Convicted felon Jussie Smollett has been released from jail on bail, pending appeal. That decision was made by an Illinois appeals court that apparently bought Smollett’s argument that his life was in danger while incarcerated.
In this case, the “bail” isn’t an actual payment being made like normal bail would be. Rather, it’s just a threat to charge him $150,000 if he misses his court dates.
This comes after Smollett’s post-sentencing performance, where he yelled about not being suicidal and continued to proclaim his supposed innocence. Throughout this entire saga, the former “Empire” actor has never shown any remorse despite the overwhelming evidence against him. Perhaps that strategy paid off?
A judge found that because Smollett had been convicted of “non-violent” offenses, the court would allow him to be released from a Chicago jail on a $150,000 individual bond during the appeal, according to the court order.
Under the terms of the I-Bond, Smollett would not have to dig into his pockets to get out of jail, and would only owe money if he skipped his court dates.
The special prosecutor in the case opposed the move, arguing that Smollett’s lawyers had not provided sufficient evidence that any danger existed. Smollett had already been separated from the general inmate population.
As to what this means, I’m not sure it points to much of anything except the court using an already existent legal standard. Non-violent offenders can be granted bail, pending appeal, if they were otherwise not sentenced to a certain amount of jail time. In this case, Smollett was only sentenced to serve 150 days. Still, in the end, it’s extremely unlikely he will win an appeal, given historical success rates, which means the inevitable is probably just being delayed here.
On a broader note, we are witnessing the most consistent bias in our legal system. It’s not race-based, but class-based. If you have the money and stature to pressure a court with the best lawyers and lots of bad press, you have a much higher chance of receiving favorable treatment. Would Smollett have been released if he were a random nobody arguing jail life is just too tough? Color me extremely skeptical.
I guess we’ll have to see where this goes, but an appeal could take a long time to get through, so for the foreseeable future, Smollett looks to be a free man with no real stipulations.
Three recent left-wing tracts demonstrate how the Woke Occupation Army, and its pagan gods, are at war with traditional America and how they are determined to pin the blame on us.
“The United States is coming to an end. The question is how.”
Those are the opening lines of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, by Canadian journalist Stephen Marche. It is one of several new books examining the possibility of our current political differences escalating into open conflict.
Marche’s book purports to be a fair-minded analysis of our partisan divide, but isn’t. His effort is interesting mainly as a sociological exhibit of the incurious leftist mind. The author launches his investigation by claiming that he has no stake in American politics, considering himself neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Yet on virtually the same page where he makes this statement he writes ominously about “the rise of the hard-right anti-government patriot militias” without so much as hinting at the existence of any leftist extremists. In fact, Marche claims “Left-wing radicalism matters mostly because it creates the conditions for right-wing radicalization.” (Keep that bizarre claim in mind; it turns up elsewhere.)
Almost unbelievably, in a book devoted to the growing political divisions in the United States, the deadly and ideologically charged riots of 2020 are not even mentioned. In his single reference to the black-clad anarcho-Marxists who sacked the downtowns of major cities, Marche states, “Antifa does exist, but it lacks any power or the means to establish power. Left-wing defiance of federal authority, when it comes, tends to be legalistic and political.”
The Next Civil War is shallow and tendentious, and Marche tells at least one flat-out lie, alleging that the January 6 “rioters beat a policeman to death on the steps of the Capitol.” Amazingly, however, Barbara Walter’s How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them is even worse, flaunting its ideological blinders right out of the gate.
Walter opens her book, released in January of this year, by solemnly recounting the 2020 “plot” to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. As with Marche, there’s no excuse for not knowing the facts. Last July, Buzzfeed published a major story revealing how the FBI all but orchestrated this ridiculous escapade. Subsequent revelations by other journalists and media outlets (including Julie Kelly right here at American Greatness) have uncovered even more sordid details about the FBI’s questionable conduct. But Walter—a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego—studiously avoids noticing any of these inconvenient revelations, and clings dogmatically to the feds’ official narrative, which nicely confirms her narrative about the “white nationalist” threats that leave her “alarmed but not altogether surprised.”
