quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:

quote:

They are clearly meant to be provocative

How so? That looks like ordinary diplomatic relations with an ally to me.

For China, anything that is not what they want is provocative. And we're supposed to ignore any bad act they do, like using their navy to bully and drive off fishing vessels in the South China Seas, or build military bases on the Spartly Islands to make a claim to the region over all the other nations that also claim the islands as their own, but want to negotiate an agreement instead of occupying them militarily.

And China views image above all else. I lost any shred of respect for John Cena when he had to post an apology in Chinese because he said a truth the CCP didn't like, and his studios didn't want to lose access/funding in West Taiwan.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
The People's Republic of China is threatening all kinds of consequences and says that McCarthy's visit will "unite the Chinese people against a common enemy".

Should McCarthy avoid meeting with Tsai and cancel the trip to Taiwan because the Red Chinese are calling both of those (prospective) actions "provocations"? Are we "ignoring their warnings" if McCarthy goes ahead and meets with Tsai and then visits Taiwan?

No. Of course not.
We (the United States) should stand for the United States. America first.

We should not cower in fear. We should not accept Chinese bribes. We should prosecute and hang for treason the Bidens (and anyone else accepting Chinese bribes). We should not allow the Chinese into our universities. We should not allow them to buy our real estate. We should not give them "most favored nation" trading status and buy their cheap crap. In short, we should treat them as adversaries, because they are.

And now it looks like Russia is decapitating Prisoners of War. Pretty low for even Russia. That is Taliban/AQ/ISIL level of bullshit.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/...eading-investigation

Award-winning independent investigative muckraker Seymour Hersch launched another Patriot missile at The Narrative yesterday, in a Substack piece provocatively titled “Trading With The Enemy.” The sub-headline pondered, “Amid rampant corruption in Kiev and as US troops gather at the Ukrainian border, does the Biden administration have an endgame to the conflict?”
https://seymourhersh.substack....ading-with-the-enemy

According to Hersch, Zelenskyy has been using Uncle Sam’s war bucks to buy diesel fuel, which is critical to keeping the tanks and trucks and launchers chugging along Eastern Europe’s muddy roads. That much is unsurprising. Apparently diesel can fetch a pretty price in a war zone, and Hersch reminded us that the DoD previously shelled out over $400 a gallon in Afghanistan to keep that war’s machines humming.

Here’s the narrative-bending plot twist: according to Hersch’s sources, Zelenskyy has been buying diesel at massively-inflated wartime prices … from the RUSSIANS.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

This wacky twist raises a myriad of answerless questions. Why would Zelenskyy trade with the same evil empire and the war criminals besieging “his” country? Why would Russia sell diesel to the Ukrainians when it would be better to let them to run dry?

It’s almost like this whole thing is a big fat “Wag the Dog” charade or something.

But wait, there’s more. I doubt you’re surprised, but Hersch says his sources in the intelligence community say it is well known that Zelenskyy has — in one year — skimmed off $400 MILLION DOLLARS for himself by doing the old invoice switcheroo with the diesel payments — a classic creative accounting tactic going back to the Civil War — and peddling US weapons to terrorists on the dark web’s version of eBay.

“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions.”
Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks.

Another whistleblower described a clandestine January rendezvous between CIA Director William Burns and President Zelenskyy — to better coordinate the grifting. Like a 1950’s mob boss, Burns whined that Zelenskyy was pocketing more than his fair share, angering a pack of Zelenskyy’s generals, who feel like all the president’s greedy grasping was reducing their own shares. Burns specifically griped about three dozen generals who were being way too obvious about the scam, cruising around Kiev in swanky high-end luxury sports cars, hanging around with bikini models, and flaunting ridiculous fur coats and ostentatious gold neck chains.

Zelenskyy quieted the controversy by publicly firing the top ten worst offenders, which also conveniently resolved his problem of their complaints about his own avarice.

Top to bottom, the whole thing is a gigantic sunglassed, track-suited criminal enterprise robbing the U.S. taxpayer blind and greatly inconveniencing millions of average Ukrainians.

In case you think I’ve been a lone voice crying in the wilderness about the opaque, mendacious Biden Administration, apparently there are signs of life in our intelligence community who’ve noticed the same thing. And they know a LOT more than I do. Hersch reported on internal agency disgust about Biden’s lying officials:

Another divisive issue, I have been repeatedly told in my recent reporting, is the strident ideology and lack of political skill shown by Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. The president and his two main foreign policy advisers “live in different worlds” than the experienced diplomats and military and intelligence officers assigned to the White House;. “They have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories.”

