The Leaked Plan to Attack Russians in Syria Revealed
By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 1, 2023
The war in Ukraine was planned to extend to Syria. Leaked secret documents revealed the Ukrainian military were planning to attack Russian troops stationed in Syria in an effort to distract Russia and cause losses and casualties far from the battlefield in eastern Europe.
Jack Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested by the FBI in the investigation of leaked classified military intelligence which were viewed on the Discord chat platform.
Among the documents were details of the planning and assessment of attacks on Russian military capabilities in Syria, to be carried out by the U.S. military partner there, the SDF.
The SDF control the northeast quarter of Syria and the troops are made up of about one-third Kurds and two-thirds Arab tribal members. The Kurdish semi-autonomous region in Syria was created by the U.S. alliance with the Communist administration of the Kurds under Ilham Ahmed and General Mazloum Abdi.
The area the U.S.-Kurdish alliance controls is not populated by a majority of Kurds, but the Kurds do represent a sizable ethnic population. Once they became financially and militarily supported by the U.S., the Kurds were able to carry out a program of ethnic cleansing which displaced the original inhabitants from their homes, lands and businesses.
The SDF working alongside the U.S. occupation forces in Syria were planned to be supplied with drones and other equipment to attack the Russian troops in Syria. The Russian airbase on the coast in Latakia was cited to be attacked as well as other areas.
The Ukrainian military intelligence had planned the attacks in Syria, using the U.S. allied paramilitary force the SDF, for the purpose of opening a second front in the war with Russia. The planning strategized that Russia would be distracted by attacks on its forces in Syria, and become weaker in their military capabilities.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, a former TV comedienne, cancelled the operations while still in the planning stages.
The Russian military was invited into Syria in October 2015, when the terrorist group Jibhat al-Nusra was at its height and threatened to over-run the coastal region. After the Russian military arrived in Syria, the Russian forces alongside the Syrian Arab Army were successful in pushing the terrorists back. Today, the central government in Damascus controls almost all of Syria with the exception of the Kurdish region previously described, and the small province of Idlib in the north west which is under the occupation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the current name of Jibhat al-Nusra. Mohammed al-Julani is in control of Idlib. He started off in Iraq with Al Qaeda, then was sent to Syria by the leader of ISIS, and finally is holding about 3 million civilian hostage in Idlib, while being supplied with humanitarian aid by the U.S., UN, EU and other charities.
The Russian presence in Syria today can be termed a peace-keeping mission. They still attack ISIS and terrorist positions, but most of their presence is in holding the peace between the Kurds and their sworn enemy, Turkey. If it was not for the Russian military presence in Syria, Turkey would have invaded even further into the Kurdish region, and there could have been massacres.
Russia has a working relationship with Syria, Iran and Turkey and has been negotiating for a peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis.
Turkey had been a U.S. ally, but has felt betrayed by the U.S. support of the Kurdish paramilitary SDF, which consists of the core military group YPG, which is aligned with the PKK, a terrorist group responsible for about 30,000 deaths over decades.
Had the Ukrainian plan to attack Russians in Syria been carried out, the response could have been a joint Turkish-Russian military operation against the Kurds, which could have resulted in U.S. military deaths or injuries, and would likely have ended with the U.S. occupation forces withdrawal to Iraq.
If Zelensky hadn’t stopped the plans, Syria could have regained the north east quarter from the Kurds, and Turkey could have vanquished the SDF and YPG. That would then leave Idlib and the terrorists sitting on the border without their U.S. supporters. It could have resulted in Idlib’s terrorist occupiers fleeing under cover of darkness, and the 3 million hostages being set free after more than a decade of captivity.
Under the plan, the SDF asked for protection that they would not be revealed as the source of the planned attacks on the Russian military in Syria, and instead make it appear that the U.S. protected terrorists holding Idlib would be blamed.
Turkey has military troops occupying Idlib, and should the plan have been carried out, Russia could have attacked Idlib as the source of the planned attacks, and this would have been a direct confrontation between Turkey and Russia on Syria soil.
The U.S. may have ordered Zelenskyy to halt the planned attacks on Russians in Syria. Washington, DC. is insisting to remain occupying bases in Syria to prevent Syria from access to its energy resources, and thus preventing Syria from recovery from the U.S.-NATO attack on Syria beginning in 2011. The U.S. has failed in their plan to install an American puppet in Syria, but they were successful in making sure they have a compliant and easily manipulated leader in Ukraine.
Ukraine working with FBI to censor social media – official
RT | April 28, 2023
Ukrainian intelligence has partnered with the FBI and other US government agencies to remove ‘Russian’ content on Silicon Valley platforms, a senior official told independent journalist Lee Fang earlier this week at the RSA Convention in San Francisco.
“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the US, we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” Ilya Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), told Fang.
