welcometohellworld | Autumn Harris' lungs were so filled with fluid they weighed four
times what a normal person's lungs should weigh during her autopsy. The
thirty four year old died in an Alabama prison in 2018 after going
untreated for pneumonia by medical staff for weeks according to a
malpractice lawsuit filed by her father in 2020 that will finally get a
hearing next year. Six years of waiting for the possibility that maybe
someone will be held responsible for his daughter's death.
Harris had been arrested because she missed a misdemeanor court hearing over an alleged theft of $40 Alabama.com reported.
State
investigators interviewed women Harris was being held with and one said
she got so sick toward the end that she started to hallucinate and was
calling one of them momma.
If you are poor please do not make a
mistake of any kind. Please do not fuck up in such and such a way
leading you to need $40 very badly or to miss a court date. Do not fuck
up even once despite the entire world being littered with boobytraps
just waiting for you to make a false step. The floor is lava but not in
the way that usually means. If you are poor almost every fuck up you
might make carries with it a potential death sentence in this country.
It
sounds facile and obvious to say that kind of shit doesn't it? It's
almost like what's the point? You know it and I know it and people
walking through the obstacle course on hard mode know it better than
anyone.
I guess we have to keep saying it anyway.
We're all
of us walking through the obstacle course to be clear it's just at
varying degrees of difficulty. Unless some of you reading this happen to
be rich in which case can I have $50,000?
Marquette | The wholesale destruction of Jews and other ethnic minorities
in Europe by Nazi Germany before and during World War II has been
widely and justly condemned as a crime against humanity. Literally
thousand of books and articles have been written on this particular
genocide, highlighted by extensive testimony presented to the
Nuremberg criminal trials after the war.
We have been conditioned since World War II to believe that
such a horrible human tragedy cannot, or at least should not, happen
again. Particularly in the Western World, schooled in the Judeo-
Christian ethic, we believe that another Holocaust could not happen and
particularly not in the United States. It cannot happen here, we saybecause we live under democratic forms of government and our U.S.
Constitution guarantees us protection of our lives as a God-given right.
Until this current century, we were no doubt justified in relying
on these guarantees to our human existence. But will these guarantees
survive the very dangerous new trends in the Western world's regard for
the protection of life? Is a new and different kind of Holocaust in the
offing, not against Jews or other minorities, but a Holocaust against the
elderly, the chronically ill, the terminally ill and the disabled, right here
in our own country? This proposition might appear preposterous at
first glance, but the issue is important enough to merit a closer look.
It is a surprising historical fact that in the United States, we are
wittingly or unwittingly following the same steps that led Germany to
the disastrous conclusion that some lives are "life not worthy of life"
and can be legally extinguished to suit the needs of society and the
desires of the family and the state. Germany progressed from the
adoption of genetics theories in the last century to sterilization to
abortion to euthanasia to the indiscriminate murder of ethnically and
politically undesirable races and aliens. Except for timing, the United
States is proceeding along the identical path, with only the legalization
of euthanasia. or assisted suicide, remaining before the flood gates
open. Indeed, we are now facing this last and fatal step on the "slippery
slope".
In January 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court began to hear, on
appeal, oral arguments for Vasco v. Quill and Washington v.
Glucksberg, the New York and Washington cases which struck down
anti-assisted suicide laws in each state earlier in 1996.
If the U.S. Supreme Court follows the unfortunate precedent
which it established in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in which it
created with very questionable constitutional basis a new "right" to
abortion, then they may now create another new "right" to assisted
suicide. If this happens, we will have taken the final step toward
undermining the very foundation of our American democracy in which
the government has the constitutional responsibility both to protect the
lives of its citizens and not destroy those lives.
Ideas do have consequences and the legalization of assisted
suicide would have momentous implications for the future of American
society, families, medicine and the ultimate evaluation of the worth of
a human life, as well as the very foundations of our American form ogovernment. Ultimately, the lives of our citizens may well be
subordinated to the desires and interests of the government, which will
decide directly or indirectly who will live and who will die. In fact,
some U.S. authorities already are beginning to talk about the future
demands on the resources of Medicare and Medicaid to maintain
patients who might be kept alive for many years by modem medical
technology, at great public expense, unless they can be dispensed with
through assisted suicide.
It is well known that in the Netherlands today, where assisted
suicide is widely practiced, serious abuses are being perpetrated against
people who have not given their consent. In almost one-half of the
assisted suicide cases in the Netherlands, the decision is being made by
third parties without consulting the patient or the family. If the state or
its agents can kill targeted people at will, then democracy as we know
it will have perished. The next Holocaust, if and when it comes, will
thus not be of the same character as the Nazis'. But the end result will
be the same, namely, the wholesale killing of undesirables whether they
be unborn, partially born, old, ill, or just tired of living.
Let us review the historical steps that both Germany and the
United States have passed through since Darwin's theory of evolution
originated in the middle 1850s and jolted the scientific world, including
scholars, philosophers and even some misguided theologians. We will
see how the seeds of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany preceded the
Hitler era by several generations
WaPo | How
quickly do times of apparent peace become times of conflict; seemingly
stable world orders come crashing down; the hopes of many for
improvement of the human condition are dashed and replaced by fear and
despair.
For
the first dozen years after World War I, the three powerful democracies
— the United States, Britain and France — were in substantial control
of world affairs, economically, politically and militarily. They
established the terms of the peace settlement, redrew the borders of
Europe, summoned new nations into being, distributed pieces of defunct
empires, erected security arrangements, determined who owed what to
whom, and how and when debts should be paid. They called together the
conferences that determined the levels of armaments the major nations
could possess.
All
this was possible because they had won the war; because the United
States and Britain controlled the banks and the seas; because France
wielded predominant military power on the European continent. With this
power, the three Western democracies sought to establish and consolidate
a world system favorable to their interests and preferences. They
argued over how best to do this, and they became increasingly estranged
from each other in these years. But they all wanted a stable, prosperous
and peaceful Europe. They all sought to preserve their global empires,
or, in the United States’ case, its hemispheric hegemony. They all
sought to defend the liberal, capitalist economic system that enriched
and protected them and in which they believed. None doubted the
rightness of their vision of international order or much questioned the
justice of imposing it.
