{"id":90843,"date":"2022-08-24T15:21:50","date_gmt":"2022-08-24T19:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/?p=90843"},"modified":"2022-08-29T10:11:23","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T14:11:23","slug":"interview-with-col-richard-h-black-ret-u-s-ukraine-disinformation-boards-are-instruments-of-tyranny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/blog\/2022\/08\/24\/interview-with-col-richard-h-black-ret-u-s-ukraine-disinformation-boards-are-instruments-of-tyranny\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Col. Richard H. Black (ret.) \u2014 U.S.\/Ukraine &#8222;Disinformation Boards&#8220; Are &#8222;Instruments of Tyranny&#8220;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Col. Richard Black: U.S.\/Ukraine &quot;Disinformation Boards&quot; Are &quot;Instruments of Tyranny&quot;\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6PQj0qh-Ziw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mike Billington interviews Col. Richard H. Black (ret.) on the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation board hit list, the Ukraine war and his thoughts about the Schiller Institute&#8217;s role in today&#8217;s crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Mike Billington: <\/strong>Hello. This is Mike Billington. I\u2019m the co-editor of the Executive Intelligence Review representing the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Organization. I\u2019m here today, August 23, 2022,&nbsp; with Colonel Richard A. Black\u2014Senator Richard Black\u2014who, after serving for 31 years in the U.S. Marines and in the Army, then served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1998 to 2006, and in the Virginia Senate from 2012 to 2020, I\u2019ll allow Colonel Black to describe his military service himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Colonel Black, <a href=\"https:\/\/larouchepub.com\/other\/interviews\/2022\/4918-the_u_s_is_leading_the_world_t.html\">my interview<\/a> with you April 26, which focused on the difference between the U.S. and the Russian military operations in Syria and also in Ukraine, now has had nearly 3 million views, a million in English, over half a million in Russia with Russian subtitles, and many, many other languages.&nbsp; The thousands of comments, have been mostly of the nature of high praise for a military veteran telling the truth about the extreme danger of the failed U.S. leadership, which is driving the world towards global war, perhaps even nuclear war. So, you have a very large following around the world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;For Ministries of \u2018Truth,\u2019 Truth <\/strong><strong><em>Is<\/em><\/strong><strong> the Danger\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps that is one of the reasons that you are one of the 72 people who were placed on the blacklist published July 14 by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), which of course means Censorship Board, or Ministry of Truth, you could say. The CCD was set up by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. and British intelligence in Kiev to label any challenge to the approved narrative about military operations in Ukraine as \u201cRussian propaganda,\u201d even calling the people on the list, i.e., <em>you<\/em>, \u201cinformation terrorists\u201d and \u201cwar criminals. What is your view of this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Richard Black: <\/strong>Well, let me start, if I could, by just giving our listeners a little bit of my background. I want to make it very clear that I love my country. I\u2019ve risked my life for it hundreds of times. I volunteered to fight in Vietnam. I was a helicopter pilot, flew 269 combat missions. My helicopter was hit by enemy ground fire on four of those flights. In one case, bullets that were aimed directly at me tore through the cowling of the cockpit just behind my head. They very nearly hit me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was flying off the carrier <em>Iwo Jima<\/em> in the South China Sea off the coast of the Philippines, when the flight operations officer who briefed us in the morning, told us our squadron has been tasked with providing a volunteer to fight on the ground with the 1st Marine Division, which was at the time heavily engaged in combat. I immediately volunteered, went to work with the 1st Marine Division, and fought in 70 bloody combat patrols. During my final patrol, I was wounded. Both my radiomen were killed next to me after we had launched a rubber boat assault and crossed a river under enemy fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I served a total of 32 years in uniform, first as a marine pilot, then as an Army lawyer, I ran legal offices at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, Fort Ord, California, and at Fort Lewis, Washington. In each of those I supervised 25-40 Army lawyers. Finally, I retired as Chief of the Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon, where I testified before Congress. I advised the Senate Armed Services Committee and prepared executive orders that were signed by the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That said, I am adamantly opposed to our current wars and especially the very dangerous war that we\u2019ve engaged in in Ukraine. I believe the U.S., the U.K., and the European Union have embarked on an imprudent course of action that has carried a significant risk of triggering an all-out nuclear war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Moving on to the issue of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation. It\u2019s very interesting\u2014this woman, Nina Jankewitz, created quite a media frenzy when it was discovered that the Department of Homeland Security was going to set up a disinformation board, a \u201cMinistry of Truth,\u201d to decide which versions of facts would be permissible and which ones would be censored. This was censorship at the very highest levels of the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nina Jankewitz is a rather bizarre, young, narcissistic woman with an extensive background of working within the Ukrainian system and informing those people about how to control so-called \u201cdisinformation.