COVID-19 is biological warfare against prisoners

March 3, 2022

One in every five state and federal prisoners in the United States has tested positive for the coronavirus, a rate more than four times as high as the general population – 1,700 loved ones have died. In some states, more than half of prisoners have been infected, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project. Stop experimenting and start releasing!

Part 2 of Herd Immunity

by Cheryl Vaughn, California Institute for Women (CIW)

Editor’s note: We continue with our JPay correspondence from Cheryl Vaughn, W93852, who sounds like an activist, but is a woman sharing her grave concerns about the plight of women prisoners being treated inhumanely at CIW – same as many of us might do sitting around our kitchen tables sharing our thoughts on the state of the world – feeling she has little to no agency over her ability to change her circumstances, other than having hope, saying prayers and risking retaliation for exposing current prison conditions at CIW to the public.

Jan. 5, 2022 (excerpt)

We are in Phase 1 again. Deja Vu. They seem dead set on not letting people go.

Then they got the nerve to speak harshly: “Go to your cells! Close your doors!” Then you hear a woman’s voice loudly over their radio snippy and shouting harshly: “No inmates are to be showering or using phones, they don’t get to be out!!” They love locking us down, yelling, talking down to us like we’re bad dogs or something. 

Those compaction moves were bound to contribute to this current environment of Covid positives. How utterly cruel, murderous even. They would rather watch us die or suffer, than let people go or do any of the right, moral and ethically sound things humans do if they have a responsibility over the lives of others. 

With power comes responsibility. But this treatment is utterly criminal – no better than what many of us are accused of doing or have done. In some ways it’s worse, because it’s genocide.

Here’s the coldest part of it – the warden is a woman of color. A Black woman! How could she?!

Jan. 8, 2022

Dear Nube Brown, 

I hope this letter finds you all doing well, staying safe out there. We here at CIW are trying to maintain our mental and physical health. 

We were issued one N95 mask each about three days ago. However, we are expected to wear them when we come out of our cells per one of the housing lieutenants. But we were wondering, how often should we get a new one? Generally, officers have them, but rarely do we ever get them unless we are on a transport out of the prison. If we are going to be on this statewide 15-day quarantine, shouldn’t we get one a day, at least, of the N95 mask?

snippy and shouting harshly: “No inmates are to be showering or using phones, they don’t get to be out!!”

Aside from the quarantine we are already on because we have positives in our housing unit here in Emmons A and Emmons B, the staff is not telling us who is or isn’t positive; something they never should have been doing in the first place because it was causing people added stress and shame for everyone to know they were specifically on quarantine with the sign on their cell doors, and everyone would blame them because the quarantines would cut short the programming time of everyone in the unit. 

Another thing I question is, should the porters (inmate workers) be the ones controlling the bleach, holding on to it, not allowing other inmates access to it themselves, etc.? We have one very, very bossy inmate worker who wants to tell others what to do so badly, policing other inmates especially since they pick on certain ones and overlook their buddies.

Inmate workers are out of their cells while the rest of the population is locked down. They began to address other inmates in a superior tone and tell the COs how they want to run things. The staff are so short that they are allowing this behavior because they need the help, I guess. 

It’s very bad policy – inmates should never be put in a position to police other inmates. Morally speaking, they should not even want to, but apparently the incarcerated workers don’t recognize the damage of allowing themselves to be used by the system like this. They don’t get all the PPE gear that staff does, so why even be used like that? 

Sincerely, Inmate Cheryl Vaughn  W93852

Jan. 14, 2022

Hi, Nube. It’s me, Cheryl, from CIW.

Food insecurity is becoming a feature of prison now, and it doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon. The pandemic has a lot to do with this.

Schools are facing this same problem. But why should CDCR take funding from schools and other vital services just to keep prisons open and prison guards employed? Certainly, if schools are facing food shortages because of supply-chain crises, then the chains that supply prisons should be supplying the public schools instead.

It’s very bad policy – inmates should never be put in a position to police other inmates.

However, if that happens, prisoners will come up short. It then becomes unjust detention when captors cannot supply inmates with the proper amounts of nutritional, at least somewhat palatable, food to sustain each person on a daily basis. We are already beginning to see food insecurities here in CIW.

We really need to start on a true campaign of vigorous prison closures in California. Too much money is being taken from other needy programs for prisons. The detention in California is already reaching a level where it has become unjust detention. 

Covid is continually scourging inmates and staff. We drink unsafe water. Our dilapidated buildings and plumbing are fit for demolition; These old buildings are full of asbestos. We receive substandard medical care, there’s overcrowding of inmates and we’re too close together – then we get another surge of positive Covid cases. 

The huge shortages of staff are due to the pandemic. These unsafe conditions abound in California prisons. Conditions were already bad for prisoners, and sometimes even staff, but mostly since Covid, they are unbearable. 

Critical times, hard to deal with, heading toward tribulations – the cycles of abuse seem never ending with no sign of letup. There is no more possibility of reform – the California prison system is broken beyond any hopes of repair.

Truthfully, the people should close all except the very few highest-level prisons for serial killers and rapists and child molesters – although even a few people in some of those categories may possibly be reformed – but the California prison system itself is way out of control and beyond reform.

The Department of Agriculture pledged in the week of Dec. 17, 2021, to send up to $1.5 billion to states and school districts to help fortify the nation’s school-meal program. The funds, which the USDA says it hopes to make available in January of 2022, are intended to help schools deal with disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The bulk of the funds is expected to flow to as many as 100,000 schools in all 50 states.

