What Will It Take To Get MAGA To Open Fire?

I have a weird feeling about Mitch McConnell stepping down today pic.twitter.com/GSYhH6G2ll

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 29, 2024

This Is Why MTG Needs To Slap The Taste Out Of Chuck Schumer's Mouth

 

I hope everyone appreciates what this means. The CIA disclosed highly classified intelligence to hand-picked journos in order to fight a PR war against Republicans in Congress who want to scale back Ukraine war funding.

The CIA is literally unleashed on Republicans in Congress. https://t.co/bt9DzmajQA

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 28, 2024

Lil' Buckwheat's Capacity To Lie On The Fly No Longer Up To Cornpop Standards....,

dailycaller  |  Karine Jean-Pierre has turned over her spotlight to Admiral John Kirby in an “unprecedented” way as the White House barrels toward a pivotal election season, a Daily Caller review of briefing data reveals.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Kirby has been a mainstay at briefings alongside Jean-Pierre to answer reporters’ questions about the foreign conflict. Though Americans have indicated the war is not their top concern, Kirby has remained at the briefings — only missing three since the start of the year through Oct. 7. Of the briefings he has attended in 2024, 19 out of the 22 total held, Kirby has fielded questions for almost the exact same amount of time as Jean-Pierre.

As of Feb. 27, Jean-Pierre has spent about 11 hours and 31 minutes at the White House press briefing podium this year across 22 briefings. Kirby has answered questions for just under nine hours and two minutes in 19 briefings. In those 19 briefings when Kirby and Jean-Pierre were together, the press secretary spoke for just shy of nine hours and 11 minutes — almost a perfect fifty-fifty split with her counterpart.

“There is no precedent for this. Press secretaries always bring guests, right. It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have the OMB [the Office of Management and Budget] guys brief you on the budget and talk to you about that.’ That’s normal,” Sean Spicer, one-time press secretary for former President Donald Trump, told the Daily Caller. “That’s as old as the job. But this idea that you have a co-press secretary is unprecedented.”

Some other names have made appearances at briefings and gaggles, either alongside Jean-Pierre or Kirby: deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, White House spokesman for oversight and investigations Ian Sams and a few other policy-specific officials from the administration.

But none have appeared nearly as often as Kirby, who Jean-Pierre was reportedly concerned might usurp her as press secretary when she first got the job. Biden “awkwardly” added that Kirby would be joining Jean-Pierre’s team when the president gave her the press secretary position in 2022, leaving her “upset and confused,” according to Axios.

Jean-Pierre’s appointment was lauded as historic and powerful when she got the job — she’s the first black press secretary, and is also a lesbian woman of immigrant parents. From the beginning, things have reportedly been rocky, though — Biden also allegedly said that Jean-Pierre didn’t need to worry because she’d “have an admiral looking over your shoulder,” a comment that was not received well by the new press secretary.

Amid the tension between Kirby and Jean-Pierre, the latter’s top deputy, Dalton, is reportedly ditching the White House for a gig at Apple.

That leaves a clear path to the top job for Kirby. He has told some around the White House he’s interested in the position, according to Axios, but other White House officials denied those accounts.

When it comes to gaggles, Kirby has appeared at more as of late, speaking at seven of them between the start of the year and Feb. 16 for a total of more than an hour and seven minutes. The pair has attended four gaggles together, with Jean-Pierre answering questions for more than 41 minutes.

“I don’t think the dynamic is awkward to begin with. I think they did it under the presence, under the guise of national security and foreign affairs. But the reality is, Kirby has really taken over a lot more, for obvious reasons,” Spicer said. “The press secretary should be able to handle all of the issues and it’s pretty obvious that there’s a level of competence that just doesn’t exist.”

 

 

The Times Article Was Authorized By The CIA

scheerpost  |  The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of what purports to be the history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present.  The story, “The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” is one of initial bilateral distrust, but a mutual fear and hatred of Russia, that progresses to a relationship so intimate that Ukraine is now one of the CIA’s closest intelligence partners in the world.  

At the same time, the Times’ publication of the piece, which reporters claimed relied on more than 200 interviews in Ukraine, the US, and “several European countries,” raises multiple questions:  Why did the CIA not object to the article’s publication, especially with it being in one of the Agency’s preferred outlets?  When the CIA approaches a newspaper to complain about the classified information it contains, the piece is almost always killed or severely edited.  Newspaper publishers are patriots, after all.  Right?  

Was the article published because the CIA wanted the news out there?  Perhaps more important was the point of the article to influence the Congressional budget deliberations on aid to Ukraine?  After all, was the article really just meant to brag about how great the CIA is?  Or was it to warn Congressional appropriators, “Look how much we’ve accomplished to confront the Russian bear.  You wouldn’t really let it all go to waste, would you?”

The Times’ article has all the hallmarks of a deep, inside look at a sensitive—possibly classified—subject.  It goes into depth on one of the intelligence community’s Holy of Holies, an intelligence liaison relationship, something that no intelligence officer is ever supposed to discuss.  But in the end, it really isn’t so sensitive.  It doesn’t tell us anything that every American hasn’t already assumed.  Maybe we hadn’t had it spelled out in print before, but we all believed that the CIA was helping Ukraine fight the Russians.  We had already seen reporting that the CIA had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine and that the U.S. government was training Ukrainian special forces and Ukrainian pilots, so there’s nothing new there.  

