Construction of the two carriers will begin “in the years ahead,” it said. “When complete, they will join the most capable, flexible, and professional Navy that has ever put to sea.”

The new carriers are part of a plan to boost American naval power.

The U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carriers, all nuclear-powered, by far the largest fleet in the world. Rivals China and Russia have three and one, respectively.

With about 290 ships now, the U.S. Navy wants to expand the total fleet to 381 in coming years, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Biden Administration has not explicitly endorsed that 381-ship objective.

“When I personally delivered the news to Bill and George, they were deeply humbled,” said Biden in the statement. “Each knows first-hand the weight of the responsibilities that come with being commander-in-chief.”

Named after presidents

Most U.S. aircraft carriers are named after former presidents. Bill Clinton was the 42nd U.S. president, serving two terms from 1993 to 2001.

During his time in office, Clinton ordered a naval deployment to respond to the Third Taiwan crisis in 1996, as well as air strikes against Iraq in 1998 to degrade its capabilities to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.

His successor, Bush, launched a global effort against terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to defeat what Washington considered “two of the world’s most brutal and aggressive regimes.”

There is already a carrier named after Bush’s father, George W.H. Bush, who was president from 1989-1992.

US aircraft carriers

The U.S. Navy regularly deploys two or three carriers in the Indo-Pacific amid rising regional tensions.

“Aircraft carriers are the centerpiece of America’s naval forces,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in response to the naming of the two carriers.

“They ensure that the United States can project power and deliver combat capability anytime, anywhere in defense of our democracy.”

A Congressional Research Service’s report on the Ford-class aircraft carrier program said that the scheduled deliveries of several shipbuilding programs would be delayed approximately 18 to 26 months.

Edited by Mike Firn and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

Why should Americans trust anyone who believes Orwell’s 1984 was an ode to servility?

  “You could drop Hillary  into any trouble spot, come back in a month and… she will have made it better,” former president Bill Clinton declared in a 2016 speech championing his wife’s presidential candidacy.  But Hillary’s entry into the brawls surrounding the 2024 presidential election will leave many Americans wishing to drop her elsewhere.

As the race enters the home stretch, Hillary Clinton is riding in like Joan of Arc  to rescue truth – or at least to call for hammering government critics.  But Hillary has been a triple threat to American democracy for 15 years.

Last week, Hillary declared on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC talk show that the federal government should criminally prosecute Americans who share “propaganda”  – which she made no effort to define.

Hillary has long been one of America’s foremost censorship advocates.  In 2021, she announced that there must be “a global reckoning with the disinformation, with the monopolistic power and control, with the lack of accountability that the [social media] platforms currently enjoy.”  Hillary made her utterance at a time when freedom in much of the world had been obliterated by governments responding to a pandemic that occurred as a result of U.S. government funding reckless experiments in Chinese government labs.  The U.S. denial of its role in financing coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was one of the biggest deceits of the decade. But Hillary never kvetched about that scam regarding a debacle that  contributed to millions of deaths.  The Obama administration sought to prohibit U.S. government funding for such wildly risky research but Fauci and other officials evaded the restrictions.

In 2022, Hillary wailed that “tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability” and endorsed European Union legislation to obliterate free speech. But “disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods.

That awkward fact didn’t deter Democratic Vice President nominee Tim Walz from declaring last month: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” Who knew the Minnesota version of the First Amendment has a loophole bigger than Duluth?

After the New York Post shot down Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board in 2022, Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris as chief of a White House disinformation task force to find ways to protect women and LGBTQI+ politicians and journalists from vigorous criticism on the Internet (“online harassment and abuse”).  Harris declared that such criticism could “preclude women from political decision-making about their own lives and communities, undermine the functioning of democracy.”  But when did criticism of female politicians become irreconcilable with democracy?  Most politicians deserve all the grief they get.

Five years ago, at a NAACP Detroit “Freedom Fund” dinner, Harris proclaimed, “We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy.”  She did not specify the precise degree of alleged rancor required to nullify a speaker’s constitutional rights.

Biden administration censorship schemes have been denounced by federal courts and Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), chair of the House Cybersecurity Subcommittee, sent the White House a letter last week noting that the Biden administration always “advertised its willingness to manipulate the content of social media sites” and called for a cessation of all federal censorship tainting the 2024 election.  Mace requested copies of all official “communications with social media companies…  concerning the concealment or suppression of information on their sites.”  At last report, nobody on Capitol Hill is sitting on the edge of their chair awaiting an informative White House response. .

Hillary’s own career exemplifies a political elitist righteously blindfolding all other Americans.

When she was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, Clinton exempted herself from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), setting up a private server in her New York mansion to handle her official email. The State Department ignored 17 FOIA requests for her emails and said it needed 75 years to comply with a FOIA request for Hillary’s aides’ emails. The Federal Bureau of Investigation shrugged off Hillary’s aides using a program called BleachBit to destroy 30,000 of her emails under subpoena by a congressional committee. Federal judge Royce Lamberth labeled the Clinton email coverup “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”  An Inspector General report slammed FBI investigators for relying on “rapport building” with Team Hillary instead of using subpoenas to compel the discovery of key evidence. The IG report “questioned whether the use of a subpoena or search warrant might have encouraged Clinton, her lawyers … or others to search harder for the missing devices (containing email), or ensured that they were being honest that they could not find them.” The FBI’s treatment of Hillary Clinton vivified how far federal law enforcement will twist the law to absolve the nation’s political elite, or at least those tied to the Democratic Party.

During Clinton’s tenure, the State Department gave grants to promote investigative journalism in numerous developing nations as part of its “good governance” programs. But exposing abuses was only a virtue outside U.S. territorial limits.  Clinton vigorously covered up debacles in the $200 billion in foreign aid she shoveled out. From 2011 onward, AID’s acting inspector general massively deleted information on foreign aid debacles in audit reports, as The Washington Post reported in 2014. Clinton’s machinations helped delude Washington policymakers and Congress about the profound failures of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.

Pirouetting as a champion of candor is a novel role for the former Secretary of State.  Shortly before the 2016 election, a Gallup poll found that only 33% of voters believed Hillary was honest and trustworthy, and only 35% trusted Donald Trump. The Clinton-Trump tag team made “post-truth” the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2016 word of the year.

Hillary believes that the lesson of George Orwell’s 1984 is that good citizens should shut up and grovel. In her 2017 memoir, Hillary claimed that 1984 revealed the peril of  critics who “sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.”  Did Hillary think Orwell dedicated the novel to Stalin?  Hillary’s book noted that the regime in Orwell’s novel had physically tortured its victims to delude them.   Hillary is comparatively humane, since she only wants to leave people forever in the dark – well, except for the scumbags who undermine the official storyline.

 Hillary was a key player in the Obama administration that believed that Americans had no right to learn the facts of the torture committed by the CIA after 9/11.  When she was  Secretary of State in 2012,  she declared, “Lack of transparency eats away like a cancer at the trust people should have in their government.”  But the more secrets politicians keep, the less trust they deserve.

To sanctify censorship, Hillary is again invoking the Russian peril. A 316-page report last year by Special Counsel John Durham noted that in mid-2016, after the shellacking she suffered from her email scandal, “Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” President Barack Obama was briefed on the Clinton proposal “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” FBI officials relied on the “Clinton Plan” to target the Trump campaign even though no FBI personnel apparently took “any action to vet the Clinton Plan intelligence,” the Durham report noted.

The first three years of Trump’s presidency were haunted by constant accusations that he colluded with Russians to win the 2016 election. In 2019, an Inspector General report confirmed that the FBI made “fundamental errors” and persistently deceived the FISA Court to authorize surveilling the Trump campaign.

Hillary’s scams were even too much for federal scorekeepers. The Federal Election Commission in 2022 levied a $113,000 fine on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee for their deceptive funding to cover up their role in the Steele dossier, which spurred the FBI’s illicit surveillance of Trump campaign officials.

In Hillary’s new improved version of the Constitution, there is no free speech for “deplorables” – the vast swath of Americans she openly condemned in 2016.  But this is the same mindset being shown by the Kamala Harris presidential campaign.  Harris has scorned almost every opportunity to explain how she would use the power she is seeking to capture over American citizens.  Instead, she is entitled to the Oval Office by acclimation of the mainstream media and all decent folks – or at least those who drive electric vehicles and donate to her campaign.

