Tag: Intelligence assessments

Biden’s ally in Guatemala?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

CHIUL, Guatemala − Life in Bartolo Báten’s village has been defined by corruption: A teacher who can’t get a job at the school until she pays a bribe. A water project that runs out of money before the pipes reached town. Sick residents who can’t afford the medicine that’s available elsewhere.

Insurgent candidate tells Guatemalans: Stay, don’t go to the U.S. This time, they’re listening. (archived)

Related:

Seven Decades After Guatemala Coup, Bernardo Arévalo Sees a Dramatic Rise (Will Freeman, CFR)

Arévalo and Semilla are centrists—but in a country where politics habitually skews right, they are often described as center-left. “Semilla has a social democratic element, but its program is centrist, and it also has some center-right followers,” said Lucas Perelló, a political scientist who has spent time studying the party’s formation. Arévalo says he wants to gradually universalize existing social assistance programs to include a greater share of poor Guatemalans, reduce the cost of medicines and healthcare, and link isolated parts of the country through new infrastructure—doable tasks, given Guatemala’s exceptionally low share of debt as GDP, and necessary ones, given the country’s soaring poverty and malnutrition rates.

On security issues, another major concern for Guatemalans, Arévalo promises to increase state presence in crime hotspots, reclaim jails from gangs, and use intelligence-gathering to dismantle mafias. He says Bukele’s anti-gang strategy is not applicable to Guatemala. He is also critical of human rights abuses in Venezuela and Nicaragua and Putin’s war on Ukraine and has no stated plans to recognize China over Taiwan. Asked for a leader he admires, he named the ex-president, José Pepe Mujica, of Uruguay, where he was born during his father’s exile.

U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal + General Frost

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)
Twitter/X

Thwarted by minefields, Ukrainian forces won’t reach the southeastern city of Melitopol, a vital Russian transit hub, according to a U.S. assessment

…

“Russians are known to be capable of fighting in cold weather,” the official said.

U.S. intelligence says Ukraine will fail to meet offensive’s key goal

Related:

‘General Frost’: How the Russian winter terrified the country’s enemies

William Arkin: CIA Is Playing “Outsize Role” in Ukraine Despite Biden Pledge Not to Send U.S. Forces

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

A new investigation reveals the extent of the CIA’s involvement in the war in Ukraine, where the agency operates clandestinely in what, under a formal declaration of war, would be the domain of the military. We’re joined on the show by the author of the investigation, William Arkin, a national security reporter and senior editor at Newsweek, who says that the CIA has “got its hand in a little bit of everything” in Ukraine. According to various sources, the CIA is shuttling weapons into Ukraine using a “gray fleet” of commercial aircraft that crisscrosses Central and Eastern Europe, sending personnel into Ukraine on secret missions and assisting Ukrainians with new weapons and systems, all while using Poland as its clandestine hub to coordinate its operations inside the country. At the same time, the U.S.’s nonaligned status appears to place a limit on its intelligence, keeping it in the dark on both Zelensky and Putin’s next moves.

William Arkin: CIA Is Playing “Outsize Role” in Ukraine Despite Biden Pledge Not to Send U.S. Forces

Related:

The CIA’s Blind Spot about the Ukraine War

My takeaways:

  • Putting aside the propaganda, Burns has been allegedly using the CIA as military operatives. Supposedly, this is why they clueless about what’s going on, such as with the NordStream attack, the terrorist attacks inside Russia, or the attacks on the Crimean Bridge. More likely, they are ‘clandestinely’ involved!
  • If Zelenskyi isn’t in charge, is Valerii Zaluzhnyi, whose advisor is former Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh?!
  • The Biden admin is dangerously using commercial airlines (the CIA asked Newsweek not to identify which ones are being used) to transfer weapons to Ukraine. Russia isn’t stupid enough to target a commercial airliner, but I wouldn’t put it past the AFU to setup the Russian Armed Forces!

Ukrainian women training for war can kill Russians with ‘office supplies,’ resistance group leader says

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment
Українська Жіноча Варта (English)

Forget guns and grenades — Ukrainian women training for war can kill Russians using just “office supplies,” a resistance group leader said.

Ukrainian women training for war can kill Russians with ‘office supplies,’ resistance group leader says

H/T: Alex Christoforou

The Pentagon is already writing the movie script, replete with jars of pickled tomatoes! 🙄

ICC’s Putin arrest warrant based on State Dept-funded report that debunked itself

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)2 Comments

On March 17, the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, introduced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Llova-Belova. The warrant, which accused Putin and Lolva-Belova of conducting the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a “network of camps” across the Russian Federation, inspired a wave of incendiary commentary in the West.

ICC’s Putin arrest warrant based on State Dept-funded report that debunked itself

Related:

YouTube: The Grayzone exposes shoddy ICC warrant against Putin