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In Support Of Regime Change – The New York Times Continues To Disinform Its Readers
U.S. President Joe Biden continues Donald Trump's regime change policy towards Venezuela. From yesterday's press briefing by the State Department:
QUESTION: Staying in Latin America, is it fair to say that the Biden administration is pursuing regime change in Venezuela?
MR PRICE: It is fair to say that the Biden administration supports the democratic aspirations of the people of Venezuela. Our overriding goal is to support a peaceful democratic transition in Venezuela through free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections, and to help the Venezuelan people rebuild their lives and their country.
We know at the root of much of the misery and the suffering of the people of Venezuela stands one individual, and we have been very clear that Nicolas Maduro is a dictator. His actions have not been in the best interests of the people of Venezuela. It hasn’t just been the United States that has been saying that. It has been the United States and many of our closest partners both in the region and well beyond.
QUESTION: So it’s basically – it’s basically a nicer way of saying Maduro must go?
MR PRICE: We believe and we support the democratic aspirations of the people of Venezuela. That is why we are committed to supporting the people through humanitarian measures and also targeting regime officials and their cronies involved in human rights abuses and corruption.
Yes.
The New York Times is, as usual, supportive of such illegal policies. It continues to disinform its readers about economic problems caused by these. Today it reports on a minor measure Biden took with regards to Venezuelans in the United States:
As many as 320,000 Venezuelans living in the United States were given an 18-month reprieve on Monday from the threat of being deported, as the Biden administration sought to highlight how dangerous that country has become under President Nicolás Maduro.
The fourth paragraph is supposed to describe Venezuela's current 'danger':
Venezuela is mired in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises under Mr. Maduro, who, through a mix of corruption and neglect, oversaw the decay of the country’s oil infrastructure that had propped up its economy. The United Nations has estimated that up to 94 percent of Venezuela’s population lives in poverty, with millions of people bereft of regular access to water, food and medicine.
Isn't there something missing in the above? Was the 'decay of the country’s oil infrastructure' really caused by Maduro? Or did the U.S. have something to do with that?
Six paragraphs further down we learn what really is causing Venezuela's problems:
Cont. reading: In Support Of Regime Change – The New York Times Continues To Disinform Its Readers
U.S. Launches New Afghanistan Initiative Which Is Unlikely To Fly
The U.S. has an agreement with the Taliban which commits it to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by May 1. Should the U.S. stay longer the Taliban will again start attacking U.S. troops and bases in Afghanistan and the conflict will continue as it did over the last 20 years.
The agreement also foresees peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But President Ashraf Ghani has been dragging his feet with regards to peace talks. He believes that the U.S. will stay in Afghanistan, that he does not have to make concessions and can continue to stay in office. Meanwhile the Afghan army is losing the war. The Taliban already rule most of the the countryside. They are ready to take the cities which are still under government control as soon as the U.S. pulls out.
The Biden regime does not want to pull out to then immediately see the Taliban win the war. It needs some face saving period of 'peace in Afghanistan' to justify a pull out. It also wants to keep some CIA counter-terrorism force in the country which is something the Taliban are unlikely to allow.
Over the weekend The Biden administration launched a new attempt to create a power sharing agreement for Afghanistan. This would include the Taliban into the current government under President Ghani. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is putting pressure on the Afghan government to agree to that:
In a letter to President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan requesting his “urgent leadership,” Mr. Blinken signaled that the Biden administration had lost faith in faltering negotiations between Mr. Ghani’s government and the Taliban. The unusually blunt letter, in which Mr. Blinken asked Mr. Ghani to “understand the urgency of my tone,” reflected American frustration with the Afghan president’s often intransigent stance in stalled peace talks.
The letter (also here) was delivered by U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalizad to President Ghani, his rival Chairman Abdullah Abdullah and to the Taliban.
In it Blinken announced that he would ask the UN to convene the foreign ministers of Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, India and the United States to discuss a unified approach for supporting peace in Afghanistan. Pakistan, which supports the Taliban, is likely to reject any inclusion of its arch enemy India into such a process.
Khalizad also delivered a draft of an Afghan Peace Agreement (pdf) which is essentially a new constitution for Afghanistan but with all the elements that created the current failed system. (Writing constitutions for countries which have fundamental internal disagreements is a British and U.S. pasttime which rarely works.) The proposal foresees an interim government with a few Taliban seats in the parliament. It sets out new elections which the Taliban generally reject. The proposal includes the creation of a new High Council for Islamic Jurisprudence to advise the independent judiciary. That is probably the sole good element and the only one the Taliban could agree with.
While Blinken has claimed to have coordinated all this with U.S. allies, the EU special envoy to Afghanistan expressed dismay:
Cont. reading: U.S. Launches New Afghanistan Initiative Which Is Unlikely To Fly
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-019
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
> [Steven Adair, president of Volexity,] said his firm tracked the malicious activity back to early January, though researchers in Taiwan identified Exchange software bugs as far back as December.
