Eric Schmidt's STENCH Puppeteering Is Behind SO MUCH Of Our Current Imperial Failing

Years worth of subrealistic dot connecting pointing toward Eric Schmidt as the embodiment - if not the author - of very much of the current and quite conspicuous western elite moral, political, technological, and strategic leadership failure.

I Never Imagined Having To Depend On Indian Media For The Truth

ukraina.ru  |  Opening the meeting, Alexei Pushkov , Chairman of the Federation Council Commission on Information Policy and Interaction with the Media , noted the importance that information policy has today. And he expressed a number of considerations as to what should be taken into account in its formation in the foreseeable period. According to Pushkov, we already live in a qualitatively changed world, we should not expect that after the end or settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, everything will return to normal.

“We see a big reformatting of the geopolitical space, geo-economic space, transport links, reformatting of energy supplies, etc. we are entering a qualitatively new world, ” the  politician said, emphasizing that we also see a geopolitical gap between Russia and the West: “these are no longer fluctuations, this is a different state of relations, and if this is less pronounced on our part, then the West clearly took the line on the maximum break in relations and contacts with Russia.

The politician noted that this big gap is accompanied by "a fundamental ideological and informational delimitation - at least it concerns the demarcation with the official line of Western states and the mainstream media, which determine the informational and propaganda agenda."

“This big gap was a matter of time, since Russia fully decided on its choice to develop as an independent center of power. This was not provided for in Western doctrine and Western policy,  ” Pushkov said.

He added that the doctrine of the “end of history”, which justifies the triumph of the Western liberal model of the world order, is unacceptable for Russia.

The vaunted pluralism is over, now the West has one doctrine that everyone must obey, and a number of tools are used to ensure this doctrine (cancellation culture, censorship, blocking objectionable resources, banning journalists, etc.). All this is well felt in the information field of Russia, which, of course, cannot be put up with.

The disengagement manifests itself in various forms - for example, the West has rejected the principle of equal security, is ready to impose its interests by force, imposes a "deliberately muddy" system based on rules that are constantly changing and have no logical justification - in fact, a new international law is being introduced, "the law de facto".

In this regard, the information policy of Russia faces a set of important tasks, the senator continued. There are several directions. This is, in particular, the development and approval of their own criteria for assessing what is happening in the world; gain an independent view of themselves; to reconsider the ideas of the superiority of the Western liberal model - “it turned out that the Soviet Union was not so bad”, and Western democracy, in its current form, clearly cannot be a model ...

In a word, in the Russian Federation “it is necessary to form a new information, educational, educational and cultural space in which the Western world will no longer be a subject of fetishization ... but also not a subject of rejection,” the politician said.

Jordan Peterson Needs To Stick With "Clean Up Your Room" And Other Simple Nostrums...,

 

Global Redistribution Of Resources And Power CAN NOT Be Peaceful

valdaiclub |  In the event that the growing conflict in and around Ukraine does not lead to irreparable consequences on a global scale in the near future, its most important result will be a fundamental demarcation between Russia and Europe, which will make it impossible to maintain even insignificant neutral zones and will require a significant reduction in trade and economic ties. Restoring control over the territory of Ukraine, which, most likely, should become a long-term goal of Russian foreign policy, will solve the main problem of regional security — the presence of a “grey zone”, the management of which inevitably becomes the subject of a confrontation that is dangerous from the point of view of escalation. In this sense, we can count on a certain stabilisation in the long term, although it will not be based on cooperation between the main regional powers. However, it is already obvious that the road to peace will be long enough and will be accompanied by extremely dangerous situations.

In his speech to the participants in the Davos forum, Henry Kissinger, the patriarch of international politics, pointed to just such a prospect as the least desirable from his point of view, since Russia then “could alienate itself completely from Europe and seek a permanent alliance elsewhere”, which would lead to the emergence of diplomatic distances on the scale of the Cold War. In his opinion, peace talks between the parties would be the most expedient way to prevent this; these would result in Russian interests being taken into account. For Kissinger, this means that in some respect, Russia’s participation in the European “concert” is an unconditional value, and the loss of this must be prevented as long as some chance remains.

However, with all the highest appreciation of the merits and wisdom of this statesman and scholar, the impeccable logic of Henry Kissinger faces only one obstacle — it works when the balance of power is determined and relations between states have already passed the stage of military conflict. In this sense, he certainly follows in the footsteps of his great predecessors — Chancellor of the Austrian Empire Klemens von Metternich and British Foreign Secretary Viscount Castlereagh, whose diplomatic achievements were the subject of Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation in 1956. Both of them went down in history precisely as the creators of the new European order, established after the end of the Napoleonic era in France and which persisted, with minor adjustments, for almost a century in international politics.

Like his great predecessors, Kissinger appears on the world stage in an era when the balance of power between the most important players is already being determined by “iron and blood.” The time of his greatest achievement was the first half of the 1970s — a period of relative stability. However, one cannot ignore the fact that the ability of states to behave in that way was due not to their wisdom or responsibility to future generations, but to much more mundane factors. The first factor was the completion of the “shrinkage” of the order which obtained its approximate features as a result of the World War II. Over the next 25 years (1945 — 1970), this order was “finalised” during the war in Korea, the US intervention in Vietnam, the USSR’s military actions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, several indirect wars between the USSR and the US in the Middle East, the completion of the process of disintegration of the European colonial empires, as well as a significant number of smaller, but also dramatic events. So now it would be difficult to expect diplomacy to be able to take first place in world affairs at the initial stage of the process, which promises to be very long and, most likely, quite bloody.