And
there had been successes, certainly from their point of view. By the
second half of the 1920s, the world had grown less violent and
marginally less miserable. In Europe especially, economies were
recovering, living standards were rising, general violence was down from
the immediate postwar years, and the dangers of war and aggression
seemed as low as they had been in decades. Internationally, trade had
risen by more than 20 percent, despite growing protectionism, driven
largely by the American economic boom. Nations spent more time
discussing measures for peace than preparing for war. The League of
Nations had come into its own. Germany seemed to be on a moderate,
democratic course. In general, the threat of a return to autocracy and
militarism seemed low. Democracy seemed to be ascendant.
Even
those who openly defied the new order had to move cautiously. The
Soviets promoted their revolution abroad but not so aggressively as to
challenge the dominant powers, and they wound up settling for “socialism in one country.”
Benito Mussolini, ruling an Italy surrounded in the Mediterranean by
British and French naval power and dependent on the United States for
financial support, thought it best to play the responsible European
statesman. The 1920s were his “decade of good behavior.”
Adolf
Hitler, too, proceeded with caution as he ascended to power in the
early ’30s. Impressed by the United States as “a giant state with
unimaginable productive capacities” and by Anglo-American domination of
the global economy, and well aware of the role it had played in
selecting Germany’s past governments, he worked at first to soften
Washington’s opposition to his rise. He reached out to the U.S.
ambassador, gave numerous interviews to prominent American media
figures, including William Randolph Hearst, in the hope of making “the
personality of Adolf Hitler more accessible to the American people.” He
promised to pay Germany’s “private debts” to American bankers and went
out of his way to assure the English-speaking world that his national
socialist movement would gain power only in a “purely legal way”
in accordance with the “present constitution.” After taking power, he
told the press and his own officials to play down the campaigns of
antisemitism that began immediately. He sought to keep German rearmament
under wraps in what he called the “perilous interval” during which the
“whole world” was “against us.” Until the economy recovered and German
rearmament was further along, he feared that the national socialist
revolution could be crushed at any time by the superior power of the
democracies.
It
was remarkable how quickly the winds were shifting, though. An American
journalist identified the moment when history pivoted. “In the first
five years after the World War,” he wrote, “the nations of Europe, on
their backs and seeking American aid, took all pains to avoid offending
us and therefore appeared to give careful and weighty consideration to
our altruistic advice. The succeeding five years have changed that.”
One
indicator of the shifting trends was the declining fortunes of
democracy throughout Europe. It was inevitable that some of the new
democracies, implanted in lands that had never known such a form of
government, would not survive. The rise of dictatorship in various forms
in Hungary (1920), Italy (1925), Lithuania, Poland and Portugal (1926),
Yugoslavia (1929), Romania (1930), Germany and Austria (1933), Bulgaria
and Latvia (1934), and Greece (1935) had many internal and external
causes, including the global depression that began around 1930. But the
overall decline of European democracy from the second half of the 1920s
onward, and the turn away from democracy in Japan, also reflected the
declining influence and appeal of the great-power democracies and their
order.
Liberal
democracy was not just losing ground. It faced a potent challenge from a
vibrant and revolutionary anti-liberal doctrine that attracted
followers and imitators throughout Europe and beyond. Americans, British
and French during World War I and for decades afterward assumed that
Bolshevism posed the greatest threat to liberal democracy. But
Bolshevism proved less easily exported than both its proponents and its
opponents believed. Ostracized by the rest of Europe, the Soviet Union
turned inward to wrestle with the transformation of its society. When
democracies fell in the 1920s and ’30s, they fell to the Right, not the
Left.
21stcenturywire | There is a small but highly influential and powerful faction
embedded throughout Washington’s top political institutions and policy
think tanks, who’s primary objective is the promotion of region and
global military conflicts.
They will not rest unless the world is on fire, and the share prices of ‘defense’ corporations like General Electric, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Blackstone Group, and Carlyle Group
– are hitting record highs. To do this they must also keep Israel
relevant, if not the center of attention, regarding US foreign policy.
They want war, and they want it often and they will do anything to see it happen…
From US-Russia.org
– Here‘s what Robert Parry, the American investigative journalist who
broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated
Press and Newsweek, has to tell us about the Robert
Kagan-Victoria-Nuland couple and their hold on Obama, whose foreign
policy seems to be outsourced to these two Washington
ideologue-opportunists.
According to Parry, the couple’s latest project is to sink Minsk-2
and lay the ground for further U.S. military-industrial-complex
profiteering at the expense of the EU, of the U.S. national security
itself, and of peace in Europe.
The Background
Neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan and his wife, Assistant Secretary of
State Victoria Nuland, run a remarkable family business: she has
sparked a hot war in Ukraine and helped launch Cold War II with Russia –
and he steps in to demand that Congress jack up military spending so
America can meet these new security threats. [….]
Not only does the broader community of neoconservatives stand to
benefit but so do other members of the Kagan clan, including Robert’s
brother Frederick at the American Enterprise Institute and his wife
Kimberly, who runs her own shop called the Institute for the Study of
War.
Yet it weren’t for Nuland’s efforts as Assistant Secretary of State
for European Affairs, the Ukraine crisis might not exist. A neocon
holdover who advised Vice President Dick Cheney, Nuland gained
promotions under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and received
backing, too, from current Secretary of State John Kerry.
Confirmed to her present job in September 2013, Nuland soon undertook an extraordinary effort to promote “regime change”
in Ukraine. She personally urged on business leaders and political
activists to challenge elected President Viktor Yanukovych. She reminded
corporate executives that the United States had invested $5 billion in
their “European aspirations,” and she literally passed out cookies to
anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan square.
Working with other key neocons, including National Endowment for
Democracy President Carl Gershman and Sen. John McCain, Nuland made
clear that the United States would back a “regime change” against
Yanukovych, which grew more likely as neo-Nazi and other right-wing
militias poured into Kiev from western Ukraine.
In early February 2014, Nuland discussed U.S.-desired changes with
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (himself a veteran of a
“regime change” operation at the International Atomic Energy Agency,
helping to install U.S. yes man Yukiya Amano as the director-general in
2009).
