Bungling Biden Pushes China Into Russia's Arms
Tuesday March 21, 2023
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Bungling Biden Pushes China Into Russia's Arms
Tuesday March 21, 2023
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Iraq 20 Years: The Uses and Abuses of National Intelligence Estimates
Tuesday March 21, 2023
A New York Times Magazine article in July 2020 focused on then Secretary of State Powell and his U.N. speech of Feb. 5, 2003 and the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) upon which it is largely based. A lot of the detail in the article may have been new to many readers, but not to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which had been established a month before. VIPS watched the speech, dissected it, and sent their verdict to President George W. Bush before close of business that same afternoon
We gave Powell a charitable grade of “C”, faulting him for, inter alia, not providing needed context and perspective. We should have flunked him outright.
Robert Draper’s article describes how, despite C.I.A.’s strong effort to please, the “case” the agency made for war on Iraq, using such evidence as there was on weapons of mass destruction, was deemed not alarmist enough for Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hawks.
Specifically, the hawks were dissatisfied with the evidence-light, but-alarmist (term of art used was “leaning forward”) Pentagon and White House briefings by CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin in late Dec. 2002 on WMD in Iraq. The hawks started to look elsewhere, since not all senior officials (including Powell) appeared to be “with the program.”
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It’s Moving, It’s Alive! Alvin Bragg Prepares the Ultimate Frankenstein Indictment
Tuesday March 21, 2023
“It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive . . . it’s moving . . . IT’S ALIVE!”
The scene from the 1931 movie “Frankenstein” came to mind this week as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prepared an indictment of former President Donald Trump.
It is the ultimate gravedigger charge, where Bragg unearthed a case from 2016 and, through a series of novel steps, is seeking to bring it back to life.
Of course, like the good doctor, Bragg shows little concern over what he has created in his Frankenstein indictment.
Bragg is combining parts from both state and federal codes.
He is reportedly going to convert a misdemeanor for falsifying financial records into a prosecution of a federal crime.
The federal crime is reportedly the failure to report a payment of $130,000 to former porn star Stormy Daniels to hush up an affair.
That was just before the presidential election and Bragg is alleging that it was an effective campaign donation.
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Iraq was 20 Years Ago Today…
Tuesday March 21, 2023
I was part of Iraq 2.0, heading two embedded civilian provincial reconstruction teams (ePRTs) 2009-2010 and wrote a book critical of the program, We Meant Well, for which was I was punished into involuntary retirement by my employer the U.S. State Department. The working title for the book was originally “Lessons for Afghanistan from the Failed Reconstruction of Iraq” and was meant to explain how our nation building efforts failed to accomplish anything except setting afire rampant corruption, and how repeating them nearly dollar-for-dollar in the Afghan theatre was just going to yield the same results. After all, isn’t one definition of madness doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?
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Trump And Putin To The Slammer?
Monday March 20, 2023
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'True Stories … Could Fuel Hesitancy': Stanford Project Worked to Censor Even True Stories on Social Media
Monday March 20, 2023
While lost in the explosive news about Donald Trump’s expected arrest, journalist Matt Taibbi released new details on previously undisclosed censorship efforts on social media. The latest Twitter Files revealed a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The effort included suppressing stories that we now know are legitimate such as natural immunity defenses, the exaggerated value of masks, and questions over vaccine efficacy in preventing second illnesses. The work of the Virality Project to censor even true stories should result in the severance of any connection with Stanford University.
We have learned of an ever-expanding coalition of groups working with the government and social media to target and censor Americans, including government-funded organizations.
However, the new files are chilling in the details allegedly showing how the Virality Project labeled even true stories as “anti-vaccine” and, therefore, subject to censorship. These files would suggest that the Project eagerly worked to limit free speech and suppress alternative scientific viewpoints.
Taibbi describes the Virality Project as “a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.”
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Operation Babylift and the Hypocrisy of the International Criminal Court
Monday March 20, 2023
In the “collective West,” hypocrisy rules the narrative, most recently in regard to the ICC and the “kidnapped” children of Ukraine.
In America, the scurrilous neocon and warmonger propagandist Max Boot weighed in on the meaningless and unenforcible decision to arrest President Putin. Boot’s argument is delusional, but then neocons thrive on lies and delusions.
Propaganda, pure and simple. Boot is an accessory to mass murder, having advocated the invasion of Iraq, the slaughter of over a million Iraqis, and the engineered destruction of their country.
The hypocritical ICC didn’t bother to contrast and compare Putin’s supposed abduction of Ukrainian children to an organized mass kidnapping of Vietnamese children. It was dubbed “Operation Babylift,” ordered by then President Ford, and was conducted at the end of the Vietnam War as the USG evacuated, having lost the war.
The Vietnamese children abducted without permission were described as “orphans,” although many had parents and relatives that were left behind. 3,300 children, described as “infants” (many were older children), were parceled out to families in America, Australia, West Germany, and France.
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Are Bank Failures a Sign of More Trouble Ahead?
Monday March 20, 2023
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 was the second largest bank failure in US history. Just two days following SVB’s collapse, Signature Bank joined the record books as the third largest bank failure in US history. First Republic Bank also seemed on the edge of collapse until Bank of America, Citigroup, and other big banks agreed to jointly fund a bailout for it.
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3 Years to Slow The Spread: Covid hysteria and the creation of a never-ending crisis
Saturday March 18, 2023
Thursday marked the three year anniversary of the infamous “15 Days To Slow The Spread” campaign.
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Ron Paul Challenged the Coronavirus Tyranny from the Beginning
Friday March 17, 2023
Thursday was three years since President Donald Trump announced the “15 days to slow the spread” campaign that played a big role in propelling the use of new expansive government powers to limit the exercise of freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. The campaign both did not slow the spread and did not end after 15 days. What it did do was help grow and maintain tyrannical policies of the United States, state, and local governments that were marketed as based in science and promoting of health but that in reality were grounded in pseudoscience and harmful to health.
While innumerable media pundits and politicians were jumping before any available microphone to expound their commitment to use government to bludgeon the people in the name of countering coronavirus, a smaller group of individuals, ignored by the big money media and censored on social media, was warning of the dire consequences of the plethora of government mandates being put in place across America. Among them was libertarian communicator Ron Paul, founder and chairman of the Ron Paul Institute.
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