[ZH] Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in a new interview has speculated over the reasons behind Victoria Nuland stepping down from her high-ranking position as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number three top official in the State Department.
Her retirement was announced by her boss Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday. But the question is why now when the administration is attempting to stay the course and present a strong continued stance on Ukraine, also as Biden is still seeking to get tens of billions in defense aid through Republicans in the House.
While there have been rumors that maybe she could be in poor or declining health, McGovern has told Russia's Sputnik that the notoriously hawkish Nuland was a liability at a moment NATO and Russia are inching closer to direct nuclear-armed confrontation.
"My best guess here is that the CIA and the Defense Department and the NSA got this message around saying, 'look, Victoria's got her own agenda here,’" said McGovern.
The former CIA official continued to speculate: "’The president doesn't really want to strike these ammo depots in Russia or knock down the [Crimean] Bridge. So we got to rein her in, I guess it's time for her to go to early retirement.’"
Another theory, though not necessarily contradictory to the above, has been advanced by professor of national security at Bowie State University Dr. Matthew Crosston.
He laid out what "a staunch anti-Putinist Nuland was and how fervently she wanted to continue to utilize Ukraine as a platform in which to continue to weaken and/or slight Russia on the global stage — and perhaps even up the ante in that conflict with her support of sending ballistic missiles into Ukraine." But she also knows the Ukrainian side is losing.
She may have seen the writing on the wall as Ukraine forces are in retreat, and wanted to bail before potential total defeat:
"She undoubtedly understood that if American support lessons or wanes, Ukraine loses, period," Crosston pointed out. "Perhaps she did not want to be in the Administration that would be responsible for that outcome."
But both McGovern and Crosston would agree that with Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (in this capacity she basically ran all of US foreign policy in Europe), ceasefire talks between Kiev and Moscow remained an extremely distant prospect or even an impossibility.
"One thing is certain: as long as Nuland remained in that chair, there was literally no chance such talk could even be theorized. Now it can," Crosston concluded.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald also weighed in on Nuland stepping down in an interview with The Hill. Greenwald describes the "singular monstrousness of Victoria Nuland and her bipartisan, blood-stained, ghoulish career"...
Nuland's temporary replacement for under secretary upon her retirement has been announced as career diplomat John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan. He is currently in the position of the undersecretary of state for management. He oversaw Biden's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and so it is somewhat ironic that he'll also oversee Ukraine policy at this critical juncture where Kiev is clearly against the ropes.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/09/2024 12:29 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Kirill Strelnikov
[RIA] The recent NATO “security conference” in Munich was overshadowed not only by the liberation of Avdiivka by Russian troops (just in time for the curtain of the Sabbath), but also by a scandal in the venerable family: the suddenly bellicose Macron publicly insulted the German Chancellor Scholz and accused him of cowardice towards Russia and betrayal of Ukraine. The long-standing personal enmity between Macron and Scholz has nothing to do with it.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] In Belarus, the results of the parliamentary elections were summed up last week. And now the leaders of the political emigration, or, as Lukashenko calls them, "fugitives," are trying to justify their complete illegitimacy on all available international platforms. And besides, literally force the West to help them "democratize" Belarus.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, referred to by her comrades as the "elected president," recently said at a session of the UN Human Rights Council: "I believe that democracy is the responsibility of every person in the world. If you want to protect democracy, you must help those who fight for it. Because this is not a local, but a global struggle. I believe that the democratic world will show dictators that they will not win."
[PJ] And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. — Ephesians 5: 11
The left-over expression vectors used to manufacture the mRNAs are at contamination levels 100-fold higher than originally proposed and imply trillions of DNA molecules per dose. This has implications for integration into our genome. — Jessica Rose
The old saw tells us it takes only one bad apple to spoil the barrel. Unfortunately, one good apple in a barrel of bad apples does not have a corresponding positive effect. There are, be it said, a small number of good apples in a vast Covid-scam barrel of absolutely horrendous and rotting bad apples, but it has taken an inordinately long time for the better influence to be felt.
Quantitative biologist Alex Washburne, an extremely good apple, has posted a major essay, "Scientists For Science — the "boys will be boys" of science," in which the tactics, strategies, intentions, and deceptions of the globoid villains are laid out plain to see. The con they have promoted is almost beyond belief, both in its scope and its success. Almost every country in the world, the financial elite, corporate Pharma, and the political class as a whole are implicated, with only a few exceptions like Sweden and Belarus. Professors Fredrik Andersson and Lars Jonung revel in the fact that Sweden, almost unique among nations in its pandemic policy, recognized that "China’s authoritarian government should not have served as a guide for a liberal democracy." Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko claims that the World Bank and the IMF offered him $940 million to impose "extreme lockdown on his people," force them to wear face masks, decree strict curfews, establish a police state, and ultimately crash the economy.
