By Simon Watkins of OilPrice.com,

Russia’s failure to achieve a quick military victory in Ukraine as most people thought likely at the outset of its invasion has weakened its own geopolitical position and, albeit to a lesser degree, that of its key ally, China. This is being reflected in a series of deals by key Middle Eastern countries and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) made with an eye on winning back favour with the U.S. and Europe, and last week’s deal between Oman and key NATO member, Turkey, is part of this emerging pattern. 

It could be that a reversal is taking place from the previous creeping influence of the China-Russia alliance in the Middle East, the aim of which was to secure the region’s enormous oil and gas resources, strategic ports, and military and intelligence cooperation. These assets are vital to China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) power-grab project and crucial as well to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plans to resuscitate the Soviet Union, the breakup of which he stated was “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth century”. Only one year ago, foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, and the secretary-general of the GCC were arriving in Beijing for a five-day visit to push ahead on negotiations over the China-GCC Free Trade Agreement (FTA). At these meetings, the principal topic of conversation was to finally seal the China-GCC FTA and a “deeper strategic cooperation in a region where U.S. dominance is showing signs of retreat”. 

Oman’s primary significance to both Beijing and Moscow, and anyone else with a map for that matter, lies in its geographical position, with long coastlines along the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, away from the extremely politically-sensitive Strait of Hormuz, through which passes at least one third of the world’s crude oil supplies. These coastlines offer largely unfettered access to the markets of South Asia, West Asia, and East Africa, as well as to those of its neighbours in the Middle East. What China has really been after in the steady build-up of its presence in recent years, but especially since the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran that left many Middle Eastern countries feeling in need of a new superpower alliance, is to control all the major crude oil shipping route chokepoints from the Middle East into Europe and the West. For China, these routes avoid the more expensive and more nautically-challenging Cape of Good Hope route around South Africa and the more politically-sensitive Strait of Hormuz route. The all-encompassing 25-year deal with Iran, as uncovered in a worldwide exclusive by me published on 3 September 2019, gave China effective control over the Strait of Hormuz. The same deal also gave China a hold over the Bab al-Mandab Strait (through Iran’s dealings with the Houthi rebels), through which crude oil is shipped upwards through the Red Sea towards the Suez Canal before moving into the Mediterranean and then westwards. Control over the Gulf of Oman is the last piece of the set of key sea routes for oil and LNG out of the Middle East.

Oman’s secondary significance is that it has considerable liquefied natural gas (LNG) capabilities, one of the few countries in the world that does, and that they are not fully utilised, given the relatively paltry hydrocarbons resources that Oman itself has. In the current hydrocarbons supply and demand matrix in Europe, gas is the thing that all countries want to secure, to offset lost supplies from Russia, and LNG is their best option, as it is available much quicker than pipelined gas, without the prerequisite build-out of costly and time-intensive infrastructure. Iran has long had its eye on utilising this unused LNG capacity in Oman as part of a broader gas cooperation plan and the same blueprint to do so has been on the board for nearly 10 years. The middle of 2022, however, saw Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, visit Oman to finalise the remaining details of the plan that broadly involves two elements: first the LNG capacity utilisation by Iran, and second the laying of a pipeline between the two countries. 

The LNG part of the plan is for Iran to use at least 25 percent of Oman’s LNG capabilities to allow it to realise its long-term target of becoming a world leading LNG exporter. This plan was part of a broader co-operation deal made between Oman and Iran in 2013, extended in scope in 2014, and fully ratified in August 2015, that was centred on Oman’s importing at least 10 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year (bcm/y) from Iran for 25 years beginning in 2017. This equated to just less than 1 billion cubic feet per day and was worth around US$60 billion at the time. The target for this was then changed to 43 bcm/y to be imported, albeit for a shorter period, of 15 years, and then finally to at least 28 bcm/y for a minimum period of 15 years. 

