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Seymour Hersh makes claim over reasons for Nord Stream sabotage

RT | March 24, 2023

US President Joe Biden ordered the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines because he was unhappy with the level of support provided by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed.

Hersh first accused Washington of destroying the key European energy route in an article released in February, and made more allegations in an interview with the China Daily newspaper published on Friday.

“The [US] president was afraid of Chancellor Scholz not wanting to put more guns and more arms [forward for Kiev]. That’s all. I don’t know whether that it was anger or punishment, but the net effect is that it cut off a major power source through Western Europe,” Hersh claimed.

Despite attempts by the US to deny its involvement in the Nord Stream attack, “Europe is in crisis now” and Biden will receive “a lot of criticism for what he did” in the coming months, the journalist argued.

The Pulitzer Prize winner alleged that “the people that were initially asked to do the job” of destroying the pipelines were contacted by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan towards the end of 2021.

The initial purpose of mining Nord Stream 1 and 2, built to deliver Russian gas to Europe through Germany, was “to give the [US] president an option to say to [Russian] President Putin, ‘If you go to war [in Ukraine], we’re going to destroy the pipelines,’” Hersh claimed.

Biden himself publicly confirmed that stance but “unfortunately, those people in the Western press seemed to have forgotten,” the journalist stated.

Just under three weeks before the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, Biden warned during a press conference on February 7 that “if Russia invades… there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

According to Hersh, the US leader decided to order the detonation of mines at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last September because the conflict “wasn’t going great in Ukraine” from a US perspective. There was “at best a stalemate” during that period, in what Hersh described as “the American war that President Biden was so eager to support.”

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

The US’ Rejection Of China’s Peace Plan For Ukraine Exposes Its Warmongering Intentions

By Andrew Korybko | March 24, 2023

Bloomberg cited an unnamed Biden Administration official on Thursday to report that “the US is worried about being backed into a corner over the Chinese proposal. Regardless of the US reservations, dismissing it outright could let China argue to other nations that are weary of the war — and of the economic damage it’s wreaking — that Washington isn’t interested in peace.” Alas, that’s precisely what America has done by acting as if China isn’t a serious mediator and that its peace plan is unrealistic.

By rejecting Beijing’s 12-step proposal, Washington exposed its warmongering intentions for the rest of the world to see and vindicated Moscow’s criticism that it wants to fight this proxy war “to the last Ukrainian”. The majority of the international community that resides in the Global South and which is most adversely affected by the systemic consequences of this conflict, particularly the food and fuel crises catalyzed by Western sanctions, had their perceptions of US soft power shattered once and for all.

Prior to the onset of Russia’s special operation last year that it was forced to commence in defense of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there, a significant share of folks in developing countries still generally had a favorable view of that declining unipolar hegemon. They might not have endorsed every one of its foreign policy moves, but these people still thought that its worldview had some redeeming factors that made it worthy of being listened to at the very least.

The allure of its soft power, particularly in the socio-cultural sphere as propagated by the mass media over the decades, still had a powerful hold over their hearts and minds. Now, however, these same people are directly suffering from the food and fuel crises catalyzed by the West’s unilateral sanctions. To make matters worse, the US signaled through its rejection of China’s peace plan for Ukraine that relief won’t be forthcoming, thus indefinitely perpetuating and thus exacerbating these problems.

It’s one thing for US-inclined folks in the Global South who’ve fallen under the sway of its soft power to oppose some part of its foreign policy regarding a faraway country and another entirely for that same foreign policy to directly affect them and their family. They might still enjoy consuming some of its socio-cultural products and perhaps still cling to believing in the so-called “American Dream” despite the odds of them ever benefiting from it, but their views of the US as a whole will certainly change.

This rapidly emerging outcome represents a latent crisis of the highest importance for the US’ grand strategic interests since the loss of such a critical mass of supporters will hamstring its goals across the Global South. These same people will be less susceptible to its information warfare products against their multipolar governments, thus reducing the chances that forthcoming Color Revolution plots will succeed, to say nothing of them tuning out the US’ fake news about the Sino-Russo Entente.

The combination of hunger pains and rising costs, which are the direct result of the food and fuel crises respectively that the US’ unilateral sanctions are responsible for, can turn anyone against anything even if they were previously the most fervent of believers. This is especially so when it worsens the living conditions of one’s own family, including their children. The arrogance of American policymakers, deluded by the supremacist belief in their system’s supposed “exceptionalism”, blinds them to this.

The aforesaid oversight, which could easily have been foreseen and thus avoided had groupthink not been in effect, is the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and turned the Global South against the US en masse. There’s now no credible possibility of America advancing its interests there by information warfare-driven attraction ever again, thus leading to it doubling down on subversion and force out of desperation instead of accepting the loss of its influence in those countries.

March 24, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Ron Unz: JFK Assassination, Iranian Channel Four TV (IRIB)

Iranian TV Fills the “Blank Spots” in Our National History

BY RON UNZ • UNZ REVIEW • MARCH 19, 2023

I recently read Lenin’s Tomb, David Remnick’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1993 account of the decay and political collapse of the Soviet Union, and one of the crucial points he emphasized was that Soviet history contained many important “Blank Spots,” deeply suppressed facts or incidents central to the true history of that unfortunate country.

Just as information suppressed by the Soviet authorities had once circulated freely in the West, topics totally banned from today’s Western media are openly discussed in other societies, which possess entirely different taboos.

