racket |On a flight, reading about the FBI’s arrest
of Jack Texiera, already dubbed the “Pentagon Leaker.” A quick review
reveals multiple media portraits already out depicting him as a
dangerous incel who shared his wares on Discord, a social media app
where “racist memes” and “offensive jokes” flourish. Writes the New York Times:
Dark
humor about race or ideology can eventually shape the beliefs of
impressionable young people, and innocuous memes can be co-opted into
symbols of hatred, researchers say.
Well, clearly we can’t have dark humor or innocuous memes! Gitmo cages for all!
The Washington Post went with “charismatic gun enthusiast”:
The New York Timessummarized
key points in the secret defense documents, which among other things
suggested “Ukrainian forces are in more dire straits than their
government has acknowledged publicly.” Reading what’s out there, it’s
not easy to parse what’s a legitimate intelligence concern in reaction
to these leaks and what’s mere embarrassment at having been caught
lying, to the public, to would-be U.S. allies the documents show we’ve
been spying on, etc.
You’ll read a lot in the coming
days about the dangers of apps like Discord, or of online gaming groups,
which counterintelligence officials told the Washington Post today are a “magnet for spies.” The Leaker tale will also surely be framed as reason to pass the RESTRICT Act,
the wet dream of creepazoid Virginia Senator Mark Warner, which would
give government wide latitude to crack down on “communication
technology” creating “undue or unacceptable risk” to national security.
The intelligence community has itself been massively interfering in domestic news using illegal leaks for years. Remember the “Why Did Obama Dawdle on Russia’s Hacking?” story by David Ignatius of the Washington Post
in January of 2017, outing would-be Trump National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn as having been captured in intercepts speaking with a
Russian ambassador? That was just the first in a string of leak- or
intercept-based news stories that dominated news cycles in the Trump
years, involving everything from conclusions of the FISA court to
supposedly secret meetings in the Seychelles.
When
civilians or whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Julian Assange (in jail
for an incredible four years now), Reality Winner and now the “Discord
Leaker” bring leaked information to the public, the immediate threat is
Espionage Act charges and decades of jail time. When a CIA head or a top
FBI official does it, it’s just news. In fact, officials talk openly
about using “strategic leaks”
as a P.R. staple. In a world where media currency is becoming the
ultimate power, these people want a monopoly. It’s infuriating.
Watch how this thing will be spun. It’s going to get ugly fast.
greenwald | On a virtually daily basis, one can find authorized leaks in The New York Times, The Washington Post,
on CNN and NBC News: meaning stories dressed up as leaks from anonymous
sources that are, in fact, nothing more than messaging assertions that
the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon have instructed these
subservient media corporations to disseminate. When that happens, the
leaker is never found or punished: even when the leaks are designated as
the most serious crimes under the U.S. criminal code, such as when The Washington Post's long-time CIA spokesman David Ignatius in early 2017 published the contents of the intercepted phone calls
between Trump's incomcing National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and
Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Most of Russiagate was constructed
based on authorized leaks, a generous way of describing official propaganda from the U.S. Security State launedered in the American corporate press.
But when it comes to unauthorizedleaks--
which result in the disclsoure of secret evidence showing that the U.S.
Security State lied, acted corruptly, or broke laws -- that is when the
full weight of establishment power comes crashing down on the head of
the leaker. They are found and arrested. Their character is destroyed.
And now -- in a new and genuinely shocking esclation -- it is the
largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI's work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.
This
playback is always used in such cases and is easily recognized. The
point is to shift attention from the substance of the embarrassing and
incriminating disclosures onto the personal traits of the person who
exposed them, so as to make the public forget about what they learned
and come to see the leaker as so unlikeable that they want nothing to do
with the disclosures themselves. Thus:
When Daniel Ellsberg
leaked the Pentagon Papers – showing the US Government was lying to the
American public that it believed it could win the war in Vietnam – FBI
and CIA agents broke into the office of his psychoanalyst to try to expose his psychosexual secrets to discredit him and distract from the substance of the disclosures.
When it became clear that Julian Assangehad
created a powerful and formidible instrument for holding the U.S.
Security State accountable and exposing their lies and crimes --
WikiLeaks -- corporate outlets began puking up a deluge of personal
attacks against him, ones designed to make people conclude he is so
repellent that the disclosures he enabled should be ignored because he
was just too personally distasteful. The then-editor-in-chief of The New York Times Bill Keller even stooped to demeaning his personal hygiene, publishing this 2011 paragraph that he said he received from one of his reporters:
“He
was alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street,
wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white
shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his
ankles. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in days.”
When Edward Snowden furnished to myself and Laura Poitras the previously secret evidence that Obama national security official James Clapper lied to the public
when denying that the NSA spied en masse on millions of Americans --
reporting that ended up winning every major journalism prize in the West
and that caused an appellate court to rule that Obama's NSA had acted both unconstituitonally and illegally in infringing the privacy rights of millions of Americans -- CNN, NYT. NBC and The New Yorkier's Jeffrey Toobin labeled him a "narcissist" for believing he knew better than everyone else, and numerous outlets dug through his old blog comments to prove he had bad politics as a teenager.
Now, when doing the FBI's work by outing Jack Teixeira, both the Washington Post and CNN are emphasizing transgressive comments
he made about race and anti-Semitism in a teenagers' gaming room to
distract attention from the lies these docs reveal about, among other
things, Biden's role in Ukraine.
NYPost | Accused Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira
could not have acted alone — suggesting the 21-year-old is merely the
patsy in a much wider intelligence breach, according to one of
former-President Trump’s top national security aides.
Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar.
That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime.
And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more.
Ask yourself who is the real enemy?
A young low level national guardsmen?
Or the…
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) April 13, 2023
“It’s just not possible” for a low-level Air National Guard
information technology specialist like Teixeira to have access to the
trove of highly sensitive US intelligence he allegedly revealed, according to Kash Patel, Trump’s former deputy director of national intelligence.