Tell lies and make up stories? Sounds like a snarky comment in C&C. Apparently some of the intelligence community is also chaffed about the whole Nordstream Pipeline Bombing thing and Biden’s lazy denials of having anything to do with it:

“There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community,” the intelligence official said. The rift dates back to the fall, when, as I reported in early February, Biden ordered the covert destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official told me.

Now, what happens when you get sideways with the intelligence community? Chuck Schumer famously said they have a million ways of getting back at you. Like, say, leaking highly sensitive top-secret documents showing your so-called Proxy War isn’t going too well, for one example.

Finally, Hersch brought up the mysterious deployment of two U.S. brigades — over 20,000 soldiers and support staff from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions — stationed in Poland just two miles from the Ukraine border. That’s the distance from my house to the nearest Publix. Nobody Hersch spoke to seems to know why our troops are there, or what they are doing, and the spooks don’t think the White House knows either:

The intelligence officials told me that “there is no evidence that any senior official in the White House really knows what’s going on in the 82nd and 101st. Are they there as part of a NATO exercise or to serve with NATO combat units if the West decides to engage Russians units inside Ukraine? Are they there to train or to be a trigger? The rules of engagement say they can’t attack Russians unless our boys are getting attacked.”
… “This is not just bad leadership. There is none. Zero.”

Hersch has a long career of reliable reporting. On the other hand, when the intelligence community is talking and leaking, you can’t always be sure about what you’re getting. But I trust Hersch, who hasn’t been proven wrong yet, way more than I trust the official White House narrative, which has been proven false over and over and over again.

All this bad news will make it harder to get Congress to cough up the next round of war cash, and might even be signaling an imminent narrative shift. Ukraine supporters might want to give a moment’s thought to how Biden ended things in Afghanistan. Just saying.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...ack&utm_medium=email

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I wonder if the Big Guy has received his 10% of that 400 million yet.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Finally, Hersch brought up the mysterious deployment of two U.S. brigades — over 20,000 soldiers and support staff from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions — stationed in Poland just two miles from the Ukraine border. That’s the distance from my house to the nearest Publix. Nobody Hersch spoke to seems to know why our troops are there, or what they are doing, and the spooks don’t think the White House knows either:

The intelligence officials told me that “there is no evidence that any senior official in the White House really knows what’s going on in the 82nd and 101st. Are they there as part of a NATO exercise or to serve with NATO combat units if the West decides to engage Russians units inside Ukraine? Are they there to train or to be a trigger? The rules of engagement say they can’t attack Russians unless our boys are getting attacked.”

It's a mystery. Nobody knows why those troops went to Poland and Romania, or for that matter what the British troops in Poland and Estonia, the French in Romania, the Dutch and Germans in Lithuania and Slovakia, or the Canadians, Spanish and Italians in Latvia have been doing there since last year. They might just spontaneously team up and intervene in Ukraine to fight the Russians. After all, nobody can look into those soldiers' heads.

quote:

They might just spontaneously team up and intervene in Ukraine to fight the Russians. After all, nobody can look into those soldiers' heads.

Right. So I guess they are there of their own accord, for their own individual reasons, without sponsorship and living at their own expense and without direction from anyone.
That’s hard to believe.

In another corporate-media-embargoed story, the Indian Firstpost ran an article yesterday headlined, “Xi Jinping effect? Macron Blocks EU Decision to Finance Ammunition Supply to Ukraine.”

How could this happen?

In a story more layered than a croissant, France reportedly blocked a European Union vote to finance and send a million artillery shells to Ukraine. And right when Ukraine is preparing for its widely-publicized, not secret at all Gala Spring Offensive, too.

Tell me if this story makes any sense: Back on March 20th, the specially-abled EU parliament voted like a pack of drunken sailors on shore leave to supply two more billion Euros worth of ammo to Ukraine. Apparently, two billion sounded like a good number. Member states were to be “reimbursed” from this common fund as they each kicked in some rockets to make up the total aid package.

But then — AFTER the vote — the ministers realized they didn’t actually know how much artillery they all had in inventory, and when the counting started they found out that, whoopsie daisy, there weren’t enough artillery shells in all of Europe to satisfy the vote.

