realclearpolitics | Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy editor of Newsweek and author of the new book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women, speaks with RCP Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon on Thursday's edition of the RealClearPolitics radio show.
"People don't talk about it like it is an outrage," she said about the
transformation of the Democratic Party into something other than a party
for the working class. "It is such a fait accompli at this point
that we forget that it is outrageous for a party that used to represent
labor, the little guy against big corporations and the rich, completely
abandoned that constituency to cater to an over-credentialed college
elite on one hand, and the dependent poor on the other. And it is double
outrageous because that party still masquerades as the party of the
little guy, even though it is not the case anymore."
"It started with the handshake agreement between both parties that we're
going to become an economy that embraced free trade," she said. "That
was Bill Clinton's contribution to this, signing NAFTA into law and
trade agreements that resulted in the offshoring of 5 million
manufacturing jobs to China and Mexico."
"And then President Obama showed up and said repeatedly those jobs are
not coming back, and pioneered this idea that everyone was going to go
to college and become part of the knowledge industry, and that was going
to be the pathway to the American dream. And then it became the only
pathway to the American dream!"
"Joe Biden played his part by effectively opening up the border,
decriminalizing illegal border crossing, and welcoming in 11 million new
migrants to compete with working-class Americans for the jobs that
remained here," she said.
"It's true that immigration raises the GDP in the aggregate. The problem
is nobody lives in the aggregate. GDP is not equally distributed across
the nation. We know the top 20% now has 50% of the GDP at its disposal.
The very people who love to rail against the 1% are the people who have
made the largest gains in the last 50 years, and they are the consumers
of low-wage migrant labor, which is why, of course, they want more of
it. It is an upward transfer of wealth from the working class to the
elites who consume that labor."
"If you bring in 11 million people and you know they are going to be
employed as cleaning people, landscapers, and in construction, you have
effectively stolen wages from the Americans who were employed in those
jobs. It is just obvious supply and demand."
Carl Cannon asked: "Do they really hate the working class, or are they
just in their politically correct bubble and don't see what they're
doing?"
"They can not stand the idea that they will lose, even if they lose in a
very obviously democratic way," Ungar-Sargon said. "They are very
comfortable when they can sit there on cable news making millions of
dollars to sneer at the working class. They're comfortable when the
working class can't clap back."
"This was really Obama's revolution, the idea that the 'smart set'
should run things. We should have an oligarchy of the credentialed. But
when the working class has their audacity to vote in their own interest
and clap back by putting somebody like Donald Trump in power, that
sneering contempt turns to hate."
tri-statedefender | Sharing their experiences with crime reduction, The Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime wrapped up a two-day conference at the Hyatt Centric Beale Street Memphis on Thursday, March 28.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young hosted Black leaders from 18 U.S. cities during the meeting that began Wednesday, March 27.
“People want the short-term solution. They want to figure out how we are going to stop crime today. And then, we want to figure out how to stop crime in the future. In order to do that, there has to be an intense dialogue,” said Young.
In addition to Washington D.C., they came from several states with large African-American populations, like Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina and California.
“We have a lot of violence around convenience stores and gas stations,” Mayor Tishaura Jones told Action News 5 after the conference. “So how can we hold those business owners accountable and also bring down crime? (We’re also finding that ) some of the things that we’re already doing, we’re finding that other mayors are doing as well.”
Strategies were front and center in the discussion. They included Operation GOOD in Jackson, Miss. and Operation Scarlett in Charlotte, N.C. According to proponents, both have paid dividends in their respective communities.
Operation GOOD is a nonprofit with ambitious goals to curb recidivism, reduce violence and tackling blight, for example. Operation Scarlett is an ongoing anti-luxury car theft operation that was expanded to 11 states and 152 law enforcement agencies. So far, 132 vehicles have been retrieved.
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis also appeared at the event.
Russ Wiggington, president of the National Civil Rights Museum, moderated the conversation.
The Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank devoted to criminal justice policy, began the conference with a keynote presentation.