The material basis of that order, which was given its final polish by Kissinger’s diplomacy, the policy of “détente” with the USSR and the 1972 reconciliation with China, was the strategic defeat of Europe as a result of two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. The collapse of the European colonial empires and the historic defeat of Germany in its attempt to take centre stage in world affairs brought the United States to the forefront, which made it possible to make politics truly global. As a result of the self-destruction of the USSR, this order turned out to be short-lived. We see now that this was a great tragedy, since it led to the disappearance of the balance of power in favour of the dominance of only one power.

Now we can assume that the massive emancipation of mankind from Western control is of central importance, the most important factor of which is the growth of China’s economic and political power. If China itself, as well as India and other major states outside the West, cope with the task entrusted to them by history, in the coming decades the international system will acquire features that were completely uncharacteristic before.

Most of the significant events that are taking place now, both globally and regionally, are connected with the objective process of the growth in the importance of China and, following it, other large Asian countries. The determination Russia has shown in recent years, and especially months, is also associated with global changes. The fact that Moscow so purposefully stood up to protect its interests and values was due not only to domestic Russian reasons, although they are of great importance. Nor were they predicated upon expectations of direct material assistance from China, which could compensate for the losses during the acute phase of the conflict with the West.

Russia And The Kingdom Of Saudia Arabia Pool Their Interests

indianpunchline |  The fact that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states held a joint ministerial meeting with their Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Saudi capital of Riyadh at this point in time in global politics conveys a powerful message in itself. 

To drive home the message in no uncertain terms, the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said at a press conference following the ministerial on Wednesday that the GCC member-countries share a common stance with respect to the crisis in Ukraine. (The news conference was broadcast live by the Al-Arabiya TV channel.) 

“The countries of the Persian Gulf share a common stance regarding the Ukrainian crisis and its negative consequences, especially with regard to the food security of other countries,” Al Saud said. 

For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the media that “the GCC countries understand the nature of the conflict between Russia and the West.” Earlier, during a bilateral with Lavrov who was on a 2-day visit, Al Saud said the “the kingdom’s position regarding the crisis in Ukraine is based on the principles of international law and support for efforts aimed at achieving a political solution to the crisis.”

After the meeting, Lavrov said the GCC countries will not join the West in imposing sanctions on Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine. In his words, “Aspects of the international situation, which are connected with the events unfolded by the West around Ukraine, are well understood by our partners from the Gulf Cooperation Council states.”

Lavrov added, “We appreciate and reaffirmed today once again the balanced position that they take towards this issue at international forums, and in practice, refusing to join the illegitimate, unilateral Western sanctions that were introduced against Russia.” 

Lavrov said Moscow and Gulf countries intended to further develop their partnership in sharp contrast with the growing tensions between Russia and the US and its European allies. After meeting with the top diplomats of the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in Riyadh, Lavrov said, “We reaffirmed our focus on the comprehensive development of our partnership, including in the new conditions that are emerging in the world economy in the context of the policies of our Western colleagues.” 

Looking ahead, Lavrov expressed satisfaction that “We reaffirmed our focus on the comprehensive development of our partnership, including in the new conditions that are emerging in the world economy in the context of the policies of our Western colleagues.”  

The timing of the GCC-Russia ministerial and Lavrov’s visit to Riyadh is highly significant at a juncture when the Biden Administration is pulling out all the stops to repair the US’ fractured relationship with Saudi Arabia ever since Candidate Biden famously christened the Kingdom as a “Pariah state” and the Washington establishment launched a concerted campaign to defame the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally over the killing of the ex-CIA consultant Jamal Khashoggi.

Like Censorship And Surveillance - Sanctions Are Extralegal Corporate Crimes Against Persons

The US and its allies can impose sanctions without broad international support, and can claim that the “whole world” supports them, and nations can draw their own conclusions.  But these are not national sanctions. The SWIFT prohibition isn’t, the seizure of Russia’s FX assets wasn’t, and the EU not being a nation, none of the EU sanction packages were national or sovereign sanctions either. 

The US has actively and aggressively been trying to get other nations to hew to its Russia sanctions, see its threats to China, Saudi Arabia, India.  But it's not the government of the U.S. which has imposed any of its sanctions regime.

This is an important and insightful way of thinking about sanctions: Sanctions are beyond the Rule of Law and Due Process. For instance, this Russian or that Russian is sanctioned, absent any due process. I would also classify the actions against the Unvaccinated as sanctions, executive or bureaucratic orders without due process. Even if there might be fair and just due process, it is too late and expensive.

“Economic sanctions are the modern equivalent of ancient sieges, trying to starve populations into submission. The devastating impacts of sieges on access to food, health and other basic services are well-known.”  Sanctions are meant to hurt civilian populations–which makes them the tactic of choice of cowards unwilling to send in their own cannon fodder. Civilians dying in sanctioned countries don’t make it into U.S. newspapers–not when there are blond Ukrainians to photograph.

jomodevplus  |  Sanctions cut both ways
Unless approved by the UN Security Council (UNSC), sanctions are not authorized by international law. With Russia’s veto in the UNSC, unilateral sanctions by the US and its allies have surged following the Ukraine invasion.

During 1950-2016, ‘comprehensive’ trade sanctions have cut bilateral trade between sanctioning countries and their victims by 77% on average. The US has imposed more sanctions regimes, and for longer periods, than any other country.

Unilateral imposition of sanctions has accelerated over the past 15 years. During 1990-2005, the US imposed about a third of sanctions regimes around the world, with the European Union (EU) also significant.

The US has increased using sanctions since 2016, imposing them on more than 1,000 entities or individuals yearly, on average, from 2016 to 2020 – nearly 80% more than in 2008-2015. The one-term Trump administration raised the US share of all new sanctions to almost half from a third before.

During January-May 2022, 75 countries implemented 19,268 restrictive trade measures. Such measures on food and fertilizers (85%) greatly exceed those on raw materials and fuels (15%). Unsurprisingly, the world now faces less supplies and higher prices for fuel and food.

