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The CIA’s Crack-Cocaine Enterprise and the Destruction of Urban America

21st Century Wire | November 14, 2021

The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in drug trafficking. Books and investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General. U.S. Government Officials said in 1990 the supposed Anti-Drug Unit at the CIA. “accidentally” shipped a ton of cocaine into the US from Venezuela as part of an effort to infiltrate and gather evidence on drug gangs. The cocaine was then sold on the streets of America. As expected, no criminal charges were brought, although CIA officer Mark McFarlin resigned and one officer was disciplined. The CIA issued a statement on the incident saying there was “poor judgment and management on the part of several CIA officers”. We are meant to believe that it all ends there. But this story is much bigger and more wide-ranging than even the issue of drugs on the streets on America and the targeting of black communities with the new deadly drug known as crack.

According to a PBS Frontline investigation, DEA field agent Hector Berrellez said, “I believe that elements working for the CIA were involved in bringing drugs into the country.”

“I know specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning some of the pilots, in fact were bringing drugs into the U.S. and landing some of these drugs in government air bases. And I know so because I was told by some of these pilots that in fact they had done that,” he added.

The impact on poor communities in large cities like Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Chicago and others was nothing short of devastating.

Interestingly, the CIA’s criminal operation plot also tracks back to Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport where narcotics, weapons, and ammunition were smuggled in both directions – with weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua, and drugs back into the United States. This connects these events directly to Oliver North and former US President Bill Clinton. The recent Hollywood film depiction of some of these events, American Made, is a dramatisation of the story of Barry Seal, a pilot working for both Medellín Cartel and US intelligence, who ran his operations out of Mena, Arkansas.

According to the Kerry Committee report, “it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.”

In 1996, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles which appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, investigating a number of aspects of this illicit trade, including Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funnelled profits to the Contras. His articles exposed how the CIA helped facilitate cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel, and how the US intelligence agency directly aided drug dealers to raise funds for the Contras. Webb went on to publish a book based on his article series, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, which was later made into a film in 2014 called Kill the Messenger. In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. General Manuel Noriega, who ruled Panama at the time (and who was later outed as a CIA informant), had been giving military assistance to Contra terrorist groups in Nicaragua – ordered by the US, which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his own drug-trafficking activities and money laundering which US authorities were fully aware of since the 1960s.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The following video montage forms the historic media record on this issue – providing a visual summary of these events including interviews with Gary Webb and other journalists, as well as clips from Congressional and Senate Hearings on the matter, and which clearly shows how and why the Establishment went to such great lengths to cover-up the state-sponsored criminal enterprise.

November 21, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

THE SECRETS OF SEROXAT (PAXIL)

Panorama, BBC One | October 13, 2002

Seroxat is one of the world’s biggest selling and most successful antidepressants.

But this Panorama investigation discovers the drug may have a darker side – the programme reports that people can get hooked on it, suffering serious withdrawal symptoms when they try to come off it.

For some it can lead to self harm and even suicide. But little warning of these possible side effects accompanies the drug.

These are accusations that the drug’s maker GlaxoSmithKline denies.

The programme follows one Seroxat user and charts her nine month struggle to wean herself off it.

Panorama also spoke to Dr David Healy, an expert on the drug who has had access to confidential Seroxat studies in the GlaxoSmithKline archives.

THE SECRETS OF SEROXAT (2002) from BOB FIDDAMAN on Vimeo.

November 20, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

PATRIOT PURGE, PART 1

TUCKER CARLSON | November 2nd, 2021

November 19, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Can a space war be stopped?

By Paul Robinson | RT | November 18, 2021

News that Russia has tested an anti-satellite missile has sparked concern for spacecraft and, more worryingly, highlighted the lack of international treaties regulating space weapons, meaning the cosmos is becoming a battleground.

While the US currently opposes controls on orbital arms, the shifting balance of power means that it would likely do well to reconsider. The test in question, confirmed by Moscow on Tuesday, destroyed an old, inoperable Soviet reconnaissance satellite, with Washington blasting the operation as “irresponsible” and “reckless” over the resulting debris.

So-called “space junk” poses a serious danger to objects such as satellites and the International Space Station. By adding to the cloud of junk floating around in orbit, Russia has done nobody any favours, although it should be pointed out that the test didn’t break international law, as there is at present no binding legal regime regulating space debris.

Typical of Western responses to the Russian test was that of General James Dickinson, commander of the US Space Command, who said that Russia had “demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations.”

“We won’t tolerate this kind of activity,” added US State Department spokesman Ned Price. But while American complaints about space debris may be valid, one wonders whether their real concern is the threat the Russian test poses to their military dominance.

Experts distinguish between the militarization and the weaponization of space. The first involves using space for military purposes, such as communications, and the second involves placing systems with destructive capabilities in space. Militarization happened long ago. Weaponization has yet to occur.

The only legal instrument regulating weapons in space is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which prohibits the placing of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around the Earth, or on the Moon or celestial bodies. Efforts to expand the prohibition to weapons in general have failed, in large part due to American resistance.

While some strategists have argued that it is better to leave space as a “sanctuary” and to avoid going down a path that will lead to a new arms race, the current of opinion in American military circles has long been that such an arms race is unavoidable and that it is better for the United States to get a lead on others while it enjoys a technological advantage.

As the then-Commander-in-Chief of US Space Command, Joseph W. Ashy, said in 1996:

“It’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen… we’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space. That’s why the US has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We engage terrestrial targets someday – ships, airplanes, land targets – from space.”

Since the time of Ronald Reagan, powerful forces have also been lobbying hard for space-based anti-ballistic missile defence systems, a key component of which would consist of weapons systems in orbit. For these reasons, the USA has opposed efforts to tie its hands by means of arms control. In 2006, the US National Space Policy announced that the country will “oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit US access to or use of space. Proposed arms control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduct research, development, testing, and operations or activities in space for US national interests.”

Consequently, when in 2008 China and Russia proposed a draft Treaty on Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and of the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects, the United States rejected it. Similarly, the United States has consistently voted against an annual resolution put forward by the ad hoc committee of the UN Conference on Disarmament, entitled “The Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space.”

The differing approaches of the US and its Western allies on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other, became clear last year when the two sides backed competing UN committee resolutions. The first, drafted by the British and supported by the US, encouraged UN members to “share their ideas on the further development and implementation of norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviours” in space. Russia voted against this innocuous proposition, complaining that it failed to “include provisions on the need for peaceful uses of outer space, on prohibiting the installation of weapons there, on threats of use of force and a clear outline of responsible behaviour.”

