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Almost Half of US’ F-35 Fleet Not Capable of Flying at Any Time – Watchdog

Sputnik – 22.09.2023

WASHINGTON – Almost half the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that are supposed to be operational are not capable of flying and it will cost $1.3 trillion to keep them operational, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a new report.

“The F-35 fleet mission capable rate – the percentage of time the aircraft can perform one of its tasked missions – was about 55% in March 2023, far below program goals,” the report said on Thursday.

The GAO called this level of operational readiness “unacceptably low.”

“The program was behind schedule in establishing depot maintenance activities to conduct repairs. As a result, component repair times remained slow with over 10,000 waiting to be repaired – above desired levels,” the report said.

Organizational-level maintenance has also been affected by a lack of technical data and training, the report added.

It will cost $1.3 trillion to keep the full F-35 fleet operational and flying even if or when all the repair and maintenance bottlenecks, as well as ongoing development problems with the aircraft’s cannon, ejector seat, software and hardware are fixed, the report said.

However, despite the downfalls associated with the F-35 program, the report also determined that the Biden administration and the Department of Defense remain committed to a $1.7 trillion expenditure on buying a total of 2,500 F-35s for the US armed forces.

“In the coming decades, the Department of Defense plans to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion on nearly 2,500 F-35s,” the report stated, acknowledging that the majority of the funds will go to operating, maintaining, and repairing the aircraft.

The F-35 aircraft now represents a growing portion of the Defense Department’s tactical aviation fleet with about 450 of the aircraft fielded, the GAO said.

From the start of the F-35 program, officials have dealt with a variety of major setbacks with the fleet, ranging from costly fixes to sensitivities with overheating and lightning strikes.

More recently, the program made global headline news after a US Marine Corps F-35B crashed in South Carolina and sent authorities on a hunt after being unable to track the fighter once its pilot safely ejected.

September 22, 2023 Posted by aletho | Economics, Militarism | United States | Leave a comment

U.S. Project to Split Syria Up Is Entering a New Phase in Suwayda

By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 20, 2023

Thousands of Druze in Suwayda, in the southwest of Syria near Jordan, have been protesting inflation and economic woes facing all of Syria because of U.S.-EU sanctions, and the economic collapse after the long armed conflict. But, recently, they are calling for regime change, and the U.S. is supporting them.

In late August, Ben Cline of Virginia, French Hill of Arkansas and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, all Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, entered Syria from Turkey illegally, without any VISA, via the Bab al-Salam crossing north of Aleppo, under the control of Al Qaeda linked terrorists. They met with Syrian opposition members living in terrorist control areas.

Recent media reports are circulating that Congressman French Hill discussed the Suwayda protests on the phone for more than an hour with the spiritual leader of Syria’s Druze community, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri.

The Syrian conflict began in March 2011 not far from Sawayda; however, the city did not get involved in the “Arab Spring”. The Druze are a close-knit minority, neither Christian nor Muslim, who have communities in Suwayda, the Damascus suburb of Juramana, and Lebanon.

The Druze attempted to sit-out the 2011 conflict, and preferred to be neutral. The instigators of the violence in Deraa in March 2011 were followers of Radical Islam, and wanted ‘regime change’ to install a pro-U.S. government in Damascus. The Obama administration, with VP Joe Biden, supported the terrorists fighting for “Holy War” because they were the only available boots on the ground. The CIA ran a multi-billion-dollar project supplying and training the terrorists in Turkey who crossed the border into northern Syria. In 2017, Trump cut the CIA program off, which has since left Syria in a quiet stalemate.

Suwayda is an agricultural area, and though it is close to Deraa, it did not have a stake in the uprising to install an Islamic State in Syria. Suwayda, similar to Aleppo, kept its collective head down and kept working hoping that the armed conflict between U.S.-NATO and the Damascus central government would pass them by, and they could survive on the sidelines.

The Druze and the Christian community of Syria are minorities under a secular Syrian government which has protected minorities. The armed opposition was comprised of followers of Radical Islam, such as those who are aligned with Al Qaeda and ISIS. The Druze have no connection with Radical Islam or “Holy War”. For this reason, they felt collectively as if the conflict did not include them, and they wanted no part in it.

But now, after 13 years of armed conflict which has turned into a status quo, Suwayda has taken the center stage and is protesting and they are asking for ‘regime change’ as well as economic reforms.

Why now, after years of neutrality and dodging the fighting? Experts have pointed a finger at the U.S., which is instigating the protests and promising support. Damascus, Aleppo and Homs are all quietly suffering the same economic hardships, but they are not protesting. Electricity is supplied just a few hours per day, gasoline is very expensive and the prices of basic food stuffs have gone up by the day, making some basic needs now a luxury item.

Expert analysis in the early days of the 2011 conflict pointed to the overarching U.S. goal of breaking Syria into small pieces, such as the U.S.-NATO attack achieved in Yugoslavia. Small places, each governed by different leaders, would be easier to control and denominate for U.S. interests.

The protesting Druze in Suwayda are separatists. They are asking for their small piece of the pie from the U.S. map of the new Middle East. Suwayda, Deraa and the U.S. occupation military base at Al Tanf would be connected in a crescent shaped border with Jordan and Iraq.

The Al Tanf base is positioned to prevent Iranian cargo from entering Syria on the Baghdad-Damascus highway.

Deraa was the starting point of the March 2011 conflict. The Al Omari Mosque was used as a weapons storage for the terrorists who were supplied with Libyan arms confiscated from the U.S. military and transferred through the neighboring U.S. military base in Jordan.

Recently in Suwayda, protesters attacked the Ba’ath Party headquarters which has an arsenal stored there for use by the Syrian Arab Army.

The original map drawn by the U.S. State Department in 2011, showed Syria cut into small pieces. It now appears that the northwest province of Idlib is proposed to be part of the Turkish occupied border area, and the border with Turkey north of Aleppo is also proposed to be under Turkish administration, which they would like to annex later. The U.S. sends no humanitarian aid of any kind to Syria, even for the 7.8 magnitude earthquake relief, except to Idlib alone, which is under terrorist control. The former ISIS leader of Idlib, Mohammed al-Julani, has already changed into a suit and tie and has given interviews to U.S. media in an effort by the State Department to rebrand his image as a western supported leader, transformed from his time with ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The Kurds are also on the same separatist band wagon with Idlib and Suwayda. The Kurds were a sizable community in the northeast of Syria, but were never the majority, who were Arabs and Christians. But, the Kurds had the backing of the U.S. military who partnered with them in the fight to defeat ISIS. The actual victors over ISIS were the Syrian Arab Army, the Iraqi Army, Russian military, along with the U.S. military and Kurds. The Kurds have established their own Communist administration under the tremendous financial support of the U.S. government. Usually the U.S. government takes a dim view of Communism, but in the case of the Kurds they have fully supported them, which reinforces the fact that the U.S. government will work with, and support any group, as long as it is in the U.S. interest.

Suwayda is just the newest proposed project in a long list of U.S. regime change projects which have resulted in dividing a sovereign nation into small pieces. Yugoslavia was the first, and the next big U.S.-NATO regime change project was the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, which has left Iraq split into the northern section of Kurdistan, and the southern section of Iraq, which has never recovered from the U.S. invasion and destruction.

Then Libya was attacked in 2011 by U.S.-NATO forces for regime change, and is now split into two separate sections with separate governments. Sudan and Yemen were both attacked and split up.

A project still in progress is the partition of Syria into at least five sections, and also on the drawing board in Washington, DC. is the partition of Lebanon, which will first depend on the culmination of the partition of the south of Syria including Suwayda.

Lebanon has been purposely left without a President for one year, and a government and parliament which is flying on auto-pilot. Israel’s goal, which is jointly a U.S. goal, is to contain Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon and to cut off its support from Iran, and Syria.