Both of these books are simply regime-compliant propaganda, designed to indict the Right preemptively and hold it responsible for any open conflict that might unfold in the coming months or years. Like Marche, Walter mentions Antifa only once, and only to make the same repugnant argument: “anti-fascist” thugs bashing skulls are problematic only because “the specter of left-wing radicals flexing their muscle will be what right-wing extremists invoke—to stoke fear and, ultimately, justify their own violence.”
Since two examples show only a coincidence but three makes a pattern, let me mention one more title in this feculent genre. It Could Happen Here: Why America is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable—And How We Can Stop It is essentially a megaphone for Anti-Defamation League alarmism by that organization’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt. Predictably, this book like the others mentions Antifa precisely once.
I couldn’t bear reading every page of this wearisome book, but given the ADL’s main concern I did check the index for any discussion of Islamic hatred of Jews. Will anyone be shocked to learn this is a phenomenon more or less invisible to Greenblatt? Under the index heading for “Muslims,” along with entries for “hate crimes against,” “hatred toward,” “interfaith actions,” “mosque shootings,” and “Trump ban on,” I did manage to find a reference to “antisemitic rhetoric.” This directed me to three pages of feel-good fuzziness about Imam Abdullah Antepli, a “recovering antisemite.” For the ADL, there is no active Muslim (or African-American) antisemitism worth mentioning. If there ever were antisemites in the leftist rainbow, Greenblatt implies, they are all now happily in recovery.
All this would be comical if it were not so infuriating; and there’s no point in wasting any more time on these wretchedly dishonest books. (Please don’t buy them!) The most relevant thing to note, from the perspective of political analysis, is that the woke oligarchy evidently decided that 2022 is the year they would explicitly address the possibility of civil conflict.
On that note, it is important to emphasize here that contrary to these defamatory books, almost all Americans on the Right are repulsed by the idea of a civil war, and mostly just want to be left alone by the overbearing thought police. If open civil conflict does come, it seems indisputable that it will be entirely the fault of the leftist oligarchy currently in control of the federal government and most of our major institutions. I cast this blame unequivocally for a simple reason: Preventing civil war is always the responsibility of the invading and conquering nation.
To explain what I mean by that, we need to take a step back.
The ancient Romans—who knew something about conquest—were ruthless in demanding tribute from the tribes and peoples they subjugated. But Rome held its empire as long as it did because it knew when to restrain the heavy hand of cruelty. Imperial Roman policy, maintained over several centuries, usually avoided religious persecution. Generally, occupied nations were required to show total political obedience yet were allowed to keep their ancestral pagan gods. The Romans pursued war but knew the value of peace and thus did not try to conquer human nature. They acknowledged that most people would tolerate the loss of their political freedom as long as they were not robbed of what they held most sacred.
America’s new ruling class is not as humble or gentle as those who dominated the Roman empire.
If there is any doubt that the United States is currently occupied by a foreign power, fanatically devoted to an alien faith, consider this widely circulated photo.
This is an act of religious worship. Taken on June 8, 2020, the photograph shows the Democratic leadership of Congress kneeling in silent remembrance of the martyred George Floyd. Two dozen wealthy and aged plutocrats remained in this pose—with their creaky knees on a cold marble floor—for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, symbolically reenacting Floyd’s Passion. This painful act of contrition reveals unmistakably the remorseless piety that rules the souls of our political and intellectual elites. The god of the Holy Empire of Antiracism is a pitiless and jealous god—far more vengeful, in fact, than the God of the Bible.
The intensity of our rulers’ woke piety is odd for many reasons, including that God (according to them) is supposed to be dead—a claim tediously repeated for more than a century by the leading intellectuals of the Left. Religion was held to be a lingering superstition that only deplorables cling to, along with their guns. Clearly that is no longer the case. There may once have been a time when people on the Left considered themselves, and perhaps even were, liberal believers in secular reason, freedom of speech, and the universal brotherhood of mankind. Those convictions—if they ever truly existed in fact and not merely in speech—are now gone.
