Why Hasn’t the US Arrested WaPo Journalist for Publishing Classified Documents?

Why hasn’t the US government arrested WaPo journalist Shane Harris for publishing highly classified documents related to the war in Ukraine and US spying on its allies? The ones leaked by Air national Guardsman Jack Teixeira?

The documents contain significant revelations. Among other secrets, they show the CIA recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders, reveal eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from NATO ally Turkey to use against Ukraine, explained what kind of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, and made clear US and NATO have special forces on the ground inside Ukraine.

Why Shane Harris is not in jail has a long history, and a complex answer. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret US government-written history of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times. No one had ever published such classified documents before, and reporters at the Times feared they would go to jail under the Espionage Act (the same law under which Jack Teixeira is charged.) A federal court ordered the Times to cease publication after initial excerpts were printed, the first time in US history a federal judge censored a newspaper via prior restraint. In the end, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and handed down a victory for the First Amendment in New York Times Company v. United States. The Times won the Pulitzer Prize. Ever since media have published national security secrets as they found them.

Law professor Steve Vladeck points out “although the First Amendment separately protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, the Supreme Court has long refused to give any separate substantive content to the Press Clause above and apart from the Speech Clause. The Supreme Court has never suggested that the First Amendment might protect a right to disclose national security information. Yes, the Pentagon Papers case rejected a government effort to enjoin publication, but several of the Justices in their separate opinions specifically suggested that the government could prosecute the New York Times and the Washington Post after publication, under the Espionage Act.”

The Supreme Court left the door open for the prosecution of journalists who publish classified documents by focusing narrowly on prohibiting prior restraint. Politics and public opinion, not law, has since kept the feds exercising discretion in not prosecuting the press, a delicate dance around an 800-pound gorilla loose in the halls of democracy.

The closest an American journalist ever came to being thrown in jail was in 2014, when the Obama administration subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen. They then accused former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling of passing classified information to Risen. After a lower court ordered Risen to testify and disclose his source under threat of jail, the Supreme Court turned down his appeal, siding with the government in a confrontation between a national security prosecution and an infringement of press freedom. The Supreme Court refused to consider whether the First Amendment implied a “reporter’s privilege,” an undocumented protection beneath the handful of words in the Free Press Clause.

In the end, the Obama administration, fearful of public opinion, punted on Risen and set precedent extra-judicially. Waving a patriotic flag over a messy situation, then-attorney general Eric Holder announced that “no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” Risen wasn’t called to testify and wasn’t punished for publishing classified material, even as the alleged leaker, Jeffrey Sterling, disappeared into prison for three and a half years. To avoid creating a precedent that might have granted some form of reporter’s privilege under the Constitution, the government set a different precedent and stepped away from the fight. That’s why Shane Harris of the Washington Post isn’t under arrest right now. For traditional media American journalists like Shane Harris, the Risen case was a turning point.

Meanwhile Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is under arrest, rotting away in his fifth year in a UK prison fighting extradition to the United States. There are complex legal questions to be answered about who is a journalist and what is publishing in the digital world — is Assange himself a journalist like Risen or a source for journalists like Sterling was alleged to be? There is no debate over whether James Risen is a journalist and whether a book is publishing. Glenn Greenwald has written about and published online classified documents given to him by Edward Snowden, and has never been challenged by the government as a journalist or publisher.

Assange isn’t an American, so he is vulnerable. He is unpopular, drawn into America’s 21st-century Red Scare for revealing the DNC emails. He has written nothing alongside the primary source documents on Wikileaks, has apparently done little curating or culling, and has redacted little. Publishing for him consists of uploading what has been supplied. The government would argue Assange is not entitled to First Amendment protections simply by claiming that a mouse click and some web code isn’t publishing and Assange isn’t a journalist. The simplest interpretation of 18 USC. § 793(e) of the Espionage Act, that Assange willfully transmitted information relating to national defense without authorization, would apply. He would be guilty, same as the other canaries in the deep mine shaft of Washington before him, no messy balancing questions to be addressed. And with that, a unique form of online primary source journalism would be made extinct.

And that really, really matters. Wikileaks sidestepped the restraints of traditional journalism to bring the raw material of history to the people. Never mind whether or not a court determined disclosure of secret NSA programs which spied on Americans disclosure was truly in the public interest. Never mind the New York Times gets a phone call from the President and decides not to publish something. Never mind how senior government officials are allowed to selectively leak information helpful to themselves. Never mind what parts of an anonymous technical disclosure a reporter understood well enough to write about, here are the cables, the memos, the emails, the archives themselves. Others can write summaries and interpretations if they wish (and nearly every mainstream media outlet has used Wikileaks to do that, some even while calling Assange and his sources traitors), or you as an individual can simply read the stuff yourself and make up your own damn mind about what the government is doing. Fact checks? There are the facts themselves in front of you. That is the root of an informed public, through a set of tools and freedoms never before available until the internet created them.

Allowing these new tools to be broken over the meaning of the words journalist and publishing will stifle all of what’s left of the press. If Assange becomes the first successful prosecution of a third party under the Espionage Act, the government can then turn that precedent into a weapon to aggressively attack the media’s role in national security leaks. Is a reporter, for example, publishing a Signal number in fact soliciting people to commit national security felonies? Will media employees have to weigh for themselves the potential public interest, hoping to avoid prosecution if they differ from the government’s opinion? The Assange case may prove to be the topper in a long-running war of attrition against free speech.

Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com.

from Why Hasn’t the US Arrested WaPo Journalist for Publishing Classified Documents?

RFK, Jr Is Making It Real

I was elated to find out that Joe Biden is all about my freedom, and while he didn’t have a lot of luck increasing freedom in his first three years, I’m sure that wasn’t his fault. He is running for a second term because he wants to save freedom.

Or is it democracy he wants to save – Biden interchanges the terms with abandon. I do have a small concern about the slurring of words, and the imprecise language, but come on, man! This is our moment.

I haven’t followed the GOP side of things, There are no republicans running so far, that I am aware of, with a basic and fundamental understanding of economics, and none that don’t secretly want to send my kids and grandkids to fight in some foreign country – and of course, Joe Biden wants war everywhere, right now. Funny how he didn’t mention that in his announcement.

It really does seem as if the country is polarized – but not in the way Joe said, with good people versus MAGA domestic terrorists. Believe it or not, we actually can still speak to one another, and find common ground. We do it every day – the alternative is indeed civil war, and we are not there yet.

But the polarization is real – the liberal elite corporate bureaucracy that rules the United States versus all of the rest of us who live our lives, work, produce and participate in mostly elite-orchestrated sham political action.

We worry about being able to retire at 65, and yet the two leading candidates for President at the moment are both well past that age. Biden looks like he’s got one foot in the nursing home, and one wonders at times about Trump’s blood pressure. The president is a figurehead, so maybe their mental health doesn’t matter – but we expect them to at least manage the people who do the damage. Trump, famous for being able to hire the best, and fire the worst, failed in his strongest selling point. He hired John Bolton for a stint as his national security advisor, and continued in this confused path by failing to fire Fauci, two of many, many bad hiring and firing decisions. Further, neither Trump nor Biden can lead their own party, or even remotely begin to unify it.

Inability to lead a corrupt party machine is not a flaw. No one can do it. Both major parties – captured by elite money and special interests, one of them currently being marketed directly to the people by state media – are out of touch and have no answers. When you don’t have answers, you hem and haw until you can think of something, or figure out a way to save yourself. We are being offered Candidate Hem and Candidate Haw.

