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: "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?"
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 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 terroristattack
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.
The modern-day GUR is a product of the CIA, which certainly shared
with its protégés everything that it learned while waging the ongoing HybridWar
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.
strategic culture |Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.
The money quote:
“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has
a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it,
not to mention the territory of new regions.”
Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way
or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.
Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.
Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail
and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers
leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes,
this is a NATO force.
That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.
Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a
music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots
people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on
fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing,
all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.
And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in
southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least
five strikes.
Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in
Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is
among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan
next October.
Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they
have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring
China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb,
Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total
political support from Beijing and Moscow.
The sponsors remain the same
Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no
one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of
course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers.
A massive investigation is in progress.
The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday
during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a
mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it
with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.
Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this
ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an
all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real
Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.
That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in:
ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably
Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian
SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the
commando killers did not look like Slavs.
It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He
directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and
British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places
in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible
terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.
The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the
Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…
sonar21 | Americans are by-and-large decent, genial folks. But when it comes to
history, most have the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient. Sam Cooke was
speaking for most Americans when he crooned, “Don’t know much about
history …”. So I will make this simple — America’s hatred of Russia has
its roots in the U.S. Government’s post-WW II embrace of Nazis. Tim
Weiner writes about this in his essential book, Legacy of Ashes.
In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Berlin, U.S. Army
intelligence recruited and relied on German General Reinhard Gehlen:
“During World War II, General Gehlen had tried to spy on the Soviets
from the eastern front as a leader of the Abwehr, Hitler’s military
intelligence service. He was an imperious and cagey man who swore he had
a network of “good Germans” to spy behind Russian lines for the United
States.
“From the beginning,” Gehlen said, “I was motivated by the following
convictions: A showdown between East and West is unavoidable. Every
German is under the obligation of contributing his share, so that
Germany is in a position to fulfill the missions incumbent on her for
the common defense of Western Christian Civilization.” The United States
needed “the best German men as co-workers…if Western Culture is to be
safeguarded.” The intelligence network he offered to the Americans was a
group of “outstanding German nationals who are good Germans but also
ideologically on the side of the Western democracies.”. . .
“But in July 1949, under relentless pressure from the army, the CIA
took over the Gehlen group. Housed in a former Nazi headquarters outside
Munich, Gehlen welcomed dozens of prominent war criminals into his
circle. As Helms and Sichel feared, the East German and Soviet
intelligence services penetrated the Gehlen group at the highest levels.
The worst of the moles surfaced long after the Gehlen group had
transformed itself into the national intelligence service of West
Germany. Gehlen’s longtime chief of counterintelligence had been working
for Moscow all along.”
In the wake of this debacle, the CIA failed to recruit and run any
significant sources in the Soviet Government. The CIA had very few
officers who spoke Russian and swallowed whole hog the belief that the
Soviets were intent on conquering the world and that it was up to the
United States — relying heavily on the CIA — to stop the Soviets. That
became the cornerstone of American foreign policy and explains the CIA’s
obsession with regime change. No one in the intelligence hierarchy was
encouraged or permitted to raise the alternative view — i.e., the
Soviets, fearful of a Western invasion, took firm control of the
European nations on its western border and installed governments that
would served the Soviet interest. The CIA started its life as a new
bureaucracy in Washington firmly committed to destroying the Soviet
Union.
One of its first projects was recruiting and funding an insurgency
with Ukrainians who had sided with the Nazis. While that effort was
crushed by the Soviets, it served to further convince Stalin and others
in the Soviet hierarchy that the West was in bed with Nazi survivors and
could not be trusted.
The failure of the CIA to predict critical world events was an early
distinguishing feature of the CIA from the start. The Soviets detonated
their first nuke on August 29, 1949. Three weeks later a U.S. Air Force
crew flying out of Alaska detected traces of radiation beyond normal
levels. Weiner recounts what happened next:
“On September 20, the CIA confidently declared that the Soviet Union
would not produce an atomic weapon for at least another four years.”
