Blinken openly endorses Kiev regime’s attacks on Russia with US-made missiles
By Drago Bosnic | September 15, 2023
As we all know, American involvement in Ukraine is crucial. The United States initiated the war back in 2014 after decades of setting it up by financing the most radical elements of the Ukrainian society, resulting in their takeover of the unfortunate country after the Maidan coup. Since then, the US has been modernizing and training the Kiev regime forces. The culmination of this process was prevented by Russia’s counteroffensive, which forced the political West to invest enormous resources just to keep the Neo-Nazi junta afloat. Since the start of the special military operation (SMO), the political West has been doing everything in its power to keep escalating the conflict.
What started out as deliveries of various types of ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) soon turned into full-blown support for the Kiev regime through massive shipments of modernized Warsaw Pact-era weapons (tanks, artillery, rockets, helicopters, fighter jets, etc). These were then complemented by NATO and US-made weapons and munitions, the deliveries of which keep escalating to ever more dangerous and longer-range missiles and other systems. All the while, Western officials are parroting meaningless “assurances” that they supposedly “don’t want escalation with Moscow”. Obviously, the exact opposite has been happening.
These schizophrenic tendencies are not subsiding in the slightest, as evidenced by recent comments made by Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State in the troubled Biden administration. 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 civilian and military targets within Russia. Blinken’s statement came only a day after ABC News reported that the US would provide the ATACMS to the Kiev regime.
The MGM-140 ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) is a US-made supersonic tactical/theater ballistic missile system with a maximum range of approximately 300 km. While its range and maximum speed of Mach 3 don’t exactly make it a revolutionary weapon (for instance, Russia’s “Iskander” has twice the range and speed), this is still enough to jeopardize Russian supply lines, as well as civilian settlements deeper within Moscow’s territory. The ATACMS can also be fired from the tracked M270 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System), as well as the wheeled M142 HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), both of which have been delivered to the Neo-Nazi junta forces well over a year ago.
The system comes in five variants of missiles developed since the 1990s. The basic M39 (ATACMS Block I) uses INS (inertial navigation system) and carries 950 M74 APAM (anti-personnel and anti‑materiel) bomblets. Its range is up to 165 km. Production ceased in 1997.
It was replaced by the M39A1 (ATACMS Block IA) with improved GPS guidance. In part due to its smaller warhead carrying 300 M74 APAM bomblets, the range was extended to 300 km. Production ended in 2003.
The M48 (ATACMS Quick Reaction Unitary or simply QRU) GPS-guided missile carries the WDU-18/B penetrating high explosive blast fragmentation warhead found on the “Harpoon” anti-ship missile, only repackaged into the newly designed WAU-23/B warhead section. Its range is also estimated at up to 300 km. Production ceased in 2004.
The updated M57 (ATACMS TACMS 2000) GPS-guided missile of the same range also uses the WAU-23/B, but its production ended in 2013. It sports an increased accuracy of 9 m CEP (circular error probability), but was soon complemented by the enhanced M57E1.
The M57E1 (ATACMS Modification or just MOD) is also GPS-guided and is essentially an upgraded M39/M39A1 with better propulsion, updated guidance and WAU-23/B instead of the M74 APAM bomblets. It also includes a proximity sensor for airburst detonation, which is particularly deadly against infantry and civilians. Production started in 2017.
As previously mentioned, such weapons are not exactly groundbreaking for the Russian military that possesses far more potent missiles, both ground-based and air-launched, but the real issue comes from the fact that the political West is providing the necessary ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) data. This is a significant force multiplier that can make even a relatively mediocre weapon such as the ATACMS more dangerous. Moscow is doing its best to keep the scope of the SMO localized, but NATO continues to escalate, as evidenced by the resurgent presence of its ISR platforms around Russia’s borders, particularly in the Black Sea, which puts the Eurasian giant’s naval forces deployed there in jeopardy.
