Major oil producer fears ‘apocalyptic’ impact of Russia sanctions
RT | May 26, 2023
The stability of oil supplies from Kazakhstan to the global market relies on transit through Russia, the country’s ambassador to the US, Yerzhan Ashikbayev, has stated. He added that any disruption to flows caused by sanctions could trigger a dire scenario.
“We proceed from the mutual interest of all parties, the interest in the stability of the global market, in the stability of supplies. This is vital both for the functioning of our [Kazakh] economy and for the entire global economy,” the envoy told RIA Novosti on Thursday on the sidelines of the Trans-Caspian Forum in Washington.
When asked whether he sees any risk that sanctions could make it difficult or impossible for Kazakhstan to transit oil, the diplomat described it as “some kind of apocalyptic scenario.”
Kazakhstan supplies oil to the global market via one of the world’s largest pipelines, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).
A multinational project, the CPC involves Russia, Kazakhstan and a consortium of leading oil companies. The pipeline system mainly collects crude from the large oil fields of western Kazakhstan, but also from Russia. Its total capacity is over 1 million barrels of oil per day, which is 2.3% of global seaborne crude trade.
The CPC delivers around 1.2 million barrels of crude oil daily from Kazakhstan to Europe, and for subsequent shipment to the US. The pipeline’s operations were interrupted last year by storm damage to equipment at a Black Sea terminal, with the disruption sparking concerns of a global supply crisis.
According to Ashikbayev, the CPC remains an important project for Kazakhstan, accounting for 80% of the country’s crude oil exports.
Kazakhstan has strengthened its oil and gas ties with Russia despite the threat of secondary sanctions from the US and EU.
US might use credit default to attack competitors
By Ahmed Adel | May 26, 2023
On May 22, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the country may be unable to service its debt by June 1 unless Congress raises its ceiling or suspends it. In turn, President Joe Biden ruled out the declaration of default. At the same time, despite all the predictions of doom and gloom, the US could benefit from a default, especially to wreak havoc on the international economy and competitors.
In the US, the amount of public debt is limited by law. Currently, it has reached $31.4 trillion. It is up to the US Congress to raise the national debt ceiling, but this year the issue became a major contention between Republicans and Democrats. The Republican party, with a majority in the House of Representatives, set a condition: it will vote to raise the ceiling if the Democratic government accepts significant cuts in budget spending.
Specifically, the Republicans propose cutting tax credits for the purchase of electric cars and the installation of solar panels, as well as reducing public spending on the repayment of educational loans. For Democrats, if they want to win the 2024 presidential election on their terms, these conditions are unacceptable.
No economic reasons for default prevent raising the public debt ceiling. Still, there are political reasons. The Republican majority in the US House of Representatives want to bring greater accountability to the Biden Administration, which has been making economic decisions without consulting Congress. The Republicans hope to catch the Biden Administration, the Federal Treasury, the State Department, and the Defense Department violating American law.
There is a low chance of default in Washington, but this does not rule it out entirely because a default can be used as a financial weapon capable of unleashing a global economic crisis which will also affect the US’s main competitors. It is much easier and more politically legitimate to default in the context of increasing global military and political tensions. For this reason, it cannot be entirely ruled out that Biden will pursue such a path.
Likewise, the US could use default to influence other countries. Despite the enormous debt figure of $31.4 trillion, the external debt is only $7 trillion. Consequently, some countries —which Washington will want to target economically and geopolitically— may be the victims of this default.
Even so, the main thing for the US is not to let doubts about the sustainability of its economy and debt loom. If a default occurs, it will be more difficult for the US to obtain loans.
For this reason, the probability of default is low because many tools exist to avoid it. Article 14 of the Constitution could be invoked, which states that the US debt cannot be called into question. Also, the Federal Reserve could easily double its balance sheet and buy all foreign debt.
On May 24, the US House of Representatives speaker, Kevin McCarthy, acknowledged that the Republicans and the White House maintain substantial discrepancies on the increase in the public debt limit requested by the Biden administration. The senior official expects to negotiate with the president daily until an agreement is reached.
Even if Republicans and Democrats overcome the impasse, it is recalled that in 2011, the last time the two parties had such fiscal odds, the most severe turmoil happened after a deal was struck, which saw shares fall the most steeply since the 2008 financial crisis. This was also amid worries about the impact of the spending cuts made to get the agreement and the implications of a downgrade in America’s bond rating by one credit rating agency.
Fitch Ratings on May 24 put the US on a negative watch – the first step toward a downgrade in the country’s rating by the major credit ratings firm. The credit agency cited “increased political partisanship” and weak governance compared to other countries that hold its top rating.
“The brinkmanship over the debt ceiling, failure of the US authorities to meaningfully tackle medium-term fiscal challenges that will lead to rising budget deficits and a growing debt burden signal downside risks to US creditworthiness,” the company said.
All this signals that the US is on the economic brink. What is most alarming, though, is that if the US was to default, it might not do so quietly and calmly but instead use an opportunity to bring down the world economy to hurt enemies and partners alike.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
IRS Opened Investigation Into Journalist Matt Taibbi On Christmas Eve, Following Government Censorship Reporting
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | May 25, 2023
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) examined independent journalist Matt Taibbi’s 2018 tax returns on December 24, 2022, which was a Saturday and Christmas Eve. It was soon after Taibbi published the first batch of Twitter Files, internal Twitter documents exposing how federal government agencies pressured Twitter to censor content.
The timing raised eyebrows and many believed it to be an act of retaliation for sounding the alarm on government-backed censorship.
The House Judiciary Committee obtained the details after the IRS was criticized for visiting Taibbi’s home in March about the tax filing, on the same day the journalist testified before Congress about the Twitter Files.
In a letter to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, chair of the Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said the documents the agency provided “raise more questions than they answer.”
The IRS defended the review by saying it was trying to determine that Taibbi was not the victim of identity fraud. It further claimed that in 2019, it wrote to Taibbi to explain that there was a discrepancy in his 2018 tax return. However, the documents obtained by the committee show that the IRS opened a review of the tax return on Christmas Eve last year.
Additionally, Taibbi did not owe the IRS. In fact, he was owed a refund, according to the documents obtained by the Committee.
“The IRS asserted to the Committee that it sent a letter to Mr. Taibbi on October 24, 2019 — nine days after Mr. Taibbi filed his 2018 tax return — asking Mr. Taibbi to verify his return because it met identity theft criteria and could not be processed until he confirmed,” Jordan wrote.