The sordid affair begins with bum science. A group called Scientists For Science, which Washburne dubs the "pathogenic academic lobby," includes such prestigious figures, among others, as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Francis Collins, Peter Daszak at EcoHealth Alliance and Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust. All have "financial conflicts of interest connecting [them[ to the Wuhan labs" and "ties directly to the researchers of concern [who] may have caused the pandemic." Washburne is being ginger here, relying on a modal rather than a declarative, but the purport of his 16-page thesis leaves no doubt that such was the case.
[Gateway] The drugs wore off. He's a dilapidated husk
Joe Biden’s handlers decided to send him out on the road for a rally on Friday following his disastrous State of the Union Address Thursday night.
Joe Biden used the bully pulpit to attack his predecessor and blame the former President for his unpopular and miserable record.
We’ve never seen such a deranged partisan hatefest like what Old Joe put us through last night.
The speech obviously took its toll. On Friday night Joe Biden traveled to Pennsylvania for a small rally of supporters. Joe was shot.
He’s never had such a confused performance. It was gaffe after gaffe.
Joe Biden asked the audience to send him to Congress.
Joe Biden: "Pennsylvania, I have a message for you: Send me to Congress."
Joe Biden was never a US Representative and left the Senate in January 2009.
Biden then told the crowd that our freedoms came under attack on July the 6th? Huh?
If you’re going to lie, Joe, it helps to keep your dates right anyway!
And Joe Biden admitted that almost every world leader has grabbed his arm, pulled him aside, and said, "You can’t win again."
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/09/2024 08:16 ||
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[National Election Defense Coalition] It’s obvious that connecting voting machines directly to the Internet through wireless modems or other means increases the vulnerability of those systems to hacking. Though we have frequently been told that voting machines are not connected to the Internet[1] this is not always the case. Many states’ voting machines include wireless modems which transmit their unofficial results over the Internet. Some states allow their vote tabulation computers to be connected to the Internet.
These configurations provide increased opportunities for nation-state actors, partisan criminals, hacktivist or other malign attackers to gain access to our voting machines and manipulate and/or disrupt our elections.
Last year, with our allies and over two dozen computer security experts, NEDC sent this letter to the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is the federal agency responsible for creating federal guidelines for voting systems and certifying equipment to those standards. We urged the agencies to encourage states to discontinue the use of wireless modems.
The EAC has until now refused to issue guidelines banning the use of wireless modems. The EAC has even insisted that "no EAC certified voting system is connected to the Internet," but that’s only because no vendor has chosen to pursue EAC certification for a voting system configured with wireless modems. The current federal standards would allow wireless modems in federally certified systems and it’s possible if not likely the next version of the federal VVSG will continue this, if citizens don’t speak out.
It’s important to note that the federal guidelines are voluntary; states are free to adopt them or not as they choose and compliance with the VVSG has had no impact on a state’s ability to receive federal funding. But the VVSG help shape the market and a ban on wireless modems and Internet connectivity will send a strong message to states discouraging this practice.
IS INTERNET CONNECTIVITY NECESSARY?
Wireless modems and Internet connectivity are not at all necessary to conduct elections.
Recognizing the significant security threat internet connectivity and wireless modems create, many states have prohibited them in their voting systems, adopting strong and secure methods of transmitting election results without needlessly increasing the exposure of their voting machines to hacks.
Make no mistake, eliminating wireless modems and Internet connectivity will not guarantee our voting machines can’t be manipulated or hacked through corrupted USB sticks, insider attacks or supply chain corruption which is why all votes should be cast on paper ballots and all elections should be audited by manually counting a sample of the paper ballots.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have confirmed that our foreign adversaries have targeted election networks in all fifty states for cyber attacks. The EAC must take these warning deadly seriously and pass the VVSG with an added ban on wireless modems and Internet connectivity in voting systems.
[Federalist] President Biden’s use of taxpayer dollars to rig the 2024 election in Democrats’ favor is a whole new level of sinister — and only House Republicans possess the power to stop him.
Two months after taking office, Biden took the unprecedented step of ordering hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration. Under Executive Order 14019, all departments were required to use U.S. taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. The head of each department was directed to draft "a strategic plan" explaining how his or her agency intended to fulfill Biden’s edict.