Monetary authorities have been raising interest rates to curb inflation, but such efforts do not address the main causes of higher prices now. Worse, they are likely to deepen and prolong stagnation, increasing the likelihood of ‘stagflation’.

Sanctions were supposed to bring Russia to its knees. But less than three months after the rouble plunged, its exchange rate is back to pre-war levels, rising from the ‘rouble rubble’ promised by Western economic warmongers. With enough public support, the Russian regime is in no hurry to submit to sanctions.

Corporations Equal Crime Without Criminals...,

counterpunch |   Crimes without criminals was not a subject for study when I was in law school. The two were seen as part of the same illegal package. That was before notorious corporate lawyers and a cash register Congress combined to separate economic, health and safety crimes from corporate accountability, incarceration and deterrence.

Lawlessness is now so rampant that a group of realistic law professors, led by Professor Mihailis E. Diamantis of the University of Iowa Law School, claim there is no corporate criminal law. I say “realistic” because their assertion that corporate criminal law, does not in fact, exist is not widely acknowledged by their peers.

Most Americans know that none of the executives on Wall Street who are responsible for the lies, deception, and phony investments they sold to millions of trusting investors were prosecuted and sent to jail. “They got away with it,” was the common refrain during the 2008-2009 meltdown of Wall Street that took our economy down and into a deep recession that resulted in massive job loss and the looting of savings of tens of millions of Americans.

Not only did the Wall Street Barons escape the Sheriff but they got an obedient Congress, White House and Federal Reserve to guarantee trillions of dollars to bail them out, implicitly warning that the big banks, brokerage firms and other giant financial corporations were simply “too big to fail.” They had the economy by the throat and taxpayer dollars in their pockets. Moreover, Wall Streeters made out like bandits while people on Main Street suffered.

All this and much more made up a rare symposium organized by Professor Diamantis last year at Georgetown Law School. (See: https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/imagining-a-world-without-corporate-criminal-law-symposium/). He wrote that the “economic impact of corporate crime is at least twenty times greater than all other criminal offenses combined,” quoting conservative estimates by the FBI. It’s not just economic, he continued: “Scholars, prosecutors and courts increasingly recognize that brand name corporations also commit a broad range of ‘street crimes’: homicide, arson, drug trafficking, dumping and sex offenses.”

The litany of corporate wrongdoing ranges from polluting the air and drinking water, dumping microplastics that end up inside human beings, promoting lethal opioids that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, providing millions of accounts or products to customers under false pretenses or without consent, often by creating false records or misusing customers’ identities, (Wells Fargo), manufacturing defective motor vehicles, producing contaminated food, allowing software failures resulting in crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX’s with 346 deaths. (See, Why Not Jail? By Rena Steinzor).

People don’t need law professors to see what’s happening to them and their children. People laugh when they hear politicians solemnly declare that “no one is above the law,” extol “the rule of law” and “equal justice under the law.”

By far the greatest toll in preventable fatalities and serious injuries in the U.S. flows from either deliberate, negligent or corner-cutting corporate crime under the direct control and management of CEOs and company presidents, many of whom make over $10,000 an hour over a 40-hour week.

All The Perogatives Of Personhood With No Accountability: More Human Than Human

HuffPost |  In a 1999 memo entitled “Bringing Criminal Charges Against Corporations,” written when he was deputy U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder argued that government officials could take into account “collateral consequences" when prosecuting corporate crimes.

That memo has resurfaced at a time when Holder, now U.S. attorney general, faces increasing criticism for the Department of Justice's reluctance to bring charges against white-collar criminals.

“There’s all kinds of problems with the applications of this policy which began with the Holder memo and got more formalized,” said John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University and an expert in white-collar crime. “You are going to send a message that we don’t really care significantly about misconduct within those institutions.”

Although it brought only a modest change in the way prosecutors evaluate whether to bring criminal charges against corporations, Holder's memo laid the groundwork for subsequent policies that allowed for more leeway when going after large firms, Coffee said.

Adora Andy Jenkins, a Justice Department spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post that under Holder's leadership, "this Justice Department has stood firm in our approach that no person and no corporation is above the law."

In 1999, Holder highlighted the possibility of deferred prosecution -- an arrangement now common in the wake of the financial crisis -- whereby prosecutors essentially give defendants amnesty in exchange for paying a fine, enacting reforms and cooperating with investigators. But later officials published further memos, turning the option into more of a recommendation, Coffee said.

He said the policy was strengthened in response to the Arthur Andersen scandal of the early 2000s. After the government brought criminal charges against the consulting firm, the company failed, causing 28,000 workers -- many of whom likely had no role in any wrongdoing -- to lose their jobs. A court later overturned the charges.

Holder told the Wall Street Journal in 2006 that he drafted the memo in response to complaints that there seemed to be no uniform rules for deciding whether to bring charges in corporate cases.

"[I] didn’t expect these issues would become as big as they were," Holder told the WSJ at the time. Indeed, they've only grown larger in the seven years since that interview, as the financial crisis wreaked havoc on the U.S. economy.

The government has yet to prosecute any big banks or major executives for their role in the meltdown, and critics have derided Holder and his Justice Department for using the collateral damage argument as an excuse for not doing enough to hold those institutions accountable. The DOJ came under fire last year after declining to prosecute HSBC for years of money laundering violations, saying that to do so would bring too much damage to the global economy.

“The government just backed down,” Coffee said of that case. “There were reasons in 2008 to say maybe we shouldn’t indict any bank we can because it will just add to the systemic risk. But we were in 2012 to 2013 with HSBC -- that risk wasn’t there and we weren’t dealing with something that was relating to the activities that produced the 2008 crisis.”