The CIA’s leaders knack for getting it wrong continued with the
failure to heed warnings that China was going to intervene on behalf of
North Korea in 1950. Here is Weiner’s account:
“The president left for Wake Island on October 11, 1950. The CIA
assured him that it saw “no convincing indications of an actual Chinese
Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in
Korea…barring a Soviet decision for global war.” The agency reached that
judgment despite two alarms from its three-man Tokyo station. First the
station chief, George Aurell, reported that a Chinese Nationalist
officer in Manchuria was warning that Mao had amassed 300,000 troops
near the Korean border. Headquarters paid little heed. Then Bill Duggan,
later chief of station in Taiwan, insisted that the Chicoms soon would
cross into North Korea. General MacArthur responded by threatening to
have Duggan arrested. The warnings never reached Wake Island.
At headquarters, the agency kept advising Truman that China would not
enter the war on any significant scale. On October 18, as MacArthur’s
troops surged north toward the Yalu River and the Chinese border, the
CIA reported that “the Soviet Korean venture has ended in failure.” On
October 20, the CIA said that Chinese forces detected at the Yalu were
there to protect hydroelectric power plants. On October 28, it told the
White H ouse that those Chinese troops were scattered volunteers. On
October 30, after American troops had been attacked, taking heavy
casualties, the CIA reaffirmed that a major Chinese intervention was
unlikely. A few days later, Chinese-speaking CIA officers interrogated
several prisoners taken during the encounter and determined that they
were Mao’s soldiers. Yet CIA headquarters asserted one last time that
China would not invade in force. Two days later 300,000 Chinese troops
struck with an attack so brutal that it nearly pushed the Americans into
the sea.
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? While it is true there were
some solid intelligence officers in the ranks of the CIA, any attempt to
raise a warning that flew against conventional wisdom or defied what
the leaders wanted to hear was ignored or punished. The failures of the
CIA leadership to correctly predict the Soviets producing a nuclear bomb
and the Chinese invasion of Korea are not isolated incidents. When it
comes to big, critical issues — e.g., the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Tet
offensive, the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of the Shah
of Iran and the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeni, Saddam’s 1990 invasion
of Kuwait, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 9-11 plot, weapons of
“Mass Destruction in Iraq” and Russia’s ability to survive western
sanctions and spin up its defense industry to outpace the U.S. and NATO
countries combined — the CIA missed them all.
TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Candace is attacked – even when she’s right (4:27) Ben Shapiro’s comments (12:50) The emotional response to news out of Israel (23:05) Nikki Haley vs. free speech (30:34) 2024 predictions pic.twitter.com/VOThqpQQ48
dailycaller | The Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing announced Friday that the outlet has severed ties with Candace Owens. Owens hosted a show on The Daily Wire after becoming a prominent name in the conservative movement. The outlet abruptly made the announcement of her departure for reasons currently unknown. “Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship,” Boreing announced without an explanation.
apnews | Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who made history as his country’s
first gay and first biracial leader, announced Wednesday that he is
stepping down for reasons that he said were both personal and political.
Varadkar announced Wednesday he is quitting immediately as head
of the center-right Fine Gael party, part of Ireland’s coalition
government. He’ll be replaced as prime minister in April after a party
leadership contest.
“My reasons for stepping down now are personal
and political, but mainly political,” Varadkar said, without
elaborating. He said he plans to remain in parliament as a backbench
lawmaker and has “definite” future plans.
Varadkar, 45, has had two spells as taoiseach, or prime minister — between 2017 and 2020, and again since December 2022 as part of a job-share with Micheál Martin, head of coalition partner Fianna Fáil.
He was the country’s youngest-ever leader when first elected, as well
as Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister. Varadkar, whose mother is
Irish and father is Indian, was also Ireland’s first biracial
taoiseach.
“I’m proud that we have made the country a more equal and more modern
place,” Varadkar said in a resignation statement in Dublin.
Varadkar was first elected to parliament in 2007, and once said he’d quit politics by the age of 50.
He led Ireland during the years after Britain’s 2016 decision to
leave the European Union. Brexit had huge implications for Ireland, an
EU member that shares a border with the U.K.’s Northern Ireland.
U.K.-Ireland relations were strained while hardcore Brexit-backer Boris
Johnson was U.K. leader, but have steadied since the arrival of Prime
Minister Rishi Sunak.
Varadkar recently returned from Washington, where he met President Joe Biden and other political leaders as part of the Irish prime minister’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day visit to the United States.
racket |Hopkins reached out to me after listening in disgust to the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme
Court hearing Monday. Standing was a big issue: our government said
plaintiffs like Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Aaron Kheriaty lacked definite
proof that the government was responsible for suppressing their speech.
