Here’s Your Russian Collusion: Biden Working with Russia on New Iran Nuke Deal - Robert Spencer

 

by Robert Spencer

Why exactly is Biden getting Russian help to appease Iran?

 

Just when you think the Biden administration couldn’t possibly get worse, it finds a way. Gabriel Noronha, a former State Department official, tweeted Wednesday that State, NSC, and European Union officials are warning that “what’s happening in Vienna,” where Biden’s handlers are negotiating a new nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, “is a total disaster,” and that they’re hoping that “Congress will act to stop the capitulation.”

It’s about as likely that Congress will stop this, of course, as it is that Biden’s handlers will send Donald J. Trump himself to Vienna to handle the negotiations, but there are abundant signs that the new agreement will be far worse than the old one, and directly endanger America and its allies. For one thing, even amidst ever-rising tensions with Russia and punitive sanctions, the administration has turned over leadership of the negotiations to a Russian diplomat, Mikhail Ulyanov. Yes, that’s right: Putin’s man is going to get us a new deal with the mullahs.

The trouble is not coming just from the fact that we are trusting Russia to act in America’s best interests (although America’s best interests have never been a priority for Biden’s handlers, and there is really no reason to believe that they have ever been a priority in the Vienna negotiations). Noronha added: “Led by Rob Malley, the U.S. has promised to lift sanctions on some of the regime’s worst terrorists and torturers, leading officials in the regime’s WMD infrastructure, and is currently trying to lift sanctions on the IRGC itself.”

Robert Malley has won renown and disgust as a man who has never hesitated to kowtow to America’s enemies. Judicial Watch noted back in 2015 that “over the years he has published a number of newspaper opinion pieces urging the United States to reach out and negotiate with terrorist enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah and Muqtada al-Sadr.” Now the Iranian mullahs can be added to that list, but since they won’t sully themselves by dealing directly with the emissaries of the Great Satan, the Russians are helpfully playing intermediary.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted the danger of all this absurdity in a tweet last Sunday: “President Biden — stop partnering with Russia to cut a deal with Iran. When China and Russia are on your side of the table negotiating ‘against’ Iran, you are putting America and Israel at risk.” A senior congressional official added on Monday: “It’s obvious that Russia should no longer serve as one of the key intermediaries brokering an Iran deal. We need to be isolating Russia not just economically, but also diplomatically. There is absolutely no chance that Russia has U.S. national security interests in mind when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program.”

Yeah. But Biden’s handlers show no sign of relenting on this. To all appearances, they’re rushing headlong in to a deal with Tehran that would, surprise of surprises, place Russia in a key role, as did the original Obama nuke deal. NBC News explained that “Under one draft interim agreement that sources said Russia presented to Iran, Tehran would be required to stop enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity and dispose of its current stockpile, possibly by exporting it to Russia, along with other restrictions. In exchange, the Iranian government would receive access to billions of dollars in oil revenues frozen in foreign bank accounts, including in South Korea, the sources said.”

So the Russians would get uranium at a time when Vladimir Putin has raised nuclear tensions to a level we have not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Islamic Republic, whose leaders finance not just jihad terror groups, but also Leftist groups that work to destabilize Western societies would get billions. What could possibly go wrong?

Then there is the ongoing malevolence of the country that forces its people to chant “Death to America” in mosques every Friday. On Sept. 23, 2015, two months after the nuke deal was finalized, Khamenei published an article entitled “The Idols Will Be Shattered,” illustrated with a drawing of the Statue of Liberty shattered in pieces. In it, he declared, “The idol of the soul, the idol of pride, [and] the idol of sexual lust; the idol of tyranny and subservience; the idol of global tyranny [that is, the U.S.]; the idol of sloth and irresponsibility; and the other idols that shame the precious human soul—a plan that will spring forth from the depths of the heart will shatter them.”

That doesn’t exactly sound as if the JCPOA was a path to peaceful coexistence. And more recently, on Tuesday Khamenei blamed the “Mafia regime” in the United States for the conflict in Ukraine. So in Vienna, Biden’s handlers are now cooperating with a diplomat from one hostile power in order to appease another hostile power. Remember back when we had an administration that worked for Americans?

 

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/heres-your-russian-collusion-biden-working-russia-robert-spencer/

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A Supreme Crackdown on the Environmental Protection Agency? - Matthew Vadum

 

by Matthew Vadum

Is the agency becoming a “central energy planning authority”?

 

The Supreme Court may be on the verge of clawing back some of the sweeping regulatory authority it unwisely gave the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 15 years ago at the height of Al Gore-promoted global warming hysteria.

This about-face by the high court could come if conservative justices have the courage to do the right thing in West Virginia v. EPA, which the court heard Feb. 28. In all, 19 states are challenging how much power the federal Clean Air Act gives the agency.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican leading the legal challenge, told this writer recently he is concerned the EPA is transforming itself from “an environmental regulator into a central energy planning authority.”

Morrisey said this case is “so important because it gets to the fundamental question as to who gets to decide the major questions of the day in our society.”

“Should major issues of the day be decided by Congress, or by an unelected bureaucracy that has no accountability to the American public?” he said.

Admittedly, whether the six conservative justices on the nine-member court will do the right thing is a pretty big if, especially given their fondness for fetishizing stare decisis, instead of putting the U.S. Constitution first.

A year after the Gore-centered agitprop film, An Inconvenient Truth, began brainwashing audiences, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) that the EPA is free to regulate so-called greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide, as “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act.

The high court bought into Gore’s nonsense big time, declaring climate change “the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”

Propaganda disguised as science found its way into the majority opinion. The court cited the findings of the dubious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and accepted that “the rise in sea levels associated with global warming has already harmed and will continue to harm Massachusetts.”

Carbon dioxide was to blame, the majority claimed.

A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species—the most important species—of a ‘greenhouse gas.’

But those who still cling to common sense in this irrational age have long ridiculed the designation of carbon dioxide, the invisible gas people push out of their lungs when breathing, as a pollutant.

After all, carbon dioxide is life – without it, there would be no photosynthesis, which is essential to the growth of plants.

