Tag: joe biden

Have the US and NATO Decided to Play FAFO With Russia?

FAFO is a social media acronym that means F**k Around Find Out. It appears that the United States and NATO have decided to play that dangerous game with Moscow. I had an offline chat with Alastair Crooke this morning. He flagged an article in the Times of Israel that I had missed, and he discussed it with the Judge. The article is an interview with retired Israeli General, Itai Brun, the former head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence research and analysis division. Here are the salient points:

[Brun] warned Saturday that Israel’s inability to recognize that Hamas was preparing to invade shows a far-reaching systemic failure that cannot be fixed simply by replacing key officers and officials.

Correcting that strategic failure, said Brun in a TV interview, requires a fundamental change in the approach and culture of intelligence gathering, the processing of intelligence by the security establishment, and the interaction with the political leadership. . . .

But while Israel’s military intelligence community recognized that it had refused to even consider that Hamas could and would burst through the border fence, and “they realized that they needed to rethink” as regards Gaza, some fundamentally false conceptions continued to be held even after the invasion and slaughter.

Israeli intelligence still failed to recognize and internalize that the Iran-led axis believed it could destroy Israel, Brun specified. “They didn’t understand this change.”

He said Israeli intelligence had so much data, all indicating that Hamas was deterred and was not seeking a war, that there was a refusal to so much as countenance the possibility that this conception was erroneous — not even when the IDF obtained documentation such as the Jericho Wall material showing Hamas’s attack plans.

This intelligence failure is the result of at least two kinds of bias — reporting bias and confirmation bias.

Reporting bias is when managers and analysts selectively report or omit information based on the outcome of the research or personal beliefs.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to favour, seek out, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses, whilst giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

This is different than lying. And this phenomenon is not unique to Israel. In fact, I believe it is a major reason the US intelligence community has been so wrong, so often in its analysis of Russia and the war in Ukraine. We are seeing a manifestation of that now with Biden giving the Ukrainians the green light to use ATACMs inside Russian territory. Biden and his inept advisors have convinced themselves that they can unleash Ukraine and Russia will not respond. If Ukraine goes forward and launches the missiles — with the help of US intelligence data to program the missiles — then Russia will respond in a forceful way. Initially, I believe they will limit their response to Ukrainian territory, but Putin will authorize targeting NATO sites that have gone unscathed until now.

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Is Joe Biden Trying To Start World War 3 Before He Leaves Office?

As if everything that Joe Biden has done so far was not enough, now he has decided to push us to the brink of nuclear war.  On Sunday, Joe Biden decided to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles provided by the United States to hit targets deep inside of Russia.  This is a bombshell.  I don’t know how else to put it.  The Russians have already warned us how they will respond if long-range missiles provided by the United States and other NATO countries start raining down on their cities.  Sadly, most Americans have no idea what a direct conflict with Russia would mean.

When I first heard what Joe Biden had done, I reacted very emotionally.

I am still feeling very emotional at this moment.

Everyone needs to clearly understand what just happened, because this is a major turning point…

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Ex-security adviser accuses Biden of trying to ‘sabotage’ Trump’s effort to end Russia-Ukraine war

Aformer top security aide to Donald Trump on Monday accused the Biden administration of trying to intentionally “sabotage” the President-elect’s efforts to bring an end to the Russian war against Ukraine.

Former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz said President Joe Biden was repeatedly unwilling to authorize Ukraine to use U.S.-made missiles to strike deep inside Russia before the election, and his lame-duck decision this weekend to authorize it now smacks of an effort to thwart Trump’s effort to create a ceasefire and peace deal.

“The timing is really curious, because Biden was reluctant to do this before the election, because he was worried he would escalate the war. He would take a lot of criticism for possibly escalating the war,” Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And now that the election is over, he’s made this decision, which Putin has said is a red line and could put Russia at war with the United States.

“I don’t think this is an effort to give Ukraine leverage in negotiations with Russia, because it’s going to make the war worse,” he added. “I think this is a deliberate attempt by Joe Biden to sabotage President Trump’s efforts to negotiate a ceasefire.”