To allow attendants to speak freely, no media were invited to the event. However, Young has suggested future meetings could be open to the public and virtual. It’s a sentiment matched by Mayor Chokwe Lumumba Jr. of Jackson, Miss.
“We’re ensuring amongst ourselves that this will not be the last engagement, but that we will continue to lean in,” Lumumba said at a post-conference press event.
Although crime rates in Memphis has dropped recently, they are still above pre-pandemic levels.
Overall, the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission statistics reflect a 6.4% drop in fourth quarter of 2023, over 2022’s final period. This includes murder, burglary, robbery, theft, weapons and drug charges. Property crimes fell 10.1% too.
However, violent crime in Memphis bucked the trend. In addition to 398 homicides in 2023 – breaking the 2021 record – the major violent crime rate rose 7.4% in Memphis. Shelby County saw inflated numbers too, with a 6.3% jump over 2022.
To date, there have been over 80 homicides in 2024. Memphis has the highest number of all the cities represented during he meetings. Most have seen a decrease.
The Black Mayors Coalition on Crime is the latest in a series of conversations Young has recently held to address crime early in his first term.
In a bizarre segment, a transgender 'personality' who previously wanted to be a "human Ken doll" before deciding to become a 'woman', lectured JK Rowling on what being female really means, declaring that the author should "stick to what she knows." Report: https://t.co/K06cu2wjbT pic.twitter.com/fHcFCrS9sY
— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) April 8, 2024
Joe Biden, who grew up a Muslim attending a Black church in the Puerto Rican part of Scranton, where he beat up Corn Pop while marching for trans rights on his way to a synagogue, now claims his family were “watermen in the Port of Baltimore in the 1800s”pic.twitter.com/zHHpaIYb4L
— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) April 5, 2024
newsweek | Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was booed by members of the audience of The View after expressing regret for his endorsement of President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
Boos were heard on Friday morning after the airing of a short clip from a recent Fox News interview with the actor and professional wrestling star, who is set to return to the ring for the first time in eight years at this weekend's WWE WrestleMania event.
Johnson said that he was not "happy with the state of America" in the clip and revealed that he would not be endorsing Biden in this year's election because he feels his 2020 endorsement had caused "division."
"The endorsement that I made years ago with Biden was one that I thought was the best decision for me at that time," Johnson said. "Am I going to do that again this year? That answer's no, I'm not going to do that."
"I realized what that caused back then was something that tears me up in my guts—back then and now—which is division," he added.
The View crowd responded to Johnsons remarks by loudly booing, seemingly taking co-host Joy Behar and the show's other co-hosts by surprise with their overwhelmingly negative response.
"Should I pay any attention to someone who gives an interview on Fox where they lie every day?" Behar asked the crowd, before questioning whether celebrities should "endorse public figures" or "keep their politics to themselves."
Some in the audience could be heard responding "no" after Behar asked if celebrities should make endorsements. A short time later, the crowd made their opinions on former President Donald Trump's 2024 candidacy clear after co-host Sunny Hostin weighed in.
"I do think we're living in a time where we have someone [Trump] running for president that is an existential threat to democracy," Hostin said, prompting loud cheers and applause from the audience.
"Now is the time—if you have a platform—you must be active, you must speak out," she added, drawing additional applause.
While endorsing Biden in 2020, Johnson described himself as a "political
independent and centrist" who was making his first public endorsement
due to the outcome of the election being "critical."
FT | Author JK Rowling has attacked Humza Yousaf, calling Scotland’s first minister “bumbling and illiberal” and stoking a row over the country’s contentious new hate crime law.
The creator of the Harry Potter franchise was responding to criticism from Yousaf on Thursday that posts she had made on X earlier in the week identifying transgender women as men were “offensive and upsetting”. Rowling posted on X: “Most of Scotland is upset and offended by Yousaf’s bumbling incompetence and illiberal authoritarianism, but we aren’t lobbying to have him locked up for it.”
Rowling, a leading gender-critical feminist, used her social media profile to test whether the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act would criminalise promoting the importance of biological sex over gender identity. The legislation, which came into effect on Monday, has triggered a row between the author and lawmakers, and thrust culture wars into the forefront of Scottish politics.