“You can be the biggest IT person in [the Department of Defense], and
you are still compartmented off of the actual information,” Patel told
Breitbart News Saturday.
“Almost never does an IT person need to know, as we say, the
substance of the intelligence,” Patel, a onetime Pentagon chief of
staff, told the conservative outlet. “Their job is to provide the secure
information systems around it to protect any disclosures.”
“This is crazy sensitive stuff,” he said of the detailed data about
Ukraine’s military planning that Teixeira is accused of posting online.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who have a Top Secret/SCI clearance don’t
have access to this information.”
Patel said he does not believe “for a single second” that “this guy —
a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman — ran his operation alone.”
Instead, he said, the explosive revelations are likely part of “an
Assange-style operation” — referring to the WikiLeaks founder who faces espionage charges for helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files.
“The way it was produced, the way it was put out there — pages,
printed photographs taken, published online — that is a methodical way
of releasing classified information illegally,” Patel said.
“I think he’s definitely working with other people in DOD or the
intel space to get this information out,” he added — calling Teixiera’s
Thursday arrest “an extensive cover-up.”
sonar21 | Until I saw the document labeled, CIA Operations Center Intelligence
Update, I was inclined to believe that the leaked documents were the
work of a frustrated whistleblower. But I have changed my mind. This
looks like a controlled, directed leak by individuals who manipulated
the 21 year old National Guard troop into taking certain documents and
posting them on a public server.
The CIA Operations Center Intelligence Update is a document produced
by analysts in the Operations Center to be delivered to the regular CIA
analysts. When I worked in the Ops Center I was responsible for
monitoring traffic from Latin American posts and flagging items that the
analysts in the Latin American Division need to know. I would write up
summary paragraphs just like the ones in the documents leaked on line.
This was an internal CIA document. It was not broadcast to the other
intelligence agencies. In my 23 years working with U.S. military
commands around the world, I never saw a copy of this type of report
circulating among those with the highest clearances. Never. How did a 21
year old kid get his hands on at least two of these?
The classified documents now in the public domain are focused
primarily on Russia and Ukraine. The CIA Ops Center docs now floating
around the internet are only partial copies. For example, there are
three pages, all classified Top Secret, from an eight page document. If
you’re a goofy 21 year old gamer simply intent on impressing your young
proteges, why not take all eight pages. My guess is that the other five
pages contained no intelligence information on Ukraine or Russia.
The 102nd ISS provides intelligence systems maintenance, integration,
and operations for the AN/GSQ-272 SENTINEL weapon system, as part of
the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System (AF-DCGS) Enterprise,
enabling near real-time Collection, Processing, Exploitation, and
Dissemination (CPED) of
The Sixteenth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber),
headquartered at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, focuses on information
warfare in the modern age. Information Warfare requires integrating:
Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance; Cyber Warfare;
Electromagnetic Warfare; Weather; Public Affairs; and Information
Operations capabilities. 16th Air Force ensures that our Air Force and
Nation are fast, resilient, and fully integrated in competition, crisis,
and conflict by incorporating Information Warfare at operational and
tactical levels, capitalizing on the value of information by leading the
charge for uniquely-21st century challenges in the highly dynamic,
seamless, and global information domain..
I do not believe it is a coincidence that he served in an information
warfare unit. Remember, he was a low ranked enlisted guy. He had a
chain of command. He did not show up to work and decide what duties he
had to perform while on the job. He reported to and worked at the
direction of Non-Commissioned Officers and Commissioned Officers. He
did not just waltz into a SCIF and print documents at his leisure. A guy
at his level would attract attention if he was printing off a document
like the CIA Ops Center report.
I believe that the alleged leaker did have access to Top Secret
intelligence by virtue of his job. I don’t know if there was a polygraph
requirement for him and his cohorts. Regardless, all of the
intelligence that has been leaked was on a Top Secret computer net and
could only be accessed inside a SCIF.
Let me explain why I think the story currently being sold to the
public about this young man is too good to be true and, in my view, is a
smoke screen.
The first problem is BELLINGCAT. Bellingcat is an Open Source Intelligence outfit
that has been funded by U.S. and British intelligence. BELLINGCAT is
“credited” with sleuthing out the identity of the site where the
classified documents were posted and the name of the leaker.
NYPost | Then-Vice President Joe Biden visited Ukraine on a mission to bolster the country’s energy industry days after his son Hunter joined the board
of natural gas company Burisma in 2014 — which a former White House
stenographer claims implicates the now-80-year-old in a foreign
influence-peddling “kickback scheme.”
Mike McCormick says he was with current national security adviser Jake Sullivan — then a Biden aide — in the press cabin of Air Force Two en route to Kyiv on April 21, 2014, as he outlined how the world’s wealthiest country would help the deeply corrupt post-Soviet state build its gas industry.
Giving a rundown of priorities for the trip, Sullivan — described in a
transcript as an anonymous “senior administration official” — said
Biden would “discuss with [Ukrainian officials] medium- and long-term
strategies to boost conventional gas production, and also to begin to
take advantage of the unconventional gas reserves that are in Ukraine.”
Asked for details, the Biden aide said the US was interested in
providing “technical assistance to help [Ukraine] be able to boost
production in their conventional gas fields, where presently they aren’t
getting the maximum of what they could be” while offering “technical
assistance relating to a regulatory framework, and also the technology
that would be required to extract unconventional gas resources; and
Ukraine has meaningful reserves of unconventional gas according to the
latest estimates.”
In December of that year, amid broader Obama administration support for Ukraine, Congress approved $50 million to support the country’s energy sector, including the natural gas industry.
McCormick, who worked more than a decade at the White House, told The
Post this week he believes the timeline of events, featuring the
unmasked longtime Joe Biden aide, demonstrates that the president used
his prior position to help his son’s foreign business interests.