Yet in addition to the HSBC deal, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others have criticized Holder for statements he made to senators -- and later walked back -- indicating that he thought big banks had gotten too large to prosecute.

Disquiet At Davos And The Fear Of Failure

strategic culture |  "Klaus Schwab, passionate for Ukraine, essentially configured the World Economic Forum (WEF) to showcase Zelensky and to leverage the argument that Russia should be kicked out of the civilised world. Schwab’s target was the assembled crème de la crème of the world’s business leaders assembled there. Zelensky pitched big: 'We want more sanctions and more weapons'; 'All trade with the aggressor should be stopped'; 'All foreign business should leave Russia so that your brands are not associated with war crimes', he said. Sanctions must be all encompassing; values must matter.

"Disquiet ran through the Davos set: The WEF is high-octane globalist, right? Yet this Schwab line suggests a de-coupling ‘on stilts’. It precisely reverses interconnectedness. Plus, the western generals in charge are saying that this conflict may last not just years, but decades. What will this signify for their markets in parts of the world that refuse action against Russia, the moneymen were wondering?"

Prior to Kissinger's words that got him sanctioned by Zelensky, both a NYT OP/ED and Congressman Eric Cantor opined in a similar vein:

The Davos ‘greater disquiet’ emerged however, from an unexpected quarter. Just before the WEF began, the NY Times had run a piece from the editorial team urging Zelensky to negotiate with Russia. It argued that such engagement implied making painful territorial sacrifices. The piece attracted indignant and angry push-back in Europe and the West, possibly because – albeit couched as advice to Kiev – its target was evidently Washington and London (the arch belligerents).

Eric Cantor, a former whip in the U.S. House of Representatives (a legislator well versed on Iran sanctions), also at Davos, questioned whether the West would be able to maintain a united front in pursuit of such maximalist aims as Zelensky and his Military Intelligence Chief have demanded. “We may not get the next vote”, Cantor opined (in wake of the $40 billion vote ostensibly earmarked for Ukraine).

Cantor said excluding Russia entirely would require secondary sanctions against other countries. This would place the West into a head on clash with China, India, and the almost 60 states which had refused to back a UN resolution denouncing Russia’s invasion. He warned that the U.S. may be in danger of overplaying its hand.

Add Kissinger's remarks, and that makes a massive FUBAR far worse than Afghanistan.

Eric Cantor, and other Americans at WEF may frame their disquiet over western objectives in ‘polite company’ as simply articulating their uncertainties over America’s grand strategy – whether the U.S. is trying to punish Russia for its aggression, or whether the goal is a subtler use of policy that gives the Kremlin a ‘route out of sanctions’, were it to change course. But behind the narrative lies a darker fear. The unsaid fear of failure.

What does this mean? It means that the West’s ultimate war aims in Ukraine have so far been able to stay opaque and undefined, the details swept aside in the mood of the moment.

Paradoxically, this opacity has been preserved despite the public failure of the West’s first statement of aims – which was that the seizure of Russia’s offshore foreign reserves; the Russian bank expulsions from SWIFT; the sanctioning of the Central Bank; and the broadside of sanctions would, in and of itself alone, turn the rouble to rubble; cause a run on the domestic banking system; collapse the Russian economy; and provoke a political crisis that Putin might not survive.

In short, ‘victory’ would be quick – if not immediate. We know this, because U.S. officials and the French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire bragged about it publicly.

So confident in a quick financial-war success were these western officials that there seemed little need to invest deep strategic reflection on the aims or the course of the secondary Ukrainian military thrust. After all, a Russia already economically collapsed, with its currency ruined and its morale broken, would likely put up little or no fight as the Ukrainian army swept across Donbas and into Crimea.

Well, the sanctions have proved a bust and Russia’s currency and oil revenues are bountiful.

And now, western politicians are being warned in the media, and by their own military, that Russia is ‘close to a major victory’ in Donbas.

This is the unspoken fear disquieting Davos attendees – fear of another débacle, following that of Afghanistan. One made all the worse as the ‘war’ on Russia boomerangs into an economic collapse in Europe, and with NATO’s eight-year investment in building-up a successful proxy-army to NATO standards turning to dust.

This is what Kissinger’s comments – decoded – urge: ‘Don’t procrastinate’; get a quick deal (even an unfavourable one), but one that can be dressed up, and somehow spun as a ‘win’. But don’t wait, and let events lead the U.S. into yet another unmistakable, undeniable débacle.

Nazis? What Nazis? These Are Heroic Ukrainian Nationalist Freedom Fighters...,

caitlinjohnstone |  Ahh, that’s much better. Problem solved.

British empire smut rag The Times has a new article out titled “Azov Battalion drops neo-Nazi symbol exploited by Russian propagandists,” which has got to be the most hilarious headline of 2022 so far (and I’m including The Onion and other intentionally funny headlines in the running).

“The Azov Battalion has removed a neo-Nazi symbol from its insignia that has helped perpetuate Russian propaganda about Ukraine being in the grip of far-right nationalism,” The Times informs us. “At the unveiling of a new special forces unit in Kharkiv, patches handed to soldiers did not feature the wolfsangel, a medieval German symbol that was adopted by the Nazis and which has been used by the battalion since 2014. Instead, they featured a golden trident, the Ukrainian national symbol worn by other regiments.”

Yeah that’s how you solve Ukraine’s Nazi problem. A logo change.

https://twitter.com/taseenb/status/1531324958776995840

Claiming it’s “Russian propaganda” to say the Azov Battalion uses neo-Nazi insignia, and is ideologically neo-Nazi, is itself propaganda. A month ago Moon of Alabama published an incomplete list of the many mainstream western outlets who have described various Ukrainian paramilitaries as such, so if it’s only “Russian propagandists” who’ve been saying the Azov Battalion is neo-Nazi then Silicon Valley social media platforms should immediately ban outlets like NBC News, the BBC, The Guardian, and Reuters.

