Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Strategy is easy to understand, but hard to do. Long and sometimes frustrating debates with officials, soldiers, and scholars, has caused me to doubt the former claim; the latter comes close to being one of those truths that Americans can hold with confidence to be all but self-evident. To resort to a British term, concepts are part of the ‘kit’ that people pack when they set forth to do strategy. Action is fuelled by ideas — sound, unsound, and both. Infinity Journal has the mission of improving understanding of strategy, because that is an important way to help improve strategic performance. If people lack a grasp of strategy’s meaning, of why and how it should work, they must be unready to cope with practical challenges. Instinct and luck are not to be despised but neither should they be trusted. Some education in strategy must be regarded as prudent insurance.”
- Colin Gray

 "The vast accumulations of knowledge - or at least of information - deposited by the nineteenth century have been responsible for an equally vast ignorance. When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not. And when we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts." - T.S. Eliot, “The Perfect Critic” for the literary journal Athenaeum in 1920

“… insurgency and counterinsurgency… have enjoyed a level of military, academic, and journalistic notice unseen since the mid-1960s. Scholars and practitioners have recently reexamined 19th- and 20th-century counterinsurgency campaigns waged by the United States and the European colonial powers, much as their predecessors during the Kennedy administration mined the past relentlessly in the hope of uncovering the secrets of revolutionary guerrilla warfare. The professional military literature is awash with articles on how the armed services should prepare for what the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) refers to as “irregular warfare,” and scholars, after a long hiatus, have sought to deepen our understanding of the roles that insurgency, terrorism, and related forms of political violence play in the international security environment.”
-William Rosenau, “Subversion and Terrorism: Understanding and Countering the Threat”




1. As Fears Grip Afghanistan, Hundreds of Thousands Flee
2. Remarks by President Biden at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
3. An Afghan interpreter and his family are in grave danger and I can do nothing to help
4. Sunisa Lee’s Olympic Gold Celebrated by Hmong Americans, Forgotten Allies in Vietnam War
5. Opinion | Russia’s New Form of Organized Crime Is Menacing the World
6. State TV: Russians Are Using Prosthetic Arms to Dodge COVID Jabs
7. The Geopolitical Olympics: Could China Win Gold?
8. Guam exercises provide ‘at-scale’ test of new Army, Air Force operating concepts
9. US senators urge Biden gov't to condemn Duterte abuses
10. US Marine quick reaction force deployed twice in last 30 days to defend embassies
11. The US doesn't need Europe's help in the 'Indo-Pacific'
12. Xi demands rapid modernisation of PLA ahead of China’s army day
13. U.S Top Diplomat Blinken to Court Southeast Asia in Virtual Meetings Next Week
14. Cuba's cultural counter-revolution: US gov't-backed rappers, artists gain fame as 'catalyst for current unrest' | The Grayzone




1. As Fears Grip Afghanistan, Hundreds of Thousands Flee
If Afghanistan was not a landlocked country we would be seeing boat lifts.


As Fears Grip Afghanistan, Hundreds of Thousands Flee
The New York Times · by Fatima Faizi · July 31, 2021
With the Taliban sweeping across much of the country, at least 30,000 Afghans are leaving each week. Many more have been displaced within Afghanistan’s borders.

With the security situation in Afghanistan rapidly deteriorating, hundreds of people wait in long lines at the passport department in Kabul each morning.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
July 31, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan — Haji Sakhi decided to flee Afghanistan the night he saw two Taliban members drag a young woman from her home and lash her on the sidewalk. Terrified for his three daughters, he crammed his family into a car the next morning and barreled down winding dirt roads into Pakistan.
That was more than 20 years ago. They returned to Kabul, the capital, nearly a decade later after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime. But now, with the Taliban sweeping across parts of the country as American forces withdraw, Mr. Sakhi, 68, fears a return of the violence he witnessed that night. This time, he says, his family is not waiting so long to leave.
“I’m not scared of leaving belongings behind, I’m not scared of starting everything from scratch,” said Mr. Sakhi, who recently applied for Turkish visas for himself, his wife, their three daughters and one son. “What I’m scared of is the Taliban.”
Haji Sakhi at his home in Kabul.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Across Afghanistan, a mass exodus is unfolding as the Taliban press on in their brutal military campaign, which has captured more than half the country’s 400-odd districts, according to some assessments. And with that, fears of a harsh return to extremist rule or a bloody civil war between ethnically aligned militias have taken hold.
So far this year around 330,000 Afghans have been displaced, more than half of them fleeing their homes since the United States began its withdrawal in May, according to the United Nations.
Many have flooded into makeshift tent camps or crowded into relatives’ homes in cities, the last islands of government control in many provinces. Thousands more are trying to secure passports and visas to leave the country altogether. Others have crammed into smugglers’ pickup trucks in a desperate bid to slip illegally over the border.
In recent weeks, the number of Afghans crossing the border illegally shot up around 30 to 40 percent compared to the period before international troops began withdrawing in May, according to the International Organization for Migration. At least 30,000 people are now fleeing every week.
The sudden flight is an early sign of a looming refugee crisis, aid agencies warn, and has raised alarms in neighboring countries and Europe that the violence that has escalated since the start of the withdrawal is already spilling across the country’s borders.
An Afghan commando at a frontline position in a civilian house in Kunduz in July.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
“Afghanistan is on the brink of another humanitarian crisis,” Babar Baloch, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said earlier this month. “A failure to reach a peace agreement in Afghanistan and stem the current violence will lead to further displacement.”
The sudden exodus harks back to earlier periods of heightened unrest: Millions poured out of Afghanistan in the years after the Soviets invaded in 1979. A decade later, more fled as the Soviets withdrew and the country fell into civil war. The exodus continued when the Taliban came to power in 1996.
Afghans currently account for one of the world’s largest populations of refugees and asylum seekers — around 3 million people — and represent the second highest number of asylum claims in Europe, after Syria.
Now the country is at the precipice of another bloody chapter, but the new outpouring of Afghans comes as attitudes toward migrants have hardened around the world.
After forging a repatriation deal in 2016 to stem migration from war-afflicted countries, Europe has deported tens of thousands of Afghan migrants. Hundreds of thousands more are being forced back by Turkey as well as by neighboring Pakistan and Iran, which together host around 90 percent of displaced Afghans worldwide and have deported a record number of Afghans in recent years.
Coronavirus restrictions have also made legal and illegal migration more difficult, as countries closed their borders and scaled back refugee programs, pushing thousands of migrants to travel to Europe along more dangerous routes.
In the United States, the growing backlog for the Special Immigration Visa program — available to Afghans who face threats because of their work with the U.S. government — has left roughly 20,000 eligible Afghans and their families trapped in bureaucratic limbo in Afghanistan. The Biden administration has come under heavy pressure to protect Afghan allies as the United States withdraws troops and air support amid a Taliban insurgency.
Still, as the fighting between Taliban, government and militia forces intensifies and civilian casualties reach record highs, many Afghans remain determined to leave.
One recent morning in Kabul, people gathered outside the passport office. Within hours, a line snaked around three city blocks and past a mural of migrants with an ominous warning: “Don’t jeopardize you and your family’s lives. Migration is not the solution.”
A mural warning against migration served as a backdrop for people lining up outside the passport office in Kabul.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Few people were deterred.
“I need to get a passport and get the hell out of this country,” said Abdullah, 41, who like many in Afghanistan goes by only one name.
Abdullah, who drives a taxi between Kabul and Ghazni, a trading hub in the southeast, remembers speeding toward the capital when fighting erupted recently, picking up a group of Afghan troops who demanded a ride along the way. Two days later, his boss called to say that Taliban fighters had asked about a taxi driver seen evacuating security forces — and had recited Abdullah’s license plate.
Terrified, Abdullah says he will find any way to leave.
“Trying to leave legally is costly, and if we go illegally it is dangerous,” he said. “But right now the country is even more dangerous.”
“I need to get a passport and get the hell out of this country,” said Abdullah, 41.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Farther west, a surge of Afghans have flocked to Zaranj, a hub for illegal migration in Nimruz Province, where smugglers’ pickup trucks snake south down the borderlands to Iran each day.
In March, around 200 cars left for the Iranian border each day from Zaranj — a 300 percent increase from 2019, according to David Mansfield, a migration researcher and consultant with the British Overseas Development Institute. By early July, 450 cars were heading to the border each day.
Those who can afford it pay thousands of dollars to travel to Turkey and then Europe. But many more strike pay-as-you-go deals with smugglers, planning to work illegally in Iran until they can afford the next leg of the journey.
“We don’t have any money or means of getting a visa,” said Mohammad Adib, who is considering migrating illegally to Iran.
Mr. Adib fled his home in Qala-e-Naw, in the country’s northwest, in early July after the Taliban laid siege to the city one night. As dawn broke, he says the paw-paw-paw of gunfire was replaced with wails from neighbors. Electricity lines littered the ground. Doors of houses were broken down. The road was stained with blood.
“We cannot find another way out,” he said.
In Tajikistan, officials recently announced that the country was prepared to host around 100,000 Afghan refugees, after the country received around 1,600 Afghans this month.
Other neighboring countries have expressed less willingness to host an outpouring of Afghans, instead beefing up their border security and warning that their economies cannot handle a new influx of refugees. Leaders in Central Europe have called to increase their border security as well, fearing the current exodus could swell into a crisis similar to that in 2015 when nearly a million, mostly Syrian migrants entered Europe.
But in Afghanistan, about half of the country’s population is already in need of humanitarian assistance this year — twice as many people as last year and six times as many as four years ago, according to the United Nations.
Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi, 40, borrowed $1,000 to bring 36 relatives to Kabul after the Taliban attacked his village in Malistan district. Today his three-room apartment, situated on the edge of the city, feels more like a crowded shelter than a home.
Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi borrowed $1,000 to bring 36 relatives to Kabul after the Taliban attacked his village in Malistan district. Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
The men sleep in one large living room, women stay in the other and the children cram into the apartment’s one small bedroom alongside bags of clothes and cleaning supplies. Mr. Mohammadi borrows more money from neighbors to buy enough bread and chicken — which have nearly doubled in price as food prices surge — to feed everyone.
Now, sinking further into debt with no relief in sight, he is at a loss for what to do.
“These families are sick, they are traumatized, they have lost everything,” he said, standing near his kitchen’s one countertop — out of earshot from his family. “Unless the situation improves, I don’t know what we will do.”
Jan Bibi, left, 40, lost her husband, who was a militiaman, during the fighting in Malestan. She now resides at Mr. Mohammadi’s house in Kabul.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
Asad Timory contributed reporting from Herat; Zabihullah Ghazi from Laghman; Fahim Abed and Jim Huylebroek from Kabul.
The New York Times · by Fatima Faizi · July 31, 2021


2. Remarks by President Biden at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence

I noticed comments that these remarks have been overlooked in the media.
Remarks by President Biden at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
JULY 27, 2021
National Counterterrorism Center
Liberty Crossing Intelligence Campus
McLean, Virginia
THE PRESIDENT: It’s an honor to be here. I guess you all are the ones that lost the lottery, huh? (Laughter.) You had to be here in person.
 
Well, I’d like to thank Director Haines and Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Christy Abizaid, for showing me around the watch floor. 
 
Folks, the main reason I came — and I mean this sincerely — is to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. The American people, almost by definition, are not able to know what you do. And you devote so much of your time, your effort, and many of you end up risking your lives in the Intelligence Community to do things to make sure that your families and people back here are safe — make a difference. 
 
And you’d be amazed — as I traveled the world as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee or member of the Intelligence Committee for all those years, or as Vice President of the United States dealing with national security issues, or as President of the United States — how many of now my foreign counterparts thank you for what you do. 
 
I’d like to introduce you, by the way, to my National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Jake, would you stand up? (Applause.)
 
And, you know, the leaders of many of our intelligence agencies are here today. And I thank you for your diligence and keeping our country safe, and your commitment to supporting your teams. Because, if there’s anything, a team sport is what y’all are doing if there’s going to be anything that’s going to be accomplished.
 
Because the people I most want to honor and thank today are the intelligence professionals whose names the public is never, ever going to know, never have any notion of what you’ve done for us: the analysts; the linguists; the collectors and field officers; scientists; support staff; so many others who are real experts, whose careers started much longer before my administration and whose service to our nation is going to extend well beyond my presidency.  
 
You know, you’re the eyes and ears around the world — in the frontlines of our national defense, and in many cases, for the world, through us. And you serve the American people no matter which political party holds power in Congress or the White House. It’s so vital — so vital that you are and should be totally free of any political pressure or partisan interference. That’s basic.  
 
And I want to be absolutely clear that my administration is getting us back to the basics. To the basics. I promise you: You will never see a time, while I’m President of the United States, when my administration in any way tries to affect or alter your judgments about what you think the situation we face is. I’ll never politicize the work you do. You have my word on that. It’s too important for our country. 
 
Getting back to basics also making — to make sure the IC scrupulously acts within the legal constraints and abides by our strong traditions of internal and congressional oversight, including respect for whistleblower protections. 
 
And it also means understanding that much of the work you must do is in secret but necessary and for the sake of safety. But we should strive to be as open as possible with the American people about the nature of the threats we face and just how serious they are — and they are. 
 
Every one of you joined up because you believe in being part of something that’s bigger than yourself, especially you guys and women in uniform — bigger than yourself. You’re patriots. It’s a word that we use lightly, but I mean it. It’s not — it’s not — I don’t use it lightly. I really don’t. 
 
My son, who spent a year in Iraq and died, he was a patriot. He wasn’t just somebody else. You all are patriots. You risk your lives and your sacred honor for all that we need to have done for us. 
 
And you believe in the American idea. And living up to that idea is embracing democratic values that are our greatest strength at the end of the day, leading not just by the example of our power, but by the power of your example. The power of your example. 
 
In addition to thanking you for your bravery, integrity, and your sacrifices, I want to make it clear to everyone here today and to the members of the Intelligence Community working around the globe that you have my full confidence. 
 
That’s doesn’t mean I don’t question what you send me. That meant — doesn’t mean — it’s not that I — I — you know, I’m not a new guy on the block in terms of these issues. But one of the reasons I question is to push — push you to the limits to determine just how certain you are about what you’re doing. Lots of times, the only honest answer: “We’re not certain. We’re not certain, but this is what our best judgment is.”
 
I know — I really do — know how hard the work you do is. I’ve been doing this for a long, long time before I became President. I know there’s no such thing as 100 percent certainty in the intelligence world. Occasionally that happens, but rarely, rarely, rarely. 
 
But I also know that your work is invaluable to our ability to make informed, strategic national security decisions. And I just had an interesting meeting, as you all know, with my very close friend, Vladimir Putin. (Laughter.) I can tell — one thing: I’ve been dealing with world leaders a long, long time. And just like all of you men and women, you can sort of sense somebody else after a while. 
 
He knows that you’re better than his team, and it bothers the hell out of him. Not a joke. Not a joke. And he, as a consequence of you, think we have capacities he may even exaggerate. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. 
 