Is “disinformation” becoming simply another stick for rulers to use to flog uppity citizens? Denouncing disinformation sounds better than “shut up, peasants!”  Will Americans’ rights and liberties be caught in a federal thresher? One blade is the Iron Curtain of secrecy about government policies, including denying almost all the crimes the government commits. The other blade will be vigorous prosecution of anyone who exposes official wrongdoing.   But if politicians have no obligation to disclose how they use their power and can persecute citizen who reveals their abuses, how in Hades can liberty survive?

Hillary’s latest victory lap is also a reminder of the profound changes in American politics since her husband took office in 1993.  For most of the late twentieth century, liberals championed free speech with few quibbles or asterisks.   Hillary would not be tub-thumping for censorship unless there had already been a sea change in attitudes among her target audience. Or do Hillary’s supporters retain more devotion to free speech than she presumes?

An earlier version of this piece was published by the Libertarian Institute.

The post Hillary Clinton Returns to Muzzle Everyone   appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by James Bovard.

Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton at the Great Hall in Swansea University Bay Campus in Wales on Nov. 16, 2023.

On Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton published an opinion piece in The Atlantic headlined “Hamas Must Go.” Why does she believe this? The subhead explains: “The terror group has proved again and again that it will sabotage any efforts to forge a lasting peace.” 

The article is the latest chapter of Clinton’s press tour following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, including an appearance on the daytime talk show “The View.” Both in The Atlantic and on “The View,” Clinton explained why a ceasefire in Israel’s current war on Gaza would be a terrible mistake.

Everything Clinton has said is part of a peculiar genre of self-defeating “liberal” propaganda on the topic of Israel–Palestine. Clinton is rational and informed and understands, as she writes in The Atlantic, that “the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a secure, democratic, Jewish state is by achieving two states for two peoples. … There is no other choice.”

She cannot acknowledge, however, the historical events that have led to the present situation, which clearly show that the primary obstacle to a two-state solution is not any Palestinian faction: It’s the government of Israel.

She repeatedly claims that it’s been Palestinians who have stood in the way of any kind of permanent peace. Of course, this makes her call for a two-state solution appear like the worst kind of liberal naïveté — and is therefore a huge gift to the U.S. and Israeli right. After all, if even the extremely liberal Hillary Clinton admits that Palestinians don’t want peace, why should Israel even try?

If even the extremely liberal Hillary Clinton admits that Palestinians don’t want peace, why should Israel even try?

The degree to which Clinton’s Atlantic essay is riddled with historical inaccuracies is startling, especially given that she brags about her “decades of experience in the region.” The article begins in November 2012 with a tale of her knocking on the door of President Barack Obama’s hotel room early in the morning during a visit to Cambodia. “Then, like now,” Clinton writes, “the extreme Islamist terror group Hamas had sparked a crisis by indiscriminately attacking Israeli civilians.” She and Obama debated whether she should fly to the Middle East and try to broker a ceasefire in what Israel had dubbed Operation Pillar of Defense. 

This was a difficult decision, she writes, because she and Obama “knew Hamas had a history of breaking agreements and could not be trusted.” Nevertheless, they decided she should go. She succeeded in negotiating a halt to the conflict, after about 100 Palestinian and two Israeli civilians died, along with military personnel on both sides. 

Clinton says she was left uneasy. “I worried that all we’d really managed to do was put a lid on a simmering cauldron that would likely boil over again in the future,” she writes. “Unfortunately, that fear proved correct. In 2014, Hamas violated the cease-fire and started another war.”

This is close to the opposite of reality. 

Sparking a Conflict

Israel had, in collaboration with Egypt, imposed a brutal blockade on Gaza since 2007. Blockades are arguably acts of war, and one place you can find it argued is on the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs: “The blockade is by definition an act of war, imposed and enforced through violence. Never in history have blockade and peace existed side by side.”

This is an excerpt from a June 1967 speech by Abba Eban, then the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, right after the end of the Six-Day War. Eban was explaining why Israel had not started the war, despite the fact that it had struck Egypt first. Because Egypt had imposed a blockade on the Straits of Tiran the month before, Eban said, it was actually Egypt who was responsible for the war.

In the years leading up to Operation Pillar of Defense, Hamas leaders said over and over that they were willing, at a minimum, to accept a long-term truce with Israel. Even the U.S. Institute for Peace, a think tank funded by federal government, acknowledged that Hamas had “sent repeated signals that it may be ready to begin a process of coexisting with Israel.”

This did not interest the Israeli government. On November 14, 2012, Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari, the head of Hamas’s military wing. 

Gershon Baskin, an Israeli peace activist, had been in communication with Jabari long before the assassination. According to Baskin, Jabari had come to believe that it was in the best interest of Palestinians for Hamas to negotiate a long-term truce. Jabari, Baskin asserted, had on several occasions acted to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Israel. In Baskin’s telling, just before the assassination, he gave Jabari a draft proposal for such a truce to review and approve. The draft was agreed to by Baskin and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, and Baskin also said he had previously shown it to Ehud Barak, then the Israeli minister of defense.

After Israel assassinated Jabari, Reuven Pedatzur, a military analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, reported: 

Our decision makers, including the defense minister and perhaps also Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, knew about Jabari’s role in advancing a permanent cease-fire agreement. … Thus the decision to kill Jabari shows that our decision makers decided a cease-fire would be undesirable for Israel at this time, and that attacking Hamas would be preferable.

Baskin himself told the story in a column for the New York Times. “Israel has used targeted killings, ground invasions, drones, F-16s, economic siege and political boycott,” he wrote. “The only thing it has not tried and tested is reaching an agreement (through third parties) for a long-term mutual cease-fire.”

While there had been tit-for-tat attacks, Israel’s assassination is widely seen as the proximate cause of the eight-day flare-up of violence in November 2012 — the one Clinton left Cambodia to deal with.

Breaking the Ceasefires

Clinton’s claim that “Hamas violated the cease-fire and started another war” in June 2014 is also highly misleading. 

The period from November 2012 to June 2014 was generally presented in U.S. media as one of quiet in the Israel–Palestine conflict, because in this time only seven Israelis — three soldiers and four civilians, of which three were West Bank settlers — were killed by Palestinians. During the same year-and-a-half period, over 60 Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza were killed by Israelis.

Among those killed were two Palestinian teenagers who were shot by Israeli forces on May 15, 2014, during a West Bank commemoration of the Nakba, the mass dispossession and expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 at the founding of Israel. Then, in June, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped by Palestinians from a West Bank settlement.

To this day, it’s unclear what connection, if any, Hamas had to the abduction. At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed, “Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay.” An Israeli intelligence officer, though, anonymously said that there was no evidence for this, and “we have come to conclude that these men were acting on their own.”

Hamas proposed a 10-year ceasefire. Israel studiously ignored this proposal and went on to kill over 2,000 people in Gaza.

In response to the kidnapping, Israel launched Operation Brother’s Keeper, during which it arrested hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank — most of whom were members of Hamas — and tortured many of them. It also killed seven civilians. It was all for naught: The teenagers were found dead several weeks after they were taken.

Escalations followed — Hamas fired rockets, doing little damage — until Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, another bombing and invasion of Gaza, on July 8. 

Several days later, Hamas proposed a 10-year ceasefire, on the condition that Israel would release the Palestinian prisoners, and the blockades of Gaza in the Mediterranean Sea and along its border with Egypt would be lifted. Israel studiously ignored this proposal and went on to kill over 2,000 people in Gaza, about two-thirds of whom were civilians. Seventy-two Israelis died during the operation, nearly all of them soldiers.

Revisionism

Clinton’s appearance on “The View” last week was propagandistic in all the same ways, with an added wrinkle of nonsense regarding President Bill Clinton’s involvement in the conflict. According to Hillary Clinton, “My husband with the Israeli government at the time in 2000 offered a Palestinian state to the Palestinians at that time run by [then head of the Palestinian Authority Yasser] Arafat. … Arafat turned that down.” She added, “There would have been a Palestinian state now for 23 years if he had not walked away from it.”

In reality, it was Israel that walked away from what was possibly the best chance there will ever be for a resolution to the conflict.