The Russian military already shot down some of NATO’s ISR platforms, resulting in several months of pause in flights close to the SMO zone. However, the belligerent alliance recently restarted this highly destabilizing practice. Moscow is perfectly aware that the political West controls the Kiev regime’s targeting, even issuing orders which Russian assets are to be attacked. The sole reason why Russia hasn’t responded by shooting down all NATO ISR platforms in relative vicinity of its forces is that it wants to avoid escalating the conflict into a world-ending thermonuclear confrontation. However, the US-led political West sees this as a weakness and an opportunity to test Russian patience, which is slowly running out.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
The CIA in Ethiopia
Tales of the American Empire | September 14, 2023
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a presidential “finding” under the National Security Act authorizing the CIA to conduct a nonlethal campaign to support democratic resistance to the communist Dergs and the CIA budgeted 500,000 dollars a year to help the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Alliance conduct a worldwide propaganda war against the Marxist government. This group was led by wealthy Ethiopian landowners who had fled their nation after the communists seized their property.
Reagan labeled Ethiopia a threat to the world, and was one of four nations he targeted for regime change. Reagan wanted to arm Ethiopian “freedom fighters” as part of the “Reagan Doctrine,” a concerted effort to roll back Soviet gains in the Third World, but the US Congress refused to provide funds. As a result, the CIA raised funds itself.
It is unknown if the CIA worked with its friends in Hollywood to create the 1985 “We Are the World – Live Aid” fundraiser, or just diverted the money flow. Most evidence comes from a March 3, 2010 report by Martin Plaut of the BBC that published evidence millions of dollars worth of aid for the Ethiopian famine were diverted to buy weapons by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, a CIA backed group trying to overthrow the Ethiopian communist government. Rebel soldiers said they posed as grain merchants to receive cash they used to buy arms. The report cited a declassified CIA document saying aid was “almost certainly being diverted for military purposes.” One rebel leader estimated 95 of the 100 million dollars raised by the charity effort was used to buy weaponry.
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Related Tale: “The Sordid History of the CIA”; 
• The Sordid History of the CIA
“Ethiopian Famine Aid Spent on Weapons”; Martin Plaut, BBC; March 3, 2010; this is the “corrected” article from months later after the BBC editorial board reacted to threats for printing the truth; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/853…
Audio of the original report can be heard here: https://archive.org/details/AidForArm…
“Ethiopia’s Contras”; MERIP; March 1987; https://merip.org/1987/03/ethiopias-c…
“Ethiopian Security Police Seized, Tortured CIA Agent”; Patrick Tyler; The Washington Post; April 25, 1986; https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv…
Related Tale: “The American Empire Invades Africa”; • The American Empire Invades Africa
Related Tale: “The Empire’s 2021 Coup in Guinea”; • The Empire’s 2021 Coup in Guinea
“Americans are WILDLY Misled About Ethiopia”; Jimmy Dore Show; January 29, 2023; • Americans Are WILDLY Misled About Eth…
“UN agency suspends food aid to Ethiopia’s Tigray amid theft”; AP; May 1, 2023; https://www.stripes.com/theaters/afri…
Related Tale: “The CIA in Angola”; • The CIA in Angola
DHS Awards $20 Million To Program That Flags Americans As Potential “Extremists” For Their Online Speech
An overt way of policing speech?
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 14, 2023
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 34 grants to as many organizations, worth a total of $20 million, whose role will be to undergo training in order to flag potential online “extremist” speech of Americans.
The money will be spent from the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program for fiscal year 2023, while the recipients include police, mental health providers, universities, churches and school districts.
According to DHS, this program (administered by its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3, and for some reason, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) is the only federal one of its kind whose goal is “helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in combating targeted violence and terrorism.”
Those given the money from the grants fund are expected to develop prevention programming at the community level that would stop “targeted violence and terrorism,” as well as come up with innovative prevention ideas, and “identify prevention best practices that can be replicated in communities nationwide.”
In announcing and explaining the need for such spending, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited the Jacksonville shooting. As he remarked while justifying the awarding of grants, the event was racially motivated, and – “[it] made painfully clear, targeted violence and terrorism can impact any community, anywhere.”
DHS claims that the “current” environment is one of heightened – and lethal – threat, based on ideology or personal grievances of “lone offenders and small groups.”
The DHS announcement came on the anniversary of 9/11, but it showed that the focus is now on Americans rather than some foreign terrorist threat (or even foreign terrorist gangs in the habit of “invading” US soil).
And the way the terrorist threat is defined here looks more like a drive to suppress dissent to dominant narratives pushed by the government and large traditional and social media who work in concert with the federal authorities.
Specifically, what opponents of such policy single out as possible reasons to be branded a violent extremists or (domestic) terrorist could be disagreeing, and expressing that opinion online on anything from Covid, vaccines, gun rights, gender and LGBTQ policies, the war in Ukraine, or immigration.