You know, one of the things I miss most during the four years between my time serving as Vice President and being a professor in a college — and I mean this sincerely: From the time I was 31 years old, every morning I woke up and got in the train to come to — I commuted every day from Delaware after my wife and daughter were killed. And I’d come every day, and one of the things I would get — I’d get a brief in the morning. And I was more informed than 99 percent of the American people. You know what I miss most, for real, from those four years of being a professor? The PDB. (Laughter.) No, you think I’m joking. I am not. A sense of knowing where all the pieces were. Whether we had it all down, we knew where all the pieces were. We knew where the pieces were.
 
And so now I have access again — and to the chagrin of many of you, I read it in detail. (Laughter.) And I ask questions of my briefers and follow up with my team. And I ask each of you the same thing I asked Director Haines, “Just give it to me straight.” I’m not looking for pablum; I’m looking for straight-from-the-shoulder assessments. And when you’re not sure, say you’re not sure. But give me your best judgment of what you think is — your best judgment is better than almost anybody else’s judgment in the whole world — even if the news is hard, even if the news is bad.
 
I can’t make the decisions I need to make if I’m not getting the best unvarnished, unbiased judgments you can give me. I’m not looking to hear nice things. I’m looking to hear what you think to be the truth. 
 
I greatly appreciate just how much work goes into the analysis that the IC produces and the tactical and intelligence supporting our warfighters and the superb effort to ensure our IT, our human capital, and the facilities are the best in the world. Because, again, without knowing what — without you telling me, I don’t know enough to know what to ask for from the Congress — how much money we need, what we need to focus on. 
 
It’s a massive, coordinated, global effort to pull together reliable intelligence in a timely way. And all of you, no matter which agency you work for, are part of one team with one shared mission: keeping America strong and secure in the world, or simply making sure your families are safe. It gets down to basic things. Just really basic things. 
 
You know, for most of the last 20 years, much of the work has been focused on counterterrorism, making sure the United States doesn’t experience another horror like occurred on September the 11th. And that work has to continue and evolve to address the changing shape of terrorism as we find it today. 
And that’s no great insight on my part, it’s going to change significantly more. It’s going to change significantly more. 
 
I always get kidded by my colleagues when I served in the Senate for 36 years for quoting Irish poets. They think I quoted Irish poets because I’m Irish. That’s not the reason I quote them; they’re simply the best poets in the world. (Laughter.)
 
And there’s a famous poem written by — that says, “All has changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty has been born.” The world is changing so rapidly — technologically and in terms of alliances and human intercourse — that war is going to change across the board in the next 10 years than in the last 50 years. That’s not hyperbole; that’s a fact.
 
If I talked to you 15 years ago about hypersonic flight, you’d look at me like I was crazy. So much is going to change and that’s going to put an enormous burden on you to stay ahead of the curve. It’s really going to get tougher. 
 
But we have the best folks in the world. And one of the things that I think — and I don’t want to get off too far afield here, but one of the things that is really important is — our greatest strength, in fact, is our diversity, bringing completely different perspectives to it. And I really mean that. That’s not hyperbole. I’m not trying to be “Kumbaya, everybody get along.” It’s just a fact. It’s a fact.
 
And so, threats that are more geographically dispersed than they were 20 years ago are going to continue to require our vigilance. And we have to continue our efforts to better understand some of the hardest and most important intelligence targets we face as a nation. 
 
But, you know, we also need to make sure that we’re positioning ourselves to stay ahead of security challenges that will stretch the IC in new ways it has never been stretched before.
 
You know, we’ve seen how cyber threats, including ransomware attacks, increasingly are able to cause damage and disruption to the real world. I can’t guarantee this, and you’re as informed as I am, but I think it’s more likely we’re going to end up — well, if we end up in a war, a real shooting war with a major power, it’s going to be as a consequence of a cyber breach of great consequence. And it’s increasing exponentially — the capabilities.
 
When I was with Mr. Putin, who has a real problem — he is — he’s sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else. Nothing else. Their economy is — what? — the eighth smallest in the world now — largest in the world? He knows — he knows he’s in real trouble, which makes him even more dangerous, in my view. 
 
Take a look at China. I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping as a world leader than anyone else has. I spent 25 hours alone with him when I was Vice President because it was important that, according to President Obama, that someone knew who the new guy coming on board was, and it couldn’t be the President. 
 
I traveled 17,000 miles with him. I’ve sat with him, with me and just an interpreter — each of us have a simultaneous interpreter. He is deadly earnest about becoming the most powerful military force in the world, as well as the largest — the most prominent economy in the world by the mid-40s — the 2040s. It’s real.
 
I don’t know. We probably have some people who aren’t totally cleared — I don’t know, but you saw just what we found out about hypersonic — we — anyway, as they say in Southern Delaware, “This boy has got a plan.” And, you know, we better figure out how we’re going to keep pace without exacerbating and moving us in a position where we increase the hostilities unnecessarily. 
 
I think we also need to take on the rampant disinformation that is making it harder and harder for people to access — assess the facts, be able to make decisions. 
 
In today’s PDB you all prepared for me, look what Russia is doing already about the 2022 elections and misinformation. It’s a pure violation of our sovereignty. 
 
Now you see what’s happening. More people get their information from the Internet than they do from any other outlet. What’s — all the disinformation that’s having real consequences in terms of people’s access.
 
And so, there’s so much that you all — particularly those of you who are new and coming along — are going to have to be — keep up with and ahead of in ways that are not even happening now, as good as everything is.
 
You know, as we compete for the future of the 21st century with China and other nations, we have to stay on top of the cutting-edge developments of science and technology.
 
If you’d hold for a second here, I want to point out something. You know, we used to — we used to be, when I first got here as a U.S. senator, actually three and a half decades ago, we invested more money — R&D — money in R&D as a percent of our GDP than any nation in the world. We’re now number eight. China was number nine; they’re now number two. It matters. It matters. 
 
Look at where we are on things that intelligence communities and others don’t even think very often about — about how educated the public is. We’re coming around right now. This doesn’t relate to the intelligence community per se, but it does.
 
Think about it. If we were having the debate that was taking place in the United States in the late 1890s and the early 1900s about public education, do you think any of us would say 12 years of free public education was enough to compete in the 21st century? Not a joke. Think about it. What do you think? I don’t think there’s a shot if we were doing that today.
 
So the fact we have the best-educated public in the world — well, that’s our objective — will matter a great deal. It will matter a great deal. It is as much a part of national defense, in my view, as anything else is.
 
So I think we have to think differently. I don’t expect you to agree with me. I expect you to at least understand where I’m coming from because the world is changing so significantly.
 
And it’s especially important that we work closely with our partners and allies to maintain our technological edge; shore up supply chains; ensure that the rules that govern technologies support democracies, not autocracies.
 
You know, at the same time, we have to work in cooperation with nations like China and Russia that are our competitors — and possibly mortal competitors down the road — in the context of there’s — to meet the existential threats, for example, of climate change. There are certain things that are in our mutual interest. But we can’t — we can’t be lulled into thinking that that’s enough and that we don’t really have to keep a watchful eye on what the ultimate objective of the other team is. But there are things where we should be — where we should be cooperating.
 
This shared danger impacts all of nations. Climate challenges are already accelerating instability in our own country and around the world: extreme weather events that are more common and more deadly; food and water insecurity; sea levels rising, resulting in changing climates and driving greater migration and posing fundamental risk to the most vulnerable of communities. 
 
If you could hold for just a second again. We’re in a situation where — think about this. Think about this: I’ll never forget the first time I went down in the tank as Vice President, after I got elected. The Defense Department said what the greatest threat facing America: climate change.
 
If, in fact, the seas’ level rises another two and half feet, you’re going to have millions of people migrating, fighting over arable land. You saw what happened in North Africa. What makes us think this doesn’t matter? It’s not your responsibility, but it’s something you’re watching because you know what’s going to happen.
 
People who were Muslim, and the only difference was Black and/or Arab, killing each other by the thousands for arable — a piece of arable — arable land in North Central Africa. But what happens — what happens in Indonesia if the projections are correct that, in the next 10 years, they may have to move their capital because they’re going to be underwater?
 
It matters. It’s a strategic question as well as an environmental question. 
 
A dramatically warming Arctic is opening up competition for resources that once were hard to access. I had — as they say in Southern Delaware — they talk at you like this, you know what I mean? — I had a “Come to Jesus” meeting, an “altar call” with Mr. Putin about what he thinks is what Russia’s property is in the Arctic. China looking very closely at that as well, where they are.
 
That’s what I mean about the world changing. What is that going to do to our strategic doctrine in the next 2, 5, 10, 12 years, when you can circumvent the Arctic without icebreakers?
 
So, look, we need your insight, we need your expertise on all these issues. The one thing you all have in common is you all have high IQs. You’re all smart. You have significant intelligence quotients, and you put it to use to help the elected leaders in this country decide what the best route to go is.
 
So just as you always have been essential as we’ve sought to counter traditional threats, the Intelligence Community is going to be critical to America’s strength as we take on these new challenges and hybrid threats.
 
Finally, I’ve laid out a broad agenda, and that’s just a fraction of it. But we can’t do any of this without taking care of our best and most important asset: the American people.
 
I know the intelligence community is already one of the best places to work in the federal government. I asked my staff when I found out you came in second just after NASA — I said, “Don’t tell me what the White House is ranked.” (Laughter.) “It will hurt my feelings.” And they assured me, no, you don’t rank them. That was a good thing: “We don’t rank the Oval Office.” (Laughter.)
 
But all kidding aside, it’s about the comradery you have, and most of all, it’s about being able to trust one another — to trust one another. 
 
My highest priority as President is the safety and security of all Americans, and that includes those who serve in our Intelligence Community.
 
You take on unique risks in these jobs, and we’re taking the cases of anomalous health incidents that are affecting intelligence officers, government officials, and their families very seriously, for example.
 
My administration is coordinating a government-wide effort to respond to these incidents, because this challenge demands — demands that departments and agencies, including the entire Intelligence Community, work together with urgency. 
 
Talked about changes. What’s going to happen as we move on and we’re able to develop around the world pathogens that can be transmitted to societies and communities? It may not be a nuclear weapon. It may not be a hypersonic missile. It may not be any of the things we think of. 
 
But think about it. Just think about what’s happened with one — I’m not suggesting it was intended — a lot more we need to know — but think what’s happened: More people have been killed in the United States of America because of COVID than in every single major war we fought combined. Every single one. What’s next? What is intended? There’s a lot of research going on. You’re going to find — you’re going to have to increase your ranks with people with significant scientific capacity relative to pathogens. 
 
So, my point is: Your value is going to increase and increase and increase and increase in terms of security. You know, from the CIA to all the agencies, there’s a lot that’s going to happen. 
 
And to all of you who’ve been affected, we recognize how important it is to make sure that they have the best possible care at a time you’re figuring out how to deal with what’s happening, not only to some of those who have been stationed abroad, but their families. 
 
Look, this is a priority for our entire leadership team. So let me just close by saying how much I value the work you do. That’s why I wanted to come here today.  
 
So much of the work you do is in secret. It means many, many times you don’t get credit — the credit you deserve — and the things you prevented from happening, the catastrophes you’ve enabled us to avoid, the judgments you’ve provided us to make our people safer.
 
And America is probably never going to learn about the lives you’ve saved or the disasters that never come to pass because of your diligent, professional intelligence work. But I want you to know I know. For the time being, at least as long as I’m around, I know. 
 
And on behalf of the American people, thank you all for what you do every single day. And we’re grateful — we’re grateful that you’re there for us. We’re safer because of your dedication, your honesty, your integrity, and your significant intellectual capacity to act in our interest. 
 
We’re stronger because of your insight. We’re a more noble nation because of your insight. And American lives have been saved repeatedly because of your insight. I know it may sound like hyperbole, but from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. I thank you for all you do and continue to do.  
 
And may God bless you all. And may God protect our troops and all those patriots serving in harm’s way, because there’s a lot still there. Thank you, thank you, thank you. (Applause.)
 
I have to seek permission to leave. I had to check, if you noticed. (Laughter.) Thank you again. (Applause.)
 
Q   President Biden, will you require federal employees to get vaccinated?    
 
THE PRESIDENT: Beg your pardon?
 
Q   Will you require all federal employees to get vaccinated?
 
THE PRESIDENT: That’s under consideration right now. But if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were.
 
Q   Are you concerned that the CDC’s mask guidance could sow confusion?
 
THE PRESIDENT: We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated, and they’re sowing enormous confusion. And the more we learn — the more we learn about this virus and the Delta variation, the more we have to be worried and concerned. And only one thing we know for sure: If those other hundred million people got vaccinated, we’d be in a very different world. 
 
So, get vaccinated. If you haven’t, you’re not nearly as smart as I said you were.  
 
Thanks. (Applause.)
 
END


3. An Afghan interpreter and his family are in grave danger and I can do nothing to help

There are so many tragic stories coming out and will continue to come out of Afghanistan.


An Afghan interpreter and his family are in grave danger and I can do nothing to help
I'm not Schindler.
taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · July 31, 2021
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On Thursday, I received a series of frantic texts from Sher Ahmad Ahmadzai, an Afghan man who worked for coalition forces, after someone threw a Molotov cocktail at his home. He included a picture of his son’s hand, which was burned.
Then I listened to his voicemail. He was crying as he said he had a “big problem” and did not know what to do. He asked me to help him and his family.
Ahmadzai, a former interpreter, is one of several Afghans who have reached out to me in recent weeks as I’ve written about Afghans who have helped the United States over the past 20 years but are unable to secure visas allowing them to get out of the country due to bureaucratic issues.
Afghans who are not in the process of getting a Special Immigrant Visa have no hope of being evacuated as part of Operation Allies Refuge. Even if they are in the application pipeline, Afghans would still have to get to Kabul to be flown out of the country, and Taliban checkpoints make the journey to the city extremely dangerous.
In addition to writing about Ahmadzai, I’ve tried to help him get a new letter of recommendation for his visa application. It has turned out to be much more difficult than I expected in part because the medical evacuation company he worked for years ago no longer exists. Letters of recommendation must be written in a precise way and even the most minor error causes visa applications to be summarily denied.
Advocacy groups are also working with Ahmadzi but the fact is the situation in Afghanistan is very bad and there is little that anyone can do for the Afghans left behind now that the U.S. military has withdrawn most of its troops from the country.
This story is difficult to write because journalists are rightly expected to not get involved in the stories we cover, and the modicum of help that I have tried to provide to Ahmadzai clouds my objectivity. In a way, I’ve already failed at my job.
My father, who spent nearly 40 years in the news business, once told me that reporters are the conduits through which stories are told.
We don’t solve murders. We don’t put out fires. We are ethically bound to be passive. Our responsibility is to report the news accurately and truthfully. We are never the story. And we don’t get involved.
My obligation is to let the world know about the Afghans whom America has left behind. Each one has a family that is also in danger. These are the stories that many in power would hope that you don’t read because they shatter the myth that the United States is doing all it can to save Afghans who are in danger of being murdered by the Taliban.
Once at the Pentagon, I heard another reporter say our job is to report the problems and it’s up to the powers that be to fix them. Sometimes, that happens, such as when the Washington Post and Army Times revealed atrocious conditions wounded service members faced at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
But the crush of news coming from television and social media has had a numbing effect on the American public. We can no longer be shocked. We shrug after every mass shooting because we know nothing will change.
The reality is no matter how many Afghans plead for help, U.S. government officials are not likely to make any meaningful action. They don’t have to. News about Afghanistan rarely gets on television, the medium of choice for the ruling class.
The only way I can truly help Ahmadzai and the other Afghans who feel the Taliban closing in is to tell their stories. If the U.S. government officials in charge of the ongoing evacuation fail to rescue all the Afghans in danger, I can guarantee I will report that story too.
Still, that doesn’t feel like enough. I’ve been watching clips of Schindler’s List recently, including the scene in which Oskar Schindler dictates the names of the hundreds of Jews that he is about to save from Auschwitz.
I’ve also been thinking about Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from Budapest towards the end of World War II. He died in a Soviet prison in 1947.
But I’m not Schindler. I’m not Wallenberg either. I’m just a no-name reporter who is powerless to help a man and his family.
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is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for 15 years. You can email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com, direct message @JeffSchogol on Twitter, or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488. Contact the author here.
taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol · July 31, 2021


4. Sunisa Lee’s Olympic Gold Celebrated by Hmong Americans, Forgotten Allies in Vietnam War
Reflect on a people we left behind.

