The Chris Moeller Archives

Joe Biden should be dismissed as a candidate for president

As an ongoing example of the unhealthy obsession with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the intelligence state, the U.S. has been sticking its neck in where it doesn’t belong in Eastern Europe. The provocations have escalated in recent years, but it’s been going on in its current form since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In February of 1990, U.S. leaders made an offer to the Soviets, “iron-clad guarantees,” that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” The result of this promise was Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreeing to reunification talks for Germany. By 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were NATO members. By 2004, add Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The US has also backed, if criteria can be met, potential membership for the Republic of Georgia and Ukraine, while extended-range missiles that could hit Russia have been sold by the U.S. to Poland.

With its stubborn insistence under Putin to be independent in the world and repeatedly stand up to U.S. imperialism, the Russian Federation has managed to become an “enemy” again to U.S. goals of hegemony. Imagine an alternate world, if you will, where Putin sold extended-range missiles to, say, Cuba, to be pointed at Florida. You might need a time machine just to formulate the vision, because when something akin to the U.S. putting missiles in Poland did happen in reverse, in Cuba in 1962, the world came to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Despite having a GDP that is less than Portugal’s, and a total military budget that is less than the 2019 increase to the U.S. military budget, Putin’s government is the dark shadow that modern-day Cold Warriors in both the Democratic and Republican parties fear. It would be far beyond the pale for him to place missiles aimed at the U.S. in our hemisphere, but nobody in the U.S. seems to expect Russians to feel they are being provoked by U.S. intrusions in the former Eastern bloc.

In 2014, Ukraine’s democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown in a coup supported by the United States. The reason it happened was that Yanukovych was re-considering a proposed business agreement with the European Union in favor of a potentially more beneficial one with Putin. The EU deal was dependent on meeting guidelines set by the International Monetary Fund, which has long been used as a hammer by the West against developing countries (for an outline, read Naomi Klein’s "The Shock Doctrine"). Those guidelines would have frozen salaries, put drastic government budget cuts in place, and increased Ukrainians’ gas bill. What any of this has to do with the United States is a mystery. Our stepping in would be akin to Vladimir Putin trying to force changes on the North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. That's inconceivable.

Enter the new right-wing government of Ukraine, the ultra-nationalist Svoboda group, who participated in the coup and are inarguably neo-Nazis, remnants of the Hitler collaborators that opposed the Soviet Union in that region. Their leader has warned Ukrainians of the dangers of the “Muscovite-Jewish” mafia even while the late U.S. Senator John McCain traveled to Ukraine and rallied with him and his group in the national capital of Kiev. (McCain also once declared, on the floor of the Senate, that his fellow Senator-- and his fellow Republican-- Rand Paul, was “working for Vladimir Putin” after Paul objected to a resolution that would allow Montenegro to join the NATO alliance.)

Members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), come to power, still wear the SS insignia on their arms dating from their alliance with Nazi Germany. U.S. intelligence, behind its “communist under every bed” wisdom, has been closely aligned with the group since the end of World War II. President Obama admitted to CNN shortly after the new government took over that he had “brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine” to the government led by this group. What was that again that Rachel Maddow was just saying about Russian election meddling?

In Ukraine, where the OUN waves the United States Southern Confederate flag as well as the flag of Nazi Germany, they despise Russians as much as they do anyone, and a large number of Russians live in the eastern part of the country and will continue to feel a cultural connection and loyalty to Russia. After the coup, the new illegitimate and fascist government banned Russian as the nation’s second language.

And why does the U.S. care so much about Ukraine? If you think it’s because we care about freedom and democracy for their people, than you’re a person that’s very easy to lie to, and for a really long time. Ukraine is oil and natural gas. Ukraine is rich in mineral deposits. Vladimir Putin has agreed to the most recent version of the Minsk Agreements, drawn up by Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Francois Hollande, to ease the military buildup in this part of the world between Russia and NATO. Former Secretary of State John Kerry was ready to sign on too, but then-Vice President Biden stepped in, with one of his national security advisers calling Kerry’s negotiation trip to Sochi, Russia “counter-productive.” The New York Times, no cheerleader for Putin, acknowledged that “Vice President Biden has played a leading role in American policy towards Ukraine as Washington seeks to counter Russian intervention in Eastern Ukraine.” Former President Obama clearly tabbed his vice president to be the point man when it came to Ukraine.

What makes all this reek of corruption is that two months after the Yanukovych coup, in April of 2014, Biden’s son, Hunter, was named to the board of directors for a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings. Later, still as U.S. Vice President, Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion of U.S. money to the country unless a prosecutor into this particular company was fired. That leverage was employed in 2016, and Biden proudly recounted his triumphant moment on stage of an event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in January 2018. It can be argued that Biden shared the opinion of the U.S. government towards both Ukraine and this prosecutor at the time of his actions, but the family relationship and clear conflict with national interest was gross enough, then the judgement displayed in boasting about it produces additional red flags.

There is zero wisdom behind electing Joe Biden president while the intelligence state is busy promoting an increasingly dangerous conflict with Russia. The son of the vice president chose to take advantage of an illegal coup of a foreign government. It should have already been clear to neutral observers in 2014 that this relationship with the Bidens and Ukraine was a problem for the U.S. The passing of time has only confirmed it. It’s not hard to imagine how the mainstream media would react differently to this story if the politician's son in question was Donald Trump, Jr., but in its sloppy attempt to muddy President Trump in any possible way, regardless of validity, it has largely neglected this story and it was left to Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani to promote it in recent weeks as Biden’s stock simultaneously rises among would-be Democratic voters. The implications of this ugly association to the U.S. presidential race should be immaterial. It only will be if Biden is roundly rejected by voters during his party’s primaries.

For good measure, Hunter Biden wasn’t done in sullying his father’s political fortunes after chasing the black gold of the Crimea in 2014. His investment fund, it was revealed last month, has also invested in a surveillance system in China that permits that authoritarian government to spy on ethnic Muslims in its western provinces. Randall Schriver, the head of Asia Policy at the Defense Department, says China is employing mass imprisonment of Muslims in concentration camps. How does this relationship play when Papa Biden is on the campaign trail telling everyone who will listen that President Trump is unfairly building up the threat of China while Hunter is working in lucrative concert with them? Biden said at a rally for his campaign last month, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man!”

The DNC will continue to push hard for Biden. Right now, he’s the only vetted establishment candidate that can serve as the plausible “Anybody but Bernie” choice. You’ll continue to be told by them-- in the middle of a race where the Republican candidate’s adult children are Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner-- that Hunter Biden is not his father, and his business associations are not his father's. To me, though, even the sacking of the legal prosecutor is surplus. I came to understand the entire hoax that was the story of Russian influence on the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election when I first read that the son of the U.S. vice president could be inexplicably serving on the board of a giant Ukrainian oil company. How dumb-- and/or greedy-- can a guy be? The question remains as to how dumb a major American political party can be. Nominating Joe Biden in the middle of the new Russian Red Scare would be like anointing Bill Clinton’s wife, enabler, and attack dog to go head-to-head against one of the nation’s best-known misogynists. It defies all logic, but we’ve been there before.

posted by CM @ 9:55 PM