Tuesday 19th of March 2024

a happy brainless president makes everyone miserable.....

WASHINGTON — A scene like one right out of “Ted Lasso” unfolded at Monday’s White House press briefing as actor Jason Sudeikis, who plays the show’s namesake soccer coach, fielded a question from the fictitious sports critic Trent Crimm.

The lighthearted exchange came as several cast members made an appearance at the daily press briefing to talk about mental health, a popular theme on the hit Apple TV+ show.

 

“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter who you voted for,” Sudeikis said, everyone knows someone or has been that person who “has struggled, that’s felt isolated, that’s felt anxious, that has felt alone. And it’s actually one of the many things that — believe it or not — that we all have in common as human beings.” 

 

READ MORE: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/ted-lasso-cast-visits-white-house-talk-mental-health-rcna75807

 

SEE ALSO: https://sputniknews.com/20230321/white-house-briefing-turns-chaotic-as-journo-blasts-press-sec-for-mocking-first-amendment-1108623074.html

 

BACK TO THE SERIOUS BUSINESS AT HAND.....

 

Send in the Clowns Yellen and Garland perform back-to-back surprise visits to Ukraine 

 

Sometimes I think that the script being used by the Biden Administration to manage its foreign and national security policies has been written by George Orwell, though I am not sure if it based on 1984 or Animal Farm. Maybe it is a combination of the two. Either way, it would help explain why there is something seriously wrong here. For example, at the end of February Congress, confronted by a debt ceiling, began discussing cutting Medicare and Social Security while more recently a banking sector crisis seems to be developing so Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen decided to go off doing photo-ops in Kiev embracing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after handing him the keys to the US economy. She explained to Zelensky how the White House had approved an additional $12 billion in aid to Ukraine during the previous week, including $2 billion for the military and $10 billion to support Zelensky’s government and other infrastructure needs. The US Treasury is now de facto the source of the Ukraine government’s entire annual budget. In addition, Yellen described glowingly how the Treasury and State Departments will implement a new round of sanctions against more than 200 entities and individuals with ties to Russia’s military, high-technology industries, and its metals and mining sectors. The US Department of Commerce is also enforcing export restrictions on materials and technology, including semiconductors, sold by American companies to customers in Russia and China.

In defense of her grand mission, Yellen penned an op-ed for the always compliant New York Times explaining the importance of Ukraine to the United States. She wrote how in Ukraine “…Russia’s barbaric attacks continue — but Kyiv stands strong and free. Ukraine’s heroic resistance is the direct product of the courage and resilience of Ukraine’s military, leadership and people. But President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians would be the first to admit that they can’t do this alone — and that international support is crucial to sustaining their resistance. I’m in Kyiv to reaffirm our unwavering support of the Ukrainian people. Mr. Putin is counting on our global coalition’s resolve to wane, which he thinks will give him the upper hand in the war. But he is wrong. As President Biden said here last week, America will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes… Ukrainians are fighting for their lives on the front lines of the free world. Today, and every day, they deserve America’s unyielding support.”

The Yellen op-ed drones on with a lie so large that it is astonishing that the New York Times would even print it: “When confronted with scenes of brutality and oppression, Americans have always been quick to stand up and do the right thing. Our strength as a nation comes from our commitment to our ideals — and our capacity to see in others the same desires that animated our own struggles for freedom and justice.” But then she tops that with assurances from “President Zelensky, [who] has pledged to use these funds in the ‘most responsible way.’ We welcome this commitment, as well as his longstanding agenda to strengthen good governance in Ukraine.” Huh?

And here is Yellen’s version of “Why We Fight!”: “Our support is motivated, first and foremost, by a moral duty to come to the aid of a people under attack. We also know that, as President Zelensky has said, our assistance is not charity. It’s an investment in ‘global security and democracy.’ Let’s look at the strategic impact of our support for Ukraine so far. Mr. Putin’s war poses a direct threat to European security, as well as to the laws and values that underpin the rules-based international system.”

So, Americans have a “moral duty” apparently up to and including sending their sons and daughters to die supporting Ukraine. And ah yes, it’s all about the “free” world, democracy and the notorious rules based international system! Has anyone yet cited Hegel’s observation that the President Joe Biden Administration’s foreign policy has already “repeated itself, first as a tragedy in Afghanistan, second as a farce”? Meanwhile one suspects Zelensky was laughing all the way to the bank as Yellen disappeared over the horizon to come up with the cash, as that old expression goes, and he probably already has one of his buddies shopping for a new villa on the French Riviera to supplement his other real estate! But wait! The story became even more exciting the following week, involving another visit to Mr. Z by America’s nearly invisible Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who can literally look Z in the eye as they are both very short. Garland is generally engaged in chasing white supremacists and requiring all new FBI hires to learn all about how to identify and pursue antisemites, but he has made two trips to Kiev to meet mano-a-mano with the brave olive drab t-shirt clad warrior who is already being beatified as the twenty-first century’s Winston Churchill.