The religion of the Woke Occupation preaches a strange catechism. If George Floyd is the faith’s greatest martyr, its prophet was, until recently, Anthony Fauci. In November 2021, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Fauci said of his critics, “they’re really criticizing science, because I represent science.” As the embodiment of science, of course, Fauci sanctified himself as a kind of public health oracle, whose authority exceeds any elected official in the federal government—including White House occupant Joe Biden.
Millions of woke faithful obeyed Fauci’s commandments with worshipful devotion. (Recently, the prophet seems to have made a pilgrimage into the wilderness in order to be out of sight for the midterm elections.) Unlike Moses, Fauci could claim no miracles to endow his authority with divine sanction. On the contrary, his pronouncements revealed all-too-human ignorance and inconsistency, not to mention audacious dishonesty. Nevertheless, while racism constitutes the original sin of the woke religion, science represents its Holy Writ and promise of salvation. These elements—we must immediately note—fit together uneasily; so much so that most interpretations of the Left’s new religious impulse tend to focus on one aspect or the other, but rarely account for both.
If the theology of the woke occupation has two distinct strands, it seems to comprise three political components: 1) a faction focused on racial grievances highlighted by BLM and critical race theory, largely sustained and legitimized by the universities; 2) a militant anarcho-Marxist wing led by Antifa which receives rhetorical and organizational support from socialist members of Congress, radical mayors and district attorneys, and obscure financial backers; and 3) an elite, cosmopolitan oligarchy that exerts powerful influence on our public discourse, imposes woke ideology on ever larger segments of the private sector, and swells the budgets of the militants with extravagant financial contributions.
Clearly, the racial element of woke religiosity tracks with the BLM/critical race theory political component, while faith in science overlaps with the technocratic authority of the global oligarchy. Yet these factions represent very different, and in some ways conflicting, interests and policy agendas. And there is still the anarcho-Marxist element to account for. How all these pieces fit together and who controls whom (or even if anyone is clearly in charge) are difficult questions, to say the least. I plan to dig into this question a bit deeper in a future essay.
What is clear is that the Woke Occupation Army, and its pagan gods, are at war with traditional America. And like religious fanatics throughout history, they regard all “heretics” as their implacable enemies.
The war in Ukraine continues to rage after Russia’s illegal invasion threw the Eastern European country into turmoil. Who is actually “winning” is an argument that rages on social media while the real-world answers remain incredibly muddled. There is no doubt that Russia’s advances have been hit with stiff resistance and that losses have been higher than expected.
Then there’s the war raging back in the United States over how one views the conflict, not necessarily regarding who is “good” or “bad” (polls show a near-universal preference for Ukraine in the conflict if forced to choose), but rather in what the response should be, both practically and rhetorically.
In some ways, it feels like we are back in 2004, though, the roles have changed a bit. For some on the right, any criticism of Ukraine or suggestion that the United States should do anything but prioritize opposition of Russia is considered “treasonous.” Recently, Mitt Romney tried that gambit, viciously attacking Tulsi Gabbard by falsely insinuating she said something that she didn’t say. And of course, Adam Kinzinger is always good as an example of pure idiocy on this front.
Let’s talk about that mindset because I find it really disturbing and dangerous, and it is not at all limited to quacks like Kinzinger.
To start, I think it’s important to state where I stand. I am not an isolationist when it comes to foreign policy, and on matters of principle, some might find me fairly hawkish. Yet, I’m also much more nuanced in how I view situations than your average neoconservative. For example, I think the push to fund the civil war in Syria was a despicable miscalculation by overzealous American politicians which only helped hundreds of thousands of deaths. I must be an anti-war, pro-dictator zealot, right? But I also think Afghanistan was a just war, that opposing Vladimir Putin is good, and that using strategic strikes such as the one on Iran’s Soleimani is acceptable and smart. So what does that make me? I guess it depends on who you ask.
