‘No place’ for independent Russia in Western mindset – Moscow
RT | January 10, 2023
The secretary of Russia’s national security council has lashed out at the West, pointing to their habit of creating global threats, including numerous terrorist groups, in pursuit of their interests.
Nikolay Patrushev also claimed, in an interview published by news outlet Argumenti i Fakti, that Washington’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was a prelude to NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
“The events in Ukraine are not a confrontation between Moscow and Kiev. It’s a military confrontation of NATO – the US and England first and foremost – with Russia,” the top security official said in a newspaper interview. “They fear a direct standoff, so NATO instructors push Ukrainian guys toward their certain deaths.”
Patrushev argued that, while Western nations claim to be “defending civilization against barbarism” in Ukraine, they are actually motivated by selfish interests and won’t “save any lives at the expense of their enrichment and ambitions.”
He said there is an established pattern of the US creating threats that it later ostensibly fights against, he continued, citing terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) as examples. Washington may occasionally show off the killing of individual terrorist leaders like Osama Bin Laden, but continue “training and arming a hundred others” at the same time, he added.
NATO’s mission in Afghanistan resulted “in the creation of multibillion-dollar corruption schemes” and a surge in illegal drug production, Patrushev claimed. And the US withdrawal from the country in 2019 was to a large degree about “focusing on Ukraine” and confrontation with Russia, he said.
The security official cited remarks made last month by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who admitted that, with the country’s military presence in Afghanistan finally ended, the administration of President Joe Biden had more opportunities to funnel arms to Kiev.
Patrushev believes that, in the wider picture, the interests of the US as a nation state are subservient to the interests of transnational corporations, which ultimately dictate the policies of many governments. Those unaccountable forces have inherited the colonialist approach that allowed Western nations to become wealthy and powerful, but they are no longer vested in national interests, he said.
Russia “has no place” in their schemes, since it “irritates the handful of world masters because of its natural riches, vast territories, and smart, self-sufficient people who love their country, its traditions and history,” he added.
US ‘threatening’ Africa over ties with Russia – defense minister
RT | January 10, 2023
Relations between Washington and Pretoria have become strained after a Russian cargo ship visited South Africa’s largest naval base last month, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The country’s defense minister said the US had been pressuring African nations over any links with Moscow, according to the outlet.
Washington is “concerned by the support the South African Armed Forces provided to the ‘Lady R’,” a senior US official told the WSJ, referring to a Russian vessel that was sanctioned in May over its alleged involvement in arms shipments for Moscow.
In early December, the ship was allowed to enter Simon’s Town navy base with its transponders turned off and freely move cargo there, the report claimed. “There is no publicly available information on the source of the containers that were loaded onto the ‘Lady R’,” the official said.
The outlet cited comments made by South African Defense Minister Thandi Modise last month regarding the visit of ‘Lady R’. She declined to reveal what cargo the ship was carrying, only saying that “whatever contents this vessel was getting were ordered long before Covid,” which emerged in late 2019.
Washington “threatens Africa, not just South Africa, of having anything that is even smelling of Russia,” Modise said, as quoted by the WSJ.
The article noted that, under the US law, Washington can place sanctions on any entity that provides services to a black-listed ship.
Darren Olivier, who heads African Defense Review consulting company, told the outlet it was plausible that the ‘Lady R’ was bringing an old order of Russian ammunition to South Africa. Moscow and Pretoria agreed a shipment of 4.5 million rounds of Russian ammunition worth around $585,000 back in 2020, he said.
As for what was loaded on the ship, Olivier pointed out that “South Africa’s defense industry does not generally produce armaments and complete systems that are used by the Russian military.” However, he said Moscow could be interested in dual-use items, including guidance systems and optics for aerial drones.
According to the senior US official, who spoke to the WSJ, the US embassy warned Pretoria in November that a sanctioned vessel was about to arrive in the country, but the South African authorities did not respond. The events surrounding ‘Lady R’ demonstrate the “difficulty” of implementing sanctions on Russia for the US and its allies, the article noted.
Twitter censored tweets after pressure from Pfizer director
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | January 9, 2023
A newly released email from the Twitter Files has revealed that Twitter censored a tweet from Dr. Brett Giroir, a board member at the biopharmaceutical company Altesa Biosciences, after it was flagged by Scott Gottlieb, a board member at the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Gottlieb and Giroir both currently serve on the boards of several pharmaceutical companies and have backgrounds in public health. Gottlieb is a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner while Giroir is a former Assistant Secretary for Health and former acting Commissioner of the FDA.
Pfizer produces Covid vaccines whereas Altesa Biosciences develops drugs to combat Covid.