The exception to this is the remarkable RFK, Jr. His 120 plus minute long presidential announcement speech, given live with no notes, was impressive, and stirring.

The presidential campaigns of Ron Paul, Ross Perot, and a few others, punched higher than their weight. Their messages became became topics of the national conversation. Trump, a lifelong democrat who connects with the populist center did this as well, and was elected because he was able to co-opt the GOP institution itself – normally an extremely reliable elite partner, just not in 2016. The treatment of Trump by our elite ruling institutions – impeached twice, targeted incessantly by both parties and the state media, disobeyed and misled by his own appointees – is a case study in what our elite rulers will, and will not, tolerate.

The populist center is the real counterweight to the elite, quasi-global, corporate interests that dominate most governments, and certainly the US government. This cannot be spoken – our rulers divide and conquer, pit interest and economic groups against each other like any other colonial master. Only when we get the odd outlier do we see the great power of Americans together – common sense, caring, with a nostalgia for freedom and a sense that justice is actually possible, and worthwhile.

This is why Biden’s 3 minute video, emotionally promoting fear and division while using language that appeals to the center, is what it is. It’s the secret of Trump’s political success as well – this outreach to that powerful well of the heart of the country.

Like Ron Paul, Ross Perot, and Lt General Smedley Butler, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. offers a thinking man’s perspective, authenticity of experience, and willingness to speak to us as if we are thoughtful adults.

His phrasing is memorable – he speaks of “strip mining the country,” how lockdowns served the large corporations while “hollowing out the middle class,” “people in authority lie.” “The media lies, and everybody knows it.” He explains “regulatory capture” and corporate capitalism and he puts America first. His description of the US activity in fomenting war in Ukraine, and sustaining that and other wars for the benefit of elites is both accurate and chilling. He talks about his father’s presidential campaign and Vietnam. He explains the disaster of the COVID lockdowns – a story every American intuitively knows, but cannot mention in polite company. No one speaks like this today – and we crave it, we’ve been starved for it.

RFK, Jr.’s entry into the race is a blessing for the country. We are going to learn a lot by hearing his voice. We will learn even more by watching how the political machine and our permanent rulers react to him. He is running as a Democrat, but he is really a stalking horse for the populist center, including many of those who were inspired by Trump’s populism and common sense prescriptions. May God bless and keep Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as he traverses very dangerous territory.

Reprinted with permission from LewRockwell.com.

from RFK, Jr Is Making It Real

Top Pentagon Brass Cheers Tucker Carlson's Ouster...Soldiers Not So Much

It speaks volumes about Pentagon leadership that they are, according to Politico, celebrating the end of the Tucker Carlson news program. Tucker railed against the "woke" absurdities of "leaders" like Gen Milley and they hated him for it. But he was extremely popular among those expected to actually do the fighting. Wonder why they can't meet recruiting goals? Also today, Congress looks to pass bill to ensure Ukraine victory. Finally: Fauci blames science for his own Covid failures. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Top Pentagon Brass Cheers Tucker Carlson's Ouster...Soldiers Not So Much

Europe Has Lost Its Guiding Myth

The message sent by the Chinese Defence Minister’s three-day visit to Russia is clear. His reception – a high-profile event – was intentionally invested with high visibility. And at its symbolic centre was a meeting with President Putin on (Orthodox) Easter Day which was consequential, both for being far beyond the norms of protocol, and for occurring on Easter Day, when Putin would not customarily work.

Its key message may be surmised from remarks earlier framed by Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of China’s Global Times: “The US repeatedly claims that China is preparing to provide “lethal military aid” to Russia in the ongoing Ukraine conflict”. But that war has “has been going on for more than a year: And according to the West’s previous calculation, Russia should have already collapsed by now … And, whilst NATO is supposed to be much stronger than Russia, the situation on the ground doesn’t appear as such – which is why it causes [such] anxiety in the West …”.

Hu Xijin continues:

If Russia alone is already so difficult to deal with, what if China really starts to provide military aid to Russia, using its massive industrial capabilities for the Russian military? [If] Russia alone … is more than a match for the Collective West. If they [the West] really forces China and Russia to join hands militarily – the question that haunts them is that the West will no longer be able to do as it pleases. Russia and China together, would have the power to check the US.

This essentially was what the Defence Minister’s visit was all about: Events have moved on since Hu wrote that piece in the Global Times a few weeks ago and, if anything, recent developments have lent added dimension to his clarion warning that a Sino-Russian joining of hands – militarily – would mark a paradigm change.

The recent event of the US Intelligence leaks (as well as earlier reports from Seymour Hersh) seem to point to deep internal schism in the US ‘Permanent State’:

One element is convinced that the Ukrainian Spring Offensive is a disaster in the making – with major consequences for US prestige. The Neo-con contingent, on the other hand, bitterly refutes this analysis, and instead demands escalation via immediate preparation (arming Taiwan) against a US war to be waged against both China and Russia soon. The neo-cons claim a Russian panic and collapse could happen within 24 hours of an Ukrainian attack.

To put it plainly, the sudden ignition of neo-con war fever against China has just done what Hu earlier foresaw: It has forced Russia and China to join hands militarily, not necessarily in Ukraine, but rather to plan and prepare for war with the West.

In the wake of the Intelligence leaks, the focus on Ukraine in the US has waned, and been replaced in the US with a rising fever for war with China.

The Chinese Defence Minister’s extended Moscow visit was the tangible evidence that now, China and Russia are convinced that the prospect of war is real, and they are preparing for it. Putin underlined the ‘jointery’ by, inter alia, prioritising the strengthening of the Russian Pacific fleet, and upgrading generally Russian Naval capacities.

This is just crazy: Hu was ‘spot on’. If NATO does not have the military industrial capacity to defeat Russia on its own, how can the US and Europe expect to prevail against China and Russia combined? The notion seems delusional.

Historian Paul Veyne, a towering figure in the history of the ancient Roman world, once posed the question: Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? All societies, he wrote, contrive to some notional distinction between ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’, but in the end, according to him, this too, is just another ‘fishbowl’, the one we happen to inhabit, and it is in no way superior, as a matter of epistemology, to the fishbowl in which ancient Greeks lived and made sense of their world, in no small part through myths and stories about the gods.

In respect to the myth of the Roman Empire which nourishes US foreign policy, Veyne’s position is profoundly contrarian. For his basic claim is that Roman imperialism had little to do with statecraft, nor economic predation or the assertion of control and the demand of obedience, but rather that was motivated by a collective wish to create a world in which Romans might be left alone, not simply secure, but undisturbed. That is all.

Paradoxically, this account would place the American traditionalist ‘Right’ – which leans to a Burkean-Buchanan perspective –closer to that of Veyne’s Roman ‘reality’ that to that of the neo-cons: i.e. what most Americans wish is for America to be left alone, and to be secure.

Yes, the gods and myths were tangible to the Ancients. They lived through them. The point here is Veyne’s warning against our ‘lazy treating’ of ancient Romans as versions of ourselves, caught up in different contexts, to be sure, but essentially interchangeable with us.

Did the Greeks believe in their Myths? Veyne’s short answer is ‘no’. The public spectacle of authority was an end in itself. It was artifice without an audience – as an expression of authority beyond question. There was no ‘public sphere’, indeed no ‘public’ as such. The state was instrumentalist. Its role was to mediate and keep the Empire aligned and attuned with these invisible and powerful forces.

The gods and myths were understood by the Ancients in a way that is almost wholly alien to us today: They were energetic invisible forces that carried distinct qualities that both shaped the world and carried meaning. Today, we have lost the ability to read the world symbolically – symbols have become rigid ‘things’.