Last time that I checked, no other state’s prison guards are as well funded as California’s.

Sounds nice, but how many times has the bulk of funding allocated for public programs, even schools, ended up in police coffers and prison personnel pockets instead? Besides, the funding the police organizations hijack isn’t going toward the inmates, but for salaries, raises, medical care and dental coverage, and so many other perks and benefits for prison employees and their families.

The nepotism in hiring for some of these prisons in California is so blatant and rampant that several generations of one family can be employed in one prison alone. A lot of that happens right here at CIW. Perhaps there are rules against this practice, but no one seems to be enforcing those rules.

Funding also goes for more employee vehicles and weapons to use against inmates. Not even New York’s correctional peace officers union have it as well as the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Last time that I checked, no other state’s prison guards are as well funded as California’s.

This comes at the cost of taking money that should be for firefighters, teachers, medical personnel in public hospitals – not just jail or prison infirmaries, where it’s well-known that medical care for incarcerated people is substandard, and medical personnel in carceral institutions usually lack proper credentials and training for treating inmate-patients.

These monies should also be for homeless shelters and senior centers and animal shelters, the improvement of public-school grounds and equipment and more after-school programs, etc. [These monies should be for] the community – really put funds into the hands of the community instead of criminalizing almost everyone in the community besides a select few. 

The inhumane treatment of incarcerated people is not considered criminal, but protesting such treatment is criminalized.

Please stop the school to prison pipeline which is set to churn out more slaves for the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) – brainwashing men, women, children, everyone, into believing we are all chattel once we are incarcerated.

The PIC is also having us believe that speaking out against being treated as such makes us rebels, outlaws and criminals. Oh, People, stop funding this diabolical system.

Now, here’s the cold part, where it gets tricky: The inhumane treatment of incarcerated people is not considered criminal, but protesting such treatment is criminalized. Framing trouble by decree like the 13th Amendment did and still does to this day, hundreds of years later, after the Civil War, there’s a modern-day slave class – prisoners.

Sincerely, Cheryl Vaughn

Jan. 16, 2022

Hi Nube, it’s me Cheryl from CIW. Today is Sunday Jan. 16, 2022.

My e-mails of course are all monitored closely as my regular snail mail is. 

I do worry that as a result, I can expect retaliation, though. But I know that’s going to happen anyway as soon as this state quarantine is over – I have been hearing rumblings of, “Oh yeah, come February” from a CO.

Officials may transfer me to some worse prison or put me in a cell with some bully or known thief. An officer has already “jokingly” threatened me to do something like that. He is the same one that keeps clapping his hands in my presence talking about, “come February.” I guess that’s when we are expected to get out of quarantine. The staff have also said things that let me know they have been reading my mail, so it’s too late for me to clam-up now.

 As I write this, I was just told I am getting a bunky again, one who came from off the bus. Double-celled again. They are filling us up again right now. It’s so bogus how staff on second and third watch shifts make the safety COVID announcements daily about social distancing, then turn around and place us with bunkies like there’s a revolving door to each cell.

Also, I dared to question the reasoning behind CIW – or any prison in California – having the same person as warden, or even acting warden, who was the warden at CIM who allowed the transfer of 122 inmates from CIM (California Institute for Men) to San Quentin on May 30, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

a real surge in positive Covid cases throughout the prison – why would the warden do such a careless thing at this time? 

Right now, some of the same officials responsible are working here at CIW, despite so many deaths caused by their carelessness. What’s worse is, during this Omicron variant, this ex-CIM official who now works here at CIW, has made many compaction moves double bunking almost all of us once again, even though doing so may be a violation of the treatment of prisoners under the United Nations’ Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela rules), and the standards defined by the American Correctional Association (ACA). The cells are tinier than the bathrooms in most homes.

The compaction moves here at CIW have caused so much stress and mental anguish. The main thing to happen since these moves has been a real surge in positive Covid cases throughout the prison. Why would the warden do such a careless thing at this time? 

Is this part of some scheme to test out the power of the vaccinations against COVID or what?! We were already secretly used as Guinea pigs by officials during the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in prisons throughout the U.S., in an attempt to establish herd immunity during the Trump administration. Crimes against humanity is what it looks like from where I sit.

I don’t know what’s up their sleeves, but I can only imagine. Naturally, being a lifer who has never gone to Board, even after 22 years of incarceration, I am sure I can expect to pay dearly for expressing myself at Board. 

At one point, people of color who were going to the Board were being asked if they were going to have any dealings with the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. I cannot recall verbatim how the questions were posed, but the fact that it was even brought up during a Board hearing was intimidating. That was the way one young woman took it. I was not there in the room, so I have not seen the actual transcripts to know exactly what was said.

Fortunately, one of the people who this happened to has paroled. So, thank you Nube, by all means publish. Thank you for listening to my cries of anguish.

Sincerely, Cheryl Vaughn W93852

Jan. 26, 2022 (excerpt)

The governor is looking the other way, but these wardens must be doing this at the request of some higher official. You may find this same weirdness is happening all across the U.S., with wardens intentionally exposing inmates to this deadly virus to establish herd immunity. But in the process, they have sacrificed the lives of inmates and staff.

No one gave INFORMED CONSENT to be used this way. We are not just acceptable casualties. This affects the public, not just prisoners. 

