By Joe Lauria / Consortium News

A Washington Post headline last week was a bombshell for someone who has only been reading about the Ukraine war in The Washington Post and other Western media: “U.S. doubts Ukraine counteroffensive will yield big gains, leaked document says.”

The story admits that Western media audiences have been misled about the course of the war, that essentially what mainstream media has been reporting about Ukraine has been a pack of lies: namely that Ukraine is winning the war and is poised to launch an offensive that will lead to a final victory. 

Instead, the second paragraph of the piece makes clear the leaked documents show the long-planned Ukrainian offensive will fail miserably — “a marked departure from the Biden administration’s public statements about the vitality of Ukraine’s military.”  

In other words, U.S. officials have been lying about the state of the war to the public and to reporters who have faithfully reported their every word without a hint of skepticism.

The Post said, as if it’s a bad thing, that the leaks will likely “embolden critics who feel the United States and NATO should do more to push for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.”

That has begun to happen. Writing in the uber-Establishment Foreign Affairs, former State Department official Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, write that “it is difficult to feel sanguine about where the war is headed.”

In “The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine: A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table,” they say:

“The best path forward is a sequenced two-pronged strategy aimed at first bolstering Ukraine’s military capability and then, when the fighting season winds down late this year, ushering Moscow and Kyiv from the battlefield to the negotiating table.”  

The article does not mention the leaks, though it was published after the disclosures made clear that the Ukrainian offensive, intended to  break through Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, would fail.

Filled with the usual talk about Ukraine having better “operational skill” than Russia, and that the war will end in a “stalemate,” the piece represents an emerging strategy in the West: namely that before negotiating, Ukraine needs to launch its offensive to gain back some territory, “imposing heavy losses on Russia, foreclosing Moscow’s military options, and increasing its willingness to contemplate a diplomatic settlement.”

But that is a tall order. Moscow would be unlikely to negotiate at the end of the Ukrainian offensive, particularly as the article admits the “Russian military’s numerical superiority” and that Ukraine is “facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.” 

Moscow was ready to cut a deal with Kiev one month after Russia’s intervention but the West, with its strategy of lengthening the war to weaken Russia, quashed it. Why would Moscow accept a deal now when Ukraine is at its weakest and Russia is poised to make significant gains on the battlefield?

The Foreign Affairs piece admits, “This diplomatic gambit may well fail. Even if Russia and Ukraine continue to take significant losses, one or both of them may prefer to keep fighting.”

“Come the end of this fighting season,” the article says, “the United States and Europe will also have good reason to abandon their stated policy of supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes,’ as U.S. President Joe Biden has put it.”

And what comes next? “NATO allies would start a strategic dialogue with Russia on arms control and the broader European security architecture.”  

Incredibly this is what Russia was asking for before its February 2022 intervention and it was rebuffed by NATO and the U.S.  Now a Foreign Affairs article is recommending it.

Is there no better sign that Ukraine has lost this war?

Going Ahead With the Offensive Anyway

The strategy of Ukraine going ahead with an offensive it knows will achieve little is Kiev’s last gasp — unless delusional neocons continue to outmaneuver the realists in Washington.

Most importantly for the West, the failure of this last-gasp attempt would serve as a way for it to escape the disaster it has created for itself: namely, the backfiring of the economic war on Russia; the failure of the information war in the non-West and ultimately defeat on the battlefield in its proxy war.   

Already in February, French President Emmanuel Macron, who is also pushing this strategy, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy that the game was up.  This news was brought to us by the establishment Wall Street Journal. 

And then ten days later U.S. intelligence provided a story to The New York Times that a pro-Ukraine “group,” and possibly the Ukrainian government itself, was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, a way of distancing the U.S. from Kiev as the exit ramp looms into sight. 

Why Did the MSM Publish the Leaks?

Why did the Times, the Post and other establishment outlets publish stories about these leaks if they severely undermined their own credibility? There are three possibilities.   

The first is simply competition.  The Times or the Post may have gotten word that their rival had their hands on the leaks and did not want to be beat. There is almost nothing worse for an editor or reporter (in the petty world of journalism) then having to “match” a competitors’ story.

The second reason has to do with keeping up appearances. These leaks were eventually to come out somewhere and may not have been easily ignored. What would it have looked like if the big papers didn’t have it first?