Europe doesn’t even HAVE two billion Euros worth of artillery combined.

So yesterday they voted again — the vote France successfully opposed — to buy the shells from non-EU countries — like America! — which would’ve sent all those sweet, sweet Euros off-continent. There was some talk of trading weapons for the shells, which would further draw down Europe’s already-depleted military inventories, assuming anyone even wants Italian-made tanks and stuff:

Officials familiar with the matter said that the plan is being held up as member states argue over how far spending for the plan will stay within the EU.

Finally, the Firstpost connected the painfully-obvious dots that our worthless U.S. corporate media can’t draw. I blame the public school system:

The French President’s remarks came after his China visit where he was given a full red-carpet welcome in China despite his tough stand against Beijing over its support to Russia in the Ukraine war. This unusually lavish hospitality was seen as a sign of Beijing’s attempt to wean away allies from the United States.

If Germany flips like France, the entire EU will be out of the action.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
It's a mystery. Nobody knows why those troops went to Poland and Romania, or for that matter what the British troops in Poland and Estonia, the French in Romania, the Dutch and Germans in Lithuania and Slovakia, or the Canadians, Spanish and Italians in Latvia have been doing there since last year. They might just spontaneously team up and intervene in Ukraine to fight the Russians. After all, nobody can look into those soldiers' heads.

Total mystery. It's not like Poland, the Baltics, Romania have ever been the victim of Russian aggression in the last century. And it's not like Putin's Russia would attack a neighbor or two... So super big mystery why NATO members would want others to bolster their security. Especially when Putin's government is making threats towards those NATO members.

VDH had an excellent article today. When you see these numerous flashpoints all listed it puts it in even better perspective how much this administration has screwed us in the last two years. Not listed, but I think very relevant, is Biden's gutting our oil industry, thereby ceding the market to Russia to fuel its war.


The Biden 10-Step Plan for Global Chaos
Victor Davis Hanson
Apr 14, 2023



Why is French President Emmanuel Macron cozying up to China while trashing his oldest ally, the United States?

Why is there sudden talk of discarding the dollar as the global currency?

Why are Japan and India saying they cannot follow the United States' lead in boycotting Russian oil?

Why is the president of Brazil traveling to China to pursue what he calls a "beautiful relationship"?

Why is Israel suddenly facing attacks from its enemies in all directions?

What happened to Turkey? Why is it threatening fellow NATO member Greece? Is it still a NATO ally, neutral, or a de facto enemy?

Why are there suddenly ongoing Chinese threats toward Taiwan?

Why did Saudi Arabia conclude a new pact with Iran, its former archenemy?

Why was Egypt secretly planning to send rockets to Russia for use in Ukraine, according to leaked Pentagon papers?

Since when did the Russians talk nonstop about the potential use of a tactical nuclear weapon?

Why is Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador bragging that millions of Mexicans have entered the United States illegally? And why is he interfering in U.S. elections by urging his expatriates to vote for Democrats?

Why and how, in just two years, have confused and often incoherent President Joe Biden and his team created such global chaos?

Let us answer by listing ten ways by which America lost all deterrence:

1) Biden abruptly pulled all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. He left behind to the Taliban hundreds of Americans and thousands of pro-American Afghans. Biden abandoned billions of dollars in U.S. equipment, the most extensive air base in central Asia - recently retrofitted for $300 million - and a $1 billion embassy. Our government called such a debacle a success. The world disagreed and saw only humiliation.

2) The Biden administration allowed a Chinese high-altitude spy balloon to traverse the continental United States, spying on key American military installations. The Chinese were defiant when caught and offered no apologies. In response, the Pentagon and the administration simply lied about how China had surveilled top-secret sites.

3) In March 2021, at an Anchorage, Alaska mini-summit, Chinese diplomats unleashed a relentless barrage at their stunned and mostly silent American counterparts. They lectured the timid Biden administration diplomats about American toxicity and hypocrisy. And they have defiantly refused to explain why and how their virology lab birthed the COVID-19 virus that has killed tens of millions worldwide.

4) In June 2021, in response to Russian cyber-attacks against the United States, Biden meekly asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to at least make off-limits specific critical American infrastructure.

5) When asked what he would do if Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden replied that the reaction would depend on whether the Russians conducted a "minor incursion."