Garland was in town to do the other thing the engages his sense of law and order, which is to set up a tribunal to arrest, prosecute and punish Russian war criminals after Ukraine emerges triumphant from its conflict with the unimaginably evil President Vladimir Putin. It would be modeled on the Nuremberg Tribunals that tried leading Nazis after the Second World War, and Garland has cited his family’s escape from the so-called holocaust to explain why he is intent on personally being involved in delivering what he describes as “justice.” A Justice Department spokeswoman described Garland’s mission as being in Kiev to personally “reaffirm America’s commitment to help hold Russia responsible for war crimes committed in its unjust and unprovoked invasion against its sovereign neighbor.”

Garland had several meetings with President Volodymyr Zelensky and foreign law enforcement officials including Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin while attending what was billed as the “United for Justice Conference.” Zelensky elaborated that the purpose of the conference was to hold Russia’s leadership accountable for the alleged atrocities carried out by its army. “The main issue of all these meetings is accountability,” he said. The US Justice Department is reportedly actively engaged in the gathering of evidence to indict the Russians. During Garland’s first visit to Ukraine in June 2022 he announced the appointment of Eli Rosenbaum, an Office of Special Investigations prosecutor best known for going after former Nazis, to direct American efforts to identify and track Russian war criminals.

Garland laid it on thick, as was expected from someone responsible for prosecuting the rest of the world when it steps out of line. He told his hosts that “Just over twelve months ago, invading Russian forces began committing atrocities at the largest scale in any armed conflict since the Second World War. We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly, and with one voice: the perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them. In addition to our work in partnership with Ukraine and the international community, the United States has also opened criminal investigations into war crimes in Ukraine that may violate US law.” He concluded by throwing out the complete bullshit party line much beloved by Joe Biden and Tony Blinken, that “The United States recognizes that what happens here in Ukraine will have a direct impact on the strength of our own democracy.”

Of course, there is more than a little bit of irony in all this, not to mention top level hypocrisy, as the United States has killed more people directly or indirectly while committing more crimes against humanity dished out in various ways over the past twenty years than any other country, except, predictably, Israel, which currently is committing crimes against humanity on a nearly daily basis. Curiously, however, the normally tone-deaf White House and Pentagon seem to understand, on a certain level, that opening up Pandora’s box might not be a good idea when it comes to war crimes. Last week Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin refused to share US information on alleged Russian crimes with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the ICC collected by American intelligence agencies regarding Russian activities in Ukraine because helping the court investigate Russians might set a precedent that could help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans. Washington does not recognize the ICC, fearing that it might well seek to examine the sorry record of US military crimes in Asia and Africa. Israel similarly does to recognize the court for roughly the same reason.

So here we are, two top level officials from the Biden regime sneak into Kiev to give an arch crook money and unlimited moral support, together with a pledge that more cash is on the way as are arms and war crimes tribunals await those nasty Russians. And guess what? It is all packaged as being good for America! This sounds like a song that was sung previously in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and it was a tissue of lies then just as it is now. Yellen ought to have stayed home to tend to the banking system and should be giving the billions of dollars earmarked for Zelensky back to the American people. If Garland wants to investigate anyone it should be the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and Congress. And yes, his own FBI! And don’t forget how the Bidens and Clintons became multi-millionaires! And then there is the destruction of Nord Stream. Funny how every time one turns over a rock in and around the US government something really smelly surfaces.

 

 

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/send-in-the-clowns/

 

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ukraine under a bus......

Goodbye to Ukraine? US prepares public for defeat

 

By Tim Beal

 

The New York Times report of 8th March that ‘Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say’ elicited two sets of responses.

The mainstream US media dutifully replicated the story without curiosity or challenge, carefully sidestepping questions of plausibility or context, and often, as with the Washington Post, managing to avoid mentioning the name of Seymour Hersh, whose article of 8 February ‘How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline’ they had spent a month trying to ignore. The alternative media, by contrast, jumped on the question of plausibility, put the Seymour Hersh article up front and saw this ‘revelation’ as a transparent attempt at diversion. They were broadly correct in that but they left out a very intriguing question, ‘why Ukraine?’.