The implication of Veyne’s analysis is that Rome is false as a comparison to support the ‘myth’ of the inevitability of US primacy: The ‘mythical’ neo-con approach of course is instrumentalised to convince us all that US primacy is ordained (by the gods?), and that Russia is low hanging fruit – a fragile rotten structure that easily can be toppled.

Do then the neo-cons believe their own myths? Well, ‘yes’ and ‘no’. ‘Yes’, in that the neo-cons are a group of people who come to share a common view (i.e. Russia as fragile and fissiparous), often proposed by a few ideologues deemed to be credentiallised. It is a view however, not based in reality. These adherents may be convinced intellectually that their view is right, but their belief cannot be tested in a way which could confirm it beyond doubt. It is simply based on a picture of the world as they imagine it to be, or more to the point, as they would like it to be.

Yes, the neo-cons believe their myths because they seem to work. Just look around. As the means of communication have become decentralized, digitized and algorithmic, contemporary culture has forced individuals into herds. There is no standing apart from this discourse; there is no thinking outside of the Tik-Toc feed; it gives rise to the formation of a pseudo-reality, severed from the World, and generated for wider ideological ends.

Put plainly, there never was a ‘public sphere’ in Rome in the modern sense, and in today’s sense, no alive western ‘Public Sphere’ either. It has been anaesthetised via the social media platforms. The public spectacle of neo-con credentiallised ideological authority (say, a Lindsay Graham advocating for war on China) becomes an end in itself. An expression of authority beyond question.

The neo-con myth of Russia on the cusp of implosion makes no sense. But it is a picture of the world as the neo-cons imagine it to be, or more to the point, would like it to be. The shortcomings of the Ukrainian forces as detailed in (their own American) Intel leaks: They pretend not to notice – convinced, as Foreign Policy explains, that once the expected Ukrainian offensive launches, if “the Russian soldiers panic, causing paralysis among the Russian leadership … then the counter-offensive will be successful”.

The more such delusional analysis is pursued, the more functional psychopathy will be exhibited, and the less normal it becomes. In short, it descends into collective delusion – if it hasn’t already.

The US may have entered a fever for war (for now! (Let us see how it lasts as events in Ukraine play out)), but what of Europe? Why would Europe seek war with China?

Thomas Fazi writes that:

Emmanuel Macron’s call for Europe to reduce its dependency on the United States and develop its own “strategic autonomy” caused a transatlantic tantrum. The Atlanticist establishment, in the US as much as in Europe, responded in a typically unrestrained fashion — and, in doing so, missed something crucial:

Macron’s words revealed less about the state of Euro-American relations than they did about intra-European relations.

Very simply, the 'Europe' Macron speaks of no longer exists, if it ever did. On paper, almost the entire continent is united under one supranational flag — that of the European Union. But that is more fractured than ever. On top of the economic and cultural divides that have always plagued the bloc, the war in Ukraine has caused a massive fault line to re-emerge along the borders of the Iron Curtain. The East-West divide is back with a vengeance.

The end of the Cold War and, then, the CEE countries’ accession to the EU just over a decade later were both heralded as the post-Communist countries’ much-awaited 'return to Europe'. It was widely believed that the EU’s universalist project would smooth out any major social and cultural differences between Western and Central-Eastern Europe …Such a hubristic (and arguably imperialistic) project was bound to fail; indeed, tensions and contradictions quickly became apparent between the two Europes.

Belief in an integral European culture has been more a mark of a central European sensibility than of the western edge of Europe. It was not only Russia that was at issue for the East. They resented being cut off from a world of which they had been an essential part. Yet when communism receded, the European culture – as imagined by the dissidents – vanished in a Europe beset by division and a culture war imposed from the centre that purposefully has attempted to strangle any attempt to revive national cultures. For Milan Kundera and other writers like him, there is no living culture in Europe, and its posterity inhabits a void created by the disappearance of any supreme values.

Paradoxically, the war in Ukraine has strengthened Russian national culture, but has exposed the façade in the EU. There seems to be more cultural energy present in the US today, than there is in Europe, which has long since severed from living myth.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

from Europe Has Lost Its Guiding Myth

What's Your Theory About Tucker's Firing?

Was it criticism of the Ukraine war? Jan. 6th skepticism? Pharma skepticism? Too many Democrat guests? What triggered Fox execs to fire America's top-viewed newscaster? Also today: US warships near Sudan - looking for a nice little intervention? Finally: Biden tosses his hat back into the ring for 2024 - what's Trump's reaction? Watch today's Liberty Report:



from What's Your Theory About Tucker's Firing?

Syria Comes in From the Cold

While the world continues to come to grips with the reality — and consequences — of the Chinese-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Araba and Iran, another diplomatic coup is unfolding in the Middle East.

This one is orchestrated by the Russians. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan flew to Damascus last week, where he met Syrian President Bashar Assad. This visit followed that of Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad earlier this month to Riyadh.

The two countries severed diplomatic relations in 2012 at the beginning of a Syrian civil conflict that saw Saudi Arabia throwing its money behind anti-regime fighters seeking to remove Assad from power.

The startling diplomatic about face is part of a new Saudi Arabian foreign policy, embodied in its historic new relationship with Iran, which seeks to engender regional stability through conflict resolution instead of military-brokered containment.

As the Saudi Foreign Ministry noted on bin Farhan’s visit to Damascus, the Saudi goal is “to reach a political solution to the Syrian crisis that would end all its repercussions and preserve Syria’s unity, security, stability, and Arab identity and restore it to its Arab surroundings.”

Dramatic Outbreak of Diplomacy

The dramatic outbreak of diplomacy between Riyadh and Damascus is the by-product of Russia’s growing influence in Middle Eastern affairs and is one of the clearest signals yet of the declining role of the United States, whose military and diplomatic posture in the region has greatly diminished over the course of the past few years.

Russia has long-standing ties with the Syrian government. In 2015, its intervention during Syria’s civil conflict upheld the Assad government, allowing it to regain the initiative against the US-and Saudi-backed opposition.

Russia’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, however, was more complex, with the Saudis having strategically aligned themselves with US foreign and national security objectives in the Middle East and in global energy policies.

But that dynamic changed after October 2018, when Saudi security agents, alleged to have been working under the direct orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, murdered Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Saudis took umbrage at the US outcry at the crime, especially when then-presidential candidate Joe Biden threatened the crown prince, popularly known as MbS, with isolation and punishment.

“We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are,” Biden said during a televised debate in November 2019, adding that there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”

Biden was later to regret those words when, in July 2022, he was compelled to fly to Saudi Arabia and ask MbS to increase oil production to lower energy costs that had skyrocketed because of the consequences of US-led efforts to sanction Russian oil and gas in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While MbS received Biden, the US did not get the results it wanted from the meeting for reasons that went beyond poor personal chemistry between MbS and Biden. By then, both Saudi Arabia and Russia recognized that, as major oil producers, their interests were not well served by competing in a market dominated by US-driven angst.

This realization matured in the spring of 2020 in the aftermath of an “oil war” between the two nations which saw Saudi Arabia precipitously lower the price of oil by overproducing, only to be matched by Russia.

The Saudi-Russian oil war ended because of negotiations brokered by then-President Donald Trump and for a while the world was compelled to live in an environment where the top three oil producers — the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia — openly colluded on global production quotas.

But then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine, US-led energy sanctions and the recognition by both Russia and Saudi Arabia that the US was not a stable partner when it came to managing the most important economic resource of their nations — energy.