Bill Clinton did propose what he called parameters for a two-state solution in December 2000. In early January 2001, with less than a month to go in his presidency, Clinton announced, “Both Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat have now accepted these parameters as the basis for further efforts. Both have expressed some reservations.”

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians continued later that month in Taba, Egypt. But they were terminated by Barak on January 27, ahead of upcoming elections in Israel. The negotiators issued a joint statement that the two sides had “never been closer to reaching an agreement and it is thus our shared belief that the remaining gaps could be bridged with the resumption of negotiations.”

Barak, however, was defeated by Ariel Sharon, who opposed a two-state solution and did not restart the talks. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a statement that the Clinton parameters “are not binding on the new government to be formed in Israel.”

Bill Clinton has since lied over and over again about what happened, contradicting his own words at the time, claiming that Arafat was the one who rejected a settlement. 

There’s much more detail to this story, of course, but together Hillary and Bill Clinton have done an extraordinary amount of damage to any hope for peace in Israel and Palestine. If they really care about the lives of Israelis and Palestinians, they should both correct their farragoes of deceit — or, at the very least, just stop talking.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

The post Chile: The Aussie Connection: An Interview with Clinton Fernandes appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Kendall Hawkins.

In order to be acquitted in a penal proceeding on grounds of discriminatory enforcement, a defendant generally has been required to show that enforcement authorities have purposefully singled him out, while not acting against others for similar violations. The mere fact that an impartial law has been applied unequally does not establish a denial of fourteenth amendment rights. This requirement of purposeful discrimination is justified as to most penal laws insofar as universal enforcement is a practical impossibility.

Rarely have such clear exemplars of discriminatory law enforcement been provided as Barack Obama’s decision not to prosecute his Secretary of State and chosen successor Hillary Clinton versus Joe Biden’s decision to prosecute his chief political competitor Donald Trump.

The Biden indictment of Trump, by Biden’s agent Merrick Garland (who as President Biden’s agent, possesses the full Constitutional and legal authority and power to fire, at will), includes 8 charges, of which the majority, 5, were at least as applicable to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but which Obama (through his agent James Comey) refused to even present to a grand jury for an indictment against her.

The 5 criminal-law statutes that apply to both Clinton and Trump but were cited ONLY against Trump, are (as I first detailed them on 5 July 2016 regarding Clinton):

the following six [which include five of the eight that now are charged against Trump] U.S. criminal laws, each of which undeniably describes very well what she [and he] did:

18 U.S. Code § 1512 — Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

(c) Whoever corruptly

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

18 U.S. Code § 1519 — Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

18 U.S. Code § 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information …

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer —  

Shall be fined not more than $10, 000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy, shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.

Those laws are consequently null and void, by Executive action. 

Specifically with regard to the Trump case, the alleged crimes are violations of:

18 U.S.C. 793(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it

18 U.S.C. 1512(k) Whoever conspires to commit any offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

18 U.S.C. 1512(b)(2)(A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding

18 U.S.C. 1512 (c)(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;

18 U.S.C. 1519 Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy. Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Meanwhile, Biden’s agent Merrick Garland has not yet decided whether or not to bring to a grand jury the similar charges that have been discussed in the ‘news’ media regarding his boss, Joe Biden himself.

The Democratic Party newspaper Washington Post headlined on June 8 “Trump indictment: A moment of reckoning for the former president,” and reported,

The decision to indict also carries some risks for Justice Department and the administration of President Biden, given that the defendant is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Special counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigation, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who allowed the indictment to go forward, had to weigh the rule of law against the potential political backlash from Trump’s allies, but it was Trump himself who helped force the prosecutor’s hand.

Donald Trump has been charged in the classified documents case, the second time he’s been indicted since March. Get live updates.

Donald Trump is facing historic legal scrutiny for a former president, under investigation by the Justice Department, district attorneys in Manhattan and Fulton County, Ga., and a state attorney general. He denies wrongdoing.

If ever the very concept of equal protection of the laws (and its corollary of equal application of the laws) has ever applied to anything, then this is the case, and it then must be compared with the way that these laws are and have been applied — or not — to not ONLY Trump, and Clinton, and Biden, but to all other individuals who have been alleged to (and especially to those who have convicted to) have mishandled confidential U.S. Government documents. The more that this is done, the more that injustice will be found to be routine in the U.S. Government. And this is why I don’t expect it ever to be done.

Biden has thus opened here a can of worms, if only the U.S. press will look inside this can (which I have no expectation that any of America’s ‘news’-media will do). If all of them will not do it, then will that be proof-positive that the U.S. regime is, itself, totalitarian? What other conclusion could one then come to?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

In order to be acquitted in a penal proceeding on grounds of discriminatory enforcement, a defendant generally has been required to show that enforcement authorities have purposefully singled him out, while not acting against others for similar violations. The mere fact that an impartial law has been applied unequally does not establish a denial of fourteenth amendment rights. This requirement of purposeful discrimination is justified as to most penal laws insofar as universal enforcement is a practical impossibility.

Rarely have such clear exemplars of discriminatory law enforcement been provided as Barack Obama’s decision not to prosecute his Secretary of State and chosen successor Hillary Clinton versus Joe Biden’s decision to prosecute his chief political competitor Donald Trump.

The Biden indictment of Trump, by Biden’s agent Merrick Garland (who as President Biden’s agent, possesses the full Constitutional and legal authority and power to fire, at will), includes 8 charges, of which the majority, 5, were at least as applicable to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but which Obama (through his agent James Comey) refused to even present to a grand jury for an indictment against her.

The 5 criminal-law statutes that apply to both Clinton and Trump but were cited ONLY against Trump, are (as I first detailed them on 5 July 2016 regarding Clinton):

the following six [which include five of the eight that now are charged against Trump] U.S. criminal laws, each of which undeniably describes very well what she [and he] did:

18 U.S. Code § 1512 — Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

(c) Whoever corruptly

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

18 U.S. Code § 1519 — Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy

Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

18 U.S. Code § 793 — Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information …

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer —  

Shall be fined not more than $10, 000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy, shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy.

Those laws are consequently null and void, by Executive action. 

Specifically with regard to the Trump case, the alleged crimes are violations of:

18 U.S.C. 793(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it

18 U.S.C. 1512(k) Whoever conspires to commit any offense under this section shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the offense the commission of which was the object of the conspiracy.

18 U.S.C. 1512(b)(2)(A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding

18 U.S.C. 1512 (c)(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;

18 U.S.C. 1519 Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy. Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Meanwhile, Biden’s agent Merrick Garland has not yet decided whether or not to bring to a grand jury the similar charges that have been discussed in the ‘news’ media regarding his boss, Joe Biden himself.

The Democratic Party newspaper Washington Post headlined on June 8 “Trump indictment: A moment of reckoning for the former president,” and reported,

The decision to indict also carries some risks for Justice Department and the administration of President Biden, given that the defendant is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Special counsel Jack Smith, who led the investigation, and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who allowed the indictment to go forward, had to weigh the rule of law against the potential political backlash from Trump’s allies, but it was Trump himself who helped force the prosecutor’s hand.

Donald Trump has been charged in the classified documents case, the second time he’s been indicted since March. Get live updates.

Donald Trump is facing historic legal scrutiny for a former president, under investigation by the Justice Department, district attorneys in Manhattan and Fulton County, Ga., and a state attorney general. He denies wrongdoing.

If ever the very concept of equal protection of the laws (and its corollary of equal application of the laws) has ever applied to anything, then this is the case, and it then must be compared with the way that these laws are and have been applied — or not — to not ONLY Trump, and Clinton, and Biden, but to all other individuals who have been alleged to (and especially to those who have convicted to) have mishandled confidential U.S. Government documents. The more that this is done, the more that injustice will be found to be routine in the U.S. Government. And this is why I don’t expect it ever to be done.

Biden has thus opened here a can of worms, if only the U.S. press will look inside this can (which I have no expectation that any of America’s ‘news’-media will do). If all of them will not do it, then will that be proof-positive that the U.S. regime is, itself, totalitarian? What other conclusion could one then come to?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

An exploratory drilling camp at the proposed site of the Willow oil project on Alaska’s North Slope in 2019. Photo: ConocoPhillips.

