Category Archives: CIA

NATO prolongs the Ukraine proxy war, and global havoc

Posted on by
3

With diplomacy thwarted, the US and its allies plan for “open-ended” military and economic warfare against Russia, no matter the costs at home and abroad.

(US Dept. of Defense)

By Aaron Maté

Source: Aaron Mate Substack

Russia has announced plans to mobilize an additional 300,000 troops for the war in Ukraine. In his speech unveiling the expanded war effort, Vladimir Putin vowed to achieve his main goal of the “liberation of Donbas,” and issued a thinly veiled nuclear threat in the process. The move comes days ahead of planned referendums in breakaway Ukrainian areas to formalize Russian annexation.

Russia’s escalation ensures that the fighting is entering an even more dangerous phase. While Russia bears legal and moral responsibility for its invasion, recent developments underscore that NATO leaders have shunned opportunities to prevent further catastrophe and chosen instead to fuel it.

Putin’s announcement comes just after the Ukrainian military’s routing of Russian forces from Kharkiv, which relied extensively on US planning, weaponry and intelligence, sparked triumphant declarations that the tide has turned.

According to The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, “Americans and Europeans need to prepare for a Ukrainian victory,” one so overwhelming that it may well bring “about the end of Putin’s regime.”

Beyond the chorus of emboldened neoconservatives, Western officials are less sanguine.

“Certainly it’s a military setback” for Russia, a US official said of the Kharkiv retreat to the Washington Post. “I don’t know if I could call it a major strategic loss at this point.” Germany’s defense chief, General Eberhard Zorn, said that while Ukraine “can win back places or individual areas of the frontlines,” overall, its forces can “not push Russia back over a broad front.”

Whether or not it marked a major strategic loss for Russia, the battle in Kharkiv is already a major victory for NATO leaders seeking to prolong their proxy war in Ukraine and economic warfare next door.

Ukraine’s expulsion of Russian forces in the northeast, the New York Times reports, has “amplified voices in the West demanding that more weapons be sent to Ukraine so that it could win.”

“Despite Ukrainian forces’ startling gains in the war against Russia,” the Washington Post adds, “the Biden administration anticipates months of intense fighting with wins and losses for each side, spurring U.S. plans for an open-ended campaign with no prospect for a negotiated end in sight.”

As has been apparent since the Ukraine crisis erupted, US planning for open-ended proxy warfare against Russia has led it to sabotage any prospect of a negotiated end.

The US rejection of diplomacy around Ukraine has been newly substantiated by former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill. Citing “multiple former senior U.S. officials,” Hill reports that in April of this year “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement.” Under this framework, Russia would withdraw to its pre-invasion position, while Ukraine would pledge not to join NATO “and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”

In confirming that US officials were aware of this tentative agreement, Hill bolsters previous news that Washington’s junior partner in London was enlisted to thwart it. As Ukrainian media reported, citing sources close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev in April and relayed the message that Russia “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” Johnson also informed Zelensky that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on [security] guarantees with Putin,” his Western patrons “are not.” The talks promptly collapsed.

In his speech announcing the expanded war effort, Putin invoked this episode. After the invasion began, he said, Ukrainian officials “reacted very positively to our proposals… After certain compromises were reached, Kyiv was actually given a direct order to disrupt all agreements.”

Having undermined the prospect of a negotiated peace in the war’s early weeks, proxy warriors in Washington are openly celebrating their success.

“I like the structural path we’re on here,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently declared. “As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.”

Graham’s avowed willingness to expend every “last person” in Ukraine to fight Russia is in line with a broader US strategy that views the entire world as subordinate to its war aims. As the Washington Post reported in June, the White House is willing to “countenance even a global recession and mounting hunger” in order to hand Russia a costly defeat. In Ukraine, this now means also countenancing the threat of nuclear disaster, as the crisis surrounding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has laid bare.

The prevailing willingness to sacrifice civilian well-being extends to the US public, as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has newly made clear. Appearing at the Aspen Security Conference, Sullivan was asked if he is worried about the “American people’s staying power” on the Ukraine proxy war, amid “criticism that we’re spending billions and billions to support Ukraine, and not spending it here.”

 “Fundamentally not,” Sullivan responded. “It’s very important for Putin to understand what exactly he’s up against from the point of view of the United States’ staying power.” That staying power, Sullivan explained, was cemented in the $40 billion war funding measure overwhelmingly approved by Congress (including every self-identified progressive Democrat) in May.

“That can go on, just on the basis of what we have already had allocated to us and resources for a considerable period of time,” Sullivan vowed. “And then, I strongly believe that there will be bipartisan support in the Congress to re-up those resources should it become necessary.”

To policymakers like Sullivan, there is not only an endless pool of money to “re-up” the war, but a “fundamentally” indifferent posture toward the taxpayers footing the bill.

Despite Biden’s reported scolding of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for admitting that the US goal in Ukraine is to leave Russia “weakened,” Sullivan – speaking before a friendly Beltway crowd — also forgot to stick to the script.

The US “strategic objective” in Ukraine, Sullivan explained, is to “ensure that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… is a strategic failure for Putin,” and that “Russia pay a longer-term price in terms of the elements of its national power.” This would teach a “lesson,” he added, “to would-be aggressors elsewhere.”

By “would-be aggressors elsewhere”, Sullivan naturally precludes the US and its allies, whose aggression is not only permitted but promoted under the US-led “rules-based international order.”

President Biden has made that clear by abandoning his pledge to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state, notwithstanding its murderous (US-backed) aggression in Yemen. The regular aggression by US ally Israel against Gaza and Syria also continues unabated. The United Nations just reported that an Israeli strike on the Damascus international airport in June – one of hundreds of Israeli bombings on Syria that go largely ignored — “led to considerable damage to infrastructure” and “meant the suspension of U.N. deliveries of humanitarian assistance” to Syrians in need for nearly two weeks. As of this writing, the latest Israeli strike killed five Syrian soldiers, eliciting no Western media and political protest. It is more accurate to describe Israeli aggression on Syria as a joint Israeli-US effort, given that the US reviews and approves the strikes.

Allied NATO leaders are also vocally countenancing the Ukraine proxy war’s costs on their domestic populations. In response to the European sanctions, Russia has now halted gas deliveries to the EU via the key Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Having previously relied on Russia for close to 40 percent of its gas needs, European industries are facing layoffs, factory closures, and higher energy bills that “are pushing consumers to near poverty,” the Financial Times reports.

“People want to end the war because they cannot bear the consequences, the costs,” the EU’s Josep Borell observed this month. While ending the war might appeal to some, it does not interest the EU’s top diplomat. “This mentality must be overcome,” Borell declared. “The offensive on the northeastern front helps with that.”

Europe, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg recently wrote, may even face “civil unrest,” as economies contract and temperatures drop, but “for Ukraine’s future and for ours, we must prepare for the winter war and stay the course.”

“No matter what my German voters think, I want to deliver to the people of Ukraine,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told a conference in Prague last month. During the upcoming winter, Baerbock acknowledged, “we will be challenged as democratic politicians. People will go in the street and say ‘We cannot pay our energy prices’.” While pledging to help people “with social measures,” Baerbock insisted that the European Union’s sanctions on Russia will remain. “The sanctions will stay also in wintertime, even if it gets really tough for politicians,” she said.

Whereas Western leaders appear confident they can manage civil unrest at home, they face additional resistance abroad. In Africa, a leaked report from the European Union’s envoy to the continent warns that African nations are blaming the EU’s Russia sanctions for food shortages. The report also cautions that “the EU is seen as fueling the conflict,” in Ukraine, “not as a peace facilitator.”

Rather than address these African concerns, the envoy’s office proposes a “more transactional… approach” in which the EU makes “clear” that its “willingness” to “maintain higher levels” of foreign aid “will depend on working based on common values and a joint vision,” – in short, on Africa falling in line.

That is undoubtedly the US policy, as UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield made clear last month. After promising a “listening tour,” Thomas-Greenfield instead came to Africa with a dictate and an outright threat. “Countries can buy Russian agricultural products, including fertilizer and wheat,” she decreed. But “if a country decides to engage with Russia” and break US sanctions, “they stand the chance of having actions taken against them.” That Africa faces a food security crisis, with hundreds of millions going hungry, is apparently of lower importance.

While Western sanctions on Russia wreak havoc worldwide, the architects in Washington seem only perturbed by their failure, so far, to inflict the intended levels of suffering on Russian civilians. “We were expecting” that US sanctions “would totally crater the Russian economy” by now, a disappointed senior US official told CNN.

Other US officials are leaving room for hope. “There’s going to be long-term damage done to the Russian economy and to generations of Russians as a result of this,” CIA Director William Burns told a cybersecurity conference this month. Burns’ long-term forecast of harming “generations of Russians” is based on extensive planning. As one US official explained it to CNN, when the sanctions were designed, Biden officials not only “wanted to keep pressure on Russia over the long term as it waged war on Ukraine,” but also “wanted to degrade Russia’s economic and industrial capabilities.” Accordingly, “we’ve always seen this as a long-term game.”

The “long-term game” of trying to destroy Russia’s economy and immiserate “generations” of its citizens is accompanied by increasing plans for a long-term fight. The Biden administration plans to formally name the US military mission in Ukraine – such as in prior campaigns like Operation Desert Storm — while also appointing a general to oversee the effort. The naming, the Wall Street Journal observes, is “significant bureaucratically, as it typically entails long-term, dedicated funding.”

The US plan for a long-term military and economic campaign against Russia is being implemented despite the awareness that Ukraine could face far worse.

“Some American officials express concern that the most dangerous moments are yet to come,” the New York Times reports. To date, “Putin has avoided escalating the war in ways that have, at times, baffled Western officials.” Unlike US military campaigns in Iraq, Russia “has made only limited attempts to destroy critical infrastructure or to target Ukrainian government buildings.”

“The current moment draws attention to a tension that underlies America’s strategy for the war,” the Washington Post observes, “as officials channel massive military support to Ukraine, fueling a war with global consequences, while attempting to remain agnostic about when and how Kyiv might strike a deal to end it.”

These rare admissions not only contradict the typical portrayal of a genocidal Russia that is used to justify the proxy war, but capture the underlying policy driving it. More than six months in, US officials are aware that Russia has “avoided escalating the war” and targeting “critical infrastructure,” – to the point where these same officials are “baffled” by Russian restraint. Despite this, their policy centers on “fueling” this same war, while remaining “agnostic” about ending it.

War being fluid – and US-led military support for Ukraine ever-expanding – it is of course possible that Ukraine will continue to defy expectations and drive out the invading Russian forces.

What the latest developments on and off the battlefield make undoubtedly clear is that NATO states are willing to use Ukraine for as long as it takes to achieve the stated aim of leaving Russia “weakened” or even achieving regime change, no matter the damage knowingly inflicted on Ukrainians, Russians, the Global South, and their own citizens.