\u201d Now, she was President Biden\u2019s pick to be the Director of the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s new Disinformation Governance Board. Literally, the sole purpose of that board was to censor critics of government policies. This is a woman who supposedly is going to make things more truthful by suppressing voices like yours and mine. It\u2019s interesting that she issued some tweets that implied that reports about Hunter Biden\u2019s laptops were somehow Russian disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, I think practically everyone in the country, Democrat and Republican, understands that there is something gravely wrong with Hunter Biden\u2019s laptops and the information revealed on them. Jankewitz has said that she shudders to think of what free speech abolitionists would do if Elon Musk loosens the restrictions on free speech imposed by Twitter. In other words, if there is somehow an explosion of freedom in America, she just doesn\u2019t know how the world would deal with the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know, the truth <em>is<\/em> quite a danger. We do know that she has very close connections with the Ukrainian government, and the Ukrainian government has set up a Disinformation Board, which issued essentially a blacklist which contains 72 names, 30 of whom were speakers at a conference of the Schiller Institute, which has done some excellent work in keeping people informed about what\u2019s going on. This blacklist is clearly intended to instill fear and to silence critics, to censor critics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here we have a situation where the Department of Homeland Security is giving guidance to the Ukrainian government, to the SBU, which is sort of a terroristic secret police in in Ukraine, telling them how to suppress the voices of American citizens. Not only American. There is an Italian General, a lot of prominent people. We\u2019ve got a very real problem where we have American taxpayer dollars being spent by the Department of Homeland Security for the purpose of silencing free speech. That\u2019s where we stand right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;The Targetting of the Schiller Institute<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>As you mentioned, 30 of the people on that list were either leaders or friends of the Schiller Institute, who spoke at one of the Schiller Institute conferences. You spoke at several Schiller Institute conferences with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. What is your sense of why there\u2019s this extreme targeting of the Schiller Institute by these Ukrainian forces?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>I think if you look at the people who have appeared at these various conferences and interviews that have been done by Schiller Institute\u2014the Schiller Institute and the <em>Executive Intelligence Review<\/em> publish highly accurate, very balanced foreign policy assessments, and also raw intelligence from which people can simply look and see what the media from all different nations is saying. You have this aggregation of open source intelligence, which allows people to sift through and to some extent, to arrive at their own conclusions. And I think that the Schiller Institute is viewed as a genuine threat to the new world order, the globalist, the deep state, whatever you want to call them. For them, truth is the ultimate disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>You were one of 16 Americans on that hit list who this past week signed a letter to six congressional committees\u2014the Intelligence, Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees in both the House and the Senate\u2014a letter which demands an investigation of, as you said, the use of taxpayer money to finance a foreign entity in Ukraine, which is threatening the right to constitutionally guaranteed free speech of Americans, as well as threatening the personal safety of American citizens, given that people are accused of being propagandists for Russia with whom Ukraine is at war, and therefore to call these people war criminals and terrorists, is clearly a threat that something might be done physically. Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer who\u2019s also on the list, made the point that when you\u2019re dealing with the Ukraine regime, such a list is a \u201ckill list.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As both a former military officer who headed the Army\u2019s Criminal Law Division and a political leader who served in the Virginia House and Senate, what is the impact of this U.S.-sponsored and -funded threat on you and others? And what must the Congress do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>You know, it\u2019s interesting. At the at the height of the Islamic caliphate that was set up by the terror group ISIS, I was among three Americans who were named as enemies of ISIS. ISIS called me \u201cThe American Crusader,\u201d and that was certainly a hit list. And so it\u2019s ironic, but here we are and we now have not the infamous terror group ISIS, but we have the Ukrainian government operating, probably under the specific direction of the Department of Homeland Security, to put me on a target list, which frankly, today I think is far more dangerous. I think ISIS ended up having much more to worry about than whether I liked them or didn\u2019t like them. But I think today the hit list published by the Ukrainian government is probably a more deadly hit list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just this week, Daria Dugina, the daughter of an activist, a pro-Russian activist, was murdered in Moscow, apparently by a Ukrainian assassin who killed her using a bomb that exploded under her car, ripping her body to pieces and burning her to death. Since the United States has admitted being involved in targeting 13 Russian Generals for assassination in Ukraine, it is possible that the CIA provided the targeting information to go after this young woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Apparently, they were actually targeting her father. He\u2019s an established pro-Russian pro-war journalist. And they wanted to show that they have the ability to go right into Moscow and to carry out a mafia style hit. So, they did it. I would not be surprised if the CIA provided the targeting information