For much of January and February, the Chinese theft of email seemed stealthy and targeted, Adair said. Then suddenly about a week ago, shortly before Microsoft issued its patch, the activity exploded. The hackers seemed to be dropping webshells on anyone running an Exchange server, he said. It was, he said, almost as if they suspected a patch was forthcoming. <
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Other issues:
Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-019
Is China Hacking Random Servers To Put Itself Into A Bad Light?
When I was an IT manager I never liked Mircosoft's Exchange email servers. Like many other Microsoft products it is overloaded with useless niche features and legacies from previous versions. I am thereby not astonished that it was seemingly quite easy to hack.
A currently ongoing hacking campaign that by now has effected hundred thousands of system was first found by Volexity, a cyber security company in Reston, Va.:
In January 2021, through its Network Security Monitoring service, Volexity detected anomalous activity from two of its customers’ Microsoft Exchange servers. Volexity identified a large amount of data being sent to IP addresses it believed were not tied to legitimate users. A closer inspection of the IIS logs from the Exchange servers revealed rather alarming results.
…
Through its analysis of system memory, Volexity determined the attacker was exploiting a zero-day server-side request forgery (SSRF) vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange (CVE-2021-26855). The attacker was using the vulnerability to steal the full contents of several user mailboxes. This vulnerability is remotely exploitable and does not require authentication of any kind, nor does it require any special knowledge or access to a target environment. The attacker only needs to know the server running Exchange and the account from which they want to extract e-mail.
The hackers used four different zero-day security holes in Exchange Server products. A zero-day security hole is one that was previously unknown and has never been used before. To find new zero-day security holes is difficult and expensive. But after they are found and made operational they are often easy to use. Whoever did this hack has invested quite some effort.
Besides extracting emails the hackers also installed backdoors that give them remote access to the hacked Exchange systems.
On March 2 Microsoft released patches for the four security holes. In its release it accused China of being behind the hack:
Cont. reading: Is China Hacking Random Servers To Put Itself Into A Bad Light?
On ‘Shia Backed’, ‘Iran Backed’ Nonsense And Other Warmongering Journalism
The recent U.S. airstrike at the Syrian-Iraqi border and the missile attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq were followed by many examples of bad journalism.
U.S. media, as FAIR documents, have purged inconvenient facts from their coverage of Biden’s ‘first’ airstrike:
The less clear the US population is about the frequency and scale of murderous violence its government carries out, the easier it is for the US ruling class to go about its wars. Fortunately for the US state, corporate media help manufacture collective amnesia by expunging US aggression from the record.
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Securing consent for running a lethal, worldwide empire requires unremitting propaganda: Redacting the historical record and playing the victim are two useful strategies.
The dozens of examples in the FAIR piece are telling. FAIR gets one thing wrong though. The attack was not in Syria, as the U.S. claimed, but on the Iraqi side of the border.
Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai – 6:01 UTC · Mar 3, 2021
Analysts keep making this mistake: 1st Biden’s bombing was in #Iraq not #Syria. An Iraqi military delegation sent by @MAKadhimi verified & confirmed that the #US bombed Iraqi security forces on the Iraqi borders with #Syria and not on Syrian territory.
Nearly all U.S. media use ‘Iran-backed militia’ when describing the groups that allegedly launched the missiles. The Pentagon now wants to change that. A press briefing with spokesman John F. Kirby had several exchanges about that:
Q: Just going back to — to the rocket attack, could you describe roughly the distance that the rockets were coming from? And what does that say about the tactics — and how does that — of the — whoever fired those? And to what degree does this resemble previous attacks by the Iranian-backed militia?
MR. KIRBY: I’m not qualified to do the forensics, Dan, on — on — on how this equates to previous attacks, other than obviously it’s a rocket attack and we have seen rocket attacks come from Shia-backed militia groups in the past. So in that way, it certainly — it certainly coincides with our past experience here.
… [lots of unrelated stuff] …
Cont. reading: On ‘Shia Backed’, ‘Iran Backed’ Nonsense And Other Warmongering Journalism
Open Thread 2021-018
Biden’s “Nothing Will Fundamentally Change” Promise Extends To His Foreign Policy
"America is back" claimed Joe Biden to no ones amusement. But the world has changed after four years of Trump and after a pandemic upset the world. The U.S. position in this world and its role in it have thereby also changed. To just claim one is back without adopting to the new situation promises failure.
As candidate Joe Biden promised that there would be no changes.
Joe Biden to rich donors: "Nothing would fundamentally change" if he's elected
Former Vice President Joe Biden assured rich donors at a ritzy New York fundraiser that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he is elected.
Biden told donors at an event at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday evening that he would not “demonize” the rich and promised that “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change,” Bloomberg News reported.
That Biden statement destroyed the illusion of those who had hoped that he would lift the standard of living for the average Amercian.
Biden stayed true to his words at the fundraiser. There will be no rise in the minimum wage. The $2,000 checks he promised to all voters will now be only $1,400 checks. They will also be heavily means tested. Those who made more than $80,000 in 2019 but lost their income in 2020 will get no check at all.
Even as they hold the White House and the House and Senate majorities the Democrats are unable or unwilling to deliver basic progress. This will likely cost them their House majority in 2022 and the presidency in 2024.