The article goes a little further in detail, although, again, without providing anything that might endanger sources and methods.  For example, it tells us that:

• There is a CIA listening post in the forest along the Russian border, one of 12 “secret” bases the US maintains there.  One or more of these posts helped to prove Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.  That’s great.  But the revelation exposes no secrets and tells us nothing new.
• Ukrainian intelligence officials helped the Americans “go after” the Russian operatives “who meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.”  I have a news flash for the New York Times: The Mueller report found that there was no meaningful Russian meddling in the 2016 election.  And what does “go after” mean?
• Beginning in 2016, the CIA trained an “elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245, which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems.”  This is exactly what the CIA is supposed to do.  Honestly, if the CIA hadn’t been doing this, I would have suggested a class action lawsuit for the American people to get their tax money back.  Besides, the CIA has been doing things like this for decades.  The CIA was able to obtain important components of Soviet tactical weapons from ostensibly pro-Soviet Romania in the 1970s.
• Ukraine has turned into an intelligence-gathering hub that has intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kiev could initially handle.  Again, I would expect nothing less.  After all, that’s where the war is.  So of course, communications will be intercepted there.  As to the CIA station being overwhelmed, the Times never tells us if that is because the station was a one-man operation at the time or whether it had thousands of employees and was still overwhelmed.  It’s all about scale.
• And lest you think that the CIA and the U.S. government were on the offensive in Ukraine, the article makes clear that, “Mr. Putin and his advisers misread a critical dynamic.  The CIA didn’t push its way into Ukraine.  U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.”

It’s at this point in the article that the Times reveals what I believe to be the buried lead: “Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines.  And they are increasingly at risk: “If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”  (Emphasis mine.)

Why Did The NYTimes Report On CIA Operations In Ukraine?

scheerpost  |  We can start, logically enough, with that desperation evident among those dedicated to prolonging the war. The outcome of the war, in my read and in the view of various military analysts, does not depend on the $61 billion in aid that now hangs in the balance. But the Biden regime seems to think it does, or pretends to think it does. The Times’s most immediate intent, so far as one can make out from the piece, is to add what degree of urgency it can to this question.

Entous and Schwirtz report that the people running Ukrainian intelligence are nervous that without a House vote releasing new funds “the CIA will abandon them.” Good enough that it boosts the case to cite nervous Ukrainians, but we should recognize that this is a misapprehension. The CIA has a very large budget entirely independent of what Congress votes one way or another. William Burns, the CIA director, traveled to Kyiv two weeks ago to reassure his counterparts that “the U.S. commitment will continue,” as Entous and Schwirtz quote him saying. This is perfectly true, assuming Burns referred to the agency’s commitment.

More broadly, The Times piece appears amid flagging enthusiasm for the Ukraine project. And it is in this circumstance that Entous and Schwirtz went long on the benefits accruing to the CIA in consequence of its presence on the ground in Ukraine. But read these two reporters carefully: They, or whoever put their piece in its final shape, make it clear that the agency’s operations on Ukrainian soil count first and most as a contribution to Washington’s long campaign to undermine the Russian Federation. This is not about Ukrainian democracy, that figment of neoliberal propagandists. It is about Cold War II, plain and simple. It is time to reinvigorate the old Russophobia, thus—and hence all the baloney about Russians corrupting elections and so on. It is all there for a reason.  

To gather these thoughts and summarize, This piece is not journalism and should not be read as such. Neither do Entous and Schwirtz serve as journalists. They are clerks of the governing class pretending to be journalists while they post notices on a bulletin board that pretends to be a newspaper.

■

Let’s dolly out to put this piece in its historical context and consider the implications of its appearance in the once-but-fallen newspaper of record. Let’s think about the early 1970s, when it first began to emerge that the CIA had compromised the American media  and broadcasters.

Jack Anderson, the admirably iconoclastic columnist, lifted the lid on the agency’s infiltration of the media by way of a passing mention of a corrupted correspondent in 1973. A year later a former Los Angeles Times correspondent named Stuart Loory published the first extensive exploration of relations between the CIA and the media in the Columbia Journalism Review. Then, in 1976, the Church Committee opened its famous hearings in the Senate. It took up all sorts of agency malfeasance—assassinations, coups, illegal covert ops. Its intent was also to disrupt the agency’s misuse of American media and restore the latter to their independence and integrity.

The Church Committee is still widely remembered for getting its job done. But it never did. A year after Church produced its six-volume report, Rolling Stone published “The CIA and the Media,” Carl Bernstein’s well-known piece. Bernstein went considerably beyond the Church Committee, demonstrating that it pulled its punches rather than pull the plug on the CIA’s intrusions in the media. Faced with the prospect of forcing the CIA to sever all covert ties with the media, a senator Bernstein did not name remarked, “We just weren’t ready to take that step.”

We should read The Times’s piece on the righteousness of the CIA’s activities in Ukraine—bearing in mind the self-evident cooperation between the agency and the newspaper—with this history in mind.

America was just emerging from the disgraces of the McCarthyist period when Stuart Loory opened the door on this question, the Church Committee convened, and Carl Bernstein filled in the blanks. In and out of the profession there was disgust at the covert relationship between media and the spooks. Now look. What was then viewed as top-to-bottom objectionable is now routinized. It is “as usual.” In my read this is one consequence among many of the Russiagate years: They again plunged Americans and their mainstream media into the same paranoia that produced the corruptions of the 1950s and 1960s.

Alas, the scars of the swoon we call Russiagate are many and run deep

Schumer Making Threats Again "Fund Ukraine Or You'll Be Sorry!"

WSJ  |  Democratic and Republican congressional leaders struck an optimistic tone that they would avert a government shutdown this weekend after a White House meeting in which lawmakers also stepped up pressure on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) to allow a long-stalled vote on Ukraine aid to go forward. 

Johnson is expected to put forward legislation in coming days that would keep the government fully open, but the details remained uncertain. The Congress has until Saturday at 12:01 a.m. to fund the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Agriculture, Energy and several other agencies that have been operating on temporary extensions since Sept. 30. The funding for the rest of the federal government expires after March 8.

The main holdup has been in the Republican-led House, where Johnson is managing a rowdy GOP conference that has taken a hard line on spending and is increasingly skeptical of foreign aid, even as the Democratic-controlled Senate has been ready for months to move forward.

