Strategic Culture Foundation

1. FBI Hovering up DNA at a Pace That Rivals China, Holds 21 Million Samples and Counting

China and the U.S. are collecting the same proportion of their populations' DNA profiles — and the FBI wants to double its budget to get even more.

By Ken KLIPPENSTEIN

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THE FBI HAS amassed 21.7 million DNA profiles — equivalent to about 7 percent of the U.S. population — according to Bureau data reviewed by The Intercept.

The FBI aims to nearly double its current $56.7 million budget for dealing with its DNA catalog with an additional $53.1 million, according to its budget request for fiscal year 2024. "The requested resources will allow the FBI to process the rapidly increasing number of DNA samples collected by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security," the appeal for an increase says.

"When we're talking about rapid expansion like this, it's getting us ever closer to a universal DNA database."

In an April 2023 statement submitted to Congress to explain the budget request, FBI Director Christopher Wray cited several factors that had "significantly expanded the DNA processing requirements of the FBI." He said the FBI collected around 90,000 samples a month — "over 10 times the historical sample volume" — and expected that number to swell to about 120,000 a month, totaling about 1.5 million new DNA samples a year. (The FBI declined to comment.)

The staggering increases are raising questions among civil liberties advocates.

"When we're talking about rapid expansion like this, it's getting us ever closer to a universal DNA database," Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who specializes in genetic privacy, told The Intercept. "I think the civil liberties implications here are significant."

The rapid growth of the FBI's sample load is in large part thanks to a Trump-era rule change that mandated the collection of DNA from migrants who were arrested or detained by immigration authorities.

Mission Creep in FBI's DNA

The FBI began building a DNA database as early as 1990. By 1998, it helped create a national database called Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, that spanned all 50 states. Each state maintained its own database, with police or other authorities submitting samples based on their states' rules, and CODIS allowed all the states to search across the entire country. At first, the collection of data was limited to DNA from people convicted of crimes, from crime scenes, and from unidentified remains.

Even those categories were controversial at the time. When CODIS was launched nationally, most states did not submit DNA from all people convicted of felonies; the only point of consensus among the states' collection programs was to take DNA from convicted sex offenders.

"If you look back at when CODIS was established, it was originally for violent or sexual offenders," Anna Lewis, a Harvard researcher who specializes in the ethical implications of genetics research, told The Intercept. "The ACLU warned that this was going to be a slippery slope, and that's indeed what we've seen."

Today, police have the authority to take DNA samples from anyone sentenced for a felony charge. In 28 states, police can take DNA samples from suspects arrested for felonies but who have not been convicted of any crime. In some cases, police offer plea deals to reduce felony charges to misdemeanor offenses in exchange for DNA samples. Police are even acquiring DNA samples from unwitting people, as The Intercept recently reported.

"It changed massively," Lewis said of the rules and regulations around government DNA collection. "You only have to be a person of interest to end up in these databases."

The database is likely to continue proliferating as DNA technology becomes more sophisticated, Lewis explained, pointing to the advent of environmental DNA, which allows for DNA to be collected from ambient settings like wastewater or air.

"Just by breathing, you're discarding DNA in a way that can be traced back to you," Lewis said.

While this might sound like science fiction, the federal government has already embraced the technology. In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offered a contract for laboratory services to assist with "autonomously collected eDNA testing": environmental DNA testing based on samples that are no longer even manually collected.

Until recently, the U.S. DNA database surpassed even that of authoritarian China, which launched an ambitious DNA collection program in 2017. That year, the BBC reported, the U.S. had about 4 percent of its population's DNA, while China had about 3 percent. Since then, China announced a plan aimed at collecting between 5 and 10 percent of its male population's DNA, according to a 2020 study cited by the New York Times.

China has a record of abusing its DNA database for surveillance and crackdowns on dissent. The efforts have been aided by American technology and expertise. In 2021, the U.S. intelligence community raised alarms about China's widespread DNA collection, including foreigners' genetic information.

"Cheaper, Easier, and Faster"

The changes detailed by Wray include shifts in statutory and regulatory requirements, with the bulk of new samples coming from a new policy mandating collection of DNA from people arrested or detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a Department of Homeland Security agency. The new DHS policy, however, only explains part of the rapid growth of the FBI's DNA database.

Whereas DNA analysis once had to be conducted in a lab by a cumbersome manual process of manually matching DNA strands that took months, the process has since been fully automated. Under rapid DNA analysis, a DNA profile can be developed in one to two hours after a simple swab of one's inner cheek without a lab or human involvement.

"When surveillance technology gets cheaper, easier, and faster to use," said Eidelman, of the ACLU, "it tends to get used more — often in ways that are troubling."

"When surveillance technology gets cheaper, easier, and faster to use, it tends to get used more — often in ways that are troubling."

In 2021, the FBI touted as "a major milestone" the contribution of its 20 millionth DNA profile to the national DNA database, calling it "one of the most successful investigative tools available to U.S. law enforcement."

