Call Leftist Collusion With Western Imperialism What It T.I.IS....,

BAR  |  One of the most positive things to emerge from the Collective West's war in Ukraine is that it helped to expose elements of the U.S. left that have always had a soft, sentimental spot for the West. The arrogance of these Westerners who signed on to this call for more war (see below) is reflected in the fact that they don't even feel compelled to explain how their morally superior commitment to Ukrainian self-determination against "Putin's" war is reconciled with the various statements from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former French President Francois Hollande and before them, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko revealing that the Minsk agreement was just a delaying tactic to prepare for war. 

We ask the Network as we have been asking Zelensky and Biden, the co-coordinators of the White Lives Matter More Movement, how this phase of the conflict that started in 2014 became Putin’s war? Do we just dismiss as Kremlin propaganda that the Russian Federation felt threatened by what appeared to be the de-facto incorporation of Ukraine into NATO as the Ukrainian army was built into the most formidable fighting force in Europe outside of Russia?

Did the Russians not have any legitimate security concerns with NATO missiles facing them from Romania and Poland, a mere six minutes away from Moscow, and that Ukraine was also making a pitch for “defensive” missiles in Ukraine? And how does the Network characterize the conflict in Eastern Ukraine that started in 2014 and produced over 14,000 deaths when the Ukrainian coup government attacked its own citizens, if the current conflict started in February 2022? What happened to the fascist issue in Ukraine that was written about for years but with even more urgency after the coup in 2014? Did the Kremlin plant those stories in the Western press? 

We understand that these are questions that the organizers of the Ukrainian Network will never answer because they do not have to.  As Westerners they can just postulate an assertion and it is accepted. The Network and the Western bourgeoisie declare that the war in Ukraine is Putin’s war and it becomes objective truth - because that is what the West can do and can get away with. It’s called power – white power perhaps? 

The Ukrainian Solidarity Network is the ultimate expression of social imperialism that has become so normalized in the U.S. and Western Europe that it is no longer even recognized. An example from the statement makes the argument that Ukraine has the “right to determine the means and objectives of its own struggle.” That is a recognized left position. But the social imperialists of the West do not extend that principle and right to nations in the global South. In fact, we ask the signers of this call to explain when the coup government of Ukraine became the representatives of the Ukrainian nation and recognized the sovereign will of the people? 

Therefore, it is not a mere coincidence that the main signatories of this Network statement pledging undying support to Ukraine and its project, are also some of the same “left” forces in the forefront of giving left legitimacy to the charge leveled by Western imperialism that the struggling socialist oriented national liberationist states like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia are nothing more than “authoritarian” states more interested in power than socialist construction. Some of those forces also cheered on the NATO attack against Libya, passionately defended Western intervention in Syria and have been silent on Western plans to violently invade Haiti. 

For the contemporary neocons in the leadership of the Ukrainian network, their commitment to abstract principles, and certainty that they know more than everyone else, objectively place them in the same ideological camp with Obama, Biden, NATO strategists, the Zelensky clown, and Boris Johnson. But they will argue that their positions are different, since they represent something they call the left. 

For a number of individuals who signed on to this pro-Western, pro-war letter, they are in a familiar place. However, I suspect a few of the individuals on that list were probably confused or not paying attention, not thinking about who they would be affiliated with when they signed on.

That of course, is not the case for some of the key supporters of this initiative. Individuals like the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins, Eric Draitser of Counterpunch, and Bill Fletcher who normally I would not name specifically but because these individuals and the tendency they represent embody the worst of the arrogant, Western left that in so many cases (not all) objectively provides ideological cover ( rightism with left phraseology) for the imperialist program of Western capital -  they should not be allowed continued left respectability without challenge.

These individuals certainly have not hesitated in offering criticisms of those of us who never wavered from our strategic priority to defeat our primary enemy - the Western white supremacist colonial/capitalist patriarchy. For us everything else represents secondary contradictions at this specific historical moment. And is why we reject the arguments these forces advance about fighting dual imperialisms as anti-dialectical nonsense and a political cover. 

Why Are So-Called Leftists Blind To The Cause Of War In Ukraine?

BAR  |  As the Left in the US struggles to hold to a clear ideological line against the US empire in its proxy war using Ukraine against Russia, the understanding of how this conflict arose has been lost amid the discourse of needing to either present a “balanced” view of the conflict, or to accuse anti-imperialists who indicate US/EU/NATO’s complicity, as “Putin’s apologists.” This kind of mealy-mouthed, spineless analysis is expected from those who always support the empire and its bloody deeds. But these days, more and more of this criticism of anti-imperialists is coming from some of the so-called US left. This group is engaged in a bizarre public display of supporting Ukraine, a display that defies logic and the facts surrounding the conflict.

As an example, the Ukraine Solidarity Network was created by Howie Hawkins, one-time Green Party presidential candidate and alleged leftist, and has been signed onto by dozens of people who are prominent in some way in US progressive politics. Among the Network’s absurd positions are their demand for reparations for the people of Ukraine, their support for Ukraine’s right to receive as many arms as they can without question or strings attached, and their demand for the IMF to cancel Ukraine's debts.

Are these demands made on any basis of fact? No. When you consider that information about actual events that led up to this conflict are easily located with the most cursory search, there is no way that anyone can conclude that Ukraine is the victim of some terrible crime committed by Russia, let alone that they are owed reparations and deserve all the weapons they could want to fight them.