This focuses on the Hmong relationship with the CIA but there is also a strong relationship with Special Forces due to White Star.  I recommend Joe Cleski's 2019 book: The Green Berets in the Land of a Million Elephants: U.S. Army Special Warfare and the Secret War in Laos 1959-74. https://www.amazon.com/Green-Berets-Land-Million-Elephants/dp/1612006655. White Star was an excellent example of through, with, and by support to indigenosus forces.


Sunisa Lee’s Olympic Gold Celebrated by Hmong Americans, Forgotten Allies in Vietnam War
coffeeordie.com · by Matt Fratus · July 30, 2021
Sunisa Lee, an 18-year-old Hmong American, took gold in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics women’s gymnastics all-around event on Thursday. With her victory, Lee became the first Hmong American to win an Olympic medal. In coverage of the Games, Lee’s performances were often cut with videos of her hometown fans in Minnesota. As her success grew, the crowds in the clips grew too, as the Hmong American community in St. Paul rallied to her side.
The city is a hub for the US Hmong community, which traces its beginnings to a 1970s immigration wave after the Vietnam War. Those Hmong families came to St. Paul and a few other cities, such as Fresno, California, fleeing persecution after Hmong soldiers fought beside American forces in Vietnam for much of the war.
Below: The mostly Hmong American crowd, including Sunisa Lee’s family, gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota, to watch her compete.
Sunisa Lee is going to win the gold medal in all-around. Unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/C8sfKMmfc4
— Dane Mizutani (@DaneMizutani) July 29, 2021
Hmong soldiers were among the United States’ most ardent allies in the war, enlisted by the CIA in the so-called Secret War in Laos. They mainly fought alone and in secret, defending secret American bases, rescuing US pilots, and disrupting North Vietnamese supply lines. Hmong fought with Americans for the entirety of the war, from 1960 to 1975.
“One Hmong that died in Laos meant one American [fighting in] South Vietnam going home,” said Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University. “We prevented the North Vietnamese Army from going into South Vietnam to massacre the Americans down there.”
CIA operatives like Jerry Daniels worked hand in glove with Gen. Vang Pao and the Hmong to conduct the Secret War in Laos. The CIA recruited Hmong men and boys as soldiers for Special Guerrilla Units (SGUs). Unofficial surrogates of the US armed forces, many SGUs died while defending US interests in Laos, including at the US radar facility Lima Site 85, aka Phou Pha Thi. Photo courtesy of PBS.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the CIA trained and equipped thousands of Hmong soldiers in northern Laos to conduct covert operations against communist forces. The Hmong soldiers were given three-day crash courses in guerrilla tactics before entering combat as members of the Special Guerrilla Units, or SGUs.
These SGUs had three primary missions behind enemy lines on behalf of the CIA and the US military. They were to protect the secret American radar base, Lima Site 85, the site of one of the war’s fiercest battles and rescue missions, though its details remained secret for decades; rescue American pilots shot down near the border of Laos and Vietnam; and disrupt the flow of North Vietnamese supply lines on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Kiachue Xiong, one Hmong soldier who later moved to Sacramento, California, served in the SGUs from 1960 to 1975 and was shot and blown up during the years of fighting. He still has more than 50 pieces of shrapnel in his body.
More than 35,000 Hmong soldiers were killed in action or declared missing, and others lost their lives attempting to escape to freedom after the US withdrew — a retreat that many Hmong still view as the US abandoning them. Although they were hired and paid by the CIA, the Hmong are not recognized as US veterans, seen simply as surrogates.
Even today, CIA veterans of the Secret War speak out about the bravery of the Hmong they fought with and the cold reality that the US abandoned the Hmong people when it left.
“For 10 years, [Royal Lao Army Gen.] Vang Pao’s soldiers held the growing North Vietnamese forces to approximately the same battlelines they held in 1962,” William E. Colby, the CIA director from 1973-1976, said in a speech in 1996. “And significantly for Americans, the 70,000 North Vietnamese engaged in Laos were not available to add to the forces fighting Americans and South Vietnamese in South Vietnam.”
Below, a Department of Defense documentary of the Lima Site 85 battle, which included over 1,000 Hmong soldiers fighting with a handful of Americans.
After the American withdrawal, the Hmong faced persecution and massacres similar to the better-known mass murders committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In 1975, when the communist group Pathet Lao threatened to capture Laos, the CIA would only allow the evacuation of some 2,500 high-ranking military officers and their families. The Pathet Lao launched an aggressive and targeted kill campaign against all Hmong soldiers who had sided with the Americans. Those who could fled to refugee camps in Thailand; others took refuge in the jungle to fend for themselves.
The last day of SGU soldiers and their families evacuating out of Long Tieng, May 14, 1975. Photo courtesy of Special Guerrilla Units Veterans and Families of USA Inc.
Even Yang See, a liaison between the CIA and the Royal Lao Army, a reliable CIA asset known by the radio call sign “Glass Man,” had to use his own money to ensure safe harbor for hundreds of refugees. Still, the Hmong people weren’t considered suitable for resettlement in the United States at first.
“The U.S. considered the Hmong to be ‘illiterate’ and ‘people living in the hills’ who would not be able to adjust to modern life in America,” Yang Dao, a former Laotian official, said, according to Minnesota Public Radio News.
The first Hmong family to resettle in Minnesota came over in November 1975. After the passage of the US Refugee Act of 1980, the largest wave of refugees arrived in Minnesota. It took decades before “the last wave” finally resettled in America, and by 2010, the Hmong American community had grown to 260,000.
“Here were thousands of Hmong, many of whom spoke American military lingo and had names like ‘Lucky’ and ‘Judy’ and ‘Bison’ and who had been soldiers, radio operators, pilots, and CIA operatives in a war unknown to the American public,” Lionel Rosenblatt, head of the Refugees International, said, according to Larry Clinton Thompson’s Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus, 1975-1982. “If the United States owed gratitude to anyone in Southeast Asia, it was the Hmong.”
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coffeeordie.com · by Matt Fratus · July 30, 2021



5. Opinion | Russia’s New Form of Organized Crime Is Menacing the World

Hybrid warfare.
Opinion | Russia’s New Form of Organized Crime Is Menacing the World
The New York Times · by The Editorial Board · July 31, 2021
The Editorial Board
Russia’s New Form of Organized Crime Is Menacing the World
July 31, 2021

By
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
The screen goes blank.
A message appears in crude, Google Translate English, advising that all your files have been encrypted — rendered unusable — and can be restored only if you pay a ransom.
After some back and forth, you pay out in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency, most likely to a Russian-based gang. There’s no choice: It’s cheaper and far quicker to pay up than to rebuild a computer system from scratch. To avoid further trouble or embarrassment, many victims don’t even notify the police.
A few years ago, the ransom may have been a few hundred bucks. In early May, Colonial Pipeline shelled out $5 million to the DarkSide ransomware gang to get oil flowing through its pipes again. (Some was recovered by the Justice Department.) In June, the meat processor JBS paid $11 million to the Russian-based REvil (Ransomware Evil) gang. About a month ago REvil came back to score what may be the biggest attack yet, freezing the systems of about a thousand companies after hacking an IT service provider they all used. The ask this time was $70 million. The criminals behind ransomware have also evolved, expanding from lone sharks to a business in which tasks are farmed out to groups of criminals specializing in hacking, collecting ransom or marshaling armies of bots.

Ransomware attacks can cripple critical infrastructure like hospitals and schools and even core functions of major cities. Using methods as simple as spoof emails, hackers can take over entire computer systems and pilfer personal data and passwords and then demand a ransom to restore access.
In about a dozen years, ransomware has emerged as a major cyberproblem of our time, big enough for President Biden to put it at the top of his agenda with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, when they met in June and for lawmakers in Congress to be working on several bills that would, among other things, require victims to report attacks to the government.
It is a war that needs to be fought, and won. While the extortion business is run by a relatively small network of criminals seeking windfall profits, their ability to seriously disrupt economies and to breach strategically critical enterprises or agencies also makes them a formidable potential threat to national security. The Colonial Pipeline attack created an almost instant shortage of fuel and spread panic in the southeastern United States.
Big strikes make the big news, but the main prey of the ransomware gangs is the small to medium enterprise or institution that is devastated by the disruption of its computers and the ransom payment. How many have been hit is anybody’s guess — unlike breaches of personal information, the law does not require most ransomware attacks to be reported (though that is another thing Congress may soon change).
The F.B.I. internet Crime Report for 2020 listed 2,474 attacks in the United States, with losses totaling more than $29.1 million. The reality is probably of a different magnitude. The German data-crunching firm Statista has estimated that there were 304 million attacks worldwide in 2020, a 62 percent increase over 2019. Most of them, Statista said, were in the professional sector — lawyers, accountants, consultants and the like.
Whatever the true scope, the problem will not be solved with patches, antivirus software or two-factor authentication, though security experts stress that every bit of protection helps. “We’re not going to defend ourselves out of this problem,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator and a leading authority on ransomware. “We have too many vulnerabilities. Companies that are small, libraries, fire departments will never afford the required security technology and talent.”
The battle must be joined elsewhere, and the place to start is Russia. That, according to the experts, is where the majority of attacks originate. Three other countries — China, Iran and North Korea — are also serious players, and the obvious commonality is that all are autocracies whose security apparatuses doubtlessly know full well who the hackers are and could shut them down in a minute. So the presumption is that the criminals are protected, either through bribes — which, given their apparent profits, they can distribute lavishly — or by doing pro bono work for the government or both.
It’s clear that the ransomware gangs take care not to target the powers that shelter them. Security analysts found that REvil code was written so that the malware avoids any computer whose default language is Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Tajik, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Uzbek, Tatar, Romanian or Syriac.
Finding the criminals is not the problem. The U.S. government has the wherewithal to identify and arrest would-be cyberblackmailers on its own soil and to help allies find them on theirs. In fact, Washington has identified and indicted many Russian cybercriminals — the F.B.I., for example, has offered a reward of $3 million for information leading to the arrest of one Evgeniy Bogachev, a.k.a. “lucky12345,” a master hacker in southern Russia whose malware has led to financial losses of more than $100 million.
The key is to compel Mr. Putin to act against them. At his summit with him in June, Mr. Biden said he demanded that Russia take down the ransomware gangs it harbors and identified 16 critical sectors of the American economy on which attacks would provoke a response.
Yet two weeks later, REvil made the biggest strike ever, hacking into Kaseya, a firm that supplies management software for the I.T. industry, and attacking hundreds of its small-business customers. That led Mr. Biden to telephone Mr. Putin and to say afterward that “we expect them to act.” Asked by a reporter whether he would take down REvil’s servers if Mr. Putin did not, Mr. Biden simply said, “Yes.” Shortly after that, REvil abruptly disappeared from the dark web.
Tempting as it might be to believe that Mr. Biden persuaded the Russians to act or knocked the band’s servers out with American means, it is equally possible that REvil went dark on its own, intending, as happens so often in its shadowy world, to reappear later in other guises.
So long as the hackers focus on commercial blackmail abroad, Mr. Putin probably sees no reason to shut them down. They do not harm him or his friends, and they can be used by his spooks when necessary. Unlike the “official” hackers working for military intelligence who have drawn sanctions from Washington and Europe for meddling in elections or mucking around in government systems, Mr. Putin can deny any responsibility for what the criminal gangs do. “It’s just nonsense. It’s funny,” he said in June when asked about Russia’s role in ransomware attacks. “It’s absurd to accuse Russia of this.”
The Russians apparently also believe they can parlay their control over the ransomware gangs into negotiating leverage with the West. Sergei Rybakov, the deputy foreign minister who leads the Russian side in strategic stability talks launched at the Biden-Putin summit, indicated as much when he complained recently that the United States was focusing on ransomware separately from other security issues. Ransomware, he implied, was part of a bigger pile of bargaining chips.
That, said Mr. Alperovitch, suggests that Mr. Putin does not appreciate how seriously the new American president takes ransomware. For reasons still unclear, Donald Trump as president was prepared to give Mr. Putin carte blanche for any cybermischief. Mr. Biden, by contrast, sees himself as the champion of small business and the middle class, and it is there that ransomware hurts the most.
Writing in The Washington Post, Mr. Alperovitch and Matthew Rojansky, an expert on Russia who heads the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, argued that Mr. Biden should confront Mr. Putin with a clear message: Crack down or else. If the Russians do not, the authors wrote, the Biden administration “could hit Russia where it hurts by sanctioning its largest gas and oil companies, which are responsible for a significant portion of the Russian government’s revenue.”
Drawing red lines for Russia does not usually work. The message would best be delivered privately, so that Mr. Putin would not be challenged to publicly back down before the United States. It is possible that Mr. Biden has already delivered such a message. If so, he should be prepared to follow through.
The other critical factor in ransomware is cryptocurrency. By no coincidence, there were few ransomware attacks before Bitcoin came into being a dozen years ago. Now, cybercriminals can be paid off in a currency that’s hard to track or recover, though the U.S. government managed to do just that when it recuperated $2.3 million of the Colonial Pipeline stash.
Cryptocurrency is reportedly one of the issues addressed in legislation soon to be introduced by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Congress is also being urged by federal law enforcement agencies to pass a law compelling companies in critical industry sectors hit by a cyberattack to inform the government, and a host of other anti-ransomware legislation is in the works.
Mounting a multifront attack against ransomware will take time and effort. Devising ways to control cryptocurrency is bound to be complex and fraught. Companies will be reluctant to damage their brand by acknowledging that they have been hacked or have paid ransom, and lawmakers have been traditionally wary of passing laws that impose burdens on businesses.
But letting Russian hackers continue to wreak havoc on America’s and the world’s digital infrastructure with impunity is an immediate and critical challenge. If this is not stopped soon, further escalation — and the growth of organized cybercrime syndicates in other dictatorships — is all but certain.
Mr. Putin must be made to understand that this is not about geopolitics or strategic relations but about a new and menacing form of organized crime. That is something every government should seek to crush. If he refuses, Mr. Putin should know that he will be regarded as an accomplice and be punished as such.
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The New York Times · by The Editorial Board · July 31, 2021


6. State TV: Russians Are Using Prosthetic Arms to Dodge COVID Jabs

I thought this was the Onion. But no this is the Daily Beast (which some may think is a cousin to the Onion!). I suppose vaccination sites in the US need to be on the lookout for prosthetic arms especially if vaccinations are made mandatory.