The majority opinion in 2007 was written by the late Justice John Paul Stevens. His opinion was joined by current Justice Stephen Breyer, retired Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The dissenters from this jurisprudential rubbish of were Chief Justice John Roberts, current Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Breyer, who is retiring at the end of the court’s present term, seems unlikely to flip on his comrades because it would hurt his legacy.

But if the three dissenters still on the court hold fast, two of the three new conservative justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, or Amy Coney Barrett, could overturn or at least weaken Massachusetts v. EPA.

Unless he was playing devil’s advocate Feb. 28, Kavanaugh may be on-board with the 19 states’ challenge under the Clean Air Act.

“Congress must speak clearly if it wishes to assign an agency decisions of vast economic and political significance,” the Trump appointee said during oral arguments.

The court is skeptical when agencies “claim to have found in a long extant statute an unheralded power to regulate a significant portion of the American economy,” Kavanaugh said.

Alito also seems eager to curb EPA authority.

The justice told U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar that her approach would not impose any “concrete limitations” on EPA’s powers.

“What your interpretation of the statute claims for EPA is not a technical matter,” Alito said.

“It is not a question of how to reduce emissions from particular sources, but you are claiming that the interpretation gives you the authority to set industrial policy and energy policy and balance such things as jobs, economic impact, the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, as well as costs.”

We’ll probably find out in May or June how the justices ruled.

 

Matthew Vadum

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/supreme-crackdown-environmental-protection-agency-matthew-vadum/

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Pizza Hut Teaches Kids America is Built on Slavery and Genocide - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

A fast food chain that makes bad pizza wants to talk to your kids about white privilege.

 

 

Pizza Hut, unsatisfied with making kids fat, also wants to make them racist.

The stale franchise chain has supplemented its menu of lightly charred cardboard covered in tasteless glops of something that a blind hobo might mistake for cheese with racism.

While Pizza Hut focuses on poisoning children with such horrible concoctions as cheeseburger crust pizza, fish and chips pizza, and sushi cream cheese pizza, the Pizza Hut Foundation is hard at work teaching students that America is racist and white people suck.

The training materials intended for use in the classroom want teachers to ask 10-year-olds, “How often have you thought about your race in the last 24 hours?”

If demanding that 10-year-olds spend all their time thinking about race sounds crazy, another Pizza Hut pamphlet with tips for "talking to kids about race" claims that by "6 months, babies notice racial differences" and that 4-year-olds "show signs of racial bias."

The Empowering Educators Toolbox presented by the Pizza Hut Foundation urges teachers to tell their students that everyone is defined by race, that "everyone has a racial identity", and that race defines American life. Forget MLK, the stale pizza franchise chain wants your kids to believe that they're defined by their skin color, not the content of their character.

A sane country wouldn’t take its cues on race from the people who decided to combine hot dogs and pizza into something that looks like a dachshund got run over by a garbage truck, but in a nation of woke corporations, Pizza Hut would like your children to violently hate America.

"America is a country built on a foundation of slavery, genocide, and white supremacy," a pamphlet for teachers stamped with the Pizza Hut logo declares.

Pizza Hut is built on a foundation of turning kids into fat butterballs waiting for a heart attack.

The actual best practices for teachers would be to teach your students to love America and avoid Pizza Hut unless they want to close off their minds as thoroughly as their arteries.

When Pizza Hut isn’t serving up junk food, it’s serving up junk history and junk factoids.

A Challenging Conversations pamphlet claims that, "police force is the sixth leading cause of death for black men."

According to the CDC, it's actually diabetes. But it's understandable that Pizza Hut, which makes millions giving black men heart disease, strokes, and diabetes, wants to blame the cops who are the only people keeping the underpaid employees of their struggling franchisees alive..

1,055 people were shot and killed by police officers in 2021. 234 of them were white and only 139 were black. 632 of those who were shot were waving guns. Only 34 were unarmed.

459,540 black people died in 2020. With heart disease, strokes, hypertension and diabetes accounting for around 30% of deaths, Pizza Hut and the rest of the Yum! Brands family probably kill more black men in one day than every single police shooting in a century combined.

Not satisfied with being blamed for Michael Jordan's food poisoning during the 1997 NBA finals, Pizza Hut's handout to teachers rants about "white privilege" and quotes a false claim that white teachers who refuse to "recognize their privilege" are harming their students.

The hateful pamphlet also promotes demands for race reparations by millionaire racist author Ta-Nehisi Coates who wrote that the police officers and firefighters who died on September 11 “were not human to me.”

Good to know Pizza Hut agrees.

A guidebook to teachers marked with the Pizza Hut logo  and with an introduction co-signed by Artie Starrs, then Yum!'s CEO of Pizza Hut, claims that "racism" has been part of America's "collective history since the first English colonists arrived in 1607." It's a good thing that the Spanish who were there a century earlier and enslaved and killed the Indians weren't racists.

"Science has proven that race is not biological," insists a pamphlet for teachers produced by a fast food chain that understands science almost as well as it knows history and cooking.

Don't question any of this. According to the Pizza Hut branded pamphlet, saying, "I don't see color", "white privilege doesn't exist" and "all lives matter" are all racial microaggressions.

Never mind that Pizza Hut’s entire existence is an ongoing hate crime against Italians.

Pizza Hut's bad education materials come in three flavors, racist lies, woke lies, and lies that could be easily disproven if someone involved in the racist pamphlets, which also promote fact checking and warn against “misinformation”, bothered to spend 30 seconds on Google.

For example, the Pizza Hut indoctrination pamphlet falsely claims that the Atlanta spa shootings were a hate crime against Asian people. The shooter was actually struggling with sex addiction, and was never charged with a hate crime.

"Anti-bias, antiracist instruction should happen year-round," Pizza Hut demands.

What does that mean? The Pizza Hut hate pamphlets defend critical race theory and promote the Black Lives Matter hate movement, racist authors like Ibram X. Kendi, and the 1619 Project.

But that’s what happens when you get your history from a subsidiary of Yum! Brands which once infuriated Vietnamese-American refugees by using a Communist red star in a logo.

The obvious question is why is Pizza Hut trying to poison kids in a whole new way?

The answer, as Pizza Hut's new Chief Equity Officer Chequan Lewis said, is equity.