“Joe Biden was over there telling them, ‘You can’t be corrupt! You
can’t be corrupt!’ while he was corrupt,” McCormick says. “Look, this is
Air Force Two. This is Joe Biden’s plane. He’s in control of it. Jake
Sullivan was in the front of the plane with Joe Biden in a meeting and
then he walks back in the plane to talk to the press.”
Now, McCormick tells The Post that he wants to testify before the federal grand jury in Delaware considering charges against Hunter — saying he has relevant information that the FBI ignored.
“They’ve been looking at Hunter Biden, but this ties Joe Biden and
[Sullivan] into promoting a kickback scheme with Ukraine,” he said.
“It’s the timeline that does it.”
seymourhersh |
The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using
American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel
fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with
Russia. It is unknown how much the Zalensky government is paying per
gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per
gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or
parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.
What also is unknown is that Zalensky has been buying the fuel from
Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the
Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold
millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments.
One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the
embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert
compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the
Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports
emerging from the Ukraine.”
“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one
knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying
for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making
millions” on it.
Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I
was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons
and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which
provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia,
but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. “I
wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the
Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,” an
American expert on international trade told me.
The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a
meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns. His
message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence
official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob
movie. The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry
at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian
president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than
was going to the generals.”
Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and
senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in
the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten
days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious
officials on the list and doing little else. “The ten he got rid of were
brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their
new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me.
Zelensky’s half-hearted response and the White House’s lack of
concern was seen, the intelligence official added, as another sign of a
lack of leadership that is leading to a “total breakdown” of trust
between the White House and some elements of the intelligence community.
Another divisive issue, I have been repeatedly told in my recent
reporting, is the strident ideology and lack of political skill shown by
Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake
Sullivan. The president and his two main foreign policy advisers “live
in different worlds” than the experienced diplomats and military and
intelligence officers assigned to the White House;. “They have no
experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up
stories. Diplomatic deniability is something else,” the intelligence
official said. “That has to be done.”
A prominent retired American diplomat who strenuously opposes Biden’s
foreign policy toward China and Russia depicted Blinken as little more
than a “jumped-up congressional staffer” and Sullivan as “a political
campaign manager” who suddenly find themselves front and center in the
world of high-powered diplomacy “with no empathy for the opposition.
They’re decent pols,” he added, “but now we have the political and
energy world all upside down. China and India are now selling refined
gasoline to the Western world. It’s just business.”
The current crisis is not helped by the fact that Putin also is
acting irrationally. The intelligence official told me that everything
Putin has been “doing in Ukraine is counter to Russia’s long-term
interests. Emotion has overcome rationality and he’s doing things that
are totally nonproductive. And so are we going to sit down with Zelensky
and Putin and work it out? Not a chance.”
“There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and
the intelligence community,” the intelligence official said. The rift
dates back to the fall, when, as I reported in early February, Biden
ordered the covertdestruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic
Sea. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even
known in advance, by the community,” the official told me. “And there
is no strategy for ending the war. The US spent two years planning for
the Normandy invasion in World War II. What are we going to do if China
decides to invade Taiwan?” The official added that the National
Intelligence Council has yet to order a National Intelligence Estimate
(NIE) on defending Taiwan from China, which would provide national
security and political guidance in case such does happen. There is no
reason yet, despite repeated American political provocation from both
Democrats and Republicans, the official said, to suspect that China has
any intention of invading Taiwan. It has lost billions building its
wildly ambitious Belt and Road Initiative aimed at linking East Asia to
Europe and investing, perhaps foolishly, in seaports around the world.
“The point is,” the official told me, “there is no working NIE process
anymore.
“Burns is not the problem,” the official said. “The problem is Biden
and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of
worshippers—who see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin. ‘We
are against evil. Ukraine will fight ’til the last military shell is
gone, and still fight.’ And here’s Biden who is telling America that
we’re going to fight as long as it takes.”
The official cited the little-known and rarely discussed deployment,
authorized by Biden, of two brigades with thousands of America’s best
army combat units to the region. A brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division
has been intensively training and exercising from its base inside
Poland within a few miles of the Ukrainian border. It was reinforced
late last year by a brigade from the 101st Airborne Division that was
deployed in Romania. The actual manpower of the two brigades, when
administrative and support units—with the trucks and drivers who haul
the constant stream of arms and military equipment flowing by sea to
keep the units combat ready—could total more than 20,000.
The intelligence officials told me that “there is no evidence that
any senior official in the White House really knows what’s going on in
the 82nd and 101st. Are they there as part of a NATO exercise or to
serve with NATO combat units if the West decides to engage Russians
units inside Ukraine? Are they there to train or to be a trigger? The
rules of engagement say they can’t attack Russians unless our boys are
getting attacked.”
“But the juniors are running the show here,” the official added.
“There’s no NSC coordination and the US army is getting ready to go to
war. There’s no idea whether the White House knows what’s going on. Has
the president gone to the American people with an informative broadcast
about what is going on? The only briefings the press and the public get
today are from White House spokespeople.
“This is not just bad leadership. There is none. Zero.” The official
added that a team of Ukrainian combat pilots are now getting trained
here in America to fly US-built F-16 fighter jets, with the goal, if
needed, of flying in combat against Russian troops and other targets
inside Ukraine.” No decision about such deployment has been made.
The clearest statements of American policy have come not from the
White House, but from the Pentagon. Army General Mark A. Milley, who is
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of the war last March 15:
“Russia remains isolated. Their military stocks are rapidly depleting.
Their soldiers are demoralized, untrained, unmotivated conscripts and
convicts, and their leadership is failing them. Having already failed in
their strategic objectives, Russia is increasingly relying on other
countries, such as Iran and North Korea. . . . This relationship is
built on the cruel bonds of repressing freedom, subverting liberty and
maintaining their tyranny. . . . Ukraine remains strong. They are
capable and trained. Ukrainian soldiers are . . . strong in their combat
units. Their tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and armored vehicles are
only going to bolster the front line.”