A few months ago I was contacted by a host for Iranian broadcast television who had decided to feature interviews with a number of Western dissident thinkers, individuals whose controversial views had excluded them from American media outlets. Channel Four of the Iran Broadcasting Corporation is one of that country’s largest, having a potential audience of ten million, and I gladly spent four hours discussing a variety of my topics, while also suggesting a number of other figures who were also interviewed as well.

Thirty-odd segments featuring about a dozen different guests were ultimately recorded, and as they have been aired, they are also being released on a streaming website. About half are now available, including most of my own and those featuring E. Michael Jones, Nick Kollerstrom, Kevin Barrett, and Laurent Guyénot. For more convenient Western access, I had them video-captured and uploaded to a Rumble channel, realizing that many of the taboo topics would immediately trigger a purge on Youtube.

Those of my interviews already broadcast included discussions of the JFK Assassination, the 9/11 Attacks, and the Holocaust, and I was reasonably pleased with how they came out. I’m embedding these video segments below, followed in each case by some of the main articles I had previously published on those particular topics.

Ron Unz: JFK Assassination, Part #1, Iranian Channel Four TV (IRIB)

Ron Unz: JFK Assassination, Part #2, Iranian Channel Four TV (IRIB)

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Mexican President Says Trump Arrest is About Keeping Him Off the Ballot

Agencia Press South via Getty Images
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | March 23, 2023

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador slammed the Biden administration for accusing him of corruption while abusing the justice system in America to engage in a political witch hunt against Donald Trump “so that he doesn’t appear on the ballot”.

AMLO made the comments in response to a U.S. government report that accused his an administration of “human rights violations,” a charge which he asserts is a tissue of “lies”.

Over the weekend, Trump said he expects to be arrested in connection with a potential indictment for ‘hush money’ payments made to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.

“Right now, former President Trump is declaring that they are going to arrest him,” said AMLO, adding, “If that were the case… it would be so that his name doesn’t appear on the ballot.”

Obrador said he sympathized with Trump because he too had been targeted with “the fabrication of a crime, when they didn’t want me to run.”

“And this is completely anti-democratic… Why not allow the people to decide?” said AMLO.

The president also shot down claims that he was responsible for the mistreatment of journalists by pointing to America’s treatment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, adding that the report criticizing his administration, “should not be taken seriously.”

“Let’s see, human rights? Why don’t you release Assange?” he asked. “If you are talking about journalism and freedom, why are you holding Assange?”

Obrador also said the U.S. had no right to browbeat him about violence given their alleged role in blowing up the Nord Stream oil pipelines.

“If you talk about acts of violence, how is it that an award-winning United States journalist tells us that the United States government sabotaged the Russian-European gas pipeline?” the president stated.

“Why is a cartel, or several cartels, allowed to operate in the United States, freely distributing the fentanyl that does so much harm to young people in that country?” he asked.

AMLO said the U.S. should stop trying to “be the government of the world” when their own behavior is rife with inconsistencies.

Last night, a letter written by Michael Cohen’s attorney said that Cohen acted alone when paying off Stormy Daniels in 2016, with the case against Trump looking increasingly flimsy and more likely to collapse altogether.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Russian governor’s son flees house arrest in Italy

RT | March 23, 2023

Artyom Uss, son of the governor of Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Region, Aleksandr Uss, has fled house arrest near the Italian city of Milan, the ANSA news agency has reported.

The Carabinieri – an Italian law enforcement agency that also acts as the military police – is searching for the alleged fugitive, the agency added.

According to ANSA, Uss is believed to have broken his electronic tag before fleeing his home on Wednesday afternoon.

The developments come just days after a court of appeals in Milan approved the 40-year-old’s extradition to America. Uss was detained last October at Milan’s Malpensa Airport on allegations of sanctions evasion and money laundering. The New York district attorney had earlier issued an international arrest warrant for him.

Uss, who had been held under house arrest since his initial detention, denied the allegations and his lawyer had told TASS that they intended to appeal the extradition decision. According to ANSA, Uss was preparing to contest the court’s decision when he disappeared.

The US has claimed that the governor’s son allegedly purchased American military technology before selling it to sanctioned Russian entities. He is also accused of smuggling oil from Venezuela to customers in China and Russia.

In October, a Russian court ordered Uss’s arrest on money laundering charges. Moscow has since demanded that he be extradited to his homeland.

Governor Aleksandr Uss has claimed that the charges against his son are politically motivated. Lawyers for Artyom Uss have also suggested that Washington may want to use him in potential prisoner exchanges with Moscow.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Iraq war is epitomy of media duplicity

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | March 23, 2023

The Iraq War was spawned by a deadly combination of political depravity and media complicity. Unfortunately, on the twentieth anniversary of the war, both elements of that conspiracy are being whitewashed. Instead, politicians and their pundit accomplices are prattling as if the Iraq war was a well-intentioned mistake, not a crime against humanity.

In the days after 9/11, when pollsters asked Americans who they thought had carried out the 9/11 attacks, only 3 percent of respondents suggested Iraq or Saddam Hussein as culprits. But President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney worked ceaselessly to convince Americans that Saddam was the 9/11 culprit. Official propaganda trumpeting the Saddam/al-Qaeda link was the linchpin for exploiting 9/11 to justify war. A February 2003 poll found that 72 percent of Americans believed that Saddam was “personally involved in the September 11 attacks.” Shortly before the March 2003 invasion, almost half of all Americans believed that “most” or “some” of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17 percent of respondents knew that none of the hijackers was Iraqi.

