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The Goose and the Gander in Cuba

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 12, 2023

Hand it to the Chinese and Cubans for exposing the utter hypocrisy of the U.S. national-security state, its empire of foreign military bases, and its foreign policy of interventionism.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that China is paying Cuba billions of dollars in return for permitting China to construct a major facility in Cuba to spy on the United States.

China and Cuba deny the deal but what is so funny has been the reaction of U.S interventionists. They are going ballistic over China’s supposedly aggressive behavior.

Florida Senator Marc Rubio expressed the sentiments of all U.S. interventionists by exclaiming, “The threat to America from #Cuba isn’t just real, it is far worse than this.” Rubio and U.S. Senator Mark Warner from Virginia jointly stated, “We are deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to target the United States and our people. The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security.”

The Reds are coming! The Reds are coming!

Wait a minute! What about all those military installations, including spying facilities, that the Pentagon and CIA have surrounding China and Russia? Indeed, what about the Pentagon’s and CIA’s imperial torture and prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which is used to spy on Cuba?

Oh, there isn’t anything threatening about those facilities, U.S. interventionists exclaim. They are just for “defense.” The Chinese, Russians, and Cubans just suffer from extreme paranoia. The United States, U.S. interventionists say, is really just a peace-loving nation. Never mind that much of the world views the U.S. national-security state as Martin Luther King did — as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” one that is responsible for the deaths and injuries of millions of people in the last 7o years.

Referring to the China-Cuba deal, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, stated that U.S. officials are closely monitoring these activities and taking steps to counter them.

Really? Now why would they do that? One big reason: They don’t like it! They don’t like it when some foreign power from thousands of miles away establishes a spy facility only 90 miles away from American shores.

And what happens if that Chinese spy facility in Cuba begins to show signs of nuclear missiles? I will guarantee you that Kirby and all the other officials in the national-security establishment will go ballistic and begin calling for a bombing campaign against Cuba or an invasion, just like Pentagon and CIA officials did back in 1962. That’s because they won’t like the fact that there are Chinese nuclear missiles pointed at the U.S. from only 90 miles away.

But can you see the hypocrisy that the rest of the world sees? When Russia and China object to U.S. and NATO military installations and nuclear missiles on or near their borders, U.S. officials condemn them for their “aggressiveness.”

Moreover, let’s not forget that whenever there is some altercation between Chinese or Russian planes or ships and those of the Pentagon, the altercations always take place over there near Russia and China, not over here in our part of the world. That’s because U.S. military planes and ships are over there stirring up crises and conflicts to justify the continued existence of America’s Cold War-era national-security state.

Time will tell whether the Chinese-Cuba connection will erupt into another full-blown crisis, one that will naturally be used to justify ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess for the national-security establishment. If so, it will only provide more confirmation of how U.S. interventionism abroad makes Americans less safe here at home.

But one can easily understand why the Chinese, Russians, and Cubans would behave in the same manner as the Pentagon and the CIA. After all, from their perspective, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

June 12, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

The 1974 CIA Coup in the United States

Tales of the American Empire | June 8, 2023

American corporate propaganda and schools teach that Richard Nixon was a corrupt, horrible President. This is because he was popular with the American people and took actions to benefit them, at the expense of the Deep State. During his five years in the White House Americans saw a reduction of involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union, deep cuts in military spending and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In 1969, Nixon upset the Pentagon by ordering bio-weapon labs closed and all stockpiles destroyed. Nixon ended American involvement in Vietnam combat in 1973 and the military draft that same year. His visit to China in 1972 eventually led to diplomatic relations.

Nixon engaged in intense negotiations with Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev that led to agreements for increased trade and two landmark arms control treaties: SALT I, the first comprehensive limitation pact signed by the two superpowers, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which ended the nuclear arms race. Nixon and Brezhnev proclaimed a new era of “peaceful coexistence” and reduced military spending. Nixon worked with Congress to slash military spending 25%!

There was massive opposition to these efforts from corporate America and the Pentagon. Nixon rose to power as a loyal member of the Deep State, but went rogue once he reached the top. He told friends that he didn’t trust the CIA, thought their intelligence was poor, and that the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Nixon was a Quaker from a modest background who served in the Navy during World War II. He had served in the US House of Representatives, the US Senate, and eight years as Vice President. He knew how Washington worked! Nixon got things done so was popular with the American people and would easily win reelection in 1972, giving him more four years to dismantle the Deep State. As a result, Nixon was ousted in a 1974 CIA coup.

______________________________

“Ford’s Editing Backed ‘Single Bullet’ Theory”; George Lardner Jr; The Washington Post; July 3, 1997; https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv…

“Eugenio Rolando Martinez, a Watergate Burglar, Recalls His Arrest”; Nixon Library; June 14, 2012;    • Eugenio Rolando M…  

“Watergate – the reasons behind the burglary”; Barbara Newman; A&E; 1992;    • Watergate — reas…  

“Nixon’s Plan to Threaten the CIA on JFK’s Assassination”; Jefferson Morley; Politico; June 5, 2022; https://www.politico.com/news/magazin…

“Woodward-Haig Connection”; The Colodny Collection; Texas A&M University; https://www.watergate.com/bob-woodwar…

“WATERGATE: Nixon Warned Grand Jury on Pentagon Spy Ring”; James Rosen; Fox News; December 23, 2015; Nixon transcripts released; https://www.foxnews.com/politics/wate…

”Tucker Carlson – Biden is Done”; Fox News; January 19, 2023; a short segment about the Nixon coup;    • Tucker Carlson: B…  

June 12, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Most Countries Side With Russia in Ukraine Conflict While US’s Credibility Slips – Hersh

Sputnik -12.06.2023

Most of the world’s population supports Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, while the United States lost its credibility, Pulitzer Prize-winning US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said on Sunday.

“The percentage of the [countries], particularly of the African and Central Asian and South Asian countries, that have changed from being pro-America to being pro-Russia is really quite dramatic. Much more than a half of the world’s population supports Russia in the war and not the United States. This was never the way it was,” Hersh said in an interview with talk show host George Galloway.