When Condoleezza Rice called for a New Middle East, she was referring to an Arabic styled patchwork quilt, made up of bits and pieces of formerly defiant and resistance supporting countries, who had called for the end of the occupation of Palestine as a core national cultural value. The American-engineered New Middle East demands forgetting resistance, and acquiescing to normalization with Israel as the prerequisite to peace and prosperity.

September 21, 2023 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Iraq, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Meet Ukrainian Military’s American Spokesman

Transgendered Sarah Ashton-Cirillo advocates free speech and killing journalists

BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

As our world gets weirder by the second, it has become ever harder to know if what we are presented with is real. Every time someone sends a report or video that is purportedly a representation of factual reality, I try to evaluate if it’s indeed real or if it’s propaganda, black propaganda, satire, or the creation of a mentally ill person.

This morning I saw a story about an American transgendered woman named Sarah Ashton-Cirillo who claims to be a soldier and an official spokesman of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces. She is in the news because of a publicized spat she is having with Senator JD Vance of Ohio who has made an inquiry to determine is Sarah Ashton-Cirillo really is an official English language spokesman for the Ukrainian TDF. Spoiler Alert: She really is.

Vance became aware of Ashton-Cirillo after he saw a video of the spokesman announcing that journalists who disseminate Russian propaganda will be hunted down and killed. In this video, she proclaims:

Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes. This puppet of Putin is only the first. Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down and justice will be served.

In response to Senator Vance’s query, Ashton-Cirillo posted yet another video in which she proclaims her support of the First Amendment, but hastens to add that reporting Russian propaganda is not protected by the First Amendment.

Who adjudicates what is Russian propaganda and what is merely critical reporting of the Ukrainian government and its U.S. government supporters?

The question touches on something I have frequently written about on this Substack—namely, the strange rise of ORTHODOXY in recent years. There are, we are told, certain major issues in which the ORTHODOX—that is, official U.S. government and MSM representations—cannot be questioned or criticized. Those who do question these orthodoxies will be censored, censured, or—if Ashton-Cirillo has her way—hunted down and killed.

The top four orthodoxies are what I call the Holy Quadripartitus of Piffle. They are:

1). COVID-19 vaccines are saving mankind. Anyone who questions the safety and efficacy of the vaccines is guilty of heresy.

2). The U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is a sacred mission and no negotiated settlement with Russia shall be countenanced. Anyone who criticizes the Ukrainian and U.S. governments, and any attempt to understand the war from the Russian point of view, is guilty of heresy.

3). Human induced climate change will soon destroy the earth if trillions aren’t spent to overhaul our entire energy policy. Anyone who questions this proposition is guilty of heresy.

4). The concept of biological sex is a mere “construct.” Skilled surgeons and endocrinologists can transform a boy into a girl or vice versa. Anyone who questions this assertion is guilty of heresy.

I reject the Holy Quadripartitus of Piffle as fanatical, obscurantist, mentally ill nonsense.

September 20, 2023 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | United States | Leave a comment

Lavrov’s claim that America is at war with Russia is no ‘exaggeration’

By Drago Bosnic | September 20, 2023

Since the start of Russia’s special military operation (SMO) against NATO’s crawling encroachment on its borders, the United States has been adamant that it’s “not a party to the conflict” and that it supposedly “doesn’t want escalation with Moscow“. However, time proved both of these statements to be patently false. According to the claims of the Neo-Nazi junta itself, the US controls the targeting of every long-range weapon deployed by the Kiev regime forces. On the other hand, the falsehood of the laughable claim that Washington DC “doesn’t want war” is painfully obvious to anyone remotely familiar with its neverending escalation aimed against Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is certainly aware of all this, although basic diplomatic etiquette prevented him from stating the obvious in the past. And yet, after well over a year and a half of being exposed to the blatant hypocrisy of the political West, it seems that even the usually reserved Lavrov has stopped holding back, as trying to follow diplomatic protocols when dealing with someone who openly breaks them is simply futile and ultimately self-defeating. Namely, in recent remarks for the press, the Russian Foreign Minister said that the US is waging war against Russia. Strong statement, one might say, but who could possibly refute it given the ongoing events?

Even if we don’t count statements made by top-level US officials, including Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin’s admission that Washington DC wants to see a “strategic defeat” inflicted on Russia and President Joe Biden’s Freudian slip that “Putin cannot stay in power“, the evidence that supports Lavrov’s claim is simply overwhelming and we’re seeing it every single day. He also pointed out the fact that the US is not only transferring enormous amounts of so-called “lethal aid” to the Neo-Nazi junta (worth hundreds of billions at this point), but is actually controlling these weapons through direct decision-making while maintaining plausible deniability.

Lavrov himself also reiterated Austin’s admission that this is because the belligerent thalassocracy wants to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. The statements about US belligerence were given while he was speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum on the morning of September 17, where he pointed out that “no matter what it says, it [the US] controls this war, it supplies weapons, munitions, intelligence information, data from satellites, it is pursuing a war against us”. Lavrov also stated that Ukraine is simply being used as a springboard to achieve American strategic goals, as it was being prepared for the ongoing conflict years in advance.

“There is a real plot around the topic of the so-called (peace) negotiations, as well as attempts to turn everything upside down through pseudo diplomacy,” he said just two days prior, adding: “The West has been saying for months that this ‘peace formula’ is the only basis for negotiations. It starts from innocent topics … and then comes to the purpose for which it was concocted – inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, to restore the borders of Ukraine as they were in 1991, court-martial the Russian leadership, force Russia to pay reparations, and then ‘mercifully’ agree to sign a peace agreement.”

Lavrov made the said comments on September 15, referring to the abortive Saudi-hosted “peace talks” and added that this pattern of double standards and hypocrisy is also used when dealing with most other countries.

“These are exactly the dirty methods that the West uses not only in relation to Ukraine but in many other areas of global politics,” he stated.

The recent direct endorsement US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave for the Kiev regime’s long-range strikes on targets within Russia is yet another proof of Lavrov’s claims. Namely, during an interview with ABC News on September 10, Blinken stated that it was supposedly “up to Ukraine” whether or not it should target Russia proper with US-made long-range weapons. The idea that the Kiev regime could ever make such a decision on its own is beyond laughable, which means that it’s the belligerent thalassocracy itself that ordered the Neo-Nazi junta to target areas deeper within Russia in order to inflict maximum damage with minimal investment or risk for itself.

Blinken’s statement came only a day after ABC News reported that the US would provide the ATACMS to the Kiev regime. The range of these missiles, while hardly groundbreaking, is enough to jeopardize not only Russian supply lines, but also civilian infrastructure hundreds of kilometers behind the frontlines. And yet, this isn’t the only danger Lavrov pointed out thus far, as back in early June, he warned that nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets could lead to an uncontrollable escalation that Russia will certainly not tolerate. He stressed that Moscow would be forced to respond militarily, meaning that NATO would also be held directly responsible in that case.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

September 20, 2023 Posted by aletho | Militarism | NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

Unrest grows in US-occupied Syria after Kurdish proxy hikes fuel prices by 300 percent

The Cradle | September 19, 2023

Syrians living under the de-facto rule of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) in Hasakah governorate have launched mass demonstrations and a general strike to oppose a fuel price hike of over 300 percent for public transport and industrial vehicles.

The unprecedented protests have grown in scope after Kurdish authorities announced that reversing the decision is “almost impossible,” citing the country’s deteriorating economic situation. While fuel prices for vehicles were hiked from 525 to 2,050 Syrian pounds, the fuel price for heating, agriculture, and electric generators remains the same.

Protesters have been blocking roads and shutting down businesses for several days in the towns of Qamishli, Rumailan, and Mabada, accusing the US-backed authorities of plundering Syria’s wealth for their own benefit. Demonstrations have also been called in the regions of Raqqa, Manbij, and Ain al-Arab, which could lead to significant economic repercussions in all areas under the control of the AANES and its official military force – the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

“The people went out to express their rejection of the policies of AANES, which aim to impoverish the people and push them to migrate,” a demonstrator in Qamishli told Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar.