In his official notification of invasion sent to Congress (in lieu of a declaration of war) on March 18, 2003, Bush declared that he was attacking Iraq “to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Bush tied Saddam to 9/11 even though confidential briefings he received informed him that no evidence of any link had been found. Three years after the war started, Bush publicly admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

On March 17, 2003, Bush also justified invading Iraq by invoking UN resolutions purportedly authorizing the U.S. “to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.” In a speech giving Saddam 48 hours to abdicate power, Bush declared, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” In the weeks and months after the fall of Baghdad, Bush repeatedly asserted that U.S. forces had discovered WMDs or that Saddam had weapons programs. “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories,” Bush declared to journalists on May 29, 2003. Five weeks later, he again claimed vindication because “we found a biological lab” in a truck trailer. However, CIA investigators concluded that the trailer had nothing to do with an Iraqi WMD program. False claims by the Bush administration on Saddam seeking uranium in Niger sparked an uproar and leaks seeking to destroy the former ambassador who exposed the sham.

In June 2003, Bush repeatedly denounced “revisionist historians” who kept asking about the missing WMDs. In a November 12, 2003 interview with the BBC’s David Frost, Bush declared that he had sent a team to Iraq “to find the weapons or the intent of weapons.” Bush did not reveal how he defined “the intent of weapons.” The following month, Bush told ABC News that the war was justified because there was “the possibility that [Saddam] could acquire weapons.” In January 2004, David Kay—the man Bush chose to head the search for WMDs in Iraq—testified to Congress that “we were almost all wrong,” as far as Iraq possessing WMDs. Kay’s testimony demolished one of the prime pretexts for the war.

Bush responded by portraying the lack of evidence as proof of his courage. On February 8, 2004, Bush justified invading Iraq because Saddam “had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum.” This is like justifying a violent no-knock raid on someone’s house because they could have purchased gunpowder and tin cans.

In a March 2, 2004 speech to Homeland Security Department employees, Bush offered a new justification for invading Iraq: “America will not allow terrorists and outlaw regimes to threaten our Nation and the world with the world’s most dangerous technologies.” The mere suspicion that a nation might have “dangerous technologies” justified devastating their land.

But what did George W. Bush really think? That mystery was solved a few weeks later at the annual Washington dinner for the Radio and Television Correspondents Association. Bush performed a skit featuring slides showing him crawling around the Oval Office peeking behind curtains. Bush quipped to the poohbah attendees: “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere…Nope, no weapons over there… Maybe under here?” The crowd loved it and The Washington Post headlined its report on the evening: “George Bush, Entertainer in Chief.” Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor & Publisher, labeled the performance and the press’s reaction that night as “one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of the American media and presidency.” By the time of Bush’s performance, hundreds of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians had already been killed.

Most of the media had embedded themselves for the Iraq war long before that dinner. The Washington Post buried pre-war articles questioning the Bush team’s shams on Iraq; their award-winning Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained, “There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’” Instead, before the war started, the Post ran 27 editorials in favor of invasion and 140 front-page articles supporting the Bush administration’s case for attacking Saddam. PBS’s Bill Moyers noted that “of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news, from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.” Jim Lehrer, the host of government-subsidized PBS Newshour, explained his timidity in 2004: “It would have been difficult to have had debates [about invading Iraq]… you’d have had to have gone against the grain.” Lehrer’s admission did not disgrace him since groveling to officialdom is the job description for Washington journalists.

In his 1971 opinion on the Pentagon Papers case, Justice Hugo Black declared that a free press has “the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.” But during the Iraq War, most of the media preferred to trumpet official lies instead of exposing them.

A 2005 American University survey of hundreds of journalists who covered Iraq concluded: “Many media outlets have self-censored their reporting on the conflict in Iraq because of concern about public reaction to graphic images and details about the war.” Individual journalists commented:

“In general, coverage downplayed civilian casualties and promoted a pro-U.S. viewpoint. No U.S. media show abuses by U.S. military carried out on regular basis.”

“Friendly fire incidents were to show only injured Americans, and no reference made to possible mistakes involving civilians.”

“The real damage of the war on the civilian population was uniformly omitted.”

The media sugarcoated the war and almost always refused to publish photos incriminating the U.S. military. The Washington Post received a leak of thousands of pages of confidential records on the 2005 massacre at Haditha, including stunning photos taken immediately after Marines killed 24 civilians (mostly women and children). Though the Post headlined its exclusive story, “Marines’ Photos Provide Graphic Evidence in Haditha Probe,” the article noted that “Post editors decided that most of the images are too graphic to publish.” The Post suppressed the evidence at the same time it continued deferentially reporting official denials that U.S. troops committed atrocities.

In 2007, two Apache helicopters targeted a group of men in Baghdad with 30 mm. cannons and killed kill up to 18 people. Video from the helicopter revealed one helicopter crew “laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians, including two Reuters journalists.” “Light ’em all up. Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” one guy on the recording declared. Army Corporal Chelsea Manning leaked the video to Wikileaks, which disclosed it in 2010. Wikileaks declared on Twitter: “Washington Post had Collateral Murder video for over a year but DID NOT RELEASE IT to the public.” Wikileaks also disclosed thousands of official documents exposing U.S. war crimes and abuses, tacitly damning American media outlets that chose to ignore or shroud atrocities.

In 2007, Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly declared that at the beginning of the war in Iraq, “everybody in the country [was] behind it, except the kooks.” The “kooks” included UN weapons inspectors, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and many foreign governments. The “kook” label was also attached to Antiwar.com, The American Conservative, Counterpunch, the Future of Freedom Foundation, and an array of individual journalists who often found closed doors to their submissions. Likewise, the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of protestors who took to the streets of American cities to oppose the war were redefined into a laughingstock.