Vitiuk spoke at the cyber security conference, sitting on a panel alongside FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Bryan Vorndran, Special Agent Alex Kobzanets from the San Francisco field office, and Laura Galante from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Fang noted that the Ukrainian official thanked the many “private sector allies” in the US, including Google, Amazon, Starlink, and CrowdStrike – the DNC contractor that claimed ‘Russian hacking’ in 2016 but later testified it had no evidence for it.
“I don’t know how many times we’ve called the CEOs here in San Francisco to drive to their office on a Sunday afternoon and really engage with our Ukrainian partners,” Kobzanets said during the panel.
According to Vitiuk, the SBU tells the FBI that a certain person or account is “probably Russia’s influence” in order to get them censored. He described the FBI as his agency’s “top partner” and US cyber support as a “psychological game changer” for Ukraine.
“Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not,” Vitiuk told Fang when asked how the SBU determines what might be disinformation. “Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”
By way of example, Vitiuk cited reports of tensions between President Vladimir Zelensky and Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, saying they were completely fabricated by Russia. In early March, the openly pro-Ukraine German tabloid Bild reported on their disagreements about military tactics.
Fang has previously documented US government plans to work with social media platforms on censoring “disinformation” related to “the nature of US support to Ukraine.” In December, he also revealed that the Pentagon had teamed up with Twitter to “amplify certain messages” for the US military.
Tucker Carlson Was ‘Trying to Get to the Truth’ Amid ‘Virtually Nonexistent’ US Independent Media
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 29.04.2023
Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News comes as independent media appears to have been muzzled in the US, with corporations playing a hefty role in limiting the kind of information that gets out to people, Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, told Sputnik.
Truthful media coverage of a whole host of issues in the United States is discouraged. It is even frowned upon, Larry Johnson, a former US official, told Sputnik in the wake of the abrupt departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News.
“Media corporations over the course of the last 30 years have become increasingly concentrated in a small number of organizations. So, the independent media that used to exist is virtually nonexistent now, except for what appears on the Internet and podcasts,” the retired CIA intelligence officer stated.
He pointed out that The Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, “has become very much of a political outlet, as opposed to a news outlet”. Similarly, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, all previously separate newspapers, have been “consolidated under centralized corporate control.”
“Those corporations play a heavy role in limiting the kind of information that gets out to people. That coupled with reporters who are desperate to keep their jobs, and normally they’ll just play along with whatever the company policies are,” Larry Johnson said.
Several days after Fox News unexpectedly announced on April 24 that its outspoken anchor Tucker Carlson would be parting ways with the cable news network, the pundit himself made a video address telling viewers that media bosses were trying to stifle any form of debate in the industry.
“The people in charge… are hysterical and aggressive. They’re afraid. They’ve given up persuasion – they’re resorting to force… But it won’t work… true things prevail,” Carlson said in a two-minute video clip posted on his Twitter account on Wednesday.
In his monologue, Carlson said that debates on “big topics” like war, corporate power, and civil liberties “are not permitted in American media,” because, “both political parties – and their donors – have reached consensus… to shut down any conversation about it.”
Weighing in on the seasoned journalist’s verbal barrage, Larry Johnson agreed that truthful media coverage in the US is being stifled.
“The corporate media’s normal coverage about economic issues, for example, is always trying to emphasize the positive, even when the actual data points to some very alarming trends. On the foreign policy front this comes down to the concentration of power in the hands of a few corporations, and those corporations are wielding enormous influence. Basically, the defense industry and the pharmaceutical industry in the United States have enormous influence over the public debate, what gets publicized and what is ignored,” he said.
Even attempts in the media to label Tucker Carlson, who was refusing to accept official narratives, as a right-winger, Johnson said, was a “hallmark of censorship.” The journalist was simply somebody who was trying to get to the truth, the one-time State Department official underscored.
“Tucker is really more of a libertarian from the standpoint that he does not subscribe to the positions of the Republican Party or the Democrat Party. But he would take each issue on its own, and ask legitimate questions, such as the protests that took place on January 6, 2021 [which] were described by the regime as an insurrection and [it] characterized anybody who was up there on Capitol Hill as basically a terrorist. In fact, the vast majority of the people out there were peaceful and they were not attacking and destroying the Capitol by any standpoint,” Larry Johnson explained.
He deplored the “tremendous amounts of propaganda” in the United States, adding: “What I see now is there is far more press freedom in Russia than in the United States, or places like Canada.”
What was once an open society, allowing the questioning of issues, with “an aggressive, actually free press,” has transformed into a landscape of “almost state-controlled media,” with “people happily involved with suppressing dissident voices,” the retired CIA intelligence officer stated.
Larry Johnson concluded by urging people to look at multiple sources and listen to as many voices as possible to be able to “make their own judgment.”
Government agencies are subpoenaed for documents on social media censorship collusion
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 29, 2023
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, has sent subpoenas to the heads of three federal agencies for records on communications with social media companies to censor online content.
