I’m wondering whether the leaks were, at least in part, a deliberate effort by the Biden Administration and the Intelligence Community. Could they be trying to acclimate the American people to what they believe will be a gigantic foreign policy and military calamity in Ukraine?
Let’s hope not. What we can count on is the fact that the claims that some of the assessments were altered or modified is almost certainly untrue.
It has not been a good few months for the CIA and it’s sister agencies. Everyone who thinks straight now realizes that the NordStream Pipeline was destroyed with American acquiescence if not active participation. The cover story that was concocted to shift blame was so amateurish that it was laughable. The Germans know the Americans did it; everyone knows it.
Even a total Ukrainian victory, as unlikely as that is, won’t save the United States from its disastrous foreign policy. The dollar is being replaced slowly but surely. American adversaries are emboldened as never before and are collaborating more closely than we could have ever imagined. Nations that Biden once hoped to woo like Brazil and India are washing their hands of the United States and its demands.
It’s quite something to realize that even a Ukraine military victory still ends up as an American political and economic defeat. One shudders to contemplate what a Russian victory would mean for the U.S.
I was taken by something Larry Summers said recently in an interview I watched on Bloomberg Television. He relayed something he heard from a senior political leader in an ostensibly non-aligned nation. Summers asked this leader whether his nation was moving towards China or the United States. The answer was telling. He said China delivers airports while the United States delivers stern lectures. That’s why China is winning and we are losing.
The neoconservative/liberal internationalist elites are literally destroying the American power and influence that they believe is essential to the world order they are partial to. They almost never get anything right.
Perhaps Putin would have invaded Ukraine regardless of what the United States did. But Biden’s decision to instigate Putin to invade may turn out to be the most serious error in judgement since World War II. Biden, Blinken, Nuland and the rest of the fools running American foreign policy were convinced that encouraging Putin to invade would lead to his downfall and a restoration of American hegemony that dissipated in the Trump years. Instead we are watching the last vestiges of American hegemony collapse right before our eyes.
Even President Macron has had it with the United States.
We have learned (the hard way) that our intelligence agencies lie to the American public, lie to our (glorious) leaders, and probably lie to each other.
That lying has gone past incompetence to political manipulation.
We can't stop them from lying, but we sure can stop respecting those hacks.
On the whole, there are more professionals among intel agencies than among politicians and pundits. That doesn't mean to take their reports without a grain of salt, but it does mean don't leap at every chance to distrust them.
Black people in the US have been treated terribly and that needs to be addressed (American justice has two classes: the protected and the unprotected).
Plus there is a lot of racism.
But violent demonstrations (and the rampant larceny of BLM) is counterproductive.
Reinforces racists.
And destroys black neighborhoods.
(Lived in Pittsburgh; boxed up in the Hill District, an all black area. There were no grocery stores. It was a food desert. People had to drive or take taxis to buy food. Added significantly to the cost for poor people.)
That said, takes time. BLM is accelerating a painfully slow integration.
But at a cost.
Anger is building in society even as injustices are being (very slowly) addressed.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm glad I didn't assume anything.
I asked, because I find that some of BLM's more vocal activists think in ways that I consider to be far too binary. There are bad police, no doubt, but that's a very different thing from "police are bad." I think what they're falling for is the black and white fallacy. Then, this behavior is reinforced online by thoughtless repetition on Twitter and the like.
I’m wondering whether the leaks were, at least in part, a deliberate effort by the Biden Administration and the Intelligence Community. Could they be trying to acclimate the American people to what they believe will be a gigantic foreign policy and military calamity in Ukraine?
Let’s hope not. What we can count on is the fact that the claims that some of the assessments were altered or modified is almost certainly untrue.
It has not been a good few months for the CIA and it’s sister agencies. Everyone who thinks straight now realizes that the NordStream Pipeline was destroyed with American acquiescence if not active participation. The cover story that was concocted to shift blame was so amateurish that it was laughable. The Germans know the Americans did it; everyone knows it.
Even a total Ukrainian victory, as unlikely as that is, won’t save the United States from its disastrous foreign policy. The dollar is being replaced slowly but surely. American adversaries are emboldened as never before and are collaborating more closely than we could have ever imagined. Nations that Biden once hoped to woo like Brazil and India are washing their hands of the United States and its demands.
It’s quite something to realize that even a Ukraine military victory still ends up as an American political and economic defeat. One shudders to contemplate what a Russian victory would mean for the U.S.
I was taken by something Larry Summers said recently in an interview I watched on Bloomberg Television. He relayed something he heard from a senior political leader in an ostensibly non-aligned nation. Summers asked this leader whether his nation was moving towards China or the United States. The answer was telling. He said China delivers airports while the United States delivers stern lectures. That’s why China is winning and we are losing.
The neoconservative/liberal internationalist elites are literally destroying the American power and influence that they believe is essential to the world order they are partial to. They almost never get anything right.
Perhaps Putin would have invaded Ukraine regardless of what the United States did. But Biden’s decision to instigate Putin to invade may turn out to be the most serious error in judgement since World War II. Biden, Blinken, Nuland and the rest of the fools running American foreign policy were convinced that encouraging Putin to invade would lead to his downfall and a restoration of American hegemony that dissipated in the Trump years. Instead we are watching the last vestiges of American hegemony collapse right before our eyes.
Even President Macron has had it with the United States.
Yikes!
And never forget political agendas.
We have learned (the hard way) that our intelligence agencies lie to the American public, lie to our (glorious) leaders, and probably lie to each other.
That lying has gone past incompetence to political manipulation.
We can't stop them from lying, but we sure can stop respecting those hacks.
On the whole, there are more professionals among intel agencies than among politicians and pundits. That doesn't mean to take their reports without a grain of salt, but it does mean don't leap at every chance to distrust them.
Remember those 50 intelligence experts who opined that the Hunter Biden laptop had all the "hallmarks of Russian disinformation"?
Just before the election.
Distrust of the intelligence agencies is warranted.
They earned this distrust the old fashioned way.
Through repeated mendacity.
I appreciate that you're succinct. Curious, how do you feel about BLM?
Torn.
Black people in the US have been treated terribly and that needs to be addressed (American justice has two classes: the protected and the unprotected).
Plus there is a lot of racism.
But violent demonstrations (and the rampant larceny of BLM) is counterproductive.
Reinforces racists.
And destroys black neighborhoods.
(Lived in Pittsburgh; boxed up in the Hill District, an all black area. There were no grocery stores. It was a food desert. People had to drive or take taxis to buy food. Added significantly to the cost for poor people.)
That said, takes time. BLM is accelerating a painfully slow integration.
But at a cost.
Anger is building in society even as injustices are being (very slowly) addressed.
My feelings.
I would not want to be black in America.
So that means that we have to change.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm glad I didn't assume anything.
I asked, because I find that some of BLM's more vocal activists think in ways that I consider to be far too binary. There are bad police, no doubt, but that's a very different thing from "police are bad." I think what they're falling for is the black and white fallacy. Then, this behavior is reinforced online by thoughtless repetition on Twitter and the like.