“There was a consensus to provide and improve the quality of diesel in exchange for increasing its prices,” the head of the AANES fuel management authority, Abeer Khaled, recently told reporters, adding that “it is difficult to retract or modify the decision to increase [considering that] raising prices will contribute to reducing fuel smuggling operations outside areas under the control of AANES.

In 2021, AANES reversed a similar decision to hike fuel prices after intense clashes between locals and the SDF left several dead.

The territory occupied by the SDF and the US army in Syria’s northeast houses the country’s largest oil and gas fields, as well as vast wheat fields.

Washington’s forces regularly smuggle these resources via convoys to their bases in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), where the oil and gas are sold to fund the operations of US proxy militias and de facto authorities.

The protests in Hasakah come as armed operations continue in neighboring Deir Ezzor governorate by Syrian Arab tribes who have been staging a rebellion against Kurdish forces. While heavy clashes have subsided for the most part, the region is still seeing sporadic attacks targeting the SDF.

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Economics, Illegal Occupation | Human rights, Syria, United States | Leave a comment

Biden’s ‘age’ is now becoming an issue

Leave it to The Washington Post to come up with a ridiculous euphemism designed to conceal the real story

BY BILL RICE, JR. | SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

The spin-producing talents of our nation’s most prominent mainstream media “journalists” leave me dumbfounded.

The Washington Post would be at the top of the list of “news” organizations that excel in covering up real news and, when its editors feel they have to run an embarrassing story, concocting outlandish euphemisms to conceal the real story.

The Post just published a big story stating that President Biden’s “age” is making many political leaders wonder if he should not run for re-election.

This long story never once mentioned the words “dementia” or “cognitive decline,” proving once again that the press knows which giant elephants it can’t mention in a news article – especially if this elephant is a Democrat donkey.

A few excerpts from the article should give readers a greater appreciation of the talents of the Post’s wordsmiths.

Here’s the lede paragraph:

“A growing number of polls are showing voters concerned about President Biden’s age and energy … Prominent commentators have ruminated on whether he should drop out of the presidential race.”

“… Parts of the Democratic Party (now) fret about whether the man who helped oust Donald Trump from the White House may not have the vitality, at 80, to successfully prevent a return …”

“Supporters and critics alike suggested that Biden’s prospects may hinge on whether he can find a way to overcome a persistent and growing feeling in the electorate that his advanced age is his defining characteristic.”

Deep into the story, we get one sentence where Post editors come as close as they as they can to broaching the real truth:

“When asked what word came to mind when they thought of Biden, more than a quarter of (poll) respondents mentioned age, with another 15 percent using words like “slow” or “confused.”

Readers could also read between the lines with this passage:

“Biden’s gait can be stiff, and his physical and verbal stumbles have at times given his critics material. “

My comment: Biden’s verbal stumbles don’t happen only “at times;” they happen every single day, every time he opens his mouth and tries to read the teleprompter remarks written for him by aides.

The real story is of course not being told …

While The Post frames this story with the question of whether Biden will step down because of his “age,” increasing numbers of Americans now understand the real story is the growing realization that our national “watchdog” press corp is completely captured.

An army of pack-thinking journalist clones are basically acknowledging their most important job is the daily effort to protect the person who was selected to implement their favorite country-destroying causes.

Clear-thinking adults now know the press corps will always eschew important journalism if said stories embarrass them or might lessen the likelihood key items from their agenda are brought to fruition.

Think about what we’re really seeing here.

The Washington Post has hundreds of journalists, including a platoon of journalists who cover only the White House and the president. Each of these journalists and editors have multiple sources in the White House and probably shoot the bull with these White House aides over drinks after work.

For four years, they’ve known Biden has textbook dementia, which was obvious three years ago, but has gotten worse every week since.

If they wanted to, these alleged journalists could have “broken” the “Biden has dementia” story years ago, including anecdotes that would make even the most loyal Democrat proclaim, “Good God.”

I’m a freelance journalist in Troy, Alabama and I know from common sense that 50 White House staffers must be working 24-7 to produce the cue cards, teleprompter speeches and recruiting Easter Bunny interns, all of whom are working feverishly to get the leader of the free world through another day without the Mother of All “gaffes” playing out for the world to see.

None of this would matter if this was our retired grandfather battling this affliction, but this happens to be a man who can start World War III and signs “emergency orders” that affect hundreds of millions of citizens.

Needless to say, if Donald Trump had been experiencing the same cognitive decline while he was president, this alarming mental condition would have – correctly – been exposed in one week.

We all know why the dementia story’s been covered up for years.

If it was exposed, this would mean all those Biden “critics” referenced in the Post article … had been right all along. It would mean that everyone would know that America’s news-gathering journalists actually exist to conceal important news.

And more people are starting to reach this conclusion as well: If 98 percent of the most-important journalists in the world are concealing obvious truths about the president’s dementia, what else have they been concealing or refusing to investigate?

The answer: Everything important.

The Washington Post could also detonate all the Covid lies and cover-ups … in about two weeks – if its editors wanted to do this and were given permission to do so from their controllers.

They could have easily broken the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden influence peddling scandals … years ago.

The real story is the public is never going to get any real stories from this batch of sycophants and professional propaganda writers.

If some rogue journalists stunned us and decided to practice important investigative journalism, their editors and publishers wouldn’t let them because this would prove this news organization spiked important stories for years.

People might say, “Wow. This expose is great … but why did it take you three years to figure this out or authorize these investigations?”

The fear of publishers is the public would belatedly learn the most important lesson – that all those wacko and dangerous critics were … right all along.

Not only were all the experts wrong – not only were all the key narratives fiction – plenty of journalists must have suspected this; they simply knew they weren’t allowed to prove this.

So what’s the work-around?

As we can see from this article, there’s now no denying President Biden has major mental issues (even though the story never mentions “mental issues.”) It’s a coin toss whether “Joe Biden” can make it through the primaries, much less four years of a second term.

Even with mail-in ballots and rigged elections, the Powers That Be are no doubt wondering if Biden’s dementia will cost the Democrats four more years in the White House.

From Climate Change initiatives to central bank digital currency to the WHO treaty to future mRNA vaccines (and to cover-up past crimes against humanity), it’s imperative their guy remain in the White House.

Gavin Newsom, an awful governor of a state that’s coming apart at the seams, seems to be the betting favorite as the best politico Democrats can find to fill in for their current leading man … who will exit stage left not because of dementia … but because of “age.”

Apparently, this is the only story they’ve got and they’re going to stick to it.

Disinformation by Omission

For the last four years, disinformation has become a buzz word of our times. Biden himself (reading from his teleprompter) said this, and so has everyone who works for the federal government.

The Washington Post says it too. But most of the world doesn’t understand the key way the most important disinformation is spread. What we have is Disinformation by Omission. Don’t talk about all those giant pachyderms in the room. Don’t tell your readers our Emperor has no Brain.

When “don’t investigate this” might no longer work, society’s elite communicators simply spun another narrative – The poor man is simply getting up there in age and is beginning to lose some of his previous “vitality.”

They even spin the poll questions. This particular story was picked up by msm.com, which included one of its requisite reader polls at the end of the article:

“How concerned are you about the age of President Biden?”

I don’t answer narrative-manipulating poll questions and I’m not really concerned about Biden’s “age.” For that matter, I’m no longer worked up about his dementia, which I detected four years ago. Plus, I’ve known for years that “Joe Biden” isn’t making the big decisions.

The question that should have been asked is this:

How concerned are you that our nation’s leading “news” organizations are completely captured?

My answer: Pretty damn concerned.

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Joe Biden, United States, Washington Post | Leave a comment

Mask Up and Don’t Ask Questions

By Armando Simón | Brownstone Institute | September 19, 2023

“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” ~ Solzhenitsyn

Our wise and benevolent liberal overlords, satisfied with how well their exploitation of the covid pandemic went three years ago, have decided to do it all over again since the nonconformists, for all their outrage, never got around to holding them accountable. Not for the lockdowns. Not for the censorship. Not for the toxic injections. Not for shoving infected patients into nursing homes. Not for police brutalizing peaceful citizens. Not for the deaths they caused.

