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Amanda Head: Biden Has Zero Clue Americans are Hurting Economically

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Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

It’s difficult for Joe Biden to see down from his ivory tower.

Biden found himself the target of criticism from both sides of the aisle after a major environmental faux pas…

Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Pentagon Spying on Everything for Bad Comments About Generals

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David B. Gleason from Chicago, IL, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – Big Brother keeps growing – As part of the broader government war against free speech, the Department of Defense (DoD) is now using Orwellian means to search the internet, social media, and just about everything else, for things we say or post.

And it’s not just for legitimate physical threats against generals, it will also be looking for simple negative comments about our top military leaders.

And we should all be outraged. This really is scary stuff. This even goes beyond recent reports of the government buying our detailed personal information from data brokers, which I wrote about here.

The military runs a little-known outfit called the Army Protective Services Battalion under the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID). Think of it as the Pentagon’s Secret Service for generals.

Its mission specifically falls under CID’s Executive Protection and Special Investigations Field Office. And it has a lot of resources. Its new webpage notes:

With over 400 assigned special agents, police officers, analysts, physical security specialists, and professional support personnel spread across three continents, the Executive Protection Field Office is the largest office within CID providing worldwide dignitary protection for the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of the Army, Chief of Staff of the Army, and over a dozen other protectees in domestic and overseas locations.

Executive Protection also protects foreign counterparts during official visits to the United States, along with designated former or retired Department of Defense officials. Army CID’s dignitary protection mission is supported by robust protective intelligence and threat management investigative capabilities. [Emphasis added].

This perfectly legitimate organization exists to safeguard our senior military brass, as well as foreign brass visiting our country. As part of its duties, it conducts legitimate ‘protective intelligence’ to identify potential physical threats to its protectees. 

I am very familiar with their mission having worked with some of these folks as a military attaché during high-level foreign visits by our Defense Secretary and generals. I also have professional experience with dignitary protection. 

All this is very good and vital stuff.

The problem arises when the scope of the protective intelligence mission expands to include things that it shouldn’t. In this case, the unit is tasked to protect current and former high-ranking military officers from “assassination, kidnapping, injury or embarrassment.” 

Yes, among the big threats is “embarrassment.” 

That’s bad enough since it opens the door to looking into things that they shouldn’t just because they might embarrass a general. 

But now, according to an Army procurement document from September 2022, reports the Intercept, the detachment’s mission has expanded to include monitoring social media for “direct, indirect, and veiled” threats and identifying “negative sentiment” regarding its protectees. 

And it’s hiring a technology contractor to do its dirty work.

“Negative sentiment” – that is almost as bad as “mean tweets.” It is beyond outrageous.

I have expressed ‘negative sentiment’ toward a few senior military leaders numerous times online and in published articles – including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley.

And I will continue to do so, as is my 1st amendment right.

The line should be when anyone makes veiled or direct physical threats against any political or military leader, not just says mean things.

As The Intercept reports: “There may be legally valid reasons to intrude on someone’s privacy by searching for, collecting, and analyzing publicly available information, particularly when it pertains to serious crimes and terrorist threats,” Ilia Siatitsa, program director at Privacy International, said.

“However,” he added, “expressing ‘positive or negative sentiment towards a senior high-risk individual’ cannot be deemed sufficient grounds for government agencies to conduct surveillance operations.”

Siatitsa rightly concluded: “The ability to express opinions, criticize, make assumptions, or form value judgments — especially regarding public officials — is a quintessential part of democratic society.”

Beyond that, what if the Army is protecting a Chinese general visiting the United States? Will they surveil or target Americans who are critical of this foreign adversary’s general or of China?

And according to the documents uncovered by The Intercept, the program the Army is procuring for its newly expanded intelligence mission is a dystopian surveillance nightmare. 

It will scour everything, everywhere, and then even pinpoint the location of the person making the comment.

This is extremely frightening.

The Army describes their surveillance system as “a reliable social media threat mitigation service” with an “Open-Source Web-based toolkit with advanced capabilities to collect publicly available information (PAI).”

Information is not only grabbed up from Twitter’s “firehose” but also from 4Chan, Reddit, YouTube, Discord, Telegram, private contractors like Dataminr, as well as smartphone apps and advertisers.