The journalist opined that “things are not as good as they used to be in Russia” amid Western sanctions, but “the idea that they are desperate is just wrong.”

Hersh also argued that Washington “lost so much credibility around the world,” citing Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic rapprochement with Iran as an example.

“It’s happened because, I think, because of Ukraine and dislike of the war. Saudi Arabia, by the way, they’re selling 25% of [their] oil to China, as I have mentioned, but the Saudis immediately cut a deal. And the Iranians immediately responded … They have a lot of control in Yemen over the Houthi tribes,” Hersh said.

Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, following calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The world has split into those who support Moscow and accuse NATO of provoking the conflict, and those who condemn Russia’s actions and impose sanctions on the country, while also ramping up their financial and military aid to Kiev. Some countries have avoided taking sides in the conflict.

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Asia-Pacific is where China-Russia “no limits” partnership will be put to test

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JUNE 11, 2023 

The power dynamic in Northeast Asia is undergoing a dramatic change against the backdrop of the “no limits” strategic partnership between China and Russia. Ukraine’s defeat in the war with Russia may compel the Biden administration to put “boots on the ground” triggering a global confrontation and, equally, the US-China relations are at their lowest point since their normalisation in the 1970s, while Taiwan issue may potentially turn into a casus belli of war. To be sure, the Northeast Asian theatre is going to be a crucial arena in the brewing big power confrontation.    

Symptomatic of the cascading tensions, Russian foreign ministry summoned the Japanese ambassador on Friday and a protest was lodged in extraordinarily harsh language, as it came to be known that the 100 vehicles that Tokyo innocuously promised last week to Ukraine would in reality be armoured vehicles and all-terrain vehicles. Apparently, Tokyo was dissimulating, since Japan’s export rules ban its companies from selling lethal items overseas! 

Tokyo is crossing a “red line” and Moscow is not amused. The foreign ministry statement on Friday “stressed that the administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida should be ready to share responsibility for the deaths of civilians, including those in Russia’s border regions… (and) driving bilateral relations even deeper into a dangerous impasse. Such actions cannot remain without serious consequences.”

Significantly, on Friday, in a video conference with General Liu Zhenli, Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff Department of China’s Central Military Commission, the Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence General Valery Gerasimov expressed confidence in the expansion of military cooperation between the two countries and noted, “Coordination between Russia and the People’s Republic of China in the international arena has a stabilising effect on the world situation.” 

The Chinese media later reported that the two generals agreed that Russia will participate (for the second time) in the Northern/Interaction-2023 exercise organised by China, signalling a new framework of China-Russia joint strategic exercises alongside the  joint air patrol over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea by their strategic bombers. By the way, the sixth such joint air petrol was conducted on Tuesday since the practice began in 2019. 

The big picture is that the shift in Japanese policies through the past year — close alignment with the US regarding Ukraine; copying the West’s sanctions against Russia; supply of lethal weaponry to Ukraine, etc. — has seriously damaged the Russo-Japanese relationship. On top of it, Japan’s re-militarisation with American support and its  growing ties with the NATO (which is lurching toward the Asia-Pacific) makes Tokyo a common adversary of both Moscow and Beijing. 

The imperative to push back this resurgent US client is strongly felt in Moscow and Beijing, which also has a global dimension since Russia and China are convinced that Japan is acting like a surrogate of American dominance in Asia and is subserving western interests. On its part, in a turnaround, Washington now actively encourages Japan to be an assertive regional power by jettisoning its constitutional limits to rearmament. It pleases Washington that Japan pledged a long-term increase of over 60 percent in defence spending. 

What worries Moscow and Beijing is also the ascendance of revanchist elements — vestiges of Japan’s imperial era — in the top echelons of power in the recent period. Of course, Japan continues to be in denial mode as regards its atrocities during the period of its brutal colonisation of China and Korea and the horrific war crimes during World War 2. 

This trend bears striking similarity to what is happening in Germany, where too the pro-Nazi elements are reclaiming habitation and a name. Curiously, a German-Japanese axis is present at the core of Washington’s strategies against Russia and China in Eurasia and Northeast Asia. 

The German Bundeswehr is expanding its combat exercises in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and will deploy more naval and air force units to the Asia-Pacific region next year. A recent German report noted, “The intensification of German participation in Asian-Pacific regional manoeuvres is taking place at a time when the United States is carrying out record-breaking manoeuvres in Southeast Asia, in its attempts to intensify its control over the region and displace China as much as possible.”

Japan’s motivations are easy to fathom. Apart from Japanese  revanchism which fuels the nationalist sentiments, Tokyo is convinced that a settlement with Russia over Kuril Islands is not to be expected now, or possibly ever, which means that a peace treaty will not be possible to bring the World War 2 hostilities to an end formally. Second, Japan no longer visualises Russia to be a “balancer” in its  troubled relationship with China. 

Third, most important, as Japan sees the rise of China as a political and economic threat, it is rapidly militarising, which in turn creates its own dynamic in terms of both upending its power position in Asia as also integrating itself with the West (“globalising”). Inevitably, this translates as promoting NATO in the Asian power dynamic, something that cuts deep into Russia’s core national security and defence strategies. Consequently, whatever hopes the strategists in Moscow had nurtured in the past that Japan could be weaned away from the US orbit and encouraged to exercise its strategic autonomy have evaporated into thin air. 

Arguably, in his zest to integrate Japan into the US-led “collective West”, Prime Minister Kishida overreached himself. He behaves as if he is obliged to be more loyal than the king himself. Thus, on the same day that President Xi Jinping visited Moscow in March, Kishida landed in Kiev from where he went to attend a NATO Summit and openly began lobbying for establishment of a NATO office in Tokyo. 

Kishida followed up by hosting NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Tokyo and giving him a platform to berate China publicly from its doorstep. There is no easy explanation for such excessive behaviour. Is it a matter of impetuous behaviour alone or is it a calculated strategy to gain legitimacy for the ascendance of revanchist elements whom Kishida represents in the Japanese power structure?