6) Between 2021 and 2022, Biden serially insulted and bragged that he would not meet Muhammad bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and one of our oldest and most valuable allies in the Middle East.

7) For much of 2021, the Biden administration announced that it was eager and ready to offer concessions to re-enter the dangerous Iran nuclear deal - when Iran has joined China and Russia in a new geostrategic partnership.

8) Almost immediately upon inauguration, the administration moved the United States away from Israel, restored financial aid to radical Palestinians, and publicly and privately alienated the current Netanyahu government.

9) In serial fashion, Biden stopped all construction on the border wall and opened the border. During the 2019 Democratic presidential primary, Biden made it known that illegal aliens were welcome to enter the United States - some 6-7 million did. He reinstated "catch and release." And he did nothing about the Mexican cartel importation of fentanyl that has recently killed over 100,000 Americans per year.

10) In the last two years, the Pentagon has embarked on a woke agenda. The army is short by 15,000 in its annual recruitment quota. The defense budget has not kept up with inflation. One of the most significant intelligence leaks in U.S. history just occurred from the Pentagon.

The Pentagon refused to admit culpability and misled the country about Afghanistan and the Chinese spy balloon flight. The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called his Chinese communist counterpart and head of the People's Liberation Army to advise him that the U.S. military would warn the Chinese if it determined an order from its commander-in-chief, former President Donald Trump, was inappropriate.

This list of these self-inflicted disasters could be easily expanded.

But the examples explain well enough why our emboldened enemies do not fear us, our triangulating allies judge us unreliable, and calculating neutrals assume America is in descent and too dangerous to join.

Yet without America, the result is a new Chinese order in which, to quote the historian Thucydides, "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."

https://townhall.com/columnist...lobal-chaos-n2621956

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Right. So I guess they are there of their own accord, for their own individual reasons, without sponsorship and living at their own expense and without direction from anyone.
That’s hard to believe.

What I find hard to believe is that "noone at the White House knows what's going on in the 82nd and 101st" on their "mysterious" deployment. Frankly, this last article has settled it for me that Hersh, or possibly his team which does the legwork, is simply scooping up conspiracy theories which have been making the rounds on the net for months - the US Nord Stream sabotage under cover of BALTOPS, the P-8 which turned from a US Navy to a Norwegian "navy" to a Norwegian air force plane flown by US pilots, and now the 101st Air Assault BCT in Romania which is going to intervene in Ukraine - and weaving them into "journalistic" naratives.

Even the claim that Ukraine is buying Russian diesel with American money seems based upon a recent Latvian TV report that Russian fuel is going to Ukraine via Latvia with forged documents even after the EU ban of 5 February. Which promptly caused outrage among Russian bloggers claiming that their corrupt elites were supplying fuel to the enemy's armed forces (if you think some Americans are upset because they consider their own government corrupt and traitorous, you haven't followed Russian pro-war posters who believe the Kremlin is ruled by an "appeasement of the West party" which can't wait to sell out the country, though they are careful to not criticize Putin himself by name).

The problem with all those "mysteries" and "revelations" is that they typically aren't - people are just too ignorant and bloody lazy to inform themselves and follow news other than what social media algorithms and media bubbles catering to their established opinion feed them. Same for the "embargoed" story about France blocking EU ammo purchases - this was reported over a week ago, before Macron and von der Leyen went to China. Incidentally, it's not the only quarrel about EU money for arms related to Ukraine going on; from the same source, Estonia is being accused of calling like-new prices for reimbursement of old equipment they supplied.

That kind of haggling is going on all the time, in all areas. Even Poland, the most ardent Ukraine supporter of all, recently blocked an 18-billion-Euro aid package for the country over disagreement on the issue of a corporate minimum tax. It's business as usual in a 26-member-union where every national government is watching its own interests. The only way individual cases work to create the hopeful expectation of imminent breakdown is to "uncover" them to people who are otherwise clueless of what's going on in the world, because they can't be bothered to follow media which don't tell them what they want to hear.

quote:

The problem with all those "mysteries" and "revelations" is that they typically aren't - people are just too ignorant and bloody lazy to inform themselves and follow news other than what social media algorithms and media bubbles catering to their established opinion feed them. Same for the "embargoed" story about France blocking EU ammo purchases - this was reported over a week ago, before Macron and von der Leyen went to China. Incidentally, it's not the only quarrel about EU money for arms related to Ukraine going on; from the same source, Estonia is being accused of calling like-new prices for reimbursement of old equipment they supplied.

