No Leadership, But Drift: Jeffrey Sachs.
Unaccountable CIA
In interview with Judge Napolitano this morning, March 14, Jeffrey Sachs - distinguished economist and Columbia University professor (he will not be welcoming his new colleague Victoria Nuland) - discusses recent revelations of Trump’s direction to the CIA in 2017 to destabilize Chinese leadership and bad-mouth China’s massive successes in Global South development. The latest sad outcome of this misdirection is the threat against TikTok and against free speech, in deference, I believe, to Silicon Valley monopolists who should be up in arms in defense of TikTok.
Sachs reminds us that it is now 53 years since the last time that the CIA was held accountable by the Church and Pike congressional investigations, and that it is 60 years since the USA last had a President who was not a tool of the CIA - and Sachs is clearly in line with those like myself who believe the CIA participated in the assassination of JFK. Napolitano once asked Trump why Trump had not released the still secret JFK assassination files. Trump replied that if he,Napolitano, had seen what Trump had seen, he would not release them either!
Battlefields
Ukraine attempted further attacks yesterday on the northern border and in Belgorod. These were repelled by Russian forces, with heavy Ukrainian losses. Attacks continued into Thursday.
Elsewhere, Russia appears to have the advantage, with the arrival of better weather, and is taking out Ukrainian artillery and other positions with relative ease in areas such as Bakhmut where the area west of Klishchiivka and around Ivanivka appears to be largely under Russian control; Avdievka, where Russia controls most of the territory between Avdievka and Orlivka: Novomykhailivka where Russia is taking territory to the north of the settlement; Pervamaiske, gateway to Vuhledar; the Vremevka Ledge. No updates for Robotyne.
Return of water to the Dnieper valley in Zapporizhzhia will make a Ukrainian advance there more difficult, but there are still worries as to what Ukraine is planning for the ZNPP. More worrying for Russia is US/NATO surveillance and drone activity that suggests yet another attempt on the Kerch Bridge is close.
In the meantime French President Macron continues talking about sending in French troops to Ukraine as non-combatants. His army advises against this. In response President Putin has warned that any such troops will be treated as combatants. He warns the West once again that in the event that Russia considers that its existential security is threatened it may resort to nuclear weapons. Putin has also indicated, as I have argued here in the past, that the West is simply too untrustworthy for Russia to waste time negotiating with. If so then this war will end only with Western capitulation to Russian terms. Medvedev meanwhile is anticipating the reintegration of Ukraine into Russia.
Biden the Baby Killer
Turns out that Biden’s idea of building an aid pier is not only utterly stupid - the longest possible and most expensive way of getting food to Gaza’s starving - it is not even his idea. Whose idea is it! Netanyahu’s! (it originated, according to Blumenthal, from a leader Israeli Zionist in 2015). Biden, according to Max Blumenthal in a recent speech and repeated this morning in an interview of Blumenthal with Judge Napolitano, is the single largest recipient of AIPAC money among the current generation of active politicians. He has recently raised $42 million at a the home of a major Hollywood Israeli donor. He has described himself as a Christian or gentile Zionist. If Israel did not exist, he has said, the USA would have to invent it. In 1982, Biden told a closed session of the senate with Israeli premier Begin, just after Israel had invaded Lebanon, that he would go further than Begin and he would kill women and children.