Emerging from the meeting, Johnson said he was “very optimistic” about government- funding talks. Leaders think “we can get to agreement on these issues and prevent a government shutdown,” he said. He didn’t take questions. 

The other congressional leaders at the sit-down—Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D., N.Y.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.)—also sounded upbeat about avoiding a shutdown. 

“We are making good progress,” said Schumer, adding there was some “back and forth on some issues that different people want.” But he said, “I don’t think those are insurmountable.” He indicated that the most likely path was a short-term spending patch to give negotiators more time to complete the full fiscal-year bills. 

McConnell said everyone was on the same page regarding the need to keep the government funded. “I think we can stop that drama right now before it emerges,” he said.

The leaders sat down in the Oval Office, with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris positioned in armchairs near a crackling fire. Congressional leaders sat on sofas arranged around a coffee table.

Those gathered for the meeting, including McConnell, pressed Johnson to allow a House vote on a Ukraine aid package. Central Intelligence Agency Director William J. Burns gave a presentation laying out the difficult conditions for Ukrainian soldiers on the battlefield, with troops running out of munitions. 

The Senate passed a $95.3 billion package this month that contained a fresh round of aid for Ukraine and funds for Israel and Taiwan. Johnson has declined to put it on the House floor. House Republicans are divided on Ukraine aid, with a little more than half on the record opposing it in the past, including Johnson before he became speaker. The Senate bill would need significant Democratic support to pass.

Schumer said the discussion on Ukraine was “the most intense I have ever encountered in my many meetings in the Oval Office.” He said he told Johnson he would “regret it for the rest of his life” if he blocked assistance for Kyiv.  

Johnson “said he wanted to get Ukraine done, and he had to figure out the best way to do it,” Schumer recalled.

In the meeting, McConnell, a strong advocate for Kyiv, told Johnson the House’s best path forward on Ukraine is to pass the Senate bill, because making any changes would further delay the aid. “We have a time problem here,” he told reporters. 

Johnson said he continued to insist on steps to secure the southern U.S. border before passing any foreign-aid package. The House “is actively pursuing and investigating all the various options” on the Ukraine package, he said, but “the first priority of the country is our border.” Earlier this year, Republicans blocked a bipartisan Senate deal linking aid to Ukraine with changes at the border, saying it wasn’t tough enough.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), speaking with reporters after meeting with President Biden and other congressional leaders, said he thought a government shutdown could be averted. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

The White House meeting started shortly before noon and lasted about an hour. Johnson briefly spoke one-on-one with the president after the meeting ended. White House officials declined to say what the two men discussed, other than explaining that the conversation wasn’t scheduled in advance. 

Afterward, Biden told reporters a “bipartisan solution” was needed to fund the government. Regarding Ukraine, he said “the need is urgent” for additional funds. “I think the consequences of inaction in Ukraine are dire,” Biden said.

Such White House summits are high-profile opportunities for both sides to show they are fighting for their parties’ priorities, rather than nitty-gritty policy negotiations. But the moment was particularly challenging for Johnson, a formerly little-known conservative who leapfrogged from the lower ranks of House Republican leadership to assume the speakership in October, after a group of GOP dissidents ousted his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.).

Unlike other senior leaders on Capitol Hill, Johnson has almost no pre-existing relationship with Biden.

For months, the Republican House and Democratic Senate have deferred on Congress’s responsibility to set new spending levels and priorities for the federal government for fiscal year 2024, instead passing a series of stopgap measures by repeatedly extending spending levels set back in December 2022.

Johnson has a number of options. none of which will satisfy all House Republicans. He could seal a deal with congressional Democrats and try to pass fresh full-year spending legislation at a two-thirds threshold, bypassing Republican holdouts. Johnson could put it off a few days or weeks with a short-term patch—again with Democrats’ help. Or he could try to rely on his narrow Republican majority to pass another stopgap bill through September, triggering automatic across-the-board spending cuts; such a move would be almost certain to lead to a shutdown because any such measure would be dead on arrival in the Senate.

Beneath the surface of the spending fight, a tug of war is playing out inside the House Republican conference between military hawks and conservatives opposed to further spending, with Johnson caught in the middle. The military hawks want to avoid the defense cuts that would be triggered if Congress fails to enact new full-year spending measures by April 30. The critics of more spending benefit from congressional inaction, because it brings them closer to the date when across-the-board cuts would be activated under a provision in last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Some GOP lawmakers have said in recent days they wouldn’t mind a shutdown, while other figures including McConnell have warned that shutdowns are bad policy—and bad politics.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Is Congress doing enough to avoid a partial government shutdown? Join the conversation below.

People familiar with the negotiations between Johnson and Democrats said that a key sticking point is how much money to appropriate for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Democrats are asking for $7.03 billion, more than the $6.3 billion previously sought by the Senate and requested in Biden’s budget. But the GOP-led House passed a measure including $6 billion for the program, which provides food and health assistance.

Another obstacle, these people said, is a provision to block the VA from reporting the names of veterans who need help managing their benefits to a national background-check system used to screen gun purchases. Democrats want the language to be stripped out.

Even if those issues get resolved, Johnson must sell the deal to his factious conference after House lawmakers return Wednesday to Washington. A House Republican meeting is scheduled for Thursday.

A Friday conference call for GOP lawmakers did little to assuage raw feelings as Johnson sought for an hour to manage the expectations of his conference, fielding more than a dozen questions. The speaker told lawmakers not to expect a home run or grand slams in the spending bills, but instead singles or doubles, according to people on the call. Johnson said such expectations reflected the reality of divided government, and that some Republicans’ willingness to block routine procedural votes—essentially paralyzing the floor—had hurt Republicans’ leverage in talks with Democrats.