The pipeline element of the plan – that would be key to enabling Iran to dramatically increase the amount of LNG it could produce, using Oman’s LNG facilities – involves a land and a maritime section. The land section would comprise around 200 kilometres of 56-inch pipeline (to be constructed in Iran), to run from Rudan to Mobarak Mount in the southern Hormozgan province. The maritime section would include a 192-kilometre stretch of 36-inch pipeline along the bed of the Oman Sea at depths of up to 1,340 metres, from Iran to Sohar Port in Oman. The overall objective was that Iran would use these facilities to bring on further phases of development of North Pars. It would also use them with a view to the using the gas from several other major gas fields, including most immediately Golshan, Ferdowsi, Farzad A and Farzad B, and Kish, for LNG purposes.

Turkey, with which Oman struck the major gas deal last week, has been notable in recent years for its political, economic, and military fluidity in dealing with NATO countries on the one hand, and Russia on the other. Like Russian President Putin’s dreams of an idealised Soviet Union, Turkish President Recep Erdo?an’s thoughts seem to be of the same ilk, focused on the once mighty Ottoman Empire. Just in the way that Putin seems to imagine himself as the new Tsar of the new Russian Empire, so Erdo?an appears to regard himself as the caliph of a new Ottoman Caliphate, calling his supporters during election campaigns ‘grandsons of Ottomans’. In this sense, Erdo?an is useful to NATO and to Europe, particularly as Europe can dangle the carrot of highly lucrative European Union membership in front of him, as the geographical position that Turkey has always offered – as being both part of the West and of the East as well – is augmented by his apparent geopolitical cognitive dissonance.

The deal between Turkey and Oman, crucially, is focused on the very LNG sector that Iran and Russia and China have been keen to exploit in the Sultanate. According to statements from the companies involved, Oman LNG will start supplying 1 million metric tonnes of LNG every year for 10 years to Turkey’s BOTAS Petroleum Pipeline Corporation, beginning in 2025. As highlighted by the chief executive officer of Oman LNG, Hamed al Naamany last week: “Signing this term-sheet agreement with BOTAS supports our efforts to further develop our position in the global energy and LNG industry and explore new markets with key industry partners […] This step complements our commitment to add value to the local economy through growth and collaborations with international partners such as BOTAS.” Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Fatih Donmez, added that: “The new gas purchase agreement with Oman also includes an opportunity to be extended further if needed […and] At a time when the world, especially Europe, is suffering from gas supply problems, Turkey is taking all steps to become a gas trade centre.” 

It is apposite to note that all of Oman’s major LNG deals this year have been with companies not associated with either Russia or China or any of their proxies. These included, on January 18, Oman LNG signing two deals with Thailand’s PTT Global LNG and France’s oil and gas giant TotalEnergies to supply a total of 1.6 million metric tonnes of LNG annually, starting in 2025. Just before this, on 27 December, Oman LNG signed long-term agreements with three Japanese companies – JERA Co, and trading firms Mitsui & Co, and Itochu Corporation – to supply them with 2.35 million tonnes of LNG annually from the Sultanate.

Adding to the days of strikes and mass street demonstrations about French President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to raise the retirement age, farmers have flooded the streets of Paris for an entirely different reason. 

French farmers drove hundreds of tractors, if not more, into Paris on Wednesday to protest against a ban on pesticide use.

👍Waouh! Impressive demonstration by 🇫🇷 #sugar #beet #growers & farmers in Paris, around 800 tractors gathered in “Les Invalides” to:
✅explain their urgent need &
❌condemn excess of regulations!@FnseaGBP @CGB_FR #LaBetteraveEnDanger #sauvetonpaysan @SanderFranck @_MissBetter pic.twitter.com/yqAGiXxHT4

— C.I.B.E. (@SugarBeetEurope) February 8, 2023

Ag website Agriland said the protest comes after a recent EU court ruling overturned a French rule that allowed sugar beet growers to use neonicotinoids, an insecticide. Farmers were livid by the EU courts because neonicotinoids are critical for sugar beet production. Agriland said at least 800 large farm tractors flooded Paris streets around Les Invalides. 

