Gun Owners of America, one of the largest pro-gun organizations, has just published what appears to be a leaked internal ATF email documenting their plans to start seizing lawfully-owned forced reset and wide-open triggers beginning immediately.
Gun Owners of America has credibility when it comes to finding out what the ATF is doing before going public. If you remember, they were some of the first to break the news on the ATF considering braced pistols to be short barrel rifles, a very similar situation.
GOA’s video (linked here) discusses how the ATF has just given their field agents the go-ahead to start demanding the forfeiture of Rare Breed’s Forced Reset Trigger and BDU’s Wide Open Trigger, which the ATF considers to be a “machine gun.”
[ZH: For now, the ATF appears to be targeting manufacturers and resellers, according to the email. Still, the question is, of course, whether this portends similar action against individuals down the road.]
The interesting thing about these items is that (as we’ve covered before) they’re not machine guns at all. Anyone possessing a bump stock violates the Hughes Amendment and the National Firearms Act and is subject to harsh penalties. This situation is very similar to the bump stock situation in 2019, where a firearm accessory increases the rate of fire yet does not convert the gun itself to “automatic.” The ATF, of course, cared little for these nuances and ended up considering bump stocks themselves to be “machine guns” in 2019. They’re now seemingly looking to do the same for forced reset triggers.
In the leaked email, these plans for confiscation are detailed further. We can see that the ATF is planning to “take possession of any documents and FRTs” that retailers and manufacturers have. Additionally, it’s detailed in the leaked email that if said manufacturers, distributors, or retailers refuse to comply, the field agents can “seize them for forfeiture.”
One of the most interesting parts of the leak is how the word “defendant” is used. In the email, it reads, “FMS will be collecting the number of FRT’s recovered and number of defendantsfound in possession of these devices.” It seems that the ATF has already declared those in possession of FRTs to be guilty.
The FRT was an amazingly popular device with wide circulation among gun owners. This leak is disturbing news. But this is just another example of the ATF changing the law on a whim and criminalizing millions overnight. Who knows how many gun owners may be affected by this change in policy.
There’s another aspect to this policy change that is even more sinister, though. The forced reset trigger technically still is a semi-automatic trigger. Even though it may allow the operator to increase their fire rate, the trigger is still being actuated per shot. There’s a reset of the trigger each time it’s pulled. All the forced reset does is, force the resetting of the trigger to happen.
So by all logical standards, that trigger is semi-automatic. Gun owners should be very concerned about this. When the ATF banned bump stocks, many people thought they were silly devices that were more of a novelty than anything else, and while that might be true, how they were banned has opened up the path to banning all semi-automatic firearms.
To ban the bump stock, the ATF could only use laws already on the books. That law is the NFA (National Firearms Act). The NFA subjected certain firearms to a regulatory tax and background check for the purchase. Those items are suppressors, short barrel rifles/shotguns, and suppressors. In 1986, the Hughes Amendment was added to FOPA or Firearms Owners Protection Act. This amendment banned possession of all new production machine guns after 1986 altogether. So how did the ATF “ban” bump stocks? By considering them to be machine guns, no bump stocks were made before 1986. So all bump stocks were effectively banned using the NFA, GCA & FOPA. The ATF uses this same process to ban and criminalize possession of forced reset triggers.
Now here’s why gun owners should be concerned. These devices are not machine guns. They only increase the rate of semi-automatic fire. How long until single-stage triggers are considered machine guns? Then semi-automatic triggers in general- Have you ever seen Jerry Miculek shoot?
For those reading now that think that maybe I’m being paranoid, I’d highly encourage you to read “Legal & Lethal,” an article for Giffords written by none other than failed ATF nominee David Chipman.
In Section 9 of Legal & Lethal, Chipman details his idea that semi-automatic firearms with “large-capacity magazines” in his mind are the same as machine guns, and considering a semi-automatic trigger like Rare Breed’s FRT is another inch closer to that goal.
Kraft-Heinz Again Raises Prices On Dozens Of Products As Inflation Continues To Bite
As some on Wall Street warn that the Fed remains dangerously behind the inflation curve (a fear that was given voice yesterday when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments on inflation during the post-FOMC press conference appeared to send stocks spiraling lower), one of America’s biggest makers of food and consumer goods has warned that more price hikes are coming.
To wit, Kraft-Heinz (in which Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns a big stake) said in a letter to customers that it will raise prices in March on dozens of its most popular products. The hikes will affect brands including Oscar Mayer cold cuts, hot dogs, sausages, bacon, Velveeta cheese, Maxwell House coffee, TGIF frozen chicken wings, Kool-Aid and Capri Sun, CNN reported.
Increases range from 6.6% on 12oz packs of Velveeta to a whopping 30% hike on a package of Oscar-Mayer turkey bacon.
Most cold cuts and beef hot dogs will go up around 10% and coffee around 5%. Some Kool-Aid and Capri Sun drink packs will increase by about 20%.