In his rush to war, President Bush showed boundless bad faith—followed by boundless righteousness after his lies were exposed. By the summer of 2008, only 22 percent of Americans approved of Bush and 41 percent said he was the “worst president ever.” But the same media outlets that championed the Iraq War helped resurrect Bush’s public image a decade later. Bush was exalted like the second coming of George Washington for his slams against the Trump administration. By early 2018,  a poll showed that 61 percent of Americans approved of Bush, and his support among Democrats quintupled, from 11 percent in early 2009 to 54 percent now. The key to Bush’s rehabilitation was burying his Iraq War record in the Memory Hole.

The media played the same trick to expunge its own tawdry Iraq record. Four years ago, the Washington Post spent a king’s ransom to produce and run a Super Bowl ad on its “Democracy Dies in the Darkness” motto. At that time, the Post was whipping up RussiaGate hysteria and reaping torrents of new subscribers. The Super Bowl ad, a paean to reporters, declared, “When we go off to war… knowing keeps us free.”

But kowtowing leaves people dead. Twenty years after the start of the Iraq War, President Biden is dragging America deeper into a foreign conflict that could spiral into World War III. Most of the mainstream media is again parroting whatever the U.S. government or its foreign lackeys say about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Lies are political weapons of mass destruction, obliterating all limits on government power. The Iraq War should have taught Americans not to trust presidents or pundits who seek to unleash mass carnage. But don’t trust the Washington elite to ever learn or admit that lesson.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US to build new military bases near South China Sea

RT | March 23, 2023

The United States is set to build four new military bases “scattered” around the Philippines, the country’s president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., has confirmed. He added that at least one facility would be placed near a disputed island chain claimed by China and several other nations.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, the Philippine leader offered additional details about the new installations, which were first unveiled last month as part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with Washington. However, he said he could not reveal their exact location until a formal announcement is made alongside the US.

“There are four extra sites scattered around the Philippines – there are some in the north, there are some around Palawan, there are some further south,” he said, adding that the bases would help to defend the country’s largest island, Luzon.

Palawan is one of the Philippines’ westernmost regions, and is situated around 200 miles (320 kilometers) east of the disputed Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea, which is also known by several other local names. Six countries have laid claim to parts of the small island chain, among them China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei as well as the Philippines, though US officials have repeatedly rejected Beijing’s claims as “unlawful.”

American bases on Luzon, meanwhile, are likely to be built with Taiwan in mind given its close proximity to the self-governing island, which China considers part of its sovereign territory. Though Washington had long maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taipei, President Joe Biden has broken with that approach, explicitly stating that US forces would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack.

Asked about the plans for the new bases during a Wednesday press briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin argued that military cooperation between countries should be “conducive to regional peace and stability and not targeted at or harmful to the interests of any third party.”

“The US side, out of selfish interests, remains trapped in a zero-sum mentality and keeps increasing military deployment in the Asia-Pacific,” he said, adding that “Regional countries need to remain vigilant and avoid being coerced or used by the US.”

President Marcos went on to warn of a “complex” and “unpredictable” security environment in the region, saying he was aware of an “emerging threat” that would require “adjustments in our strategy” without elaborating.

Under the 2014 EDCA, the US was initially permitted to construct five military bases around the Philippines, but the pact was recently extended to four additional “strategic” sites. Washington has so far spent $82 million on the original five facilities, and continues to work on bases that will eventually host rotating troop deployments.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Putin and Xi Standing Firm on the Right Side of History

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 23, 2023

The historic summit this week between the Russian and Chinese leaders provoked paroxysms of angst in the Western media. President Vladimir Putin’s hosting of China’s Xi Jinping in Moscow was presented as the “world’s two most prominent autocrats” purportedly establishing a hostile “anti-West axis”.

The American and European media – slavishly echoing the talking points of their imperialist regimes – were in hyper-bogeyman mode. The meeting of Putin and Xi was distorted in every way to appear as something illegitimately threatening and sinister to the Western “rules-based global order” (euphemism for Western capitalist privileges and predation.)

Bogeyman mode also entails collective amnesia. The summit coincided with the 20th anniversary of the U.S. and British launching their war on Iraq – arguably the biggest crime of the 21st century so far. Yet this vile anniversary has hardly stirred any Western media condemnation or shame, never mind legal accountability.

The wanton cynicism towards the Putin-Xi meeting belies the deep anxiety among the U.S.-dominated clique of Western states that the much-vaunted “rules-based order” is collapsing. A collapse caused by its own inherent corruption and systematic abuse of power and international law over many decades.

Both Putin and Xi emphasized that the Russia-China alliance was not meant to threaten any third party.

“We are always for peace and dialogue,” said China’s President Xi who was in Russia on a three-day state visit.

Putin hailed the highest point in relations between Moscow and Beijing and underscored the long historical friendship. Both leaders said this was not simply an extension of a Cold War-era alliance but rather a harbinger of genuine multipolar global development for all nations based on partnership and cooperation, respecting international law and national sovereignty.

Indeed, the much-anticipated multipolar world order is coming to fruition as the erstwhile dominance of Western elitist unilateralism shrivels. The Russian and Chinese leaders signed multiple trade deals and furthered plans to use national currencies, thereby making the unwarranted privileges of the US dollar obsolete.

There is a palpable sense that the global economy is moving in a tectonic shift towards Eurasian partnership of vitality and dynamic multipolar development, foreshadowing a fateful demise for U.S.-led Western capitalist hegemony. Western nations are haunted by financial bankruptcy, inequality, paralyzing debt, and dead-end militarism.

