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NATO Spent Decades Preparing For Proxy War With Russia in Ukraine

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 12.07.2023

Even before the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, Britain, Sweden, Canada, and the United States were investing in Ukraine and building up their capabilities, the UK defense minister has stated at the NATO summit in Vilnius. Does it mean NATO has long prepared for a proxy war with Russia?

The US neocons and their likeminded NATO allies have long been apparently seeking to knock Russia out of the political arena before trying to crack down on China in a bid to preserve the US dominance, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski believes.

“I think that the US officials and advisors (along with those in NATO) believe that they must be able to exploit Russian resources prior to any direct confrontation with China,” Kwiatkowski, who is also a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, told Sputnik. “The neoconservative ideology that over half of Congress embraces, and that the US defense and security complex embraces, envisions and demands a unipolar globe, with the US and its debt-funded governmental system, at the top. For them, this is an existential issue, albeit most Americans don’t see it that way.”

It seems that Ukraine appeared a convenient candidate for the role of a “hammer” against Russia.

For How Long Has Ukraine Received Western Military Assistance?

Ukraine has been a leading recipient of Western military supplies since the early 1990s when the country gained independence, with the US spearheading the initiative. In the first ten years after independence, Ukraine received almost $2.6 billion in assistance from the US. Until 2014, Ukraine had been receiving an estimated $105 million per annum, including foreign military financing.

NATO’s North Atlantic Cooperation Council embraced Ukraine as a “partner country” in 1991 and included it in the Partnership for Peace program in 1994. Washington’s NATO ally, the UK, played an important role in the effort, holding joint military exercises with the Ukrainians, as well as providing training and funding to the nation’s armed forces.

Thus, the first joint Ukrainian-British military exercises “Cossack steppe” were held in the second half of the 1990s as part of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. The NATO-Ukraine Commission was established in 1997 with the aim of developing the relationship between the nation and the bloc and directing cooperative activities.

As per UK government documents, the Ministry of Defense spent approximately £3.9 million supporting Ukraine through the Defense Assistance Fund and the Conflict Pool between 2009 and 2014.

Many of the activities funded through these mechanisms supported “command, control and communications capabilities (C3).” In particular, the UK held joint exercises with the Ukrainian military, provided military education to the nation’s specialists, and “contributions to NATO coordinated activities.” Both UK civilian and military personnel had been deployed to Ukraine during that period of time while Ukrainian personnel were sent to the UK.

Following the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014, the West stepped up military assistance to the new Ukrainian authorities.

Between 2014 and 2021, the United States provided over $2.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, which included the provision of trainers, selected weaponry systems (such as counter-mortar radars), and Javelin anti-tank missiles.

The boost in military assistance was justified by NATO member states by the alleged “Russian invasion” in Donbass. However, it is well documented that Donbass declared independence in response to the illegitimate coup d’etat in Kiev fomented with the assistance of nationalist and neo-Nazi paramilitary groups and subsequent Russophobic policies of the new government. The Donbass breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Republics started largely forming militias after the interim Kiev government kicked off what it called “anti-terrorist” operations (ATO) against the region.

“Kiev had been on the offensive with the Donbass with Western support, for a number of years, even before 2014, and this is well documented,” explained Kwiatkowski. “Other Eastern and Southern European countries had been ‘encouraged’ by Western powers, as we saw with Yugoslavia, to break up into smaller national and ethno-cultural countries, and the peaceful divide between the Czech Republic and Slovakia was also allowed and supported. This is primarily because the newly smaller countries added potential members to NATO and the EU – all controlled and controllable by the US-EU elites.”

Moscow came up with the idea of the Minsk Agreements to stop hostilities in Eastern Ukraine. Russia, France and Germany played the role of guarantors of the accords.

Nonetheless, as ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President François Hollande admitted last year, the Minsk agreements were signed by Western powers to buy time in order to bolster the Ukrainian military capacity.

“In the case of the political separation desired by the Donbass, and the Minsk agreements that were designed to allow that autonomy, the Russian-speaking East, if autonomous, would not have chosen to be a part of the NATO borg,” said the former Pentagon analyst. “Hence, that independence would not be allowed. Yes, NATO and the US supported such an offensive, and were preparing for it actively, as comments from many US and European officials and diplomats have confirmed. Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have publicly confirmed this, as have many others.”

Ukraine Extensive Training and Naval Provocations

US allies jumped on the bandwagon, forwarding their military assistance to Ukraine through the NATO-Ukraine Commission, and through initiatives such as the US/Canada/UK/Ukraine Joint Commission for Defense Reform and Security Cooperation which was established in July 2014.

In particular, Britain kicked off and then expanded Operation Orbital, envisaging extensive training of the Ukrainian military including combat actions in urban environments.

These activities included:

· medical, infantry and survival skills training;
· countering improvised explosive devices;
· training for defensive operations in an urban environment;
· operational planning;
· engineering;
· countering attacks from snipers, armored vehicles and mortars.

It meant that those Ukrainian soldiers that had undergone training under the program would pass on their knowledge and techniques to their military peers. Britons also expanded the scope of the training package to embrace all branches of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.

In June 2020, Ukraine was offered Enhanced Opportunity Partner status with NATO which provided Ukraine with preferential access to NATO’s exercises, training and exchange of information and situational awareness. The status envisaged increasing interoperability between Ukraine and NATO member states. In September 2020, Ukraine hosted the Exercise Joint Endeavour with British, US and Canadian troops, held within the framework of Ukraine’s new enhanced NATO status.

In June 2021, the UK, Ukraine and industry signed a Memorandum of Implementation to a new Naval Capabilities Enhancement Program (NCEP). The program in particular included:

· Ukraine’s acquisition of two refurbished Royal Navy Sandown-class minehunters;
· the sale and integration of missiles on new and in-service Ukrainian Navy patrol and airborne platforms, including a training and engineering support package;
· The UK’s assistance in building new naval bases in the Black and Azov Seas;
· the development and joint production of eight fast missile warships;
· The participation in the Ukrainian project to deliver a modern frigate capability.

The same month, the UK Carrier Strike Group led by HMS Defender was deployed in the Black Sea “in a show of solidarity with Ukraine” and illegally entered Russian waters off Crimea and proceeded to sail through, prompting Russian warships and aircraft to surround the ship and fire warning shots in its vicinity to force it to leave. Even though the UK initially denied that it resorted to deliberate provocations, leaked British government documents proved otherwise.

Russia’s Draft Security Agreements

Russia has repeatedly raised the red flag over the NATO-Ukraine rapprochement and the transatlantic bloc’s enlargement. In accordance with its Declaration of State Sovereignty (July 16, 1990) Ukraine pledged to permanently remain a neutral country. In addition, in the early 1990s, Western powers asserted to Moscow that NATO wouldn’t expand towards Russia. At the same time, the US and its allies refused to consider Russia’s bid to join NATO while encouraging former Soviet Republics and Warsaw Pact member states to join.