It reminds me of the Tuskegee Experiments: Black male prisoners were exposed to a venereal disease. Sure, some may have contracted it naturally, but prison staff let those men go untreated to record how the disease progressed on each “subject.” Some of the men may have died, but all really suffered needlessly, and were injured in mind and body, some permanently. 

So, Covid is being used as a weapon against prisoners; I think it is like biological warfare.

Whatever those in power claim as the reason why they are allowing or even facilitating these outbreaks doesn’t matter, the results are weapons against a particular group of people – genocidal behavior of authorities against inmates, people who cannot fend for themselves.

Send our sister some love and light: Cheryl Vaughn, W93852, CIW, Emmons 403-L, 16756 Chino-Corona Rd., Corona, CA 92880.

Editor’s note: Cheryl Vaughn, like all those that speak out, are at risk of retaliation and other forms of intimidation to keep them silent or in fear. We can provide some protection and support by taking time to write to our imprisoned writers, and calling the governor with your concerns: 916-445-2841. 

Our community members behind the walls should not feel alone, hopeless or separate from the struggles we face out here. Let’s stand in solidarity with our community members behind the walls in our commitment to assert our humanity and fight for what’s right. 

https://sfbayview.com/

The kinky roots of British royalty

March 6, 2022

Meghan, Harry and Archie met with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on their African tour in September 2019.

by Karen Mims

https://sfbayview.com/

So, what do we really know about the Brits?

We know that they have a very colorful history and folklore. We know that the early settlers came to America fleeing religious persecution from merry old England, (Britain is the island comprising England, Scotland and Wales.) One might say they were not having such a jolly old time.

Many of us have read or seen movies about the courageous King Arthur and his lovely wife Lady Guinevere who was in love with Sir Lancelot, a gallant knight and loyal friend of King Arthur. Human behavior is timeless. This had all the makings of a medieval love triangle.

If you were of nobility or a tax collector traveling through the forest during 14th century England, you may have had the misfortune to have made the acquaintance of that socially conscious fellow Robin Hood. Robin took from the rich and gave to the poor, sort of a medieval socialist. Why should a few people have so much, and the masses have nothing? Whether you called him friend or foe, his popularity grew as did his legend.

What would Britain be without her royalty? Undoubtedly a very pale English rose. Well, one can rest assured that there is nothing pale about British English Royalty. Her history is just as colorful as her folklore. Let us begin with the Tudors.

Henry the 8th, one of England’s very capable and ruthless monarchs, married the Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon. It was said that Henry and Katherine were quite the couple. They were very much in love. Katherine made several unsuccessful attempts to give her husband a male heir. Her inability to deliver a male heir for the throne was a fatal blow to her marriage. Well, of course there were always ambitious ladies waiting to catch the eye of the king. It’s been documented that two of Henry’s wives lost their heads over him.

This brings us to Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudor monarchs. Elizabeth, like her father, was a great monarch in her own right. Britain/England flourished under her reign. She beheaded her cousin Mary Queen of Scotts for treason.

Elizabeth was commonly referred to as “The Virgin Queen.”. Was she really a virgin? Who knows? Remember she was the daughter of Queen Anne Boleyn; her father, King Henry the 8th, had her mother decapitated. She remembered what happened to a woman when she was too trusting of a man. She thought an empty bed was fair trade for keeping her head and her throne. History has shown she did both.

Queen Elizabeth I remembered what happened to a woman when she was too trusting of a man. She thought an empty bed was fair trade for keeping her head and her throne. History has shown she did both.

What did the Queen of Talk interview reveal about the modern royals? Oprah’s interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was highly anticipated. Millions of people tuned in curious as to what insights could be gained about the world’s most admired and longest reigning monarch. What intrigues lie behind the frozen smiles of British Royals? What whispers may now be spoken? 

More tea was spilled during the interview than was spilled at the Boston Tea Party. Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, who thinks of herself as an independent woman, has been very vocal regarding women’s rights and empowerment. Megan’s own voice was silenced. She was now unable to advocate for herself, she said. Her own life was vastly different from the public image of a fairytale princess that all is well and that she and Harry were living happily ever after. The Duchess of Sussex was a frightened young woman whose life had more in common with Cinderella, living under lock and key with extended periods of isolation.

Living under constant private and public scrutiny, as well as being dogged by the press and deprived of help, Meghan’s mental health began to rapidly decline. Death shadowed her as suicidal thoughts took up permanent residence in her mind.

Centuries ago, monarchs and people of great wealth had enormous influence over their subjects. They had the power of life and death over them. To offend or displease the monarchs may cause one’s head to roll. Today’s royals may not be capable of causing one’s head to roll, at least literally, but they clearly have influence.

The royal’s refusal to bring clarity to an incident involving Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton, in which Kate was responsible, gave root to shaping her public persona as a villain. Perhaps if the royals had displayed some integrity, her reputation would not have been as damaged. 

Adding insult to injury, Prince Harry’s relatives, the royal family, also called “The Firm,” conveyed to Harry, as he confided in his wife, and now to Oprah and the world, that there was concern about how dark-skinned their unborn child, who is now Archie, would be – that a child with African features would be an embarrassment to the crown.

The royal family, also called “The Firm,” conveyed to Harry, as he confided in his wife, and now to Oprah and the world, that there was concern about how dark-skinned their unborn child, who is now Archie, would be – that a child with African features would be an embarrassment to the crown.

