interest that would require us to engage in an industrial war of attrition in Eastern Europe.
To the extent we are at risk of becoming involved in such a disastrous mess, it is entirely of our own doing via the entangling alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and our leader’s own messianic gnostic crusades for democracy or whatever pseudo religious ideology is presently in vogue.
The U.S. is blessed as being the most secure power in history. We are the hegemon of the western hemisphere, with vast moats in the form of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that no other state has the capability to project military force across, and all our neighbors are weak and relatively friendly. We are not at any risk of being forced to fight an industrial land war on the home front. Any war the army would be used in would be as an expeditionary force fighting in the eastern hemisphere, where we have no compelling defensive need to do so.
From the beginning of the U.S., there have been warnings against the dangers of both entangling alliances and standing armies. The best solution to the military recruitment crisis is to simply abolish the standing army and not plan to wage a costly and pointless war on the other side of the planet that would result in trillions of dollars down the drain and who knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans being killed, maimed, and psychologically scarred.
FDA rush to approve killer ‘vaccines’ but reject life-saving allergy treatment
By Roger Watson | TCW Defending Freedom | September 25, 2023
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), quick to approve an experimental and untested Covid-19 ‘vaccine’, is now stalling over approval of a new device that could save the lives of people who go into anaphylactic shock.
Anaphylactic shock, or anaphylaxis, is an extreme immune system reaction to an allergy which leads to a massive release of chemicals around the body, principally histamine, in an effort to deal with an allergen. This reaction of the body is, in fact, an overreaction and the response leads to difficulties with breathing and sudden and dramatic drop in blood pressure (shock). If untreated it can be fatal.
One of the first lines of treatment for anaphylaxis is an EpiPen which can be carried by those who know they have allergies. It is a device containing the drug noradrenaline (called norepinephrine in the US) that counteracts the shock induced by anaphylaxis. However, an EpiPen requires the injection of noradrenaline intramuscularly. This is invasive and if the person is unable to administer the drug others can be reluctant, either not knowing how to use the device or being afraid to. Also, the drug has to get from the musculature to the bloodstream to be effective. This can take five to ten minutes during which time the person may die.
How much better if noradrenaline could be administered more directly into the bloodstream. Manufacturing a device to do this intravenously, far less expecting anyone other than a medic, nurse or paramedic to have the expertise to do this in an emergency, is a tall order. But drugs can be administered rapidly into the bloodstream nasally and a company, ARS Pharmaceuticals, has developed an injection-free device for administering noradrenaline nasally in the form of an epinephrine nasal spray.
What’s not to like, you may think. Well, the FDA don’t like it and have withheld approval pending further testing. The FDA objections are based on the need for further clinical data in people with anaphylaxis due to the fear that it may fail to work.
It is, surely, heartening that the FDA has the best interests of potential anaphylaxis sufferers at heart. If only they had had the same concern on 2021 when they approved the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines. It has been exposed in these pages from the start of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout that these were ‘experimental’ medications and had not been tested adequately before approval. Well, they have been tested now and the outcome is clear: they were completely unnecessary; they do not work; and they are extremely dangerous leading to injury and death. They undoubtedly have played a large part in the level of excess deaths observed in recent years.
According to UK government figures, the overall fatality rate from Covid-19 (always a disputed figure due to the difficulty in distinguishing ‘with Covid’ from ‘from Covid’) is 0.1 per cent. The estimated fatality rate from anaphylaxis – made uncertain by the fact that many suspected cases are dead before being found – is between 0.7 and 2 per cent. Recent England hospital Covid-19 admissions are approximately 3,000 per month at the latest available figures. The annual rate of hospitalisation in England for anaphylaxis in 2022-23 was 26,000; at approximately 2,000 monthly, the same order of magnitude as the Covid-19 admissions.
Bearing in mind that it is not easy to distinguish Covid-19 from other respiratory infections but that anaphylaxis is unmistakable and more fatal and, assuming a similar situation in the US, the recent FDA decision regarding nasally administered noradrenaline for anaphylaxis in the light of their unseemly haste over Covid-19 vaccinations is hard to understand. Could political and financial pressured be involved? Surely not!

