The U.S. State Department under the leadership of Secretary Hillary Clinton continued a program to embolden foreign, revolutionary, social media activists to agitate for regime change in various parts of the world. The program arguably had major, detrimental consequences for the trajectory of the Middle East.
Recent leaks show a memo that top Clinton aide Huma Abedin sent to her boss stating, “I’m giving you credit for inspiring the ‘peaceful’ protests,” with regard to Egypt, with quotation marks around the word “peaceful.”
The United States government is believed to have utilized a program called the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, co-founded by a close Hillary Clinton adviser, to provide networking opportunities for an activist plotting to overthrow Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak several years before the “Arab Spring” protests that led to widespread regime change in the Middle East.
When Hillary Clinton took over the State Department the next month, she kept Cohen on her State Department Policy Planning staff. Cohen worked for Clinton for almost two years, where he focused on counter-radicalization strategies in the Middle East, before taking a job with Google (now Alphabet).
After Clinton took office, her State Department sponsored the next Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in Mexico City in 2009. Clinton personally announced and addressed that Summit to encourage the activists in attendance. She also became the face of the “21st Century Statecraft” initiative spearheaded by Cohen.
Clinton’s State Department partnered with Google, Facebook, and others to sponsor the 2009 Alliance of Youth Movements Summit in Mexico City on October 16, 2009. Clinton as Secretary of State addressed that Summit with a video message.
“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton first announced this summit in March 2009 during her digital town hall on the campus of Tecnológico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. The Secretary is committed to connecting and empowering these young community leaders,” according to a 2009 State Department press release.
Clinton’s address to the Summit called for “citizen activists” to learn how to foment change in their home countries:
By trying to save the Poroshenko regime, the United States is simply adding to the collapse of Ukraine, according to RIA Novosti political analyst Zakhar Vinogradov.
It seems that Washington has failed to realize the fact that it is continuing to contribute to the collapse of Ukraine by seeking to save the Poroshenko regime, RIA Novosti political analyst Zakhar Vinogradovsaid.
His remarks came after the US House of Representatives approved the "Act on stability and democracy in Ukraine" which among other things earmarks money for supplying lethal weapons to Kiev.
However, by failing to understand the essence of the latest events in Ukraine, Washington has actually exacerbated a civil conflict by arming opponents of the current regime, he says.
In this vein, Vinogradov referred to a recent visit to Ukraine by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his French colleague Jean-Marc Ayrault, who, in fact, brought a peace plan for the settlement of the civil conflict in eastern Ukraine. The document largely coincided with Russian's stance on the matter.
Poroshenko has vehemently opposed this peace plan in a move that was supported by many "hawks" in the country's government and parliament, Vinogradov said, pointing to some Ukrainian businesspeople's drive to continue to capitalize on the ongoing war in their country.
Secondly, the peace plan will also be blocked by the Ukrainian radical groups which currently number up to 50,000 armed militants who refer to themselves as the so-kind "volunteer battalions". Being members of these groups remains the only way to survive for these gunmen, according to Vinogradov.
"Now that it is becoming clear that Kiev is to blame for the war turning into a protracted conflict, the United States wants to radicalize the situation," Vinogradov saidb referring to the "Act on stability and democracy in Ukraine" which allows Kiev to receive lethal weapons.
Meanwhile, the US knows full well that it is losing its ally Europe that wants neither war nor sanctions any longer, he said, adding that the Ukrainian problem added to a split between the EU and the US, something that was reflected by the French and German Foreign Ministers' visit to Ukraine.
As for US Vice President Joe Biden, he currently faces a moment of truth related to Ukraine being hit by corruption, the absence of reforms and the agonizing economy, Vinogradov said, adding that if the anti-Russian sanctions are scrapped, both Poroshenko and Biden will be losers.
Footage of the nighttime attack on the Syrian aid convoy in Aleppo has surfaced. But there's something curious about how the footage has been appearing on Western news reports. A commenter on the Moon of Alabama blog, PavewayIV, made the following observations about what appears in the video, and what it suggests. First, however, here's an unedited version of the blast, courtesy of ABC:
In the screen cap above, you can see what looks to be a cloud of sparks following an initial explosion. According to PavewayIV, this is a signature of the Metal-Augmented Charge (MAC) Hellfire AGM-114N, the Predator drone's typical payload.
The fiery cloud is produced by the residue of the fine-mesh fluorinated aluminum particles (the "metal augmentation"). Aside from the ABC footage, most other networks have shown edited versions that make this signature difficult to detect.
For example, here's AP's version:
Shakey-cam added for jihadi-vision effect? Why would they do this?
Thermobaric Hellfire air-blasts don't leave craters, and they typically start fires. No craters are visible in footage of the burned convoy.
The Russians have thermobaric bombs, too, according to PavewayIV, but they use different particles and their blast patterns are different: either no "sparkles" or long-duration "sparkles", not the fast-duration flash as seen in the video of the Aleppo blast.
As we reported yesterday, the Russians detected a Predator drone which took off from Incirlik airbase in Syria, flew to the precise location of the convoy, arrived before the strike, stayed for a while, then left after the damage was done.
Surely just a coincidence...
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