“The IRS alleged that it sent a second letter to Mr. Taibbi on March 23, 2020.
“However, according to Mr. Taibbi, neither he nor his accountant received either of these letters or any other notification that there was an issue with his 2018 tax return — that is until the IRS conducted a field visit at Mr. Taibbi’s home three years later.
“The IRS also failed to produce these purported letters to the Committee.”
Jordan added: “The IRS’s production shows that the IRS opened its examination of Mr. Taibbi’s 2018 tax return on December 24, 2022. Not only was this date Christmas Eve and a Saturday, but it also happened to be three weeks after he published the first Twitter Files detailing government abuses and the same day that Mr. Taibbi published the ninth segment of the Twitter Files, detailing how federal government agencies ‘from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA’ coordinated to censor and coerce speech on various social media platforms.”
In March, Taibbi said that an IRS agent visited his home in New Jersey and left a note telling him to contact the agency.
Congress To Investigate WHO Plans To Use “Listening Surveillance Systems” To Identify “Misinformation”
Rep. Chris Smith wants an investigation into the World Health Organizations plans to surveil speech and more
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 25, 2023
If you’ve been following our reporting on the issue, you’ll already know that the new World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic prevention initiative, the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET), recommends using “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “misinformation.” But as more people are learning about how unelected bodies are being used to suppress speech and potentially override sovereignty, it’s starting to get more pushback.
According to documents from the UN agency, PRET aims to “guide countries in pandemic planning” and work to “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The PRET document describes misinformation as a “health threat,” and refers to it as an “infodemic.”
“Infodemic is the overabundance of information – accurate or not – which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities. The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness,” the document states.
However, it continues to recommend invasive methods of countering the spread of misinformation.
“Establish and invest in resources for social listening surveillance systems and capacities to identify concerns as well as rumors and misinformation,” the WHO wrote in the PRET document.
“To build trust, it’s important to be responsive to needs and concerns, to relay timely information, and to train leaders and HCWs in risk communications principles and encourage their application.
Communication should be tailored to the community of interest, focusing on and prioritizing vulnerable groups.
“New tools and approaches for social listening have been developed using new technologies such as artificial intelligence to listen to population concerns on social media (such as the Platform EARS developed by WHO).”
The document also recommends testing these tactics during “acute respiratory events including seasonal influenza.”
“Develop and implement communication and behavior change strategies based on infodemic insights, and test them during acute respiratory events including seasonal influenza. This includes implementing infodemic management across sectors, and having a coordinated approach with other actors, including academia, civil society, and international agencies,” it explains.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) is holding a Congressional hearing on the WHO’s pandemic accord.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, recently met with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the WHO, to discuss the accord and the “critical role” of the US “in global health security.”
In his opening remarks at the World Health Assembly, Ghebreyesus said: “I urge you to deliver the pandemic accord on time, as a generational commitment. The next pandemic will not wait for us. We must be ready.”
The Accord’s preliminary document, zero draft, was first published in February.
In March, the Biden administration’s envoy at the negotiations, Pamela Hamamoto, said that the administration is “committed to the Pandemic Accord, to form a major component of the global health architecture for generations to come.”
“The American people have a right to know exactly what the Biden Administration is negotiating at the WHO, especially as the President remains silent and fails to reassure us that he will protect our Constitution from bureaucrats at this troubled United Nations body,” Rep. Smith said.
Smith is particularly concerned that the Accord could undermine the sovereignty of the US over its healthcare infrastructure.
“The zero-draft WHO pandemic treaty starts off with very harsh criticism of the United States and the international community by calling it a ‘catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity in response to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic,’” Rep. Smith noted. “Article 4 of the treaty pays lip service to sovereignty and then completely overcomes that lip service by saying, ‘provided that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to their peoples and other countries,’ which empowers the WHO to step in and prescribe what each country would do.”
During the hearing, Smith plans to ask Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the contents of the accord’s zero draft.
“Under absolutely no circumstances should the Biden Administration surrender American sovereignty to the World Health Organization and allow the voice of the American people and consent of the governed to be subjugated to dictates of an agenda-driven global administrative bureaucracy,” Smith insisted.
Black Lives Matter hitting hard times
RT | May 24, 2023
Black Lives Matter is spending money at double the rate it takes in revenue as donations to the activist group plummet and management costs rise, causing its asset base to shrink.
Donations to BLM’s Global Network Foundation tumbled to less than $9.3 million in its latest fiscal year, ended on June 30, down a staggering 88% from the preceding 12 months, according to state tax filings. Revenue was even lower, at $8.5 million, amid investment losses. The group’s spending totaled over $17 million, or twice as much as it took in.
The documents were first obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, showing that the financial bonanza that BLM reaped during its 2020 protests against police brutality is now dwindling. Net assets dropped 28% in the latest fiscal year, declining to $30.2 million.
Part of the problem is that even as the foundation throttles back its activities – expenses for “program services” plunged 65% from a year earlier, to $11.5 million – it’s spending even more on management. Those costs rose 36% last year to $5.1 million.
The group’s leaders have also been accused of siphoning off donations for their personal gain. A sister organization, Black Lives Matter Grassroots, claimed in a lawsuit that foundation leader Shalomyah Bowers diverted $10 million for his own use. His predecessor, co-founder Patrisse Cullors, resigned in May 2021 after being accused of living a lavish lifestyle on BLM’s wealth. She reportedly purchased four homes for a combined $3.2 million while heading the group.
The Cullors family continues to benefit financially from BLM. The documents showed that her brother, graffiti artist Paul Cullors, received $140,000 in compensation last year in his role as “head of security.” In addition, his security firm was paid more than $750,000. Filings for the previous fiscal year showed that the foundation paid a company owned by Damon Turner, father of Patrisse Cullors’ child, nearly $970,000 for “live production, design and media” services.
An auditors’ review of the group’s finances reportedly found that Bowers’ company had been paid nearly $1.7 million over the preceding two years for “management and consulting services.”
Cicley Gay was brought in as the BLM foundation’s chairwoman in April 2022, at least partly to help sort out the group’s finances. She reportedly had difficulties managing her own finances, filing for bankruptcy protection from creditors three times between 2005 and 2016.
Cullors and two other activists launched the BLM movement in 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who killed black teenager Trayvon Martin during a February 2012 scuffle while serving as a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Florida.