“Pizza Hut is introducing a new chapter in our long-standing commitment to literacy – focused on the intersection of equity and education,” Lewis said.

Literacy now means corporations turning kids into Marxists at shareholder expense.

Pizza Hut's Literacy Project emphasizes Young Activists. "Find amazing examples of activism and get your students involved," a program backed by a garbage pizza chain insists.

Corporate Marxism has become as ubiquitous as it is infuriating. But wokeness is also a symptom of a declining corporate power.

Domino's beat Pizza Hut around the same time that Trump beat Hillary. Pizza Hut sales fell in 2020 even as the pandemic helped boost Domino's and Papa John's by 17.6% and 15.9%. The largest Pizza Hut franchisee, with over 1,300 locations, filed for bankruptcy in 2020 after struggling with $1 billion in debt. Pizza Hut’s garbage pizza is as woke as it is broke.

Having destroyed pizza and its own company, Pizza Hut now wants to destroy America.

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/pizza-hut-teaches-kids-america-built-slavery-and-daniel-greenfield/

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Biden Shatters Israel’s Delusions - Caroline Glick

 

by Caroline Glick

Wait til you hear the high points of the "new and improved" - from Iran's point of view - JCPOA

 

For decades, senior Israeli defense officials beat a path to the Pentagon, the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council with briefcases full of documents providing conclusive proof that Iran’s nuclear program is a military program and that its purpose is to transform the Islamic Republic of Iran into a nuclear-armed state. The officers arrived in Washington convinced that the smoking gun they were providing the Americans would compel Washington to abandon its long-held delusion that there is a “grand bargain” to be had with the fanatical Islamist theocracy whose leaders believe that Iran’s rise will herald an era of unmitigated Shiite global domination.

All of the Israeli officers made their best cases to their American counterparts. Most believed the Americans were open to the information they provided, and left Washington convinced that the Americans finally recognized the danger and would act to block Iran from achieving its nefarious goal. On at least one occasion, their efforts were rewarded.

In 2018, after Israel’s Mossad spy agency spirited Iran’s nuclear archive out of a warehouse in Tehran and brought it to Israel, Israel’s spy chiefs flew to Washington to share the findings with the Trump administration. The documents provided incontrovertible proof of Israel’s long-standing contentions that Iran’s nuclear program was initiated, maintained and expanded throughout the years for the primary purpose of developing nuclear weapons. Then-President Donald Trump responded to Israel’s revelations by withdrawing the U.S from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—the nuclear deal the Obama administration had concluded with Iran.

The 2015 nuclear deal placed certain restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities for a limited period. But the JCPOA allowed Iran to continue with its nuclear research and development, and placed no restrictions on Iran’s missile development and proliferation. In other words, Barack Obama‘s deal limited what Iran could do with the nuclear capabilities it had acquired by 2015, but it enabled Iran to massively expand its nuclear capabilities for the future.

During the early years of the JCPOA, Iran developed second-generation centrifuges capable of enriching uranium 10 times faster than it was able to enrich in 2015—and to much higher levels of purity. Iran began deploying the new advanced centrifuges as soon as they were ready, even before Trump abandoned the JCPOA and reinstated the nuclear sanctions the Obama administration had suspended in 2015.

After abandoning the JCPOA, Trump and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced their “maximum pressure” campaign of harsh sanctions on the Iranian regime. The campaign intended to block the regime from waging war against its neighbors, either directly or through its proxies, and to deter it from attacking U.S. forces and assets in the region.

The maximum pressure strategy was working effectively when Trump left office. Had it been retained by the Biden administration, Iran’s regime would likely have collapsed by this year, rendering its nuclear weapons program dead in the water. But rather than continue a policy that was working, President Joe Biden reinstated Barack Obama’s policy of facilitating Iran’s nuclear program and its regional aggression by agitating for a restoration of American and Iranian compliance with the 2015 deal.

Biden appointed Robert Malley, a former Obama administration nuclear negotiator who had developed strong ties with the Iranian regime during his tenure at the helm of the International Crisis Group, to serve as his envoy to renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran. Both before the talks were initiated in Vienna, and since the talks commenced, in the interests of convincing Iran to agree to a deal, Biden ended enforcement of the most significant sanctions Trump had placed on Iran’s nuclear operations. He delisted Iran’s Yemeni proxy, the Houthis, from the State Department’s formal list of foreign terrorist organizations. And Biden convinced U.S. allies to unfreeze Iranian funds held in their banks due to Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, in the hopes of proving his benign intentions to the ayatollahs.

This brings us back to the Israeli military officers who have come and gone through the corridors of power in Washington for the past two decades, bearing proof of Iran’s malign intentions and actions. During Obama’s presidency, then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was often the lone voice in Israeli leadership circles warning that the Obama administration had no intention of blocking Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed power. For eight years, Netanyahu fought with the Israeli defense establishment, whose leaders continued to believe that Americans from both sides of the partisan aisle could be trusted when they said they would not permit Iran to become a nuclear power.

Last June, Netanyahu was ousted from power by a narrow coalition of small parties hailing from the establishment right to the far left to the Muslim Brotherhood. Current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz came into office promising not to publicly criticize Biden’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and even voicing support for a renewed agreement with the mullahs. The Israeli security establishment, which long opposed Netanyahu’s doctrine of muscular public diplomacy and independent action to block Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, felt vindicated.

Over the past several months, as nuclear talks have dragged on in Vienna, Israel’s dovish new leaders kept to their word. Opposition to rumors of U.S. concessions was voiced politely, and generally in private. Senior military and intelligence officers continued to travel to Washington with their briefcases, brimming with documents and believing it was in their power to shift the U.S. position at the negotiating table in Vienna. Netanyahu’s frequent warnings that now is no time for silence were dismissed as the ravings of a bitter, spurned leader.

But then, last Wednesday, Gabriel Noronha, a former Iran specialist at the State Department, published details of the concessions Malley has already agreed to on his Twitter feed. Noronha wrote that he received the details of the U.S. concessions from his former colleagues at the State Department and National Security Council, as well as from the European Union delegations to the talks. Noronha wrote that his associates, all “career” officers rather than political appointees, “are so concerned with the concessions being made by Rob Malley in Vienna that they’ve allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes that Congress will act to stop the capitulation.”