There is evidence that Milley is as optimistic as he sounds. I was
told that two months ago the Joint Chiefs had ordered members of the
staff—the military phrase is “tasked”—to draft an end-of-war treaty to
present to the Russians after their defeat on the Ukraine battlefield.
If worse comes to worst for the undermanned and outgunned Ukraine
army in the next few months, will the two American brigades join forces
with NATO troops and face off with the Russian army inside Ukraine? Is
this the plan, or hope, of the American president? Is this the fireside
chat he wants to give? If Biden decides to share his thoughts with the
American people, he might want to explain what two army brigades, fully
staffed and supplied, are doing so close to the war zone.
sputnikglobe | The appearance online of what looks like secret documents concerning US intelligence assessments of the conflict in Ukraine and their proliferation by media have sparked widespread controversy, with observers divided into two broad camps: those who believe the docs are genuine, and those who have reservations. Here’s what we know right now.
The leak of over 100 photographed pages of documents dated between late February and early March and labeled “Secret,” “Top Secret,” and “NOFORN” (not for viewing by foreign nationals) related to the ongoing NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine continues to generate global headlines. It has also had a real world impact, with Washington officials scrambling to contact and reassure allies amid embarrassing revelations that the US has been spying on its own allies (although, of course, that’s nothing new to anyone who’s been paying attention).
Key Takeaways As the dust settles and the potential security implications of the leaks (including, potentially, the judiciousness of further US and NATO military assistance to Kiev), several facts seem to stand out among the info gleaned.
1. A page from a “Top Secret” assessment from February highlights apparent major “force generation and sustainment shortfalls” within Ukraine’s Armed Forces, and warns that Kiev would be able to secure only “modest territorial gains” if it decided to launch a spring offensive.
The assessment is significant because it highlights the contrast between the glum internal appraisal by the Pentagon, and the gung ho, everything-is-awesome sentiment expressed by officials in Washington and Brussels, and by President Joe Biden’s brash talk of Kiev’s impressive capabilities to conduct large-scale offensive operations with US support.
The information also raises questions about just where the tens of billions of dollars in US and NATO security assistance to Kiev has gone, given growing concerns about Western weapons sent to Ukraine somehow popping up in the hands of European gangs and African and Middle Eastern rebels and terrorist groups, while the dollar value of arms deliveries to Ukraine comes close to matching Russia’s entire annual defense budget.2. Another significant document, also dating from February, highlights President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recommendation that Ukrainian forces carry out massed drone strikes against “Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast,” and complaints that Kiev does not have the necessary long-range missile capabilities for such strikes.This piece of info is significant because it highlights President Zelensky’s apparent desperation and readiness to attack Russia directly despite warnings by some of his NATO paymasters that doing so might undermine their support for Kiev.3. The leaks challenge longstanding claims by the Pentagon and the Ukrainian military about casualties. A document entitled “Top Secret – Status of the Conflict as of March 01, 2023” estimates total Russian losses could be up to 16,000-17,500 killed in action, and 61,000-71,500 on the Ukrainian side.
That’s a far cry from the assessment by Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley in November, which estimated Russian deaths at “well over” 100,000 troops, as well as the Ukrainian military’s pie in the sky “eliminated personnel” figures of 180,050 (i.e. nearly matching the 190,000 troop total that Western intelligence estimated were near Donbass in February 2022 before the escalation of the crisis).
Ukrainian officials and Western media have sought to downplay these figures, accusing Russia of “doctoring” the stats (despite possible secondary corroboration) and assuring that Russian casualties are much higher, and Ukrainian ones much lower. Wherever the truth lies, the figures serve to undermine confidence in Ukraine’s NATO-supported and equipped army of super soldiers.
4. Another key revelation relates to the extent of NATO involvement. While alliance officials have consistently assured that no Western forces are on the ground fighting against Russia, a “Top Secret” document dated March 23 indicates that nearly half-a-dozen NATO powers do in fact have “boots on the ground” in the form of special forces troops. These include Britain (50 troops), Latvia (17), France (15), the US (14), and the Netherlands (1).
It’s unclear what exactly these forces are doing there. The document doesn’t say. Apparently realizing the grave implications of this information, Britain’s Defense Ministry offered a catch-all dismissal of the documents, assuring in a Tweet Tuesday that “the widely reported leak of alleged classified US information has demonstrated a serious level of inaccuracy,” and that “readers should be cautious about taking at face value allegations that have the potential to spread disinformation.”
What’s significant about the NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine? Well, for one thing, they serve to confirm longstanding allegations made by senior Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the US and its allies are waging a “total war” against Russia. Moreover, it raises important questions about the dangerous potential future of proxy wars. How, for example, would the US react if Russia or China deployed special forces troops to fight NATO forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Yugoslavia? The presence of Western alliance forces in Ukraine has effectively opened that can of worms.5. One final significant piece of information that can be gleaned from the documents relates to the state of Ukraine’s air defenses. A Pentagon assessment dated February 28 projected that Kiev’s stocks of Soviet-made Buk and S-300 missile systems – which make up almost 90 percent of the country’s air defenses, would be “fully depleted” by mid-April and May 3, respectively. A second slide from an assessment from February 23 predicts that Ukrainian forces’ frontline protection would be “completely reduced” by May 23.
This information is significant because it seems to confirm that the US and its allies are running out of time to shore up their client’s air defense protection before Russia gains total air superiority similar to the kind its Air Force enjoyed in the counterterrorism operation in Syria, or the kind the US and its allies typically have when they decide to bomb a third world country.
The US has promised to provide Ukraine with its bulky Patriot missile system and to ramp up deliveries of other anti-air weaponry, but observers have expressed concerns about the ability of the US military-industrial complex to ramp up production quickly enough, and questioned whether Washington will be willing to send additional sophisticated air defense hardware to a conflict zone where losses would mean a significant hit to US weapons makers if the equipment is lost.
