In 2023, despite skyrocketing inflation, debt, as well as rising sociopolitical divisions, leadership among both the Republicans and Democrats will always agree that substantially more US taxpayer money, never less, should be poured into the military industrial complex, according to an analysis by Judd Legum.
Case in point, the debt ceiling agreement established between the Joe Biden administration and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy caps military spending at a record $886 billion, exactly matching Biden’s mammoth budget request.
The GOP was seeking large increases in military spending and would only entertain cuts in non-military expenditures. The agreed upon war budget represents a 3.3% increase over the current year. The tentative deal still needs to make its way through Congress, where hawks will fiercely oppose any and all military spending caps.
Half of this money will go to defense contractors with Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics receiving the lion’s share. Some of these arms industry giants are currently ensnared in a massive “price gouging” scandal, with a bipartisan group of Senators demanding an investigation be opened at the Pentagon’s highest levels.
Legum highlights the lack of any “peace dividend.” after the disastrous 20 year war and occupation in Afghanistan. “This military spending increase has occurred even as Biden ended the war in Afghanistan, the military’s longest-running and most costly foreign intervention… Each year, the costs go up dramatically,” Legum writes.
He explains that the US has added more than $300 billion to the military budget during the last eight years. In 2015, the Pentagon budget was $585 billion. Half of this obscene increase in war spending and profiteering has been bylined by the Biden administration. Legum continues,
(Had military spending kept pace with inflation, [it] would still be less than $700 billion annually.) Biden has added nearly $150 billion to the military budget since 2021, the last budget approved by President Trump. The budget of the Pentagon now exceeds “the budgets for the next ten largest cabinet agencies combined.” In 2020, Lockheed Martin received $75 billion in government contracts, more than 1.5 times the budget of the entire State Department.
Last year, the United States spent more on its military than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined.
A recent report on 60 Minutes, the CBS news program, saw former Pentagon officials, contract negotiators, and insiders accuse these defense firms of “astronomical price increases” and “unconscionable” fraud.
In particular, the CBS report cites Shay Assad, a 40-year veteran contract negotiator, who says military industrial complex behemoths, such as Lockheed and Raytheon, overcharge for “[everything from] radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”
The cited experts described these practices, as well as the accompanying rampant unaccountability, as largely the culmination of bureaucratic decisions made during the immediate post-Cold War era.
In the early 1990s, ostensibly to reduce costs, the DOD “urged defense companies to merge and 51 major contractors consolidated to five giants.” This drastically reduced competition and put the big five industry “giants” in an extremely advantageous situation. The War Department “has few options today, and the defense contractors know it,” Legum writes.
Assad clarifies the effects of this centralization of power, “In the [1980s], there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now,” Assad said. “The problem was compounded in the early 2000s when the Pentagon, in another cost-saving move, cut 130,000 employees whose jobs were to negotiate and oversee defense contracts.”
Retired Pentagon auditor Mark Owen bluntly told CBS, this is “not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly.”
The report highlighted the fact that, before the clamp down on competition, a shoulder-fired Stinger missile, produced by Raytheon, cost $25,000 in 1991. Now that Washington is subsidizing the provision of so many Stingers to Ukraine, as well as Taiwan, the weapon is now priced at more than $400,000. This is an “eye-watering” seven-fold increase, even when taking inflation into account as well as interim technological advancements.
Lockheed and Boeing were found to have yielded an over 40 percent profit on sales of PAC-3 surface to air missiles to Washington and its allies. Assad explained the companies saw a windfall of hundreds of millions on the deals over seven years, and “based on what they actually made, we would’ve received an entire year’s worth of missiles for free.”
The DOD also “caught Raytheon making what they called ‘unacceptable profits’ from the Patriot missile defense system by dramatically exaggerating the cost and hours it took to build the radar and ground equipment.”
Assad demonstrated to the 60 Minutes host that an oil pressure switch was selling for over $10,000, when he claimed the switch should cost $328. The host asked Assad a question regarding the huge discrepancy, to which the former official responded “Gouging. What else can account for it?”
A major aspect of this problem is the Congress and defense contractors’ bribes. As Legum details, the military-industrial complex spent $2.5 billion on lobbying in the last two decades. “During that period, defense contractors employed an average of 700 lobbyists — more than one lobbyist for every member of Congress.”
Though, some Senators just denounced the contractors, in a letter to the Pentagon chief, saying these firms are “dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages.”
The lawmakers charged that these “companies have abused the trust government has placed in them… exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin.”
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism | Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, United States |
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US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed that Kiev’s upcoming NATO-backed counteroffensive will commence sometime this summer, which makes it timely to discuss the key challenges that it’ll face. First and foremost among these is the NATO-Russian “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared in mid-February. Considering that Kiev is entirely dependent on foreign support, the state of those two’s competition is the most crucial variable.