Nuland treated her proposed new line-up of Ukrainian officials as if
she were trading baseball cards, casting aside some while valuing
others. “Yats is the guy,” she said of her favorite Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Disparaging the less aggressive European Union, she uttered “Fuck the
EU” – and brainstormed how she would “glue this thing” as Pyatt
pondered how to “mid-wife this thing.” Their unsecure phone call was intercepted and leaked.[….]
Though there was no evidence that Putin had instigated the Ukraine
crisis – and indeed all the evidence indicated the opposite – the State
Department peddled a propaganda theme to the credulous mainstream U.S.
news media about Putin having somehow orchestrated the situation in
Ukraine so he could begin invading Europe. Former Secretary of State
Clinton compared Putin to Adolf Hitler. [….]
Amid the barrage of “information warfare” aimed at both the U.S. and
world publics, a new Cold War took shape. Prominent neocons, including
Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New
American Century which masterminded the Iraq War, hammered home the
domestic theme that Obama had shown himself to be “weak,” thus inviting
Putin’s “aggression.”
In May 2014, Kagan published a lengthy essay in The New Republic
entitled “Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire,” in which Kagan castigated
Obama for failing to sustain American dominance in the world and
demanding a more muscular U.S. posture toward adversaries.
According to a New York Times article about how the essay
took shape and its aftermath, writer Jason Horowitz reported that Kagan
and Nuland shared a common world view as well as professional ambitions,
with Nuland editing Kagan’s articles, including the one tearing down
her ostensible boss.
Though Nuland wouldn’t comment specifically on her husband’s attack
on Obama, she indicated that she held similar views. “But suffice to
say,” Nuland said, “that nothing goes out of the house that I don’t
think is worthy of his talents. Let’s put it that way.”
Horowitz reported that Obama was so concerned about Kagan’s assault
that the President revised his commencement speech at West Point to
deflect some of the criticism and invited Kagan to lunch at the White
House, where one source told me that it was like “a meeting of equals.”
[See “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’”]
How to sink Minsk-2
And, whenever peace threatens to break out in Ukraine, Nuland jumps in to make sure that the interests of war are protected.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President
Francois Hollande hammered out a plan for a cease-fire and a political
settlement, known as Minsk-2, prompting Nuland to engage in more
behind-the-scenes maneuvering to sabotage the deal.
In another overheard conversation — in Munich, Germany — Nuland mocked the peace agreement as “Merkel’s Moscow thing,” according to the German newspaper Bild,
citing unnamed sources, likely from the German government which may
have bugged the conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel
and then leaked the details.
Picking up on Nuland’s contempt for Merkel, another U.S. official called the Minsk-2 deal the Europeans’ “Moscow bullshit.”
Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the
practical impact of the Ukraine war on Europe: “They’re afraid of damage
to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia.” According to the Bild
story, Nuland also laid out a strategy for countering Merkel’s
diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis.
“We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them,” Nuland reportedly said.
NATO Commander Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove was quoted as saying
that sending more weapons to the Ukrainian government would “raise the
battlefield cost for Putin.” Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians
present that “I’d strongly urge you to use the phrase ‘defensive
systems’ that we would deliver to oppose Putin’s ‘offensive systems.’”
Nuland sounded determined to sink the Merkel-Hollande peace
initiative even though it was arranged by two major U.S. allies and was
blessed by President Obama. And, this week, the deal seems indeed to
have been blown apart by Nuland’s hand-picked Prime Minister Yatsenyuk,
who inserted a poison pill into the legislation to implement the Minsk-2
political settlement.
The Ukrainian parliament in Kiev added a clause that, in effect,
requires the rebels to first surrender and let the Ukrainian government
organize elections before a federalized structure is determined. Minsk-2
had called for dialogue with the representatives of these rebellious
eastern territories en route to elections and establishment of broad
autonomy for the region.
Instead, reflecting Nuland’s hard-line position, Kiev refused to
talks with rebel leaders and insisted on establishing control over these
territories before the process can move forward. If the legislation
stands, the result will almost surely be a resumption of war between
military forces backed by nuclear-armed Russia and the United States, a
very dangerous development for the world. [See “Ukraine’s Poison Pill for Peace Talks.” ]
uprootedpalestinians | It’s interesting to take a look at the word “kagan” in terms
of its etymology. Is the word perhaps derived from another language? Did
its use originate in another country?
The answer to that is yes on both counts. The words comes
from Khazaria, a kingdom which once existed in what is today Ukraine and
which underwent a mass conversion to Judaism in about the 8th or 9th
century AD. Ashkenazi Jews today are descendents of the Khazars, and as I
discussed in an article I wrote last year, the leader or head of state of the Khazar kingdom was not referred to as a “king”, but rather as the “kagan.”
It’s just a little something I thought might interest readers.
In the post I put up yesterday, I mentioned that Robert Kagan
was one of the founders of the Project for a New American Century, a
group of neocons who organized themselves in 1997 and who are probably
most famous today for having composed a report entitled “Rebuilding
America’s Defenses.” That document envisioned a “new Pearl Harbor”
befalling the United States, and was released in September of 2000. One
year later 9/11 happened.
Kagan and William Kristol were the two co-founders of PNAC. You can go here
to see a list of others who have been involved with the organization.
Nuland’s husband is the only “Kagan” but other names on the list are
“Abrams,” “Cohen,” “Decter,” “Gaffney,” “Podhoretz,” and “Wolfowitz”–all
Jewish. That’s not to say there weren’t a few Gentiles in the merry
little klan. Jeb Bush and Dick Cheney are there as well.
Like Nuland, Elliot Abrams also seems to be cheer leading for war with Russia, as do Kristol, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, and Frank Gaffney.
These and others collectively are building a momentum toward war with
Russia, and President Obama seems for the most part to be going with the
flow.
It does seem very much as if America has a ruling class of
“Kagans.” And equally, it seems Obama either can’t or won’t stand up to
them. But then after all, they’re “kagans” and he’s only a “president.”
Below is an interesting little piece written by Kevin MacDonald and
posted last year on February 9, less than two weeks before Viktor
Yanukovych, the legitimate, democratically elected president of Ukraine,
was ousted from power.