The Drumbeats of War and US-NATO Propaganda: “China is Bad” and “They are Coming to Enslave Us”

Posted on by
Reply

The Truth about China’s Imperial Ambitions, the Uyghurs and What the West Really Fears

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Western media outlets are playing the drumbeats of war by warning the public that a new Chinese empire is going to develop into an unstoppable force capable of ruling the world with an iron fist.  They claim that under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they will control every country and human being on earth.  Overall, it’s an absurd claim.  It is fair to say that China under the leadership of the CCP has several issues that concerns the Chinese public with a social credit score system, Zero Covid policy rules and a nation-wide surveillance system that is Orwellian to say the least.  China also had a one child policy that has led to a decline in its population which was and still is problematic for its future when it comes to their labor force and economy, but they ended that policy in 2016.  Whatever faults China has, it is not looking to rule the world despite what Western countries claim especially the United States who say that Beijing’s policies reflect a growing appetite for imperial expansion.  On May 25th, 2017, Reuters published ‘China says new Silk Road not about military ambitions’ reported on what China’s Defense ministry had said about China’s future “China’s ambition to build a new Silk Road is not about seeking to expand its military role abroad nor about seeking to set up foreign bases.” The Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang told a regular monthly news briefing conference that China’s Silk Road was not expanding militarily nor setting up bases in any sovereign country and that the accusations were “groundless.” Guoqiang said that “the new Silk Road is about cooperation and trade” and that “The Belt and Road initiative has no military or geostrategic intent. China is not seeking the right to guide global affairs, or spheres of influence, and will not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”

According to a report from September 23rd, 2020, by the National Herald India titled ‘China will never seek expansion, has no intention to fight either ‘Cold War’ or ‘hot war’, says Xi Jinping’ as Xi Jinping declared in a pre-recorded video sent to the United Nations meeting that “We will continue to narrow differences and resolve disputes with others through dialogue and negotiation” he continued “We will never seek hegemony, expansion, or sphere of influence. We have no intention to fight either a Cold War or a hot war with any country.”   The report also mentioned India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to the Ladakh region a few months prior where he said that “the era of expansionism is over and that the history is proof that “expansionists” have either lost or perished” in what the report described as a “clear message” to China.  “Xi, also the General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China and the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese military, said his country will not pursue development behind closed doors.” Xi made it clear that a new plan for development for growth domestically and internationally will create more opportunities for China’s economy.  Xi said the following:

Rather, we aim to foster, over time, a new development paradigm with domestic circulation as the mainstay and domestic and international circulations reinforcing each other. This will create more space for China’s economic development and add impetus to global economic recovery and growth

The report also mentioned that during the Covid-19 pandemic, US President, Donald Trump ramped up tensions with China and “demanded that China, where the coronavirus emerged, be held accountable for failure to control the virus and for allowing it to spread across the world” he continued, “As we pursue this bright future, we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China”.  Trump’s rhetoric including his administration slapping tariffs on China’s goods surely increased tensions between Washington and Beijing.  The National Herald India quoted what Xi had said about China’s own decisions that will benefit its own economy and path of development and that it should be respected, “one should respect a country’s “independent choice of development path and model.”  Xi made a point that the world is diverse, and that it can inspire human advancements:

The world is diverse in nature, and we should turn this diversity into a constant source of inspiration driving human advancement. This will ensure that human civilisations remain colourful and diversified

Conflicts and Disagreements: China, India, and the Soviet Union

The history between China and India involved conflicts over border issues.  In 1962, China had a dispute with India over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh borders.  The conflict was mostly among ground troops of both sides which did not involve any Air force or Naval forces.  What started the conflict was China’s construction of a road that connected the Chinese regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.  However, Aksai Chin was claimed by India.  So, in the months of October and November the Sino-Indian War began.  Several violent conflicts also occurred between China and India after the 1959 Tibetan uprising due to India’s recognition of the Dalai Lama, or who is known as Gyalwa Rinpoche to the Tibetan people.  In an important note to consider, the Dalai Lama was supported by the CIA for many years.  The CIA financially supported the Dalai Lama from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s with more than $180,000 a year for the CIA’s Tibetan program to support anti-China activities and to create foreign offices within Tibet to lobby for international support which was a concern for China. 

In 1960, India had constructed a defensive policy to disrupt China’s military patrols and its logistics in what was called ‘Forward Policy’  that placed Indian outposts along the borders in the north of the McMahon Line, the eastern portion of the Line of Actual Control.   However, China did try to implement diplomatic settlements between 1960 and 1962, but India rejected the proposal allowing China to abandon diplomacy and became aggressive along the disputed borders. China defeated Indian forces in Rezang La in Chushul in the west and Tawang in the east.  China declared a ceasefire on November 20th, 1962.  The war ended as China withdrew to its areas claimed in the ‘Line of Actual Control.’  Matters became complicated when the Soviet Union sold MiG fighter aircrafts to India in a show of support since the US and the UK refused to sell arms to India.  However, tensions between China and the Soviet Union were also high during that time which was known as the ‘Sino-Soviet split’ over ideological differences in Marxist-Leninist theories during the Cold War.  There were various agreements between China and India with no progress for peace until 2006.   Although Indian officials were concerned with China’s growing military power and its relationship with Pakistan (India’s main rival), China’s Silk Road opened the doors for peace between both nations.  In October of 2011, China and India formulated border mechanisms regarding the Line of Actual Control as both resumed bilateral army exercises between China and Indian troops by early 2012.  In 2013, what was known as the Depsang standoff, India had agreed to demolish and remove several ‘live-in bunkers’ in the Chumar sector along with the removal of observation posts built along the border among other things that made the resolution of the dispute a success, so the Chinese military withdrew it forces, ending the dispute in May 2013.  Although there are some disagreements between both countries still exist over their borders policies, today China and India are part of the BRICS coalition.

The Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979

On December 21st, 1978, Vietnam launched an attack on the Khmer Rouge.  After more than 10 years of fighting, Vietnam had successfully defeated the Khmer Rouge ending Pol Pot’s reign of terror.  Then in February 1979, China had declared war with Vietnam over its borders.  Now Vietnam was facing a two-front war. China’s invasion was a surprise to the world because China supported Vietnam with its wars against France and the US.  From 1965 until 1969, China had more than 300,000 troops in the Vietnam war with more than 1,000 members from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who were killed with 4,300 wounded. 

However, it all changed due to China’s domination of Vietnam for centuries which created animosity among the Vietnamese government and its people towards Beijing thus creating tensions between both countries.  Conflicts on the border also developed between China and the Soviet Union in 1969 during the Sino-Soviet split, so Vietnam had a dilemma, it had to choose one of them as an ally.  On November 3, 1978, Vietnam signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union that offered security assurances.  Since tensions were high at the time, more than 150,000 Chinese who were living in Vietnam had fled. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and CCP officials viewed Vietnam as ungrateful and traitorous.  The Chinese saw the treaty as a threat since the Soviets had a similar treaty with Mongolia which in a way allowed the Soviets to surround China.  On December 7, 1978, China’s Central Military Commission decided to launch a “limited war” along their borders and at the same time, Vietnam had invaded Cambodia to destroy the Khmer Rouge.

Since Vietnam had border clashes with the China-backed Khmer Rouge in Cambodia along with Beijing’s decision to cut aid to Hanoi, it decided to partner with Moscow.  On January 29th, 1979, for the first time, Chinese Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping went to the US and reportedly told President Jimmy Carter that “The child is getting naughty, it is time he got spanked.”   A couple of weeks later, on February 15th, China terminated the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance and Xiaoping declared that China was going to attack Vietnam to support its ally, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia among other reasons including the plan to reclaim the Vietnamese occupied Spratly Islands.  China wanted to prevent the Soviet Union from intervening on Vietnam’s behalf, so Xiaoping warned the Soviets that China’s forces were prepared for war.  Declaring an emergency, China deployed all of the PLA forces along the Sino-Soviet border and set up a military command station in Xinjiang, they also evacuated more than 300,000 civilians from the area.

China eventually suffered a defeat by the Vietcong since its military was not prepared to fight an experienced fighting force who previously defeated two Western powers, France, and the US.  It was reported that experienced Vietnamese ‘tank-killing teams’ destroyed or damaged more than 280 tanks and armored vehicles during the war.  China avoided the use of its Air Force and Navy since it promised the Soviets and Americans a limited war against Vietnam.  China also knew that Vietnam had an experienced military as well as having one of the best anti-air capabilities in the world.  After two short weeks of fighting, China began withdrawing its troops.  By March 16, Chinese troops had a ‘scorched-earth campaign’ in Vietnam destroying bridges, factories, mines, farms, and crops.  It is estimated that China had between 7,900 to 26,000 troops killed and between 23,000 to 37,000 wounded.  Vietnam had between 20,000 to 50,000 troops and civilians killed and wounded.  China clearly had a difficult time with Vietnam. 

China’s history with its neighbors shows that it may be difficult even today if they decided to become an imperialist power subjugating the world to its demands because it would face an uphill battle that will become economically and politically costly and that will collapse its economy and society.  Before the US became a global empire, they made sure they contained and controlled its own backyard and that was the Caribbean and Latin America after the Spanish-American War of 1898.  China would have to control its own backyard against several nations including Russia, India, Vietnam, and others.  China understands that imperial projects to dominate the world is a risk not worth taking. 

Remember, China was on the receiving end of Japanese Imperialism that practically destroyed its society.  In 1931, Imperial Japan had invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria for raw materials to fuel its industries, and by 1937 they controlled many areas of China.  The Imperial Japanese war crimes mounted against the Chinese people.  China understands the consequences of war because it sees what has happened to the US and its military adventures which has led to its decline.  It knows it will not benefit anyone, in fact wars can destabilize regions, destroy economies, and disrupt societal norms and China is not at all interested in any of that.  They want to rebuild their civilization.      

The age of empires is over.  A new multipolar world is needed now more than ever before where no single entity or centralized power could rule over any country who wants to remain sovereign.  That would start an era of lasting peace around the world.  Of course, there are no guarantees that total peace would prevail in a multipolar world because there will be bad actors who will prefer a globalized world order over countries who want sovereignty, but in a multipolar world order, wars can be avoided.  It would be a good start where sovereign countries would respect each other’s boundaries and work out their differences.  That’s the way it should be instead of a group of globalist psychopaths making geopolitical and economic decisions to change the social fabric of every country on the planet.         

Inside China: The Surveillance State

China’s internal problems is a stain on its reputation.  China’s surveillance state is indeed problematic.  In 2018, the CCP installed more than 200 million surveillance cameras with an increase in facial recognition technology nationwide.  Surveillance cameras and facial recognition networks would add to the social credit system already in place that gives Chinese citizens a score based on their “social behaviors.”  Going back to 2003, China began its Smart City pilot programs to track and analyze air quality, traffic, wastewater disposal systems, social behaviors of its residents and other areas of urban life.  We can fairly say that China’s surveillance state is rather extreme and unnecessary.  The Chinese people will increasingly voice their concerns to the CCP’s leadership in the future to scrap its surveillance capabilities because it can get out of control, but the question is, will it happen?  Only time will tell.   