to go after her. It was just a last-minute switch of automobiles that caused the daughter to die instead of the father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would agree with Scott Ritter to this extent. The CIA and the Department of Homeland Security have a common interest in blocking access to the truth about the Ukrainian war. The SBU, the secret intelligence agency of Ukraine, is being molded through a series of rather violent purges by Zelensky into one of the most ruthless intelligence agencies in history. It is possible that the SBU could view the Ukraine\/Department of Homeland Security\u2019s joint list as some sort of a kill signal authorizing them to go after individuals, to attempt to assassinate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;The Case of Senate Candidate Diane Sare<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>Another person on the CCD list is Diane Sare, the independent LaRouche candidate from New York State for U.S. Senate against Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer was one of the leading members of the Congress pushing the massive funding of the Ukraine government and war, including their Security and Defense Council, which set up this hit list. She\u2019s on the hit list, and running against Chuck Schumer. So, Chuck Schumer is financing a foreign entity which is threatening a candidate against him. This would appear to be a quite virulent intervention into an American election. Do you have some thoughts on that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>I do know that Diane Sare is on the hit list. I\u2019ve listened to her discuss this issue in an interview with Scott Ritter. She is an amazingly bright, informed, articulate, appealing candidate. I can\u2019t imagine anyone being a better representative of the American people than Diane Sare. She would certainly have my vote if I were in New York. She makes clear what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here we have a senatorial candidate, a prominent woman in New York, and you\u2019ve got Chuck Schumer in a position where he\u2019s funding Homeland Security. I\u2019m sure that he\u2019s quite comfortable with the idea of a Disinformation Board, because there\u2019s a lot of \u201cdisinformation\u201d about him that he\u2019d like to suppress! It shows the darkness and the challenge that the American Disinformation Board, and the Ukrainian Disinformation Board\u2014the threat that they pose to freedom. These are not instruments of the people. They\u2019re not instruments of liberty and freedom. They are instruments of tyranny. These are the kinds of things that the Gestapo, that the Bolsheviks, that the great tyrannies of the world imposed\u2014some sort of preclearance on what you can say and what you can\u2019t. I think it\u2019s a very, very bad sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;The FBI Raid on Donald Trump\u2019s Home<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>U.S. taxpayers are also funding our Department of Justice, and the FBI, and that means they are also financing the raid against the former President\u2019s home. In February 2020, Donald Trump, as everybody knows, was impeached for allegedly trying to influence President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine to investigate alleged criminal behavior by President Trump\u2019s opponent, Joe Biden, and especially his son, Hunter, as you mentioned. And yet here\u2019s Joe Biden raiding the home of his possible opponent in the 2024 presidential election. What are your thoughts on this raid?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>The raid is absolutely outrageous. It is amazing. If you look at what happened here, this is an election year stunt. There\u2019s no justification for it. It is clearly designed as a Hail Mary pass by the Democrats to say, \u201cLook, let\u2019s do a raid and play it up with publicity, and hopefully it\u2019ll somehow taint the Trump campaign for President.\u201d As a practical matter, what has happened since the raid occurred, the American people are waking up. They\u2019ve said, \u201cHey, wait a minute, we just don\u2019t go for this idea of raiding your political opponent.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Think about this. When Richard Nixon was in the White House, he was overthrown over a third-rate political prank at the Watergate. It was like Republicans vs. Democrats. In the election prior to Watergate, the Democrats had broken in and burglarized the Republican headquarters. Here we were, and the Republicans burglarizing the Democratic headquarters, and yet they managed to overthrow the Presidency over this. Think of how trivial that event was relative to conducting an all-out FBI raid on the residence of the President of the United States or the former President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, if you look at the way that the FBI did it, of course, you know, they\u2019ve got a very dark history of this. They did it in a way that was designed for maximum publicity. The FBI tipped off the news media to when they were going to be there so that the news media would be able to be on the scene. They chose to maximize the visual setting so that they had emergency lights flashing. They had 30 FBI agents swarming all over the place carrying fully automatic submachine guns in full view. Democrats hate the AR-15, except when their agents are descending on their political opponents, and then they don\u2019t care whether they use machine guns or mortars or whatever. This was set up. They may have had Hollywood directors telling them how to do it\u2014I\u2019m not saying that for a fact\u2014but they thought it through. They thought, \u201cHow can we play this out in the media?