Of particular note is the plan to build a new gas pipeline from Russia to China dubbed Power of Siberia 2. It will supply an additional 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually to China. Significantly, this new supply route of Russian energy matches the volume that had been earmarked for the European Union with the operation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline – until the Biden administration blew it up.

Out of all the impressive partnership deals signed in Moscow this week, the new gas route to China speaks loudest. Russia has decided to walk away from the ungrateful Europeans and let them suffer the consequences of industrial shutdown by opting for expensive American gas.

Eurasian economic power is the fulcrum of global development. Russia and China are leading the way, not just for the rest of Eurasia, but also for the Global South, Latin America, Africa, and others. The incremental moving away from the U.S. dollar as fiat international currency is the most ominous sign of the rise and fall. Russia and China are hastening that fateful switch.

In a desperate bid to avert the inevitable, the Western imperialist regimes and their media tried to depict the Putin-Xi summit as something sinister for global security, in what amounts to be a reverse projection of their own depredations and crimes.

Western media sneered that “autocrats” Putin and Xi were “posing as peacemakers”, even while both leaders emphasized their vision of multipolar relations was based on mutual cooperation.

China’s proposals for a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine were welcomed by Putin but dismissed by the Americans and Europeans as “diplomatic cover for Russian aggression”. Meanwhile, Washington and Brussels made new commitments to increase weapons supply to Ukraine, thereby prolonging the conflict – the worst in Europe since World War Two.

It is American and European regimes that are ruling out any dialogue or political-historical understanding about the origins of the war in Ukraine. Hence their determination to swipe away any opportunity for resolution. Because if an intelligent, reasonable dialogue was held – as the Russians had proposed before the war erupted more than a year ago – the conclusions would be unacceptable for U.S. and NATO expansionism.

The paradox is Russia and China are portrayed as global villains by Western powers who are still dripping with blood from the fraudulent and illegal Iraq war and who are today fueling a potentially catastrophic nuclear confrontation over Ukraine. The same media lying machine that enabled the destruction of Iraq (and many other nations) is now enabling hostility towards Russia and China.

To augment that twisted narrative, the Western media seek to undermine the Russian and Chinese-led move towards a better, fairer global economy and with that the demise of U.S. hegemony. Of course, “U.S. hegemony” and “Western economy” are just euphemisms for a dictatorship of billionaires and corporations, a dictatorship that the vast majority of the Western public has to suffer under.

So this week, Russia was labelled the “junior partner” of China and denigrated for becoming a “dependency” on Beijing. Western media reporting went into contortions to wantonly mischaracterize the evident warmth between Putin and Xi, and the tremendous significance of their global vision.

Russia was disparaged as becoming nothing more than a “resource colony of China” owing to its burgeoning oil and gas exports. That moniker reminds one of former U.S. Senator John McCain’s insult of Russia being nothing more than a “gas station masquerading as a nation”.

It’s funny how Moscow was up until recently accused of “energy blackmail” and “weaponizing hydrocarbons” when it was the main supplier of Europe. But when Russia’s vast energy is rerouted to China it is now pilloried as a “colony” of Beijing. Western propaganda can’t make up its mind about whether to cast Russia as an energy tyrant or an energy toady. That double-think betrays propaganda construct and demonization.

The world is changing before our eyes. Western imperialist regimes are being exposed for the warmongers they are, their privileges and predatory capitalism are imploding, their neocolonialist blood-sucking days are over, and a new multipolar order of partnership and peace is emerging.

The Western elites and their media are excelling themselves by trying to bad mouth Putin and Xi in every preposterous way. The outlandish distortions are commensurate with the desperation.

Time in short order, however, is telling who really is on the right side of history.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Western Sanctions Targeting Russians Failed, PM Mishustin Says

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 23.03.2023

The US and its allies slapped packages of sanctions on Russia shortly after Moscow had launched its special military operation in Ukraine.

Russian Prime Minister Mishustin stated on Thursday that the US-led Western sanctions barrage targeting Russians has failed.

“At the very beginning, the West tried to assure that the sanctions were not directed against our citizens. And at the time, there were no illusions on this score. But now, even a person far removed from global politics understands that the main target was precisely the Russian people,” the prime minister emphasized during his speech at the State Duma, Russia’s lower house.

He said that the West “stopped at nothing”, even going as far as blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline network and seizing banking accounts.

Also, they “disconnected [Russia] from the international payment system, trying to block all banking and any other economic activity [of the country],” Mishustin pointed out.

The Russian PM emphasized that despite the sanctions, “goods and services-related payments as well as money transfers are being carried out just like before.”

“All bank cards in Russia that were previously in use are still working. The government also managed to reduce inflationary pressure and preserve the banking sector’s stability,” Mishustin stressed.

He recalled that last spring, “analysts were predicting a probable double-digit decline in Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP),” but he emphasized “we weathered the storm.” “It was a tricky task. The economic slowdown, [which was] inevitable under such conditions, was quite mild. Nevertheless, We’ve put the economy back on the growth track,” he added.

The Russian prime minister highlighted that in this regard the government had created “all the necessary work conditions for those companies that see their future in Russia, including firms from unfriendly states.”

“Despite all the restrictions, the negation of property rights, and the discriminatory measures that Russian businesses faced in the West, foreign companies feel comfortable when working in Russia,” Mushustin noted. He warned that “if foreign firms ditch their business operations in Russia and fail to take care of the future of their enterprises and employees, we will protect the interests of our people.”

The PM cautioned that “external pressure” on the Russian economy is unlikely to show signs of easing any time soon, and that “the period of [the economy’s] adaptation will end in 2024. Moreover, Russia will embark on the path of long-term progressive development.”