While DNA has played an important role in prosecuting crimes, less than 3 percent of the profiles have assisted in cases, the Bureau's data reveals. By comparison, fingerprints collected by the FBI from current and former federal employees linked them to crimes at a rate of 12 percent each year, the Bureau testified in 2004 — when fingerprint technology was far less sophisticated.

For civil liberties advocates, a government database of everyone's DNA would be rife for abuses.

"A universal database really just would subvert our ideas of autonomy and freedom and the presumption of innocence. It would be saying that it makes sense for the government to track us at any time based on our private information," Eidelman told The Intercept, adding that DNA collection presents specific risks to privacy. "Our DNA is personal and sensitive: It can expose our propensity for serious health conditions, family members, and ancestry."

DNA Collection From Migrants

The bulk of the DHS increases stemmed from samples collected from the hundreds of thousands of migrants that ended up arrested or detained by Customs and Border Protection. With the end of Title 42 expulsions, a pandemic-era policy that allowed the U.S. to expel migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum — which finally expired weeks after Wray's April statement to Congress — the FBI director said he expected the number of new samples to swell to 120,000 a month. (CBP did not respond to a request for comment.)

"This substantial increase has created massive budget and personnel shortfalls for the FBI," Wray said in his statement. "While the FBI has worked with DHS components to automate and streamline workflows, a backlog of approximately 650,000 samples has developed, increasing the likelihood of arrestees and non-U.S. detainees being released before identification through investigative leads."

DHS initially sought to collect DNA from detainees in 2009, but the Obama administration exempted the department from collection requirements for non-U.S. detainees. The task would have been too expensive, since Congress had not allocated funding for DNA collection, then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano explained.

In 2019, President Donald Trump's administration ended the exemptions, and DHS announced that it would collect DNA samples from people arrested or detained by border authorities. At the time, Trump's policy was widely condemned, including on the grounds that it could lead to widespread civil liberties violations.

President Joe Biden has not reversed the decision, causing the government's DNA database to balloon in size.

theintercept.com

2. “Foda-se a Ucrania” – Candace Owens explica por que a America nao deveria apoiar a Ucrania

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Patrick Bet-David e Candace Owens discutem o envolvimento dos EUA em conflitos internacionais, com foco especifico na Ucrania. Candace Owens argumenta por que a America deveria reconsiderar a sua posicao em relacao as intervencoes globais.

Patrick Bet-David e o fundador e CEO da Valuetainment Media. Ele e o autor do best-seller n? 1 do Wall Street Journal, Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) e pai de 2 meninos e 2 meninas. Ele atualmente reside em Fort. Lauderdale, Florida.

3. “A la mierda Ucrania”: Candace Owens explica por que Estados Unidos no deberia apoyar a Ucrania

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Patrick Bet-David y Candace Owens analizan la participacion de Estados Unidos en conflictos internacionales, centrandose especificamente en Ucrania. Candace Owens argumenta por que Estados Unidos deberia reconsiderar su postura sobre las intervenciones globales.

Patrick Bet-David es el fundador y director ejecutivo de Valuetainment Media. Es autor del bestseller numero uno del Wall Street Journal, Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) y padre de 2 ninos y 2 ninas. Actualmente reside en pies. Lauderdale, Florida.

4. Ukrainian MOD Announces ‘Sarah’ Ashton-Cirillo Has Been Suspended, Placed Under Investigation

By Hannah NIGHTINGALE

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Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has been suspended from duties as Ukrainian military spokesperson pending an investigation, following comments by the transgender former US soldier threatening to "hunt down" critics of the US' involvement in the Ukraine war.

"Statement of the Command of the Territorial Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine regarding some statements of the spokesperson of the TDF, Junior Sergeant Sarah Ashton Cirillo," a statement form the Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces, posted to X on Wednesday morning, read.

"The statements of JSgt Ashton-Cirillo in recent days were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the AFU. When conducting military operations against the aggressor, the defense forces of Ukraine strictly observe the norms of international humanitarian law," the statement added.

In a video posted to X on September 13, Ashton-Cirillo said, "Russia hates the truth, that their obsessive focus on a Ukrainian volunteer is simply allowing the light of the Ukrainian nations honesty to shine brightly."

"Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam [with] uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes."

"And this puppet of Putin is only the first Russia's war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty, and complete liberation."

Ashton-Cirillo is a 46-year-old biological male from Florida, who previously went by Mike.

On his show Thursday, Jack Posobiec reminded his audience that Ashton-Cirillo "is a member of the armed forces. That means he's under investigation from the same agency that he threatened to send after me."

"When you join the military, and those of us who actually served with know how this works, that means you fall under the military code of justice. And now you are going to face justice."

humanevents.com

5. American Citizen Journalist Sitting in Ukraine Prison, State Dept. Confirms, as Biden Begs for Billions More to Protect Ukrainian ‘Freedom’

While lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. debate sending billions more in military aid to Ukraine, an American citizen journalist, Gonzalo Lira, is languishing in a Ukrainian prison on allegations of spreading Russian propaganda, throwing into question the status of free speech in the supposed democracy the Biden administration argues is worthy of more taxpayer dollars.