Republican 2024 Hopeful Ramaswamy Vows to Close Multiple US Agencies if Elected
Sputnik – 14.09.2023
WASHINGTON – Vivek Ramaswamy, a contender for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, said he would seek to reduce the size of the US federal government by closing down five agencies if elected president in 2024.
The plan is to “reduce the size of the federal employees down by 75% by the end of the first term,” Ramaswamy told Semafor on Wednesday.
The agencies that would be closed include the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF); the Department of Education; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services, he said.
Ramaswamy pointed out he would use executive action and bypass Congress to close the agencies.
In addition, Ramaswamy said he would also execute “a revision of at least 50% of federal regulations that failed the Supreme Court’s test.”
The plan does not entail replacing the agencies, however, it does envision relocating some employees to other government units, Ramaswamy said.
For example, 15,000 of the 35,000 FBI employees would be reassigned to roles within the US Marshals Service, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Drug Enforcement Administration, Ramaswamy added.
Medical chief of Ukrainian Far-Right unit admits “huge losses” on the frontline
By Ahmed Adel | September 14, 2023
The head of the medical service of the Far-Right unit Da Vinci’s Wolves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Alina Mykhailova, spoke about the difficult situation and, even more surprisingly, admitted to huge losses on the front.
“We are suffering great losses. There is no romance in this. What is happening at the front now is something you will not read in the news,” she said in an interview with Ukrainian media on September 12.
Mykhailova added that for the first time in her life, she was ready to give up absolutely everything and talk to anyone so that her battalion would survive. She also admitted that there is no prospect of a Ukrainian victory in the near future.
“The population is very calm with statements that today or tomorrow there will be victory. It will not happen today, nor tomorrow, nor, unfortunately, in a year,” Mykhailova, who is also a deputy in the Kiev City Council, concluded.
Since the beginning of June, the Ukrainian military has been conducting a counteroffensive in Donetsk, Artyomovsk and Zaporozhye with NATO-trained brigades and Western military equipment. However, they have achieved no success.
Although Mykhailova did not give a casualty figure, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently revealed that the counteroffensive has stalled and led to over 75,500 Ukrainian casualties – shocking for only four months of active combat. Many American and European journalists and military experts also argue that Kiev’s counteroffensive failed and noted the effectiveness of Russian defences.
US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley pointed out on September 10 that Ukraine may only have about 30-45 days of fighting left. However, despite this small timeframe left in the regular fighting season and the huge losses suffered by Kiev, the US and NATO are not fazed and continue to send more military shipments and money into the financial blackhole that Ukraine has become.
The Ukrainian military will be unable to advance any further from their already paltry gains once the season changes. Ukraine and the West have exhausted their ammunition stockpile, and they cannot get supplies quickly enough. Effectively, the Ukrainians cannot do much at this point, even if they want to.
Despite the Ukrainians not being able to do much at this point, as affirmed by Mykhailova, it did not prevent Milley from falsely claiming, “There’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days’ worth of fighting weather left, so the Ukrainians aren’t done. There’s battles not done… they haven’t finished the fighting part of what they’re trying to accomplish.”
The West wants to see the offensive continue even though it has very evidently failed. For this reason, the US continues to increase aid even further, and the indications are that the West will continue this or at least try to sustain it.
US President Joe Biden has provided Kiev with $43.7 billion in military aid since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. Recently, the US announced a new security package worth $600 million for Ukraine, which will include ammunition and anti-aircraft equipment.
By providing such equipment, Washington hopes to coerce Kiev to continue the offensive for another 30 days, perhaps even through the winter. For this reason, there has been a huge uptick in rhetoric about Ukraine supposedly breaking Russia’s first line of defence and making slow but steady gains. None of this corresponds with reality.
In the US, most people do not support the current policy of sending more money down the drain in Ukraine. Considering the 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration is under domestic pressure from a chorus of voices calling for a focus on domestic issues. This could be part of the West’s attempt to transfer responsibility for the failure of the counteroffensive to Ukraine itself.
The US has brazenly admitted it worked with the Ukrainians to plan the offensive for months, arming and training the military. Now, the West is criticising Ukraine for its failures.