Last year, Western governments began to slap sweeping sanctions on the Russian economy over Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine. However, these measures finally boomeranged on the economies of the US-led West as these restrictive measures sent inflation (especially in the energy sector) skyrocketing to record highs while simultaneously driving their societies into a cost of living crisis.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s economy recovers while dozens of US banks face collapse

By Ahmed Adel | March 23, 2023

Although Western media were boasting about Sberbank’s 78% plunge in profit in 2022 due to US-led sanctions, with CEO German Gref acknowledging a “most difficult year”, it appears that the US economic system is the one actually on the brink as four banks have already collapsed, with dozens more expected to follow.

CNN described the Russian bank’s drop in profit as a “collapse” in its headline, but then had to admit in the article that “Sberbank’s resilience in the face of sanctions helped Russia’s banking sector recover from a loss-making first half in 2022.”

This is in line with Gref’s belief that this year’s profits should be close to the record 1.25 trillion rubles ($16.5 billion) earned in the “pre-crisis year.” “Our business model passed another strength test,” he added.

It is recalled that Russian Presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on March 14 that there is “practically” no risk of Russia facing a fallout from the SVB collapse, adding that: “Our banking system has certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but it is mostly under illegal restrictions.”

Despite alarmist headlines from US media and experts, Peskov was proven correct as no Russian bank has collapsed despite Western sanctions. Meanwhile, the full repercussions of SVB’s downfall are yet to be felt, with former Lehman Brothers executive Lawrence McDonald believing that up to another 50 American banks could collapse if structural problems are not fixed.

“So Lehman failed and then it forced this too-big-to-fail system, and then, now this interest rate shock to the regional banks is moving hundreds of billions of dollars out of regional banks into the big banks… So you could have another 50 bank failures… unless they fix the structural problem,” said McDonald on March 22.

“There’s going to be further damage. They have to cut rates and then they have to have a deposit guarantee, a larger one, that’s what they’re going to come up with… That’s a bailout. That’s basically the federal government taking on bank deposit risk,” he added.

By being cut-off from the Western banking system, Russia is effectively protected from the series of bank collapses that are expected to follow. Russia faced a credit crunch due to the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, which ultimately led to the Global Financial Crisis, a demonstration of how it too was exposed to weaknesses in the US economy.

Although Russia was cut-off from SWIFT only two-days after the special military operation began, in addition to many other Western restrictions, including a $60 per barrel oil price cap, President Vladimir Putin boasted about the resilience of the Russian economy.

The IMF reported that Russia’s economy contracted by 2.2% in 2022 and will start growing again in 2023, expanding by 0.3%, and then 2.1% in 2024. This is impressive when considering that fellow European countries, which are not sanctioned, will be struggling immensely. The UK is expected to contract by 0.6% and Germany will have a growth of only 0.1%.

At the same time, the OECD forecasts that US economic growth would slow from 1.5% this year to 0.9% next year. This is due to higher interest rates slowing down demand. Bloomberg on March 21, citing sources, reported that the US Treasury Department is studying the possibility of guaranteeing all bank deposits in the event of a recession in the banking sector.

The current banking crisis has forced economists, including from the esteemed JPMorgan Chase, to make new recession forecasts after any hopes of recovery were snuffed away.

“The Fed is facing a difficult task on Wednesday, but it is likely already past the point of no return,” JPMorgan strategists wrote in a note to clients on March 22. “A soft landing now looks unlikely, with the airplane in a tailspin (lack of market confidence) and engines about to turn off (bank lending).”

Goldman Sachs also echoed JPMorgan and said in mid-March that the banking crisis could deliver a severe blow to economic growth.

For his part, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has warned multiple times, including as recently as March 9 but even from before the banking crisis, that the economy could be heading for a “Wile E. Coyote moment,” referencing a Looney Tunes character who was always blissfully unaware that he was about to hit the ground after running off the edge of a cliff.

However, the expected collapse of many banks in the US and the impending economic crisis has not deterred the determination of the Biden administration to fanatically arm, fund and train the Ukrainian military and regime. With millions of Americans on the verge of dropping out of the Middle Class, Washington continues to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine, and all the while Western sanctions are now beginning to have a minimum effect on the Russian economy, thus effectively rendering them nearly useless.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

March 23, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles is caught collecting and selling personal data

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | March 21, 2023

Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) has been caught selling drivers’ personal information without their consent and without the option to opt out. Last year alone, the BMV made around $25 million from selling personal information, according to WRTV.

Asked if the BMV sells personal information, a BMV employee said to WRTV: “No. Well, you’re not supposed to. Can’t tell you for sure what they do, but they’re not supposed to!”

Though the employees might not be aware of the practice, an investigation by WRTV found that the Indiana BMV does sell personal information and the practice is legal. The BMV can sell personal information like your name, date of birth, past and current addresses, license plate number, make and model of your vehicle, VIN, date of purchase, license type, and your driver’s record.

In the past decade (2012 to 2022) the BMV made over $237 million from selling drivers’ personal information. It sells the personal information to lawyers, bail bond companies, insurance companies, private investigators, debt collection companies, recovery agents, law enforcement agencies, security guards, auto dealers, tow companies, school corporations, and mobile home parks.

The BMV refused an on-camera interview. However, in an emailed statement, a spokesperson said: “Data is only available to qualified entities who meet the eligibility and use requirements in Indiana Code § 9-14-13-7 or § 9-14-13-8.

“Consumers do not have the option to opt out at this time,” they added.

Asked how the money generated from sale of personal information [is spent], the BMV said: “The revenue generated from sales to qualified entities goes to various accounts within the BMV, most significantly the Tech Fund. The funds support maintenance and ongoing upgrades to infrastructure, databases, and security.”