What’s more, the paper trail that documents the lead-up to this conflict includes sources that are the publications of the empire, so-called mainstream, sources that are neither left-leaning nor anti-war in any substantive way. This, I believe, lends a level of credibility to their documentation that some would easily dismiss as “biased” if it were provided in left-leaning sources.

For example, if members of the Ukraine Solidarity Networkhad bothered to look, they could have found this February 24, 2022 article from the Yale MacMillan Center, which details the scuttled negotiations to completely avoid the conflict in Ukraine.

The article pointedly notes that:

“More than anything else, it was the refusal of Ukraine to implement the provisions of Minsk 2 – especially the provision that would give the predominantly Russian-speaking regions a special constitutional status – that caused Russia to threaten military action against Ukraine. Time after time in recent weeks, Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov made it clear in meetings and press conferences that the key to resolving the situation in and around Ukraine was the full implementation of Minsk 2.”

An unprovoked attack on Ukraine? Even the empire admits that this is not true, and goes further to document that the conflict could have been avoided entirely had Ukraine simply adhered to the agreement they signed. Furthermore, the same article confirms that the civil war between Kiyv and those Russian-speaking regions in Ukraine - Donbas and Luhansk - that began in 2014 was also an important factor in this current conflict, as more than 700,000 of the people in those regions were granted Russian citizenship while they “...for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev (Kyiv in Ukrainian) regime.” 

If the Yale MacMillan Center can acknowledge the centrality of these issues to this currency conflict, how is that these Latte Leftists dismiss them as insignificant?  

But why did Ukraine refuse to adhere to the agreements, one might ask? This is actually an important piece of information that also has a very clear answer if anyone is interested in knowing it. An article in Modern Diplomacy reveals that, at least according to the former Chancellor of Germany Angele Merkel, the leaders who signed onto the Minsk Accords who were not representing Russia (the leaders of Germany, France, and Ukraine) never had any intention of adhering to the agreements, as they were just a ploy to “...buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today,” Merkel said, “Ukraine in 2014-2015 and Ukraine today are not the same.”

The Late Great Glen Ford Foresaw War With Russia's Endgame Eight Years Ago

BAR  |  I think that President Obama’s attempt to destabilize Russia will be seen by history as disastrous as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Like the Iraq war, the de facto declaration of “war by other means” against Russia will accelerate the very dynamic that it intends to halt: the steady weakening of U.S. imperialism’s grip on the world. It will increase the resolve of a host of nations to disengage themselves from American madness and to strengthen collaboration and cooperation among many countries, and not just Russia and China.

The result will be the exact opposite of Washington’s intention. The attempt to isolate and destabilize Russia, the other nuclear superpower, may appear to some to be an act of brashness, a flexing of American muscle, an act of imperial overconfidence and recklessness. People thought the same thing when Bush went into Iraq. They were shocked and more than a little bit awed. [1]  In fact, sometimes I think that Americans are more shocked and awed by the American military than anybody else. But the Iraq invasion, and the brazen offensive against Russia, as well as the so-called “Pivot Against China” and the octopus-like U.S. military entrenchment in Africa — these are really symptoms of weakness and desperation.

U.S. Imperialism is losing its grip on the world and responds to its weakening condition with massive campaigns of destabilization. Destabilization characterizes U.S. foreign policy today more than any other word. The purpose is to reverse the general dynamic of global affairs today in which U.S. influence and power shrinks in relative terms as the rest of the world develops. U.S. and European hegemony — and that is the ability to dictate the terms of economic and political life on the planet — has daily diminished in myriad objective ways, ways that we can measure by the numbers. China’s soon-to-be status as the world’s biggest economy is just one aspect of that decline.

The process is inexorable and it’s gaining momentum. The trajectory of imperial decline has been firmly set ever since the Western capitalists decided to move the production of things — that, is the industrial base — to the South and the rest of the planet. Inevitably power and influence follow and imperial hegemony diminishes. This is of course unacceptable to the rulers of the United States who now find themselves in objective opposition to all manifestations of collaboration and mutual development under terms that are not dictated by Washington. They are in objective opposition to all manifestations of independence by countries in the world. This applies not just to China, not just to China and Russia, but to the rest of the BRICS and to other developing nations. And it even applies to America’s closest allies.

That is because hegemons don’t really have allies. All they have are subordinates, and so the U.S. is quite prepared to do serious harm to European economic interests by pressuring them to break long established economic ties to Russia. They will ultimately do the same thing in the pacific region with China and cause great destabilization there. They do so not because of strength but because of growing relative weakness. Their desperation compels them to risk war because their only clear superiority is in weapons.

However, the net end result, if we survive these flirtations with all-out war, can only be further isolation of the United States and the further weakening of imperialism. I think there is on what passes for the left in the United States a tendency to describe U.S. aggressions like the Iraq war, like the current offensive against Russia, as mistakes and miscalculations: “They didn’t mean to do that.”

In reality the U.S. goes to the brink and beyond the brink of war because it perceives itself as having no other choice. Its soft power is fading. It has few other means beyond the military to strategically influence events. It recruits or buys allies where it can get them, be it jihadists or Nazis. As imperialism’s sway in the world shrinks, so do its options.

Name-Stealers Squealing Like Pigs Under A Gate About Lavrov's Final Solution Comment

eurojewcong  |  The European Jewish Congress has expressed its shock and concern following comments today by Russian Federation Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov comparing Western governments’ support for Ukraine to Hitler’s Final Solution which resulted in the murder of six million Jews in the Shoah.

Lavrov claimed on Wednesday that the United States had put together a coalition of European states to solve the “Russian question” in the same way that Hitler had organised a Final Solution for Europe’s Jews.