“As we enter 2022, inflation continues to dramatically impact the economy,” Kraft Heinz said in a letter dated January 24 to at least one of its wholesale customers that was viewed by CNN Business. The wholesaler shared the letter on the condition of anonymity to protect the company’s relationship with its suppliers.
Kraft Heinz is just the latest consumer manufacturer to announce plans to boost prices early in the year. Last week, P&G said that it would raise prices on Tide and Gain laundry detergents, Downy fabric softener and Bounce dryer sheets by an average of about 8% in February. Conagra, which makes such brands as Slim Jim, Marie Callender’s and Birds Eye, has said it plans to raise prices later this year.
The question now is how much of these price hikes will retailers pass on to customers? Given the thin margins that grocery stores operate on, it’s likely that most, if not all, of the hike will be incorporated into prices on the shelf.
For Kraft-Heinz, this isn’t the first time prices have been raised since the start of the latest “transitory” inflation wave. The brand just announced a 9% price hike on its beef, lean beef, hot dogs and some other products back in November.
COVID-19 can be stopped without massive vaccination, renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told NTD’s “Capitol Report” program during the “Defeat the Mandates” march in Washington D.C., on Jan. 23.
According to McCullough, early treatment and natural immunity are safe and effective against COVID-19, but federal health agencies have ignored these in a push for vaccines, the broad use of which is not needed.
“The government has certainly been in an oblivion in terms of early treatment,” he said.
Thousands of people turned out to march in protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates—one of the largest U.S. events against the mandates since the start of the pandemic.
“Our CDC, FDA, and NIH have had no effective messaging on early treatment, even the emergency use authorized monoclonal antibodies, which are safe and effective,” McCullough said. “And even on the new Merck and Pfizer drugs, which they’re basically absent in terms of the media, despite being recently distributed across the United States.”
Early effective treatment of any disease can help avert progression to more serious illness, with an additional benefit of reducing the burden on health care systems, and in a seperate interview, McCullough claimed that 95% of the COVID deaths could have been prevented by early treatment…
Dr. Peter McCullough @P_McCulloughMD says there was a predecided plan by our health agencies to suppress early treatment in order to promote mass vaccination at all cost and 95% of our population that died could of been prevented. pic.twitter.com/9sFvyeOynk
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on its website that according to the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “current clinical management of COVID-19 consists of infection prevention and control measures and supportive care, including supplemental oxygen and mechanical ventilatory support when indicated.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved one drug, remdesivir (Veklury), to treat COVID-19 in hospitalized patients, the CDC continued.
On Monday, the FDA announced that it is restricting the use of two monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19, saying data show such treatments are “highly unlikely” to be active against the Omicron variant.
McCullough said that highly qualified doctors have done the research and have shown that “early treatment can end this pandemic by reducing the intensity and severity of disease and reducing the chances of hospitalization and death in our highest risk seniors.”
“This basically means that the vaccines broadly used aren’t needed. And in fact, we have seen far too many vaccine injuries and now vaccine failures. With the Omicron variant, there’s effectively no coverage of these vaccines against the newest form of the virus,” McCullough said, adding 22 studies showed vaccines ran out of efficacy after six months.
McCullough gave the example of how ivermectin, a Nobel prize-winning, FDA-approved drug that many studies and doctors claim is effective in treating COVID-19 patients, was dismissed by federal health agencies.
The FDA has been saying the drug was approved to treat internal and external parasites, and currently no data shows its effectiveness against COVID-19.
McCullough also claimed that the federal health agencies have ignored natural immunity, which is “robust, complete, and durable in terms of the lethal strains of the virus.”
“It was only until it got to the Omicron variant, which there was a breakthrough, and individuals who are previously immune could get a mild Omicron syndrome. But natural immunity is the end of the pandemic,” McCullough continued. “Remember, as we all become naturally immune, COVID-19 is no longer a threat to our lives.
“And the failure of our governmental agencies to recognize natural immunity has basically created unnecessary suffering, unnecessary testing, unnecessary masking and social distancing. Unnecessary compliance with all kinds of measures that are designed for the susceptible. Those who are naturally immune are no longer susceptible to fatal disease.”
McCullough expressed doubt about the claim that COVID-19 vaccines could reduce hospitalization and deaths.
“All we have at this point of time is bias-confounded, and I think invalid hospitalization data. The U.S. agencies still make the claim that the vaccines protect against hospitalization, whereas we see no evidence of that in the UK, Germany, South Africa, and the rest of the world,” McCullough said. “And I can tell you, the United States is not that different than the rest of these countries. Something is wrong. And I can tell you something is wrong with an incorrect, invalid claim that the vaccines reduce hospitalization. I don’t think it’s supportable.”
On Jan. 19, the CDC published a study showing that people who had not gotten a vaccine but did have a prior infection, also known as natural immunity, were less likely to land in a hospital than the vaccinated without natural immunity.