As a White man, who is also a prince, Harry was shocked and bewildered. I am certain Harry never experienced racism that was unapologetically in his face and directed towards him. Born into the pinnacle of privilege, European royalty, one would never be a target of it. He was shocked by the reality that his life of privilege did not extend to his Black wife and yes, little Archie. We all are aware of the one drop theory. It affected Meghan and their children.

Maybe having royalty, a prince or princess with a proud, conscious awareness of his or her African heritage would be politically threatening on the world stage regarding African affairs. Or maybe they did not wish to support a modern prince whose Hebrew identity was awakened in the courts of Pharaoh.

Meghan’s White heritage didn’t afford her access to the real goodies; it got her a quick peek before the door was quickly closed and sealed. When the prince married Miss Markle, he crossed the line – or let us say he did not stay within the boundaries of his social class. He brought home a lovely young woman who was educated but still Black, and Harry turned around and married her. 

The way the British royals and many of the elite looked at it, Harry married the help. Frozen smiles and public whispers were boldly unmasked. Meghan’s in-laws consolidated in typical White supremacist fashion to marginalize the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Harry, this is how it is done. 

The way the British royals and many of the elite looked at it, Harry married the help. Frozen smiles and public whispers were boldly unmasked. Meghan’s in-laws consolidated in typical White supremacist fashion to marginalize the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.  

They completely changed the rules of the game that worked well enough until Meghan Markle came along – especially since the prince would soon be the father of a Black child or a child of color. Distance had to be placed between the lily-white British throne and all of the privileges that go along with it that shout “Whites only!” like security for your family, your children, any titles, and cutting you off financially. 

If it was not for the Duke of Sussex’s inheritance that his mother left him, Harry may have been known as the pauper prince. The Duke and Duchess came face to face with the invisible but real presence of White supremacy as it thrives behind one of its greatest institutions, the British monarchy.

One day out of curiosity, I decided to check out European history and I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that “curiosity killed the cat,” and it did. Satisfaction brought it back. Those arrogant British royals are a pretty kinky lot. No, I do not mean as in Prince Andrew’s alleged kind of kinky, but in the British Black Queen Charlotte kinky. Yes, that is some kinky roots. Queen Charlotte was a light skinned, flat nosed, big lip sister.

I use kinky as a kind of synonym for Black or African. Those uppity British royals have Black, as in African, blood. They got that drop. Queen Charlotte was a direct descendant from Margarite de Castro y Sousa, a Black branch of the Portuguese royal house, according to PBS Frontline. 

My imagination became fueled by the blatant disrespect the current British royals displayed to the Duke of Sussex and his wife the Duchess of Sussex because of her African heritage. If it were possible for Queen Charlotte to return for a moment, what would be her reaction? Personally, honestly, I believe she would have felt so dishonored that her African blood would be boiling.

Queen Charlotte was a light skinned, flat nosed, big lip sister. If it were possible for her to return for a moment, what would be her reaction? Personally, honestly, I believe she would have felt so dishonored that her African blood would be boiling.

Queen Charlotte, of Moorish descent, was well rooted in her kinkiness, her Blackness, and would have called them out – including Queen Elizabeth herself – and they would have been put on notice about their hypocrisy. That would have made interesting coverage.

If Her Majesty Queen Charlotte had stuck around a little longer, she would shout to the world, standing on top of Buckingham Palace, which her late husband King George III purchased for her as a family home in 1761, that not only the current British royal held a kinky past.

Remember I use kinky as a synonym for Black or African, but the entire British country is kinky rooted, meaning deeply Black. The remains of a 10,000-year-old man were discovered in a gorge in Cheddar Somerset, Britain. The man was accurately identified, possible because of the advancement of technology, by scientists who added flesh to his skeletal remains. This was accomplished by extracting his DNA. 

Scanning the skull, experts were able to recreate the man with unprecedented detail. It was determined that he had dark to Black skin with wavy hair; and get this: He had blue eyes. I began this article asking, “What do we really know about the Brits?” I now know that every blue-eyed, blond-haired Brit’s origin is deeply kinky at its roots.

One more thing, we spilled a lot of tea. Let us have a cup. I am serving it with crow. Eat and drink up, Brits.

Community activist Karen Mims can be reached at kmims048@gmail.com. 

 

The Tragedy Of Ukraine’s Abyss: Three Decades Of Misguided Geopolitics – OpEd

Location of Ukraine. Source: CIA World Factbook.

 March 7, 2022  

By Dan Steinbock

The Russia-Ukraine war was not warranted. Ukrainians despair for peace. Russia needs security. China offers development. But Blackwater, US, NATO and the far-right Ukrainian paramilitaries seek something very different.

In his TV address of February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced three decades of NATO expansion and broken pledges to Russia. Moscow did not intend to occupy Ukraine but wanted to “demilitarize and de-nazify” the country. As bombs exploded in several Ukrainian cities, Putin’s speech was discounted in the West, even as Facebook reversed its ban on users praising the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi white supremacist military unit.  

In reality, Putin’s address was not a rogue autocrat’s conspiracy fantasy. 

NATO expansion, rise of far-right paramilitaries 

A series of security assurances were given to Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders against NATO expansion at the turn of the 1990s, as evidenced by declassified files posted online half a decade ago by the Washington-based National Security Archive. 