US-Saudi Relations Strained

As Russia-Saudi bonds grew stronger based upon shared goals and objectives, the strain between Saudi Arabia and the US likewise grew, driven by the total disconnect that existed between the Biden administration and MbS over Middle East policy.

Saudi Arabia has embarked on an ambitious project, Vision 2030, which seeks to transition the oil-rich kingdom away from its current over-reliance on energy production to a more diversified economy based upon modern technologies and non-energy economic initiatives. 

A key prerequisite for this vision is for Saudi Arabia to become a force of connectivity in the region and the world — something that US-driven policies promoting regional instability and war made impossible. The Biden administration had doubled down on a policy in which Saudi Arabia served as the keystone in confronting Iran along an arc of crisis stretching from Lebanon, through Syria and Iraq; and into Yemen.

Saudi Arabia confronted the reality that it could not win its war in Yemen (ongoing since 2014), and that the US-led destabilization efforts in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq were floundering. With its own economic diversification goal in mind, it opted to work with Russia to engender the kind of stability needed for energy-driven economies to flourish.

Russia quietly organized talks with both Saudi and Syrian officials and diplomats, culminating with the March 2023 visit of President Assad to Moscow, where the issue of a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia was finalized.

Work remains to be done, however, as Saudi Arabia’s effort to bring Syria back into the ranks of the Arab League faces resistance from staunch US allies Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar. But the fact is that, thanks to Russian and Chinese diplomacy, peace, not war, is breaking out all over in the Middle East. Bringing Syria in from the cold is simply the most recent manifestation of the phenomena.

Reprinted with author's permission from ConsortiumNews.com.

from Syria Comes in From the Cold

Was 2020 Another Deep State Coup?

As we learn more about the collusion between the Biden 2020 campaign and former senior US intelligence officials on the Hunter Biden laptop story, it seems more and more obvious that the US "deep state" played a major role in deciding who would win the election. Is an Administration that holds "democracy summits" to lecture the rest of the world actually guilty of undermining US democracy? Also today: US Afghan inspector general warns of massive Ukraine corruption. Finally: Biden Administration officials worried that a failed Ukraine counteroffensive will end US support for the war. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Was 2020 Another Deep State Coup?

Did Biden Steal The Election?

Move over Watergate. On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal.

The problem was that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and the explosive contents of the computer were leaking out. The details of the Biden family’s apparent corruption and the debauchery of the former vice-president’s son were being reported by the New York Post, and with the election less than a month away, the Biden campaign needed to kill the story.

So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign - using their high-level government titles - to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. A letter signed by dozens of the highest-ranking former CIA, DIA, and NSA officials would surely carry enough weight to bury the Biden laptop story. It worked. Social media outlets prevented any reporting on the laptop from being posted and the mainstream media could easily ignore the story as it was merely “Russian propaganda.”

Asked recently by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) why he agreed to draft the false sign-on letter, Morell testified that he wanted to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.” Morell also likely expected to be named by President Biden to head up the CIA when it came time to call in favors.

The Democrats and the mainstream media have relentlessly pushed the lie that the ruckus inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6th 2021 was a move by President Trump to overthrow the election results. Hundreds of “trespassers” were arrested and held in solitary confinement without trial to bolster the false narrative that a conspiracy to steal the election was taking place.

It turns out that there really was a conspiracy to steal the election, but it was opposite of what was reported. Just as the Steele Dossier was a Democratic Party covert action to plant the lie that the Russians were pulling strings for Trump, the “Russian disinformation campaign” letter was a lie to deflect scrutiny of the Biden family’s possible corruption in the final days of the campaign.

Did the Biden campaign’s disinformation campaign help rig the election in his favor? Polls suggest that Biden would not have been elected had the American electorate been informed about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop. So yes, they cheated in the election.

The Democrats and the mainstream media are still at it, however. Now they are trying to kill the story of how they killed the story of the Biden laptop. This is a scandal that would once upon a time have ended in resignation, impeachment, and/or plenty of jail time. If they successfully bury this story, I hate to say it but there is no more rule of law in what has become the American banana republic.

from Did Biden Steal The Election?

9/11 revelations – is Washington now throwing Riyadh under the bus?

Recently released court filings outlining how two of the 9/11 hijackers had knowingly or unknowingly been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation, confirmed what was already open knowledge.

In July 2016, the infamous ‘28 Pages’ section of the official inquiry into the intelligence services activities before and after 9/11 was declassified, outlining the role that high-ranking Saudi officials and intelligence officers had played in the attacks by providing financial and logistical support to the hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

Indeed the Al-Qaeda organisation itself has its roots in Operation Cyclone, a Cold War-era CIA programme involving the arming, funding and training of Wahhabi militants known as the Mujahedeen, who were then sent on to wage war on the Socialist government of previously-Western friendly Afghanistan in 1979. One of the most well-known of the Mujahedeen was none other than Osama Bin Laden.

The 9/11 attacks also served as the pretext for the US to pursue an aggressive foreign policy in line with the aims of Project for the New American Century, a highly-influential Neoconservative think tank which envisaged the United States maintaining global hegemony through radical changes in its military and defence policy, including the removal by force of then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In ominous fashion, a September 2000 report by the PNAC predicted that the implementation of such policy changes would be slow and incremental, and that only an event on the scale of Pearl Harbour would allow for rapid upheaval, with such a catalyst conveniently occurring a year later in New York and Virginia.

In further ominous foreshadowing, retired four-star General Wesley Clark would later recount how on a visit to the Pentagon in the days following 9/11, an unnamed military official had informed him that the decision had been made for the US to go to war with Iraq, despite there being no evidence to link Baghdad to the attacks. In a subsequent follow up meeting a few weeks later when the US had begun bombing Afghanistan, the same official informed Clark that a further six countries - Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran - would be targeted in response to 9/11, despite each one, like Iraq, having no established connection to the attacks.

The timing of the latest release of court documents highlighting Saudi involvement in 9/11 is also highly suspect.

Last month, in a seismic geopolitical shift, it was announced that the Gulf Kingdom and its long-time regional rival Iran, had resumed diplomatic ties in a deal brokered by China. Less than two weeks later, it was announced that Saudi Arabia would also seek to restore diplomatic ties with Syria in talks mediated by Russia, effectively signalling the end of US hegemony in the region.

The release of documents relating to Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11 in the same timeframe suggests that ties between Washington and what was perhaps its most strategic ally in west Asia after Israel – also with known connections to the 9/11 attacks - have now began to go cold following Riyadh’s pivot towards Beijing and Moscow; and in response, Washington has now began to publicise Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11, possibly in a bid to isolate Riyadh on the world stage.

Indeed, the US throwing former allies under the bus in light of new geopolitical developments has a historical record.

Iran, once a key US-ally in the region, has been the subject of Western sanctions and threats of war since the 1979 Islamic Revolution saw the US and UK-backed Shah Pahlavi overthrown and replaced with Ayatollah Khomeini, with a Syria-style coup attempt currently ongoing in the country.

Neighbouring Iraq would effectively be used as a US-proxy during the Iran-Iraq war that began a year later, with then-Middle East envoy to the Reagan administration and future PNAC member, Donald Rumsfeld, infamously meeting Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 1983 in order to reiterate US support. Two decades, Rumsfeld would serve as Secretary of Defense in the administration of George W. Bush that would go on to invade Iraq, with Hussein subsequently being executed in the aftermath.

Now, with Riyadh’s pivot eastwards and the publication of documents relating to its role in 9/11 in the same period, it would appear that this historical trend is now beginning to take place in Saudi Arabia.



from 9/11 revelations – is Washington now throwing Riyadh under the bus?

