”In Vietnam the United States was ứa Ngô Đình Diệm’s “most important ally” until he was assassinated by the CIA. President Zelensky doesn’t want Ukraine to be Vietnam II as a means to sell U.S. weapons.

This is upside down. Ukraine borders Russia. Russia considers Ukraine part of a protective ring of countries dividing Russia from Western Europe. A nuclear armed NATO Ukraine is a direct military threat to Russia:

 “Zelensky’s Ukraine finds itself in the crosshairs of Moscow’s attempts to reassert its influence in what it considers its sphere of influence and prevent the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from moving into the states that once constituted the Soviet Union.” 

***

“We’re his most important ally and he’s poking us in the eye and creating daylight between Washington and Kyiv,” said the U.S. official. “It’s self-sabotage more than anything else.”

In Vietnam the United States was ứa Ngô Đình Diệm’s “most important ally” until he was assassinated by the CIA. Zelensky doesn’t want Ukraine to be Vietnam II.

***

Nevertheless, Zelensky’s message has found an audience among some U.S. officials, who emphasize that it’s the Ukrainian leader and his citizens who should have the last word.

“I have listened closely to what President Zelensky has said and he reminds us time and again that there could be a way out of this short of military action,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

“I hope there is,” he added. “But it’s his decision to make.”

MORE AT:

The Washington Post

Ukraine’s Zelensky’s message is don’t panic. That’s making the West antsy.

***

The United States vs Iraq War is over. 

The United States vs Afghanistan War is over. 

Defense contractors need a new war to sell weapons. 

“If it sounds like Hayes is using mounting tensions as an advertising opportunity for his company, this may not be far fetched. On a January 25 earnings call (which was noted on Twitter by Nick Cleveland-Stout of the Quincy Institute), Hayes included “tensions in Eastern Europe” among the factors that Raytheon stands to benefit from. He said: “We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.” 

Raytheon isn’t alone in its projections. Among those noting the likely boost to profits is Jim Taiclet, the chairman, president and CEO of Lockheed Martin. In a January 25 earnings call, he told investors, “If you look at the evolving threat level and the approach that some countries are taking, including North Korea, Iran and through some of its proxies in Yemen and elsewhere, and especially Russia today, these days, and China, there’s renewed great power competition that does include national defense and threats to it.”

This “great power competition,” he suggested to investors, bodes more business for the company. Taiclet says, “And the history of the United States is when those environments evolve, that we do not sit by and just watch it happen. So I can’t talk to a number, but I do think, and I’m concerned personally that the threat is advancing, and we need to be able to meet it.”

The statements come from leaders of an industry that exerts tremendous influence in Washington, employing an average of 700 lobbyists per year over the past five years, or more than one lobbyist per member of Congress, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. 

Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are also funders of the influential think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has been encouraging the United States to take immediate action, including militarily, in the event of a Russian invasion.

“Everyone in D.C. knows that weapons manufacturers are helping skew U.S. policy towards militarism, but they usually try to be less obvious,” Erik Sperling, executive director of Just Foreign Policy, an anti-war organization, told In These Times. “They are cashing in on tensions over Ukraine as the U.S. pours weapons into the region.”

General Dynamics, meanwhile, has noted that past tensions have increased demand for the company’s products. On a January 26 earnings call, the company was asked, “The Ukraine and everything going on with Russia has been in the headlines. What does that mean for your international Land Systems business, particularly in Eastern Europe?” 

CEO Phebe Novakovic replied, “Well, for some time now, the Eastern European demand for combat vehicles has been at elevated level.”

MORE AT:

Top Weapons Companies Boast Ukraine-Russia Tensions Are a Boon for Business

In calls with investors, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin boasted that the worsening conflict is helping profits.

January 27, 2022

Like 1967 when we lived at 22nd & Green & Philly PD ran drugs. "I’m a Broad Street runner, so I know that Temple Hospital is mile marker 2 and City Hall is mile marker 6, and within four short miles all of this violence is going on. Where was that outrage?

 When we lived on Green Street. Our friend Dr. Lena Stella lived downstairs. She worked weekends at Misericordia Hospital. Weekends of near fatal knife wounds & near fatal gunshot wounds. 

The same two officers would park car 914 at the 22nd. St end of Green St. They walked down Green St. putting tickets on all the vehicles that would be illegally parked on Tuesdays and Thursdays street cleaning days. 

Our landlord refused to pay $100 per year to the Phillly PD superintendent & also the Philly plumbing inspector, Fire inspector & electric inspector. Running out to move the car to the other side of the street was a small price to pay to live in an apartment that was always up to code. 

Corruption was endemic in Philly government. The drug business brought high profits into political corruption. Political corruption in Philadelphia was laid on a foundation of drug money. 

“Since 1993, Amy Goldberg has been a trauma surgeon at Temple University Hospital, which has the distinction of treating more gunshot patients than any other hospital in the state. Last year, there were 747, up from 576 the year before.

Goldberg, a native of Broomall who went to the University of Pennsylvania and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, says she’s treated thousands here, in rare cases those who have been shot on more than one occasion. And though Goldberg and Scott Charles, Temple’s trauma outreach manager, over the last 15 years have started programs to advocate for and assist victims, educate schoolchildren about gun violence, and train community members on how to provide first aid to gunshot victims, they have watched as the city’s gun violence has escalated again this past year.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day, after two were killed and 12 injured in three separate shootings — one of them near Temple’s campus — Goldberg tweeted: “Last night was an abomination in our city. Our community is dying. Where is the outrage ... from everyone?”