Excerpts:

“So far, the most f’d up story about anti-vaxxers was brought to me by a makeup effects artist who made us costumes for our last shoot. She has a workshop, where they make props and prosthetics,” Russian film producer Rosya Skrypnik tweeted last month. “Every week someone tries to order a silicone pad that could be applied to the arm, so that the vaccine would be injected into a ‘fake shoulder.’”
The producer wrote that initially, she thought the makeup artist was joking. But then, her colleague showed her “DMs to her workshop, where people are offering unlimited amounts of money for a prosthetic arm they could wear to a mandatory vaccination. When the props masters patiently explain that the doctor would recognize a prop, and that this works only in the movies, the anti-vaxxers just offer more money.”
TikTok personality Nika Viper helped popularize the nutty idea with her video, demonstrating a mock vaccination with a prosthetic arm. It received nearly 20,000 likes. Some of the comments read: “I’d pay any amount of money for this,” “Can I borrow the arm?” and “This vaccine is dangerous.”


State TV: Russians Are Using Prosthetic Arms to Dodge COVID Jabs
The Daily Beast · by Julia Davis · August 1, 2021
‘MASS PSYCHOSIS’
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
Kremlin loyalists are lamenting the insane measures some Russians are taking to avoid vaccine mandates. But it’s a mess of their own making.
Published Aug. 01, 2021 4:58AM ET
Kremlin loyalists are lamenting the insane measures some Russians are taking to avoid vaccine mandates. But it’s a mess of their own making.
Published Aug. 01, 2021 4:58AM ET 
K
remlin-controlled media is deep in a massive vaccine disinfo campaign, and has been ever since COVID jabs were first introduced. The goal, from the beginning, was simple: to undermine foreign-made inoculations, and promote Russia’s COVID jabs as the very best.
But now, it seems that the fearmongering is backfiring and impeding the Kremlin’s push to vaccinate its own people. The sale of counterfeit vaccination certificates is currently the most widespread type of online fraud in Russia, and some are so desperate to dodge the jab that they’re allegedly ordering prosthetic arms to fool medical personnel.
“So far, the most f’d up story about anti-vaxxers was brought to me by a makeup effects artist who made us costumes for our last shoot. She has a workshop, where they make props and prosthetics,” Russian film producer Rosya Skrypnik tweeted last month. “Every week someone tries to order a silicone pad that could be applied to the arm, so that the vaccine would be injected into a ‘fake shoulder.’”
The producer wrote that initially, she thought the makeup artist was joking. But then, her colleague showed her “DMs to her workshop, where people are offering unlimited amounts of money for a prosthetic arm they could wear to a mandatory vaccination. When the props masters patiently explain that the doctor would recognize a prop, and that this works only in the movies, the anti-vaxxers just offer more money.”
TikTok personality Nika Viper helped popularize the nutty idea with her video, demonstrating a mock vaccination with a prosthetic arm. It received nearly 20,000 likes. Some of the comments read: “I’d pay any amount of money for this,” “Can I borrow the arm?” and “This vaccine is dangerous.”
The story about anti-vaxxers seeking prosthetic arms for sale was also showcased on Russian state TV last month. Popular state TV program 60 Minutes broadcast a cartoon demonstrating the use of the fake arm during an inoculation. Host Evgeny Popov explained that Russian anti-vaxxers “invented another method they see as a viable option, designed to trick the doctors during their vaccination,” adding, “This is not a joke.” Co-host Olga Skabeeva surmised, “Prosthetic arms, fake vaccination certificates, all sorts of things anti-vaxxers do to avoid a vaccination. The kinds of things we used to laugh at have become a reality.”
Russia's 60 Minutes
Other methods reportedly used by desperate Russian anti-vaxxers include obtaining an excuse from a doctor by faking a pregnancy or feigning various allergies, paying corrupt doctors and nurses to administer a fake shot into a sponge instead of an arm, using a ridiculous gadget to remove freshly-injected vaccine, and buying fake vaccination certificates on the black market. “This is mass psychosis,” concluded Artem Kiryanov, member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, discussing the increasingly desperate measures taken by anti-vaxxers in his 60 Minutes appearance.
A glimpse into the Russian state media’s operations reveals at least part of the reason Russia has such a low vaccination rate—a meager 16 percent, as compared to more than 49 percent in the United States.
Last year, Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of a popular state TV program Vesti Nedeli, dedicated a segment to a discussion on the AstraZeneca vaccine. He bemoaned the jab’s “serious side effects,” spoke of gory medical mishaps and trashed the Oxford invention as a “monkey vaccine,” in reference to the fact that—unlike Russia’s Sputnik V—AstraZeneca is chimpanzee adenovirus-vectored, meaning it was made using a modified version of a virus that infects chimps.
“America was counting on AstraZeneca’s vaccine,” the notoriously anti-U.S. propagandist said as he stood in front of a screen with two posters. One featured Uncle Sam with the caption: “I want you to take monkey vaccine” and another depicted King Kong forcefully inoculating Ann Darrow, above a text that read: “Don’t worry, monkey vaccine is fine.” The segment concluded with Kiselyov asserting that less Russophobic countries have an advantage: They can use Sputnik V instead of the “monkey vaccine.”
State TV presentations followed a familiar pattern: Citing a slew of unreliable sources, hosts announced “horrendous scandals,” alleging multiple deaths and devastating side effects experienced by AstraZeneca vaccine recipients. Multiple news segments bombarded the audiences with stories of the jab’s complications, from blood clots to multiple deaths. Sinister music often accompanied the segments. They even showcased a photograph allegedly depicting a corpse lying in the street, and attributed the death to an AstraZeneca shot.
The Pfizer vaccine was also targeted by Russian state media with fervor. One video posted by a Louisiana-based Brant Griner earlier this year—featuring his mother, Angelia Gipson Desselle, violently twitching after receiving the Pfizer jab—was played on loop across Russian airwaves. The news lines were dramatic: “Horrific consequences of the American Pfizer vaccine,” “Woman who suffered convulsions after taking Pfizer Covid jab being screened for permanent neurological damage, son tells RT.”
Appearing on Russian state TV, Griner urged people not to take the jab, and claimed he had been contacted by “thousands and thousands” of people, “hundreds” of whom had reported adverse reactions. “Forewarned is forearmed,” Evgeny Popov ominously said in one of the broadcasts, referring to the clip. After getting contacted by U.S. news outlets attempting to verify his story, Griner removed the clip from his social media pages—but by that point, it had already racked up millions of views.
In later videos, he said that his mother “didn’t know” the condition “would go away in a day or two,” and asked her son to remove the videos as she was “overwhelmed” by the amount of publicity they received. Still, as recently as this month, Desselle was included in a Fox News segment about adverse reactions to vaccines, featuring Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson.
Other videos promoted by the Russian state media were less dramatic, but their cumulative effect was potentially devastating. Cherry-picking isolated reports of rare side effects from around the world, the state media created a never-ceasing stream of bad vaccine news, including: “13 dead in Norway,” “Miami doctors dies 2 weeks after Pfizer’s Covid-19 jab,” “Young doctor left paralyzed in wake of taking Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in Mexico,” and “Teenager Dies in Sleep After Receiving Pfizer COVID-19.”
On July 20, Alexei Naumov from the Russian International Affairs Council said: “Our fight for our vaccine is a struggle for Russia’s global influence... It’s a modern-day nuclear arms race and we’re among the leaders, which is great.” To further discredit the Pfizer jab, Russian TV state programs would even showcase clips of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson questioning the vaccine.
Darwin’s hypothesis will come true in the reverse order: A man will turn into a monkey.
— Russian TV commentator.
Therein lies the entire plot. Moscow’s ham-fisted approach was explicit and brazen. By trashing the reputation of Western vaccines and showcasing individual adverse reactions from all over the world, the Russian state media sought to discredit competitors and promote its own vaccines. Instead, vaccine hesitancy in Russia is now through the roof, and stories of people using prosthetic limbs for COVID shots and faking vaccine certificates are rampant. Russia now has the highest tracked rate of vaccine opposition in the world, according to a recent study by Morning Consult, with the U.S. coming in second. A July survey by Russia’s Levada-Center showed that the most popular reason for refusing vaccination is the fear of side effects.
When Russia announced that its health ministry is testing the effectiveness of combining Sputnik V with AstraZeneca, the public response demonstrated just how successful the propaganda campaigns have been. Appearing on various Russian TV shows, multiple guests appeared shocked and bashed the idea, with some saying: “Need a new batch of volunteers with no survival instinct?” and “Darwin’s hypothesis will come true in the reverse order: A man will turn into a monkey.”
Addressing Russia’s struggle to get the pandemic under control, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Tuesday that “the not-very-rapid vaccination pace is among the reasons why we have so far been unable to radically contain the spread of the disease.”
Turns out that fearmongering about other vaccines leads to a distrust in all of them. As a well-known Russian proverb goes: Don’t dig a hole for someone else, or you may fall into it yourself.






















































































































































7. The Geopolitical Olympics: Could China Win Gold?

Conclusion:
As the United States and China compete neck-and-neck in the Tokyo Games, the head of China’s General Administration of Sports, Gou Zhongwen, has made no secret of China’s goal. As he put it recently: the Tokyo and Beijing Games are stepping stones on the path to China’s becoming a global “sports power by 2035.” In pursuit of this mission, China sent its biggest-ever team to Tokyo with 777 athletes to America’s 621. Nonetheless, as she arrived in Tokyo, the CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee declared: “Team USA is ready” for everything. In sum, the game is on.
Americans have never shrunk from competition. Indeed, our market economy and democracy are founded on the proposition that fair competition will spur the rivals to run faster than they would do running alone. But for students of war and peace, the big question is: in the great geopolitical rivalry, can the United States and China can find a way to structure and manage constructive competition? Can the necessity for coexistence drive enlightened leaders to engage in peaceful competition in which each nation does its best to demonstrate which system—America’s democracy, or China’s Party-led autocracy—can deliver more of what human beings want? Since citizens’ lives in both countries depend on an affirmative answer, we must hope and pray that they can find their way to yes.

The Geopolitical Olympics: Could China Win Gold?
In the past two decades, China has risen further and faster on more dimensions than any nation in history. As it has done so, it has become a serious rival of what had been the world’s sole superpower.
The National Interest · by Graham Allison · July 29, 2021
The Tokyo Olympics offers an apt analogy for reflecting on the much more consequential geopolitical Olympics in which China is challenging the United States today. In the century-long history of the modern Olympics, when did China win its first medal? Not until the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Just a quarter-century later, in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China displaced the United States from its accustomed position as No. 1—taking home forty-eight gold medals to the United States’ thirty-six.
While the United States snapped back in 2012 and 2016, the outcome of this summer’s games looks to be tight. Most betting sites have the United States winning forty gold medals to China’s thirty-three. But curveballs and caveats abound: tight rules have banned spectators and excluded elite athletes who failed Covid-19 tests. Meanwhile, several favored U.S. Olympians have stumbled in early competition. Sportswriters can be forgiven for repeating Yogi Berry’s one-liner about baseball: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
In the geopolitical Olympics, China’s rise to rival the United States has been even more dramatic. Only two decades ago at the dawn of the twenty-first century, China did not even appear on the league tables of any geopolitical competition. Economically, it was classified as a “poor, developing country” (and thus allowed to join the World Trade Organization on terms reserved for developing economies). Technologically, with a per capita income at roughly the same level as Guyana and the Philippines, its citizens did not have enough money to buy advanced computers or cellphones, much less the resources to produce them. Militarily, it was for the Defense Department inconsequential, covered as what it called a “lesser included threat.” Diplomatically, it sat quietly, following Deng Xiaoping’s guidance to “hide and bide.”
But that was then.