By Kristina WONG

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The Biden administration is asking Congress to approve another $24 billion for Ukraine for now through the end of this year, which would add to the $113 billion that Congress has committed to the country since its war with Russia began in February of last year.

President Biden on Tuesday at the United Nations argued that investment in Ukraine was an investment in "the future of every country that seeks a world governed by basic rules."

However, the administration has been much less vocal about Ukraine potentially violating the rights of an American journalist who is currently detained in Ukraine for his reporting; and in a speech at the U.N. almost entirely devoted to Ukraine, the status of Gonzalo Lira was not mentioned once by Biden.

Lira, a dual citizen of the United States and Chile who was living in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at the time of the Russian invasion, is reportedly facing between five to eight years in prison under Ukraine's wartime propaganda laws.

The American citizen journalist was initially arrested in May of this year on suspicion of producing pro-Russian propaganda on his YouTube channel, where he questioned the narratives around the war presented in the legacy media and from the Zelensky government, including suggesting that Moscow was provoked into invading by the Ukrainian government and the expansion east of the American-led NATO military alliance.

In July of this year, Lira posted messages on Twitter and YouTube claiming that he was going to try to cross the Ukrainian border into Hungary to claim asylum after being released from prison on bail. He has not posted on either platform since.

In his final video message, Lira claimed that if he did not post after his attempt to cross the border, it would mean that he had been arrested again by the Ukrainian authorities. Lira said that in such an event, he would "die in prison" and begged the public to "raise a ruckus" about his arrest. The former red pill-style dating coach turned citizen journalist has maintained that he merely discussed publicly available information about the war.

"The American State Department knows exactly who I am and the fate that awaits me," he said before attempting to cross the border.

According to a copy of the apparent charges, the Ukrainian government alleged that Lira "had a criminal intent aimed at the manufacture, distribution materials containing justification, recognition as legitimate, denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began in 2014, as well as justification, recognition as legitimate of the temporary occupation of part of Ukraine territory."

The charge sheet posted by Lira contains zero mention of him ever working for the Russian government in any capacity, nor does it lay out any other criminal acts other than statements he made on social media.

"The charges against me are just because of my opinion about this conflict, I did no harm to anyone," Lira said.

The citizen journalist has also said that he has suffered violent abuse from other prisoners during his initial time in jail, making claims, which cannot be verified, that the prison guards "outsource" torture to other inmates. Lira said that he believes the Chilean embassy did more to protect his welfare than the U.S. State Department. He added that he believes the American government does not have an interest in his case because: "I'm not a black lesbian druggie, or a transgender grifter. Besides, Victoria Nuland hates my guts, or so I'm told."

A State Department spokesperson told Breitbart News in a statement Tuesday: "We are aware of the detention of Mr. Lira in Ukraine. We take our role in assisting U.S. citizens abroad seriously and are providing all appropriate assistance.

"We are monitoring the situation but have no further comment at this time. We reiterate our message that U.S. citizens should not travel to Ukraine due to the active armed conflict."

Ukraine's Trans 'Spokesperson' Lashes Out at Sen. J.D. Vance for Spreading 'Gender Chaos', Refuses to Deny U.S. Gov't Tieshttps://t.co/eLUui3iwkl

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 18, 2023

Lira's case has come into focus after apparent Ukrainian military spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo claimed last week to have given testimony against Lira while claiming to have met with him personally. Ashton-Cirillo asserted that he was in good physical and mental health during their meeting.

The transgender spokesperson has come under criticism from U.S. Senator J.D. Vance after declaring on social media that Russian propagandists would be "hunted down" by the Ukrainian government.

Sen. Vance, Breitbart News reported, has written to the Biden administration, questioning if the White House is aware of any plans from the Zelensky government to wage violent attacks on people exercising their right to free speech. Ashton-Cirillo, meanwhile, has asserted that Ukraine respects freedom of speech but caveated by declaring that those who spread supposed Russian propaganda cannot claim to be journalists and therefore will face imprisonment.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration brought home five Americans detained in Iran in exchange for releasing $6 billion to the Islamic nation, along with five Iranians facing charges in the United States.

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Europe's largest journalist association, has expressed concern about a new Ukrainian law that could arbitrarily censor media in the country. https://t.co/ZBVFEa1dJP

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 9, 2023

breitbart.com

6. New Iron Curtain in Europe, Like Last One, is a Creation of Western Hostility Towards Russia

The Cold War demarcation of Europe and the wider world is back with a vengeance, promoted by the same imperialist powers that created the last one.

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The European Union, which has become a virtual clone of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance, is erecting a new Iron Curtain across the continent – more than 30 years since the Cold War supposedly ended.

In the new division of the European continent, Russia and Russian citizens are deemed to be unacceptable, demonized and excommunicated. The EU is proposing to ban Russian citizens from entering the EU states as innocent travelers. Cars with Russian registration plates are to be excluded from crossing national borders, at risk of being confiscated from their owners.