Moreover, NATO expansion was widely condemned already in June 26, 1997, by a group of 50 leading U.S. foreign policy experts, including the architect of the Cold War Paul Nitze, in an open letter to President Clinton (Figure 1). With foresight, they warned it would undermine U.S.-Russian mutual trust and nuclear arms control. 

Figure 1 NATO Opposition: Open letter to President Clinton, Jun. 26, 1997

Another ironic outcome was the rejuvenation of Ukrainian far-right, which entered an ominous phase last November, when Russia presented a motion in the UN against the “glorification of Nazism.” The overwhelming majority passed the resolution, which was opposed by the U.S., along with Ukraine and Canada. 

It was a stunning reversal of official US stance, yet perfectly aligned with US covert activities since the postwar era. During World War II, Ukraine’s far-right anti-Communist forces collaborated with Nazi-Germany. During the Cold War, they cooperated with Washington. Since the 2014 Ukrainian unrest and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, these clandestine networks, fostered by Western intelligence services, have been dominated by far-right, neo-Nazi and white supremacist paramilitaries, as evidenced by a recent study on Ukrainian far-right by a US watchdog on far-right extremism.

U.S. has given overt and covert training, financing and arming to these groups. And since the mid-2010s, Ukraine has been the Mecca for far-right white supremacists from the West, as stressed by a West Point report.

Undermining Ukraine’s development with China 

Even as tensions have progressively escalated in the past half a decade, trade ties between Ukraine and China have steadily increased since President Viktor Yanukovych’s state visit to Beijing in 2013. Four years later, Ukraine, now under President Poroshenko, joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And in 2019, China bypassed Russia as Ukraine’s biggest single trading partner. Together, the two absorb a fourth of Ukraine’s exports, over six times more than the US (Figure 2). 

Figure 2 Ukraine’s major trading partners, 2021  

Source: The Observatory of Economic Complexity, Mar 1, 2022

In June 2020, Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov signed a deal to strengthen cooperation in multiple areas, particularly in infrastructure financing and construction. And last year, overall trade boomed to $19 billion, having soared 80% since 2013. To Ukraine’s President Zelensky, the BRI meant an alternative future that would be more peaceful and stable. Or as he said in his phone conversation with President Xi Jinping, Ukraine might become a “bridge to Europe” for Chinese investments. 

In just a year, major Chinese companies started operations in construction (CPCG, CHEC), food (COFCO) and telecoms (Huawei). Intriguingly, Huawei, which U.S. has struggled to bury for a decade, Ukraine to develop mobile networks, won the bid to install a 4G network in Kyiv’s subway and was selected in 2020 to improve Ukraine’s cyber defense and -security. Indeed, new contracts signed by Chinese companies in the Ukrainian engineering market exceed $2 billion for two consecutive years. 

But Washington did not perceive stability and development as an acceptable future for Ukraine. Hence, the U.S. penchant to ignore Russian pleas for diplomacy, Zelenskyy’s reconciliation efforts that were derailed by the far-right paramilitaries, the purposeful neglect of Austrian-style options for neutrality in the region and the fatal sanctions against Russia that will ultimately undermine global economic prospects.

The White House has opted for very different scenarios.

Ukraine’s military-industrial complex: From Prince to Biden 

From 1991 to 2014, the US flooded Ukraine with $4 billion in military assistance. Over $2.7 billion has been added since then, plus over a billion provided by the NATO Trust Fund, and all that is only a part of the NATO total. Even before the crisis, that inched closer to $10 billion. To Erik Prince, it was a great money-making opportunity, Iraq déjà vu. 

As the founder of the private US military contractor Blackwater (renamed Academy), Prince had long supplied mercenaries to the CIA, Pentagon and State Department for covert operations, including torture and assassinations. In early 2020, as Washington struggled to keep China and economic development out of Ukraine, Prince outlined a “roadmap” for the creation of a “vertically integrated aviation defense consortium” that could bring $10 billion in revenues and investment.

However, Prince needed the Motor Sich factory, which had a deal with Beijing Skyrizon Aviation. The Chinese company had bought its 41% stake already in 2017. Chinese investors hoped to invest $250 million in one of the largest advanced engine manufacturers for airplanes and helicopters worldwide. 

Prince pushed his plan, with tacit support by his family, a powerful Republican dynasty; and his sister Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education. While the Trump administration urged Ukraine not to complete the sale to the Chinese, the 2020 election undermined the plan. Prince’s Ukrainian partners got under criminal investigation for alleged efforts to sway the 2020 presidential election and the investigation included President Biden’s son and his stakes in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Washington blacklisted the Chinese firm involved, then Ukrainian court froze the holding for “national security” reasons and Chinese companies and dealmakers were sanctioned. 

After Trump left the White House, the idea of the nascent military-industrial complex remains in both the US and Ukraine, where the state-controlled sector employs more than 1 million people and has moved into increased military procurement since 2014. 

Zelenskyy’s government sees the complex as “strategic.” It could serve the needs of the US, Ukrainian state, its defense suppliers and their oligarch owners. As a platform, it could pave way to the next regime change in the region. And it is located close to Kremlin.  

Global risks that were avoidable

In an interview done over 2 months ago, US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor predicted both the Russian invasion and its timing. The ex-Pentagon advisor also suggested U.S. policy was misguided and captive by “the war lobby” in America. Ukraine that remains “independent, sovereign, free… may or may not have anything to do with membership in NATO. But we haven’t been willing to consider that.”