As US elections are looming and Ukraine cannot win the war, the Biden administration needs to shift the blame and is pinning it directly on the Eastern European country. This demonstrates the confused nature of US policy as, on one hand, it is encouraging Ukraine to continue fighting by sending more weapons and money, but at the same time, narratives are being concocted to explain to US voters why billions of dollars have been wasted on a lost cause. Meanwhile, as Mykhailova highlighted, “there is no romance,” nor any victory for Ukraine through this war.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Decrepit Britain… Schools Collapsing and Challenger Tanks Blown to Smithereens
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 13, 2023
Britain’s schools are not just out for summer. Autumn too, apparently. Hundreds of schools across England are being forced to close because they are in danger of falling down on the heads of children. That issue alone says a lot about the decrepit condition of Britain today.
Added to this embarrassing blow to British prestige is the reported destruction of its Challenger 2 main battlefield tank deployed with great fanfare in Ukraine earlier this year.
The supposedly invincible tank was first stopped in its tracks by a Russian mine, and then the turret was promptly blown off by an incoming Russian Kornet missile. It is thought to be first time, the Challenger 2 has been so visibly destroyed. Even the BBC’s reporting couldn’t cover up the shock from such a blow to presumed British military prowess.
In previous deployments during Britain’s criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Challengers were up against militarily weaker opponents. They earned an overblown reputation as robust fighting machines. Now up against withering Russian firepower, the British equipment is under more testing conditions – and not faring so well.
Thus, it was a bad week alright for Britain. Schools crumbling from cheap concrete structures and then the formidable Challenger tank being pummeled like a cardboard box under Russian attack.
Interestingly, there is a bodily connection to the seemingly unrelated British misfortunes in the form of Rishi Sunak, Britain’s unelected prime minister. He took over 10 Downing Street last October after his predecessor Liz Truss was ousted due to her gaping incompetence. Truss was only in the job a matter of weeks having taken over from Boris Johnson who was forced to quit over endless corruption scandals.
Sunak, a wealthy heir of Indian heritage whose super-wealthy Indian wife doesn’t pay her taxes in Britain, was shoe-horned into the prime minister job as part of a Tory Party shake-up. He wasn’t elected by the public for his present office. That’s British democracy for you!
As prime minister, Sunak made the decision in January this year to send Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. The move was seen as a bold escalation and prompted other members of the NATO alliance to send heavier weapons to the Kiev regime. It was followed by Germany supplying its Leopard 2 tanks, the French donating AMX-10s, and there’s talk of the Americans eventually sending their M1 Abrams.
Sunak hailed his decision to donate 14 of Britain’s supposedly finest hardware as a game-changer that would allow Ukrainian forces to advance against Russian lines.
However, eight months later, the purported British game-changer has given the Ukrainian military no gains, neither have the German Leopard 2 tanks, nor all of the other sundry NATO “wonder weapons”.
Indeed, by nearly all accounts, the NATO-backed Ukrainian counteroffensive is rapidly turning from failure to disaster as troops and equipment get decimated by superior Russian firepower. Even former British army officers are acknowledging the disastrous defeat on the battlefield.
Under the unelected Sunak, Britain has pledged a total of £4.6 billion ($5.7 bn) in military aid to Ukraine. Britain is the second biggest sponsor of the Kiev Nazi regime after the United States, which has committed about $44 billion in military supplies to Ukraine.
Now get this. While Sunak has readily green lighted the supply of Challenger 2 tanks, as well as depleted uranium shells, Storm Shadow cruise missiles and RAF spy and fighter planes to the Black Sea, his personal neglect of school restoration projects in England has put hundreds of institutions at risk of collapsing.
Before his Tory Party appointment as prime minister, Sunak was Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is also known as the treasury minister. By tradition, the British chancellor resides in No. 11 Downing Street. It is seen as the second-most powerful political office after the prime minister owing to the fact that the chancellor controls the budgets for all other government departments.
While he was in the chancellor job during 2020-22, Sunak slashed funding for the repair of schools by nearly 50 percent. That was in spite of warnings from educational expert committees that a crisis was looming from dilapidated concrete structures. That crisis is now manifesting with the forced closure of over 100 schools across England as the new academic year begins this month. It has become a national scandal owing to fears that pupils’ and teachers’ lives are at risk from collapsing walls and roofs.
Rich boy Rishi Sunak can directly take the blame for much of the scandal even if he tries to worm his way out of accepting responsibility.
This guy like many other Western political leaders is a charlatan and a pathetic Yes-Man for the U.S.-led proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Sunak likes to wear tween friendship bracelets on his wrist and he is prone to giving Hindu peace signs when in public.