In the past two decades, China has risen further and faster on more dimensions than any nation in history. As it has done so, it has become a serious rival of what had been the world’s sole superpower. Moreover, to paraphrase former Czech president Vaclav Havel, all this has happened so quickly that we have not yet had time to be astonished.
Who is today the manufacturing workshop of the world? Who is the No. 1 trading partner of most nations in the world? Who has been the principal engine of economic growth in the decade and a half since the Great Recession of 2008? By the yardstick that both the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Monetary Fund have concluded is the best single metric for comparing national economies, who has the largest economy in the world?
In the military arena, who has eroded America’s competitive edge in every domain of warfare to the point that “today, every domain is contested: air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace”—in the words of former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis? While the United States remains the only global military superpower, in the Department of Defense’s most carefully constructed simulations of conflict over Taiwan, who has won eighteen of the past eighteen war games—according to former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work?
Who is the largest producer and consumer of automobiles? Who does Elon Musk see as the largest market for Teslas and other electric vehicles? In the technology likely to have the greatest impact on economies and security in the next generation—artificial intelligence (AI)—who is the clear leader in facial recognition, voice recognition, supercomputers, and fintech—in the judgment of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google (which is the leading AI company in America)?
Readers who hesitate before answering these questions will find bracing the forthcoming Report from Harvard’s China Working Group on the “Great Rivalry: China vs. the US in the 21st Century.” Prepared as part of a package of Transition Memos for the new administration after the November 2020 election, chapters of the report have been provided to those leading the Biden administration’s strategic reviews (as well as to those who had been heading up plans for a second Trump term). After the Biden team and leaders of Congress have had an opportunity to use them in whatever ways they find helpful, the chapters will be published later this year as Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Discussion Papers. But since there have recently been a number of public comments and inquiries about the report, this essay previews some of our key findings.
The specific assignment to which our report on the “Great Rivalry” responds was “to document what has actually happened in the past two decades in the array of races between China and the US.” The goal was to provide an objective database that could serve as a foundation for policymakers who would undertake a fundamental strategic reassessment of the China challenge. Five chapters drill down on the rivalry in five core arenas of power: economic, technologicalmilitarydiplomatic, and ideological. Each chapter begins by identifying criteria, metrics for assessing various races, and the best-unclassified sources of data on each topic. Each then summarizes the evidence about what has happened over the past two decades and concludes with a candid assessment of where the competitors now stand.
In offering judgments, we have made our best effort to follow the lead of judges in the Olympics: scoring results impartially according to established criteria. For example, in assessing where the United States and China currently stand in AI applications for voice recognition, we report the results of Stanford’s international challenge for machine-reading, where Chinese teams won three of the top five spots, including first place. In most of these races, this means reporting that China’s performance has improved dramatically. But as the report explains, these advances should not be surprising, since China has essentially been playing catch up, closing gaps by copying technologies and practices pioneered by the United States and others.
Nonetheless, for Americans—including us!—news about China overtaking us and even surpassing us in some races is unsettling. Indeed, as students of international security, we recognize that the international order the United States has led for the seven decades since World War II provided a rare “long peace” without war between great powers, and larger increases in health and prosperity worldwide than in any equivalent period in history. The impact of China’s meteoric rise on that order is thus a matter of deep concern. But as John Adams repeatedly reminded his compatriots as they fought for freedom against the most powerful nation in the eighteenth-century world: “facts are stubborn things.”
In brief, the major findings of our report across the five arenas are these. First, China is not only rising. It has already risen to a point that it has upended the post-Cold War order: geopolitically, economically, technologically, militarily, diplomatically, and politically. Washington officials continue straining to see China in our rearview mirror. They insist that it is no more than what they call a “near-peer competitor.” Reality says otherwise. The time has come to recognize China as a full-spectrum peer competitor of the United States. As such, it poses a graver geopolitical challenge than any American living has ever seen.
The difference between the terms is not just semantic. If our assessment is correct, the Director of National Intelligence’s 2021 Global Threat Assessment describing China as “increasingly a near-peer competitor” is wrong. And the difference matters. Ask American athletes in Tokyo about peer competitors.
Second, China has not only overtaken the United States in a number of significant arenas, including the size of its economy, but has established leads the United States is unlikely to recover. While many readers may find this hard to believe, they should consider the arithmetic. Since China has four times as many people as the United States, if Chinese workers were only one-quarter as productive as Americans, their gross domestic product (GDP) would equal that of ours. GDP, of course, is not everything. But it forms the substructure of power in relations among nations.
Third, if both nations continue on their current trajectories, by 2030, China’s economy will be twice the size of America’s. Moreover, in many other sports that the United States has traditionally dominated, China is likely to have sustainable advantages. Painful as it will be, Americans will have to find some way to come to grips with a world in which, at least in some realms, “China is No. 1.”
Fourth, in contests like the Olympics, winning the largest number of medals is essentially a matter of national pride. In core geopolitical rivalries, however, including GDP, relative military capabilities for potential conflicts (for example, over Taiwan), or leadership in frontier technologies like AI, if China succeeds in winning gold medals that we should have, the consequences for the American economy, American security, and the American-led international order will be profoundly negative. Anyone who has doubts about what life under Chinese rules looks like should watch what is happening in Hong Kong.
Fifth, contrary to those for whom these findings lead to defeatism, the authors of the Harvard report decidedly do not believe that this means “game over” for the United States. Historically, American democracy has been slow to awake to great challenges. On the battlefield, had its greatest wars ended after the first innings, American colonists would have never become independent, Germany would have emerged the victor in World War I, Asia would now be a grand Japanese co-prosperity area, and Europeans would be speaking German in a Nazi empire. Had the United States not made the Soviet Union’s launch of the first satellite into space a “Sputnik moment” of awakening, the United States would not have been the first nation to send a man to the moon.
Recognition of the magnitude of the challenge posed by what Singapore’s founding leader Lee Kuan Yew presciently predicted would be “the biggest player in the history of the world,” is the beginning of wisdom. We believe it should—and will—lead the United States to mobilize a response proportionate to the challenge.
As the United States and China compete neck-and-neck in the Tokyo Games, the head of China’s General Administration of Sports, Gou Zhongwen, has made no secret of China’s goal. As he put it recently: the Tokyo and Beijing Games are stepping stones on the path to China’s becoming a global “sports power by 2035.” In pursuit of this mission, China sent its biggest-ever team to Tokyo with 777 athletes to America’s 621. Nonetheless, as she arrived in Tokyo, the CEO of the U.S. Olympic Committee declared: “Team USA is ready” for everything. In sum, the game is on.
Americans have never shrunk from competition. Indeed, our market economy and democracy are founded on the proposition that fair competition will spur the rivals to run faster than they would do running alone. But for students of war and peace, the big question is: in the great geopolitical rivalry, can the United States and China can find a way to structure and manage constructive competition? Can the necessity for coexistence drive enlightened leaders to engage in peaceful competition in which each nation does its best to demonstrate which system—America’s democracy, or China’s Party-led autocracy—can deliver more of what human beings want? Since citizens’ lives in both countries depend on an affirmative answer, we must hope and pray that they can find their way to yes.
Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Image: Reuters.
The National Interest · by Graham Allison · July 29, 2021

8. Guam exercises provide ‘at-scale’ test of new Army, Air Force operating concepts

Excerpts:

The Army is now in the midst of the Guam-based Pacific Forager 21 exercise, which involves about 4,000 U.S. personnel who rapidly deployed to the theater.
Training scenarios include an 82nd Airborne operation; a bilateral airborne operation with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and 1st Special Forces Group; a live-fire exercise with Apache attack helicopters; and multidomain operations involving the transport over land, air and sea of Strykers, the Avengers surface-to-air missile system and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, the Army said.
The Air Force is wrapping up the Pacific Iron exercise, during which aircraft and about 800 airmen from Pacific Air Forces and the Air Combat Command deployed quickly into the Indo-Pacific region under the Air Force’s new operational concept called agile combat employment.
Guam exercises provide ‘at-scale’ test of new Army, Air Force operating concepts
By Wyatt Olson Stars and Stripes3 min

Soldiers from 1st Special Forces Group and members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces Group parachute during a joint airborne operation on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, July 30, 2021, during Exercise Forager 21.
Joint U.S. Army and Air Force exercises centered on Guam are intended to keep adversaries guessing about how America’s armed forces would defend and attack during a conflict, a top Pacific Air Forces official said Sunday.
“We know one thing for sure is that they've studied the way that the U.S., our allies and partners have employed force when it's been necessary,” Lt. Gen. Jon Thomas, deputy commander of Pacific Air Forces, told reporters during a conference call that also included Gen. Charles Flynn, commander of U.S. Army Pacific.
“[Adversaries] believe that we'll concentrate and will build large mountains of sustainment and supply, and then we'll wait to go forward,” Thomas said. “We know that we can't wait to do that, nor can we give them that opportunity, and so thus we're preparing to operate in a different way.”
This summer’s exercises are doing just that.
The Army is now in the midst of the Guam-based Pacific Forager 21 exercise, which involves about 4,000 U.S. personnel who rapidly deployed to the theater.
Training scenarios include an 82nd Airborne operation; a bilateral airborne operation with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and 1st Special Forces Group; a live-fire exercise with Apache attack helicopters; and multidomain operations involving the transport over land, air and sea of Strykers, the Avengers surface-to-air missile system and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, the Army said.
The Air Force is wrapping up the Pacific Iron exercise, during which aircraft and about 800 airmen from Pacific Air Forces and the Air Combat Command deployed quickly into the Indo-Pacific region under the Air Force’s new operational concept called agile combat employment.
The concept employs a “hub-and-spoke” system of established and remote air bases and prepositioned equipment that allows quick and unpredictable deployment of air assets.
Thomas described Pacific Iron as “our largest and our most comprehensive exercise to date to exercise” agile combat employment.
“We've demonstrated the ability to move forward to the second island chain 26 F-22s, 12 F-15Es and four C-130s here … on Guam or nearby,” Thomas said.
Meanwhile, the Army is honing its own operational concept, multidomain warfare, during Forager, Flynn said. Under the concept, the Army is part of a joint force with the Air Force, Marines and Navy that is capable of engaging and defeating adversaries in all domains — air, land, sea, space and cyberspace — in both “gray area” competition and armed conflict.
Both generals emphasized that the exercises taking place demonstrate the services’ concepts “at scale.”
“There's a whole host of work that gets done as concepts are being developed,” Flynn said. “But when you actually bring real forces together in real time, and they really have to sustain and they really have the command and control and they really have to conduct operational maneuvers at distance and at scale —I think that's where their greatest incremental learning goes on.”
One reporter pointedly asked Flynn whether the U.S. Army could rapidly deploy “in case Taiwan is invaded by China.”
“The Army is always able to rapidly deploy,” Flynn said. “And we have a range of forces out here in the Pacific —from forcible entry forces, to motorized forces to sustainment, communications, cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence, security-force assistance — all ranges of capabilities within the Army, that can move at speed and at scale, to conduct operations across the region.”


9. US senators urge Biden gov't to condemn Duterte abuses

The letter from the Senators is at the bottom of page at the original link here: https://www.rappler.com/world/us-canada/united-states-senators-press-biden-condemn-duterte-abuses
US senators urge Biden gov't to condemn Duterte abuses
Democratic senators from the United States urged the Biden government to condemn the human rights abuses committed by the Duterte government in the Philippines, just as the two countries welcomed the extension of the visiting forces agreement that allows US soldiers on Philippine soil.
“We urge the Biden administration to stand with the people of the Philippines as they continue to fight for their universal human rights. The State Department should condemn the aforementioned abuses at the highest levels in our diplomatic engagements with Philippine government representatives, as well as publicly,” the senators said in a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The letter was written by Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, along with the following senators:
  • Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts
  • Cory Booker of New Jersey
  • Patrick Leahy from Vermont
  • Jeffrey A. Merkley of Oregon
  • Sherrod Brown of Ohio
  • Ben Cardin of Maryland
  • Ron Wyden of Oregon
  • Bob Casey of Pennsylvania
  • Richard J. Durbin of Illinois
  • Chris Van Hollen from Maryland
Three of the senators – Markey, Durbin, and Leahy – had earlier been banned by Duterte from entering the Philippines after they sponsored a US travel ban on Filipino officials linked to the detention of Senator Leila de Lima.
“Maintaining a bilateral relationship such as this requires upholding shared values — the protection of human rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and vibrant democratic governance,” the senators said.
They added: “Yet, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has waged a multi-year extrajudicial, violent, and inhumane ‘war on drugs’ that has devastated communities, and has been used as justification to target the independent press, political opponents, [and] human rights advocates, and compromise judicial due process.”
The priority issues
The senators first flagged Duterte’s so-called “war on drugs,” which has claimed the lives, according to underreported government records, of at least 7,000 drug suspects. Human rights groups estimate that deaths related to the drug war actually reach to around 30,000, including killings inspired by Duterte’s campaign.
“Allegations of extrajudicial police misconduct — including collaboration with vigilantes, fabricated reports, and planted evidence — are rampant. Opposition figures, journalists, and activists critical of the killing campaign frequently find themselves targeted by the Duterte government,” the senators noted.
They then flagged the Duterte government’s practice of red-tagging critics of the administration.
“Terrorism Act, currently under review by the Philippines Supreme Court, is then used to persecute red-tagged groups,” the senators acknowledged.
The senators also stressed that Duterte’s government has targeted journalists, highlighting the Committee to Protect Journalists’ count of three murdered Filipino journalists in 2020, as well as the shutdown – with the help of the Duterte-controlled Congress – of ABS-CBN, the country’s biggest broadcaster.
This "pattern of silencing critics and shuttering space for democratic discourse,” the senators said, was exemplified in the jailing of Senator Leila de Lima and the government’s continued prosecution of Rappler CEO Maria Ressa.
The attacks against Ressa and Rappler, the senators said, is part of “a broad effort to silence independent voices and views critical of the government’s human rights abuses.”
“These cases lay bare the systemic and coordinated attempts to silence journalists, political opposition, and human rights defenders,” the senators said.
Questions for Blinken
The senators then posed questions to Blinken.
First, they asked whether the State Department has done anything about “the Philippine government’s systemic human rights violations, including the coordinated push to implement the Anti-Terrorism Act
They then asked if the State Department is considering using the Magnitsky Act against officials implicated in drug war killings and human rights violations, including in the detention of De Lima.
They asked whether Blinken has engaged the Philippine government about De Lima’s detention as well as the prosecution of Ressa. Blinken was also asked if he has communicated to the Philippine government that red-tagging is “an unacceptable practice in violation of international human rights.”
As for sanctions, the senators asked Blinken if he has reviewed the United States’ security assistance to the Philippine National Police, and its sale of weapons to the Philippine military, and whether he is considering barring Duterte officials “involved in significant corruption.”
In their last question, the senators asked Blinken whether he would discuss the human rights situation in the Philippines in the upcoming Summit for Democracy and other discussions of human rights in the Indo-Pacific.
Read the full letter of the senators below:
– Rappler.com

10. US Marine quick reaction force deployed twice in last 30 days to defend embassies

I have not seen any mainstream media reporting on this.

US Marine quick reaction force deployed twice in last 30 days to defend embassies
The US Marine Security Augmentation Unit has completed 107 deployments
foxnews.com · by Peter Aitken | Fox News
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.
The U.S. Marine Security Augmentation Unit has deployed twice in the past 30 days to support and protect embassies in Africa and the Caribbean.
The quick reaction force consists of 145 Marines who can deploy in small teams at a moment’s notice from Quantico, Virginia to anywhere in the world – including a small African nation like Eswatini.
A team of 13 Marines deployed to Eswatini on June 30 as thousands of protesters took to the streets to decry their King Mswati III, who lives in luxury as his citizens starve.

U.S. Marines attached to the Marine Security Augment Unit (MSAU) simulate room clearing through a Tactical Maze in Summit Point, W.Va., April 9, 2015. The training prepares members of MSAU for the protection and security of American Embassies and assets across the globe. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Daniel Benedict/Released) (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Daniel Benedict/Released)
Another team saw deployment on July 16 in the aftermath of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse to support the U.S. Embassy "out of an abundance of caution."
These two missions marked the 106th and 107th missions for the MSAU since the group was founded in 2013, Task and Purpose reported.
The MSAU was founded in the aftermath of the 2012 attack on Benghazi, which left a U.S. Ambassador and three other Americans dead. The members bring a variety of occupational experience and specialties, including medical, close quarters combat, marksmanship, security analysis and augmentation, creating one of the most experienced and elite security details on the planet.
The corps mainly deploys via air, but also includes sea-based units and land-based Special Purpose Air-Ground task forces.