No such issue exists in CJ’s case, as you can see.
Hopkins
also wanted Americans who might be up in arms about the specter of
legalized censorship in their own country to see that the phenomenon has
also spread to virtually every Western democracy, often in more extreme
forms than we’ve seen so far in the United States.
CJ’s unique
insight involves his ludicrous German case, which as you’ll read in the
Q&A below has taken bizarre turns since we last checked and will now
go to trial yet again. As an expat following the American situation
from afar, he’s seen how the authoritarian tide is rising in similar or
worse ways all around the globe.
Hopkins is facing the business end of the German version, among the worst. As detailed last June,
he was charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which
are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist
organization.” The crime? Using a barely detectible Swastika in the
cover image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich.
Far from “furthering the aims” of Nazism, he was criticizing them by
comparing Nazi methods and laws to those of modern health authorities.
The offending image:
Hopkins went to trial in January and delivered an impassioned plea
to the court. “Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in
this courtroom, understands what this prosecution is actually about,” he
said. “It has nothing to do with punishing people who actually
disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing dissent, and
making an example of dissidents in order to intimidate others into
silence.”
Though the judge was clearly not a fan of Hopkins — a courtroom account by Aya Velázquez, which
I recommend reading, described how the judge said CJ’s statements were
“ideological drivel,” just “not punishable by law” — he won on the law.
After
acquittal, he was made aware that technically the case wasn’t over,
because thanks to a quirk of German jurisprudence, the prosecutor had a
week to file an appeal. Hopkins was unconcerned. “I doubt he will
[re-file]. He made a total fool of himself in front of a large audience
yesterday,” he wrote. “I can’t imagine that he will want to do that again.”
Bzzt! Wrong.
The prosecutor re-filed charges. The prosecutorial theory in the
Hopkins case was based on a bizarre interpretation of hate crime,
essentially asserting that if you have to think about an image to
realize it’s satire, it can’t be allowed. If that idea spreads, it would
make comedy or even sharp commentary impossible. This is why his
indictment, and the similar investigation of Roger Waters,
are really serious moments. Not to be heavy-handed, but eliminating the
loophole for satire or mockery is exactly what Waters meant by “Another Brick in the Wall.” Before you know it, it’ll be toohigh to see over.
thehill | Channeling Tennessee Williams in his play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Judge Scott McAfee wrote that, after their testimony, there remained “an odor of mendacity.”
That odor was particularly strong after the hearings indicated that
Wade may have committed perjury in his earlier divorce case, and that
both Willis and Wade were credibly accused of lying on the stand about
when their relationship began.
Yet, that distinct odor noted by Judge McAfee goes beyond the sordid affairs of Willis and Wade.
For many citizens, mendacity, or dishonesty, is wafting from various
courtrooms around the country. The odor is becoming intolerable for many
Americans as selective prosecution is being raised in a wide array of
cases.
The problem is that courts have made it virtually impossible to use
this claim to dismiss counts. Yet there is a disturbing level of merit
to some of these underlying objections.
For years, conservatives have objected that there is a two-tier
system of justice in this country. I have long resisted such claims, but
it has become increasingly difficult to deny the obvious as selective
prosecution in a variety of recent cases and opinions.
I have long stated that the charges against Trump over documents at
Mar-a-Lago are strong and based on established precedent. However, the
recent decision of Special Counsel Robert Hur not to bring criminal
charges against President Joe Biden has undermined even that case.
Hur described four decades of Biden serially violating laws governing
classified documents. The evidence included Biden telling a third party
that he had classified material in his house and actually reading from a
classified document to his non-cleared ghostwriter. There is evidence
of an effort to destroy evidence and later an effort of the White House
to change the report. There is also Biden’s repeated denial of any
knowledge or memory of the documents found in nine locations where he
worked or lived.
Hur ultimately had to justify the lack of charges based on a belief
that he could not secure a conviction from a D.C. jury with an elderly
defendant with diminished mental faculties.
Although Special Counsel Jack Smith could still proceed on
obstruction counts, his prosecution of Trump for the retention and
mishandling of national security documents is absurdly in conflict with
the treatment Biden is receiving.