Similarly, a highly-regarded U.S. foreign policy expert, Michael Mandelbaum, one of the original signatories of the 1997 protest against the NATO expansion, sees the current Ukrainian crisis as a logical outcome of “one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of America.”

Ukraine’s shift toward warfare economy has occurred at the expense of Ukrainians’ welfare. After the Cold War, Ukrainian living standards were not that different relative to Poland. By the end of 2021, they had fallen 60% behind those in Poland. Today, they are barely ahead of those in the war-torn Libya – another target of Western regime change.

In terms of global economic prospects, the risk is that the misguided geopolitics will soon not only derail the lingering global recovery. It could result in stagflationary recession by dividing the international community in the worst possible way in the worst possible time. 

What happens in Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine.

A version of the commentary was published by China-US Focus on March 4, 2022

Dan Steinbock

Dr Dan Steinbock is an recognized expert of the multipolar world. He focuses on international business, international relations, investment and risk among the leading advanced and large emerging economies. He is a Senior ASLA-Fulbright Scholar (New York University and Columbia Business School). Dr Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized expert of the multipolar world. He focuses on international business, international relations, investment and risk among the major advanced economies (G7) and large emerging economies (BRICS and beyond). Altogether, he monitors 40 major world economies and 12 strategic nations. In addition to his advisory activities, he is affiliated with India China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and EU Center (Singapore). As a Fulbright scholar, he also cooperates with NYU, Columbia University and Harvard Business School. He has consulted for international organizations, government agencies, financial institutions, MNCs, industry associations, chambers of commerce, and NGOs. He serves on media advisory boards (Fortune, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, McKinsey).

Secret talks in Venezuela: US officials visit Maduro in effort to further isolate Putin

US officials are exploring a possible partial lifting of oil sanctions imposed on Caracas as part of their strategy to isolate Russia, as well as the possible release of Citgo executives jailed in Venezuela, sources tell Univision.


POR::DAVID C ADAMS
 6 MAR 2022 

Crédito: Ana Maria Otero/AP

Senior U.S. officials flew to Venezuela on Saturday for talks with Nicolas Maduro's government, to explore a deal to partially lift U.S. oil sanctions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and skyrocketing energy prices that are pushing inflation even higher in the United States, according to two sources familiar with the talks.

The secret trip is the highest-level U.S. visit to Venezuela since Washington imposed sweeping sanctions on the Maduro regime in 2019 and appears to be part of a U.S. strategy to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. officials, National Security Director for the Western Hemisphere, Juan Gonzalez and ambassador to Venezuela, Jimmy Story, met with Maduro on Saturday, sources told Univision, but neither government has made any official comment about the meeting.

The White House told reporters at a briefing on Friday that the Biden administration was “looking at ways to reduce the import of Russian oil while also making sure that we are maintaining the global supply needs out there."

Bipartisan legislation is already being drawn up in Congress while some 80% of Americans think the United States should stop buying Russian oil, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Friday.

But some Republicans strenuosly oppose any deal with Maduro. "Joe Biden using Russia as an excuse to do the deal they always wanted to do anyway with the Maduro Regime," tweeted Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Sunday. "Rather than produce more American oil he wants to replace the oil we buy from one murderous dictator with oil from another murderous dictator," he added.

Russian oil dependence varies globally

Russian oil accounts for only about 5% of U.S. petroleum imports (about 670,000 barrels a day), and a smaller amounts of liquid natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). But U.S. allies in Europe, especially Germany and Italy are much more dependent on Russia for their energy. Germany relies on Russia for about 34% of its oil needs and two-thirds of its natural gas, which itself accounts for 27% percent of all the energy it consumed, according to government figures. (Germany also has wind, solar and nuclear power sources.)

Overall, the European Union imported close to 40% of its total natural gas consumption and 25% of its oil from Russia in 2021.

The United States and its allies are under growing pressure to further punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by sanctioning Russia's oil and gas exports. Venezuela, once one of the largest oil and gas exporters in the world, could serve as a potential alternate source of oil supplies should western nations decided to cut off Russian oil and gas exports, which they have so far hesitated from doing.

But Venezuelan oil production has fallen drastically in recent years and critics object to Maduro being allowed to benefit financially without major concessions.

China to tax Venezuelan crude: the possible end of an alliance that marks another chapter in Maduro's economic debacle


US and Venezuela would have to make major concessions

Any a=reement would involve a huge change of policy from both sides. The Biden administration has insisted it will not lift sanctions, including on Venezuela's vital oil sector, unless Maduro takes concrete steps toward holding free elections.


It would also be a stunning development if Maduro were to take any action against the interests of the Kremlin. Venezuela on Feb. 25 blamed the United States and NATO for the crisis in Ukraine, though it abstained in a vote at the United Nations condemning the Russian invasion.

In a March 1 phone call, Putin and Maduro discussed the situation in Ukraine and talked about increasing a strategic partnership between Russia and Venezuela, the Interfax news agency reported, citing the Kremlin.

Advocates of a negotiated solution, like the International Crisis Group, have long advocated for the phased lifting of sanctions in return for progress in restoring institutional rule in Venezuela.

“The current crisis offers an opportunity to break the logjam, but Washington will need to be aware of the danger that a deal under these circumstances might enable the Venezuelan government to sideline opposition voices and consolidate authoritarian rule," said Phil Gunson, the Crisis Group senior analyst for the Andes region.