\u201d It was deliberately designed as a media circus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let\u2019s look at their justification for this. They say that President Trump had some classified papers in some cartons that he took when he left the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have old documents that I\u2019m going through for the first time now, that date back to 1963, and they\u2019ve sat in dusty containers ever since. The idea that somehow President Trump, in between his incredible schedule of making appearances, is going through all these old dusty boxes\u2014I don\u2019t find that too convincing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But here\u2019s something that I think will interest your listeners. Seymour Hersh is probably the finest investigative journalist of our times. He won the Pulitzer Prize over the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. He exposed the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He\u2019s a magnificently talented individual. He has spent many, many years, while he\u2019s writing other books and doing other investigative things. He has been, for over 30 years now, preparing a book called <em>The Dark Side of Camelot<\/em>. It\u2019s a book about President Kennedy and his administration and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In that book, Hersh interviews a woman named Suzanne K. Forbes, a national security archivist at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. She\u2019s responsible for maintaining the National Security Archives that are held by the Kennedy family, essentially, at the Kennedy Library. She told Hersh, referring to the Eisenhower administration, that the Eisenhower administration left virtually none of its national security files behind when it vacated the White House, and that this typically is the case with outgoing presidential administrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Reflect on that. You have national classified holdings today at the Kennedy Library, just as you have in other Presidential libraries. You have the national security archivist at the Kennedy Library saying that this is a typical thing that\u2019s done by different outgoing administrations, specifically the Eisenhower administration, which had some very dark secrets in its time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If all other Presidents take archives when they leave office, and later on release them at their pleasure from their Presidential archives, why does that suddenly become a crime because Donald Trump does it and the deep state doesn\u2019t like Donald Trump? This whole thing is a total fabrication. We\u2019ve got the Attorney General of the United States, working hand-in-glove with the Biden administration to suddenly create something criminal out of thin air. It\u2019s just a total hoax. It was an attempt to try to influence the midterm elections and nothing else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;No Peace in Ukraine Before Mid-Term Elections<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>Let me switch to the global strategic crisis. In our April 26 interview, you warned very stringently that we\u2019re facing the threat of global war and even a nuclear war, and that continues today. The U.S. continues to pour billions of dollars in heavy military hardware into Ukraine. Just last Friday, the Pentagon announced another $775 million in arms shipments, including additional ammunition for the HIMARS system, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, which the spokesman claimed has \u201creally changed the dynamic on the battlefield.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is your professional opinion of that claim and the military situation in general in this ongoing conflict?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>HIMARS appears to be a very effective system. The HIMARS fires rockets that are GPS guided, so it\u2019s extraordinarily accurate. However, they talk about the HIMARS as though it is somehow going to turn the tide of battle. There is never a particular single weapon that turns the tide of battle. The HIMARS does make a difference, but it will not be decisive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What we have seen, if you\u2019ve been watching the war from the beginning, the Ukrainians have fought a very fine defensive war, very tenacious. But at the same time, here we are at the six-month point, and they have never once launched a significant counteroffensive. They\u2019ve had limited counterattacks. You know, you can have a single company that launches a counterattack and goes back and forth. But I\u2019m talking about a counteroffensive where they actually make a drive to seize territory somewhere. Not a single time have they done that. At the same time, NATO, the United States had a flood of weapons pouring in to Ukraine. A great many of those have been destroyed. Many of them are being sold on the black market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just recently, a very, very good friend of mine, the former military attach\u00e9 of the Pakistani embassy, Lieutenant General Sarfraz Ali, one of the corps commanders in Pakistan, died in a tragic helicopter accident. There are very strong rumors that he was shot down. Now, the United States has been so loose with control over its anti-aircraft weapons that those things are literally being sold on the dark web. So it\u2019s quite possible that he was shot down either by one of these weapons that was lost in Afghanistan, or perhaps one that\u2019s being sold by the Ukrainians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In any event, there\u2019s a tremendous bleed-off of weapons that are being sent to Ukraine, and then sold off by oligarchs, diverted in different ways to terror groups and so forth. The flow of weapons to the Ukrainian army has slowed very dramatically since the beginning of the war, and yet the flow of weapons on the Russian side continues. It\u2019s very steady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People looking at the Ukraine Russian war are somehow saying, \u201cWell, look, the Russians haven\u2019t staged an enormous blitzkrieg.\u201d But you have to realize that the eastern part of Ukraine is heavily industrialized. What the Russians are really doing is fighting urbanized combat on a very massive regional scale. You don\u2019t do that with some sudden rush. It\u2019s not as though you\u2019re going off across empty planes, rolling your tanks, like might have happened sometimes in the Second World War. It is urban combat. It\u2019s very, very difficult, very brutal. And yet the Russians continuously move forward and they are inflicting enormous, just a terrible number of casualties on the Ukrainians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m confident that nothing will be done to achieve peace before the mid-terms, because there\u2019s no way that the United States is going to allow Zelensky to talk peace with the Russians. But I hope that they will do it, because I hate to see these young Ukrainian men being slaughtered, they\u2019re just being used as cannon fodder for the Russians and also that the West can achieve certain political gains and sell weapons and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;\u2018The Effort to Destroy Russia Has Failed\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>In particular, Secretary of Defense, Gen. Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Tony Blinken were in Kiev at the same time as our previous interview in April. Austin said at that point, \u201cwe want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can\u2019t do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.\u201d Now, this is not a military policy. This is a geopolitical mission to destroy Russia and its people through the massive sanction policy, as well as the proxy war in Ukraine. What do you think about this? And is the effort to destroy Russia working?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>When we first went in there, there was all sorts of excited talk, from the President on down, about how we were going to turn the ruble into dust. We would destroy it. We would impose sanctions like nobody had ever seen. We would just cut off Russia and they would all starve or whatever. And we have moved to do everything that we claimed we would do. But the fact of the matter is that there was an initial sort of a shock wave in Russia. The ruble initially declined. There was a sudden outflow of capital, a momentary outflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But then, the Russian Central Bank moved quite aggressively, very effectively to limit capital outflows, to devise ways to work around the sanctions. The ruble today is at a seven-year high, during the time since the invasion. The ruble has become the world\u2019s strongest single currency in terms of its appreciation against other currencies. Instead of being turned to dust, it has become much stronger than any other currency. Part of this comes from the fact that Russia has heavy gold reserves and very low debt, unlike the United States, which prints money on a whim. Russia has to follow budgets and they don\u2019t spend money that they don\u2019t have. So it\u2019s given them tremendous financial resiliency. As far as the sanctions were concerned, the Russian balance of trade is now triple what it was before the war. The reason for this is that they have found alternative markets for their oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Russia\u2019s selling to China. They\u2019re selling to India. They\u2019re selling to Japan. They\u2019re even selling to Turkey, which is one of the NATO countries! They\u2019re selling oil all around the world. They\u2019re selling all of their commodities. They do it at a heavily discounted price, but they produce them at a low price; they\u2019re making lots of profits. It\u2019s interesting how the media talks about, \u201cWell, there\u2019s a recession going to hit them,\u201d and they call Putin a dictator, even though he\u2019s elected, in fairly fair elections relative to our own. I guess he\u2019s an elected dictator! But then they always acknowledge that he is reluctant to declare full mobilization because the people might not like it. So he is far more responsive to the Russian people than our government is to our people. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s a dictator. I think he is a duly elected government representative of the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In any event, the effort to destroy Russia has failed. And now, as we approach the Winter, there is a growing sense of panic in Europe. Russia didn\u2019t impose sanctions, the U.S. imposed sanctions, and the U.S. forced the European Union to impose sanctions. Who did the sanctions hurt? They hurt Europe more than anybody else. They hurt the United States somewhat. But we have really just thrown Europe under the bus because they depend on the Russian gas, oil, and other commodities. So, no, it has not worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Flaunting the \u2018One China\u2019 Policy<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>We have a parallel situation now developing in Asia. As you know, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who\u2019s third in line to the presidency, recently visited Taiwan, even though President Biden had a phone call with President Xi Jinping just days before the trip, during which&nbsp; President Xi Jinping called on Biden to stop it, saying \u201cthose who play with fire will perish by fire.\u201d Biden even said publicly that the U.S. military was advising Pelosi not to go, although that might have been just him saying it. But it appears that the same military-industrial forces who launched the surrogate war against Russia in Ukraine want to do the same thing with Taiwan, that they\u2019re trying to force China to act militarily to defend their sovereignty, and then blame them and impose massive sanctions and decoupling on China as they have with Russia. What is your view of the Asia ploy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>This whole thing about Taiwan has been a concoction of the U.S. State Department. If the United States were not constantly putting a sharp stick in the eye of the Chinese, things would be quiet around the Taiwan issue. The United States recognized long ago that there was One China and that Beijing was the seat of government for One China. But we did it in a very delicate way that sort of preserved some autonomy for Taiwan. We didn\u2019t officially recognize their government, but unofficially, there was sort of an acknowledgement that we saw some legitimacy to it. There\u2019s a very delicate balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Henry Kissinger has recently spoken about it\u2014I know he\u2019s not one of your favorites. He\u2019s not one of mine. But as he grows old, he said a few things that were accurate. And one is, he\u2019s been rather distraught about how cavalier we have been in upsetting this very delicate balance. As he said, and I agree with him, that the One China policy