Yousaf in an interview with the BBC hit out at the author’s provocative posts on social media, insisting the law had a high threshold for criminality and was not intended to respond to those who are “upset or insulted”. The legal difficulties in balancing the protection of vulnerable communities with the right to free speech have opened up a new line of attack for the opponents of the Scottish National party and Green coalition, with them characterising the legislation as an example of unworkable progressive policymaking. It comes as opinion polls fail to provide a clear picture of voting intentions ahead of the general election later this year.
A YouGov poll this week predicted a UK landslide for Labour in which it would become the largest party in Scotland, winning 28 seats north of the border to the SNP’s 19. A Survation poll last week forecast that the SNP would hold 41 seats to Labour’s 14. The act widens the existing crime of stirring up racial hatred to include other protected characteristics, such as sexuality, gender and disability, with the threat of jail terms of seven years.
Thousands of complaints have reportedly been made to the police about Rowling’s posts, as well as about a speech Yousaf gave to parliament in 2020 during which he complained about the number of senior positions of authority held by white people. Police Scotland, which has yet to announce the number of allegations of hate crimes it has received, earlier this week decided Rowling’s posts, in which she invited the police to arrest her, were not criminal. The force also decided against logging Rowling’s posts and Yousaf’s speech as “non-crime hate incidents”.
The police, who note such incidents when allegations do not breach the threshold of criminality, use these records to monitor trends, but opponents say this process has a chilling effect on free speech.
The police decision sparked an angry response from Murdo Fraser, a Conservative MSP, whose post last year on social media saying identifying as non-binary was as valid as “choosing to identify as a cat” did get logged.
Fraser on Wednesday accused Police Scotland of political bias. “They have taken a different approach to comments made by the SNP first minister to those made by an opposition politician,” he said. “It is hard not to conclude that Police Scotland has been captured by the SNP policy agenda.”
stanford | In a special episode recorded in front of a live audience, Dean Lloyd Minor welcomes Chelsea Clinton, a bestselling author and an advocate for public health and early childhood education. They discuss the importance of accountability for scaling global health initiatives, and the power of storytelling to counter misinformation in science and health. They also talk about finding motivation through conscious optimism and rebuilding public trust through support of individuals, families, and communities. Along the way, they share memories of Chelsea’s time as a Stanford undergraduate and their overlapping memories of their home state of Arkansas.
Chelsea Clinton is vice chair of the Clinton Foundation and
the Clinton Health Access Initiative, working to improve lives, inspire
emerging leaders, and increase awareness around public health issues. At
the foundation, she is active in the early child initiative Too Small
to Fail, which supports families with resources to promote early brain
and language development; and the Clinton Global Initiative University, a
global program that empowers student leaders to turn their ideas into
action. A longtime public health advocate, Chelsea uses her platform at
the Clinton Health Access Initiative to address vaccine hesitancy,
childhood obesity, and health equity. In addition to her foundation
work, Chelsea also teaches at Columbia University’s Mailman School of
Public Health and has written several books for young readers, including
the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World. She is also the co-author of The Book of Gutsy Women and Grandma’s Gardens with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and of Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why? with Devi Sridhar. Chelsea’s podcast, In Fact with Chelsea Clinton,
premiered in 2021, and she is a co-founder of HiddenLight
Productions. Chelsea holds a bachelor’s degree from Stanford, a master
of public health degree from Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health,
and both a master of philosophy degree and a doctorate in international
relations from Oxford University.
This you, @JoeBiden? https://t.co/p7zmhlhQLm pic.twitter.com/ZIT6v7tiHO
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) April 1, 2024
WashingtonTimes | President Biden stoked more outrage over his decision to honor Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31, which was also Easter, by issuing a head-scratching denial Monday as the White House blamed the political backlash on “misinformation.”
MSN | K Rowling has challenged Scotland’s police to arrest her under the SNP’s new hate crime law after stating that a series of high-profile trans women are men.
The Harry Potter author, who lives in Edinburgh, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.