“We are shocked and appalled by this shameful comparison drawn by Minister Lavrov between the actions of a coalition of democratic countries and Hitler’s persecution and murder of six million Jews in the Shoah,” EJC President Ariel Muzicant said.

“This is Holocaust distortion at its most basic level and we call on Mr. Lavrov to unequivocably apologise and withdraw these comments,” he added.

Mr. Lavrov claimed the West is “waging war against our country with the same task: the “Final Solution” of the Russian question.

“This is not the first time the minister has used Holocaust equivalence and Hitler references,” Musicant pointed out. “This must stop. As we mark in the coming days International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the memory of Holocaust victims must never be used in such an appalling manner.”

Sergei Lavrov Said U.S. And NATO Seeking A Russian "Final Solution"

mid.ru  |   I will not speak now about the West’s actions in other geopolitical areas. Today we regard the policies of the US and the West as a whole as the main problem creating difficulties in all areas. In short, this is what it means. Washington’s policy of dictate in international affairs means precisely that the Americans can do anything anywhere they want, even at the other end of the Earth.  They do what they think is necessary. All other countries cannot do anything without the US’s approval, even in response to direct security threats the US creates on their borders.

Like Napoleon, who mobilised nearly all of Europe against the Russian Empire, and Hitler, who occupied the majority of European countries and hurled them at the Soviet Union, the United States has created a coalition of nearly all European member states of NATO and the EU and is using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia with the old aim of finally solving the “Russian question,” like Hitler, who sought a final solution to the “Jewish question.”

Western politicians – not only from the Baltics and Poland but also from more reasonable countries – say that Russia must be dealt a strategic defeat. Some political analysts write about decolonising Russia, that our country is too big and “gets in the way.” The other day I read an item in The Telegraph that called for liberating Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, while leaving Karelia, Koenigsberg and the Kuril Islands for negotiations. Of course, it is a tabloid, but we have to read yellow sheets because they sometimes make headline news.

Quite a few such statements have been made, including in our non-system opposition. No Western politician has refuted them. President of France Emmanuel Macron, who proposed creating a European Political Community as a format which all European countries apart from Russia and Belarus will be invited to join, has also suggested convening a conference of European states. He suggested that it should be open for the EU member states, Eastern Partnership countries (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), as well as Moldova and Ukraine. I doubt that Belarus will be invited. The potential participants as the EU states and Eastern Partnership countries, plus – note this - politically active emigres from Russia. It has been said (not in Macron’s presentation but in subsequent comments) that some Russian regions, which are trying to maintain ties with Europe, could be invited as well. I believe that everything is clear. It is not a black-and-white situation, contrary to what our Western colleagues claim; it reflects their strategy of global domination and unconditional suppression of all countries on pain of punishment.

The Western politicians are talking only about sanctions. Ursula von der Leyen has recently said in Davos that new sanctions will be imposed on Russia and Belarus, that they know which sanctions to adopt to strangle the Russian economy and cause it decades of regression. This is what they want. They have shown their true colours. For many years, UN Security Council members discussed sanctions against countries that violated international law or their obligations. And every time the Western countries that initiated such measures promised that the sanctions would not harm the people but would be targeted at the “regime.” What became of their promises?

They openly say that sanctions against Russia are designed to incite the people to rise in a revolution to overthrow the current leaders. Nobody is observing or intends to observe proprieties any longer. But their reaction and frenzied attempts to ensure, by hook or by crook, by any foul means possible, the domination of the US and the West, which Washington has already brought to heel, is proof that, historically, they are acting contrary to the objective course of events by trying to stop the rise of a multipolar world. Such change does not happen on orders from the high offices on the Potomac or in any other capital, but for natural reasons.

Patriarch Kirill's Epiphany Sermon "Fuck Around And Find Out!!!"

theatlantic |  This Russian propaganda has been amplified and endorsed by an unusual assortment of people in the United States, including the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs. The propaganda absolves Russia, blames the United States for the war, and has four main tenets: first, that a long-standing American effort to bring Ukraine into NATO poses a grave threat to Russian security. Second, that American shipments of weapons to Ukraine have prolonged the fighting and caused needless suffering among civilians. Third, that American support for Ukraine is just a pretext for seeking the destruction of Russia. And, finally, that American policies could soon prove responsible for causing an all-out nuclear war.

Those arguments are based on lies. They are being spread to justify Russia’s unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to seize territory from a neighboring state. Concerns about a possible nuclear exchange have thus far deterred the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with the tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles that might change the course of the war. If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads to the defeat of Ukraine, Russia may use them to coerce other states. Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become commonplace. Nuclear weapons would no longer be regarded solely as a deterrent of last resort; the nine countries that possess them would gain even greater influence; countries that lack them would seek to obtain them; and the global risk of devastating wars would increase exponentially.

