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Biden Threatened Ex-Ukraine Prez Poroshenko With Assassination If He Cooperated with Trump, Leaked Audio Reveals
Leaked audio from 2016 shows then-Vice President Joe Biden threatening former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko with assassination should he cooperate with the incoming Trump administration.
A One America News Network (OAN) report of a phone call recorded on November 16, 2016 – two weeks after Donald Trump’s shock electoral victory against Hillary Clinton – revealing Biden’s voice warning Poroshenko about working with Trump began circulating social media on Wednesday.
“This is getting very, very close to what I don’t want to have happen. I don’t want Trump to get in a position where he thinks he’s about to buy onto a policy where the financial system is going to collapse and he’s going to be looked to pour more money into Ukraine,” Biden told the former Ukraine president.
“That’s how he’ll think about it before he gets sophisticated enough to know the detail.”
“So, anything you can do to push the PrivatBank to closure so that the IMF loans comes forward, I would respectfully suggest is critically important to your economic as well as physical security,” Biden warned Poroshenko.
House NDAA Would Authorize Training for Ukrainian Pilots to Use US Warplanes
The House version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was passed Thursday night includes an amendment that would authorize $100 million to train Ukrainian pilots on how to use US warplanes.
Ukraine has been asking the US for F-15s and F-16s, but its pilots are only trained to use Soviet-designed MiG-29s and Sukhoi planes. According to Defense News, it would take about three months to train pilots to fly the F-15s and F-16s at a basic level.
The pilot training amendment was sponsored by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), an ultra-hawk who has repeatedly called for direct US military intervention in the war. Kinzinger said the US was ready to start training Ukrainian pilots at the Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi, and possibly at another base in Texas.
“There is no doubt to me that when this war ends, Ukraine is going to have to be outfitted with western military equipment. Plus, there’s just no more MiGs left and no more MiG supplies,” Kinzinger said.
So far, the US has not sent any fighter jets to Ukraine and declined a Polish offer to transfer MiG-29s to the Ukrainians earlier in the war. But the Biden administration has shown its willingness to escalate its military aid for Ukraine despite the risk of provoking Moscow.
Ukraine is piling pressure on the US to send more advanced equipment and sent two Ukrainian fighter pilots to Washington as part of their lobbying effort.
This Proxy War Has No Exit Strategy
The International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America has released a statement opposing the US government’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, saying the billions being funneled into the military-industrial complex “at a time when ordinary Americans are struggling to pay for housing, groceries, and fuel” is “a slap in the face for working people.” The statement advocates a negotiated settlement for peace, saying continuing to pour weapons into the country will “needlessly prolong the war, resulting in more civilian deaths” and that it “risks escalating and widening the war – up to and including nuclear war.”
In response to this entirely reasonable and moderate position, the DSA is currently being raked over the coals with accusations of Kremlin loyalty and facilitation of murder and bloodshed by blue-checkmarked narrative managers on Twitter. This is because the only acceptable positions for anyone of significant influence to have about this war range from supporting continuing current proxy warfare operations to initiating a direct hot war between NATO and Russia.
That’s how narrow the permissible spectrum of debate has been shrunk regarding this conflict: status quo hawkish to omnicidal hawkish. Anything outside that spectrum gets framed as radical extremism. As Noam Chomsky said: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Three Illuminating Quotes About The War In Ukraine
Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Chris Hedges have lent their expertise to the subject of the war in Ukraine with some recent comments that help bring some much-needed clarity to an often confusing and always contentious issue. Here they are:
“I’ve spent my career working in the mainstream, and I’ve covered probably seven, eight, nine shooting wars; I’ve never seen coverage so utterly consumed by a tsunami of jingoism, and of manipulative jingoism as this one.”
~ John Pilger
This comment comes from a recent interview with the legendary Australian journalist by the South China Morning Post, and it says so much about the information ecosystem we now find ourselves floundering around trying to understand things in.
From the earliest days of the invasion it was clear that the western world was being smashed with a deluge of propaganda unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. In the first full month of the conflict, American network TV stations gave more coverage to the war in Ukraine than any other war that the US has been directly involved in, including Iraq and Vietnam. Literal Iraq war architects were some of the first pundits sought out for analysis of the conflict by the mainstream press, and calls for insane escalations against Russia succeeded in pushing the Overton window of acceptable debate in the direction of warmongering extremism and away from support for diplomatic solutions.
And this was all easily piped into mainstream consciousness because the way had been lubricated by years of Russia hysterica resulting from the mass scale psychological operation known as Russiagate. America’s most dangerous confrontation in generations just so happens to have been preceded by years of media-generated panic about that very same country, despite the Ukraine invasion having ostensibly nothing whatsoever to do with the conspiracy theory that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government. Heckin’ heck of a coincidence right there, buddy boy.
“It’s quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the ‘unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits. Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.”
~ Noam Chomsky
This quote, from an interview last month with Ramzy Baroud, is self-evidently true and should be pointed out more often.