The Epoch Times has contacted CDC for additional comment.
Last month, President Joe Biden announced new measures to battle COVID-19, the top three of which are boosters for all adults, vaccinations to protect kids, and expanding free at-home testing. Biden did talk about the new treatment, saying that “if and when any new COVID-19 treatment pills have been found to meet FDA’s scientific standards, they are equitably accessible to all Americans.”
China Warns US Over Ukraine & Blasts “Interference” In Beijing Olympics
China on Thursday blasted the US for continuing to interfere in its affairs, further saying nothing has fundamentally changed, but instead charging there’s been “new shocks” since the Biden-Xi virtual summit of two months ago.
The scathing rebuke came on Thursday as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone call with his counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Importantly, Wang took the opportunity to for the first time side with Russia in the direct communication with the US top diplomat, saying Moscow has “reasonable security concerns” over Ukraine that must be “taken seriously”. Chinese state media and Beijing-linked pundits have also become increasingly vocal on the issue, charging NATO with overstepping…
Russia won’t be alone when it resists squeeze from the US and NATO. China will offer Russia support for sure. https://t.co/dKfQRfIgtt
He urged calm on the part of all sides but specifically called on the West to “abandon its Cold War mentality”. It’s been no secret that Washington sanctions and punitive actions against officials in both countries have served to make Russia and China unlikely allies against a common enemy.
“All parties should completely abandon the Cold War mentality and form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism through negotiation,” Wang spelled out in the call with Blinken, according to AFP.
The tough rhetoric echoed the words of Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian during a Wednesday press briefing. In response to US claims that Russia is likely to invade Ukraine during the Beijing Winter Olympics, Zhao said, “As the world’s largest military alliance, NATO should abandon the outdated Cold War mentality and ideological bias, and do things that are conducive to upholding peace and stability.”
He suggested that NATO is outdated and contributes to instability: “China firmly opposes all kinds of small cliques,” he added, and urged “fully consider each other’s legitimate security concerns, avoid antagonism and confrontation, and properly address differences and disputes through equal consultation on the basis of mutual respect.”
Wang focused much of his Thursday call with Blinken on the “urgent priority” that the “US should stop interfering in the Beijing Winter Olympics.” The swipe appeared not just aimed at Washington’s continued emphasis on China’s human rights abuses, including allegations of detention centers and “genocide” targeting Uighur Muslims, but in response to the words the day prior from Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
Sherman had unexpectedly linked the Ukraine crisis with the Olympic games hosted by China:
“We all are aware that the Beijing Olympics begin on Feb. 4, the opening ceremony, and President Putin expects to be there. I think that, probably, [Chinese] President Xi Jinping would not be ecstatic if Putin chose that moment to invade Ukraine, so that may affect his timing and his thinking,” Sherman said in a virtual conference.
Senior US official predicts Russia will attack Ukraine by mid-February. Wendy Sherman notes China won’t like invasion during Beijing Winter Olympics; US embassy in Kyiv advises citizens to consider leaving ‘now’; diplomatic talks continue #Russia#Ukraine#USA [TOI] pic.twitter.com/s2kbMr19lO
She said this even as Ukraine’s leaders have stressed that it doesn’t appear an invasion is “imminent” – as the White House has been asserting.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has essentially rejected the US assessment, stating at the start of the week when the US Embassy in Kiev began reducing staff: “In fact, there have been no radical changes in the security situation recently: the threat of new waves of Russian aggression has remained constant since 2014, and the accumulation of Russian troops near the state border began in April last year,” the ministry said.
Meanwhile, in the South China Sea…
PLA recently organized warplane drills based on Yongxing Island of the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea, after a US warship trespassed into Chinese territorial waters in the region ahead of the #Beijing2022. https://t.co/gNbSvMk60tpic.twitter.com/v6o0n3K4Zt
Already there’s a US diplomatic boycott of the games, which means no US government official can attend, despite America being represented in the games through its athletes.
Some 2,000 foreign contractors and nonprofits in 177 countries received more than $6.4 billion in United States’ federal pandemic response assistance between the spring of 2020 and the fall of 2021, according to a report by the U.S. Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC).
Most of the “prime recipients” are based in the United States and distributed the funds overseas. The $6.4 billion in foreign payments came from two pandemic relief packages passed by Congress in March 2020 and March 2021 totaling $4.1 trillion.
Those prime recipients include federal agencies, including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Health & Human Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and nonprofits, such as North Carolina-based Family Health International and Boston-based JSI Research & Training Institute.
Collectively between spring 2020 and Sept. 30, 2021, these federal agencies and nonprofits have approved more than 4,000 contracts and issued 1,000 grants from pandemic relief funds to “sub-recipients” across the globe, including foreign contractors that provide services for the U.S. government and international development and health care organizations.
The largest single international prime recipient is the United Nations, which received $831.4 million in direct pandemic funding, according to the report.
The United Nations, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees received 43 percent of U.S. pandemic relief funding spent overseas, according to the report.