Instead, Russia supported a rival draft that declared that, “the exclusion of outer space from the sphere of the arms race and preserving the realm for peaceful purposes should become a mandatory norm of State policy and a generally recognized international obligation.” The US, along with the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Israel, Japan, the Marshall Islands, and Ukraine voted against this second, more robust resolution. It would appear that they prefer vague talk about “norms” rather than a specific prohibition of the weaponization of space.

Underlying this attitude is the idea that arms control benefits the weaker side, and that as the world’s dominant military power, the US should not agree to being constrained. An arms race in space would be unwelcome, but if one happened, the US would win. Unfortunately for the Americans, it can no longer be so sure of this, and recent technological advances have rendered many of its plans for space irrelevant.

Most notably, Russia’s deployment of hypersonic glide missiles has made the tens of billions of dollars invested by Washington in ballistic missile defence worthless. Even if the Americans could develop some space-based defence system against these missiles, the cost would be gargantuan, and by the time the system could be deployed, new technologies would already have produced counter-measures. The idea that America needs to weaponize space in order to defend itself against nuclear attack doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

The Russian anti-satellite test may be seen as an effort to try to force the United States to recognize its vulnerability and so bring it to the negotiating table. This may not work. The gargantuan sums of money mentioned above mean that there are powerful institutional interests in the United States who will resist any such effort. This is highly regrettable. Nobody but generals and arms manufacturers will benefit from an arms race in space. The sooner everyone recognizes this the better.

Paul Robinson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is author of the Irrussianality blog.

November 18, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Bounty on Your Life: Hospitals’ Incentive Payments for COVID-19

By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. and Ali Shultz, J.D. | Association of American Physicians and Surgeons | November 17, 2021

Upon admission to a once-trusted hospital, American patients with COVID-19 become virtual prisoners, subjected to a rigid treatment protocol with roots in Ezekiel Emanuel’s “Complete Lives System” for rationing medical care in those over age 50. They have a shockingly high mortality rate. How and why is this happening, and what can be done about it?

As exposed in audio recordings, hospital executives in Arizona admitted meeting several times a week to lower standards of care, with coordinated restrictions on visitation rights. Most COVID-19 patients’ families are deliberately kept in the dark about what is really being done to their loved ones.

The combination that enables this tragic and avoidable loss of hundreds of thousands of lives includes (1) The CARES Act, which provides hospitals with bonus incentive payments for all things related to COVID-19 (testing, diagnosing, admitting to hospital, use of remdesivir and ventilators, reporting COVID-19 deaths, and vaccinations) and (2) waivers of customary and long-standing patient rights by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

In 2020, the Texas Hospital Association submitted requests for waivers to  CMS. According to Texas attorney Jerri Ward, “CMS has granted ‘waivers’ of federal law regarding patient rights. Specifically, CMS purports to allow hospitals to violate the rights of patients or their surrogates with regard to medical record access, to have patient visitation, and to be free from seclusion.” She notes that “rights do not come from the hospital or CMS and cannot be waived, as that is the antithesis of a ‘right.’ The purported waivers are meant to isolate and gain total control over the patient and to deny patient and patient’s decision-maker the ability to exercise informed consent.”

Creating a “National Pandemic Emergency” provided justification for such sweeping actions that override individual physician medical decision-making and patients’ rights. The CARES Act provides incentives for hospitals to use treatments dictated solely by the federal government under the auspices of the NIH. These “bounties” must paid back if not “earned” by making the COVID-19 diagnosis and following the COVID-19 protocol.

The hospital payments include:

  • A “free” required PCR test in the Emergency Room or upon admission for every patient, with government-paid fee to hospital.
  • Added bonus payment for each positive COVID-19 diagnosis.
  • Another bonus for a COVID-19 admission to the hospital.
  • A 20 percent “boost” bonus payment from Medicare on the entire hospital bill for use of remdesivir instead of medicines such as Ivermectin.
  • Another and larger bonus payment to the hospital if a COVID-19 patient is mechanically ventilated.
  • More money to the hospital if cause of death is listed as COVID-19, even if patient did not die directly of COVID-19.
  • A COVID-19 diagnosis also provides extra payments to coroners.

CMS implemented “value-based” payment programs that track data such as how many workers at a healthcare facility receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Now we see why many hospitals implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates. They are paid more.

Outside hospitals, physician MIPS quality metrics link doctors’ income to performance-based pay for treating patients with COVID-19 EUA drugs. Failure to report information to CMS can cost the physician 4% of reimbursement.

Because of obfuscation with medical coding and legal jargon, we cannot be certain of the actual amount each hospital receives per COVID-19 patient. But Attorney Thomas Renz and CMS whistleblowers have calculated a total payment of at least $100,000 per patient.

What does this mean for your health and safety as a patient in the hospital?

There are deaths from the government-directed COVID treatments. For remdesivir, studies show that 71–75 percent of patients suffer an adverse effect, and the drug often had to be stopped after five to ten days because of these effects, such as kidney and liver damage, and death. Remdesivir trials during the 2018 West African Ebola outbreak had to be discontinued because death rate exceeded 50%. Yet, in 2020, Anthony Fauci directed that remdesivir was to be the drug hospitals use to treat COVID-19, even when the COVID clinical trials of remdesivir showed similar adverse effects.

In ventilated patients, the death toll is staggering. A National Library of Medicine January 2021 report of 69 studies involving more than 57,000 patients concluded that fatality rates were 45 percent in COVID-19 patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, increasing to 84 percent in older patients. Renz announced at a Truth for Health Foundation Press Conference that CMS data showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% percent of all patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.

Then there are deaths from restrictions on effective treatments for hospitalized patients. Renz and a team of data analysts have estimated that more than 800,000 deaths in America’s hospitals, in COVID-19 and other patients, have been caused by approaches restricting fluids, nutrition, antibiotics, effective antivirals, anti-inflammatories, and therapeutic doses of anti-coagulants.

We now see government-dictated medical care at its worst in our history since the federal government mandated these ineffective and dangerous treatments for COVID-19, and then created financial incentives for hospitals and doctors to use only those “approved” (and paid for) approaches.

Our formerly trusted medical community of hospitals and hospital-employed medical staff have effectively become “bounty hunters” for your life. Patients need to now take unprecedented steps to avoid going into the hospital for COVID-19.

Patients need to take active steps to plan before getting sick to use early home-based treatment of COVID-19 that can help you save your life.