Before this war started this past February it wasn’t seriously controversial to say that Ukraine has a Nazi problem except in the very most virulent of empire spinmeister echo chambers. Even in the early days of the conflict it was still happening with mainstream publications who hadn’t yet gotten the memo that history had been rewritten, like this NBC News article from March titled “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t.”

So plainly it is not “Russian propaganda” to highlight the established fact that there are neo-Nazi paramilitaries in Ukraine who are receiving weapons from the US and its allies. The change in insignia isn’t being made to correct a misperception, it’s being made to obscure a correct perception.

The change in insignia is a rebranding to a more mainstream-friendly logo, very much like Aunt Jemima rebranding to Pearl Milling Company due to the Jim Crow racism the previous branding evoked. The primary difference is that the corporate executives of Pearl Milling probably aren’t still interested in turning America back into an apartheid state.

As journalist Alex Rubenstein noted on Twitter, al Qaeda in Syria went through a similar rebranding not long ago for the exact same reasons:

 

Ukrainian Nazi Blowback In America Will Be Extensive And Ugly

thegrayzone |  As the United States undergoes a national mourning process over a spate of mass shootings, American white nationalists with documented histories of violence are attaining combat experience with advanced US-made weapons in a foreign proxy war.

That’s according to the Department of Homeland Security, which has been gathering intelligence on Americans who have joined the ranks of the more than 20,000 foreign volunteers in Ukraine.

The FBI has indicted several American white nationalists associated with the Rise Above Movement after they trained with the neo-Nazi Azov Battaliion and its civilian wing, the National Corps, in Kiev. But that was almost four years ago. Today, federal law enforcement has no idea how many US neo-Nazis are participating in the war in Ukraine, or what they are doing there. 

But one thing is for certain: the Biden administration is allowing the Ukrainian government to recruit Americans – including violent extremists – at its embassy in Washington DC and at consulates across the country. As this report will show, at least one notorious extremist fighting in Ukraine has received extensive promotion from mainstream media, while another who is currently wanted for violent crimes committed in the US was mysteriously able to evade FBI investigators looking into war crimes he previously committed in Eastern Ukraine.

According to a Customs and Border Patrol document released thanks to a May 2022 Freedom of Information Act request by a nonprofit called Property of the People, federal authorities are concerned about RMVE-WS’s, or “racially-motivated violent extremists – white supremacy” returning to the US armed with new tactics learned on the Ukrainian battlefield.

“Ukrainian nationalist groups including the Azov Movement are actively recruiting racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist white supremacists to join various neo-Nazi volunteer battalions in the war against Russia,” the document states. “RMVE-WS individuals in the United States and Europe announced intentions to join the conflict and are organizing entry to Ukraine via the Polish border.”

The document, which was drafted by Customs and Border Protections, the Office of Intelligence, and other Homeland Security sub-agencies, contains write-ups of interviews conducted by law enforcement with Americans en route to Ukraine to fight Russia.

One such volunteer interviewed in early March “admitted to contacting the Georgian National Legion but decided against joining the group as they were accused of war crimes,” according to the document. Instead, the volunteer “ hoped to obtain a work contract with the Azov Battalion.”

That interview was conducted nearly a month before additional war crimes committed by the Georgian Legion were reported by The Grayzone. However, the volunteer’s allegation may also refer to the illegal execution of two men who had attempted to break through a Ukrainian checkpoint, or an additional, unreported crime known to insiders within volunteer networks.

One key “intelligence gap” listed in the document speaks to the US government’s complete lack of oversight in the proxy war it is sponsoring in Ukraine. NATO arming campaign which has offered no assurances that Western weapons won’t fall into the hands of Nazis. “What kind of training are foreign fighters receiving in Ukraine that they could possibly proliferate in US based militia and white nationalist groups?” the document asks.

 

 

Shrapnel In The Forest And Shells From The Sky

NYTimes |   Under the fire of Russia’s long-range arsenal and facing a desperate need for ammunition and weapons, Ukrainian forces remain outgunned on the long and pockmarked eastern front, according to military analysts, Ukrainian officials and soldiers on the ground.

Just one engagement on Thursday and Friday on a small swath of the line, in a forest north of the town of Sloviansk, sent about a dozen Ukrainian soldiers to a military hospital with harrowing shrapnel wounds.

“You ask how the fighting is going,” said Oleksandr Kolesnikov, the commander of a company of soldiers fighting in the forest, interviewed on an ambulance gurney outside a military hospital in Kramatorsk. “There was a commander of the company. He was killed. There was another commander. He was killed. A third commander was wounded. I am the fourth.”

Out on the highways in the Donbas region, trucks towing howitzers and flatbeds carrying tanks rumbled east on Saturday, suggesting the Ukrainian military was reinforcing its front lines. The army does not disclose its force numbers but has publicized the arrival of Western weaponry, including American M777 artillery guns.

“We needed to move a group to the left flank and they immediately started pounding us with mortars,” said Mr. Kolesnikov. “That is how I was wounded.”

He called for artillery fire from the Ukrainian side to hit the Russian mortar crew, but said the Ukrainian battery was only able to shoot a dozen or so shells, which did not halt the Russian mortar attack.

The deputy commander, Anatoly Ignatyenko, was wounded a day earlier in the same spot. The two soldiers, now off the front line, comforted one another in the ambulance, and Mr. Ignatyenko helped his commander drink from a bottle of water.

Both said President Biden and the leaders of other Western nations need to hasten the supply of long-range weapons, such as rocket artillery, to even the odds in the battle for the Donbas.