To be sure, Northeast Asia is a priority now for China and Russia, given their overlapping interests in the region. NATO expansion to Asia and the sharp rise in the US force projection bring home to the defence strategists in Beijing and Moscow that the Sea of Japan is a “communal backyard” for the two countries where their “no limits” strategic partnership ought to be optimal. The Chinese commentators no longer downplay that the Russian-Chinese military ties “serve as a powerful counterbalance to the US’ hegemonic actions.” 

It is entirely conceivable that at some point in a near future, China and Russia may begin to view North Korea as a protagonist in their regional alignment. They may no longer  feel committed to observe the US-led sanctions against North Korea. Indeed, if that were to happen, a host of possibilities will arise. The Russian-Iranian military ties set the precedent. 

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump’s Second Indictment Shows Democrats Uninterested in ‘Fair’ 2024 Election

Sputnik – 10.06.2023

The federal indictment against former US President Donald Trump was unsealed earlier Friday and revealed he was being charged with 37 felony counts, 31 of which were for violating the Espionage Act through his “willful retention” of classified records. The remaining offenses were for false statements and obstruction of justice.

The latest indictment filed against former US President Donald Trump highlights how much Democrats are uninterested in holding a “fair election” ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle, Ethan Ralph, a conservative political commentator and host of the Killstream, told Sputnik.

Ralph noted that “Democrats don’t seem to be interested in a fair election.”

“The increase in lawsuits, indictments, and other legal assaults on Trump is directly related to the viability of his 2024 candidacy,” the commentator said. “The Democrats themselves do not seem to think that they can beat Trump in a fair fight. Just look at their actions.”

The latest indictment filed against Trump centers around classified documents retrieved by FBI agents during a raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence. Although Trump has stated records were unclassified prior to him leaving office, his claims have not proven concrete as he did not follow government protocol.

Prior to this week’s indictment, Trump was previously hit with a 34-count indictment in New York for business fraud in April, and was later found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in early May in relation to a civil case filed by columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Asked whether the indictment had the potential of affecting the former president’s chances at returning to the Oval Office, Ralph admitted it was not likely Trump would wind up behind bars before the election kicked off.

“The latest federal indictment could hurt him with independents and other potential voters, but the polarization of the electorate and hardened views on Trump himself mean that it’s unlikely to hurt him very much,” he pointed out.

Not long after records were retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, classified documents began to turn up in the possession former US Vice President Mike Pence and US President Joe Biden.

In Biden’s case, several documents had been found at his Delaware home and office, as well as the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC. However, unlike steps taken at Trump’s Florida residence, both the Biden and Pence cases did not involve a full blown raid and they haven’t received the same treatment in the media.

Ralph pointed out that “it’s particularly egregious” in how American media treated the cases – specifically that involving Biden. He noting that if outlets are going to cover the topic, it’s best to “have an equal playing field for Trump and non-Trump alike.”

“Last night on the cable news, you heard them making excuses for Biden’s behavior. But the fact remains; he mishandled classified material,” he pointed out. “It’s my opinion that this is a pretty common thing that goes on. It seems to cross both parties. It would be better not to politicize it to this degree.”

In the hours since Trump first revealed via a Truth Social post that he had been indicted, multiple political figures have come forward to condemn what they see as the weaponization of the US justice system against the former commander-in-chief.

Among the critics are Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said late Thursday that it was “unconscionable” that Biden indicted “the leading candidate opposing him” in the 2024 election.

While the Biden White House has claimed it only found out about the indictment through the media, Ralph stated that the weaponization of federal law enforcement by Democrats is unlikely to ease up.

“I think as we move forward, the real danger is not just political retribution that the parties take on each other, but the retribution they eventually try to take on the other side’s voters,” Ralph said. “If empowered by a reelection and perhaps gains elsewhere, there’s a likelihood they take things further.”

“The useless US media certainly won’t do anything other than cheerlead the moves,” he concluded, pointing out that the “trend is towards repression by the West.”

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Trump Indictment: FBI Veteran Raises Red Flags Over ‘Abnormal’ Mar-a-Lago Raid

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.06.2023

A senior FBI official charged with executing the raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago last year has raised a red flag about “abnormalities” and apparent violations in the Justice Department’s handling of the case.

Former Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO) Steven D’Antuono has reached out to the US Congress citing concerns and frustration with the manner President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice arranged the August 2022 raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan unveiled the damning testimony earlier this week and sent a letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding answers.

First, D’Antuono, who had two decades of FBI experience, drew attention to the fact that the bureau’s headquarters made the decision to assign the execution of the search warrant in Trump’s Miami residence to… the Washington Field Office. As per D’Antuono, it looked strange given that the search occurred in the territory of the Miami Field Office, which should have been assigned with the task under the bureau’s rules.

Second, the DoJ failed to assign a US Attorney’s Office to the investigative matter of that magnitude which was “unusual” as per the FBI veteran. This triggered D’Antuono’s deep concerns as it was “out of the ordinary.” He noted that he “never got a good answer” from DoJ with regard to this decision.

Third, the FBI did not first seek consent to effectuate the search. D’Antuono recalled that at the meeting between FBI and DoJ officials, the Department of Justice pushed the bureau to execute the search warrant as quickly as possible. Referring to his experience, the FBI veteran underscored that the agency should have sought consent to search the premises prior to the raid. D’Antuono suggested that either AG Garland or FBI Director Christopher Wray made the decision to seek a search warrant despite “opposition” from the agents working on the case in the WFO. D’Antuono pointed out that “there was a good likelihood that [Trump’s legal team] could have given consent.”

Fourth, the FBI refused to wait for Trump’s attorney to be present before the raid, as per D’Antuono. The bureau veteran claimed that the FBI sought to exclude Trump’s lawyers from the search, which again sounded an alarm for the senior officer.

The FBI veteran’s testimony has prompted US Republican lawmakers to make a repeated request for bureau documents and information concerning the raid. In his latest letter to AG Garland, Jordan pointed out that a previous request regarding the matter was rejected by the Department of Justice.