MORE AT:

The Philadelphia Inquirer 

‘Where is the outrage ... from everyone?’ The story behind this Temple trauma surgeon’s tweet.

We sat down with Amy Goldberg to talk about that tweet, her work as both a surgeon and more recently the interim dean of Temple’s medical school and what she would like to see from Philadelphians.

Susan Snyder

Published Jan 21, 2022

READ:

Police, Politics, Corruption: The Mixture Dangerous to Freedom and Justice Hardcover – May 15, 2000

by Colonel Frank McKetta (Author)

The best answer Republicans have to COVID is Justice Alito’s “magic wand.” If the Democrats have a political strategy for 2022 going forward it appears to be, we tried to stop Republicans from killing themselves, the Supreme Court stopped us.

Justice Alito and the magic wand COVID cure:

“Suppose that this protection were provided not by the administration of a vaccine but by waving a wand over employees when they arrive at work and suppose that wand also had the capability of taking away this protection when the employee leaves work. Would OSCA have the authority to tell employees you must have this wand over you when you arrive but you can’t taken off when you leave?” 

"The Supreme Court on Thursday stopped the Biden administration’s vaccination-or-testing requirement for the nation’s largest employers, a dramatic blow to the federal government’s most far-reaching initiative to combat the coronavirus and boost the country’s lagging vaccination rate.

But the court allowed a different and smaller policy to go forward, requiring vaccinations for most health-care workers at the facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare funds."

MORE AT:

Supreme Court blocks Biden’s workplace vaccine rules, allows requirement for health-care workers

Robert Barnes  7:23 p.m. EST January 13, 2022

“Vaccine Police” Christopher Ray “traveling the country with guns, flame thrower & fake badge” threatening to execute pharmacists & Democratic Governors is “not about violence.”

 “I will do it [the citizen arrests] lawfully, and the sheriffs will be with me,” he added."  

THESE SHERIFFS?

Friday, October 14, 2016

Are Chester County Sheriff’s coming to the polls locked & loaded?

"In a series of Telegram messages posted over the past week, Key has visited countless state offices and harassed officials over vaccines, masks, and mandates. In a phone conversation with The Daily Beast this past week, Key stated that he has been traveling the country “serving” people with packets of information he believes supports his conspiracy theory that COVID-19 vaccines are “bioweapons.” But it’s not only firearms Key has shown off, he also appears to have access to a flamethrower. “All those bioweapons that we have, that are not vaccines, they all need to be lined up, and they need to be exterminated,” Key said in a video posted in mid-December while brandishing a flamethrower. On Saturday night, when asked about the guns and if he intends to bring them along when conducting the planned arrests, Key told The Daily Beast he is “never about violence.” “I will do it [the citizen arrests] lawfully, and the sheriffs will be with me,” he added."

MORE AT:

Anti-Vax Leader Traveling Country With Guns, Flamethrower, and Fake Badge in Quest to Arrest Dem Governors

OUT OF CONTROL

Zachary Petrizzo

Media Reporter

Updated Jan. 01, 2022 9:06PM ET / 

***

"Livestreaming on Facebook, a man known online as the "vaccine police" harassed pharmacists at a Walmart in Springfield — saying the workers would be "executed" for administering the COVID-19 vaccine.

Invited from Alabama to last week's Mercy hospital rally, Christopher Key is an entrepreneur who came to prominence after convincing Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis to use his "deer antler spray" to treat his injury.

In recent months, Key has been speaking out against the COVID-19 vaccine. And since the Saturday rally, he has been in Springfield.

Monday evening, Key and his "Missouri crew" entered the Walmart Supercenter west of Springfield on Sunshine Street. Making a beeline to their pharmacy, Key yelled that he was putting the store's workers "on notice."

By the time Key and his group of about a half dozen reached the pharmacy, staff had locked the door, closed the window, and were hiding in the room.

"You are being put on notice!" he shouted outside the door. "And if they give one more vaccine, as of this day after being put on notice, then they can be hung up. And they can be executed."

Over the course of almost 30 minutes, Key and his "Missouri crew" taunted and jeered at the pharmacists through the door window — all captured through Key's Facebook livestream.

"What they're doing here is they're violating the Nuremberg Code, and if you allow one more shot to go into one more person's body, you yourself can be executed," he told the pharmacists as well as other Walmart workers present. "It's a violation of the Nuremberg Code. I do this out of love, I'm not trying to give you any fear and intimidation — I'm just letting you guys know that if you continue to do this, that you guys will be held accountable."

Throughout the tirade, Key claimed that a "sworn affidavit" proved 45,000 people had died within three days of being vaccinated against COVID-19 — a claim he also made two days prior at the Mercy Hospital anti-vaccine rally.

That belief is based on a lawsuit filed by a group called “America’s Frontline Doctors,” which has spread other discredited claims about COVID-19. Their lawsuit is on behalf of an unnamed “computer programmer.”

MORE AT:

Andrew Sullender Springfield News - Leader 

Published 5;30 a.m. CT

August 18, 2021 

Updated 8;26 a.m. CT Aug. 18, 2021

Man threatens Springfield Walmart workers, tells them they will be executed for administering vaccines