Ukraine: Stalemate in an attritional war?

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) arrives at the Headquarters of the Dnepr Group of Forces, Kherson Oblast, April 17, 2023

The Russian President Vladimir Putin travelled to the country’s “new territories” of Lugansk and Kherson/Zaporozhye Regions on Monday to assess the military situation.

The countdown has begun for the Ukrainian “counterattack”. The arrival of Patriot missile system in Ukraine testifies to the scale of mobilisation to impose heavy losses on Russia. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg paid a surprise visit to Kiev today, his first since the war began.

The leaked Pentagon documents are sceptical about the success of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, but Moscow makes its own assessments. Primarily, the neocons are not going to pull the plug on the Zelensky regime, since that means opening the Pandora’s box when President Biden is about to announce his bid for a second term as president and cannot accept that Ukraine is losing the war.

In reality, Ukraine is haemorrhaging. It is in the nature of attritional wars that at some point, the weaker side breaks and thereupon, the end comes very fast. This was how in Syria where once the 5-year old Battle of Aleppo was won in December 2016, the government forces swept through the country in a string of military victories bringing the curtain down on the conflict.

The attritional war in Ukraine may look “stalemated” but the clincher will be which side is inflicting the greater casualties. There is no question that the massive military, intelligence, financial and economic assistance by the West notwithstanding, Russian forces have ground down the Ukrainian side all along the line of contact.

The Russian ambassador to the UK recently said the ratio of losses in the attrition war is roughly seven Ukrainian soldiers to every Russian soldier. To put things in perspective, western media reports estimate that around 35,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be involved in the upcoming counter-offensive along the 950-km frontline while Putin is on record that the Russian reserve forces on the frontline come to 160,000 soldiers! 

The Ukrainian air defence system is in a critical state. Russians have a predominance of artillery and, Russians have heavily fortified the frontline in the recent 5-6 months in multiple layers of defence such as mines, earthworks and bollards to impede advancing tanks, etc.


Russia’s Fortification Line

This is a desperate gambit for Ukraine, which has lost a large share of its most experienced soldiers (estimated 120,000 casualties), to take on the Russians who are having air superiority and missile superiority, air defence superiority and artillery superiority, and trained manpower superiority, above all.

The areas that Putin chose to visit — Kherson / Zaporozhya and Lugansk — are where the Ukrainian counteroffensive is most expected. Putin heard from the commanders the military situation and of course, most certainly, that will be inputs for his decisions on Russian counter-strategies, both defensive and offensive.

Despite the Pentagon leaks and the ensuing disarray and confusion in Washington and European capitals (and Kiev), the Ukrainian counterattack will go ahead to gain back at least some of the lost territory. This is a desperate throw of the dice.

However, delusional thinking still prevails in Washington. This is apparent from a recent article in the Foreign Affairs co-authored by two veterans of the US establishment — former State Department official Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations — titled The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine: A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table.

The article largely sticks to the myths spawned by the neocons — that Russia’s special military operations failed and the war has “turned out far better for Ukraine than most predicted” — but has occasional flashes of realism. It builds on the refrain currently in vogue in Washington that “the most likely outcome of the conflict is not a complete Ukrainian victory but a bloody stalemate.”

Haas and Kupchan wrote that “By the time Ukraine’s anticipated offensive is over, Kyiv may also warm up to the idea of a negotiated settlement, having given its best shot on the battlefield and facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.”

The authors take note en passe that Russia’s leadership has options and calculations too, as western sanctions have failed to cripple Russian economy, popular support for the war remains high (above 70%) and Moscow senses that time is on its side as the staying power of Ukraine and its Western supporters and their resolve will wane and Russia should be able to expand its territorial gains substantially.

Fundamentally, Haas and Kupchan hail from another planet. They cannot comprehend that Russia will never accept a scenario where the conflict ends with a ceasefire but the NATO will continue to beef up Ukraine’s military capabilities and steadily integrate Kiev into the alliance.

Why would Russia want to play another game of musical chairs while the West formalises Ukraine’s NATO membership — that is, acquiesce in a replay of the grotesque interregnum between Minsk Agreements of 2015 and Russia’s special military operations?

Putin’s visit to the new territories at this crucial juncture with the attritional war at a tipping point conveys a powerful signal that Russia too has an offensive plan and it is not up to Biden to blow the whistle and call off the proxy war — out of sheer fatigue or pressing distractions in the Asia-Pacific or due to cracks in the western unity or whatever else.

Equally, it is improbable that Russia can ever reconcile with the Zelensky regime, which Moscow sees as a puppet of the Biden administration. But how can Biden possibly dump or lose sight of Zelensky while the skeletons are rattling in the family cupboard?

Most important, the Russian public opinion expects Putin to redeem the pledge he made while ordering the special military operations. Anything short of that will mean tens of thousands of Russian lives perished in vain.

It is not in the grain of Putin’s political personality to ignore the groundswell of Russian opinion — or overlook the wounded national psyche as images are playing out of forced eviction of hundreds of monks of  Pechersk Lavra, the 11th-century Orthodox cave monastery complex in the heart of Kiev, branded as Russian fifth columnists. It was a calculated political move by Zelensky with tacit western encouragement. (here and here)

What the neocons in the US are yet to grasp is that they failed to subjugate Russia despite all the humiliations poured on its national honour, proud history and enviously rich culture. Why would Russia normalise with states that appropriated its sovereign wealth and imposed such draconian sanctions to bleed and weaken its economy?

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has admitted on CNN that sanctions may ultimately risk hegemony of the US dollar. But her remarks do not go far enough. 

Meanwhile, Russia-China strategic partnership has strengthened, the signal this week being Moscow’s willingness to coordinate with Beijing to counter military challenges in the Far East. (See my blog China, Russia circle wagons in Asia-Pacific) 

Russia is far from isolated and enjoys strategic depth in the international community. Whereas, through the past one-year period, the systemic decline of the West and the US’ waning global influence has become an inexorable historical process.

Reprinted with permission from Indian Punchline.

from Ukraine: Stalemate in an attritional war?

Blinken Busted: Played Central Role In Discrediting Hunter Biden Laptop Story As Election Loomed

In a major development in the House ongoing probe of the deep state's October 2020 effort to suppress revelations from Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell," a former senior CIA official has testified that he organized an influential letter from former intel officials to help Joe Biden "win the election" -- and was inspired to do so by a call from current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was then a top Biden campaign official.   

Mike Morell, who was at the time a former deputy director of the CIA, says he also coordinated with the Biden campaign on strategy for the letter's release. Word of his revelations comes via a press release jointly issued by the chairmen of the House judiciary and intelligence committees late Thursday, first reported by the New York Post.  

Before diving into the new information, let's briefly recap what was already known...

On Oct. 14, 2020, the New York Post reported that Hunter Biden exploited his father's position for personal gain -- with the apparent knowledge of his father. The story -- which drew on emails on a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop -- undermined Joe Biden's denials that he'd communicated with Hunter about his international business schemes.

Five days later, 51 former US intelligence officials issued a public statement assaulting the Post story, infamously declaring that it had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and solemnly declaring their conviction that "American citizens should determine the outcome of elections, not foreign governments."



Media outlets credulously reported on the letter, which was also used by social media platforms to justify blocking the story. The Post's Twitter account was even suspended for two weeks. Biden cited the letter in a presidential debate, as he deflected Donald Trump's exploitation of the damning Post story:  

FLASHBACK: During the 2020 debates, Joe Biden used the letter signed by 50 former intelligence officials to deflect from questions about Hunter’s Laptop. pic.twitter.com/IiYa2NDwFV

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) April 21, 2023

The Post story was of course legitimate. And with today's release, we know Morell organized the misleading letter from 51 former intelligence community officials after receiving a phone call from Blinken.