BLM raked in donations from Microsoft, Amazon and other corporations in the summer of 2020, after the killing of black Minneapolis resident George Floyd by police sparked a wave of protests around the country and overseas. Cullors referred to the huge cash influx as “white guilt money.” Many of the demonstrations escalated into riots, leaving many Americans injured and dead and causing billions of dollars in property damage.
LinkedIn Locks Out Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Censors Him For “Misinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | May 25, 2023
In yet another development that raises serious questions about the suppression of election candidates during a presidential campaign, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has announced he has been locked out of his LinkedIn account for his comments on climate change and President Biden’s relationship with China.
“I was a bit surprised to get an email noting that my LinkedIn account had been shut down,” Ramaswamy said in a video. “I wondered why, ‘cause actually a number of friends texted me saying they follow me on LinkedIn. That’s how they keep up. They weren’t able to find me anymore. And so when I had my team get in touch with LinkedIn, here’s the response that we got.”
Ramaswamy, went on to explain the excuse that LinkedIn gave: “Your account was restricted for sharing content that contains misleading or inaccurate information,” Ramaswamy said. “They said that it was one video, a video where in the video I said the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is playing the Biden administration like a Chinese mandolin. China has weaponized the woke pandemic to stay one step ahead and it’s working.”
Ramaswamy said his second offense was saying, “if the climate religion was really about climate change, then they’d be worried about shifting oil production from the US to places like Russia and China. Yet the climate, religion and its apostles and the ESG movement have a very different objective.”
And Ramaswamy’s third offense on the Microsoft-owned platform was saying that, “the climate agenda is a lie. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity.”
Ramaswamy, a notable biotech entrepreneur turned political candidate, is no stranger to controversy and was little fazed by the censorship for himself. But he talked about how he’s more prominent and other people likely won’t be so lucky when they get censored by tech giants.
“Now, I gotta kick out of this, I’m gonna be honest. I’m sure that we’re gonna get this escalated because I’m a US presidential candidate,” he said. “We have the connectivity to the people that we need to talk to to be able to get my LinkedIn account back. But I’m not bringing this about because it’s about me. I’m bringing this up because if they can do it to me, they can really do it to anybody for making statements about the climate change movement and agenda in this country that are grounded in fact, and then express an opinion based on those facts to make a statement about Biden’s relationships with China and criticize his China policies as a result.”
Ramaswamy’s outspoken views on issues such as big tech, and identity politics have drawn both criticism and support. However, it’s his commentary on climate change that has landed him in hot water with LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking platform.
Microsoft is currently facing scrutiny for its lack of transparency with its partnership with the Global Disinformation Index, a controversial censorship network with state ties. Microsoft is dragging its feet regarding requests for transparency about how it operates its censorship practices and what ties it has to state-backed groups when doing so.
EXPOSED: Biggest FBI Spy Scandal of the Year
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | May 25, 2023
A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion released last week revealed that the FBI violated the constitutional rights of 278,000 Americans in 2020 and 2021 with warrantless searches of their email and other electronic data. For each American that the FISA court permitted the FBI to target, the FBI illicitly surveiled almost a thousand additional Americans. This is only the latest federal surveillance scandal stretching back to the years after 9/11.
The FISA law was enacted in 1978 to curb the rampant illegal political spying exposed during the Richard Nixon administration. After the 9/11 attacks, the George W. Bush administration decided that the president was entitled to order the National Security Agency to vacuum up Americans’ emails and other data without a warrant. After The New York Times exposed the surveillance scheme in late 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that “the president has the inherent authority under the Constitution, as commander in chief, to engage in this kind of activity.” Gonzales apparently forgot the congressional impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. The Bush White House also asserted that the September 2001 “Authorization to Use Military Force” resolution Congress passed entitled Bush to tap Americans’ phones. But if the authorization actually allowed the president to do whatever he thinks necessary on the homefront, Americans had been living under martial law.
Federal judges disagreed with Bush’s prerogative to obliterate American privacy. The result was a 2008 FISA reform that authorized the feds to continue commandeering vast amounts of data. But under Section 702 of that law, the FBI was permitted to conduct warrantless searches of that stash for Americans’ data only to seek foreign intelligence information or evidence of crime.
President Barack Obama responded to the new law by sharply expanding the NSA’s seizures of Americans’ personal data. The Washington Post characterized Obama’s first term as “a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection.” Obama’s Justice Department thwarted court challenges to the surveillance, thereby permitting the White House to claim that it was respecting Americans’ rights and privacy.
Edward Snowden blew the roof off the surveillance state with his disclosures starting in June 2013. But there was no reason to presume that federal crime sprees were not occurring before Snowden blew the whistle. Professor David Rothkopf explained in 2013 how FISA’s Section 702 worked:
“What if government officials came to your home and said that they would collect all of your papers and hold onto them for safe-keeping, just in case they needed them in the future. But don’t worry… they wouldn’t open the boxes until they had a secret government court order… sometime, unbeknownst to you.”
The 2008 FISA amendments and Section 702 snared vast numbers of hapless Americans in federal surveillance nets. The Washington Post analyzed a cache of 160,000 secret email conversations/threads (provided by Snowden) that the NSA intercepted and found that nine out of ten account holders were not the “intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.” Almost half of the individuals whose personal data was inadvertently commandeered were U.S. citizens. The files “tell stories of love and heartbreak, illicit sexual liaisons, mental-health crises, political and religious conversions, financial anxieties and disappointed hopes,” the Post noted. If an American citizen wrote an email in a foreign language, NSA analysts assumed they were foreigners who could be surveilled without a warrant.
Snowden also leaked secret court rulings that proved that the FISA Court had “created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans,” The New York Times reported in 2013. FISA judges rubberstamped massive seizures of Americans’ personal data that flagrantly contradicted Supreme Court rulings on the Fourth Amendment. The Times noted that the FISA court had “become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues,” and almost always giving federal agencies all the power they sought.
Unfortunately, Snowden’s courageous disclosures did not stop the outrages. The heavily-redacted 2022 opinion finally released Friday revealed that the FBI wrongly searched almost 300,000 Americans’ online lives. And this was on top of the roughly 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans in 2021 via Section 702 that the FBI conducted that the Justice Department claimed was justified.