The alleged expose of DoJ misconduct during the August raid comes after the department indicted Republican presidential candidate Trump earlier this week, charging him with 37 counts including the mishandling of classified materials. The charges further include obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and false statements, as well as one charge under the Espionage Act.

“The Department [of Justice] will indict President Donald Trump, despite declining to indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information and failing to indict President Biden for his mishandling of classified information,” Jordan wrote. “The indictment creates, at the minimum, a serious appearance of a double standard and a miscarriage of justice.”

The latest row between House Republicans and the DoJ erupted amid the congressional investigation into the apparent “preferential treatment” of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who has been probed for tax crimes since at least 2018. The House GOP is also presently looking into an uncorroborated report about Joe Biden receiving a $5 million bribe, which has recently been provided by the FBI to lawmakers.

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Kiev’s NATO-Backed Counteroffensive Is The West’s Most Important Military Campaign Since WWII

More Than Meets The Eye

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 11, 2023

Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive has captivated the world’s attention as everyone watches to see whether it’ll push Russia out of the territory that Ukraine claims as its own. Progress on that direction would likely lead to continued Western support, while the failure to fulfill expectations might lead to the aforesaid being curtailed and ceasefire talks commencing. Either outcome is important, but what many observers have overlooked is the historical significance of this campaign.

The Unexpected Proxy War

It’s the first time since World War II that the West has conventionally fought a military peer, albeit indirectly in this case since they’re fighting Russia via their Ukrainian proxy. The US envisaged transforming that former Soviet Republic into a platform for threatening Russia through conventional, hybrid, and unconventional means with the aim of coercing it into never-ending concessions. The goal was to strategically neutralize then Balkanize it in order to facilitate doing the same to China afterwards.

While Ukraine was cooperating with NATO to this end prior to the start of Russia’s special operation, including through the secret hosting of that bloc’s bases as well as joint biological and nuclear weapons programs, everything was supposed to accelerate after its planned reconquest of Donbass in early 2022. President Putin narrowly preempted his opponents’ first move once he concluded that the West didn’t want to resolve their problems through peaceful means after they rejected Russia’s security requests.

Mutual Surprises Lead To A Stalemate

The fast-moving events that were set into motion caught both sides by surprise. The West didn’t really expect a large-scale intervention, predicting instead that Russia would likely concentrate its forces in Donbass in the unlikely scenario that it got involved, but they still secretly dispatched plenty of anti-air and -tank missiles to Ukraine ahead of time just in case. Likewise, Russia didn’t expect such formidable resistance from Ukraine, but the West was also surprised that Russia didn’t collapse due to sanctions.

Neither side has thus far been able to defeat the other as a result of the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that Secretary-General Stoltenberg finally admitted in mid-February has been going on this whole time. His bloc continued pumping Ukraine full of increasingly higher quality arms and training more of its troops to NATO standards exactly as it planned to do had Donbass been reconquered, while Russia partially mobilized its trained reservists and ramped up its military-industrial production.

The New York Times Spills The Beans

Instead of settling for the present stalemate by seeking to freeze the Line of Contact via a Korean-like armistice, the West saw the opportunity to put its proxy war plans against Russia into action ahead of schedule. Had Donbass been reconquered by Ukraine last spring like NATO envisaged, then Kiev would have been armed to the teeth and extensively trained for years prior to provoking a crisis over Crimea, but the decision was made to test it now since it’s partially ready and the pretext already exists.

The New York Times (NYT) hinted at this motivation in their recent article titled “As Ukraine Launches Counteroffensive, Definitions of ‘Success’ Vary”, which revealed that “Essentially, the United States and its allies will be looking at the counteroffensive for evidence that their plan of remaking the Ukrainian army into a modern force that fights with NATO tactics, and that can use complex maneuvers and advanced equipment to allow a smaller force to defeat a larger one, is sound.”

The West’s Reality Check

The influx of over $165 billion worth of military support to Ukraine from NATO proved too tempting of an opportunity for the bloc’s most hawkish decisionmakers to pass up in terms of finally testing their arms and strategies against a peer competitor. Considering the likelihood of Russia entrenching itself even deeper into those territories that Ukraine claims as its own and recalling the neck-and-neck NATO-Russian “race of logistics”, the decision was made to test it now instead of face greater difficulties later.

The NYT reported that expectations are tempered as a result of this newfound context: “Privately, U.S. and European officials concede that pushing all of Russia’s forces out of occupied Ukrainian land is highly unlikely. Still, two themes emerge as clear ideas of ‘success’: that the Ukrainian army retake and hold on to key swaths of territory previously occupied by the Russians, and that Kyiv deal the Russian military a debilitating blow that forces the Kremlin to question the future of its military options in Ukraine.

The outlet then proceeded to indicate some tangible benchmarks for “success” such as “retaking some parts of the Donbas or pushing Russia out of agricultural and mining areas in southeastern Ukraine”, “Seizing the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia”, and/or “cut[ting] off, or at least squeez[ing], the so-called land bridge.” These moderate goals are a far cry from the maximalist one that’s officially being pursued by NATO and Ukraine, which shows what a reality check the past 15 months of fighting have been.

NATO’s Utter Humiliation By Russia

Even worse for them is that Russia didn’t just destroy a sizeable amount of their so-called “wunderwaffen” over the past few days, but even released videos proving its accomplishments, thus utterly humiliating NATO. The bloc’s most hawkish decisionmakers were so eager to receive large-scale battlefield data from their Ukrainian proxies’ fielding of NATO equipment against the West’s Russian peer competitor that they arrogantly overlooked all the signs that this risked tremendously backfiring.

It was wrongly thought after Russia’s pullbacks in Kharkov and Kherson Regions late last year that the entire front would collapse if it was pushed strongly enough by NATO-trained Ukrainians fielding some of that bloc’s most famous equipment during the planned counteroffensive over half a year later. This assessment ignored the particularities of those two situations and assumed that Russia was incapable of learning from its prior shortcomings, which directly led to the West’s disaster over the past few days.