EU states like Latvia are moving to outlaw the speaking of the Russian language in public, even though a quarter of its population are ethnic Russian speakers. Russian cultural figures are vilified when participating in concerts, ballet or literary events.

Russian news media are blacked out and no questioning or an alternative perspective on the war in Ukraine is allowed. The historical context on how this conflict originated, the duplicitous expansion of NATO, are expunged from any public discourse. Put simply, according to the West, Russia is an evil aggressor, its leader Vladimir Putin is a Hitlerian tyrant and the entire nation is a pariah (apart from Western-approved "dissident" figures like the conman Alexei Navalny).

The exclusionary measures are unilaterally implemented by the European Union. It is the EU that is setting up what can only be described as a new Iron Curtain. This may seem somewhat ironic given a common view in the West that it was the Soviet Union, the predecessor of the Russian Federation, that initiated the previous Iron Curtain following the Second World War.

It was actually the United States and its European allies that were responsible for the sudden post-WWII freezing of relations with the Soviet Union and the instigation of decades of Cold War, which featured the relentless threat of nuclear mutually assured destruction.

The phrase "Iron Curtain" was first introduced to the Western public by Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill in a famous (more accurately, notorious) speech delivered during a visit to the United States in March 1946. Churchill darkly warned about an Iron Curtain descending across Europe and he blamed the Soviet Union for the sinister continental division.

Bear in mind this rhetorical grandstanding by Churchill was less than one year after the defeat of Nazi Germany by the "allies" of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union.

Churchill's demonization of the Soviet Union was an unprecedented provocation towards a former ally whom many citizens in the West largely sympathized with as the main victim of Nazi imperialism and, furthermore, admired as the crucial military force among the allies inflicting the final defeat of the Third Reich in Berlin.

Soviet leader Josef Stalin responded to Churchill's speech by condemning it as "warmongering" theatrics. The British and the Americans were henceforth serving notice to Moscow that the Second World War would de facto continue against the Soviet Union – albeit under the label of Cold War and other propaganda constructs such as "defense of the free world". Think about that for a moment. In effect, the U.S., Britain and their soon-to-be-formed NATO alliance (established 1949) were positioning themselves as the successor of Nazi imperialist hostility towards the Soviet Union. The malevolence here is inestimable from the Russian point of view.

Churchill's treachery was not the only contemporary signal of malign intent towards the Soviet Union. The dropping of two atomic bombs on an-all-but defeated Japan in August 1945 was also viewed by the Soviet Union as a latent terror threat by the Americans about the postwar global carve-up and the coming policy of "containment".

Other menacing signals were the recruitment of former Nazi officers, spies and scientists by the U.S. and the British. Instead of delivering Nazi war criminals over to the Soviet Union, as the Western powers had preciously agreed to, these criminals were given refuge and a new life via ratlines set up across Europe. Many of the most vicious Ukrainian fascists (Stepan Bandera, Mykola Lebed and others) who had collaborated with the Nazi SS were also recruited by the United States and Britain. Some were deployed behind Soviet lines for the purpose of sabotage and assassination.

The Ukrainian NeoNazis of today who have been killing ethnic Russians in the Donbass region are self-declared proud heirs to the Nazi collaborators of WWII. The U.S. and NATO weaponizing of the Kiev Nazi regime and training of the Azov Nazi battalion and others is totally consistent with the covert recruitment by the United States and Britain in early postwar period against the Soviet Union.

But, but, but, it will be said, the Soviet Union and the allied Warsaw Pact states built the Berlin Wall and erected barbed-wire borders across Europe.

Well, yes, that is partly true. But just remember this: the Soviet Union was invaded by an imperialist Nazi behemoth that killed up to 27 million of its people. There is plenty of evidence that the Nazi war machine had been enabled by Western capital investment during the 1920s and 30s with the aim of destroying the Soviet Union because it was perceived as a threat to the Western imperialist order.

Given the blatant treachery shown by the West towards the Soviet Union amid the still-smoldering ashes of WWII and given the unprecedented existential threats that were being newly deployed by the West (atomic bombings, Nazi recruitment), it is hardly surprising that Moscow and its Warsaw Pact partners adopted a vigorous defensive mode. They were, after all, under attack, albeit covertly.

From the objective facts, one can conclude that it was the Western powers that were the first to instigate the Cold War and the subsequent Iron Curtain division across Europe that came into being in the late 1940s. The basic reason, and it pertains to today, is that the Soviet Union could not be tolerated as a different entity coexisting with the Western imperialist states. For the latter, it is absolutely imperative that they prevail over a zero-sum world. There can be no multipolarity, only unipolar dominance by the West. That is a definitional necessity for imperialist power.

It should be also noted that Churchill did not invent the phrase, Iron Curtain. That phrase was articulated in February 1945 by Josef Goebbels who warned that the defeat of Nazi Germany would be a disaster with an "Iron Curtain" falling over Europe.