November 18, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

FDA Asks Federal Judge to Grant it Until the Year 2076 to Fully Release Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Data

By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | November 17, 2021

The FDA has asked a federal judge to make the public wait until the year 2076 to disclose all of the data and information it relied upon to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.   That is not a typo.   It wants 55 years to produce this information to the public.

As explained in a prior article, the FDA repeatedly promised “full transparency” with regard to Covid-19 vaccines, including reaffirming “the FDA’s commitment to transparency” when licensing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

With that promise in mind, in August and immediately following approval of the vaccine, more than 30 academics, professors, and scientists from this country’s most prestigious universities requested the data and information submitted to the FDA by Pfizer to license its COVID-19 vaccine.

The FDA’s response?  It produced nothing.  So, in September, my firm filed a lawsuit against the FDA on behalf of this group to demand this information.  To date, almost three months after it licensed Pfizer’s vaccine, the FDA still has not released a single page.  Not one.

Instead, two days ago, the FDA asked a federal judge to give it until 2076 to fully produce this information.  The FDA asked the judge to let it produce the 329,000+ pages of documents Pfizer provided to the FDA to license its vaccine at the rate of 500 pages per month, which means its production would not be completed earlier than 2076.  The FDA’s promise of transparency is, to put it mildly, a pile of illusions.

It took the FDA precisely 108 days from when Pfizer started producing the records for licensure (on May 7, 2021) to when the FDA licensed the Pfizer vaccine (on August 23, 2021).   Taking the FDA at its word, it conducted an intense, robust, thorough, and complete review and analysis of those documents in order to assure that the Pfizer vaccine was safe and effective for licensure. While it can conduct that intense review of Pfizer’s documents in 108 days, it now asks for over 20,000 days to make these documents available to the public.

So, let’s get this straight. The federal government shields Pfizer from liability.  Gives it billions of dollars.  Makes Americans take its product.  But won’t let you see the data supporting its product’s safety and efficacy.  Who does the government work for?

The lesson yet again is that civil and individual rights should never be contingent upon a medical procedure.  Everyone who wants to get vaccinated and boosted should be free to do so.  But nobody should be coerced by the government to partake in any medical procedure.  Certainly not one where the government wants to hide the full information relied upon for its licensure until the year 2076!

Health Impact News

Attorney Aaron Siri gave testimony in Washington D.C. earlier this month at Senator Ron Johnson’s Roundtable Discussion.

Here is his 10 minute address explaining the hurdles he is facing in suing the FDA.

November 18, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Why Doesn’t the CIA Just Destroy Its Secret JFK Records?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 17, 2021

With President Biden’s order granting the CIA’s request for continued secrecy of its 60-year-old records retailing to the JFK assassination — on grounds of protecting “national security” — the question naturally arises: Why doesn’t the the CIA simply sneak into the National Archives and just destroy its records and be done with it? 

By now, it should be obvious to everyone, including the CIA’s assets in the mainstream press, that the CIA’s remaining secret records contain incriminating evidence pointing toward a national-security state regime-change operation against President Kennedy, just as Oliver Stone posited in his movie JFK in 1991. The notion that the release of 60-year-old records will endanger “national security,” no matter what definition is placed on that meaningless, nebulous term, is patently ludicrous on its face.

Mind you, I’m not advocating that the CIA do this, of course. I believe those long-secret records should have been disclosed to the American people six decades ago. I’m just asking a question and wondering why the CIA doesn’t do what it has done in the past to prevent the American people from seeing its dark-side activities.

Yes, I know that doing this would be violating the JFK Records Act of 1992. But we all know that nothing would happen to the CIA if it broke the law and destroyed those records. Nobody would get indicted. No one would even lose his job. No one would even get a slap on the wrist. After all, this is the CIA we are talking about.

When the CIA intentionally destroyed its videotapes of its brutal torture sessions with suspected terrorists, nothing happened to the CIA. When the CIA intentionally destroyed its MKULTRA records of its drug experiments on unsuspecting American citizens, again nothing happened. 

Moreover, consider what the Secret Service did after the JFK Records Act was enacted. That sordid story is recounted in Douglas Horne’s watershed 5-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board.

The JFK Records Act mandated that all federal agencies disclose their assassination-related records to the public. To enforce the law, Congress called into existence The Assassination Records Review Board.

After the law was enacted, a letter was sent to the Secret Service and other federal agencies specifically directing them to not destroy any assassination-related records. The Secret Service received the letter and understood the directive. 

Nonetheless, the Secret Service intentionally destroyed critically important secret information relating to the assassination. 

No one got indicted for what was obviously a knowing, intentional, and deliberate violation of the law. No one got cited for contempt. No one got fired. The Secret Service got away with it. The American people never got to see those secret assassination-related records.

The Secret Service’s intentional destruction of those records looked especially bad in the context of the Secret Service’s actions prior to and immediately after the assassination. 

First, it didn’t seal the windows or the roof of the Texas School Book Depository or other high-rise buildings overlooking Dealey Plaza, where President Kennedy was assassinated,

Second, it prevented agents from stationing themselves on the side and back of the presidential limousine during the motorcade.

Third, it ensured that the motorcycle cops stayed behind the limousine rather than on its sides. 

Fourth, the custom was to have the official press corps car in front of the presidential limousine so that the professional photographers could easily take pictures and film during the motorcade. This time, the Secret Service placed the press corps car several cars behind the limousine, which ensured that there were few professional photographers capturing the assassination in photographs or film.

Fifth, when the first shot rang out, the Secret Service agent who was driving the presidential limousine — William Greer — failed to floor the accelerator and immediately escape from the area before a second shot could hit the president.

Sixth, the Secret Service agent in the passenger seat — Roy Kellerman — sat there like a bump on the log after the first shot rang out, even though his duty was to immediately jump in the back seat and cover the president with his own body. That’s what Secret Service agent Clint Hill was trying to do when he ran from his car toward the president’s car.

Seventh, as I detail in my book The Kennedy Autopsy, Kellerman was actually the person who first launched the scheme for a fraudulent autopsy that was conducted later that day at the military’s medical facility at Bethesda National Naval Medical Facility. When Dr. Earl Rose, the Dallas County Medical Examiner, announced his intention to conduct an autopsy on the president’s body in accordance with Texas state criminal law, Kellerman, who was carrying a submachine gun, declared that no such autopsy would be permitted. Stating that he was operating on orders. Kellerman and his team of Secret Service agents, who were themselves brandishing their own guns, forced their way out of Parkland with the president’s body in a very heavy ornate casket. Kellerman and his team then delivered the body to new President Lyndon Johnson. Later that day, Johnson delivered the president’s body to the military, which then conducted a top-secret, classified fraudulent autopsy on Kennedy’s body.