Jordan sent the subpoenas to head of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) head Jen Easterly, State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) coordinator James Rubin, and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
We obtained an example of one of the letters for you here.
The subpoenas are part of the efforts to reveal the collusion between the federal government and social media to censor certain viewpoints.
“Numerous documents made publicly available reflect the weaponization of the federal government’s power to censor speech online directly and by proxy,” Jordan wrote in his letter to Dr. Walensky. (Documents obtained in the lawsuit filed by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general against the Biden administration and the Twitter Files published by Matt Taibbi and other independent journalists have shown that officials at several federal agencies, including the FBI and DHS, constantly contacted social media companies to have certain people and content censored.)
“It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which the CDC coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies in order to censor speech.”
Jordan sent all three agencies letters to produce the records, but they failed to adequately provide the records requested. The subpoenas are an attempt to force them to produce all the records required.
All three agencies have until May 22 to provide the records.
Revisionist history: Fauci and Weingarten distance themselves from the School Closure policy they enacted & encouraged
Media does not hold them accountable because they are political allies
BY VINAY PRASAD | OBSERVATIONS AND THOUGHTS | APRIL 29, 2023
I always say that the most common way people change their mind is that they rewrite their memories and imagine they always agreed with you. Years ago, we published a provocative paper that qualified the percent of cancer patients eligible for genomic drugs. (it was ~8%), and the same doctors who had until recently claimed that these drugs have changed care for most people, were quick to say, “I always said only a fraction are eligible.” Sure you did, buddy. Sure you did.
To some degree, it is forgivable. The human ego is strong, and it is hard for many to admit they were wrong. When it comes to everyday Americans, I support their right to mis-remember their historical views on COVID19 policy. In fact, I predicted a great swing on this issue specifically — schools.
But, my concession does not extend to the architects of school closure. The experts who went on TV and repeatedly scared the public out of sending their kids to schools, and scared Governors, districts and teachers out of their duty to kids. These people should be remember as being on the wrong side of history, and receive the punishment they deserve: being precluded from shaping policy every again.
That includes Anthony Fauci and Randi Weingarten— two people who are doing an aggressive media campaign to distance themselves from the policies they set in motion.
One of Fauci’s defenses is that he just gave advice, and did not shut anything down. This is contradicted by the fact that he previously took credit for lockdowns, and specifically noted that in early march 2020, Trump faithfully followed his advice.
Of course the NIAID director and WH Covid counsel member has a special responsibility to give good advice, and should know the probability his advice shapes policy is high.
Additionally, he controls a multibillion dollar research budget. Why did he run zero RCTs of masking? School reopening? Distancing? Cohorting? Busing? Ventilation? That was entirely in his power, and there is no excuse for giving advice while not studying your advice, when you control the entire research budget!
Fauci’s next claim is that he always wanted schools reopened. This is contradicted by a detailed timeline of his position on schools, which was consistently to fearmonger about kids and keep them closed.
In the summer of 2020, Fauci was still opposed to schools.
In spring 2020, when DeSantis reopened Fauci went on multiple news outlets to sabotage those efforts
As for Randi, the most accurate comment was in this clip from a distressed parent:
Randi claims she just wanted to open schools safety, but the problem is you didn’t need 750 billion dollars and hepa filtration to open safely. Even masks were unnecessary. Ultimately, schools reopened and ~100% of kids got COVID anyway, the vast majority did fine, most did not have the vaccine beforehand, and there is no reliable evidence the vax lowered the risk of severe disease for kids. All you needed to reopen were teachers with courage, sadly Randi and Tony sapped that away from them with constant inaccurate rhetoric.
The truth is Randi asked for things she knew she would not get, so she could justify her position that teachers be paid, get first dips on vaccine (over the elderly), and continue to not work in person.
School closure has already destroyed a generation of kids. The full damage is not yet appreciated, but the first signs are showing.
The virus was comparable to other viruses in healthy children, and no one should have disrupted their lives. It was not only wrong in retrospect, it was wrong at the time, and many of us saw it instantly and clearly. It was a human rights violation to close schools for kids.
Fauci and Weingarten are the tip of the spear of school closure. History should remember that, and no one should ever entertain their opinion on a policy matter again. The media coverage of them has been meek and toothless.
Bombing Japan After the Atomic Bombings
Tales of the American Empire | April 27, 2023
Americans who read about Japan’s surrender in August 1945 learn only part of what happened because historical accounts are incomplete. They recite the official narrative of the United States government that invading Japan would have caused a million American casualties. Luckily, the United States had developed the atomic bomb. After dropping two atomic bombs Japan quickly surrendered. This official history fails to mention that Japan was seeking to negotiate a surrender since late 1944 after it was clear the war was lost, but powerful people wanted the war to continue longer to demonstrate the power of atomic bombs.