The other top nine prime recipients which spend the relief funds overseas included were: UNICEF ($224 million); FHI ($99.945 million); General Dynamics Global Force LLC ($96.5 million); United Kingdom-based Acrow Global Ltd. ($83.5 million); International Red Cross/Red Crescent ($73.667 million); International Organization for Migration ($68.242 million); JSI ($64.32 million); the African Field Epidemiology Network ($62.5 million) and “miscellaneous foreign contractors” ($366.5 million).
About $2.132 billion of the $6.4 billion in internationally distributed U.S. pandemic relief funds was deposited and distributed through banks in Switzerland because many international nonprofits and organizations are headquartered in Geneva.
According to PRAC, those Geneva-based recipients include $1.5 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; $401 million for the U.N. High Commission; $87.856 million for the International Organization for Migration; $78.688 million for the World Health Organization; and $61.4 million for Le Comite International de La Croix-Rouge (Red Cross).
The recipient mix varies from nation to nation. For instance, sub-recipients in Kuwait received the second-highest allocation by nation after Switzerland, $411 million, with most providing services for U.S. information technology and defense contractors, such as Colorado-based Vectrus Systems Corp., which distributed $339 million in pandemic relief funds on contractors and organizations in Kuwait.
The pandemic relief funds that went to non-domestic recipients are in addition, or supplementary, to existing U.S. foreign aid programs, which totaled $51 billion in aid obligations to 11,000 recipients across the globe in 2020.
In 2021, while pandemic relief funds were distributed through USAID, its direct allocation actually declined to $36 billion, which was committed to 8,000 “activities” in 181 countries.
Since spring 2020, USAID maintains it has supported “more than 120 countries in their fight to contain and combat the virus” by providing $5.7 billion for vaccinations, including $700 million to strengthen vaccination programs and to purchase 1 billion Pfizer vaccines for distributions around the world.
During fiscal year 2022, USAID reports it had $4.7 billion “obligated”—$502 million in contracts, $4.2 million in grants—and dispersed $3.1 billion in 781 pandemic relief awards to 287 recipients, including many in Africa.
Phone calls and emails left with officials listed as USAID media contacts did not to elicit a response over a two-week period.
PRAC was created within the OIG’s independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency (CIGIE) in spring 2020 to track the $2.2 trillion in CARES Act allocations to state and local governments, nonprofits, contractors, and individuals.
With the subsequent adoption of additional federal COVID-19 relief and stimulus packages, including the March 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, PRAC’s 22 inspector generals are now tracking more than $5 trillion in federal pandemic allocations and documenting what is reported by “prime recipients” on its webpage that is accessible to the public on the committee’s website.
But accessibility and transparency doesn’t always translate into comprehensive accounting; there are 21 million “rows” of data on one of PRAC’s dashboards.
OpenTheBooks.com founder Adam Andrzejewski told Epoch Times that while doing a “deep dive” August analysis of the $282.6 billion the U.S. distributed in foreign aid between 2013-18, researchers found discrepancies between the numbers posted by PRAC, USAID, the Department of Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Service.
Many of the discrepancies across the varied tracking and oversight programs are related to specific agency reporting requirements, the type of recipients they deal with, and can mix in assorted federal allocations from different times and programs that are not related to the COVID-19 response.
The bottom line, Andrzejewski said, is it can be daunting to find the bottom line when there are nearly as many haystacks as needles.
“It takes hard work” to ferret through and comprehend the data, he said. “They don’t make it easy.”
According to the Treasury, in 2020 Congress appropriated $3.8 billion for international COVID-19 relief efforts and by April 2021, had added another $10.8 billion in COVID-19 foreign-aid funding, totaling $14.6 billion.
OpenTheBooks maintains the $6.4 billion figure cited by PRAC, and even the $14,6 billion cited by Treasury, does not include all foreign-related COVID-19 spending, such as allocations for the U.S. Health & Human Services global vaccine program, the $9.6 billion in “total COVID-19 budgetary resources” earmarked for USAID, or the American subsidiaries of foreign companies,
According to OpenTheBooks.com, that includes 125 Chinese firms—with “strong ties to the Communist Chinese Party (CCP)”—that received forgivable loans from the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in 2020, which is also not included in the foreign aid outlays.
PRAC’s Award Details Report lists 27 allocations totaling $14.539 million in pandemic assistance on its webpage to contractors in China through U.S.-based organizations and businesses with the largest —$5.18 million—allocated by DHS to U.S. Tactical Supply, Inc., based in Post Falls, Idaho.
According to USASpending, the May 18, 2020 allocation was for U.S. Tactical Supply’s procurement of 5.396 million face masks made in China.
FHI of Durham, N.C., distributed $99.945 million and the JSI Research & Training Institute, based in Boston, dispersed $64.32 million to contractors and organizations overseas.
Both are public health management consulting and research organizations that provide technical and managerial assistance to public health programs worldwide in tandem with contributions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union, European Investment Bank, and corporate donors.