Skepticism is Healthy The leak of the documents online, and the fact that they were picked up by major legacy media resources in the West, has caused understandable consternation in some circles about whether or not they are genuine. After all, these are the same newspapers, outlets, and television networks that have pumped out story after debunked Russia-related story over the years and decades, from the claim that Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan, to the allegation that Moscow meddled in America’s elections in 2016 and secretly installed a “Manchurian Candidate” named Donald Trump.
“We don’t have a position,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Sputnik when asked about the leaks. “Maybe it’s a fake, deliberate misinformation.”
Ryabkov explained that since Washington is a key party to the Ukraine conflict and is waging a hybrid war against Russia, the documents may be a ploy to mislead the Russian side. “I’m not confirming anything, but understand that various scenarios are conceivable here,” he said.
Publicly, at least, officials in Washington have treated the leaks as if they’re the real thing. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin vowed that his department would “turn over every rock” until the “source” of the leaks was found and their extent clarified. CIA chief William Burns echoed Austin’s performance, calling the leaks “deeply unfortunate” and saying they were something the US government “takes extremely seriously.”
Amid reports that the Pentagon has been trying to scrub the leaked docs from the net, Twitter CEO Elon Musk sarcastically quipped that “yeah, you can totally delete things from the internet – it works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”
Kiev, predictably, has blamed Moscow, calling the leaks a “Russian propaganda ploy.” Chinese media dismissed these assertions, suggesting that if Russia had gotten its hands on the documents, it would likely hold onto them and use them to its advantage against Ukraine and NATO instead of spreading them online.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the leaks “quite interesting.” As for the suggestion that Moscow might somehow be involved, he said that “the tendency to constantly blame Russia for everything is a widespread disease right now.”
The truth about who leaked the documents and why may never be found. However, a stream of retired US officials, Washington-based security advisors, and CIA analysts have told Sputnik that the “leaks” may be an attempt by “dissenters” and “realists” within the US security state establishment to provide Washington with a much-needed “offramp” from the ever-escalating conflict with Russia in Ukraine before it turns into a world war.
NYTimes | The F.B.I. on
Thursday was preparing to enter the home of a 21-year-old member of the
intelligence wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who is linked
to an online group at the center of a trove of leaked classified U.S.
intelligence documents that have upended relations with American allies
and exposed weaknesses in the Ukrainian military.
The
national guardsman, who was first identified by The New York Times as
Jack Teixeira, oversaw an online group named Thug Shaker Central, where
about 20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, came together
over a shared love of guns, racist online memes and video games.
On
Thursday, an armored vehicle and about a dozen uniformed officers, most
wearing tactical gear and holding weapons, were outside the
cordoned-off home.
Two
U.S. officials confirmed that investigators want to talk to Airman
Teixeira about the leak the government documents to the private online
group. One official said he might have information relevant to the
investigation.
Starting
months ago, the authorities say, one of the users of the online group
uploaded hundreds of pages of intelligence briefings into the small chat
group, lecturing its members, who had bonded during the isolation of
the pandemic, on the importance of staying abreast of world events.
The
New York Times spoke with four members of the Thug Shaker Central chat
group, where Airman Teixeira served as group administrator.
While
the gaming friends would not identify the group’s leader by name, a
trail of digital evidence compiled by The Times leads to Airman
Teixeira.
Here’s what else to know:
The
Times has been able to link Airman Teixeira to other members of the
Thug Shaker Central group through his online gaming profile and other
records. Details of the interior of Airman Teixeira’s childhood home —
posted on social media in family photographs — also match details on the
margins of some of the photographs of the leaked secret documents.
Members
of Thug Shaker Central who spoke to The Times said that the documents
they discussed online were meant to be purely informative, and started
to get wider attention only after one of the teenage members took a few
dozen of them and posted them to a public online forum.The
person who leaked, they said, was no whistle-blower, and the secret
documents were never meant to leave their small corner of the internet.
On
Thursday, President Biden told reporters that the United States was
“getting close” to finding answers about the leak. Senior law
enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expect an
arrest in the case over the next day or two.
The
leaked documents reveal sensitive material — maps of Ukrainian air
defenses and a review of South Korea’s secret plans to deliver
ammunition to Ukraine — but it is the immediate relevance of the
intelligence that most worries White House and Pentagon officials: Some
of the documents appear to be barely 40 days old.
politico | A deep secret,
like a glass of water, can be easily controlled and contained. But when
you build vast structures to hold them — a national security apparatus
in the case of secrets and canyon-spanning dams when it comes to water —
the pressures can exceed thousands of pounds per square inch. Unless
adequately monitored and maintained, secrets and water can breach their
restraints and flood everything downhill for miles.
The Pentagon just suffered such a dramatic breach as upward of 100 documents leaked. These files contained a grab-bag of national security secrets
including about the conduct of the war in Ukraine; U.S. success in
penetrating the Russian war machine; insights on the clandestine
maneuverings of Israel and South Korea; hints about a previously unknown
satellite surveillance technology; the attempted shoot-down of a
British spy plane by the Russians; a pending arms deal between Egypt and
Russia and one between Turkish contacts and the Wagner group; a Russian
effort to hack Canadian gas fields; and intelligence sources and
methods, all of which flowed onto online sites, drenching the Pentagon
in embarrassment and endangering secret missions around the world.
As
national security disasters go, the Pentagon leaks were complete. But
as great a scandal as the secrets deluge might be, the greater scandal
is how lax the Pentagon appears to be with such monumentally
confidential information that it could be purloined and posted on
freeform internet sites 4Chan and Discord. Squawking from Congress has ensued, of course, and the Pentagon has muttered about how “serious” the damage is. There is talk that some of the documents have been altered to exaggerate the number of Russian dead.
But the government is mostly ostriching the calamity right now.