It would not be hyperbole to state they were drunk with power. Power is intoxicating.

They used the panic and the prediction of millions and millions and millions of deaths to suppress well-established rights: the right of assembly, the right to worship, the right of free speech, the right of free press—all selectively applied.

And they did it with glee.

And, furthermore, they masqueraded as being pro-science, shouting, “Follow the science!” Yet, physicians, scientists, and nurses who disagreed with the official dogma and cited facts were persecuted to such an extent that they lost their jobs, and their licenses were revoked and their professional opinions suppressed (yet, these—isolated—brave professionals persisted in telling the truth, which media propaganda called “disinformation”). Mind you, these are the same pro-science persons who deny that sex is determined through chromosomes, and insist that sex is “a social construct” (which begs the question, if a person’s genitals do not determine their gender, how does removing them change their gender?).

So now, it seems that the first phase is to, once again, force everyone to don those cloth face masks, which were useless from the beginning, as several scientific papers have shown, but which became a sign of conformity and political affiliation. Even children.

The rest may come later.

The fact of the matter is that, if one examines the elites’ actions during the pandemic—which, remember, we were told it would kill millions and millions of people—it is apparent that they really did not believe any of it. Not the lockdown. Not the mortality. Not the face masks. To prove that this was so, I will set down the specifics rather than write in generalities. If it seems that I am overdoing by doing so, if it is extensive, it proves my point precisely.

And remember while reading the following that during the pandemic everyone was forced to wear masks. Everyone did except for the ones who had backbone and refused who were harassed, arrested, insulted as “white supremacists” and “fascists,” and even physically attacked for not conforming:

2020

CNN’s Chris Cuomo was caught breaking lockdown by a cyclist. Predictably, Cuomo insulted the man for outing him. Cuomo is related to the politician who jammed infected patients in nursing homes, causing the deaths of thousands and who has never been held accountable.

CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins took off her face mask once the cameras were not recording her. Surprise! They were!

Democratic governor Steve Sisolak of Nevada apologized after a photo showed him not wearing a mask nor abiding by social distancing guidelines.

Democratic governor Gavin Newsom of California was caught wining and dining at a posh restaurant named The French Laundry (!) with friends and associates, none of them wearing face masks and obviously flaunting lockdowns, both of which were meant for the average citizen and not for the elite.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi took time off from criticizing Trump for not wearing a mask to go to a hair salon and not wearing a mask, contrary to policy.

The wife of Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker violated the state’s stay-at-home order when she traveled to a second home in Wisconsin. Why? Because her husband is one of the elites. This same elite sent construction workers to go work on his mansion.

Next door, the husband of Democratic Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, called a marina to get their yacht in the water for a Memorial Day trip. The person at the other end of the line blew the whistle, whereupon Whitmer claimed that he was making a joke. Nobody laughed. She was also found dining with at least a dozen other people at The Landshark Bar & Grill in East Lansing, Michigan. She also took a trip to Florida. Whitmer, incidentally, also put infectious covid patients with healthy residents inside nursing homes, just like Cuomo. And just like Cuomo, she has never been held accountable.

In California, Democratic governor Newsom ordered vineyards closed to prevent the spread of covid and the resulting deaths of millions and millions and millions of people. All vineyards except for the one he owns.

In the People’s Democratic Republic of Austin, Mayor Steve Adler told everyone to stay home and not travel, then took a trip to Mexico for fun and giggles.

Democrat Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl was seen dining outdoors, maskless, hours after banning outdoor dining for the masses.

Democrat San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo had dinner with numerous people in spite of state regulations.

Democrat California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was seen at an airport without a face mask. The sight of her face was traumatic for some.

Democrat Mayor Michael Hancock from Denver flew across state lines to Mississippi for fun.

Democrat politician Eric Adams hosted a maskless fundraiser in order to become mayor of NYC.

Democratic Chicago Mayor, and Crypt-Keeper twin, Lori Lightfoot, ignored the statewide order for salons and barber shops to be closed to the peasants and got some work done on her. Not enough, though. Upon being confronted with the transgression, she said she could do it because she was special.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, a Democrat, of course, was found to have been playing hockey in a skating rink after closing the rink to one and all, including children who were immune to the covid virus. He explained that, yes, he was skating, but he was alone in the rink. Then a video surfaced showing he was playing with 10 others, so he condemned the video as “stalking.”

2021

Alexandria Ayala, a member of the Palm Beach County School Board who had insisted that (immune) children should be masked regardless of parents’ wishes, was seen partying maskless over the weekend. In a demonstration of her arrogance, she had once told citizens during a school board meeting that it is “a privilege to address your public officials and to be in this chamber.”

Federal postal workers were exempt from the toxic injection but private businesses were fined $14K per violation. Nor were illegal aliens required to have the “vaccine.” Aside from the lack of legislation and the obvious dictatorial aspects, think about the logic there.

Members of Congress and their staff were exempt from taking the toxic injection because they are the elites. The peasants, otherwise, can be poisoned with the toxic substance in the “vaccine.”

Being one of the elites, Democratic San Francisco Mayor London Breed was seen partying at a club without the face mask she had mandated for the peasants. She stated that she should not be blamed because she was enjoying the music.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was seen at the NFC Championship game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams without a face mask that he had been raging about for everyone to wear. Asked to explain, he said he was holding his breath.

At the Emmy Awards, where the elites tell each other how wonderful they are, none of them were wearing masks.

Democratic Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib admitted that she wore a face mask in public because there was a Republican tracker keeping tabs on her hypocrisy.

Democratic New Jersey governor Phil Murphy and Essex County Education Association (ECEA) members celebrated at a gala entitled—get this—the Equality Ball. Which you could only attend if you were one of the elites in that state. “At the very same time that this governor issued another EO mandating two-year-olds wear masks for upwards of 7 hours a day because of purported ‘safety,’ the New Jersey political Democratic elite gathered maskless by the thousands,” said State Senator Holly Schepisi.

The vermin are everywhere, including Tennessee, while in Washington, DC, Pseudo-President walked around in public without a face diaper.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi took off time from her insider trading to attend a public function—maskless. Considering the way she looks, she could have done everyone a favor by covering up her face.

And in the UK, their elites do exactly the same. First Minister Mark Drakeford of Welsh Labour was seen at a party maskless. The wanker had passed some of the strictest mask mandates in the country. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, did the same. And, speaking of wankers, Professor Neil Ferguson—the one who predicted millions and millions and millions of people were going to die from covid—was caught breaking lockdown in order to have sex with a whore. Dominic Cummings helped to draft the government’s Stay Home—except he didn’t. Neither did Labour MP Dawn Butler who went out to lead a Marxist rally. Leftist Labor wanker Keir Starmer believed that lockdowns were for the proles, not for the aristocratic elites like himself. And then, of course, there was Commissar Jeremy Corbyn.

AOC was found maskless, not in NYC, not in DC, but in Florida. No lockdown, no mask. My, my. Back in her home turf, she put on a mask when cameras pointed at her only to take it down when they did not. It must be because cameras contained covid 19 and were contagious. Yeah! That must be it!

If you know anything about universities, it is that they are infested with scumbag administrators with grandiose titles who are parasites on students. At Northern Illinois University, a maskless Christmas party saw law school dean Cassandra Hill, Chief of Staff Melody Mitchell, assistant dean Kellie Martial, Assistant Professor Matthew Timko, and President Lisa Freeman. Several of these individuals among others, had snarled at any students walking around without face masks on.

2022

Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, unaware that the peasants would take umbrage at her privileged elite status, apologized for not wearing a mask in public and “promised to do better.” At not being caught.

Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock entered a room full of people who were ordered to wear masks. He did not wear one since he is one of the elites.