Imagine building 70 new coal-fired power plants that will emit 9 million metric tons of carbon pollution a year (the same as two million gas-powered cars) and more than wipe out all emissions savings from renewable energy projects on U.S. public lands by 2030. Imagine constructing hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines, two airstrips, a gravel mine and a big processing plant on tundra and wetlands where the permafrost is already melting so quickly that it will have to be artificially-refrozen to keep the whole enterprise from collapsing.

That’s basically what you’re getting with the Willow Project, the massive oil drilling operation just approved on Alaska’s North Slope by Biden’s Interior Department. This grotesque operation prompted Al Gore to waddle forth with a rare rebuke of a fellow New Democrat: “The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska is recklessly irresponsible. The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future. We don’t need to prop up the fossil fuel industry with new, multi-year projects that are a recipe for climate chaos. Instead, we must end the expansion of oil, gas and coal and embrace the abundant climate solutions at our fingertips.”

Gore makes a lot of sense here, except for one major blind spot: It was his own administration which first opened the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to drilling. He and Bruce Babbitt both lent their environmental credentials (such as they were) to drilling on the very same North Slope tundra into which Conoco-Phillips now plans to drill 200 oil wells. Here’s how it happened. –JSC

Forget the favors to Lippo. Forget those nightly rentals of the Lincoln bedroom. By far the biggest scandal in town, entirely unreported, is the new Alaskan oil rush. It is a multibillion-dollar giveaway reminiscent of the Teapot Dome fiasco, when Albert Fall, President Warren Harding’s Interior Secretary, secretly leased off a naval oil reserve north of Casper, Wyoming, to oilman Harry Sinclair. For his efforts, Fall received as much as $400,000 from Sinclair and a year in the federal penitentiary.

How is this contemporary version of the Teapot Dome being brokered? Following the standard script for the Clinton Administration, it is a story of special access and special rights, greased by well-placed lobbyists, secured by corporate campaign disbursements and involving the transference-on an almost unfathomable scale–of public wealth into private hands. At the center of this drama is the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a glorious, fragile wilderness, the largest expanse of undeveloped public land in North America. In the wings is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, whose opening to oil leasing has been the decade-long goal of ARCO, British Petroleum and Exxon, the three major players in the state. Already, a couple of deregulatory curtain-raisers suggest the course of acts to come.

In the spring of 1996, amid a sphinx-like silence from the press, the Clinton Administration handed the oil industry a gigantic favor worth billions of dollars. It overturned the twenty-three-year old ban on the export of Alaskan crude oil. From the beginning, the opening of Alaska’s North Slope to drilling–and the construction of the leaky 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline to transport the crude from the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez–was sanctioned by Congress only because the oil was intended to buttress America’s energy independence. At the time, however, Senator Walter Mondale warned that the oil companies would eventually have the export ban overturned. They envisioned a “Trans-Alaska-Japan pipeline,” he said, an opening to export large shipments of Alaskan crude to Asia in order to keep winter heating fuel prices high in the Midwestern states.

He turns out to have been right. Of course, the oil companies explain their intentions somewhat differently. Back in 1994, still at the nadir of public esteem because of the Exxon Valdez disaster and unsuccessful in efforts to whip up fears of an oil shortage that might open the Wildlife Refuge to drilling, they announced that the problem wasn’t a shortage at all, but a glut. Suddenly, they said, there was more oil in Prudhoe Bay than anyone had previously imagined, but because of laws prohibiting the sale of Alaskan oil to lucrative foreign markets–Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China–the companies might have to scale back production and lay off hundreds of workers.

The winning strategy to lift the export ban was hatched by Tommy Boggs, the Rasputin of American lobbyists, whose firm, Patton Boggs, represents a thick portfolio of oil companies, including Exxon, Mobil, Shell and ARCO. In this instance, Boggs was the advance man for Alyeska, an oil consortium that operates the pipeline and supervises drilling on the North Slope. In an August 1995 memo to a prospective client, Boggs, a golfing pal of Bill Clinton, boasts of “having led the private-sector effort to get exports of Alaskan North Slope oil approved by the 104th Congress and signed by President Clinton.” Boggs’s typical price tag is a robust $550 per hour–or $22,000 for a forty-hour week.

Barely had Clinton signed the order lifting the ban before he handed the oil cartel another amazing gift: the Federal Oil and Gas Simplification and Fairness Act. The name is signal enough that dirty work was afoot. And indeed it was.

Approved by Congress on the last day of the 1996 summer session, the law places a seven-year limit on federal audits of oil company records of income from drilling on public lands. It turns over many auditing responsibilities concerning drilling on federal lands to the states. It permits the oil companies to sue the federal government to collect interest on royalty “overpayments,” and it allows those same companies to set the “market price” of the crude oil upon which the royalty payments to the government are based. In other words, the bill legalizes a scam Big Oil has been running for decades, underpaying billions in royalties on crude oil extracted from federal lands.

As he shoveled a mountain of cash to the oil companies, Clinton cast the measure as a simple matter of streamlining. “Many Americans don’t know it, but a significant percentage of the oil and natural gas produced in the United States comes from federal lands,” he declared. “Until today, regulatory red tape and conflict in court rulings had discouraged many companies from taking full advantage of these resources,” which he said he was now unleashing to increase domestic energy production.

Map of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Credit: Alaska Audubon.

The next public intimation that the Clinton Administration is among the federal properties leased by ARCO and Exxon came in the vulgar surroundings of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on lands formerly owned by the Rockefeller clan. Here, Clinton played host to a platoon of oil company moguls, who took the opportunity to brief him on an even grander scheme to boost domestic oil production: open the National Petroleum Reserve to oil leasing. And here’s where we find Teapot Dome redivivus.

West of Prudhoe Bay lies the 23-million-acre reserve, set aside in 1923. Back then it was under the control of the Navy, the oil held in store against a national calamity. For decades, even during the fraught hours of World War II and the frenzied days of the energy crisis, the admirals fought off the oil companies and their allies in the Interior Department who lobbied to open the reserve to private exploitation under the guise of national security. In late 1980, Jimmy Carter gave the Interior Department the authority to sell the Navy’s oil. This was the fatal move, for Reagan’s Interior Secretary James Watt then quickly geared up to open the reserve to the oil barons. He was held off by a lawsuit brought by Eskimo elders, who argued that drilling would damage their subsistence rights to hunt and fish. Bill Clinton and Bruce Babbitt are now set to accomplish what Reagan and Watt could not.

Students of the political economy of the Clinton White House are correct in assuming, as this narrative unfolds, that the billions handed over by Clinton to the Alaskan oil cartel were predicated on a substantial river of cash flowing the other way. After all, ARCO the largest producer on the North Slope and likely to be the prime benefactor of the new Alaskan oil bonanza–is one of the pre-eminent sponsors of the American political system. In the 1996 election cycle, ARCO’s political action committee handed out more than $352,000. Over the same period, ARCO pumped soft money into the tanks of the Republican and Democratic national committees ($764,000 and $486,000, respectively).

On October 25, 1995, Robert Healy, ARCO’s director of governmental relations, attended a White House kaffeeklatsch with Vice President A1 Gore and Marvin Rosen, finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee. A few days before the session, Healy himself contributed $ 1,000 to the Clinton/Gore reelection campaign. Before the month was out, his company had put $32,000 into the D.N.C.

A man who does much of ARCO’s political dirty work in Washington is Charles Manatt, former chairman of the Democratic Party. Manatt runs a high-octane lobbying shop called Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, formerly the lair of Mickey Kantor. The lobbyist attended a White House coffee with Clinton on May 26, 1995. In 1993 and 1996, Manatt alone doled out $117,150 in hard and soft money. Members of Manatt’s family threw in $4,500, his law firm $24,500 and the firm’s PAC another $81,099. Inside the Clinton Cabinet, Manatt’s former partner, Kantor, became the most strident voice for lifting the export ban on Alaskan oil, promoting it as a vital element in the Administration’s Asian trade policy.

Lodwrick Cook, ARCO’s former C.E.O., is a personal friend of Bill Clinton. In 1994, Cook celebrated his birthday at the White House. The President himself presented the towering cake. Cook traveled with Commerce Secretary Ron Brown on a trade junket to China in August 1994. During that trip, Cook and Brown negotiated ARCO’s investment in the huge Zhenhai refinery outside Shanghai. The refinery is now ready to process Alaskan crude, which suggests that at least two years before Clinton’s executive order allowing Alaskan oil exports, ARCO had inside knowledge of what was to come.