Yet, there is a segment on the right that has made Ukraine a litmus test that I’m just not comfortable with. Obviously, Kinzinger and Romney are the extremes of that, accusing people of capital crimes for daring to state true information they find inconvenient. But here’s also the slightly less subtle version of that which tends to involve screaming “Putin puppet” at anyone who suggests anything but an absolutist approach to Russia.
I can disagree with someone’s opinion that Ukraine should give up more than the status quo to stop the fighting without labeling them a foreign agent. I can believe that extreme isolationism may lead to bigger problems down the road without completely discounting valid points on the other side as “propaganda.” Last I checked, the United States is still a country founded on the idea of freedom of speech, and labeling fellow Americans as good or evil based on their view of a conflict halfway around the world that doesn’t directly involve us is incredibly illiberal. Whatever one thinks of Russia and how we should oppose Putin, there should be room for disagreement without shouting “traitor.”
Tucker Carlson spouted more pro-Putin propaganda on his Fox News show this week, arguing that the “collision” between Ukraine and Russia was long coming and that it was provoked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with tacit approval from President Joe Biden.
Wait, I got that wrong. It wasn’t this week, and it wasn’t Tucker Carlson. It was The New York Times. My mistake!
The paper’s Moscow bureau chief, Anton Troianovski, made that exact case in an episode of the Times’ “The Daily” podcast on March 8. It’s apparently pro-Putin to say anything other than “I stand with Ukraine and Zelensky is hot,” but it’s worth recounting what Troianovski said: that Russia was initially hopeful of a cooperative relationship with Zelensky, but after Biden was elected, the Ukrainian president felt encouraged to take a more antagonistic position on Putin.
Troianovski said it was Ukraine’s rejection of a Covid vaccine developed by Russia in 2020 that first indicated Zelensky was “taking a pro-Western route and being skeptical, being cautious of getting too close to Russia.” And thereafter, Zelensky “became more outspoken” about Ukraine joining NATO, a notion that has always been treated by Russia as a security threat.
Troianovski said that then the transition from President Donald Trump, who was, at best, ambivalent toward Ukraine, to Biden, who had a heightened interest, created more tension. Biden, Troianovski said, “comes in, of course, with a message of much greater support for Ukraine to take a path that brings it closer to Western institutions and takes it farther away from Russia.”
For Zelensky, Biden’s inauguration was a green light, the reporter said. And just so there’s no mistake that these are the words of a high-level New York Times correspondent and not some Russia State television message I’m relaying on my own, here’s what Troianovski said in full:
“So what happens is just days after Biden is inaugurated, Zelensky cracks down on a business tycoon in Ukraine named Viktor Medvedchuk. And that’s important because Medvedchuk is basically the closest link remaining between Ukraine and the Kremlin. Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter. Medvedchuk runs a political party that is fairly pro-Russian. He was running several TV channels that were pro-Russian, and early last year, Zelensky closes those TV channels, starts an investigation into Medvedchuk. Last May, Medvedchuk was put under house arrest under suspicion of treason. So Zelensky took all these steps that were very aggressive, and that was something that clearly annoyed Putin greatly and in retrospect was likely one of the factors that exacerbated the situation between Ukraine and Russia.”
When Zelensky closed down those TV channels just after Biden’s inauguration, he added insult to injury by tweeting at the time, “Ukraine strongly supports freedom of speech. Not propaganda financed by the aggressor country that undermines Ukraine on its way to the [European Union] and EuroAtlantic integration.”
Troianovski’s colleague Michael Barbaro summarized. “So Anton, you’re saying the shift in the U.S. presidency from Trump to Biden represented to Zelensky that he had more Western support,” Barbaro said, “and that basically he had some backup if he wanted to cross Putin and so it’s then that he starts taking more and more aggressive steps to move away from Russia.”
“Exactly,” Troianovski replied, “and as [Zelensky’s] presidency progressed, he found himself more and more on a collision course with Vladimir Putin.”
Blowing air in the face of a dog doesn’t mean you deserve to get your nose bitten off, but it’s a possibility easily avoided by keeping your mouth shut. Likewise, to acknowledge reality isn’t to say Russia is justified in declaring war on Ukraine. But maybe it was a mistake for Zelensky, under the impression that Biden’s America was eager to fight Ukraine’s battles, to flex on Putin.