While NYC was turning into a hellhole—and it continues that way—Democratic Mayor Adms insisted that (immune) children in schools had to wear masks for the public good. Which doesn’t apply to him.

After two years the hysteria began to die down, but LA County public health director Barbara Ferrer wanted to reinstate indoor face masks in 2022 because covid was so dangerous, yet she was seen without a mask on. Nor was she alone. Seattle Public Schools wanted to reimpose the face masks for (immune) children.

When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went to Ukraine for a photo-op, he was not wearing a mask, supposedly the first time in 2 years. Sure. He also did not wear a mask when visiting the Queen. Or on a train in BC.

You can’t make this up: The arrogant elitist Broadway star Patti LuPone—who was not wearing a mask with other elites on stage, shrieked obscenities at an audience member for not having his/her face mask over the nose.

Democrat NYC mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams mandated (notice the lack of legislation) that employees of businesses be vaccinated. But fellow elite artists and athletes were exempted.

TV celebrity Joy Behar, well known for her shrieking in The View, was spotted not wearing a face mask less than 24 hours after virtuously posturing before the other harpies that she would continue wearing one.

The political elites of California, specifically the governor and the mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles posed maskless in public with sports elite Magic Johnson (maskless also, of course), contrary to the mask mandate.

The City of St. Louis had a mask mandate for indoor public spaces. But partying Mayor Tishaura Jones and friends were exempted. You see, the elites are immune to the virus. More so than children.

Election denier and future President of Earth, Stacey Abrams, had her picture taken in a class of masked (immune) children, though she herself was unmasked. The picture was quickly taken down. Too late.

The arrogance of the elites has been for some reason particularly evident in school boards, whether relating to mutilating children, attempts to turn children into homosexuals, or anti-white racists. It was also evident during the pandemic that was going to kill millions and millions of people. At any rate, Susan Kass, Chairwoman of the Montgomery County, Virginia, school board, had a fit when she was outed for not wearing a mask while adamant that (immune) children should wear one.

2023

In their hellbent drive to destroy America, Democrats have eliminated our national borders and have urged and welcomed illegal aliens to just walk in and make themselves at home, even during the “height” of the pandemic. And they did not have to wear masks or be vaccinated.

Democratic President Obama had a birthday bash which, for all the warnings about yet another variant of covid, was maskless.

Conclusion

In looking back, several things become obvious. One, as evidenced by their behavior, it appears our overlords knew from the very beginning that it was all bogus in spite of their self-righteous proclamations and posturing before the cameras.

Second, it is particularly interesting that the rank-and-file of true believers (the Covidians for lack of a better term) never stopped to think, never had their fervor or their fanaticism diminished by seeing that their overlords—having the same politics as them—obviously thought the restrictions were absurd and broke them and flaunted doing so. Instead, they became even more virulent in their hatred for common people who refused to wear masks, and for the physicians and scientists who stated that lockdowns and face masks were not only useless, but counterproductive.

Now, they have dusted off their face masks. Some are wearing them again in fear, others with pride, and still others with glee, while some never took them off, as they walk around, looking down with disdain at the rest of us. All of them are looking forward to millions and millions and millions of deaths. Just like it happened with AIDS.

Third, everything, literally everything, that our overlords said about the covid pandemic was wrong: the social distancing, the effectiveness of face masks, the safety of the “vaccines,” the lockdowns, the mortality, the treatments were wrong. And they persisted in being wrong even when they knew the facts. In fact, it had become thoroughly evident by the middle of the first year. Nonetheless, they persisted. Why?

Fourth, if one checks the links to the above, one can notice that almost none came from the mainstream media, the same who were fanning the flames of panic. They deliberately suppressed the stories (just like they have suppressed the stories on the Hunter Biden laptop, the crimes of Joe Biden, and many more facts). There must be a reason for all those. I am not sure what that is.

Lastly, whether in Europe, Canada, Australia, or America, the opposing political parties kept mum. Aside from an isolated squawk here and there, they said nothing, they did nothing to counter the authoritarian impulse. The term “uniparty” has come into being as a result. What opposition there was to the oppression came from the citizenry.

Now, for our own good, we are supposed to relive the covid fiasco, perhaps to gauge how submissive the population remains. Considering the fact that neither the overlords nor the rank-and-file Covidians were ever held accountable—not at the local level, not at the state/provincial level, not at the national level—there is a basis for their optimism.

Months ago, a writer suggested that, yes, terrible “mistakes” had been made, but instead of holding people accountable, we should have an amnesty for the perpetrators. No, we see why we cannot have an amnesty, why we must hold them accountable, because if we don’t they will try again, with variations.

Armando Simón is a retired psychologist, originally from Cuba, and author of The U, Fables From the Americas and A Prison Mosaic.

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, United States | Leave a comment

YouTube Is Wiping Safety Content on COVID-19 Vaccines

Study Finds Platform is Cleansing Side Effect Information and Promoting Unbridled Use of Experimental Products

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | September 19, 2023

YouTube is the most utilized video platform in the world. Many of my patients ask “doctor, why don’t we hear about vaccine side effects?” People feel blind-sided when they develop myocarditis, stroke, blood clots, or other common vaccine side effects but can can find no information on them with standard Google searches landing on YouTube.

Ng and colleagues performed a rigorous analysis of YouTube COVID-19 vaccine content and found that the platform is having effective content moderation. This means when you do a search, they are wiping vaccine safety information off the platform as “anti-vaccine” and replacing it with either irrelevant health information or pro-vaccine content.

Ng YMM, Hoffmann Pham K, Luengo-Oroz M Exploring YouTube’s Recommendation System in the Context of COVID-19 Vaccines: Computational and Comparative Analysis of Video Trajectories J Med Internet Res 2023;25:e49061 doi: 10.2196/49061PMID: 37713243

The authors declare this a “success” of content moderation. Others would say this is censorship of valuable health information replaced with propaganda promoting novel, experimental unsafe, ineffective, genetic vaccines. What YouTube is doing is very scary, the authors self-expressed virtuosity is even more alarming.

Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

President, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

Ng YMM, Hoffmann Pham K, Luengo-Oroz M Exploring YouTube’s Recommendation System in the Context of COVID-19 Vaccines: Computational and Comparative Analysis of Video Trajectories J Med Internet Res 2023;25:e49061 doi: 10.2196/49061 PMID: 37713243

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Biden Regime Awards Over $4 Million In Grants To Programs That Target “Misinformation”

Millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on programs that target speech

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 19, 2023

Since the start of September, the Biden administration’s National Science Foundation (NSF) and State Department have awarded grants totaling more than $4 million to programs, studies, and other initiatives that target “misinformation” — a term that the Biden admin has used to demand censorship of content that challenges the federal government’s Covid narrative.

The NSF has awarded the following nine grants since September 1:

A $330,000 grant to a postdoctoral fellowship that will “develop educational materials to help identify misinformation in media.” The associated program began on September 1, 2023.
A $1.5 million grant to Arizona State University as part of a biological sciences program. The grant will help build “new risk management strategies” and its description claims that the “rapid dissemination of information on the internet is contributing to the spread of misinformation about hazards, risks, and how to manage them.” The associated program began on September 1, 2023.
A $529,609 grant to Florida International University to conduct a study on “detection and containment of influence campaigns” that “distribute and amplify misinformation and hate speech with significant societal impact.” The associated program is due to start on October 1, 2023.
Two grants totaling $730,017 to the Research Foundation for the State University of New York and Trustees of Boston University for a collaborative research program that will develop a platform to “help identify and mitigate information manipulation (misinformation and dis-information).” The associated programs are due to start on October 1, 2023.
Two grants totaling $547,555 to the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as part of a collaborative research program involving the Poynter Institute — an organization that certifies Facebook’s “fact-checkers” through its International Fact-Checking Network and receives funding from Big Tech. The grant descriptions claims that “combating misinformation in the digital age has been a challenging subject with significant social implications” and describe misinformation as “a serious threat.” The associated programs are due to start on October 1, 2023.
Two grants totaling $600,000 to the University of Rochester and Trustees of Indiana University for a collaborative research program that aims to increase the efficiency of an AI technique that can be applied to various areas, including “identifying misinformation on social media.” The associated programs are due to start on October 1, 2023.