“Let Biden not be stingy with weapons,” said Mr. Ignatyenko. Russian artillery attacks were relentless, he said: “There is not an hour without a pause.”

Also on Friday, a Ukrainian logistics unit resupplying the soldiers in the forest suffered losses. Soldiers drove an armored personnel carrier to the position to deliver food and ammunition.

When the soldiers inside stepped out, a mortar landed nearby, killing the commander of the carrier and wounding two others.

“I’ve never seen such hell,” said Mykola Pokotila, a soldier wounded by shrapnel in the forest.

Another wounded soldier, Serhiy Osetrov, sat gingerly in the same ambulance, wincing from shrapnel still lodged in his right leg.

The Ukrainian soldiers were deployed to the forest to repel a Russian advance in the area, on the western edge of the larger battle raging in the east. “We try to push them back but it doesn’t always work,” said Mr. Kolesnikov. “We don’t have enough people, enough weapons.”

Nearby, another more heavily wounded man was wheeled out on a stretcher, his head bandaged. Bloodied field stretchers were stacked up in a line against the wall, traces of the daily cost from the front lines of the Donbas.

Mainstream Confesses Ukraine Getting Boiled In Russian Cauldrons

theguardian |  After several weeks of deadlock, Russia’s military appears to have found a way to advance in the Donbas – pounding it with such intense, unsophisticated artillery that Ukraine’s exhausted defenders are having to yield.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy rarely gives casualty figures but Ukraine’s president said last Sunday that “50 to 100 Ukrainian troops die on Donbas frontlines each day”, meaning perhaps 3,000 a month in the grisly war of attrition.

Wounded will typically be three or perhaps four times as much, a serious loss for a Donbas defence force estimated at 30,000 before the war began, although the numbers increased following Ukraine’s mass mobilisation.

“Russian forces have secured more terrain in the past week than efforts earlier in May,” reported the Institute for the Study of War on Tuesday, in particular approaching the frontline city of Sievierodonetsk and in villages nearby.

“The shelling of Sievierodonetsk is growing exponentially,” said Serhiy Haidai, the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, which is now 95% controlled by the Russians. He estimated 10,000 Russian troops and an extra 2,500 pieces of equipment had been committed to the attack.

The Russian advances are not dramatic but they reflect a new strategy. Gone for now are the attempts at wider encirclements of Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, which included a failed river crossing in early May. Instead units are focused on smaller encirclements – or “cauldrons” – and a sheer concentration at Sievierodonetsk.

That was confirmed by the militia head of the self-proclaimed pro-Russian republic in Donetsk, Eduard Basurin, who said Russian forces had adopted an approach of creating smaller encirclements to deprive Ukrainian troops of logistics and reinforcements, rather than pursuing a single large one.

 

 

After Months Of Hyping Ukraine - Russian Military Supremacy Has Become Undeniable

WaPo  |  The ambulances hurtled into the parking lot one after the other, each carrying wounded troops directly from the nearby front line. One young man stared straight ahead, his face swollen, his neck and back dripping with blood. Others lay silently under foil blankets.

Some stumbled out the back doors and collapsed into wheelchairs as staff members rushed to push them inside. Nearby, bloodied cots sat propped against a tent and other wounded soldiers lingered about, their faces grim, their heads, arms or legs bandaged as the sound of outgoing artillery boomed across the sky.

About 10 wounded soldiers arrived at this hospital in eastern Ukraine in less than an hour Sunday morning — the latest military casualties as Ukrainian forces, outgunned by Russia in the country’s east, continue to lose territory at a critical moment in the war.

The Washington Post is withholding the name and precise location of the hospital out of concerns from staff members that it could be targeted by Russian forces.

“Seventy people from my battalion were injured in the last week,” said a soldier and ambulance driver just outside the hospital gates who identified himself only as Vlad, 29. “I lost too many friends; it’s hard for me. I don’t know how many. … It’s getting worse every day.”

The night before, he said, the shelling was so loud he hardly got any sleep. “It’s all artillery bombing down,” he said. “All the wounded are coming from shrapnel. Most guys in the trenches haven’t even seen the enemy face-to-face.”

Last week, one battalion of young soldiers on a road near Kramatorsk spent their days digging defensive trenches in a pocket not far from the front line.

They were gearing up to provide additional support for the soldiers battling the Russians head-on, preparing for a worst-case scenario in which Russian forces continue or accelerate their current advance. That would be a potential turning point on the battlefield.

It would come at a particularly desperate moment for the Ukrainians. Kyiv is already enraged that some Western voices are floating the idea of ceding territory to Moscow. And the Biden administration is taking weeks to decide whether to provide heavier weaponry that could aid Ukrainian troops at this critical juncture in the war.

“Everyone’s tired,” said Bohdan, a 30-year-old soldier and officer in the battalion who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used and his precise position not be given. “But we are ready to stand and protect until the last man.”

 

 

Russiagate PROVES That "A Nation Of Laws And Not Men" Is Utter Nonsense!!!

taibbi |   Last week, in the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, prosecutor Andrew DeFilippis asked ex-campaign manager Robby Mook about the decision to share with a reporter a bogus story about Donald Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. Mook answered by giving up his onetime boss. “I discussed it with Hillary,” he said, describing his pitch to the candidate: “Hey, you know, we have this, and we want to share it with a reporter… She agreed to that.”

In a country with a functioning media system, this would have been a huge story. Obviously this isn’t Watergate, Hillary Clinton was never president, and Sussmann’s trial doesn’t equate to prosecutions of people like Chuck Colson or Gordon Liddy. But as we’ve slowly been learning for years, a massive fraud was perpetrated on the public with Russiagate, and Mook’s testimony added a substantial piece of the picture, implicating one of the country’s most prominent politicians in one of the more ambitious disinformation campaigns we’ve seen.