That is why the greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than any other country, and for years Putin has portrayed them as a source of national pride. His warnings about their possible use during the war in Ukraine have been coy and often contradictory. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened,” Putin said in September, “we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff.” His vow to rely on nuclear weapons only as a defensive measure conveys an underlying threat: An attempt to regain Ukrainian land annexed by Russia and deemed by Putin to be part of “our country” might prompt a nuclear response. He also asserted that the United States and NATO are the ones engaging in “nuclear blackmail,” and that “those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.” In October, he claimed that Ukraine was planning to launch a nuclear strike on itself—by detonating a warhead filled with radioactive waste—as part of a false-flag operation to make Russia seem responsible. In December, Putin said that the risk of a nuclear war was increasing but suggested once again that the real danger did not come from Russia. “We have not gone crazy,” he said. “We are aware what nuclear weapons are … We are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”

Although Putin’s comments have been subtle and open to multiple interpretations, the propaganda outlets that he controls have been neither. For almost a year, they have continually threatened and celebrated the possibility of nuclear war. This division of labor allows Putin to appear statesmanlike while his underlings stoke fear and normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons to commit the mass murder of civilians. Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast, and Francis Scarr, a BBC correspondent, have performed an immense public service: supplying translations of the vicious, apocalyptic, often unhinged rants that have become the norm on Russian television. “Either we lose in Ukraine, or the Third World War starts,” Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today and a close ally of Putin’s, said in April. “I think World War III is more realistic, knowing us, knowing our leader … That all this will end with a nuclear strike seems more probable to me.” At various times, Simonyan has discussed nuclear attacks on Ukraine, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, arguing that death would be better than succumbing to “the monstrous organism known as the collective Western world.”

Vladimir Solovyov, another popular broadcaster who is close to Putin, routinely expresses a preference for nuclear annihilation over a Russian defeat. The invitation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to the White House and the U.S. Capitol in December made Solovyov especially angry. “We’ll either win, or humanity will cease to exist, because the Lord won’t stand for the triumph of warriors of the Antichrist,” he said, repeating the new propaganda line that Ukrainians aren’t just Nazis; they’re satanists. “We are Russians. God is with us,” he concluded. Despite his professed hatred for ungodly Western decadence, before the invasion of Ukraine Solovyov owned villas overlooking Lake Como, in Italy.

La CucaRacha Zelensky Executes The Ukrainian Interior Ministry With A Stinger Missile

According to JokerDNR Telegram channel:

I will answer you all, my faithful followers, what happened today in Brovary. The Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine has long known that the leadership of the Ministry of Defense is selling Western weapons that come to Ukraine in the form of assistance in favor of third countries, and this process is directly supervised by the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate Budanov. By the way, this information has already surfaced somewhere. The leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs wanted their share and began to collect data through their structural units, which are associated with intelligence and outdoors. As a result of this, they managed to obtain evidence and blackmail began. The military commanders promised a share to the police leadership and the first tranche was paid. But it was pointless and unprofitable to pay further. Plus, the audacity of the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who climbed into the wrong garden, strained the military elite. And today the day has come when the guys from the GUR were able to demonstrate their skills. But that’s not all. The sanction for this was personally given by Yermak, who is also in the subject in secret from the supreme narcissistic clown Zelebobik.

Reports say the chopper was on fire before it crashed into a kindergarten yard, suggesting a manpad or AD hit.

BBC  | The three main figures in Ukraine's interior ministry have been killed in a helicopter crash beside a nursery in an eastern suburb of the capital Kyiv.

Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, 42, died alongside his first deputy minister and state secretary.

Fourteen people died when the helicopter came down in Brovary around 08:30 local time (06:30 GMT), including one child, authorities said.

There is no indication the crash was anything other than an accident.

But the SBU state security service said it was following several possible causes for the crash, which included sabotage as well as a technical malfunction or breach of flight rules.

The helicopter came down near a kindergarten building which was left badly damaged and blackened by smoke.

The State Emergency Service had previously stated that up to 18 people were killed but later revised the death toll from the crash, saying 14 had died.

Mr Monastyrsky, who was one of President Volodymyr Zelensky's longest serving political advisers, is the highest profile Ukrainian casualty since the war began.

The deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said the minister had been travelling to a war "hot spot" when his helicopter went down.

The head of police in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Volodymyr Tymoshko, said the ministerial team were on their way to meet him there and he had spoken to them only yesterday.

The minister's death cuts to the heart of the government in Kyiv as the interior ministry has the vital task of maintaining security and running the police during the war.

Appearing via video-link at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Zelensky asked leaders to observe a minute of silence for the lives lost in the helicopter crash, and later added "there are no accidents at war time. These are all war results absolutely."

The Ukrainian president added that he was not concerned for his own safety.

The head of Ukraine's national police force, Ihor Klymenko, has been appointed acting interior minister following Mr Monastyrsky's death.

Zesty Zelensky Advisor Tells The Truth Is Forced To Resign And Gets Put On Myrotvorets Hit List

theguardian |  A Ukrainian presidential adviser has resigned after causing widespread anger when he suggested a Russian missile that killed dozens had been shot down by Ukraine.

45 people were killed in the south-central city of Dnipro when a Russian X-22 anti-ship ballistic missile hit an apartment block on Saturday. Rescuers called off the search on Tuesday with 20 people still missing.  

https://myrotvorets.center/criminal/arestovich-aleksej-nikolaevich/

In comments to a YouTube channel , hours after the attack, Oleksiy Arestovych said the rocket had detonated after it had been downed by Ukrainian air defence forces.

“The rocket was shot down, it fell on the driveway, it exploded when it fell,” he told Feigin Live.

Hundreds of Ukrainian members of civil society and several prominent figures took to social media in the days afterwards, demanding the presidential administration sack Arestovych for making unverified statements. They said the comments aided Russian propaganda, which frequently portrays attacks as the fault of Ukraine’s armed forces.

In a statement, which did not address the remarks directly, Ukraine’s air defence forces said they did not currently have the technological capabilities to detect or shoot down ballistic missiles.

Arestovych refused to apologise for two days, blaming tiredness and stating that it was “one theory” put forward by a friend who happened to be near the scene. Then on Tuesday, Arestovych published a picture of his resignation letter on Facebook, stating that it was “an example of civilised behaviour” in light of his “fundamental mistake”.