established by Richard Nixon\u2014I think generally acknowledged as one of his great achievements\u2014has preserved peace in that region for 50 years. It\u2019s enhanced trade enormously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tended to agree with President Trump that we needed to renegotiate some things on the trade scene, but it didn\u2019t mean that we had to become hostile, and I don\u2019t think President Trump intended any hostility toward China. I think he just intended to try to gain a little bit of advantage for American firms. And I didn\u2019t disagree with that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">President Biden has not been good on China, but at the same time, he at least had the sense to recognize that what Pelosi was doing was her swan song\u2014I don\u2019t know what she gets out of it personally, but she obviously hopes for something because, she\u2019s going to be out of office after November because she will almost certainly step down when the Republicans take over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, what is it? What motivated her to make this extremely provocative visit? She was forcing the Chinese to react in some way. Fortunately, they\u2019ve done it in a balanced way that was probably the minimum of what they could have reasonably done. They\u2019ve done a little bit of a show of force, flying aircraft and ships and that kind of thing. But we always run the risk that something like what Pelosi\u2019s done, or one of these very provocative movements of ships, something that we do, triggers an inordinate response. Somehow, we\u2019re relying on the maturity and the good judgment of people in China to prevent some catastrophe from happening. At the same time, we\u2019re allowing ourselves to take the most reckless, provocative steps, totally in reliance on their good judgment over on the other side. It\u2019s not wise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;Contempt of Military and Civilian Officials for Americans<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>You may have seen that Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, two leading journalistic promoters of the regime-change wars around the world\u2014they\u2019ve never seen a war they didn\u2019t like\u2014recently published an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2022\/08\/15\/inside-the-war-between-trump-and-his-generals\">article<\/a> in <em>The New Yorker<\/em> about Gen. Mark Milley, who was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump and still is so today. The article is called \u201cInside the War Between Trump and His Generals.\u201d They report that Milley opposed Donald Trump, his Commander-in-Chief, on many fronts, but especially on Trump\u2019s orders to end the \u201cendless wars\u201d in Afghanistan and in Syria. Glasser and Baker, of course, support Milley in rejecting those orders, to therefore continue the wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Milley is still Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. You\u2019ve strongly criticized him in the past. In your professional view, what do you think about what is going on there with the top military officers of our country?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>First of all, the article is a very, very interesting article. You have to read it understanding the enormous bias and prejudice of the two people who wrote the article. They obviously have no concept of self-governance, of the right of the people to govern themselves. They seem to think of the American public as a bunch of buffoons who need to be governed by an unaccountable elite, which, unfortunately, is the case now. When President Trump was elected, he had no governmental experience. His greatest single failing was that he selected a cabinet and he selected general officers who literally despised him and disagreed with every policy that he had campaigned on and promised the American people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Keep in mind, the American people elected Trump because of those policies, not because they liked his style\u2014well, some of them did probably like his style\u2014but they liked his policies. They liked his foreign policy, among other things. But unfortunately, Trump was sort of enamored by people with Ivy League degrees, with Generals who have lots of stars on their shoulders. He didn\u2019t realize the cultural change that took place under Clinton. Obama, now continues under Biden, where we no longer have the great American patriots in the Pentagon and the State Department. We now have people who are very disdainful of the American people. They have sort of a contempt and a hatred for the people that they govern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As you read the Glasser and Baker&nbsp; article, you see that within the national security establishment, Department of State, the CIA, the FBI, there was quite a contempt for a government of the people.&nbsp; A comment by one of the authors reflects this: \u201cYet the Constitution offered no practical guide for a General faced with a rogue President.\u201d Now, if that doesn\u2019t tell you something about the way the elites look at our system of government &#8212; how can the President be a \u201crogue President? He\u2019s the highest elected official in the land. He is the person who is entrusted by the public with carrying out their will. How can he be a \u201crogue President?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think all of the people who were opposing him were rogue Generals, rogue cabinet officials. This Mark Milley\u2019s made some rather bizarre statements. One of them was after Jan. 6, when we had the demonstrations at the at the Capitol. He calls together the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he makes this bizarre statement. He says: \u201cThis is a Reichstag moment, the moment of the F\u00fchrer!\u201d This man is a histrionic buffoon. He is a dangerous individual who truly is a threat to the Constitution. That kind of bizarre type of reaction\u2014we\u2019ve seen the same thing when he\u2019s testified before the U.S. Senate in June 2021, defending the teaching of Critical Race Theory in our service academies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gen. Milley made this angry statement: he said, \u201cI want to read Critical Race Theory,\u201d or something like that. \u201cI want to read this Critical Race Theory so that I\u2019ll understand white rage.