And if the truth is considered pro-Russia propaganda, The New York Times has a lot to answer for.
"There was a big love of my life, Russia, and now it's dead as well"
Article by Paul Kirby in BBC News
Russia's state TV hit by stream of resignations
When
Marina Ovsyannikova burst into Russian living rooms on Monday's nightly
news, denouncing the war in Ukraine and propaganda around it, her
protest highlighted a quiet but steady stream of resignations from
Russia's tightly controlled state-run TV.
Ukrainian
President Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked her, appealing to anyone
working for what he calls Russia's propaganda system to resign. Any
journalist working in what he calls the fourth branch of power risks
sanctions and an international tribunal for "justifying war crimes", he
warns.
Some
of Russian President Vladimir Putin's biggest cheerleaders on state-run
TV have already faced sanctions, including Vladimir Solovyov who
presents a talk show on Russia's biggest channel Rossiya-1, and
Margarita Simonyan who has accused anyone ashamed of being Russian at
this point as not really being Russian.
Russia's state-run channels are required to toe the Kremlin line, so who has quit in response to the war?
Hours after Marina Ovsyannikova's on-screen protest, three resignations came to light.
Channel One colleague Zhanna Agalakova quit her job as Europe correspondent while two journalists have left rival NTV. Lilia Gildeyeva had worked for the channel as a presenter since 2006 and Vadim Glusker had been at NTV for almost 30 years.
Rumours abound that journalists have also headed for the door at All-Russia state TV group VGTRK.
Journalist
Roman Super said people were quitting its Vesti news stable en masse,
although that has not been confirmed. However, renowned TV host Sergey
Brilev quashed reports that he had resigned, pointing out he has been on
a business trip for more than a week.
Maria Baronova
is the highest-profile resignation at RT, formerly known as Russia
Today. Former chief editor at RT, she told the BBC's Steve Rosenberg
this month Mr Putin had already destroyed Russia's reputation and that
the economy was dead too.
A number of other RT journalists have also resigned, including non-Russian journalists working for its language services.
Former London correspondent Shadia Edwards-Dashti announced her resignation on the day Russia invaded Ukraine without giving a reason. Moscow-based journalist Jonny Tickle quit on the same day "in light of recent events".
French RT presenter Frédéric Taddeï said
he was leaving his show because France was "in open conflict" with
Russia and he could not continue to host his programme Forbidden to
Forbid "out of loyalty to my country".
Days
later, the EU said it was banning all of RT's various outlets as well
as those of fellow Kremlin outlet Sputnik for their "campaign of
disinformation, information manipulation and distortion of facts".
Russia's German-based state news agency Ruptly has also endured a spate of resignations, according to Reuters news agency.
Russia's
non-Kremlin media have come under repeated attack for years, so many
journalists who have worked under constant threat of losing their
livelihoods at independent outlets will be unimpressed by the current
crop of resignations. Some have been hit with the Soviet-era label of
foreign agent.
Dozhd (TV Rain),
which was forced off mainstream TV in 2014, has had to halt its online
broadcasts because of the Ukraine invasion and a number of its
journalists have fled Russia for their safety.
Radio Ekho Moskvy has also been taken of the air amid Russia's new legislation on so-called false information. BBC Russian is among a number of Western outlets that have been banned, while journalists working for Latvia-based Meduza were forced out of Russia.
It is not just journalists who have disappeared from state TV.
One of Russia's biggest talk show hosts, Ivan Urgant,
has taken a break from his prime-time Evening Urgant show on Russia's
second biggest channel, Channel One, the same station as Marina
Ovsyannikova.
He
reacted to the war by posting a black square on his Instagram account
with the simple message: "Fear and pain. No War." He has since told his
followers not to panic, and that he's taken a holiday and will be back
soon.
Russia's number one celebrity couple Alla Pugacheva and Maxim Galkin are
among a number of other showbiz figures who have also gone on holiday.