A spokesperson for the president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Serhiy Nykoforov, confirmed that the resignation had been accepted. The former actor and politician was appointed as a freelance, non-staff adviser to the presidential administration in 2020.

I Find It Gratifying To Watch Biden Dumbly And Angrily Glare In Response To Impertinent Kwestins...,

thehill |  The White House is once again struggling with its messaging, this time on the discovery of classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president, where administration officials have sought to minimize the damage due to the revelation but have struggled to address it cohesively. 

Democrats, meanwhile, have had scattered reactions, ranging from praising the Biden administration over its cooperation with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and National Archives to suggesting a congressional review of the materials over national security concerns. Others have acknowledged what a political headache it has become for the president.

The disjointed responses are in part a reflection of mixed messaging by the White House, including when it prematurely told reporters last week that a search of classified documents potentially kept by Biden was “complete” before the administration said days later that more documents were found.

Officials have been adamant that they are limited in how much they can say about the discovery of the documents, what’s in them and when the president was informed of the situation, citing an ongoing Justice Department investigation and the appointment of a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was chosen by Biden to lead the agency.

“We understand that there’s a tension between the need to be cooperative with an ongoing DOJ investigation and rightful demands for additional public information. And so we’re trying to strike that balance and being as clear as we can,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson for investigations, told reporters on Tuesday.

Addressing the matter to the public has largely been left to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who has at times sparred with reporters over questions about why the White House didn’t reveal the discovery when it was made in November, when Biden learned of it and whether any other searches were underway.

On Thursday, Jean-Pierre said that “you should assume that it’s been completed, yes” in response to a question about a second set of documents that turned up at Biden’s home in Delaware, including in his garage. But on Saturday, the White House acknowledged that five more classified documents had been found at Biden’s home — the first time it was the administration, not a news report, that revealed a discovery. 

When questioned on Tuesday over whether she’s being directed to not be forthcoming, Jean-Pierre said that she knew as much as the press did at the end of last week, before the next discovery was revealed on Saturday.

She also pushed back when asked if she’s upset that she came out to the briefing on Friday with incomplete and inaccurate information.

“Well, what I’m concerned about is making sure that we do not politically interfere in the Department of Justice, that we continue to be consistent over the last two years. And that is continue to refer you all when it comes to an ongoing process,” she said.

Jean-Pierre also added that she and other members of the press office found out about the documents in Biden’s office in Washington in November when CBS broke the news last week. The press secretary has also faced questions about whether the White House would have disclosed the findings at all if not for the CBS report.

Biden Has Enemies

Nobody’s blackmailing Biden to escalate in Ukraine. Ukraine has been his project going back to 2008 (and his time on the Senate Intelligence Committee likely pushes it further back). Ukraine is his personal project. His favorites from the Clinton State Department that assisted him back then all got nice promotions in his administration. The whole reason he ran in 2020 was to execute the Ukraine plan because Trump had messed it up and nobody in the field was going to be reliable enough to really run with it. Old Cornpop's a violent and angry man. He wanted more war in Yugoslavia, he was all in on Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the Spring he was publicly talking about bringing down Putin as well as informing enlisted soldiers in Poland that they’d be in Ukraine soon. If anything, people are holding Joe back. Consider the documents could be used to get Joe out of the way because Ukraine can’t be wound down as long as he’s POTUS. Per his autobiography, as a freshman senator in the mid 70s, he was introduced to the opportunities of southeast Europe by his mentor, Averell Harriman.

amgreatness  |  Biden and his allies have continued their vendetta against Trump, exposing his tax returns and raiding his home for possessing documents he supposedly owed the National Archives. This did not go over as well as Attorney General (and all-around hack) Merrick Garland anticipated, and it seems Garland and the January 6 Committee have each decided to scale back their demands. 

This is why the recent exposure of top secret documents in Biden’s old office, his garage, and a mysterious third location suggests something is afoot. We went from a Monday disclosure to a special counsel being appointed on Thursday. Nothing like this happens this quickly unless it is by design. 

There are, of course, ways to deal with this situation that do not involve public exposure. Couldn’t Biden or his staff order some FBI agents or White House people to pick them up and take them to wherever they’re supposed to be stored? 

It’s in the news because somehow his lawyers found the documents and reported them before the story could go through White House channels. And, lawyers being lawyers, they followed the street-lawyer rule that if someone has to go to jail, make sure it’s your client and not you. Concerned about individual culpability for obstruction or mishandling documents, they made this hot potato someone else’s problem as fast as possible. 

Someone is responsible for the way this information came out, and that someone is an enemy of Biden. There are plenty of possibilities: some secret Republicans at the Justice Department, Kamala Harris and her people, a committee of Democratic Party insiders concerned about Dementia Joe being president for another four years. The whole thing has a whiff of a conspiracy, and, like the various allegations and pretexts employed to investigate Trump, it may very well originate in the intelligence community. 

As Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) once said, “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” In this instance, the hypothesis is not completely satisfying. Biden has not really taken on the intelligence community, so far as I can tell, unless they’re still smarting about how he ended the Afghanistan boondoggle.

Adam Schiff's "Expulsion From Congress" Seems Like A Pretty Small Price To Pay

ronpaulinstitute |  With each new release of the “Twitter Files” we learn more and more about the deep corruption in Washington. We sensed during Covid that something was really wrong – for example the bizarre denial of natural immunity. But thanks to Elon Musk’s decision to open the books, our worst fears have been proven true. Each new release seems to show something even more criminal inside America’s rotten ruling class.