The State Department has awarded the following five grants since September 1:

An $18,000 grant to the Albanian-based non-governmental organization (NGO) the Institute for Democracy, Media, and Culture to ensure a “whole-of-society response to cyber incidents and misinformation.” The associated program began on September 1, 2023.
A $14,500 grant to Paraguay’s American Cultural Center that will be used to implement workshops that “seek to combat misinformation and promote responsible digital citizenship.” The associated program began on September 1, 2023.
A $15,000 grant to the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Udayana University to “raise digital literacy among selected amcors communities, journalists, and social media influencers to combat misinformation, pre-2024 general election.” The associated program is due to start on October 1, 2023.
A $50,000 grant to New York University to complete the implementation of a speaker series that supports “countering misinformation.” The associated program is due to start on October 1, 2023.
A $50,000 grant to the non-profit Digital Rights Nepal “to create a sustainable network of youth to promote digital rights, safer internet use and a collective resilience towards misinformation and disinformation.” The associated program is due to start on October 2, 2023.

These awards were granted as the Biden admin faces a major lawsuit for pressuring Big Tech to censor content that it deems to be misinformation.

An appeals court recently stated that the Biden regime violated the First Amendment when pushing social media platforms to censor and in an Independence Day ruling on this case, a judge described the Biden admin’s actions as “Orwellian.” The Supreme Court is now considering whether to hear the case.

While some of the grants focus have been awarded to non-American organizations, whose misinformation targeting efforts don’t fall under the scope of the First Amendment, these types of programs can result in the speech of Americans being targeted.

For example, Biden’s State Department has previously funded foreign think tanks that created “disinformation” blacklists. These blacklists were used to target American conservative media outlets.

Both of the agencies that awarded these grants have been involved in prior censorship controversies.

In addition to funding groups that created disinformation blacklists, Biden’s State Department has flagged thousands of accounts to Twitter, now known as X, for censorship.

Meanwhile, the NSF has been accused of funding programs that develop tech that targets vaccine dissent and has funded research on correcting “false beliefs” online.

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Biden repeats ‘unforgivable’ remark about Putin

RT | September 19, 2023

US President Joe Biden has described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “dictator,” claiming that his main political opponent, former President Donald Trump, would “bow down to” him if elected in 2024. The Democrat also touted himself as a defender of US democracy.

Speaking to supporters during a fundraiser at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater in New York City on Monday, Biden said, “I will not side with dictators like Putin. Maybe Trump and his MAGA friends can bow down, but I won’t.”

The incumbent president claimed that “Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” whereas he would always “protect and fight” for it.

This recent comment made by the US head of state about President Putin is not the first instance of him referring to another foreign leader as a dictator.

Last March, Biden told attendees of the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon that the US and its allies were standing together against a “murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine.” A day prior, the US president said he considered Putin a “war criminal.”

Commenting on Biden’s remarks at the time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told TASS news agency that Moscow deemed “unacceptable and unforgivable such rhetoric from a head of state whose bombs have killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world.” He noted that the US leader had resorted to “personal insults,” a level that President Putin, a “thoughtful and wise leader,” would never stoop to.

Last month, several US media outlets also quoted President Biden as alleging that China is run by “bad folks.” In June, he described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator,” which Beijing characterized as a “political provocation.”

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Progressive Hypocrite | Joe Biden, United States | Leave a comment

Emails Show Decade of Hunter Biden Spinning Journalists on Foreign Business Deals

The Hunter Biden laptop archive shows years of careful efforts to manipulate media outlets, a rare window into the DC spin cycle.

BY LEE FANG | SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, announcing that the House of Representatives will pursue an impeachment inquiry, suggested that the probe will hinge in part on deceiving the American public about Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures.

“President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business deals,” McCarthy said at a press conference. GOP lawmakers, he added, have “uncovered credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct.”

Such an investigation will likely force an examination of the public narrative regarding Hunter Biden’s consulting deals that go back at least a decade. During President Obama’s second term, then-Vice President Joe Biden was the administration’s point man on the nation’s policy toward Ukraine, a perch he used to urge the country to adopt sweeping ethics reforms to resist “the cancer of corruption” and enact sweeping ethics reforms.

At the time, some American journalists began to question whether the vice president’s stern message was undermined by his son Hunter Biden’s employment at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was owned by a notorious local oligarch.

Emails on Hunter’s laptop reveal that the inquiries sparked an internal debate within his team of consultants and public relations agents. Ultimately, they devised a series of responses about Hunter’s work with Burisma that were, at best, misleading and, at worst, outright falsehoods.

The Biden team has constructed a careful image of Hunter Biden’s business ventures, sometimes employing a sophisticated myth-making operation aided by allies in the media who rarely challenged or investigated their false claims. The laptop emails show that the team closely monitored critical reporting and pushed to shape coverage with reporters from the New York Times, Time magazine, Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.

Their spin informed much of the ensuing coverage in the mainstream press, defusing the issue, even as President Trump and other Republicans insisted that Ukraine was a hotbed of Biden family corruption. Although he had no background in the energy field and little experience in corporate governance, Hunter Biden, who had a law degree, was appointed to the board of Burisma in May 2014.

It was revealed later that he was paid about $1 million per year – as was his business partner Devon Archer. In a press release announcing his appointment, Hunter Biden is quoted as saying, “I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”

That same month, journalist Michael Scherer reached out with questions about the arrangement.

Several consultants employed by Burisma, including Ryan Toohey of FTI Consulting and Heather King, a partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller, & Flexner, where Hunter worked as counsel, strategized over how to respond to Scherer, a reporter then with Time magazine who has since joined the Washington Post.

For the Scherer inquiry, laptop emails show, Hunter’s business associates settled on a strategy to deflect the most direct questions and obfuscate the true intent of Burisma’s attempts to sway U.S. government officials.

One of Hunter’s associates noted that they planned to respond to Scherer’s attempts to reach David Leiter, a former aide to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, hired to work for Burisma. The plan was to use an assistant to make Leiter “unavailable to comment, as opposed to some sort of statement that made it seem like we were unwilling or refusing to engage with the reporter.” Leiter, the emails show, was in fact available, but the public relations team wanted to keep him out of reach.

Scherer wanted to know why Burisma was on a hiring spree of well-connected American lobbyists, including Leiter and others. In response, Toohey planned to tell Scherer that the hired guns were simply working on issues related to energy independence, economic growth, as well as “transparency and good governance.”

In response to other questions posed by Scherer, Toohey prepared a statement claiming that Hunter Biden will “not be engaged with the U.S. government” on anything related to Burisma.

The response belied a detailed lobbying agenda spelled out in other emails.

Burisma had made clear that the company had hired Leiter, Hunter Biden, and other political operatives as part of a focused plan to obtain Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky a U.S. visa as well as to persuade American officials to intervene with Ukrainian government officials to drop an investigation of his business interests.

In a May 2014 email, Vadim Pozharskyi, a close adviser to Zlochevsky, explained to Hunter that he needed his “advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” a reference to an ongoing investigation of Zlochevsky by Ukrainian prosecutors.

That month, Pozharskyi again wrote to Hunter, spelling out the “working plan for both FTI and David,” reiterating that he wanted the lobbyists to intervene against the “politically motivated proceedings initiated against us in Ukraine” and to overcome the “US entry ban” for the Burisma owner.

“The immediate plan is to reach out to the Energy and Ukraine desks, respectively, at State Dept,” wrote Heather King, the attorney working closely with Hunter Biden at the time. “That will include outreach to Carlos Pascual, he is the top US energy diplomat,” she added.