Malley’s capitulation includes delisting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terror Organizations and ending U.S. sanctions on Iran’s senior terror masters—including the terror chiefs responsible for the massacre of 241 U.S. Marines at the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, where 85 people were killed.

Malley has agreed to end sanctions on 112 entities and people tied to Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei, through which Khamenei has accrued massive wealth and organized Iran’s global terror and weapons procurement networks. Malley is willing to end sanctions on Iranian entities and individuals involved in the torture and murder of Iranian civilians.

All told, Noronha’s colleagues said Malley has agreed to sanctions relief that will provide Iran with an immediate cash infusion of $90 billion, as well as an additional $50-55 billion annually in oil and gas profits.

On the nuclear front, beyond a few formalities, Biden’s deal will enable Iran to move full-speed ahead with its development of advanced centrifuges and continue its race to the nuclear finish line. All limitations—which are largely unenforceable—will be removed in two and a half years. And Iran’s nuclear program, which constitutes a material breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory, will be legitimated by the UN and the U.S. government.

All of these concessions guarantee two consequences. First, Iran will go to war. As U.S. Army Col. (res.) Joel Rayburn, who served as Trump’s envoy to Syria and in a range of senior positions related to the Middle East in Central Command, the National Security Council and the State Department explained in a recent interview with Newsweek, with the JCPOA’s implementation in 2015, Iran received billions of dollars in sanctions relief. It used the funds to expand its wars against Israel, against U.S. forces deployed in the Middle East and against Iran’s Sunni Arab neighbors the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Iran fought its various foes both directly and through its proxies in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

The $90 billion that Malley and his colleagues in the Biden administration are poised to now give Iran guarantee that Iran will massively escalate its aggression against these actors.

The second consequence of the new nuclear deal is that Iran will become a nuclear-armed state unless Israel attacks and destroys a sufficient number of Iran’s nuclear installations to significantly scale back Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

And so we return to Israel’s security brass. The most powerful shock wave Noronha’s revelations produced is the one going through Israel’s military high command. Israel’s military leaders can no longer deny the truth that they have gone to near-superhuman heights to wish away for 20 years. Netanyahu, it turns out, was right all along.

The contest between Iran and Israel pits a country of 90 million against a country of nine million; a theocratic regional hegemon with manifold foreign legions against a liberal democracy with no aspirations for territorial conquest. And under the Biden administration, the U.S. is standing with the Iranians.

Originally published in Newsweek.com.

 

Caroline Glick

Source: https://carolineglick.com/biden-shatters-israels-delusions/

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What China is learning from Putin's Ukraine invasion - James Jay Carafano

 

by James Jay Carafano

Lessons Xi and his cronies are learning in Russia-Ukraine war might not be ones they saw coming

 

Vladimir Putin could never rest easy without the Russian flag flying over Kyiv. Never doubt for a second that Xi Jinping feels the same way about Taiwan. The president of China certainly hopes, in his lifetime, to see the communist flag flutter above Taipei.

So the obvious question is whether the current conflict holds any lessons for China and its cause. It does – but they might not be the ones Beijing expected.

 

   Video

Putin would not have moved on Ukraine if he didn’t think a weakened, distracted and divided Europe, paired with a feckless American president, would not stand in his way. The response from Beijing, of course, was – what’s not to like? Putin was doing Xi’s dirty work for him. A rattled Europe would be more open to Chinese efforts to expand its influence in Europe, as well as push out and marginalize the Americans.

DEFENDING RELIGION IN UKRAINE – RUSSIA'S PUTIN DISTORTS SHARED CHRISTIAN ROOTS TO JUSTIFY WAR

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the time is right to take Taiwan. For one thing, China already thinks the West is weak. Nothing that has happened in the last few days gives it any reason to advance its own timeline.

Consider as well the logistics problem. As Asia expert Walter Lohman has noted, "Unlike Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a Chinese move on Taiwan involves it getting past hundreds of miles of water." If Beijing wants to take Taiwan by force, it won’t act until it’s convinced it can win decisively and quickly. Beijing thinks the West is only going to get weaker, so time is on its side.

 

 Video

The lessons Xi and his cronies are learning, however might not be the ones they saw coming. 

What happens when victories are not quick and decisive? Putin may well conquer Ukraine, but if he does, it will only be after an expensive, debilitating campaign that devastates his conquests while delivering a staggering hammer blow to his own economy. Win or lose, Putin will have big burden to bear.

The lesson for Beijing may be to wait a bit. 

Beijing is also learning lessons about the value of Putin as ally. Rather than dividing and weakening Europe, Putin has given NATO a reason to be NATO again. European countries are stepping up to spend more on defense. Congress is likely to press the Biden administration to strengthen both the U.S. military’s conventional and strategic posture.

Beijing has also had to spend geopolitical capital to side with Russia. Fending off responsibility for the Uyghur genocide (which they can hide behind the Great Firewall) is one thing, but defending Russian war crimes, which play out on Twitter and YouTube, guts China’s credibility of claims that it’s a "responsible" power.

 

  Video

Further, Beijing’s buddy in Moscow is going to be an economic basketcase. Even if Beijing wants to bail them out with their patent debt trap, that is going to cost a lot of money – likely more than the Chinese Communist Party can spare. Buying up Russia at fire-sale prices might be more than even Xi can manage.

Here is an even bigger lesson Xi did not anticipate. He has been thrilled to watch the West commit economic suicide with its "climate action" plan that impoverishes their economies (while doing little to address climate issues) even as the China economy thrives, powered by ever more coal-fired plants. What if this war actually causes the West to wake up and adopt policies that deliver reliable, affordable and abundant energy (without Russian oil and gas)?

 

  Video

Let’s be honest. Even before Putin attacked Ukraine, Beijing was right to think the West was in the process of geopolitical suicide. Not one Western leader showed Putin any backbone. They still cling to their climate-action nonsense. We still talk a lot about protecting supply chains, and then Congress offers to subsidize costs for high-tech companies knee-deep in China.