Pictures from the farmers tractor convoy protests in Paris. #Paris pic.twitter.com/JcuoivUCWi

— Live Not by Lies (@Dana35300026) February 8, 2023

“The protest has the backing of the country’s leading farm organization, the FNSEA, as well as organizations representing the sugar beet producing sector,” Agriland said. 

Well before the EU court ruling, French sugar-beet yields were expected to slide by 5-7% for the next growing season, according to Bloomberg, citing Francois Thaury, an analyst at Paris-based adviser Agritel. Thaury said losses could not top 10%. 

د فرانسې یوه ډله بزګرو د حکومت ځینو پالیسو خلاف مظاهرې په ترڅ کې خپل تراکتورونه د پاریس لارو کوڅو ته راوړي دي. یو له دغو پالیسیو څخه د حشره وژونکو او افت وژونکو په کارونې بندیز دی.#voapashto #voasocial #voaafghanistan #paris #farmers #protest #tractor pic.twitter.com/74MoRC70Xz

— VOA Pashto (@VOAPashto) February 8, 2023

Meanwhile, in separate mass protests, hundreds of thousands of people nationwide took to the streets against Macron’s plans to raise the retirement age. 

Protests come as Macron’s popularity has hit its lowest level. Spring is ahead, and that could mean additional protests as temperatures rise. 

Authored by Francis P. Sempa via RealClear Wire,

Retired U.S. Army LTC Alexander Vindman, who gained fame for helping Democrats impeach President Donald Trump for a phone call Trump had with Ukrainian officials in July 2019, is urging the Biden administration and its Western allies to swiftly and dramatically increase military aid and supplies to Ukraine to help the Ukrainian armed forces credibly threaten to take back Crimea, which Russian forces seized in 2014. He lays out a Ukrainian military campaign–armed and funded by the United States and its NATO allies–that he claims will cause Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a Russian withdrawal from Crimea and reduce the risk of a wider war. Vindman is reminiscent of those European statesmen and generals before and during World War I who thought that mobilizing for war would somehow prevent it and, if not, would result in a swift victory.

Writing on the Foreign Affairs website, Vindman notes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a video appeal at the meeting of the World Economic Forum, saying: “Crimea is our land, our territory,” and requesting Western nations to “give us your weapons” so that Ukraine can retake “what is ours.” In his article, Vindman urges Washington and NATO to “give Ukraine the weapons and assistance it needs to win quickly and decisively in all occupied territories north of Crimea–and to credibly threaten to take the peninsula militarily.” Vindman suggests that a credible threat to militarily retake Crimea will be sufficient to bring Putin to the negotiating table and end the war on terms favorable to Ukraine.

Vindman has been one of the most vociferous war hawks when it comes to U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine War. Politico reports that Vindman is organizing a group of experienced American military contractors “who would travel to Ukraine and embed themselves with small units near the front lines” and provide Ukrainian forces with “military logistics support.” Back in the summer of 2022, Vindman traveled to Ukraine to help the country wage successful war against Russia. He called the Ukraine war “the most important geopolitical event of the last 20 years & maybe the next 20 years.”

And Vindman has not shied away from partisan politics in his “geopolitical” analysis. He has blamed former President Trump, Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Republican Party, and Fox News for “emboldening Russia to invade Ukraine,” even though Russia’s invasions of Ukraine occurred during the Obama and Biden administrations. “There is blood on the Republican Party’s hands,” Vindman said. “They were partially responsible for what is happening in Ukraine.”

Vindman claims that if the U.S. and NATO continue to provide military assistance to Ukraine incrementally instead of giving Ukraine everything it needs now, the risk of widening the war and embroiling NATO in the conflict will increase. But, he claims, with swift and decisive Western military support, including hundreds of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, advanced fighter aircraft, long and short-range missiles, and thousands of rocket systems, Ukraine can credibly threaten to retake Crimea, which he claims will force Putin to negotiate, withdraw from Crimea, and will supposedly reduce the risks of a wider war.