President Joe Biden has been silent on the issue. And on Monday, White
House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby,
counseled the press to look away. Declining to confirm the provenance
of the documents, Kirby said, “It has no business — if you don’t mind me
saying — on the front pages of newspapers or on television. It is not
intended for public consumption, and it should not be out there.”
Yes,
yes! If the press and the public will only take a deep breath and
ignore the rising floodwaters, the Russians and the Turks and the
Israelis will ignore the tidal wave, too, and dryness will be restored
to the land. Good work, Kirby!
The Pentagon — and Kirby, who previously worked as a military and diplomatic affairs analyst for CNN
— have enough egg on their faces to start an omelet factory. They don’t
know how these secrets escaped their cage, they don’t know who
engineered the breakout, they don’t know if additional secrets were
snagged. They seem to know nothing and to be engaged in the magical
thinking that if we turn away the problem will disappear.
According to press reports, the stash of classified documents
appears to have been printed and photographed before being posted
online and were likely printed from a secure printer by an authorized
user. One unnamed U.S. official told the New York Times that hundreds, if not thousands,
of military and U.S. officials have security clearances that would
permit them access to the documents. The Pentagon is going to need a
wide dragnet if they hope to catch the leaker.
Guardian | A damaging batch of documents leaked from the Pentagon
appears to have been initially shared on the video game chat platform
Discord in an effort to win an argument about the war in Ukraine,
according to open-source intelligence analysts.
The
bizarre provenance of the leak may seem unusual but it is far from the
first time that a dispute between gamers has sparked an intelligence
breach, with the overlapping communities causing problems for military
and gaming platforms alike.
The
existence of the leaked cache was exposed as documents showing
estimated casualties in the Bakhmut theatre of battle began circulating
on public social networks last week.
Two
versions of those documents, one of which had been crudely digitally
altered to understate Russian casualties and overstate Ukrainian ones,
were passed around among observers of the war. One, with the correct
figures, stemmed from a leak to 4chan, the chaotic image board best known for birthing the “alt right” movement.
At the same time, a second set of documents, including the edited image, were being passed around pro-Russian Telegram channels.
Neither
was the original source, however. Before they emerged on to the public
internet, the documents had been shared on closed chatrooms hosted by
Discord, a gamer-focused chat app. In one server, called “Minecraft
Earth Map”, 10 of the documents were posted as early as 4 March, a month
before they appeared on 4chan.
“After a brief
spat with another person on the server about Minecraft Maps and the war
in Ukraine, one of the Discord users replied: ‘Here, have some leaked
documents’ – attaching 10 documents about Ukraine, some of which bore
the ‘top secret’ markings,” said Aric Toler, an analyst at the investigative research group§ Bellingcat.
That
user had, in turn, found them on another Discord server, run by and for
fans of the Filipino YouTuber WowMao, where 30 documents had been
posted three days earlier, with “dozens” of other unverified documents
about Ukraine.
However, even that did not appear to be the original source: a third
Discord server, named “Thug Shaker Central”, among other titles, may
have been where the documents were originally posted as early as
mid-January.
“Posts and channel listings show
that the server’s users were interested in video games, music, Orthodox
Christianity, and fandom for the popular YouTuber ‘Oxide’,” Toler said,
referencing the military-themed YouTube channel. “This server was not
especially geopolitical in nature, although its users had a staunchly
conservative stance on several issues, members told Bellingcat. Racial
slurs and racist memes were shared widely.”
Intelligence agencies have been aware of the need
to monitor gaming communities for some time. In 2013, the cache of
documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the
agency was actively monitoring Xbox Live, the voice chat platform for
Microsoft’s console, and had even deployed real-life agents into the virtual world of Azeroth, the setting of the World of Warcraft series.
One
document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games
& Virtual Environments, warned that it was risky to leave gaming
communities under-monitored, describing them as a “target-rich
communications network”. The notes warned that so many different
agencies were conducting operations inside gaming services that a
“deconfliction” group was needed to prevent them spying on each other by
accident.
thegrayzone |Perhaps the most notable piece of
information contained in the leaked documents relates to military death
tolls, with Ukrainian and Russian losses estimated at about a 4:1 ratio.
According to one document, 71,500 Ukrainian troops have been killed in
action.
That figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited
by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022
speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with
statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky’s top
advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC
in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200
soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between
the launch of Russia’s military operation and the date of the documents
would total 74,000.)
Other American and EU state officials have offered dramatically different figures placing
Russian KIA’s over the six figure mark. For instance, Norway’s defense
chief has charted 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead to Russia’s 180,000,
while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley asserted that Russian losses are “significantly well over 100,000.”
Another key detail in the documents
pertains to the size of the front lines in Donetsk: Russia maintains 91
battalions in the “Donetsk axis” with around 23,000 total personnel,
while Ukraine maintains eight brigades and 40 battalions, with 10,000 to
20,000 total personnel.
The documents also outline
expectations of weapons deliveries to Ukraine from the US and other NATO
countries along with training schedules for Ukrainian forces as a
Spring counteroffensive approaches. The timeline spans from January
through April, detailing twelve Ukrainian brigades under construction
and the weapons they have been or will be supplied. Nine brigades are
said to be armed and trained by the US and NATO allies, and six are said
to be ready by the end of March, while the rest will be in action by
the end of April. The brigades are said to require 253 tanks, 381
mechanized vehicles, 480 motor vehicles and more.
While the documents distributed on
Telegram contain important details about NATO and Ukrainian military
capacity, and highlight the astounding depth of American involvement in
the war, their publication raises a number of questions.
If the documents were partially
faked, were they disseminated to help Russia advance its public
relations goals, perhaps by minimizing their casualty numbers or
inflating those of their foe? They certainly would not be fooling anyone
at the Department of Defense, since they obviously have the original
files on hand. Or could it be that the United States leaked the
documents with faulty intelligence strewn throughout their contents to
confuse Russia ahead of a Ukrainian offensive?