The Nord Stream pipelines, build to transport gas from Russia to Germany had been blown up 26 September 2022, and there was immediate and unanimous agreement from all quarters that it was sabotage. The question was the classic murder mystery one, who dun it? The problem for the Western media was that by the standard criteria of means, motive and opportunity by far the leading contender was the United States. And the main immediate loser was Russia, which lost an expensive pipeline, a lot of valuable gas and its huge German market. The media, of course, is used to surmounting such challenges. The New York Times pointed the finger at Russia it its headline – Sabotaged Pipelines and a Mystery: Who Did It? (Was It Russia?) – but covered itself in the subheading by admitting there was ‘little evidence’. The Washington Post attempted to gain creditability by focussing on third parties – European leaders blame Russian ‘sabotage’ after Nord Stream explosions. President Biden had promised he would stop Nord Stream 2 and had forced Scholz to block its implementation. The sabotage made sure that Scholz could not change his mind. Germany was consigned to long term economic decline. All this was clear to anyone whose salary did not depend on denying it, but what remained unclear, or in dispute, was the mechanism of the sabotage and who the accomplices might have been. Seymour Hersh probably solved that puzzle; it was an American operation with help from the Norwegians, who became Germany’s largest gas supplier and made $100billion out of the operation. Hersh had been a thorn in the side of the US government since his exposure of the My Laimassacre in Vietnam in 1972, and he was drawing blood again.

The US responded to the Hersh article by attempting to dismiss it and by giving it very little coverage in the media. Then came the US intelligence press release through the New York Times. The NYT did not get the story through investigative reporting in the Hersh manner, nor through a whistle-blower but from a handout from officials. That meant it was a considered and calculated information operation, coming over five months after the sabotage and a month after Hersh. Plenty of time to prepare.

The US officials who were the source of the NYT article claimed that they were ‘reviewing’ new evidence and that apparently referred to an investigation ostensibly carried out by German media, led by Die Zeit. It is unclear whether US intelligence was responding to the German narrative or if the operation was coordinated. Given that Germany is very much a junior partner it is unlikely that the story would have surfaced unless the Americans agreed; the London Times claimed that US/NATO had suppressed Scandinavian intelligence accusing an Ukrainian oligarch since a week after the sabotage. Whatever the details, the new sabotage allegations can be best analysed now as a US-led coordinated operation, and that brings us back to the question of ‘why Ukraine?’.

The NYT article discreetly identified the consequences of ‘Ukrainisation’:

Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.

Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.

It has been argued very plausibly that the German story of a handful of ‘pro-Ukrainian’ sympathisers, perhaps Russians (a nice touch) doing what had previously been authoritatively considered only possible by state-level professionals is so implausible as to be probably a complete fabrication. Examples include Scott RitterMoon of Alabama and Jeremy Scahill. If it is a work of fiction, why cast Ukrainians as the culprits, why not stick with the Russians, or perhaps the North Koreans for a touch of the exotic? And if Ukrainians were up to something why not keep schtum, why let the cat out of the bag now?

One answer suggests itself: people at senior, but probably not top, level have decided that it is necessary to wean the public away from the Ukraine myth and prepare the ground for a deal. For the Germans that would be mainly to rescue the country from economic devastation and social fragmentation and for the Americans to clear the ground for the war against China. This interpretation is consistent with the possible disintegration of the Ukrainian military and the inability of the West to produce sufficient munitions.

An increasing number of stories are seeping into the media about the huge losses Kyiv is suffering and the concern that, as former US Colonel Alex Vershinin puts it, ‘Ukraine might be running out of men’. Vershinin is also the author of a seminal paper on industrial warfare, the huge demand for weapons and ammunition that the West can no longer satisfy. The West cannot provide enough for a proxy war in Ukraine let alone direct war with Russia, or China, or both.

Time for a dial back in Ukraine?

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/goodbye-to-ukraine-signs-that-the-us-preparing-to-dial-down-on-ukraine-to-concentrate-on-china/

 

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the dismal slough.......

 

 BY Phil Butler Operation Enmity: A Holding Action

 

My country is failing, falling into the same dismal slough all dying empires are swallowed by. The Senators and Caesars of America have one last hope of holding onto their gain. If they can sew hatred and bitterness between brothers on the Russian steppe, the old western world order can buy time. They can hang on a little longer to their unimaginable wealth and power. Perhaps.

I have a friend in Russia whose wife begged him to take his family away from the border of conflict. Her reasoning was sound: save her small children in case the NATO threat flooded Russia’s western borders. Her husband, one of my closest Russian friends did what he had to, but not for reasons the New York Times or the mighty White House press department would seek advantage from.

This stout and capable friend, I’ll call him Vasily here, after the hero Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev, the famous sniper of WW2, is Russian through and through. Brave, capable, and honest as the day is long, he lives half in and half out of the forests and the traditions that fortify Russia. What I mean to say is, combat would never be a reason for him to flee. Save two purposes, that is. If your brothers and cousins live over the border in Ukraine, or Latvia or another corner of crisis, the probability of killing some of them is too much to ask. Russians and Ukrainians have no real hatred for one another. The hate that caused this conflict was manufactured through extremist groups like the Bandera/Nazis, and NGOs run by our CIA and people like George Soros.