“I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new Act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
nakedcapitalism | Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novella The Minority Report created “precrime,” the clairvoyant foreknowledge of criminal activity as forecast by mutant “precogs.” The book was a dystopian nightmare, but a 2015 Fox television series transforms the story into one in which a precog works with a cop and shows that data is actually effective at predicting future crime.
Canada just tried to enact a precrime law along the lines of the 2015 show, but it was panned about as much as the television series. Ottawa’s now-tabled online harms bill included a provision to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future. From The Globe and Mail:
The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says. Mr. Virani, who is Attorney-General as well as Justice Minister, said it is important that any peace bond be “calibrated carefully,” saying it would have to meet a high threshold to apply.
But he said the new power, which would require the attorney-general’s approval as well as a judge’s, could prove “very, very important” to restrain the behaviour of someone with a track record of hateful behaviour who may be targeting certain people or groups…
People found guilty of posting hate speech could have to pay victims up to $20,000 in compensation. But experts including internet law professor Michael Geist have said even a threat of a civil complaint – with a lower burden of proof than a court of law – and a fine could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.
While the Canadian bill is shelved for now, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it resurface after some future hate crime. I wonder if this is where burgeoning “anti-hate” programs across the US are headed. The Canadian bill would have also allowed “people to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission over what they perceive as hate speech online – including, for example, off-colour jokes by comedians.”
There are now programs in multiple US states to do just that – encourage people to snitch on anyone doing anything perceived as “hateful.”
The 2021 federal COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act began to dole out money to states to help them respond to hate incidents. Oregon now has its Bias Response Hotline to track “bias incidents.” In December of 2022, New York launched its Hate and Bias Prevention Unit. Maryland, too, has its system – its hate incidents examples include “offensive jokes” and “malicious complaints of smell or noise.”
Maryland also has its Emmett Till Alert System that sends out three levels of alerts for specific acts of hate. For now, they only go to black lawmakers, civil rights activists, the media and other approved outlets, but expansion to the general populace is under consideration.
California vs. Hate, a multilingual statewide hotline and website that encourages people to report all acts of “hate,” is coming up on its one-year anniversary, reportedly receiving a mere 823 calls from 79% of California’s 58 counties during its first nine months of operation. It looks like the program is rolling out even more social media graphics in a bid to get more reports:
jonathanturley | House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer has sent a seven-page letter (below) to invite President Joe Biden to testify in the Republican impeachment inquiry. The letter is the latest, and best, reduction of the glaring contradictions in the President’s past statements on his family’s well-documented influence peddling operation. President Biden is not expected to testify. However, the media should be interested in his answering the questions presented by the Committee. It is now clear that the President lied during his campaign and during his presidency on his lack of knowledge of his son’s business activities as well as his denial of any money gained from China. Yet, the White House responded, again, with mockery — a sense of impunity that only exists due to an enabling media.
Chairman Comer reduces the past testimony and evidence acquired by the Committee in the corruption scandal. In the last hearing, Democratic members simply refused to acknowledge that evidence. There was a bizarre disconnect as members mocked the witnesses for not supplying evidence of the President’s knowledge or involvement. They then did so and the members declared that there was no evidence.
Various members also misrepresented my earlier testimony during the hearing on the basis for the impeachment inquiry. Members like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) stated that I joined other witnesses in stating there was nothing that could remotely be impeachable in these allegations. That is demonstrably untrue. My testimony stated the opposite. I refused to pre-judge the evidence, but stated that there was ample basis for the inquiry and laid out various impeachable offenses that could be brought if ultimately supported by evidence. I also discussed those potential offenses in columns. The purpose of the hearing was not to declare an impeachment on the first day of the inquiry. Unlike the two prior impeachments by many of these same Democratic members, this impeachment inquiry sought to create a record of evidence and testimony to support any action that the House might take.