Yet the resistance in the Ukraine has stirred some buried truth in the West, like being dead asleep and then shocked awake – a reminder that if we don’t defend our freedom, safety and prosperity, no one will.

The lesson for Beijing may be to wait a bit. They may well decide to wait and see what happens after the Ukraine war: if the West returns to its geostrategic slumbers or if defending the free world becomes a new reality in the post-modern world. You can bet Xi will be rooting for the former.

 

James Jay Carafano is vice president of foreign and defense policy studies  The Heritage Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @JJCarafano.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/china-learning-putin-ukraine-invasion-james-jay-carafano

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Russia destroyed Ukraine nuclear neutron generator - IAEA chief - Yonah Jeremy Bob

 

by Yonah Jeremy Bob

Asked if this meant that Russia had attacked a facility protected by IAEA safeguards rules, Grossi paused, but then answered, "yes, when there is nuclear material."

 

‘THERE IS less access, let’s face it.’ Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Mariano Grossi ahead of a virtual IAEA Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna last year.

(photo credit: CHRISTIAN BRUNA/REUTERS)

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi on Monday told a press conference that Russia's military assault on Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station led to the destruction of a neutron generator in one of the facilities on the campus.

His answer came in response to a question from the media about what would happen if Russia's attack harmed the generator.

Until now it had been reported that Russian forces fired on the facility, but the results of the attack were unknown.

"Apparently it has been destroyed," said Grossi matter-of-factly, leaving the assembled media shocked.

However, he then tried to assure those present that the situation would not be a new Chernobyl-style disaster, saying, "the neutron generator facility had a very small inventory. It was a subcritical facility to use neutrons for scientific experiments."

IAEA DIRECTOR-GENERAL Rafael Grossi speaks at a news conference during a Board of Governors meeting in Vienna in September. (credit: Leonhard Foeger/Reuters)

"It was a relatively new one [facility], part of an operation between the US and Ukraine from the Obama administration. It was a scientific institute," he said.

Asked if this meant that Russia had attacked a facility protected by IAEA safeguards rules, Grossi paused, but then answered, "Yes, when there is nuclear material," meaning since there had been nuclear material there, Russia's attack violated IAEA international protection rules.

 

Yonah Jeremy Bob

Source: https://www.jpost.com/international/article-700566

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Turkey Committing War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity – Again - Uzay Bulut

 

by Uzay Bulut

Instead of targeting and defeating jihadist forces in Syria and Iraq, Turkey's military evidently chooses to cooperate with them and targets the [People's Defense Units] YPG, which is the principal military ally of the United States

• The Turkish government uses the pretext of "fighting terrorism" for its military attacks against Iraq and Syria. Its "fight against terrorism", however, does not mainly target the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda or its affiliates such as the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

• Turkey, home to leaders of Hamas until just a few days ago, has for several years been granting citizenship to collaborators of ISIS.

• Instead of targeting and defeating jihadist forces in Syria and Iraq, Turkey's military evidently chooses to cooperate with them and targets the [People's Defense Units] YPG, which is the principal military ally of the United States on the ground against Islamic State. Turkey's military attacks thus weaken the US-led global coalition against ISIS and continue to devastate the Yazidis, Christians, Kurds, and other civilians in the region.

• "Many governments, including the USA and others, as well as the UN, are trying to rebuild Sinjar. Meanwhile, Turkey is bombing the city regularly." — Pari Ibrahim, Executive Director of the Free Yezidi Foundation, to Gatestone, February 2022.

• "While Turkey claims it is trying to attack PKK in Sinjar, in reality they are killing the Yezidis who fought and defended Sinjar against ISIS. Turkey, by the way, did not express any interest in bombing Sinjar when it was occupied by ISIS. It is only now, when the area is once again inhabited by Yezidis, that Turkey is bombing. So we see a very nefarious hand by Turkey, which is bombing basically all of the allies of the Global Coalition against ISIS. While the Coalition is fighting ISIS, Turkey is fighting the Coalition's allies on the ground." — Pari Ibrahim to Gatestone, February 2022.

Turkey has for years been cooperating with jihadists in Syria and bombing Yazidis in Iraq. On February 1, Yazidis (an indigenous non-Muslim minority) in Iraq and Syria were once again terrorized by Turkish airstrikes. "Many governments, including the USA and others, as well as the UN, are trying to rebuild Sinjar. Meanwhile, Turkey is bombing the city regularly," says Pari Ibrahim, Executive Director of the Free Yezidi Foundation. Pictured: Battle-damaged buildings in the town of Sinjar, Iraq photographed on February 5, 2019. (Photo by Zaid Al-Obeidi/AFP via Getty Images)

Turkey has for years been cooperating with jihadists in Syria and bombing Yazidis in Iraq. Yazidis, exposed to a genocide at the hands of ISIS in Iraq in 2014, are an indigenous non-Muslim minority in the Middle East who have for centuries faced persecution because of their religion and ethnicity.

On February 1, Yazidis were once again terrorized by Turkish airstrikes targeting parts of Iraq and Syria. The Turkish government-funded TRT channel reported:

"Turkiye [Turkey] has launched an aerial operation in northern regions of Iraq and Syria to target YPG [People's Defense Units]/PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] terrorist bases, hideouts and tunnels that Ankara said was part of its fight against terrorism and right to self-defense.

"The operation dubbed 'Winter Eagle' began early on Wednesday and targeted YPG/PKK in Syria's Derik and Sinjar, Karacak regions in Iraq, the Turkish Defence Ministry said on Wednesday in a statement."

The pro-Kurdish Firat News Agency confirmed the airstrikes. The United Nations-administered Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq and a nearby village were also among the areas affected by the bombing.

The Turkish government uses the pretext of "fighting terrorism" for its military attacks against Iraq and Syria. Its "fight against terrorism", however, does not mainly target the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda or its affiliates such as the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS or the "Organization for the Liberation of the Levant"). According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

"In May 2018, the group [HTS] was added to the State Department's existing designation of its predecessor, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Today, HTS can be thought of as a relatively localized Syrian terrorist organization, which retains a Salafi-jihadist ideology despite its public split from al-Qaeda in 2017."