Combined with cellular location data the Army could also precisely pinpoint those who might make a mean tweet about current or former military officials. 

The Intercept adds that all this data, plus CCTV feeds, radio stations, personal records, and even webcams – would be available via a “universal search selector.” That means they can access just about anything.

The Army also wants the contractor to preserve the “anonymity and security needed” by “using various egress points globally to mask their identity.” This means they can conveniently make it look like the folks doing the snooping are in China or Russia.

This is a very scary domestic spying capability to use against Americans. Congress must investigate this Orwellian program immediately and remove elements that will infringe on our constitutional rights.

Or it will soon be used against you.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Even Hollywood Hates Meghan Markle Now

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WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - October 28: THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF SUSSEX'S VISIT TO NEW ZEALAND: Engagement 6. Reception hosted by the Governor-General, Government House. October 28, 2018 in Wellington, New Zealand. (Photo by Mark Tantrum/ http://marktantrum.com)

Even woke Hollywood can’t stand Meghan Markle…

The former princess’ podcast finally got the axe…

Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Biden’s Dangerously Weak and Naive Meeting with China’s Chairman Xi – ‘Strategic Insanity’

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Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse with Joe Biden, he goes and has a chummy sideline meeting with China’s communist leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.

While his partisan spinmeisters in the media dutifully reported the White House line that Biden was firm with Xi, the three-and-a-half-hour private meeting was muddled, absurdly naïve and dangerous.

At the summit, Biden stated that the U.S. aims to manage competition with China “responsibly” and that there is no need for a new Cold War. 

Biden also strongly and foolishly reaffirmed China’s ‘One China’ policy regarding Taiwan, adding (against warnings from NATO and his own national security officials) that he didn’t foresee any Chinese military action against Taiwan any time soon.

Fox News reported Biden said during a press conference ahead of the G20 summit in Bali:

“[Xi] was clear and I was clear that we’ll defend American interests and values, promote universal human rights and stand up for the international order and work in lockstep with our allies and partners…”

“We’re going to compete vigorously but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” Biden said. “And I want to make sure that every country abides by the international rules of the road. We discussed that.”

Biden’s messaging was clear in one area though.

He believes climate change is more of a threat than a revisionist, expansionist, power-hungry, communist dictatorship with an economy almost the size of the U.S.

And Biden is willing to risk America’s sovereignty, independence, security and freedom to get China’s faux help with his extreme climate agenda.

GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was rightfully livid over Biden’s meeting and statements.

Rubio said in a statement:

President Biden’s claim that ‘there need not be a new Cold War’ between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party proves that this administration dangerously misunderstands the CCP, which openly pushes for conflict with the United States and its allies…

Last week, while Xi appeared in a military uniform and called on the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] to prepare for war, Biden’s Department of Defense pulled an entire squadron of American fighter jets out of the Indo-Pacific. Not only is the United States unprepared to defend Taiwan against a PLA invasion, President Biden is now downplaying its likelihood.

This meeting should have held the CCP accountable for its rampant human rights abuses, ongoing theft of American intellectual property, and its refusal to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Rubio added: “Instead, President Biden demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice everything — including our national security and the security of our allies — for the sake of pursuing ill-fated climate talks with our nation’s greatest adversary.”

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen told Fox News on Monday that Biden’s diplomacy with China is “strategic insanity” that may only help the autocratic communist state accumulate power and global influence.

Fox News adds that “Biden reportedly has been pressuring China to essentially join him in his Green New Deal-style vision of non-petroleum power sources, which Thiessen said is one of the key areas the United States can apply pressure to Beijing if they invade their peaceable neighbor Taiwan.

“The last thing we want China to do, quite frankly, is to start weaning itself off of oil,” Thiessen said.

“If they follow Biden’s advice and wean themselves off of oil and start embracing clean energy, we lose that leverage,” Thiessen said.

“So, you know, it’s not only a sign of weakness, it’s strategic insanity.”

As I recently reported, Xi has been increasingly adamant that so-called ‘reunification’ with Taiwan can no longer wait and China will use force if necessary to control the independent democratic nation.