Kennedy’s body was secretly sneaked into the Bethesda morgue in a cheap shipping casket at 6:35 p.m., which was almost 1 1/2 hours before the official entry time of 8 p.m.  As I also detailed in The Kennedy Autopsy, Secret Service agents Kellerman and Greer participated in the secret reintroduction of Kennedy’s body into the expensive, heavy ornate Dallas casket, which was then brought into the morgue at the official entry time of 8 p.m.

What was in those top-secret Secret Service records that the Secret Service intentionally destroyed after being specifically told not to destroy them? 

I don’t know, but my hunch is that there was a good reason why the Secret Service felt the need to destroy them.

There is obviously a good reason why the CIA doesn’t want its 60-year-old records disclosed to the American people, and I have no doubts that it has nothing to do with protecting “national security.” Which causes me to wonder why the CIA doesn’t do what the Secret Service did and just be done with the entire controversy.

November 18, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Australia Refuses to Reveal Additional Proof of Its Role in Chile’s CIA-Backed Coup

By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 16, 2021

The U.S. has declassified thousands of documents relating to its involvement in the ousting of Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende and the installing of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Australia, on the other hand, continues to guard its classified documents on the pretext of security, drawing a discrepancy between its purported democratic principles and obstructing the public’s right to knowledge. As a country which welcomed Chileans fleeing the horrors of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship, as well as harbouring Chilean agents – the most notable case being that of Adriana Rivas – Australia’s political and moral obligation should not be played down.

This month, the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruled that releasing documents relating to the Australian Secret Intelligence Service’s (ASIS) role in Chile would damage Commonwealth relations. “Protecting our ability to keep secrets – and being seen to do that – may require us to continue suppressing documents containing what may appear to be benign or uncontroversial information about events that occurred long ago,” the ruling partly stated.

In September this year, heavily redacted documents were declassified which confirmed ASIS working with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), following petitions signed by a former Australian intelligence officer, Clinton Fernandes, calling upon the government to clarify its role in Cambodia, Indonesia and Chile.

Fernandes had described Australia’s foreign policy complicity with the U.S. as “a profoundly undemocratic, unfriendly act.” Allende, after all, was democratically elected. U.S. interference to bring about the right-wing dictatorship was a strategy to impede other countries from following Chile’s example in democratic revolutionary socialism.

In 1971, ASIS was tasked to open a radio station in Santiago by the CIA through which spy operations were conducted. Australia’s involvement ceased when the newly-elected Labour Prime Minister Gough Whitlam ordered the closing down of operations, fearing that any public disclosure would make things difficult in terms of explaining ASIS’s presence. At the same time, Australia was also concerned that its decision would be interpreted as anti-American.

Australia’s decision is baffling, considering the amount of declassification which the U.S., as the main instigator of violence in Latin America, has undertaken. The Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal did not make its proceedings public, thus Fernandes and his lawyer could not counter-argue the decision.

To state that not a sufficient passage of time has passed since Australia’s involvement in the coup stands in contrast with how Chile has proceeded since the democratic transition, where the rewriting of a new constitution spells the possibility of a thorough reckoning with the dictatorship legacy. While the Chilean military still holds on to its files and upholds its secret pact which National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) agents are bound to, thus refusing to collaborate with the courts for justice when it comes to locating the disappeared, for example, the Chilean government has been coerced to respond to the people’s call for change, thus ushering in an era where Pinochet’s legacy can be challenged and toppled.

There exists speculation that the Australian government would request permission from the CIA to reveal its role, based upon an agreement between the CIA and ASIS. In the early 90s, Chileans in Australia requested the expulsion of DINA agents living in Australia but were told that the government did not have permission from the CIA to heed the request.

Almost 50 years have passed since Pinochet took power, so what exactly is Australia afraid of? The petition was not calling for a revelation of names, but rather the actions which would shed light on Australia’s role in Chile at the behest of the CIA. Considering the exiled Chileans living in Australia, refusing declassification is a political infringement on their right to memory.

November 17, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the Inability to Think in Terms of Principles

By Glenn Greenwald | November 16, 2021

The FBI has executed a string of search warrants targeting the homes and cell phones of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and several others associated with that organization. It should require no effort to understand why it is a cause for concern that a Democratic administration is using the FBI to aggressively target an organization devoted to obtaining and reporting incriminating information about Democratic Party leaders and their liberal allies.

That does not mean the FBI investigation is inherently improper. Journalists are no more entitled than any other citizen to commit crimes. If there is reasonable cause to believe O’Keefe and his associates committed federal crimes, then an FBI investigation is warranted as it is for any other case. But there has been no evidence presented that O’Keefe or Project Veritas employees have done anything of the sort, nor any explanation provided to justify these invasive searches. That we should want and need that is self-evident: if the Trump-era FBI had executed search warrants inside the newsrooms of The New York Times and NBC News, we would be demanding evidence to prove it was legally justified. Yet virtually nothing has been provided to justify the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and his colleagues, and the little that has been disclosed by way of justifying this makes no sense.

The FBI investigation concerns the theft last year of the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, yet Project Veritas, while admitting they received a copy from an anonymous source, chose not to publish that diary because they were unable to verify it. Nobody and nothing thus far suggests that Project Veritas played any role in its acquisition, legal or otherwise. There is a cryptic reference in the search warrant to transmitting stolen material across state lines, but it is not illegal for journalists to receive and use material illegally acquired by a source: the most mainstream organizations spent the last month touting documents pilfered from Facebook by their heroic “whistleblower” Frances Haugen.

On Monday night, we produced an in-depth video report examining the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and Project Veritas and the dangers it presents (as we do for all of our Rumble videos, the transcript will soon be made available to subscribers here; for now, you can watch the video at the Rumble link). One of the primary topics of our report was the authoritarian tactic that is typically used to justify governmental attacks on those who report news and disseminate information: namely, to decree that the target is not a real journalist and therefore has no entitlement to claim the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

This not-a-real-journalist tactic was and remains the primary theory used by those who justify the ongoing attempt to imprison Julian Assange. In demanding Assange’s prosecution under the Espionage Act, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions.” Yet the five-term Senator insisted: “but he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt.”

This not-a-real-journalist slogan was also the one used by both the CIA and the corporate media against myself and my colleagues in both the Snowden reporting we did in 2013, as well as the failed attempt to criminally prosecute me in 2020 for the year-long Brazil exposés we did: punishing them is not an attack on press freedom because they are not journalists and what they did is not journalism.