The second one is connected with the preceding one and concerns the fact that Kiev’s NATO-trained forces haven’t yet been tested in battle. For all the hype about the upcoming counteroffensive, it remains to be seen whether they’ll perform as expected since they lack the experience carrying out large-scale operations. Russia learned from its shortcomings that were responsible for Ukraine’s reconquest of Kharkhov and half of Kherson Region, thus reducing the chances of this happening again.
On that topic, the third key challenge facing the counteroffensive is that Russia has fortified its defenses along the Line of Contact (LOC). Kiev will therefore struggle to achieve a breakthrough absent some black swan event, which of course can’t be ruled out but nevertheless appears unlikely. Moreover, the Battle of Artyomovsk imbued Russian forces with invaluable urban warfare experience that they can put to use defending major cities under their control, which could create more meat grinders for Kiev.
This leads into the fourth point, which is that Ukraine has already exhausted a large amount of its equipment and personnel over the past 15 months. The Washington Post drew attention to this in their detailed report in mid-March, which the Polish Chief of Army Staff extended credence to in his similar assessment that he shared in late April. These objective observations from pro-Kiev sources cast serious doubt on the success of the upcoming counteroffensive.
It’s precisely because of these worries that Ukraine is pinning its hopes on so-called “wunderwaffen” like the F-16s, but even US Air Force chief Frank Kendell said in late May that such systems aren’t going to be a “dramatic game-changer…for their total military capabilities.” Furthermore, Russia has already proven that it’s able to adapt to Kiev’s fielding of prior such “wunderwaffen” like Turkiye’s Bayraktar drones, which government-funded US and UK experts recently admitted that Moscow successfully neutralized.
Building upon the abovementioned fifth key challenge, the sixth one involves the West’s growing fatigue with indefinitely funding the NATO-Russian proxy war, which has already cost their taxpayers over $160 billion. Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul cautioned in early May that the counteroffensive’s potential failure to meet the public’s expectations could lead to a reduction in future support, which exposes other Western officials’ pledges of unconditional support as lies.
And finally, the last factor working against Kiev’s favor ahead of its counteroffensive is to meet the Western public’s unrealistically high expectations that McCaul spoke about despite the tremendous odds. Unnamed Biden Administration officials told Politico in late April that they’re very worried that this won’t happen, which places Ukraine’s spree of terrorist attacks since then into their appropriate context by revealing them to be nothing but infowar copium to satiate the bloodthirsty Western masses.
These seven key challenges will be very difficult for Kiev to overcome, thus making it likely that the outcome of its much-hyped counteroffensive will simply be some limited changes along the LOC. Seeing as how that would almost certainly provoke deep disappointment among the Western public, it could very well be that this predictably lackluster result directly leads to the resumption of peace talks by year’s end, which might freeze the conflict with a ceasefire if not end it outright with some sort of compromise.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | NATO, Russia, Ukraine |
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The quest to develop and refine technologically advanced means to commit mass homicide continues on, with Pentagon tacticians ever eager to make the military leaner and more lethal. Drone swarms already exist, and as insect-facsimile drones are marketed and produced, we can expect bug drone swarms to appear soon in the skies above places where suspected “bad guys” are said to reside—along with their families and neighbors. Following the usual trajectory, it is only a matter of time before surveillance bug drones are “upgraded” for combat, making it easier than ever to kill human beings by whoever wishes to do so, whether military personnel, factional terrorists, or apolitical criminals. The development of increasingly lethal and “creative” means to commit homicide forges ahead not because anyone needs it but because it is generously funded by the U.S. Congress under the assumption that anything labeled a tool of “national defense” is, by definition, good.
To some there may seem to be merits to the argument from necessity for drones, given the ongoing military recruitment crisis. There are many good reasons why people wish not to enlist in the military anymore, but rather than review the missteps taken and counterproductive measures implemented in the name of defense throughout the twenty-first century, administrators ignore the most obvious answer to the question why young people are less enthusiastic than ever before to sign their lives away. Why did the Global War on Terror spread from Afghanistan and Iraq to engulf other countries as well? Critics have offered persuasive answers to this question, above all, that killing, torturing, maiming, and terrorizing innocent people led to an outpouring of sympathy for groups willing to resist the invaders of their lands. As a direct consequence of U.S. military intervention, Al Qaeda franchises such as ISIS emerged, proliferated, and spread. Yet the military plows ahead undeterred in its professed mission to eliminate “the bad guys,” with the killers either oblivious or somehow unaware that they are the primary creators of “the bad guys.”
Meanwhile, the logic of automation has been openly and enthusiastically embraced as the way of the future for the military, as in so many other realms. Who needs soldiers anyway, given that they can and will be replaced by machines? Just as grocery stores today often have more self-checkout stations than human cashiers, the military has been replacing combat pilots with drone operators for years. Taking human beings altogether out of the killing loop is the inevitable next step, because war architects focus on lethality, as though it were the only measure of military success. Removing “the human factor” from warfare will increase lethality and may decrease, if not eliminate, problems such as PTSD. But at what price?