Turkey, home to leaders of Hamas until just a few days ago, has for several years been granting citizenship to collaborators of ISIS.

The 2021 report by the Middle East Institute, "The Economics of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham," details that Turkey and HTS are co-occupying and exploiting parts of northwest Syria:

"The most significant shift in HTS economic policy occurred in July 2017, when the group took over the Bab al-Hawa crossing, one of the biggest sources of revenue in NW Syria and a particularly strategic acquisition in terms of the relationship with Turkey."

In January 2018, Watad Petroleum Company was formed in HTS-occupied north-west Syria and was granted exclusive rights to import oil derivatives and gas from Turkey into the region.

In June, HTS announced that it would replace the Syrian pound with the Turkish lira (TL), indexed the prices of goods to the lira and Watad Petroleum indexed oil derivatives and gas prices to the lira. These changes demonstrate how the Turkish government has become a lifeline for the jihadist HTS through its massive economic support to the group.

On February 2, U.S. Special Forces conducted an operation targeting ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi in Idlib province, near the border with Turkey. The former leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed by a similar operation in the nearby town of Barisha in October 2019. Both areas are controlled by HTS -- supported by the Turkish government.

The Syrian city of Afrin has also been occupied since late 2018 by a coalition of Islamist groups, with Turkey as the real power behind them. The Turkish military -- in an operation dubbed "Olive Branch" -- defeated and expelled the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the People's Defense Units (YPG) which were previously the de facto local military and governing power in the area. In February 2019, the United Nations' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria released a report assessing the situation in Afrin, which stated:

"The commission finds there are reasonable grounds to believe that armed group members in Afrin committed the war crimes of hostage-taking, cruel treatment, torture, and pillage."

According to many news reports including one from the Firat News Agency:

"Since the occupation of Afrin in March 2018, the Turkish state has established a regime of looting and exploitation. Olive and olive products were the main source of income in the region before the invasion. With the Turkish invasion, Afrin's olive groves have been plundered and have become a source of funding for militiamen from the Turkish-established mercenary 'Syrian National Army' (SNA). The SNA militias loot the region's olive production and bring it to the world market via Turkey."

Instead of targeting and defeating jihadist forces in Syria and Iraq, Turkey's military evidently chooses to cooperate with them and targets the YPG, which is the principal military ally of the United States on the ground against Islamic State. Turkey's military attacks thus weaken the US-led global coalition against ISIS and continue to devastate the Yazidis, Christians, Kurds, and other civilians in the region.

Pari Ibrahim, Executive Director of the Free Yezidi Foundation, told Gatestone:

"On the evening of 1 February, the Turkish Airforce conducted airstrikes in Iraq, targeting Yezidi genocide survivors who have joined the Yezidi defense force, after the Yezidi genocide in August 2014. According to reports we have received, the following areas were hit by the Turkish air force in Sinjar [Shingal].

"1. At least five airstrikes on the peak of Sinjar Mountain.
2. At least five airstrikes near Chalmira area on Sinjar Mountain.
3. At least three airstrikes near Bara Village.
4. At least three airstrikes near Kira Qiranya area.
5. At least two airstrikes near Bab Shalo area.
6. At least one airstrike near Bab Karsi area."

On August 3, 2014, the Islamic State launched an offensive against the Sinjar region of northern Iraq and carried out genocide against the Yazidi population. This involved mass killings, sexual assaults, torture, forced conversions, kidnappings, enslavement, and cultural heritage destruction. ISIS killed or captured nearly 10,000 Yazidis and forcibly displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes. Yazidis call the atrocity "the 74th Yazidi genocide". Today, around 2,700 Yazidi women and children are still held captive by ISIS or remain missing. Approximately 210,000 Yazidis remain internally displaced, mostly spread across 15 Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. According to Ibrahim:

"The Free Yezidi Foundation focuses on displaced Yezidis because many Yezidis are unable to return home and are afraid of the security dangers, including the Turkish airstrikes," Ibrahim added. "There are still more than 200,000 Yezidis who are displaced, in and out of camps. We do not believe these airstrikes are helping -- they are greatly destabilizing. Many governments, including the USA and others, as well as the UN, are trying to rebuild Sinjar. Meanwhile, Turkey is bombing the city regularly.

"Some say Turkey is trying to finish what the Islamic State started, the eradication of Yezidis and preventing Yezidis from returning to their homeland in Sinjar. We understand there is a conflict between Turkey and the PKK. But we as Yezidis do not want to see any more deaths or targeted attacks against Yezidis in Iraq, under any pretexts. It is not only Yezidis who are affected by this. The airstrikes destabilize the area and prevent all the civilians from returning to their areas of origin."

The February 1 airstrikes were not Turkey's first attacks against Yazidis in Iraq. In 2017, Turkish warplanes dropped bombs on Sinjar, hitting a civilian clinic, said Yakhi Hamza, country director of the 1st New Allied Expeditionary Force, a humanitarian nonprofit delivering medical help to Yazidis. The airstrikes killed at least five people and severely wounded several more. In August 2018, November 2019, January 2020 and June 2020, among others, Turkey also carried out airstrikes on Sinjar.

Ibrahim continued:

"Turkey claims it is seeking to attack PKK and PKK assets and bases in Sinjar. We know there is conflict between Turkey and the PKK. But the people who are being attacked and killed are not Kurds from Turkey, they are Yezidis from Iraq. It is hard to understand the legal justification of the Turkish attacks against Iraqi Yezidis who are literally just trying to defend their homeland. These Yezidis fought against ISIS when they came to destroy Yezidis. While Turkey claims it is trying to attack PKK in Sinjar, in reality they are killing the Yezidis who fought and defended Sinjar against ISIS. Turkey, by the way, did not express any interest in bombing Sinjar when it was occupied by ISIS. It is only now, when the area is once again inhabited by Yezidis, that Turkey is bombing. So we see a very nefarious hand by Turkey, which is bombing basically all of the allies of the Global Coalition against ISIS. While the Coalition is fighting ISIS, Turkey is fighting the Coalition's allies on the ground."