In the latest release, thanks to the excellent reporting of independent journalist Matt Taibbi, we see outgoing Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), continuously pressuring Twitter to validate his fantasies of “Russian bots” manipulating US politics.

The short version of what Taibbi reported comes from around the time then-Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) was about to release his Committee’s findings about the FBI misuse of the FISA Court to spy on the Trump presidential campaign. The FBI, it turns out, relied exclusively on the widely-discredited “Steele Dossier” – paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign – as justification to spy on the Trump campaign.

When pressure grew to release the Nunes findings, Twitter exploded with users demanding that Congress “release the memo.” That’s where then-ranking Member Schiff and his staff began relentlessly pressuring Twitter to show that the accounts demanding the release of the memo were actually Russian agents, out to help their supposed favorite, Donald Trump. Schiff was not alone. Fellow “Russiagate” hoaxers like Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also pressured Twitter to find Russians behind the demand to release Nunes’ findings.

Over and over, Twitter – which was hardly sympathetic to Trump – told Schiff and his colleagues there was simply no evidence of Russian involvement. As much as some Twitter employees may have liked to report the opposite, to their credit they refused to participate in the scam.

Even after Twitter had informed Schiff and his fellow hoaxers that there was no Russian involvement, Sen. Blumenthal released a statement he knew was not true: “We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans.” Again, this was right after he had been informed by Twitter employees - who were by-and-large strongly opposed to Trump - that there was just no evidence to back up such a statement.

We are moving closer and closer to a nuclear showdown with Russia over Ukraine. For political gain the Democrats – and plenty of Republicans – have been pushing the “Russiagate” hoax and in so doing have fertilized the ground for the obsessive Russia hatred prevalent in the US today.

I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that if US/Russia relations had not been poisoned by the lie of “Russiagate” for pure political gain, we would not be anywhere near our current state of near-direct conflict with the largest nuclear power on earth, Russia.

It is shocking that Schiff and his "Russiagate" allies would potentially sacrifice millions of dead Americans to defeat Trump and other political enemies. 

Let’s not forget: Rep. Jim Trafficant was expelled from Congress for asking his staffers to wash his boat. Shouldn’t there be at least equal punishment for Senators and Members who are lying us into World War III?

Jim Jordan An'Em Have Their Work Cut Out For Them

 gatestoneinstitute |  Destroying American Democracy - An Inside Job

• Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election.

• The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are main gateways for information to millions of Americans, is a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

• Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

• Having... false information -- some of which the FBI actually altered -- in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump.

• Today we know that the "Russia hoax" was a lie.... the information in the "Steele dossier" was false -- and the FBI had known it was from the start.

• For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden's laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: "Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA."

• One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the Twitter files.... Tweet #17 states, "executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content." Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to "handle requests from the bureau."

• The FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

• Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted?

• Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.?

• Has more than one solitary person -- former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email -- been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power?

• Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with twitter?

• Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts?

• Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?

• It is clear that our law enforcement community needs to be investigated, but most importantly we need to investigate how our Intelligence Community has evolved from having literally a non-existent relationship with speech in America to being inside the room determining what speech is allowed.

• There... needs to be a significant investigation by an outside, non-government group to understand how far this massive government overreach into free speech and election manipulation went. Clearly the government has been influencing what we get to see and hear. It needs to stop -- now -- before our democracy is destroyed.

McCarthy Shreds Lying Turdburglers Swalwell And Schiff

CNN cuts away from Speaker McCarthy's press conference when he starts hammering Rep. Swalwell for being allegedly compromised, and Rep. Schiff for repeatedly lying about having evidence of collusion. pic.twitter.com/fL5xcblNI1

— Bill D'Agostino (@Banned_Bill) January 12, 2023

trendingpolitics  |  On Thursday while speaking with reporters, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy left reporters speechless after he defended his decision to keep California Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff off of the House Intelligence Committee.

“If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee,” McCarthy said, leaving reporters silent.

This suggests damning bombshell information about Swalwell’s handlings that we will hopefully learn in the coming weeks.

“And you’re going to tell me other Democrats couldn’t fill that slot? He cannot get a security clearance in the private sector,” McCarthy said. “So would you like to give him a government clearance?”

McCarthy went on to explain that the last Congress lead by Nancy Pelosi kept Swalwell on the committee even though they were aware of the massive red flag from the FBI.

“You’re going to tell me there are 200 other Democrats that couldn’t fill that slot, but they kept him on it? The only way that they even knew it came forward is when they put to nominate him to the Intel committee. And then the FBI came and told the leadership that he’s got a problem, and they kept him on. That jeopardized all of us,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy also name dropped Schiff.

“Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistle blower,” McCarthy said while referring to false claims made by the California Democrat against former President Donald Trump.

“He put America for four years through an impeachment that he knew was a lie.” At the same time, we had Ukraine, the same time we had Afghanistan collapse. Was that the role of the Intel committee? No,” McCarthy said.

“So what I am doing with the Intel committee, bringing it back to the jurisdiction is supposed to do forward looking to keep this country safe, keep the politics out of it,” he continued.

 

 

In 2018 Hunter Biden Paid $50K/Month For The Document Stash House He Also Claimed He Owns

trendingpoliticsnews |  “In 2018 Hunter Biden claimed he owned the house where Joe Biden kept classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage ,” reported journalist Miranda Devine.

In 2018 Hunter Biden claimed he owned the house where Joe Biden kept classified documents alongside his Corvette in the garage Via @jj_talking pic.twitter.com/L7c80MRRiS

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) January 12, 2023

Was this Hunter Biden’s way of funneling the money he earned with his father’s political connections back to his father?