Some Republicans complained that he had offered little information about the substance of any of the spending bills, raising fears that Johnson was setting the stage for another episode in which he would rely on Democratic votes to clear must-pass legislation through the House.

So far, Johnson has passed five major bills at a two-thirds threshold with the help of Democrats: two previous stopgap spending bills; the annual defense-policy bill; a temporary reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration; and a bipartisan tax bill.

McCarthy’s willingness to pass a stopgap bill with Democratic votes in September triggered the rebellion that led to his removal. The same fate could await Johnson if at least three House Republicans were willing to vote with all Democrats to fire him from the speakership, given the narrow majority in the House.

In What Alternate Reality Does Disclosure Of CIA Bases In Ukraine Garner More Support?

CTH  |   I find it very interesting this report surfaces in the New York Times and not The Washington Post first.  This material distinction showcases the motive for the outline is heavily domestic in nature; meaning, the core of domestic USA politics (specifically the White House) needs to admit that Ukraine is a proxy province in order to retrigger support for policy.

[Inside Baseball] – Watch the responses to this report from CNN (State Dept) carefully and watch the responses from WaPo (CIA/Intel). The more subtle and/or quiet the response(s), the more certain these influence institutions were collaborating on the material report to the New York Times.

The White House is admitting the CIA and larger IC apparatus, which includes the State Dept., has been heavily controlling all activity in Ukraine for the past decade.  The only reason to admit this now very publicly is because they are losing voter support.  THIS EXPLAINS WHY BIDEN IS CALLING FOR A WHITE HOUSE MEETING!! 

The US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) maintains 12 secret bases in Ukraine along the border with Russia, and last Thursday CIA chief William Burns made his 10th secret visit to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The Times is now reporting the USA (State Dept.) was responsible for the coup in Ukraine (color revolution) and took control over political operations in 2014.   We have long suspected this; many have reported exactly this reality; however, this is the first time it has all been admitted.

(NYT) – The C.I.A.’s partnership in Ukraine can be traced back to two phone calls on the night of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Millions of Ukrainians had just overrun the country’s pro-Kremlin government and the president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his spy chiefs had fled to Russia. In the tumult, a fragile pro-Western government quickly took power.

The government’s new spy chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, arrived at the headquarters of the domestic intelligence agency and found a pile of smoldering documents in the courtyard. Inside, many of the computers had been wiped or were infected with Russian malware.

“It was empty. No lights. No leadership. Nobody was there,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko said in an interview.

He went to an office and called the C.I.A. station chief and the local head of MI6. It was near midnight but he summoned them to the building, asked for help in rebuilding the agency from the ground up, and proposed a three-way partnership. “That’s how it all started,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko said. (read more)

Source: The New York Times, based on more than 200 interviews with current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe.

The report tries to paint various Ukraine officials as the originators of the operation to use Ukraine as the tip of the spear against the Russia construct; however, it doesn’t take a deep weeds walker to realize that part of the narrative is needed to protect the U.S. foreign influence policy from public ridicule.

The White House needs support for their Ukraine proxy.  The public opposition to that continued policy agenda is a problem.  The politicians are caving to pressure from the people.  The IC needs to change the narrative urgently; thus the admission takes place.

Aaron Bushnell...,

 

US Airman Aaron Bushnell did not kill himself to protest some other country's war

The US Department of Defense has compelled the participation of Air Force members like Bushnell in Israel's Gaza genocide

Their orders to deploy to Israel read "mandatory" https://t.co/AoVE0Orj5s pic.twitter.com/5OUtpTlJbm

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 26, 2024

Covid And Covid Jab Deaths? Move Along Now, Nothing To See Over There....,

TUCKER CARLSON: “How can world governments kill more than 10 million people and leave some large undetermined number disabled for life? And not say a word about it. Not apologize. Not work to fix it. Not work to make the families whole. I mean, just leave it by the side of the… pic.twitter.com/zVy7ZY3rPB

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) February 24, 2024

TUCKER CARLSON: “How can world governments kill more than 10 million people and leave some large undetermined number disabled for life? And not say a word about it. Not apologize. Not work to fix it. Not work to make the families whole. I mean, just leave it by the side of the road like a corpse and keep marching. I don’t understand that. How can that happen?

STEVE KIRSCH: “Believe me, I’m surprised, as well. You know, I can’t get an audience with anybody in the United States Congress. Except for Senator Ron Johnson. Like, I can’t have a dialogue. They won’t talk to me. Nobody wants to know. They don’t want to know the truth. It’s like autism in this country. You know, autism has been around for a very long time. And we’ve known from the statistics that vaccines cause autism. It’s the leading cause of autism. Now, can we even get a discussion about that?”

TUCKER CARLSON: “May I? May I ask you to pause that? I mean, the statement you just made is verboten. I mean, no person who wanted to say work at the Atlantic magazine or who takes the New York Times on a daily basis would ever say something like that because you’re not allowed to say that. Tell us why you say that?”

STEVE KIRSCH: “Because it’s true. I’ve collected my own data just independently, to look at, at the connection between vaccines and autism. And it’s amazing. I had over 10,000 parents, tell me about their kids. And I said, hey, tell me about your kids. Tell me how many vaccines they got, and tell me if they have autism. Tell me if they have ADHD. You know, just tell me about your kids. Tell me about the medical conditions. And tell me about how many shots they get. And it’s a straight line. The more shots you get, the more likely you are to get autism. And it’s the same thing for ADHD. It’s the same thing for PANDAS. It’s the same thing for autoimmune diseases. I mean that it is basically the more shots you get, the less healthy the kids are.”

Those With Real Power Are Mindful Of What They Say...,

 

🇷🇺🇺🇸 Biden called Putin a "crazy son of a bitch" after he said Russia would prefer Biden for POTUS over Trump.

Putin reaffirms his position and says he still prefers Biden.