FHI fields a staff of 4,000 across the U.S. and in more than 60 countries. JSI Research & Training Institute, a nonprofit subsidiary of John Snow International, has 135 staff members engaged in 75 projects in 40 countries, seven technical core competency centers and corporate services teams.
Officials at JSI did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls. An FHI representative who requested not to be cited for attribution explained COVID-19 assistance was “channeled” by U.S.-based nonprofits to international groups and contractors using existing “contracting vehicles” and “funding mechanisms” established through the Epidemic Control (EpiC) project funded by the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
“When COVID hit, (the federal government) used a lot of nonprofits” like FHI and JSI because “they were experienced and they had the pipelines in place” to support COVID-19 response in countries “where we’re already working,” she said, providing a fact sheet outlining how FHI allocated pandemic relief money by modifying EpiC in early 2020 to respond to COVID-19 and to bolster health systems to address the pandemic.
CCP Expands Beijing Lockdown As More Cases Detected Among Olympics Personnel
The other day, the English-language press picked up on a rumor that President Xi of China had implored his ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, not to invade Ukraine until after the Winter Games. Anonymously-sourced leaks like these are often propaganda, not truth. But as the Games draw near, the Communist government is tightening the screws on the city of Beijing as COVID continues to spread – albeit, more slowly – despite their draconian measures.
Reuters reports that the CCP has expanded its localized lockdowns in Beijing, restricting movement to those who live within a growing number of neighborhoods and housing complexes, and prohibiting outsiders from entering.
For example, Beijing’s Fengtai district said late on Wednesday residents in a new swath of areas should not leave their residential compounds for unnecessary reasons and must be tested daily for COVID.
Beijing has some reason to target the district: it has produced more local cases than any others, at least going by what the CCP has admitted publicly.
The area had already locked down some compounds that house tens of thousands of people, while several other city districts have restricted the mobility of their residents.
China’s NHC said Beijing saw just five locally transmitted infections confirmed for Wednesday, down from 14 a day earlier.
Locals who spoke with Reuters anonymously indicated that they are all terrified of getting COVID for fear of provoking the government’s wrath.
“I’m anxious everyday because the virus situation is still quite serious,” said a traveler surnamed Wang at Beijing Railway Station. “I don’t want to bring trouble to my hometown. Now I’m tested negative, but what if it changes to positive?”
Beijing has already locked down some compounds that house tens of thousands of people. Several other city districts have imposed mobility restrictions in certain areas. Meanwhile, elsewhere in China, travel has surged during the Lunar New Year holiday. Travel during the first ten days of the holiday season has risen 46% from last year.
Local authorities in charge of the Winter Games said 23 new cases were detected among Games-related personnel on Jan. 26, including eight among those already in the closed-loop Olympics bubble. The rest were discovered upon arrival at the airport.
China isn’t alone. Cases are climbing elsewhere in Asia. For example, in Japan, Tokyo is reportedly facing “an explosive infection situation due to an omicron-fueled wave that’s driving daily case numbers to record highs. Top Japanese health authority Norio Omagari said newly recorded daily infections in Tokyo could exceed 24K in a week if the current trend continues. The capital city reported 16.5K cases on Thursday.
Another potential scenario is that Russia draws on the Cuban Missile Crisis and positions offensive weapons within the borders of Latin American allies. Whatever the outcome, the crisis has underscored the perils of a second Cold War between the world’s top nuclear powers.
If the path forward is unpredictable, what got us here is easy to trace. The row over Ukraine is the outgrowth of an aggressive US posture toward Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, driven by hegemonic policymakers and war profiteers in Washington. Understanding that background is key to resolving the current impasse, if the Biden administration can bring itself to alter a dangerous course.
US principles vs. power constraints
Russia’s central demands – binding guarantees to halt the eastward expansion of NATO, particularly in Ukraine, and to prevent offensive weapons from being stationed near its borders – have been publicly dismissed by the U.S government as non-starters.
In rejecting Russian concerns, the Biden administration claims that it is upholding “governing principles of international peace and security.” These principles, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says, “reject the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.”
The US government’s real-world commitment to these principles is non-existent. For decades, the US has provided critical diplomatic and military cover for Israel’s de-facto annexations, which have expanded its borders to three different strips of occupied territory (the West Bank, Gaza, and Syria’s Golan Heights). The US is by far the world leader in dictating policies to other countries, be it who their leaders should be; how little to pay minimum-wage workers; or how to share energy supplies.
When not making sanctimonious public pronouncements, US officials are quietly able to acknowledge the real principles that guide their actions. According to the Washington Post, one US official specializing in Russia “believes the Russians are still interested in a real dialogue.” Russia’s real aim, this official says, is “to see whether Washington is willing to discuss any sort of commitment that constrains U.S. power.”
