Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Has a Quisling GOP Enabled a Desperate October Surprise?


Who benefits from the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage? The answer is obvious. A regime facing devastating electoral losses in just over a month.


The panic is palpable. With the midterms just a month away, even carefully curated polling data is showing momentum building towards a Republican blowout, and the reckless cabal in charge of the Biden Administration has clearly run out of political ammo. 

Gas prices are back on the rise and Biden’s politically motivated action in drawing down the strategic oil reserve to lower prices at the pump is now a widely acknowledged and dismal failure, and one that has gravely endangered national security. Despite the administration’s pathetic groveling, OPEC just added insult to injury by restricting oil supply to accelerate the price squeeze. The administration’s massive “stimulative” federal spending gambit of the last few years has only succeeded in stimulating runaway inflation and an explosion of the national debt, made immeasurably worse by fast-rising interest rates. Transparent pandering to his base in the form of unconstitutional and widely panned student loan bailouts has only reinforced the perception of fiscal irresponsibility and political opportunism bereft of principle. 

On top of these disasters, are others. COVID vaccine uptake has collapsed, as more people realize the mandates and shutdowns have inflicted enormous damage on the country—all for an ineffective, dangerous, and novel gene-therapy treatment with massive adverse effects. Orchestrating an invasion of illegal immigrants on the southern border for permanent electoral advantage has backfired as U.S. citizens grasp the insanity of bringing in unprecedented numbers of workers during an economic downturn, and recent immigrants themselves grasp that their future prosperity and safety is not with a party that is tanking the economy and spiking violent crime. Even Biden’s initial promise of national reconciliation has been revealed to be a sick joke, as the Delaware Democrat has engaged in unprecedented polarization, demonization, and targeting of his political opponents. 

But thanks to the quisling GOP leadership, one last card remains in the hand of the desperate Biden regime. Is it beyond them to play it? They may already have put it down on the table. Two weeks ago, it is possible the administration made a calculated decision that it was worth risking nuclear conflict with Russia through an unprecedented act of energy terrorism and environmental depredation in order to shore up political support and suppress dissent at home.

On Monday September 26, the Nord Stream pipeline was blown apart in international waters off the coasts of Denmark and Sweden in what EU officials called an act of deliberate sabotage. Already facing a winter of skyrocketing fuel costs and energy and food shortages due to the senseless Russia-Ukraine conflict, now the prospect of catastrophe in the coming months has increased immeasurably. 

Coincidentally, on September 28 (barely a day after the sabotage of Nord Stream was discovered) U.S. and EU officials announced the opening of the the Baltic Pipe natural gas pipeline from Norway to Poland via Denmark and the Baltic Sea, hailing the new gas link as a crucial move to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. No credible analyst, however, believes the supply will be enough to curtail severe shortages. 

The number of “coincidences” one needs to entertain in order to subscribe to the official media and government narrative that Putin blew up his own pipeline (in the process destroying any possible leverage he had over European support for his Ukrainian foes) requires a truly Homeric suspension of disbelief. One has to ignore the fact that both Biden and longtime neocon warmonger Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland explicitly threatened Nord Stream operations in early 2022 should Russia invade Ukraine. One must further ignore the fact that Defense Department Spokesperson John Kirby bragged that the destruction of Nord Stream presented a “tremendous opportunity for years to come” to reduce dependence on Russian gas and oil, while disavowing U.S. responsibility for creating such good fortune. Above all, one must ignore the fact that Putin and Russia gain precisely no strategic advantage from destroying an expensive investment they were effectively using as political leverage over Europe. Putin, we are told, is mentally unbalanced and increasingly unstable due to cognitive impairment (unlike the current occupant of the White House). 

So, in traditional realpolitik analysis, cui bono? The answer is obvious. A regime facing devastating electoral losses in just over a month. A desperate regime that has failed to prolong the panic over COVID (or to create a new panic over Monkeypox) in order to credibly suspend in-person voting on what was once known as Election Day. A regime with far too much to lose should the GOP gain congressional oversight as a result of inevitable revelations related to 1) government collaboration with Big Pharma and media to perpetuate vaccine fraud; 2) the use of intelligence agencies and their social media lackeys to target political opponents; 3) the coordination by Biden political operatives of election fraud in 2020, and, especially; 4) the Biden crime family and its operations in both China and Ukraine. 

Many Americans have trouble believing a United States president would intentionally provoke a high stakes nuclear showdown with Russia over the territorial integrity of the Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine (one of the most corrupt governments on the planet) where we have no vital national interest. But the Biden Administration’s lack of interest in reducing hostilities became crystal clear with the recent revelation that in April the United States scuttled a tentative deal to end the war—even though both Russia and Ukraine were ready to agree—in which Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23 and Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership. 

Of course, provoking foreign crises in order to suspend civil liberties (including elections) and crack down on political opponents at home with the use of “wartime emergency powers” has long been a favorite page in the playbook of totalitarian regimes over the world. And the events of the past week should leave no doubt that the Biden regime is contemplating, if not on the verge of implementing, just such a contingency. 

Days after the explosions sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines, a $290 million purchase of drugs to treat radiation poisoning for distribution to the U.S. population was announced on October 4 by the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), an agency within the HHS with the job of preparing the nation for future disasters and public health emergencies. On October 6, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zenenskyy called on NATO to launch “preemptive strikes” into Russia to “make it impossible for Russia to use nuclear weapons.” On the same day as Zelenskyy’s call for a preemptive strike, Joe Biden said that the threat of nuclear “Armageddon” is at its highest level since the Cuban missile crisis, and that the United States is trying to find an “off-ramp” for Russia before they begin the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Finally, there was the Ukrainian bombing of the the only bridge connecting annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland—a momentous move that most likely could not have been taken without U.S. military support, and which has already led to a massive escalation of Russia’s attack on Ukrainian cities and the credible threat of using tactical nuclear weapons in response. 

The big question now is not whether the Biden regime is prepared to risk everything to prevent devastating electoral losses and congressional investigations. The real question is why have Republicans been complicit in, nay enthusiastic supporters of, this disastrous proxy war that has already resulted in the energy and food supply disruptions roiling Europe and about to roil the United States? 

Normal American voters, who regard it as madness to pour billions of taxpayer dollars into a war defending the ostensibly sacred borders of Ukraine while allowing an illegal invasion of millions over our own nation’s porous southern border, can be forgiven for wondering who in Washington is sticking up for their interests. They may soon be wondering why Republicans went along with a ruinous, provocative policy of nuclear gamesmanship that allowed the Biden Administration to divert attention from its own abject policy failures with a choreographed foreign crisis, giving them an excuse to use emergency powers to step up persecution of their political opponents at home. And perhaps to disrupt an election.