Federal departments were also told to collaborate with so-called "nonpartisan third-party organizations" that have been "approved" by the administration to supply "voter registration services on agency premises." Many of these groups are extremely left-wing, such as Demos and the ACLU.
The secrecy surrounding these "Bidenbucks" in the years since its enactment prompted House Republicans to seek further information about the directive and its implementation by federal agencies.
#1
Putin, Obama, and Biden were 'appointed.' Why do we need costly, time consuming elections? Who are these people who believe they can simply vote us out of office ?
[American Thinker] The similarities between the Obama administration and Italian fascism have been pointed out many times. Over a dozen articles about this are on this site alone (1, 2, 3, 4). It is usually said that fascism is a strain of socialism in which the means of production are beneficially owned by private persons but controlled by the government.
Both the Obama administration and Mussolini used a financial crisis to take over banks and industry. Mussolini openly assumed complete control of them, even though partial private ownership was allowed to remain. The U.S. government bailed out banks and the auto industry in 2008, before Obama was inaugurated. It did not own the banks, but the bailout created public sentiment in favor of government control of the banks and more regulation of all businesses. Obama used this sentiment to its full extent. Elizabeth Warren led the creation of the partisan Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which wielded unprecedented powers and was unaccountable to Congress. By 2016, the corporate world was already subverted and controlled by the Democrat administration. For example, all banks refused to deal with Donald Trump in 2016. The democrat-controlled media misrepresented the cause of this discrimination. Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau effectively allowed the ruling administration to strangle its opposition financially.
Citizens United v. FEC, decided by the Supreme Court in January 2010, very likely radicalized Democrats even further into total fascism. The Supreme Court confirmed that private corporations have the First Amendment right to use their money to support political candidates; Democrats concluded that they would have to control corporations to win elections.
Starting in 2010, the Obama administration viciously targeted any effective opposition, including the Tea Party movement, which was obliterated. The IRS was most notorious for targeting Tea Party organizations, but the DOJ (Eric Holder) and the FBI (Robert Mueller) also participated. What do we call regimes that destroy non-violent opposition movements?
A few months before the 2012 elections, Obama’s DOJ sued Gallup for hinting that the government had manipulated unemployment numbers. Additionally, Obama’s DOJ sued Standard & Poor’s for $5 billion for downgrading the federal debt, Treasurys. As a result, nobody challenges the false current inflation numbers, and the credit rating agencies do not dare downgrade the Treasurys below their current AA+/AAA rating.
The Obama administration also waged and eventually won the war on Fox News. It also chilled media criticism of Obama and the administration’s agenda. The DOJ and FBI (Robert Mueller and James Comey) criminally prosecuted and imprisoned filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and lied about the initiation and predication of that investigation. (D’Souza had produced a film criticizing and mocking Obama.)
[Jpost] The United Nations report on the sexual violence of October 7 is not upsetting because of the lack of international response, it is upsetting because Israel is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the report only exemplifies that.
A team on a mission to Israel, led by the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, uncovered substantial evidence confirming that individuals, including fatalities, hostages, and survivors from October 7, were the victims of sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by terrorists.
The release of this report marked the first occasion on which an international organization has substantiated Israel’s claims following October 7.
The team found “clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, has been committed against hostages.”
They bore witness to a “pattern” that “may be indicative of some forms of... sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” in which “victims, mostly women, [were] found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.”
The report, however, is missing the most crucial form of evidence: firsthand survivor testimonies. While Patten and her team spoke to friends, family, and witnesses and were presented with mountains of video and photographic evidence, they were not able to interview survivors. Their testimonies – which these women are still emotionally unequipped to give – are sorely missing from the report.
KATZ AND GUTERRES
Additionally, before the report was even formally released, Foreign Minister Israel Katz had already summoned the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, back to Israel for “consultations” after condemning UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres because he “did not order the convening of the Security Council in light of the findings, in order to declare Hamas a terrorist organization and impose sanctions on its supporters.”
The following day, Katz said that Guterres was “working to diminish the serious report he himself commissioned on Hamas’s sexual crimes.”
There are several issues with this response.
First of all, and most obviously, when exactly did Katz expect Guterres to respond? Does a report not need to be publicly released before one publicly responds to it?
Secondly, and more importantly, the report was not strong enough for any organization to responsibly take further action in consequence, and that is because of the missing testimonies and the crucial forensic evidence that was reduced to ashes when the victims were set aflame.
We cannot change this lack of testimony in the coming days, weeks, months, and possibly years. The acute trauma of experiencing such extreme sexual violence ultimately shatters one’s being. It tears its victims apart, sets them aflame from within, and leaves them feeling as charred as those murdered.