The two atomic bomb attacks produced the same destruction as previous raids involving hundreds of B-29 bombers so they had little impact on the war or Japanese leaders, who were really terrified that Soviet forces had landed in northern Japan. Delaying the end of the war to demonstrate two atomic bombs was immoral and counterproductive. For unknown reasons, the Americans launched a massive bombing raid five days after the second atomic bomb was dropped.
___________________________
“Japs Asked Peace in January”; Walter Trohan; Chicago Tribune; August 19, 1945; http://wyso.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/9/…
Related Tale: “Japan’s Conditional Surrender”; 
• Japan’s Condition…
“Was There a Diplomatic Alternative? The Atomic Bombing and Japan’s Surrender”; Jeremy Kuzmarov; The Asia-Pacific Journal; October 15, 2021; https://apjjf.org/2021/20/Kuzmarov-Pe…
“The B-29 Raid That Ended World War II”; J.A. Hitchcock; http://www.jahitchcock.com/mission/b2…
“Bombing of Kumagaya in World War II”; (five days after Nagasaki was bombed); Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing…
“American Had Plans to Help Russia Invade Japan During World War II”; Sebastien Roblin; The National Interest; December 31, 2020; https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reb…
Related Tale: “The Japanese Victory on Iwo Jima”; • The Japanese Vict…
Related Tale: “The Disastrous Liberation of the Philippines”; • The Disastrous Li…
US senators demand Biden seize more Iranian oil tankers
The Cradle | April 28, 2023
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers has urged President Joe Biden to enable the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) to seize more Iranian oil and gas shipments.
“It is unacceptable that a US government program, which makes the United States and its allies safer, provides funds to remediate the victims of terrorism, and generates income for the United States in a cost-effective manner has been allowed to languish,” a letter drafted by Senators Joni Ernst and Richard Blumenthal reads.
The letter then highlights that the HIS has not been allowed to conduct what amounts to maritime piracy for more than a year before lamenting the success of the Islamic Republic in bypassing US sanctions to boost its oil and gas exports.
“As Iranian oil sales continue to rise, and the IRGC continues to target US citizens and servicemembers, including inside the US, it is imperative that we use all available government assets to limit the activities of the Iranian regime.”
Other senators that signed the letter included Ted Cruz, Steve Daines, Lindsey Graham, Maggie Hassan, Mark Kelly, Joe Manchin, Jerry Moran, Marco Rubio, Kyrsten Sinema, and Ron Wyden.
“The failure to support HSI’s Iranian oil seizure and disruption operations in FY22, despite available funds, is a policy choice that must be reversed,” the senators stressed.
HIS was formed in 2019 during the government of former president Donald Trump. According to the lawmakers, the agency is responsible for pillaging nearly $230 million in Iranian crude and fuel oil.
Its operations have reportedly been curtailed by “policy limitations” from the Department of Treasury’s Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture.
Despite an ever-intensifying “‘maximum pressure” sanctions campaign from the west, Iranian oil exports have reached their highest level since 2015.
According to Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji, Iran exported 83 million more oil barrels in the past 12-month period compared to the 12 months before. At the same time, gas exports increased by 15 percent over the past 12 months.
Iranian crude exports fell to as little as 100,000 bpd in 2020 from over 2.5 million bpd in 2018.
Tehran has been able to evade the US-imposed sanctions, partly through oil sales to China, Iran’s biggest customer, and increase its exports. To avoid sanctions, most of Iran’s crude exports to China are rebranded as crude from other countries. This is done by forging documents to hide the origin of Iranian oil cargo.
See also: Quiet US Seizure Of Iranian Crude Prompted Iran’s Capture Of Houston-Destined Tanker
US officials accuse Russia of antagonizing Washington’s illegally occupying troops in Syria
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | April 29, 2023
The US military, with the help of its Kurdish allies, occupies a third of Syrian territory with no legal basis and is now complaining about Russia antagonizing its troops. Although Moscow has been invited into Syria by Damascus and the US has repeatedly been asked to leave, the Americans are treating Syrian territory as if it is their own.
US officials have recently lashed out with yet more accusations against Moscow. This time the complaints have surfaced through Western corporate media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The head of US Air Forces Central Command, Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, told the WSJ that “we continue to see unsafe and unprofessional area activity from the Russians,” reportedly in proximity of US forces. No evidence has been provided for the claims and Moscow has yet to make any comment.
In July of last year, Dana Stroul, the Biden administration’s deputy assistant secretary of defense (DASD) for the Middle East, said: “Russia is flying in and moving about, at times, in the same space or terrain, near our forces, and it is the responsible, professional thing to do to make sure we have a channel to talk to each other.” She claimed this system has been in place for “a very long time” and is key in preventing misunderstandings that could “tip into an escalatory cycle.” With the presence of both forces in close proximity so frequently, there has yet to be any indication that what is being complained about now is anything new.