The United States and its European NATO vassals cannot abide any dissent from their narrative of vainglorious virtue and "defense of the free world". Russia, like the Soviet Union before it, is a threat to the Western imperialist order because it does not accept vassal status. To that end, Moscow must be excluded at all costs.

The Cold War demarcation of Europe and the wider world is back with a vengeance, promoted by the same imperialist powers that created the last one.

7. France Detains Journalist Who Covered Killings of Civilians in Egypt-Libya Border Operation

Ariane Lavrilleux faces investigation in attempt to identify sources of leak that revealed joint operation that led to extrajudicial killings in Western Desert between 2016 and 2018

By MEE staff

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French police detained a journalist on Tuesday in connection with her reporting on alleged French complicity in extrajudicial killings of civilians in Egypt's Western Desert between 2016 and 2018, according to investigative news website Disclose.

The journalist, Ariane Lavrilleux, who is a French national, co-authored the investigative series Egypt Papers, which was published in November 2021.

The investigation claimed that France has provided intelligence to the Egyptian authorities as part of Operation Sirli, which was then used by Cairo to "kill civilians" suspected of smuggling across the border with Libya, rather than terrorists, as was agreed.

According to leaked classified defence documents cited by Disclose, the French military was implicated in at least 19 air strikes against civilians between 2016 and 2018.

The French government has not denied the reports.

Operation Sirli began in February 2016 during the presidency of Francois Hollande. It continued despite reservations expressed by both French military intelligence and the air force about the way Egypt was using the intelligence, Disclose reported.

One such note was addressed to French defence minister Florence Parly on 22 January 2019, before French President Emmanuel Macron's official visit to Egypt.

In response to the revelations two years ago, Herve Grandjean, spokesperson for the defence ministry, said that the ministry had "taken legal action after this massive leak of classified documents", without specifying who was targeted by the complaint.

Disclose said on Tuesday that the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) searched Lavrilleux's home looking for evidence related to her sources.

"The objective of this unacceptable attack on press freedom is to identify the Disclose's sources, which made it possible to reveal the military operation Sirli, carried out by France in Egypt on behalf of the dictatorship," the website said in a press release.

"Accompanied by an investigating judge, police officers from DGSI placed the journalist in police custody as part of an investigation for compromising national defence secrets and revealing information which may lead to the identification of a protected agent," the statement added.

Reporters Without Borders denounced Lavrilleux's arrest, saying in a Tweet: "We fear that the DGSI's actions will undermine the secrecy of sources."

Meanwhile, Lavrilleux's lawyer Virginie Marquet warned that the crackdown "risks seriously undermining the confidentiality of journalists' sources", and told AFP that her client had "only revealed information of public interest".

Last year, two US advocacy groups filed a joint complaint asking France's national anti-terrorism prosecutor and the UN to investigate Paris' complicity in crimes against humanity in Egypt in connection with Operation Sirli, according to Disclose.

France detains journalist who covered killings of civilians in Egypt-Libya border operation

8. After Failure of Ukraine’s ‘Spring Offensive,’ U.S.-NATO Escalate War Against Russia

By Andre DAMON

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On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Joe Biden will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York City in an effort to mobilize support for the US-NATO war against Russia.

Their appearance follows the failure of Ukraine's "spring offensive," which has made no significant territorial gains despite the loss of tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops. On Monday, Zelensky's government announced that it had dismissed all of its deputy defense ministers, following the firing last month of the country's defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov.

Adding to the context of crisis and desperation, just one day ahead of Zelensky's appearance at the UN, the New York Times published a report refuting claims that a September 6 missile attack on a Ukrainian market that killed at least 15 civilians was a deliberate massacre by Russian "terrorists." Instead, the Times reported, the disaster was the result of an allegedly accidental Ukrainian missile strike—suspiciously timed to correspond with the arrival of Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ukraine the same day.

The mass dismissal of the entire leading ranks of the Ukrainian defense ministry is an all but open admission that the counter-offensive failed. Zelensky is being flown into Washington for emergency talks. It is evident that the Biden administration is responding to the military setback by escalating the war. It is demanding that Congress pass a further $21 billion in weapons and aid to Ukraine, adding to the more than $150 billion that has already been allocated. It is also moving to send long-range missiles capable of striking deep into Russian territory.

The US media's coverage is more and more directly using the language of open war against Russia. "How to wage the financial war against Russia's economy," read an editorial in the Washington Post.

The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, one of America's leading war propagandists, called in an op-ed Friday for the US to urgently lift any remaining restraints on the intervention. "Ukraine needs to inflict as much damage on Putin's army as fast as possible," Friedman wrote.

"That means we need to massively and rapidly deliver the weaponry Ukraine needs to break Putin's lines in the country's southeast. I'm talking the kitchen sink: F-16s …; MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, which could strike deep behind Russian lines—whatever the Ukrainians can use effectively and fast."

Friedman concluded that "securing justice in war almost always requires the total defeat and occupation of the aggressor."

Openly expressing Washington's aims, Friedman declared, "Ukraine is a game-changing country for the West" because "its integration into the European Union and NATO someday would constitute a power shift that could rival the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification."