The official added: “The Russians are waiting to see what we’re going to offer, and they’re going to take it back and decide is this serious. Is this something we [the Russians] can sell as a major victory for security, or is it just, from their point of view, another attempt to fob us off and not give us anything?”
If their public statements and actions are any guide, the Biden administration is so far opting for the latter.
When US officials and allied media voices permit themselves to drop “Wag the Dog” theatrics and entertain the possibility of constraining US power, the Ukraine crisis no longer appears so dangerously intractable.
In the New York Times, veteran national security correspondent David E. Sanger allows that it is “possible” that Putin’s “bottom line in this conflict is straightforward”: obtain a pledge to “stop Ukraine from joining NATO” as well as one that the US and NATO “will never place offensive weapons that threaten Russia’s security in Ukrainian territory.”
On these issues, “there is trading space,” Sanger concedes. Given that “Ukraine is so corrupt, and its grasp of democracy is so tenuous… no one expects it to be accepted for NATO membership in the next decade or two.” Accordingly, Russia could be offered “some kind of assurance that, for a decade, or maybe a quarter-century, NATO membership for Kyiv was off the table.”
In Sanger’s view, the real and “complex” issue is not Ukraine’s NATO status, but “how the United States and NATO operate” there – specifically, by flooding the country with weapons. Since 2014, Sanger writes, the US and NATO allies have provided “Ukraine with what the West calls defensive arms, including the capability to take out Russian tanks and aircraft”, a “flow that has sped up in recent weeks.” Russia – for reasons apparently foreign to Sanger – believes that these “weapons are more offensive than defensive” and “that Washington’s real goal is to put nuclear weapons in Ukraine.” An agreement to address these concerns, an unidentified US official concedes, would be “‘the easiest part of this,’ as long as Russia is willing to pull back its intermediate-range weapons as well.”
Unmentioned by Sanger is that Russia has repeatedly signaled such a willingness, including just last month: Russia’s proposed draft treaty with NATO — issued with the stated aim of resolving the Ukraine standoff — proposes that all sides “not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles” in any area that allows them “to reach the territory of the other Parties.” Also unmentioned is that such deployments were previously banned under the INF Treaty, the Cold War-era pact that the Trump administration abandoned in August 2019, to the resounding silence of Democratic lawmakers and allied media outlets more invested in pretending that Trump was a Russian puppet than in addressing his actual Russia policies.
In a bid to preserve some of the INF Treaty’s safeguards, Putin immediately offered a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe – a proposal swiftly rejected by both Trump and NATO. (Trump’s response was again duly ignored by Russiagate-crazed media outlets and politicians, for the obvious narrative inconvenience.)
Much like its refusal so far to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal – another critical security pact torn up by Trump — the Biden administration has thus placed itself in a dangerous geopolitical standoff rather than embrace diplomacy around proposals that US officials either deem as reality anyway (Ukraine not joining NATO) or that they were once party to (the Trump-sabotaged INF treaty).
NATO expansion, from the Cold War to a Ukraine coup
If the Biden administration is now willing to accept “real dialogue” over an outcome that “constrains US power” on the Ukraine-Russia border, it will have to eschew guiding US principles since the end of the Cold War.
When he agreed to the reunification of Germany, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was “assured in 1990 that the [NATO] alliance would not expand,” Jack Matlock, Reagan and Bush I’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, recently noted. But upon entering office, Bill Clinton broke that pledge and began an expansion spree that has pushed NATO to Russia’s borders. In 2008 – against the reported advice of advisers including Fiona Hill – President George W. Bush backed a NATO declaration calling for Ukraine and Georgia’s eventual ascension.
The constant expansion of NATO has led to what the scholar Richard Sakwa calls a “fateful geographical paradox”: NATO, Sakwa says, now “exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”
Sakwa’s maxim undoubtedly applies to Ukraine, where the threat of Russia’s neighbor joining a hostile military alliance sparked a war in 2014 that continues today.
The standard narrative of the origins of the current Ukraine crisis, as the New York Times recently claimed, is that Ukrainians revolted in street protests that ousted “pro-Russian leader” Viktor Yanukovych, “prompting [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to order the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and instigate a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.” In reality, the US backed a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government and sabotaged opportunities to avoid further conflict.
The immediate background came in the fall of 2013, when the US and its allies pressured Yanukovych to sign a European Union association agreement that would have curtailed its ties to Russia. Contrary to how he is now portrayed, Yanukovych was not “pro-Russian”, to the point where he even “cajoled and bullied anyone who pushed for Ukraine to have closer ties to Russia,” Reuters reported at the time.
To sign the EU deal, Ukraine would have to accept the harsh austerity demands of the IMF, which had publicly criticized Ukraine’s “large pension and wage increases,” and “generous energy subsidies.” The agreement also contained a provision calling on Ukraine to adhere to the EU’s “military and security” policies, “which meant in effect, without mentioning the alliance, NATO,” as the late scholar Stephen F. Cohen argued.