A key role in this affair has also been played by Alaska’s Governor, Tony Knowles, known by some Alaskans as the Governor of ARCO. Knowles, who proudly asserts that in his youth he was a “roughneck” in the oilfields of West Texas, is the first Democrat to run the state in many years, and his 1994 campaign received more than $30,000 from ARCO. In recognition of this munificence, Knowles lobbied the Clinton Administration to open more federal land in Alaska to oil development. High on the list was the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. However, as a pledge to the eco-lobby, Clinton had vowed to veto any measures to open the 17-million acre Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. At that point, as the Anchorage Daily News regularly reported, Knowles countered that if the refuge was off limits, the Administration had to unlock the National Petroleum Reserve.

This was almost certainly the message that Tony Knowles delivered to Clinton when he slept at the White House in January of 1995, and was underscored by his Lieutenant Governor, Fran Ulmer, at a morning coffee in the Map Room on February 28, 1996. In his State of the State address this year, Knowles boasted, “Just five years ago, they said we’d be turning off the lights on the industry with one of the state’s largest payrolls. Now our motto should be that old bumper sticker: `DEAR LORD, PLEASE LET THERE BE ONE MORE OIL BOOM, AND I PROMISE WE WON’T WASTE IT.”‘ His prayers were soon answered by the Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt. On February 7, Babbitt announced that he was ordering an environmental impact statement on the leasing of the reserve. Babbitt went further, saying that “oil leasing is absolutely the goal of the environmental studies.”

That statement indicates the utter lawlessness of the crowd now running the country. As the National Environmental Policy Act stipulates, environmental review comes first, and a decision second. For Babbitt, it’s the other way around. He rationalizes this effrontery by gesturing toward a new consensual politics that does not require the pesky corsets of legal obligation: “We’d like to break away from the adversarial style and see if we can put together some new way of doing business with the oil industry. I think we’ve got lots of possibilities.”

Babbitt says he will go to Alaska this summer to hike over the 23 million acre reserve. “I want to get out on the ground and I want to look at every square inch of the National Petroleum Reserve. My plans now are to fly to Anchorage, change planes for Barrow, and then I want to disappear into the N.P.R. for as much time as I need, to understand every geological structure, every lake, every wildlife issue so that I will be prepared to be a meaningful participant in this process.” Perhaps he will come across the bones of Hale Boggs, the former oil Congressman from Louisiana, whose plane disappeared in the Alaskan outback in 1972. It would be an appropriate discovery. Boggs navigated the original Alaskan oil-drilling bill through Congress at the start of the seventies as a favor to his friend Edward Patton, the Exxon executive who became the C.E.O. of Alyeska, now represented in Washington by Hale Boggs’s son Tommy.

What kind of place is the National Petroleum Reserve? This 36,000 square-mile expanse of Arctic land is crossed by the Colville River, which sweeps in a giant arc from its headwaters in the Noatak National Park across the Anuktuvuk plateau to its delta at the icy Beaufort Sea. Grizzlies gather at the river in astounding numbers to feast on grayling, Arctic char and whitefish. As the river makes its final bend toward the Arctic Ocean, it slides along a sixty-mile palisade of cliffs, eroding away at the base to reveal mastodon tusks and the fossilized bones of dinosaurs. Two hundred feet up in these limestone bluffs nest peregrines, gyrfalcon and rough-legged hawks, making the Colville drainage the most prolific raptor habitat in the Arctic. It is this escarpment that the oil companies cherish most.

Arctic Caribou crossing the Kobuk River. Photo: USFWS.

By far the region’s most dominant ecological force is the Western Arctic caribou herd, which roams across the reserve on migratory routes unimpeded for millennia. The 500,000-head herd is the largest in Alaska, three times the size of the famous Porcupine herd in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In the wake of the caribou come the wolves, ravens, wolverines and native hunters, feeding on the detritus of this massive rush of life.

David van der Berg, a carpenter from Fairbanks, is one of the few people to have floated the 450-mile course of the Colville. “The Colville country is unquestionably the wildest place in North America,” he says. “The oil companies have occupied nearly every other tract in northern Alaska. True wilderness is now so much scarcer than oil.”

The National Petroleum Reserve encompasses an area the size of Indiana, yet the entire region is home to fewer than 6,000 people, most of whom live on its peripheries. On its eastern border is the hamlet of Nuiqsut, a village of 450 people built on the site of an ancient Eskimo settlement. By the early sixties many of the Eskimo had been moved off their traditional lands and relocated to the town of Barrow. In 1974, however, twenty-seven families decided to reclaim their lands at the mouth of the Colville. Back in Barrow, their neighbors shook their heads, thinking they would surely perish that first winter living in tents. But they finally built the village at Nuiqsut, which this year is celebrating its twentieth anniversary.

Now ARCO has come to Nuiqsut looking for help in gaining entry into the reserve. It has promised money and jobs. And, indeed, the villagers would like the money, but fear the cultural and environmental repercussions of an enormous oilfield development over which they would have no control.

Consider what’s already happened on the North Slope. The 500-plus wells in Arctic Alaska produce 840,000 gallons of waste each year. In 1985 and 1986 the Alaska Department of Conservation recorded 953 spills involving oil and other liquids. The contents of more than 250 pits, each filled with 13 million gallons of toxic pollutants, are pumped onto gravel roads or the open tundra. A January 1997 report by the Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility disclosed that a contractor for British Petroleum had been illegally injecting hazardous waste, including oil, solvents, paints and hydraulic fluid, into its wells on Endicott Island, one of the most productive oilfields in Alaska. When an oil worker refused to dispose of the waste in this manner, he was told by his superiors that illegal dumping didn’t matter because “no one lives on the North Slope anyway.”

From Nuiqsut on a clear day it is possible to see the foul haze of the operations at Prudhoe Bay sixty miles away. The industrial sprawl surrounding the bay is the best reason to keep the oil companies out of the petroleum reserve. These days Prudhoe Bay is something of a toxic armed encampment, entry to the area being totally controlled by the security forces of the oil companies.

As for the pipeline, it has leaked almost from the day the crude began to flow. In 1976 it was learned that one of Alyeska’s contractors had falsified X-rays of faulty welding on much of the pipeline. In 1979, one of the welds broke and more than 235,000 gallons of oil spilled into the Atigun River. Now the pipeline averages a major incident every ten days. Many of these problems have been brought to the attention of the company and federal officials by Alyeska employees. The oil company’s response has been to go after the whistleblowers.

“In 1990, Alyeska hired Wackenhut security to conduct an industrial espionage campaign to identify and harass whistleblowers,” says Richard Fineberg, an oil policy consultant to the Alaska Forum. “When the company’s espionage escapades came to light, Alyeska issued a public apology and settled lawsuits brought by six Alaskans who were targets of the spying effort.”

How much oil is buried beneath the tundra? According to explorations in the early seventies by Navy geologists, the Alaskan reserve may harbor as much as 35 billion barrels, worth nearly a trillion dollars if drilled to the last drop. The estimate is almost certainly conservative. ARCO knows more precisely the subterranean wealth at stake, because it has done extensive testing in the area and has just struck a 300 million-barrel oilfield on the reserve’s eastern border, near Nuiqsut. In fact, the oil companies have been poaching crude off the reserve for years, siphoning its hidden resources by slant drilling within the two-mile buffers established in 1923 by the Navy. But ARCO which swallowed up old Harry Sinclair’s oil company in 1969, the same year it struck oil in Alaska–says that to divulge what it knows about the oil in this public property would be to reveal proprietary information.

“Some conservationists might be tempted to trade off the largely unknown ecological treasures of the National Petroleum Reserve for a delay in the leasing of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” warns Sylvia Ward of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center in Fairbanks. “That would be a tragic miscalculation. In Alaska we’ve come to learn that the oil companies won’t stop until they have it all.” A few days later, British Petroleum and Chevron announced their intention to sink exploratory wells within two miles of the Wildlife Refuge.