In the August 27, 2021 email, which was published by journalist Alex Berenson, Gottlieb complained to Todd O’Boyle, a senior manager on Twitter’s Public Policy team, about a tweet from Giroir that claimed natural immunity to Covid-19 was superior to vaccine immunity.
“This is the kind of stuff that’s corrosive,” Gottlieb wrote. “Here he draws a sweeping conclusion off a single retrospective study in Israel that hasn’t been peer reviewed. But this tweet will end up going viral and driving news coverage.”
According to Berenson, O’Boyle forwarded Gottlieb’s email to Twitter’s Strategic Response team — a team that was tasked with handling complaints from Twitter’s most important employees and users.
Berenson said that O’Boyle didn’t mention that Gottlieb was a Pfizer board member in this email and instead wrote, “Please see this report from the former FDA commissioner.”
An analyst from Twitter’s Strategic Response team quickly found that the tweet didn’t violate any of Twitter’s “misinformation” rules, according to Berenson. However, the tweet was still slapped with a “Misleading” label and had its replies, shares, and likes disabled after Gottlieb’s complaint.
This label and the restrictions still haven’t been removed, even though several high-ranking health officials, such as former White House Covid response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, have since questioned the effectiveness of Covid vaccines when it comes to preventing infections.
Berenson also claimed that one week later, on September 3, 2021, Gottlieb complained about a tweet from Covid lockdown and vaccine skeptic Justin Hart.
The Hart tweet that Gottlieb reportedly complained about stated: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but a viral pathogen with a child mortality rate of ~0% has cost our children nearly three years of schooling.”
Berenson alleged that Gottlieb complained about this tweet when the Pfizer Covid vaccine “would soon be approved for children 5 to 11.”
However, Berenson said that this time, Twitter refused to act.
Previous Twitter email releases have revealed that during the same month that Gottlieb was complaining about Giroir’s tweet, he also flagged one of Berenson’s articles to Twitter. Berenson was temporarily suspended from Twitter days after Gottlieb flagged his article.
Gottlieb responded to the revelations about him flagging Giroir’s tweet by claiming that the publication of this email was a “selective disclosure” of his “private communications with Twitter” and that it had stoked “the threat environment” and instigated “more menacing dialogue, with potentially serious consequences.”
Giroir accused Gottlieb of scheming with Twitter to “apparently put corporate interests first not public health.”
The Final Tally of Purdue Pharma’s Crime Will Be Dwarfed By What Is Now In the Making
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | January 9, 2023
On October 21, 2020—just six weeks before the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine received Emergency Authorization Use in individuals 16 years of age and older—the US Department of Justice announced its Global Resolution of Criminal and Civil Investigations with Opioid Manufacturer Purdue Pharma and Civil Settlement with Members of the Sackler Family. As was stated in the announcement:
Today’s resolution is the result of years of hard work by the FBI and its partners to combat the opioid crisis in the U.S.,” said Steven M. D’Antuono, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office. “Purdue, through greed and violation of the law, prioritized money over the health and well-being of patients. The FBI remains committed to holding companies accountable for their illegal and inexcusable activity and to seeking justice, on behalf of the victims, for those who contributed to the opioid crisis.”
It is now high time for the Department of Justice and its FBI agents to investigate how and why regulatory laws and procedures for protecting the public against dangerous medical products were cast aside in order to promote and even force the dangerous mRNA vaccines on mankind.
Federal investigators need to start asking: Why are young athletes dropping on the football field and basketball court? Why are young media commentators dying in press boxes?
The same goes for the Canadian authorities, who need to ask why this CTV reporter collapsed during a live news broadcast. Wake up Mounties! Investigate why this generally fit young woman suddenly collapsed like this.
Pentagon Set to Begin Work on New Military Base in the Pacific
By Kyle Anzalone | Libertarian Institute | January 9, 2023
The Department of Defense is set to begin construction on a new naval base in Palau, the Pacific-island nation. A company was awarded an over $100 million contract to begin construction on the installation, which will house a new advanced radar system.
The Navy announced Gilbane Federal would receive just over $118 million for “the construction of reinforced concrete pads and foundations in support of the installation of the Tactical Mobile Over-the-Horizon Radar equipment in the Republic of Palau.”
The total cost of the military base is unclear and the DoD has been secretive about the Palau base. However, the Pentagon hopes the radars will enable “over the horizon” capabilities. The facility will have two sites located 60 miles apart.
Washington’s new base in the Pacific will add to the over 750 networks of American military bases across the globe. Over the past decade, three successive presidents have poured tax dollars into increasing American military presence in the Indo-Pacific. The build-up comes as the White House prepares for potential conflicts with Beijing and, to a lesser extent, Pyongyang.