The latest disclosure from the FISA court signals that the FBI presumed that any American suspected of supporting the January 6, 2021 protests forfeited his constitutional rights. Roughly 2,000 pro-Trump protestors (including an unknown number of undercover agents and informants) entered the Capitol that day. But an FBI analyst exploited FISA to unjustifiably conduct searches on 23,132 Americans citizens “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence,” according to FISA Chief Judge Rudolph Contreras. The court ruling did not disclose the standards (if any) the FBI used for its warrantless January 6 searches. Did Twitter retweets suffice?
The FBI exploited FISA to target 19,000 donors to the campaign of a candidate who challenged an incumbent member of Congress. An FBI analyst justified the warrantless searches by claiming “the campaign was a target of foreign influence,” but even the Justice Department concluded that almost all of those searches violated FISA rules. Apparently, merely reciting the phrase “foreign influence” suffices to nullify Americans’ rights nowadays. (In March, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL) revealed that he had been wrongly targeted by the FBI in numerous FISA 702 searches.)
The FBI conducted secret searches of the emails and other data of 133 people arrested during the protests after the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
The FBI conducted 656 warrantless searches to see if they could find any derogatory information on people they planned to use as informants. The FBI also routinely conducted warrantless searches on “individuals listed in police homicide reports, including victims, next-of-kin, witnesses, and suspects.” Even the Justice Department complained those searches were improper.
Judge Contreras lamented: “Compliance problems with the querying of Section 702 information have proven to be persistent and widespread.” The FBI responded to the damning report with piffle:
“We are committed to continuing this work and providing greater transparency into the process to earn the trust of the American people and advance our mission of safeguarding both the nation’s security, and privacy and civil liberties, at the same time.”
In 2002, the FISA court revealed that FBI agents had false or misleading claims in 75 cases and a top FBI counterterrorism official was prohibited from ever appearing before the court again.
In 2005, FISA chief judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented; that never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. So FBI agents continued to have a license to exploit FISA secrecy to lie to the judges.
In 2017, a FISA court decision included a 10-page litany of FBI violations, which “ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight.”
In 2018, a FISA ruling condemned the FBI for ignoring limits on “unreasonable searches.” As The New York Times noted, “F.B.I. agents had carried out several large-scale searches for Americans who generically fit into broad categories… so long as agents had a reason to believe that someone within that category might have relevant information. But [under FISA] there has to be an individualized reason to search for any particular American’s information.” The FBI treated the FISA repository like the British agents treated general warrants in the 1760s, helping spark the American Revolution.
In April 2021, the FISA court reported that the FBI conducted warrantless searches of the data trove for “domestic terrorism,” “public corruption and bribery,” “health care fraud,” and other targets—including people who notified the FBI of crimes and even repairmen entering FBI offices. If you sought to report a crime to the FBI, an FBI agent may have illegally surveilled your email. Even if you merely volunteered for the FBI “Citizens Academy” program, the FBI may have illegally tracked all your online activity. As I tweeted after that report came out, “The FISA court has gone from pretending FBI violations don’t occur to pretending violations don’t matter. Only task left is to cease pretending Americans have any constitutional right to privacy.” FISA court Chief Judge James Boasberg lamented “apparent widespread violations” of the legal restrictions for FBI searches but shrugged them off and permitted the scouring of Americans’ personal data to continue.
The FISA court treats the FBI like liberal judges treat serial shoplifters. Going back more than 20 years, FISA court rulings have complained of FBI agents lying to the court and abusing the law. As long as the FBI periodically promises to repent, the FISA court entitles them to continue decimating the Fourth Amendment.
Federal intelligence agencies refuse to even estimate how many Americans’ private data has been rounded up in government databases. There is no reason to presume that the feds have disclosed all their FISA wrongdoing. Prior to Edward Snowden’s leaks, the feds probably admitted less than 1% of federal surveillance abuses.
Section 702 will expire this year unless Congress reauthorizes that provision of the law. But the FBI’s perpetual crime wave has created a hornet’s nest on Capitol Hill. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) asked: “How much longer must we watch the FBI brazenly spy on Americans before we strip it of its unchecked authority?” Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) declared, “We need a pound of flesh. We need to know someone has been fired.” Even Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, opposes reauthorizing Section 702 without fundamental reforms.
But will Congress finally stop the federal spying spree on Americans? As I tweeted on December 27, 2012, “FISA Renewal: Only a fool would expect members of Congress to give a damn about his rights and liberties.” Without radical reform, FISA should be renamed the “Trust Me, Chumps!” Surveillance Act.
Jim Bovard is the Junior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. He is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
The Prince And The Spy
By Whitney Webb | The Last American Vagabond | May 12, 2023
A TLAV investigation has found that Erik Prince, the man behind the Blackwater mercenary group, recently teamed up with an Israeli spy, creating a front company with her to help Israeli defense technology providers exploit loopholes and sell their products to the American military.
For years, Erik Prince – the founder of mercenary firm Blackwater (now Academi) – has been a major source of controversy. Ever since he left Blackwater over a decade ago, Prince has appeared in the news for pushing to privatize several wars, his ties to former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns, his violation of international arms embargoes and his unusually close ties with Project Veritas, among other notable events and connections.
However, some of Prince’s antics in recent years have not yet made it into the news – namely his decision to team up with an Israeli spy to build a very secretive company that has – until now – evaded scrutiny. That company, Comframe Solutions, appears to operate as an intelligence front and explicitly targets parts of the American military involved in highly sensitive combat operations. As this investigation will show, Prince’s partner in Comframe – Lital Leshem – has been tied to a series of apparent, and admitted, Israeli intelligence front companies, several of which have a focus on technology. Yet Prince and his close associate Chris Burgess – Comframe’s supposed president – have done everything they can to hide their association with the incredibly secretive company. Why might that be and what exactly is Comframe up to?
From “Army Brat” to Cyber Spy
Lital Leshem was raised as an “army brat” in Reut, Israel and Pennsylvania, USA. She later enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as she was “truly devoted to safeguarding the State of Israel.” She quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Operations Officer in the IDF of the besieged Gaza Strip and later becoming a Major, a position she continues to hold to this date through her “reserve duty activities.” According to her LinkedIn, she served in Israeli military intelligence from 2005 to 2011 and, more specifically, served in its signals intelligence unit – Unit 8200. She later attended IDC Herzliya, an Israeli university deeply tied to its military and intelligence apparatus. There, she met Amir Elichai and the two would co-create the company Reporty, which later became Carbyne911 – today known only as Carbyne.