Meanwhile, in reality, the ultra-privileged occupant in Downing Street signs off billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Ukraine, paid for by the British taxpayers through relentless cuts in their public services, incomes and social conditions. War and poverty go hand-in-hand in Britain.
It is estimated that to rectify Britain’s decaying schools it would cost around $1 billion, which is about a fifth of what Sunak has pledged in military aid to Ukraine. And yet this warmongering charlatan is not even accountable to British citizens.
Evidently, the unelected British prime minister views the funding of a futile, bloody overseas war – which could spiral into a nuclear world war – as more of a priority than the education and safety of British children. Dare we say that’s because he is not a democratically elected leader. He is an abject vassal of American imperialism. Many of his predecessors in Downing Street could be said to have been of the same cringemaking weakness. But the incumbent and unaccountable Sunak is absolutely shameless.
The obscene misallocation of public funds by an unelected prime minister says everything about decrepit Britain. It’s a democracy only in name and even that has become a stretch.
US offers to pay Polish media for Ukraine coverage
RT | September 13, 2023
The US Consulate General in Krakow is soliciting Polish outlets to write about Ukrainian refugees “returning and rebuilding,” it emerged on Wednesday. Washington is offering $50,000 for the year-long project.
The project “to promote coverage in Poland by local and regional media representatives of stories in Ukraine” was first spotted by a Telegram channel based in Belarus. It can be found at the website of the US embassy in Poland, under the designation WAW-NOFO-FY23-05.
It was unclear when the solicitation was originally posted. However, the deadline for submissions is end of the day Friday, September 15.
According to the post, the goal is to “promote in-depth reporting by local and regional Polish media of the return of Ukrainian families from Poland to Ukraine and their social and physical rebuilding efforts, particularly those built on partnerships between Poles and Ukrainians.”
The articles should fuel “public understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by Ukrainians” as well as interest in Ukrainian “efforts to return and rebuild” and the “enduring impact of support provided by Polish society to Ukrainian refugees.”
The solicitation suggests the project would actually be given to a Polish NGO, with US embassy staff having “substantial involvement in the grant implementation, including reviewing and approving selection of participants, trainers, and award decisions within the project.”
The NGO would get a grant of $50,000 (about 215,500 zloty at the current exchange rate) and then have Polish journalists compete for portions of the money. The embassy would evaluate their success by the “quality and reach of reports generated.”
The project also includes at least one workshop teaching the reporters “culturally sensitive and trauma-informed manner and how to create compelling human-interest stories in this context,” taught by “experts in the intersection between mental health and journalism in war zones” and others with the relevant experience.
The entire project is slated to run for a single year, though Washington reserves the right to extend that if it’s judged to be “in the best interest of the US Department of State.”
There are approximately one million Ukrainian refugees in Poland at the moment. Multiple surveys of those who settled in EU countries show that more than 40% do not intend to return even if the conflict with Russia ends. Warsaw has reportedly already started sending men of military age back, even as other EU members have refused to do so on human rights grounds.
Life Not so Peachy for Biden as Impeachment Looms
By James Tweedie – Sputnik -13.09.2023
Joe Biden is now facing a congressional probe into his alleged influence-peddling abroad. Ted Harvey, a former senator in the Colorado state legislature, said the allegations were more damaging than impeachment proceedings would be.
Moves to impeach US President Joe Biden will undermine his political support and leadership of the Democratic Party, says a former state legislator.
Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s shady business dealings abroad — including in Ukraine during Biden’s time as vice-president to Barack Obama.
Files on Hunter Biden’s abandoned “laptop from hell” and testimony by whistleblowers indicate that the Democrat president sat in on online meetings with his son’s partners where payments in return for political influence were negotiated.
Fellow Republican Ted Harvey told Sputnik that the three main grounds for impeaching a president were “treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors,” and there was copious evidence Biden was guilty of “one of the top two, bribery.”
“The more that comes out about what then Vice President Joe Biden did and his son did and his family did, it rises to the level of bribery and there’s bank statements that show the money coming in,” he pointed out. “There’s bank statements showing that they were distributing the money to various family members.”
“Though most speakers don’t want to do an impeachment, I think that the evidence is getting to a point where they have no other choice than to at least do a very serious investigation and all of the subpoena powers that come along with that,” Harvey said. “And I think it’s only going to get worse for Biden and the Democrats as this unfolds over the next year.”