There is also the possibility that
they are one hundred percent authentic. If so, Ukraine and its Western
patrons may have more serious problems than a few leaked documents.
ICE COLD PISSY LAGER PRETTY MUCH SELLS ITSELF DUMB ASS!!!
WHAT KIND OF CATEGORICAL FUCKTARD INCOMPETENT MUST YOU BE TO FUCK UP A GIG AS EASY AS THIS ONE????
NYPost | In 2018, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who oversees assets worth $8.6 trillion and has been called the “face of ESG,” wrote a now-infamous letter to CEOs titled “A Sense of Purpose” that pushed a “new model of governance” in line with ESG values.
“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a
social purpose,” Fink wrote. “To prosper over time, every company must
not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a
positive contribution to society.”
Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s VP of Marketing, doubles down on her extreme woke strategy to promote the “declining” American beer brand to “young people”, while smearing her former customers as “fratty and out of touch”.
Fink also let it be known “that if a company doesn’t engage with the
community and have a sense of purpose “it will ultimately lose the
license to operate from key stakeholders.”
In December, Florida pulled $2 billion worth of state assets managed
by BlackRock. “I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use
their power to influence societal outcomes,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at
the time.
Fink has denied that ESG is political,
but key staff managing his ESG operations worked in the Obama
administration and donate to Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
In his first veto, President Joe Biden last month rejected a GOP-backed bill that
sought to block ESG investing — especially in pension funds where,
critics say, American retirement funds will be sacrificed to a radical
left-wing agenda.
ESG and CEI proponents say that adhering to socially conscious values
when investing and managing a company will make the world a better
place. Not everyone agrees.
Derek Kreifels is the co-founder and CEO of State Financial Officers Foundation, one of several financial officers fighting ESG on a national level.
He calls ESG itself a “highly subjective political score infiltrating
all walks of life, forcing progressive policies on everyday Americans
[and] resulting in higher prices at the pump and at the store.”
The Corporate Equality Index is an ominous cog in ESG’s wheel, Kreifels told The Post.
“The problem with measures like CEI, and its big brother ESG, is that
it introduces an incentive structure outside of the bounds of business,
often in ways contradictory to fiduciary duty,” Kreifels said. “Whether
Anheuser-Busch was trying to cash in on Dylan Mulvaney’s TikTok
following or chasing higher CEI ratings for inclusivity, the backlash
has been significant, and the stockholders to whom the company is
obligated will feel the pinch.”
thecritic.co.uk |If a man seeks to humiliate a woman he encounters, nothing is easier than reducing her appearance to a mere caricature. Men do this directly in front of the woman they are targeting: lifting their voice to a squeak, exaggerating hand gestures, pushing out pretend breasts, wiggling their bum, pouting and fiddling with their hair. Most of these men confine the taunt to the woman in front of them, and
the woman often feels and displays a righteous rage. However, when it
comes to Dylan Mulvaney, the Tik Tok user who has become famous for his
grotesque parody of women, women are not supposed to react critically. They are seen as cruel or “transphobic” if they express annoyance at being so grossly insulted.
In March 2022
Dylan Mulvaney saw a way to take his barely-concealed disdain for women
up a level, with predictable success. After his career as a musical
actor had stalled due to the Covid pandemic, with people
finding solace daily on Tik Tok, wily Dylan invented a new role that
guaranteed his future wealth and success. He announced he was embarking
on a journey of “being a girl” and began a series of videos documenting
this ludicrous notion.
Women see this for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is
Shortly before this year-long, very public “transition”, Mulvaney performed a pilot video for his current lucrative act. In it he told the viewer that he “had trouble finding roles” so a friend had invented one for him, a “femme character”. His character wears a pink dress and pearls, white gloves and ankle socks. At this point Mulvaney must have
been delighted to glimpse a potential new career path. It was a very
savvy move for him to extend and develop this caricature of a 1950s
woman. Now, just over a year later, Dylan Mulvaney has highly paid “partnerships”
with a number of companies including Budweiser, Kate Spade and — during
the past week, to great objection — the Sportwear giant Nike.
In an inflammatory paid partnership video
with Nike, an inanely grinning, barefoot Mulvaney wears a Nike sports
bra and leggings. He performs a series of ridiculous moves including
comedic side stretches, a theatrical run kicking his heels up
nonsensically and failed chorus-line high kicks. He almost runs
backwards into a hedge at one point and pulls a comedy expression of
shock. It all looks ridiculous and slapstick. It mocks women by
suggesting they exercise trivially and ineffectively, but smiling throughout.
The media seems unwilling to focus on the actual reasons many women are angry about this. It has focused instead on stating that objections to the sponsorship are because Dylan is trans. This is not why women are
outraged. When a man “performs woman” in front of women to such a
humiliating degree, when he waggles and jiggles and implies that
weakness and silliness are
inherent to being a woman who plays sport, women appropriately see this
for the deliberately constructed misogyny it is. Ria Chapman, a London
PE teacher, told me why she finds this act so irritating and offensive:
Girls are still routinely bullied and mocked for being sporty and or breaking stereotypes, their achievements and ambitions not being celebrated and valued like those of their
male peers. For a sports company the size of Nike to use a male
performing a parody of what he believes women behave like during sport
only adds to the ammunition that boys will use to put girls down.
Utilising female stereotypes is the foundation of Mulvaney’s role. On his “Day 1 of being a girl” video debut, he said:
I’ve
already cried three times, written a scathing email I didn’t send,
ordered dresses online that I couldn’t afford and when someone asked me
how I was, I said “I’m fine” but I wasn’t fine. How did I do, ladies?