In his private sworn testimony, Morell said Blinken called him on or about Oct 17 2020, and that the call "absolutely" triggered his intent to organize the letter, enlisting signatories that included James Clapper, John Brennan and Leon Panetta.

Later that night, Blinken emailed Morell a USA Today story (likely this one) reporting that the FBI was probing whether the Post report had Russian origins. The email appeared to be the forwarding of an email from Blinken's fellow Biden 2020 campaign staffer, Andrew Bates, who was serving as the director of rapid response.

🚨BREAKING: Ex-CIA chief asked to write false Hunter Biden laptop letter to ‘help Biden win the election'

Biden's campaign asked Morell to organize 50 colleagues to sign a letter claiming that emails from Hunter Biden's laptop were Russian disinformation.

Morell testified that… pic.twitter.com/Fesek3ZLui

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) April 21, 2023

In his testimony, Morell said he organized the letter for two reasons -- to "share our concern with the American people," and to "help Vice President Biden...because I wanted him to win the election." 

An Oct. 2020 Morell email to Brennan's former chief of staff Nick Shapiro indicates the Biden campaign told Morell that the letter should first go to a certain Washington Post reporter -- who hasn't been outed yet -- and that the campaign should get the letter too. Shapiro ended up first delivering the vessel of politically-motivated disinformation to Politico. 

After the debate in which Biden used the letter in his defense, Jeremy Bash -- former CIA chief of staff, husband of CNN's Dana Bash and now an MSNBC "national security analyst" -- coordinated a phone call to Morell from Biden campaign manager Steve Richetti, who thanked Morrell for his handiwork. 

With Morell's testimony in hand, Jim Jordan and Michael Turner -- respectively, chairs of the House judiciary and intelligence committees -- have now sent a 5-page letter to Blinken asking that he "identify all people with whom you communicated about the inception, drafting, editing, signing, publishing, or promotion" of the former intel-official letter, and "produce all documents and communications" referring to it.

Summarizing the sordid affair in their Thursday afternoon release, Jordan and Turner wrote: 

Although the statement’s signatories have an unquestioned right to free speech and free association—which we do not dispute—their reference to their national security credentials lent weight to the story and suggested access to specialized information unavailable to other Americans. This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.

Does this remind anyone else of the time an anonymous Biden official told AP that Zero Hedge was a Russian propaganda operation?

Reprinted with permission from Zerohedge.com.

from Blinken Busted: Played Central Role In Discrediting Hunter Biden Laptop Story As Election Loomed

Will Jack Teixeira Get the General Petraeus Treatment for Mishandling Classified Intelligence?

At this point Jack Teixeira is alleged to have posted classified intelligence documents to the web, but there is no direct evidence that he actually was the one who placed those documents in a chat room. That remains to be seen if the allegation, which comes from one of the members of the chat room, can be proven in court. If that cannot be proven, he still faces potential charges on mishandling classified information.

Well, what has been the U.S. Government’s policy towards those who “mishandle classified information?” I have two names for you — Sandy Berger and General David Petraeus.

Let’s start with Sandy Berger:

Sandy Berger, who was President Clinton’s top national security aide, pleaded guilty Friday to taking classified documents from the National Archives and cutting them up with scissors.

Rather than the 'honest mistake' he described last summer, Berger acknowledged to U.S. Magistrate Deborah Robinson that he intentionally took and deliberately destroyed three copies of the same document dealing with terror threats during the 2000 millennium celebration.

'Guilty, your honor,' Berger responded when asked how he pleaded.

The charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of a year in prison and up to a $100,000 fine.

However, under a plea agreement that Robinson must accept, Berger would serve no jail time but instead pay a $10,000 fine, surrender his security clearance for three years and cooperate with investigators. Security clearance allows access to classified government materials.

Mr. Berger, now deceased, was no 21 year old kid. A college graduate, a lawyer and a longtime government political appointee, with stints at the US State Department and the National Security Council, Berger had both the legal and work experience to understand the implications of mishandling classified intelligence. He was guilty, by reason of his confession, and only had to pay a $10,000 fine. Nothing like having friends in high places to give you a pass for breaking the law.

Then we have General David Petraeus. During his tenure as CIA Director, Petraeus shared classified intelligence documents with his mistress:

David Petraeus, the retired US army general and former CIA director responsible for the development of the hugely influential 'counter-insurgency' strategy used in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced on Thursday to two years’ probation and ordered to pay a fine of $100,000 for sharing highly classified information with his lover and biographer, Paula Broadwell. . . .

The affair was discovered after Jill Kelley, a Florida socialite, was sent threatening messages from an anonymous email account in May. She notified a friend who worked at the FBI, who traced the emails to Broadwell.

The affair did not become public until after the presidential election in November, when Petraeus tendered his resignation to the White House. Obama later accepted his offer of resignation.

But the saga wasn’t over. After Petraeus resigned, it emerged that Broadwell had been given a set of eight notebooks which contained classified information – including codewords and military strategy – by the general.

Initially Petraeus lied to investigators, saying that following his resignation from the CIA he had no classified documents in his possession. However, an FBI search of the general’s house in April 2013 found the notebooks in an unlocked drawer in his study. . . .

Petraeus pleaded guilty in March in a federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina, to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information. Under the terms of his plea deal, he escaped possible jail time and an embarrassing public trial.

So, let’s recap — Petraeus gave classified information to someone not cleared to possess it, he lied to the FBI and he kept the classified information in an unlocked, non-secure location. That should have been a felony but, once again, if you are part of the right club you get a slap on the hand, a misdemeanor and, best of all, some sweet corporate jobs:

General David H. Petraeus (US Army, Ret.) (New York) is a Partner at KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which he established in May 2013. He is also a member of the boards of directors of Optiv and OneStream, a Strategic Advisor for Sempra and Advanced Navigation, a personal venture investor, an academic, and the co-author (with British historian Andrew Roberts) of 'Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine' (October, 2023).

Maybe, just maybe, Jack Teixeira has followed the careers of Berger and Petraeus and decided that mishandling classified documents could be his ticket to fame and fortune. My point is that the US Government has no problem beating up little guys who go astray while giving “players” a get out of jail free pass. So much for Justice being blind, i.e., treating everyone the same regardless of their social position, friends and wealth. The U.S. justice system increasingly resembles a third world clown show.

Remains to be seen how Jack Teixeira will be treated.

Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.com.

from Will Jack Teixeira Get the General Petraeus Treatment for Mishandling Classified Intelligence?

Pentagon “Leaks”: 5 ways to tell REAL from FAKE

We promised a longer take on the Pentagon “leaks”, and here it goes. Regular readers will probably be familiar with my view on leaked documents in general, but if you’re not allow me to quote my own 2019 article on the (absurd) “Afghanistan papers”:

An awful lot of modern “leaks” are no such thing. They are Orwellian exercises in controlling the conversation […] carefully making sure the “establishment” and the “alternative” are joined in the middle, controlled from the same source.

That’s not to say ALL “leaks” are automatically and ubiquitously narrative control exercises, clearly some are real…but it’s usually pretty easy to tell them apart. In fact here’s a little checklist.

1. If your “leak” tells you stuff you already know, it’s probably a fake leak.

“Leaking” widely known, publicly available information is a very common tactic. In the Pentagon “leaks”, for example, it was “revealed” that the US has been spying on South Korea, Israel and Ukraine. But the US spies on everyone – allies included – and we have all known that for literal decades.

Further, everyone spies on everyone, it’s just the way the game is played. Acting like it’s a big reveal, and the performative outrage of the South Korean government, is a hallmark of a fake leak.

2. If your “leak” reinforces the mainstream narrative, it’s probably a fake leak.

Leaks can be used to manage and/or reinforce the mainstream narrative. The Afghanistan Papers are, again, a prime example of this. The “secret history” which did nothing but repeat myths and lies about the US war.

Or the leaked Fauci emails, which resurrected the lab-leak theory of Covid’s origins, but reinforced that Covid existed and was dangerous.

3. If your “leak” gets MASSES of media coverage, it’s probably a fake leak.

A telltale sign of the fake leak is the mainstream media carefully explaining to everyone how important it is and what it all means. The BBC, Sky News, CNN and others have all put out explainer articles and videos detailing the content of the leaks. US spokespeople, like John Kirby, have said the press shouldn’t report on the leaks, but this has made no difference

We know the corporate media is just an extension of the Establishment, they only report what they’re told to report. They have no duty to the truth, and no ties to reality. If they publicise the leaks, it’s because they’re instructed to, because it serves the greater narrative. Officials criticising the press for publishing the “leak” is just a utilisation of the Streisand affect, textbook “please don’t throw me in the briar patch” stuff.

4. If your “leak” source is revealed immediately and publicly, it’s probably a fake leak.

Within days of the recent leak the press were reporting the name and rank of the alleged leaker, his arrest was filmed and the videos sent to the press, and he was arraigned in public. Is this how covert agencies bent on concealing important information operate?

For comparison’s sake, consider Seth Rich. Mr Rich was alleged to be the source of leaked emails which proved the DNC was rigging votes for Hillary Clinton. He died when he was shot in the back by muggers who didn’t take anything.

5. If your “leak” tells you what you want to hear, it’s probably a fake leak.

Never trust anyone who tells you only what you want to hear, that goes double for media outlets or government agencies.

In the most recent “leaks”, we see how they very conveniently feed both sides of the war narrative.

One of the “revelations” is that the Ukrainian military is running out of anti-air ammunition. Meaning that, in the near future, Russia could potentially flatten Ukraine with its air superiority.

This is, obviously and clearly, propaganda aimed at supporting the “Ukraine needs our help” storyline. It will be used to argue the West “has not done enough” to protect Ukraine and result in demands for more money and/or weapons to be sent over.

On the other hand the “revelations” concerning depleting ammunition stocks and higher-than-reported casualties provide, as well as the presence of NATO special forces in the country, fuel to the Western alternative media pro-Russia position.

Read the whole article here.

from Pentagon “Leaks”: 5 ways to tell REAL from FAKE

If You Oppose Biden's Ukraine Policy...You May Be Sent To Jail!

The Biden Administration has indicted four Americans and charged them with conspiracy to spread Russian propaganda and acting as unregistered Russian agents. The four are members of the African People’s Socialist Party, which has opposed US foreign policy since 1971. They face 15 years in prison. Also today, the Biden Administration announced another $300 million in military aid to Ukraine. Might these two stories be related? Also today, RFK announced his bid to be the Democratic Party's candidate for US president. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from If You Oppose Biden's Ukraine Policy...You May Be Sent To Jail!

Kennedy Declares His Presidential Campaign and Presidency Mission: ‘To End the Corrupt Merger of Sate and Corporate Power’

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s presidential campaign announcement speech on Wednesday included much that advocates of limiting the power of the United Sates government can cheer, including strong criticism of the US government’s crackdown in the name of countering coronavirus and of the series of wars in which the US government has engaged from Vietnam to Ukraine. We’ll be watching and listening as Kennedy in the coming months expands on this criticism and discusses his promised different approach.

Early in his speech and immediately following announcing that he had decided to seek the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Kennedy stated what will be the focus of his campaign and, should he win the election, his presidency. Declared Kennedy: “My mission over the next 18 months of this campaign and throughout my presidency will be to end the corrupt merger of state and corporate power that is threatening now to impose a new kind of corporate feudalism in our country, to commoditize our children, our ‘purple mountains majesty,’ to poison our children and our people with chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs, to strip mine our assets, to hollow out the middle class, and keep us in a constant state of war.”

Coming back to this theme later in his speech, Kennedy stated:

All I am saying is you need a president at this time in history who can stand up to his bureaucracy. The bureaucracies are owned by the industries. I’m talking about, you know, NIH and EPA and CDC and FDA and DoT. That train track wreck would not have happened in East Palestine except we have a captive agency at DoT. Our food is terrible because the food companies and the pesticide companies own USDA. We’re in constant wars because the military-industrial complex, the big contractors, own CIA.

Kennedy proceeded to note that he believes most people at the CIA are “patriots” and “good public servants” with “enormous courage and idealism.” That, continued Kennedy, “is the same with most our agencies.” But, he explained, “the problem is the people who end up rising in those agencies generally are people who are in the tank with industry, and that’s how they get corrupted.”

As you watch Kennedy’s presidential campaign proceed, keep these comments from his campaign announcement speech in mind. They will likely be important for well understanding his future comments and proposals.

Kennedy’s ability to gain support in the race may end up largely dependent on his ability to bring along voters to understand and agree with both his take on the “corrupt merger of state and corporate power” and his pitch that as president he would successfully counter that problem.

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2023/april/20/kennedy-declares-his-presidential-campaign-and-presidency-mission-to-end-the-corrupt-merger-of-sate-and-corporate-power/

Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For "Weaponized" Free Speech

The Biden administration's Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says "weaponized" the First Amendment rights of Americans.

The Washington Post reports:

Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States.

The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates for public office in Florida.

Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by officers of the FSB, a Russian government intelligence service.

Now, authorities have added charges against four Americans who allegedly did Ionov’s bidding through groups including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia, and an unidentified political group in California — part of an effort to influence American politics.

AFP reports that the conspiracy charges carry a sentence of up to ten years, with three of the four APSP members additionally charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia which carries another five years.

“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ's press release regarding the indictments, adding, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

Looks like the United States has decided to dispense with those freedoms as well.

The superseding indictment containing these charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics to obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for speech and political activities in the United States which happen not to align with the wishes of the US government. The grand jury alleges that the aforementioned Ionov "directed" these Americans to "publish pro-Russian propaganda" and "information designed to cause dissention in the United States," which is about as vague and amorphous an allegation as you could possibly come up with. 

For the record Omali Yeshitela, the founder and chairman of the African People's Socialist Party and one of the four Americans named in the indictment, has adamantly denied ever having worked for Russia. Earlier this month before charges were brought against him, the Tampa Bay Times quoted him as saying, "I ain’t ever worked for a Russian. Never ever ever ever. They know I have never worked for Russia. Their problem is, I’ve never worked for them.”

But it's important to note that this should not matter. Under the First Amendment the government is forbidden to abridge anyone's freedom to speak however they want and associate with whomever they please, which necessarily includes being as vocally pro-Russia as they like and promoting whatever political agendas they see fit, whether that happens to advance the interests of the Russian government or not. The indictment alleges that the four Americans engaged in "agitprop" by "writing articles that contained Russian propaganda and disinformation," but even if we pretend that's both (A) a quantifiable claim and (B) a proven fact, propaganda and disinformation are both speech that the government is constitutionally forbidden from repressing.

It's not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being "weaponized". You can't have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as "agitprop" and "disinformation", because they'll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. You can't have your government dictating what political groups are legitimate and which ones are tools of a foreign government, because you can always count on the powerful set such designations in ways which benefit themselves. 

There's also the brazen hypocrisy of it all. The US government is constantly engaging in foreign influence operations with outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up to help foment coups and color revolutions and advance US information interests overtly in ways the CIA used to do covertly.

As commentator Brian Berletic noted on Twitter, "The US through the National Endowment for Democracy has created armies of organizations carrying out malign influence operations around the world including here in Thailand. When the Thai government attempts to stop this activity, the US embassy shouts 'free speech.' Thailand's government and others around the world could easily cite this move by the US Justice Department to target and uproot US-funded organizations doing exactly this and worse."

So for the US government to now claim it's legitimate to start throwing US citizens in prison for a decade because they published "propaganda" for another country is absurd, and more than a little scary. The most powerful government in the world needs more political dissent at home, not less, and here they are trying to turn it into a crime.

When they claim the members of the APSP published "propaganda" and promoted "dissention", what they really mean is that they engaged in speech and political activism that the US government does not like. The spinmeisters will try to spin it, the legal mumbo-jumbo will try to obfuscate it, but that's what's happening. Don't let them conceal this from you. They're not worried about Russian propaganda, they're worried you'll stop listening to US propaganda.

Reprinted with permission from Caitlin's Newsletter.
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from Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For "Weaponized" Free Speech

The End of American 'Exceptionalism'?

Watching a once great nation commit suicide is not pretty. President Joe Biden does not seem to understand that his role as elected leader of the United States is to take actions that directly or indirectly benefit the folks who voted for him as well as the other Americans who did not do so. That is how a constitutional democracy is supposed to work.

Instead, Biden and the gang of introverts and neocon war criminals that the has surrounded himself with have done everything that can to inflict fatal damage on the economy through rash initiatives both overseas and at home. A spending spree to buy support from the bizarre constituencies that make up the Democrat Party base while also fighting an undeclared war in Europe have meant that nearly two trillion dollars has been added to the national debt under Biden’s rule, a debt that was already unsustainable at nearly $30 trillion, larger than the United States’ gross national product. Plans to cancel student loan debts will add hundreds of billions of dollars more to the red ink.

And those actions undertaken overseas, to include continuing to expand the war in Ukraine against Russia, will do immeasurable more damage. Consider how the Democratic Party has long had it in for Russian Federal President Vladimir Putin, dating back to when Putin took power in 2000 and started kicking out the western scallywags who were looting his country. Subsequently, false intelligence and other innuendoes were contrived by Hillary Clinton and her team in 2016 to implicate Donald Trump as a Russian stooge who was secretly working for Putin. When that didn’t work and Trump was elected, the Russians were accused by the media and Democrats of willy-nilly interfering in US elections more generally speaking, a much-exaggerated claim in contrast to the overwhelming silence surrounding the real electoral and policy interference, which has been coming from Israel and its fifth column inside the United States, who, not coincidentally, are the chief proponents of the war against Russia.

Placing a target on Vladimir Putin’s back appears to have an unfortunate consequence which Biden has yet to wake up to, namely the fact that the United States now has what might be described as a Ponzi scheme faux economy which is very vulnerable, particularly as much of the world has become disenchanted with the US style of global leadership. Note for example the recent state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Beijing, where he embraced a “global strategic partnership with China” to bring about a “multipolar” world, freed of “blocs” that is not sheltering behind “Cold War mentality.” Macron also criticized the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar.”

And threats made by the Bidens against both China and Russia have accomplished little beyond drawing the two major political and military powers closer together. Beijing and Moscow entered into a trade agreement in their own currencies in 2014 and have openly taken steps to challenge US dominance of international currency exchanges, creating instead a global multipolar trading environment. Europe aside, many nations are now eager to cut the tie that binds, which is the decades long American dominance of international financial mechanisms and also the general use of dollars to pay for oil and other energy supplies. The widespread use of petrodollars enables the buffoonish Janet Yellen at the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve banks to print unlimited unbacked fiat currency, knowing that there will always be a market for it.

Which brings us back to the Ukraine war, pursued “until we win” by Biden and his somnolent Secretary of State Antony Blinken. One of the first moves when Russia intervened in Ukraine was to block and eventually confiscate Russia’s 300 billion dollars-worth of foreign reserves in banks in the US and Europe. That sent a shock wave across currency markets all around the world. Biden and Yellen had weaponized the US’s own national currency, which hitherto had been an untouchable step in international relations for nations that were not actually at war. Countries like China and India with large economies then realized that the US Treasury Department and the dominance of the dollar as an exchange currency had now become a weapon of war and a serious threat to the economies of all other nations.

As a consequence, the US Dollar is right now being rejected by many nations as the world’s reserve currency. Some nations all over the world have agreed to use the Chinese Yuan and Indian Rupee for any-and-all international currency transactions. Saudi Arabia continues to use the petrodollar but does not demand it. Recently, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to permit the Saudis to sell oil to China in Yuan. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is now allowing multiple currencies to be used to purchase its oil, a major attack on the primacy of the US dollar and it also has accepted Chinese mediation to mend fences with the US and Israel’s arch enemy Iran. And the Saudis have even more recently refused a Biden Administration request that it start pumping more oil to reduce energy costs, signaling that the shift is both political and economic in nature. Japan, a major economy, has also started purchasing oil and gas directly from Russia against the US imposed energy embargo while Brazil, another major economy, has agreed to use the Yuan in its increasing trade with China. As fewer nations utilize the US dollar, America’s ability to export and ignore its burgeoning domestic debt and inflation to other countries is being diminished.

This might have a decisive impact on the US currency as the drive to break with the petrodollar continues to grow and could produce something like a “perfect storm” impacting on the US economy. It threatens to drastically lower the standards of living of nearly all Americans within the next several years as the dollar loses value and purchasing power. As the US economy is heavily interconnected with many European economies, Europe is also likely to be a victim of the coming disaster.

The good news, of course, is that the United States will no longer be able to afford its endless wars and international interventions. Lacking its economic power, it will no longer be able to declare itself “exceptional” and the enforcer of a “rules based international order.” It would mean an ending of the funding of developments like the Ukraine proxy war and the troops will have to come home from places like Syria and Somalia. And it might even mark the ending of sending billions of dollars annually to a wealthy Israel.

Ending dollar supremacy would inevitably have an immediate impact on what passes for US foreign policy, making it more difficult for Washington to initiate and sustain Treasury Department sanctions on countries like Iran and North Korea. It could also create economic turmoil for many countries until the situation resolves itself by producing greater volatility in currency markets worldwide. The Federal Reserve Bank will no doubt respond to the unfolding crisis by acting as it always does by raising interest rates to astronomical levels, thereby hurting most the Americans who can least afford the shock therapy.

And it did not have to turn out this way. It could have been avoided. If the US, which had no horse in the race, had left Ukraine alone Vladimir Putin would not have become a symbol of defiance against the “Rules Based International Order” and he would not have worked with China to establish multipolarity in the way the financial world operates. Instead, we have a situation where Europe is being de-industrialized due to soaring energy prices and Washington’s destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines while the US is potentially confronting economic disaster as the dollar’s relevance to international trade sinks. The ultimate irony is that Russia, and also the US/Israeli arch enemy Iran, are by comparison doing quite well economically as they sell their oil and gas to anyone in any currency. One has to conclude that when US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently made her secret trip to Kiev to promise the despicable Volodymyr Zelensky billions of taxpayer dollars the United States might just have been better served if she had stayed in Washington and made some minimal effort to address the mounting economic problems confronting us here at home.

from The End of American 'Exceptionalism'?