U.S. Marines attached to the Marine Security Augment Unit (MSAU) practice firing on stationary targets in Summit Point, W.Va., April 9, 2015. The training prepares members of MSAU for the protection and security of American Embassies and assets across the globe. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Daniel Benedict/Released) (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Daniel Benedict/Released)
New members undergo training at the Marine Security Guard School in Quantico for six weeks, during which they learn the details of embassy duty and qualify for use of particular firearms: the Glock 19 pistol, the short-barrelled MK18 carbine rifle and the M870 shotgun.
Officers then serve at an overseas post before a region commander might recommend them to join the MSAU.
"Marines assigned to duty at MSAU are screened by Marine Corps Embassy Security Group Headquarters for performance, decision making, and leadership and tactical skills," said Capt. Andrew Wood, a Marine spokesman. "Once assigned to the unit, the MSAU staff assess each Marine’s ability and provide advanced training in MSG and Diplomatic Security skills."
The Marines alone do not deploy to defend these sites, though: The Diplomatic Security Service Mobile Deployments team might assist, which it did during the Eswatini protests, according to a press release from the Defense Department.
The MSAU also deployed on such notable occasions as the Bangkok protests in 2013-14 and the Yellow Vest protests in Paris in 2017.
One of the largest MSAU deployments saw 80 Marines deployed to Tripoli to help evacuate the U.S. embassy, the Marine Corps Times reported.
"Our Marine Security Guard Augmentation Units maintain a high state of readiness and can rapidly respond when called upon," said U.S. Central Command spokesman Maj. Josh Jacques said.
foxnews.com · by Peter Aitken | Fox News


11.  The US doesn't need Europe's help in the 'Indo-Pacific'

I think articles like this seem to illustrate a lack of understanding of the nature, objectives, and strategy of the PRC, PLA, and the CCP. And of course they do not appreciate the Biden administration's priority to alliances and collective action among like-minded democracies to deal with global threats.

That said, Africa is important and we should recognize that but a naval deployment may not have as much effect in Africa as it might have as part of a combined military presence in INDOPACOM.

The US doesn't need Europe's help in the 'Indo-Pacific' – Responsible Statecraft
responsiblestatecraft.org · by Anatol Lieven · July 30, 2021
The US doesn’t need Europe’s help in the ‘Indo-Pacific’
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin inadvertently introduced a conversation about where the EU should focus its security priorities.
July 30, 2021

Some of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s remarks in Singapore on Tuesday are a severe embarrassment to the British government. Whether Austin realized this or not, he undermined one part of Biden administration strategy with regard to Europe and China when he said, “If…we focus a bit more on Asia, are there areas where Britain can be more helpful in other parts of the world?”
Austin’s statement is an implicit recognition that the British carrier group (whose planes and escort vessels are in fact chiefly American) dispatched to the “Indo-Pacific” does very little in practical terms to strengthen U.S. forces against China. The purely symbolic warships dispatched by European NATO members to the region do even less, which is to say nothing at all.
On the other hand, as Austin suggested, Europe is facing challenges closer to home where Britain could play a more useful role, and Europe could relieve the United States of some of its present commitments. Of these, the most menacing is the spread of Islamist revolt across the Sahel region, and the way in which it overlaps with the increasing decay of the Nigerian state.
British and European calculations in making gestures of support to the United States in the “Indo-Pacific” are somewhat different. For the British establishment, it is part of their continuing desire to be seen as playing the role of a great power on the world stage, without bankrupting Britain in the process. This can only be done on the shoulders of the United States. Since Brexit, this desire has become an obsession on the part of the Johnson government in Britain, because of their promises that as a result of leaving the EU, Britain would regain the freedom and independence to become great again.
Paradoxically but inevitably, this desire for independence has in fact led to even greater dependence on the United States. Yet the crazy thing — as hinted at in Austin’s remarks and stated explicitly by President Obama and his administration — is that sensible members of the establishment in Washington never wanted Britain to leave the EU. This was not just because they regarded Britain as a channel for American influence within the EU, but because within Europe, Britain can make a real military contribution — not due to the strength of its forces, but because Britain (together with France) has one of the only two armies that is actually willing to fight.
The strategy of the other European members of NATO is to avoid serious warfare and the cost of creating effective armed forces, and to leave responsibility for the defense of Europe in the hands of the United States. To this end however, they give the minimum help necessary to make sure that the United States maintains that commitment to Europe and they do not have to take responsibility themselves. As German officials admitted to me in the past, Germany could not be relied on even to send troops to fight in the Balkans should another war break out between Serbia and her neighbors.
From the U.S. point of view, this is a fool’s bargain. European military help to America is almost insignificant compared to American military help to Europe; and the deteriorating situation in the Sahel means that the needs of European security are likely to increase greatly in the years to come.
Robert Kaplan warned 27 years ago in “The Coming Anarchy” that the degradation of West African states and societies posed a serious threat. He may have been a bit premature, but he was also prophetic. The troubles of the region are the result of a combination of factors: terrible standards of governance; deep poverty and lack of development; enormous population growth (Nigeria alone is projected to have a population of around 400 million by 2050); and growing ecological degradation, which in the future is likely to be made much worse by climate change.
Especially since the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011 (due in large part to the misguided intervention of the United States, Britain and France), to these factors has been added a steep rise in Islamist extremist groups. In Nigeria, the monstrous actions of Boko Haram have overlapped with other growing conflicts between pastoralists and agricultural ethnicities over access to increasingly scarce water resources; between increasingly powerful bandit groups and the state; and between the state and a range of separatist forces.
According to the United Nations, the conflict with Boko Haram alone in Nigeria has contributed to the deaths of around 350,000 people, making this one of the worst ongoing civil wars.
The threat to Europe stems not so much from the Islamist extremists themselves, as from the danger that fuelled by local rivalries and socio-economic despair, they will help unleash civil wars across the region that will send a massive flow of refugees northward to Europe. As we have seen from Brexit and the rise of nationalist parties across western and central Europe, mass migration can seriously destabilize European liberal democracy — and future movements from Western Africa may dwarf anything we have seen in the recent past. Insofar as the United States has a vital interest in the maintenance of democracy and successful capitalism in Europe, this is also a threat to America — one by the way which renders insignificant by comparison any threat that Russia or China can or would pose to Europe.
To try to ward off this danger, the European Union needs to make a massive and co-ordinated effort to promote economic development across the region. However, it must also be recognized that in several countries including Nigeria, successful economic development cannot occur unless the security situation is greatly improved, and that so far, local armies have not been adequate to this task. Outside help has been provided overwhelmingly by the United States and France, acting in defense of its traditional client states in the region.
Despite initial successes, the French commitment has been worn down over the years, with more than 50 dead and financial costs to France of almost one billion euros in 2020. President Macron has now declared that he is ending “Operation Barkhane” and reducing France’s troops in the region from 5,000 to fewer than 3,000. He has also asked for increased military help in the region from France’s European partners. Their response to date has been minimal. For example, despite official statements about the gravity of the Sahel crisis, the British contribution so far consists of six planes and fewer than 200 men — a force that could well be called symbolic.
The Sahel, not the “Indo-Pacific,” is where European NATO members can and should make a real commitment to their own security and relieve the United States of some of the burden. And this is where the Biden administration should encourage them to make a commitment, rather than asking for gestures in the Indo-Pacific that impress nobody — the Chinese least of all.
responsiblestatecraft.org · by Anatol Lieven · July 30, 2021



12. Xi demands rapid modernisation of PLA ahead of China’s army day

Fast, cheap, and quality.  Which two does Xi want?

Xi demands rapid modernisation of PLA ahead of China’s army day
hindustantimes.com · July 31, 2021
Chinese president Xi Jinping said that the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) ‘commands the gun’ and asked the military to make resolute efforts to transform China’s army into the world’s best army by 2027 on par with the US army. Xi’s comments come on the eve of China’s army day and are a reiteration of what was decided during the plenary session of the CPC in October 2020.
Xi while addressing a group study session of the CPC Political Bureau on Saturday asked the army to build the determination to work hard and achieve the goal set for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) which celebrates its 100 years in 2027. He said that the goal is in alignment with national strength and it fulfils the future national defence needs of China.
Xi heads the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC) which is the overall high command of the Chinese military. He also emphasised on holding military exercises in real battle conditions to win wars and rapid modernisation of the PLA.
The Chinese president punished over 50 top generals besides a host of mid-rung officials as it held a massive anti-corruption drive after coming to power. On Saturday, he extended regards to officers, soldiers and civilian personnel of the PLA and the People's Armed Police Force. This meeting comes ahead of the 94th anniversary of the PLA on Sunday.
Xi also highlighted during the meeting that these goals set by him are necessary to ‘build a modern socialist country’.
(with inputs from PTI)

hindustantimes.com · July 31, 2021



13. U.S Top Diplomat Blinken to Court Southeast Asia in Virtual Meetings Next Week


U.S Top Diplomat Blinken to Court Southeast Asia in Virtual Meetings Next Week
By U.S. News & World Report3 min

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken boards his plane to depart for his return to the United States from Kuwait International Airport in Kuwait City, Kuwait, July 29, 2021. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Pool
By Daphne Psaledakis and Simon Lewis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet virtually with Southeast Asian officials every day next week, a senior state department official said on Saturday, as Washington seeks to show the region it’s a U.S. priority while also addressing the crisis in Myanmar.
The top U.S. diplomat will attend virtual meetings for five consecutive days, including annual meetings of the 10 foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and other nations and separate meetings of the Lower Mekong subregion countries Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.
"I think it's a clear demonstration of our commitment to the region," said the official, who briefed Reuters on condition of anonymity.
In recent years top U.S. officials have not always attended ASEAN meetings and have sometimes sent more junior officials to the region's summits.
The virtual meetings come after the Biden administration in its early days was seen as paying little attention to the region of more than 600 million people, which is often overshadowed by neighboring economic giant China, which the administration sees as its major foreign policy challenge.
But that has been partly addressed by recent visits to the region. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand in May and June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in Vietnam and the Philippines this week, and Vice President Kamala Harris is set to visit Singapore and Vietnam.
"That steady flow of high-level engagement is going to pay dividends. It's noticed," the official said, adding that countries in the region "notice when we don't show up and that's when you start hearing some complaining maybe about not taking them seriously or taking them for granted."
The official said that donations of COVID-19 vaccines to the region had been a "game changer in terms of how our image is perceived."
On Sunday, the United States shipped 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam and it has sent doses to other Southeast Asian countries too, but an agreement it reached in March with Japan and Australia and India to provide a billion doses to the region stalled due to an Indian export ban
By mid-next week the United States will have donated 23 million doses to countries in the region, which is experiencing a surge of the coronavirus with vaccination rates well below countries in the West, the official said.
But none of those doses have gone to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, where military generals staged a coup on Feb. 1 and detained elected leaders including Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking sanctions from Washington and other Western capitals.
The meetings next week will see Blinken in the same virtual meetings as representatives of Myanmar’s military government, but the official said rather than bestowing legitimacy on those officials, this was an opportunity to get messages to the military government.
"We're not prepared to walk away from ASEAN because of the bad behavior of a group of generals in Burma," the official said, adding that U.S. officials were also engaging with the National Unity Government that opposes the military government there.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Simon Lewis; editing by Diane Craft)
Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters.


14. Cuba's cultural counter-revolution: US gov't-backed rappers, artists gain fame as 'catalyst for current unrest' | The Grayzone


An anti-American and anti-imperialist screed from a bizarre web site that has adopted (stolen?) the current moniker for national security short of traditional war -the gray zone. CIA and National Endowment of Democracy and more. I wish we were as good as they accuse us of being.


Cuba's cultural counter-revolution: US gov't-backed rappers, artists gain fame as 'catalyst for current unrest' | The Grayzone
thegrayzone.com · by Max Blumenthal · July 26, 2021