Never a very self-reflective lot, war architects have even less inclination than ever before to consider whether their interventions have done more harm than good because of the glaring case of Afghanistan. After twenty years of attempting to eradicate the Taliban, the U.S. military finally retreated in 2021, leaving the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (as they now refer to themselves) in power, just as they were in 2001. By focusing on how slick and “neat” the latest and greatest implements of techno-homicide are, those who craft U.S. military policy can divert attention from their abject incompetence at actually winning a war or protecting, rather than annihilating, innocent people.
For decades now, military officers have expressed outright disdain toward those who dare to broach the topic of civilian casualties. When asked about the Iraqi death toll after the 1991 Gulf War, General Colin Powell infamously muttered, “That’s not really a number I’m terribly interested in.” General Tommy Franks, when asked a version of the same question after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, similarly quipped, “You know, we don’t do body counts.”
Once a war has been waged, “rules of engagement” are specified by military officers themselves, which is one of the reasons why the killing of civilians seen throughout the “War on Terror” has occurred wherever and whenever wars have been fought. In the twenty-first century, however, the problem of designating who is “fair game” for slaughter is far more serious, for the assassination of suspects has been rebranded as targeted killing and claimed by the highest authorities of the U.S. government, including the Department of Justice, to be perfectly permissible, even in “areas outside active hostilities,” i.e., beyond war zones. That the Barack Obama administration somehow persuaded nearly the entire nation to believe that it was not only acceptable but in fact laudable to execute U.S. citizen suspects located outside a war zone without so much as an indictment, much less a court trial, was a remarkable accomplishment, and in some ways unbelievable.
Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden followed the precedent set by Obama in radically expanding the use of lethal drones to target suspects on hit lists drawn up by their own administrations. The normalization of assassination achieved by the Obama administration was well illustrated by Trump’s authorization of the intentional and premeditated execution of an Iranian general located in Baghdad, General Qasem Soleimani (on January 3, 2020), as though this were a matter of business as usual. Indeed, Trump gleefully bragged about having executed a high-profile public figure using a lethal drone, effectively asserting the right to target named foreign officials at the pleasure of the U.S. president. By openly assassinating General Soleimani, Trump essentially put any leader who dares to demur from U.S. policy on notice that they, too, can be eliminated through the push of a button at the caprice of the U.S. executive.
Most of the thousands of victims of drone strikes have been unnamed persons (of unknown identity at the time of their demise) located in areas where “unlawful enemy combatants” were said to hide. After having claimed that they had killed yet another “senior Al Qaeda leader” in northwest Syria on May 3, 2023, officials at the Pentagon emended their report, acknowledging that the victim, identified by locals and his family as Lotfi Hassan Misto, a 56-year-old shepherd, may not have been the “bad guy” they had been pursuing after all. To soften the blow, a Pentagon spokesperson suggested that Misto was nonetheless somehow “associated” with Al Qaeda, a vague assertion backed by no evidence and in fact denied by area residents and effectively refuted by terrorist experts who noted the highly significant absence of jihadist group chatter in the aftermath of the event.
It is most plausible that on May 3, 2023, the “savvy” techno-killers destroyed yet another family like that of Zemari Ahmadi, who, along with nine other people, including seven children, was annihilated by the U.S. military in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 29, 2021, in a drone strike initially touted by the public relations team at the Pentagon as the successful neutralization of a terrorist attack. Ahmadi, an aid worker, had the misfortune of driving a white Toyota Corolla, which someone in the “intelligence” community had determined was being used by a “bad guy” to plan and perpetrate an attack on the airport. The usual confirmation bias kicked in as Ahmadi was followed around all day by surveillance drones while he performed actions interpreted as “suspicious” by those looking to “get some.”
After the fact of their demise, the victims of U.S. military interventions are essentially fictionalized in the minds of those who ended their lives. This tendency is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than by Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s response to a question (posed by Errol Morris in his 2003 documentary film, The Fog of War) about “mistakes made” by any commander during the prosecution of a war:
“He has made mistakes in the application of military power. He has killed people, unnecessarily, his own troops or other troops, through mistakes, through errors of judgment.”
Note McNamara’s stunning omission of civilians among the possible victims of commanders’ mistakes.
The fictionalization of civilian victims of drone strikes is especially troubling in cases where the U.S. government offers no explanation of what transpired when named persons such as Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Mamana Bibi are erased from existence. Abdulrahman was the 16-year-old son of suspected Al Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki, and Mamana Bibi was a 68-year-old grandmother “taken out” by a U.S. drone while picking okra all alone in her family’s fields. In many cases there has not even been a report of any U.S. missiles having been fired when incinerated corpses are discovered by locals on the ground.