That’s not to say that Ukraine’s counteroffensive might not achieve some success despite the enormous physical costs that this would certainly entail, but just that global perceptions about Western power have just been shattered after Russia shared videos of it destroying their “wunderwaffen”. If more sober-minded decisionmakers had the final say in whether the counteroffensive should go ahead, they might have calculated that it’s better to preserve the illusion of dominance than risk having it dispelled.

Great Power Competition

It might have been inevitable in hindsight that the greenlight would be given to Kiev’s NATO-backed counteroffensive, however, when remembering that the US has been planning to test its new proxy war model against a peer competitor since at least December 2017. The National Security Strategy that was released at the time declared that “great power competition has returned”, specifically identifying China and Russia as the two that the US must actively contain.

Despite Trump continuing to arm Ukraine and impose sanctions against Russia during his tenure, he appears to have sincerely wanted to strike a deal with the Kremlin in order to then focus entirely on containing China, but he was thwarted by his permanent bureaucracy. Upon Biden coming to power, the Democrats’ plot to have Kiev reconquer Donbass as part of their grand strategic plan to contain Russia before China was once again back in play, which would have happened earlier had Hillary won in 2016.

The Biden Administration’s Gamble

The West didn’t expect Russia to stop them, let alone intervene far beyond Donbass in the unlikely scenario that it got involved, and then they wrongly predicted that it would soon collapse under sanctions. They were wrong on all three counts, which led to them being pulled by rapidly accelerating mission creep into waging a proxy war against Russia a lot earlier than they planned. Instead of being satisfied with their test data and freezing the conflict, they want even more at a much larger scale.

The most hawkish decisionmakers downplayed Russia’s proven military improvements since its pullback from Kherson last November and authorized the counteroffensive for this purpose since they were convinced that Ukraine’s NATO-trained and -armed forces would smash through the entire front. They couldn’t resist the chance to finally test their arms and strategies against a peer competitor at this scale after NATO poured over $165 billion worth of military aid into their proxy these past 15 months.

Concluding Thoughts

Awareness of these real motivations explains why the counteroffensive is the West’s most important military campaign since World War II, which was the last time that they conventionally fought a military peer. Even though they’re only doing so by proxy right now, they’re still receiving the large-scale data that they require in order to fine-tune their plans ahead of possibly waging a direct war against one. What the West has learned over the past few days, however, is that they shouldn’t take victory over Russia for granted.

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

What are UFO Disclosure Gatekeepers Acclimating the Public To?

By Susan A. Manewich and Jefferey Jaxen | IET Evolve | June 10, 2023

The public received another drop of military intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ this week. Vetting the story was, well, impossible. Why? Because it’s classified.

Unlike whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, both revealing actual evidence, David Grusch’s ‘whistleblowing’ storytelling and ‘evidence’ are two different things altogether.

Grusch is alleging there is a secret UFO retrieval program.

Interviewer, “Do we have bodies? Do we have species?” Grusch replies, “When you recover something that has either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots.”

Interviewer asks, “We have spacecraft from another species?” Grusch replies, “Yes, we do.”

Was he (Grusch) part of that program? No.

Did he (Grusch) see the craft or bodies himself? No.

Grusch says, “we’re definitely not alone.”

There are two major points here; first is the continuity of media chosen to release these type of stories and second is the progression of a narrative through the same media sources.

Breaking the story first on June 5th, in written form, was Leslie Keane and Ralph Blumenthal. It was NewsNation who did the first sit-down recorded interview of Grusch, also released on the same day with a pre-recorded appearance by Keane. Coincidently on the same day, June 5th, a live panel discussion at one of the largest UFO conferences in the world also picked up the story and excitedly integrated it into their segment with Danny Sheehan and Richard Dolan giving a live synopsis.

NewsNation claimed they have not seen or verified the alleged proof Grusch claims he provided to investigators. They also state that Grusch has not seen photos of the alleged craft himself but has talked extensively with other intelligence officials who have.

Keane and Blumenthal were the journalists who kicked off the intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ in their co-authored article which appeared in the NY Times on December 16, 2017 titled Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program which featured former Pentagon official Lue Elizondo.

Then, three days later, CNN added to the intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ on December 19, 2017. “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” says Lue Elizondo.

So who is NewsNation? Owned by Nexstar Media Group, America’s largest local TV and media company boasting a record $1.26 billion in first quarter revenue of 2023, NewsNation is also the platform the untrusted former CNN notable Chris Cuomo now leads. There is a continuity of media shepherding the story throughout the past six years. Albeit, the facing organizations of it have changed.

Elizondo’s statement in 2017 “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.” And Grusch in 2023, “we’re definitely not alone” hint at the building of a narrative in lockstep.

Embedded within this current disclosure narrative are both subtle and not so subtle directives. First, if we don’t know what is ‘out there,’ the military, and by extension, the public must treat it as a threat. Second, the focus should be on the mechanistic and materialist aspects of this phenomena, nothing more because that’s what the military is looking at. How does it maneuver? What material are they made of? Can we back-engineer it?

Are forces at work crafting this narrowly defined disclosure narrative?

Keane said in an interview three days after the Grusch story was released, “It’s a matter of strategically bringing out aspects one step at a time and letting people acclimate to that.”

That sounds like gatekeeping of information.

Who’s making the decisions to strategically pick and choose what parts of this huge story the public gets to ‘acclimate to?’ And to what is the public acclimating? Acclimating to this type of narrative of disclosure? The words used, whom they are from and the authoritative voice has an ongoing psychological impact to how the public formulates their thoughts, emotions and values approaching the UFO and ET conversation.

If we are being told that now these flood gates have opened and individuals within the government and ex government want transparency for the American people around this topic, because the public “has a right to know” why the strategic drip on a narrow perspective?

The fallout from this story particularly has seen several credible journalists and pundits checking basic due diligence and scrutiny at the door to parrot stories and talking points from intelligence agencies that have been rightfully discredited in previous reporting of the last few years, sometimes by their own hand.

Things the current military intelligence agency-led ‘disclosure’ doesn’t seem to want to address at this stage, is that there is a long history of the U.S. government actively working to discredit and neutralize researchers and citizen information around these topics.

And what about the large community of people around the world who have multifaceted experiences of contact with these alleged craft and intelligence which the government has actively sought to disrupt, ignore, and ridicule?