Russia outlined its longstanding concerns with regard to Ukraine’s military buildup on its doorstep and NATO’s expansion in draft security agreements which were handed over to the US and NATO in December 2021.

The agreement particularly sought guarantees of NATO’s non-enlargement and non-admission of Ukraine to the bloc. The US and NATO rejected the major provisions of the agreement leading to Russia’s special military operation aimed at de-militarizing and de-Nazifying Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine Conflict is US/NATO Proxy War Against Russia

Even though in March 2022, Ukraine and Russia struck a preliminary deal in Istanbul to stop hostilities, the US and the UK openly opposed the agreement, pledging more weapons to Kiev and declaring the goal of bleeding Russia white.

“The US is waging a proxy war, because that is what the US has been waging against various named enemies, for the past 70 years, and it is how we are organized to fight,” said Kwiatkowski. “It is an open secret that the Pentagon, even with close to a trillion dollar budget, does not and, at this point, cannot defend US territory. The US elites and the US defense establishment self-perpetuation is wholly disconnected from the people here who pay its bills. Poor and non-strategic US leadership placed the US in a lose-lose situation.”

According to the US military expert, three problems have emerged in the result of Washington’s misreading of the Russia and Ukraine conflict:

· First, that intent of weakening and isolating Russia did not play out “as it must have done in Jake Sullivan’s brainstorming sessions.”
· Second, the supplies have illustrated a variety of strategic weaknesses in US and NATO defense industrial production, where we see Joe Biden actually stating the obvious that the “US is out of ammunition.”
· Third, taking the Ukraine-Russia destruction project on at a time when the US is experiencing financial weakness, with very limited reserves of gold, guns and “war spirit” demonstrates that the “war planning” of the White House and Pentagon has been done in a vacuum, and under false assumptions.

As per Kwiatkowski, peace is possible but it may require a difficult re-evaluation of the US role in the world while neocons and war profiteers do not accept this re-evaluation.

“Their ideology is mated to unipolar US power,” the US military veteran said. “I suspect some leaders in the West are beginning to understand that there is a way to peace, and it starts with acceptance of the truth of all sides, and negotiations based on that truth. Imagine a sane US government, a concerned NATO, a true patriot of Ukraine in Kiev, and the Russians all speaking honestly. As Trump stated months ago, this war could be ended in one day.”

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

US cluster bombs already in Ukraine – military

RT | July 13, 2023

Kiev has already received cluster munitions promised by the US, a Ukrainian general has told CNN. Washington has attempted to justify the delivery of the controversial arms by claiming that Ukraine would minimize the long-term threat to civilians when using them.

“We just got them, we haven’t used them yet, but they can radically change [the battlefield],” Brig. Gen. Aleksandr Tarnavsky told the US news network on Thursday. He added that he expects Ukrainian troops to push Russian forces back from their defensive positions thanks to the delivery.

Cluster bombs discharge dozens of submunitions over a large area. Some of the bomblets fail to detonate and can maim or kill years after their deployment. Over 100 nations, including many NATO members, have banned their production and use.

The US decided to supply Ukraine with old 155mm artillery shells with cluster payloads stockpiled during the Cold War. President Joe Biden described the move as a stopgap, claiming that Kiev’s foreign backers had no regular munitions of that caliber left to share, and that they were in the process of ramping up production.

The US is not party to the 2008 convention on cluster munitions, but still had to bypass its own rules, which normally ban exports of cluster bombs with a dud rate of over 1% (meaning more than one in 100 submunitions fail to explode).

The Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs) which the US has sent to Ukraine demonstrated an average dud rate of 14% during a 2000 study. The Pentagon, however, has claimed that less than 2.35% of bomblets would fail in the version supplied to Kiev’s forces.

Tarnavsky insisted Ukraine would not fire cluster shells at settlements held by Russia.

Ukraine has a stockpile of Soviet cluster munitions and has used them in places where unexploded bomblets posed a threat to civilians, according to Human Rights Watch. The international watchdog was among those to urge Washington to reconsider its plans.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said this week that Moscow has the means to respond in kind to Ukraine’s use of American arms.

“Russia has cluster munitions, as they say, for all occasions,” the minister warned, adding that the Russian arsenal is superior in capability and diversity.

July 13, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

The War on ‘Misinformation’: Outlawing Dissident Data on the Road to Tyranny

Judge Terry A. Doughty’s Defense of the Right to be Wrong

Michael Hoffman’s Revelation of the Method | July 12, 2023

“Misinformation” [noun]: Any data that contradicts Establishment dogma

Fittingly, on Independence Day, July 4, U.S. Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana, issued a preliminary injunction in the case of Missouri v. Biden, documenting and excoriating the Federal government’s abrogation of the First Amendment with regard to policing social media.

The patricians assigned exalted status as “First Amendment experts” by their cronies in the legacy media, have lied about Judge Doughty’s ruling and presume to explain it to the rest of us mere plebians in the hope that we will not read the 155 pages of his decision.

Thus, His Eminence Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University, together with Leah Litman,  professor of law at the University of Michigan, contemptuously dismiss Justice Doughty’s decision as buncombe. They rely on their prestige to convince us of their evidence-free claim that, “The impetus behind the case is the now thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that the government is somehow strong-arming Big Tech into censoring conservative speech and speakers in violation of the First Amendment.”

Words Intended to Trigger our Obeisance

Notice the words intended to trigger our obeisance to the anathema which Tribe and Litman have pronounced: “thoroughly debunked,” and the old reliable put-down, “conspiracy theory.”

No respectable true believer in the stature and renown of the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus will dare to think otherwise than as prescribed.

Tribe and Litman add to their pejorative-laden rant, stating, “the absurdity of different aspects of the decision…….Each step in the reasoning of the decision manages to be more outlandish than the last…”

“Absurd.” “Outlandish.”

They go further: “There is no shortage of errors in this opinion, which is trying to make the infamous ‘Twitter files’ into constitutional law. Who knows whether the equally infamous U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will correct any of these mistakes…”

“Infamous.” “Equally infamous.”

A heretical thought occurs to the reader of Tribe and Litman’s invective: prove it. They can’t, so they don’t bother.

Ah, but there’s the rub, fellow plebe. This legal duo need not prove anything. They are famous legal scholars.

Musk’s Twitter file revelations are “infamous” and Justice Doughty is “absurd.” Therefore, predicated on their ad hominem adjudication, Tribe and Litman don’t stoop to offering a refutation because none is necessary. Their ipse dixit is sufficient. We are in the realm of the blind faith required of people by the secular religion that enforces a fundamentalist intellectual conformity which brooks no dissent.

Witness the 155 pages of Doughty’s decision dismissed without a single factual reply concerning the Federal government illegally threatening and pressuring social media which publish disfavored authors and data on the Internet.