After Hunter’s divorce was finalized in May of 2017, he was included in an email from his business partner James Gilliar about a venture with Chinese state-funded energy company CEFC China Energy. The email stated that Hunter and his partners would receive 20% of the shares in the new business, with 10% going to Hunter’s uncle James Biden and the other 10% being “held by H for the big guy.”

Tony Bobulinski, another one of Hunter’s former business partners, claims that he had a meeting with Joe Biden regarding the CEFC venture on May 2, 2017, and that the president was the individual referred to as the “big guy” in Gilliar’s email. Additionally, Gilliar himself confirmed that Joe Biden was the “big guy” mentioned in a message found on the laptop.

The New York Post reports: “The following year, federal investigators began looking into whether Hunter and his business associates violated tax and money laundering laws during their dealings in China and other countries. Emails and other records related to the deals were found on the laptop, which Hunter dropped off at a Delaware repair shop in 2019 and never reclaimed.”

According to text messages found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the president’s son was on the hook for 50% of family expenses. How did Hunter Biden get this money back to his father?

“I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years,” a furious Hunter Biden said to his daughter Naomi in January of 2019. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

The New York Post continues:

The laptop doesn’t contain any direct evidence of such money transfers but shows Hunter was routinely on the hook for household expenses — including repairs to the Wilmington home.

In December 2020, weeks after his father was elected president, Hunter Biden announced that his “tax affairs” were being investigated by federal authorities in Delaware, and said he was “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.”

Recent reports have indicated investigators believe they have enough evidence to charge the first son with tax crimes — as well as with lying about his drug abuse on a federal form so he could buy a gun in 2018.

Did Hunter Have Access To The Big Guy's Classified Documents Stash?

Newsweek  |  Republicans are speculating that the classified documents kept by President Joe Biden at his Delaware home may have been reviewed by the president's son Hunter Biden.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that classified documents dating back to the Obama administration had been found at the president's private residence in Wilmington.

That revelation came only days after it was announced that an initial batch of classified documents from Biden's time as vice president had been found in an office at Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.

Biden defended the discovery at his private home by insisting that he treats "classified materials seriously" and noting that the documents were inside a "locked" garage. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to look into the Biden document finds later in the day.

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Republicans have argued that there is a double standard regarding the mishandling of government records. Some have demanded that the FBI raid Biden's home to look for more classified documents, as happened last summer at the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump.

Following the new discovery in Delaware, a number of prominent conservatives floated conspiracy-laden suggestions that Hunter Biden may have seen the documents, although there is no evidence to suggest that he did.

"Given his extensive ties to China, Russia, and Ukraine, did Hunter Biden have access to Joe Biden's garage and therefore the classified documents?" Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.

"Gosh I hope Biden didn't let Hunter drive the Corvette," tweeted conservative commentator Liz Wheeler. "Hunter might've found the classified documents. Have we checked Hunter's naked crack-smoking Russian hooker videos for Biden's classified documents yet?"

As a private residence, it is not clear that any visitor logs would be kept at Biden's home in Delaware. Regardless of any records, the possibility that Hunter Biden visited his father's home at any point during the roughly six years since he was vice president seems far from remote.

However, there is little reason to believe that Hunter Biden would have reviewed the documents during a visit with his father.

Earlier this week, Donald Trump claimed without evidence that Chinese agents "saw" the classified documents that were stored at Penn Biden Center.

The status of any visitor logs taken at the residences of Trump, who is facing potential criminal indictments over his own classified documents scandal, is unclear.

 

 

An Ongoing "Special Investigation" Prevents Any Unwanted Congressional Oversight

WSJ  |  Additional pages marked as classified were found at President Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence and have been given to the Justice Department, the White House counsel said Saturday, the latest revelation over the handling of classified information that has emerged this week.

The documents were discovered after Mr. Biden’s attorneys said earlier that some classified material, likely dating from his time as vice president, had been found in his garage at the residence in December.

One document marked as classified also was found at his residence earlier this week, the White House had said. In addition, documents marked as classified were found at his office at a Washington think tank in November.

In a statement Saturday, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said he accompanied Justice Department officials to Wilmington on Thursday to retrieve the initial document from the residence—and during that process “five additional pages with classification markings” were found among the material, bringing the total to six pages discovered this week.

All material was immediately taken into possession by the Justice Department, Mr. Sauber said. The Justice Department declined to comment Saturday.

The revelations come after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney during the Trump administration, as special counsel to examine why classified documents were found at both Mr. Biden’s home and the office he used at the think tank.

Aides had found documents with classified markings at the think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, on Nov. 2, and turned them over to the National Archives. 

Mr. Biden’s team has said the material was inadvertently misplaced.

House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York said Saturday on Twitter, “House Republicans will hold Joe Biden’s DOJ & FBI accountable for their double standard of justice and uncover the TRUTH about why Biden has been allowed to be so irresponsible with classified documents for so long.”

 

World War III Is A Conflict Of Anthropological Values

twitter |  Emmanuel Todd, one of the greatest French intellectuals today, claims that the "Third World War has started."

Small 🧵 translating the most important points in this fascinating interview.