Now, the Committee has laid out the considerable evidence showing that the President had lied, knowingly and repeatedly.
mid.ru | White House spokesman John Kirby’s statement, made in Washington shortly after the attack, raised eyebrows even at home, not only outside the United States. At first, he said he needed “more time, and we need to learn more information” on the Crocus City Hall attack for the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. Finally, one would think, someone sees reason – we need to wait for at least some preliminary examination results, for interrogations and investigative actions. But no, after just a couple of hours, the pieces must have clicked together. The White House and the State Department declared that Ukraine had no role in the attack. What grounds or what information did they have to draw this conclusion? This was absolutely unclear. One thing was clear though. They started finding excuses for the Kiev regime in order to get themselves off the hook. Everyone is perfectly aware that there is no independent Kiev regime without Western financial support or military aid.
When asked whether the United States knew about the attack in advance, Mr Kirby referred the reporter to the State Department. Think about it, this is important. To answer the question of who was behind the terrorist attack in Russia, it only took the State Department and the White House a couple hours. They immediately said who was responsible. But when the White House was asked whether the Biden administration or the US intelligence community had officially transferred relevant materials to Moscow, they couldn’t answer that question. They referred the journalists to other agencies. How can this be? This is their area of responsibility and competence. Why were they not ready to answer for their own actions, while being quick to write a “prescription” for a case they had absolutely no knowledge of, given that they had no facts on hand (at least, the United States never said they had any).
Let me remind you that on March 7, the US Embassy urged its citizens to avoid shopping malls. The embassies of other NATO countries did the same, which indicated that their intelligence services had some information about possible attacks.
The apparent synchronicity between the condolences extended by the Western governments and Washington’s statements has not gone unnoticed: US satellites published them (mostly on social media) only after getting a clear go-ahead from their Big Brother. A few NATO countries stood out though. Sweden, a newcomer to NATO, confined itself to a brief comment that they were “following the developments” in the first hours after the attack. Only when they caught on to the general tone of other comments did Stockholm express its condolences in a manner more befitting the situation. In the same vein, Moldovan officials managed to get out a few meager words only after harsh condemnation by opposition politicians and the Russian-speaking diaspora. Moldovan nationals could have been there – not only Moldovans by passport, but by ethnic origins or kinship. But the authorities in Chisinau could not find a few words of sympathy.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis published a totally outrageous post in response to the attack: “Let's not lose focus.” It isn’t “focus” that they can lose. They do not want to lose the aim. But then that should have been the way to say it. Ireland, Canada and New Zealand tried to remain silent, delaying their response as long as they could.
As I said, the Zelensky regime was the only one that accused Russia of involvement in the Crocus attack. Later they said they were misunderstood and they didn’t mean what they said. No, we got it perfectly right. We saw and we saved every video, audio, and screenshots of messages posted online or shown on television during those hours. We saw officials representing the Kiev regime, and others, who call themselves Ukrainian journalists (in fact, they are not even propagandists, but simply troubadours of terror), spend hours ranting about Russia’s guilt and the country’s leaders’ role in the terrorist attack, under headlines like “Moscow is killing its own citizens.”
As a reminder, American liberal Democrats have been financing the terrorist activities of the Kiev crime ring for a long time, not a year or two, or even five. It began under the Obama Administration, when Joe Biden, who is now President of the United States, was Vice President. In ten years, Ukraine has been transformed by the West into a centre for the spread of terrorism. However, ignoring this “dancing on the graves” organised by Ukrainian propagandists, people from all continents are extending their heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims, wishing a speedy recovery to the injured and strongly condemning this terrible attack against innocent civilians.
We are thankful to everyone worldwide who responded with compassion to the tragic terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall. Heads of state and government, heads of government agencies, international organisations, non-profit organisations, religious groups, and concerned citizens have all shown their sympathy in the face of this terrible tragedy. In moments like these, the true nature of a person is revealed. However, we cannot overlook the monstrous and misanthropic remarks made by Ukrainian professional propagators of terrorism. The actions and statements of the Kiev regime adepts underscore their moral decline and ugly Nazi nature. Unfortunately, the mainstream Western media fail to shed light on this dark side of modern blatant neo-Nazism in Ukraine, which is rooted in hatred towards all things Russian. They are not ridiculed in caricatures, nor are they held accountable by international human rights organisations, or subjected to “cancel culture” for their reprehensible statements and actions. Instead, they are rewarded with even more financial support. But for what purpose? As George W. Bush once remarked, to enable them to kill even more Russians. It appears that the representatives of the White House and the current Biden administration have embraced this notion, deeming it a beneficial arrangement.
🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH?
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 26, 2024
Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks are, like, way better than Warren Buffett's. How does that happen?"
Tulsi Gabbard: "There should be no perception that our elected leaders are… pic.twitter.com/8SnFsWkbG8
sputnik | Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) raised eyebrows recently with the revelation the former US House Speaker placed a big bet on a little-known San Francisco tech startup. A disclosure made last week showed the powerful Democratic Party politician purchased $5 million in stock of the privately-held company Databricks, a cloud data company. The stake is one of dozens Pelosi holds in US tech companies, some obscure and some well-known such as Tesla and Microsoft. The lawmaker has reportedly invested more than $120 million in stock purchases since entering federal government in 1987. Her net worth is thought to be over $100 million, although her current salary as a US congresswoman is just over $220,000. Pelosi has never been convicted of criminal wrongdoing in her investment activity, although her portfolio’s impressive return of 65% last year might suggest the legislator is more informed than average traders. US stock indices grew an average of 26% in 2023.
“From an ethical perspective, I believe it is extremely harmful for politicians to trade individual stocks,” said Chris Josephs, the founder of a stock trading service, to US media. “There are numerous jobs out there that don’t allow employees [to conduct] trading, yet our most powerful Americans can.” Pelosi opposed attempts to ban lawmakers from buying and selling stocks in 2021 under the claim such activity could be viewed as insider trading. “We are a free-market economy,” she said at the time. “They [Congress members] should be able to participate in that.” Former director of the US Office of Government Ethics Walter Shaub slammed the argument as “ridiculous.” “She might as well have said ‘let them eat cake,’” said Shaub, referring to famous comments by the French queen Marie Antoinette. “Sure, it’s a free-market economy. But your average schmuck doesn’t get confidential briefings from government experts chock full of nonpublic information directly related to the price of stocks.”
Late last week it was announced that an activist involved in pro-Palestine protests at the California lawmaker’s home had been arrested on felony vandalism charges. Cynthia Papermaster, 77, is reportedly being held on a $50,000 bond. “We want to see a permanent and immediate ceasefire,” said Papermaster in an interview recently. “We can’t control what the Israelis do, but we can control what our own government does, or at least that’s the aspiration.” Pelosi called for the anti-war activists to be investigated by the FBI in an appearance on US television after the incident earlier this year. Pelosi first claimed the demonstrators were being paid by China, then later clarified she believed Russia was behind the act of civil disobedience. The former House speaker joins the ranks of opponents of US civil rights with her comments; detractors frequently claimed racial justice protests in the 1960s and 70s were fomented by Russia to sow discord in the United States.
strategic culture | Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to the Crocus terror attack. This is as explosive as it gets. Intel sources in Moscow discreetly confirm this is one of the FSB’s prime lines of investigation.
December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, only 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post: “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night (…) You gotta get back there and create a campaign behind the lines.”
January 4, 2024: In an interview with ABC News, “spy chief” Kyrylo Budanov lays down the road map: strikes “deeper and deeper” into Russia.
January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press conference at night in the middle of an empty street, she promises “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for asymmetric war.
February 22: Nuland shows up at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event and doubles down on the “nasty surprises” and asymmetric war. That may be interpreted as the definitive signal for Budanov to start deploying dirty ops.
February 25: The New York Times publishes a story about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel does not already know.
Then, a lull until March 5 – when crucial shadow play may have been in effect. Privileged scenario: Nuland was a key dirty ops plotter alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State factions got hold of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her one way or another – because Russian intel would have inevitably connected the dots.
Yet Nuland, in fact, is not “retired” yet; she’s still presented as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and showed up recently in Rome for a G7-related meeting, although her new job, in theory, seems to be at Columbia University (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).