The capacity for high-level decision makers in the military to deny any and all responsibility for what have been decried by the public as war crimes has been amply illustrated in case after case. For example, the torture at Abu Ghraib prison was blamed on a handful of “bad apple” low-level grunts, when in fact they were acting in accordance with their interpretations of what they were asked to do. The problem in such cases is two-fold. First, low-level soldiers are required to obey the orders of their superior officers. Second, when officers or bureaucrats redefine key terminology, such as the use of the neologistic “enhanced interrogation techniques” in place of “torture,” which most everyone seems to agree is wrong, then no one should be surprised when atrocity ensues. Similarly, “rules of engagement” said to permit the targeting of any person present (as in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004) will naturally generate civilian deaths. Again, when Reuters journalists were killed in 2007 by soldiers in an Apache helicopter hovering above New Baghdad, film footage of the event made public by Wikileaks (Collateral Murder) was met with the horror and outrage of people all around the globe. The Pentagon concluded its investigation of the killings with the expected announcement that no crimes were committed on that day.
The CIA ran drone operations outside areas of active hostilities for years (most likely to avoid congressional oversight), and it appears that they continue to do so in places such as Somalia, where seven civilians, including three children were killed by a “suspected” U.S. drone strike on January 30, 2023, not claimed by the Pentagon. This is a case where irrefutable evidence of homicide, dead people destroyed by a missile and discovered by bereft family members and friends, has not prompted U.S. administrators to accept any responsibility whatsoever for their actions, no doubt under the “get out of jail free” (a.k.a. “state secrets privilege”) pretext according to which the publication of facts somehow undermines national security.
What facts undermine are spurious claims by warmakers to be accomplishing anything worthwhile for anyone but death industry profiteers in running this nonstop killing machine. Originally the marketing line for unmanned rather than manned combat planes was that the new technology would save troops’ lives. But by using lethal drones, and expanding their use to places where there were no U.S. military personnel on the ground to protect, the presumption against killing civilians was weakened to the point where, today, in many cases, only civilians’ lives are being risked by missiles launched from drones. The victims of drone strikes are labeled “collateral damage,” just as they have been for decades in combat theaters, but according to the lethality maximizers, so long as the killers “intend” to kill bad guys, they never do anything wrong. They may have curtailed the lives of innocent men, women, and children who never posed a threat to anyone, but it was all part of a good faith effort to defend the nation.
This normalization of assassination as a standard operating procedure of warfare not only endangers civilians in order to protect combat soldiers but also flouts widely accepted conventions regarding the proper conduct of war. According to longstanding international agreements such as the Geneva Conventions, soldiers are to be provided with the opportunity to surrender before they are killed. In drone strikes, the targets (usually unarmed) are summarily executed without warning under the assumption that they are guilty until proven innocent, which is of course impossible for them to do ex post facto.
What the military knows how to do is perpetrate mass homicide, and this they will continue to do, if they are not somehow reined in. The revolving door between government administrators and military industry makes it difficult to see how this might be accomplished. The problem is not only one of corruption, although that is a part of the problem. Even more intractable is that the persons who rise in the ranks of the military are precisely those who wholeheartedly agree that conflicts are to be resolved through homicide. (It turns out, felicitously for many of them, that the death industry is also highly lucrative.) It matters little whether military leaders such as current secretary of defense and former Raytheon board member Lloyd Austin are profoundly self-deceived or willfully ignore the carnage and misery which their policies have sown for people far from U.S. shores. They occupy positions of power and advise the president on matters of foreign policy.
Not everyone who joins the military rises in the ranks to become an administrator, having bought into the company line. Certainly drone operators are not always happy to learn that they have been transformed into contract killers, required to execute strangers at the request of “the customer,” and expected to deal with their reservations and guilt for what they have done through dosing themselves with psychiatric medications. Happily for war entrepreneurs, however, machines will solve all of the problems of hesitation to kill and critical thinking about what exactly the guiding strategic objective is supposed to be in “whack-a-mole and all of their family” missions conducted by soldiers at no risk of death when they terminate the lives of fellow human beings.
When computer algorithms have replaced human judgment in decisions about when and where to launch missiles from drones, it will become even more difficult to hold anyone responsible than it already is. When an automated program determines that a swarm of drones should be sent out to kill suspected “bad guys” located in an area inhabited by many civilians, no one will be held accountable when some of those civilians are stripped of their lives. Those who wrote the algorithms will continue to shirk personal responsibility by muttering the usual shibboleths: “Mistakes were made.” “Stuff happens.” Note the absence of an active subject in these sorts of reflexive responses to the military’s commission of war crimes. The move from evading responsibility through the use of passive verbs to the outright denial that any agent of the U.S. government has ever done anything wrong will be seamless once lethal drone missions are computer programmed, for there will be no identifiable moral agent behind any specific decision at all.