In recent years, Washington has attempted to rally its allies in the region against China. In the past few years, the US has started the Quadrilateral Dialog, AUKUS, and signed a trilateral defense cooperation pact with Tokyo and South Korea in June. Additionally, Washington has pushed its NATO partners to increase their military presence in the region.
In an interview with The Financial Times published on Sunday, Lieutenant General James Bierman, commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF) and of Marine Forces Japan, said the US was preparing for war with China over Taiwan.
“Why have we achieved the level of success we’ve achieved in Ukraine? A big part of that has been because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, pre-positioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations,” he said. “We call that setting the theatre. And we are setting the theatre in Japan, in the Philippines, in other locations.”
Biden’s Bloated IRS Will Skewer Taxpayers
By James Bovard | FFF | January 5, 2023
The Internal Revenue Service is perhaps the ultimate sacred cow in Washington. It is the “goose that lays the golden eggs” for the city’s power and prestige, delivering trillions of dollars to politicians to work miracles (or at least get reelected). When criticism erupted over the 87,000 new revenooers to be hired thanks to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, Washington’s Defenders of Correct Thinking rushed to the ramparts.
The media goes to bat for the IRS
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, in an article headlined “Another Republican Lie is Born,” caterwauled that Republicans’ anti-IRS rhetoric is one of the “hallmarks of authoritarianism” and justified Biden’s condemnation of Republicans for “semi-fascism.” Post columnist Joe Davidson fretted that “attacks on the IRS” are part of Republican efforts “delegitimatizing government.” Another Post article warned that Republicans are “putting federal workers in danger” by “repeating baseless claims” about the IRS. A Post purported humor columnist did a piece headlined, “Farewell, Mother I am off to join the IRS army!” sneering at baseless fears about Biden weaponizing IRS agents.
“Baseless?” At the time the Inflation Reduction Act passed, the IRS was advertising for “special agents” who must “carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary” during “execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.” The IRS had recently made massive purchases of new firearms and ammunition. The job notice declared: “No matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) observed, “The IRS has never pointed a gun at a billionaire or his employees, so why does the IRS need 87,000 new agents, AR-15s, and 5 million rounds of ammunition? They’re not gunning for billionaires or their bank accounts.”
Shock brigades of Fact Checkers rushed to rescue the IRS’s reputation. Reuters announced that it is “false” that the IRS “is hiring 87,000 new armed IRS agents” because only a couple thousand IRS agents carry firearms. Similarly, an Associated Press “fact-checking” report derided as “false” the allegation that “all new employees that the IRS intends to hire … will be required to carry a firearm and use deadly force if necessary.” Since not all IRS new hires will be heavily armed, it is “misleading” to pretend that any danger exists.
Controversy also swirled about a film clip of an IRS recruiting program on college campuses. A clip from Utah shows students putting on flak jackets and readying toy guns and handcuffs for “taking down a landscape business owner who failed to properly report how he paid for his vehicles.” “First they came for the tulip bulbs….”
Associated Press Fact Checkers complained that the video is “being misrepresented to falsely claim it shows a new force of IRS special agents being trained as part of agency expansion efforts.” But it is a recruiting video for college students that shows how they will be trained and use their power as IRS agents.
Since not all IRS employees will be carrying Glocks or AR-15s, Americans should presume that every IRS employee is a well-meaning civil servant waiting to assist people tormented by convoluted IRS instruction booklets. And it won’t matter if the new hires abuse their power. An IRS “enforcement operation” won’t count as a raid unless agents shoot at least three people. And then it still won’t matter because anyone who is gunned down will be labeled a suspected tax scofflaw. Regardless, Americans should presume that the IRS is actually less aggressive than a Girl Scout cookie-selling campaign.
There were plenty of “Iron Fist Bellwethers” last year when Biden first announced plans to vastly expand the IRS. The Washington Post reported that “the single biggest source of new revenue in the plan comes from dramatically expanding the clout of the nation’s tax agency.” Slate reported, “Biden wants to fund a massive upgrade to the American welfare state by making the IRS great at audits again.” And there aren’t that many billionaires to go around to finance all the schemes that Team Biden favors.
While Fact Checkers zealously squelch nitwit comments from random dudes on Facebook, they are ignoring far bigger howlers from the White House. On August 19, the White House promised that “No one making under $400,000 per year will pay a penny more in taxes” thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. Team Biden effectively insists that “those who have nothing (or at least no income) to hide have nothing to fear.” According to Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), “If you’re not cheating on your taxes, you have nothing to worry about.” But the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that “between 78% and 90% of the estimated additional $200 billion the IRS will collect [over the next decade] will come from small businesses making less than $200,000 annually,” the New York Post reported.