What is most striking about this weapon is that — like the campaign to agitate for more censorship — it is led by journalists. It is the corporate media that most aggressively insists that those who are independent, those who are outsiders, those who do not submit to their institutional structures are not real journalists the way they are, and thus are not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment. In order to create a framework to deny Project Veritas’s status as journalists, The New York Times claimed last week that anyone who uses undercover investigations (as Veritas does) is automatically a non-journalist because that entails lying — even though, just two years earlier, the same paper heralded numerous news outlets such as Al Jazeera and Mother Jones for using undercover investigations to accomplish what they called “compelling” reporting.

I am very well-acquainted with this repressive tactic of trying to decree who is and is not a real journalist for purposes of constitutional protection. Many have forgotten — given the awards it ultimately ended up winning — that the NSA/Snowden reporting we did in 2013 was originally maligned as quasi-criminal not just by Obama national security officials such as James Clapper but also by The New York Times. The first profile the Paper of Record published about me the day after the reporting began referred to me in the headline as an “Anti-Surveillance Activist” and then, once backlash ensued, it was changed to “Blogger” (the original snide, disqualifying headline is still visible in the URL).

The Guardian, Jan. 29, 2014

As the New York Times‘ own Public Editor at the time objected, by purposely denying me the label “journalist,” the paper was knowingly increasing the risks that I could be prosecuted for my reporting. Indeed, recent reporting from Yahoo! News about CIA plots to kidnap or murder Julian Assange reported that denying Assange the label “journalist,” and then re-defining what I and my colleague Laura Poitras were doing from “journalist” to “information broker,” would enable the U.S. Government to spy on or even prosecute us without having to worry about that inconvenient “free press” guarantee of the First Amendment.

New York Times, June 6, 2013

All of this demonstrates how dangerous it is to invoke this very same not-a-real-journalist tactic against O’Keefe and Project Veritas. Yet, if one warns of the dangers of the FBI’s actions, that is precisely what one hears from liberals, from Democrats and from their allies in the media: the FBI’s targeting of Project Veritas has nothing to do with press freedoms since they’re not real journalists. They are invoking the authoritarian theory that maintains that the state (or, in this case, the FBI) is vested with the power to decree who is a “real journalist” — whatever that means — and who is not.

There are so many ironies to the use of this framework. So often, employees of media corporations who have never broken a major story in their lives (and never will) revel in accusing independent journalists who have broken numerous major stories (such as Assange) of not being real journalists. At the height of the Snowden reporting, I went on Meet the Press in July, 2013, only for the host, David Gregory, to suggest that I ought to be in prison alongside my source Edward Snowden because I was not really a journalist the way David Gregory was. At the time, Frank Rich, writing in New York Magazine, noted how bizarre it was that the TV personality David Gregory assumed he was a real journalist, whereas I was a non-journalist who belonged in prison for my reporting, given that Gregory — like most employees of large media corporations — had never broken any story in his life. Rich used a Q&A format to make the point this way:

On Sunday, Meet the Press host David Gregory all but accused the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald of aiding and abetting Edward Snowden’s fugitive travels, asking, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” And, speaking to his larger point, do you see Greenwald as a journalist or an activist in this episode? And does it matter?

Is David Gregory a journalist? As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin, or Chuck Schumer. Meet the Press has fallen behind CBS’s Face the Nation, much as Today has fallen to ABC’s Good Morning America, and my guess is that Gregory didn’t mean to sound like Joe McCarthy (with a splash of the oiliness of Roy Cohn) but was only playing the part to make some noise. In any case, his charge is preposterous. As a columnist who published Edward Snowden’s leaks, Greenwald was doing the job of a journalist — and the fact that he’s an “activist” journalist (i.e., an opinion journalist, like me and a zillion others) is irrelevant to that journalistic function. . . . [I]t’s easier for Gregory to go after Greenwald, a self-professed outsider who is not likely to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and works for a news organization based in London. Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago, he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers. In any case, Greenwald demolished Gregory on air and on Twitter (“Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”).

At the time — both in terms of that exchange with Gregory and my overall reporting on the NSA — I had significant support from the liberal-left (though it was far from universal, given that we were exposing mass, indiscriminate, illegal spying by the Obama administration). But few believed that I ought to be prosecuted on the grounds that, somehow, I was not a real journalist.

So why are so many of them now willing to endorse this same exact theory when it comes to O’Keefe and Project Veritas, or even to justify the prosecution of Julian Assange? The answer is obvious. They are unwilling and/or incapable of thinking in terms of principles, ones that apply universally to everyone regardless of their ideology. Their thought process never even arrives at that destination. When the subject of the FBI’s attacks on O’Keefe is raised, or the DOJ’s prosecution of Assange is discussed, they ask themselves one question and only one question, and that ends the inquiry. It is the exclusive and determinative factor: do I like James O’Keefe and his politics? Do I like Julian Assange and his politics?

This primitive, principle-free, personality-driven prism is the only way they are capable of understanding the world. Because they dislike O’Keefe and/or Assange, they instantly side with whoever is targeting them — the FBI, the DOJ, the security state services — and believe that anyone who defends them is defending a right-wing extremist rather than defending the non-ideological, universally applicable principle of press freedoms. They think only in terms of personalities, not principles.

The FBI’s actions against Project Veritas and O’Keefe are so blatantly alarming that press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation (on whose Board I sit) have expressed grave concerns about it, including on their social media accounts for all to see. Even the ACLU — which these days is loathe to speak out in favor of any person or group disliked by their highly partisan liberal donor base — issued a very carefully hedged statement that made clear how much they despise Project Veritas but said: “Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom” (at least thus far, the ACLU has just quietly stuck this statement on its website and not uttered a word about it on its social media accounts, where most of its liberal donors track what they do, but the fact that they felt compelled to say anything in defense of this right-wing boogieman demonstrates how extreme the FBI’s actions are). The federal judge overseeing the warrants has temporarily enjoined the FBI from extracting any more information from the cell phones seized from O’Keefe and other Project Veritas employees pending a determination of their legal justification.

Committee to Protect Journalists, Nov. 15, 2021

The reason this is such a grave press freedom attack is two-fold. First, as indicated, any attempt to anoint oneself the arbiter of who is and is not a “real journalist” for purposes of First Amendment protection is inherently tyrannical. Which institutions are sufficiently trustworthy and competent to decree who is a real journalist meriting First Amendment protection and who falls outside as something else?

But there is a much more significant problem with this framework: namely, the question of who is and is not a real journalist is completely irrelevant to the First Amendment. None of the rights in the Constitution, including press freedom, was intended to apply only to a small, cloistered, credentialed, privileged group of citizens. The exact opposite was true: the only reason they are valuable as rights is because they enjoy universal application, protecting all citizens.