"it's an adequate reaction" said Putin.

pic.twitter.com/NNgH3qBx9m

— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) February 22, 2024

Oppressed Victim Supremacist Suffering Unhappy Wife Equals Unhappy Life Syndrome

twitter  |  Over my 35-year career, I have been the subject of many thousands of articles, including extremely negative, inaccurate, and libelous articles, yet I have never sued a media organization or a journalist.

Beginning in early January of this year, Business Insider released a series of stories about my partner in life, @NeriOxman, that were defamatory, materially false and misleading, and designed to cause her harm, principally because the reporters do not like me, my support for Israel, and my advocacy to remove former Harvard President Claudine Gay due to her leadership failures, and her lack of moral clarity.

These are not fantastical accusations. We prove them with detailed empirical evidence in a 77-page demand letter that we sent to @axelspringer this morning, and that we are sharing publicly now.

After I posted weeks ago on @X that I intended to sue @Businessinsider and its parent company Axel Springer for defamation, I heard from a number of people that I highly respect who strongly discouraged me from suing, pleading with me to find another solution to resolve this mess.

These individuals did not question that Neri and I had been defamed, but rather they explained that Axel Springer has been perhaps the strongest long-term supporter of the state of Israel of any media organization, and also an important advocate against antisemitism.

I also recently had the opportunity to have dinner with Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, and he seemed like a good man. We did not, however, discuss the Business Insider reporting or the lawsuit that night, but my opportunity to meet him confirmed much of what I had been told about him and Axel Springer.

Upon consideration of the advice we have received from people we highly respect and my opportunity to meet Mathias Döpfner, we are making an effort to avoid litigation by sending Axel Springer this demand letter in which we outline with particularity all of the facts around BI’s reporting of this matter, the factual inaccuracies in its reporting, Axel Springer’s false statements about BI’s reporting, and a proposed resolution.

If we can resolve this matter as we have proposed, we can avoid litigation, and more importantly, we can hopefully end Business Insider’s unethical and unprofessional practices. If indeed Axel Springer is the professional ethical media company that I am told it is and it purports to be, it cannot continue to own and control Business Insider if it continues to operate as it has historically.

The 77-page demand letter can be found here:

http://clarelocke.com/OxmanRetraction

I strongly encourage you to read the letter. The letter includes the detailed WhatsApp, SMS, and email correspondence that I and Fran McGill, our head of communications, had with the main protagonists in this situation including Henry Blodget, Chairman and Founder of Business Insider, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, Henry Kravis, Co-Executive Chairman of KKR, Martin Varsavsky, Director of Axel Springer, Katherine Long, BI’s Investigative Reporter, and John Cook, Executive Editor of BI.

It will not go unnoticed that the demand letter reads remarkably similarly to the pleadings of a lawsuit. If needed, we can convert the demand letter into a complaint and file a lawsuit, which I hope is unnecessary.

Business Insider is well known for its dishonest and unprofessional journalism. BI’s actions here are sadly representative of its approach to journalism, and similar to its many other unfair, sensational, false and misleading attacks on high-profile people designed to satisfy the politics and preferences of its journalists, and to drive advertising revenues.

Business Insider has caused enormous harm and reputational damage to many with its false and misleading reporting and unethical tactics. Remarkably, however, Business Insider’s CEO and Axel Springer’s spokesperson claim that Business Insider is a paragon of journalistic professionalism, ethics, and virtue.

In January, when I publicly challenged the accuracy and reporting of the stories, Business Insider’s CEO, Barbara Peng, stated that:

“The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing… The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.”

Similarly, Adib Sisani, Axel Springer’s spokesperson said:

“I’m certain the sourcing and technical journalistic work done was spotless.”

I strongly encourage you to compare the above statements with the empirical evidence and other irrefutable facts that are included in our demand letter, and judge for yourself.

The demand letter was prepared by Libby Locke of Clare Locke LLP, a firm best known for its recent representation of Dominion Voting Machine in its lawsuit against Fox that resulted in a $787.5 million settlement for Dominion.

Libby and her partner Tom Clare are the rock stars of defamation law. They should be your first call if something like what happened to Neri and me happens to you.

What Happened To Jon Stewart?

twitter  |  In which Jon Stewart tries to convince you crime and urban decay are simply “the price of freedom” and Russia’s clean streets and subways are only possible because of political repression—a total crock, and he knows it. America could easily enjoy those things too, and has in the past.

The idea here is just to use the bogeyman Putin to reconcile Americans to their own social decline by making them reflexively suspicious of high-trust societies, and associate any attempts to stem/reverse the problem (or even draw attention to it) with authoritarianism. “Don’t believe your lying eyes and draw the obvious conclusions—that’s what fascists do!”

No, actually, we don’t have to accept “urinal caked chaotic subways” to protect our liberty. Incredibly stupid and insidious argument by Stewart.

May Golan Looks And Sounds Just Like A Pig Grunting....,

#Israel official states:
"I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did."

— May Golan, Israeli Minister of Social Equality & Women's Advancement

-MyLordBebo pic.twitter.com/b9KRRMAJX2

— Arthur Morgan (@ArthurM40330824) February 23, 2024

AA  |  Israeli Minister of Social Equality May Golan said she is "proud" of the destruction caused by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking during a session held by the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) Wednesday evening, Golan threatened Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, with decapitation or arrest.

"We are not ashamed by saying that we want to see the soldiers of the IDF (Israeli army) catching Sinwar and his terrorists by their eyes and dragging them across the Gaza Strip on their way to the dungeons of the Prison Authority," she said in a widely circulated video of her speech.

"I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did," she said. "No dove and no olive branch, only a sword to cut off Sinwar's head, that's what he will receive from us.”

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 Hamas attack that Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

The ensuing Israeli bombardment has killed at least 29,410 victims and caused mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Nearly 70,000 people have been injured.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

For the first time since its creation in 1948, Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial body of the United Nations.

