Harris has been tasked with important roles since Biden took office, such as holding talks to determine the 'root causes' of the border crisis

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Wednesday refused to say whether she believes Vice President Kamala Harris is President Joe Biden's best running mate and quietly admitted there's not too much to the position.

Pelosi, who announced last Friday she's seeking reelection to Congress in 2024, was asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper if Harris was the right fit for the job.

"He [Biden] thinks so," Pelosi said. "And that's what matters."

What a desperately presumptuous act it is for the White House Counsel's Office to blast out a memo ordering media organizations to apply the blowtorch to Republicans and defend President Biden in the impending House impeachment inquiry.

The marching orders went out Wednesday morning under a blaring headline: "MEMO TO EDITORIAL LEADERSHIP AT U.S. NEWS MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS."

Ian Sams, the grandly titled special assistant to the president and senior adviser and spokesman for the White House Counsel's Office, declared: "It's Time For The ­Media To Do More To Scrutinize House Republicans' Demonstrably False Claims That They're Basing Impeachment Stunt On."

Talk about ungrateful.

The White House is making overt what has been covert, and humiliating their media handmaidens in the process.

Tensions between Baku and Yerevan mount again, against a background of increasing US and EU activity in the region

The situation in the South Caucasus is once again becoming tense, as the long-term conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh is on the verge of escalating into another hot war.

Almost every day the two sides open fire at each other and exchange accusations. Last weekend, Baku reported that Armenia had fired at its army, while just several hours later, Yerevan said that its own forces had been attacked. The events are unfolding against the background of Armenia's joint military exercises with the United States, which will continue until September 20 - a fact that, in turn, has perplexed Russia.

The EU has also intervened in the situation and is actively holding talks with both Yerevan and Baku. For its part, Moscow believes that Brussels is responsible for escalating the conflict in the region.

Hunter Biden has been indicted on three counts related to the possession of a gun while using narcotics, court documents show.

As Techno Fog notes via The Reactionary:
Here is the indictment, and here are the charges which all relate to the same 2018 purchase of a handgun:

Count 1:

In October 2018, in connection with the purpose of a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver, Hunter Biden knowingly made a false statement, "certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious." This is in violation of 18 USC sections 922(a)(6) and 924(a)(2).

Count 2:

In October 2018, in connection with the purpose of a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver, Hunter Biden made a knowingly false statement to the company that sold him the gun "certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious." This was in violation of 18 USC section 924(a)(1)(A).

Count 3:

In October 2018, Hunter Biden possessed the Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver "knowing that he was an unlawful user of and addicted to any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance" as defined under the US Code. This was in violation of 18 USC sections 922(g)(3) and 924(a)(2).

Here's the issue - with the plea deal falling, through, is the original diversion agreement still valid? Hunter Biden's attorneys think so. In response to the Weiss's notice to the court that he would seek the grand jury indictment, Biden's attorneys responded that the agreement was still in effect and that "Mr. Biden has been and will continue to follow the conditions of that Agreement."

[ZH: Click Here for Techno Fog's in-depth legal analysis]

Washington must preserve its leadership "from a position of strength," the US Secretary of State has claimed...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has claimed the world is transitioning to a new diplomatic order in which Washington must lead the way in overcoming increasing threats from Russia and China.

In a speech at John Hopkins University in Washington, he said:

"One era is ending, a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future for decades to come. The post-Cold War order ended as decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers.

"Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine is the most immediate, the most acute threat to the international order."

Those powers are led by Russia and China. China poses the biggest long-term challenge, he claimed, because it aspires to reshape the international order and is developing the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so.

"Beijing and Moscow are working together to make the world safe for autocracy through their 'no limits' partnership," Blinken argued. He claimed that Russia and China have framed the existing order as a "Western imposition," but that system is, he claimed, anchored in universal values and enshrined in international law. Ironically, he also accused the two rivals of believing that big countries can "dictate their choices to others," a charge that is increasingly made against Washington.

I have previously written how the level of advocacy and bias has created a danger of a de facto state media in the United States. It is possible to have such a system by consent rather than coercion. Given that long concern, a letter drafted by the Biden White House Legal Counsel's Office was striking in a call for major media to "ramp up their scrutiny" of House Republicans "for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies."

The message is curious and concerning, particularly in the aggressive role being played by the White House Counsel's office under Stuart Frank Delery.

First, as I have previously noted, the White House is now actively involved in pushing narratives and denying factual allegations linked to the Biden corruption scandal. That could create Nixonian-type allegations of the abuse of office in the use of federal employees to counter impeachment efforts.

Second, the letter was drafted by Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel's Office. So White House lawyers are now enlisting the media in a counter media campaign against impeachment? The letter removes any pretense of separation between the Biden personal legal team and the White House Counsel's office. Sams has been the most aggressive White House official in actively swatting down allegations of corruption as well as the President's documents investigation.