It is a single-minded obsession with maximizing lethality which has created the perpetual motion drone killing machine, and the problem will only grow worse with automation. The “drone warriors” have amply displayed their insouciance toward the thousands of innocent victims whom they have already killed, so it falls on people who do not serve as cogs in the machine to pose legal and moral objections to what has been going on now for more than twenty years. This is easier said than done, for citizens have become inured to the atrocities funded by them as a result of the military’s effective management of the mainstream media. With the U.S. government engaged in the suppression and outright censorship of counternarratives, the problem of profligate killing has become even more challenging to address, for citizens and politicians alike are largely ignorant of the crimes committed in their name.
Indeed, the Pentagon exerts such control over the narrative transmitted to the populace today that whistleblowers and others who expose war crimes, such as Julian Assange, are ruthlessly criminalized and persecuted as a direct result of highly effective discreditation campaigns. When the government labels even nonviolent dissidents in the homeland as extremists, then the next logical step will be to “neutralize” them, too, by all means necessary. With artificial intelligence already being used to identify so-called extremists, and the looming specter of automated lethal drones ready to deploy, it has never been more dangerous to defy the government. Nonetheless, we must find a way to turn off this killing machine while it is still possible to do.
Laurie Calhoun is the Senior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. She is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique, in addition to many essays and book chapters. Questioning the COVID Company Line: Critical Thinking in Hysterical Times will be published by the Libertarian Institute in 2023.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | United States |
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The 52nd session of the CIS Council of Heads of Security Agencies and Special Services took place in Minsk on Thursday, during which time representatives from the Union State expressed concern that the NATO-Russian proxy war will expand. FSB chief Bortnikov from the Russian side shared his assessment that this bloc is responsible for sabotage in their two countries. He also warned that “The West actively encourages Moldova to get involved in the Ukrainian conflict by cleansing Transdniestria and Gagauzia.”
As for the Belarusian side of the Union State, it was most importantly represented by President Lukashenko, who raised awareness of the West’s impending coup plot against him. According to him, “this is no longer 2020, when girls went to rallies wearing short white skirts and holding flowers. People are ready to come here with weapons.” He said that this is because the West now demands that those “opposition” figures who they’re hosting commit terrorist attacks in order to continue receiving funding.
Bortnikov and Lukashenko shared their views on the same day as the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that it had beaten back Ukrainian terrorists earlier that morning who tried infiltrating Belgorod Region in a repeat of last week’s incident. These three developments suggest that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will possibly attempt to expand the geographic scope of this proxy war to include Belarus, Moldova, and/or Russia’s pre-2014 territory, perhaps even all at once.
The strategic reason for going all out like that would be to compensate for the seven key challenges that place Ukraine in a position of weakness vis-à-vis Russia even in spite of the over $165 billion in aid that it’s received from NATO since the start of the special operation. Aware that the counteroffensive will likely fail to meet the Western public’s expectations exactly as unnamed US officials told Politico in late April, Kiev seems to be preparing a set of spectacular provocations to spin as a success instead.
The potential plan appears to be for Kiev to lash out in those three directions in the hope of achieving a breakthrough across at least one of those fronts, not to mention the Line of Contact (LOC) between its forces and Russia’s in the territory that Ukraine claims as its own. The West wanted Georgia to play a role in this scheme too in order to maximally divide Moscow’s attention, but its Color Revolution agents couldn’t get Tbilisi to go along with this despite trying their best to pressure it to do so in March.
In the event that Kiev gains and holds ground in Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and/or Ukraine’s former regions, none of which can be taken for granted of course, then the West can claim that the counteroffensive was worth it. NATO doesn’t think that the last-mentioned front along the LOC will see much progress, if any at all, which is why it appears to be preparing Kiev for a multifront attack that stands a better chance of meeting the public’s expectations of success.
The scenario of a direct NATO military intervention in Moldova and/or up to the LOC also can’t be ruled out either. The second one would of course spike the risks of nuclear brinksmanship, but since “Biden’s Re-Election Hinges On The Success Of Kiev’s Counteroffensive”, the US’ ruling liberal–globalist elite might gamble with the apocalypse out of desperation if Kiev fails to achieve any success at all. The possibility of Russia reversing the dynamics to achieve its own breakthrough could also prompt that dark scenario too.
The West is in a dilemma since NATO’s “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia that Secretary-General Stoltenberg declared in mid-February is gradually trending in Moscow’s favor as proven by its victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk. Such an astronomical sum has already been invested in this counteroffensive, which has also been hyped up to an absurd level, that it has to go forward no matter what despite the Washington Post warning in mid-March about how poorly Kiev’s forces are really faring.