Victoria Nuland’s Family Ties: The Permanent Government in Action
Intertwined Jewish power families are an important aspect of Jewish
history, cementing business relationships by creating networks of close
relatives who married only among themselves—e.g., the Court Jews of
17th- and 18th-century Europe (seehere, pp 150-152). We see echoes of that in the contemporary world, as among the neocons.
As with the other Jewish intellectual movements I have
studied, neoconservatives have a history of mutual admiration, close,
mutually supportive personal, professional, and familial relationships,
and focused cooperation in pursuit of common goals. For example, Norman
Podhoretz, the former editor ofCommentary,
is the father of John Podhoretz, a neoconservative editor and
columnist. Norman Podhoretz is also the father-in-law of Elliott Abrams,
the former head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (a
neoconservative think tank) and the director of Near Eastern affairs at
the National Security Council. Norman’s wife, Midge Decter, recently
published a hagiographic biography of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, whose number-two and number-three deputies at the Pentagon,
respectively, are Wolfowitz and Feith. Perle is a fellow at the AEI. He
originally helped Wolfowitz obtain a job with the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency in 1973. In 1982, Perle, as Deputy Secretary of
Defense for International Security Policy, hired Feith for a position as
his Special Counsel, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Negotiations Policy. In 2001, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz
helped Feith obtain an appointment as Undersecretary for Policy. Feith
then appointed Perle as chairman of the Defense Policy Board. This is
only the tip of a very large iceberg. “Neoconservatism as a Jewish movement” (p. 32)
Ethnic networking and ties cemented by marriage are on display in theflapover
Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s phone conversation with
Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. As VDARE’sSteve Sailerputs it, Nuland is a member of
a talented, energetic [Jewish] family that is part of the
Permanent Government of the United States. It doesn’t really matter who
wins the Presidential election: some Kagan-Nuland will be doing
something somewhere in your name and on your dime.
The Kagan connection is via her husband, Robert Kagan. As noted byYour Lying Eyes, “Robert and brotherFredseem
to have strategically implanted themselves in key policy-making
positions within the Democratic and Republican party apparatus. Robert
is embedded at Brookings, while Fred is ensconsed at AEI.”
So we have another Jewish neocon family tree, beginning
with Donald Kagan, a Yale historian whose history of the Peloponnesia
War has been used by neocons as a rationale for invasions of countries
Israel doesn’t like (see Sailer). Donald Kagan was also a signatory to a
2002 letter to George W. Bush put out by Bill Kristol’s Project for the
New American Century (PNAC) equating threats to Israel (Iran, Syria,
Iraq) with threats to the U.S.
The next generation, Fred Kagan (American Enterprise
Institute) and Robert Kagan (Brookings) are neocon stalwarts as well.
(E.g., Donald, Robert and Frederick are allsignatoriesto the neocon manifesto,Rebuilding America’s Defenses(2000),
put out by PNAC.) They and their wives, are all graduates of elite
universities and well entrenched in the neocon thinktank/government
infrastructure. Fred’s wifeKimberly(nee Kessler) is the head of the Institute for the Study of War and holds typical neocon positions.
And although U.S. policy toward Ukraine likely stems from other
issues besides the neocon hostility toward Russia (the latter due toissuessuch
as Putin’s crackdown on the oligarchs and Russia’s support of Israel’s
enemies, Iran and Syria), there be little doubt that Nuland’s energetic
support of the pro-EU opposition to the Yanukovych government dovetails
with the attitudes of her neocon network. Our Permanent Government at
work.
BAR | One of the most positive things to emerge from the Collective West's
war in Ukraine is that it helped to expose elements of the U.S. left
that have always had a soft, sentimental spot for the West. The
arrogance of these Westerners who signed on to this call for more war
(see below) is reflected in the fact that they don't even feel compelled
to explain how their morally superior commitment to Ukrainian
self-determination against "Putin's" war is reconciled with the various
statements from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former French
President Francois Hollande and before them, former Ukrainian president
Petro Poroshenko revealing that the Minsk agreement was just a delaying
tactic to prepare for war.
We ask the Network as we have been asking Zelensky and Biden, the
co-coordinators of the White Lives Matter More Movement, how this phase
of the conflict that started in 2014 became Putin’s war? Do we just
dismiss as Kremlin propaganda that the Russian Federation felt
threatened by what appeared to be the de-facto incorporation of Ukraine
into NATO as the Ukrainian army was built into the most formidable
fighting force in Europe outside of Russia?
Did the Russians not have any legitimate security concerns with NATO
missiles facing them from Romania and Poland, a mere six minutes away
from Moscow, and that Ukraine was also making a pitch for “defensive”
missiles in Ukraine? And how does the Network characterize the conflict
in Eastern Ukraine that started in 2014 and produced over 14,000 deaths
when the Ukrainian coup government attacked its own citizens, if the
current conflict started in February 2022? What happened to the fascist
issue in Ukraine that was written about for years but with even more
urgency after the coup in 2014? Did the Kremlin plant those stories in
the Western press?
We understand that these are questions that the organizers of the
Ukrainian Network will never answer because they do not have to. As
Westerners they can just postulate an assertion and it is accepted. The
Network and the Western bourgeoisie declare that the war in Ukraine is
Putin’s war and it becomes objective truth - because that is what the
West can do and can get away with. It’s called power – white power
perhaps?
The Ukrainian Solidarity Network is the ultimate expression of social
imperialism that has become so normalized in the U.S. and Western
Europe that it is no longer even recognized. An example from the
statement makes the argument that Ukraine has the “right to determine
the means and objectives of its own struggle.” That is a recognized left
position. But the social imperialists of the West do not extend that
principle and right to nations in the global South. In fact, we ask the
signers of this call to explain when the coup government of Ukraine
became the representatives of the Ukrainian nation and recognized the
sovereign will of the people?
Therefore, it is not a mere coincidence that the main signatories of
this Network statement pledging undying support to Ukraine and its
project, are also some of the same “left” forces in the forefront of
giving left legitimacy to the charge leveled by Western imperialism that
the struggling socialist oriented national liberationist states like
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia are nothing more than “authoritarian”
states more interested in power than socialist construction. Some of
those forces also cheered on the NATO attack against Libya, passionately
defended Western intervention in Syria and have been silent on Western
plans to violently invade Haiti.