Third, the letter calls for the media to actively support the White House account. The draft of the letter is a call for what I have previously criticized as "advocacy journalism" where reporters frame stories to advance their own viewpoints or values.

Just as a janky investment can turn catastrophically ruinous in the finance world, "Joe Biden" has transmuted from an asset to a liability for the Party of Chaos as we enter the season when things get real. Just weeks ago, the phantasm in the White House could do nothing wrong, despite doing absolutely everything wrong in the thirty-two months he's haunted the Oval Office. But now, an odor of rot and sulfur trails his every bumbling misstep while his maunderings from the podium set off alarms in party HQ. What to do, indeed...?

As of five minutes ago, "JB" was still pretending to run for reelection, which, of course, was a bamboozle that only the Wokester rank-and-file, hoaxed into an epic psychotic rapture, might swallow. The "president's" stage managers run a "campaign committee" on next-to-zero contributions, you see, but all it really does is send out millions of algo-concocted, drivel-filled emails five times a day to keep the big pretend going while the DC Blob desperately looks for a way out.

Ever since the fabled Laptop from Hell entered stage left, the un-raptured of the land have been exposed to gales of evidence that "Joe Biden" ran a family influence-peddling racket as veep, and that it likely has something to do with the extravagant mess spawned in Ukraine. The crude and lawless labors of the DOJ and the FBI to cover all that up have been failing lately as a harsh music of blown whistles ominously cleaves the dank night air over the Potomac swamp.

The Russian president brushed off a US claim that Moscow was unwilling to compromise.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded sharply to remarks by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who used the phrase "it takes two to tango" to explain the absence of peace talks with Ukraine. The Russian president noted that Blinken hails from a nation known for its uncompromising approach to international relations.

"As for the Americans, they don't know how to do this tango themselves. The music is remarkable and the steps are beautiful, but the US seeks to deal with everything from a position of power," he said on Friday.

This report is designed to help readers think about some big topics: how to really prevent pandemics and biological warfare, how to assess proposals by the WHO and its members for responding to pandemics, and whether we can rely on our health officials to navigate these areas in ways that make sense and will help their populations.

We start with a history of biological arms control and rapidly move to the COVID pandemic, eventually arriving at plans to protect the future.

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Chem/Bio

Traditionally, the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have been labelled Chemical, Biological, Radiologic, and Nuclear (CBRN).

The people of the world don't want them used on us — for they are cheap ways to kill and maim large numbers of people quickly. And so international treaties were created to try to prevent their development (only in the later treaties) and use (in all the biological arms control treaties). First was the Geneva Protocol of 1925, following the use of poison gases and limited biological weapons in World War I, banning the use of biological and chemical weapons in war. The US and many nations signed it, but it took 50 years for the US to ratify it, and during those 50 years the US asserted it was not bound by the treaty.

Western news media have become a parody of misreporting, misinformation and outright imperialist propaganda. Nobody of sound mind can take their claims seriously anymore. This week such media "excelled" in their deceptions and distortions with hysterical coverage of the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

It is, however, instructive to analyze what motivates the Western hysteria and false narratives.

The tone of Western reporting and commentary was akin to reading reviews of a new James Bond movie. In their telling, the summit was portrayed as a tete-a-tete between the world's most dastardly villains. The Washington Post perhaps took the laurels for hyperbole, describing the summit as having "nefarious glamor" and went on to mention Kim arriving in a bulletproof train (as if that is somehow weird) and how the two leaders met at a "remote space port" (cue the James Bond music) and dined on "duck salad and crab dumplings" (oh, how very evil!). All that was missing, it seemed, was a shark tank.

The contrived menacing tone projected by the gamut of Western media speculated on Russia cutting a deal with North Korea to supply artillery munitions for the 18-month-old conflict in Ukraine. There were also heavy inferences that Russia would help bolster its East Asian neighbor's nuclear arsenal thereby allegedly posing a greater threat to the United States.

It was widely claimed that the summit demonstrated that Russia was isolated internationally over the Ukraine war and that President Putin was "desperate" by reaching out to "pariah state" North Korea.

As we noted above, Western media have long ago forfeited any credibility. Their narratives have become embarrassingly discredited. Anything that American or European news media pronounce on should be taken with a risible pinch of salt, if not with utter contempt.

One topical example suffices. This week saw an appalling human disaster in Libya from storm floods. Up to 20,000 people are feared dead from torrential flooding. Not one Western media outlet even remotely made the connection that this horror was made wholly possible because the North African country was destroyed and turned into a failed state by the criminal military attack on the nation in 2011 by the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

Given this total denial by Western media of the underlying cause of Libya's ruination, one can reasonably dismiss their credibility and moral presumption to discuss any other world events. Their function is to mislead, not inform.