Carbyne was originally founded as Reporty in 2014 by Leshem, Elichai and Alex Dizengof. Leshem and Elichai are Unit 8200 veterans, while Dizengof previously worked for Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office. Before it was revealed that Jeffrey Epstein had poured at least 1 million dollars into the company at the behest of his close associate Ehud Barak, Cabryne’s board of directors – which Barak chaired – included the former commander of Unit 8200, Pinchas Buchris, as well as Epstein associate turned venture capitalist Nicole Junkermann. In the wake of the Epstein scandal, Buchris, Barak and Junkerman, among others, were removed from the board and were largely replaced with veterans and former heads of American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Leshem had left the company in 2017, but has continued to own shares in the company.
Carbyne is a Next-Generation 9-11 (NG911) platform and the explicit goal of NG911 is for all 911 systems nationwide to become interconnected. It is currently active throughout the United States, its main target market. Its software has been criticized due to “serious privacy concerns” about the amount of information it harvests from smartphones that call a 911 call center running Carbyne’s software. For instance, Carbyne’s smartphone app extracts the following information from the phones on which it is installed:
“Device location, video live-streamed from the smartphone to the call center, text messages in a two-way chat window, any data from a user’s phone if they have the Carbyne app and ESInet, and any information that comes over a data link, which Carbyne opens in case the caller’s voice link drops out.”
The potential for Carbyne as a tool for mass surveillance has been extensively reported by Narativ, MintPress News and other outlets. In addition, Carbyne stores all data on past calls and events in order to “enabl[e] decision makers to accurately analyze the past and present behavior of their callers, react accordingly, and in time predict future patterns.” As a result, Carbyne – along with other Israeli intelligence-connected companies seeking to dominate the American “public safety” market – has the potential to facilitate controversial “predictive policing”, i.e. pre-crime, policies.
In addition to Carbyne, Leshem also worked for Black Cube, which has since been removed from her LinkedIn. There, she had been the firms Director of Marketing. Black Cube was specifically outed as an Israeli intelligence front organization in a 2019 article published by Calcalist Tech. That same article also contains the stunning revelation that many Israeli companies, including Black Cube, have been founded as fronts for intelligence operations since 2012. It states that “since 2012, cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that in some cases were built for this exact purpose.” The article also adds that:
“In some cases, managers of development projects in the Israeli military and intelligence arms were encouraged to form their own companies which then took over the [military and/or intelligence] project.”
With Leshem having worked for one company already known to be a product of this deliberate policy, it is worth scrutinizing Carbyne as being one such front, especially considering the common tie of Ehud Barak to both companies. In addition, Leshem has also worked for another company tied to Barak that has been described as worse than the NSO Group, which produced the notorious Pegasus software. Called Toka, its top executives – like Carbyne – are largely veterans of Israeli’s Unit 8200, where Leshem also served, or former commanders of Israeli military cyber operations.
Toka, which Ehud Barak founded in 2018, is very, very likely to be one of the front organizations produced as a result of the aforementioned 2012 Israeli intelligence policy. The company is directly partnered with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and other Israeli intelligence and security agencies since its founding and the company only sells its products to countries that are considered allies of Israel. It purports to be able to hack, not just smartphones, but any device with internet connectivity, such as doorbell cameras and other “smart” devices. As will be noted later in this article, Leshem herself has noted that Toka has a relationship with the CIA.
After being involved with a series of Israeli intelligence fronts and her enduring ties to Israeli military intelligence through her “reserve duty activities”, Leshem was courted by a surprising figure – Erik Prince, war profiteer and founder of the controversial mercenary outfit Blackwater.
Partnering with Prince
Leshem says that she met Prince after she “randomly stumbled across his path and joined his team.” There, per her website, she “managed his business portfolio and his global investments.” Her LinkedIn lists her as serving as the executive director of global business development of Frontier Resource Group (FRG) from 2018 to 2021. Frontier Resource Group was founded by Prince and is “an Africa-dedicated investment firm partnered with major Chinese enterprises, including at least one state-owned resource giant that is keen to pour money into the resource-rich continent,” according to the South China Post. It not only operates in Africa, but also other countries due to its contracts to support China’s One Belt One Road initiative, which were signed in 2019.
FRG is a subsidiary of Frontier Services Group (FSG), which Prince also founded. In 2013, he sold a majority share of FSG to the China International Trust Investment Corporation (CITIC), a state-owned Chinese investment company that is among the largest of the country’s state-run conglomerates. CITIC, during the mid-1990s, was chaired by Wang Jun, who doubled as China’s chief arms dealer and was a key figure in the “Chinagate” scandal of the Clinton White House. As detailed in One Nation Under Blackmail, that scandal involved the illicit transfer of American military technology to China and the illicit transfer of Chinese weapons, whose sale in the US was banned during this time, into the United States. Mark Middleton, a White House aide, and Jeffrey Epstein are some of the names apparently involved with those activities. “Chinagate” appears to have been a joint venture between factions of the CIA and Israeli intelligence and has never been properly investigated by federal authorities. It seems that Prince, who was (and may still be) a CIA asset, and Leshem have engaged in similar activities via FRG/FSG. For example, TRTWorld reported that Leshem is “speculated” to have transferred Carbyne’s technology to China via her role at FRG and her connection to Prince. China launched an app that was nearly analogous to Carbyne, but more explicitly focused on surveillance, at the same time that Carbyne launched its first 911 call system in the United States.
In addition, TRTWorld notes, the company DarkMatter, a UAE surveillance and intelligence group that employs former US intelligence operatives, attracted the attention of Chinese officials at a smart cities conference in 2015. DarkMatter, which was launched to modernize Emirati intelligence and military operations, signed a Global Strategic Memorandum of Understanding with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant. The middle man in this sale was none other than Erik Prince. Leshem and another Prince associate, Dorian Barak, also have business ties to the UAE via their prominent roles at the UAE-Israel Business Council.
As TRTWorld concluded:
“With similar technology being used, and the same mercenary middle-man between Carbyne and China who brought together UAE’s DarkMatter surveillance technology with China, indications point to a likely transfer of surveillance technology from Epstein’s Israeli company [Carbyne] to China.”
Comframe – Secretive Company or Intelligence Front?