In New York, the legislature changed the statute of limitations to
allow Trump to be sued while New York Attorney General Letitia James
effectively ran on a pledge of selectively prosecuting him. She never
specified any particular crime, just promising to bag Trump.
declassified | Jack Smith's Florida case. "[Judge Aileen] Cannon repeatedly asked both sides for examples of criminal prosecution for 'other officials who did the same.' She questioned the 'arbitrary enforcement' of the espionage statute, forcing the government to admit that no other former president or vice president has faced criminal prosecution for keeping similar documents and failing to return them.
'This speaks to the arbitrary enforcement...featuring in this case,' Cannon told Bratt. Cannon also pushed back on claims Trump should have expected to face prosecution for storing classified files. Once again noting no former president or vice president-Mike Pence also discovered classified records after Trump was indicted in 2023-has been charged, Cannon suggested it was fair for Trump to expect the same treatment since 'no historical precedent' is on the books. 'Given that landscape,' Cannon continued, Trump could argue he has been unfairly targeted. Which his team already has.
In a motion emailed to the court and the government last month, Trump's attorneys asked to dismiss the case based on 'selective and vindictive prosecution.' Although the motion is not public, Jack Smith quickly responded to defend the Department of Justice's choice to pursue Trump and not Biden. 'Trump, unlike Biden, is alleged to have engaged in extensive and repeated efforts to obstruct justice and thwart the return of documents bearing classification markings, which provides particularly strong evidence of willfulness and is a paradigmatic aggravating factor that prosecutors routinely rely on when making charging decisions,' Smith wrote in a March 7 response. 'Second, the evidence concerning the two men's intent-whether they knowingly possessed and willfully retained such documents-is starkly different.'
In an almost comical passage, Smith admits Biden unlawfully retained classified records-just not as many as Trump. 'Biden possessed 88 documents bearing classification markings, including 18 marked Top Secret. By contrast, Trump possessed 337 documents bearing classification markings, including 64 marked Top Secret.
unherd | The US Supreme Court has been hearing arguments today
on what could be one of the most consequential rulings related to free
speech in decades. The case, Murthy v. Missouri, revolves around efforts
by US Government agencies, including the CDC and the FBI, to influence
the narrative around major events, such as Covid-19, by leaning on
social media platforms to censor posts, topics and accounts.
The case — brought by two states, Missouri and Louisiana, as well as
five individuals against the federal government — was in part animated
by Elon Musk’s decision to publish the Twitter Files, a trove of emails,
text and other company correspondence which showed the extent to which
Government agencies ranging from the CDC to the CIA were in contact with
managers at social media platforms over issues such as claims about the
vaccine and the effectiveness of lockdowns.
The case could not be more significant for American society as far as
freedom of speech is concerned. The reason is that at the heart of the
case is what constitutes disinformation and what steps governments can
take to combat it. In this case, many of the claims censored by social
media companies at the behest of the Government turned out to be true.
This includes widespread censorship of social media posts claiming that
the Covid-19 vaccines carry health risks and that the lockdowns were not only ineffective but also damaging.
Republicans have alleged that the same dynamic was at play when social media giants censored the New York Post’s
reporting on the now infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, arguing that
deep state actors leant on the platform to block the coverage. Twitter
executives involved in the decisions denied this, with one of them, Yoel
Roth, saying “I believe Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.”
The irony, of course, is that “the mistakes of 2016” refers to the
widespread allegations that Trump colluded with the Russian government
to sway that year’s election, including on Facebook. None of these
claims have been proved true — and some, like the effect of “fake news”
on the election, have been debunked.
Nevertheless, the “Russiagate” narrative — itself one of the most sweeping disinformation campaigns of recent years
— took a firm hold in American public life, in large part thanks to
claims of disinformation that lay at the heart of the campaign.
This speaks to the central challenge of the case: while the
Government’s critics argue that disinformation is a cudgel to silence
dissent, proponents argue that a core Government function is to police
information, especially during times of emergency.
abcnews | On Saturday, following
the meeting, the junta’s spokesperson, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, said
U.S. flights over Niger’s territory in recent weeks were illegal.
Meanwhile, Insa Garba Saidou, a local activist who assists Niger’s
military rulers with their communications, criticized U.S. efforts to
force the junta to pick between strategic partners.
“The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer,” he told The Associated Press.
Singh
said the U.S. was aware of the March 16 statement “announcing the end
of the status of forces agreement between Niger and the United States.
