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Finian Cunningham

Biden’s F-16 Move Is Flight of Fancy Signifying Desperation

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It’s no coincidence that US President Joe Biden made a sharp U-turn to send F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine on the same weekend that the NATO-backed Kiev regime just lost the strategic battle for Artyomovsk (Bakhmut).

Recall that Biden had emphatically said no to supplying the American warplane to Ukraine partly out of concern to not antagonize Russia.

The battle for the transport hub city in the Donbass region had been raging for eight months. Some commentators have compared the pivotal fight for Artyomovsk – a “meat grinder” – to Stalingrad in World War Two which largely determined the final victory of the Soviet Red Army over Nazi Germany.

Russian forces claimed to have finally taken full control of Artyomovsk on May 20, despite Kiev denials and a reluctance in the Western media to admit reality. Indeed, the relentless Western narrative of defiant Ukraine sticking it to the Ruskies is also a casualty here, lying bloodied on a stretcher, as is the supposed entire authority of this same media (aka Western propaganda service.)

This major defeat for the Kiev regime at the weekend completely upends Washington and NATO’s presumed prowess. The Biden administration has bankrolled President Vladimir Zelensky’s forces with $38 billion in military aid over the past 15 months. Other NATO members, Britain, Germany, France and Poland have likewise pumped Ukraine with all sorts of advanced weaponry.
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Macron’s Musings on Europe’s ‘Strategic Autonomy’… Much Ado About Nothing, But US Insecurity Is Palpable

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French President Emmanuel Macron has got the Americans in a flap with his comments advocating greater European strategic autonomy and for the old continent to avoid becoming embroiled in a US-China confrontation over Taiwan.

Macron made his remarks while traveling back from China where he appeared to have been well received by President Xi Jinping. The trip reportedly garnered several lucrative trade deals for French businesses at a time when Élysée Palace is assailed with nationwide public protests and strikes over economic woes.

The American chagrin over Macron’s musings about European strategic autonomy is revealing in at least two ways.
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US Blacklists Strategic Culture Foundation in Attack on Independent Journalism and Political Dissent

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In an audacious attack on free speech, journalists and writers based in the United States have now been banned by the US federal authorities from publishing articles with Strategic Culture Foundation. We interview one of those authors affected by the ban, New York City-based journalist Daniel Lazare who shares his thoughts on the profound implications for free speech, independent journalism and political dissent.

Lazare is one of several US-based writers who formerly published regular columns with Strategic Culture Foundation. Our online journal greatly appreciated their intelligent insights and analysis of US and international politics. Sadly, we will no longer be able to publish their columns because of the threat levied on them by the US federal authorities who accuse SCF of being an influence operation directed by the Kremlin. The allegations and threats are baseless and draconian.

If US-based writers defy the ban, they have been threatened with astronomical financial penalties of over $300,000. The prohibition has only emerged in recent weeks. It follows earlier moves by the US State Department and the Treasury Department accusing SCF of being an agent of Russian foreign intelligence. No evidence has been presented by the US authorities to support their provocative claims. The Editorial Board of SCF categorically dismisses the allegations. In a statement, the editors said: “We reject all such claims by the US authorities that the journal is an alleged Russian intelligence operation. We have no connection with the Russian government. We provide an independent forum for international writers to debate and freely critique major topical issues of world importance.”
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West’s Navalny Hypocrisy a Gas

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The day after opposition figure Alexei Navalny was arrested in Moscow last week on his return from a provocative and prolonged decampment in Germany, Western media fell over themselves to condemn his detention.
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Navalny False-Flag Authors Invent New Twist to Cover Lies

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So now the Navalny poison episode takes on a new twist with German military intelligence subsequently claiming they found traces of Novichok on a bottle of water the Russian dissident had purportedly been drinking from. Rather, it sounds more like the authors of this false-flag operation have “bottled” – meaning became unnerved by the absurdities inherent in their own narrative.

Last week the German government announced that a Bundeswehr military laboratory had detected Novichok in the body fluids of Sergei Navalny. That promptly led to charges that the Kremlin was responsible for the attempted murder of Navalny using the Soviet-era nerve poison.