Furthermore, what about individuals who, in some cases, speculate that it has been the U.S. government itself responsible for the negative abduction experiences American citizens have reported?

Whipping up humanity into fear of a purportedly unknown, uncontrollable threat that could appear at any moment from anywhere poses a greater, more immediate concern. As evidenced from the pandemic response of the last three years, there is now a well-trained reflex from the political, scientific and military communities, acting in concert, to lockdown populations and suspend civil liberties, Constitutional rights and wage all-out psychological and information warfare on their populations at the hint of any threat you are told is dangerous.

Is there another lens to view this subject matter from besides fear and threat? Besides technology and material from the craft?

In the 2018 book Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non-Human Intelligence several PhD researchers surveyed thousands of people around the globe who claimed to have contact with non-human intelligences and they paint a very different picture than what the slow drip of disclosure is attempting. The respondents overall main points were that, the planet is energetically changing and so are us human beings as a species. Our consciousness is primary. The capacity to heal ourselves from fear and traumas and to spiral up to a more loving species is necessary for this next phase in humanity’s evolution. Beings that many people reported in their encounters were teachers assisting in guiding this evolutionary process.

When you look up at the sky, do you think about the government first? Do you fear human beings are no longer top of the food chain in a predatory system? Or is your wonderment still intact towards something infinite, beautiful and expansive where you are a part of this next phase in co-creation?

June 11, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

‘Reckless in the Extreme’: FDA Panel Recommends New RSV Shot for Use in Healthy Infants

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 9, 2023

Advisors to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday recommended approval of AstraZeneca’s new monoclonal antibody, which the drugmaker said is designed to protect infants and toddlers up to age 2 from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

The drug, nirsevimab, would be delivered to newborns in a single shot at birth or “just before the start of a baby’s first RSV season, or as a larger dose in a second RSV season in children who are highly vulnerable,” CNN reported.

Members of the independent committee, which includes several pediatricians, “were enthusiastic about the potential” of the antibody, STAT reported, as was Thomas Triomphe, executive vice president of vaccines at Sanofi, which will market the drug in the U.S.

In a statement, Triomphe said:

“Most babies hospitalized with RSV are born at term and healthy, which is why interventions specifically designed to protect all infants are likely to result in the greatest impact.

“We are encouraged by the advisory committee’s positive vote based on the compelling clinical development program supporting nirsevimab and its breakthrough potential to reduce the magnitude of annual RSV burden.”

But medical experts interviewed by The Defender raised a number of concerns, including what they said was inadequate safety testing.

“It’s preposterous to give this drug prophylactically, especially without adequate safety testing,” said Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., senior director of science and research for Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

AstraZeneca reported only 48% efficacy for the drug. And Hooker noted that the “circulating half-life of the antibodies is probably less than one month so the protection would be minimal at best.”

Hooker also commented on the fact that 12 infant deaths were recorded during the clinical trial, which the FDA committee claimed were “unrelated” to the antibody:

“It appears that this vote was meant to bolster uptake and popularity of the RSV vaccines that are now approved for maternal use. The very low rate of effectiveness for such a therapy is troubling as the conservative estimate is below 50%, which is usually a hard metric for drug approval.

“Also, it seems odd that four infants in the trial would die of cardiac arrest — with no information given, it leaves one to wonder why these children would die in such a way. Also, there should be further investigation into the two SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome] deaths that occurred during the trial.”

Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist, biological warfare epidemiologist and member of CHD’s scientific advisory committee, told The Defender,“It is reckless in the extreme to inject very young babies with an inadequately tested monoclonal antibody drug to prevent a condition that for most of them will be no more than a cold.”

Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender that while monoclonal antibodies are “generally safe” for children, he questioned the benefit of such a treatment for what he called a “mild” infection. He said:

“Monoclonal antibodies are generally safe in children and adults; however, I am concerned broad infant population uptake may disrupt normal thymus and immune system development that easily handle infections such as RSV, influenza, rhinovirus, adenovirus and SARS-CoV-2.

“RSV is a characteristically mild infantile infection easily resolved with conventional nebulizers. I believe nirsevimab would not be clinical-indicated for all infants and likely would be utilized in high-risk babies with congenital heart or lung disease, such as cystic fibrosis, or those with prior thoracotomies for heart surgery, where respiratory mechanics would be compromised.”

The FDA committee’s positive recommendation for nirsevimab, also known as Beyfortus, comes just weeks after the agency approved GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals’ Arexvy, the first-ever RSV vaccine for older adults, and recommended Abrysvo, Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for pregnant women.

According to CNBC, the FDA is expected to make a final decision on nirsevimab in the third quarter of this year.

Nass told The Defender that while the FDA is not obligated to follow the panel’s advice, “it almost always does so.”

FDA: Infant deaths during clinical trial ‘unrelated’ to the treatment

CNBC reported that the FDA review identified no safety concerns with nirsevimab, but also reported that 12 infants died during the trials.

According to CNBC:

“Four died from cardiac disease, two died from gastroenteritis, two died from unknown causes but were likely cases [of] sudden infant death syndrome, one died from a tumor, one died from COVID, one died from a skull fracture, and one died of pneumonia.”

Dr. Melissa Baylor, who according to CNBC is “an FDA official,” said, “Most deaths were due to an underlying disease. None of the deaths appeared to be related to nirsevimab.”

But according to STAT, “There are questions that remain to be answered” about nirsevimab that require “further study.”

For instance, no data are available “about whether giving nirsevimab to a baby whose mother was vaccinated against RSV during pregnancy would give the infant more protection or would be a waste of the product.”

STAT noted that several members of the FDA committee “worried that the dose given in the first year of life might be too small to benefit a baby who was 8 months or older when receiving the injection, depending on the size of the baby.”

Baylor also expressed concerns about how nirsevimab would interact with vaccines in development — such as Pfizer’s Abrysvo — that confer protective antibodies to the fetus by administering the shot to the mother.

CNBC reported that “Other monoclonal antibodies have been associated with serious allergic reactions, skin rashes and other hypersensitivity reactions.”