March 22, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

I am the “US-based Kremlin intermediary” that tried to help Tucker Carlson book an interview with Putin

By Anya Parampil · The Grayzone · March 20, 2023

Tucker Carlson accused the NSA of spying on his personal communications when he tried to schedule an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I can corroborate his story.

On March 10, Fox News host Tucker Carlson told the Full Send podcast that the US government “broke into [his] text messages” in the summer of 2021, just months before the launch of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Carlson claimed the spying occurred as he was planning a trip to Russia, where he hoped to record a conversation with the country’s president. According to Carlson, he learned of the surveillance after a US government source arranged to meet him in Washington and proceeded to share information with him that only someone with access to his private, personal text messages could have known.

“This person’s like… ‘Are you planning a trip to go see Putin?’ This was the summer before the war started. And I was like, ‘how would you know that? I haven’t told anybody,’” Carlson recalled.

“I was intimidated,” he added. “I’m embarrassed to admit, but I was completely freaked out by it.”

Carlson’s interview with Full Send did not represent the first time he spoke publicly about the NSA’s surveillance of his private communications. On June 28, 2021, Carlson opened his primetime Fox News show with a monologue accusing the Biden Administration of spying on his team, disclosing that an NSA whistleblower had contacted him and “repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails.” At the time, he did not disclose specific details about the story in question.

“The NSA captured that information without our knowledge, and did it for political reasons,” the Tucker Carlson Tonight host declared, asserting his source informed him that the Biden Administration planned to “leak” his private texts “in an attempt to take this show off the air.”

Carlson’s colleagues at Fox proceeded to studiously ignore his allegations, while other mainstream news outlets appeared to mock the host for going public with the information. When anonymous NSA officials announced that an internal agency review found “no evidence” to support Carlson’s claims the following month, the corporate press took them at their word.

Amidst the NSA’s denials, however, a report surfaced that seemed to directly support Carlson’s narrative. On July 7, an Axios “scoop” cited unnamed US officials accusing the Fox host of “talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before [he] accused the National Security Agency of spying on him.”

Though the government officials who planted that story remain anonymous, I can confirm the identity of at least one of the “US-based Kremlin intermediaries” in question.

It was me. They lied.

In April 2021, Tucker Carlson told me that he was trying to book an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that he kept running into roadblocks. Though Tucker knew I previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for the Russian government-funded news channel RT America in Washington DC, he was not asking for my assistance. In fact, I do not believe he even considered that I could help him book the interview in any way.

Regardless, I attempted to assist Tucker’s pursuit of the interview through a senior Russian government contact. Ironically, the contact had not been established through my time at RT America, but my work as a correspondent for The Grayzone, the online outlet that has employed me since early 2019. The Grayzone is fully independent and not connected to Russia or any other government, financially or otherwise.

In July 2019, I traveled to Caracas, Venezuela, to cover a high-level diplomatic meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement. While in Caracas, I met Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergey Ryabkov and interviewed him for The Grayzone’s YouTube channel. (Many of the predictions Ryabkov made, including that the US dollar would soon lose its significance in the global economy, are currently playing out as a direct result of US and European sanctions levied in response to the Ukraine war).

Having found his insights on international relations extremely relevant to my coverage of the emerging multi-polar world, I maintained occasional contact with Ryabkov over email in the months following our discussion. When Tucker told me that he was hoping to arrange an interview with Putin, I offered to connect him with Ryabkov.

I had met Tucker in July 2018, when we both covered President Trump’s highly anticipated summit with his Russian counterpart in Helsinki, Finland. Though Tucker had been dispatched to the Finnish capital for an interview with Trump, I personally always believed that a far more interesting conversation would have resulted from an exchange between him and Putin (who was instead left to have a predictably hostile, largely forgettable encounter with Chris Wallace, then of Fox, now at CNN).

When Tucker expressed his desire to interview Putin three years later, I volunteered to put him in contact with Ryabkov by email so they could discuss his plan to visit Russia. I expected to write a basic introductory email, receive a standard “thank you” from both parties, and let Tucker’s team manage communication from there.

Both Tucker and Ryabkov replied to my initial message within hours. Yet their digital exchange took an inexplicable turn.

On the evening of April 16, 2021, I sent a brief email introducing Ryabkov to Tucker. Tucker responded within minutes, informing Ryabkov that he planned to record shows in Russia in the summer of that year. Just over five hours later, Ryabkov replied that he would be happy to talk with Tucker and proposed time slots for a phone call the following week.

I assumed my role was done. Yet on April 20, I received a follow-up email from Ryabkov.

“Strangely, I can not send my message of interest to talk to Mr.Carlson directly to him. I tried it twice with no success,” the diplomat informed me, before asking me to relay his message.

At the time, I did not think much of the issue. I thought that perhaps Tucker’s email service, which was different than mine, had sent the note to spam, or that I had mistyped an email address. In retrospect, however, I should have been suspicious. Both Tucker and Ryabkov had received and replied to my initial message, meaning their respective addresses were typed correctly in the thread. And Ryabkov’s email to Tucker wasn’t going to spam – it was failing to deliver altogether.

The digital communication error between Ryabkov and Tucker was not a one-off event. Weeks later, on May 25, I received a message from Ryabkov’s team explaining that Tucker had failed to reply to a yet another email. They kindly requested I ask Tucker if he had received their message. Once again, he had not.