Indeed, one of the most passionate grievances of the American colonists was that nobody was permitted to use the press unless first licensed by the British Crown. Conversely, the most celebrated journalism of the time was undertaken by people like Thomas Paine — who never worked for an established journalistic outlet in his life — as he circulated the pamphlet Common Sense that railed against the abuses of the King. What was protected by the First Amendment was not a small, privileged caste bearing the special label “journalists,” but rather the activity of a free press. The proof of this is clear and ample, and is set forth in the video we produced on Monday night.

But none of this matters. If you express concern for the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe, it will be instantly understood not as a concern about any of these underlying principles but instead as an endorsement of O’Keefe’s politics, journalism, and O’Keefe himself. The same is true for the discourse surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse. If you say that — after having actually watched the trial — you believe the state failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in light of his defense of self-defense, many will disbelieve your sincerity, will insist that your view is based not in some apolitical assessment of the evidence or legal principles about what the state must do in order to imprison a citizen, but rather that you must be a “supporter” of Rittenhouse himself, his ideology (whatever it is assumed to be), and the political movement with which he, in their minds, is associated.

On some level, this is pure projection: those who are incapable of assessing political or legal conflicts through a prism of principles rather than personalities assume that everyone is plagued by the same deficiency. Since they decide whether to support or oppose the FBI’s actions toward O’Keefe based on their personal view of O’Keefe rather than through reference to any principles, they assume that this is how everyone is determining their views of that situation. Similarly, since they base their views on whether Rittenhouse should be convicted or acquitted based on how they personally feel about Rittenhouse and his perceived politics rather than the evidence presented at the trial (which most of them have not watched), they assume that anyone advocating for an acquittal can be doing so only because they like Rittenhouse’s politics and believe that his actions were heroic.

In sum, those who view the world through a prism bereft of principles — either due to lack of intellectual capacity or ethics or both — assume everyone’s world view is similarly craven. It is this same stunted mindset that saddles our discourse with so much illogic and so many twisted presumptions, such as the inability to distinguish between defending someone’s right to express a particular opinion and agreement with that opinion. In a world in which ideology, partisan loyalty, tribal affiliations, in-group identity and personality-driven assessments predominate, there is no room for principles, universally applicable rights, or basic reason.

November 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

RFK, Jr.’s ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’ Hits Bookstores

The Defender | November 16, 2021

Children’s Health Defense’s board chair and lead counsel Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s highly anticipated book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” is available today in bookstores throughout the U.S. and Canada.

The New York Times bestselling author’s latest work details how Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and their cohorts used their control of media outlets, scientific journals, key government and quasi-governmental agencies, and influential scientists and physicians to flood the public with fearful propaganda about COVID-19 virulence and pathogenesis, and to muzzle debate and ruthlessly censor dissent.

As people the world over are questioning the origins of the COVID crisis, news continues to emerge about U.S. taxpayers’ funding of gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. Some U.S. Senators including Rand Paul are calling for Fauci’s resignation while U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace is leading a bipartisan effort to investigate his agency’s treatment of beagle puppies during experiments that the group of lawmakers calls “cruel.”

“The Real Anthony Fauci” exposes a side of Dr. Fauci that has thus far been shielded from the public by the ongoing media blackout of any information that counters the Pharma/government narrative.

“The research I conducted for this book exposes how Fauci’s gargantuan yearly disbursements allow him to dictate the subject, content and outcome of scientific health research across the globe,” said Kennedy.

“These annual disbursements also allow Fauci to exercise dictatorial control over the army of ‘knowledge and innovation’ leaders who populate the ‘independent’ federal panels that approve and mandate drugs and vaccines — including the committees that allowed the Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 vaccines.”

“The Real Anthony Fauci” informs readers of how Fauci, Gates and their collaborators:

  • Invented and weaponized a parade of fraudulently concocted global pandemics, including bird flu (2005), swine flu (2009) and Zika (2015-2016), in order to sell novel vaccines, enrich their Pharma partners and increase the power of public health technocrats and Gates’ entourage of international agencies.
  • Used “gain-of-function” experiments to breed pandemic superbugs in shoddily constructed, poorly regulated laboratories in Wuhan, China, and elsewhere, under conditions that almost certainly guaranteed the escape of weaponized microbes, in partnership with the Pentagon, the Chinese military and a shady cabal of bioweapons grifters.
  • Made a series of prescient predictions about the imminent COVID-19 pandemic — almost to the day. Their precision soothsaying further awed a fawning, credulous and scientifically illiterate media that treats Gates and Fauci as religious deities, insulates them from public criticism and vilifies their doubters as heretics and “conspiracy theorists.” Adulatory mainstream media abetted Fauci’s conspiracy to cover up COVID’s origins at the Wuhan lab.
  • Teamed with government technocrats, military and intelligence planners, and health officials from the U.S., Europe and China to stage sophisticated pandemic “simulations” and “Germ Games.” Exercises like these, encouraged by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, laid the groundwork for imposition of global totalitarianism, including compulsory masking, lockdowns, mass propaganda and censorship, with the ultimate goal of mandating the coercive vaccination of 7 billion humans.
  • Practiced, in each of their “simulations,” psychological warfare techniques to create chaos, stoke fear, shatter economies, destroy public morale and quash individual self-expression — and then impose autocratic governance.

Kennedy discussed “The Real Anthony Fauci” at length Monday with Tucker Carlson on FOX Nation. Portions of that interview were featured last night on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Watch here.

“Fauci’s COVID policies also spawned new insidious authoritarianism — and propelled America down a slippery slope toward a grim future as a dark totalitarian security and surveillance state,” said Kennedy.

GET YOUR COPY TODAY at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, IndieBound, Bookshop.org and independent booksellers including these.

November 16, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Why is the US Hyping Up the Threat of ISIS in Afghanistan?

By Valery Kulikov – New Eastern Outlook – 16.11.2021

To justify its interventionist actions in the Middle East, the United States, following the now cliched example, actively uses its alleged commitment to fighting against terrorism, focusing on countering such well-known terrorist formations as Al Qaeda and ISIS. The same goes for the actions of the USA in Afghanistan. However, Washington didn’t take any accountability before the rest of the world about the results of this fight against terrorists in Afghanistan during its 20 years of abysmal military intervention.