Vindman even lays out a tactical strategy that includes tying down Russian forces in the Luhansk, Kherson, and northern Donetsk regions, severing Russia’s land route to Ukraine by pushing through to the Sea of Azov, and interfering with Russia’s military resupply route by destroying the Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Russia to the Crimea. This would be followed by “weeks of strikes” on Russian armed forces, including air bases, naval installations, transportation nodes, and command and control centers. Then Ukraine would launch “land and amphibious attacks to gain a foothold in Crimea,” and move on to seize Russia’s naval installation at Sevastopol, the capital of Simferopol, Feodosiya, and Kerch. Unless, that is, the Clausewitzian “friction” of war intervenes, as it usually does.

There are a lot of assumptions underlying Vindman’s plan. One is his claim that “Western officials are less worried about Russian nuclear saber rattling than they once were.” He does not identify who those officials are or why they are allegedly less worried about nuclear escalation. Another assumption is that a dramatic increase in Western military supplies–giving Ukraine everything it needs to defeat Russia–is less dangerous than what he calls “incremental escalation.” And Vindman assures us that “Putin has no interest in a fight with NATO.” Presumably, that includes a NATO that supplies Ukraine with everything it needs to defeat Russia.

Perhaps Vindman’s most questionable assumption–which is not mentioned in the Foreign Affairs article, but that he voiced after his trip to Ukraine in the summer of 2022–is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “the most important geopolitical event of the last 20 years.” Others would argue that China’s rise–economically and militarily–and its expanded influence throughout Eurasia and beyond is a more important geopolitical event, especially when it is coupled with the growing strategic partnership between China and Russia. In the past, American statesmen recognized the importance of maintaining the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia. It is why we sided with Stalin against Hitler. It is why we sided with Mao against the Soviet regime. But all the Vindman approach does is to push Russia even closer to China. And as tensions increase in the western Pacific over Taiwan, Vindman’s counsel may get us into a two-front war that nobody should want.

Francis P. Sempa is the author of Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21^stCentury, America’s Global Role: Essays and Reviews on National Security, Geopolitics and War, and Somewhere in France, Somewhere in Germany: A Combat Soldier’s Journey through the Second World War. He has written lengthy introductions to two of Mahan’s books, and has written on historical and foreign policy topics for The Diplomat, the University Bookman, Joint Force Quarterly, the Asian Review of Books, the New York Journal of Books, the Claremont Review of Books, American Diplomacy, the Washington Times, The American Spectator, and other publications. He is an attorney, an adjunct professor of political science at Wilkes University, and a former contributing editor to American Diplomacy.

Authored by Robert B. Charles via RealClear Wire,

A Chinese surveillance balloon floats over the United States for a week. No action is taken, until the outcry makes taking it down necessary. A second is over South America, a third was over Hawaii. President Biden says it happened under President Trump. After former Trump administration officials said that didn’t happen, Biden countered they were “discovered” after Trump left. What explains all this?

To start with, China just tested Joe Biden, and he failed. China had put a spy balloon over Hawaii, and the president – we now learn – did nothing about a device about a dozen miles in the air leisurely traversing the United States and presumably sending images in real-time back to the Chinese military. U.S. airspace goes to 62 miles up.

Why was it not shot down? We’re told only that “debris” might hurt someone, or that it was innocuous, and hence no need for action. These were tenuous, if not false, excuses for inaction. Debris would have been minimal and could be engineered into empty spaces. Satellites see things, but a spy balloon 100 times closer sees more.

As for “no need,” well, only if you want more spy balloons next month and see no danger in the precedent, which is to say, the possibility of one day facing a possible chem, bio, radioactive, or EMP threat. Otherwise, you shoot it down fast, as you would a Chinese fighter or bomber.

We did not do that. Why not? The explanation apparently is that the Biden team is timid, afraid to upset China, and believes this provocation will be viewed as a mere “incremental” violation, one they can let slip if not noticed.