But is misinformation really the crux of the issue? Witness the misinformation that pours forth daily from the presses of the sacrosanct New York Times. We need look no further than Michael Shear and David McCabe’s report July 5 in the Times regarding Judge Doughty’s ruling. The issue of government censorship, which concerns all civil libertarians across the political spectrum, is reduced to an “effort by conservatives to document what they contend is a liberal conspiracy.”

That’s not just misinformation, it’s a lie. Two victims of the government crackdown on social media who are plaintiffs in the case of Missouri v. Biden, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, are infectious disease epidemiologists, not conservative Republican politics wonks.

The Great Barrington Declaration of October 4, 2020, criticized lockdown policies and expressed concern about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of lockdowns. Shortly after being published, the Great Barrington Declaration, which was signed and endorsed by numerous health science personnel holding a variety of political views, was censored on social media by Google, Facebook and Twitter under the threat of reprisals from the Biden administration.

Jill Hines is Co-Director of Health Freedom Louisiana, a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. Hines was censored because she advocated against the use of mask mandates for young children. Health Freedom Louisiana’s social-media page was suspended on Facebook in January 2022 for sharing a display board that contained Pfizer’s preclinical trial data. Facebook did the government’s bidding.

There are dozens of examples like these. The New York Times is misinforming its readers into believing that Missouri v. Biden is mainly an issue of Republican partisanship, with no wider significance for all liberty-loving Americans. The Times expects us to believe that Justice Doughty ruled in favor of the victims of government-inspired viewpoint censorship because, in the words of Shear and McCable, he is “favorable to right-wing lawsuits.”

The New York Times is determined to engage in misinformation by falsely characterizing the paramount issue, interdiction of freedom of the press by agents of the Federal government, as something of concern to right-wingers who see “liberal conspiracies” under every bed.

As of July 12, in almost every instance of legacy media misinformation related to the judge’s ruling that we have encountered, at no time were readers provided a link to Justice Doughty’s decision, which is published online, in order to facilitate the now out-of-fashion principle that the people should be encouraged to decide for themselves, rather than being told what to think.

Instead, the Times referred its readers to Litman and Tribe’s splenetic fulmination, in which government censorship is “content moderation,” and ensuring the Biden administration doesn’t threaten online news media if they don’t submit to their censorship orders, becomes, “a huge blow to vital government efforts to harden U.S. democracy against threats of misinformation.”

Without apprehension, we ought to call a thing by its accurate description. In their report, which appeared on New York University’s website, JustSecurity.org, we regret to say that the University of Michigan’s Litman, and Harvard’s Tribe, lied about Judge Doughty’s ruling—as follows:

“… the district court made no effort to identify circumstances where the government came even close to coercing social media companies into doing something they didn’t want to do…”

How does one parse a mendacity that is so transparently false it is beyond chutzpagh? The duo who put forth the preceding statement are insulting the intelligence of their readers on the assumption that they are too lazy to find and study Justice Doughty’s ruling—in which he clearly “identifies” the points at which the Federal government coerced social media companies into censoring scientists, activists and vital alternative information.

Judge for yourself:

Excerpts from Missouri v. Biden documenting Government Coercion of Social Media Companies

“On May 5, 2021, then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki (“Psaki”) publicly began pushing Facebook and other social-media platforms to censor COVID-19 misinformation. At a White House Press Conference, Psaki publicly reminded Facebook and other social-media platforms of the threat of ‘legal consequences’ if they do not censor misinformation more aggressively.

“Psaki further stated: ‘The President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19 vaccinations and elections.’ Psaki linked the threat of a ‘robust anti-trust program’ with the White House’s censorship demand: ‘He also supports better privacy protections and a robust anti-trust program. So, his view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging, sometime life-threatening information, is not going out to the American public.”

“On January 23, 2021, three days after President Biden took office, Clarke Humphrey (“Humphrey”), who at the time was the Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team, emailed Twitter and requested the removal of an anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.2 Humphrey sent a copy of the email to Rob Flaherty (“Flaherty”), former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy…

“On February 7, 2021, Twitter sent Flaherty a ‘Twitter’s Partner Support Portal’ for expedited review of flagging content for censorship. Twitter recommended that Flaherty designate a list of authorized White House staff to enroll in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal and explained that when authorized reporters submit a ‘ticket’ using the portal, the requests are ‘prioritized’ automatically. Twitter also stated that it had been ‘recently bombarded’ with censorship requests from the White House and would prefer to have a streamlined process. Twitter noted that ‘[i]n a given day last week for example, we had more than four different people within the White House reaching out for issues…”

“On March 15, 2021, Flaherty…demanded a report from Facebook on a recent Washington Post article that accused Facebook of allowing the spread of information leading to vaccine hesitancy…Flaherty followed up by making clear that the White House was seeking more aggressive action on ‘borderline content.”

“On March 22, 2021, Flaherty responded to this email, demanding more detailed information and a plan from Facebook to censor the spread of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ on Facebook. Flaherty also requested more information about and demanded greater censorship by Facebook of ‘sensational,’ ‘vaccine skeptical’ content.”

“On April 13, 2021, after the temporary halt of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine…Flaherty also requested that Facebook monitor ‘misinformation’ relating to the Johnson & Johnson pause and demanded from Facebook a detailed report within twenty-four hours. Facebook provided the detailed report the same day.”

“On April 14, 2021, Flaherty demanded the censorship of Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren because the top post about vaccines that day was ‘Tucker Carlson saying vaccines don’t work and Tomi Lahren stating she won’t take a vaccine..”

“Two days later, on April 16, 2021, Flaherty demanded immediate answers from Facebook regarding the Tucker Carlson video…Facebook…gave the video a 50% demotion for seven days and stated that it would continue to demote the video.”

“…examples of posts that did not violate Facebook’s policies but would nonetheless be suppressed included content that originated from the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit activist group headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” (Mr. Kennedy’s group was abeled by the government as one of the “Disinformation Dozen”).

“On April 21, 2021, Flaherty, Slavitt, and other HHS officials, met with Twitter officials about ‘Twitter Vaccine Misinfo Briefing.’…Twitter discovery responses indicated that during the meeting, White House officials wanted to know why Alex Berenson (“Berenson”) had not been ‘kicked off’ Twitter. Slavitt suggested Berenson was ‘the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.’ Berenson was suspended thereafter on July 16, 2021, and was permanently deplatformed on August 28, 2021.”

“On April 23, 2021, Flaherty sent Facebook an email including a document entitled “Facebook COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Brief” (“the Brief”)…The Brief recommended much more aggressive censorship of Facebook’s enforcement policies and called for progressively severe penalties.”