In 2015, there were 300,000 Yazidis living in camps for internally displaced persons. An American human rights activist, Amy L. Beam, author of The Last Yezidi Genocide, documenting the atrocities committed by ISIS, moved to Kurdistan, Iraq, obtained Iraqi IDs and passports for nearly 1,000 Yazidis to leave Iraq. Many of these women and children told her their stories of torture and abuse while in ISIS captivity. Beam told Gatestone:

"After nearly eight years of being displaced, with no reconstruction and no compensation, Yazidis feel there is no future in Iraq. After the most recent airstrikes in Khanasor, Shingal by Turkey, Yazidis flooded me with increasingly desperate requests to help them obtain asylum.

"As long as Turkey continues to conduct airstrikes in Shingal with impunity under the false pretext of killing 'PKK terrorists,' Ezidis continue to live in constant fear. Those still living in camps in Kurdistan will not return to Shingal. The international community has shamefully failed to rebuild their homeland.

"Even though the Iraqi security forces have been providing security on the ground in Shingal since October 2017, neither Iraqi federal government, Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI), nor Coalition forces has been able to protect Shingal from Turkey's deadly airstrikes in Shingal. No complaint has been registered with the United Nations Security Council for Turkey's invasion of Iraqi air space."

"It is long-overdue for all countries to offer blanket asylum to any Ezidi from Iraq or Syria. Very little justice has been provided by prosecutions of ISIS in Iraq."

Ibrahim urged the West and the international community to help end Turkey's military attacks against Yazidis. She said:

"We as Free Yezidi Foundation would like to see a no-fly zone over Sinjar. These attacks against our people need to end. Turkey has no right to attack Yezidis who are native to Sinjar. Yezidis survived a genocide. We see a pattern with these attacks: Any time the international community is occupied with another crisis, as was the case with Afghanistan and is currently the case in Ukraine, Turkey starts airstrikes against Yezidis in Sinjar. We feel powerless, as the international community does not react. A NATO member should behave better than this."

 

Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18272/turkey-war-crimes

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Anonymous is 'waging war' on Russia: Several broadcasts hacked - Jerusalem Post Staff

 

by Jerusalem Post Staff

The hacker group has been actively targeting Russia in cyberspace since the initial assault on Ukraine began on February 24.

 

The masked face of international hacker Anonymous

(photo credit: WIKIMEDIA)

The hacker group Anonymous hacked Russian streaming services on Sunday, hitting Wink and Ivi, as well as live TV channels Russia 24, Channel One and Moscow 24 to broadcast footage of the war with Ukraine.

Anonymous also posted photos on Twitter showing that, instead of regular broadcasting, a message appeared stating that "ordinary Russians are against the war" and called for Russians to oppose their government's attack on Ukraine.

The hacking collective #Anonymous hacked into the Russian streaming services Wink and Ivi (like Netflix) and live TV channels Russia 24, Channel One, Moscow 24 to broadcast war footage from Ukraine [today] pic.twitter.com/hzqcXT1xRU

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) March 6, 2022

Anonymous has been actively targeting Russia in cyberspace since the initial assault on Ukraine began on February 24, In the days since, the group has claimed credit for several cyberattacks including DDOS attacks and the complete shutdown of government sites, which brought Russia's media and government sector to a grinding halt on the internet.

From shutting down the Kremlin's official website to Russian "propaganda" news outlets, the group certainly has been busy. However, it is more of an informal collective rather than a unified outfit, making it difficult to attribute the attacks to them fully.

Its targets in the past have included the CIA, the Church of Scientology, and the Islamic State. Widespread arrests of alleged members were made in the US in the 2010s.

The group's loose structure can also drastically change their goals as well as the hackers they attract. While anyone could theoretically use the Anonymous handle, the group appears more organized in the case of the Ukrainian war, and a lot more focused on their own "declaration of war" against Russia.

The Russian-Ukrainian stage has brought to light the importance of cyberspace in the modern battlefield, with several skirmishes hitting both sides as the war continues. Even Elon Musk's Starlink Internet satellite system was hit with disruptions almost as soon as it was implemented in Ukraine.

 

Jerusalem Post Staff 

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-700529

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How is Israel’s government shaping the global future of artificial intelligence? - Zachy Hennessey

 

by Zachy Hennessey

Experts in the Justice Ministry and throughout the government are working to find the right balance between allowing innovation and protecting the public.

Artificial intelligence is one of the foremost fields of technology currently being explored, and while there is no reasonable doubt that the advancement of the technology will greatly benefit humanity, the rampant innovation taking place comes with a host of ethical, humanitarian and legal concerns.

AI is going through its Wild West era, and Israeli regulators are working to promote the fledgling technology’s development while creating sensible safeguards to protect citizens from the potential misuse of its enormous power.

Dr. Yuval Roitman, senior director of the regulation division at the Justice Ministry, explained why there is such a pressing need for AI regulation.

“We understand that AI is here, and it’s going to be more and more substantial in the work of the Israeli government and Israeli economy, on the one hand,” he said, “and on the other hand, we have a very important AI sector within the private sector,” he said. “We want to do two things: to promote the industry and to protect our citizens.”

As such, Israel’s government now features a host of teams that were created in order to establish a national AI strategy. These teams are responsible for topics such as the use of AI within the government, data privacy, the promotion of innovation in the regulation of AI and ethics in relation to it.

Also pertinent is a government team developing regulations for frameworks called “sandboxes,” which are limited ecosystems where developers can experiment with technology in a controlled manner. Roitman explained that the ministry is promoting a general sandbox act “so we won’t have to go to the Knesset for every situation that we want to allow a sandbox.” This will allow developers to experiment much more freely, which will be greatly relevant to the advancement of artificial intelligence.

ANOTHER KEY player in Israel’s AI regulation is a task force dedicated to issues of law and technology. One of its focuses, understandably, has been the regulation of artificial intelligence.

 

IT SHOULD BE noted that in the training process in the core technology areas, such as chip design, algorithms, software, artificial intelligence, and cyber, is long – there are no shortcuts. (credit: HADAS PARUSH/FLASH90)

Cedric Sabbah, the Justice Ministry’s director of emerging technologies and a main contributor to the task force’s operations, explained that the international conversation on AI regulation started a few years ago upon the release of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Recommendation on AI, which provided an intergovernmental standard for AI policies.