We are working through diplomatic channels to seek clarification. These
are ongoing discussions and we don't have more to share at this time.”
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the discussions were prompted by Niger's “trajectory."
“We
are in touch with transition authorities to seek clarification of their
comments and discuss additional next steps,” Patel said.
The junta has largely
been in control in Niger since July when mutinous soldiers ousted the
country’s democratically elected president and months later asked French
forces to leave.
The
U.S. military still had some 650 troops working in Niger in December,
largely consolidated at a base farther away from Niamey, Niger's
capital. Singh said the total number of personnel still in country,
including civilians and contractors, is roughly 1,000.
The
Niger base is critical for U.S. counterterrorism operations in the
Sahel and has been used for both manned and unmanned surveillance
operations, although Singh said the only drone flights being currently
conducted are for force protection.
In the Sahel the U.S. has also supported local ground troops, including
accompanying them on missions. However, such accompanied missions have
been scaled back since U.S. troops were killed in a joint operation in
Niger in 2017.
SCF | Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around and mouthing off about war in Ukraine. Putin remarked in an interview that Macron’s wanton warmongering over Ukraine was borne out of resentment due to the spectacular loss of France’s standing in Africa. One after another, France’s former colonial countries have told Paris in no uncertain terms to get out of their internal affairs. Since 2020 and the coup in Mali, there has been immense political upheaval on the continent, particularly in West and Central Africa, stretching from the vast Sahel region down to the equator. At least seven nations have undergone coups or government changes against Francophone rulers. They include Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Gabon, and Guinea. The continent-wide changes have come as a political earthquake to France. The new African governments have adamantly rejected old-style French patronage and have asserted a newfound national independence.
Paris has had to recall unwanted ambassadors, shut down military bases, and withdraw thousands of troops. Where to put these French troops? In Ukraine, pitted against Russia? Popular sentiment across Africa is exasperated with and repudiating “Francafrique” corruption. Meanwhile, with an unmistakable end-of-era sense, French media have lamented “France’s shrinking footprint in Africa.” A former diplomat summed up the momentous geopolitical shift thus: “The deep trend confirms itself. Our military presence is no longer accepted. We need to totally rethink our relationship with Africa. We have been kicked out of Africa. We need to depart from other countries before we are told to.” Africa analysts are now watching two key countries closely. They are Senegal and Ivory Coast. Both are currently governed by pro-France presidents but the rising anti-French political tide is putting those incumbents at risk of either a coup or electoral ouster.
The blow to the French political elite cannot be overstated. The loss of status in its former colonies is conflating multiple crises tantamount to the traumatic loss of Algeria back in the early 1960s. Financially, for decades after handing over nominal independence to African nations, Paris continued to exploit these countries through control of currencies and their prodigious natural resources. Most of France’s electricity, for example, is generated from uranium ore mined in Africa – and obtained like most other African resources for a pittance. The system of neocolonial suzerainty was typically sustained by France bribing local corrupt regimes to do its bidding and offering security guarantees from the continuance of French military bases. Not for nothing did Paris think of itself as the African Gendarme.
One of the extraordinary curiosities of this neocolonial arrangement was that African nations were compelled to deposit their gold treasuries in France’s central bank. Any African nation trying to resist the neocolonial vassalage was liable to be attacked militarily through counter-coups, or its nationalist leaders were assassinated like Thomas Sankara in 1987, who was known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”. Nevertheless, the halcyon days of France’s dominance over its former colonies are over. African nations are discovering a new sense of independence and purpose, as well as solidarity to help each other fend off pressure from France to reinstate the status quo ante. The collapse of France’s status in Africa is perceived by the French establishment as a grievous loss in presumed global power.
No French politician can feel more aggrieved than President Emmanuel Macron. Macron imagines himself to be on a mission to restore “France’s greatness”. He seems to harbor fantasies of also leading the rest of Europe under the tutelage of Paris. It was Macron who proclaimed one of his grand objectives as achieving a reset in Franco-African relations, one which would renew continental respect for Paris and promote French strategic interests. How embarrassing for Macron that a whole spate of African nations are asserting that they no longer want to have anything to do with the old colonial power. Chagrin indeed.