Biden and his media allies pretend that the federal tax code is as lucid as the Ten Commandments and that depravity and/or iniquity are the only reasons people underpay taxes. But Americans are confounded by the four million words in the tax code and by the IRS’s failure to answer more than 90 percent of phone calls from taxpayers. Did the IRS need an $80 billion bribe to answer the phones? Actually, only 4 percent of the new $80 billion in funding will be devoted to customer service while 58 percent will go to turbo-charge enforcement.
IRS a law unto itself
Biden is acquiring a new army of IRS enforcers at the same time the agency obliterates unlucky taxpayers with deluges of penalties —which have increased tenfold since the 1950s. Sen. David Pryor (D-AR) complained that the IRS used penalties “as a weapon, as a whip over the innocent and the guilty taxpayer’s head, and as a point of leverage.” IRS enforcement policies have been travesties of due process for longer than Joe Biden has been in Washington.
IRS bureaucrats don’t even need to file a criminal charge before snaring citizens’ life savings. Consider IRS depredations under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which required banks to file a federal report for any cash transaction exceeding $10,000. The IRS “enforced” the law by presuming that anyone who deposited slightly less than $10,000 was a criminal. The IRS seized a quarter billion dollars because it disapproved of how businesses and individuals structured their bank deposits and withdrawals.
Between 2005 and 2012, the number of IRS seizures rose more than fivefold, but the vast majority of victims were never criminally prosecuted for structuring offenses. IRS criminal investigators simply looked at banking records and then confiscated hundreds of accounts. Most of the victims were “legal businesses such as jewelry stores, restaurant owners, gas station owners, scrap metal dealers, and others.” The IRS targeted businesses with legal sources of income, according to a 2017 Inspector General report, “to engage in ‘quick hits,’ where property was more quickly seized … rather than pursuing cases with other criminal activity (such as drug trafficking and money laundering), which are more time-consuming.” The IG found no evidence in 91 percent of the seizure cases that the money came from illegal activities. The IG noted, “Interviews with the property owners were conducted after the seizure to determine the reason for the pattern of banking transactions and if the property owner had knowledge of the banking law and had intent to structure.”
The IRS is menacing in part because federal courts have been shamelessly docile. As David Burnham, author of A Law Unto Itself: The I.R.S. and the Abuse of Power, noted, “Over and over again, federal judges have found ways either to ignore or actually to legitimize the growing reach of the tax collectors,” a “pattern of judicial tenderness … partly the product of the natural sympathy that those in power always feel toward the tax collectors.”
In U.S. Tax Court, IRS determinations of what citizens owe are “presumed correct,” with taxpayers bearing the burden to prove the feds wrong. Corporations with hefty legal departments routinely defeat the IRS in court, but few citizens can afford to fight a federal agency that appears to hold all the cards. Tax expert Daniel Pilla estimates that the “IRS’s audit results are incorrect between 60 and 90 percent of the time.”
The Supreme Court will soon hear the case of Romanian-American businessman Alexandru Bittner, who voluntarily notified the IRS that he was late filing reports on his foreign bank accounts (he was unaware of his duty to file). The IRS hit him with $2.72 million in fines, penalties, and interest — even though at least one federal court believed he should owe only $50,000. The difference between $2.72 million and $50,000 is a dramatic gauge of the arbitrary power that the IRS possesses over Americans.
The IRS agenda
The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy political opponents. But in the glorious era of President Joe Biden, all previous cases of government abuse of power are being expunged, at least by the media and Biden supporters. The stunning political bias of Obama’s IRS vanished into the Memory Hole, never to be seen again (at least by respectable media outlets). But in 2014, a report by Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee concluded that the IRS’s Lois Lerner, who masterminded the blockade of conservative nonprofit applications, “believed the political participation of tax-exempt organizations harmed Democratic candidates, she believed something needed to be done, and she directed action from her unit at the IRS.”
The Inflation Reduction Act will pay for new IRS computer systems. It has received billions of dollars from Congress to fix its computers since the 1980s, but the system is still a total mess (relying in part on 1960s-era computer technologies that are no longer widely taught in computer science classes).
How bad is the IRS information management system? An Inspector General report revealed that the IRS had destroyed 30 million tax information returns in 2021 without processing them because it was overwhelmed by the accumulating paper. Bloomberg News noted, “The IRS explained the documents were destroyed because the agency’s ‘antiquated’ information technology systems could no longer handle them.” Texas CPA Brian Streig groused, “To see the IRS just destroy these [returns] is almost like the IRS admitting they don’t really care.” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) denounced the document destruction as a “scandal” and lamented that “all the American people see at the IRS is incompetence and catastrophe.” Pascrell called for Biden to fire IRS chief Charles Rettig.