Emmanuel Todd: «La Troisième Guerre mondiale a commencé» GRAND ENTRETIEN - Au-delà de l’affrontement militaire entre la Russie et l’Ukraine, l’anthropologue insiste sur la dimension idéologique et culturelle de cette guerre et sur l’opposition entre l’Occid… https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/monde/emmanuel-todd-la-troisieme-guerre-mondiale-a-commence-20230112#Echobox=1673601494-1

 

He says "it's obvious that the conflict, started as a limited territorial war and escalating to a global economic confrontation, between the whole of the West on the one hand and Russia and China on the other hand, has become a world war." 

 

He believes that "Putin made a big mistake early on, which is [that] on the eve of the war [everyone saw Ukraine] not as a fledgling democracy, but as a society in decay and a “failed state” in the making. [...] I think the Kremlin's calculation was that this decaying society... 

 

... would crumble at the first shock. But what we have discovered, on the contrary, is that a society in decomposition, if it is fed by external financial and military resources, can find in war a new type of balance, and even a horizon, a hope." 

 

He says he agrees with Mearsheimer's analysis of the conflict: "Mearsheimer tells us that Ukraine, whose army had been overtaken by NATO soldiers (American, British and Polish) since at least 2014, was therefore a de facto member of the NATO, and that the Russians had... 

 

... announced that they would never tolerate Ukraine in NATO. From their point of view, the Russians are therefore in a war that is defensive and preventive. Mearsheimer added that we would have no reason to rejoice in the eventual difficulties of the Russians because... 

 

...since this is an existential question for them, the harder it would be, the harder they would strike. The analysis seems to hold true." 

 

He however has some criticism for Mearsheimer:

"Mearsheimer, like a good American, overestimates his country. He considers that, if for the Russians the war in Ukraine is existential, for the Americans it is basically only one 'game' of power among others. After Vietnam... 

 

...Iraq and Afghanistan, what's one more debacle? The basic axiom of American geopolitics is: 'We can do whatever we want because we are sheltered, far away, between two oceans, nothing will ever happen to us'. Nothing would be existential for America. 

 

Insufficient analysis which today leads Biden to proceed mindlessly. America is fragile. The resistance of the Russian economy is pushing the American imperial system towards the precipice. No one had expected that the Russian economy would hold up against the 'economic power'...

...of NATO. I believe that the Russians themselves did not anticipate it.

If the Russian economy resisted the sanctions indefinitely and managed to exhaust the European economy, while it itself remained, backed by China, American monetary and financial controls of the world......would collapse, and with them the possibility for United States to fund their huge trade deficit for nothing. This war has therefore become existential for the United States. No more than Russia, they cannot withdraw from the conflict, they cannot let go. 

 

This is why we...... are now in an endless war, in a confrontation whose outcome must be the collapse of one or the other." 

 

He firmly believes the US is in decline but sees it as bad news for the autonomy of vassal states:

"I have just read a book by S. Jaishankar, Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs (The India Way), published just before the war, who sees American weakness, who knows that the......confrontation between China and the US will have no winner but will give space to a country like India, and to many others. I add: but not to Europeans. Everywhere we see the weakening of the US, but not in Europe and Japan because one of the effects of the retraction of......the imperial system is that the United States strengthens its hold on its initial protectorates. As the American system shrinks, it weighs ever more heavily on the local elites of the protectorates (and I include all of Europe here). 

 

The first to lose all national autonomy...... will be (or already are) the English and the Australians. The Internet has produced human interaction with the US in the Anglosphere of such intensity that its academic, media and artistic elites are, so to speak, annexed. On the European continent we are somewhat...... protected by our national languages, but the fall in our autonomy is considerable, and rapid. Let's remember the Iraq war, when Chirac, Schröder and Putin held joint anti-war press conferences." 

 

He underlines the importance of skills and education: "The US is now twice as populated as Russia (2.2 times in student age groups). But in the US only 7% are studying engineering, while in Russia it is 25%. Which means that with 2.2 times fewer people studying, Russia trains......30% more engineers. The US fills the gap with foreign students, but they're mainly Indians and even more Chinese. This is not safe and is already decreasing. It is a dilemma of the American economy: it can only face competition from China by importing skilled Chinese labor." 

 

On the ideological and cultural aspects of the war: "When we see the Russian Duma pass even more repressive legislation on 'LGBT propaganda', we feel superior. I can feel that as an ordinary Westerner. But from a geopolitical point of view, if we think in terms of...... soft power, it is a mistake. On 75% of the planet, the kinship organization was patrilineal and one can sense a strong understanding of Russian attitudes. For the collective non-West, Russia affirms a reassuring moral conservatism." 

 

He continues: "The USSR had a certain form of soft power [but] communism basically horrified the whole Muslim world by its atheism and inspired nothing particular in India, outside of West Bengal and Kerala. However, today, Russia which repositioned itself as the archetype......of the great power, not only anti-colonialist, but also patrilineal and conservative of traditional mores, can seduce much further. [For instance] it's obvious that Putin's Russia, having become morally conservative, has become sympathetic to the Saudis who I'm sure have a......bit of a hard time with American debates over access for transgender women in the ladies' room.

Western media are tragically funny, they keep saying, 'Russia is isolated, Russia is isolated'. But when we look at the votes at the UN, we see that 75% of the world does not......follow the West, which then seems very small.

With an anthropologist reading of this [divide between the West and the rest] we find that countries in the West often have a nuclear family structure with bilateral kinship systems, that is to say where male and female kinship......are equivalent in the definition of the social status of the child. [Within the rest], with the bulk of the Afro-Euro-Asian mass, we find community and patrilineal family organizations. We then see that this conflict, described by our media as a conflict of political......values, is at a deeper level a conflict of anthropological values. It is this unconscious aspect of the divide and this depth that make the confrontation dangerous."