Except that Americans saw it with their own eyes, so we were treated to predictably partisan and self-serving crisis management: Biden’s team quickly said they had “discovered” it, were “monitoring” it, would decide what to do next. Meantime, the secretary of state immediately waffled on postponing his planned trip to China.

Biden’s team wrung their hands, said little, did less, and hoped this would just drift away. The outcry was significant, so they finally decided to shoot the offending balloon down over the ocean, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken bravely delayed his trip.

The courage quotient in this White House, Biden’s Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and State Department, is stunning – for its absence. Are we to imagine no one thought of the possibilities here? Are we to imagine we only consider planes or missiles a threat?

So, the Biden team finally shoots the Chinese spy balloon down over the ocean, while China mumbles, lies, and carries on. But this is where the “scandal within scandal” begins. Under the gun to explain themselves, Biden and his team belatedly says “three Chinese balloons” were over the U.S. under Trump. Almost every highly cleared Trump intelligence and national security appointee (more than a dozen) flatly deny that.

This leads to the next hard-to-believe deflection. Biden’s team says the Chinese balloons Trump did not shoot down were only discovered after he left office. What?

Yes, they say it happened then but was only “discovered after” Trump left, which is probably why no one had heard about it. This is hard to credit. Are we to believe that NORAD’s 24/7 operations center was asleep – that China dared cross Trump, and we only saw the spy balloons after reviewing the tape?

All this sounds increasingly absurd, throws water on solid facts, damning, indefensible, and which should require – in an accountable republic – high level resignations. Here are the big, real questions.

First, if any spy balloon from China really floated over the United States during Trump’s time and not one appointee was briefed, do we have an “intelligence deep state” – which is either pro-China or which so feared Trump’s penchant for action that they withheld that? Exactly who knew what, when, and said nothing?

Second, if the balloons were over the U.S. under Trump, and NORAD or the intelligence community did not see them in real time, why not? That is a major intelligence failure. How did that happen? Third, either way – and regardless of which scandal is worse – the Chinese spy balloon in U.S. airspace should have immediately been brought down. Would we wait on a fighter, and say debris worried us?

China has learned a key lesson, and it cannot be unlearned. Biden will hesitate, deflect, do almost anything to avoid confrontation with China, even allow penetration of U.S. airspace. None of this will make Taiwan feel good, or Japan, Australia, the Philippines – or any U.S. ally.

Communist China’s deliberate penetration of U.S. airspace is not a non-event, not inconsequential, not something to pretend did not happen. And it should have instantly triggered a shootdown.

Who will be held accountable for this fiasco? What will China do next? This is not a small error, passing oversight, or victory – nor was the disastrous U.S. exit from Afghanistan. This is another layered scandal.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness.

These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford to ignore them much longer.

Foreign interests are buying up our farmland and holding our national debt. As of 2021, foreign persons and entities owned 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, 47% of which was forestland, 29% in cropland, and 22% in pastureland. Foreign land holdings have increased by an average of 2.2 million acres per year since 2015. Foreign countries also own $7.4 trillion worth of U.S. national debt, with Japan and China ranked as our two largest foreign holders of our debt.

Corporate and governmental censorship have created digital dictators. While the “Twitter files” revealed the lengths to which the FBI has gone to monitor and censor social media content, the government has been colluding with the tech sector for some time now in order to silence its critics and target “dangerous” speech in the name of fighting so-called disinformation. The threat of being labelled “disinformation” is being used to undermine anyone who asks questions, challenges the status quo, and engages in critical thinking.

Middle- and lower-income Americans are barely keeping up. Rising costs of housing, food, gas and other necessities are presenting nearly insurmountable hurdles towards financial independence for the majority of households who are scrambling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, mounting layoffs in the tens of thousands are adding to the fiscal pain.

The government is attempting to weaponize mental health care. Increasingly, in communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, even if they pose no danger to others. While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with the government’s ongoing efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), the specter of mental health round-ups begins to sound less far-fetched.