The IRS also sought to cover up the fact that it had failed to process tens of millions of tax returns in 2020 and 2021, continually misleading Congress and the media about the size of the backlog. Citizens faced harsh penalties for not filing their 1040 on time, but the IRS faced no penalty for making false statements about millions of tax returns it had failed to process.
The Inflation Reduction Act should have been named the Boarhawging Taxpayers Again Act. The Internal Revenue Service has perennially been the authoritarian means to paternalistic ends. Since politicians worship revenue above all other gods, don’t expect the Biden administration or Congress to stand up for average Americans unfairly caught in the revenue crosshairs.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
Unidentified drone bypasses US security at Ain al-Assad base
The Cradle | January 9, 2023
According to Iraqi media reports, US defense systems at the Ain al-Assad military base in Iraq’s western Anbar province brought down an unidentified drone that was able to bypass the facility’s security and reach “inaccessible” areas of the base.
An anonymous military source was quoted by Iraq’s Al-Maalouma news agency as saying that on 8 January, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) managed to make its way through all of the base’s security rings and enter areas that are “off-limits,” before finally being shut down “with electronic systems.”
The US army is usually able to target any ‘suspicious’ aircraft before it makes its way to the first security ring, the source stated.
“The drone reached very important parts of the Ain al-Assad base, and this was the first time that this happens … The American military has not released the details of the incident because the drone passed through the missile defense systems of the Ain al-Assad base and threatened the dormitories and sanatoriums of the soldiers,” it added.
The Iraqi news agency said that it was unclear whether or not the drone was on a surveillance mission, or if it was carrying any explosives. No explosions, damages, or casualties were reported. An investigation into the incident has reportedly been opened, the agency added without elaborating further.
Five days after an illegal US drone strike on 3 January 2020 killed Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) chief, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Tehran responded by showering the Ain al-Assad military base with a barrage of missiles.
The US military denied any casualties, but the Pentagon reported that over 100 US military personnel suffered traumatic brain injuries following the strike. The facility also sustained heavy material damages.
Unbeknownst to many, however, Iran responded to Soleimani’s killing with more than just an attack on Ain al-Assad. In 2021, an anonymous, high-ranking security official within the Resistance Axis told The Cradle that two senior officers, one in the US army and another in the Israeli army, were killed in a resistance operation in Iraq’s Erbil – which was carried out to avenge the illegal assassination.
Lt. Col. James C. Willis, who was involved in the Soleimani assassination and was killed in Erbil, was reported by the Pentagon – in a blatant coverup – to have died “in a non-combat incident at Qatar’s Al-Udeid base.” The Israeli, Col. Sharon Asman, was also killed in the operation and was reported to have suffered from heart failure.
Since Iran’s missile attack on Ain al-Assad, the facility has come under attack several times. Other US bases in Iraq have also been struck, and this year, attacks against US bases in Syria are increasing in frequency and intensity.
On 5 January 2020, Lebanese resistance leader, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed: “The response to the blood of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis will be the expulsion of all US forces from the region.”
China’s normalization overtures rejected as US opts for another Taiwan escalation
By Drago Bosnic | January 9, 2023
For decades, many geopolitical experts have been claiming the United States is in constant need of geopolitical adversaries. The view was challenged by those claiming that all the US wants is the spread of “peace, prosperity, democracy, freedom, human rights,” etc. And yet, the belligerent thalassocracy is consistent in its rejection of mutually beneficial relations with other global powers.
USSR/Russia essentially dismantled its own superpower status in an attempt to establish normal ties with the political West and focus almost exclusively on economic cooperation and integration. The political West responded with an unrelenting eastward expansion and effective destabilization and encirclement of Russia’s core regions in the west of the country. Despite Moscow’s patience, the results of this are now seen in Ukraine, where the Eurasian giant is forced to fight the same ultra-radicals it had to fight eight decades ago.
A somewhat similar scenario seems to be playing out in the increasingly contested Asia-Pacific geopolitical theater, where the US and (most of) its regional vassals are taking aim at China. Despite Beijing’s attempts at rapprochement with Washington DC and its numerous satellites, this seems to be futile. The belligerent thalassocracy keeps insisting on not just meddling in China’s internal affairs, but is also engaging in repeated violations of Beijing’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This is especially true concerning the South China Sea, as well as the Asian giant’s breakaway island province of Taiwan, which is being pushed ever closer to an armed conflict with (mainland) China. Beijing is certainly capable of winning if the ongoing dispute ever turns hot, but it’s still trying to avoid such a scenario.