But this is what America’s President Joe Biden, and the ghastly mafia that has gripped my country want. It’s the reason Ukraine is not already a smoldering pile of ashes. Russia’s Putin has informed the world of this many times, but his voice is muffled by censors in the west.

“Enmity and its synonyms “hostility,” animosity, and animus all indicate deep-seated dislike or ill will. Enmity (which derives from an Anglo-French word meaning “enemy”) suggests true hatred, either overt or concealed.” – Webster’s Dictionary

In Russia, especially on the borders of this conflict, there are hundreds of thousands, like Vasily, torn between the love of country, and other devotions even more sacred. Several hundred thousand reservists have already donned their plate armored vests and AK-47s to push NATO and Nazis out of neighboring Ukraine. Within their ranks, I also have friends torn just like Vasily is torn. So, darkly and horrifically, the deep state who envisioned Ukraine’s Euromaidan has won a war for hearts and minds in Ukraine. Those scoundrels who faked a Minsk peace deal, and who turned eastern Ukraine into a kind of Maginot Line (WW2 fortifications), are only evil, not stupid. They know how to create perpetual chaos better than any cabal or tribe on earth.

“Hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy.” – Liu Xiaobo

Unfortunately for the American empire, they built, greed and arrogance blended with mediocrity is their undoing. The elite order has thrown everything they have at Vladimir Putin and Russia, but Russia is stronger now than ever by comparison. News that banks are starting to fail in the U.S. has not been missed by the people of my country. Neither have the train or other infrastructure catastrophes. The U.S.A. is falling apart from rust and decay, and our leaders funnel trillions into the lords of Blackrock and other money-plundering pirates.

And the hundreds of billions Biden and Co. are giving to the most corrupt regime on the planet are not appreciated by three hundred million men, women, and children who don’t want war. In Europe, widespread protests are already popping up. A few have taken place in the U.S., for the idiocy of it all is so powerful, the nightly news cannot keep a lid on it. No, dear George Soros, the enmity you and your henchmen drove between liberal and conservative Americans won’t hold long now. When we’re all digging in the dirt for a turnip root to feed our kids, your billions and even your existence will be forfeit.

“Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time?” Kurt Vonnegut

The European Union will soon disintegrate, as it should have decades ago. When your Zelensky demands Greek, Romanian, and Croatian soldiers to fill his destroyed ranks, Germany will be leading nothing. Brussels will go back to being just a town, only a much poorer place to live than before NATO promised protection for all. The Russians will not even have to invade after a while now.

Once the monetary bubble bursts, poverty, and loss will rip the treaty alliances in the west to bits. The enemies the brains on Think Tank Row in Washington picked this time are too many and too powerful. This big stall by Biden’s handlers, will not work. Slav against Slav, everybody in the world knows who did this. But the real fall is coming not because our leaders are found out, but because empires built by conquest, always fail.

Enmity sewn by my country in the past has transmuted. Now, in the face of an unrelenting, godless, and unquenchable hegemony, China, Russia, India, the expanding BRICS nations, and much of the rest of the world have reason to embrace one another. The hatred America planted all over the earth, will now haunt my poor countrymen. It’s not what I would have ever wished for, but the “Whore of Babylon” will surely suffer as it said in the Bible. God help us at harvest time.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

READ MORE:

https://journal-neo.org/2023/03/24/operation-enmity-a-holding-action/

 

 

 

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monaco battalion......

Ukrainian oligarchs' secret escape to the French Riviera


Since the invasion of their country, dozens of wealthy Ukrainian families have fled to villas in the South of France. These illegal departures for men of fighting age have earned them the nickname the 'Monaco Battalion.'

 

In Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, there is almost complete silence. Only light building-site noises disturb the scenery of the Côte d'Azur peninsula, about 10 kilometers from Nice. Some of the most popular jewels of the Côte d'Azur can be found here, such as the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and its abundant gardens and the Villa Santo Sospir, with its walls painted by Jean Cocteau. In this township of 1,500 inhabitants, which has long been appreciated by wealthy Russians, imposing gates hide prestigious homes.

From time to time a luxury car passes on the winding and shaded roads. Several of them display Ukrainian license plates, with the letters "UA" underlining a yellow and blue flag. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, there have been so many of them that the daily newspaper Ukrainska Pravda has compared Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to Koncha-Zaspa, the neighborhood of the Ukrainian elite in the south of Kyiv, in the middle of a forest. There is the same opulent decor and the same discretion.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2023/06/01/ukrainian-oligarchs-secret-escape-to-the-french-riviera_6028690_117.html

 

 

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