More importantly, corporate journalism needs to keep up the pretense that it is actually doing journalism, i.e. that it will publish material from time to time that makes their governments look bad, and in this case, even themselves. They have to convince the public that they haven’t entirely given up on adversarial journalism if they are to survive.  

It was the same when corporate outlets partnered with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish leaks that exposed U.S. war crimes. But eventually the media turned on Assange and WikiLeaks, and fell into line with the state. 

Why the Media Went After the Leaker

And that it is indeed what has happened here. After splashy stories about the leaks, the Times and the Post, teaming with Western intelligence-backed Bellingcat, turned their attention to finding the leaker, in what Elizabeth Vos in an article today on Consortium News argues makes corporate media the anti-WikiLeaks.

Rather than protecting the source of leaks, vital to the public, they hunted down the alleged leaker, 21-year old Air National Guardsman Jack Texiera, who was arrested by military-clad F.B.I. agents outside his Massachusetts home. 

So what is the third reason why the major media published the leaks?

Very likely for the same reason they published the stories about Macron and Scholz telling Zelensky he’s lost the war, and that the Ukrainian government may have been responsible for the Nord Stream sabotage:  to lay the ground work for the U.S. and its allies to pull the plug on their Ukrainian adventure by finally admitting Ukraine is losing.

Towards that end, there is speculation that Texiera did not act alone with the motive of impressing his teenage followers on the Discord chat forum, as the press has reported. 

Former C.I.A. analyst Larry Johnson believes Texiera was set up, possibly by a senior officer.  Johnson thinks this because among the documents Texiera allegedly leaked was one from the Central Intelligence Agency Operations Center, where Johnson used to work.

“CIA Operations Center produces two daily reports — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is not a ‘Community’ product, i.e., it is not distributed to the other intelligence agencies. It is an internal CIA document (of course, it is available to the Director of National Intelligence), ” Johnson wrote on his website Son of the New American Revolution.

Texiera was not in the C.I.A. so there is no way he’d have access to an Operations Center document, Johnson wrote. So how did he get his hands on it?

The implication is that Texiera may have been a patsy for someone within the realist wing of the U.S. military or intelligence establishment who opposes the neocons’ obsession with continuing the war at all costs.  

The neocons are not going down without a fight. John Bolton, the former U.S. national security advisor and chief neocon, wrote a desperate piece in The Wall Street Journal last week, titled, “A New American Grand Strategy to Counter Russia and China.”  

Bolton gets it that the world is changing, and not in America’s favor. So his response is not to reverse failed U.S. policy, for the U.S. to become part of the rest of the world rather than trying to dominate it, but to double down like a riverboat gambler.  His solution: raise military spending to Reagan-era levels; resume underground nuclear bomb testing and taking “the North Atlantic Treaty Organization global, inviting Japan, Australia, Israel and others committed to NATO defense-spending targets to join.”

Bolton laughingly says the U.S. must “exclude” Moscow and Beijing from the Middle East, where both capitals are orchestrating the most dramatic diplomatic transformation in decades.

But Boltons saves his best laugh for Ukraine:

“After Ukraine wins its war with Russia, we must aim to split the Russia-China axis. Moscow’s defeat could unseat Mr. Putin’s regime. What comes next is a government of unknowable composition. New Russian leaders may or may not look to the West rather than Beijing, and might be so weak that the Russian Federation’s fragmentation, especially east of the Urals, isn’t inconceivable.”

Even if the ludicrous Bolton is dismissed, there’s still a major obstacle in the realists’ way: Biden’s re-election campaign. He says he’s going to announce soon. He’s already thrown his lot in with the neocons.

Is there any conceivable way that he could accept Ukraine losing this war, after all the blue and yellow flag-waving, without also losing the election? 

The Biden team’s aim was to bleed Russia. But it is Ukraine that is hemorrhaging. Will reality at last overcome delusion in Washington?

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/19/joe-lauria-leaks-spelling-the-end-for-ukraine/

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MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

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WASHINGTON — Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene plunged a House Homeland Security Committee hearing into chaos Wednesday by accusing Rep. Eric Swalwell of having a “sexual relationship with a Chinese spy” — leading Democrats to unsuccessfully demand that the remark be purged from the record.

Greene (R-Ga.) made the comment moments after Swalwell (D-Calif.) accused her of “anti-police rhetoric” and showed a print-out of a tweet she wrote promoting “Defund the FBI” merchandise in response to purported bureau bias.