Meanwhile, the assets for a major “nasty surprise” are already in place, in the dark, and totally off radar. The op cannot be called off.
March 5: Little Blinken formally announces Nuland’s “retirement”.
March 7: At least one Tajik among the four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his photo taken.
March 7-8 at night: U.S. and British embassies simultaneously announce a possible terror attack on Moscow, telling their nationals to avoid “concerts” and gatherings within the next two days.
March 9: Massively popular Russian patriotic singer Shaman performs at Crocus. That may have been the carefully chosen occasion targeted for the “nasty surprise” – as it falls only a few days before the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. But security at Crocus was massive, so the op is postponed.
March 22: The Crocus City Hall terror attack.
ISIS-K: the ultimate can of worms
The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi – similar to previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a dash for the border.
And that brings us to the Tajik connection.
There seem to be holes aplenty in the narrative concocted by the ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on Telegram; offered what was later established as a puny 500 thousand rubles (roughly $4,500) for the four of them to shoot random people in a concert hall; sent half of the funds via Telegram; directed to a weapons cache where they find AK-12s and hand grenades.
The videos show that they used the machine guns like pros; shots were accurate, short bursts or single fire; no panic whatsoever; effective use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, just melting away, almost in time to catch the “window” that would take them across the border to Ukraine.
All that takes training. And that also applies to facing nasty counter-interrogation. Still, the FSB seems to have broken them all – quite literally.
A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the op.
And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.
The alleged emir of ISIS-K, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, as the Americans were spinning: he may be currently holed up in Balochistan in Pakistan.
Yet the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those classic inter-jihadi squabbles.
Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another vector of the “nasty surprises”.
Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired citizenship. He is in fact the sterling connection between the nasty motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens worked closely with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was virtually indistinguishable from ISIS.
Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the classic “moderate rebel” advertised for years as a “freedom fighter” by the CIA and the Pentagon.
Some of the four hapless Tajiks seem to have followed ideological/religious indoctrination on the internet dispensed by Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-K, in a chat room called Rahnamo ba Khuroson.
The indoctrination game happened to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon Khurosoni. He’s the guy who made the first move to recruit the commando. Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-K and the CIA.
The problem is the ISIS-K modus operandi for any attack never features a fistful of dollars: the promise is Paradise via martyrdom. Yet in this case it seems it’s Khurosoni himself who has approved the 500 thousand ruble reward.
After handler Buriyev relayed the instructions, the commando sent the bayat – the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine may not have been their final destination. Another foreign intel connection – not identified by FSB sources – would have sent them to Turkey, and then Afghanistan.
That’s exactly where Khurosoni is to be found. Khurosoni may have been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. But, crucially, he’s not the client.
The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs
Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.
Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus.
One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.
The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.
The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable.
Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,
As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban.
Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).
The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.
But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.
The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.
But even with plausible deniability, the Crocus investigation seems to be leading exactly to where Moscow wants it: uncovering the crucial middleman. And everything seems to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.
Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an extra clue. He said the Crocus “curators” chose on purpose to instrumentalize elements of an ethnic minority – Tajiks – who barely speak Russian to open up new wounds in a multinational nation where dozens of ethnicities live side by side for centuries.
In the end, it didn’t work. The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.
TAE | From what I’ve read so far, ISIS is about the least likely suspect for the Crocus massacre. If only because the CIA fingered them within minutes of the event. Russia will need to do a very thorough investigation, and hard evidence, to keep its people calm. Andrew Korybko has more:
Andrew Korybko:
Speculation has swirled since Friday night’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow over whether ISIS-K was really responsible like the group claimed or if Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR orchestrated everything under the cover of its agents posing as members of that group. The Mainstream Media is running with the first scenario while doing their utmost to discredit the second, but recalling the GUR’s terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists shows that it’s not above suspicion.
They were responsible for assassinating Darya Dugina in summer 2022, carrying out the Crimean Bridge truck bomb attack that fall, assassinating Vladlen Tatarsky in spring 2023, and the cross–border terrorist raids by the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps” over the past year. They’re also tied to Crimean Tatar terrorists and ISIS-linked Chechen ones. The CIA is connected with these terrorist acts and groups too after the Washington Post reported last fall that they rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014.