The Uyghurs: China’s Problem with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)

One issue that has been mainly ignored in recent years by the Western mainstream media is the terrorism committed in China by the Uyghurs. Why? The Western view of China’s human rights abuses when it comes to the Uyghurs has two sides of the story.  First it benefits the Military-Industrial Complex and its future of selling arms to its allies throughout Asia including Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.  Second, it’s the demonization of China to gain support among the American people for a future war with China because they are “bad.”  Former US President Barack Obama supported his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her ‘Pivot to Asia’ agenda that she had published in Foreign Policy magazine titled ‘America’s Pacific Century.’ Clinton made it clear that the US goal is to remain a global hegemonic power especially in the Asia-Pacific region:

As secretary of state, I broke with tradition and embarked on my first official overseas trip to Asia. In my seven trips since, I have had the privilege to see firsthand the rapid transformations taking place in the region, underscoring how much the future of the United States is intimately intertwined with the future of the Asia-Pacific. A strategic turn to the region fits logically into our overall global effort to secure and sustain America’s global leadership. The success of this turn requires maintaining and advancing a bipartisan consensus on the importance of the Asia-Pacific to our national interests; we seek to build upon a strong tradition of engagement by presidents and secretaries of state of both parties across many decades. It also requires smart execution of a coherent regional strategy that accounts for the global implications of our choices.

What does that regional strategy look like? For starters, it calls for a sustained commitment to what I have called “forward-deployed” diplomacy. That means continuing to dispatch the full range of our diplomatic assets — including our highest-ranking officials, our development experts, our interagency teams, and our permanent assets — to every country and corner of the Asia-Pacific region. Our strategy will have to keep accounting for and adapting to the rapid and dramatic shifts playing out across Asia. With this in mind, our work will proceed along six key lines of action: strengthening bilateral security alliances; deepening our working relationships with emerging powers, including with China; engaging with regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment; forging a broad-based military presence; and advancing democracy and human rights

FOX News is one of the US mainstream media outlets that jumps into the defense of the Uyghurs when it comes to the CCP and its alleged abuses.  However, FOX News ignores the daily abuses of the Israeli regime against the Palestinians or the abuses by the Saudis against the people of Yemen who have been bombarded with US-made weapons since 2015.  To be fair, not only FOX News demonizes China, but so does the liberal media such as CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times that includes the BBC and others throughout Europe.   

One situation that is rarely discussed in the West is the terrorism incidents caused by certain groups and individuals in the Uyghur community not only against the CCP, but also against the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic majority in China.  In ‘Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment’ by James Millward from the East-West Center based in Honolulu, Hawaii and Washington D.C. documented terrorist activities since the early 1990’s that accelerated after the September 11th attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. Millward wrote the following concerning terror groups originating out of the Xinjiang region in China:

Since the 1990s, concerns about Uyghur separatism have received increasing official and media attention. These concerns have heightened since the events of 9-11 with the advent of a more robust U.S. presence in Central Asia and Chinese attempts to link Uyghur separatism to international jihadist groups. A steady flow of reports from the international media—as well as official PRC releases (a document on “East Turkistan” terrorism, a white paper on Xinjiang, and a list of terrorist groups)—have given the impression of an imminent separatist and terrorist crisis in the Xinjiang region

Some of the terror attacks that were documented occurred in as early as 1992: 

February 5, 1992: Urumqi Bus Bombs. Three were killed and twenty-three injured in two explosions on buses in Urumqi; the PRC’s 2002 document claims that other bombs were discovered and defused around the same time in a cinema and a residential building. Five men were later convicted in this case and reportedly executed in June 1995.

February 1992-September 1993: Bombings. During this period there were several explosions in Yining, Urumqi, Kashgar, and elsewhere; targets included department stores, markets, hotels, and centers of “cultural activity” in southern Xinjiang. One bomb in a building of the Nongji Company (apparently a firm concerned with agricultural equipment) in Kashgar on June 17, 1993, killed two and injured six. One bomb went off in a wing of the Seman Hotel in Kashgar, though no one was hurt in this explosion. The PRC’s 2002 document claims that in the 1993 explosions two people were killed and thirty-six injured overall

On March 9th, 2008, Reuters published an account on what took place during an attempted terrorist attack on a passenger jet on its way to Beijing ‘China foils attempted terror attack on flight.’  The report said that “China foiled a bid to cause an air disaster on a passenger jet en route to Beijing and the plane made a safe emergency landing, an official said on Sunday, in what state media called an attempted terrorist attack.”  According to Reuters sources, “The China Southern flight originated in Urumqi, capital of the restive far western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where militant Uighurs have agitated for an independent “East Turkestan.”  On September 8th, 2011, the BBC reported that a militant Islamic group was behind a terrorist attack in the Xinjiang region that resulted in dozens of people dead.  The BBC report ‘Islamic militant group ‘behind Xinjiang attacks‘ said the following:

A militant Islamic group has released a video saying it was behind recent attacks in China’s Xinjiang region which left dozens of people dead, a US internet monitoring group says.  The video was made by a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party.  The group, which is fighting against Chinese control of Xinjiang, says the attacks were revenge against the Beijing government.

One of the deadliest attacks experienced in China occurred on March 1st, 2014 in the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming which is located in the Yunnan province.  The BBC reported on the incident and said that ‘China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage’ and said that “Chinese officials have blamed separatists from the north-western Xinjiang region for a mass knife attack at a railway station that left 29 people dead and at least 130 wounded” and that “a group of attackers, dressed in black, burst into the station in the south-west city of Kunming and began stabbing people at random.”  The report also said that “Images from the scene posted online showed bodies lying in pools of blood” and that the “State news agency Xinhua said police shot at least four suspects dead.”  There were other terrorist attacks that involved the Uyghurs that only pushed the CCP to move forward with facial recognition and a social credit system associated with a criminal offending database.  By 2021, the CCP’s surveillance system expanded in the southern city of Guangzhou that allowed incoming passengers to walk through a biometric security checkpoint. 

In Xinjiang, security checkpoints and identification stations were in many places where people must show proof of ID with their faces being scanned at the same time by various cameras before they enter any supermarket, train stations or any other public place.  China’s security concerns do go beyond what is needed to protect themselves from terrorism. 

However, I do not justify any form of police state tactics against any population despite China’s extreme measures that resembles George Orwell’s 1984, however, at the same time, there are legitimate concerns involving the Uyghur population and their use of terrorism that has caused numerous deaths and injuries of innocent people.

From China to Syria: ETIM joins Al-Qaeda and the Syrian “Moderate” Rebels

One piece of information the Western media usually ignores is the fact that since 2013, there have been thousands of Uyghurs who have traveled to Syria and joined terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, the Syrian “Moderate Rebels” and others to fight against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army.  One western media news agency reported on the Uyghurs in Syria and their affiliation with US-backed terrorists who were trying to overthrow or kill Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and that was the Associated Press (AP) who published an Exclusive story ‘Uighurs fighting in Syria take aim at China’ admits a fact about the Uyghurs and their ties to terrorist groups from the Middle East and Africa and how they are using their experiences to fight China:

Since 2013, thousands of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from western China, have traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaida, playing key roles in several battles. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops are now clashing with Uighur fighters as the six-year conflict nears its endgame

The AP mentioned a Uyghur by the name of Ali who said, “We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was,” said Ali, “we just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China.”  That’s what Chinese officials needed on their hands, Uyghurs traveling to Syria to learn how Al-Qaeda and others use terrorist tactics and techniques then bring that knowledge back to China.  The CCP had its hands full with the threat of terrorism on Chinese soil.  The AP outlined the facts that the Uyghurs have committed numerous crimes in China over the years: 

Uighur militants have killed hundreds, if not thousands, in attacks inside China in a decades-long insurgency that initially targeted police and other symbols of Chinese authority but in recent years also included civilians. Extremists with knives killed 33 people at a train station in 2014. Abroad, they bombed the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan in September last year; in 2014, they killed 25 people in an attack on a Thai shrine popular with Chinese tourists

In a report from June 2016 by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission titled ‘China’s Response to Terrorism’ by Murray Scot Tanner and James Bellacqua clarifies what China has been facing when it comes to terrorism:

While tracking the nature and magnitude of China’s terrorist challenges is difficult, it is clear that China faces some level of domestic terrorist threat, and that its citizens have been victims of terrorist attacks both at home and abroad.

Between 2012 and 2015, China suffered multiple domestic terrorist attacks. Reported incidents became more frequent during this period, and they also became more dispersed geographically, with major incidents occurring in Beijing and other eastern cities, in addition to China’s mostly Muslim western regions. Several of these incidents were also targeted at high-traffic urban areas, resulting in indiscriminate injury or death to civilians

In an unusual fashion, in what they call a backgrounder, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a bi-partisan establishment think tank based in New York City published ‘The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)’ explained who and what is ETIM and its longtime affiliations with terrorists: 

Reportedly founded by Hasan Mahsum, a Uighur from Xinjiang’s Kashgar region, ETIM has been listed by the State Department as one of the more extreme separatist groups. It seeks an independent state called East Turkestan that would cover an area including parts of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). After Mahsum’s assassination by Pakistani troops in 2003 during a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda hideout near the Afghanistan border, the group was led by Abdul Haq, who was reportedly killed in Pakistan in 2010. In August 2014, Chinese state media released a report stating that Memetuhut Memetrozi, a co-founder of ETIM who is serving a life sentence in China for his involvement in terrorist attacks, had been indoctrinated in a madrassa in Pakistan. The report, which said Memetuhut had met Mahsum in 1997 and launched ETIM later that year, marked a rare public admission of Pakistani ties to Uighur militancy. 

Some experts say ETIM is an umbrella organization for many splinter groups, including ones that operate in Pakistan and central Asia. The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), for instance, is one of the most prominent groups, formed in 2006 by Uighurs who fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s. That group took credit for a series of attacks in several Chinese cities in 2008, including deadly bus explosions in Shanghai and Kunming. According to U.S.-based intelligence firm Stratfor, the TIP’s “claims of responsibility appear exaggerated, but the threat TIP poses cannot be ignored.” Stratfor also said that the TIP had expanded its presence on the Internet, issuing videos calling for a jihad by Uighurs in Xinjiang. Ben N. Venzke, head of the U.S.-based independent terrorism-monitoring firm IntelCenter, says it is unclear whether the TIP is separate from ETIM, but notes that the groups’ objectives are both Islamist and nationalist

In the last year of the Trump administration, despite the proof from various reports including those produced by the US and its think tanks that ETIM committed multiple terrorist attacks in mainland China, the US government removed ETIM from its terror list.  According to Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) ‘US removes separatist group condemned by China from terror list’ reported that “The United States said it would no longer designate a Chinese Uighur separatist group as a “terrorist organization” on Friday, sparking sharp condemnation from Beijing.”  This was a clear indication that Washington is doing everything it can to destabilize China.  It is a move that will allow newly trained Uyghurs to use their newly acquired skills to cause more chaos in China.  It’s basically a slap in the face:    

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) was removed from Washington’s terror list, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced in a notice posted in the Federal Register.

“ETIM was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist,” a State Department spokesperson said, news agency AFP reported

This is a typical turn of events for Washington and its long-term objective of destabilizing China by whatever means necessary to try stop its rise to power. The New World Order is becoming a multipolar world order with China, Russia and others who will compete with declining Western powers who are basically responsible for many of the wars, economic exploitation, and the colonization of the global south and that’s what Washington and its European allies are afraid of. 