There are two reasons the Clinton story isn’t a bigger one in the public consciousness. One is admitting the enormity of what took place would require system-wide admissions by the FBI, the CIA, and, as Matt Orfalea’s damning video above shows, virtually every major news media organization in America.

More importantly, there’s no term for the offense Democrats committed in 2016, though it was similar to Watergate. Instead of a “third-rate burglary” and a bug, Democrats sent schlock research to the FBI, who in turn lied to the secret FISA court and obtained “legal” surveillance authority over former Trump aide Carter Page (which opened doors to searches of everyone connected to Page). Worse, instead of petty “ratfucking” like Donald Segretti’s “Canuck letter,” the Clinton campaign created and fueled a successful, years-long campaign of official harassment and media fraud. They innovated an extraordinary trick, using government connections and press to generate real criminal and counterintelligence investigations of political enemies, mostly all based on what we now know to be self-generated nonsense.

The Clintons, and especially Hillary, have been baselessly accused of all sorts of things in the past, the murder of Vince Foster being just one example. The “vast right-wing conspiracy” was so successful that the Clintons ended up aligning with and helping fund its chief architect, David Brock, ahead of the 2016 cycle. Along with Perkins Coie and the research agency Fusion-GPS, headed by former Wall Street Journal reporter and current self-admiring sleaze-merchant Glenn Simpson, they engineered three long years of phony “collusion” headlines. No matter what papers like the Washington Post try to argue this week, this was an enormous scandal.

The world has mostly moved on, since Russiagate was thirty or forty “current things” ago, but the public prosecution of the collusion theory was a daily preoccupation of national media for years. A substantial portion of the population believed the accusations, and expected the story would end with Donald Trump in jail or at least indicted, scrolling for a thousand straight days in desperate expectation of the promised justice. Trump was bounced from Twitter for incitement, but Twitter has a policy against misinformation as well. It includes a prohibition against “misleading” media that is “likely to result in widespread confusion on public issues.”

I’m not a fan of throwing people off Twitter, but how can knowingly launching thousands of bogus news stories across a period of years, leading millions of people to believe lies and expect news that never arrived, not qualify as causing “widespread confusion on public issues”?

Let’s travel back in time to the first months of 2017, when “Russiagate” became the dominant news story in the world. Full panic arrived on the wings of a series of blockbuster events. One was the release of an Intelligence Assessment by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on January 6, 2017, which concluded Russia ordered an “influence campaign” with a “clear preference” for Trump. Days later, there was an “absolute bombshell” of a leak reported in CNN, about four intelligence chiefs — Clapper, CIA head John Brennan, FBI chief James Comey, and the NSA’s Mike Rogers — who supposedly presented president-elect Trump with “claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.”

Instantly, much of America was in a fever of speculation over the suddenly plausible-sounding possibility that the incoming president was a real-world “Manchurian Candidate” under Russia’s control. That phrase would be used by the Washington Post, New York Times, Vanity Fair, Salon, Daily News and countless others:

The Greatest Crime Since World War 2 Has Been U.S. Foreign Policy

FP |  U.S. President Joe Biden has approved a Defense Department plan to redeploy American troops to Somalia to shore up counterterrorism efforts against one of Africa’s deadliest and most powerful militant groups. 

Biden’s decision will send several hundred U.S. special operators back into Somalia to help the fragile Somali federal government fight off the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab terrorist group. The decision largely reverses former President Donald Trump’s directive to withdraw some 750 U.S. troops from the East African country shortly before leaving office in January 2021, as part of his broader efforts to draw down the U.S. military’s presence abroad. 

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity in a briefing to reporters under ground rules set by the White House, characterized Trump’s directive as “an abrupt and sudden transition to a rotational presence” that allowed the al-Shabab terrorist group to gain further strength and step up attacks against the Somali government and civilian targets in recent years. 

The senior official said “under 500” U.S. troops would be redeployed to Somalia under the new plan but did not give additional details on the troops being deployed, citing security. The United States had about 750 troops in Somalia until Trump ordered the withdrawal that took place just days before Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. Since then, U.S. troops have rotated in and out of Somalia for specific missions, which the official characterized as a difficult and inefficient system that undermines U.S. efforts to help Somalia and other partnering governments fight al-Shabab. 

“Restoring a persistent U.S. military presence will help to increase the security and freedom of movement of other personnel, such as State Department and [U.S. Agency for International Development] colleagues as they conduct critical diplomatic and development missions,” the official added. 

Biden also reportedly authorized the Pentagon to target top al-Shabab leaders in addition to the new troop deployment, as the New York Times reported. 

The news of Biden’s decision comes after a major international anti-Islamic State coalition conference in Morocco last week, where leaders from dozens of countries warned that the terrorist group was gaining traction across western Africa even as it lost territory and influence in the Middle East. American gunsights, in contrast, are trained on the al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab in Africa’s east. Biden has authorized at least five drone strikes against al-Shabab since he took office.

Al-Shabab, considered one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, has claimed responsibility for a spate of attacks targeting the federal Somali government and peacekeepers from the African Union. It orchestrated the siege of a Kenyan university that killed nearly 150 people and a massive truck bombing in Mogadishu in 2017 that killed nearly 600. It was also responsible for a 2020 attack on a U.S. air base in Manda Bay, Kenya, that killed three Americans.

In 2021, after Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces, al-Shabab stepped up its attacks, particularly around Somalia’s elections, and was expected to be implicated in over 2,000 violent incidents and a 28 percent increase in clashes with government security forces, according to a report last July from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. 

U.S. military officials have long believed that al-Shabab has the intent to attack the United States, though it lacks the capabilities to do so currently, and the Pentagon considers the group both the fastest-growing and most kinetically active terrorist cell on the continent.