All of this encapsulates the
stereotype of women as emotionally fragile, frivolous spendthrifts,
imprudent around clothes and financially inept. In the stereotype Dylan
performs, women routinely suppress our emotions and focus on being
polite at all times. It is an archaic depiction of requisite female
behaviour which was seared into women’s consciousness over decades in
the past. This view of “girlhood” took further decades for feminist
women to dismantle. Dylan Mulvaney is building it back up before our
eyes and we refuse to stay quiet about it.
dailymail | Childcare experts are expressing alarm over transgender
TikToker Dylan Mulvaney’s popularity bump after her White House debut,
saying social media is driving a spike in teens seeking sex-change
procedures.
Clinicians say Mulvaney’s sit-down time with President Joe Biden
has raised the social media sensation’s profile, extending her reach
and likely influencing teenage fans who may themselves be questioning
their own gender identity.
Mulvaney’s TikTok
following grew to 8.4 million after her White House appearance, and
while she is entitled to share her experiences online, experts told
DailyMail.com that online influencers like her in part drive an alarming
uptick in teen transitioning.
dailymail | 'A lot of the initial deals were tailored to my queerness and to my transness,' she told The Creators newsletter last month.
'For
some of these major corporations, I was actually their first trans
creator. It's exciting to make money to support myself since I lost my
job, and to have my transition surgeries be covered too.'
Her agency, CAA, did not answer DailyMail.com's interview request.
Mulvaney's
ascent has not been without hiccups. Her appearance on Ulta Beauty last
month led to controversy and calls to boycott the cosmetics firm.
Critics called her 'misogynistic' for 'appropriating' womanhood.
Likewise,
a post about Tampax feminine hygiene products left some viewers shocked
and confused. Two replied: 'Is this a joke?' She is frequently bashed
for referring to the vagina as a 'Barbie pouch'.
She
has gained a massive following on TikTok as she documents her
transition to a transgender female — originally identifying as
'nonbinary' but telling followers in March that she was a girl.
Mulvaney
interviewed Biden last month as part of a panel of six progressive
activists for NowThis News. In the interview, the Democrat vowed to
protect 'gender-affirming care,' saying states should not limit access
to transgender treatments.
teenvogue | The
fast food joint where Zuriel Hooks worked was just up the street from
where she lived in Alabama, but the commute was harrowing. When she
started the job in April 2021, she had to walk to work on the shoulder
of the road in the Alabama sun. She would pause at the intersection,
waiting for the right opportunity to run across multiple lanes of
traffic.
It was hot, it was dangerous, it was exhausting – but if
she wanted to keep her job, she didn’t have much of a choice. “I felt
so bad about myself at that time. Because I'm just like, ‘I’m too pretty
to be doing all this,’” Hooks said, laughing while looking back.
“Literally, I deserve to be driven to work.”
Hooks, 19, now works for the Knights and Orchids Society,
an organization serving Alabama’s Black LGBT community. But the
experience of walking to that job stuck with her. Though she’s been
working towards it for two years, Hooks doesn’t have a driver’s
license.
For
trans youth like Hooks, this crucial rite of passage can be a
complicated, lengthy and often frustrating journey. Trans young people
face unique challenges to driving at every turn, from complicated ID
laws to practicing with a parent. Without adequate support, trans youth
may give up on driving entirely, resulting in a crisis of safety and
independence.
The most obvious obstacle involves the license
itself. Teenagers who choose to change their names or gender markers
face a complicated and costly legal battle. The processes vary: some
states require background checks, some court appearances, some medical
documentation. At times, the rules can border on ridiculous. Alabama’s SB 184 forbade people under the age of 19 from pursuing medical transition.
Yet the state also passed a law requiring drivers to undergo medical
transition in order to change their gender markers. Though that law has
since been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court, the state of
Alabama is appealing that decision, leaving trans drivers with no
official resolution.
“It
creates this – I don't want to use the cliche, but – patchwork,” said
Olivia Hunt, director of policy at the National Center for Transgender
Equality. “Not just state-to-state, but even person-to-person, where
every person's name change and gender marker change situation is
different.”
The cost can vary widely, too. Documentation, court
fees and other requirements can quickly tally up to hundreds of dollars.
“If you've got somebody who's already in a situation where, due to
financial problems, [who] doesn't have access to a car, that might make
it just that more inaccessible for them,” Hunt told Teen Vogue.
This
lack of access to name and gender marker revisions puts first time
drivers in a dangerous limbo. If your name or gender marker doesn’t
match your appearance, there’s potential for harassment. The fear of
getting outed by an ID (and subsequent abuse) is what some researchers
call “ID anxiety.”
“For trans drivers, this is a unique, personal
embodiment of stress,” said Arjee Restar, a social epidemiologist and an
assistant professor at the University of Washington, “given that the
same ID anxiety does not occur to cisgender drivers.”
With that being said, ID law is not the only thing troubling young trans drivers. Public driver education programs have dwindled significantly since the 1970s,
leaving much of the burden of teaching driver’s ed on parents. In most
states, teenagers must practice for their driving exams under adult
supervision, typically a parent or guardian.
But trans youth
often have fraught relationships with the adults in their lives . Hooks,
who started practicing driving with someone close to her at 17, often
felt like a captive audience while trying to drive. “As [they were]
trying to somehow teach me how to drive, I feel like it was [their] way
to try to… I would say somehow try to brainwash me back from being who I
am,” said Hooks. “They’d turn [the conversation] from driving to, ‘why
are you even transitioning?’”
In Alabama, teenagers must complete a minimum of 50 hours of driving
with adult supervision in order to get their licenses in lieu of a
state-approved drivers’ education course. Hooks tried to muscle through
it. But navigating the roads while navigating the emotions in the
passenger side got to be too much. One day, Hooks just gave up. “If I'm
gonna have this much agony trying to get this done,” Hooks recalled
thinking, “then I don't want to do it.”
The alternative wasn’t much better. She didn’t just feel miserable walking everywhere; she felt vulnerable.
“I always got catcalled, I always got beeped at by a lot of men,” she said.
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