However, the story that is being completely written out of existence here is that the US has no legitimacy whatsoever to even operate inside Syria. The US government attempts to legally justify its presence by asserting that under international law it is a victim state in the face of non-state actors such as ‘Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Therefore, the Authorization for Use of Military Force (UAMF) against Iraq, which was passed by US Congress in 2002, is utilized here.
The problem is that the US invasion of Iraq had no validity under international law either, a point explicitly made by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2004. Knowing this, US government officials will always cite their invitation from the Iraqi government to operate inside the country today, sometimes attempting to attach their operations in Syria as coming in defense of their Iraqi ally. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, an international law which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state, completely invalidates US operations inside Syria, since the sovereign government of the nation never granted America permission to enter its territory. In fact, it has even ordered US forces to leave.
Even if you buy the domestic argument about the US fight against ISIS, an organization that has been reduced to terror cells that linger in caves for the most part, this justification also begins to fall apart when examined closely. In 2017, US Senator for Virginia, Tim Kaine, wrote to the US State Department and Secretary of Defense, expressing his concern that if the anti-ISIS mission was extended to include pursuing objectives outside combating the terrorist group, it would have no legitimacy.
In 2018, former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated that he planned on maintaining an indefinite troop presence in Syria, both to fight ISIS and to combat Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad. Even today, the US Department of Defense openly mentions that its mission in Syria and Iraq is a strategy to undermine Iran and ISIS. At one point, after former US President Donald Trump had been misled to believe that all US forces had been withdrawn from Syria, he corrected himself by saying that the US military presence there is “only for the oil.”
Interestingly, at a conference in 2019, Stroul stated that despite the lack of investment that the US was able to muster to counter Iranian and Russian influence in Syria, it still maintained compelling leverage “to shape an outcome that is more protective and conducive to US interests.”
Stroul outlined four ways that the US maintains its leverage. The first key point she made was about the territory in the north-east, which she said is “owned via the US military with its local partner,” adding that the “one third of Syria is the resource rich, economic powerhouse of Syria.” She elaborated that this is “where the hydrocarbons are” and that it is also the “agricultural powerhouse” of the country. Additionally, she stated that the strategy of isolating the government in Damascus diplomatically is in part about preventing Moscow’s efforts to re-integrate the country onto the international stage, and that US sanctions are partly attached to a wider anti-Iran strategy.
Perhaps the most shocking of all Stroul’s points was the admission that the US has only allowed reconstruction in the areas controlled by its SDF allies in occupied Syria while commenting that “the rest of Syria is rubble.” Stroul continued, “What Russia wants and what Assad want, is economic reconstruction and that is something that the United States can basically hold a card on via the international financial institutions and our cooperation with the Europeans.” In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Northern Syria earlier this year, the prevention of reconstruction has contributed significantly to civilian suffering resulting from the natural disaster.
The US Caesar Act sanctions have been blasted for years by UN experts, who have called upon the Biden administration to drop them over the “suffocating” humanitarian crisis they are inflicting on Syrian civilians. Under international law, the third of Syrian territory “owned” by the US can be argued as tantamount to an illegal occupation by a foreign military force. Given that the US military is an occupying power, Damascus has the right to use force to expel it, furthermore, since Russia has been invited into Syria by the official government, the US claims of harassment carry no weight. The United States of America has no right to claim self defense in Syria, it has only one right there – to leave and not return.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
Zelensky and Biden may be on their way out
BY STEPHEN BRYEN | ASIA TIMES | APRIL 29, 2023
There is no doubt now that Bakhmut will soon fall to the Russians. How soon? Probably a few days and no more than one week.
Ukraine says it has managed to evacuate its elite forces from the city, leaving only rearguard elements to hang on until the end. Efforts by Ukraine to provide counterattacks have not borne fruit, and all efforts have been stopped by Russian paratroopers and Wagner PMC fighters, along with generous amounts of Russian artillery.
Meanwhile, the Russians themselves are refocusing on the newly created Ukrainian brigades that are supposed to lead the counteroffensive. These are the brigades that have been stuffed up to their ears with Western hardware but lack well-trained troops.
Such brigades also face complex, perhaps impossible, logistical challenges, since the Western supplies require spare parts, repair centers and in many cases different types of ammunition. Even the Leopard II tanks supplied can’t all use the same ammunition.
More worrisome for Ukraine’s army is the lack of replacement supplies if their coming offensive drags on. Simply put, there are almost no supplies around. The US is mostly out of ammunition and has been stripping stockpiles in South Korea and Israel – something that has alarmed Israel’s generals, who think a hot war with Iran is only weeks away.
The South Koreans have kept quiet, mostly because President Yoon Suk Yeol has just completed a visit to Washington that was stage-managed to make Joe Biden look good. So far as can be determined, the visit was completely ceremonial and basically fruitless.