Well, maybe the EU should take care of it then?
Perhaps Ukraine is a European problem and NATO and especially the United States should stay out of it?

But perhaps we are only there to cover up for the Bidens' grifting...
And VDH, above, is right as usual.

quote:

The only way individual cases work to create the hopeful expectation of imminent breakdown is to "uncover" them to people who are otherwise clueless of what's going on in the world, because they can't be bothered to follow media which don't tell them what they want to hear.

Maybe 'following' the media IS the problem...

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Perhaps Ukraine is a European problem and NATO and especially the United States should stay out of it?

Huh? We're supposed to drop support for Ukraine or people in the US media might cook up conspiracy theories and publish them because we didn't let Europe handle it?

quote:

people in the US media might cook up conspiracy theories and publish them

People in the US media are covering for the Biden regime's lies to the American people.

Tucker noted that the government’s internal records say the reverse opposite of the lies the U.S. government and its credulous cronies in the corporate media have been peddling for 14 months:

“The second thing we learned from these slides is that despite direct U.S. involvement, Ukraine is in fact losing the war. Seven Ukrainians are being killed for every Russian. Ukrainian air defenses have been utterly degraded. Ukraine is losing.”

Tucker also accurately concluded that, absent Congressional approval, the proxy war is radioactive-level illegal: “But Lloyd Austin has not been arrested for committing that crime,” Tucker said. “Instead, the only man who has been taken into custody or likely ever will be, is a 21 year old Massachusetts air national guardsmen.”

Here’s Tucker’s 10-minute monologue:

I'm all for Europe solving Europe's problems.

quote:

Tucker noted that the government’s internal records say the reverse opposite of the lies the U.S. government and its credulous cronies in the corporate media have been peddling for 14 months:

“The second thing we learned from these slides is that despite direct U.S. involvement, Ukraine is in fact losing the war. Seven Ukrainians are being killed for every Russian. Ukrainian air defenses have been utterly degraded. Ukraine is losing.”

Tucker's relying on slides of intelligence leaks being something we can all take at face value. The leaks themselves have been altered; that's why it was unclear where they initially came from, how accurate they are and why they were released.

We're going to have to wait to see what's accurate and what's not in those leaks before we're going to be able to know what parts of it can be relied on.

And, once again, the fact that some random dude in the media (or with a podcast, or with a website, or with the occasional column) is willing to publish conspiracy theories is no reason to reshape foreign policy. People will make up and publish conspiracy theories just to fortify a political position or make a buck.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Perhaps Ukraine is a European problem and NATO and especially the United States should stay out of it?

Huh? We're supposed to drop support for Ukraine or people in the US media might cook up conspiracy theories and publish them because we didn't let Europe handle it?

It is amazing how quick these same people forgot when Europe, both through NATO and as individuals helped us in our response to 9/11 and in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Even just closing airspace and denying us access to their bases in and around CentCom would have made operations in Afghanistan a whole lot harder to undertake.

But hey, let's get our information from alt-right and/or russian backed conspiracy blogs, because that information is so much more trustworthy.

^^ It's also amazing given the discussions around Macron's latest shennanigans with Xi that people don't realize that our ability to take on China will depend on the combination of demands imposed on us for the sake of European security and the degree to which we receive assistance from Europe either in the Pacific or elsewhere around the globe. Russia is undeniably both an Atlantic and Pacific power, and the Chinese know perfectly well that Russia can help China spread our forces thinner around the globe - as long as Russia actually has the conventional forces (no, they're not going to get in a nuclear war for China) to pose an effective threat in Europe.

War propaganda is powerful stuff. There's no peace process because the folks financing this slaughter don't want peace. It's exactly what many of us though it was from day one...a proxy war. Bizarre the level of support for this mess in the US.

WHEN AN EDITORIAL LIKE THIS COMES OUT OF BOSTON, YOU KNOW THERE IS A BIG PROBLEM!



Excellent Boston Herald Editorial

Opinion by Peter Lucas - Wednesday
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.


Joe Biden could have been a good president. All he had to do was leave things alone. Instead, he blundered into the office and wrecked the country.


https://www.bostonherald.com/2...recking-the-country/