In line with its attempts at detente with the US, the last major (geo)political move China made at the end of 2022 was the appointment of a new foreign minister. On December 30, its ambassador to the US, Qin Gang, was appointed as the Foreign Minister of China, taking the diplomatic helm from Wang Yi. Major Western media outlets noted that the move could indicate Beijing’s “softening” stance toward America. Indeed, this could be considered one of the biggest recent developments out of Beijing and it could have impacted the future of US-China relations, as Qin Gang tried his best to keep ties between the two superpowers as friendly as possible during his relatively short, seventeen months-long tenure in Washington DC.
In the first days of January, the new Chinese FM grabbed the headlines of Western media by posting tweets that he’s “deeply impressed” by the American people, while pledging to push US-China ties towards a more positive relationship. “I want to pay sincere thanks to the people of the United States for the strong support and assistance given to me and the Chinese Embassy during this period,” Qin tweeted on January 2, adding: “I have been deeply impressed by so many hard-working, friendly and talented American people that I met,” further saying he had “made many friends across the US.” He promised to “support the growth of China-US relations” in his capacity as the new Chinese FM.
And yet, China’s overtures have been shunned by the US. On January 4, barely two days after Gang’s words, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) announced it will be sending a delegation to Taipei this week for additional trade talks with the government of the breakaway island province. Washington DC and Taipei held formal trade talks last year and agreed to have more such meetings after the first round was held in New York in November. Although there are no official relations between the US and Taiwan, as even Washington DC officially considers the island as part of China, the American delegation is led by Terry McCartin, the assistant US trade representative for China affairs.
This means the move is carried out by President Biden’s Executive Office, giving the effort a formal diplomatic status, usually reserved for state-level contacts, which is highly unlikely to be appreciated in Beijing. In addition, the USTR stated that the meetings would be attended by officials from several other US government agencies. According to The South China Morning Post, Yang Jen-ni, Taipei’s deputy trade representative, will lead the Taiwanese delegations, which will also include officials from other departments. This clearly implies that the meeting will include more than just trade talks, further antagonizing China and its attempts at rapprochement.
Beijing views high-level contacts between Washington DC and Taipei as a direct violation of the One-China policy, to which, as previously mentioned, the US still officially adheres. This also includes trade talks, which have been almost exclusively aimed against China in recent years. Beijing views the trade talks as another US attempt to hurt China’s standing in the Asia-Pacific region. The USTR has dubbed the trade talks the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade and said that “they are intended to develop concrete ways to deepen the economic and trade relationship.”
A major point of the talks is Taiwan’s position as the world’s largest producer of advanced semiconductors. The US is aiming to push Taiwan-based companies to move facilities to America, while sanctioning China’s microchip industry, marking a hostile shift in US trade policy toward the Asian giant. Additionally, speaking of hostility, on January 5, only a day after the controversial trade talks were announced, Washington DC further insulted Beijing by ordering the US Navy 7th Fleet’s Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon to pass through the Taiwan Strait as part of “its commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” This was the latest sign that the US is clearly rejecting China’s peace initiatives.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
These Doctors Pushed Masking, Covid Lockdowns on Twitter. Turns Out, They Don’t Exist
By Matthew Kupfer • The Standard • December 13, 2022
Last month, Dr. Robert Honeyman lost their sister to Covid. They wrote about it on Twitter and received dozens of condolences, over 4,000 retweets and 43,000 likes.
Exactly one month later, on Dec. 12, Honeyman wrote that another tragedy had befallen their family.
“Sad to announce that my husband has entered a coma after being in hospital with Covid. The doctor is unsure if he will come out,” they tweeted. “This year has been the toughest of my life losing my sister to this virus. This is the first time in my life I don’t see light at the end of the tunnel.”
Again, the condolences and well-wishes rolled in. But there was a problem: Honeyman wasn’t real.
The transgender “Doctor of Sociology and Feminist studies” with a “keen interest in poetry” who used they/them pronouns was, in fact, a stock photo described on DepositPhotos, a royalty-free image site, as “Smiling happy, handsome latino man outside—headshot portrait.”
Their supposedly comatose husband, Dr. Patrick C. Honeyman, was also fake. His Twitter photo had been stolen from an insurance professional in Wayne, Indiana.
The stock photo used as Dr. Robert Honeyman’s avatar on Twitter. (Screenshot)
The photograph used as Dr. Patrick C. Honeyman’s avatar on Twitter. (Screenshot)
The two fake doctors, whose accounts urged extreme caution about Covid-19, were part of a network of at least four fake accounts that touted their ties to the LGBTQ+ community, vocally advocated for mask-wearing and social distancing, and dished out criticism to those they felt were not taking the pandemic seriously.