\u201d Well, if you hate white soldiers, then get out of the uniform. Get the heck out of there. You have no business there. White rage. This isn\u2019t white rage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Jan. 6, 2021 demonstrations had about 900,000 people in the nation\u2019s capital, and they were a cut of Americana. They were black, they were white, they were Asian, they were Hispanic, almost in the same proportions as the entire country. There were plenty of all of these. It wasn\u2019t a token here and there. There were lots of blacks, lots of Asians, lots of Hispanic, lots of whites. It was a mix of America rising up not to overthrow the Constitution, but to ensure that the Constitution was followed and was not overthrown. And it was not a violent revolution. There wasn\u2019t a single person caught in the Capitol with a weapon. The only person who was killed, who was deliberately killed that Jan. 6, was killed by an officer, an agent working for Nancy Pelosi, who gunned down an unarmed woman who had no arms, had nothing. Without warning, he just shot her through the neck and killed her. That was the only killing that took place on that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Three times, the President ordered that we remove U.S. troops from Syria. When he ordered it done, he just gave a blank, no nonsense order, \u201cYou will withdraw by a date certain,\u201d Gen. James Mattis, who was Secretary of Defense at the time, resigned in order to throw some chaos into the chain of command. John Bolton, who was National Security Adviser, flew over to Tel Aviv and announced over there that we were not withdrawing, simply countermanding the order of the President of the United States. Later on, after the President had totally reshuffled his cabinet to try to get some loyal people in, he again ordered that American troops withdraw from Syria. Again, they simply refused to obey the order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a danger that when you have a military establishment that is not responsive to the President of the United States, we begin to set ourselves up for a military coup and the imposition of a military dictatorship. I think the leadership in the Pentagon today is inclined in that direction, and I think it\u2019s a very dangerous thing. I\u2019m hoping that whether it\u2019s Trump or whether it\u2019s someone else, whoever takes over in January 2025 must conduct an organized, orderly purge of the general officers and replace them with people who are loyal to the Constitution of the United States. That is absolutely imperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>&nbsp;Today\u2019s Global Crises Require Global Cooperation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>If there is any chance of preventing the danger that you\u2019ve indicated now for months of heading into a global war, a global nuclear war, perhaps, it would require that the U.S. and Russia and China sit down together, not go to war, but&nbsp; sit down to resolve all of the global issues that are now confronting mankind in this perfect storm: the rush to war; the hyperinflationary collapse of the dollar-based global financial system; famine, which is now reaching \u201cbiblical proportions,\u201d according to the head of the UN World Food Program; the continuing pandemic; and more. The Schiller Institute has announced a conference for Sept. 10-11 under the title \u201cInspiring Humanity to Survive the Greatest Crisis in World History.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What, in your view, is required to move the U.S. off of its suicide course and to join in the necessary deliberations of all nations to find solutions based on the dignity of all nations and all people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>I do think that over the years, there\u2019s always a tendency towards hyperbole, that this and that is the worst thing that we\u2019ve ever faced, and so forth. However, I do believe we have reached a point, particularly during the Biden administration, where the foundations of democracy have been severely weakened and undermined. We have had an election which was highly questionable at best and transparently fraudulent by another viewpoint. We\u2019re in a posture where if we continue in this direction, we can see the emergence of a of a censorship state, a state that no longer recognizes the right to free speech. We see it where government uses private companies like Facebook, Twitter, all of the Internet, social media companies. There is undoubtedly some coordination and a tremendous amount of censorship is emerging. There is beginning to be a certain level of acceptance of censorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are at a turning point, because right now, through the Schiller Institute, through various other outlets, there still is the means of communicating to sort of a policy elite, a group of people who are sufficiently intellectual and sufficiently educated to understand the gravity of where we are. Whether those voices will be silenced if the elections do not go in the right way, I think is certainly a very genuine question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, I don\u2019t say this as some kind of a hardcore Republican. I\u2019ve always voted Republican, always very, very Republican. But at the same time, I have some very grave concerns about elements of the Republican Party that I\u2019m not sure that all of the Republican Party is that devoted to freedom and liberty. But we\u2019ve got to win the next two elections, and we\u2019ve got to do it in the face of what will undoubtedly be widespread voter fraud. Watch the polls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People must not sit this out and say, \u201cWell, it\u2019s a crooked election. I can\u2019t do it.