Blinken Sends Strong Message To Putin And His Enablers: We're Flexible!
Also: Bluto Barr And Trump
The other day we discussed the fact that the US led collective West is under increasing pressure to come to terms with Russia in Ukraine—and possibly in the much broader arena of global financial and economic matters. Evidence that the US is responding to pressure not only on the Ukraine battlefield but also from increasingly discontented vassal states was adduced. France’s Macron—immediately after meeting with Zhou and guiding him through the photo ops—publicly assured a presumably worried Putin that the West is now ready to provide Russia with “security guarantees.” One suspects that by this time, after twenty years leading Russia, Putin most likely puts more trust in Russia’s military than in Macron’s assurances.
There’s always the possibility that Macron’s statement was a public follow up to the CIA’s Burns’ low key meeting with his Russian counterpart in Ankara. That meeting was supposedly another one of those stern dressing downs the US has been issuing to Russia about the use of nukes—a topic Russia never raises but which seems to obsess the West. In any event, Putin publicly, and in no uncertain terms, brushed aside Macron’s blandishments. Apparently Putin has his own views on how to guarantee Russia’s security and doesn’t welcome interference from the diminutive Frenchman.
Now Moon of Alabama has picked up on the latest signal from the heart of the US Deep State. The US, it seems, wants Russia to know that we can be flexible in very significant ways. So flexible, in fact, that our definition of what is and is not Ukraine can pivot radically in a matter of about three months:
U.S. No Longer Supports Fight For Crimea
The U.S. seems to have changed its position with regards to Crimea.
Blinken in August 2022:
Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken - 16:46 UTC · Aug 23, 2022
United States government officialIn my remarks to the Crimea Platform Summit, I urged the international community to keep raising the costs and pressure on President Putin and his enablers until all Russian troops leave Ukraine. Crimea is Ukraine. That was our position in 2014, and it remains in 2022.
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Same dude, yesterday:
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Our focus is on continuing to do what we’ve been doing, which is to make sure that Ukraine has in its hands what it needs to defend itself, what it needs to push back against the Russian aggression, to take back territory that’s been seized from it since February 24th, to make sure as well that it has the support economically and on a humanitarian basis to withstand what’s happening in the country every single day. That’s our focus.
"Territory that’s been seized from [Ukraine] since February 24th" obviously does not include Crimea which Russia 'seized' in 2014. This then is a significant shift in the position Blinken had earlier underlined.
I’m sure this confirmed to the Russians that they’re policy is working, they’re on the right track. Concessions will be forthcoming if they just keep pushing. Maybe Putin is waiting for one of those famous leaked phone calls from Victoria Nuland. Maybe one in which she says, ‘F*ck Ukraine!”
Meanwhile, the UK government continues to take a hard line:
And this:
Now, to clarify my views on Trump. We’ve all heard the hysterics and maybe seen some of the pearl clutching over Trump’s supposed attack on the Constitution. It’s mostly the usual suspects, of course—unrecovered NeverTrumps. To set the tone:
Paul is talking about the Twitter Files, but that’s really just part of the MUCH bigger coup against our constitutional republic that was intended to neuter not only Trump but also—and maybe above all—the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump. Last night I read a TGP post that featured an embedded video of Kash Patel speaking with Bannon on Rumble. Unfortunately, I can’t embed Rumble videos here, but I highly recommend it. The TGP title leaves little to the imagination:
Here is the partial transcript from TGP:
In 60 seconds let’s go from Russiagate to the laptop. Remember Russiagate was the largest criminal conspiracy propagated by the like of James Comey and his cabal and oh yeah, James Baker, the former General Counsel of the FBI who just happens to be Twitter’s General Counsel. We’ll get to that story in a second.
These guys intentionally perpetrated this crime then they lied to the FISA Court. They lied to the American people and the radical left media let them get away with it because they were their co-conspirators and they didn’t want the truth out.