The military’s global occupation is spreading our resources thin and endangering us at home. America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin. In 2022 alone, the U.S. approved more than $50 billion in aid for Ukraine, half of which went towards military spending, with more on the way. The U.S. also maintains some 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world.

Deepfakes, AI and virtual reality are blurring the line between reality and a computer-generated illusion. Powered by AI software, deepfake audio and video move us into an age where it is almost impossible to discern what is real, especially as it relates to truth and disinformation. At the same time, the technology sector continues to use virtual reality to develop a digital universe—the metaverse—that is envisioned as being the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one.

Advances in technology are outstripping our ability to protect ourselves from its menacing side, both in times of rights, humanity and workforce. In the absence of constitutional protections in place to guard against encroachments on our rights in the electronic realm, we desperately need an Electronic Bill of Rights that protects “we the people” from predatory surveillance and data-mining business practices.

The courts have aligned themselves with the police state. In one ruling after another, the courts have used the doctrine of qualified immunity to shield police officers from accountability for misconduct, tacitly giving them a green light to act as judge, jury and executioner on the populace. All the while, police violence, the result of training that emphasizes brute force over constitutional restraints, continues to endanger the public.

The nation’s dependence on foreign imports has fueled a $1 trillion trade deficit. While analysts have pointed to the burgeoning trade deficit as a sign that the U.S. economy is growing, it underscores the extent to which very little is actually made in America anymore.

World governments, including the U.S., continue to use national crises such as COVID-19 to expand their emergency powers. None are willing to relinquish these powers when the crisis passes. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the U.S. government still has 42 declared national emergencies in effect, allowing it to sidestep constitutional protocols that maintain a system of checks and balances. For instance, the emergency declared after the 9/11 has yet to be withdrawn.

The nation’s infrastructure is rapidly falling apart. Many of the country’s roads, bridges, airports, dams, levees and water systems are woefully outdated and in dire need of overhauling, and have fallen behind that of other developed countries in recent years. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that crumbling infrastructure costs every American household $3,300 in hidden costs a year due to lost time, increased fuel consumption while sitting in traffic jams, and extra car repairs due to poor road conditions.

The nation is about to hit a healthcare crisis. Despite the fact that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other high-income country, it has the worst health outcomes than its peer nations. Experts are also predicting a collapse in the U.S. health care system as the medical community deals with growing staff shortages and shuttered facilities.

These are just a small sampling of the many looming problems that threaten to overwhelm us in the near future.

Thus far, Americans seem inclined to just switch the channel, tune out what they don’t want to hear, and tune into their own personal echo chambers.

Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no amount of escapism can shield us from the harsh reality that the danger in our midst is posed by an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution, Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Being labeled a Russian propagandist all day every day for criticizing US foreign policy is really weird, but one advantage it comes with is a useful perspective on what people have really been talking about all these years when they warn of the dangers of “Russian propaganda”.

I know I’m not a Russian propagandist. I’m not paid by Russia, I have no connections to Russia, and until I started this political commentary gig in 2016 I thought very little about Russia. My opinions about the western empire sometimes turn up on Russian media because I let anyone use my work who wants to, but that was always something they did on their own without my submitting it to them and without any payment or solicitation of any kind. I’m literally just some random westerner sharing political opinions on the internet; those opinions just happen to disagree with the US empire and its stories about itself and its behavior.

Yet for years I’ve watched people pointing at me as an example of what “Russian propaganda” looks like. This has helped inform my understanding of all the panic about “Russian influence” that’s been circulating these last six years, and given me some insight into how seriously it should be taken.

Instead of tracking how “Russia” influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming: https://t.co/vxnKAoI9T7

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

That’s one reason why I wasn’t surprised by Matt Taibbi’s reporting on the Twitter Files revelations about Hamilton 68, an information op run by DC swamp monsters and backed by imperialist think tanks which generated hundreds if not thousands of completely bogus mainstream news reports about online Russian influence over the years.