This story is adapted from Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

Marcel Lehel Lazar walked out of Federal Correctional Institute Schuylkill, a Pennsylvania prison, in August 2021. The 51-year-old formerly known only as Guccifer had spent over four years incarcerated for an email hacking spree against America’s elite. Though these inbox disclosures arguably changed the course of the nation’s recent history, Lazar himself remains an obscure figure. This month, in a series of phone interviews with The Intercept, Lazar opened up for the first time about his new life and strange legacy.

Lazar is not a household name by unauthorized access standards — no Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning — but people will be familiar with his work. Throughout 2013, Lazar stole the private correspondence of everyone from a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to “Sex and the City” author Candace Bushnell.

“Right now, having this time on my hands, I’m just trying to understand what this other me was making 10 years ago.”

Marcel Lehel Lazar, known as Guccifer, opened up to The Intercept for the first time about his new life and strange legacy.

Photo: Nemanja Kneževic for The Intercept

“I was inspired with the name, at least, because my whole Guccifer project was, after all, a failure.”

Marcel Lehel Lazar shows old photos and his current ID photographs in his wallet while walking around Arad, Romania, on Jan. 8, 2023.

Photo: Nemanja Kneževic for The Intercept

A sculptural sign along a highway announces the city of Arad in Romania on Jan. 8, 2023.

Photo: Nemanja Kneževic for The Intercept

Hackers are still playing a game Guccifer mastered.

A portrait of Marcel Lahel Lazar in Arad, Romania, on Jan. 8, 2023.

Photo: Nemanja Kneževic for The Intercept

“I’m gonna keep keeping one eye on American politics and react to this. I’m not gonna let the water just flow. I’m gonna intervene.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sam Biddle.

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks to the press after Georgia’s abortion ban was instated by a judge in Atlanta on July 20, 2022.

Photo: Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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With Georgia’s voting blocs so ideologically calcified, turnout decides elections.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by George Chidi.

What do Vladimir Putin and Henry Kissinger have in common?* Late last month, the Russian President threatened the use of nuclear weapons in the war over Ukraine, stating: “To those who allow themselves to make such statements about Russia, I would like to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction, and for some components more modern than those of the NATO countries.” In the same vein in 1957, Kissinger wrote: “The tactics for limited nuclear war should be based on small, highly mobile, self-contained units, relying heavily on air transport even within the combat zone.” Putin spoke as his country is being stymied in its efforts to incorporate Ukraine into the Russian Federation. Kissinger was writing at the height of the Cold War as the Rapporteur for a study by the Council of Foreign Relations which later appeared in the book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy.**

To contextualize the possibility of using nuclear weapons by Kissinger and Putin: Both happened at times of extreme tension between the West and the Soviet Union/Russia. Both occurred when a major confrontation between the two sides was not taking place but could not be excluded.

But there are significant differences between the two. Kissinger’s advocacy of limited nuclear war was his attempt to set out a U.S. strategy to avoid a major, direct confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. He was trying to elaborate a United States military policy for the nuclear age after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, hoping any confrontation between the two belligerents could avoid massive retaliation and mutual assured destruction.  Putin’s strategy is to use the nuclear threat to gain bargaining chips in an eventual settlement over Ukraine’s borders. Stymied in an immediate takeover of Ukraine and witnessing continued Ukraine successes as the fighting continues, Putin alluded to using nuclear weapons to hasten advantages in an eventual solution.

While much is being written in the West’s reaction to Putin’s threat about the horrors of using nuclear weapons, it should be remembered what former President Bill Clinton said in 2007: “Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrents to keep the peace, and I don’t believe any President should make blanket statements in the regard to use or non-use.” It should also be remembered that prior to the Cold War the United States used nuclear weapons, leading Putin to argue that the United States’ bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “created a precedent” for their use.

Besides the political, military and ethical implications of using nuclear weapons, there is also a legal aspect. Many of the arguments for and against the use of nuclear weapons appeared in the 1996 International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on the “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons”. In the crucial part of its decision, the Court opined: “The threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law.” But the Opinion did not completely disqualify their use: “However, in view of the current state of international law, and the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”

The Court did not say that the possession of or the threat of using nuclear weapons was illegal. The Court emphasized that there are restrictions on the actions of belligerents in armed conflicts in terms of what they can do. In other words, the legality of the use of the use of certain weapons is because of their specific effects during conflicts. According to the Court, the threat or use of nuclear weapons is restricted by the rules and principles of international humanitarian law because of their effects on non-combatants and soldiers. The weapons are, in Professor Georges Abi Saab’s words; “indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction.”

But the court did not formally ban the use of nuclear weapons in conflicts – the final decision was tied seven and seven – because “it does not have sufficient elements to conclude with certainty that the use of nuclear weapons would necessarily be at variance with the principles and rules of law applicable in armed conflict in any circumstance.” Specifically, it recognized that every State has its right to self-defense when its survival is at stake. “In view of the current state of international law, and the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake,” it declared in the famous final sentence of Paragraph 2E. It is important to remember that Article 51 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter permits the use of force by States “in the exercise of this right of self-defence.”***

Kissinger believed that the very survival of the United States could be a stake if the Soviet Union attacked, justifying the possible use of limited nuclear weapons. But Putin? What is his justification for the threat? Is the survival of the Russian Federation at stake? Is Russia being attacked? While Putin may fantasize that Ukraine is a part of the Russian Federation, it has long been accepted as an independent country, even by Russia. No country invaded or threatened the Russian Federation as it exists today.

Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov followed the State survival reasoning by equating State survival with an existential threat. “So, if it is an existential threat for our country, then it [nuclear weapon] can be used, in accordance with our concept,” Peskov proposed.

The Russians are invoking the glaring weakness of the Court’s ambiguous decision. By invoking State survival, the Court invited unlimited State actions in the name of survival, both in terms of its perception of its need to use force for self-defense and the type of force it can use once it decides that its survival is at stake.

Whatever the Russians present as the basis for their eventual use of tactical nuclear weapons in the name of their survival, it should be emphasized that there has been international condemnation of the use of nuclear weapons in any situation, even State survival. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 “for spreading authoritative information and by creating awareness of the catastrophic consequences of nuclear war.” The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”

While Clinton’s statement remains in the deepest background of potential actions by a U.S. president, Putin’s threat is more immediate and more problematic. Most importantly, it does not meet the criteria of State survival permitted by the Court. Putin’s justification of “existential threat” does not meet any legal standard of State survival. But then again, respecting international humanitarian law or international law in general is not high on the Russian government’s agenda today.

Notes.

*In terms of similar negatives, an extensive list of Kissinger’s sins can be found in Christopher Hitchens’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Putin’s malfeasance is being investigated by various official and non-official bodies and awaits final listings since it is still unfolding.

**The book was a strategic studies best-seller, Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and launched Kissinger’s public career.

*** On the question of the legality of using nuclear weapons in the case of State survival, Judge Koroma wrote in his dissenting opinion; “This finding…would constitute an exception to the corpus of humanitarian law which applies in all armed conflicts and makes no exception for nuclear weapons.”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Daniel Warner.

Hillary Clinton has come under fire for her Thursday comments about the positive implications if Giorgia Meloni becomes Italy's first woman prime minister, with critics warning that the far-right candidate's agenda poses a direct threat to the fight for gender and economic equality.

Italy is scheduled to hold its general election on September 25, and "polls are led by Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia, part of a right-wing coalition widely expected to secure a majority of seats," historian David Broder, Jacobin's Europe editor, explained Friday. "With her own party backed by around one-quarter of voters, Meloni looks likely to become prime minister."

Taking time away from the Venice International Film Festival to speak with Italy's leading newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, Clinton warned of "very powerful" anti-democratic forces around the world, including authoritarian demagogues like former U.S. President Donald Trump.

But when asked about the Italian political scene, Clinton said that "the election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past, and that is certainly a good thing."

To her credit, Clinton went on to say, "as with any leader, woman or man, she must be judged by what she does."

"I never agreed with Margaret Thatcher, but I admired her determination," she added, referring to the former British Prime Minister who played an instrumental role in advancing the neoliberal counter-revolution in the United Kingdom.

Thanks in no small part to Clinton and her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Thatcher's "free market" ideology and upwardly redistributive policies—such as privatization, pro-corporate trade deals, and deregulation of the financial industry—also took hold in the United States, worsening inequality and aiding the ascent of reactionaries like Trump.