Galkin said on Instagram: "There can be no justification for war! No
War!"
Over last weekend, former Representative Tulsi Gabbard made some headlines with a short video statement she created.
Here are the undeniable facts.
There are 25 to 30 US-funded biolabs in Ukraine. According to the US government these biolabs are conducting research on dangerous pathogens.
Ukraine is in a active war zone with widespread bombing and artillery and shelling and these facilities, even in the best of circumstances could easily be compromised and release these deadly pathogens.
Now, like COVID, these pathogens know no borders. If they are inadvertently or purposely breached or compromised, they will quickly spread all throughout Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world causing untold suffering and death. So in order to protect the American people, the people of Europe, the people around the world, these labs need to be shut down immediately and the pathogens that they hold need to be destroyed.
Instead of trying to cover this up, the Biden-Harris Administration needs to work with Russia, Ukraine, NATO, the UN to immediately implement a ceasefire for all military action in the vicinity of these labs until they’re secured and these pathogens are destroyed.
Now, in addition to all this, the US funds around 300 biolabs around the world who are engaging in dangerous research, including gain-of-function, similar to the lab in Wuhan where COVID-19 may have originated from. Now, after realizing how dangerous an vulnerable these labs are, they should have all been shut down two years ago, but they haven’t.
Now, this is not a partisan political issue. The administration and Congress need to act now for the health and wellbeing of every American and person on the planet.
I don’t think Gabbard’s video represents “undeniable facts,” but I find myself largely in agreement with her. If there is one thing we’ve learned from the Wuhan fiasco, it is that we can’t rely upon scientists to keep us safe. The lack of any moral compass by biomedical researchers from the lab bench to NIH led to skirting the laws against gain-of-function research and releasing a dangerous engineered pathogen into the environment. I suspect that Wuhan is the tip of the iceberg. There are probably dozens, or hundreds, of projects supported by US funds, from either Defense or NIH, being carried out overseas that would result in lengthy prison sentences if they were done in America. That’s a story for a different day.
The very fact that a charter member of the globalist elite would react to Gabbard’s video with an illogical and nonsensical accusation of “treasonous lies” leads me to believe that she is closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit.
Let’s put aside the issue of “the US funds around 300 biolabs around the world who are engaging in dangerous research,” and look at the Ukraine situation.
By and large, the whole biolab issue resembled another Pizza-gate episode until Victoria Nuland, a retread from multiple administrations who has the bureaucratic survival skills of a cockroach and epitomizes the phrase “f*** up and move up,” testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In congressional testimony this week, Ms. Nuland, the under secretary of state for political affairs, was asked by Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, whether Ukraine has chemical or biological weapons.
“Ukraine has biological research facilities which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of,” she responded. “So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
If there were a biological or chemical weapon attack inside Ukraine, Mr. Rubio asked, would there be any doubt that Russia was behind it?
“There is no doubt in my mind, Senator, and it is classic Russian technique to blame the other guy what they’re planning to do themselves,” Ms. Nuland responded.
I think the idea that Ukraine is actively producing biological weapons is nonsense at best and overt Russian propaganda at worst. There is no certified BSL-4 lab and only one BSL-3 lab[corrected] in Ukraine. Trying to develop a biological agent outside of such a facility would be incredibly dangerous for the staff (I’m assuming they don’t care about the population), and it would be impossible to construct without massive outside assistance. Beyond that, the United States gave up researching biological weapons long ago, not out of any sense of moral superiority but because biological agents are difficult to deliver on a target and impossible to control once released. Nothing about the story makes any sense in real life.
US involvement with labs in Ukraine has been funded through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. This arrangement is not secret. Here is a lengthy history of the program. It is short on details, but it does show that Ukraine did have labs that researched biological pathogens. They seem to focus primarily on veterinary medicine rather than biological weapons; the emphasis is “seemed.” There is one lab that studies “plague.”
Some of the demilitarized labs have had a significant impact on studying COVID. They continue to monitor diseases spread by land movement from Asia. The official fact sheets can be found here; they have not been “scrubbed,” as some have reported.