Roughly one month later, Tucker informed me that a source inside the NSA had contacted him to warn that the US government had caught wind of his effort to interview Putin by spying on his electronic communications. Tucker went public with the story on June 28. As summarized above, virtually every single mainstream reporter, including those at Fox, trusted the denials of the US government rather than rally behind one of their own.

There are three points I must emphasize here. One: it is completely normal and routine for journalists to maintain contact with high-level government sources, domestic or otherwise. Two: it is also normal and routine for journalists to share those connections with trusted colleagues and friends. Three: at the time, I genuinely believed that a Tucker-Putin interview would have moved us closer to peace. Instead, we are currently positioned on the brink of nuclear war.

Oh, and the obligatory fourth point: I am absolutely not a Kremlin operative or “intermediary.” I have no relationship with the Kremlin, and I have not accepted financial support from any state or state-sponsored organization since my departure from RT America in December 2018. Even then, my “relationship” with the Russian government was completely transparent. Would anyone suggest that US or British citizens employed by Al Jazeera, for example, are representatives of the Emir of Qatar? I worked for RT America because they gave me an opportunity to cover the actions of my own country at home and abroad from a perspective that domestic, corporate-run networks would have never allowed. When that reality changed (paradoxically thanks to US, not Russian, government interference), I walked out — but that’s a story for another day.

In truth, even my “Russian” forename is simply a product of the fact that my Indian-American father and American mother could not agree on anything else to call me. So why did US government sources characterize me as a Kremlin intermediary? Do they have any evidence to formally accuse me of being such? Or did they simply dump that information on an unquestioning Axios reporter without even offering them my name?

The answer to the second question is of course, no. The answer to the third: probably. As for the first? Clues can be found in the more recent effort to tarnish Tucker’s reputation through legal machinations and the selective leaking of his private text messages.

Target: Tucker

In March 2021, Dominion Voting Systems filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News on the basis that it incurred financial damages as a result of the network’s coverage of the 2020 Presidential Election. Though Tucker is not named in the suit, last year a judge allowed Dominion to seize the Fox host’s private text messages. Within months, the contents of Carlson’s personal texts had made their way to the pages of the Washington Post.

Curiously, coverage of Carlson’s private messages has so far focused on a single comment he made about former President Trump — not Dominion Voting Systems. Earlier this month, mainstream outlets seized on a January 2021 text the Fox host sent one of his producers in which he claimed to “passionately” hate the former president. The story represented an obvious attempt to drive a wedge between Carlson and Trump just before the the 2024 presidential election season officially heats up.

Whether such tactics will succeed in undermining Carlson and Trump’s relationship is a question only they can answer. It is worth noting, however, that Carlson consistently attempted to reorient Trump toward his “America First” agenda throughout the latter’s time in the White House, using his show to offer principled critiques of the former president’s decision to bomb Syria, escalate regime change operations against Venezuela, and assassinate Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. In June of 2019, Carlson personally persuaded Trump to reject the advice of his national security team and elect not to retaliate against Iran over its decision to shoot down a US drone that had violated its sovereign airspace. The Fox host’s actions not only averted a deadly US military strike on Iran, but a potential regional war.

For anyone who values peace and diplomatic engagement over military conflict, Carlson’s influence over Trump — and the US public, for that matter — must be regarded as positive. Perhaps that is why the press, including his colleagues at Fox, have refused to publicly denounce the US government’s selective targeting of Tucker. After all, aside from a handful of Fox News hosts who have attempted to cop his anti-interventionist style, the mainstream media are in virtual lockstep when it comes to inciting continued US involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

Tucker is by far the most popular US media figure to consistently denounce Washington’s escalations in the Ukraine battle, articulate the looming reality of World War III, and sound the alarm over the threat of global nuclear war. As if such positions did not threaten powerful forces enough already, last December he even dedicated a lengthy show open to investigating the murder of President John F. Kennedy, revealing a source with “direct knowledge” of classified information told him the CIA did in fact have a hand in the assassination.

Though the campaign to cancel Tucker is largely framed in terms of the culture wars and partisan debate over the events of January 6, it is substantially driven by neoconservative interventionists seeking to muzzle the pro-war Uniparty’s single greatest foe. If the Dominion lawsuit succeeds in bankrupting Fox, or even casting Tucker as the network’s scapegoat, it will have succeeded in punishing the media’s pre-eminent opponent of the escalating Ukraine proxy war.

Which brings us back to the question: why did US government sources characterize me as a “Kremlin intermediary” while feeding a “journalist” information about Tucker’s private texts back in July 2021? The answer is simple: US officials weaponized my mere existence, through innuendo, in order to suggest Tucker was involved with Kremlin agents. By undermining his credibility, they aimed to invalidate his character and by extension, his anti-war positions.

Beyond the financial threat it poses to Fox, the Dominion suit similarly aims to discredit Tucker. And politics aside, it poses a major threat to the First Amendment.

What does the fact that a corporation can sue a media organization over critical coverage, allege financial damage, and gain access to a journalist’s private texts say about a society that claims to value a free press? If Dominion is able to target a company as powerful as Fox in such a manner, what does that mean for those of us who challenge corporate and government interests in independent media? Why aren’t more journalists asking these questions?

And finally, if the Fox-obsessed Beltway press corps is truly so concerned with holding journalists accountable for “knowingly lying” to the public, there is no shortage of willful deceptions to reckon with. After all, this week marks 20 years since the launch of the US military campaign in Iraq, a catastrophic war that was directly enabled by lies its greatest cheerleaders in the press still repeat to this day.

Anya Parampil is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She has produced and reported several documentaries, including on-the-ground reports from the Korean peninsula, Palestine, Venezuela, and Honduras.

March 22, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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