The trouble for the German side was that their narrative soon ran into contradictions from the Russian toxicologists who first treated Navalny when he apparently fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow on August 20. The Russian medics said they had tested Navalny for a whole range of poisons, including organophosphate-type chemicals which attack the nervous system. The Russian doctors affirmed they found no poison traces. They concluded Navalny’s coma was induced by an existing medical condition, presumably diabetes. Furthermore, the doctors at the hospital in Omsk where Navalny was taken to on August 20, said they have original samples of his body fluids.
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Washington Sailing on Collision Course With China

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As of this month, the United States is deploying three of its aircraft carriers simultaneously to patrol the Pacific in what is designed to be a clear threat to China. Each carrier strike group comprises destroyers, aircraft and submarines. The US has 11 aircraft carriers in total.
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Macron’s ‘Brain-Dead’ NATO?.. Thou Protest Too Much

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French President Emmanuel Macron certainly ruffled a lot of feathers this week when he lamented the US-led NATO military alliance as being “brain dead”. But his comments were less about a principled or objective assessment of NATO, and more about self-aggrandizement by the French leader.

Macron, whose political ambition is suffused with reviving France as a global power, appears to be exploiting tensions in the transatlantic alliance in order to push his pet plan for creating a European Army.

With Britain leaving the European Union, the French president sees an opportunity for France becoming the lead power in Europe. His call for Europe to regain “military sovereignty” is aimed at enhancing French power as the top European military force.

In an interview with the London-based Economist, Macron said: “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” He went on to claim that the United States is relinquishing commitment to the alliance; that the US is “turning its back on us”; and that European states must therefore “wake up” to “be in control of our destiny”.
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UK’s Johnson Plays Court Jester for Trump to Wreck Iran Deal

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Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson showed his true colors this week when he led the collapse of European support for the nuclear deal with Iran. What’s more, it was pathetically evident that Johnson was pandering to US President Donald Trump.

Since the clownish figure of “Boris” took over Downing Street in July, it was predictable that the hapless Johnson and his wobbly Brexit ambitions would make him ever-more reliant on the American president in order to negotiate a post-Brexit trade deal with the US. That, in turn, would mean Johnson being more sycophantic than British leaders usually are in indulging the White House and its foreign policy goals.

This week, predictions of Johnson’s kowtowing to Trump were fully delivered on, when he stabbed the nuclear accord with Iran in the back. On the way to the UN general assembly in New York, he declared it a “bad deal”.

It was an extraordinary U-turn by Britain which up to now had endorsed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the nuclear deal, along with Germany, France and the European Union, as well as Russia and China. The accord was signed in 2015 by all of the above plus the US with the aim of lifting economic sanctions off Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear program.
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Why There’ll Be No US-Russia Reset Post-Mueller

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President Donald Trump and his White House team may have been cleared of collusion with the Kremlin in the 2016 presidential election. That startling conclusion by Special Counsel Robert Mueller after nearly two years of investigation, might be viewed by some as giving Trump freedom to now get on with normalizing relations with Moscow. Don’t bet on it.

Mueller’s report, and US attorney general William Barr’s appraisal of it, only partially vindicate Trump’s long-held claims that the whole so-called “Russiagate" story is a “hoax”.

Yes, Mueller and Barr conclude that neither Trump nor his campaign team “conspired” with Russia to win the presidential race. But Democrat opponents are now dredging up the possibility that Trump “unwittingly” facilitated Kremlin cyber operations to damage his 2016 rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton.

In his summary of Mueller’s report, Barr unquestioningly accepts as fact the otherwise contentious claim that Russia interfered in the US election. Democrats and the anti-Trump US news media have not been deterred from pursuing their fantasy that the Kremlin allegedly meddled in US democracy. Trump has been cleared, but Russia has certainly not. It very much continues to have the smear of interference slapped all over its image.
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Russia Gives US Red Line on Venezuela

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At a high-level meeting in Rome this week, it seems that Russia reiterated a grave warning to the US – Moscow will not tolerate American military intervention to topple the Venezuelan government with whom it is allied.
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