The modern-day GUR is a product of the CIA, which certainly shared with its protégés everything that it learned while waging the ongoing Hybrid War on Syria, not to mention their terrorist contacts as well. It was through this meticulous cultivation that GUR chief Kirill Budanov obtained his bloodlust that was on full display last spring when he declared that “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”
For as lethal as the GUR has become over the past decade, it’s still a CIA knockoff, which is why it’s expected to make sloppy mistakes from time to time. This is relevant when it comes to the latest attack after ISIS-K claimed responsibility using an outdated news template, thus suggesting that someone else claimed credit in their name at first but then ISIS-K opportunistically ran with it for clout. Considering its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists, that mysterious actor was arguably the GUR.
What likely happened is that their agents posed as members of that terrorist group in order to retain plausible deniability in case the planned attack was foiled or the terrorists were caught afterwards. One of the Tajiks who was captured in the car that was racing towards the Ukrainian border claimed that they were recruited by the curators of a radical Telegram channel just a month ago to carry out the attack using already cached arms in exchange for a debit card payment of around $5000 each.
These nationals were probably chosen by the GUR since some of them are predisposed to religious radicalism due to the lingering legacy of Tajikistan’s Islamist-inspired civil war from the 1990s, their country abuts ISIS-K’s Afghan headquarters, and they have visa-free travel privileges to Russia. Accordingly, they were allegedly recruited via a radical Telegram channel, ISIS-K’s involvement doesn’t seem entirely implausible, and they were able to easily enter Russia with minimal scrutiny.
They weren’t radical enough to go out with guns blazing or in a suicide blast like ISIS-K is known for, however, but were still sufficiently sympathetic with that group’s ideology to carry out what they believed was its latest mission in exchange for money. This explains why they fled from the scene of the crime, which is contrary to what any affiliate of that group would ever do, after machine-gunning dozens of people and setting fire to the venue.
Had they reached Ukraine, where the FSB confirmed that they had contacts and President Putin said that “a window was prepared for them…to cross over”, then they’d likely have been killed by the GUR to cover everything up. It shouldn’t be forgotten that this group learned how to conduct terrorism from the CIA, which in turn perfected this practice in Syria over the past 13 years of the Hybrid War that it’s been waging there, but the GUR is still a knockoff and that’s why they made three sloppy mistakes.
In the order that they occurred, their first mistake was recruiting people who weren’t ready to fight to the death at the scene of their forthcoming terrorist attack. This led to the culprits being captured and spilling the beans about how they were recruited in exchange for money, which is one of the signs that ISIS-K wasn’t behind what happened since their members always expect to die as “martyrs”. Accordingly, the fact that this mistake was made suggests that the GUR was desperate to go through with their plans.
The second mistake was that they didn’t tell their proxies to flee to a safe house right after the attack to meet a contact that’ll then help them reach the border later on but who’d actually kill them once they meet in order to cover everything up. This led to them racing towards the Ukrainian border, thus showing everyone that they at the very least felt that they’d find sanctuary there, which made Russia’s claim of Ukrainian involvement much more believable for many skeptical Westerners.
And finally, the last mistake was that the GUR used an outdated news template to claim credit for the attack on behalf of ISIS-K, who they correctly predicted would opportunistically run with it for clout. By doing so, however, they signaled that the group itself didn’t play a role in organizing what happened otherwise their more modern template would have been used instead. Taken together, these three sloppy mistakes discredited the Mainstream Media’s narrative and drew attention to the GUR instead.
Coupled with its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamic groups, which respectively prove that it has the capabilities and intent to carry out the Crocus attack as well as the knowledge required to impersonate extremists online for recruiting purposes, all of this makes the GUR the prime suspect. It learned everything about terrorism from the CIA, but since it’s still a knockoff, it made a series of sloppy mistakes that resulted in incriminating Ukraine instead of lending false credence to the ISIS-K narrative.