Prince’s and Leshem’s joint activities after Leshem left FRG suggest that this pattern of behavior has not only continued, but deepened. According to Leshem’s website, a year and a half after she started working for Prince, she and Prince “joined forces to found Comframe, a company that takes the best of Israeli defense technology providers, and helps them penetrate the American market by bridging prevalent gaps.” Leshem also says Comframe was assisted by her “premier integrator and business development platform for deploying advanced military, special operations, public safety and HLS solutions in the United States, and a wide network of partnership, both government and civilian.”
In discussing Comframe elsewhere, Leshem writes that the company she co-founded with Prince “is led and staffed by Special Operations and defense procurement veterans with billions of dollars of successful sales to USG and foreign government to their names.” She says that Comframe has a “track-record of success implementing complex procurement and integrations programs from intelligence gathering & analysis, to contracting, program sales and personnel deployment, is exceptional.”
What Leshem says of the company clashes with Comframe’s threadbare public presence. For instance, its website, which is notably short on content, lists the following companies as partners – TomCar, BlueBird Aero Systems, General Robotics, SafeStrike, Ops-Core (now part of Gentex Corp) and Axon. On its partners page, Comframe says that this is “a small sampling of our current partners we have chosen to work with.” Most of these companies were created by Israeli military/military intelligence veterans.
Aside from the partners page, there is little other information available on the Comframe site. It describes its mission as “to source cutting-edge, innovative technologies that safely and securely solve articulated U.S. government problems” and touts its “get it done” commitment and how its employees “wake up every morning wanting to find solutions that keep the U.S. government safe and more lethal.” It lists the company’s president as Chris Burgess. Burgess, a former NAVY Seal who trained with Erik Prince, does not list Comframe on his LinkedIn or in any other site discussing his work history. He is currently the CEO of military contractor Regulus Global. Burgess previously ran a mercenary firm he founded, Greystone Ltd., that was previously affiliated with Prince’s Blackwater and was originally intended to be Blackwater’s “sister company.”
Both Blackwater (now Academi) and Greystone have been accused of sending mercenaries to fight in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Both companies deny this. The accusations came after Prince had planned to create a “private army” in Ukraine, something he has attempted to do (and sometimes succeeded) in various conflict zones, such as Afghanistan. Prince has also attempted to offer “lethal services” to Russia’s Wagner group.
Aside from Burgess’ apparent unwillingness to associate himself publicly with Comframe, there is also the fact that the only employee publicly associated with Comframe at all is Lital Leshem. Indeed, even Erik Prince has declined to publicly affiliate himself with the company. Another oddity is the fact that Comframe’s website has an “Industry News” page that contains several blog posts with titles discussing oil markets and geopolitics. However, the content of the posts themselves are all filler generated by WordPress. Was Comframe also intended to work in commodities markets? The odd and sparse nature of the website seems to clash with Leshem’s characterization of the company.
So, what is Comframe exactly and what is it intended to do? Why are the only people associated with the company two professional mercenaries, one of whom is a known CIA asset, and an Israeli spy? A 2020 article published in the Jerusalem Post seems to highlight Comframe’s mysterious inner workings and likely purpose.
That article notes that Comframe acted as a middleman in forging an agreement to create an assembly line in El Paso, TX in order for the Israeli company Tomcar to “offer its latest models to the US Armed Forces.” The agreement was made between Tomcar and Prince Manufacturing, a major contract manufacturing company that works with Ford, General Motors and Tesla, among others. Prince Manufacturing was notably founded and run for many years by Edgar Prince, Erik Prince’s father. Notably Tomcar, its founder – Yoram Zarchi – and his son (works for Tomcar) – Ram Zarchi – appear in the Panama Papers as does the former holding company that owned Tomcar from 2004 to 2011.
The article notes that Comframe “is focused on recognizing needs in the US defense industry and matching them to possible solutions, usually involving innovative Israeli companies.” However, the article notes, “to meet the demands of American security needs, one must have an American entity.” Leshem is then quoted as saying, “Ram [Zarchi of Tomcar] had been living in Phoenix for 15 years, but he can’t do that [sell to the American military because he is not a US citizen]. We can.”
In other words, per Leshem, Comframe utilizes Prince and presumably Burgess to sell Israeli defense technology and products to the American military that would otherwise not happen due to national security concerns around buying foreign-made products for sensitive defense and military operations. Leshem goes on to state Comframe sells “to the US Special Forces and other branches of the service [i.e. US military],” noting that Comframe is specifically targeting Special Ops. She also suggests that, aside from the US military, another intended market for the company is NATO – she told the Jerusalem Post that the US “controls 70% of NATO’s defense industry.”
The article ends by stating that, for Comframe, when sales are related to national security, one still has to have “boots on the ground,” suggesting why Comframe has such a minimal web and online presence. This is similar to another company Leshem has been working for while at Comframe, Ehud Barak’s Toka. Notably, at the end of this very article, Leshem uses Toka as an example regarding Comframe’s “boots on the ground” sales approach. She states:
“Hi-tech companies like Toka with clients like the CIA, can’t discuss what they do using Zoom.”
A New Pattern for Prince
Comframe is a very suspect company – it is highly, highly secretive, targets sensitive American military agencies with foreign technology, and its known employees are apparent spooks and intelligence-linked mercenaries. Not only that, but the history of Israeli espionage in the United States – from Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS to Comverse and beyond – shows a concerted effort to target the American military and security agencies, often with bugged or “backdoored” technology.
In addition to the above, Prince has also recently engaged in efforts to market a very suspect smartphone to MAGA Republicans as being “unhackable” and “unsurveillable.” That phone was “designed in Israel” and the company that produces it is called Unplugged. According to reports, Unplugged’s “day-to-day technology operations are run by Eran Karpen, a former employee of CommuniTake, the Israeli start-up that gave rise to the now infamous hacker-for-hire firm NSO Group.” Karpen, like Leshem, is also a veteran of Unit 8200.
Notably, DarkMatter, the UAE private intelligence company that was mentioned earlier due to its association with Prince, once marketed an “ultrasecure” phone called Katim, only to be later outed for hacking dissidents and journalists. In addition, Prince debuted Unplugged’s phone on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program. Both Prince and Bannon have controversial relationships with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Guo.