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Russia Is “Furious” At Biden’s “Serious Escalation” Of Ukraine War

The Biden Administration’s insane decision to give the green light for Ukraine to fire long range US missiles at Russia has been met with fury by the Kremlin.

“Departing US president Joe Biden… has taken one of the most provocative, uncalculated decisions of his administration, which risks catastrophic consequences,” Russian state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta declared Monday morning.

Russian MP Leonid Slutsky, who heads the pro-Kremlin Liberal-Democratic Party, warned that the move will “inevitably lead to a serious escalation, threatening serious consequences”.

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Congressional Investigation into Authors of ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Intensifies

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), authors of the “Disinformation Dozen,” faces a Nov. 21 deadline to provide Congress with documents related to its alleged collusion with the Biden administration and social media platforms to censor online users.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on Nov. 7 subpoenaed CCDH as part of an ongoing congressional investigation, launched in August 2023, into the nonprofit’s censorship-related activities.

The subpoena requests all communications and documents “between or among CCDH, the Executive Branch, or third parties, including social media companies, relating to the identification of groups, accounts, channels, or posts for moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation.”

The subpoena also requests all records, notes, and other “documents of interactions between or among CCDH and the Executive Branch referring or relating to ‘killing’ or taking adverse action against Elon Musk’s X social media platform (formerly Twitter).”

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Report: Trump Team Putting Together List of Military Officers Involved in Afghanistan Withdrawal

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is putting together a list of United States military officers who were involved in the Biden Administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a recent report.

Two people familiar with the plan told NBC News that Trump’s transition team is reportedly in talks about whether to establish “a commission to investigate” the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left 13 American service members dead.

The commission would reportedly also gather “information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military,” and how the plan “was carried out,” among other things.

“They’re taking it very seriously,” one person with the plan explained to the outlet.

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Biden and Harris Raided Medicare to Fund Green New Deal: Premiums Are Now Set to Spike

When Democrats rammed through the Inflation Reduction Act during the days they controlled all of Washington, D.C., it ignited a chain reaction that led to higher Medicare costs for America’s senior citizens.

“Nearly two years after its passage, the IRA has diverted nearly $260 billion from the projected Medicare ‘savings’  to pay for special interest handouts like large tax credits for costly electric vehicles, enormous subsidies paid to big health insurer-PBM corporations, and funding health care programs for illegal immigrants,” Ron Fitzwater, Chief Executive Officer of the Missouri Pharmacy Association, wrote in an Op-Ed in the Missouri Times.

“The Biden-Harris administration is not protecting Medicare; they’re stealing from it,” he wrote.

According to Politico, the chain reaction began when the act shifted the burden of paying for prescription medicine from seniors to insurance companies.

Then came what could have been predicted: Insurance companies hiked their premiums for 2025.

Fitwater, in his Op-Ed, said increases were coming in at 179 percent.

But since that was going to hit right before the election, there was one more step – a federal bailout that has the taxpayer-funded federal treasury taking the hit for what the IRA caused.

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Like Biden, don’t expect Trump to pay much attention to Africa

As commentators assess the implications of Donald Trump’s election victory for the United States and the world, various publications have asked what Trump’s return will mean for their continent. In one well-informed analysis, the BBC’s Wedaeli Chibelushi highlights “trade, aid, and security” as key sectors. We can also ask what might change in terms of Washington’s political relationships with various African countries, and how such changes would affect the overall balance of U.S. primacy versus restraint.

An initial caveat is necessary – of all the world’s regions, Trump and his team will likely not be thinking much about Africa. When Professor Stephen Walt recently assessed “The 10 Foreign-Policy Implications of the 2024 U.S. Election,” for example, he did not mention Africa – and that’s because the Middle East, Ukraine, NATO, and China, among other issues, will likely consume much more of Trump’s attention than the African continent will.