For the contemporary neocons in the leadership of the Ukrainian
network, their commitment to abstract principles, and certainty that
they know more than everyone else, objectively place them in the same
ideological camp with Obama, Biden, NATO strategists, the Zelensky
clown, and Boris Johnson. But they will argue that their positions are
different, since they represent something they call the left.
For a number of individuals who signed on to this pro-Western,
pro-war letter, they are in a familiar place. However, I suspect a few
of the individuals on that list were probably confused or not paying
attention, not thinking about who they would be affiliated with when
they signed on.
That of course, is not the case for some of the key supporters of
this initiative. Individuals like the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins, Eric
Draitser of Counterpunch, and Bill Fletcher who normally I would not
name specifically but because these individuals and the tendency they
represent embody the worst of the arrogant, Western left that in so many
cases (not all) objectively provides ideological cover ( rightism with
left phraseology) for the imperialist program of Western capital - they
should not be allowed continued left respectability without challenge.
These individuals certainly have not hesitated in offering criticisms
of those of us who never wavered from our strategic priority to defeat
our primary enemy - the Western white supremacist colonial/capitalist
patriarchy. For us everything else represents secondary contradictions
at this specific historical moment. And is why we reject the arguments
these forces advance about fighting dual imperialisms as
anti-dialectical nonsense and a political cover.
BAR | As the Left in the US struggles to hold to a clear ideological line
against the US empire in its proxy war using Ukraine against Russia, the
understanding of how this conflict arose has been lost amid the
discourse of needing to either present a “balanced” view of the
conflict, or to accuse anti-imperialists who indicate US/EU/NATO’s
complicity, as “Putin’s apologists.” This kind of mealy-mouthed,
spineless analysis is expected from those who always support the empire
and its bloody deeds. But these days, more and more of this criticism of
anti-imperialists is coming from some of the so-called US left. This
group is engaged in a bizarre public display of supporting Ukraine, a
display that defies logic and the facts surrounding the conflict.
As an example, the Ukraine Solidarity Network
was created by Howie Hawkins, one-time Green Party presidential
candidate and alleged leftist, and has been signed onto by dozens of
people who are prominent in some way in US progressive politics. Among
the Network’s absurd positions are their demand for reparations for the
people of Ukraine, their support for Ukraine’s right to receive as many
arms as they can without question or strings attached, and their demand
for the IMF to cancel Ukraine's debts.
Are these demands made on any basis of fact? No. When you consider
that information about actual events that led up to this conflict are
easily located with the most cursory search, there is no way that anyone
can conclude that Ukraine is the victim of some terrible crime
committed by Russia, let alone that they are owed reparations and
deserve all the weapons they could want to fight them.
What’s more, the paper trail that documents the lead-up to this
conflict includes sources that are the publications of the empire,
so-called mainstream, sources that are neither left-leaning nor anti-war
in any substantive way. This, I believe, lends a level of credibility
to their documentation that some would easily dismiss as “biased” if it
were provided in left-leaning sources.
For example, if members of the Ukraine Solidarity Networkhad bothered to look, they could have found this February 24, 2022 article from the Yale MacMillan Center, which details the scuttled negotiations to completely avoid the conflict in Ukraine.
The article pointedly notes that:
“More than anything else, it was the refusal of Ukraine to
implement the provisions of Minsk 2 – especially the provision that
would give the predominantly Russian-speaking regions a special
constitutional status – that caused Russia to threaten military action
against Ukraine. Time after time in recent weeks, Putin and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov made it clear in meetings and press
conferences that the key to resolving the situation in and around
Ukraine was the full implementation of Minsk 2.”
An unprovoked attack on Ukraine? Even the empire admits that this is
not true, and goes further to document that the conflict could have been
avoided entirely had Ukraine simply adhered to the agreement they
signed. Furthermore, the same article confirms that the civil war
between Kiyv and those Russian-speaking regions in Ukraine - Donbas and
Luhansk - that began in 2014 was also an important factor in this
current conflict, as more than 700,000 of the people in those regions
were granted Russian citizenship while they “...for eight years now,
have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev (Kyiv
in Ukrainian) regime.”
If the Yale MacMillan Center can acknowledge the centrality of these
issues to this currency conflict, how is that these Latte Leftists
dismiss them as insignificant?
But why did Ukraine refuse to adhere to the agreements, one might
ask? This is actually an important piece of information that also has a
very clear answer if anyone is interested in knowing it. An article in Modern Diplomacy
reveals that, at least according to the former Chancellor of Germany
Angele Merkel, the leaders who signed onto the Minsk Accords who were
not representing Russia (the leaders of Germany, France, and Ukraine) never had any intention of adhering to the agreements,
as they were just a ploy to “...buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this
time to become stronger, as you can see today,” Merkel said, “Ukraine
in 2014-2015 and Ukraine today are not the same.”
BAR | I think that President Obama’s attempt to destabilize Russia will be
seen by history as disastrous as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Like the Iraq war, the de facto declaration of “war by other
means” against Russia will accelerate the very dynamic that it intends
to halt: the steady weakening of U.S. imperialism’s grip on the world.
It will increase the resolve of a host of nations to disengage
themselves from American madness and to strengthen collaboration and
cooperation among many countries, and not just Russia and China.
The result will be the exact opposite of Washington’s intention. The
attempt to isolate and destabilize Russia, the other nuclear superpower,
may appear to some to be an act of brashness, a flexing of American
muscle, an act of imperial overconfidence and recklessness. People
thought the same thing when Bush went into Iraq. They were shocked and
more than a little bit awed. [1] In
fact, sometimes I think that Americans are more shocked and awed by the
American military than anybody else. But the Iraq invasion, and the
brazen offensive against Russia, as well as the so-called “Pivot Against
China” and the octopus-like U.S. military entrenchment in Africa —
these are really symptoms of weakness and desperation.
U.S. Imperialism is losing its grip on the world and responds to its
weakening condition with massive campaigns of destabilization.
Destabilization characterizes U.S. foreign policy today more than any
other word. The purpose is to reverse the general dynamic of global
affairs today in which U.S. influence and power shrinks in relative
terms as the rest of the world develops. U.S. and European hegemony —
and that is the ability to dictate the terms of economic and political
life on the planet — has daily diminished in myriad objective ways, ways
that we can measure by the numbers. China’s soon-to-be status as the
world’s biggest economy is just one aspect of that decline.