“From May 28, 2021, to July 10, 2021, a senior Meta (Facebook’s parent) executive reportedly copied Andrew Slavitt (‘Slavitt’), former White House Senior COVID-19 Advisor, on his emails to Surgeon General Murthy (‘Murthy’), alerting them that Meta was engaging in censorship of COVID-19 misinformation according to the White House’s ‘requests’ and indicating ‘expanded penalties’ for individual Facebook accounts that share misinformation…”

“Eric Waldo (‘Waldo’) is the Senior Advisor to the Surgeon General and was formerly Chief Engagement Officer for the Surgeon General’s office…Waldo and the Office of the Surgeon General received a briefing from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (‘CCDH’) about the “Disinformation Dozen.” The Center for Countering Digital Hate gave a presentation about the Disinformation Dozen and how they (CCDH) measured and determined that the Disinformation Dozen were primarily responsible for a significant amount of online misinformation.”

“At the July 15, 2021 press conference, Murthy described health misinformation as one of the biggest obstacles to ending the pandemic; insisted that his advisory was on an urgent public health threat; and stated that misinformation poses an imminent threat to the nation’s health and takes away the freedom to make informed decisions….Murthy also stated that people who question mask mandates and decline vaccinations are following misinformation, which results in illnesses and death. Murthy placed specific blame on social-media platforms for allowing ‘poison’ to spread and further called for an ‘all-of-society approach’ to fight health misinformation. Murthy called upon social-media platforms to operate with greater transparency and accountability, to monitor information more clearly, and to ‘consistently take action against misinformation super-spreaders on their platforms.’ Notably, Waldo agreed in his deposition that the word ‘accountable’ carries with it the threat of consequences.” (Emphasis supplied)

“…on July 20, 2021, at a White House Press Conference, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield (‘Bedingfield’) stated that the White House would be announcing whether social-media platforms are legally liable for misinformation spread on their platforms and examining how misinformation fits into the liability protection granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which shields social-media platforms from being responsible for posts by third parties on their sites). Bedingfield further stated the administration was reviewing policies that could include amending the Communication Decency Act and that the social-media platforms ‘should be held accountable.’ The public and private pressure from the White House apparently had its intended effect. All twelve members of the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ were censored, and pages, groups, and accounts linked to the Disinformation Dozen were removed…”

“Murthy made statements on the following platforms: a December 21, 2021 podcast threatening to hold social-media platforms accountable for not censoring misinformation; a January 3, 2022 podcast with Alyssa Milano stating that ‘platformers need to step up to be accountable…”

“In addition to ‘misinformation’ regarding COVID-19, the White House also asked social-media companies to censor misinformation regarding climate change, gender discussions, abortion, and economic policy. At an Axios event entitled ‘A Conversation on Battling Misinformation,’ held on June 14, 2022, the White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy (‘McCarthy’) blamed social-media companies for allowing misinformation and disinformation about climate change to spread and explicitly tied these censorship demands with threats of adverse legislation regarding the Communications Decency Act.”

“On June 16, 2022, the White House announced a new task force to target ‘general misinformation’ and disinformation campaigns targeted at women and LBGTQI individuals who are public and political figures, government and civic leaders, activists, and journalists. The June 16, 2022, Memorandum discussed the creation of a task force to reel in ‘online harassment and abuse’ and to develop programs targeting such disinformation campaigns. The Memorandum also called for the Task Force to confer with technology experts and again threatened social-media platforms with adverse legal consequences if the platforms did not censor aggressively enough.”

End quote of excerpts from Missouri v. Biden, July 4, 2023. This judicial freedom document is worthy of study and publication in its entirety.

The War on “Misinformation” — Outlawing Dissident Data on the Road to Tyranny

The question of who is qualified to arbitrate what constitutes misinformation is seldom discussed and mostly neglected, for obvious reasons. If it were deliberated, the bias of the legacy media’s anointed “misinformation experts” (Stanford Internet Observatory, Virality Project, Center for Countering Digital Hate, etc.) would be apparent, along with a larger question: why is “misinformation” supposedly lethal to the commonweal?

In the claustrophobic corridors of conformity where roost our supposed intellectual superiors, there is little historical memory of ideas once denounced as the vilest heresy having been proved right over the course of time, unless those views were on the “progressive” side of the ideological scale.

A truly non-partisan recollection of the past would lead to tolerance and judicious latitude for ideas which the 21st century consensus considers outside the limits of acceptable belief.

Error Has Rights

The precept that error has rights is as old as the Jeffersonian democracy which the Biden administration and its friends in high places, claim to defend. The battle for this principle was successfully fought in the 1780s, and again in the 1960s and ‘70s. It has since been nearly overturned in the new millennium, where it now hangs by a thread.

“Free Press” Smokescreen

The free press debate is mostly a smokescreen for an ideological conflict in which one side of the political spectrum seeks to gain an advantage over the other. Concerning censorship, the Left and the Right are often partners in slime. Trying to find an authentic Jeffersonian on either side is like searching for a Baptist in Mecca. The right of scholars who analyze flaws in the Talmud and the atrocities of the Israeli government to be free of censorship and cancellation, has zero support among most of the Republican legislators, jurists and pundits who are indignant over the suppression of their viewpoints by Biden’s bureaucrats.

In America, much of the interdiction of ideas and obstruction of free inquiry is perpetrated by private companies, and more specifically, the usury industry, which monopolizes online payment systems. In resistance to their monopoly, dissident writers are paid and sustained by readers rather than corporations, which helps to encourage the widest possible diversity of opinion, as well as independent investigative reporting which is vital to the democracy which Prof. Tribe and our would-be Overlords cynically extol with seigneurial conceit, and simultaneously thwart.

In 1789 the Catholic idea that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without sin and assumed bodily into heaven was considered a depraved belief in the eyes of the majority of the Protestant population of the United States. Had it not been for the liberty of conscience enshrined in the Bill of Rights that year, those Catholic beliefs may very well have been outlawed.

234 years later, modern science has discovered that babies in the womb share the cells of their mothers: “Mothers around the world say they feel like their children are still a part of them long after they’ve given birth. As it turns out, that is literally true… Fetomaternal transfer… occurs in all pregnancies and in humans the fetal cells can persist for decades. Microchimeric fetal cells are found in various maternal tissues and organs including blood, bone marrow, skin and liver” (cf. here and here).

Consequently, the Son of God who was of one flesh with the humble Israelite girl we know as His mother Mary, shared his very tissue with her. In light of that discovery by avant-garde science, it seems far less likely that God would have allowed the body that contained within it the flesh of Jesus Christ, to rot on earth. In 1950, when Pius XII declared the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, it seems he was prescient indeed.

Nowadays, with the desacralization of our society, where the outcome of the colosseum sports game is of infinitely greater interest than the corporeal fate of the human that served as the vessel for the incarnation of God, the once hotly disputed veracity or falsehood of the pontiff’s declaration doesn’t necessitate First Amendment protection. Other controversies however, are ablaze in the white hot fire of zealotry and the certitude that one side is right and the other is not only wrong, it has no right to be wrong. For example, disputing trans claims and COVID orthodoxies are subject to intense proscription.