That Prince would help market this phone specifically to MAGA Republicans is disturbing given that his associate Leshem and other Israeli intelligence veterans and operatives have played a major role in developing the infrastructure for the US’ “War on Domestic Terror,” which is mainly targeted at the political right and has already utilized mass surveillance through smartphones and other technologies to justify arrests, including “pre-crime” arrests. Given the content of this investigation, Prince’s ties to foreign governments and intelligence agencies should be heavily scrutinized, especially Comframe – whose secretive activities may be drastically undermining American national security.
Chinese War Simulation Finds Top US Carrier Group Could Be ‘Destroyed With Certainty’
By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 25.05.2023
War games conducted by Chinese researchers found the US military’s most prized aircraft carrier could be reliably sunk with relative ease in the event of a hot war in the South China Sea.
A volley of hypersonic missiles could reliably sink the US military’s most powerful aircraft carrier group in a potential conflict, according to war game simulations carried out by a team of Chinese military planners.
Using 24 of their most advanced anti-ship missiles, Chinese forces consistently destroyed a carrier fleet led by the USS Gerald R. Ford over the course of 20 mock battles in simulations which were run on a war game platform employed by the People’s Liberation Army.
In the simulation, the US ships came under fire after ignoring multiple Chinese warnings not to approach an island in the South China Sea controlled by Beijing.
For test purposes, the war games’ designers used a carrier group made up of six surface ships which were selected for their “unparalleled strength and advanced technology.”
A major Hong Kong-based newspaper reported that the military planners “selected vessels deemed the US Navy’s most superior – the CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford, accompanied by a CG56 Ticonderoga-class cruiser the San Jacinto, and four DDG-103 Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyers.”
Led by Cao Hongsong from the North University of China, the researchers found that virtually every US surface vessel was ravaged by the attack and eventually sank.
According to researchers, the Ford carrier group – which was once thought to be all but unsinkable – could actually be “destroyed with certainty” using just a handful of hypersonic missile strikes.
Chinese military planners placed a number of constraints on themselves in the simulation, including cutting their access to space-based spy satellites and limiting the number of hypersonic missiles available.
The basic principle underlying the exercise was to be “lenient with the enemy and strict with oneself,” Cao explained.
As the Hong Kong-based outlet explained, “during the simulation, the PLA used its sea-based surveillance network to detect and identify the US carrier group before firing eight of the less-reliable hypersonic missiles simultaneously from southern and central sites in China.”
Though “some of the missiles were intercepted, the attack depleted the US fleet’s SM-3 munitions, paving the way for the PLA to launch “eight of its more accurate hypersonic missiles from northern and western China, with four focused on the aircraft carrier while the others targeted the destroyers,” the outlet noted.
“After the attack, four ships survived from the blue [US] team, with the destroyers having the most remaining, on average.”
A “mop-up” operation with six of the less accurate hypersonic missiles was able to dispatch with the remaining vessels, the research paper determined.
After the simulation was run 20 times to allow for different variables which could affect the outcome of the engagement, the team’s strategy was ultimately able to eliminate an average of 5.6 out of 6 surface vessels – effectively meaning the “total destruction” of the carrier group.
The release of a paper detailing the war game in May marked “the first time the results of simulated hypersonic strikes against a US carrier group have been made public” by China’s military, the Honk Kong outlet noted.
But it’s likely to be seen as a warning to Washington against any provocations in the South China Sea.
An anonymous Beijing-based researcher interviewed by the outlet suggested that “greater transparency about China’s military capabilities and intentions could help to reduce misunderstandings and miscalculations on both sides, which could in turn help to reduce the risk of conflict.”
Biden’s Re-Election Hinges On The Success Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | MAY 25, 2023
Senior Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak told Italian media that his country’s much-hyped counteroffensive already began a few days ago, which is curious since that timeframe coincides with its proxy invasion of Russia’s Belgorod Region that was just copium for deflecting from Artyomovsk’s loss. That media-driven stunt tremendously failed to achieve any tangible gains, however, thus raising even more questions than ever before about whether the counteroffensive will succeed at all.
The Washington Post raised awareness in March about how poorly Kiev’s troops were faring in the NATO-Russian proxy war, which was followed by Politico citing unnamed Biden Administration officials a month later who worried about the consequences of it failing to meet the public’s expectations. Former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov then concocted a conspiracy theory wildly speculating that Kremlin agents infiltrated the White House and sabotaged the counteroffensive before it even began.
This popular pro-Kiev figure seemed to have been spooked by Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul telling Bloomberg that “I think there’s going to be a lot riding on the line with this counteroffensive. If Ukraine is successful in the eyes of the American people and the world, I think it will be a game-changer for continued support. If they are not, that will also have an impact, in a negative way, though.” In other words, its failure could lead to the US severely curtailing aid to Kiev.
Therein lies the real reason why the counteroffensive is still going ahead despite the overwhelming odds against its success that were detailed in the preceding months by the Washington Post and Politico. Biden’s re-election hinges on the success of this campaign after NATO already sent over $165 billion in taxpayer-provided aid to Kiev, the vast majority of which came from the US. He needs anything that his perception managers can spin as a victory to justify this ahead of next year’s election.
It’s not just for the sake of placating taxpayers either in this increasingly partisan conflict that’s seen a rising number of Republicans calling for more pragmatism and restraint as opposed to their Democrat rivals who remain gung-go about going all in for as long as it takes. Biden presided over the US’ most humiliating military loss in history after August 2021’s chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, which infamously resulted in leaving a large number of Americans and allied locals behind to an unknown fate.
He and his team don’t care how many tens of thousands of Ukrainians have to be sacrificed in this conflict so long as they can achieve something that the Democrats can distort as having made the most geostrategically significant conflict since World War II worth provoking. A failed raid into Russia and an unsuccessful assassination attempt against President Putin aren’t considered by most Americans to be worth the risk of a Third World War by miscalculation.
After 15 months of fighting, Kiev has only managed to reconquer part of the territory that it claims as its own, which is unimpressive when considering that it has the full backing of what the US portrays as supposedly being the world’s most powerful military alliance in history. The NATO chief’s self-proclaimed “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia that he declared in February inadvertently proved that Russia’s military-industrial complex can compete with the entire West’s.
That was an unintended self-inflicted blow to this de facto New Cold War bloc’s reputation of being a military superpower and also thus discredited their information warfare narrative that the Russian economy is collapsing. In late January, the New York Times admitted that the West’s sanctions failed, and then they admitted at the end of February after the NATO chief’s dramatic declaration that they also failed to isolate Russia too.