Painting itself as a grassroots collective of artists fighting for freedom of expression, the San Isidro Movement has become a key weapon in the US government’s assault on the Cuban revolution.
“My people need Europe, my people need Europe to point out the abuser,” Yotuel, a Spain-based Cuban rapper, proclaimed in an EU parliament event convened by right-wing legislators before handing the mic over to Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó. Days later, Yotuel held a Zoom call with State Department officials to discuss “Patria y Vida,” the anti-communist rap anthem he helped author.
As the dust clears from a day of protests across Cuban cities, the Wall Street Journal has dubbed “Patria y Vida” the “common rallying cry” of opponents of Cuba’s government, while Rolling Stone touted it as “the anthem of Cuba’s protests.”
Besides Yotuel, two rappers who collaborated on the song are among a collection of artists, musicians and writers called the San Isidro Movement. This collective has been credited by US media with “providing a catalyst for the current unrest.”
Throughout the past three years, as economic conditions worsened under an escalating US economic war while internet access expanded as a result of the Obama Administration’s efforts to normalize relations with Cuba, the San Isidro Movement has invited an open conflict with the state.
With provocative performances that have seen its most prominent figures parade through Old Havana waving American flags, and through flagrant displays of contempt for Cuban national symbols, San Isidro has antagonized the authorities, triggering frequent detentions of its members and international campaigns to free them.
By basing itself in a largely Afro-Cuban area of Old Havana and working through mediums like hip-hop, San Isidro has also maneuvered to upend the racially progressive image Cuba’s leftist government earned through its historic military campaign against apartheid South Africa and the asylum it offered to Black American dissidents. Here, the San Isidro Movement appears to be following a blueprint articulated by the US regime change lobby.
Over the past decade, the US government has spent millions of dollars to cultivate anti-government Cuban rappers, rock musicians, artists, and journalists in an explicit bid to weaponize “desocialized and marginalized youth.” The strategy implemented by the US in Cuba is a real life version of the fantasies anti-Trump Democrats entertained when they fretted that Russia was covertly sponsoring Black Lives Matter and Antifa to spread chaos through North American society.
US-backed Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó appeared alongside Yotuel to celebrate the release of “Patria y Vida” in the EU parliament
As this investigation will reveal, leading members of the San Isidro Movement have raked in funding from regime change outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy and US Agency for International Development while meeting with State Department officials, US embassy staff in Havana, right-wing European parliamentarians and Latin American coup leaders from Venezuela’s Guaidó to OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro.
San Isidro has also welcomed support from a network of free market fundamentalist think tanks which make no secret of their plan to transform Cuba into a colony for multi-national corporations. Days after protests broke out in Cuba, San Isidro’s leadership accepted an award from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a right-wing Republican think tank in Washington that includes Nazi German soldiers in its count of historic deaths at the hands of communism.
Behind their branding as cosmopolitan intellectuals, renegade rappers, and avant garde artists, San Isidro’s has openly embraced the extremist politics of the Miami Cuban lobby. Indeed, its most prominent members have expressed effusive support for Donald Trump, endorsed US sanctions, and clamored for a military invasion of Cuba.
The cultural collective has nonetheless made inroads into progressive circles of North American intelligentsia, working to weaken traditional bonds of solidarity between the Cuban revolution and US left. As we will see, the rise of the San Isidro Movement is the latest chapter in the emerging playbook of intersectional imperialism.
A “forgotten group of people”: Afro-Cuban protest participation captivates US media
The scenes of an overturned police car in Havana’s October 10 neighborhood, mobs pelting police officers with molotov cocktails, and the looting of commercial centers this July 11 ripped the cover off the resentment of a class of citizens that has fallen through the cracks of Cuba’s beleaguered special economy.
Following years of deepening economic deprivation, Cuban have experienced blackouts and food rationing brought on by former President Donald Trump’s intensification of the 60-year-long US economic blockade of Cuba. A sudden collapse in tourism due to the Covid-19 pandemic together with the government’s elimination of Cuba’s dual currency system exacerbated the economic chaos.
Cristina Escobar, a Havana-based journalist and one of the most widely watched news personalities on Cuba’s state broadcasting channel, described the protest rank-and-file to The Grayzone as the byproduct of sustained marginalization.
“There’s a group of people in urban places like Havana that have the following characteristics,” Escobar explained. “They’re usually from rural poor areas and have moved to the city looking for better opportunities; usually not white with all the gradients there, and live at the margins, receiving whatever state benefits that are available. They often work in informal economy, they feel disaffected and don’t have involvement in patriotic ventures because they’re the victims of the special period of poverty.”
While Cuba’s social safety net has prevented this demographic from slipping into the misery familiar to slums of IMF-managed states such as Haiti or Honduras, Escobar says “they are a forgotten group of people, disintegrated, without roots in society. They are expressing the inequality they experience and unfortunately, they are not doing it peacefully anymore.”
US corporate media has seized on the images of Afro-Cuban protesters to paint the demonstrations as an expression of explicitly racialized discontent. In an article headlined, “Afro Cubans at forefront of [Cuba’s] unrest,” the Washington Post quoted anti-government NGO’s and activists associated with the San Isidro Movement denouncing Black Lives Matter for its statement of solidarity with the Cuban revolution.
Left unmentioned by the Washington Post was the role of the US government in backing many of these same NGO’s and activists in a bid to weaponize the Cuba’s underclass. At the forefront of Washington’s strategy are two traditional CIA fronts: the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Throughout the Cold War, USAID worked alongside the CIA to liquidate socialist movements across the Global South. More recently, it helped implement a phony CIA vaccination program in Pakistan to track down Osama bin Laden, and instead wound up spawning a massive polio outbreak. Across Latin America, USAID has funded and trained right-wing opposition figures, including Venezuela’s US-appointed pseudo-president Juan Guaidó.
For its part, the NED was established under the watch of former CIA director William Casey to provide support to opposition activists and media outlets wherever the US has sought regime change. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein told journalist David Ignatius, who celebrated the organization as “the sugar-daddy of overt operations.”
Throughout their history, USAID and NED have worked to exploit the grievances of ethnic minority groups against socialist and non-aligned governments. Their financial and logistical support for the Uyghurs against China, the Tatars against Russia, and indigenous Miskito people against Nicaragua are among many examples.
In recent years in Cuba, Washington’s regime change specialists have homed in on Afro-Cubans and marginalized youth, harnessing culture to turn social resentment into counter-revolutionary action.
Weaponizing “desocialized and marginalized youth” against Cuban socialism
2009 paper in the Journal of Democracy, the official organ of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), outlined an ambitious blueprint for cultivating Cuba’s post-Cold War underclass as an anti-government vanguard.
“Using the principles of democracy and human rights to unite and mobilize this vast, dispossessed majority in the face of a highly repressive regime is the key to peaceful change,” wrote Carl Gershman and Orlando Gutierrez.
Gershman and Gutierrez are influential figures in the world of overt regime change operators. The founding director of the NED, Gershman presided for four decades over US efforts to destabilize governments from Managua to Moscow. Gutierrez, for his part, is an outspoken advocate of a US military invasion of Cuba who serves as national secretary of the USAID and NED-funded Cuban Democratic Directorate.
#UnitedStates | Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, a Cuban-American based in South Florida, leads the organization. On December 4, Boronat expressed his support for an armed invasion of Cuba to overthrow the socialist government.https://t.co/pEbsGnYrBQ
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) December 9, 2020
Gershman and Gutierrez advised a strategy that encouraged “non-cooperation” with Cuba’s revolutionary institutions among those they described as “‘desocialized’ and marginal youth – the dropouts, the jobless young people who make up nearly three-quarters of Cuba’s unemployed, and those who are drawn to drugs, crime, and prostitution.”
The two regime change specialists pointed to music and online media as ideal vehicles for harnessing the frustrations of Cuban youth: “The alienation of the young reaches into the mainstream and expresses itself in the angry lyrics of rock musicians; the bloggers’ depictions of the frustrations and tawdriness of everyday life; the frequent evasion of agricultural work, voluntary service, and neighborhood committee meetings; and the general disengagement from politics that is the fruit of a half-century of coerced participation and force-fed political propaganda,” they wrote.
The year that Gershman and Gutierrez’s influential paper appeared, Washington enacted an audacious covert operation based on the strategy they outlined.
“Rap is War”: USAID covertly recruits Cuban hip-hop artists as regime change propagandists
In 2009, USAID initiated a program to spark a youth movement against Cuba’s government by cultivating and promoting local hip-hop artists.
Because of its long history as a CIA front, USAID outsourced the operation to Creative Associates International, a Washington DC-based firm with its own track record of covert actions.
Creative Associates found its point man in Rajko Bozic, a veteran of the CIA-backed Otpor! group that helped topple nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic, and whose members moved on to form an “‘export-a-revolution’ group that sowed the seeds for a number of color revolutions.”
Posing as a music promoter, Bozic approached a Cuban rap group called Los Aldeanos that was known for its ferociously anti-government anthem, “Rap is War.” The Serbian operative never told Los Aldeanos he was a US intelligence asset; instead, he claimed he was a marketing professional and promised to turn the group’s frontman into an international star.
To further the plan, Creative Associates rolled out ZunZuneo, a Twitter-style social media platform that blasted out thousands of automated messages promoting Los Aldeanos to Cuban youth without the rap group’s knowledge.
Within a year, as Los Aldeanos escalated its rhetoric, taunting Cuban police as mindless drones during a local indie music festival, Cuban intelligence discovered contracts linking Bozic to USAID and rolled up the operation.
Embarrassment ensued in Washington, with Sen. Patrick Leahy grumbling, “USAID never informed Congress about this and should never have been associated with anything so incompetent and reckless.”
Danny Shaw, an associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the City University of New York, encountered Los Aldeanos during several extended visits to Cuba. He also got to know Omni Zona Franca, a collective of poets and Rastafarian-oriented performance artists based in the Alamar neighborhood of Havana which formed the inspiration for the San Isidro Movement.
Shaw said the artists’ hostility towards Cuba’s socialist system was so intense that many of them denied the US blockade’s existence. “I tried to explain to them my understanding of the economic war, and they said, ‘You can come and go as you please, you don’t live here, so it’s easy for you to be a Marxist.’ And they had a point – if you completely decontextualized the situation,” he told The Grayzone.
According to Shaw, some Omni Zona Franca members began visiting the US and Europe for art festivals and interviews with corporate Spanish-language media. “When the stories about USAID supporting Cuban rappers and artists came out, then it all kind of made sense to me,” he reflected.
In 2014, USAID was exposed again when it tapped Creative Associates to organize a series of phony HIV prevention workshops which were, in fact, political recruitment seminars.
An internal Creative Associates document leaked to the media in 2014 referred to the bogus HIV workshops as the “perfect excuse” to enlist youth into regime change activities on the island.

President Barack Obama introduced his plan to normalize relations with Cuba’s government just as USAID’s latest operation was exposed. As a condition of diplomatic recognition, Obama insisted that Cuba expand internet access.
Venezuelan investigative website Misión Verdad warned at the time, “We are witnessing an update in the mechanisms, methods and modes of intervention. All the harmony at this time is totally illusory. What is already being placed under the label ‘normalization’ in the Cuban sociopolitical environment provides the minimum operating conditions to facilitate the idea of ​​a ‘Cuban spring,’ a test tube revolution…”
Internet expansion opens the door for US infiltration
The 3G internet network arrived in Cuba in 2018, enabling young Cubans to access social media on their phones. Now, instead of spinning out social media platform like ZunZuneo, US intelligence focused on developing technology like Psiphon so Cubans could access Facebook and YouTube despite internet blackouts.
The NED and USAID exploited the opening to build a potent online anti-government media apparatus. The new batch of US-backed outlets like CubaNet, Cibercuba and ADN Cuba represented an echo chamber of toxic insurrectionism, mocking President Miguel Diaz-Canel with insulting memes and calling for his prosecution for high crimes including genocide.
ADN Cuba mocks Diaz-Canel by merging his face with that of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
The Dutch Foreign Ministry has advanced the US efforts, helping to set up and fund the anti-government blog, El Toque, through an NGO called RNW Media.
Ted Henken, a US academic and author of “Cuba’s Digital Revolution,” remarked to Reuters that Cuba’s leadership “miscalculated in that they didn’t realize that [expanded internet access] would very quickly, in two and a half years, blow up in their face.”
“None of [protests] would have been possible without the nascent 3G network that has allowed millions of Cubans to access the internet via mobile devices since 2018,” the corporate online outlet Quartz declared.
As Cuban access to anti-government media grew, the Trump administration increased NED’s budget by 22% in 2018.
That year, NED’s Cuba budget earmarked close to $500,000 for the recruitment and training of anti-government journalists, and to establish new media outlets.
Another NED grant budgeted funds to “promote the inclusion of marginalized populations in Cuban society and to strengthen a network of on-island partners,” implying the targeting of Afro-Cubans.
The NED has placed a heavy emphasis on infiltrating Cuba’s hip-hop scene. In 2018, the US government entity contributed $80,000 to the Cuban Soul Foundation to “empower independent artists to produce, perform, and exhibit their work in uncensored community events,” and $70,000 to a Colombia-based NGO called Fundacion Cartel Urbano for “empowering Cuban hip-hop artists as leaders in society.”

Cartel Urbano publishes an online magazine clearly modeled off of Vice, the premier vehicle for hipster imperialism. Besides keeping readers informed about the latest releases from anti-government Cuban rap artists, the US government-funded magazine dedicates entire sections on its website to drug usetrans culture, and the green vegan lifestyle.
In catering to the sensibilities of academically oriented, self-styled radicals, the outlet’s writers routinely deploy the letter “x” to erase gender distinctions, leading to passages like the following: “cuerpxs trans, marikonas, no binarixs, racializadxs, monstruosxs…”
Cartel Urbano is sponsored by the US government to train and promote Cuban hip-hop artists
The startling proliferation of online opposition media, vitriolic anti-government propaganda, and US infiltration of Cuba’s cultural scene that accompanied the expansion of the country’s internet services prompted an unprecedented crackdown by the country’s leadership.
“The years when we had the thawing of relations with the US, we had so much tolerance domestically,” Cristina Escobar, the Cuban journalist, reflected. “That’s because the government did not see itself as under siege. But then Trump won. And now the leadership feels like they should have never trusted Obama.”
Just hours after taking office in April 2018, President Diaz-Canel proposed Decree 349. The new measure would require that all artists, musicians and performers obtain prior approval from the Ministry of Culture before publicizing their work.
Put forward in direct response to the recruitment of rap artists and other cultural figures by US intelligence, Decree 349 explicitly forbade the dissemination of audiovisual materials containing “sexist, vulgar or obscene language.” Though the law would never be enforced on a formal basis, the provision was viewed by Cuba’s opposition as a direct attack on the subculture of reggaeton seeping into the country’s urban landscape.
Almost overnight, a collective of artists and musicians mobilized to protest the decree. Named for the hardscrabble San Isidro neighborhood in Old Havana where several of its members lived, the new movement appealed directly to cultural influencers in the Global North, marketing itself as a diverse collection of visual creators and independent rappers struggling for nothing more than artistic freedom.
For perhaps the first time, Cuba’s right-wing opposition had a vehicle for making inroads into progressive circles abroad.
With US flags in hand, confronting the state and courting celebrity
On November 6, 2020, a police officer appeared in the home of Denis Solis, an outspoken anti-government rapper affiliated with the San Isidro Movement. Solis quickly turned his cellphone camera on the cop and livestreamed his defiant encounter on Facebook.
After taunting the officer with anti-gay slurs, Solis proclaimed, “Trump 2020! Trump is my president!”
The police visit was triggered by the excited coverage Solis received from Diario de Cuba, a NED-funded publication, and other anti-government outlets, for a tattoo emblazoned across his chest that read, “Change; Cuba Libre.” He had also taken to Facebook to boast, “Communists, now they’re going to have to tear the skin from my chest.”
The 8 month prison sentence Solis received for “contempt” – a punishment clearly inspired by the spectacle he generated with his livestream – provided the spark for the November 2020 hunger strike that vaulted the San Isidro Movement onto the global stage.
The strike was held inside inside the Old Havana home of the San Isidro Movement’s coordinator, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. An Afro-Cuban performance artist, Otero has courted the ire of the government by defiling the Cuban flag, wrapping it around his naked torso on the toilet and while brushing his teeth, or by sprawling out on it while clad in underwear bearing the US flag.
In another provocative display, Otero gathered children to run through his neighborhood waving a giant American flag, triggering an immediate police response and his own detention for four days.
Above: The art of San Isidro Movement coordinator Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. Below: Otero enlisted Cuban youth to run through Old Havana bearing US flags.