The pundit argued that Biden’s grip on power was looking more tenuous as Democrats were now “getting very nervous with where the president is in his poll numbers.”
“And then he goes on his trip to Vietnam and Asia, and he is embarrassing not only the country, but he’s embarrassing himself,” Harvey said. “I’m as a partizan of a Republican as you can get, but I felt sorry for the president. Our country is in a terrible position right now where somebody who is obviously lost his cognitive abilities is leading the free world.”
He said Democrats were reluctant to “throw him overboard” before the next election as “Kamala Harris isn’t much better, and it puts their party in even worse position from a public polling perspective.”
But McCarthy continues to drip-feed damaging information on the Biden family to the media — a move seemingly focused on attacking Biden politically, not legally.
“It’s good politics to not provide all of the information that they have on the president until it gets closer to the election, and puts the Democrats in a bind where they already have their horse that they’ve chosen to ride into the 2024 election” Harvey said. “And I think he’s going to be a very compromised the more information that comes out.”
An impeachment may backfire, especially as the Republicans lack the numbers in the Senate to carry it through.
“You don’t want to strengthen Joe Biden. If you look at Bill Clinton when he was impeached, he left office as the most popular president ever and still is the most popular president ever from a polling perspective,” Harvey noted. “Look at Trump — he was impeached twice, and now he’s winning the Republican nomination by 60 percent and he’s beating Joe Biden.”
White House tells media how to cover Biden impeachment
RT | September 13, 2023
White House lawyers have reportedly written a letter directing CNN, the New York Times and other US media outlets to scrutinize Republican lawmakers more aggressively as they try to impeach US President Joe Biden.
CNN and other recipients of the letter acknowledged getting the missive on Wednesday. “It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter. He added that the impeachment efforts should “set off alarm bells for news organizations.”
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) launched the impeachment effort on Tuesday, directing committees of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to open a formal inquiry. He said allegations of influence-peddling and solicitation of bribes by the Biden family “paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”
Even before receiving any guidance from the White House, some US media outlets already appeared to be trying to protect the president. CNN and Associated Press, for instance, suggested that Republicans were trying to prosecute Biden without having evidence to justify their investigation.
Those outlets apparently ignored such evidence as the sworn testimony of IRS whistleblowers and the records of bank transfers that lawmakers have already revealed. By launching impeachment proceedings, congressional committees will gain more power to subpoena documents that could help prove or debunk the allegations.
Veteran US journalist Matthew Keys, who has worked for such outlets as Reuters and Fox News, said the White House directive on impeachment coverage was “not OK.” He added, “The White House should not be encouraging, influencing or interfering in the editorial strategies of America’s newsrooms, including CNN and the New York Times.” The letter could backfire, Keys said, because “any time the media does try to hold Republicans to account, those lawmakers can simply counter by questioning whether it’s actual journalism or something encouraged by the Biden administration.”
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, said the directive “has an uncomfortable feeling of marching orders to the media.” By trying to influence coverage of the impeachment inquiry, he argued, the administration “removes any pretense of separation between the Biden personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s Office.”
Sams, who also serves as a senior adviser to Biden, claimed that Republicans had failed in nearly nine months of investigation to “turn up any evidence of the president doing anything wrong.” He added that impeachment is “grave, rare and historic,” and the press must treat the claims of Republicans with “appropriate scrutiny.” The White House official attached a 14-page appendix to his memo providing talking points to address Republican “lies.”
Democrats previously controlled the House and twice impeached then-President Donald Trump.
CDC Recommends New Covid Boosters to Everyone Over Six Months of Age
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | September 13, 2023
While Europe has now largely confined Covid vaccination to older and vulnerable groups, the American Centers for Disease Control have chosen a different path. Yesterday, they accepted the advice of an advisory panel and recommended the XBB.1.5 jabs to everyone six months and older. They insist that “the benefits of vaccination exceed the risks for everyone,” and hope vaguely that their “universal recommendation” will “ease the rollout of the vaccine and improve access and equity.”
“Let’s keep America strong, healthy,” said Dr. Camille Kotton, a panel member who voted in favor of the recommendation and who is an infectious disease specialist at Harvard Medical School. “Let’s do away with COVID-19 as best we can by prevention of disease through vaccines. Let’s make things clear.”