It’s therefore politically impossible to do the pragmatic thing by agreeing to a ceasefire that freezes the LOC before Kiev loses even more territory, hence why the West seems to be seriously contemplating the previously unthinkable scenario of escalating along four separate fronts at once. This is being done from a position of weakness out of desperation for something tangible to be achieved that can then be spun as a success in order to partially meet the Western public’s expectations.
The counteroffensive’s full failure would reflect terribly on the ruling Western elite and possibly pose a major electoral challenge to their figureheads the next time that voters go to the polls, which is why they’re ready to do whatever is required to prevent that perception among their people. There’s of course the slim chance that cooler heads will prevail, but the latest developments suggest that Kiev is being pressured by NATO to go all out, which could lead to the proxy war expanding in four directions at once.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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By Lucas Leiroz | June 1, 2023
The Kiev regime shows that it is really not willing to negotiate and achieve peace diplomatically. In a recent publication on social media, Mikhail Podoliak, the main adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, stated that it would be necessary to create a “demilitarized zone” inside Russian territory. The measure sounds absolutely absurd and does not correspond to the terms of peace demanded by the Russians, making it impossible for there to be talks seeking mutual interests.
Podoliak published his plan in his Twitter account on May 29. The adviser stated that the creation of a demilitarized zone of 100-120 km (62-76 miles) deep into Russian territory bordering Ukraine would “prevent a recurrence of aggression in the future”, and “ensure real security” for Ukrainian citizens in Kharkov, Chernigov, and Sumy regions. According to him, Zaporozhye, Lugansk and Donetsk regions (which Kiev considers its own, but which were already reintegrated into Russia last year) would also benefit from the absence of Russian troops in the area.
In the scheme exposed by him, there should be no units of the Russian armed forces in the cities of Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk and Rostov. Curiously, Podoliak referred to these Russian oblasts as “republics”, quietly suggesting that they should become more autonomous regions or independent states. With this, Podoliak also makes it clear that he echoes the already known intentions of the Ukrainian and Western authorities to divide the Russian Federation in order to neutralize it through the loss of territorial control.
The adviser believes that the plan to create the demilitarized zone should be implemented in stages, with the possibility of initially allocating an international security contingent in the region to gain territorial control and guarantee the absence of Russian forces. Then, the area could finally be completely demilitarized, making the peace project successful.
The official even classified these measures as a “key issue” to discuss the possibility of lasting peace between the two countries. For him, “if [the Russians] are not going to attack and don’t decide they want revenge in a couple of years, this shouldn’t be an issue”. Obviously, the aide ignores all the problems involved in this dispute, such as the self-determination of ethnic Russians who want to join the Federation and Russia’s need for solid security guarantees.
In fact, the Ukrainian attitude of ignoring Russian demands for peace is already well known, being the main reason why all attempts at talks so far have failed. However, there is something significantly more serious about the current case, as Kiev openly plans to violate Russia’s undisputed territory under the excuse of “avoiding aggression”. In practice, Ukraine makes it clear that its condition for peace is not only to take back the territories it considers its own (the newly integrated oblasts and Crimea), but also to fragment the Federation and prevent Moscow from exercising its sovereignty even in areas not claimed by Kiev.
In other words, Podoliak makes it clear that the neo-Nazi regime has no other intention in this conflict than to attack Russia and violate its sovereign space. Although the western narrative describes Russia as an “invader” and an “aggressor”, the real situation is the exact opposite, with Kiev and NATO being the threatening sides, who openly want to harm Russia and its people. Moscow’s military actions since the beginning of the special operation have been only a reaction to the imminent risk posed by the (Western-sponsored) Ukrainian side.
In practice, this definitely annuls the chances of peace through diplomacy. Moscow will obviously not accept restrictions on the use of its military force in its own territory. And Kiev will certainly continue to refuse to accept Russian terms, which would oblige the Ukrainian government to recognize territorial losses and commit to not joining NATO. Faced with this impasse, the only solution left is to continue fighting on the battlefield until the winning side unilaterally imposes its conditions after neutralizing the enemy.
For Ukraine, this is the worst scenario, since, according to many experts, the country is simply not able to reverse the unfavorable military scenario. Russian victory seems to be just a matter of time, as Moscow troops continue to gain territory even with a low percentage of mobilization, while Ukraine is losing more and more ground even though it is using everything it has – no longer being able to count on reserves for the future. Obviously, in the face of imminent defeat, it is best to resort to negotiations, but Kiev does not have the sovereignty to decide something in this sense, only obeying Western orders to continue a proxy war that is impossible to win.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | NATO, Russia, Ukraine |
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I just returned from a month-long visit to Russia, during which time I had the opportunity to see a dozen different cities covering nearly the entire expanse of the Russian Federation. Prior to my departure, I was filling up the tank of my car, when I noticed a sticker on the gas pump.
