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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- | |
| Alex Marlow's ‘Breaking Biden: Antony Blinken Is the Patron Saint of the Military-Industrial Complex | |
| 2023-10-11 | |
| I’m not one to advocate self promotion but this review from Breitbart has meat and may be of interest to some. [Breitbart] Spend any significant time in Washington D.C. and you’ll learn that pretty much everything that is said about the Military-Industrial Complex—a term that was popularized by Dwight D. Eisenhower—is true, if not worse. It is a truly national disgrace that the diplomats who are tasked with carrying out our foreign policy and those who allocate and distribute our war budget make millions of dollars from the defense industry itself. As documented across multiple chapters of my new book, Breaking Biden: Exposing the Hidden Forces and Secret Money Machine Behind Joe Biden, His Family, and His Administration, there is no person in Joe Biden’s administration who is a bigger part of this swampiest part of D.C. than Secretary of State Tony Blinken. SECRETARY OF BOEING In 2018, Antony Blinken — then managing director of the Penn Biden Center, home of Joe’s infamous classified documents — co-founded WestExec Advisors, a boutique D.C. consultancy focused on “advising companies on geopolitical risk and emerging opportunities.” Staffed largely by former Obama administration officials looking to turn their expertise into dollars, WestExec Advisors also served as a sort of “government-in-waiting” for the next Democratic administration. When Joe Biden took office, they finally had their opportunity. At least sixteen Biden administration officials have come from WestExec, including Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki. WestExec employees — at least 16 of whom joined the Biden administration — disclosed clients including Boeing, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Blackstone, FedEx, AT&T, Discovery, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gilead Sciences, and Uber. Once they entered the Biden administration, they were supposed to provide oversight of these exact companies. Tony Blinken’s own clients included companies such as Boeing, Microsoft, and AT&T. Blinken has attempted to recuse himself from foreign policy that relates to Boeing, but to completely disqualify himself from this part of his portfolio would leave him little left to do as secretary of state. Boeing’s products are crucial in diplomacy with China, Israel, the Middle East, and Ukraine. For example, the U.S. sent Ukraine GPS guided bombs in February 2023 made by… wait for it… Boeing! The company’s CEO later said he hoped Blinken’s 2023 visit to China would lead to more orders for planes. BAGGING CASH FROM CHINA AND GOOGLE The company’s work isn’t limited to typical defense industry buckraking either. On its website, WestExec claimed to help American universities seek funding and partnerships in Communist China; they scrambled to hide this fact in the months leading up to the 2020 election. Upon its founding, WestExec quickly partnered with Jigsaw, a branch of Google that “explores threats to open societies,” one of which is disinformation. Blinken helped execute the “Russian disinfo” hoax that got the Laptop from Hell censored before the 2020 election. Have no doubt, this business has been lucrative for Blinken and his allies. Blinken initially valued his stake in WestExec at between $500,000 and $1 million, but upon taking office, he sold it back to the firm for between $1 million and $5 million — up to ten times its initial reported value. And that’s not counting the nearly $1.2 million he was paid by WestExec prior to taking office. Perhaps the original value estimate turned out to be a little off. Or perhaps the prospect of having its partners staff the incoming administration inflated WestExec’s value even further. Blinken’s career has delivered serious value to his friends and corporate paymasters, but comparatively little to the American people. As secretary of state, Antony Blinken has served up false promises and embarrassments, claiming during a June 2021 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that there would be no urgent need to evacuate the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan: “We’re staying, our embassy’s staying . . . if there is a significant deterioration in security, I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.” But two months later, in mid-August, a “Friday-to-Monday” disaster is literally what happened when the Taliban violently and swiftly swept through Kabul over the course of a weekend, forcing a dramatic acceleration of embassy evacuations.
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| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #2 Days after Joe Biden became president, his DOJ sought briefing on Hunter criminal case, memos show |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-10-11 03:00 |
| #1 Blinken to visit Israel to meet with officials in show of support after Hamas attack |
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