The EU proposal, the New York Times observed in November 2013, was the centerpiece of its “most important foreign policy initiative”: an attempt to “draw in former Soviet republics and lock them on a trajectory of changes based on Western political and economic sensibilities.”
In the words of Carl Gershman, the then-head of the CIA-tied National Endowment for Democracy, “Ukraine is the biggest prize.” In Gershman’s fantasy, Ukraine’s entry into the Western orbit would redound to Russia as well. “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” he wrote. “… Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
Although it would have been a boon for DC neoconservatives, accepting the EU’s insistence on “increasing the retirement age and freezing pensions and wages” would have meant political suicide for Yanukovych. Putin capitalized by offering a more generous package of $15 billion in aid and gas subsidies, a deal that contained “no immediate quid pro quo for Russia,” the New York Times noted. To lure Yanukovych, Russia even dropped a proposal, opposed by Ukraine’s Maidan protesters, that Ukraine join a Russian-led customs union.
Putin’s Ukraine offer, the Times added, was one of “several foreign policy moves that have served to re-establish Russia as a counterweight to Western dominance of world affairs.” In the eyes of the Western domineers, the prospect of a Russian “counterweight” was an intolerable act. The US responded by ramping up support for the Maidan protests in Kiev and helping to sabotage an agreement with Yanukovych to hold new elections.
Any pretense that the US was acting as an honest broker was obliterated in early February 2014 when Russia released a recording of an intercepted a phone call between then-senior Obama official Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. The US diplomats not only selected who would be Ukraine’s next Prime Minister — Arseniy Yatsenyuk – but decided to exclude their EU allies from the process. “Yats is the guy,” Nuland declared, before adding: “Fuck the EU.”
A major tipping point in the conflict came two weeks later, on February 20th, when nearly 50 Madain protesters were massacred by snipers. The Ukrainian opposition immediately accused government forces, sparking a series of events that led to Yanukovych’s flight from the country two days later. Exhaustive research by the University of Ottawa’s Ivan Katchanovski argues that the massacre was in fact “perpetrated principally by members of the Maidan opposition, specifically its far-right elements.”
Faced with the possibility of losing Russia’s most important naval base at Sevastopol to a US-backed coup regime, Putin responded by seizing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Russia also provided military support to Ukrainians in the country’s Donbas region hostile to the new coup government, sparking an ongoing war between the opposing sides.
In Washington, the annexation of Crimea is widely seen as an expansionist act of aggression; even, according to Hillary Clinton, akin to “what Hitler did back in the 30s.” In Crimea, Russia had the support of the majority of the population, if polls are to be believed. The same for the Russian population, across the political spectrum. “For [Russian] politicians, not vocally supporting, let alone questioning, the annexation of Crimea is practically akin to political suicide – even for liberals,” a European Union think tank observed in 2014. Even “Anti-Putin nationalists… are enthusiastic backers of Putin’s territorial grab.” (For over 200 years Crimea had been a territory of Russia, until Nikita Khrushchev assigned it to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.)
A negotiated solution to the Donbas war has been in place since the signing of the Minsk II accords in 2015, as Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has repeatedly stressed. The prospect of NATO expansion appears to be the pact’s main obstacle to implementation. Minsk II calls for granting autonomy to the Donbas region in return for its demilitarization. But Ukraine has “[refused] to guarantee permanent full autonomy for the Donbas”, Lieven writes, out of fear “that permanent autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union, as the region could use its constitutional position within Ukraine to block membership.”
In Lieven’s view, this could change with one critical shift: “If the United States drops the hopeless goal of NATO membership for Ukraine, it will be in a position to pressure the Ukrainian government and parliament to agree to a ‘Minsk III’ by the credible threat of a withdrawal of US aid and political support.”
San Jose To Punish Low-Income Gun Owners With Liability Insurance Requirement
From their ivory towers (and returning to their low-crime neighborhoods) the San Jose, California City Council has decreed that gun owners will soon be required to carry liability insurance and pay a fee if they want to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.
The new requirements – the first of their kind in the United States – disproportionately punishes low-income residents who wish to defend themselves against criminals who will ignore the new financial burden.
It’s the illegal gun ownership that needs restrictions. Don’t punish legal gun owners.
It’s unclear when exactly the plan will go into effect, according to ABC7.
Fighting the law is the Firearm Policy Coalition, which called it “burdensome, unconstitutional, and prohibited by California law” to law-abiding citizens who own firearms.
“Since San Jose’s recalcitrant City Council members don’t believe that the United States Constitution applies to them or their citizens, Firearms Policy Coalition and our members are now committed to fight the City’s outrageous and offensive policies in federal litigation and take every possible action to block their enforcement,” said the group.
The move follows June 2021 legislation requiring the video taping of all legal gun purchases.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a Monday press conference that “San Jose has an opportunity to become a model for the rest of the nation to invest in proven strategies to reduce gun violence, domestic violence and suicide and the many other preventable harms from firearms in our communities.”