The sticker portrayed a smiling Joe Biden, the President of the United States, gesturing to his right. Underneath the image were printed the words, “I did this!”
Far from being a compliment, the sticker was a form of humorous protest against the Russia sanctions adopted last year after the start of the special military operation. Many of these sanctions involved Russian energy, and the resulting economic chaos in global energy markets prompted gas prices to surge. Biden was quick to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming on June 22, 2022, that “the simple truth is gas prices are up almost $2.00 a gallon because of Vladimir Putin’s ruthless attack on Ukraine.”
Biden called the increase in cost “Putin’s Price Hike”, but the American people saw through the subterfuge, as the sticker on the pump proved. If anything, the increase in gas prices prompted many Americans to look at the sticker after examining the bill, and sarcastically proclaim, “Thank you, Joe Biden.”
Upon my arrival to Russia, I expected to see a nation heavily impacted by the consequences of American-led sanctions. Instead, I saw a nation undergoing an economic revival, in large part thanks to the policies Russia was compelled to undertake because of Western sanctions. When I told my Russian hosts about the sticker at the gas pump and my sarcastic appreciation, they laughed. “Send us the stickers,” they said. “And we will thank Joe Biden with all the sincerity we can muster!”
The best way to judge a man is most often based upon the weight of his own words, and when it comes to sanctions and the Russian economy, Joe Biden is no exception. On March 26, 2022, Joe Biden spoke before an audience in Warsaw, Poland about the conflict in Ukraine. One of Biden’s main objectives for his speech was to engender a sense of confidence among the crowd that his administration had the situation under control. The heart of Biden’s argument was the detrimental impact the program of systemic economic sanctions championed by the US, the European Union, the G-7, and NATO were having on the Russian economy.
A little more than a year later, Biden’s words have come back to haunt him.
“As a result of these unprecedented sanctions,” Biden then crowed, “the ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble. The Russian economy—that’s true, by the way, it takes about 200 rubles to equal $1.”
While I was in Russia, the exchange rate hovered between 79 and 81 rubles to the dollar. The Russian currency is stable, backed by a strong and vibrant economy. Moreover, unlike during the pre-sanction period, the ruble today is a convertible currency, used to pay for Russia’s international business transactions, especially in the field of energy, once the exclusive domain of the petrodollar. Far from being reduced to rubble, the ruble today serves as a foundational currency for global economic activity, part of a new “basket of currencies” that is responsive to the needs of a new multilateral reality that is rapidly supplanting the previous era of US economic hegemony.
“Thank you, Joe Biden!”
“The [Russian] economy is on track,” Biden then bragged, “to be cut in half in the coming years. It was ranked, Russia’s economy was ranked the 11th biggest economy in the world before this invasion. It will soon not even rank among the top 20 in the world.”
The Russian economy currently retains its rank as the 11th in the world, based upon standard gross domestic product (GDP) comparisons. However, when one converts Russia’s $1.78 trillion GDP using the “basket of goods” formulation of purchasing power parity (PPP) (i.e., what similar goods cost in the United States versus Russia), Russia’s actual economic strength converts to $4.80 trillion, making it the world’s sixth largest economy, surpassing all but China, the US, India, Japan, and Germany.
“Thank you, Joe Biden.”
“Taken together these economic sanctions,” Biden then pontificated, “a new kind of economic statecraft with the power to inflict damage that rivals military might. These international sanctions are sapping Russian strength, its ability to replenish its military, and its ability to project power. And it’s Putin, it is Vladimir Putin who is to blame. Period.”
In January and February 2023, Russia spent 2 trillion rubles ($26 billion) on defense, a 282% jump on the same period a year ago. Far from being unable to replenish its military strength and sustain the conflict in Ukraine, Russia is far outpacing NATO in terms of rushing military material to the frontlines by 4 to 1 in terms of tanks and armored fighting vehicles and 5 to 1 in artillery ammunition. When calculated with kill ratios that are overwhelmingly in favor of Russia, the fact is that Russia is sapping the strength of NATO and its Ukrainian proxy, while expanding its own. In addition to nearly tripling the size of its special military operation contingent, Russia is simultaneously building up the forces necessary to meet the expansion of its army from its pre-conflict size of 1 million, to a force of more than 1.5 million. Moreover, Russia’s increase in military production has not only softened the economic impact of the US-sponsored sanctions, but also helped reverse their impact across Russia’s industrial base.
Everything I saw while touring Russia underscored the incontrovertible fact that, because of Western sanctions, the Russian economy has been compelled to undertake changes which have not only made it more resilient, but also more productive and efficient. Foreign investments are surging in, proving that there is a world that exists beyond that controlled by the American economic hegemon. Moreover, because sanctions have curtailed the previous practice of Russian business tycoons sending their wealth abroad, there is a huge amount of domestic economic capital available for reinvestment into the Russian economy. This truth was evident in every city I visited, where there were unprecedented levels of infrastructure improvements and new construction taking place.