According to Baylor, the FDA did not identify “any cases of serious allergic reactions in the nirsevimab trials,” while “cases of skin rash and hypersensitivity reactions were low in infants who received the antibody.” She added that cases of such side effects are expected to be observed if the treatment receives FDA approval.

Manish Shroff, AstraZeneca’s head of patient safety, said, “Safety is of utmost importance” to the drugmaker and that it will “keep a close eye” on the safety of nirsevimab via a “global monitoring system,” CNBC reported.

According to Endpoints News, nirsevimab has already received regulatory approval in the EU, U.K. and Canada, but “it has not yet launched in any of those markets.”

According to CNBC, “Nirsevimab is administered as a single injection with the dose depending on the infant’s weight.”

Infants weighing less than 5 kilograms will receive a 50 mg dose for their first RSV season, while those over 5 kilograms will receive a 100 mg injection. Children under age 2 who “remain at risk for severe RSV” in their second season would then receive an additional 200 mg injection of the antibody.

Nirsevimab is not the first monoclonal antibody for RSV. According to STAT, AstraZeneca’s Synagis (palivizumab) is approved in the U.S. and EU, and “protects against infection in high-risk infants.”

According to CNBC, it is intended “only for preterm infants and those with lung and congenital heart conditions that are [at] high risk of severe disease” and is administered monthly, whereas nirsevimab “would be administered to healthy infants.”

Endpoints News reported that “AstraZeneca leads all development and manufacturing activities” for nirsevimab, “while Sanofi is responsible for marketing activities and revenue recognition” — for which the drugmaker paid $129 million “to be part of the collaboration.”

Is RSV really a danger for most infants?

CNBC previously reported that the U.S. “suffered an unusually severe RSV season” this past winter. The New York Times reported on a “tripledemic” involving RSV, flu and COVID-19, “that swamped children’s hospitals and some I.C.U. wards.”

One U.S. county — Orange County, California — declared a local health emergency and issued a proclamation of local emergency in November 2022, citing rising RSV cases among children in the region, and the Biden administration subsequently declared a public health emergency that month.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly all children are infected with RSV before the age of 2.

While CNBC characterized RSV as a “public health threat” that “kills nearly 100 babies in the United States every year,” Nass questioned the danger it poses to most infants.

In May, Nass wrote that the CDC published a paper on RSV deaths in infants between 2009 and 2021, which found “were only a total of 300 deaths in children less than one year over the 12 years, or 25 on average per year.”

Nass added that the number of injuries that may be caused by vaccines or other treatments during pregnancy “is almost certainly going to outweigh the loss of 25 babies a year from RSV.”

In her remarks to The Defender, Nass drew comparisons with the hepatitis B vaccine for children, saying that adverse effects from the treatment may appear later in childhood and are not likely to be connected to the drug:

“The hepatitis B vaccine, recommended for all children at birth in the US, and received by about 75%, was never tested for babies’ safety — over more than a few days — before the program started, or since.

“Because no one can know what a very young baby will become at birth, it is impossible to attribute a lower IQ, hyperactivity, less nimble limbs or any other problem that shows up later, to an injected drug given shortly after birth. So those connections, if any, are unlikely to be identified.”


Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

June 10, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Beware of Studies Concluding Autism is Not Associated with Childhood Vaccination

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | June 3, 2023

As an epidemiologist, I can tell you it takes considerable training and scholarship to determine whether or not a study is valid and to determine if the conclusions are supported by the data. When it comes to childhood vaccines, the world is becoming skeptical of the vaccine industry since the CDC ACIP panel has added the EUA unsafe, ineffective mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for infants starting at 6 months of age.

With the ever expanding ACIP schedule of vaccine quantity and intensity of injections there has been a skyrocketing rate of autism. This has triggered scientists to go back and look at the studies published at the time to reassure parents that routine vaccines did not cause autism. Because so many shots are given at once, it is probably not any individual product that is the culprit, rather “hyper-vaccination” of a bundle of vaccine products that invokes a neurotropic, cytokine mediated inflammatory reaction that in some causes febrile seizures, autism, and immediate death. There are factors related to susceptibility including older parents and siblings with autism, but it remains that hyper-vaccination is a likely provocateur.

Madsen et al used Danish automated health data to evaluate the association of the MMR at age 15 months and autism. Only 40/422 had charts reviewed to verify the diagnosis of autism. Because it is an important diagnosis, all 422 cases should have been adjudicated by two blinded expert child psychiatrists. This study was unlikely to find an association from the outset since not all the vaccines where considered as a “bundle” and compared to children who went “natural” meaning completely unvaccinated with any product.

Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med. 2002 Nov 7;347(19):1477-82. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa021134. PMID: 12421889.

To make matters worse, the authors found 18% had missed the MMR at 15 months. That proportion seemed high to me so I checked another source. In 2015-2016 Holt et al performed a chart review and found that 55% of those MMR “unvaccinated” in the Danish system were indeed received the MMR documented in the medical record. Hence the Madsen analysis is invalid since both groups had largely received the MMR shot at age 15 months and there was no reporting of the true control group of interest—completely unvaccinated children.

Holt N, Mygind A, Bro F. Danish MMR vaccination coverage is considerably higher than reported. Dan Med J. 2017 Feb;64(2):A5345. PMID: 28157059.

In studies that are using unadjudicated, automated sources of data, misclassification often biases the results to the null hypothesis making a Type II error, that is, failing to find an association when indeed it is present.

Here is a summary of why Madsen does not rule out MMR or hyper-vaccination as a cause of autism:

  1. non-randomized study with no true placebo group
  2. all 442 cases of autism were not adjudicated by at least two independent child psychiatrists to confirm the diagnosis
  3. Danish automated data due no capture all the MMR vaccinations; some (~55%) of the “unvaccinated” had received the MMR vaccine
  4. MMR was not considered as part of the multi-injection bundle of hyper-vaccinated children compared to completely natural unvaccinated kids, which is the real control group of interest for autism

A similar paper using the same data sources, nearly identical study design, and equally flawed analysis was published similarly in Annals of Internal Medicine in 2019 (Hviid et al). In summary, we cannot rely on the Madsen or Hviid studies to rule out the MMR as a partial determinant of autism. Moreover, studies that make strong conclusions with such faulty data are suspect for investigator bias—meaning the authors intentionally wanted to rule out the association perhaps to advance the vaccine agenda, appease their institutions or research sponsors, or otherwise wished to be willfully blind to the possibility that childhood hyper-vaccination is a determinant of autism.

Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, Schendel D, Wohlfahrt J, Thorsen P, Olsen J, Melbye M. A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism. N Engl J Med. 2002 Nov 7;347(19):1477-82. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa021134. PMID: 12421889.

Holt N, Mygind A, Bro F. Danish MMR vaccination coverage is considerably higher than reported. Dan Med J. 2017 Feb;64(2):A5345. PMID: 28157059.

Hviid A, Hansen JV, Frisch M, Melbye M. Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study. Ann Intern Med. 2019 Apr 16;170(8):513-520. doi: 10.7326/M18-2101. Epub 2019 Mar 5. PMID: 30831578.

June 10, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

FDA admits it has no records indicating covid-19 vaccine safety protocols were followed

By Aaron Siri | ICAN | June 9, 2023

From early in the pandemic, the government has been promising the public that it was taking COVID-19 vaccine safety “very seriously,” and that the vaccines had been subject to “the most intense safety monitoring program in U.S. history.” ICAN likes to confirm these claims for itself but when it tried to do just that, it uncovered that the FDA actually deviated from long-standing protocols concerning vaccine safety.

Since May 9, 2008, the FDA has had vaccine safety procedures in place detailed in a Standard Operating Procedures and Policies (SOPP) document. This document “describes the procedures that the [FDA] staff should routinely follow to coordinate rapid responses to complex vaccine safety issues,” and discusses a Vaccine Safety Team whose “key purpose”  is to “coordinate [FDA] rapid responses to vaccine safety issues … and to serve as a resource [] to identify data and policy needs pertaining to vaccine safety.”

One office in the FDA is crucial to this goal and acts as the “official contact for VAERS and is responsible for processing and review of the reports,” as well as “for forwarding those reports to the appropriate contacts within CBER for further action and follow-up.” For example, its staff members identify VAERS adverse event reports that “need a rapid response and complex coordination,” after which they are supposed to “immediately” inform certain FDA management who then alert other sub-agencies.

Given the lofty talk by federal health agencies claiming that COVID vaccines were subject to “the most rigorous – and accurate – review processes globally,” one would think that the FDA, at a minimum, subjected them to at least these already ridiculously weak pre-existing standards for vaccine safety monitoring.

But, after ICAN’s attorneys submitted records requests to the FDA seeking documents on the FDA’s policies concerning the identification of VAERS reports requiring a “rapid response,” as well as documents showing that the FDA had actually followed up on the individual VAERS reports that required a “rapid response,” the FDA replied more than year later with an incredible response: “A search of our records did not locate any documents responsive to your request.”

In a nutshell, the FDA has essentially admitted that it is not following even its own set of already watered-down procedures for vaccine safety monitoring that were in place prior to COVID.

When the curtain is pulled back on the purported “thorough” and “intense” safety monitoring, there is yet again nothing to see. So much for the FDA’s promise to look out for the American people. ICAN will continue to monitor the FDA and share any important updates.

See below for more instances where ICAN uncovered instances where “health” agencies made unsupported claims to the public:

June 10, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

US & NATO’s Ultimate Goal is to ‘Take Over Ukrainian Land, People and Resources’

By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 10.06.2023

Shortly after the fabled Ukrainian counteroffensive finally started, it became increasingly apparent that NATO military equipment and training won’t be enough for the Kiev regime forces to penetrate Russian defensive lines.

With the Ukrainian offensive now underway, Kiev so far has virtually nothing to show in the way of gains, whereas images of wrecked Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles used by Ukrainian troops have already started circulating on social media.

Even though the United States and its allies have been generously supplying Ukraine with armaments and military vehicles during the ongoing conflict, it appears that Ukrainian forces are “institutionally and operationally unable to successfully absorb the wide and inconsistent variety of equipment and weaponry” while “under fire and duress,” said US Ret.Lt.Col Karen Kwiatkowski.

“This is the fault of the US and NATO which seeks to ride the back of Ukrainian patriotism in order to both confront and harass Russia, with an aim to take over Ukraine’s land, people and resources once there is little Ukraine left – in a kind of mini-Marshall Plan, this time completely and wholly managed and conducted by US and international crony capitalists, like Black Rock,” Kwiatkowsky, a former US Department of Defense analyst, told Sputnik.

She suggested that the United States and Britain were likely the ones who actually needed Kiev to launch this counteroffensive and that it would seem “as if Western governments see Ukraine little more than a snuff film, for their entertainment and profit.”

“Clearly, what Ukraine needs is to find a way to get out from under the US political cycle and NATO’s organizational expansion obsession, and make peace,” Kwiatkowsky mused, postulating that such a deal would likely entail the separation of the “Russian side of the former Ukraine” from the “Ukrainian side.”

She did point out, however, that so far the US and the UK politicians have been quick to suppress any attempts by the Ukrainian side to “make peaceful signs or noises.”

Meanwhile, Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest and former CIA station chief Phillip Giraldi has observed that some Western media outlets have been trying to make it look like the Ukrainian counteroffensive is succeeding and that Kiev regime forces are “overrunning the Russian positions.”

Commenting on this development, Giraldi suggested that politicians in the US, the UK and Germany “need to be able to speak positively about what is occurring” in Ukraine, since the public in their respective countries is starting to turn against the conflict “as it grinds on and on consuming hundreds of billions dollars worth of equipment.”

He further suggested that people in the United States, Britain and Germany are none too thrilled about their governments directly backing the regime in Kiev, which he described as “a regime that nearly everyone concedes is hopelessly corrupt.”

“There is talk here in Washington that the Ukrainian generals might depose Zelensky and enter into negotiations with Moscow,” Giraldi added.

June 10, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment