Biden 'Discovers' Another $3 Billion For Ukraine!

Just when the nearly $50 billion wasted on Ukraine was about to run out...Biden discovered another $3 billion under his couch cushions to keep the war chugging along. Also today: US Supremes green-light more IRS spying powers. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Biden 'Discovers' Another $3 Billion For Ukraine!

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!

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'?

Economic Sanctions Are Simultaneously Ineffective and Cruel

Joe Biden’s administration keeps boasting about how successful international sanctions have been in punishing Russia for invading Ukraine. But that boast is increasingly hollow, both with respect to the extent of international unityand the success of the sanctions. Instead of being a success story, the U.S.-led sanctions campaign against Russia is fast becoming another example of a chronically failed tactic.

The administration’s propaganda about widespread global support relies primarily on 2 resolutions condemning the invasion that the UN General Assembly approved, one in March 2022 and the other in February 2023. However, both resolutions were purely symbolic, toothless measures. They did not commit member states to take any action. Nevertheless, more than one-fifth of the UN members, including such key players as China, South Africa, and India, defied Washington’s pressure and cast negative votes or abstentions.

A more graphic and substantive indication of the unwillingness of countries not already in Washington’s geopolitical orbit to join the crusade against Moscow is their refusal to impose economic sanctions. Except for the NATO bloc and long-standing U.S. security dependents in East Asia, the global mapis nearly devoid of countries that have adopted punitive measures. Such absence of support throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America is especially striking.

Western sanctions have damaged Russia’s economy, but they have been decidedly less effective than Washington’s boasts would imply. After a brief, sharp decline, the Ruble has become one of the stronger currencies internationally, making a mockery of President Biden’s prediction that it would soon become "the rubble." Russia also remains a key export power in terms of both energy and food. Indeed, the Kremlin has been markedly successful in shifting its exports from European markets to those in other regions. Most notably, it has replaced Saudi Arabia as China’s largest sourceof oil and natural gas. Collaboration on that issue is just one sign of an emerging bilateral alliance between the Asian giants – a development that gives US military planners nightmares.

The faltering of the U.S.-led strategy of economic sanctions against Russia should not come as a surprise. Similar campaigns have a long track record of being an ineffective foreign policy tool. North Korea has not capitulated to Washington’s demands despite massive economic pressure since the middle of the twentieth century. US sanctions against Cuba, now in their seventh decade, and against Iran, now in their fifth decade, have produced similar frustrations for US policymakers.

The seminal scholarly work of Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, documented how sanctions rarely achieved their policy goals. More recent editions of the book confirm the conclusion with even greater certainty. Sanctions inconvenience the targeted regime – and create substantial suffering for innocent people in that country – but they seldom compel the regime to capitulate or even make major concessions. As Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott demonstrate, that outcome is especially true when the issue at stake is a high-priority matter for the country’s political leadership.

The habitual ineffectiveness of sanctions is reason enough to reject such a policy option, but their pervasive cruelty should be an even more compelling reason. Unfortunately, US and other Western officials seem oblivious or callous about that problem. The ongoing sanctions against Russia have undoubtedly injured tourist shop owners in Saint Petersburg, where cruise ships now are barred from stopping. Yet how driving a middle-age seller of nesting dolls into bankruptcy is supposed to compel Vladimir Putin to cease his war against Ukraine remains a mystery.

Undoubtedly the most shocking example of insensitivity about the collateral damage that economic sanctions inflict was a comment that Madeleine Albright made in the mid-1990s. CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl cited accounts that the U.S.-led international sanctions against Iraq, still in effect years after the Persian Gulf War, had cost the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked if the policy had been worth such a price, Albright responded: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it." It was a stunningly callous comment, but there is little evidence that Albright’s successors in either Republican or Democratic administrations have adopted a more enlightened attitude.

Continuing to impose economic sanctions that inflict suffering on innocent civilians is a policy unworthy of a decent country. The United States and NATO need to abandon that course with respect to Russia and the other targets of Washington’s wrath.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

from Economic Sanctions Are Simultaneously Ineffective and Cruel

Endangering Washington's Divine Right to Deceive

Do Americans have the right to know if the $100 billion in their tax dollars that the Biden administration is delivering to Ukraine is being wasted? No, according to the U.S. Congress - which recently voted against creating an Inspector General to investigate whether handouts to the most corrupt government in Europe were being stolen.

Do Americans have the right to know if their own government blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, the biggest act of environmental terrorism in history? The Washington Post reported that the message from the U.S. and western European governments is “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.” So almost all reporters were “good boys” and moved along.

Do Americans have the right to know if Biden administration officials have perennially made false statements about the prowess and victories of the Ukrainian army fighting the Russians?

No, according to Washington journalists who proudly fly Ukrainian flags on their own lavish homes.

Regardless of the horrendous death tolls suffered by both the Ukrainian and Russian armies, the Powers That Be in Washington are doing just fine and living comfortably.

Except for another damn leak.

In the last 10 days, Washington has been rocked by leaks of top secret information on Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and a few other topics. The response by the Washington establishment and media is akin to the mob in “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” who stoned an old man who said the word “Jehovah” out loud.

On Thursday, the FBI arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member. He was charged with retention and transmission of national defense information and willful retention of classified documents. According to the Washington Post, a friend said that Teixeira was “a devout Catholic and a libertarian with an interest in guns and doubts about America’s future.” A Post editorial noted that the alleged culprit had “complained of government overreach,” so obviously he was up to no good.

At this point, it isn’t clear whether Teixeira intended to leak the documents or whether people on the Discord gaming group where the documents were allegedly posted chose to make them public without his permission. His motivation is unclear.

The documents reveal that the Ukrainian military is in far worse shape than the Biden administration claimed. The expected Spring offensive by the Ukrainian army will likely be a flop if not a disaster. They reveal that the Ukrainian government was behind an attack in Belarus. The documents also contained embarrassing information on Israel’s Mossad, the Russian government, and U.S. spying on South Korea.

Thus far, it appears that none of the information that allegedly came out via Teixeira has endangered the lives of any U.S. soldiers or American citizens. But Teixeira is guilty of exposing boatloads of bootlickers and liars in Washington.

White House National Security spokesman John Kirby warned the media that the leaked documents are “not intended for public consumption... This is information that has no business in the public domain.”

Unfortunately, that is how federal policymakers feel about almost all the information regarding U.S. foreign policy. That’s why the government creates trillions of new pages of secrets per year.

According to local legends, there was a bygone era when Washington journalists fought zealously to expose government cover-ups. But the response to the latest leaks makes that story difficult to swallow.

New York Times military correspondent David Philipps tweeted, “The NYT worked feverishly to find the identity of the guy leaking [Top Secret] docs on Discord. Ironically, if they same guy had leaked to the NYT, we'd be working feverishly to conceal it.” (Philipps wasn’t endorsing that fever.) Journalist Michael Tracey scoffed, “Contributing writer at The Atlantic @AmyZegart declares the real ‘heroes’ of the week were all the amazing journalists who participated in a ‘dragnet’ to identify the leaker, at which time the FBI ‘moved into action’ and nabbed him. A true landmark feat of journalistic heroism.”

The Washington press corps showed vastly more enthusiasm for tracking down the leaker than for discovering who bombed the Nord Stream pipeline. At a Pentagon press conference, journalists showed far more indignation about the breach of federal secrecy than about the lies that the documents exposed. (Here’s a film clip of journalists demanding “that more be done to prevent future leaks.”)

Don’t expect the Fourth Estate to ‘fess up to their conflict of interest. Many of the reports on the leaker are written by people who previously peddled official lies on Ukraine and other topics. When the Biden administration exploits the leak to further suppress freedom of speech on the Internet, expect most of the Washington press corps to cheer him.

Will the uproar over the leaks spur some Americans to recognize how their “self-government” has become a parody? The Biden administration is tacitly invoking a divine right to continue deceiving the American people regarding Ukraine and a boatload of other foreign policies. But supposedly, everything Biden and his appointees do automatically incarnates “the will of the people” because of tens of millions of mail-in ballots a few years ago. It doesn’t matter if Biden seems perennially confused or unaware of where he is or what he is saying. Is the “holy ghost of democracy” hovering over Biden’s shoulder thanks to “Vox Populi, Vox Dei”? Unfortunately, the answer is classified.

Are we defaulting to the “cannon fodder version of democracy”? Do Americans have the right to know if the Biden administration is dragging them into World War Three? Unfortunately, few mainstream media outlets have either the curiosity or the courage to doggedly investigate and expose the possible perils of the Biden administration’s escalation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Biden’s appointees have vigorously opposed any ceasefire in that war. It is a national disgrace that such comments have not spurred widespread outrage at Team Biden’s efforts to perpetuate the carnage. A Washington Post editorial condemned the alleged leaker: “Breaking the laws for a psychic joyride is a despicable betrayal of trust and oaths.” But what about the media’s complicity in championing a war that makes the Hearst newspapers’ campaign for war with Spain in the 1890s look like child’s play?

Almost no one who condemns leaks of confidential information offers any alternative for Americans learning what “their” government is doing. As long as average Americans stay in their place, paying and obeying, everything will work out fine - at least for Washington real estate values. If democracy is now little more than a system where insiders deceive people for their own good, how is it different than all the other regimes that oppressed people throughout history?

from Endangering Washington's Divine Right to Deceive

More Unanswered Red Flags Regarding Jack Teixeira

Several former military and intelligence professionals have contacted me and voiced similar doubts about the pat story being circulated regarding National Guard Airman Jack Texeira and the allegations that he removed TOP SECRET documents from a SCIF, photographed them and then posted them to a gamer chat. They all agree, something is not right. The media account does not make sense.

The biggest oddity are the two two separate documents from the CIA’s Operations Center. Neither are complete and both deal only with the Ukrainian/Russian war. To reiterate a point from my previous article, that CIA Operations Center produces two daily reports — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is not a “Community” product, i.e., it is not distributed to the other intelligence agencies. It is an internal CIA document (of course, it is available to the Director of National Intelligence).

Texeira’s alleged possession of two separate reports is doubly odd because he did not copy the full reports. The one dated 1 March 2023 only shows 3 of 8 pages. If he was taking the documents to impress the youngsters on the gamer chat, why did he not take the whole enchilada? And why did he only publish the portions of the intel report that dealt exclusively with Ukraine and Russia?

There has been some media reports that he also posted a State Department EXDIS cable. I have not seen it and cannot confirm that it exists. If it does, that would be another huge red flag. EXDIS is bureaucratic speak for EXCLUSIVE DISSEMINATION. It has a cousin, NODIS — i.e., NO DISTRIBUTION. The U.S. military does not have access to such cables.

There was a time when State EXDIS was available to U.S. military commands on a restricted basis. That was pre-Chelsea Manning. After Manning’s leaks in 2010, that access was cut off. I know this first hand because I was part of a team scripting military exercises for all U.S. regional commands (i.e., EUCOM, NORTHCOM, AFRICOM, PACOM, CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM) during the course of a year. I was the State Department Subject Matter Expert. That means I had the job of creating cable traffic from the Secretary of State or U.S. Embassies that the U.S. military might see during a terrorist crisis. Prior to the Manning/Wikileaks leak, I had full access to State Department messages, including EXDIS. After Manning, that access was terminated. Not just for me but for all the uniformed personnel I worked with. All held TS SCI clearances. There has been no change in that policy, which means there is no way that Jack Texeira would have had any access to copy and take a State Department EXDIS message.

Another curiosity with the story, apart from Jack’s youth and the claim that he held TS SCI clearances and had access to CIA internal reports, is the schedule of his Massachusetts Air National Guard unit. That outfit had not been called up and assigned a 24 x 7 mission. Instead, the Air National Guard unit meets one weekend a month. In other words, Jack had to work his magic over a two or three day period surrounded by peers and those in command of the unit. You do not just show up and pursue your own interests. There are drills and assigned work, which is supervised by Non-Commissioned Officers (i.e., Sergeants) and Officers.

The documents I have seen posted on Twitter and Telegram, were dated 28 February, 1 March and 2 March, i.e., Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. According to the MI-6 funded Bellingcat, those documents were published on 4 March, a Saturday. Let’s assume that Texeira’s National Guard unit assembled for drill on March 4. We’re asked to believe that Jack Texeira showed up for monthly Air National Guard duty on Saturday, quickly scoured the high side computer for sensitive documents, printed them off, smuggled them out of the SCIF, returned home sometime after 5 pm (normal end of duty day), photographed the documents and quickly uploaded them to the Discord server. If that is what happened, it smacks of urgency. Most young airmen, after a long day at work, want to go out and party rather than stay at home photographing documents.

I remain skeptical of the narrative and hope by raising these questions that some genuine journalists will explore the oddities and try to get to the ground truth.

from More Unanswered Red Flags Regarding Jack Teixeira

Will the End of the Petrodollar End the US Empire?

Future historians may say that the most significant event of 2023 had nothing to do with Donald Trump, other 2024 presidential candidates, or even the war in Ukraine. Instead, the event with the most long-term significance may be one that received little attention in the mainstream media — Saudi Arabia’s movement toward accepting currencies other than the US dollar for oil payments.

After President Nixon severed the last link between the dollar and gold, his administration negotiated a deal with the Saudi government. The US would support the Saudi regime, including by providing weapons. In exchange, the Saudis would conduct all oil transactions in dollars. The Saudis also agreed to use surplus dollars they accumulated to purchase US Treasury bonds. The resulting “petrodollar” is a major reason why the dollar has maintained its world reserve currency status.

Also this year, China and Brazil made an agreement to conduct future trade between the countries using the countries’ own currencies rather than dollars. Brazilian President Lula da Silva has called on more nations to abandon the dollar.

This de-dolarization movement is driven in part by resentment of America’s foreign policy, including, in particular, the US government’s increasing use of economic sanctions. Dethroning the dollar from its world reserve currency status makes it easier for countries to ignore these sanctions.

De-dolarization will negatively impact the US government’s ability to manage its over 30 trillion dollars debt. With a few exceptions, there is still no real support in Congress for spending cuts. Republican leadership members may say they will not support a debt ceiling increase unless it is tied to spending cuts. However, after the Biden administration accused the Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared a reduction in spending on Social Security and Medicare — big drivers of the federal deficit — “off the table.” Similarly, despite the growing skepticism of foreign interventionism among Republicans, the military-industrial complex maintains a viselike grip on congressional leadership and the White House. Therefore, do not expect any reduction in military spending. Instead, the Pentagon’s budget will likely increase.

The Federal Reserve will face continuing pressure to monetize ever-increasing federal debt and keep interest rates (and thus the federal government’s borrowing costs) low. The resulting inflation will lead to more support for ending the dollar’s world reserve currency status. As more countries abandon the dollar, the Fed will become less able to monetize the federal government’s debt without creating hyperinflation. This will result in a dollar crisis and an economic meltdown worse than the Great Depression.

This crisis will lead to the end of the welfare-warfare-fiat currency system. While history suggests this will lead to the rise of even more authoritarian political movements, the growing popularity of libertarian ideas suggests the collapse will also fuel the further growth of the liberty movement. This could mean that the crisis leads to a restoration of limited government and an advancement of liberty. The key to taking full advantage of the opportunity presented by the crisis is to keep spreading our ideas. Fortunately, we do not need a majority; we just need a tireless, irate minority committed to the cause to regain our liberty.

from Will the End of the Petrodollar End the US Empire?

The 21 Year Old Leaker — Something is Not Right

The media obsession in vilifying Jack Texeira for “leaking” TOP SECRET and SECRET documents and judging him guilty without any benefit of doubt, is just another symptom of the authoritarian fever that grips many inhabitants of the United States. Forget the first amendment. Stay in the dark and trust the Government to tell you what you need to know. Before you join the mob eager to lynch the poor kid, let me share what some of my friends who are veterans of the CIA and the Air Force have said about this affair in the past few days.

Both men say that the story and alleged facts smell to high heaven. One longtime buddy, a veteran of the CIA, still provides consulting services to the U.S. Government and holds the same high clearances that he had prior to his retirement. He is an experienced operations officer. He has recruited foreigners to spy on behalf of the United States, managed highly classified programs and planned and executed many covert actions. In other words, he is no desk jockey.

We started working together 18 years ago in providing training support to a variety of military commands by writing and executing military exercises. All of our work was conducted in a SCIF and we had the clearances that gave us access to TOP SECRET, COMPARTMENTED INTELLIGENCE. I stopped doing that work five years ago but he has continued on.

During our 18 years of working on these highly classified exercises we have never seen a E3 (i.e., an Airman First Class) anywhere in the SCIF. The enlisted personnel who worked on these TOP SECRET exercises were at least a Staff Sergeant (E5). So what is a lowly E3 doing in a SCIF with TOP SECRET material and no supervision? That is the first red flag.

Another red flag, as I noted in my previous piece, is the partial copy of the CIA Operations Center Intelligence Report. Both of us have had access to CIA systems available on the military servers and we have never seen the CIA Ops Center report on any of those systems. Never! How did this 21 year old kid get his hands on that?

I was chatting today with another friend. He’s of more recent vintage. I discovered he is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and that his last job with the Air Force was the inspection, certification and monitoring of Air Force SCIFs. Wow! Talk about serendipity. I asked him what he thought of the story the media is hard selling about the 21 year old with a trove of TS leaked documents? He told me, “It does not make sense.”

He made the same points as my CIA buddy — how does a 21 year old E3 have this kind of access? My retired Colonel never saw it during his career. He told me, “At most, kids this age, might have a SECRET clearance.”

He also made the same observation that I raised in my previous piece on this incident — where the hell was this airman’s chain of command? A lowly E3 is not going to have unfettered access to a SCIF and will always have at least one senior commander (NCO or Officer) present to tell him what to do and to monitor his work.

Something is askew with the media story being presented to the World about the boy who posted the leak on the gamer chat board. The documents are not randomly selected. If the intent was to post classified information in order to impress a bunch of teenage gamers then why is the bulk of the material only about the war in Ukraine?

Finally, we are told, according to the Washington Post, that there are 300 documents. Really? Where are they? I have only been able to find roughly 18 documents. Have any of your seen the 100 pages that the media insists were posted to the web? That discrepancy alone raises another big red flag for me. Why was the Washington Post allowed to read/see 300 highly classified documents? The Post reporters do not hold security clearances. But it is okay for them to review those documents.

One of the major revelations from this leaking incident is that most of the press in the United States have rejected the fundamental mission of the media — expose truths the Government wants to hide from the public. What a volte face!! Fifty years ago the New York Times and the Washington Post led the way in defying the Nixon Adminstration’s effort to quash the publication of the highly classified Pentagon Papers. Those documents revealed that the U.S. Government, under both Republican and Democrat Presidents, lied to the American public about the war in Vietnam. And today? Those two media outlets enthusiastically helping the U.S. Government identify the leaker and smear him in the process. So much for the viability of the First Amendment.

Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.com.

from The 21 Year Old Leaker — Something is Not Right

How NATO states sponsored ICC prosecutor’s Putin arrest warrant

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan meets with Ukrainian President Zelensky, March 2023

Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, stood before a podium on March 3, 2023, and issued an unusual qualifier: “Of course the prosecutor of the ICC does not, whatever affection and regard I may have for my dear friends in Ukraine – has no special affinity to any particular country. We’re not a party to any hostilities.”

“We have an affinity to legality,” Khan insisted in British-accented English. “We have an affinity and commitment to the rule of law.”

Khan made his declaration of legal independence while headlining the “United for Justice” conference, an event personally organized in Lviv, Ukraine, by President Volodymyr Zelensky. There, he pressed the flesh with Ukraine’s president and conferred with US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had stopped in to advance the Biden administration’s effort to haul Russian President Vladimir Putin before an international war crimes tribunal.

It was Khan’s fourth visit to Ukraine since the Russian military invaded the country in February 2022.

On March 17, 2023, Khan introduced a formal ICC warrant for Putin’s arrest, accusing the Russian president of the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a “network of camps” throughout Russia. The warrant arrived days before the 20th anniversary of the NATO invasion of Iraq, a crime directed by US and UK officials whom the ICC has refused to prosecute to this day.

As The Grayzone has reported, the ICC’s warrant was inspired by a State Department-funded report that contained no field reporting, no concrete evidence of war crimes, and no proof that Russia was actually targeting Ukrainian youth with a massive deportation campaign. In fact, the investigators acknowledged finding “no documentation of child mistreatment, including sexual or physical violence, among the camps referenced in this report.” What’s more, the inquiry’s lead author told The Grayzone’s Jeremy Loffredo that “a large amount” of the Russian youth camps his team researched were “primarily cultural education – like, I would say, teddy bear.”

Though Khan pledged his absolute independence in his hunt for Putin, he is closely aligned with the same Western governments that are currently engaged in a proxy battle with Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield. Meanwhile, he has stalled the ICC’s case against Israel, frustrating human rights lawyers who represent the victims of grisly violence in the besieged Gaza Strip. Additionally, Khan formally dropped the international court’s case against the US military for its actions in Afghanistan.

Through his focus on Ukraine, Khan has presided over a massive surge in Western financial support for his office, with much of the money earmarked for his investigation into Russian officials. The ICC’s issuance of Putin’s arrest warrant happened to coincide with a major donor’s conference for the court in London, England.

The ICC prosecutor’s political entanglements do not stop there. Celebrity lawyer Amal Clooney has worked as a special advisor to Khan’s office while simultaneously counseling the Ukrainian government on its initiative to target Russian officials with prosecution, either by the ICC or another international body. Clooney has also served as a special liaison to the British Foreign Secretary.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that after two decades of unremitting hostile relations with the ICC, official Washington is suddenly warming up to the court, and is endeared by its top prosecutor.

CC’s Khan inspires “sighs of relief in Jerusalem,” support from the US

US President Joe Biden helped set the tone in Washington with a full-throated endorsement of the ICC prosecutor Khan’s warrant against Putin, declaring it “justified.” On the Republican side of the aisle, the US Senate’s most enthusiastic cheerleader of the Ukraine proxy war, Lindsey Graham, was even more fulsome in his support for the court’s campaign, celebrating the ICC’s prosecutor as a modern-day Nazi hunter.

Washington’s sudden embrace of the ICC represented a sudden and clearly opportunistic break from two decades of antagonism.

Almost as soon as US President George W. Bush entered the White House in 2001, his administration introduced the Servicemembers Protection Act, a measure that authorized a future US military invasion of the Hague in the event the ICC indicted any US personnel for war crimes. When the bill passed the Senate the following year, not one member of the Republican Party opposed it.

The US intensified its campaign against the ICC in 2019, after then-Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced an investigation into war crimes committed by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. While Secretary of State Mike Pompeo personally denounced Bensouda, the Senate introduced a bipartisan resolution calling on him to escalate its attacks on the “politicized” ICC. Graham was among the signatories to the resolution. (The Biden administration also opposes the ICC investigation into Israeli war crimes).

When Bensouda declared her intention to investigate both the US and Taliban for crimes against humanity in Afghanistan the following year, Washington placed the prosecutor under sanctions and revoked her US visa.

Since replacing Bensouda in 2021, Khan has worked to soothe the nerves of the US and its most violence-prone allies. The Jerusalem Post reported in June 2022 that “there have been some sighs of relief in Jerusalem,” as Khan had “not issued a single public statement nor taken any single public action regarding Israel-Palestine” in his first year as prosecutor.

“There has been no significant progress or measures taken, the investigation [into Israeli atrocities] is not a priority for the office of the prosecutor, and no cases have been brought yet,” a member of the legal team representing victims of Israeli violence in the occupied Gaza Strip told The Grayzone. “Every time the issue is raised before Khan, he never takes a position, and there’s never been a statement.”

The lawyer noted the irony of Khan’s obsession with the transfer of civilians from Ukraine to Russia, considering he has ignored the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the territory now known as “Israel” to occupied territories and refugee camps across the Middle East. “In Palestine civilians have been transferred for decades, it’s the most over documented situation of war crimes in history,” they said. “Palestine should be the final benchmark for the credibility of the court.”

Khan also narrowed the scope of the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation, protecting US forces from prosecution by focusing solely crimes committed by the Taliban. “This decision reinforces the perception that these institutions set up in the West and by the West are just instruments for the West’s political agenda,” Shaharzad Akbar, the former chair of Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, complained to The Intercept

“This was clearly a political decision – there’s really no other way it can be interpreted,” Jennifer Gibson, a US lawyer who heads an investigation into US abuses in Afghanistan, saidof Khan’s action. “It gave the US and their allies a get out of jail free card.”

With its two most contentious investigations out of the way, a clearly pliant figure in the prosecutor’s office, and Russian troops inside Ukraine, the previously battered ICC suddenly experienced a deluge of Western financial support.

“In the weeks after 24 February [2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine], the [International Criminal] court has been flooded with cash and secondments,” reported JusticeInfo.net.

Much of the money flowed directly to Khan’s office, with special earmarks for efforts targeting Russian officials. As Maria Elena Vignoli of Human Rights Watch told JusticeInfo.net, “In the messaging around the various pledges that were made, states were not always that careful, and they often made the link between their contribution and Ukraine, thus creating this perception of politicization or selectivity in the court’s work.”

Washington, London pave the path for the ICC’s Khan

It was February 28, 2022 when Khan announced his intention to “proceed with opening an investigation into the Situation in Ukraine, as rapidly as possible.” Russia’s military operation inside Ukraine was only four days old at that point.

Days later, on March 2, 2022, the British Embassy in the Hague delivered Khan a referral co-signed by over 40 US and UK diplomats that urged him to investigate Russia for violations of the Rome Statute of the ICC.

That same day, Sen. Graham introduced a resolution in the US Senate calling for “Vladimir Putin and members of the Russian regime to be held accountable for the numerous acts of war, aggression, and human rights abuses that have been conducted under his watch.” Even as hawks like John Bolton warned that support for the ICC’s warrant could validate future legal actions against the US citizens, the resolution passed unanimously.

Just hours after issuing his resolution condemning alleged violations of international law, Graham took to Twitter to call for Putin’s assassination. “Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” the senator pleaded on March 3, 2022. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?

The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.

You would be doing your country - and the world - a great service.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 4, 2022

On April 3, 2022, Biden injected further momentum into the ICC’s campaign against Russia, branding Putin a “war criminal” and demanding he be hauled before “a war crimes trial.”

To further Biden’s objective, and by extension, that of the ICC, the US Department of State announced in May 2022 the establishment of a Conflict Observatory to gather open source evidence of alleged Russian war crimes and disseminate the findings “so that prosecutors can potentially even build criminal cases based on the material that is published.”

With American political winds at his back, Khan embarked on his first officially-curated tour of Ukraine.

Four government-guided junkets to Ukraine

Khan made his inaugural visit to Ukraine on March 16, 2022, arriving first in Poland, where he met with Ukrainian migrants at a refugee reception center. He then crossed the Ukrainian border to confer in Lviv with Irina Venediktova, the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General, before holding a virtual meeting with Zelensky.

“We conduct our work with independence, impartiality and integrity. I have underlined that I wish to engage with all parties to the conflict,” Khan insisted.

📢 During today's visit to #Ukraine, Prosecutor #KarimAAKhanQC met virtually w/ President @ZelenskyyUa:“I was pleased to hold important exchanges w/ the President while in country; we agreed all efforts are needed to ensure #IHL is respected & to protect the civilian population.” pic.twitter.com/SqAJsdF5oI

— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) March 16, 2022

His second visit came just weeks later, in April, when Venediktova shepherded him to the town of Bucha, which Russian troops had occupied for weeks before retreating at the start of that month. Ukrainian officials simultaneously led packs of Western journalists to local gravesites, presenting the burial grounds as evidence that Russia had carried out mass-scale executions in the town.

Images of corpses strewn across Bucha prompted Zelensky to accuse the Russian government of “genocide”, while US President Biden demanded that Putin appear before a war crimes tribunal. Biden’s request came despite his own Defense Department concessionthat it could not “independently and singlehandedly confirm accounts” of execution-style massacres committed by Russian forces in the town.

When Khan made his third visit to Ukraine in July 2022, he went to Kharkiv. Accompanied once again by Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Venediktova, he announced that the ICC planned to establish a field office in Kiev.

By that point, Zelensky’s government had outlawed 13 opposition parties, jailed his main presidential rival, shut down all critical media, banned the Russian patriarchate of the Orthodox Church and was on its way to arresting its top priest. Kiev was also disappearing and torturing political opponents and human rights advocates as part of an assassination campaign targeting Ukrainian officials accused of collaborating with Russia. Neo-Nazi militants had even videotaped themselves executing suspected Russian sympathizers.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military was escalating its attacks on civilian targets throughout the independent Republicans of Donetsk and Lugansk, bombing markets and in one instance, massacring a bus load of commuters with a Tochka-U missile. Ukrainian soldiers were also recorded executing unarmed Russian prisoners or war and shooting them in the knees.

But as Khan was junketed around Ukraine, he remained studiously disinterested in the documented abuses his official hosts were carrying out right under his nose. He had his eyes firmly fixed on Putin – and on the generous Western donations that propelled his mission.

Bring Back Our Girls 2.o

This March, Khan made his fourth trip to Ukraine to, in his words, “deepen our engagement with national authorities.” In Lviv, he headlined a conference called “United for Justice.” Personally hosted by Zelensky, the stated purpose of the event was to “hold Russia’s top leadership accountable for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.”

In promotional material, the United For Justice conference focused on a seemingly new and emotionally potent issue: the supposed deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia, and the urgent need to bring them home.

The theme contained clear echoes of the Kony 2012 campaign launched against Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony, who “kidnapped over 30,000 children to strengthen his army,” according to the now-disgraced online hucksters that initiated it. It also recalled the humanitarian interventionist “Bring Back Our Girls” hashtag campaign launched by former First Lady Michelle Obama and other celebrities to highlight the abduction of several hundred schoolgirls by the Islamist militia Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.

At United for Justice, it seemed NATO officials had landed on a theme guaranteed to pique the outrage of suggestible Western liberals.

Throughout the United for Justice conference, participants repeatedly leveled the allegation of mass youth deportations against Russia. “Small children are being kidnapped, brainwashed, and forced to become Russian citizens,” Dutch Foreign Minister Woepke Hoekstra claimed from the podium, denouncing “the systemic abduction of Ukrainian children.”

Merrick Garland, the US Attorney General, said after his visit to Lviv that he was “trying to find the people” to identify and “build evidence against” in Russia’s alleged “effort to forcibly deport children.”

During his own address, Khan linked a visit he made to an orphanage inside Ukraine to “allegations that we received that children have been deported outside Ukraine, into the territory of the Russian Federation.” He did not indicate that any children were taken from the orphanage he toured, however.

The ICC website currently features a photograph of Khan posing beside empty cribs in the Ukrainian orphanage he referenced in his speech – an apparent public relations ploy designed to suggest that Putin’s minions had snatched the young children from their beds. Though this orphanage was far from the front line, Khan sported a kevlar protective helmet for added effect.

In May 2022, Khan’s brother, Imran Ahmad Khan, resigned from his seat in the British House of Commons after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. Ahmad Khan served 18 months in prison after a judge found him guilty of climbing into the boy’s bunk bed and groping his groin while attempting to ply him with gin and pornography. Following the conviction, a second man accused Ahmad Khan of abusing him as a minor.

While there is no indication Karim Khan provided any legal assistance to his convict brother, The Guardian noted that Ahmad Khan remains “close to his family, particularly his brothers Karim and Khaled, both lawyers, the former a prosecutor at the international criminal court in The Hague.”

Khan relies on State Department-sponsored research for “home run pitch”

During public speeches about Ukraine, Karim Khan often emphasizes his trips to battlegrounds like Bucha and Kharkiv, where the Kiev government accused Russia of  committing grisly war crimes. However, when he introduced the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin, his indictment did not mention any alleged Russian atrocities in either location. Instead, it focused entirely on the supposed deportation of Ukrainian children.

The ICC prosecutor’s warrant was clearly inspired by a Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) report that was funded and supported by the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations – an entity the Biden administration established in May 2022 to advance the prosecution of Russian officials.

The ICC accuses Russia's leadership of running a network of "re-education camps" for captive Ukrainian youth.@loffredojeremy did what the ICC refused to do and visited one such camp outside Moscow.

Is this a war crime? Watch Jeremy's exclusive video and judge for yourself. pic.twitter.com/lVTYjxpkJZ

— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) April 2, 2023

That State Department-sponsored paper, as The Grayzone revealed, contained long passages contradicting the ICC’s prosecutor’s claims, as well as those its author made in media appearances. In a conversation with journalist Jeremy Loffredo, Yale HRL director Nathaniel Raymond stated that “a large amount” of the Russian youth camps his team researched were “primarily cultural education – like, I would say, teddy bear.”

When asked why his research team did not attempt to visit any programs inside Russia, Raymond said, “We’re persona non grata. We’re considered extensions of US intelligence by the Russians.”

At the same time, the Yale HRL director acknowledged his report was driven by State Department objectives, conducted under “a lot of pressure” from the US National Intelligence Council. He also conceded his team relied on the Pentagon’s US Indo-Pacific Command to “expand our satellite access in the Pacific Command to get the Siberian and eastern camps.”

When asked why Khan did not seek arrest warrants over allegations of Russian war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, which dominated Western media coverage for days, Raymond recalled a phone conversation he held with several foreign correspondents from the New York Times in March 2023:

I was on the phone with the New York Times on Friday – the folks who did the big Bucha investigation, and they were like, basically, ‘Hey, we want to win a Pulitzer Prize on Bucha. We think it’s weird that Khan charged [the transfer of youth] and didn’t charge Bucha.’ And I said, ‘It would have been the worst thing imaginable.'

Raymond explained the prosecutor’s logic: “If Khan had charged Bucha, it would have been catastrophic, because he would have been telegraphing weakness to the Russians. Because Bucha is a massacre. But it doesn’t mean that it is Rome Statute-level in terms of intentional systematic and command-and-control orders. To do that, you need the forensics… ballistics, you need the communications. And there’s no evidence the ICC has that.”

So, according to the Yale HRL director, Khan “started with a home run pitch, and basically said, we’re charging Putin on his own statements in a prima facie evidence-proof [case] on a conservative set of indictments. The transfer and deportation was lowball, he didn’t charge first degree murder.”

“For the New York Times,” Raymond continued, “they’re not going to be happy until Bucha gets charged with all the glitz of an ICC indictment. But [Khan would] be basically saying to Putin: ‘go throw a lieutenant colonel from the paratroopers out the window and you’re cool.'”

Besides providing Khan with the easiest route to an arrest warrant for Putin, the indictment also happened to pack the biggest propaganda punch, enabling the prosecutor to cast himself as the savior of Ukraine’s children.

To that end, he has received critical PR assistance from Amal Clooney, the international lawyer who gained fame as the wife of a Hollywood humanitarian interventionist who is one of the US Democratic Party’s most prolific fundraisers.

The Clooney connection: Khan collaborates with Hollywood humanitarian interventionists

In September 2021, weeks after assuming the role of ICC prosecutor, Khan appointed Amal Clooney as a special advisor to his investigation into atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. When Russian forces entered Ukraine five months later, Clooney immediately shifted her focus, accepting a Ukrainian government invitation to join their “legal task force on accountability.”

Her collaborative relationship with Khan, which spanned at least a decade, has raised further questions about the ICC cheif’s pledge of “independence, impartiality and integrity.”

The Lebanese-born Amal Clooney first emerged as a global celebrity through her marriage to Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney, himself a prominent humanitarian interventionist who led the campaign to target Sudan’s government and its former president, Omar Bashir, with economic sanctions and genocide charges over its actions in Darfur. The US Israel lobbyand then-US president George W. Bush heavily supported the crusade against Khartoum, with the latter threatening to send US troops to the oil-rich region to confront Bashir. For his part, Clooney invoked the memory of Auschwitz to advocate for UN military intervention in the region. Though the subsequent ICC warrant for Bashir’s arrest ultimately proved futile, Clooney’s campaign established his bonafides within the international human rights industry.

In 2016, George Clooney turned his focus to domestic politics, raising what he described as “an obscene amount of money” for the presidential campaign of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Entry costs ran up to $353,400 per couple at the pro-Hillary fundraisers hosted by George and Amal Clooney.


George and Amal Clooney (right) at a 2016 fundraiser they hosted for Hillary Clinton


That same year, George and Amal leveraged their fame to establish the Clooney Foundation for Justice. Like the foundations established by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama after their presidencies, the Clooneys’ initiative relied on funding from liberal billionaires including Bill Gates and George Soros and forged partnerships with Microsoft and the UN. The Clooney Foundation for Justice also lists the US and UK government-sponsored intelligence proxy Bellingcat as an official partner.


(bigger)

The agenda of the Clooneys’ human rights outfit tracks closely with Washington’s foreign policy objectives. The group pushes human rights campaigns in countries where the US seeks regime change, while overlooking well-documented atrocities committed by the US and its allies, including Israel. In Venezuela, for example, which the US has targeted with sanctions and violent military coups in pursuit of regime change, the Clooney Foundation says it is assisting an ICC investigation into President Nicholas Maduro.

While overseeing her foundation, Amal Clooney won several British government appointments, including a two years stint as UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s Special Envoy for Media Freedom, and a role as a formal international legal advisor to the UK Attorney General.

Though Clooney once served on the legal team of jailed Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, she said nothing when Hunt denounced her former client, defended his arrest, and endorsedthe journalist’s extradition to the US.

In April 2022, the Clooney Foundation announced it would dispatch a team to Kiev to assist the Ukrainian government’s ICC investigation. That month, Amal Clooney appeared on a UN Human Rights Council panel alongside Khan, where she introduced the public to the allegations that Russia’s government was engaged in the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children for the first time.

“Could it be that thousands of children are being forcibly deported to Russia? Could it be that teenage girls are being raped in the street in front of their family and their neighbors? …Unfortunately, the answer is yes,” Clooney proclaimed, providing no evidence to back her claim.

"Ukraine is, today, a slaughterhouse."

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney urged countries at the UN to focus on international justice for war crimes in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/Wthabo06W7

— DW News (@dwnews) April 28, 2022

Two months later, Khan and Amal Clooney reunited for a meeting with Ukraine’s General Prosecutor, Irina Venediktova, at the European Union’s Eurojust side-event on prosecuting Russian officials.

Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova met with ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan and Amal Clooney, a British lawyer who is part of the Legal Task Force. This working group supports #Ukraine in providing justice for victims of international crimes committed by Russia.⤵ pic.twitter.com/T7pJMPWTFy

— Now in Ukraine (@Now_in_Ukraine) June 2, 2022

Next, in September, Khan participated in another Eurojust “cooperation for accountability in Ukraine” side-event co-sponsored by the governments of Ukraine, Germany, Denmark and Netherlands. The ICC prosecutor moderated the panel alongside Amal Clooney and the Ukraine’s new prosecutor, Dmitri Kostrin. (President Zelensky dismissed Venediktova in July over “concerns of treason”).

Khan’s relationship with Amal Clooney began long before either gained international notoriety. Back in 2010, when she was still Amal Alamuddin, the lawyer contributed to a volume of essays which Khan co-edited. Khan has also blurbed a 2022 book Clooney co-authored with British lawyer Philippa Webb, calling it a “a tour de force.” (Like Clooney, Webb is a member of the Kiev-supported “legal task force on accountability for crimes committed in Ukraine”).

The website of the Clooney Foundation for Justice features Khan showering even more praise on Clooney, hailing her as a “a giant [who has] been willing to speak up even though many would rather [she] quietened down…[her] refusal to be muzzled must inspire us not to be muzzled [and her] refusal to lose hope must inspire us to march forward.”

The ICC prosecutor’s adoration for Clooney apparently inspired his decision to keep her as a special advisor to his office, even as she worked for the British and Ukrainian governments – both belligerents in a war with Russia.

The Grayzone queried the ICC prosecutor’s press officer about Khan’s close collaboration with Clooney, inquiring whether her work on behalf of the Ukrainian and British governments compromised Khan’s stated pledge to “independence, impartiality and integrity.” It received no reply.

This March 20, exactly one week after issuing an arrest warrant for Putin, Khan appeared in London at an event sponsored by the British and Dutch governments to appeal to the Western states sponsoring the Ukraine proxy war for more money. There, he was seen yukking it up with British Justice Minister Dominic Raab and his counterparts from several NATO states and Ukraine.

The Guardian linked the timing of the Putin arrest warrant to the donor conference, noting, “Khan made his dramatic move against the Russian president last week ahead of a conference in London co-hosted by the UK and the Dutch government aimed at raising cash to fund the ICC’s war crimes investigatory work inside Ukraine.”

With justice ministers 40 UK and UK allies on hand, the confab raised $5 million for the ICC’s mission to prosecute Russian officials.

The donor conference just happened to take place three days after the 20th anniversary of the US and UK-led invasion of Iraq, an event that is estimated to have left over 1 million Iraqis dead. In 2020, the ICC dropped its investigation into British atrocities in Iraq.

Meanwhile, it has been over three months since Khan pledged to visit the Occupied Palestinian Territories to further the ICC’s dormant investigation into Israeli abuses. “Nobody knows if Khan has any plans to go to Palestine,” a lawyer representing Palestinian victims of Israeli violence lamented to The Grayzone. “It’s clear that it won’t be a priority.”

It is also clear that the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin has planted another obstacle in the way of a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine. As a top Zelensky aide, Mykhailo Podalyak, stated on Twitter immediately after the court’s indictment of Putin, “There can be no negotiations with the current Russian elite.”

Reprinted with permission from The Grayzone.
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