US Government Propaganda on China’s Internment Camps for the Uyghurs

In an important investigation by Ben Norton and Ajit Singh of The Grayzone ‘No, the UN did not report China has ‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur Muslims’ starts off with an introduction on how mainstream media propaganda has claimed that China has imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs in designated “internment camps” but as the facts makes itself clear, it is a fabrication by the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that is funded by Washington’s armchair warriors:

A spokesperson from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed in a statement to The Grayzone that the allegation of Chinese “camps” was not made by the United Nations, but rather by a member of an independent committee that does not speak for the UN as a whole. That member happened to be the only American on the committee, and one with no background of scholarship or research on China.

Moreover, this accusation is based on the thinly sourced reports of a Chinese opposition group that is funded by the American government’s regime-change arm and is closely tied to exiled pro-US activists. There have been numerous reports of discrimination against Uighur Muslims in China. However, information about camps containing 1 million prisoners has originated almost exclusively from media outlets and organizations funded and weaponized by the US government to turn up the heat on Beijing

On August 10, 2018, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination conducted a review for 179 countries who were signed on to the convention which is a process that takes place annually which also included a review for China’s compliance.  “On the day of the review, Reuters published a report with an explosive headline: “U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps.”  From CNN, FOX News to the New York Times, all echoed the same propaganda that the UN had investigated China’s actions against the Uyghurs and accused Beijing of genocide, but it was all a lie.  The UN did conduct any investigation into the Uyghur internment camps “and this committee’s official website makes it clear that it is “a body of independent experts,” not UN officials.”  One individual that The Grayzone report focused on is Gay McDougall, a member of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):

What’s more, a look at the OHCHR’s official news release on the committee’s presentation of the report showed that the only mention of alleged re-education “camps” in China was made by its sole American member, Gay McDougall. This claim was then echoed by a Mauritanian member, Yemhelhe Mint Mohamed.

During the committee’s regular review of China, McDougall commented that she was “deeply concerned” about “credible reports” alleging mass detentions of millions of Uighurs Muslim minorities in “internment camps.” The Associated Press reported that McDougall “did not specify a source for that information in her remarks at the hearing.” (Note that the headline of the AP news wire is much weaker than that of Reuters: “UN panel concerned at reported Chinese detention of Uighurs”)

The Grayzone received an email from the OHCHR spokesperson Julia Gronnevet “confirmed that the CERD was not representative of the UN as a whole.”  She said that “You are correct that the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is an independent body,” Gronnevet wrote. “Quoted comments were made during public sessions of the Committee when members were reviewing State parties.”  The report confirmed that McDougall’s claims were false:

Thus the OHCHR implicitly acknowledged that the comments by McDougall, the lone American member of an independent committee, were not representative of any finding by the UN as a whole. The report by Reuters is simply false

The mainstream media has tried to cover up McDougall’s lies with an “Activist group” called ‘Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), but the problem with this network is that it is supported by US regime-change operators based in, you guessed it, Washington D.C:

In addition to this irresponsible misreporting, Reuters and other Western outlets have attempted to fill in the gaps left by McDougall, referring to reports made by so-called “activist group” the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).

Conveniently left out of the story is that this organization is headquartered in Washington, DC and funded by the US government’s regime-change arm.  CHRD advocates full-time against the Chinese government, and has spent years campaigning on behalf of extreme right-wing opposition figures

CHRD is supported by one of the most notorious organizations involved in Regime-Change operations around the world, and that is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

However, tax documents uncovered by The Grayzone show that a significant portion of this group’s budget comes from the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA-linked soft-power group that was founded by the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s to push regime change against independent governments and support “free markets” around the world.

In 2012, the NED gave the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders $490,000. In 2013, it got a $520,000 grant from the NED

The list of funds given to CHRD from the NED continued in 2015 with $496,000, and another $412, 300 was added to its budget in 2016. 

Behind the CHRD is its international director, Renee Xia who is an anti-China activist who in the past has called upon Washington to impose sanctions on CCP officials.  She is an advocate for the release of a neoconservative Chinese dissident by the name of Liu Xiaobo:  

While Liu Xiaobo became a cause celebre of the Western liberal intelligensia, he was a staunch supporter of colonialism, a fan of the most blood-soaked US military campaigns, and a hardcore libertarian. 

As writers Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong reported in The Guardian in 2010, Liu led numerous US government-funded right-wing organizations that advocated mass privatization and the Westernization of China. He also expressed openly racist views against the Chinese. “To choose Westernisation is to choose to be human,” Liu insisted, lamenting that traditional Chinese culture had made its population “wimpy, spineless, and fucked up.”

While CHRD described Liu as an “advocate of non-violence,” he practically worshiped President George W. Bush and strongly supported the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, as well as the war in Afghanistan. “Non-violence advocate” Liu was even a fan of America’s wars in Korea and Vietnam, which killed millions of civilians

The Grayzone mentioned an article published by The Guardian in 2010, ‘Do supporters of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for?’ written by Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong state the fact that Liu supports Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians and has claimed that they are the provocateurs:

Liu has also one-sidedly praised Israel’s stance in the Middle East conflict. He places the blame for the Israel/Palestine conflict on Palestinians, who he regards as “often the provocateurs”

Overall, the accusations by the CHRD against China and its imprisonment of the Uyghurs is brought to you by the CIA and its propaganda news networks from around the world:

A look at the sourcing of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders’ research raises many doubts about its legitimacy. For one, the most-cited source in the CHRD report, accounting for more than one-fifth of the 101 references, is Radio Free Asia, a news agency created by the CIA during the Cold War pump out anti-China propaganda, and still today funded by the US government.

Even The New York Times has referred to Radio Free Asia as a “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA.” Along with Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio y Televisión Martí, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia (RFA) is operated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a federal agency of the US government under the supervision of the State Department. Describing its work as “vital to U.S. national interests,” BBG’s primary broadcasting standard is to be “consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.”  The near-total reliance on Washington-linked sources is characteristic of Western reporting on Uighurs Muslims in China, and on the country in general, which regularly features sensational headlines and allegations

China’s Threat to the ‘New World Order’ is the Multipolar World Order

The US and its European allies are afraid of China’s economic growth and of its political influence on the world stage, not of its supposed “imperial agenda” they consistently claim.  China is becoming part of a multipolar world where more than one country has the economic and diplomatic influence instead of the Old-World Order where a unified Western power structure led by the US and its European allies that has brought nothing more than death and destruction to most of the global south.  Their imperial expansion accelerated after World War II to become a global empire, but the world is tired of the same old political establishment from the West telling the rest of the world what to do and who they can become allies with.  China is a target of the West, but China will protect its sovereignty at all costs.  China is ready for a war. 

China will be a force economically for centuries to come with their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that was introduced in 2013 as a global investment project to develop an economic infrastructure strategy to invest and trade with more than 150 countries who participate in the project.  The US is worried about that, so, like spoiled children, the US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and then later on, fellow Democrat Senator, Ed Markey from Massachusetts and other Democrat Representatives including John Garamendi and Alan Lowenthal from California, and Don Beyer of Virginia with Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen of American Samoa, who is a Republican with more politicians to follow suit in the future, all defiantly went to Taiwan in an effort to antagonize China to see how far will the CCP go knowing that the One-China Policy is what Beijing takes seriously, in fact, it’s the red line for them.  It was an insult, but China did not take any serious actions against the move that would have led to a world war.     

China has human rights issues and to be fair, so does the US government, for example, the US has more people in prison than any other country on the planet.  There is no doubt that the CCP has serious issues when it comes to its internal security policies, but hopefully the Chinese people and their government will work something out in the future when the threat of terrorism and other security issues are no longer a problem.  Perhaps a new beginning can emerge that will benefit China’s society.  But one thing is certain, China and its people will not be bullied by the West.  They experienced an invasion by Imperial Japan during World War II, so it is guaranteed that China will not allow something like that to happen again especially if the US planned to install a military base in Taiwan.    

China was and still is a great civilization.  China had periods of history where they flourished, for example under the Tang Dynasty (618-907), although not a perfect example because there were internal conflicts and rebellions for political reasons, but it was considered China’s golden age.  Under the Tang Dynasty, China had a rich, highly educated society that was well-governed. The Tang Dynasty has a rich history of poetry and numerous innovations with political and cultural influences throughout Asia.  China has the potential to become a great civilization once again.  

Today, China is not a threat to world peace.  What the West fears is China’s rise as an economic powerhouse along with its Russian counterpart and others who challenge US and European hegemony.  Now the rest of the world (especially the global south) can pick and choose who they trade with and who they choose as an ally.  In other words, most countries around the world will now have a choice.  They don’t have to listen to Washington anymore, they can choose whoever they want that will benefit them the most without giving up their sovereignty in doing so.  The US and Europe as a partner is risky, especially for smaller countries who in some cases, have natural resources but don’t have a formidable military that can protect themselves from western powers.  However, China, Russia and Iran have that power to challenge the West, and now the global south sees what is happening geopolitically and they feel more optimistic about the future.  A future without Uncle Sam waving his big stick and telling governments what to do will be a new start for the world.  The era of empires is over with a multipolar world order is on the horizon and that’s a fact the West is not willing to accept. 

We are closer to World War III than ever before, but the question is, where would it begin?  In the South China Sea, in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe? I believe that World War III will begin in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, but it’s hard to tell at this point, but one thing is guaranteed, China will be involved in the next world war.  They want China to become another puppet state that they can control and dominate economically and politically forever and that’s not an exaggeration.  The US and its European allies have been the dominant power on the global stage for centuries and they are not willing to give that up anytime soon, but there is a new multipolar world emerging and that would end the threat of Western hegemonic powers that has only brought misery and pain around the world.  

The American Kleptocracy: A Government of Liars, Thieves and Lawbreakers

Posted on by
Reply

By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.”—H. L. Mencken

The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) continues to suck the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

Think about it.

Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government.

Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars. Domestic extremism. The COVID-19 pandemic.

In almost every instance, the U.S. government (often spearheaded by the FBI) has in its typical Machiavellian fashion sown the seeds of terror domestically and internationally in order to expand its own totalitarian powers.

Who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.

Who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government.

Which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The U.S. government.

Which country has conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins? The U.S. government.

What country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.

Are you getting the picture yet?

The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.

The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.

Consider that this very same government has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.

So why is the government doing this? Money, power and total domination.

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Case in point: the FBI.

The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.

It’s a diabolical plot with far-reaching consequences for every segment of the population, no matter what one’s political leanings.

As Rozina Ali writes for The New York Times Magazine, “The government’s approach to counterterrorism erodes constitutional protections for everyone, by blurring the lines between speech and action and by broadening the scope of who is classified as a threat.”

This is not an agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.

For instance, the FBI has been secretly carrying out an entrapment scheme in which it used a front company, ANOM, to sell purportedly hack-proof phones to organized crime syndicates and then used those phones to spy on them as they planned illegal drug shipments, plotted robberies and put out contracts for killings using those boobytrapped phones.

All told, the FBI intercepted 27 million messages over the course of 18 months.

What this means is that the FBI was also illegally spying on individuals using those encrypted phones who may not have been involved in any criminal activity whatsoever.