“That was quite entertaining from someone that had a sexual relationship with a Chinese spy — and everyone knows it,” Greene shot back, referring to Swalwell’s alleged romance with suspected Chinese agent Fang Fang.

“I move to take her words down,” exclaimed Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). 

“Completely inappropriate!”

Asked by committee chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) which words Goldman would like deleted from the record, the Lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn Democrat answered: “Everything that the gentlelady from Georgia has said.”

“No, you need to be more specific,” Green replied.

“The accusations of an affair with a Chinese spy. Those are engaging in personalities,” Goldman said.

After several minutes of study, Green declared, “The chair rules that those words that were spoken are not going to be stricken from the record.”

Democrats protested, with Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) complaining: “I don’t think there’s any question about what the gentlelady has said … We have never had an accusation made of any member like that and I’m appalled by it. We all ought to be embarrassed by it.”

When Thompson appealed the decision, Republicans on the committee voted to table the motion, effectively denying it and keeping the accusation in the meeting’s official transcript.

Swalwell’s office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

It’s unclear if Swalwell has ever specifically denied having a sexual relationship with Fang, who reportedly returned to China in 2015 as US authorities became aware of her conduct. 

Swalwell received a “defensive briefing” from the FBI, also in 2015, after Fang reportedly fundraised for his campaign and placed an intern in his office.

Most, if not all, of Swalwell’s GOP colleagues, including on the House Intelligence Committee, were unaware of his ties to Fang before a bombshell 2020 report in Axios exposed her operation, in which she also allegedly seduced two Midwestern mayors. Swalwell’s brother and father remained Facebook friends with Fang until after her role was publicly revealed. 

House Republicans booted Swalwell from the intelligence committee this year, citing the relationship.

Greene delivered further barbs to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — who was testifying before the committee — for not doing more to address record-high US drug overdose deaths caused by fentanyl smuggled from China.

“How many more people do we have to watch die … how long are you going to continue this outrage, complete outrage, where China is poisoning America’s children?” Greene asked Mayorkas.

“We are not letting it go on, we are fighting the scourge,” Mayorkas said.

“You are a liar, you are letting this go on and the numbers prove it,” Greene said.

Green did agree to strike Greene’s attack on Mayorkas from the record, which per House rules barred her from speaking any more during the hearing.

About 196,000 Americans died from fentanyl between 2018 and 2021. 

Complete figures are not yet available from 2022 but are estimated to remain near the record of roughly 71,000 US fentanyl deaths the previous year.

READ MORE:

https://nypost.com/2023/04/19/marjorie-taylor-greene-says-eric-swalwell-slept-with-chinese-spy/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_x72Sjrflo

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WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is mishandling its probe into Hunter Biden, a lawyer representing an IRS supervisor said in a letter to US lawmakers.

“I represent a career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent who has been overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high-profile, controversial subject since early 2020 and would like to make protected whistleblower disclosures to Congress,” the letter said on Wednesday.

The letter was sent by attorney Mark Lytle to lawmakers, including US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and US Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden.

The sensitive investigation relates to Hunter Biden, US media reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The disclosures by the IRS supervisor contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee and involve failure to mitigate conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case and detail examples of preferential treatment that would not normally be followed if the subject of the probe were not politically connected, the letter said.

The IRS supervisor has already made protected disclosures internally and to the Justice Department Office of Inspector General, the letter added.

Hunter Biden has faced scrutiny from investigators regarding whether he made a false statement in connection with a gun purchase. US media has reported that investigators have believed for months that they hold enough evidence to indict Biden.

On Tuesday, US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she has seen evidence of the Biden family running a criminal enterprise, involving multiple family members and shell companies. The statement came after Greene and other lawmakers reviewed thousands of pages of financial records at the Treasury Department.

Greene alleged that the “Biden crime family” participated in human trafficking and benefited financially from foreign countries as a direct result of President Joe Biden’s positions of authority in the US government.

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https://sputnikglobe.com/20230420/irs-supervisor-tells-us-lawmakers-hunter-biden-probe-being-mishandling-by-agency-1109675492.html

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The world, we have a problem. It is Houston.

America is out of control, and is the main threat to the world’s peace, security and civilizations.

America is out of control in its prosecution of war. No nation has loved war more, hot or cold. It has waged war in all but 17 years of its existence since 1776. The frequency of its wars have increased since 1989. It then began the New World Order Wars, in which America ‘made its own reality’, ‘bombed countries back into the Stone Age’, and lost its head in its unipolar status.