\u201d There\u2019s always been a certain level of fraud in our elections. We have a long and storied history of voter fraud. Many major elections have been decided by voter fraud and Presidential elections certainly have. We know that the Kennedy-Nixon election was rigged. I think that\u2019s fairly widely acknowledged today. So, we\u2019ve got to watch the polls, but we\u2019ve got to get out. We\u2019ve got to vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new President, whether it\u2019s Trump, whether it\u2019s someone else, has got to nominate and have confirmed a cabinet that is loyal to the American people. Loyal to the things that the president campaigned on. If they don\u2019t believe in what the President campaigned on, they have no business being there. Why does he want voices of dissent? It\u2019s one thing to have people say, \u201cMr. President, I don\u2019t think it\u2019d be wise to implement your policy this way. I think we should do it in another way.\u201d That\u2019s the kind of dissent that\u2019s positive. But we have people who simply hate what the President stands for and despises the man personally. Those people had no business in government. It\u2019s not supposed to work that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The President\u2019s got to confirm people who are representative of the American people and not simply beholden to the globalist elites. We\u2019ve got to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, which is a tragic war. We\u2019ve got to get out of Ukraine. We\u2019ve got to get out of Somalia. We sent troops into Somalia to start a war in Somalia, intervene in a war in Somalia. They didn\u2019t even bother to explain to people why, it\u2019s just some little one paragraph: \u201cWe\u2019re sending troops.\u201d We\u2019re going to war in countries without even bothering to inform the American people, to concoct some kind of a justification. It\u2019s just we\u2019re going to send them off to war. We\u2019re in Somalia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why are we occupying Germany 75 years after the war? Why do we still have an occupation force in Germany? Why do we still have an occupation force in Japan? I mean, for goodness sake, these have been our strongest allies. There\u2019s no excuse for that. And it certainly doesn\u2019t benefit the American people in any way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, I do think one of the one of the most hopeful signs I have seen is that if you look at the Supreme Court decisions from the last term, not just singling out this one or that one, but as a whole, there is at least a genuine hope that the Supreme Court, as it\u2019s constituted today, is moving towards a restoration of Constitutional governance with the separation of powers, with the recognition of the rights of states, with a withdrawal of authority from the faceless, unelected bureaucrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think there\u2019s a great deal of hope, and I think that should inspire Americans, because up until now, really, since the 1950s, Americans would have some enormous drive to change the law, and then the Supreme Court would wrap them on the knuckles with a hickory stick and say, \u201cGet back in line. You\u2019re not going to have your will through the ballot box. You\u2019re going to shut up and be in your place.\u201d The new Supreme Court, I think, offers some help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ve got to build and enforce a wall on our southern border and stop tinkering around with it, saying, \u201cLet\u2019s do a little of this and a little of that.\u201d I think we need to be prepared to use military force against the cartels, which are killing 100,000 people a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My goodness! In the 10 years of the Vietnam War, we only lost 60,000. And that was the last truly bloody war we fought. 60,000 and the cartels kill 100,000 <em>every year!<\/em> And then when President Trump suggested, I think it was to his Chief of Staff, \u201cWe know where these cartel leaders are. Why don\u2019t we just take them out, you know, use missiles, take them out,\u201d apparently the Chief of Staff was just aghast: \u201cOh, my goodness, you would hurt the cartel? The cartels are wired in with all these politicians, they\u2019re where all the money comes from!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, the United States needs to be prepared to take action and not to fly some FBI clowns down and arrest these guys. We have a war going on with these cartels across the southern border. We need to take them out. We need to kill them. There is no excuse for these cartels murdering 100,000 people a year in the United States while we sit back and our so-called Department of Defense has all of its troops all over the world, and they\u2019re not defending the southern border. They\u2019re not defending us against the death of 100,000 people a year in the United States. What the heck use are they if they cannot defend the United States border?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>Well. I thank you. We will be circulating this widely. It\u2019s a moment of crisis for mankind as a whole. I\u2019ll repeat that we\u2019re organizing for a conference on September 10-11. I encourage all of our listeners to prepare to register for that. I, again, thank you for working with the Schiller Institute, for making your voice heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Col. Black: <\/strong>I very much appreciate what you\u2019re doing personally and what the Schiller Institute is doing. I\u2019m not sure what we would be doing if you were not disseminating the information that you do. So, thank you very much for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Billington interviews Col. Richard H. Black (ret.) on the Ukraine Center for Countering Disinformation board hit list, the Ukraine war and his thoughts about the Schiller Institute&#8217;s role in today&#8217;s crisis. Mike Billington: Hello. This is Mike Billington. I\u2019m the co-editor of the Executive Intelligence Review representing the Schiller Institute and the LaRouche Organization. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":87207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[842],"class_list":["post-90843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-lang-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90843"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90894,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90843\/revisions\/90894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}