Hamilton 68 purported to track Russian attempts to influence western thought on social media, but Twitter eventually figured out that the “Russians” the operation has been tracking were actually mostly real, mostly American accounts who just happened to say things that didn’t perfectly align with the official Beltway consensus. These accounts were often right-leaning, but also included people like Consortium News editor Joe Lauria, who’s about as far from a rightist as you can get.

They played a massive role in fanning the flames of public hysteria about online Russian influence, but while they did this by pretending to track the behavior of Russian influence ops, in reality they were tracking dissent.

One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way westerners are being brainwashed by western propaganda into panicking about Russian propaganda, something that has no meaningful existence in the west. Before RT was shut down it was drawing a whopping 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience. The much-touted Russian election interference campaign on Facebook was mostly unrelated to the election and affected “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content” according o Facebook. Research by New York University into Russian trolling behavior on Twitter in the lead-up to the 2016 election has found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior.” A study by the University of Adelaide found that despite all the warnings of Russian bots and trolls following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the overwhelming majority of inauthentic behavior on Twitter during that time was anti-Russian in nature.

Russia exerts essentially zero influence over what westerners think, yet we’re all meant to freak out about “Russian propaganda” while western oligarchs and government agencies continually hammer our minds with propaganda designed to manufacture our consent for the status quo which benefits them.

The arguments in this article are self defeating (a crisis of democracy should use secret unaccountable CIA subsidies to push “democracy”) and have already been refuted countless times, and is pointless as we are still using disguised cutouts and pass throughs to do propaganda https://t.co/kMtQxShCSp

— Joel Whitney (he/him) (@joel_whitney) January 30, 2023

All this and we’re still seeing calls for more narrative management from the western empire, like the recent American Purpose article “The Long War of Ideas” being promoted by people like Bill Kristol which calls for a resurrection of CIA culture war tactics like those used during the last cold war. Every day there’s some new liberal politician sermonizing about the need to do more to fight Russian influence and protect American minds from “disinformation”, even as we are shown over and over again that what they really want is to shut down dissident voices.

That’s what we’re seeing in the continual efforts to increase online censorship, in the bogus new “fact-checking” industry, in calls to increase the output of formal US government propaganda operations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia, in the way all dissent about Russia has been forcefully purged from the western media in recent years, in the way empire-amplified trolling operations have been shouting down and drowning out critics of US foreign policy online, in the way censorship via algorithm has emerged as one of the major methods of restricting dissident speech.

They claim there needs to be a massive escalation in propaganda, censorship and online psyops in order to fight “Russian influence”, while the only influence operations we’re being subjected to in any meaningful way are only ever of the western variety. They just want to do more of that.

Our rulers aren’t actually worried about “Russian influence”, they’re worried about dissent. They’re worried the public won’t consent to the “great power competition” they plan to subject us to for the foreseeable future unless they can exert massive influence over our minds, because they know that otherwise we will recognize that our interests are directly harmed by the economic warfare, exploding military spending and nuclear brinkmanship which necessarily accompanies that campaign to reign in Russia and stop the rise of China.

They’re propagandizing us about the threat of foreign propaganda in order to justify propagandizing us more. We’re being manipulated into consenting to agendas that no healthy person would ever consent to without copious amounts of manipulation.

*  *  *

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After a surprise UK visit, Ukraine’s President Zelensky went to Paris immediately afterward in a whirlwind European tour to meet with Western leaders. In Paris he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Macron asserted during the visit that Russia cannot win the war against Ukraine. “Ukraine can count on France, its European partners and allies to win the war. Russia cannot and must not win,” Macron said before a working dinner among the three leaders at the Elysee Palace.

Just ahead of the meeting, Zelensky in an interview with Le Figaro hailed a change of heart in Macron. “I think he has changed, and changed for real this time,” Zelensky said. “After all, it is he who paved the way for the delivery of tanks. And he has also supported Ukraine’s membership to the EU. I think that was a real signal.”