Biden's "nothing will fundamentally change" attitude extends into foreign policy.
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo – 0:29 UTC · Dec 21, 2019
Today, the #ICC prosecutor raised serious questions about the ICC’s jurisdiction to investigate #Israel. Israel is not a state party to the ICC. We firmly oppose this unjustified inquiry that unfairly targets Israel. The path to lasting peace is through direct negotiations.
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Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken – 1:34 UTC · Mar 4, 2021
The United States firmly opposes an @IntlCrimCourt investigation into the Palestinian Situation. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security, including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.
With that, and with its lack of punishment for the Saudi clown prince, the Biden administration has blinked on human rights which it had emphasized in earlier statements.
That nothing will change is also expressed in two policy papers the Biden administration released yesterday. The early emphasis on human rights, which distinguished it from the Trump administration, is already gone.
The common theme is now 'democracy' as if that were not just a form of government but a value in itself.
The White House published an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (pdf). The paper is dripping with ideological LGBTQWERTY librulism. Its central claim is that 'democracy' is under threat:
Cont. reading: Biden’s “Nothing Will Fundamentally Change” Promise Extends To His Foreign Policy
By Following Trump’s Policies Biden’s ‘Deterrence’ Predictably Fails
U.S. politicians and military love to claim that they are acting to restore deterrence:
When the president illegally ordered the assassination of Soleimani in January of this year, administration officials eventually lined up behind the excuse that it was intended to “restore deterrence” against rocket attacks from Iranian-backed Iraqi militias. Even though these attacks have continued throughout the year much the same as before, we are back to the same old tired issuing of threats of military action in response to attacks that would not be happening if it were not for the president’s own reckless actions.
…
Were it not for the president’s “maximum pressure” campaign, U.S. forces in Iraq would face far fewer risks than they do today, and conflict between our governments would be much less likely. Had it not been for the president’s decision to order the illegal and provocative attack that killed Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader, tensions between the U.S. and Iran would not be as great as they are now. Trump’s approach to Iran for the last two and a half years has been to pick a fight and then blame the other side for responding to his provocations. Far from deterring attacks from Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian military itself, the Trump administration has been provoking and inviting them.
President Joe Biden and his administration continue, without any change, the Trump administration's policies towards Syria, Iraq and Iran.
Just like Trump Biden has claimed that last week's airstrike on Iraqi security forces at the Iraqi-Syrian border was designed to deter from further missile strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq:
President Joe Biden said Friday that Iran should view his decision to authorize U.S. airstrikes in Syria as a warning that it can expect consequences for its support of militia groups that threaten U.S. interests or personnel. “You can’t act with impunity. Be careful,” Biden said when a reporter asked what message he had intended to send with the airstrikes, which the Pentagon said destroyed several buildings in eastern Syria but were not intended to eradicate the militia groups that used them to facilitate attacks inside Iraq.
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At the Pentagon, [chief spokesperson John] Kirby said the operation was “a defensive strike” on a waystation used by militants to move weapons and materials for attacks into Iraq. But he noted that while it sent a message of deterrence and eroded their ability to strike from that compound, the militias have other sites and capabilities.
It is quite obvious that such "messaging" by airstrikes is nonsense that only guarantees that the cycle of violence escalates. As we noted after the recent strike:
The Biden administration has yet to learn the lesson the Trump learned when he tired to provoke Iran and its allies. It is the resistance that has escalation dominance in the Middle East. It can control the pace of further steps up the escalation ladder. It is willing to step up higher than the U.S. It knows how to use that ability.
Today the U.S. received proof that the "message" it sent did not have the desired effect:
Cont. reading: By Following Trump’s Policies Biden’s ‘Deterrence’ Predictably Fails
Biden Breaks Campaign Promise On MbS Punishment – Psaki Lies To Hide That – Guardian Fakes Quote To Hide Psaki’s Lie
Updated below (and headline changed to reflect that)
During his campaign President Joe Biden promised to punish Saudi Arabia's clown prince Mohammad bin Salman for ordering the murder of the Muslim Brotherhood propagandist Jamal Khashoggi. Like with most of his other campaign promises Biden of course never had the intention to follow through on that.
Biden's press secretary Jen Psaki, known for bullshit spoken in an assertive tone, defended Biden's falsehood with another lie:
The White House on Sunday defended its decision to not target Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after a U.S. intelligence report linked the royal to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
"Historically and even in recent history, Democratic and Republican administrations, there have not been sanctions put in place for the leaders of foreign governments where we have diplomatic relations and even where we don't have diplomatic relations," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" program.
Here is the video clip of Biden's and Paski's lies. Her quote starts at 1:58 min.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control has a Sanction List Search feature which allows anyone to look up entities and persons who are under U.S. sanctions.
The pic below shows the entry for one LUKASHENKA, Alyaksandr Hryhoryavich, who's title is noted as 'President'.
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The pic below shows the entry for one MADURO MOROS, Nicolas, who's title is noted as 'President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela'.
Cont. reading: Biden Breaks Campaign Promise On MbS Punishment – Psaki Lies To Hide That – Guardian Fakes Quote To Hide Psaki’s Lie
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