An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

So It Is Written, So Let It Be Done - Lord Rothschild Reads The Balfour Declaration

thenewyorker  |  Yet Britain, however formidable its power, did not conjure up the Jewish national home with magic words. Since the Ukrainian pogroms of 1881, about thirty-five thousand settlers had come to various colonies in Ottoman Palestine, most funded by Baron James de Rothschild, half of whom stayed. About ninety thousand acres of land had been purchased, and new winemaking towns were dotting the Palestinian landscape: Rishon LeZion, Zichron Ya’akov. The real reason Weizmann had rejected East Africa in 1905 was that a national home in Eretz Yisrael was, however embryonic, becoming an established fact. By the end of 1905, with the arrival of five thousand socialist cadres from Russia—the so-called Second Aliyah, or ascent—Labor Zionism had its ideology, the beginning of its revolutionary infrastructure, and its leadership, including David Ben-Gurion, who was later Israel’s first Prime Minister. In 1909, Tel Aviv, the first modern Hebrew-speaking city, had been founded just north of Jaffa. That same year, a Labor Zionist group inspired by Ben-Gurion’s hero, A. D. Gordon, founded the first of the kibbutzim near the Sea of Galilee. Weizmann’s mentor, Asher Ginsberg (known by his pen name, Achad Haam), visited a collective settlement in Palestine in 1911. He wrote in an essay for Zionist readers the next year, “So soon as the Jew from the Diaspora enters a Jewish colony in Palestine he feels that he is in a Hebrew national atmosphere . . . half-complete, extending only to children . . . but going on.” (Weizmann stayed at Ginsberg’s home in London—the latter made his living as the sales representative of Wissotzky tea—during the negotiations leading to the Declaration.)

The Declaration, then, only crystallized for the great powers what seemed a workable cultural transformation—of Jews, but also of a part of the Palestinian landscape. By the time of the Balfour Declaration, there were as many as fifty thousand Zionist settlers, whom the Turks had tried, and failed, to suppress. (The chaos of the Soviet Revolution was bringing thousands, and would bring tens of thousands more.) Indeed, the most prominent, or conspicuous, Arab leaders seemed somewhat reconciled, too. In 1918, Weizmann travelled to Aqaba to meet Feisal; neither yet knew the full extent of Britain’s intentions to take Palestine for itself. Weizmann supported a larger Hashemite federation, and Feisal, the Arabs’ champion, Jewish “closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil”—so long as “Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights.” Feisal, meanwhile, told the Times of London that December, “Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews, and intend to give them fair play; and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their intention to see that they too have fair play in their respective areas.” The socialist-Zionist method of settlement, so disdained by the British yet so suited for incubating Hebrew culture, was bound, however, to encroach upon “Arab peasant and tenant farmers,” known as fellaheen. (The riots of 1921 had been incited, in part, by the purchase of vast lands in the Jezreel Valley, which was accomplished in a manner that had displaced, and enraged, thousands of fellaheen.)

Putting the Balfour Declaration into practice—so the Colonial Office stated—presumed an “equality of obligation” to both sides. It was another matter to presume “fair play.” As Balfour admitted in a secret memorandum in August, 1919, “So far as Palestine is concerned, the powers have made no statement of fact that is not admittedly wrong, and no declaration of policy which, at least in the letter, they have not always intended to violate.” The British were straight about one thing: the Declaration did not presume a Jewish state, which Weizmann himself could not yet envision. Building a novel Jewish nation was challenge enough; how this nation’s home might fit into larger Middle Eastern structures and machinations seemed a secondary consideration. But while the British occupation army still had the power to end Zionist colonization with brute force, it was too late to neatly nip it in the bud. By 1922, as Balfour addressed the Lords, the Jewish population had reached nearly eighty-five thousand.

The MSM Is Accidentally On-Purpose Throwing In The Towel On Biden

kunstler  |   “Biden’s most important achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” the report states.

      Gearing up? I’m sure. If gearing up means calling a lid on your life an hour after breakfast. And what do you suppose they mean by “a more traditional form of leadership.” Arranging serial overseas military humiliations? Selling favors to all comers from foreign lands? Inviting transsexuals to cavort on the White House lawn? Abolishing control of US borders? Running a $2-trillion annual deficit? Mandating unsafe and ineffective so-called “vaccine” shots on millions? Cancelling the First Amendment? Stealing elections? Conspiring to jail his political adversaries?

     We’re also informed in recent days by the Department of Justice that “Joe Biden” is not mentally competent to answer for anything in a court of law, should someone inquire into the signal irregularities emerging from the fugitive annals of his long career. Of course, “Joe Biden” running for reelection is one of the greatest gags ever put over on the American public. But more astounding yet is that half the country persists in pretending to believe it. They are egged on in every possible way by persons in high places of government fearful of going to prison if the Democratic Party loses its grip on the levers of power.

      Since “Joe Biden” is not actually calling the shots, one naturally wonders who is responsible for all the dubious achievements of the past three years. I guess we’ll find out when Mr. Trump wins that election in November, an outcome increasingly guaranteed unless “Joe Biden” (or, let’s face it, our Intel Community) takes the final decisive step of bumping off the Golden Golem of Greatness. What have they got left? AI-contrived photos of Mr. Trump having sex with a manatee in the intercoastal waterway off Mar-a-Lago?

      In New York City, the Woke lunatics did a victory dance after Judge Arthur Engoron, beaming his Joker smile, laid a $350-million fine on Mr. Trump for conducting a set of normal real estate transactions with a bank that profited from doing business with him. Many are still trying to figure out how that amounts to a crime of any sort. Don’t suppose that the check is in the mail, though. There is an appeals process that leads, you may be sure, to a dismissal of that inane judgment and the puerile hypotheticals that the case derived from. And, by and by, you also might expect a countersuit for malicious prosecution when all that smoke clears. New York Attorney General Letitia James, lacking impulse control, is for the moment enjoying the fulfillment of her campaign promise to “get Trump.” Waiting to see how much she enjoys losing her law license in the days to come.