The Left pretends to want libraries free of censorship. Some of them support trans books in children’s libraries because they have faith in the inherent value of that literature as drivers of transformative thinking in children, not due to any allegiance to the civil libertarian tenets of the First Amendment. Not for a minute would most Leftists countenance the introduction of holocaust denial or white supremacist books in a library under their control. For these folks “freedom of the press” is a pretext for overcoming the censorship demands of one’s adversaries while practicing it oneself.

The Right wants libraries stocked with writings by Karl Rove, Ludwig von Mises, Glenn Beck, John Bolton, Hannity and O’Reilly. A majority actively oppose the presence of books in public libraries by Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Edward Said, Alexander Cockburn, and Maureen Dowd. Like the Left, the Right mainly operates by a dual standard.

Knowledge of the history of the struggle for intellectual freedom and the life stories of John Lilburne, Michael Servetus, John Tyndale, Edmund Campion, Ignaz Semmelweis, Eugene V. Debs, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harry Elmer Barnes, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Norman Finkelstein, are instrumental in kindling a commitment to the American Way: •rights of conscience, •the necessity of a free press, and •toleration of opinions designated as “misinformation.”

The debate turns on whether or not a free people require intervention by “expert authorities” like fallible Fauci, who filter what would otherwise be unfettered access to information.

To prove his points in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson stated, “… let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” The Founders of our nation were unequivocal in proclaiming their confidence in the people judging for themselves, without a king, commissar or president—backed by propaganda conglomerates in New York and Hollywood— preventing them from undertaking this sacred civic responsibility and divine right.

That the interdiction of information online is termed by Lucifer’s lexicographers “a defense of democracy,” is among the most egregious evocations of doublethink since George Orwell put pen to paper.

Distilled to its first principle, the defense of democracy depends on the defense of the right to be wrong.

The New York Times, Laurence Tribe, Leah Litman, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Alex Berenson and Tucker Carlson, all have a right to be in error. Without that Constitutional liberty guaranteed to every individual — whether heretic or grandee — Fascism from the Right or Communism from the Left will inevitably take control and sift our nation like wheat.

“This country is planted thick with laws… And if you cut them down… do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.” —Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

FOR THE ADVANCEMENT TO KNOWLEDGE CONTRA CANCEL CULTURE

Michael Hoffman is the author of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare (2001), The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (2017) , Twilight Language (2021), six other books published in the United States, as well as overseas in Japanese and French translation, and 122 issues of Revisionist History® newsletter, 1997-2022. Since January, twenty-eight of his essays have been published on Substack. He is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press. His podcast, Michael Hoffman’s Revisionist History,® is heard around the world.

Twitter: @HoffmanMichaelA

Copyright ©2023 Independent History and Research, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816-0849

July 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Targeted for Tyranny: We’re All Suspects Under the Government’s Precrime Program

By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | July 12, 2023

We’re all being targeted now.

We’re all guilty until proven innocent now.

And thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s spy network of fusion centers, we are all now sitting ducks, just waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.

Although these precrime programs are popping up all across the country, in small towns and big cities, they are not making us any safer but they are endangering individual freedoms.

Nationwide, there are upwards of 123 real-time crime centers (a.k.a. fusion centers), which allow local police agencies to upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data and intelligence with state and federal agencies culled from surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring, drones and body cameras, and artificial intelligence-driven predictive policing algorithms.

These data fusion centers, which effectively create an electronic prison—a digital police state—from which there is no escape, are being built in partnership with big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which helped to fuel the rise of police militarization and domestic surveillance.

While these latest expansions of the surveillance state are part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to combat domestic extremism through the creation of a “precrime” crime prevention agency, they have long been a pivotal part of the government’s plans for total control and dominion.

Yet this crime prevention campaign is not so much about making America safer as it is about ensuring that the government has the wherewithal to muzzle anti-government discontent, penalize anyone expressing anti-government sentiments, and preemptively nip in the bud any attempts by the populace to challenge the government’s authority or question its propaganda.

As J.D. Tuccille writes for Reason, “[A]t a time when government officials rage against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that is often just disagreement with whatever opinions are currently popular among the political class, fusion centers frequently scrutinize peaceful dissenting speech.”

Indeed, while the Biden Administration was recently dealt a legal blow over its attempts to urge social media companies to do more to combat so-called dis- and mis-information, these fusion centers are the unacknowledged powerhouses behind the government’s campaign to censor and retaliate against those who vocalize their disagreement and discontent with government policies.

Already, the powers-that-be are mobilizing to ensure that fusion centers have the ability to monitor and lockdown sectors of a community at a moment’s notice.

For instance, a 42,000-square-foot behemoth of a fusion center in downtown Washington is reportedly designed to “better prepare law enforcement for the next public health emergency or Jan. 6-style attack.” According to an agency spokeswoman, “Screens covering the walls of the new facility will show surveillance cameras around the city as well as social media accounts that may be monitored for threatening speech.”

It’s like a scene straight out of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian film Minority Report.

Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.

What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.

The American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick have all been rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.

In this way, the novel 1984 has become an operation manual for an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state in which ordinary Americans find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.

With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.

It’s also a setup ripe for abuse.

For instance, an investigative report by the Brennan Center found that “Over the last two decades, leaked materials have shown fusion centers tracking protestors and casting peaceful activities as potential threats. Their targets have included racial justice and environmental advocates, right-wing activists, and third-party political candidates.”

One fusion center in Maine was found to have been “illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a peacebuilding summer camp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently.”

This is how the government is turning a nation of citizens into suspects and would-be criminals.

This transformation is being driven by the Department of Homeland Security, the massive, costly, power-hungry bureaucracy working hard to ensure that the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.

Yet here’s the thing: you don’t have to do anything illegal or challenge the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.

In fact, all you need to do is live in the United States.

It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.

Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.

Combine predictive policing with surveillance, overcriminalization and precrime programs, then add in militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you’ll be lucky to escape with your life.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

July 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Ansarallah forces surround Saudi-controlled Marib: Report

The Cradle | July 12, 2023

Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement fired two ballistic missiles at the country’s central city of Marib on 11 July, coinciding with heavy mobilization of fighters and equipment outside the city, sources in the Saudi-backed government were quoted as saying.

A military official, Rashad al-Mekhlafi, told Arab News that two missiles landed in northern Marib, near a military base and a camp for internally displaced people.

“The missiles exploded in an open area in Marib without causing any injuries,” he said.

Sources in the Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) recently told Arab News that Ansarallah has been deploying large numbers of fighters and equipment in preparation for an offensive against the city, which had been halted last year by a truce that was implemented in April.

“They have assembled fighters and enormous military equipment, including armored vehicles, cannons, and drone launchers, on the southern, western, northern, and east-northern surroundings of Marib,” Mekhlafi said.