If Trump ignores Africa, that would be in keeping with a bipartisan neglect of the continent from the time of Barack Obama through the present. Obama and Joe Biden each held a “U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit” (in 2014 and 2022, respectively), but across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, Africa was approached mostly as a theater for counterterrorism, trade, and global influence, rather than as having intrinsic importance to Washington. Vice President Kamala Harris would likely have replicated the largely performative, status quo-friendly approach of Biden. Although Harris had a deep bench of Africa hands on her campaign, that depth more reflects the long line of aspirants who line up for foreign policy jobs in Democratic administrations, more than a now-dashed promise of transformation. Biden and Harris will leave office with little to show for their Africa policy beyond the summit and a slate of high-profile but low-substance trips, including Biden’s upcoming visit to Angola.

As Trump takes office, there will be something of an opportunity for diplomatic outreach and “reset” with Africa. So far, Trump’s picks for top foreign policy postings do not include anyone with a pronounced interest in African affairs and his victory has elicited more mixed reactions in Africa than one might expect. Despite his infamous “shithole countries” comment and his numerous racist and Islamophobic remarks, many ordinary Africans admire Trump’s entrepreneurial career, socially conservative platform, and outspokenness. Various African leaders were quick to congratulate the comeback candidate. Trump is, however, likely unaware of and relatively indifferent to whatever opportunity exists for engagement, and so it will probably slip by.

If “personnel is policy,” Trump’s first term did not bring any shocking or unusual appointments for civilian posts related to Africa, and his second term may not either; the true ideologues and hawks are likely to gravitate towards Iran policy, for example. During his first term, Trump appointed veteran diplomat Tibor Nagy as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, think tanker J. Peter Pham as Special Envoy for the Sahel, and another veteran diplomat, Donald Booth, as Special Envoy for Sudan. The situation in the Sahel and Sudan was worse when Trump’s term ended than when it began: a massacre in Sudan in June 2019 brought no consequences for its perpetrators, and Mali witnessed a coup in 2020. Yet those outcomes cannot be laid solely at the feet of the Trump administration. Tellingly, the situation in the Sahel and Sudan in 2024 is also worse than it was when Biden took office, so neither administration earns high marks here.

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Professional Liar Jen Psaki Wants Social Media to be Regulated Because of ‘Disinformation’

Former Joe Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki wants to see social media regulated because of disinformation.

This is the same woman who lied for years about Joe Biden’s mental condition, lied about Joe Biden checking his watch when the bodies of dead sevice members were returned to the United States (for which she was forced to apologize), and who pushed the lie about 51 former intelligence officials claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.

But now she wants to control social media because of disinformation?

The Hill reports:

Psaki: ‘Disinformation space’ on social media a ‘core’ issue behind Harris defeat

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki is blaming Vice President Harris’s loss to President-elect Trump in part on disinformation.

“One of the things that’s changed even since I got involved in politics is just the rise of the percentage of people who get their information off of platforms that have no fact checking mechanism and no accountability for having disinformation spread,” Psaki, who worked in the Obama administration and served as President Biden’s press secretary, told Katie Couric on an episode of her Next Question podcast.

She argued that local and national television outlets are held to a much higher standard for accountability than podcasts and social media platforms.

“Local TV is held to a higher standard of accountability than social media platforms in terms of accurate information on their platforms. That is crazy,” she added.

“Laws have to change. I don’t even know the entire answer to it but that seems to me to be a core issue.”

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Israel ignores Biden ‘ultimatum’ over Gaza aid, but U.S. will continue sending weapons regardless

Last month the Biden administration announced that the Israeli government had 30 days to increase humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza or else the country could lose access to some U.S. weapons.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin established the deadline in a letter to Israel’s ministers, in which it laid out 16 conditions that Israel would have to meet. “Failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for U.S. policy,” it read.

When asked about the move during a press briefing State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller reiterated the need for Israel to act.

“The bottom line is we felt it was appropriate, if we are making clear to the Government of Israel that there are these changes that need to be implemented, that we give them an appropriate period of time to implement it – implement them,” he told reporters. “We didn’t think it was appropriate to send a letter and just say this has to happen overnight; we gave them a – made clear there’s a short window in which we want to see changes, because the humanitarian situation is so dire on the ground.”

That deadline has now passed and a group of aid organizations (including Oxfam and Save the Children) have published a detailed report showing that Israel has failed to meet any of the conditions mentioned in the Blinken/Austin letter.

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