The Honeymans could not be reached for comment, as they do not exist. At publication time, Robert Honeyman’s account was no longer active.
The fake doctors were uncovered by Joshua Gutterman Tranen, a self-described “gay writer” pursuing a master’s of fine arts at Bennington College. He saw Robert Honeyman’s tweet about their husband being in a coma, noticed people he followed also followed them, and thought that they might be part of the LGBTQ+ academic community.
But after 10 minutes of googling, Gutterman Tranen concluded that Robert Honeyman’s photo was a stock image and their biography stretched boundaries of believability: an academic who left no traces on academic websites and had lost two family members to Covid in late 2022, despite masking and distancing.
The character looked like “liberal Mad Libs,” Gutterman Tranen said.
“I’m a self-identified leftist, and I understand that people have a lot of different identities, but it felt concocted in the lab about how many identities and horrible experiences can we put on one person,” he said.
The Standard ran Dr. Robert Honeyman’s Twitter photo through a Google reverse image search and found that it was a widely available stock photo. (Screenshot)
It is unclear who created the two doctors, but their bios and personas signpost identities meant to appeal to a certain type of Twitter denizen: liberal, pro-diversity and concerned about Covid. Or meant to provoke the opposite of that type of person.
Both doctors present themselves as members of the LGBTQ+ community. Robert displayed the trans and Ukrainian flags in their Twitter name. Patrick had a rainbow flag in his bio.
Robert wrote openly about suffering from MPX, an infectious disease that caused San Francisco to declare a state of emergency earlier this year and had largely spread among men who have sex with men. “Don’t believe what the media have been sharing. […] it’s a horrible disease that has had me bed ridden,” they tweeted in July. They also claimed to have been the victim of a transphobic attack in October. […]
All four accounts urged caution about Covid. They also amplified the voices of other Twitter users calling on the public to mask, vaccinate and socially distance. At times, they criticized policies that they felt undermined pandemic safety and individuals who they believed did not take Covid seriously enough.
But as Twitter users responded to Gutterman Tranen’s thread on the Honeymans, they also discovered the accounts expressing views that appeared implausible.
“Come on china! Stop protesting, I wish we had similar lockdown measures here,” Robert Honeyman wrote in a Nov. 27 tweet. … Full article
US on alert as UAE seeks to join Turkish-Syrian reconciliation talks
The Cradle | January 8, 2023
During a speech in Ankara on 5 January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad may soon take place, “as part of efforts for peace.” He added that a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia and Syria is scheduled to be held in the near future for the first time since 2011.
The upcoming meeting aims to enhance communication after Russian-sponsored talks between the Turkish and Syrian defense ministers were held in Moscow on 28 December. The meeting was the highest-level of official meetings between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian war.
In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 5 January, Erdogan called on the Syrian government to “take the steps to achieve a tangible solution concerning the case of Syria.”
US seeks to establish a middle ground between Ankara and the SDF so as to prevent Turkish-Syrian reconciliation
The Syrian-Turkish rapprochement via declared Russian mediation was paralleled by Emirati-Syrian rapprochement – the latest of which was a “brotherly” meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and restoring historical relations between Assad and Foreign Minister of the UAE Abdallah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, according to SANA.
Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the UAE seeks “to join Russia in sponsoring Syrian-Turkish relations at a high level,” noting that the Emirati foreign minister’s visit to Damascus sought to arrange Turkiye’s participation in the tripartite meeting of Syrian-Turkish-Russian foreign ministers, making it a quadripartite meeting.
The meeting is meant to pave the way for a presidential meeting between Erdogan and Assad in the presence of Putin. Reportedly, the UAE has offered to host this summit, with a possibility of a high-level UAE official being present at the meeting if it will be held in Moscow.
Asharq Al-Awsat added that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu plans to visit Washington on 16-17 January to brief US officials on the developments of Turkish-Syrian normalization, his meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Faysal Mikdad, and the “roadmap” sponsored by Moscow in the context of security, military, political and economic fields – as agreed upon by the defense ministers as well as the intelligence chiefs in Syria, Turkiye and Russia over the past weeks.
As Turkiye has been launching successive operations against Kurdish groups both on the Turkish-Syrian border as well as within Syria itself under ‘Operation Claw Sword,’ a Western official informed Asharq Al-Awsat that a high-ranking US official will be visiting Ankara in the coming hours as part of efforts to mediate between Turkiye and the SDF in northeastern Syria.
Ankara has demanded that Moscow and Washington commit to the implementation of the bilateral military agreements signed at the end of 2019. The agreements stipulate the withdrawal of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to beyond 30 kilometers from the Turkish border, and from the areas of Manbij and Tal Rifaat, in addition to the withdrawal of all heavy weaponry.