Where does that get us?
We know the labs exist. We know the labs were the recipients of significant sums of US money to “safeguard” the biological material stored at the facilities. We know the Defense Threat Reduction Agency did dismantle several biological warfare labs in Kazakhstan. We don’t know what pathogens are in the Ukrainian labs. We don’t know what kind of research goes on in these labs. The most important question is why, if we are concerned about the Russians gaining possession of pathogens from labs in Ukraine, were the pathogens there in the first place?
This brings us back to where we are today.
The biggest issue I see is that absolutely no one is willing to answer the questions that need to be answered. I’ve come to view Jennifer Griffin as a total stooge for the Pentagon and White House, and here she does not disappoint.
Note that in response to the question, all she can do is relay accusations of Russia of being about to do what Russia’s accused us of being about to do. It reminds me of something I heard long ago about the four steps of getting out of serious trouble: Deny everything; admit nothing; blame others, and make counter-accusations.
This should give us all flashbacks to the initial outbreak of COVID, the Russia Hoax, and many other incidents. We are governed by idiots and by liars.
Some of the liars lie with a noble purpose.
Some lie to avoid the consequences of their actions or to win a bureaucratic fight. Others are just psychopaths to lie because that is what they do. The Biden junta has been unique in its propensity to lie about even simple things, like saying the money supply (M1) is not linked to inflation and astronomical gas prices are caused by a two-week-old war in Ukraine.
This brings us to the crux of the matter: the Liar’s Paradox. If you are dealing with a chronic liar, can they tell the truth? More importantly, how would you, the listener, know when the liar is being truthful. We know these people are liars. We know they have every reason to lie about the labs in Ukraine. Indeed, we expect them to lie about those labs. They may be telling the truth; in fact, I think they are, but the way they are addressing the issue sounds like a lie. They have debased their own word to the point where there is no reason that anyone should believe what Biden and his clique have to say about what goes on at biolabs in Ukraine. They have no one but themselves to blame for Russia or Chinese propaganda on the internet having as much or more credibility than the word of our government.
Until there is something that looks like an impartial investigation, we have no more reason to assume that one set of liars (Biden and his bunch) is any more credible than another set of liars (Russia). In fact, we have less of a reason to trust Biden on this than we do to trust Russia.
The Middle East has taken center stage this week as oil prices continue to skyrocket and western nations look to boycott Moscow over its deadly invasion into Ukraine.
But the Biden administration’s attempts to garner support from oil-rich nations to assist Ukraine and counter prices at the pump has been met with resistance, the result of what some argue is long-standing mistrust of the U.S. from nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
According to recent reports, President Biden was rebuffed by the two nations' leaders when he attempted to arrange calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The White House National Security Council (NSC) pushed back hard on the reports, with spokesperson Emily Horne telling Fox News, "This is a mischaracterization and does not reflect reality. There are no rebuffed calls,
In addition, Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week downplayed the suggestion that the Biden administration was snubbed by oil-leading nations in the Middle East saying, "We're all talking regularly."
However, the complex relationship between the U.S. and the oil-rich Gulf nations dates back decades and has been influenced by geopolitical policies relating to everything from oil embargoes in the 1970s to the suspension of arms amid the ongoing crisis in Yemen.
In this photo provided by the Saudi Royal Court, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, welcomes Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani upon his arrival to attend the Gulf Cooperation Council's 41st Summit in Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 5, 2021. (Saudi Royal Court via AP)
"In the Middle East, and specifically in Arab society, relationships matter. The last thing you want to be is a fair-weather friend," Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official who advised the military on matters relating to Iran and Iraq under the George W. Bush administration, told Fox News Digital.
"And from the very start, [Team] Biden defined themselves as a fair-weather friend."
Upon entering office, President Biden vowed to not only end the war in Yemen, which has resulted in one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world with hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced, but said he would stop supplying arms to Saudi Arabia.
The war in Yemen kicked off in 2014 when Shia Houthi rebels backed by Iran attempted to overthrow the government.