Macron had angered Kiev when in June he said the West must not “humiliate Russia, so that when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means.” 

Macron has also come under fire for being among the only Western leaders to hold frequent phone conversations with President Vladimir Putin, in order to attempt a diplomatic breakthrough towards ending the war. But Ukrainian leaders have suggested such diplomatic efforts are a form of ‘capitulation’.

As for Macron’s slow pivot away from pursuing a diplomatic offramp, the Associated Press now describes: 

Macron has said France hasn’t ruled out sending fighter jets but set conditions, including not leading to an escalation of tensions or using the aircraft “to touch Russian soil,” and not resulting in weakening “the capacities of the French army.”

As for Scholz, he was cited in the following on Wednesday:

He added that Paris would “continue the efforts” to deliver arms to Kyiv. Mr Scholz also assured the Ukrainian president of enduring allied support.

“We will continue to do so as long as necessary,” he told reporters, noting Germany and its partners had backed Ukraine “financially, with humanitarian aid and with weapons”. He added that Ukraine belongs to the European family.

⚡️Video showing Zelensky meeting Macron and Scholz a few moments ago. pic.twitter.com/65T0BmVfnQ

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 8, 2023

The US and UK too have lately signaled no options are off the table at this point. UK leaders took it further on Wednesday in saying Ukraine might expect Typhoon fighter jets in the longer-term.

After Paris, Zelensky is expected in Brussels on Thursday, where he will continue pushing for Ukraine to be fast-tracked into EU membership.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A 73-year-old Arizona rancher has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder for the killing of an illegal alien who has been tentatively identified as a Mexican citizen.

Full details about the shooting have not been made available, and it is unknown whether the rancher, George Alan Kelly, and the deceased, Gabriel Cuen-Butimea, 48, knew each other. The killing occurred on Jan. 30, and Kelly’s arrest was preceded by authorities finding the dead body of Cuen-Butimea on Kelly’s cattle ranch. Cuen-Butimea’s was identified from a Mexican voter registration card he carried.

Kelly is being held at the Santa Cruz County Jail in Nogales, Arizona, and his bail was set at $1 million by Justice Emilio Velasquez. Kelly has requested the judge to reduce his bail in order to go back home and take care of his wife.

“She’s there by herself… nobody to take care of her, the livestock or the ranch,” he said, according to Nogales International. “And I’m not going anywhere. I can’t come up with a million dollars,” he said.

Meanwhile, Cuen-Butimea has entered the United States multiple times illegally and was deported repeatedly, according to reports.

The Shooting

The incident happened in the Kino Springs area just outside Nogales, according to Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Gerardo Castillo. A call came in at about 2:40 p.m. Monday, regarding a shooting in the Sagebrush Road area, per Nogales International. There were reports of a commotion at the scene but the deputies found nothing on arrival.

However, around 6:00 p.m., the sheriff’s office received another call about shots fired at the property. This time, deputies found the deceased body of Cuen-Butimea with a visible gunshot wound 100–150 yards from Kelly’s house.

Kelly lived 1.5 miles north of the border with Mexico, roughly three-quarters of a mile southeast of Kino Springs Road. Kelly was arrested because the body was found on his property.

According to the outlet, Kelly requested a reduction in the bond amount but Judge Velasquez said that it would be determined by the County Attorney’s Office. Kelly was cordial with the officers when he was brought to court.

At present, Kelly, who appears to be a self-published fiction writer based on the Nogales International news report, is being held at the Santa Cruz County Jail and is set to appear in court on Wednesday.

Stand Your Ground

A person can fight, and even kill, in order to protect himself or others based on Arizona law.

The state’s Justification statute, which is similar to Florida’s “stand your ground” law, says “a person is justified in threatening or using physical force against another when and to the extent a reasonable person would believe that physical force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful physical force.”

The burden lies on prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not justified in using deadly force during self-defense.

As of December 2022, the number of illegal immigrant encounters along the southern border was at 251,487, a new monthly record, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The earlier record was in May at 241,136 encounters.