Even reading a newspaper article is now enough to get you flagged for surveillance by the FBI. The agency served a subpoena on USA Today / Gannett to provide the internet addresses and mobile phone information for everyone who read a news story online on a particular day and time about the deadly shooting of FBI agents.

This is the danger of allowing the government to carry out widespread surveillance, sting and entrapment operations using dubious tactics that sidestep the rule of law: “we the people” become suspects and potential criminals, while government agents, empowered to fight crime using all means at their disposal, become indistinguishable from the corrupt forces they seek to vanquish.  

To go after terrorists, they become terrorists. To go after drug smugglers, they become drug smugglers. To go after thieves, they become thieves.

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy. 

This certainly isn’t a constitutional republic, however.

Some days, it feels like the government is running its own crime syndicate complete with mob rule and mafia-style justice.

In addition to creating certain crimes in order to then “solve” them, the FBI—the government’s law enforcement agency—also gives certain informants permission to break the law, “including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies,” in exchange for their cooperation on other fronts.

USA Today estimates that government agents have authorized criminals to engage in as many as 15 crimes a day (5600 crimes a year). Some of these informants are getting paid astronomical sums: one particularly unsavory fellow, later arrested for attempting to run over a police officer, was actually paid $85,000 for his help laying the trap for an entrapment scheme.

In addition to procedural misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, the FBI’s laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, and harassment.

For example, the Associated Press lodged a complaint with the Dept. of Justice after learning that FBI agents created a fake AP news story and emailed it, along with a clickable link, to a bomb threat suspect in order to implant tracking technology onto his computer and identify his location. Lambasting the agency, AP attorney Karen Kaiser railed, “The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation.”

Then again, to those familiar with COINTELPRO, an FBI program created to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and neutralize” groups and individuals the government considers politically objectionable, it should come as no surprise that the agency has mastered the art of government disinformation.

The FBI has been particularly criticized in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks for targeting vulnerable individuals and not only luring them into fake terror plots but actually equipping them with the organization, money, weapons and motivation to carry out the plots—entrapment—and then jailing them for their so-called terrorist plotting. This is what the FBI characterizes as “forward leaning—preventative—prosecutions.”

Another fallout from 9/11, National Security Letters, one of the many illicit powers authorized by the USA Patriot Act, allows the FBI to secretly demand that banks, phone companies, and other businesses provide them with customer information and not disclose the demands. An internal audit of the agency found that the FBI practice of issuing tens of thousands of NSLs every year for sensitive information such as phone and financial records, often in non-emergency cases, is riddled with widespread violations.

The FBI’s surveillance capabilities, on a par with the National Security Agency, boast a nasty collection of spy tools ranging from Stingray devices that can track the location of cell phones to Triggerfish devices which allow agents to eavesdrop on phone calls. 

In one case, the FBI actually managed to remotely reprogram a “suspect’s” wireless internet card so that it would send “real-time cell-site location data to Verizon, which forwarded the data to the FBI.”

The FBI has also repeatedly sought to expand its invasive hacking powers to allow agents to hack into any computer, anywhere in the world.

Indeed, for years now, the U.S. government has been creating what one intelligence insider referred to as a cyber-army capable of offensive attacks. As part of this cyberweapons programs, government agencies such as the NSA have been stockpiling all kinds of nasty malware, viruses and hacking tools that can “steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into a listening device, or, in the case of Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.”

In fact, the NSA was responsible for the threat posed by the “WannaCry” or “Wanna Decryptor” malware worm which—as a result of hackers accessing the government’s arsenal—hijacked more than 57,000 computers and crippled health care, communications infrastructure, logistics, and government entities in more than 70 countries.

Mind you, the government was repeatedly warned about the dangers of using criminal tactics to wage its own cyberwars. It was warned about the consequences of blowback should its cyberweapons get into the wrong hands.

The government chose to ignore the warnings.

That’s exactly how the 9/11 attacks unfolded.

First, the government helped to create the menace that was al-Qaida and then, when bin Laden had left the nation reeling in shock (despite countless warnings that fell on tone-deaf ears), it demanded—and was given—immense new powers in the form of the USA Patriot Act in order to fight the very danger it had created.

This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party controls the White House: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.

Yet the powers-that-be don’t really want us to feel safe.

They want us cowering and afraid and willing to relinquish every last one of our freedoms in exchange for their phantom promises of security.

As a result, it’s the American people who pay the price for the government’s insatiable greed and quest for power.

Suffice it to say that when and if a true history of the United States is ever written, it will not only track the rise of the American police state but it will also chart the decline of freedom in America: how a nation that once abided by the rule of law and held the government accountable for its actions has steadily devolved into a police state where justice is one-sided, a corporate elite runs the show, representative government is a mockery, police are extensions of the military, surveillance is rampant, privacy is extinct, and the law is little more than a tool for the government to browbeat the people into compliance.

Somewhere over the course of the past 240-plus years, democracy has given way to kleptocracy, and representative government has been rejected in favor of rule by career politicians, corporations and thieves—individuals and entities with little regard for the rights of American citizens.

This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, our freedoms have become casualties in an all-out war on the American people.

THE WEST’S FALSE NARRATIVE ABOUT RUSSIA AND CHINA

Posted on by
4
Vladimir Putin meets with Xi Jinping in Beijing just weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. Photograph: SPUTNIK/Reuters

By Jeffrey Sachs

Source: New Cold War

The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an attempt to manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing diplomacy.
___________________________

The essential narrative of the West is built into US national security strategy. The core US idea is that China and Russia are implacable foes that are “attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” These countries are, according to the US, “determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their. militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.”

The irony is that since 1980 the US has been in at least 15 overseas wars of choice (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Serbia, Syria, and Yemen just to name a few), while China has been in none, and Russia only in one (Syria) beyond the former Soviet Union. The US has military bases in 85 countries, China in 3, and Russia in 1 (Syria) beyond the former Soviet Union.

President Joe Biden has promoted this narrative, declaring that the greatest challenge of our time is the competition with the autocracies, which “seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence around the world, and justify their repressive policies and practices as a more efficient way to address today’s challenges.” US security strategy is not the work of any single US president but of the US security establishment, which is largely autonomous, and operates behind a wall of secrecy.

The overwrought fear of China and Russia is sold to a Western public through manipulation of the facts. A generation earlier George W. Bush, Jr. sold the public on the idea that America’s greatest threat was Islamic fundamentalism, without mentioning that it was the CIA, with Saudi Arabia and other countries, that had created, funded, and deployed the jihadists in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to fight America’s wars.

Or consider the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, which was painted in the Western media as an act of unprovoked perfidy. Years later, we learned that the Soviet invasion was actually preceded by a CIA operation designed to provoke the Soviet invasion! The same misinformation occurred vis-à-vis Syria. The Western press is filled with recriminations against Putin’s military assistance to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad beginning in 2015, without mentioning that the US supported the overthrow of al-Assad beginning in 2011, with the CIA funding a major operation (Timber Sycamore) to overthrow Assad years before Russia arrived.

Or more recently, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recklessly flew to Taiwan despite China’s warnings, no G7 foreign minister criticised Pelosi’s provocation, yet the G7 ministers together harshly criticised China’s “overreaction” to Pelosi’s trip.

The Western narrative about the Ukraine war is that it is an unprovoked attack by Putin in the quest to recreate the Russian empire. Yet the real history starts with the Western promise to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not enlarge to the East, followed by four waves of NATO aggrandisement: in 1999, incorporating three Central European countries; in 2004, incorporating 7 more, including in the Black Sea and Baltic States; in 2008, committing to enlarge to Ukraine and Georgia; and in 2022, inviting four Asia-Pacific leaders to NATO to take aim at China.

Nor do the Western media mention the US role in the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych; the failure of the Governments of France and Germany, guarantors of the Minsk II agreement, to press Ukraine to carry out its commitments; the vast US armaments sent to Ukraine during the Trump and Biden Administrations in the lead-up to war; nor the refusal of the US to negotiate with Putin over NATO enlargement to Ukraine.

Of course, NATO says that is purely defensive, so that Putin should have nothing to fear. In other words, Putin should take no notice of the CIA operations in Afghanistan and Syria; the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999; the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; the NATO occupation of Afghanistan for 15 years; nor Biden’s “gaffe” calling for Putin’s ouster (which of course was no gaffe at all); nor US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin stating that the US war aim in Ukraine is the weakening of Russia.

At the core of all of this is the US attempt to remain the world’s hegemonic power, by augmenting military alliances around the world to contain or defeat China and Russia. It’s a dangerous, delusional, and outmoded idea. The US has a mere 4.2% of the world population, and now a mere 16% of world GDP (measured at international prices). In fact, the combined GDP of the G7 is now less than that of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), while the G7 population is just 6 percent of the world compared with 41 percent in the BRICS.
There is only one country whose self-declared fantasy is to be the world’s dominant power: the US. It’s past time that the US recognised the true sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible cooperation with the rest of the world, rather than the illusion of hegemony. With such a revised foreign policy, the US and its allies would avoid war with China and Russia, and enable the world to face its myriad environment, energy, food and social crises.

Above all, at this time of extreme danger, European leaders should pursue the true source of European security: not US hegemony, but European security arrangements that respect the legitimate security interests of all European nations, certainly including Ukraine, but also including Russia, which continues to resist NATO enlargements into the Black Sea. Europe should reflect on the fact that the non-enlargement of NATO and the implementation of the Minsk II agreements would have averted this awful war in Ukraine. At this stage, diplomacy, not military escalation, is the true path to European and global security.

UN Declares War On ‘Conspiracy Theories’, Here Are Several That Already Came True

Posted on by
1

If we went by the United Nations advice, blissfully believing the official story, how much truth would we actually know?

By Don Via Jr.

Source: The Free Thought Project

On August 1st, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced the beginning of a new campaign — #ThinkBeforeSharing. Intended to help counter and stop the spread of what it claims is harmful disinformation and conspiracy theories online.

They say, quite matter-of-factly, “The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a worrying rise in disinformation and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories can be dangerous: they often target and discriminate against vulnerable groups, ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with serious consequences. This needs to stop.”

Later quoting the UNESCO director general who says,

“Conspiracy theories cause real harm to people, to their health, and also to their physical safety. They amplify and legitimize misconceptions about the pandemic, and reinforce stereotypes which can fuel violence and violent extremist ideologies.”

Going on to affirm,

“A new campaign helps you learn how to identify, debunk, react to and report on conspiracy theories to prevent their spread. Check out the infographics and social media pack below and help spread the word that facts matter and no one is to blame. Thinking critically and being informed about conspiracy theories is key to challenging them.

This UNESCO campaign is implemented jointly with the European Commission, Twitter and the World Jewish Congress.”

Surly these would be noble sentiments, if they were genuine. But as you continue to peruse through the infographics it becomes quite apparent that the architects of this campaign only have one interest in mind: stifling public discourse, and discrediting anyone who dares to challenge the status quo narrative.