Last week, Reuters reported that the Biden administration is making preparations to send to Ukraine the long-range ATACMS missile, which is capable of striking hundreds of miles behind Russian lines, putting the Russian capital of Moscow itself at risk of attack with NATO weapons.

On Friday, a group of Republican senators issued a statement calling for the Biden administration to send the ATACMS missile system to Ukraine.

"We write to urge you to immediately send MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to Ukraine," the senators wrote. "Additional delay will only further undermine US national security interests and extend this conflict."

They continued, "The recent Ukrainian strike on the Sevastopol naval port using the British Storm Shadow long-range weapon demonstrated the battlefield effectiveness of such weapons."

The letter referred to last week's strike by Ukraine on two Russian warships in dry dock at the port of Sevastopol. While previously Ukrainian officials had not admitted to carrying out strikes inside Russia, they boasted about their responsibility for last week's attack.

More importantly, they openly admitted to using the NATO-provided missiles to carry out the strike, with one official telling Sky News, "It was Storm Shadow," referring to the long-range missile provided by the UK to Ukraine earlier this year.

Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken effectively endorsed Ukraine using NATO long-range missiles to strike inside Russia, declaring that it is "up to them to make decisions about what can be most effective when it comes to restoring their territorial integrity."

There is a clear trajectory of these developments. Even as its Ukrainian proxy forces suffer one military catastrophe after another, the US is escalating its direct involvement in the war, increasingly abandoning the pretense that it is not waging a war against Moscow.

In an indication of what is actually being discussed behind the scenes, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö warned of the threat of a nuclear escalation of the war in an interview published Sunday in the New York Times.

Niinistö warned, "We're in a very sensitive situation. Even small things can change matters a great deal and unfortunately for the worse. That is the risk of such large-scale warfare." He concluded, "The risk that nuclear weapons could be used is tremendous."

In fact, what the United States seeks to present as self-assurance is in reality desperation. Facing a deepening economic and social crisis, US imperialism is seeking to preserve its global hegemony and the dominance of the US dollar in global economic life, which it perceives as being increasingly threatened by the rise of China.

The deepening military crisis creates pressure for the United States to intervene directly to stave off disaster. Now that NATO weapons are being used for strikes inside Russia, how much more room does the United States have to escalate? The next step is the deployment of US and NATO troops, and even the deployment—or use—of nuclear weapons in the conflict.

This disaster can and must be averted. The sentiment for the development of a mass strike movement in the American and Canadian auto industries points to the social force that must be mobilized to stop the war drive of the imperialists. The war is, fundamentally, a "war on two fronts," not only against the countries the United States seeks to dominate and subjugate, but against the working class at home, which the ruling class is seeking to discipline and suppress as part of America's transition to wartime production.

The central task in the fight against war is to unify the social demands of workers with the fight against the predatory foreign policy of American imperialism.

After failure of Ukraine's "spring offensive," US-NATO escalate war against Russia – World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)

9. U.S. Project to Split Syria Up Is Entering a New Phase in Suwayda

Suwayda is just the newest proposed project in a long list of U.S. regime change projects which have resulted in dividing a sovereign nation into small pieces.

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Thousands of Druze in Suwayda, in the southwest of Syria near Jordan, have been protesting inflation and economic woes facing all of Syria because of U.S.-EU sanctions, and the economic collapse after the long armed conflict. But, recently, they are calling for regime change, and the U.S. is supporting them.

In late August, Ben Cline of Virginia, French Hill of Arkansas and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, all Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, entered Syria from Turkey illegally, without any VISA, via the Bab al-Salam crossing north of Aleppo, under the control of Al Qaeda linked terrorists. They met with Syrian opposition members living in terrorist control areas.

Recent media reports are circulating that Congressman French Hill discussed the Suwayda protests on the phone for more than an hour with the spiritual leader of Syria's Druze community, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri.

The Syrian conflict began in March 2011 not far from Sawayda; however, the city did not get involved in the "Arab Spring". The Druze are a close-knit minority, neither Christian nor Muslim, who have communities in Suwayda, the Damascus suburb of Juramana, and Lebanon.

The Druze attempted to sit-out the 2011 conflict, and preferred to be neutral. The instigators of the violence in Deraa in March 2011 were followers of Radical Islam, and wanted 'regime change' to install a pro-U.S. government in Damascus. The Obama administration, with VP Joe Biden, supported the terrorists fighting for "Holy War" because they were the only available boots on the ground. The CIA ran a multi-billion-dollar project supplying and training the terrorists in Turkey who crossed the border into northern Syria. In 2017, Trump cut the CIA program off, which has since left Syria in a quiet stalemate.

Suwayda is an agricultural area, and though it is close to Deraa, it did not have a stake in the uprising to install an Islamic State in Syria. Suwayda, similar to Aleppo, kept its collective head down and kept working hoping that the armed conflict between U.S.-NATO and the Damascus central government would pass them by, and they could survive on the sidelines.