The week-long hunger strike at Otero’s home generated an unprecedented international media spectacle, and generated supportive statements from Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s incoming National Security Advisor, and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
We urge the Cuban regime to cease harassment of San Isidro Movement protestors and to release musician Denis Solís, who was unjustly sentenced to eight months in prison. Freedom of expression is a human right. The United States stands with Cuba’s people.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) November 24, 2020
A cleverly staged visit to the site of the hunger strike by Carlos Manuel Álvarez, a high-profile Mexico-based Cuban journalist and literary figure, had helped galvanize international media interest.
Clad in a black turtleneck and hailing from the ranks of Cuba’s educated elite, the bespectacled Álvarez presented a stark contrast to Otero and his rugged wingman, the anti-government rapper Maykel Osorbo. For governing officials tempted to dismiss the protest leaders as a bunch of vulgar street urchins, the figure of the genteel scribe presented serious complications.
Journalist Carlos Manuel Álvarez (center) with Luis Miguel Otero (right) and rapper Maykel Osorbo (left)
Álvarez soon found space in the New York Times opinion section to market San Isidro to a liberal US audience while rattling off literary metaphors about walking over cobblestone in high-heeled shoes to denigrate Cuba’s communist bureaucracy.
“The [San Isidro] movement has become the most representative group of national civil society, bringing together Cubans of different social classes, races, ideological beliefs and generations, both from the exile community and on the island,” the writer claimed.
On November 27, 2020, as the confrontation between Cuban artists and the state deepened, a group of artists initiated a sit-in outside Cuba’s Ministry of Culture. The original demonstrators consisted largely of artists whose work had been sponsored by the Cuban state. And unlike San Isidro, many of them rejected regime change rhetoric, opting instead for a dialogue with the culture minister to resolve the conflict over freedom of expression.
As sociologist Rafael Hernandez explained in a detailed study of the sit-in, the dialogue collapsed when the San Isidro Movement and other US-backed elements imposed their maximalist agenda on the organizing body, which came to be known as N27. The New York Times and other other Anglo outlets focused their coverage squarely on the anti-communist rabble rousers of San Isidro, while leftist Cuban artists “remained invisible to the foreign press, which does not consider them news, as it does the veteran and youth dissidents,” Hernandez observed.
The intensive media coverage of the sit-in vaulted the San Isidro Movement onto the international stage, earning them the attention of celebrity artists and writers in the US and Europe. In May 2021, after Otero was again detained by Cuban security, an open letter to President Diaz-Canel appeared in the New York Review of Books, a leading journal of the liberal US literati, demanding his release.
Signed by a cast of prominent Black and Afro-Latin cultural figures, including Henry Louis-Gates, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Diaz, the missive illustrated the success San Isidro was enjoying in eroding the support of Black American intelligensia for Cuba’s revolution.
With access to the leading liberal organs of US media and support in Latin American studies departments across the country, the cultural collective was breaking Cuba’s anti-communist opposition out of its traditional right-wing Miami base.
But its success was hardly an organic phenomenon. Indeed, San Isidro had been propelled onto the international stage thanks to substantial support from the US State Department, its regime change subsidiaries and right-wing corporate lobbyists eager to see Cuba open up for business.
“Viva la anexión”: the State Department, OAS and corporate lobbyists partner with San Isidro
Each day at the El Estornudo magazine he founded, Carlos Manuel Álvarez and his colleagues present the bad news from Cuba. While painting the country as a catastrophically-run communist hellscape overrun with Covid-19 casualties, he markets his outlet as “independent.”
In reality, El Estornudo appears to be one of the many media projects incubated by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
“The collaborators who make the magazine are paid per work produced, with a fixed salary of 400 CUC. Until I left, El Estornudo was financed by the NED and Open Society [Foundations],” said Abraham Jiménez Enoa, a former writer for the magazine, referring respectively to the US government’s regime change arm and the foundation of George Soros.
El Estornudo is among a constellation of outlets delegated to criticize Cuba’s Covid response by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), an NGO that received $145,230 from the NED in 2020 to “strengthen collaboration among Cuban independent journalists” and train them in social media.
The anti-government outlets operating under the auspices of IWPR also include Tremenda Nota, an LGBTQ-themed site that routinely accuses the Cuban government of homophobia and transphobia, even as the Diaz-Canel administration has moved to legalize gay marriage, opened the army to gay soldiers, and initiated official pride events.
IWPR’s board is comprised of former NATO officials and corporate media figures, including the former chair of the Financial Times. Though the NGO has since scrubbed its list of patrons from its website, an archived page reveals partnerships with the NED and its US government subsidiaries, as well as confirmed British intelligence contractors like Albany Associates and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Carlos Manuel Álvarez is far from the only San Isidro member close to US regime change entities. Besides him, there is Yaima Pardo, a Cuban filmmaker and tech specialist whose 2015 documentary, “Offline,” emphasized the need for internet expansion to foment dissent.
Pardo is currently the multi-media director for ADN Cuba, a Florida-based anti-government outlet that received $410,710 from USAID in 2020 alone.
San Isidro’s Esteban Rodríguez, a reporter for ADN Cuba, has celebrated the economically debilitating ban Trump imposed family remittances to Cuba as “perfect.” “If I was in the US, I’d have voted Trump,” Rodríguez told The Guardian.
When San Isidro launched its international campaign against Decree 349, it chose to do so at the Organization of American States (OAS) – the Washington DC-based regional organization derided by Fidel Castro as “the Yankee ministry of the colonies.”
There, San Isidro co-founder Amaury Pacheco was received by Luis Almagro, the OAS Secretary-General who would help orchestrate the right-wing military coup in Bolivia later that year. Also on hand to welcome the Cuban artists were State Department officials and Carlos Trujillo, a right-wing Trump loyalist serving as the US representative to the OAS.
“Art in Cuba is more necessary than ever,” Almagro proclaimed. “It is necessary to expose the challenges of repression” by the Cuban state.
OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro with San Isidro Movement co-founder Amaury Pacheco (second from right) and other artists affiliated with the collective
As the Venezuela-based Instituto Samuel Robinson reported, San Isidro has deepened its ties with the international right-wing through the CADAL foundation, which nominated it for the NATO state-sponsored Freemuse Prize for Artistic Expression. CADAL is at the heart of a network of libertarian organizations that leverage corporate money to push free market fundamentalism across Latin America.
Among CADAL’s closest partners is the Atlas Network, a corporate lobbying front established with help from the Koch Brothers to advance libertarian economics and undermine socialist governments across the globe.
The think tank is also sponsored by the US State Department, the NED, and its subsidiaries, including the Center for International Private Enterprise, which devotes itself to “strengthening democracy around the globe through private enterprise and market-oriented reform.”
From the website of CADAL.org
In January 2021, leading members of San Isidro including Otero and Pardo participated in a webinar hosted by another corporate-backed, right-wing think tank. This time, they were guests of the Latin American Center of Federalism and the Freedom Foundation.
Sponsored by multi-national corporations determined to transform Cuba into a free-market haven, and inspired by the philosophy of Ayn Rand, the Argentina-based foundation is also directly affiliated with the Atlas Network.

Among the participants in the webinar was Iliana Hernandez, a reporter for Cibercuba – one of the many anti-government outlets that cropped up in recent years following the expansion of internet services.
In a November 2020 discussion about the US election on her Facebook page, Hernandez argued that because Trump was “going to take harsher measures against the tyranny… I think that, for Cuba’s freedom, Trump should win.”
She also detailed extensive coordination between the San Isidro Movement and State Department officials serving at the US Embassy in Havana.
Referring to her discussions with the hardline US Charges d’Affaires Timothy Zúñiga-Brown and his predecessor, Mara Tekach, Hernandez remarked, “In this last conversation with Mr. Tim [Zúñiga] Brown, what he told me was, ‘how can we be of help?’ Meaning, what can we do? Because, I mean, he wanted to get orders from me and not the other way around. I told him how he could help.”
Otero has also nurtured close relations with US State Department officials. In July 2019, he and other San Isidro members proudly strutted around the US embassy compound in Havana during an event commemorating US Independence Day.
Adonis Milan, a Havana-based theater director affiliated with San Isidro, posted photos on Facebook of himself, a reggae artist and San Isidro member named Sandor Pérez Pita, and Otero “enjoying a few hour of freedom inside Cuba” while snapping selfies with US Marines.
“Viva la anexión,” Milan wrote in a post expressing his “fervent passion for the beautiful gringa.”
Otero and Milan of San Isidro celebrating Independence Day inside the US embassy
San Isidro member and reggae artist Sandor Pérez Pita, aka Rassandino, with Marines inside the US embassy in Havana
Adonis Milan captioned his portrait with US Marines: “Long live annexation”
Asked by a reporter about a meeting he held on a Havana street with former US Chargé d’affaires Tekach, Otero responded, “She is a diplomat. I can meet with Mara Tekach or the French ambassador; my friend, the ambassador from the Netherlands, or the one from the EU. Even with the Cuban President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, if one day he would like to talk to me.”
In April 2021, the Cuban government claimed to have uncovered documents revealing payments of $1,000 a month to Otero from the National Democratic Institute, a subsidiary of NED. The accusations surfaced just as the artist planned to exhibit paintings of candy wrappers at his home and invite local children to view them, teasing the kids with the sweet life socialism had denied them. He flatly denied taking any payments from US government regime change outfits.
By this point, Otero had become a star in a collaborative viral anthem that had provided Cuba’s counter-revolution with a unifying slogan and protest soundtrack.
San Isidro members Maykel Osorbo (left) and El Funky (right) flank Otero Alcántara in the video of “Patria y Vida”
Introducing “Patria y Vida,” the US State Department’s favorite rap anthem
The first song directly credited with mobilizing Cubans to protest their government was recorded by a collection of rappers and reggaeton artists that included two members of the San Isidro Movement.
Hailed by US state media outlet NPR as “the song that’s defined the uprising in Cuba,” “Patria y Vida” has racked up over 7 million views since it debuted on YouTube on February 16, 2021
Recorded in Miami, the song features three self-exiled Cuban performers: Yotuel of the Orishas hip-hop group, the reggaeton duo Gente de Zona, and singer-songwriter Descemer Bueno. They were complimented by two Havana-based San Isidro Movement members: hip-hop artists El Funky and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo.
Osorbo has proclaimed that he would “give [his] life for Trump” if the US president imposed a total blockade on Cuba with “the coasts blocked, that nothing enters in, nor anything goes out… as they did in Venezuela.”
The video for “Patria y Vida” opens with the curious image of anti-colonial Cuban hero Jose Marti merging into that of US founding father and settler-colonial slave owner George Washington.
The opening image of the video of Patria y Vida
At the song’s climax, rappers Osorbo and El Funky appear on screen flanked by San Isidro’s Otero. Claiming to have filmed their performance surreptitiously, the rappers nonetheless appear in high-quality video chanting “Patria y Vida!”
This slogan was an overt twist on Cuba’s revolutionary mantra, “Patria o Muerte,” which was first uttered by Fidel Castro at a memorial for dockworkers killed by the CIA’s deadly sabotage of the La Coubre freighter in Havana harbor in 1960. By reversing Castro’s vow to defend Cuba’s sovereignty with his life, the song’s authors take aim at the anti-imperialist political culture instilled in Cubans throughout the course of six decades.
Osorbo and El Funky’s verses mix lacerating attacks on the socialist government with tributes to San Isidro:
“We continue going in circles, security, deflecting with prism
These things make me indignant, the enigma is over
Enough of your evil revolution…”
Just one week after the song’s release, incoming USAID director Samantha Power took to Twitter to trumpet “Patria y Vida” as a reflection of a “new generation of young people in Cuba & how they are pushing back against govt repression.”
Such an interesting look at the new generation of young people in #Cuba & how they are pushing back against govt repression. A group of artists channeled their frustrations into a wildly popular new song that the government is now desperate to suppress. https://t.co/47RGc9ORuR
— Samantha Power (@SamanthaJPower) February 24, 2021
While Power is not especially known as a hip-hop connoisseur, she has earned a reputation for creating failed states in places like Libya by orchestrating humanitarian interventionist military campaigns. It is hard to imagine that her sudden interest in a viral Cuban rap anthem was not guided by a dedication to regime change on the island.
The European Parliament’s center-right European People’s Party Group also rallied to promote “Patria y Vida” just one week after its release. In Brussels, EU parliamentarian Leopoldo López-Gil – the oligarchic Spanish father of right-wing Venezuelan putschist Leopoldo López – helped host San Isidro Movement’s Otero, Yotuel, and several other figures behind the creation of “Patria y Vida.”
“I ask you today to condemn the Cuban government, so that my island has the strength to rise up…” Yotuel declared. “My people need Europe, my people need Europe to point out the abuser.”
Also on hand for the EU parliament event was Juan Guaidó, the US-appointed faux “president” of Venezuela who launched a failed military coup alongside his mentor, Leopoldo López Jr.

In the days that followed, the performers of “Patria y Vida” continued to make the regime change rounds. On March 12, Yotuel and Gente de Zona held a Zoom call with State Department officials, briefing them about the success of the song and the demands of the San Isidro Movement.
Inspiring call today with @yotuel007@GdZOficial, and @EsBeatrizLuengo, where State Department officials heard about the viral #PatriaYVidapic.twitter.com/EhVTMW0ghC
— Julie Chung (@WHAAsstSecty) March 12, 2021
Three months later, as journalist Alan MacLeod reported, Power’s USAID issued a notice of $2 million in grant opportunities for “civil society” organizations seeking to advance regime change in Cuba.
Highlighting the agency’s longstanding strategy of exploiting the demographics hit hardest by US sanctions, the document emphasized the need for programs that “support marginalized and vulnerable populations, including but not limited to youth, women, LGBTQI+, religious leaders, artists, musicians, and individuals of Afro-Cuban descent.”
In the document, USAID pointed to “Patria y Vida” as a propaganda victory that helped produce a “watershed moment” – and which foreshadowed the protests to come.
A June 2021 USAID appeal for grant proposals in Cuba singles out “Patria y Vida” as a major propaganda victory
Less than a month later, on July 11, Otero issued a call to take to the streets of Havana on behalf of the San Isidro Movement. Soon, hundreds of protesters had gathered on the city’s seaside Malecon, some with signs reading “Patria y Vida.” The opposition’s vision of a national uprising capable of washing socialism away seemed to be coming into focus.
#11JCuba Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara y el Movimiento San Isidro convocan a los cubanos a salir a Malecón para reclamar libertad en La Habana pic.twitter.com/jN4vZHyZLK
— Mario J. Pentón (@MarioJPenton) July 11, 2021
An array of factors lay behind the protests, from the collapse of an electricity station in the city of Holguin, to the government’s sputtering attempts at currency unification, to the economic wounds opened by the US blockade and kept festering by the special period of deprivation.
But through the culture warriors of San Isidro, now delegated by Washington as the official faces and voices of Cuba’s opposition, the demands of the demonstrators were interpreted as a maximalist cry for Washington to escalate its efforts at regime change.
The San Isidro Movement goes to Washington
Though the protests quickly fizzled out, remarks by President Joe Biden denigrating US-embargoed Cuba as a “failed state,” and vowing to add new crushing sanctions to those imposed by Trump suggested the Democratic administration would not return to Obama’s process of normalization. A key short-term objective of the Miami regime change lobby was therefore achieved.
July 20 congressional hearings on Cuba in the House Foreign Affairs Committee highlighted the pivotal role San Isidro has played in the renewed push to topple Cuba’s government.
There, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a right-wing Democrat from South Florida, cited commentary by liberal academic Amalia Dache assailing Black Lives Matter for its statement of solidarity with the Cuban revolution. She then pointed to Afro-Cubans as an emerging base of anti-communist ferment on the island.
Several feet away sat Rep. Mark Green, a pro-Trump Republican, sporting a shirt emblazoned with the slogan, “Patria y Vida,” beneath his suit jacket.
Republican Rep. Mark Green sports a “Patria y Vida” during a July 20 House Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Cuba
That same day on Capitol Hill, the right-wing Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation honored the San Isidro Movement during its Captive Nations Week Summit.
In his remarks presenting the Dissident Human Rights award to the San Isidro Movement, Victims of Communism founder and veteran conservative movement operative Lee Edwards declared, “it isn’t always politics, but culture, which is so important in the battle we’re engaged in right now.”
Above: Victims of Communism founder Lee Edwards honors the San Isidro Movement
Maykel Osorbo, the hip-hop artist who starred in “Patria y Vida,” accepted the award on behalf of San Isidro. “My brother, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he exclaimed in a pre-recorded message to the crowd of silver-haired, right-wing Republicans.
As we will see in part two of this investigation, US government-sponsored operatives affiliated with the San Isidro Movement helped lay the groundwork for the July protests in Cuba from US soil. Working from Florida, they launched the #SOSCuba hashtag calling for US intervention in Cuba months before it flooded social media networks.

thegrayzone.com · by Max Blumenthal · July 26, 2021







V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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