It is out of control in its petulant diplomacy. Its foreign policy think tanks call to remove world leaders. American diplomats insult countries. Its geopolitical strategists try to bypass the United Nations, and make plans for every corner of the earth on their grand chessboard. Congressional Leaders grandstand with Taiwan, but its President and Secretary of State cannot even book a call with China.

Its political comity has imploded. The Biden Administration celebrated the Oscar for the film Navalny, which mythologised the Russian ‘opposition leader’, by arresting its main political rival and Presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

America has lost its mind in its culture. Its films, universities, newspapers, intellectuals, celebrities, social media and vast ideaplex are travesties of their inheritance. All that is solid transitions into air. The West has been rewilded, with noxious weeds, not natural beauty.

Its society is exploding. Life expectancy is stagnant. Inequality is notorious. Identity hatreds proliferate. Gun violence is licentious. Crime, homelessness, addiction and uncared for mental illness have ruined its cities. Its century-long neglect of basic institutions of social protection is coming home to roost on the streets of San Francisco.

The social crisis will get worse when the American financial bubble bursts. American economic commentators are freaking out that the world would dare to dethrone the dollar empire. But the BRICS have overtaken the G7 in global output, and the world is returning to real economies of commodities and products, not fire sales of finance, insurance and real estate.

Worst of all, America is out of control in its exceptionalism. Its elites believe in their manifest destiny as the universal republic. Its factions may differ on when the empire, that dare not say its name, ascended to this privileged status. But they all imagine the eternal recurrence of the New American Century.

America has bullied the world for too long. The Wolfowitz doctrine of the early 1990’s still stands. Any place on earth that dares to resist American unipolar dominance must be crushed, and their resistance declared the work of the Devil.

The bullies land their punches while screaming ‘democracy’. The world has been gas lit by American democracy for too long. All those 800 military bases around the world are defending democracy. All those intelligence operations, the drones, the assassinations, the puppets from South Vietnam to Ukraine; they are all sacred lies that serve democracy.

For decades now, compliant nations, like Australia, have fought to defend this lie of a bankrupt democracy. The advance of American Glory has been cloaked in the rhetoric of democracy and appeasement. We keep rerunning the Hollywood script of World War Two. You don’t want to appease this dictator, or that authoritarian, or the next incarnation of the Red Menace, do you?

But the world now needs to stand up to the real bully. The world should no longer appease the real threat to world peace. The world should no longer be afraid of Americans. The world must defeat America.

There is no point appealing to reason, dialogue and diplomacy. Americans do not do diplomacy. There is no point appealing to the long-term interests of Americans, as Kishore Mahbubanni has gracefully tried. America does not recognise the interests of other nations. The derangement of the American Mind has gone too far. It has fled reality.

If America refuses to accept the modest status of equality in a multipolar world, then America must be defeated. One hopes that America could change through a peaceful political transition, but the historical record suggests that is unlikely. Defeat may be the only way to end American supremacy, aggression and exceptionalism.

These are difficult words to write for this author who loves peace, dialogue, diplomacy and cultural diversity. But, we have learned America is forever at war with those values. Oswald Spengler wrote, ‘Peace is a desire. War is a fact.’ Prayers of peace are weak desires, when the real warmongers mark the next sacrifice to Mars. Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow. After AUKUS, is Australia so far behind? We, who love peace, must face the facts that American Greatness is founded on war.

The great problem of statecraft facing all world leaders, even the sub-imperial power of Australia, is how to defeat America, without provoking nuclear war and a catastrophic backlash against the rest of the world. Defeat is not destruction. Defeat is not humiliation, nor revenge. Defeat to America is not death to America. Defeat without total war could be America’s rebirth. It could spur America to retrench its over-extended empire, and repair its republic. Defeat offers hope to the American people, but no mercy for the Atlanticist elites.

The only hope for citizens of the West is that the leaders of the BRICS nations display signs that they may solve that problem of how to defeat America, even if it may take ten years. That was what Xi JinPing meant when he told Vladimir Putin that the world is changing in ways not seen for 100 years. Perhaps, Xi Jinping also offered a minor role driving those changes to Emmanuel Macron, when the French President visited Beijing in March, if he would only assert ‘strategic autonomy’.