Truth Telling About EthnoFascism Can Get You Fired, Sanctioned, Arrested Or Killed

borkena  |   Hermela Aregawi, born in Ethiopia and raised in the United States, is making headlines in the Ethiopian media after she exposed pro-Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) supporters in the diaspora in connection with the delivery of humanitarian assistance in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. 

Her favorite quote displayed on her Twitter profile reads  “if all the truth were known abt everything in the world, it would be a better place,” and that is what she seems to be doing. 

A journalist by profession, works for CBS,  from ethnic Tigray background,  tweeted earlier this week that the Pro-TPLF Tigreans in the diaspora “don’t want aid to get to people because it will make @AbiyAhmedAli Government look good.”

The Ethiopian government has been under immense pressure from the US government and European Union, among other actors, on alleged grounds of obstructing humanitarian aid delivery to the Tigray region. 

Hermela Aregawi’s view of the conflict in northern Ethiopia, including aid delivery and alleged blockade of it, seems to have changed. 

In fact, she said it in her three parts tweet:

“My perspective on Tigray evolved bc of inconsistencies I’ve seen & heard in 10+ mnths. I stayed quiet for mnths hoping to see a shift towards peace & truth bc lives of millions – including my families’ – depend on it. There was no such shift. #Ethiopia 1/3 … If you’re going to label this a genocide from Day 2 then you can’t also try to control efforts to send life-saving basics to the poor ppl in it. Likely millions$ raised in diaspora but little to no accountability about where it’s going. To fund a civil war? #Tigray #Ethiopia 2/3 …We’ve seen counts of # of civilians killed in Tigray, but how many young soldiers have been killed fighting this questionable war? Diasporans should have the conscience to ask these ?s before continuing to blindly support an ethnic-based war in the year of 2021. #Ethiopia 3/3” 

Reacting to a picture of a child affected by famine, she tweeted “Heartbreaking images. I care enough to ask this ?: If it’s true @UN claims that Ethiopian govt has aid blockade in effect, how is it @UNEthiopia recently reported 466 aid trucks went into Tigray since July 12? A claim neither side of the conflict denied.” 

It was only last week that the UN branch office in Ethiopia disclosed that only 38 of 466 trucks that went to the Tigray region returned. Ethiopia’s Ministry of Peace has confirmed the claim by the UN office. Unverified video footage circulating on social media showed the trucks being used by the TPLF to transport its forces to the battle front in the Amhara region ,one of the regions where the TPLF took its war after the Ethiopian Defense Force withdrew from Tigray region at the end of June following unilateral declaration by the Ethiopian government. 

Ethiopians who have been trying to expose TPLF crimes on Twitter have been hailing Hermela for standing for the truth. In reaction to her inquisitive remark about Associated Press statement published on September 20, Teshome Borago wrote : 

“You are good woman of honor

Please know that the writer of this article Cara Anna recently justified z mass killing of Amharas in #ChenaMassacre by saying the Amhara civilian victims were fighting back vs TPLF

These Westerners just want us Ethiopians to fight forever” 

Many other Ethiopians have been expressing appreciation for Hermela for what she has revealed and for being inquisitive about narratives that were rather regarded as distorted despite they seem to have been used by policy makers including in the U.S government. 

Last week, president Joe Biden signed an executive order approving action regimes against Ethiopia. 

Mass Shootings And Psychiatric Medications

midwesterndoctor  |  In the 1990s, school shootings transition from being very rare to a frequent facet of American life. As this timeline overlaps with the entrance of SSRIs to the US market, many articles have evaluated the link between mass shootings and psychiatric medications.  I will quote a one of the more comprehensive summaries (written in 2013) which attempted to analyze all known mass shootings:

•Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and one teacher and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public. [A detailed summary of the clear contribution of the psychiatric medication's to their mass shootings can be found here]. 

•Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. Ten dead, 12 wounded.

•Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

•Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

•Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire, killing two classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

•Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

•A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed standoff at his school.

•Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded.

•Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding ten others.

•TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his classmates.

•James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

•Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

•Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

•Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported having been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

•Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for his conditions.”

•Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed nine students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

•Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax, and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

•Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

•Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

•Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.

The article also discussed a few recent school shootings where the information to determine if a psychiatric medication was used was not available:

•What drugs was Jared Lee Loughner on, age 21…… killed six people and injuring 14 others in Tuscon, Az? [I was unable to locate any information on this case]

•What drugs was James Eagan Holmes on, age 24….. killed 12 people and injuring 59 others in Aurora Colorado? [Holmes was on Zoloft, which likely triggered violent behaviors in him in the weeks preceding the mass shooting, all of which his psychiatrist ignored.]

•What drugs was Adam Peter Lanza on, age 20, Killed 26 and wounded 2 in Newtown Ct.? [Lanza was later confirmed to have been prescribed Celexa in the past and was on a questionable antipsychotic, fanapt, known for inducing violent behavior at the time of the shooting]

Since the time this article was published, there have been four additional large school shootings:

•Christopher Harper-Mercer (2015) who killed 10 was likely on psychiatric medication but there is no definitive proof.

•Nikolas Cruz (2017) who killed 17 was likely on on psychiatric medication but there is no definitive proof.

•Dimitrios Pagourtzis (2018) who killed 10 was probably not on a psychiatric medication. His attorney said he was not (which may have been a deceitful legal maneuver, but most likely was the truth), while the president of the NRA said he was (and I was not able to determine his basis for this assertion).

Lastly, for Salvador Ramos (2022) who recently killed 22, there have been many posts stating he was on antidepressants, but while there is some circumstantial evidence suggesting this, there is presently no reliable information to confirm or deny it. For a more detailed summary of my thoughts on this matter, please see this comment.