“We are prepared to repel any attack. We bolstered the front lines with newly graduated military battalions, including sniper and infantry forces. What the Houthis were unable to achieve in previous years would be possible today,” he added.

Another government source was anonymously quoted as saying that the “legitimate government is prepared to repel any attack even as Saudi, UN, American, and European mediators advise restraint.”

Following the implementation of a truce agreement in April last year, intense fighting in Marib ceased, and Ansarallah was unable to capture the city. However, border skirmishes and periodic clashes have since been common.

While significant areas of the energy-rich province are under Ansarallah’s control, the main city is fully in the hands of the Saudi-backed government and the forces loyal to it.

Omani-mediated negotiations have recently resulted in agreements between the Saudi-led coalition and Ansarallah, particularly regarding the blockades on Hodeidah port and Sanaa airport, as well as the payment of salaries of government employees.

Saudi Arabia, as a result, has significantly reduced the scale of its bombing campaign on the country.

Many factors continue to complicate peace in war-torn Yemen – particularly a widespread Emirati occupation of the country and its ports and oilfields, as well as the presence of US, UK, and French troops.

Some have suggested in recent months that Saudi and Emirati interests in Yemen have begun to diverge, claiming that the UAE aims to maintain control over the country’s resources and strategic ports and waterways while Riyadh is increasingly looking to find a way out of the war.

July 12, 2023 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Here’s why the US may never allow Ukraine to join NATO

Kiev has to face up to some bad news – for the first time, NATO enlargement has become a threat to Washington itself

By Timofey Bordachev | RT | July 12, 2023

The Ukrainian crisis marks the first time in history that the United States has exposed itself to serious risks in defining the limits of its military presence in Europe. Any genuine move by Washington to invite Kiev into NATO would imply a willingness to enter into a direct military confrontation with Russia. A less risky option, many believe, would be to promise the Vladimir Zelensky regime some special bilateral guarantees.

The NATO military bloc was created on the basis of the real division of Europe into zones of influence between the US and the USSR after the Second World War. As a result of the greatest armed confrontation in the history of mankind, the bulk of European states lost forever the ability to determine fundamental issues of their national policy. These included, first and foremost, defense and the ability to form alliances with other countries. Europe was divided between the real winners of the conflict – Moscow and Washington. Only Austria, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and a small part of Switzerland were outside their zone of dominance.

Both of the great powers had an informal right to determine the internal order of the territories under its control. This was because the countries concerned had lost their sovereignty as such. Even France, which continued to demonstrate freethinking for several decades, had no doubt on whose side it would fight in the event of a new global conflict.

NATO was created in 1949 to formally deprive American allies of the ability to make their own foreign policy decisions and military doctrines. In this respect, the alliance was no different from the Warsaw Pact that had emerged in the USSR’s sphere of influence.

The relationship between the United States and other NATO countries has never been an alliance in the traditional sense. In the last century, classic alliances ceased to exist altogether – the gap in military capabilities between the nuclear superpowers and every other country in the world became too great.

A military alliance between relative equals is possible, as it was until the middle of the last century, but nuclear weapons have made this impossible. The former sovereign states of Europe became a territorial base from which the great powers could negotiate in peace and act in war. The creation of NATO and the subsequent accession of countries such as Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany to the alliance was a formalization of the boundaries of US dominance that the USSR had already agreed to in bilateral relations.

After the Soviet collapse, extending American rule to Moscow’s former allies in Eastern Europe and even the Baltic republics was also not a policy that posed serious risks for Washington. Incidentally, this is why NATO has an informal rule of not admitting countries with unresolved territorial disputes with third states – the US has never been willing to occupy land whose ownership is disputed. NATO’s post-Cold War expansion was based on deception, with the US promising Moscow that it would not expand NATO to Russia’s borders. But, initially, Russia did not have the physical strength to resist. This meant that the US could occupy “unclaimed” states without the threat of immediate military conflict. The US approach to NATO remained true to the philosophy of the 1945 victors: there are no sovereign states, only controlled territories.

Once the decision was taken in Washington, it was only a matter of strategy to ensure that local governments made the “right” decisions. This was all the more so as the accession of new countries to NATO in the 1990s and 2000s was ‘packaged’ with the enlargement of the European Union. This gave local elites every reason to aspire to join the bloc, from which they expected tangible material benefits. For some – the Baltic states and Poland – membership in the club also provided the possibility of solving internal problems through an aggressive anti-Russian policy by fostering fear of the big neighbor to the east. In the Baltic states, the status of an American outpost was also used by elites to combat any local opposition from radical nationalists.

For the countries that joined the bloc, NATO became a guarantee of internal stability. Since the most important decisions for them were taken outside their national political systems, there was no reason for internal competition and no danger of serious destabilization.

Of course, no country is safe from minor internal political disturbances, such as those caused by a change of government – especially if the one in power is not liked by the US. But radical changes, which generally involve foreign policy issues, have become impossible.

In this sense, Western Europe increasingly resembles Latin America, where the quality of life of the population doesn’t have dramatic consequences for the elites. There, geographical proximity to the US has long been a reason for almost total American control. The only exceptions have been Cuba and, in recent decades, Venezuela. In Western Europe, because of Russia’s proximity, this control is of a formal nature, which should in principle rule out any surprises.

Joining NATO is an exchange of state sovereignty for the indefinite retention of power by the ruling elite. This is the secret of every political regime’s desire to join the bloc: it gives them the possibility of “immortality” in spite of any domestic or economic failures. The regimes in Eastern Europe and the Baltics immediately realized that they would not last long in power without being under Washington’s control – the break with Moscow and the peripheral position of their countries promised them too many problems. And the reason Finland joined NATO is that the local elites no longer have confidence in their ability to hold power on their own.

For the United States itself, as we have seen, the expansion of its presence has never posed any serious threat or risk. At least until now. This is precisely what is being pointed out by those in America who are calling for a careful approach to be taken in response to the demands of the authorities in Kiev for membership. A call which is supported by some members of the bloc.

It is understood that a military clash between Moscow and NATO would mean global nuclear war. Nevertheless, back in the Soviet period, the US believed that any conflict with the USSR could be confined to Europe and would not involve direct attacks on each other’s territory. There is reason to believe that Moscow felt the same way during the Cold War.

NATO’s eastward expansion after the Cold War was a case of acquiring territories for which no one wanted to fight. However, in the situation of Ukraine, for the US is not a question of gaining territory, but rather of taking it from a rival power that wants to keep Washington out. This has never happened in the history of NATO, and one can understand those in Western Europe and the US who are calling for serious consideration of the likely consequences.

Inviting Kiev to join NATO could mean something entirely new for American foreign policy – a willingness to fight a peer adversary like Russia. Throughout their history, Americans have shied away from this, using other players as battering rams willing to sacrifice and suffer for American interests. This was the case in both the First and Second World Wars. The most likely scenario, therefore, is that the US will limit itself to promising to address the issue of Ukraine and NATO after the Kiev regime has resolved its problems with Russia in one way or another. In the meantime, it will only be promised some “special” terms on a bilateral basis.