Top U.S. commanders and senior intelligence officials have warned that China could take forceful action against Taiwan as early as next year, and increasingly likely by 2025 or 2027, at the latest.

Meanwhile, Biden is playing footsies with Xi, hoping China will join his radical green global agenda.

Because that is all he, and his leftist puppeteers, care about. GAND

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Marines Urged by Woke Study to Use Gender-Neutral Terms in Boot Camp

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ANALYSIS – In the most glaring example of wokeness in the military, which the Marine Commandant recently claimed wasn’t an issue in our beloved Corps, jarheads are being urged not to use sir or ma’am in Marine boot camp.

According to the Marine Corps Times, this is seen as part of a sweeping effort to avoid ‘misgendering’ drill instructors. This is something all Marines know has been a huge and pressing issue at boot camp for decades, as we have so many non-binary and trans drill instructors.

Please note my sarcasm.

The recommendation is part of a massive, recently completed, 738-page academic report from the University of Pittsburgh, which was commissioned by the Corps in 2020.

Instead of sir or ma’am the 22 University of Pittsburgh Academics that concocted the study – headed by biologists Bradley C. Nindl and Mita Lovalekar, recommend aspiring privates call their superiors by their last names. 

The study notes that other military branches have made strides to “de-emphasize gender” by using other names instead. 

The Marine Corps Times reports:

Instead of saying ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir,’ recruits in these Services refer to their drill instructors using their ranks or roles followed by their last names. Gendered identifiers prime recruits to think about or visually search for a drill instructor’s gender first, before their rank or role.

The far-left report is riddled with other woke ideas and includes a detailed study on improving gender integration at boot camp.

One important figure who thankfully appeared hesitant about this gender-neutral proposal was Col. Howard Hall, chief of staff for Marine Corps Training and Education Command.

Hall and others maintain that even if the Corps implements the change at its training facilities, recruits will then need to re-adapt to again addressing senior officers by ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ when they enter the fleet, as Marines in the real world would likely not enforce the rule.

 Hall told the Marine Corps Times, in slightly mangled terms, and some big words:

Honestly, that’s not a quick fix. What are inculcating in our young recruits that will or will not be reinforced when they graduate and enter the fleet Marine force? So again, we want to avoid any quick-fix solutions that introduce perturbations down the line.

And yes, while we all want to avoid ‘perturbations’ down the line, more importantly we want to avoid sheer idiocy right now.

Maybe our Marine officers should learn to be blunter.

This study also shows why the military needs to stop relying so much on outside consultants and academics, and their idiotic, ideologically-driven studies, to guide its policies.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Retired Generals Bash West Point for Betraying Core Values, Instilling Socialism

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Daniel Ramirez from Honolulu, USA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – Two retired generals, and a retired colonel, all three graduates of the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, have signed a statement, nominally representing the long list of West Point graduates known as the ‘Long Gray Line,’ accusing the academy of violating its core values.

And also of imposing socialist, anti-American indoctrination.

When you wonder why so many of our military commanders are involved in scandals, and accused of moral and ethical lapses, and even crimes, look no further than West Point, and the other national military academies. 

In their August 17 missive emailed to a long email list and posted on the website of the MacArthur Society of West Point Graduates, the senior officers, LTG Thomas McInerney, USAF (Ret), MG Paul E. Vallely, US Army (Ret), and Col Andrew O’Meara, US Army (Ret), argue that the academy no longer truly enforces the proud institution’s Cadet Honor Code. 

Despite West Point’s motto being “Duty, Honor, Country,” and that motto forming the basis of the Cadet Honor Code, it is now enforced less than half the time.

Rather than resulting in expulsion as in the past, the officers note that “today, the Academy’s website makes the casual web disclaimer that over 50% of convicted violators [of the honor code] are excused and allowed to graduate.”

But the rot goes far further and deeper than just letting unethical cadets graduate to form the backbone of the Army’s officer corps. These cadets are increasingly being indoctrinated in neo-Marxist socialist ideology “that runs counter to the noble principles of the Constitution.”

They add that: “The corruption of cadet instruction with socialist doctrine is further demonstrated by a pronounced bias in selecting guest speakers, who have been almost exclusively liberal.” 