The process is inexorable and it’s gaining momentum. The trajectory
of imperial decline has been firmly set ever since the Western
capitalists decided to move the production of things — that, is the
industrial base — to the South and the rest of the planet. Inevitably
power and influence follow and imperial hegemony diminishes. This is of
course unacceptable to the rulers of the United States who now find
themselves in objective opposition to all manifestations of
collaboration and mutual development under terms that are not dictated
by Washington. They are in objective opposition to all manifestations of
independence by countries in the world. This applies not just to China,
not just to China and Russia, but to the rest of the BRICS and to other
developing nations. And it even applies to America’s closest allies.
That is because hegemons don’t really have allies. All they have are
subordinates, and so the U.S. is quite prepared to do serious harm to
European economic interests by pressuring them to break long established
economic ties to Russia. They will ultimately do the same thing in the
pacific region with China and cause great destabilization there. They do
so not because of strength but because of growing relative weakness.
Their desperation compels them to risk war because their only clear
superiority is in weapons.
However, the net end result, if we survive these flirtations with
all-out war, can only be further isolation of the United States and the
further weakening of imperialism. I think there is on what passes for
the left in the United States a tendency to describe U.S. aggressions
like the Iraq war, like the current offensive against Russia, as
mistakes and miscalculations: “They didn’t mean to do that.”
In reality the U.S. goes to the brink and beyond the brink of war
because it perceives itself as having no other choice. Its soft power is
fading. It has few other means beyond the military to strategically
influence events. It recruits or buys allies where it can get them, be
it jihadists or Nazis. As imperialism’s sway in the world shrinks, so do
its options.
eurojewcong | The European Jewish Congress has expressed its shock and concern
following comments today by Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov comparing Western governments’ support for Ukraine to Hitler’s
Final Solution which resulted in the murder of six million Jews in the
Shoah.
Lavrov claimed on Wednesday that the United States had put together a
coalition of European states to solve the “Russian question” in the
same way that Hitler had organised a Final Solution for Europe’s Jews.
“We are shocked and appalled by this shameful comparison drawn by
Minister Lavrov between the actions of a coalition of democratic
countries and Hitler’s persecution and murder of six million Jews in the
Shoah,” EJC President Ariel Muzicant said.
“This is Holocaust distortion at its most basic level and we call on
Mr. Lavrov to unequivocably apologise and withdraw these comments,” he
added.
Mr. Lavrov claimed the West is “waging war against our country with the same task: the “Final Solution” of the Russian question.
“This is not the first time the minister has used Holocaust
equivalence and Hitler references,” Musicant pointed out. “This must
stop. As we mark in the coming days International Holocaust Remembrance
Day, the day that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the memory of
Holocaust victims must never be used in such an appalling manner.”
mid.ru | I will not speak now
about the West’s actions in other geopolitical areas. Today we regard
the policies of the US and the West as a whole as the main problem
creating difficulties in all areas. In short, this is what it means.
Washington’s policy of dictate in international affairs means precisely
that the Americans can do anything anywhere they want, even at the other
end of the Earth. They do what they think is necessary. All other
countries cannot do anything without the US’s approval, even in response
to direct security threats the US creates on their borders.
Like
Napoleon, who mobilised nearly all of Europe against the Russian Empire,
and Hitler, who occupied the majority of European countries and hurled
them at the Soviet Union, the United States has created a coalition of
nearly all European member states of NATO and the EU and is using
Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia with the old aim of finally
solving the “Russian question,” like Hitler, who sought a final solution
to the “Jewish question.”
Western
politicians – not only from the Baltics and Poland but also from more
reasonable countries – say that Russia must be dealt a strategic defeat.
Some political analysts write about decolonising Russia, that our
country is too big and “gets in the way.” The other day I read an item
in The Telegraph that called for liberating Abkhazia, South Ossetia and
Transnistria, while leaving Karelia, Koenigsberg and the Kuril Islands
for negotiations. Of course, it is a tabloid, but we have to read yellow
sheets because they sometimes make headline news.
Quite a few
such statements have been made, including in our non-system opposition.
No Western politician has refuted them. President of France Emmanuel
Macron, who proposed creating a European Political Community as a format
which all European countries apart from Russia and Belarus will be
invited to join, has also suggested convening a conference of European
states. He suggested that it should be open for the EU member states,
Eastern Partnership countries (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), as well
as Moldova and Ukraine. I doubt that Belarus will be invited. The
potential participants as the EU states and Eastern Partnership
countries, plus – note this - politically active emigres from Russia. It
has been said (not in Macron’s presentation but in subsequent comments)
that some Russian regions, which are trying to maintain ties with
Europe, could be invited as well. I believe that everything is clear. It
is not a black-and-white situation, contrary to what our Western
colleagues claim; it reflects their strategy of global domination and
unconditional suppression of all countries on pain of punishment.
The Western
politicians are talking only about sanctions. Ursula von der Leyen has
recently said in Davos that new sanctions will be imposed on Russia and
Belarus, that they know which sanctions to adopt to strangle the Russian
economy and cause it decades of regression. This is what they want.
They have shown their true colours. For many years, UN Security Council
members discussed sanctions against countries that violated
international law or their obligations. And every time the Western
countries that initiated such measures promised that the sanctions would
not harm the people but would be targeted at the “regime.” What became
of their promises?
They openly
say that sanctions against Russia are designed to incite the people to
rise in a revolution to overthrow the current leaders. Nobody is
observing or intends to observe proprieties any longer. But their
reaction and frenzied attempts to ensure, by hook or by crook, by any
foul means possible, the domination of the US and the West, which
Washington has already brought to heel, is proof that, historically,
they are acting contrary to the objective course of events by trying to
stop the rise of a multipolar world. Such change does not happen on
orders from the high offices on the Potomac or in any other capital, but
for natural reasons.
theatlantic | This Russian propaganda has been
amplified and endorsed by an unusual assortment of people in the United
States, including the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs.