Having liability insurance would encourage people in the 5,500 households in San Jose who legally own at least one registered gun to have gun safes, install trigger locks and take gun safety classes, Liccardo said.
The liability insurance will cover losses or damages resulting from any negligent or accidental use of the firearm, including death, injury, or property damage, according to the ordinance. If a gun is stolen or lost, the owner of the firearm would be considered liable until the theft or loss is reported to authorities. –ABC7
The law won’t apply to current or retired law enforcement officers, those with a license to carry, or anyone who simply ignores it.
Appearing during a White House press briefing Wednesday, Anthony Fauci decreed that children under the age of four will eventually be subjected to a “three-dose regimen” of COVID vaccines.
“Dose and regimen for children 6 months to 24 months worked well, but it turned out the other group from 24 months to 4 years did not yet reach the level of non-inferiority, so the studies are continued,” Fauci noted.
He added, “It looks like it will be a three-dose regimen. I don’t think we can predict when we will see an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] with that.”
He told reporters that he couldn’t give an exact timetable on when this would happen, but was adamant it would.
“We need to be patient,” he said, adding “That’s why the system works. The FDA is very scrupulous in their ability and in their effort to make sure that, before something gets approved for any age, and especially with children … that they will be safe, and that they will be effective.”
Watch:
Last week, Fauci suggested that he wants to see the FDA authorise the vaccines for toddlers within a month.
“My hope is that it’s going to be within the next month or so and not much later than that, but I can’t guarantee that,” Fauci said during an interview.
“I can’t out guess the FDA. I’m going to have to leave that to them,” he added.
However, after the interview, Fauci sent CNBC a statement “clarifying that he’s not involved in the decision making process at the FDA and didn’t know when the agency will clear the shots.”
“I did not at all mean to imply that the authorization would come within a month,” Fauci said, adding “I meant that we do not know … I am not involved in that decision.”
CDC Data has shown that children make up less than 0.1 percent of Covid deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.
To date, 259 of around 860,000 recorded U.S. Covid deaths have been among children under the age of five.
A study out of the University of Utah last October (before Omicron) found that exactly 50 percent of children who contract the virus have asymptomatic cases.
The World Health Organization’s Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan previously said that the body does not see it as necessary for healthy children to take Covid booster vaccines.
“The aim is to protect the most vulnerable, to protect those at highest risk of severe disease and dying, those are our elderly population, immunocompromised with underlying conditions and also health care workers,” Swaminathan said last week.
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US Navy Races To Recover Crashed F-35 Stealth Jet In South China Sea Before Beijing Does
The race is on to recover in a speedy fashion an advanced US F-35C stealth jet which crashed off the USS Vinson aircraft carrier and landed in the South China Sea on Monday.
The US Navy is reportedly working on the daunting task of recovering the aircraft after the “landing mishap” which injured seven in total, including the pilot who had successfully ejected and six sailors who were presumably injured while on the flight deck.
“The $100 million warplane impacted the flight deck of the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier and then fell into the sea as its pilot ejected, Navy officials said,” according to CNN.
A spokesman for the Navy’s 7th Fleet confirmed that “The US Navy is making recovery operations arrangements for the F-35C aircraft involved in the mishap aboard USS Carl Vinson.” The Navy has not disclosed the precise location or area of the South China Sea where the accident happened, also on fears that the Chinese would be eager to recover the plane, which has closely guarded secretive stealth technology.
US military sources were quoted as saying it remains vital that “no one else can get their hands on the plane” – without doubt an indirect reference to China, which has a heavy military presence in the region. According to a US military quote:
The US presently faces the challenge of pulling the wreckage out of the contested waters of the South China Sea to recover US technology, as well as make sure no one else can get their hands on the plane. “The planning efforts are ongoing for the recovery of the F-35,” a 7th Fleet spokesman told Insider.
Experts say China would almost certainly want to get ahold of the F-35, a highly-capable fifth-generation fighter jet that has taken many years and significant funding to research and develop.
Below: simulation of fighter jet crash landing aboard aircraft carrier and debris blowback impacting flight crew…
One defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, former US Navy submarine warfare officer Bryan Clark, explained that “There’s a huge opportunity for the Chinese if they were able to get a copy of an actual F-35 to reverse engineer its features, which they can’t do just based on the intelligence gathering they’ve conducted.” He added: “Maybe the bigger concern is if they got ahold of an actual F-35, it would help them to figure out how to better counter it.”
The F-35 stealth manufacturer Lockheed Martin had announced last August when the USS Vinson had departed San Diego: “This deployment marks the first time in U.S. naval aviation history that a stealth strike fighter has been deployed operationally on an aircraft carrier,” it said.
This is the F-35’s second crash in a matter of months at sea. Last November, a British F-35 stealth jet has crashed into the Mediterranean Seaduring what was described at the time as routine flying operations from the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. F-35 fighters are an estimated 135 million dollars, with cutting-edge stealth technology and radar.