“In the OECD’s text, you can really see the tension that there was between wishing to enable innovation and allow for all the benefits of AI to be reaped in an innovation friendly ecosystem, and the apprehensions about what a future of AI holds,” said Sabbah.

“The way they framed it was that in order for society to truly reap the benefits of AI innovation, society at large needs to have trust that the products that are being put out there are useful and will not come to hurt them,” he said, pointing out that Israel was “instrumental to its development along with other OECD countries, and here at the Justice Ministry, we were very much part of it.”

Since the intergovernmental economic organization sparked the global AI conversation, Israel has joined several international initiatives created to develop standardized AI regulation such as the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and the Ad-hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAHAI), which is run by the Council of Europe – the latter of which Israel joined as an observer state.

“This means that we have a voice at the table, but at the same time, we don’t have a vote,” said Sabbah. “So we can influence indirectly, we can make our voice heard, we can suggest drafting proposals and policy proposals, and we’re still taken into consideration when they try to look at the overall direction that people are supporting.”

DESPITE ISRAEL’S position in these international forums, it still has a vested interest in ensuring that the global standards being developed don’t unduly hamper innovation, which is a key facet of the country’s DNA.

“For us, it’s a big deal because so much of our industry is hi-tech, and so much of that is AI innovations, so we really do want to make sure that our interests are being heard,” Sabbah said.

On that note, he elaborated on one of the current hot-button topics in AI regulation: explainability. At its core, the issue is that as a technology becomes more advanced, it becomes more opaque to those who use it. This relationship creates a potential threat, as that opacity could veil instances of discrimination, fraud or other nefarious activities.

In response to this, there is a push from some governments to require that upon request, any decision made by an AI can be dissected and explained.

A constant availability of explainability, however, can negatively impact a system’s effectiveness. Furthermore, the disclosure of an algorithm’s operations could potentially damage a company’s intellectual property.

As Sabbah put it, “If you make it explainable, there’s a risk for companies that they’re going to have to disclose the secret sauce.”

These potentially damaging regulatory tools therefore stand to harm innovation-focused countries like Israel.

“We need to think about what it actually means if we create an international law obligation to have explainability, because it could come at the expense of protecting companies’ legitimate IP,” he said.

According to Tal Werner-Kling, senior director of international technology law at the Justice Ministry, being a party to international artificial intelligence initiatives like CAHAI grants a unique opportunity to create a brand new set of laws for a field that has never been touched before.

“It’s a rare chance, because in so many fields of law, the rules are there and you have to join and comply or decide not to join and pay the price,” Werner-Kling said.

“Right now we have an opportunity to voice an opinion, and try to find and recruit other parties who may not even realize that they have similar interests,” she said. “I think that’s a very important moment in time to be in the creation of law.”

 

Zachy Hennessey

Source: https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-700564

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Ukraine war: Russia's corruption is 'no doubt' affecting its military's combat performance - Peter Aitken

 

by Peter Aitken

The Russian oligarchs and mafia operate in every sector of society

 

Historic corruption in Russia may have hit its military and eroded its ability to maintain its war efforts in Ukraine. 

Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, and the war has not unfolded the way Russian President Vladimir Putin would have wanted. The British Ministry of Defense and U.S. officials regularly note that the Russian military has made slow progress, taking several days to even address day-one targets. 

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But more troubling for Russian troops would be the shortcomings in supplies and equipment: Pictures on social media indicate that troops carried rations that had expired in 2015, and the equipment appears dated, with radio communications transmitting over open channels and lacking long-range capabilities. Tanks and vehicles abandoned during combat show evidence of poor maintenance and care. 

The Russian Federation budgets for roughly $60 billion to $70 billion per year to fund its military, which helps finance salaries and training costs, maintain gear and facilities and develop or buy new weapons, gear and vehicles. If the military is not translating that into its war effort, it raises questions about whether Russia’s corruption has undermined its combat ability.

Rebekah Koffler, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, said that Russia has a habit of holding onto outdated equipment, but corruption is "absolutely" affecting everything, including the military, with both private businessmen and the mafia taking cuts. 

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"Corruption is so rampant," Koffler told Fox News Digital. "There’s not the same scrupulousness in Russia – it’s former Soviet Union, and it’s not even in the culture to check the expiration because no one would trust it anyways."

The setup in Russia between the oligarchs – billionaires who control whole sections of Russian industry – and the mafia is fairly unique compared to the West. Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Thomas Spoehr told Fox News Digital that while there is no specific organized crime ring in the military, it’s "certain" organized crime operates in the Russian military to some degree.

Intact Pantsir S1 captured by Ukrainians near Bashtanka pic.twitter.com/lAom7PMwQQ

— Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) March 4, 2022

"We talk about how the U.S. military is a reflection of U.S. society, and we had this issue with gangs in the military not terribly long ago," Spoehr explained. "By that same notion, it would be astonishing if there wasn’t organized crime in the Russian military because Russian society is rife with organized crime. It’s almost like another economy the way Russia operates." 

He said the Russian military prioritizes its navy over its army, which may contribute to the poor rations and guns seen on social media. But he added that while the Russian military ostensibly acquires new weapons and equipment through its bureau of acquisitions, there is no doubt "a certain amount of corruption." 

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"There is graft, malfeasance, all those kinds of things," Spoehr said. "So people are skimming off the top, maybe in some cases accepting shoddy goods, sometimes enriching themselves by directing contracts to their favorite oligarch – all that stuff happens." 

But Spoehr stressed that strategic issues and logistical shortcomings are likely more responsible for Russia’s shocking performance in Ukraine than could any possible corruption.

Dan Hoffman, a Fox News contributor and former CIA station chief in Moscow, argues that we can’t know to what degree corruption has impacted the Russian military – only that the troops are "challenged" and cannot say what the cause is. 

He argued it is just as likely that the planned revitalization of supplies and forces following the Georgia invasion in 2008 never took hold as it should have, or it could be that the military hadn’t tried to stage a full invasion since World War II and wasn’t prepared for the realities of such an operation.

 

Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukraine-war-corruption-russian-military-affecting-performance

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