     Every reaction provokes an equal and opposite reaction, Newton’s Third Law states. It manifested shortly after Judge Engoron’s end zone dance when a call went out over the Internet for America’s truckers to refuse loads inbound to New York City. We’ll have to stand by to see how that develops. No more bok choy, Texas beef, or Meyer Lemons for you, “progressive” denizens of the Five Boroughs! Embrace the suck! The genius part is that, unlike the 2022 Canadian truckers’ action in Ottawa, the American truckers will not be cluttering up New York’s streets with their rigs, license plates on view, leaving them vulnerable to such pranks as the shutdown of their bank accounts. All they’ll do is sit innocently at home back in Kentucky and Missouri, enjoying a break from the rigors of the highway. Is that a crime? Arguably no more than doing a normal real estate deal in good faith with a willing lender was a crime.

     The truckers have promised to include Washington DC next in their delivery boycott. The K-Street lobbying gang won’t be buying any influence for a while over platters of grilled branzino and Mariscos Molcajete. Maybe there will be a few Cliff Bars left in the Farragut Square 7-Eleven and they can do business in their cars. As for “Joe Biden,” his minders have probably laid in enough Ensure for a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory to get by for a few weeks — until the magic moment when, alas, he must needs be thrown under the bus of expediency to keep their game going.

Why Is The Biden Administration Abetting Genocide?

nader  |  Among the puzzling questions that the media chooses to ignore is asking high government officials why they are exercising the illegal use of power that violates the rule of law which they are required to obey.

This week, the Veterans for Peace (VFP) made it very easy for reporters to pose questions by sending an open letter (See veteransforpeace.org) to the Inspector General of the U.S. State Department and Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, invoking several U.S. statutes that require the “termination of provision of military weapons and munitions to Israel.”

Josh Paul, a former senior official in the State Department’s office charged with reviewing weapon transfers to foreign countries, said: “The Secretary and all relevant officials under his purview should take this letter from Veterans for Peace with the utmost seriousness. It is a stark reminder of the importance of abiding by the laws and policies that relate to arms transfers.”

What laws are being violated by the State Department daily as it approves ships and cargo planes full of weapons of mass destruction to be used in Israel’s war crimes and genocide against hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s civilians, mostly children and women?

These are the laws highlighted in the VFP letter:

• The Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids the provision of assistance to a government which “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
• Arms Export Control Act, which says countries that receive US military aid can only use weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal security. Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza goes way beyond self-defense and internal security.
• The U.S. War Crimes Act, which forbids grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and unlawful deportation or transfer, perpetrated by the Israeli Occupying Forces.
• The Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. Government from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights.
• The Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which was enacted to implement U.S. obligations under the Genocide Convention, provides for criminal penalties for individuals who commit or incite others to commit genocide

Under these laws, the State Department has a “Conventional Arms Transfer Policy” which, the letter notes, “prohibit [U.S. weapons transfers when it’s likely they] will be used by Israel to commit … genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, [including attacks intentionally directed against civilian objects or civilians protected] or other serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights laws.”

The VFP letter continues, “Dozens of authoritative complaints and referrals made by hospital administrators in Gaza, as well as by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Palestine Authority, South Africa, Turkey, Medicins san Frontieres, UNRWA, UNICEF, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the World Food Programme have confirmed that there is an ongoing human rights and humanitarian disaster due to Israel’s cutoff of water and electricity, deliberate destruction of sewage infrastructure and delaying of aid shipments by Israeli forces.”

If you are wondering why these laws are not being enforced – the answer is that individual citizens or groups of citizens do not have any “legal standing” to sue Secretary Blinken, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. Only a Committee of Congress, backed by a Senate or House Resolution, can take the State Department to federal court. That action to enforce Congressionally passed and enacted laws is not likely to happen in this lawless, Israeli government-indentured Congress which refuses even to demand a ceasefire.

Mike Ferner, VFP National Director, observed “Just as any good soldiers can recognize when they are given an unlawful order, we believe some State Department staff are horrified at the orders they’re given and will decide to uphold the law, find the courage to speak out and demand an end to the carnage.”

There is a related serious matter, pointed out by international law practitioner, Bruce Fein who said “The United States has clearly become a co-belligerent with Israel in its war against Hamas-Gaza Palestinians by systematically supplying the IDF with weapons and intelligence without conditions. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, nationals of a co-belligerent state are not regarded as protected persons if their state has customary diplomatic relations with an allied nation [in this case, Israel].”

For decades, the State Department has had an independent Office of the Legal Adviser. The present occupant of that post, acting legal adviser Richard C. Visek has been publicly silent. I am sending the Veterans for Peace letter to him and asking him to respond to this letter and to the American people who pay his salary.

The Wuhan Cover-Up by RFK Jr.

brownstone  |  In the final chapters of The Wuhan Cover-Up, RFK, Jr. focuses on several key figures in the biowarfare-industrial-complex, including Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust (now at the WHO), Anthony Fauci of the NIH, and Bill Gates. 

RFK, Jr. uses these figures to show how the Covid pandemic emerged from the toxic stew of ethically compromised biowarfare research standards; military, intelligence, public health, and academic institutions/organizations dependent on biowarfare funding; the involvement of China and global interests in the booming business of “pandemic preparedness and response;” and, of course, the endless pursuit of political power and personal enrichment.