Clinton reiterated her same message in an interview clip to be released by Sky's tg24 on Friday night, saying that a win by Meloni would "open doors" for other women even while acknowledging the far-right candidate would still have to be judged by her policies and performance.

According to Broder:

Prefacing her comments on Meloni saying she "doesn't know much about her," Clinton said, "every time a woman is elected to head of state or government, that is a step forward. Then that woman, like a man, has to be judged, on what she stands for, on what she does." There have to be "two parts to the analysis" for though a woman premier would "open doors, that's not the end of the story."

In all fairness, Clinton probably doesn't know much about Meloni, and chose a diplomatic answer; she also told Il Corriere that women leaders are often backed by right-wing parties because such women "are often the first to support the basic pillars of male power and privilege." It is unclear whether their "determination," like Thatcher's, is itself admirable. But if, as Clinton says, Meloni has to be judged "like a man" on how she governs, it's also important to understand why her election will close doors for women.

Exemplifying the kind of pro-natalist ideology that was central to Nazism and has been key to other expressions of fascist politics, "Meloni's party is obsessed with the idea that women are, more than anything else, mothers, while damning the Left (and what she calls 'LGBT lobbies') for working to destroy this connection," Broder wrote.

"One of the party's main slogans is 'God, Fatherland, Family,' and it routinely insists that one of the main focuses of government should be to drive up birth rates in order to avoid the 'extinction of Italians.'" he continued. "This vision of women's role also has a strong homophobic edge. Last October, in one of a series of rallies where she has been hosted by Spanish far-right party Vox, Meloni spoke of the war on 'natural motherhood,' part of the destruction of Christian civilization."

Italy is already home to the highest jobless rate among women in Europe, and over 25% of Italian women workers make less than $9 per hour.

"Fratelli d'Italia would make the situation for precarious and low-paid women harder," Broder wrote, pointing to the party's opposition to a national minimum wage, efforts to eliminate unemployment insurance, and proposal to restrict welfare benefits to mothers.

When it comes to reproductive freedom, regions already governed by Fratelli d'Italia have gone to great lengths to impede abortion access.

Finally, Fratelli d'Italia, like other far-right parties in Europe, has sought to undermine left-wing feminism through what Broder calls "femonationalism." This refers to the racist portrayal of rape and violence against women as foreign imports brought in by immigrants, especially Black and Muslim men—a lie that Meloni and others on the right tell to suggest that pro-immigrant progressives don't care about Italian women.

Given that most Italian women's lives would be made worse by Meloni's election, Broder argued, Clinton's comments exemplify the inadequacy of claiming that the increased representation of women within the upper echelons of the existing social order is an inherent victory even when nothing is done to ameliorate its exploitative and hierarchical structure.

Attacks on economic security and sexual autonomy, including those launched by right-wing women, are completely at odds with the egalitarian aspirations of working-class women who want equal access to well-remunerated jobs and public goods as well as reproductive rights, stressed Broder.

"Meloni may, indeed, become the first woman prime minister," he added, "but she's prepared to trample on plenty of other women to get there."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

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As part of a trial involving a former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer, a subpoena demanding testimony from a former New York Times reporter was submitted in April 2022 then withdrawn on May 24, legal counsel for the Times confirmed to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker in an email.

According to the Times, the subpoena called for Eric Lichtblau to testify in the trial of Michael Sussmann, who was charged with making false statements to the FBI in 2016 in his role as a Clinton campaign attorney.

Prosecutors say that Sussmann met with former FBI General Counsel James Baker and shared information about data that allegedly linked the Trump Organization to Alfa Bank, a Russian bank affiliated with the Kremlin.

Prosecutors say Sussmann wanted to prompt an FBI investigation into the connection so that journalists could report on it. Sussmann’s defense team says he approached the FBI to notify them that an article was already underway.

Lichtblau, then a reporter for the Times, co-authored an article in October 2013, six weeks after Sussmann met with the FBI, noting that officials had not been able to confirm a clear link between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.

Fox News reported that before the defense lawyers withdrew the subpoena, Lichtblau had initially agreed to testify during the trial but then filed a protective order to limit testimony to only interactions between him and Sussmann and bar any questions about other sources.

According to the Times, Lichtblau’s testimony could have “shed light on what he told Mr. Sussmann regarding how soon an article might be published before he sought the F.B.I. meeting.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

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Here is Ritter, just interviewed, Strategic Culture. Note that Ritter is called a traitor (for looking at the Russian military and political angles) and a Putin Stooge (this is it for Western Woke Culture) and he’s been banned on Twitter for a day, and then back up, and the seesaw of social media continues (more McCarthy: The New Democratic Opperative). You do not have to agree with militarism, but here we are, so the Western Woke Fascist Media and the Mendacious Political Class want nothing to do with, well, military minds looking at Russia (Ritter studied Russia big-time, and studied their military big time, both Soviet Union and Russia). He also is married to a Georgian. But again, this is it for the Western Intellect (sic).

Like we can’t watch Graham Phillips work, without being called, well, Russian Stooges. The Mainlining Mendacious Media calls him a Russian Sympathizer. Imagine that. For years,, he’s been a sympathizer (he is British, speaks Russian and goes to the actual places with camera in hand. Look at the one on Ossetia, the breakaway republic of Georgia. It is delightful (note the dinner he is served by the typical family):

Here, from, “The Ukrainian Conflict Is a U.S./NATO Proxy War, but One Which Russia Is Poised to Win Decisively – Scott Ritter” by Finian Cunningham, April 9, 2022

Question: Do you think that Russia has a just cause in launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24?

Scott Ritter: I believe Russia has articulated a cognizable claim of preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The threat posed by NATO expansion, and Ukraine’s eight-year bombardment of the civilians of the Donbass fall under this umbrella.

Question: Do you think Russia has legitimate concerns about the Pentagon sponsoring biological weapons programs in laboratories in Ukraine?

Scott Ritter: The Pentagon denies any biological weapons program, but admits biological research programs on Ukrainian soil. Documents captured by Russia have allegedly uncovered the existence of programs the components of which could be construed as having offensive biological warfare applications. The U.S. should be required to explain the purpose of these programs.

Question: What do you make of allegations in Western media that Russian troops committed war crimes in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities? It is claimed that Russian forces summarily executed civilians.

Scott Ritter: All claims of war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, including Ukrainian allegations that Russia killed Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. However, the data available about the Bucha incident does not sustain the Ukrainian claims, and as such, the media should refrain from echoing these claims as fact until a proper investigation of the evidence is conducted, either by the media, or unbiased authorities.

While one may be able to mount a legal challenge to Russia’s contention that its joint operation with Russia’s newly recognized independent nations of Lugansk and Donetsk constitutes a “regional security or self-defense organization” as regards “anticipatory collective self-defense actions” under Article 51, there can be no doubt as to the legitimacy of Russia’s contention that the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass had been subjected to a brutal eight-year-long bombardment that had killed thousands of people.

Moreover, Russia claims to have documentary proof that the Ukrainian Army was preparing for a massive military incursion into the Donbass which was pre-empted by the Russian-led “special military operation.” [OSCE figures show an increase of government shelling of the area in the days before Russia moved in.]

Finally, Russia has articulated claims about Ukraine’s intent regarding nuclear weapons, and in particular efforts to manufacture a so-called “dirty bomb”, which have yet to be proven or disproven. [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a reference to seeking a nuclear weapon in February at the Munich Security Conference.]

The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction.  (Ritter, Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression)

All the speakers, except maybe excluding John Kiriakou, have great points to make: Andrei Martyanov, expert on Russian military affairs, author The Real Revolution in Military Affairs; Chris Kaspar de Ploeg, author Ukraine in the Crossfire; James Carden, Adviser U.S.-Russia bilateral commission during the Obama administration & Ex. Editor of The American Committee for East-West accord; Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine Intelligence officer, UN Arms Inspector, exposed WMD lie in U.S. push to invade Iraq; John Kiriakou, CIA whistleblower and Radio Sputnik host; Ron Ridenour, peace activist, author The Russian Peace Threat; Gerald Horne, historian, author, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston; Jeremy Kuzmarov, CAM Managing Editor and author of The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce.