Indeed, upon browsing through the material provided it quickly establishes an air that only the supposed authorities are to be trusted, they would never lie to you or purposefully peddle false information. No, only those with whom the establishment has deemed fair, just, and honest are to be trusted. While seemingly encouraging critical thinking, they demand that you toss aside any critical thinking skills and blindly trust the figures whom you are told represent the best interests of everyone. While going on to paint anyone who disagrees and/or promotes alleged conspiracy theories as a dangerous bigot, and how one should react if you encounter one these dangerous people and their harmful ideas.

It is a carefully crafted package on how to identify “wrong think”. The latest salvo in the ongoing information war, paired with just enough of a Limited Hangout to appear good natured to the unaware.

In this special edition of The Free Thought Project’s Conspiracy Fact Series, we will dive into this latest propaganda effort to refute some of its key logical fallacies, before providing a number of examples of true conspiracies’ in order to demonstrate exactly why these kind of campaigns are antithetical to their stated purpose.

First of all, let us address the broadest question; What is a conspiracy theory? Put plainly, it is a hypothesis postulating that a conspiracy has or is taking place. And what is a conspiracy? A conspiracy is defined as follows:

  1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
  2. A group of conspirators.
  3. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.

Conspiracies happen daily, and most places have laws regarding them within their legal code. Conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit fraud, conspiracy to traffic illicit material, etcetera, happen regularly and are charges faced by individuals within the legal system. And technically speaking, until law enforcement gathers enough evidence to prove that individuals participated in such a plot, the allegations against them would be considered conspiracy theories.

Of course the allegation ceases to be a theory when you have evidence. But somewhere along the line in our common discourse the term conspiracy theory has taken on a new meaning, it has become equated with “fake news”, insinuating that the mere postulation that one or more individuals may be involved in a conspiracy is in and of itself preposterous. An idea to be denied and ridiculed outright. This goes against logical thinking and is simply not the case. In reality this is what would be referred to as a thought terminating cliché.

Right at the start, in the second infographic dedicated to how to identify conspiracy theories, we are told one way to determine if a story is a conspiracy theory or not is to check the author. If they are connected to a reputable media outlet or organization then they are to be trusted.

You mean like so-called reputable organizations like the New York Times or the Washington Post who carried stories demonizing the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and peddling the unfounded conspiracy theory that it was “Russian disinformation” when it was in fact 100% true? Or those who pushed the thoroughly debunked Russiagate election meddling hoax? Both which we backed by seemingly trustworthy officials in the intelligence community who were then proven to be either incredibly incompetent at their jobs or outright liars.

It then goes on to say that trustworthy authors will use verifiable facts and evidence from academic or scientific research. And yet this flies in the face of corporate media practices during the COVID-19 pandemic when they refused to even consider the research of some of the world’s top virologists, epidemiologists, and other reputable medical professionals from esteemed institutions; such as those of The Great Berrington Declaration or Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis, one of the most esteemed in his field, who critiqued the establishments response to COVID-19 such as lockdown policies. Who in hindsight have clearly been proven right. Or the literal hundreds of medical studies providing evidence that such interventionist policies provided little benefit, while simultaneously carrying with them an incomprehensible amount of suffering and destruction.

Where was the harsh criticism for all those who claimed that should one receive a COVID-19 vaccine they will not catch the virus and will not get sick, which is now a demonstrably false statement. And according to former CDC director Dr. Deborah Birx, a statement in which they knew was false from the beginning.

It also goes on to link so-called conspiracy theories and those who espouse them to hate, racism, and anti-Semitism. While this is certainly true in some circles and such beliefs should be ardently condemned and disavowed, one has to keep in mind that the true purpose of the UN campaign isn’t merely to target untrue conspiracy theories, but rather to discredit ANY dialog dissenting from the status quo. And it has been an emerging tactic in recent years to unfairly and incorrectly link any critique of the establishment to hate and racism as a means of discrediting it without engaging in debate.

The UNESCO diagram then goes on to assert that linking allegations of wrongdoing to Jewish individuals such as the Rothschild family, George Soros, or the state of Israel, is tantamount to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The logical fallacy here is that the majority of criticism towards those such as the aforementioned has nothing to do with the fact that they are Jewish, and everything to do with the fact that they are powerful, notably corrupt, globalist insiders with a known history of manipulating economies and governments.

Similarly with regard to the settler-colonial state of Israel, the crimes of the Zionist regime are apparent for all to see. With reputable human rights organizations such as Amnesty International condemning the nation as an apartheid state for its heinous crimes against humanity committed in occupied Palestine; and whos intelligence service is arguably among the most corrupt in the world right along with our own CIA. Criticisms of such atrocities are not leveled due to the jewishness of the nation’s inhabitants, but rather due to the fact that such heinous acts are abhorrent.

No government should be free from criticism, especially those committing acts of ethnic cleansing. And attempting to dismiss such valid criticisms by exploiting the perpetrators Hebrew lineage is equally as despicable.

Next, in the “prebunking and debunking” portion, the campaign goes on to completely contradict itself. In order to empower people to be more resilient against dastardly conspiracy theories they encourage the use of rational thinking and questioning, while in the very next sentence asserting that a key trait of conspiratorial thinking is the suspicion of official accounts.

While also once again reiterating the perfunctory reliance on so-called fact checkers to be the arbiters of truth. The same fact checkers are routinely biased and wrong, many whom posses financial conflicts of interest, ties to intelligence communities, have deliberately labeled true information as misinformation, and have openly admitted in court to being mere opinion? While notably being found to actually amplify the spread of misinformation?

They then begin to take aim at COVID-19 specifically, continuing in its overbearingly hubristic tone. Deriding what is described as deceptive conspiracy theories that ignore scientific evidence and falsely blame individuals and groups not responsible for the pandemic. Listing four major red flags that one should look out for.

They include;

  • Claims that the virus was artificially created (e.g. in a laboratory) by people with a specific interest. (e.g. reducing world population)
  • Claims that the virus was spread intentionally or its natural spread augmented to harm as many people as possible (e.g. through 5G signals)
  • Claims that vaccines and cures are intentionally withheld to not disrupt the spread and harm as many people as possible.
  • Claims that certain sanitary measures to counter the spread of the virus are used to intentionally harm or control society (e.g. vaccines, masks)

Firstly, to say that there is an accepted consensus among where the virus did or did not originate is dishonest considering that both the World Health Organization, and top officials of one of the worlds most prestigious medical journals both now believe that the lab leak hypothesis is a strong plausibility.

This is compounded by what we know regarding gain-of-function research that took place in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in which documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act prove that the United States was in fact funding gain-of-function research on ‘Bat Coronaviruses Likely to Infect Humans’. In direct contradiction to Dr. Fauci’s sworn testimony before Congress.

What’s more, the shady ties and practices of EcoHealth Alliance, who partnered with the USAID and NIH in Wuhan, raises further concerns. Including an EcoHealth whistleblower, former Associate Vice President Dr. Andrew Huff, publicly accusing EcoHealth of being a cutout for the CIA citing a conversation with its President Peter Daszak.

Additionally, asserting that effective treatments for COVID-19 weren’t suppressed by the medical establishment are demonstrably false as well. Look at Ivermectin for example. It is an undeniable fact that as Ivermectin — which has won awards for its effectiveness in treating human ailments and was widely praised as a “wonder drug” in the years prior to COVID — gained more recognition that the medical establishment and mainstream media virtually went to war to discredit it and vilify anyone who promoted it, despite a growing body of evidence it can be effective against COVID-19.

A slew of mainstream press including but not limited to MSNBC and Rachel Maddow, The Hill, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, New York Daily News and others all spread an easily debunkable outright lie about a rural hospital becoming overwhelmed with a flood of ivermectin overdoses. And when the lie was exposed they were not only spared the ire of the “fact checkers”, but refused to retract it at all.

CNN lambasted Joe Rogan for his use of Ivermectin after catching COVID, unfavorably framing the drug as a “horse dewormer”, defaming Rogan and going so far as to alter the lighting of his Instagram video to make him appear more sick than he was.

Following the incident, CNN’s chief medical advisor Dr. Sanjay Gupta joined Joe Rogan on his podcast and was confronted about the defamatory statements. Ultimately conceding that the network made a mistake. However, after the episode aired, CNN’s Don Lemon yet again doubled down on their skewed coverage.

Finally, the assertion that certain measures definitely weren’t utilized as a means of controlling the population is also easily refuted. Again, by the admission of the very same people responsible for doing so.

An article penned in the UK Telegraph on 14th May, 2021 by the papers Associate Editor Gordon Rayner titled Use of fear to control behaviour in Covid crisis was ‘totalitarian’, admit scientists specifically details the accounts from several doctors in the UK governments Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour lamenting their overt use of fear as a means of controlling the population and enforcing lockdown mandates.

In Germany, the Editor-in-Chief of the countries top newspaper, Bild, apologized for their participation in a fear based propaganda campaign not unlike that mentioned in the UK.

Similar techniques were also carried out elsewhere such as in Canada. Where documents from the Canadian Joint Operations Command revealed how the military saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test propaganda techniques against the domestic citizenry without the approval of the presidential cabinet, utilizing some of the same information warfare tactics deployed in Afghanistan.

Reported by the Ottawa Citizen;

The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for “shaping” and “exploiting” information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.

In Israel, Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz was caught on a hot mic admitting that restrictions such as the ‘Green Pass’ vaccine passport is meant to incentivize compliance with vaccine mandates on the population, touting the inaccurate “pandemic of the unvaccinated” trope. This was weeks after a major Israeli study confirmed once again that natural immunity is just as if perhaps not more effective than the jab. Now more than a year later and the social consequences of such policies have played a major role in tearing the country apart.

Fast forward to today and justification for vaccine passports and forced vaccination has been completely demolished, as in the United States the CDC has once again updated their guidelines now instructing policy to make no differentiation between vaccinated and unvaccinated. Creating quite the awkward situation for the thousands of people who were fired from their jobs, removed from school, harassed, and otherwise segregated and discriminated against for exercising bodily autonomy.

Speaking of the United States, rest assured much of the aforementioned manipulations apply here as well. Such as when A study from the US National Library of Medicine found that researchers at Yale University were testing propaganda messaging for the COVID-19 vaccine six months prior to its rollout. This was the exact same kind of messaging that was later adopted by media and government officials using some of the most classic propaganda tactics of shame, fear, anger, and embarrassment to coerce individuals into injecting themselves with the experimental shot.

Corroborated by a batch of emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in March of this year which reveals clearly a conspiracy of collaboration between the Biden administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and various mainstream media outlets to push a jab propaganda campaign.

These, combined with a number of other factors such as the brazen hubris of the tyrant class openly flouting their own restrictions, demonstrate quite concisely that it was never about science, only your compliance.

With all this talk of state and corporate collusion conspiring to commit propaganda campaigns, it seems no better time than to transition into the final portion of this treatise. It has been shown above that the UN’s latest initiative is at best logically inconsistent and full of holes, and at worst deliberately disingenuous.

Yet further still to exemplify the true insidious nature of what is fundamentally at its core a campaign which implores individuals to abandon their faculties of rumination and trust only the official approved version of events as recounted to them by persons and institutions with perhaps the most sordid track record of dishonesty known to man.

So we will provide a few examples of so-called conspiracy theories that are now accepted common fact. Truths that, if the UN had their way with this model of thinking, would still be relegated to the realm of tinfoil hat nonsense despite the veracity behind them.