[I would argue they are leftist not liberal]

“We could not identify any conservative speakers in recent years,” they noted. The officers continue:

Specifically, they argue, the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) at the Academy, or ideas derived from that theory, “severs the ties of every cadet to the defense of the Constitution, thereby nullifying the oath cadets have sworn to uphold.”

They explain that: “Critical Race Theory now replaces Duty, Honor, and Country,” at West Point.

And CRT is a cancer.

Critical Race Theory considers the founders evil, the Constitution illegitimate, and the Republic systemically racist. It abolishes the Declaration of Independence that declares all men are created equal. It brands the population as racist, privileged, and unfit to enjoy citizenship rights.

The writers add: “Officers and enlisted troops must sit through leftist indoctrination sessions that portray America as an inherently racist nation, white troops as genetically bigoted, and minority troops as hopeless, lifelong victims.”   

And the authors specifically single out Joe Biden and his team of leftists for accelerating this indoctrination and subversion at the academy, and throughout our military:

The Biden Administration seeks to divorce military service from the defense of the Constitution by replacing allegiance to the Constitution with Critical Race Theory. This prepares the military for its role in support of an overthrow of the government and the Constitutional order. By forcing the military to undergo liberal socialist indoctrination, they sever the linkage between US military service and support for the Constitution. 

To these senior retired officers, the goal is nothing less than the overthrow of our Constitutional system from within. 

Using the manufactured threat of ‘white extremism,’ as the excuse, the left is forcing Critical Race Theory indoctrination on our military to prevent any internal military opposition to the increasingly anti-constitutional actions of this, and other, far-left administrations.

Ultimately, they note: “The cumulative impact of these changes has so altered the Military Academy that USMA betrays the purpose for which it was founded in 1802 – defense of our Constitution and maintenance of individual freedom.”

And I will add – If we don’t remove this rot very quickly, our Republic is truly doomed.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: More Biden Docs…More Biden Corruption?

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President Joe Biden delivers remarks in National Statuary Hall on the one-year anniversary of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, January 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

FBI agents descended on Joe Biden’s beach home in Rehoboth Beach, DE on Wednesday as the Justice Department continues its search for classified documents…

Watch Amanda explain the latest developments below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Anti-Trump Political Witch Hunt or Valid Criminal Indictments?

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Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Former President Donald Trump faces a slew of legal onslaughts, the latest being a federal indictment by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) for violating the Espionage Act by mishandling classified information.

Like the FBI raid on his Florida home, this divisive and politically charged indictment is an unprecedented development that makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government.

And the political fallout will be huge.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and is calling the indictments a witch hunt. And yes, he has been unfairly targeted before – many times.

But is this case really part of that same anti-Trump vendetta? And does it matter?

The latest indictment is for the willful retention of highly classified national security documents at his Florida Mar-a-Lago estate, corruptly concealing documents, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.

Many will point to the later discovery of classified documents in Joe Biden’s homes and properties connected to him without him facing criminal charges (yet) as proof that this is an anti-Trump witch hunt.

Last week, the DOJ also cleared former Vice President Mike Pence of any wrongdoing after a small number of classified documents were found at his Indiana home in January.

Trump posted a slew of angry social media posts against federal investigators Tuesday highlighting different treatment.

“The Marxists and Fascists in the DOJ & FBI are going after me at a level and speed never seen before in our Country, and I did nothing wrong,” Trump wrote in one of several posts.

And yes, as I have repeatedly written about, the DOJ and the FBI have been heavily politicized, or even weaponized against conservatives.

But, as with Richard Nixon and Watergate, the problem for Trump here is the cover-up. Had he simply returned the documents once they were discovered, it would have been far less likely he would have been indicted.

Instead, Trump repeatedly refused to turn over the materials to federal officials once he left the White House, and then provided a series of bizarre justifications for his actions, before the FBI raided his home.

A separate special counsel is investigating Biden’s handling of classified material after documents were found at his Wilmington, Del., home and a Washington, D.C., office from his time as vice president. 

The difference here is Biden’s team alerted federal officials upon discovering the documents and promptly turned them over.

Trump’s own former Attorney General Bill Barr pushed back on Trump’s claims that a special counsel’s ongoing documents probe is politically motivated. 