"Ultimately, the price of combating tyranny is a period of much higher gas prices. That's a price we need to pay as a country," former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told CNN. "Inflation is a serious problem and this will make it worse. But preserving world order is much more fundamental and important," he added.

In photos: the umbelical cord between Moscow and Caracas
SIGUIENTE GALERÍA


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Hugo Chavez offers a ceremonial sword to Vladimir Putin during the Russian leader's official visit to Venezuela, April 2, 2010. Crédito: AP
Univision

Venezuela gets sanctions support from Russia

Since coming under sanctions, Maduro has retained power with the backing of Russia and several other autocratic allies, including China, Cuba and Iran.

While Venezuela's oil exports have fallen steeply in the last three years, while Russian oil companies and banks have played a key role in helping Maduro and state-run oil company PDVSA evade U.S. sanctions and continue shipments, often using ships without transponders or clandestine ship-to-ship transfers at sea.

In the short run, lifting the Venezuelan oil sanctions “would not have any relevant effect in the world oil market, but perhaps it could help some refiners in the US Gulf of Mexico to replace Russian oil imports,” said Francisco Monaldi, director of the Latin America Energy Program at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University.

Venezuela produces less than 800 thousand barrels per day and has little remaining production potential, he said. Meanwhile, Russia produces 11 million barrels per day and exports more than 7 million bpd. “So, Venezuela’s additional production would be irrelevant to compensate for a major disruption of Russian exports,” he added.

The US severed diplomatic relations with Maduro and closed its embassy in Caracas in 2019 after accusing the authoritarian leader of electoral fraud.

The U.S. and a large group of democratic countries, deemed Maduro's 2018 re-election a fraud and instead recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate president.

Venezuela also hold several Americans in jail, including several oil executives from Citgo, accused of corruption, who could be part of the sanctions bargain.

A former U.S. Marine, Matthew Heath, was also arrested four months after a botched coup in May 2020, launched from Colombia and led in part by a Florida company called Silvercorp USA. The Maduro regime accuses him of being a spy and a terrorist and claims he was caught carrying weapons and explosives.

WW3.0

Going Hot? Russia ‘Prepped the Battlefield’ in US Long Ago, Officials Say

U.S. should prepare for shocks like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, 

ex-CIA official warns

Jeff Stein
SPYTALK

The lights were blinking off.

As raucous pro- and anti-Trump crowds flooded into Washington for the presidential inauguration in Jan. 2017 , the D.C. police department’s citywide surveillance cameras stopped recording. Within seconds, 123 of its 178 surveillance cameras, including those monitoring the streets around the White House and the headquarters of multiple federal agencies, had been “accessed and compromised.”

The intelligence gap lasted for three days, from Jan. 12 to Jan. 15. Coming on the heels of Russia’s covert intrusions into the 2016 campaign, officials at first feared Vladimir Putin—or other bad actors, from China, Iran or North Korea—had dramatically upped their game to create more chaos in American society and its politics.

As it would turn out, it was none of them. A couple of lowlife Romanian hackers had stumbled into the system and used it in a ransomware demand for a paltry $60,800 in bitcoin in exchange for releasing control of the system. The suspects were tracked down 11 months later and extradited to D.C., where they pleaded guilty.

The incident still chills veteran agents who’ve spent decades worrying about such things. It could happen again, in spades, if the crisis over Ukraine overheats into a direct military contest between Russia and the United States, say veteran intelligence officials.

Decades ago, defectors from Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency said that its agents had planted weapons caches in the U.S. and Europe for sabotage attacks should a shooting war break out. One said it was "likely" that GRU operatives placed "poison supplies near the tributaries to major US reservoirs,” including the Potomac River that supplies Washington, D.C. with drinking water.

The defectors corroborated each others’ accounts, but it’s unclear whether any caches here were ever discovered. Swiss authorities reported finding a cache that had an exploding mechanism to destroy the evidence should an unauthorized person try to unearth it.

But the January 2017 blinding of DC surveillance cameras “highlights the fact that police, fire, EMS, cities and municipalities are as vulnerable as private sector entities to cyber attacks,” says Ammar Y. Barghouty, a retired, highly decorated FBI agent who ran a program responsible for computer threats from terrorist organizations. Like many a homeland security official over the past quarter century, Barghouty, now director of cyber consulting for The Soufan Group, says key infrastructure organizations “should implement best practices” to defend against cyber attacks.

Yes, but it’s late, says Bill Evanina, a career FBI special agent who became director of National Counterintelligence in the Obama administration. Utilities and financial networks began “raising their drawbridges” as the Ukraine crisis deepened, he and others say, but the Russians had “already prepped the battlefield for many years,” he tells SpyTalk.

“They've been installing malware in critical infrastructure for more than a decade,” said Evanina, who also once headed the Counterespionage Group at the CIA.

With Putin threatening war over Western sanctions and the possible transfer of Polish warplanes to Ukraine, Evanina says his “biggest concern is the utilization of intelligence operatives here to do close-access harm.” By that he means Russian agents sliding up to targets with electronic devices to throw their operating systems out of whack or offline—or more, physically cutting their cables and peppering its control offices with expert sniper shots.