The Druze and the Christian community of Syria are minorities under a secular Syrian government which has protected minorities. The armed opposition was comprised of followers of Radical Islam, such as those who are aligned with Al Qaeda and ISIS. The Druze have no connection with Radical Islam or "Holy War". For this reason, they felt collectively as if the conflict did not include them, and they wanted no part in it.

But now, after 13 years of armed conflict which has turned into a status quo, Suwayda has taken the center stage and is protesting and they are asking for 'regime change' as well as economic reforms.

Why now, after years of neutrality and dodging the fighting? Experts have pointed a finger at the U.S., which is instigating the protests and promising support. Damascus, Aleppo and Homs are all quietly suffering the same economic hardships, but they are not protesting. Electricity is supplied just a few hours per day, gasoline is very expensive and the prices of basic food stuffs have gone up by the day, making some basic needs now a luxury item.

Expert analysis in the early days of the 2011 conflict pointed to the overarching U.S. goal of breaking Syria into small pieces, such as the U.S.-NATO attack achieved in Yugoslavia. Small places, each governed by different leaders, would be easier to control and denominate for U.S. interests.

The protesting Druze in Suwayda are separatists. They are asking for their small piece of the pie from the U.S. map of the new Middle East. Suwayda, Deraa and the U.S. occupation military base at Al Tanf would be connected in a crescent shaped border with Jordan and Iraq.

The Al Tanf base is positioned to prevent Iranian cargo from entering Syria on the Baghdad-Damascus highway.

Deraa was the starting point of the March 2011 conflict. The Al Omari Mosque was used as a weapons storage for the terrorists who were supplied with Libyan arms confiscated from the U.S. military and transferred through the neighboring U.S. military base in Jordan.

Recently in Suwayda, protesters attacked the Ba'ath Party headquarters which has an arsenal stored there for use by the Syrian Arab Army.

The original map drawn by the U.S. State Department in 2011, showed Syria cut into small pieces. It now appears that the northwest province of Idlib is proposed to be part of the Turkish occupied border area, and the border with Turkey north of Aleppo is also proposed to be under Turkish administration, which they would like to annex later. The U.S. sends no humanitarian aid of any kind to Syria, even for the 7.8 magnitude earthquake relief, except to Idlib alone, which is under terrorist control. The former ISIS leader of Idlib, Mohammed al-Julani, has already changed into a suit and tie and has given interviews to U.S. media in an effort by the State Department to rebrand his image as a western supported leader, transformed from his time with ISIS and Al Qaeda.

The Kurds are also on the same separatist band wagon with Idlib and Suwayda. The Kurds were a sizable community in the northeast of Syria, but were never the majority, who were Arabs and Christians. But, the Kurds had the backing of the U.S. military who partnered with them in the fight to defeat ISIS. The actual victors over ISIS was the Syrian Arab Army, the Iraqi Army, Russian military, along with the U.S. military and Kurds. The Kurds have established their own Communist administration under the tremendous financial support of the U.S. government. Usually the U.S. government takes a dim view of Communism, but in the case of the Kurds they have fully supported them, which reinforces that fact that the U.S. government will work with, and support any group, as long as it is in the U.S. interest.

Suwayda is just the newest proposed project in a long list of U.S. regime change projects which have resulted in dividing a sovereign nation into small pieces. Yugoslavia was the first, and the next big U.S.-NATO regime change project was the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, which has left Iraq split into the northern section of Kurdistan, and the southern section of Iraq, which has never recovered from the U.S. invasion and destruction.

Then Libya was attacked in 2011 by U.S.-NATO forces for regime change, and is now split into two separate sections with separate governments. Sudan and Yemen were both attacked and split up.

A project still in progress is the partition of Syria into at least five sections, and also on the drawing board in Washington, DC. is the partition of Lebanon, which will first depend on the culmination of the partition of the south of Syria including Suwayda.

Lebanon has been purposely left without a President for one year, and a government and parliament which is flying on auto-pilot. Israel's goal, which is jointly a U.S. goal, is to contain Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon and to cut off its support from Iran, and Syria.

When Condoleezza Rice called for a New Middle East, she was referring to an Arabic styled patchwork quilt, made up of bits and pieces of formerly defiant and resistance supporting countries, who had called for the end of the occupation of Palestine as a core national cultural value. The American-engineered New Middle East demands forgetting resistance, and acquiescing to normalization with Israel as the prerequisite to peace and prosperity.

10. NATO Blames Its Failure to Protect Children From Sex Trafficking on Chinese Social Media Apps

A Chinese social media app can't be more dangerous than ideologies which enable millions of registered maniacs to prowl the streets in search of childish prey.

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As part of the EU's drive to make Big Tech march in lockstep with it, the Vichy Ireland regime recently fined TikTok an impressive €345m for not sufficiently protecting children with its algorithms. As this is the same American controlled Irish regime, which refused to collect €13 billion, plus interest, in unpaid Irish taxes Apple owed them, one can only conclude it is one rule for the American-owned Apple outfit, and another for Chinese firm TikTok.