Scherer printed the denials, but to his credit, reported on the odd circumstances surrounding Biden’s hiring, at a time when Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point person for Ukraine, with a special focus on energy policy in the region.

In many cases, Hunter Biden’s associates cast him as simply an auditor with a special focus on renewable energy sourced from geothermal vents. That was the strategy in response to an inquiry from Stephen Braun, a reporter for the Associated Press. “Mr. Biden will not lobby on behalf of Burisma. His role is to advise the company’s legal and compliance unit, including guidance on corporate governance standards.”

Behind the scenes, Hunter Biden’s team knew otherwise. In emails conferring over how to deal with Braun’s questions, Pozharskyi reiterated the plan to provide Braun with “minimum information.”

Like many other articles from this time, the AP story focused on the conflict of interest issues, noting the denials around any lobbying with a degree of skepticism:

A former Washington lobbyist, the vice president’s son is effectively exempt from most rules that would require him to describe publicly the legal work he does on behalf of Burisma.

Hunter Biden will not lobby for the company, said Lawrence Pacheco, an official with FTI Consulting, a Washington government affairs company recently hired by Burisma.

Pacheco did not say whether Biden might oversee or advise on any future Burisma lobbying strategy in the U.S. Pacheco said the company “does not take positions on political matters.”

Braun could not be reached for comment. Scherer declined an opportunity to comment on the Hunter Biden emails. Biden, Toohey, and King did not respond to a request for comment.

However, the emails clearly indicate that substantial resources were allocated to managing both Burisma and Hunter’s personal image. Pozharskyi pointed out that Burisma had retained American consultants to reach out to “the most reputable European and American journalists/newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs,” while assistance was required to handle Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online platforms. Burisma, wrote Pozharskyi, sought a “detailed algorithm on how the Company should act in case of bad publicity.” The effort included scrubbing negative details from Hunter Biden’s Wikipedia, while bolstering the online credentials of Burisma, emails show.

A highly focused effort to monitor and shape news media coverage helped maintain the public profile. Even with relatively low visibility, independent media were closely watched. Hunter and his team monitored Vice News as well as the gadfly website ZeroHedge. In response to critical reporting from Vice, one colleague noted approvingly that the article was not being “reposted or republished” in Ukrainian media.

In July 2014, Toohey circulated an investigative piece I wrote for Salon about Hunter Biden’s hiring at Burisma, which noted that the vice president’s son had been retained amid a string of nepotistic hires likely aimed at influencing natural gas and energy policy.

In the article, I noted that Joe Biden had traveled to Ukraine to “announce a $50 million aid package that included technical support for increasing the country’s natural gas production – an investment that could bolster profits at Burisma Holdings, where his son is a director.” What was not known at the time, however, was that Hunter Biden was already working with a team of public affairs consultants to channel U.S. government technical assistance to his client.

The laptop emails show that even this relatively brief mention of Hunter Biden and a potential conflict of interest with his father raised concerns.

“All, please see below a piece that mentions Hunter’s appointment as part of a broader trend, mostly within the context of relatives of eleceds [sic] engaged to lobby for the energy industry,” wrote Toohey, attaching a copy of the text of my piece. But, he added, “This was a freelanced piece picked up in a number of web-based outlets including Salon, but nothing with significant reach.”

Pozharskyi replied that he had seen the piece earlier and “wanted to have a discussion in this regard.”

In some cases, the team celebrated media coverage that elevated its desired narrative. Politico reported Hunter’s hiring at Burisma and simply printed quotes from the company’s official statements:

“The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals,” Alan Apter, Burisma Holdings’ chairman of the board of directors, said in a statement, which was reported by The Moscow Times on Tuesday.

Biden, joining the board, will be in charge of the legal unit, the company said. He will also provide support for Burisma Holdings “among international organizations.”

Biden said the company will help strengthen Ukraine’s economy.

Pozharskyi circulated a link to the Politico article to Hunter and his associates, noting the “positive coverage.”

Hunter’s membership on the Burisma board received renewed attention in late 2015, as then-Vice President Biden was set to visit Ukraine where he planned to address the parliament on the need to adopt new reforms against a culture of corruption in the country. James Risen of the Times, among others, renewed inquiries directed toward Hunter and his associates about the rationale behind his appointment to the company, Burisma, and why the company appeared to be buying access to high levels of government.

In one email found on Hunter’s laptop, Risen asked, “What lobbying activities is the company engaged in the US?” among other questions to Hunter Biden. In response, a Burisma spokesperson straightforwardly claimed that “no one is lobbying on their behalf.”

The company’s lobbying efforts were not covered in the story ultimately published by the New York Times, which featured Risen’s piece on Dec. 8, 2015. The article included a statement from the Hunter Biden team, crafted by the strategy firm FTI Consulting, asserting that the company’s focus was on “corporate governance and transparency.”

Risen’s article did not address whether Hunter’s business career demonstrated such expertise or his lack of experience in the energy field. Although Risen identified Hunter as “a former Washington lobbyist,” he accepted the denial that no lobbying was involved.

In reality, just a month prior to the email exchange with the Times, Burisma, following Hunter Biden’s advice, had hired Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm, to influence the Obama administration. A copy of the agreement, belatedly filed with the Justice Department, reveals that the firm, which aided in lobbying State Department officials on Ukrainian energy policy, received a monthly retainer of $30,000.

Blue Star Strategies was even copied on the emails with the Hunter Biden team on its response plan to Risen.

Risen also allowed a Burisma spokesman to decline to state Hunter’s compensation while claiming it was “not out of the ordinary” for such board positions. It was later disclosed that he was paid about $1 million per year, which is far higher than the typical compensation. As a point of comparison, median annual compensation of board members at Fortune 500 companies is around $110,000.

Risen, now with The Intercept, did not respond to a request for comment.

Political operatives of all ideological backgrounds frequently manipulate public perception – often employing specialized “crisis communication” firms to suppress negative coverage and shape desired narratives. What is remarkable about the Hunter Biden episode is how successful it was, and how uncritically most media organizations treated this unorthodox relationship between a president’s son and a controversial foreign corporation.

In response to the Wall Street Journal, Toohey worked closely with Blue Star Strategies’ Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano to craft a message defusing questions around a conflicting message between Hunter and his father. They settled on a strategy of presenting the Ukrainian gig as perfectly “aligned” with an anti-corruption agenda, laptop emails show. The lobbyists suggested that they release a statement to the Journal claiming that Hunter’s work for the Ukrainian energy giant, to supposedly strengthen corporate governance, are “also goals the United States.”

The Journal printed the statement, attributing it to a spokesperson.

Such coverage – which suggested Hunter Biden had engaged in questionable but ultimately harmless behavior that did not involve, much less implicate, his father – set the narrative for most coverage in mainstream outlets. When President Trump told Ukraine’s president in 2018 that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” and asked him to look into Joe Biden’s demand that the prosecutor looking into Burisma be fired, Democrats moved to impeach him.

The Biden spin continued even after the New York Post published the first articles based on material from Hunter’s laptop in October 2020. The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, sought to discredit the New York Post’s reporting that Hunter Biden had arranged a dinner meeting between his Ukrainian associates at Burisma and his father when he served as vice president. At the time, the Biden presidential campaign claimed that it “reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time, and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” Kessler reiterated this denial as though it were an established fact.

It turned out to be false. The July testimony by former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer confirmed that Hunter Biden had arranged a secret dinner with his Ukrainian business partner and his father, as the New York Post had originally reported. The ongoing saga over the Washington Post’s role in covering up the Biden revelations was detailed last month by RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry.

Last month, Kessler “updated” his article to acknowledge this.

Also last month, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, who has dismissed any hint of scandal regarding Biden business dealings, appeared on Live at the Table, a podcast hosted by Noam Dworman, the owner of New York City’s Comedy Cellar. The show went viral as Dworman challenged Bump’s claims that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.

In a heated exchange, Bump conceded that Hunter Biden’s text messages that claim, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary,” was one form of “evidence.” Moments later, Bump ended the interview and walked off the set.