Such happened in April 2013 at the Metcalf power facility adjacent to Silicon Valley, an incident that 60 Minutes revisited on Feb. 27. Investigators found that the unidentified perpetrators “shot 100 rifle rounds into 17 transformers, crippling the substation for a month and causing $15 million in damage,” NBC’s Bay Area affiliate reported in 2015. “The attack lasted just 19 minutes but sparked widespread concern that it was either an act of terrorism or a trial run for an even bigger assault on the nation’s power grid.” Later investigations showed the shots had been fired and cables cut with unusually high precision. Few physical security upgrades were taken at power stations around the country in the attack’s aftermath, 60 Minutes found.

It wasn’t Middle East terrorists who attacked Metcalf, U.S. intelligence agancies concluded. The Obama administration stopped short of publicly blaming Moscow, but officials told a congressional committee behind closed doors that only three actors were capable of carrying out such a sophisticated operation: the U.S., Israel and Russia—and it wasn’t Israel. The Russians have been suspected of carrying out more anomalous attacks on U.S. power stations in recent years.

Meanwhile, in 2020, the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, was fingered in the hacking of the SolarWinds IT management company, which “may have exposed the networks of more than 18,000 corporations and government agencies [and] inserted malware into an update of Orion, the company's software platform that monitors network traffic,” a Columbia University panel said. Then, six months later, Russians carried out a massive ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, which controls about half of the fuel flowing to the U.S.'s East Coast. Moscow blamed Russian “criminals” for the attack.

Like Evanina, retired CIA senior official Gregory Sims sees all this as Russia prepping the battlefield should war break out.

“Russian doctrine clearly suggests that these vulnerabilities are being exploited not only to harvest intelligence but to reconnoiter critical U.S networks to lay the groundwork for disrupting or destroying them,” Sims wrote in January.

U.S. national security leaders, he said, would be well advised to expect the unexpected, a shock on the order of Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor or Al-Qaeda’s audacious 9/11 plot.

“In the summer of 1941, U.S. officials knew that war with Japan was a real possibility, especially after imposing an oil embargo in response to Japanese military actions in French Indochina, a crippling blow given that Japan then imported 80 percent of its oil from the United States,” Sims wrote for The Cipher Brief, a web site populated by retired intelligence officials. “What was surprising was not that Japan attacked in December 1941, but that it dared to attack the U.S. Pacific Fleet in its home port at Pearl Harbor.”

“Sixty years later, in the summer of 2001,” Sims added, “warning signs about another foe, this time Al-Qaeda, were also ‘blinking red.’ The intelligence community repeatedly warned policymakers of indications that Al-Qaeda was planning a spectacular attack. Yet once again, the failure was not in anticipating an attack, but in failing to imagine its breathtaking audacity.”

Now the lights are “blinking red” in the cyber realm, but Sims says officials should widen their lens.

Going Deep

“It is worth pondering, for example, that Russia has developed, at tremendous expense, a sophisticated capability using exotic and highly specialized nuclear submarines and ships to attack the extensive network of undersea cables which carry 97% of global communications traffic, including the equivalent of $10 trillion in financial transactions daily,” wrote Sims, who served multiple tours as a CIA station chief or deputy chief before retiring in late 2018.

Diagram of Russian Project 09852 Belgorod. (via Hisutton.com)

“A coordinated, large-scale attack on this network would have the potential to wreak enormous economic, political, and social havoc on both sides of the Atlantic,” Sims added. “In Putin’s calculation, might that not be an appropriate response to a Russian ejection from SWIFT or other sanctions designed to cripple the Russian economy?”

Anything’s possible, say other veteran intelligence officials, considering Putin’s excited state of mind, but the Kremlin’s recent history of covert activities suggests its attacks will remain in the cyber realm, its “center of gravity,” as former DHS intelligence chief Brian Murphy puts it. Cyber-saboteurs could blow up gas pipelines or open the floodgates of a massive dam.

As for weapons caches, Murphy told SpyTalk in an interview, “We would hear things occasionally…from sources who heard something, from sources with less than credible access. I never heard anything come from it.” Then again, he says,​​ “it wouldn't surprise me,” because Iranian agents here had been caught in the past extracting ammonium nitrate and other chemicals from cold packs to make bombs. A decade ago, the FBI and DHS put out an alert to local law enforcement to be on the lookout for suspicious accumulations of cold packs. One can expect the Russians to be more sophisticated than that.

The GRU defectors who told their sabotage tales years ago corroborated each others’ accounts, but it’s unclear whether any caches here were ever discovered. Swiss authorities reported finding a cache that had an exploding mechanism to destroy the evidence should an unauthorized person try to unearth it. But, as Evanina told SpyTalk, just disabling a half dozen major transportation hubs, like airports, via mobile cyber devices could create chaos across the country.

“As you know, we panic like nobody in America, right?” he said. “So my biggest concern is the utilization of intelligence operatives here to do close-access harm.”

The U.S. recently booted 13 Russian diplomats suspected of espionage activities, just the latest expulsions going back to the Obama administration.

Alas, it’s not only the Russians that authorities have to worry about. Only two weeks ago, three white supremacists pleaded guilty to conspiring to take down power grids in three different regions in order to accelerate “economic distress and civil unrest.”

But the main worry right now is Russian intelligence agencies, because of their demonstrated expertise, sophistication and long record of aggression against American institutions, from infrastructure to elections.

“I think Putin is prepared to do whatever it takes,” Gregory Sims tells SpyTalk.

“His state of mind should concern the world.”