Now here’s my problem as a former federal prosecutor when we talk about receipts. These documents exist, and they existed that entire time and we only got about half of them out…
Patel goes on to share that former AG Bill Barr and current FBI Head, Chris Wray permitted any investigation of Hunter Biden to be “tanked”.
Why didn’t Bill Barr and Chris Wray put out this information [on the Hunter laptop]? And why, more importantly why did they authorize the FBI to have weekly meetings with Twitter and Facebook up to the 2020 Election about Hunter Biden’s laptop so they could craft a false narrative. It’s Russiagate on replay on a monumentally bigger scale…
…Our government, our DOJ and FBI, have actually caused and permitted a two-tiered system of justice to be on display…
Patel then goes on to point out that corrupt former GOP Speaker Paul Ryan received a copy of the Steele Dossier six months before Patel and then Rep. Devin Nunes had a copy.
He and his staff never told us. The committee in charge of the crime scene it was investigating was not given a central piece of evidence but Paul Ryan was. It’s not a Republican or Democrat thing, you’re totally right.
Patel then discusses that corrupt James Baker is still with Twitter.
First a brief clarification. If Paul Ryan got the “dossier” because he was part of the Gang of Eight there’s a question that needs to be asked: Since Devin Nunes was also part of the Gang of Eight, how did it happen that Nunes didn’t see the “dossier” at the same time that Ryan did? That’s strange. However, far worse, as Patel makes somewhat clear, is that Ryan allowed Nunes to be sidelined from leadership of HPSCI on bogus ethics charges so that Adam Schiff could slow down the investigation. That’s some ethics, isn’t it!
Here’s my bigger point, and one that Patel does make very clearly. All the Ukraine dirt—including the laptop material—involving the Biden Crime Family would have gone straight to Bluto Barr. Chris Wray would also be in that chain, but the reality is that the buck stops in the AG office when we’re talking about investigating the former VP and his son on wide ranging and consequential foreign corruption charges. No bureaucrat will hold onto that buck if there’s somebody else above him—the buck will continue to go up the chain of command until it lands on Bluto Barr’s desk. That’s how bureaucracies work. Barr made the decision to bury all that wrongdoing. I think that’s called misprision of a felony. He did it for political reasons, to “get” Trump—make no mistake about that, because Barr has not left us in much doubt since leaving office.
To those who are upset with Trump’s recent statements about the 2020 election and the Constitution, I point to Barr—and others—covering up crimes they were sworn to investigate for corrupt motives. Those motives included the intent to undermine the constitutionally mandated elections and to undermine the fundamental concept of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We the People cannot participate intelligently in elections when key information about the candidates is deliberately withheld. Moreover, the fact that the evidence that was withheld pointed directly to Zhou being compromised from a national security standpoint makes the whole scandal even more recklessly serious. This is the real crime against the Constitution—even if, formally, it comes under the heading of misuse of public office, official corruption, or other similar conspiracy charges. Bluto Barr, Chris Wray, and others were all engaged in a plot to subvert our constitutional republic in the most fundamental ways imaginable. But I single out Barr and Wray because they were positioned at the top of the Criminal Justice bureaucracy.
They’re men without honor or decency. They are traitors in the common understanding of the word. They are criminals.
Trump is none of the above, but will likely be prosecuted by the criminal gang that Barr thought was good enough for the likes of you, me, and the rest of America.
Terrific post Mark. Yes they are criminals who censored the Biden laptop and in doing so took a blowtorch to the Constitution, effectively disenfranchising 80 million voices, silencing us with the iron fist. It really makes my blood boil. What have we become?
This administration is absolutely clueless and criminal as was Obamas foreign policy that led to this. Billions spent on military industrial complex feeding at the Ukrainian war troff, millions in Ukraine in misery and death, all this suffering for European people and for what? Billions spent on the way in and tens of billions more on the way out to rebuild the Ukraine and stuff the pockets of the corrupt corporations and meanwhile, average people suffer and die. How thoroughly obvious and disgusting.