Imagine, the provocations.

The US government invoked self-defense as a legal justification for its invasion of Panama. Several scholars and observers have opined that the invasion was illegal under international law.

Watch, Panama Deception here: C-Span!

Oh, those Freedom Fighters, the back-shooting, civilian-killing, village-burning Contras:

Appendix A: Background on United States Funding of the Contras

In examining the allegations in the Mercury News and elsewhere, it is important to understand the timing of funding of the Contras by the United States. The following dates explain the periods during which the United States government provided funding to the Contras or cut off such funding.

• Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the leader of Nicaragua from 1967 until July 1979, when he was overthrown by the Sandinistas. When President Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, he promptly canceled the final $15 million payment of a $75 million aid package to Nicaragua, reversing the Carter administration’s policy towards Nicaragua. On November 17, 1981, President Reagan signed National Security Directive 17, authorizing provision of covert support to anti-Sandinista forces. On December 1, 1981, Reagan signed a document intending to conceal the November 17 authorization of anti-Sandinista operations. The document characterized the United States’ goal in Nicaragua as that of interdicting the flow of arms from Nicaragua to El Salvador, where leftist guerrillas were receiving aid from Sandinista forces.
• In late 1982, Edward P. Boland, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced an amendment to the Fiscal Year 1983 Defense Appropriations bill that prohibited the CIA, the principal conduit of covert American support for the Contras, from spending funds “for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.” However, the CIA could continue to support the Contras if it claimed that the purpose was something other than to overthrow the government. In December 1983, a compromise was reached and Congress passed a funding cap for fiscal year 1984 of $24 million for aid to the Contras, an amount significantly lower than what the Reagan administration wanted, with the possibility that the Administration could seek supplemental funds later.
• This funding was insufficient to support the Administration’s “Contra program” and the decision was made to approach other countries for monetary support. In April 1984, Robert McFarlane convinced Saudi Arabia to contribute $1 million per month to the Contras through a secret bank account set up by Lt. Col. Oliver North.
• In October 1984, the second Boland amendment took effect. It prohibited any military or paramilitary support for the Contras from October 3, 1984, through December 19, 1985. As a result, the CIA and Department of Defense (DOD) began withdrawing personnel from Central America. During this time, however, the National Security Council continued to provide support to the Contras.
• In August 1985, Congress approved $25 million in humanitarian aid to the Contras, with the proviso that the State Department, and not the CIA or the DOD, administer the aid. President Reagan created the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO) to supply the humanitarian aid. In September 1985, Oliver North began using the Salvadoran air base at Ilopango for Contra resupply efforts.
• On October 5, 1986, a plane loaded with supplies for the Contras, financed by private benefactors, was shot down by Nicaraguan soldiers. On board were weapons and other lethal supplies and three Americans. One American, Eugene Hasenfus, claimed while in custody that he worked for the CIA. The Reagan Administration denied any knowledge of the private resupply efforts.
• On October 17, 1986, Congress approved $100 million in funds for the Contras. In 1987, after the discovery of private resupply efforts orchestrated by the National Security Council and Oliver North, Congress ceased all but “non-lethal” aid in 1987. The war between the Sandinistas and the Contras ended with a cease-fire in 1990.
• Although the Contras were often referred to as one group, several distinct factions made up the Contras.
• In August 1980, Colonel Enrique Bermudez, a former Colonel in Somoza’s National Guard, united other former National Guard officers and anti-Sandinista civilians to form the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN). This group was known as the Northern Front because it was based in Honduras. In February 1983, Adolfo Calero became the head of the FDN.
• In April 1982, Eden Pastora split from the Sandinista regime and organized the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and the Sandinista Revolutionary Front (FRS), which declared war on the Sandinista regime. Pastora’s group was based in Costa Rica and along the southern border of Nicaragua, and therefore became known as the Southern Front. Pastora refused to work with Bermudez, claiming that Bermudez, as a member of the former Somoza regime, was politically tainted. The CIA decided to support the FDN and generally declined to support the ARDE.

Again, let’s think about what is actually happening in Ukraine, and where the country is, and what the Russians in that country are facing, and, gulp, where is Ukraine? Thousands of miles away, like Panama and Nicaragua are from USA?

Here, a Dutch journalist:

Read her work:

As the war in Ukraine rages on, I visited the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as an embedded reporter with the Russian army.

Both of the republics are the trigger of the current conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared their independence on February 24, 2022, something a lot of people were waiting for since the CIA backed coup in Ukraine of February 2014. That coup had resulted in the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and new laws forcing the Ukrainian language on Russian-speaking residents. Luhansk and Donetsk consequently voted on their independence and Ukraine attacked them, precipitating the war.

European support for the so-called Maidan coup was considerable: the Dutch MP Hans van Baalen from the ruling Dutch VVD party (Mark Rutte), for example, was at the protests that helped trigger the coup, as was the former Prime Minister of Belgium Guy Verhofstadt. Both were seen cheering on the crowds, surrounded by right-extremists on the stage, shouting “democracy.”

So what is preemptive defense? Right to Protect? What is big ugly history of Nazi’s in Poland and Ukraine? What is that all about, uh, Americanum?

At least 32 countries have sent direct military aid to Ukraine this year! US and NATO Allies Arm Neo-Nazi Units in Ukraine as Foreign Policy Elites Yearn for Afghan-style Insurgency

So, plans by ZioLensky for Dirty Bombs from the wasteland of Chernobyl, not a provocation?

How many were immolated in Waco? Why? Mount Carmel Center became engulfed in flames. The fire resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh himself.

Oh, the impatience of the USA, FBI, ATF, Attorney General, Bill Clinton, the lot of them.

Or, dropping bombs on Philly, to kill, well, black people:

How many died, and what happened to the city block? Bombs dropped on our own people, again! Police dropped a bomb on a West Philly house in 1985. The fire caused by the explosion killed 11 people, an atrocity that Philadelphia still grapples with today.

Oh, the irony.

Black Lives Do Not Matter, here, or in Ukraine. Below, representation of those lives killed by cops, of all races, in one year. Many of these in a year, 60 percent, did not involve a person with a gun, and a huge number, 40 percent, involved people going throug mental health crises.

More than one thousand people are killed by police every year in America

Oh, being black in Ukraine:

Yes, the first casualty of war is truth, and with the USA as the Empire of Lies and Hate, the casualty is now a larger framework of a Zombie Nation of virtue signalers and those who want the fake news to be real, please!

So far as I know, this is the first war in modern history with no objective, principled coverage in mainstream media of day-to-day events and their context. None. It is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission — most of it fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated uncritically as fact.

There is one thing worse than this degenerate state of affairs. It is the extent to which the media’s malpractice is perfectly fine to most Americans. Tell us what to think and believe no matter if it is true, they say, and we will think and believe it. Show us some pictures, for images are all.

There are larger implications to consider here. Critical as it is that we understand this conflict, Ukraine is a mirror in which we see ourselves as we have become. For more Americans than I wish were so, reality forms only in images. These Americans are no longer occupants of their own lives. Risking a paradox, what they take to be reality is detached from reality.

This majority — and it is almost certainly a majority — has no thoughts or views except those first verified through the machinery of manufactured images and “facts.” Television screens, the pages of purportedly authoritative newspapers, the air waves of government-funded radio stations — NPR, the BBC — serve to certify realities that do not have to be real, truths that do not have to be true.

Before proceeding to Bucha, the outrage of the moment, I must reproduce a quotation from that propaganda-is-O.K. piece The Times published in its March 3 editions. It is from a Twitter user who was distressed that it became public that the Ghost of Kiev turned out to be a ghost and the Snake Island heroes didn’t do much by way of holding the fort.

‘Why can’t we just let people believe some things?’ this thoughtful man or woman wanted to know. What is wrong, in other words, if thinking and believing nice things that aren’t true makes people feel better? (Patrick Lawrence, Special to Consortium News)

Daniel Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo- Events in America, has been cited by yours truly several times. It is a completely amazing work, sixty years ahead of its time, and it is almost completely ignored!.

I describe the world of our making, how we have used our wealth, our literacy, our technology, and our progress to create the thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life. …. The reporter’s task is to find a way to weave these threads of unreality into a fabric the reader will not recognize as entirely unreal. (Boorstin)

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

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