So how could we, as people who care for one another, as a nation that worries about the victims in its ranks, demand that they speak up? Even if it is to drill the evidence into the world’s mind until it ultimately recognizes the horrific crimes committed against Israeli women – and, indeed, men – that is too big a burden and it can come from no one but them.
Nevertheless, since this is evidence we cannot provide at present or assumedly even in the immediate future, despite the report presenting evidence that Israelis were indeed brutalized on October 7, it ultimately looks worse for Israel.
This is because, without the solidified first-person evidence that Patten and her team came to witness, the anti-Israel crowd now has more fuel than ever to claim that Israel is inventing these allegations. After all, what have they been telling us this whole time? “Give us proof.”
That, of course, is a disgusting statement unto itself. There is no other conflict in which you would ever imagine that the world would look at victims of rape, gang rape, and necrophilia and demand to see evidence. It is the lowest form of disrespect to sexual assault victims worldwide.
This two-sided coin is a tricky one.
On the international side, compassion and understanding must be exhibited because these Israelis are victims of being told that they are spewing falsehoods.
On the Israeli side, there needs to be an understanding of the international hesitancy and a fight to bring to light that which is verified, that which is clear and exact, and that which, beyond a doubt, proves to the world precisely what the massacre of October 7 really happened.
[Ynet] Touring the 98th Division's operational hub in Khan Younis indicates the war is far from over; meanwhile, the commander praises his young warriors for rapidly gaining unparalleled combat skills, marking a new era in the IDF's military evolution There is a theory that the combat is necessary (though not sufficient) training for combat
"Revenge" and "7/10 unforgiven, have a nice flight" - these messages are spray-painted on the makeshift landing pad atop a three-story villa on the outskirts of Khan Younis. From here, drones are launched to guide the forces and aircraft.
Beyond the wall, in a dimly lit room illuminated mainly by the glow of screens, reservists under the command of Colonel Israel Friedler watch what's happening a mile south, in Bani Suheila.
Three screens display two camera angles and another with aerial footage marking friendly and enemy forces. Two Palestinian youths running past another destroyed building arouse suspicion. It quickly becomes clear they are hurrying to catch a ride from a passing car. There is no need to target them with aircraft.
About an hour earlier, a similar identification led to the elimination of 10 terrorists by a fighter jet bomb, according to the commander who, until a few months ago, was training commanders.
Friedler, 43, has experienced wars, but nothing compares to the intensity of the past five months. Since October 7, his unit has lost 21 soldiers, and his wife, staying at home in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut with their six children, visits each of the families while the fighting rages on. At one point, seven of Friedler's eight brothers (he also has four sisters) participated in the fighting.
From a brief visit to the logistical and operational hub of the 98th Division, which is still orchestrating the intensive operation in Khan Younis, it's apparent that the conflict is far from over. And if a cease-fire takes place?
"We'll do as we did last time, wait at our prepared positions, and then return to fight," the commander says confidently.
We're not delving into the big questions for now. After five months, Yahya Sinwar is still in hiding, and most other Hamas leaders remain unharmed.
There's a consensus on the ground that entering Rafah is necessary, yet there's no concrete knowledge of if or when it will happen.
The vast extent of the tunnels was unknown to intelligence, but that's not the focus here, especially a day after a kilometer-long tunnel was discovered and destroyed in the division’s sector, with vehicles continuously passing on the road.
"The rain was a blessing; until yesterday, every movement kicked up terrible dust. We prefer mud, but just a bit," he says.
Itamar, a reservist and commander of the Infantry School Brigade reconnaissance battalion, observes from the third floor the Hamad neighborhood, where he briefly lived.
He came to Netzar Hazani during the 2005 disengagement with his father, retired Brig. Gen. Effi Eitam, then leader of the National Religious Party.
In uniform, Itamar is cautious with his words, merely admitting, "It's heart-wrenching to see the place where the Gush Katif settlements once stood. Now we've had to return, and it's not with joy."
As smoke and the sounds of explosions emanate from the direction Itamar points out, now populated with Qatari financial aid, Friedler reminds us that hundreds of terrorists have been killed there in recent days, with many more still inside. The task of dismantling Hamas will take more time, he stresses. In order to minimize civilian casualties - not that it will stop the current blood libelers.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PJ] And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. — Ephesians 5: 11 
[Gateway] 
[American Thinker] The similarities between the Obama administration and Italian fascism have been pointed out many times. Over a dozen articles about this are on this site alone (1, 2, 3, 4). It is usually said that fascism is a strain of socialism in which the means of production are beneficially owned by private persons but controlled by the government..jpg)