Sadly, very few Australian political, bureaucratic and cultural elites dare even ask that question or examine the real history of the bloody American Century. We have never known strategic autonomy. Our country then is fated to sink with the defeated Pequod, clinging to the wooden leg of its demented Captain Ahab.

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https://johnmenadue.com/defeat-to-america/

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Dollar losing reserve status at ‘stunning’ pace – Eurizon CEO

The US currency's share of global reserves fell ten times faster in the last year than in the previous 20, Stephen Jen has said

Western sanctions against Russia have accelerated the move away from the US dollar worldwide, Stephen Jen, the CEO of London-based asset management company Eurizon, warned on Tuesday.

The dollar’s share in global reserves fell ten times faster last year than over the past two decades, Jen said, as cited by Bloomberg. The process began as some countries started to look for alternatives after seeing Russia’s assets frozen abroad and the country cut off from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, according to Jen.

Adjusting for “wild” exchange rate fluctuations last year, the dollar has lost roughly 11% of its market share since 2016 and double that amount since 2008, Jen and his Eurizon colleague Joana Freire wrote in a note. 

“The dollar suffered a stunning collapse in 2022 in its market share as a reserve currency, presumably due to its muscular use of sanctions,” the note reads. “Exceptional actions taken by the US and its allies against Russia have startled large reserve-holding countries,” most of which are emerging economies, Jen and Freire explained. 

The greenback now represents about 58% of total global reserves, down from 73% in 2001 when it was the “indisputable hegemonic reserve,” the experts said.

China and India are working to use their own currencies to settle international trade, while Russia started to accept payments for its exports from a number of countries in rubles and Chinese yuan.

Earlier this week, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called on developing nations to move away from the US dollar in favor of their own currencies.

Following Lula’s comments, US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen admitted that the role of the dollar as the world reserve currency could diminish due to Washington using its leverage over the global financial system to pursue its geopolitical goals through sanctions.

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https://www.rt.com/business/575049-dollar-losing-reserve-status/

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"SANCTIONS LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE" JOE-STUPID SOMETHING LIKE THAT SAID....

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President Joe Biden will stop at nothing to protect America against security threats posed by China, even if the actions he must take damage his own nation’s economy, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has claimed.

“National security is of paramount importance in our relationship with China,” Yellen said on Wednesday in a speech in Washington. She gave the example of blocking China from obtaining certain technologies, adding, “We will not compromise on these concerns, even when they force trade-offs with our economic interests.”

Yellen accused China of “unfair” economic practices and of “taking a more confrontational posture”toward the US and its allies in recent years. Washington has a “broad set of tools” to deal with security threats from China, she added, such as export controls and sanctions against entities that provide support to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

“The Treasury Department has sanctions authorities to address threats related to cybersecurity and China’s military-civil fusion,” Yellen said. “We also carefully review foreign investments in the United States for national security risks and take necessary actions to address any such risks. And we are considering a program to restrict certain US outbound investments in specific sensitive technologies with significant national security implications.”

The Biden administration has already taken steps to block Chinese companies from securing advanced semiconductor technologies, such as restricting exports of chip-making equipment. Yellen insisted that Washington doesn’t take such actions to gain an economic advantage or to stifle China’s growth and modernization.

Yellen also scolded China for alleged human rights abuses and alleged “no limits” support for Russia amid the Ukraine crisis. She warned that consequences would be severe if China provided material support or helped Russia evade sanctions, and she added that the US would use its “tools”to deter human rights abuses.

“Like national security, we will not compromise on the protection of human rights,” Yellen said. “This principle is foundational to how we engage with the world.”

Beijing has balked at US accusations, suggesting that Washington should “make more effort in solving its own human rights problems.” Chinese leaders also have faulted Washington for a “Cold War mentality” in which Beijing is demonized as a security threat as Biden’s administration tries to contain its economic progress.

“Containment and suppression will not make America great again, nor will it stop China from moving towards national rejuvenation,” Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang told reporters last month.

Yellen admitted earlier this week that Washington’s use of its leverage over the global financial system to sanction other countries could diminish the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Asked about “weaponization” of the US currency, she told CNN that such tactics “could undermine the hegemony of the dollar.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/575100-china-sanctions-impact-us-economy-yellen/

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THE AMERICAN EMPIRE HAS BEEN THE MOST UNFAIR PRACTITIONER OF "COMMERCE", USING ITS MILITARY FOR THREATS AND REMOVING "RECALCITRANT" REGIMES AT WILL.

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