By 2015, under Barack Obama, the U.S. began arming Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have backed the Yemeni government. But mass causalities and the humanitarian crisis prompted the U.S. to limit its military support to the Saudi campaign in 2016.
Biden's administration largely reflects that of the Obama White House to include Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and NSC Adviser Jake Sullivan. The president has also said he would revert to policies held by the previous Democratic administration.
The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on the nature of the former Obama administration and current Biden administration officials' relationships with the oil-rich Middle Eastern country leaders.
In this July 30, 2018, file photo, a 17-year-old boy holds his weapon at the dam in Marib, Yemen. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)
"This war has to end," Biden said in a February 2021 address. "And to underscore our commitment, we're ending all American support for offensive operations in the war on Yemen, including relevant arms sales."
Biden later frustrated members of his own party with a November decision to sell $650 million in defensive aid to the Saudi government as it continues to get pummeled by Houthi forces.
The administration justified its move by saying it will continue to prioritize human rights while working with important partners in the region.
But some foreign policy experts have argued that the tumultuous U.S. relationship with the Gulf states is rooted in decisions made during the Obama administration when then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice prioritized human rights over geopolitical ties.
"There's an element of where there's smoke there's fire," Rubin told Fox News Digital. "The Saudis wouldn't be the first to complain about Susan Rice."
Rubin argued that while several of Rice’s decisions in the Middle East put a bad taste in the mouth of Gulf nations, "I don't think it can be nailed to just one person."
"You've got a situation where progressives may want to apply pressure to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh because of human rights violations, but they really need to take a step back and consider whether we would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater," Rubin added. "Because if we force the Saudis and the Emirates into the arms of Beijing, it's going to be a lot harder advocating for human rights than it is now."
China’s grip in the Middle East has increased in recent years as relations with the West have strained.
Though some relations were improved under the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, which normalized ties between Israel and Muslim nations like Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan, Beijing’s influence in the region remained.
"This is a systematic problem in Washington. We tend to conceive of our relations as always bilateral," said Rubin, who is also a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. "But we're not the only players in the sandbox."
"This isn't just a Democrat or Republican thing."
Saudi Arabia backed the U.S. war in Afghanistan after 9/11 and later during the Iraq war, but Rubin argued that there was a level of disregard toward Saudi concerns during the George W. Bush administration.
"The Saudis were afraid for sectarian reasons that we were going [to] … basically open Pandora's box and, to some extent, they were right," Rubin said. "At the same time, under Obama, the Saudis believe that we were not taking seriously their concerns vis-a-vis Iran. And remember today that they're getting hit by Iranian drones that are being flown from Iraq, are being flown from Yemen."
U.S. relations with Iran have also drastically affected U.S. ties with other top players in the region.
President Hassan Rouhani, second right, listens to head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi while visiting an exhibition of Iran's new nuclear achievements in Tehran, Iran, in April. (Iranian Presidency Office/AP)
Saudi Arabia and the UAE strongly opposed the nuclear deal established by then-Secretary of State John Kerry with Iran in 2015.
Donald Trump on the campaign trail vowed to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and eventually pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018.
Following Iran’s advancing nuclear program, the UAE and Saudi governments have said they back the Biden administration’s attempts to end Iran’s nuclear program but have demanded to be involved in this round of negotiations and have called for stronger parameters from Tehran.
"Saudi Arabia is not interested in hindering or blocking the current negotiations … It is interested in ensuring their success in achieving effectively the desired results," Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Rayd Krimly said in April 2021 as the Biden White House looked to restart negotiations with Iran.
President Biden is seen at Camp David in Maryland during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin Feb. 12, 2022. (White House)
The U.S. has looked to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to boost oil production as the U.S. and its Western allies have taken steps to boycott Moscow oil amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The UAE said last week that it supports increasing oil production to alleviate strains on the global market, but it remains unclear if it will be able to convince the Saudi-led Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to adhere to U.S. pleas.
"These countries have long memories," Rubin said. "So to mistreat the Saudis and not expect that there would be a response is wishful foolishness."