Though that Sinophobia first attracted me to the story, it is the faux concern for children the fine represents that particularly concerns me. Although TikTok and similar social media platforms are particularly addictive to children, children's autonomy is being undermined so much on line and in schools and other gatherings that it is hard to believe our EU and U.S. bosses think of them as anything else but lambs to their psychological and sexual slaughter.

According to America's National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are close to one million registered sex offenders in the United States, with creepy Joe Biden's power base of Wilmington, Delaware having an astounding one sex offender for every 107 residents.

Think about that for a moment. If you are an American soccer mom, whose kids do all the Little League and cheerleading stuff well balanced American kids quite rightly do, chances are some well-connected sex predator is eyeing them up.

This is not to say that all American children are equally at risk. They are not. But go look at this interview with a pregnant 14 year old American child prostitute and follow it up with this interview with a 13 year old American child prostitute. Whatever one thinks about the "life choices" those two children have made, one need only look at a few minutes of each video to see that they are children, young totally vulnerable children thrown into a world most of us should fear, for their sakes, to our marrow.

We have all seen the memes of Congolese child slaves mining the cobalt for Greta Thunberg's electric cars. But many of the "more fortunate" of those children are trafficked to Greta's European Union or to the U.S. where the exploitation and bare-faced denial of that exploitation continue.

Greta's Civilised Sweden, as this report explains, now has its own imported child soldiers, with children as young as ten packing heat in one or other of the countless drug armies that blight Greta's green Swedish paradise.

In checking out these pictures of recently disappeared children in Ireland, note that many of them are from ethnic, non-Irish backgrounds and that their consequent marginalisation indicates they are more at risk of being abducted than are "normal" children who live in environments where more safeguards are in place.

Not that Irish children are very safe. The fate of six year old Mary Boyle has yet to be resolved, over fifty years since she went missing close to her family home. Lost Boys: Belfast's Missing Children tells the story of Thomas Spence and John Rodgers, two of the five young boys who vanished from the streets of Belfast in the early 1970s when the Troubles were gathering pace.

Belfast was also the site of the Kincora Boys Home, whose children were sex trafficked out to the British Royal Family, MI5 bosses and Loyalist murder gangs to bribe them into murdering uppity Catholics.

And then we also have 14 year old Belfast schoolboy Noah Donohoe, who was murdered in the very strangest of circumstances, which are the subject of a forthcoming documentary by ace investigative journalist Donal McIntyre.

Although there is a major debate in Britain about how some specific ethnic groups are over-represented in child rape figures, there should be no debate that raping children is as big a problem in Britain as it in in the U.S. or Ireland, which is also plagued by organ harvesting gangs.

Although my July 15^th article on Ukraine's booming child sex trafficking industry alluded to verified accounts of them bring trafficked for sex through Dublin's hotels, there has been no further news on that non-story, presumably because dixie cup children are only of utility if they can be used to smear Russian President Putin, Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova or some similar worthy, who has nothing whatsoever to do with child sex trafficking in America, Sweden, Britain or Ireland.

When I returned to that topic on July 29^th, I singled out British asset Karim Khan for especial opprobrium not because his brother was involved in those above-mentioned child sex grooming scandals but because his Ukrainian investigations were so shoddy and he lacks any credibility in the matter.

Whereas Khan is part of NATO's libels against both Russia and China, as his own native Britain has 67,000 registered sex offenders, many of whom have gone AWOL, it is obviously no paradise for all of King Charles' most vulnerable subjects.

If the wholesale rape of English, Irish, Swedish and American children is an issue, then the wholesale punishment of Chinese social media behemoths or the scapegoating of obscure Russian mothers is not going to change matters all that much as long as the cancer at the heart of Western society remains untouched.

That cancer is best espoused in this video with "internet celebrity" Amouranth who explains in this short clip that she receives tens of thousands of dollars in tips for performing the most mundane activities online and that her earnings peak when she falls asleep in front of the camera and slackens when she wakes up.

Were we to add up all the morons who pay Amournanth over $1 million a month with all the other OnlyFans and Twitch addicts to the number of NATO's registered sex offenders we would have a gang of disreputables far in excess of the 2 million or so members of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army, who may or may not have their own TikTok addiction issues.

Whatever about China's TikTok land, we have our own dopamine issues here, which are accentuated not only by TikTok but by the EU rainbow washing its suspect drugs and ideologies to children in schools, on TV and online.

Although much of Chinese education may be a little too intense for our delicate tubbies, some one in three of all Chinese university students study STEM subjects and not their own navels, as Ireland's TikTok critics increasingly do. The problem, if such there is, is not with TikTok per se but with society, where the Chinese plough ahead and NATO's youngsters have, to Jeffrey Epstein's friends at least, lost all of their utility, save that of being trafficked human sex dolls.

And though NATO's reincarnated Sodom and Gomorrah will trundle along for some time yet, it cannot end well for an empire that thinks a Chinese social media app is more dangerous to its children than their own ideologies which enable millions of registered maniacs to prowl its streets in search of childish prey.