The abovementioned facts already make Biden look like a bumbling fool for provoking this conflict, which only proved just how limited the US’ influence and power have become in recent years, but he looks even worse when considering the bigger picture. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former US National Security Council member Fiona Hill, and Goldman Sachs’ President of Global Affairs Jared Cohen all acknowledged earlier in May that multipolarity is now a geopolitical reality as a result of this conflict.
It’s only the Biden Administration and allied propagandists abroad that remain in denial about this, which places even more pressure on their proxies in Kiev to achieve something tangible throughout the course of its counteroffensive that they can then spin as having made it worth provoking this conflict. The clock is ticking too since there’s a growing consensus across the globe that this is their side’s “last hurrah” prior to likely commencing ceasefire and peace talks by year’s end or early 2024 at the latest.
The West’s military-industrial crisis will inevitably limit the pace, scale, and scope of armed aid to Kiev, not to mention the US’ election season that’ll see this conflict unprecedentedly politicized. Instead of soberly admitting his side’s shortcomings and proactively trying to reach some sort of peace agreement that could then be exploited as the pretext for him winning the Nobel Peace Prize and thus boosting his re-election prospects, Biden is gambling against the odds that the counteroffensive will succeed.
Even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley foresaw in late January that it’ll likely be impossible for Kiev to remove Russia from all the territory that it claims as its own by this year, which means that Biden and his team are trying to prove the US’ top military official wrong. This in turn confirms that they’re prioritizing politics over military advice, thus extending credence to the claim that this counteroffensive is all about Biden’s re-election and not pushing Russia back to its pre-2014 borders.
If it fails to achieve this maximum objective as expected by Milley and the earlier cited US media, then the Republicans will rightly pounce on Biden to accuse him of cooking up the worst conflict since World War II in a desperate bid to win re-election by deflecting from his humiliating loss in Afghanistan. With his back against the wall, it can’t be discounted that his team will advise him to escalate to unthinkable levels, though Russia’s hypersonic missiles will likely keep him from crossing the ultimate red line.
Whichever way one games it out, there’s close to no chance that Kiev’s counteroffensive will meet the Western public’s expectations absent some black swan event, which means that Biden will be running for re-election with two losses under his belt in Afghanistan and Ukraine. It’s difficult to imagine that Americans will give him and his team another four years in office after they humiliated the US so badly, but tens of thousands more might still die before these warmongers are removed from power.
US military aid to Ukraine could be suspended due to debt ceiling – media
By Ahmed Adel | May 25, 2023
The Hill reported that US military funding to Ukraine could be suspended indefinitely due to proceedings in Washington over the public debt ceiling. Effectively, the public debt situation will force the US to reduce its financial support to Ukraine since it is no longer possible to expect as much support as before.
Congressman Andy Kim, a House Armed Services Committee (HASC) member, was quoted by The Hill as saying that lawmakers had conversations about what needs to be a part of the following package but expressed doubts about the timing of the legislation and highlighted that the ongoing fight over the debt ceiling was putting Ukraine aid at risk.
“It’s delaying our ability to focus on these issues,” Kim said. “That really shows that it has national security implications because we’re not able to have that kind of earnest conversation about Ukraine or the [National Defense Authorization Act] until they’re done with that.”
For his part, Congressman Bill Keating said aid to Ukraine would ultimately depend on its counteroffensive, something that will seemingly miss its long-anticipated spring deadline.
“It’s not a precise science to say what because it could be gains that were made that make more support less necessary,” Keating said. “Or there could be damage inflicted where there has to be more” assistance.
Ukrainian authorities have been promoting its upcoming counteroffensive, and NATO officials have indicated Ukraine has nearly all the promised weapons and equipment needed. Last year’s support was phenomenal, but sustaining such aid at this level is difficult. The public debt situation has affected and will continue affecting public opinion because out of all the spending, people will sacrifice those least sensitive to American society, and not such huge expenses as funding a war in Eastern Europe.
Congress is determined to cut spending, making funding difficult for Ukraine. The only thing that was announced by Congress Speaker Kevin McCarthy and confirmed by the White House was the spending cuts. Military spending is not discussed, but the funding for Ukraine now is many times less than last year. Ukraine can hardly expect the same funding it received as in the past.
The Treasury Department warned in a letter to Congress that as early as June 1, the US may not be able to fully meet its obligations if lawmakers do not authorise an increase in the borrowing limit by that time. Normally, Congress almost automatically raises the borrowing limit, but this time, the Republican opposition, who controls the House, has demanded that it reduce spending by several trillion dollars. The Republican bill passed the House of Representatives but has no chance of being approved in the Senate by Democrats, and even if the document reaches Biden, he will most likely veto the bill.
At the same time, the US finds it very difficult to accept the loss of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). With Ukrainian forces losing control of Artemovsk, the long-mooted counteroffensive becomes more politically urgent than ever for Kiev.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to keep his promise to launch a counterattack and for this reason, he continually requested the West for more weapons. As they lost control of Artemovsk, launching an offensive operation is the best way for Kiev to restart its plea for weapons from its NATO allies.
Zelensky is clearly in a difficult situation because the Ukrainian army is not ready for a counterattack and desperately needs ammunition. However, the Russian army almost immediately destroys any weapon concentration, which is starting to raise a series of questions about the success or failure of the Ukrainian counterattack.
This comes as many high-ranking military officials, including Polish Chief of the General Staff Rajmund Andrzejczak and US General Christopher G. Cavoli, acknowledged Russia’s ability to continue fighting without significant loss. Meanwhile, 40% to 60% of Ukrainian soldiers who completed their training in France in 2022 have no contact with their trainers and have likely died in battle or abandoned the battlefield.
Despite the propaganda pushed by the Kiev regime and Western media, Ukraine is clearly unable to launch its long-awaited spring offensive, and instead this is all a show to procure more weapons. The desperate situation for Ukraine coincides as Republicans and Democrats face off over the debt ceiling, proving problematic for Kiev’s quest to rearm.
House Republicans insist on spending cuts before they approve raising the nation’s debt ceiling past $31 trillion. Democrats claim Congress has already spent the money and must be allowed to repay America’s debtholders without leading to an economically disastrous default.
Negotiations are continuing to unfold to reach a debt limit deal, but the US default clock is ticking down despite it not being entirely clear when the US will officially run out of cash. When seen through this context, it is understandable why massive and reckless funding of the Ukrainian military is increasingly scrutinised.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
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