(Strictly speaking, the only result was that Yoon used the occasion of a state dinner to sing “American Pie,” no matter whether Joe drove his Chevy to the levee, or went over the side. The fact that the levee was dry is a current-time social commentary.)
At the eleventh hour, Ukraine is trying hard to recruit more soldiers, sometimes using rough tactics to dragoon young men. Such troops can’t possibly be trained in time. Practically speaking they are, at most, cannon fodder.
But the Ukrainians want to look credible to their American masters, so not only do they grab young people from street corners or in front of popular watering holes such as McDonald’s, but they beat them up if they resist.
The same is happening to any Ukrainian journalist who tries to write anything the so-called democratic government of Ukraine does not like. Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime has arrested political opponents or chased them out of the country, or worse. And these days Ukrainian special operations groups are assassinating journalists and commentators in Russia and elsewhere who oppose Ukraine.
After Bakhmut is gone, it is possible the Russians will suggest negotiations with the United States. Biden, who is running for re-election, does not want any status quo change until he is re-elected.
But Biden’s re-election is getting more and more remote as the semi-senile president stumbles and bumbles and as a number of his government’s policies will, in the end, bring down his administration notwithstanding his faltering mental status or how many dead Ukrainians pay the price for his re-election effort.
A vast wave of immigrants will soon flood across the southern border of the US; new taxes will soon be slapped on mortgages for people with good credit scores (without bothering to get congressional approval); inflation keeps killing the middle class; and worst of all, the Biden administration demands control of all children’s sexuality without the parents having any say-so.
Without negotiations, the Russians will attempt to systematically destroy Ukraine’s new brigades. With larger forces, better tactics, and more air power, air defenses and ground equipment, the Russians could very well defeat the Ukrainian army and force regime change in Kiev.
In short, in the not-too-distant future, Biden may have to hang up his walker and Zelensky may be looking for a job in California.
Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and at the Yorktown Institute.
US Nuclear Sensors in Ukraine Deployed to Scapegoat Russia
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 29.04.2023
The reason behind Washington setting up sensors across Ukraine to detect a potential nuclear blast may involve shifting the blame to Russia if a radioactive weapon is used, or even if it is not used, but only reported in Western media, Karen Kwiatkowski, former US Department of Defense analyst and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told Sputnik.
The Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST), a group of scientists, technicians, and engineers operating under the United States Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, is deploying nuclear sensors throughout Ukraine to both detect bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and identify the attacker. As per The New York Times, the goal is to verify Moscow’s culpability if Russia detonates a radioactive weapon on Ukrainian soil. The Western media has long disseminated groundless claims that Moscow may resort to the use of nuclear arms if defeated in Ukraine. Russia has resolutely shredded the assumptions, referring to intelligence alleging the Kiev regime’s potential detonation of a so-called “dirty bomb,” a “radiological dispersal device” (RDD) that combines a conventional explosive with radioactive material. The purpose of the possible provocation would be to blame Moscow for the resulting radioactive contamination.
“It makes sense that the secretive NEST team is being deployed to very quickly shift blame to Russia if any radioactive weapon is used (or even if it is not used, but only reported in Western media),” said Karen Kwiatkowski. “The US track record is provocative and the policy players are unwise, almost to a person. There is an argument to be made that this is one more way the US hopes to ‘win’ the narrative, and threaten Russia, by reporting a nuclear release, and immediately blaming Russia (as the story is already structured to do) and protecting the last Ukrainian war enthusiasts from accountability. To this day, despite evidence and logic to the contrary, most of the Western world still believes it was Russians shooting at Zaporozhye [Nuclear Power Plant] last year from Ukrainian territory, while those same Russians were holding and operating the reactor.”
One cannot completely rule out that this preventative deployment is meant to ensure Ukrainians don’t use radioactive weapons in their own last ditch efforts as the war comes to an end, according to the US Air Force veteran. Kwiatkowski suggested that the deployment could serve as a direct message to the remnants of the Ukrainian military and political leaders who could run amok, thus upsetting big Western corporations’ plans to rebuild Ukraine and upending enthusiasm of Western donors. “You can be sure BlackRock intends to profit from rebuilding Ukraine, and cleaning up nuclear contamination is not a profit center,” she stressed. Still, it raises questions how corporations’ interests would correlate with the UK plans to provide the Kiev regime with depleted uranium shells which can contaminate water, soil, and inflict irreparable harm on people’s health in the region. The former Pentagon analyst pointed out that the NEST’s network of sensors must include an array of sensor types to capture and measure the wide variety of radiation types and also be able to collect and test physical samples at the atomic level.
“Radiation from a nuclear plant leak is different from radiation from a radioactive weapon or even a dirty bomb,” Kwiatkowski explained. “The NEST itself is focused on response to radiation events, and there may be innocent explanations for this deployment to Ukraine. For example, looking for radiation leakage from nuclear reactors like at Zaporozhye may be a concern for NATO soldiers and the Ukrainian Army, vis-a-vis rebuilding and infrastructure repair planned for the future. But that is not how the NYT, a state media organ with direct connections to Pentagon intelligence and policy, described it.”