Here’s a great summary of how they all came together, through personal and institutional greed and power-mongering, to unleash the Covid catastrophe on the world:

The evidence suggests that instead of relentlessly protecting public health, Farrar exploited the pandemic to promote the venal financial agendas of his WEF [World Economic Forum] patrons, to transform Western democracies into surveillance states, to expand his personal power and paycheck, and to pander to high-level Chinese officials. Achieving these objectives required Farrar to hide [Covid’s] laboratory origins, a project in which he enlisted a cadre of his medical cartel cronies—those who, thanks to years of funding by Fauci, Farrar, and Gates, now occupy the highest echelons of virology in academia, the regulatory agencies, and pharmaceutical companies. 

(p. 539)

If for nothing else, I would recommend adding The Wuhan Cover-Up to your library as an invaluable resource on leading figures, organizations, and power brokers involved in the biowarfare-industrial-complex.

Conclusions and Comments

It was especially gratifying to me to read The Wuhan Cover-Up (all 600 pages of it), because it validated my own research, showing that the pandemic response was led by the national security/intelligence arms of government, not public health agencies. 

In fact, after reading the first few chapters – the ones that go into the history of chemical and biological warfare and the rise of the biowarfare-industrial-complex – I paradoxically felt an enormous sense of relief. 

Finally, we have a detailed account that shows – beyond what I would consider a reasonable doubt – that the entire Covid catastrophe was caused, and led, by a multinational military-intelligence-academic-pharma-tech-NGO cabal.

RFK, Jr.’s conclusion is that we should look to a future “in which the bio-elites are held responsible for their actions, people regain their rights, and the Constitution is restored to its intended preeminence.”

But how do we do that? 

I am afraid, based on the information in his own book, and the fact that RFK, Jr. himself is being censored and banned so extensively from the public square, that the solution to the problems he exposes is much more difficult and complex than just “holding the bio-elites responsible” which will somehow lead to people regaining their rights.

What we need to do is to shut down, or extract ourselves from, the global biowarfare-industrial-complex that is able to convince (or coerce?) our governments into declaring states of emergency over supposed pandemic threats, and then curtail civil rights and impose massive surveillance, censorship, and propaganda that would not be permitted in non-emergency situations. Not to mention garnering enormous wealth while forcing the world’s population to accept novel, untested, and potentially lethal medical “countermeasures.”

The Wuhan Cover-Up does a better job than any other book or article I have read at exposing the trends, forces, and institutions that brought us the Covid catastrophe – with hundreds of pages of notes and references. What’s frightening is that the enormity of the problem is beyond the scope of the book, not just to solve, but even to fully acknowledge.

Internet Free Speech Was An Instrument Of Statecraft - Until It Wasn't....,

Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy." pic.twitter.com/hDTEjAf89T

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 16, 2024

UNREAL: The censorship technologies originally intended for terrorist organizations have been weaponized against the American people.

TUCKER CARLSON: “So you’re saying the Pentagon, our Pentagon, the US Department of Defense, censored Americans during the 2020 election cycle?”

MIKE BENZ: “Yes. The two most censored events in human history, I would argue, to date, are the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Benz calls artificial intelligence-based censorship technologies, which were created by DARPA to take on ISIS, “WEAPONS OF MASS DELETION.”

That technology, Benz says, has “the ability to censor tens of millions of posts with just a few lines of code.”

Benz detailed how the government-funded Virality Project identified 66 dissident narratives related to COVID-19, breaking them down into sub-claims for monitoring and censorship through machine learning models, aiming to control the spread of information harmful to official narratives or individuals like Tony Fauci.

“And whenever something started to trend that was bad for what the Pentagon wanted or was bad for what Tony Fauci wanted, they were able to take down tens of millions of posts. They did this in the 2020 election with mail-in ballots.”

If I Wanted To Increase AntiSemitism...,

caityjohnstone |  If I wanted to increase antisemitism, I imagine I’d do a lot of really evil stuff under a Star of David flag while adamantly insisting that my actions are inseparable from the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. I’d kill children by the thousands and commit genocidal atrocities.

To really help antisemitism spread I’d do everything I can to make people less vigilant against it. I’d try very hard to make the warning label of antisemitism look ridiculous and meaningless — circulate narratives that people who oppose genocide and ethnic cleansing hate Jews, frame peace marches as hate crimes, brand calls for justice as calls for the genocide of Jewish people. I’d falsely cry wolf as many times as possible in the most self-evidently absurd ways I could think of in order to desensitize everyone to alarm bells about the real spread of anti-Jewish hate.

I’d try to make sure the Jewish soldiers carrying out the atrocities under the Star of David flag make themselves look as inhuman as possible, thereby dehumanizing ordinary Jews in the eyes of the public. They should film themselves doing the most evil things imaginable while laughing and celebrating their deeds, and then share those videos on social media. The more viral content they can create with their horrific acts, the better.

I suppose I’d also want to research longstanding antisemitic conspiracy theories and make sure everyone’s helping to feed into them. “Jews control the media”? I’ll make sure the media are wildly biased in favor of the Star of David flag. “Jews control the government”? Make sure governments are bending over backwards to facilitate the crimes of the Star of David nation. “Child blood sacrifices”? Make sure the war crimes perpetrated under the Star of David flag are killing as many kids as possible.

These steps would create the perfect environment for very real acts of hatred toward members of the Jewish faith, which I suppose could then be used to drum up support for further atrocities, thereby making the very real antisemitism even worse. This would create a self-reinforcing feedback loop of violence and hatred, causing steadily escalating antisemitism throughout our society that one day could potentially lead to something as terrible as history has ever seen.

Of course I would never do such a thing, because it would be a terrible evil to inflict upon the Jews of the world. If such a thing happened it wouldn’t be the fault of the Jews — many of whom are among the most kind hearted and upstanding people on earth — it would be the fault of the governments and media outlets who paved the way to such an outcome. Any power structure which created or fed into such a dynamic would be unforgivably depraved, and would need to be stopped for the good of humanity.