The argument is not easy to parse. First, the vaccines are alleged to be universally beneficial, although no studies beyond a “CDC analysis” exist to support this broad claim. Second, the universal recommendation is necessary to ensure “equity” and “make things clear.” In other words, more targeted recommendations would sow confusion and limit their uptake among those groups who would benefit from them. Finally, our Dr. Kotton still hopes that the vaccines can “do away with COVID-19.” Either she knows better or she is stupid, but once again, in the striving after an upside beyond benefits to the individual, we see an implicit acknowledgment that the vaccines aren’t universally beneficial after all.
An important consequence of the pandemic in the United States has been the alienation of a great part of the population from the project of public health in general on the one hand, and the overt politicisation of the CDC on the other. Before 2020, American medical mandarins at least claimed to work on behalf of society as a whole; now and again, they even found occasion to worry about how their recommendations would effect their credibility among the entire population. They have since abandoned this mission, adopting a narrow, much more politicised hygiene extremism. Now they have dropped all pretence, appealing only to the highly radicalised Covidians and the pharmaceuticals. Thus their rhetoric and their advice grows steadily more divorced from reality and reason, even as the actual threat of Covid recedes.
Ironically, the radicalism of the CDC arises from the success of the pandemicist opposition in the United States. America was one of the few Western countries that saw genuine resistance to the lockdowners and the vaccinators, extending even to elements of the political establishment. This opposition did serious damage to the entire enterprise of public health, and now millions of Americans will never care what the CDC says about anything ever again. In Europe, the mainstream parties formed a united front in support of the hygiene dictatorship, permitting our public health institutions to retain some claim to social consensus, however tenuous. On this side of the Atlantic, they still have something to lose, which is an incentive towards moderation.
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Did Israel Kill the Kennedys?
By Laurent Guyénot • Unz Review • June 3, 2018
Introduction
Just after midnight of June 6, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in a backroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just been celebrating his victory at the California primaries, which made him the most likely Democratic nominee for the presidential election. His popularity was so great that Richard Nixon, on the Republican side, stood little chance. At the age of 43, Robert would have become the youngest American president ever, after being the youngest Attorney General in his brother’s government. His death opened the way for Nixon, who could finally become president eight years after having been defeated by John F. Kennedy in 1960.
John had been assassinated four and a half years before Robert. Had he survived, he would certainly have been president until 1968. Instead, his vice-president Lyndon Johnson took over the White House in 1963, and became so unpopular that he retired in 1968. Interestingly, Johnson became president the very day of John’s death, and ended his term a few months after Robert’s death. He was in power at the time of both investigations.
And both investigations are widely regarded as cover-ups. In both cases, the official conclusion is rife with contradictions. We are going to sum them up here. But we will do more: we will show that the key to solving both cases resides in the link between them. And we will solve them beyond a reasonable doubt. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The Search for Truth: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination One Year Later
- ‘Harsh reality’: Iran says France seeks monopoly on power and intimidation, not peace for all
- When Will This White House Madness End?
- Huckabee aide goes to ‘unusual lengths’ to portray ‘Israel’ positively
- Trump Announces Diesel Supply Deal With Putin Following Phone Call
- MEP blasts ‘Euro-Gestapo’ for lecturing Russia on democracy
- Syria May Send Troops to Saudi Arabia Amid War with Ansar Allah
- UK whines about losing billions to ‘Putin tax’
- Baghaei to Rubio: Distorted narratives cannot erase US record of broken commitments
- Houthis Don’t Have to Conquer Saudi Arabia to Make It Pay
- If Americans Knew
- Gaza ceasefire exists in name only, say more than 100 organizations
- Nearly 2 Million in Gaza Need Urgent Shelter Assistance as Winter Looms: IOM Chief Warns
- Suppressing Palestinian resistance: US charity under fire for AI monitoring of Gaza classrooms
- Thousands Are Held in Israeli Torture Camps. This Is What Happens Inside
- Israel puts Gaza’s sick, injured, newborn in peril – Daily Update
- Report claimed Mark Levin used by Israeli government to influence Trump
- Over 2,000 Gazans have died awaiting medical evacuation amid Israel’s continued siege
- How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel
- 5 Palestinians Die from Israeli Strikes in Gaza as Relentless Attacks Continue
- Report: Ceasefire Slows Killing but Leaves Devastation Intact
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