At the same time, the Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov and foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mentioned several times that Russia has sufficient facts backing the claims about the USA’s cooperation with the ISIS militants in the northern part of Afghanistan. In particular, since 2017, unmarked helicopter flights have been recorded within areas of ISIS militant activity, not without the explicit knowledge of US and NATO forces in their area of responsibility, especially in northern Afghanistan… According to Afghan sources, these aircraft have been used to deliver manpower, weapons, and ammunition to ISIS militants. Moreover, there were recorded instances of surgical strikes by the US Air Force not against terrorists, but positions of radical Taliban fighters engaged in combat against ISIS.

After the termination of the US military intervention in Afghanistan in August this year under the pressure of the international public and Americans themselves, certain American politico-military circles, clearly dissatisfied with this step, started to spin the propaganda campaign about the allegedly intensified in recent months “danger of ISIS activity in Afghanistan” through their lackey media. With the apparent hope of triggering a new international armed aggression in Afghanistan, again under “US patronage.”

Thus, on September 28 this year, General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced the supposedly obvious danger of strengthening of Al-Qaeda and ISIS positions in Afghanistan: “And we must remember that the Taliban was and remains a terrorist organization, and they still have not broken ties with al-Qaeda. I have no illusions about who we are dealing with.” “A reconstituted al-Qaeda or Daesh/ISIS with aspirations to attack the US is a very real possibility,” General continued.

The allegedly growing threat of ISIS in Afghanistan has recently been actively picked up by the American media, handy to the current military and political elite. In particular, recently The New York Times began to scare the world with stories that, since the Taliban came to power, ISIS militants in Afghanistan have intensified, their terrorist attacks are exhausting the new government and raising fears among Western powers of a potential revival of the group. During his speech in Congress, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl admitted that the ability of Afghan authorities to combat the Islamists “has yet to be determined.” However, he did not say anything about who and when will determine the results of 20 years of fighting them by the United States itself.

The New York Times acknowledged that, after its disgraceful flight from Afghanistan in August, Washington had lost reliable access to intelligence. Limited drone flights now provide only partial information given the distance they need to travel to reach Afghanistan, and its established network of informants has been destroyed.

However, the real reason behind Washington’s new propaganda wave regarding the allegedly heightened threat of ISIS from Afghanistan becomes apparent in one of the final paragraphs of the article published by this newspaper. It states that the Taliban “refuse to cooperate with the United States in fighting ISIS by fighting the war on their terms.”

As for the organization of today’s fight against ISIS, Dr. Bashir, head of the Taliban’s intelligence services, has directly pointed out that such work is constantly being done, and his men have adopted the methods of this fight from their predecessors. Moreover, they even rely on Western equipment to intercept messages and radio communications. He insists, however, that the Taliban have something the past government and the Americans did not have: widespread local support that can alert authorities to attacks and militant positions, something that has always been hard to detect in the past.

As for some Western propagandists who attempt to use the thesis about the alleged merger of the Taliban with ISIS terrorists at the instigation of Washington, keep in mind that ISIS does not have such a strong influence in Afghanistan as the Taliban, and they are seen as antagonists in the country. The fact is that ISIS relies on Salafi ideology, while most Afghans identify themselves with the Hanafi school of fiqh. Therefore, the organization is a foreign body in the structure of Afghan society, which undoubtedly limits its growth of influence and popularity in the country.

As you know, ISIS announced the formation of the group in Iraq in 2014. Then came the ISIS affiliate in Pakistan. As for Afghanistan, a branch of ISIS emerged here in January 2015 under the Islamic State – Khorasan Province, which later the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan joined with. In 2015, several regional media reports revealed that the National Directorate of Security (NDS), under complete US control, had helped ISIS gain a foothold in Nangarhar province. There have also been reports that some leaders of the Afghan branch of ISIS, including Sheikh Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost (a former Guantanamo Bay detainee!), traveled in Afghan intelligence vehicles and lived in guesthouses belonging to Afghan intelligence agencies. Therefore, some analysts accuse US intelligence services of involvement in creating and strengthening ISIS in Afghanistan.

At a certain point, the Taliban viewed ISIS as temporary “allies” fighting against US intervention within Afghanistan. However, after ISIS demanded that Taliban leaders swear allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, clashes broke out between the Taliban and ISIS, especially in Nangarhar province. Notably, after such clashes broke out, government helicopters rescued ISIS fighters besieged by the Taliban in some areas, such as Jawzjan province. In particular, Afghan army helicopters supported by US forces evacuated ISIS fighters and their families and housed them in guesthouses in Sheberghan, Jawzjan province, belonging to Afghan intelligence. Afghan intelligence agencies implicitly acknowledged this.

The estimated number of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan is 5,000. A UN report released in mid-July said the number of ISIS fighters in Afghanistan ranges from 500 to 1,500. Currently, ISIS does not possess heavy weapons, guns, and tanks, even though such equipment was abandoned in large numbers by the US army after fleeing Afghanistan, and has no centers, headquarters, or open fronts on Afghan soil. In these circumstances, ISIS can gain a foothold in Afghanistan only if some foreign patrons support it with people, arms, and money to use this organization to weaken the Taliban’s power and turn Afghanistan into a new breeding ground for terrorism. And here, one cannot rule out such actions precisely on the part of the United States and its Western allies. For example, Washington has done it before by supporting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in its confrontation with the Soviet Union.

In a sense, former Afghan army and Afghan intelligence officers trained in the United States, who had already joined ISIS in Afghanistan in August after the US fled Afghanistan, could be used by the United States to manipulate ISIS. Their numbers, as admitted by The Wall Street Journal, “are still relatively small, but they are growing, according to those who know these people, and also according to Afghan and Taliban intelligence agencies.”

Today, the Taliban control the entire country and view ISIS as a foreign group to be fought and wholly expelled from Afghanistan. As for the restraints the Taliban has towards carrying out joint counter-terrorist actions against ISIS, confirmed by the Taliban on October 11 at the meeting with the Americans in Doha, one cannot rule out that it was Washington’s former ties with ISIS that could lie behind such a position of the current rulers of Afghanistan.

November 16, 2021 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

CIA Director Burns Goes to Moscow

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 16, 2021

The recent unprecedented surprise two-day visit by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns to Moscow for talks with his counterparts has triggered considerable discussion within retired spook circles in and around Washington. Even among active CIA employees the preparations for the trip were tightly held with few advisers briefed on the agenda that had been prepared for the meetings, which were clearly initiated at Langley’s request. Burns met with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev as well as Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin last Tuesday. President Vladimir Putin was briefed on the meetings on the following day. Concerning the discussions, a Kremlin spokesman said only that “Of course, dialogue at this level and dialogue on such sensitive issues is extremely important for bilateral relations and for the exchange of views on the problems that we have” elaborating only that various international issues were discussed. A US Embassy press release echoed the Russian comments.