The propaganda absolves Russia, blames the United States for the war,
and has four main tenets: first, that a long-standing American effort to
bring Ukraine into NATO poses a grave threat to Russian security.
Second, that American shipments of weapons to Ukraine have prolonged the
fighting and caused needless suffering among civilians. Third, that
American support for Ukraine is just a pretext for seeking the
destruction of Russia. And, finally, that American policies could soon
prove responsible for causing an all-out nuclear war.
Those
arguments are based on lies. They are being spread to justify Russia’s
unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to seize territory from a
neighboring state. Concerns about a possible nuclear exchange have thus
far deterred the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with the
tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles that might change the course of
the war. If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads
to the defeat of Ukraine, Russia may use them to coerce other states.
Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become
commonplace. Nuclear weapons would no longer be regarded solely as a
deterrent of last resort; the nine
countries that possess them would gain even greater influence;
countries that lack them would seek to obtain them; and the global risk
of devastating wars would increase exponentially.
That is why the greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory in Ukraine.
Russia has about 6,000
nuclear weapons, more than any other country, and for years Putin has
portrayed them as a source of national pride. His warnings about their
possible use during the war in Ukraine have been coy and often
contradictory. “If the territorial integrity of our country is
threatened,” Putin said in September, “we will without doubt use all
available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff.”
His vow to rely on nuclear weapons only as a defensive measure conveys
an underlying threat: An attempt to regain Ukrainian land annexed by
Russia and deemed by Putin to be part of “our country” might prompt a
nuclear response. He also asserted that the United States and NATO are
the ones engaging in “nuclear blackmail,” and that “those who try to
blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can
turn and point towards them.” In October, he claimed that Ukraine was
planning to launch a nuclear strike on itself—by detonating a warhead
filled with radioactive waste—as part of a false-flag operation to make
Russia seem responsible. In December, Putin said that the risk of a
nuclear war was increasing but suggested once again that the real danger
did not come from Russia. “We have not gone crazy,” he said. “We are aware what nuclear weapons are … We are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”
Although
Putin’s comments have been subtle and open to multiple interpretations,
the propaganda outlets that he controls have been neither. For almost a
year, they have continually threatened and celebrated the possibility
of nuclear war. This division of labor allows Putin to appear
statesmanlike while his underlings stoke fear and normalize the idea of
using nuclear weapons to commit the mass murder of civilians. Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast,
and Francis Scarr, a BBC correspondent, have performed an immense
public service: supplying translations of the vicious, apocalyptic,
often unhinged rants that have become the norm on Russian television.
“Either we lose in Ukraine, or the Third World War starts,” Margarita
Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today and a close ally of
Putin’s, said
in April. “I think World War III is more realistic, knowing us, knowing
our leader … That all this will end with a nuclear strike seems more
probable to me.” At various times, Simonyan has discussed nuclear
attacks on Ukraine, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, arguing that death would be better than succumbing to “the monstrous organism known as the collective Western world.”
Vladimir
Solovyov, another popular broadcaster who is close to Putin, routinely
expresses a preference for nuclear annihilation over a Russian defeat.
The invitation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to the
White House and the U.S. Capitol in December made Solovyov especially
angry. “We’ll either win, or humanity will cease to exist, because the
Lord won’t stand for the triumph of warriors of the Antichrist,” he said,
repeating the new propaganda line that Ukrainians aren’t just Nazis;
they’re satanists. “We are Russians. God is with us,” he concluded.
Despite his professed hatred for ungodly Western decadence, before the
invasion of Ukraine Solovyov owned villas overlooking Lake Como, in
Italy.
I will answer you all, my faithful followers, what
happened today in Brovary. The Minister of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs of Ukraine has long known that the leadership of the Ministry of
Defense is selling Western weapons that come to Ukraine in the form of
assistance in favor of third countries, and this process is directly
supervised by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate Budanov. By
the way, this information has already surfaced somewhere. The leadership
of the Ministry of Internal Affairs wanted their share and began to
collect data through their structural units, which are associated with
intelligence and outdoors. As a result of this, they managed to obtain
evidence and blackmail began. The military commanders promised a share
to the police leadership and the first tranche was paid. But it was
pointless and unprofitable to pay further. Plus, the audacity of the
Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who climbed into the wrong
garden, strained the military elite. And today the day has come when
the guys from the GUR were able to demonstrate their skills. But that’s
not all. The sanction for this was personally given by Yermak, who is
also in the subject in secret from the supreme narcissistic clown
Zelebobik.
Reports say the chopper was on fire before it crashed into a kindergarten yard, suggesting a manpad or AD hit.
BBC |The
three main figures in Ukraine's interior ministry have been killed in a
helicopter crash beside a nursery in an eastern suburb of the capital
Kyiv.
Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, 42, died alongside his first deputy minister and state secretary.
Fourteen
people died when the helicopter came down in Brovary around 08:30 local
time (06:30 GMT), including one child, authorities said.
There is no indication the crash was anything other than an accident.
But
the SBU state security service said it was following several possible
causes for the crash, which included sabotage as well as a technical
malfunction or breach of flight rules.
The helicopter came down near a kindergarten building which was left badly damaged and blackened by smoke.
The
State Emergency Service had previously stated that up to 18 people were
killed but later revised the death toll from the crash, saying 14 had
died.
Mr
Monastyrsky, who was one of President Volodymyr Zelensky's longest
serving political advisers, is the highest profile Ukrainian casualty
since the war began.
The
deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said
the minister had been travelling to a war "hot spot" when his helicopter
went down.
The
head of police in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Volodymyr
Tymoshko, said the ministerial team were on their way to meet him there
and he had spoken to them only yesterday.
The
minister's death cuts to the heart of the government in Kyiv as the
interior ministry has the vital task of maintaining security and running
the police during the war.
Appearing
via video-link at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Zelensky
asked leaders to observe a minute of silence for the lives lost in the
helicopter crash, and later added "there are no accidents at war time.
These are all war results absolutely."
The Ukrainian president added that he was not concerned for his own safety.
The
head of Ukraine's national police force, Ihor Klymenko, has been
appointed acting interior minister following Mr Monastyrsky's death.
theguardian | A Ukrainian presidential adviser has resigned
after causing widespread anger when he suggested a Russian missile that
killed dozens had been shot down by Ukraine.