The U.S. Proxy War Against Russia & China Is Increasingly Seen Globally As A Disaster Made By American And NATO Lies
Strategic Culture Foundation | April 28, 2023
It has become patently obvious to the world that the conflict in Ukraine is a dirty and desperate geopolitical confrontation, despite massive Western media efforts to portray it as something else more noble – the usual charade of chivalry and virtue to disguise naked Western imperialism.
The death and destruction in Ukraine is nothing but a proxy war by the United States and its NATO partners to defeat Russia in a strategic gambit. But the unspoken objective does not end with Russia. The U.S. and its Western imperialist lackeys are driven to push for confrontation with China too.
As if taking on Russia is not reckless enough! The Western powers want to double down on their warmongering with China. This is all because the underlying impetus is for Washington and its Western minions to promote U.S.-led dominance of the global order. Russia and China are the main obstacles to that path of would-be dominance, and hence we see this manic drive for aggression stemming from Washington, the executive power of the Western order.
It should be obvious that while the U.S.-led NATO axis has stoked the war in Ukraine to calamitous heights, this same axis is wantonly inciting tensions with China. This observation alone should be enough to condemn the criminality of Western powers.
This week saw the NATO powers deliver depleted uranium weapons to the Kiev regime, while the United States announced that it would be docking submarine nuclear warheads in South Korea, a move that infuriated China which pointed out that Washington was violating decades-old commitments to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. Of course, such perverse provocation is par for the course as far as Washington is concerned. It is done deliberately in a conscious effort to exacerbate tensions and escalate militarism. Peace and security are anathemas to the U.S. (and its minions) whose whole ideological raison d’être is to aggravate war to gratify corporate capitalist addiction – a system that is increasingly bankrupt and dysfunctional, and hence the insane desperation for craving “war-fixes”.
In a scathing speech to the United Nations Security Council this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that the conflict in Ukraine cannot be properly resolved without an understanding of the geopolitical context. In other words, the war in the former Soviet republic which erupted last February has bigger causes than what the Western powers and their compliant news media would try to pretend otherwise.
Defense of Ukraine? Defense of democracy? Defense of international law? Defense of national sovereignty? These are some of the laughable claims made by Washington and its allies. One only has to consider the decades of total trashing of the UN Charter and democratic principles by the United States and its rogue partners in their pursuit of criminal wars to realize that their virtue-signaling over Ukraine is a vile joke.
Lavrov’s address to the Security Council was a stunning rebuke of the hypocrisy and criminality of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers, as well as the European Union. His speech was akin to the scene in the classic old movie The Wizard of Oz when the curtain was pulled back on the buffoonish villain for all to see. Any objective observer would agree with the Russian foreign minister’s excoriating survey of modern history and why the war in Ukraine has tragically manifested. Lamentably, if we fail to understand history and the real causes of conflicts, then we are condemned to repeat the horrors.
Ironically, Western leaders have at times revealed the bigger geopolitical agenda with their own misspoken arrogant words. U.S. President Joe Biden had previously blurted out a call for regime change in Moscow while his senior aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, have succumbed to the intoxication of their narcissism and hubris by saying that the purpose of the war in Ukraine is the “defeat of Russia”.
Other NATO senior figures, such as the stupid, conceited Polish leaders and their Baltic buddies, have also come out and stated that the war’s ulterior agenda is to vanquish Russia. The fascist skeletons of their Nazi-collusion past have resurrected their deathly rattles, uncontrollably.
As Lavrov’s address to the Security Council intimates, the systematic violation of the UN Charter by the United States and its Western partners is a deplorable continuation of the Nazi fascism and imperialist barbarism that was supposed to have been defeated in World War Two. The culmination of the constant, unbridled Western imperialist criminality and its state terrorism is the current war in Ukraine and the growing aggression toward China over Taiwan as a pretext.
In all of this, woefully, the Western public has been flagrantly lied to by their governments and media as to the real nature of the war in Ukraine. American and European citizens have been bilked for hundreds of billions of dollars to prop up a Nazi regime in Kiev whose function is to act as a NATO spear-tip against Russia, and ultimately China when the NATO powers feel they are done with Ukraine. (The latter is a futile ambition, as is becoming increasingly evident.)
Journalists and antiwar activists in the West who highlight the malfeasance over Ukraine are either sacked, vilified, censored, or sanctioned into poverty, or even imprisoned.
Nevertheless, the Western public and the rest of the world are increasingly becoming aware of the odious charade. By definition, charades are inevitably untenable.
