In a little-remarked move, the Biden administration announced Monday that Victoria Nuland will take over as the acting second-in-command at the State Department. She replaces Wendy Sherman, who plans to retire at the end of this week.
Nuland’s appointment will be a boon for Russia hawks who want to turn up the heat on the Kremlin. But, for those who favor a negotiated end to the conflict in Ukraine, a promotion for the notoriously “undiplomatic diplomat” will be a bitter pill.
Why has every US president from Obama to Trump to Biden launched airstrikes inside the country? Is the US mission in Syria actually about fighting terrorism, or does it go deeper?
Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the 100-year-old who was at the heart of the United States’ rapprochement with China half a century ago, has made a surprise visit to Beijing.
While on the campaign trail, President Joe Biden spoke with some “Syrian American activists” who favor increased sanctions on the country as well as regime change in Damascus, during a private fundraiser in Maryland last month. According to neoconservative columnist Josh Rogin – one of Bill Kristol’s protégés – Biden told these regime change advocates that, among other things, Assad must go. Rogin says these activists “took advantage of their audience with Biden… to implore him to do more to oppose” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The United States owes other nations something different, something new. Democracy is in peril at home and abroad partly because of the impunity that keeps Abrams employed. Though his latest role may be somewhat ceremonial, his appointment is out of step with the demands of our time. There should be consequences for someone like Elliott Abrams. At minimum, it ought to be possible to fail out of public service, but for that to happen, we have to change the way we define failure. The massacre in El Mozote was one such failing — not a regrettable historical footnote but a catastrophic atrocity that indicts the administration Abrams served. His reward must be ignominy. The world deserves nothing less.
After the Soviet Union disbanded, Europeans assumed that Russia would be welcomed into the European Union and possibly NATO. The United States blocked these attempts because it needed a villain to justify NATO expansion. It also wanted to break up the powerful Russian Federation so that it could never challenge the American empire again nor protect its vast natural resources from foreign control. The Russian Federation consists of 22 republics where Washington supports secessionist movements with the goal of destabilizing and ultimately dismantling Russia.
Cleared by Congress, legislation later signed by US President Joe Biden in March ordered the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to declassify information regarding the potential origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The measure forced the DNI to declassify its report within 90 days.
Hu and two of his WIV colleagues were thrown into the furious COVID-19 origin debate on 13 June when an online newsletter called Public said the three scientists developed COVID-19 in November 2019. That was prior to the outbreak becoming public when a cluster of cases at the end of December 2019 surfaced in people linked to a Wuhan marketplace. Public’s report was quickly embraced by a camp that argues COVID-19 came from a virus stored, and possibly manipulated, at WIV, rather than from infected animal hosts, perhaps being sold at the Wuhan market. A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article on 20 June that said it had “confirmed” the allegations against the three, without referring to any public evidence or named sources with direct knowledge, fueled the flames even more. Social media and other publications spread the charges—and the scientists’ names.
Francis Fukuyama, who hasn’t seen a regime change op that he hasn’t liked, and Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, are salivating over the Wagner Group mutiny!
The Neocons are not new. They have tried to influence U.S. foreign policy since the 1930’s. They are not conservative. If conservatism means maintaining the status quo, then the Neocons, who advocate broad changes, are just the opposite. Furthermore, if the early pioneers of neoconservatism are those who eventually sought global stability through use of American power and promotion of its values, then the pioneers of neoconservatiam were radical leftists The more prominent devotees were followers of Leon Trotsky:
In 2003, the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq, destroyed that nation, and transformed it into a colony. Its proud, professional army was disbanded, its government institutions run by the Baath Party were dismembered, and its national oil company was privatized. The United States created a puppet government and army controlled with a massive spy system that identifies and liquidates dissidents called terrorists. The billions of dollars earned each year from Iraqi oil exports is sent to the New York Federal Reserve bank. Americans use these funds to manage Iraqi government operations, to include the pay for its government officials and generals.
Most American troops left in 2011, but several thousand remained hidden away as training units and backed by American combat units in nearby Kuwait. They engage in occasional combat as part of the ongoing “Operation Inherent Resolve.” In 2020, Iraq’s parliament rebelled and voted to expel all American troops from Iraq. American leaders ignore this demand, blame unrest on Iranian interference, and continue to rule and loot Iraq.
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