In comments to a YouTube channel , hours after the attack, Oleksiy
Arestovych said the rocket had detonated after it had been downed by
Ukrainian air defence forces.
“The rocket was shot down, it fell on the driveway, it exploded when it fell,” he told Feigin Live.
Hundreds
of Ukrainian members of civil society and several prominent figures
took to social media in the days afterwards, demanding the presidential
administration sack Arestovych for making unverified statements. They
said the comments aided Russian propaganda, which frequently portrays
attacks as the fault of Ukraine’s armed forces.
In
a statement, which did not address the remarks directly, Ukraine’s air
defence forces said they did not currently have the technological
capabilities to detect or shoot down ballistic missiles.
Arestovych refused to apologise for two days,
blaming tiredness and stating that it was “one theory” put forward by a
friend who happened to be near the scene. Then on Tuesday, Arestovych
published a picture of his resignation letter on Facebook, stating that
it was “an example of civilised behaviour” in light of his “fundamental
mistake”.
A spokesperson for the president
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Serhiy Nykoforov, confirmed that the resignation
had been accepted. The former actor and politician was appointed as a
freelance, non-staff adviser to the presidential administration in 2020.
thehill | The White House is once again struggling with its messaging, this
time on the discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s
time as vice president, where administration officials have sought to
minimize the damage due to the revelation but have struggled to address
it cohesively.
Democrats, meanwhile, have had scattered reactions, ranging from
praising the Biden administration over its cooperation with the
Department of Justice (DOJ) and National Archives to suggesting a
congressional review of the materials over national security concerns.
Others have acknowledged what a political headache it has become for the
president.
The disjointed responses are in part a reflection of mixed messaging
by the White House, including when it prematurely told reporters last
week that a search of classified documents potentially kept by Biden was
“complete” before the administration said days later that more
documents were found.
Officials have been adamant that they are limited in how much they
can say about the discovery of the documents, what’s in them and when
the president was informed of the situation, citing an ongoing Justice
Department investigation and the appointment of a special counsel by
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was chosen by Biden to lead the
agency.
“We understand that there’s a tension between the need to be
cooperative with an ongoing DOJ investigation and rightful demands for
additional public information. And so we’re trying to strike that
balance and being as clear as we can,” Ian Sams, a White House
spokesperson for investigations, told reporters on Tuesday.
Addressing the matter to the public has largely been left to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre,
who has at times sparred with reporters over questions about why the
White House didn’t reveal the discovery when it was made in November,
when Biden learned of it and whether any other searches were underway.
On Thursday, Jean-Pierre said that “you should assume that it’s been
completed, yes” in response to a question about a second set of
documents that turned up at Biden’s home in Delaware, including in his
garage. But on Saturday, the White House acknowledged that five more
classified documents had been found at Biden’s home — the first time it
was the administration, not a news report, that revealed a discovery.
When questioned on Tuesday over whether she’s being directed to not
be forthcoming, Jean-Pierre said that she knew as much as the press did
at the end of last week, before the next discovery was revealed on
Saturday.
She also pushed back when asked if she’s upset that she came out to
the briefing on Friday with incomplete and inaccurate information.
“Well, what I’m concerned about is making sure that we do not
politically interfere in the Department of Justice, that we continue to
be consistent over the last two years. And that is continue to refer you
all when it comes to an ongoing process,” she said.
Jean-Pierre also added that she and other members of the press office
found out about the documents in Biden’s office in Washington in
November when CBS broke the news last week. The press secretary has also
faced questions about whether the White House would have disclosed the
findings at all if not for the CBS report.
Nobody’s blackmailing Biden to escalate in Ukraine. Ukraine has been his project going back to 2008 (and his time on the Senate Intelligence Committee likely pushes it further back). Ukraine is his personal project. His favorites from the Clinton State Department that assisted him back then all got nice promotions in his administration. The whole reason he ran in 2020 was to execute the Ukraine plan because Trump had messed it up and nobody in the field was going to be reliable enough to really run with it. Old Cornpop's a violent and angry man. He wanted more war in Yugoslavia, he was all in on Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the Spring he was publicly talking about bringing down Putin as well as informing enlisted soldiers in Poland that they’d be in Ukraine soon. If anything, people are holding Joe back. Consider the documents could be used to get Joe out of the way because Ukraine can’t be wound down as long as he’s POTUS. Per his autobiography, as a freshman senator in the mid 70s, he was introduced to the opportunities of southeast Europe by his mentor, Averell Harriman.
amgreatness |Biden and his allies have continued their vendetta against Trump, exposing his tax returns andraiding his home
for possessing documents he supposedly owed the National Archives. This
did not go over as well as Attorney General (and all-around hack)
Merrick Garland anticipated, and it seemsGarland and theJanuary 6 Committee have each decided to scale back their demands.
This is why the recent exposure of top secretdocuments in Biden’s old office, his garage, and a mysteriousthird location
suggests something is afoot. We went from a Monday disclosure to a
special counsel being appointed on Thursday. Nothing like this happens
this quickly unless it is by design.
There are, of course, ways to deal
with this situation that do not involve public exposure. Couldn’t Biden
or his staff order some FBI agents or White House people to pick them up
and take them to wherever they’re supposed to be stored?
It’s in the news because somehow his lawyers found the documents and reported them
before the story could go through White House channels. And, lawyers
being lawyers, they followed the street-lawyer rule that if someone has
to go to jail, make sure it’s your client and not you. Concerned about
individual culpability for obstruction or mishandling documents, they
made this hot potato someone else’s problem as fast as possible.
Someone is responsible for the way
this information came out, and that someone is an enemy of Biden. There
are plenty of possibilities: some secret Republicans at the Justice
Department, Kamala Harris and her people, a committee of Democratic
Party insiders concerned about Dementia Joe being president for another
four years. The whole thing has a whiff of a conspiracy, and, like the
various allegations and pretexts employed to investigate Trump, it may
very well originate in the intelligence community.
As Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) oncesaid,
“You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday
at getting back at you.” In this instance, the hypothesis is not
completely satisfying. Biden has not really taken on the intelligence
community, so far as I can tell, unless they’re still smarting about how
he ended the Afghanistan boondoggle.
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