The SDF says that it has fulfilled its obligations, and will not withdraw its police force – known as the Asayish – nor dismantle its local councils, despite Turkiye’s insistence on dissolving all Kurdish military and civil institutions in the area.
Meanwhile, Cavusoglu told media on 29 December that Ankara is willing to withdraw from the territory it occupies in northern Syria and hand it over to Damascus in the event that “political stability” is reached – after cooperation in “neutralizing ISIS members, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the YPG.”
The Saudi newspaper’s report stated that US mediation seeks to reach a “compromise” between the Kurdish groups and Ankara without a new Turkish incursion taking place ahead of the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections in mid-2023. This mediation seems to be an attempt at circumventing the imminent Syrian-Turkish reconciliation.
Another official source disclosed that Ankara was “uncomfortable with the leaks following the meeting of the Syrian, Turkish and Russian defense ministers in Moscow, and that it had agreed to a full withdrawal.” However, the source confirmed that, “it is true that Ankara and Damascus consider the PKK a common threat, and will work against any separatist agenda, because it is an existential threat to both countries,” adding that the two countries will “work to open the Aleppo-Latakia Highway.”
Following the UAE’s visit to Damascus, which came after the US called on its allies and international partners to refrain from normalizing ties with Syria, Asharq Al-Awsat quoted an official as saying that the US has been the only western country to issue a statement against normalization, and is working alongside Paris, Berlin, and London to assume a united stance against normalization with Syria.
Communication is currently underway for a meeting between the representatives of Paris, Berlin, London, and Washington and UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pederson in Geneva on 23 January. This meeting will take place before Pedersen’s visit to Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister to “confirm the position against normalization, and support the provision of funding for electricity projects within the timeline of early recovery,” stipulated by a resolution for international aid that will be extended before 10 January.
Asharq Al-Awsat said that the UAE has proposed to contribute to the funding of economic and electrical projects in Syria – within the confines of the Caesar Act.
Simultaneously, Jordan, who was the first to open high-level channels of communication with Damascus, is leading efforts alongside other Arab countries to reach a “united Arab position that defines Arab demands in order to make normalization possible.”
The newspaper quoted another western official as saying that Jordan is calling for coordination to put pressure on Damascus to provide political and geopolitical steps for the coming phase in southern Syria, as Amman confirmed that there has been an increase in the smuggling of Captagon, weapons and ammunition across the Syrian border following the start of the normalization process. Additionally, Amman has said that the Iranian presence in southern Syria near the Jordanian border has not diminished, and that there has been an expansion of ISIS activity in the area, according to the official.
Syria’s Arab League membership was suspended in November of 2011 following the start of the Syrian war, and it has been excluded ever since.
Featured Video
Why Hamas Really Attacked Israel on Oct. 7
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Israel: Strategic Ally or Liability?
By Stephen Sniegoski | My Catbird Seat | June 12, 2010
The claim that Israel serves as a valuable ally for the United States is made by both pro-Zionists and much of the anti-war and anti-Zionist Left that is influenced by Noam Chomsky. As a result of the Gaza flotilla massacre, which has caused a world-wide uproar against Israel, the value of Israel to the United States is being publicly questioned in more mainstream foreign policy forums. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Why Hamas Really Attacked Israel on Oct. 7
- Declassified UK exposes British man who fought for ‘Israel’ in Gaza
- West’s death cult in a theater near you
- How the Yandex ‘Russian bots’ lie fell apart
- Burnham’s ‘Russia did Brexit’ ruse crumbles
- Estonia making movies and games to encourage war against Russia
- Four in five new UK jobs taken by foreigners – report
- Here’s what Trump’s latest U-turn really means for Russia and Ukraine
- The Houthis Are Not an Iranian Proxy
- Europe’s Energy Hypocrisy, Russian LNG Profits and US Dependence
- If Americans Knew
- Activists Abused By Israel Return to New Freedom Flotilla Mission
- 60 Minutes won’t tell the full truth about Israeli settler violence
- Nearly 50,000 women, girls killed or severely injured in Gaza since October 2023: UN Women
- ADL is working with AI companies to suppress alleged ‘antisemitism’
- Israeli occupation forces using social media surveillance unit to target hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank
- Israel’s New – and Terrifying – Security Doctrine
- Israeli Attacks Kill Five in Gaza, Including a four-year-old and a woman
- Air Force Major Who Called for Trump’s Impeachment Held in Solitary Confinement
- It’s a Genocide, I’m Into It’: Seinfeld Mocks Protest over Palestinian Children Killed
- Universities fire dozens amid pressure from Zionist billionaires
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