People don’t go adding the same gratuitous adjectives and modifiers to something over and over again unless they’re trying to manipulate how it’s perceived. If your neighbor always referred to his wife as “my wife who I definitely never beat,” you’d immediately become suspicious because that’s not how normal people talk about normal things. We don’t say “round Earth” or “the Holocaust that totally happened,” we just say the words, because their basic nature is not seriously in dispute and we’ve got nothing invested in manipulating or obfuscating people’s understanding about them.
Biden’s War Machine Is Sending Another $1.7 Billion To Ukraine
The Biden administration is announcing another $1.7 billion in aid to Ukraine, bringing the total taxpayer money spent on the proxy war more than $65 billion since the Russia invaded the European nation.
The additional aid was announced on Tuesday and is partially sponsored by the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID).
A statement from USAID says, “This additional funding will provide emergency food and cash assistance, safe drinking water, accessible shelter, logistical support, humanitarian coordination and protection, emergency health care, including mental health care and support for survivors of gender-based violence. This funding is in addition to USAID’s support for activities aimed specifically at alleviating shelter concerns during the coming winter months.”
It goes on to state, “The provision of cash will offset increased heating costs through the purchase of fuel for electricity, materials for light renovations (insulation), and the distribution of thermal blankets and winter clothes and shoes, especially for children and the elderly.”
To date, USAID has given the Ukrainian government $4 billion in budgetary support. The organization said these funds have been used to keep gas and electricity flowing to hospitals and schools, get humanitarian supplies to citizens, and pay the salaries of civil servants and teachers.
US spending to counter Russian war effort exceeds first 5 years of war costs in Afghanistan
The Biden administration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have pledged to counter Russia’s war in Ukraine and the threat it poses to European security, and the funds so far committed to Kyiv already exceed U.S. costs for the first five years in Afghanistan.
The Biden administration on Friday announced another $400 million military drawdown package to Ukraine as it attempts to fend off Russian advances.
The latest package was reportedly tailored in coordination with Ukrainian officials for what they specifically need on the front lines and comes just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory over the eastern Luhansk region.
Heavy artillery like howitzers and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) are among the big-ticket items that Ukraine has said it needs to target Russian command and control hotspots that sit behind the front lines.
Biden Commits Another $400 Million Of Your Taxpayer Dollars To Ukraine
The Biden administration has announced another $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, making the total financial assistance more than $63 billion.
This aid package is the 15th presidential drawdown since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.
The latest package includes four more Lockheed Martin-created High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, ammunition for them, three tactical vehicles, a thousand rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition, demolition munitions, counter-battery systems, and spare parts.
CIA ops, commandos in Ukraine: Can we just admit we are fighting this war?
The Central Intelligence Agency is operating in Kyiv and has been for some time, according to new reporting by the New York Times. So, while Biden has insisted on “no U.S. boots on the ground” in Ukraine, there are soft-soled operatives, otherwise known as American spies, providing intelligence and other tactical assistance to Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Sounds like Americans are in this war, like it or not.
The news, based on sourcing from current and former U.S. government officials, is part of a broader report about a “stealthy network” of U.S. and European commandos and spies in “cells” run by the Pentagon’s European Command “to speed allied assistance to Ukrainian troops.” Much of this is operating from military bases in France and Germany and elsewhere. But as the NYT points out, there are European commandos and CIA agents working on the inside.
The commandos are not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops and instead advise from headquarters in other parts of the country or remotely by encrypted communications, according to American and other Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. But the signs of their stealthy logistics, training and intelligence support are tangible on the battlefield.
Several lower-level Ukrainian commanders recently expressed appreciation to the United States for intelligence gleaned from satellite imagery, which they can call up on tablet computers provided by the allies. The tablets run a battlefield mapping app that the Ukrainians use to target and attack Russian troops.
As usual it appears that the administration wants to have it both ways: assure the American people that it is being “restrained” and that we are not “at war” with the Russians, but doing everything but planting a U.S. soldier and a flag inside Ukraine. The CIA, as you will recall, has increasingly had an operational combat focus since 9/11, running elaborate secret prisons overseas, engaging in enhanced interrogations (torture) and manhunting with armed drones and commando teams over the last 20 years. There may be a sliver of daylight between the CIA operatives there today and the U.S. special forces that left Ukraine after Russia invaded, but given the circumstances, is it a meaningful one? Is it all about who is pulling the trigger?
NATO boss lets the cat out of the bag: US-led bloc has ‘been preparing since 2014’ to use Ukraine for proxy conflict with Russia
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg may have said the quiet part out loud on Wednesday when he revealed to reporters that NATO’s push into Eastern Europe since 2014 was done specifically with Russia in mind.
“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he said. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”
The NATO chief went on to insist that Russia has been “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014.”
What he neglected to mention, though, was the role Western powers played in the outbreak of civil violence in Kiev on February 24, 2013 that led to the Maidan coup and, ultimately, to the current situation. The US and its influence on the ground in Ukraine, channelled through “civil society” groups it bankrolled, was largely responsibility for that mess.
Even Victoria ‘F**k the EU’ Nuland (then-US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs) admitted as much in April 2014 when she said Washington had invested $5 billion dollars into “spreading democracy” in Ukraine – apparently because such efforts worked so well before.
Hellbound and Down 
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