The Global South – the majority of the 193 nations at the UN – has had it with Western capitalist hegemony and its outrageous neocolonialist privileges. The incremental dumping of the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency for trade is a testament to the historic shift towards a multipolar order in defiance of Western unipolar elitism. The nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia understand that the U.S.-led NATO war in Ukraine is a desperate last-ditch bid to preserve an imperialist global order which should have been eradicated after World War Two with the establishment of the United Nations, but which, regrettably, was not. Because the root cause of imperialism is the AngloAmerican-led Western capitalist order. The end of World War Two, as with World War One, was but a pause in the historical killing machine.
It is now increasingly evident in the light of leaked documents from the Pentagon that the war in Ukraine is a disaster. The Kiev regime is facing defeat at the hands of superior Russian forces even though that regime has been flooded with weapons by the United States and NATO. Great expectations of a Ukrainian victory that were widely predicted by Western leaders and media have been shown to be empty, contemptible lies.
The side-show of this war is a gargantuan racket. Western arms companies have raked in unprecedented profits, while the NATO-backed cabal in Kiev has skimmed off hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the same Kiev regime that is burning down Orthodox Christian churches, exterminating the Russian language, lionizing World War Two Nazi criminals, and locking up any critical opposition and media.
But the main takeaway is the lies that the United States and Western lackeys, including the entire media industry, have been telling about the proxy war in Ukraine. This war is an imperialist adventure that has been financially ruinous, has destroyed Ukraine, and is driving a dangerous all-out war with Russia and China that could turn into a nuclear armageddon.
We should not be surprised by such blatant lying and deception. President Joe Biden and his administration have been telling barefaced lies to conceal the corruption oozing out of Biden’s own family. Biden and his son Hunter have exploited Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 for personal enrichment. The president has even reportedly got his senior aides to do his bidding to censor intelligence agencies and media from revealing to the public the corruption at the heart of his family. (Risibly, the truth is smeared as Russian or Chinese disinformation!)
The lies that Biden and his administration tell about personal corruption are indelibly coupled with the lies told about the proxy war in Ukraine.
It is increasingly clear that the American public, the European public, and the rest of the world have been duped in multiple ways. The phony war in Ukraine is exposing the deep, stinking well of corruption in this White House. There will be hell to pay.
US Democrats fundraise from arms dealers amid Pentagon budget fight
Press TV – April 29, 2023
Top Democratic lawmakers in the US are holding a fundraising meeting with major arms companies on Thursday as Washington plunges into a budget battle in which concessions to the Pentagon and the defense industry could mean cuts to welfare programs such as food stamps.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, his deputy Pete Aguilar, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) chair Rep. Suzan Delbene have been selected as the honorees to be invited to the event. The downtown D.C. function ― dubbed a “defense and national security dinner” ― is set to raise funds for the committee, which is the campaign arm for House Democrats and is central to their hopes of regaining the lower chamber of Congress.
Dozens of representatives of Pentagon contractors, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, SpaceX, Palantir, and General Dynamics will attend the event.
The group includes figures who previously worked for congressional Democrats, such as Shana Chandler, director of government relations at General Dynamics. Chandler spent 15 years as chief of staff for Rep. Adam Smith, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and another co-host of Thursday’s event.
The event could provide a significant signal about the priorities of the House Democrats as they prepare for the 2024 elections and battle Republicans who are demanding spending cuts in exchange for passing critical legislation. It could be a disappointing message to those who want the party to support social justice and progressive reform.
A senior congressional aide said news of the fundraiser set off alarm bells among staffers, and the event could be a stark example of senior Democratic leaders saying one thing but doing another. Democrats claim to support reining in out-of-control defense spending and criticize Republicans for serving America’s most powerful corporate interests while doing exactly that themselves.
In the coming months, Democratic lawmakers are expected to make key decisions that will affect the US defense industry as they fight Republican efforts to cut government spending.
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he wants comprehensive cuts. But signals from influential Republicans and analysis by budget experts suggest that McCarthy will protect the Pentagon budget.
Democrats can also demand limits on Pentagon spending to protect other government agencies. However, the defense industry will lobby hard to prevent such a development.
The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender, according to new data on global military spending published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 percent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender.
The 0.7 percent real-terms increase in US spending in 2022 would have been even greater had it not been for the highest levels of inflation since 1981.
“The increase in the USA’s military spending in 2022 was largely accounted for by the unprecedented level of financial military aid it provided to Ukraine,” said Dr Nan Tian, SIPRI Senior Researcher. “Given the scale of US spending, even a minor increase in percentage terms has a significant impact on the level of global military expenditure.”
US financial military aid to Ukraine totaled $19.9 billion in 2022. Although this was the largest amount of military aid given by any country to a single beneficiary in any year since the cold war, it represented only 2.3 percent of total US military spending.
In 2022 the USA allocated $295 billion to military operations and maintenance, $264 billion to procurement and research and development, and $167 billion to military personnel.
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