There is a consensus that Burns, a former Ambassador to Russia and a Russian speaker, was on a mission ordered by the president to create a more stable and predictable relationship. The move comes in spite of US issuance of a new wave of sanctions for past presumed Russian offenses in April. Leaks regarding the visit, if verifiable, indicate that Burns was in Moscow to discuss specifically alleged Russian ransomware hacking and even the widely discredited view that Moscow has been continuing its interference in US elections. If all of that is so, the visit would be pointless as the Kremlin has denied any such involvement and dismissed claims that the alleged Russian hackers are in any was associated with the government.

The most popular narrative currently making the rounds among some conspiracy theorists is that the Biden Administration has compiled what might be described as a dossier on the expansion of Chinese influence operations worldwide and is keen to make the case that they threaten everyone, including the Europeans and Russians. Presumably Burns would have been in Moscow to share that information in hopes that the burgeoning de facto alliance between Russia and China can be reversed. Whether Burns was successful in such a task remains to be seen, but it of course would not take into account that views in Beijing and Moscow have been shaped and hardened by confrontational activity that the United States has been engaged in both in the Baltic and South China Sea.

Joe Biden for his part has not helped any rapprochement by his assurances to defend Taiwan and his critical comments about Vladimir Putin at the recent climate change conference in Glasgow. So one must ask why is it that an Administration that is increasingly seen as disconnected and incapable at home has been persisting in provocative policies that could plausibly lead to war against major powers like China and Russia? Particularly given the fact that recent war games and exercises have suggested that the in-disarray US armed forces might well be defeated? Is the trip of William Burns to Moscow something of a wake-up call to the fact that US foreign policy basically makes no sense?

Unfortunately, the Republicans are equally locked into an adversarial mode when it comes to Russia and China. Ex-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, is now calling for economic war against Beijing. Some might conclude that everything in contemporary Washington comes down to a latter-day opera buffa in which an assortment of comic characters parade for a moment only to be replaced by the next bumbler sporting an equally ridiculous message.

Russia aside, witness the recent wave of China bashing, begun by Barack Obama with his pivot to Asia, continued under Donald Trump with his China virus rants, and endorsed by Joe Biden’s team which persists in labeling Beijing as enemy number one. No one steps back and considers even for a moment that the US is China’s largest market and that the US in turn relies on Chinese manufactured products to fill its Walmarts. If ever two nations had good reasons not to go to war, it would be China and the United States, yet the US desire to confront the “Red Menace” to include defending Taiwan continues to drive policy.

So, it remains to be seen what might come out of the William Burns delegation going to Moscow. But there have been other recent visits by senior American officials. If you really want to consider policy making that is brain dead, the prize would have to go to the recently concluded trip made by State Department Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland to Moscow. The mainstream media that reported the trip saw it, just like the Burns trip, as a gesture being made by the Biden White House to mend fences with the Vladimir Putin government. But if that were so, the selection of Nuland as the interlocutor was particularly inappropriate. She is a hard-core neoconservative who is married to Robert Kagan. She was in fact on a Russian sanctions list before her trip and had to be removed from it so she could carry out the official travel. Nuland is best known in the media for having said in an intercepted phone call “Fuck the EU” when a colleague suggested that the European Union might have a role to play in the future direction of Ukraine.

Nuland at State Department under Barack Obama was in fact the driving force behind demanding regime change in Ukraine to oust its pro-Russian government. She would drop in on Kiev’s Maidan Square with her buddy Senator John McCain to pass out cookies to demonstrators. After the government was changed to satisfy Washington, it was admitted that the US had spent something like $5 billion to bring about the “revolution.” Moscow and Putin, however, were not amused and promptly moved to take back Crimea and to stir up resistance in the largely ethnic Russian Donbass region.

Nuland met in Moscow with the Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. What she chose to discuss belies suggestions that she was there to talk nice and mend fences. A major issue was a demand from Washington to greatly reduce the Russian diplomatic presence in the United States. The number that Nuland reportedly presented to Ryabkov was that 300 diplomats would have to go. The demand reportedly came from Congressional pressure to greatly reduce the number of accredited Russians based on the claim that Moscow had interfered in American elections. Nuland had with her two lists of names for removal, and suggested that the first fifty should be returned home by January.

The Russians responded that they were willing to lift all sanctions of US diplomats if Washington would reciprocate by lifting sanctions on Russian diplomatic missions in the US. Nuland said that was not acceptable. Ryabkov countered with his observation that many of the diplomats were accredited to the United Nations and were not accountable to the US approved diplomatic list. Ryabkov elaborated that “If you will insist, we are ready to close down all US missions in Russia, and to lock down our remaining offices at Washington. We can terminate all diplomatic interaction; if you want our relations be based on the number of our nuclear missiles, we are ready. But it’s your choice, not ours.” So the discussion obviously went nowhere.

In fact, the discussion went downhill from that point, including as it did US disapproval of Russian involvement in Mali and in Libya and a sounding out of possible Kremlin response if the Biden Administration pushes forward with plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. The Russians also confirmed that they would not permit hosting US intelligence personnel on military bases in former Central Asian Soviet countries “the ‘Stans” to monitor developments in Afghanistan. Crimea was apparently not mentioned.

Ryabkov concluded that “… he and Nuland made no progress on normalizing the work of their diplomatic missions, which has been hampered by multiple rounds of sanctions, adding that the situation could exacerbate even further. The Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated Moscow’s readiness to respond in kind to any unfriendly US action.” The only positive development was thin gruel, coming when Ryabkov floated a suggestion that Putin might be willing to meet with Joe Biden at some undesignated point in the future to discuss mutual concerns.

One has to wonder who exactly selected someone as toxic as Victoria Nuland to go to Russia, but worse was to come after her return to America. Any Putin-Biden summit meeting is now less likely than it was several weeks ago as right after Nuland’s departure for the United States, the bilateral relationship worsened. The NATO headquarters in Brussels declared several Russian diplomats ‘personae non gratae’, and the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to the provocation by sending home all NATO representatives present at diplomatic missions in Russia. In response back in the United States, the media and some Congressmen and Biden Administration officials immediately began to press forward with their plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, a vital or even existential issue for Russia that guarantees to scuttle any attempts to actually improve relations. And the White House continues to make a bad situation worse by suggesting that it has an obligation to “defend Ukraine.”

So why was CIA Director William Burns in Moscow and what did he accomplish? God only knows!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

November 16, 2021 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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