The interaction provided a rare moment of visible accountability for the establishment press, which has largely followed the Biden spin for an entire decade on this issue.

Yet the White House is still hoping it can still instruct journalists on how to cover the story. Shortly after McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement, President Biden’s White House staff circulated a memo, instructing media outlets on how to cover the news. In bold type, the memo claimed that the entire Hunter Biden conflict of interest scandal had been “refuted” and “debunked” – language that was adopted in media reports about the inquiry in Vox, NBC News and CNN.

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | New York Times, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

Americans Are Being Led By a Lying Media and Corrupt Political Class

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Each morning I do a quick scan of the headlines coming over the wire services, clear my emails and Facebook entries, and then take a closer look at The New York Times online, paying particular attention to the opinion pages. I usually am not disappointed in my belief that the President Joe Biden Administration as well as ex-President Donald Trump, have been and continue to be collectively destroying what was once an admirable nation, something like flushing us repeatedly down the toilets of their ambition and greed.

In that light, last Friday was particularly bad and I had what I have come to call a Gadarene Swine moment. For those unfamiliar with the New Testament tale, which comes from the Gospel of Mark , it tells how Jesus encountered a madman during his Galilean ministry who was infested with demons. The man sought help to be cured of his infestation and Jesus obliged him, commanding “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”, before confronting the unleashed demon and asking “’What is your name?’ He answered, ‘My name is Legion. For we are many.’ And he begged Him repeatedly not to send them away out of the country. Now there was a great herd of swine feeding near the mountains.All the demons pleaded with Him, asking, ‘Send us to the swine, so that we may enter them.’ At once, Jesus gave them leave. Then the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. And the herd, numbering about two thousand, ran wildly down a steep hill into the sea and were drowned in the sea.”

My first thought was inevitably deep sympathy over what was done to the poor pigs, but that was quickly replaced by bottomless depression induced by the articles that I had just read in the Times that morning. Yes, we Americans have become the Gadarene Swine and are plummeting to our deaths as a people, driven by demons released by the folks that we have unfortunately come to accept as “our leaders.” The three pieces in question were two “opinions,” one by the inevitable Tom Friedman entitled “A Trip to Ukraine Clarified the Stakes. And They’re Huge” and the other a featured piece written by the newspaper editorial board entitled “How to Support Ukraine Beyond the Next Election.” The third article was a news report entitled “As President, Biden Sees Broader War Powers Than He Did as Senator: The president says he can direct limited military operations without lawmakers’ approval.”

The three pieces together suggest that the United States has become dominated by the airing of specious and often not very credible threats as an excuse to go onto a war footing forever, or at least until the country collapses due to its misplaced priorities. I will not, however, try to recreate in any detail the nonsense spewed by the country’s “paper of record,” if only to reject the basic arguments being made for “going the course” in wars that have no reasonable raison d’etre for having been started at all. None of the pieces even seek to answer the most basic question, which is also avoided by our warmongering governing class, and that is “What was or is the US national interest in getting involved in these wars in the first place?”

And surely the most frightening of the three articles is the one that airs the claim made by a muddle-headed Chief Executive Joe Biden that he can start a new war any time he wants, a bold challenge to the US Constitution’s essentially anti-war balance of government powers and also the existing War Powers Act. The article includes material like “If he is elected to a second term, President Biden pledged that he will go to Congress to start any major war but said he believed he was empowered ‘to direct limited U.S. military operations abroad’ without such approval when such strikes served critical American interests… In 2019, Mr. Biden had already shifted to embracing the view, adopted by the executive branch under administrations of both parties, that presidents have broader constitutional authority to carry out limited attacks on other countries without congressional authorization, so long as it falls short of full-scale war. As president, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden used force unilaterally, citing their claimed constitutional authority to use military force without congressional permission. In April 2017 and again in April 2018 , Mr. Trump directed airstrikes against Syrian government forces, and Mr. Biden in June 2021 and in August 2022 directed airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia groups in Syria.”

Should I ask how Biden will determine a “critical American interest?” Or exactly how either Syria or Iran has been “imminently threatening” the United States, which is in fact itself illegally occupying Syrian territory? And what about the current proxy war against Russia in Ukraine? Was Ukraine a threat to the US justifying bringing America to the brink of a nuclear war? Friedman is just back from a three-day trip to Ukraine and opines “What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion in a class of its own for overreach, mendacity, immorality and incompetence, all wrapped in a farrago of lies. What he is doing is evil… This is as obvious a case of right versus wrong, good versus evil, as you find in international relations since World War II.”

Perhaps Tom might make an attempt to look more deeply into the seeds of the Ukraine war and might even consider Googling “Minsk accords,” “Boris Johnson visit to Kiev,” and “NATO Expansion,” but he certainly exhibits the type of judgmentalism that he has displayed for so many years at the Times while covering the Middle East, where he has finally been able to recognize “apartheid” after a journey of nearly fifty years during which time numerous crimes against humanity committed by his Israeli friends have been staring him in the face.

The Times editorial group piece also is unwavering in separating good from evil: “While this board has questioned some specific decisions by Mr. Biden, such as supplying the Ukrainian Army with cluster munitions, we agree with him that it would be ‘wrong and contrary to well-settled principles’ to pressure another country to negotiate over its sovereign territory. Ukraine deserves full support against Russia’s unprovoked invasion, and it is in America’s national interest to lead its NATO allies in demonstrating that they will not tolerate Mr. Putin’s revanchist ambitions. It is a demonstration of America’s commitment to democracy and leadership that other would-be aggressors are watching.”

It is the well-worn “we have to be firm” assertion to set the example and warn other potential aggressors of consequences. But at the same time, to describe Russia’s attack as “unprovoked” is complete nonsense. And the real irony, not to mention hypocrisy, is the “negotiate over…sovereign territory” line when the US is occupying Syrian national territory and looking the other way and smiling as Israel steals the West Bank and Golan Heights. Some who have been closely following the developing situation in Syria are now reporting that it appears that the US is preparing to mount a new series of attacks to remove the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad. Three Republican congressmen recently traveled to occupied Syria to meet with groups that the United States government itself has labeled as terrorists. That is referred to as materially supporting terrorism which is a crime and one must ask the dwarflike Attorney General Merrick Garland where was the FBI to interrogate and possibly charge and indict the three when they returned? A major war in Syria would inevitably involve Lebanon and Iran. It would be a disaster for the entire region particularly when Israel takes advantage of the situation and Washington steps in to “have Israel’s back” even if the Jewish state starts the fighting. But the US rarely cares about how heavily its boot comes down on the local population or bothers to count the cost either in dollars or lives.

And, of course, the real danger is that if you buy into this type of nonsense, as both of the major political parties have, there is more to come to us long suffering Gadarene Swine, who will continue to endure an endless series of interventions based on nothing beyond the principal that one can get away with nearly anything when backed by a trillion dollar “defense” budget. And, oh by the way, Ukrainian “leader” Volodymyr Zelensky will be in Washington this week to meet with Biden and all his friends in Congress even as they “debate” giving him another $24 billion. He will want to make sure that the message is delivered to his hosts that he is the man who is in charge. Let’s see how the New York Times covers it!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

September 19, 2023 Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Middle East, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

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The 9/11 “Double-Cross” Conspiracy Theory

BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

Is it true that “9/11 was an inside job”? Yes, insofar as Israel is “inside” the U.S. But for the 9/11 truthers who have identified Israel as the main perpetrators, “9/11 was an inside job” is at best a half-truth, and at worst an integral part of the Zionist operation, like a secondary flag sewn as a lining under the false flag of Islamism. Victor Thorn (1963-2017) wrote in his book 9/11 made in Israel: The Plot Against America (2011): “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. . . . The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised.” In milder terms, it is “controlled opposition”.

A genuine truth movement would have pointed to Israel as the prime suspect from the start. From day one, it was obvious who would benefit. … continue

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