Timofey Bordachev is the Valdai Club Programme Director.

July 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Rep. Massie Promises Vote to Establish Audit Overseeing Ukraine War Money

The SIGUA office is opposed by President Biden but may be forced by a congressional vote

BY LEE FANG | JULY 12, 2023

The United States has allocated around $113 billion to Ukraine over the last seventeen months, soon to surpass the money spent on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II and quickly approaching the cost of twenty years of war and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

Despite this unprecedented spending, there is no overarching Special Inspector General to oversee the Ukraine funds to root out waste, fraud, and abuse.

Change may be on the horizon. “There will also be a vote this week,” Rep. Tom Massey, R-Ky., tweeted this morning, on establishing the IG for Ukraine.

The push for a Special Inspector General for Ukraine Assistance (SIGUA) has unfortunately become a partisan issue, another casualty of the negative polarization cycle in Washington, D.C. Last March, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., attempted to establish the audit office as an amendment. The bill splintered the Republican caucus in half, while every Democratic Senator, except Sens. Jon Tester, D-Montana, and Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, voted against it.

Surprisingly, notable opposition to establishing the office came from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Warren, before her rise to the Senate, became a national figure as an oversight official working alongside the SIGTARP, the auditor that oversaw the 2008 bank bailout funds. As Warren has touted in the past, SIGTARP, with relatively limited investigative resources, brought criminal charges against 144 individuals, obtained criminal convictions of 107 defendants, and obtained civil judgments and restitution totaling $4.3 billion.

The Afghanistan auditor, known as SIGAR, discovered even more breathtaking fraud and contractor abuse. The auditor found that U.S. Agency for International Development wasted $335 billion on a diesel power plant in the country that was over-budget and barely used, over $90 million on a program to place only 55 Afghan women in government jobs, and over $1 billion on “ghost schools” to build classrooms that were never utilized and left empty and dilapidated. The Pentagon reportedly “spent $6 million on a project that imported nine Italian goats to boost Afghanistan’s cashmere market” and $43 million on a single gas station.

The Afghanistan audit office was established by congressional Democrats after the 2006 midterm elections, during which the party gained power. Press releases from that era showcased the Democratic Party’s celebration of its efforts to create SIGAR. Progressive lawmakers like Sanders once championed SIGAR as a model for better oversight of the Defense Department.

Now, as President Joe Biden leads U.S. efforts to support Ukraine in its war and recovery against Russia, the tables have turned. Democrats have so far refused to cosponsor or propose a single bill in Congress to establish a similar SIGUA office to oversee Ukraine war money. The bills now before lawmakers include proposals from Rep. Wittman, R-Va.; Rep. Chip Roy, R-Tex.; Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.; and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

On Monday, the Biden administration directed lawmakers to vote against the creation of a SIGUA to oversee Ukraine money. The administration claims that new audit efforts are unnecessary, given that the government already has internal offices devoted to finding waste.

John Sopko, appointed by President Obama to head the SIGAR office for Afghanistan, has criticized the current administration’s position, noting that with such high levels of spending in Ukraine, a “whole of government” special audit office is vital. He also lashed out at officials who argue that new oversight might impede the flow of needed military or recovery assistance.

“Those are statements made by corrupt contractors, corrupt politicians, or politicians and contractors who don’t know anything about effective oversight,” said Sopko, speaking recently to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

The new effort to establish a SIGUA will likely be a recorded vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the military funding package now before Congress. Lawmakers are using the legislative proposal to tweak a number of Ukraine war issues, including an expected vote to block the Biden administration from supplying illegal cluster munitions to the Ukrainian military, as well as a push to force the Pentagon to disclose casualty figures for “both sides of the conflict” in Ukraine.

An updated list of amendments, released this morning from the House Armed Services Committee, suggests that the SIGUA amendment by Roy may be folded into a bloc vote.

I asked the offices of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for comment, over whether they have reconsidered their position on the Ukraine war money audit, but did not get a response.

July 12, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

US Legislator Tables Motion to Withdraw America from NATO

Sputnik – 12.07.2023

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia argues that the US should “only fund our country’s defense, not another country’s war.”

US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has proposed a series of amendments to the proposed fiscal year 2024 defense budget, including one calling on President Joe Biden to begin the country’s withdrawal from NATO and suspend supplies to Kiev until the Ukrainian conflict is over.

A US House special committee earlier held hearings on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which would provide some $886 billion in funding for US military needs. Lawmakers introduced hundreds of tabled amendments to the bill, including those initiated by scandal-plagued Congresswoman Green.

In particular, one of the proposed amendments mandates the American president to “take such steps as may be necessary” to withdraw the United States from NATO. The other imposes a ban on the allocation of US federal funds to Ukraine until Biden can confirm to Congress that the conflict in that country has been resolved through diplomatic means.

In addition, the congresswoman looked to amend the draft national defense budget to prohibit the delivery of fourth-generation F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles to Ukraine.

“The NDAA should only fund our country’s defense, not another country’s war,” Greene tweeted about her initiatives.

The day before, Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman from Florida, made a statement that he intended to co-sponsor an amendment to the budget that would prohibit Washington from sending cluster munitions to Ukraine or any other country. At the same time, he expressed confidence that the delivery of such munitions would not end the conflict in Ukraine.

July 12, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

China hits back at entire Western industries with rare-earth elements restrictions

By Drago Bosnic | July 12, 2023

It seems that China has finally had enough of foreign attempts to slow down or effectively stop its technological advances. The Asian giant is now making very concrete moves against the United States and its numerous vassals and satellite states, targeting their own high-tech industries, including their massive Military Industrial Complex (MIC). The troubled Biden administration (but also the previous one) has started an essentially suicidal economic confrontation with Beijing, particularly against its high-tech sector, by far the fastest growing in the world. This includes a US attack on Chinese semiconductor advances.

In response, last week Beijing decided to impose export restrictions on two rare-earth elements it produces in abundance (up to 95% of global production, depending on the source) – gallium and germanium. The two metals are heavily imported by the countries of the political West and its satellites, particularly for semiconductor production. It also seems that China’s timing for this was perfect, as it greatly strengthened its negotiating position, particularly as it came mere days before US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited China last week. In other words, Beijing is finally capitalizing on its absolute dominance in rare-earth mining and refining.

As such capacities are sorely lacking in the political West, China believes that this move would finally open up talks and “help convince” the US that any future restrictions on microchip and semiconductor development in China will be equally (if not more) painful for the political West. On July 7, The Wall Street Journal reported that Yellen and the Chinese Premier Li Qiang discussed economic competition that “would benefit both countries” and precisely this was almost certainly one of the hotly debated topics during closed doors talks. The US has a very clear and easy choice in this regard. Unfortunately, it’s extremely likely to choose confrontation once again.