1.) Mockingbird Media

Of course having just mentioned propaganda operations we would be remiss not to mention first and foremost one of the most notable, far reaching, and still active conspiracies of the last several decades — Operation Mockingbird. As detailed in part one of this series, titled How Truth Was Destroyed So Americans Would Crave Propaganda, we concisely outline in great detail the hard evidence proving the United States corporate media apparatus is subservient to the intelligence community. Fully infiltrated by and under the influence of the Central Intelligence Agency.

From the early days of ad manipulation in the 1920s and the father of propaganda himself Dr. Edward Bernays, to the Nazi origins of CIA media influence operations imported to the US via Project Paperclip; To the 1975 Church and Pike congressional committees, and the explosive investigation by renowned journalist Carl Bernstein, and even a myriad of leaked and declassified documents through to the modern day. The empirical evidence establishes the irrefutable fact that the mainstream corporate media by and large operates at the behest of state interests exerting undue influence on the public as purveyors of propaganda.

2.) Provocation Operations

Governments are, by their very nature, two things incontrovertibly; pathological liars, and monopolies on violence. Nowhere is this better seen than with warfare. Nations concocting untrue narratives to manufacture consent and justify military assaults on their adversaries is almost as old as time itself. Though only recently was the concept of false flag attacks ushered from the realm of tinfoil hat lunacy to the accepting arms of the mainstream.

For the longest time if you claimed that the government staged an attack against itself and framed its rival in order to justify military intervention abroad you would be considered crazy, “They would never do that!” detractors would exclaim. However as pointed out in Part two of this series, in the midst of the fervor of US/ NATO backed warmongering in Eastern Europe, government officials through their own accusations outright confirmed that false flag attacks indeed do happen.

But of course us “conspiracy theorists” didn’t need the pontifications of Jake Sullivan to know that. The historical proof of false flag operations has been out in the open for anyone willing to research for decades. As we elaborated in our article, whether it be the Nazis’ Operation Himmler to justify the invasion of Poland at the beginning of World War Two; The Israeli military blunder in Egypt known as The Lavon Affair; Or the infamous Operation Northwoods. In which officially declassified documents prove the CIA had planned to orchestrate a campaign of terror attacks against innocent Americans to justify an invasion of Cuba at the height of the Cuban missile crisis — the official admission of false flag operations by government officials is but the most recent example of conspiracy theory becoming openly acknowledged as conspiracy fact. But one that was a fact all along.

3.) Mass Surveillance

One of the more tame yet no less prolific conspiracy theories that has been around since at least the 1930’s is the allegation that the government is spying on you. For decades accusations abound that the feds were able to track every conversation and know everything we do. And for decades such an argument would have one labeled as a paranoid lunatic.

But in the spring of 2013 everything changed. That’s when a young contractor by the name of Edward Snowden leaked explosive documents to journalist Glenn Greenwald revealing the scope of an illegal mass surveillance program conducted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) known as PRISM.

Since then, Snowden has become a household name, as well as the various real life conspiracies of warrantless mass spying that he helped to uncover. In the years since, various other spying scandals have occurred which have vindicated Snowden even further, Now, the government can even spy on you through your TV. But it was Snowden’s revelations in and of themselves that vindicated all who came before him. The so-called conspiracy theorists who had for so long tried to expose the government’s longstanding practice of spying on their own citizens. Whether it be PRISM, The Echelon Affair of the late 1990s, the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation (or it’s modern counterpart), going as far back as 1895, as revealed by renowned journalist Meyer Berger in a 1938 article for The New Yorker, and again in a 1955 New York Times exposé on wiretapping. Evidence abounds proving the conspiracy theories were conspiracy facts.

4.) Inhumane Experiments

Throughout the entirety of the coronavirus pandemic proponents of mandatory medical intervention have constantly made the case that the experimental injection is 100% safe, and the oh so virtuous multinational pharmaceutical corporations who stand to make billions upon billions of dollars off of it, who certainly don’t have a long documented track record of corruption, would never mislead the public about their health. That it is a ridiculous conspiracy theory to ever question whether or not the federal government and their corporate cohorts would engage in such malfeasance as to put our health at risk, or even worse, to deliberately endanger the public’s well-being.

Despite this however, as The Free Thought Project reported in January of 2021, there are a myriad of facts stretching back decades exemplifying precisely why blind trust for these authorities either federal or corporate is ill advised. They can and often have put citizens at great risk for their own benefit.

In this comprehensive analysis, we outlined hundreds of instances corroborated by official government documents of blatant wrongdoing. Including but not limited to, unethical radiation experiments on handicapped children and infants; Clandestine military operations exposing Americans to carcinogenic substances; Eugenics based forced sterilization; Knowingly allowing the spread of syphilis throughout African American communities; Kidnapping and torturing American citizens during the MK ULTURA program; hundreds of germ warfare tests on the unconsenting public; Agrochemical corporations deliberately exposing Americans to cancer causing herbicides; Distributing contaminated doses of polio vaccine; and much, much more.

But if the UN had their way, you wouldn’t know any of this. It would be dismissed as wrong think and censored, leaving us all none the wiser.

There are so many more examples of alleged conspiracy theories throughout the decades to mention that were once ridiculed and now openly accepted as fact. The Business Plot of the mid-1930’s literally conspired to overthrow the Roosevelt presidency and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. The CIA trafficking drugs into urban communities is such a widely known fact now that that it’s featured as a key plot point in movies and prime time FX dramas and no one bats an eye. You get the point.

The notorious saga of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is perhaps one of the most egregious examples. Before the case became public knowledge if you were to try to have a serious conversation about high level government officials, up to and including intelligence agencies, the President of the United States, end even royalty, being tied to an international child trafficking and pedophilia ring you would run the risk of being institutionalized. But since the Epstein saga has unfolded so dramatically the whole world is now well aware of that fact. And for the astute observer, the conspiracy theorist, they were already well aware of it. Looking at instances such as Jimmy Savile in the UK, The Finders, the NXIVM cult, the Catholic church, and so on just to name a few all point to a very deep rooted and sadistic web of child trafficking and abuse among the world’s most powerful.

If we went by the United Nations advice, blissfully believing the official story, completely credulous and entirely dependent on the proper authorities, how much of this information would we actually know? How much of the world would still be secreted away from us? There is no virtue in being willfully ignorant. No matter how much the social engineers of civilization attempt to convince you otherwise. The lesson remains the same — always question authority.

Ukraine and the Politics of Permanent War

Posted on by
2

Permanent war requires permanent censorship.

War Inc. – by Mr. Fish

By Chris Hedges

Source: The Chris Hedges Report

No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for a very long time. This is by design.

On August 24, the Biden administration announced yet another massive military aid package to Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years, for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition it will give a name to the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require Congressional approval.

Including humanitarian assistance, replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in Europe, Congress has approved over $53.6 billion ($13.6 billion in March and a further $40.1 billion in May) since Russia’s February 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious existential threats we face. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion while the proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts. 

The militarists who have waged permanent war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative. The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler. Those we support are always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor.

The mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts, universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating. Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions. 

In the face of this barrage, no dissent is permitted. CBS News caved to pressure and retracted its documentary which charged that only 30 percent of arms shipped to Ukraine were making it to the front lines, with the rest siphoned off to the black market, a finding that was separately reported upon by U.S. journalist Lindsey Snell. CNN has acknowledged there is no oversight of weapons once they arrive in Ukraine, long considered the most corrupt country in Europe. According to a poll of executives responsible for tackling fraud, completed by Ernst & Young in 2018, Ukraine was ranked the ninth-most corrupt nation from 53 surveyed. 

There is little ostensible reason for censoring critics of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. is not at war with Russia. No U.S. troops are fighting in Ukraine. Criticism of the war in Ukraine does not jeopardize our national security. There are no long-standing cultural and historical ties to Ukraine, as there are to Great Britain. But if permanent war, with potentially tenuous public support, is the primary objective, censorship makes sense.

War is the primary business of the U.S. empire and the bedrock of the U.S. economy. The two ruling political parties slavishly perpetuate permanent war, as they do austerity programs, trade deals, the virtual tax boycott for corporations and the rich, wholesale government surveillance, the militarization of the police and the maintenance of the largest prison system in the world. They bow before the dictates of the militarists, who have created a state within a state. This militarism, as Seymour Melman writes in The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline, “is fundamentally contradictory to the formation of a new political economy based upon democracy, instead of hierarchy, in the workplace and the rest of society.” 

“The idea that war economy brings prosperity has become more than an American illusion,” Melman writes. “When converted, as it has been, into ideology that justifies the militarization of society and moral debasement, as in Vietnam, then critical reassessment of that illusion is a matter of urgency. It is a primary responsibility of thoughtful people who are committed to humane values to confront and respond to the prospect that deterioration of American economy and society, owing to the ravages of war economy, can become irreversible.”

If permanent war is to be halted, as Melman writes, the ideological control of the war industry must be shattered. The war industry’s funding of  politicians, research centers and think tanks, as well as its domination of the media monopolies, must end. The public must be made aware, Melman writes, of how the federal government “sustains itself as the directorate of the largest industrial corporate empire in the world; how the war economy is organized and operated in parallel with centralized political power — often contradicting the laws of Congress and the Constitution itself; how the directorate of the war economy converts pro-peace sentiment in the population into pro-militarist majorities in the  Congress; how ideology and fears of job losses are manipulated to marshal support in Congress and the general public for war economy; how the directorate of the war economy uses its power to prevent planning for orderly conversion to an economy of peace.”

Rampant, unchecked militarism, as historian Arnold Toynbee notes, “has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations.” 

This breakdown is accelerated by the rigid standardization and uniformity of public discourse. The manipulation of public opinion, what Walter Lippman calls “the manufacture of consent,” is imperative as the militarists gut social programs; let the nation’s crumbling infrastructure decay; refuse to raise the minimum wage; sustain an inept, mercenary for-profit health care system that resulted in 25 percent of global Covid deaths — although we are less than 5 percent of the world’s population — to gouge the public; carries out deindustrialization; do nothing to curb the predatory behavior of banks and corporations or invest in substantial programs to combat the climate crisis. 

Critics, already shut out from the corporate media, are relentlessly attacked, discredited and silenced for speaking a truth that threatens the public’s quiescence while the U.S. Treasury is pillaged by the war industry and the nation disemboweled. 

You can watch my discussion with Matt Taibbi about the rot that infects journalism here and here.

The war industry, deified by the mass media, including the entertainment industry, is never held accountable for the military fiascos, cost overruns, dud weapons systems and profligate waste. No matter how many disasters — from Vietnam to Afghanistan — it orchestrates, it is showered with larger and larger amounts of federal funds, nearly half of all the government’s discretionary spending. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the U.S. debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S. GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spend more on the military, $813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

An organization like NewsGuard, which has been rating what it says are trustworthy and untrustworthy sites based on their reporting on Ukraine, is one of the many indoctrination tools of the war industry. Sites that raise what are deemed “false” assertions about Ukraine, including that there was a U.S.-backed coup in 2014 and neo-Nazi forces are part of Ukraine’s military and power structure, are tagged as unreliable. Consortium News, Daily Kos, Mint Press and Grayzone have been given a red warning label. Sites that do not raise these issues, such as CNN, receive the “green” rating” for truth and credibility.  (NewsGuard, after being heavily criticized for giving Fox News a green rating of approval in July revised its rating for Fox News and MSNBC, giving them red labels.) 