[..] The French president declared with hysteria that: “If Russia wins this war [in Ukraine], Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero.” Macron’s recklessness is criminal. He is talking up war with Russia based on sheer lies and vanity. When he says Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero what he really means is that his credibility and that of NATO will be reduced to zero when Russia defeats the NATO-backed NeoNazi regime in Kiev. Macron is a most dangerous kind of politician. He has an inordinate ego that has been bruised, his delusions have been shattered, he is an impotent vassal of American imperialism, and he is desperate for his sordid political survival. The French people are all too well aware of the charlatan that poses like a Louis XIV Sun King in Elysée Palace basking in his presumed vainglory. How ironic. Kicked out of Africa… and now trying to start World War Three in Europe. How pathetic and criminal.
NYTimes | Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, on Thursday delivered a pointed speech on the Senate floor excoriating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and calling for new leadership in Israel, five months into the war.
Many Democratic lawmakers have condemned Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership and his right-wing governing coalition, and President Biden has even criticized the Israeli military’s offensive in Gaza as “over the top.” But Mr. Schumer’s speech amounted to the sharpest critique yet from a senior American elected official — effectively urging Israelis to replace Mr. Netanyahu.
“I believe in his heart, his highest priority is the security of Israel,” said Mr. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States. “However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” Mr. Schumer added: “He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”
The speech was the latest reflection of the growing dissatisfaction among Democrats, particularly progressives, with Israel’s conduct of the war and its toll on Palestinian civilians, which has created a strategic and political dilemma for Mr. Biden. Republicans have tried to capitalize on that dynamic for electoral advantage, hugging Mr. Netanyahu closer as Democrats repudiate him. And on Thursday, they lashed out at Mr. Schumer for his remarks.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on the Senate floor that it was “grotesque and hypocritical” for Americans “who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel.” He called Mr. Schumer’s move “unprecedented.”
“The Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. “It has an anti-Israel problem.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Mr. Schumer’s remarks “earth-shatteringly bad” and accused him of “calling on the people of Israel to overthrow their government.” And House Republicans, gathered in West Virginia for a party retreat, hastily called a news conference to attack Mr. Schumer for his comments and position themselves as the true friends of Israel in Congress.
Mr. Schumer’s remarks came a day after Senate Republicans invited Mr. Netanyahu to speak as their special guest at a party retreat in Washington. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, asked Mr. Netanyahu to address Republicans virtually, but he could not appear because of a last-minute scheduling conflict. Ambassador Michael Herzog, Israel’s envoy to the United States, spoke in his place and also addressed the House G.O.P. gathering on Thursday.
In his speech at the Capitol, Mr. Schumer, who represents a state with more than 20 percent of the country’s Jewish population, was careful to assert that he was not trying to dictate any electoral outcome in Israel. He prefaced his harsh criticism of Mr. Netanyahu with a long defense of the country, which he said American Jews “love in our bones.”
In an essay published Monday in City Journal,
Kulldorff wrote that his anti-mandate position got him fired from the
Mass General Brigham hospital system, where he also worked, and
consequently from his Harvard faculty position.
Kulldorff detailed how his commitment to scientific inquiry put him at odds with a system that he alleged had “lost its way.”
“I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard,” Kulldorff wrote.
“The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered,
truth can get you fired.”
He noted that it was clear from early 2020 that lockdowns would be futile for controlling the pandemic.
“It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral
damage, not only on education but also on public health, including
treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health,”
Kulldorff wrote.
“We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the
elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the
world — all will suffer.”
That viewpoint got little debate in the mainstream media until the epidemiologist and his colleagues published the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by nearly 1 million public health professionals from across the world.
The document made clear that no scientific consensus existed for
lockdown measures in a pandemic. It argued instead for a “focused
protection” approach for pandemic management that would protect
high-risk populations, such as elderly or medically compromised people,
and otherwise allow the COVID-19 virus to circulate among the healthy population.
Although the declaration merely summed up what previously had been conventional wisdom in public health, it was subject to tremendous backlash.
Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed
that Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of
Health called for a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration and of the authors, who were subsequently slandered in mainstream and social media.
respectfulinsolence | So what was (and is) going on? Kulldorff now says he was fired as
though the firing happened recently, but two and a half years ago he was
already referring to his time as professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School in the past tense. Something odd is going on here but
what could it be. One big hint is his profile on the Harvard website,
which lists him as being “on leave,”
which led me to immediately recognize that trying to figure out when
Kulldorff went on leave was a job for the almighty Wayback Machine at
Archive.org. There, I found that, as early as December 2021, Kulldorff’s
status had already been listed as “on leave.” So where did Wikipedia
get the idea that he had only been on leave since 2023? Whatever the
case, it’s clear that before his “firing,” Kulldorff had not been
working for Mass General Brigham or Harvard since at least November or
December 2021, given that the last archive of his webpage showing him
not on leave is dated October 20, 2021 and the next one on December 20, 2021 shows his status as “on leave.” This time period aligns very nicely with his move to the Brownstone Institute.
However, it also aligns with the Harvard vaccine mandate for the fall
2021 term. So maybe Harvard did fire him for refusing to be vaccinated
and raising all sorts of nonsensical objections, such as his claim that
it was against his religion because the vaccine mandate was more
religious than science-based? If that was the case, though, then why was
he listed as “on leave” on the website, rather than as suspended? Let’s
look further.
Here’s yet another hint. If you look at Kulldorff’s Harvard listing,
you’ll see that it includes his research support, specifically his
grant support. This listing indicates that he has not had NIH grant
support since 2019. To understand why this is important, you need to
know that lots of universities, but in particular Harvard Medical
School-associated positions, require faculty to maintain grant support
sufficient to cover a specific percentage of their salary. This
percentage can range from a relatively modest 30-50% to a rather
draconian 100%. (If you have to get grants to cover 100% of your salary,
I always wonder, what good is the university?) While it is true that
there is some wiggle room in that if you lose grant funding for a while
usually the university will support you until you reacquire funding, but
the university won’t support you forever. Kulldorff’s leave started a
bit more than two years after his NIH R01 grant support expired, which
is a fairly reasonable period of time for Harvard to support whatever
percentage of Kulldorff’s salary that had been grant-supported, in the
hopes that he would reacquire NIH funding.
The overall narrative is that the reason that Kulldorff had to go on
leave was because of Harvard’s vaccine mandate for its fall 2021 term,
which somewhat fits with the timeline. However, what doesn’t make sense
(at least to me, at least) about this potential explanation. Harvard got rid of its vaccine mandate a week ago.
Would Harvard decide to fire Kulldorff now, given that it had
progressively decreased its requirements for boosters and now has
eliminated the COVID-19 vaccine mandate altogether? Possibly. I can’t
rule it out entirely. Certainly, that’s what Kulldorff appears to be
claiming, that he was fired because he refused to be vaccinated.
However, it seems rather excessive that it took over two and a half
years. I also believe, based on my experience observing him, that
Kulldorff is not to be trusted, which is why I’m skeptical of his
explanation.
Here’s my educated guess as to what really happened, and I freely
acknowledge that it is nothing more than an educated guess. However, it is
a guess that makes sense given the timeline and what we know. My guess
is that in late 2021, having failed to garner any new NIH RO1 grants,
Kulldorff saw the writing on the wall and decided to go on leave in
order to accept Tucker’s offer to become senior scientific director of
the new right wing think tank that Tucker was forming, the Brownstone
Institute. (It is also possible that Harvard’s imposition of a vaccine
mandate for fall 2021 might have played into his considerations.) My
further guess is that Brigham has a limit to how long you can be on
leave before you lose your position. Here we are, over two years since
Kulldorff went on leave, and Kulldorff shows no signs of renewed
academic activity that might allow him to score new NIH or other
government grant funding. Assuming that Kulldorff was not tenured, which
now seems likely, that meant that it was time for him to go.
Of course, I still can’t totally rule out the possibility that he was
actually canned because he refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19
and that he was tenured, which somehow allowed him to drag out the
process two and a half years. However, it still seems unlikely (to me,
at least) that he would have been able to drag out the appeals process
that long even as a tenured full professor, particularly given that in
the intervening time Harvard has progressively decreased its vaccine
mandate until it got rid of it altogether a week ago. Still, it seems
rather implausible that it would take two and a half years from his
refusal to his being fired, and it seems even less plausible that
Harvard would go through with firing Kulldorff after that long given how
much the political winds have shifted with respect to mandates and how
much heat Harvard would face for doing so, in particular after its
president Claudine Gay was forced to resign over her testimony regarding campus free speech plus plagiarism charges.
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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