As reported by The Hill:

“Over time, people will see that this is not a case of the Department of Justice conducting a witch hunt,” Barr said in an interview on CBS on Tuesday. “In fact, they approached this very delicately and with deference to the president, and this would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”

The indictment carries serious legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if he’s convicted. Trump will appear at a federal courthouse in Miami on June 13.

In March, the notoriously liberal, Soros-backed Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicted Trump on state charges related to hush-money payments to a former porn film star in 2016. 

That local indictment appears far more political and ‘Trumped-up’ (pun not intended) than this federal one. The trial for this case begins in March 2024.

Jack Smith, the special counsel coordinating federal investigations into the Espionage Act indictments, oversees other inquiries related to Trump, including those regarding the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021.

But none of this will prevent Trump from continuing his campaign for president. “Nothing stops Trump from running while indicted, or even convicted,” University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard Hasen told CNN.

The Constitution requires only three things of candidates. They must be a natural-born citizen (not a naturalized one), at least 35 years old, and residents of the U.S. for at least 14 years.

So theoretically, Trump could be convicted and still be elected President.

Not only won’t this keep Trump from running, but it will probably help him with his core base of supporters in the GOP primary.

And Trump won’t even go to trial for any of this until well into the next presidential term.

But the optics and politics of all this is the biggest issue.

As the Daily Caller reported Pence as saying: “I think this is going to be terribly divisive for the country. I also think it sends a terrible message to the wider world that looks at America as a standard of not only democracy, but of justice.”

The question is when does all of this come to a head? And what will happen when it does?

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Families of Marines Killed During Afghan Retreat Blast Biden and Milley

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Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

ANALYSIS – ‘Gold Star’ families of U.S. troops killed in the August 2021 Abbey Gate bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan, are blasting Team Biden excuses over the disastrous retreat. Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attack during Joe Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from the country.

At least 183 people were killed in the attack, including the 13 U.S. service members (12 Marines and a sailor).

Shamefully, Biden allowed the Taliban to retake the country almost 20 years to the day of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Washington, DC, and New York City.

AND HERE, TWO YEARS AFTER THE AFGHAN COLLAPSE, WE STILL DON’T HAVE ANSWERS, AND NO ONE HAS BEEN HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

As I wrote about earlier, senior Biden defense officials spent the days before and after the deadly 2021 attack in Kabul obsessing on getting Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to sign off on their Climate Change plan rather than focus on the chaos and death in Afghanistan.

Now, several of these Gold Star families spoke at a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable where they expressed their anger at the Biden administration, including Chairman of the Chiefs Mark Milley, who they blame, in part, for the bombing that killed 13 service members.

As the hearing was about to commence, Milley released a statement in which he said the U.S. owes Gold Star families “everything.”

“We owe them transparency, we owe them honesty, we owe them accountability. We owe them the truth about what happened to their loved ones,” Milley said.

But the families didn’t appear impressed. Instead, they were angry about the “excuses” and misinformation they received.

Fox News reported on their justified anger and venting. Kelly Barnett, the mother of Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Taylor Hoover, said “I don’t want to hear lies, I don’t want to hear excuses from Joe Biden, from the administration.”

Hoover’s father, Darin Hoover, called on top Pentagon brass to resign. 

He poignantly noted: “Today is the date, two years ago, that we received our kids home at Dover. Two years ago today, where we were disrespected with stories of Biden’s son and him looking at his watch. And today, here we sit as their families, begging you two years later, to find these answers.”

Christy Shamblin, mother-in-law of Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole Gee, who was pictured prominently with an Afghan baby in her arms prior to her death, asked why credible warnings were ignored in the days leading up to the attack.

Some even accused the Pentagon of giving them ‘made-up stories’ about their loved ones in the aftermath of the attack.

As Breitbart News reported:

…[in a Fox interview] Cheryl Rex, whose son, Lance Corporal Dylan Merola, was killed in the Kabul airport attack in 2021 reacted to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley saying that he believes military briefers gave all the information to the families of those killed in the bombing all the information they could by stating that the briefing on her son was completely inaccurate…

…[When Rex was asked] “Do you believe that all the information was there, or do you agree with other families that it wasn’t about the information, it was about the warnings that were ignored?”

Rex answered, “Me personally, he did not — the brief report was not correct. They changed my son’s location a couple of times. They were trying to accommodate his wounds that were not even in the right spots of his body according to his autopsy report. He did not — the brief report is nothing [like] what we were actually told… I feel it was made-up stories that they were trying to cover up the wounds.”

These Gold Star families deserve answers and accountability. And so do the American people.

Mexico’s Hosts Russian and Chinese Military Units in Independence Parade

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Kremlin.ru, via Wikimedia Commons

ANALYSIS – In the ‘what the h*ll are you thinking’ category – a contingent of Russian soldiers marched in the annual Mexican Independence Day parade over the weekend. 

Russian troops had participated before, but not since Moscow launched its war of aggression against Ukraine.

This year marked 213 years since the end of Spanish rule in Mexico. 

And even as deadly fentanyl precursor ingredients are entering Mexico, to then be made into the deadly drug and flood the U.S., a Communist Chinese military honor guard from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) also marched alongside Mexican troops.

The presence of the Russian troops drew criticism because of the Russia’s brutal invasion of its neighbor. Mexico, which has long harbored bitterness against the United States for intervening militarily in Mexico in the 1800s, has condemned Russia’s invasion but has adopted a policy of ‘neutrality’ and has refused to participate in sanctions.

Populist socialist Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) noted that a contingent from China also participated. “All the countries that Mexico has diplomatic relations with were invited,” he said.

AMLO admitted the issue had become “a scandal,” but blamed it on the news media being against him.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to Mexico, Oksana Dramaretska, posted online that “The civic-military parade in Mexico City was stained by the participation of a Russian regiment; the boots and hands of these war criminals are stained with blood.”

But this is only the latest Russian flirtation by AMLO.

As Arturo Sarukhan writes in his commentary for Brookings: “…it would seem that some in Mexico, unwittingly, or wittingly, seem intent on opening a ‘second front’ for Moscow from there.”

What’s behind all of this? Given that Mexico trades in two days with the United States what it trades in a whole year with Russia, ideology seems to be paramount. The traditional left in Mexico — and throughout Latin America in general — tend to support policies that push back against “Western imperialism” but is also skeptical of liberalism and what it perceives as its institutions and stakeholders, which — like many authoritarian regimes — it considers to be tools of Western values and hegemony. 

It should therefore come as no surprise that the Mexican left is inclined to swallow and regurgitate Russian disinformation and propaganda (“NATO aggression,” “denazification of Ukraine”), see sanctions as another form of “imperialism” and an attempt to corner Russia, and resort to RT and Sputnik as sources of valid information.

The Kremlin, creating a contrast with U.S. troops on Russia’s borders, has also asked frequently, if rhetorically, what if Russian troops were stationed across the border in Mexico?

Maybe this is one way for Moscow to make that point. But there is more to the story.

As ABC News reported:

Some members of López Obrador’s Morena party have publicly expressed affection for Russia even after the invasion, and López Obrador has frequently criticized the United States for sending arms to Ukraine.

López Obrador’s administration has continued to buy Russia’s Sputnik COVID vaccine and intends to use it as a booster shot later this year, along with Cuba’s Abdala vaccine.

Experts have questioned the use of those vaccines, along with Mexico’s own Patria vaccine, as a booster for new variants, because all of them were designed in 2020 to combat variants circulating at the time.

Mexico would rather buy old and likely ineffective vaccines from Russia, than be on better terms with the United States. Under AMLO Mexico is also a helpful tool for Moscow in other ways.

As Sarukhan wrote:

Viktor Koronelli, Russia’s ambassador to Mexico, who said during the recent launching of the Mexico-Russia friendship caucus that “Mexico will never join anti-Russian sanctions” and that “across the world, there are countries like China, like India, like Mexico, that will never say ‘Yes, Sir’ to Uncle Sam’s orders.”

Despite all this Russian bravado and bluster, I would be just as concerned, or more so, about the Chinese military presence in the parade.  As AMLO noted, a contingent from  China also participated, and no one complained about that.

But China’s influence in Mexico is likely far more significant than Russia’s, and far more threatening to the United States.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.