The ratings are arbitrary. The Daily Caller, which published fake naked pictures of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was given a green rating, along with a media outlet owned and operated by The Heritage Foundation. NewsGuard gives WikiLeaks a red label for “failing” to publish retractions despite admitting that all of the information WikiLeaks has published thus far is accurate. What WikiLeaks was supposed to retract remains a mystery. The New York Times and The Washington Post, which shared a Pulitzer in 2018 for reporting that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to help sway the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory the Mueller investigation imploded, are awarded perfect scores. These ratings are not about vetting journalism. They are about enforcing conformity.

NewsGuard, established in 2018, “partners” with the State Department and the Pentagon, as well as corporations such as Microsoft. Its advisory board includes the former Director of the CIA and NSA, Gen. Michael Hayden; the first U.S. Homeland Security director Tom Ridge and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO.

Readers who regularly go to targeted sites could probably care less if they are tagged with a red label. But that is not the point. The point is to rate these sites so that anyone who has a NewsGuard extension installed on their devices will be warned away from visiting them. NewsGuard is being installed in libraries and schools and on the computers of active-duty troops. A warning pops up on targeted sites that reads: “Proceed with caution: This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.”

Negative ratings will drive away advertisers, which is the intent. It is also a very short step from blacklisting these sites to censoring them, as happened when YouTube erased six years of my show On Contact that was broadcast on RT America and RT International. Not one show was about Russia. And not one violated the guidelines for content imposed by YouTube. But many did examine the evils of U.S. militarism.

In an exhaustive rebuttal to NewsGuard, which is worth reading, Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, ends with this observation:

NewsGuard’s accusations against Consortium News that could potentially limit its readership and financial support must be seen in the context of the West’s war mania over Ukraine, about which dissenting voices are being suppressed. Three CN writers have  been kicked off Twitter. 

PayPal’s cancellation of Consortium News’ account is an evident attempt to defund it for what is almost certainly the company’s view that CN violated its restrictions on “providing false or misleading information.” It cannot be known with 100 percent certainty because PayPal is hiding behind its reasons, but CN trades in information and nothing else.  

CN supports no side in the Ukraine war but seeks to examine the causes of the conflict within its recent historical context, all of which are being whitewashed from mainstream Western media.

Those causes are: NATO’s expansion eastward despite its promise not to do so; the coup and eight-year war on Donbass against coup resisters; the lack of implementation of the Minsk Accords to end that conflict; and the outright rejection of treaty proposals by Moscow to create a new security architecture in Europe taking Russia’s security concerns into account.  

Historians who point out the onerous Versailles conditions imposed on Germany after World War I as a cause of Nazism and World War II are neither excusing Nazi Germany nor are they smeared as its defenders.

The frantic effort to corral viewers and readers into the embrace of the establishment media — only 16 percent of Americans have a great deal/quite a lot of confidence in newspapers and only 11 percent have some degree of confidence in television news — is a sign of desperation. 

As the persecution of Julian Assange illustrates, the throttling of press freedom is bipartisan. This assault on truth leaves a population unmoored. It feeds wild conspiracy theories. It shreds the credibility of the ruling class. It empowers demagogues. It creates an information desert, one where truth and lies are indistinguishable. It frog-marches us towards tyranny. This censorship only serves the interests of the militarists who, as Karl Liebknecht reminded his fellow Germans in World War I, are the enemy within.

Intelligence Expert Believes CIA Behind Car Bomb Assassination of Daughter of Alexander Dugin

Posted on by
1

Douglas Valentine says that “Zelensky doesn’t go to the bathroom without asking permission from his CIA case officer.”

Alexander Dugin and his daughter Darya and charred vehicle of the Toyota Land Cruiser that blew up with Darya in it on Saturday night. [Source: metro.co.uk]

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Source: Covert Action

CIA expert Douglas Valentine, author of the seminal book The Phoenix Program (1990), believes that the CIA was behind the car bomb that killed Darya Dugina, a journalist and daughter of well-known Russian intellectual Alexander Dugin.

Ms. Dugina, 29, was killed on Saturday night when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving in a suburb of Moscow. She was the intended target along with her father, whose promotion of a Eurasian Union has influenced the thinking of Vladimir Putin and members of his inner circle.

Russia’s Federal Security Services (FSB) blamed the Ukrainian intelligence services for the killing, specifying that the attack was carried out by a woman named Natalya Vovk (AKA Natalya Shaban), a member of the Azov Battalion along with her brother who arrived in Russia last month with her teenage daughter.[1]

Vovk allegedly rented an apartment from where she researched Ms. Dugina, attended “The Tradition” celebration where her father gave a speech and Ms. Dugina was killed, and after planting the bomb, fled to Estonia via Pskov.

According to Douglas Valentine, “Zelensky doesn’t go to the bathroom without asking permission from his CIA case officer. Ten billion dollars comes with a lot of strings attached. The CIA would have been intimately involved in recruiting the woman assassin, preparing the plan every step of the way including escape. That’s just Standard Operating Procedure.”

Valentine admits of course that there is no direct evidence to implicate the CIA in Dugina’s killing and that he’s making an “educated guess,” however, “clandestine ops occur by definition without anyone knowing they happened.” Valentine further told CAM that “the CIA doesn’t conduct a covert operation of this grandiosity unless it’s deniable and worth the risk. That’s known. So there’s rarely any evidence.”

Phoenix Program Redux

Just days before Dugina’s assassination, The New York Times published a front-page article about Ukrainian guerrilla fighters, or partisans, who openly admitted to planting car bombs targeting pro-Russian police officers and politicians behind Russian lines.

Ukraine’s Special Services (SBU) is also known to have set up a Phoenix-style kidnapping and assassination program targeting dissidents, including mayors and local government officials considered sympathetic to Russia.

Vasily Prozorov, a former SBU officer, meanwhile proclaimed that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014. “CIA employees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding, for example, specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”

Valentine told CAM in April that the CIA “is applying the same organizational structure in Ukraine as it used in South Vietnam to conduct an updated version of the typical ‘two tier’ Phoenix program. The top tier is to assure political control, the lower tier to pacify the population.”

Valentine continued:

“CIA foreign intelligence officers advise SBU security service to assure ‘top tier’ internal security and political control; and Ukrainian CIA agents run ops into Donbas, Russia and Belarus, sending illegal travelers, smugglers, and agents to set up agent nets and penetrate the enemy in his territory, [and carry out] sabotage and subversion. SBU and Ukrainian CIA are where hit-lists get authored. CIA officers advise military, militias and mercenaries in deniable political, paramilitary and psychological operations to terrorize and otherwise persuade civilian population to support Zelensky while demoralizing and fighting the enemy.”

As in Vietnam, some of the CIA agents may be operating under the cover of State Department-run police training programs which were instituted in Ukraine after the 2014 Maidan coup.[4] Others have been assigned to specialized paramilitary units fighting in eastern Ukraine.[5]

Valentine stated that the “original Phoenix was responsible for the planned assassination of between 25,000 to 40,000 people in South Vietnam. Based on the Phoenix organizational model, assassination became a standarized component of military and CIA operations. It has since been perfected, as evidenced by the assassination of Dugina and scores of other examples from Central Americca to Iran to Africa and the Far East.”

The CIA, Valentine added, is “always finding a reason to start a war, so they can send the next generation of young men into battle, to learn how to kill people in the most brutal fashion—that’s Phoenix, always rising from the ashes of war.”

  1. A Russian website of the NemeZida project, which publishes data on Ukrainian servicemen posted in April that Natalya Shaban, born in 1979, served in the Azov-based National Guard. (The National Guard is not the same as the U.S. National Guard; rather, it was formed directly by the hardcore Azov Regiment, with many members not directly members of the Azov.) The April posting displays a copy of Vovk/Shaban’s certificate indicating military unit No. 3057, in which the 12th brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine is stationed. Shaban is the name that her daughter, Sophia Shaban, used when they entered Russia—and the assumption is that Natalya Vovk is the maiden name of Natalya Shaban. The photograph of the National Guard member is a close match with the Natalya Vovk renting an apartment next to Darya Dugina’s residence. ↑

More Billions to Ukraine as America Falls Apart

Posted on by
3

By Ron Paul

Source: Ron Paul Institute

There is a video clip making the rounds showing President Biden speaking at a recent NATO summit about the seven billion dollars the US government had – at that time – provided to Ukraine. Attached to that is another clip showing the horrific state of several US major cities, including in Pennsylvania, California, and Ohio. The video of American cities is shocking: endless landscapes of filth, trash, homelessness, open fires on the street, drug-addicted zombies. It doesn’t look like the America most of us remember.

Watching Biden bragging about sending billions of dollars to corrupt leaders overseas with American cities looking like bombed-out Iraq or Libya is US foreign policy in a nutshell. The Washington elites tell the rest of America that they must “promote democracy” in some far-off land. Anyone who objects is considered in league with the appointed enemy of the day. Once it was Saddam, then Assad and Gaddafi. Now it’s Putin. The game is the same, only the names are changed.

What is seldom asked, is what is in this deal for those Americans who suffer to pay for our interventionist foreign policy. Do they really think a working American in Ohio or Pennsylvania is better off or safer because we are supposedly protecting Ukraine’s borders? I think most Americans would wonder why they aren’t bothering to protect our own borders.

A reported 200,000 illegals crossed the border into the US in July alone. You can believe they are learning quickly about the free money provided by the US government to illegals. They’ll probably get a voting card as well.

Last Friday the Pentagon announced that yet another $775 million would be sent to Ukraine. As Antiwar.com reported, it was the eighteenth weapons package to Ukraine in six months. Has there ever been a more idiotic US intervention in history?

Supporters of this proxy war may celebrate more aid to Ukraine, but the reality is that it is in no way aid to Ukraine. That’s not how the system works. It is money created out of thin air by the Fed and appropriated by Congress to be spent propping up the politically-connected military-industrial complex. It is a big check written by middle America to rich people who run Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Americans watch their budget being stretched to the limit while the Beltway fat-cats loosen their belts to continue enjoying the gravy train.

Bloomberg reported earlier this summer that inflation is costing the average American household more than $5,200 this year. Inflation is a tax on middle class and poor Americans. The wealthy – like those who run Raytheon and Lockheed Martin – always get the new money first, before prices go up. The rest of us watch as the dollar buys less and less.

As Washington salivates over fighting Russia in Ukraine, the rest of America feels like we’re becoming Zimbabwe. How long until it takes a trillion dollars for a loaf of bread? Will there be a run on wheelbarrows?

There is a way out. It’s called “non-interventionism.” The war in Ukraine was caused by the US regime change in 2014 and the neocon insistence that Ukraine join NATO. The State Department and CIA thought it was a great victory to overthrow the elected government, but meanwhile the rest of us get the bill. No NATO and not one more penny for Ukraine!