China’s pushback is already yielding results, as the global prices of the aforementioned rare-earth elements have already spiked and continue to grow. Gallium soared 27% last week, traders who spoke with Bloomberg complained, adding that the gallium market, although well-supplied for the time being, will eventually be hit by export controls starting next month, causing a flurry of panic buying as traders are scrambling to purchase the metal in greater quantities than ever. On July 7, Fastmarkets data showed Gallium prices soared $43 on the week to $326 a kilogram. As of this writing, it has soared to at least $368 and is projected to grow further in August and beyond.

Starting on August 1, exporters must apply for special licenses with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to ship gallium and germanium abroad. This will greatly impact Washington DC, as data from the US Geological Survey shows that the belligerent thalassocracy imported an estimated 14,000 kilograms of germanium in 2022 while consuming approximately 30,000. In that same year, imports of gallium were around 12,000 kilograms, while consumption was an estimated 18,000 kilograms. It can only be expected that the US will try to stockpile these metals and try to diversify imports, while there are some indications that the troubled Biden administration might move to increase domestic mining and refining of rare-earth elements.

However, this will require time and effort that will not prevent price spikes that are already affecting entire industries across the political West. According to Bernard Dahdah, an analyst at Natixis, the move by China is far from being the “nuclear option that it could have chosen”, but it’s the first “warning shot”, emphasizing that “China does control other metals through which it can inflict more severe consequences”. And this is certainly true. China’s dominance in rare-earth elements extraction and production is well known and while Beijing never intended to “weaponize” this, it is now being forced to do so as the US and its vassals and satellite states are targeting China’s economic growth and technological innovations.

In the meantime, the Pentagon seems to be in a quiet panic. On July 7, it announced that it’s invoking the Defense Production Act to boost the domestic mining and processing capacity of the two metals. This is because gallium is one of the key elements used in the production of advanced AESA (active electronically scanned array) radars used in modern fighter jets, air defense systems, ground and sea-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) equipment, etc. These radars heavily depend on the foundational materials of gallium arsenide (GaAs) and gallium nitride (GaN), with US MIC giants such as RTX (formerly Raytheon) and Northrop Grumman on the brink of launching new systems that primarily rely on GaN.

Such systems were supposed to provide superior performance over the older GaAs-based AESA radars and this advanced technology has already started being implemented into the radars for F/A-18E/F “Super Hornet” carrier-based fighters, as well as the deeply troubled F-35 stealth fighter jets. This will affect not only Washington DC, but also its vassals and satellite states that are taking part in US aggression in the Asia-Pacific, where they aim to “contain” China and curb its growth and development. The US (and now also the EU) routinely sends its fighter jets, strategic bombers and warships to the South and East China Seas, deliberately provoking the Asian giant.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

July 12, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Judge Denies Biden Administration’s Attempt To Halt Injunction Against Censorship

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2023

On Monday, a federal judge from the Western District of Louisiana, Terry Doughty, upheld his ruling, preventing the Biden administration from engaging in specific types of communication with key social media entities.

The initial request to lift the ban on these interactions came from the administration on July 6th, but has now been met with refusal by Doughty. The judge had previously instituted this ban in response to a lawsuit by the Republican state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who are challenging the manner in which government agencies cooperate with social media behemoths to curb the propagation of inaccurate or misleading information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and election security.

Judge Doughty reasoned that the chances of success for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were high, and therefore upheld his order. The judge also rejected the notion that the administration would suffer any “irreparable injury” due to the communication restrictions between government agencies and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

“The First Amendment free speech rights of Plaintiffs by far outweighs the Defendants’ interests,” Doughty said in his judgment.

Doughty also dismissed the administration’s assertion that his preliminary injunction issued on July 4 was too extensive. He held that the injunction was specifically designed to block only those types of collaboration with social media companies that could infringe upon users’ “protected free speech.” He further opined, “Defendant officials can be and should be trained to recognize what speech is protected and what speech is not prior to working with social-media companies to suppress or delete postings.”

While the ruling restricts certain types of interaction, it does not ban all communication between the government and social media corporations. Doughty’s injunction allows for the continuation of meetings between the government and social media companies, specifically on subjects like cyberattacks.

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

US House Panel Reportedly Concludes FBI Helped Ukrainian Intel Censor US Accounts

Sputnik – 11.07.2023

WASHINGTON – The FBI helped the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) censor social media accounts based in the United States as part of an effort to combat alleged Russian disinformation, US media reported, citing a US House Judiciary Committee report.

The FBI forwarded Meta an SBU-provided list of accounts flagged for removal, based on their alleged involvement in spreading disinformation, the Monday report detailed. However, the list included some US-based accounts, including the US State Department’s own Russian-language Instagram account.

The FBI and SBU marked authentic accounts belonging to the US government and journalists in an effort to have them censored, the report said.

The Judiciary Committee’s allegations are reportedly based on information gained through subpoenas sent to Meta and Alphabet – the parent company of Google and YouTube.

Google was inundated with censorship requests following the launch of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the report said, citing a senior Google cybersecurity official. The requests primarily came from the Ukrainian government, other Eastern European governments, the EU and European Commission, the employee reportedly said.

The judiciary panel’s report was developed alongside the subcommittee on the weaponization of the US government, which is investigating governmental abuse of authority and collaboration with private companies to suppress certain viewpoints.

The FBI’s actions constitute unconstitutional misconduct and endanger national security, the lawmakers’ report said. The subject is expected to arise during a committee hearing with FBI chief Christopher Wray later this week.

The allegations mirror those made earlier this year in the so-called “Twitter Files” release, which featured an email demonstrating collaboration between the FBI and SBU to forward censorship requests to Twitter.

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Decision to Send Cluster Bombs to Ukraine Will Drag US Close to WW III – Trump

Sputnik – 11.07.2023

WASHINGTON – Former President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that President Joe Biden’s recent decision to supply Ukraine cluster munitions drags the United States closer to World War III.

“Joe Biden should not be dragging us further toward World War III by sending cluster munitions to Ukraine – he should be trying to END the war and stop the horrific death and destruction being caused by an incompetent administration,” Trump said in a press release.

Trump further said unexploded cluster munitions will be killing innocent civilians for decades to come, long after the war.

Moreover, Trump said Biden should especially be seeking to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine after admitting the United States is running low on 155mm artillery shells it is supplying Ukraine, which is the reason it is reserving to providing cluster munitions.

The United States should certainly not be sending Ukraine its last stockpiles at a time when its own arsenals, according to Biden, are being diminished, Trump said.

Last week, Biden said the United States will provide cluster munitions to Ukraine for a temporary period while the US industrial base produces more 155mm artillery shells. He explained that he consulted with US allies and partners about his decision and that they understood the reason.

July 11, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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