I thought about this upon my return to the US, contrasting my journey from JFK airport through New York City with a similar journey I made from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport into Moscow. My New York journey took me from a decaying airport, through decaying highways and bridges, into a decaying city. The Moscow equivalent was, by comparison, one of pristine facilities, roads, and a city that was not only composed of recently constructed buildings, but alive with new construction as well.
I still see the “I did this!” stickers on the gas pump, and I still mutter my words of thanks to the American President that I hold accountable for the high prices. And I laugh when I think of my Russian hosts making the same exclamation. The sarcasm is evident, whether uttered in the US or Russia, but for diametrically opposed reasons. Biden, a man who promised to revitalize the US economy, has done the opposite. And yet while he has pledged ruin in Russia, a revival has occurred.
“Thank you, Joe Biden!”
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News |
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By Ahmed Adel | June 1, 2023
The legacy of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky will be turning Ukraine into “a new Afghanistan,” according to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. Azarov was head of government three times and presided over Ukraine’s largest economic growth in its post-Soviet history, thus making his opinion about Zelensky’s legacy, especially scathing.
“Over the years, presidents of Ukraine made promises to turn the country into either a new France or a new Switzerland. However, Zelensky went further than anyone and turned the country into a new Afghanistan, to the delight of the Anglo-Saxons and defence companies,” Azarov wrote in a social media post.
“What do you think? Is there a chance that Washington will get tired of its ‘toy’ in the foreseeable future? Or is the pleasure of playing dirty tricks on Russia more important than the lives of the hostages of the Kiev regime?” the politician asked on Facebook.
It is recalled that Azarov explained in an interview in early May the role played by the US and the UK in transforming Ukraine into a failed state, outlining how since the Euromaidan coup in 2014, the country’s population halved. He also characterised the current Ukrainian president as “an empty vessel” who cares more about profits and popularity abroad than the Ukrainian people, which makes him a tool of Western powers and oligarchic interests.
Azarov is certainly not the first to compare the war in Ukraine to that of the 20-year US war in Afghanistan, with experts believing that both conflicts were prospects for the US military-industrial complex to profit from massive new defence contracts. However, experts also warn that Ukraine could become Washington’s next Afghanistan-style forever war.
It is recalled that analyst Scott Ritter, a former United Nations inspector and US Marine in Iraq, said that President Joe Biden should tell his Ukrainian counterpart that his country realistically has no chance of emerging victorious from its confrontation with Russia and that the US runs from fights as it does not have to deal with the terrible consequences of leaving, just like in Afghanistan and Vietnam.
In this same light, The American Conservative published in August 2022 that “defense contractors shed a tear when America’s war in Afghanistan came to a close […] But just after one protracted conflict came to a close, another came to the complex’s rescue. Though there is little national interest for the U.S. in Ukraine, and everything to lose given Russia is a nuclear-armed power, Biden has vowed that the U.S. will be alongside Ukraine for the long haul.”
It is suggested that the US continues its useless but destructive wars, such as in Vietnam, Afghanistan and now Ukraine, to prop up the American military-industrial complex. The same publication, but in a later article, highlighted that the war in Ukraine was a “new 1980s-style Afghanistan, with the U.S. playing both the American and the Soviet roles at times,” adding that “while NATO countries and others sent small numbers of troops and material to Afghanistan, the U.S. has gone out of its way to make Ukraine look like a NATO show when it is not.”
The comments by Azarov came days before Zelensky said that the start time for the activation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine had been approved. According to Zelensky, at the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief meeting, there was also a discussion on the issue of supplying ammunition to soldiers.
However, Zelensky is merely speaking for the sake of speaking when we consider that we are in the last day of spring and the first days of summer, and the long-awaited offensive never began, which is especially humiliating considering the boastful claims made of soon capturing Crimea and Mariupol from Russia.
It is likely that, just like in the Afghanistan case, military offensive methods will not be used by Ukraine but rather terrorist methods instead, such as reconnaissance, drone weapons, airspace intrusion, and infrastructure destruction. As The Telegraph concedes, Ukrainian troops are exhausted, and Kiev is in a “desperate push to replenish its battle-stricken military ahead of a looming counter-offensive.”
Even though Ukraine has received a lot of NATO equipment and weapons, there is nonetheless a shortage of troops that officials consider key players in the counter-offensive. Recruiters are facing a huge challenge trying to attract the right number of men into the army, and now they are adopting harsher recruitment tactics to find people for the Army. All this points to a similar scenario experienced in Afghanistan, something Zelensky has made Ukraine akin to.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Militarism | Ukraine, United States |
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The US is in no position to condemn North Korea for trying to launch a satellite, having sent thousands into orbit itself, the influential sister of leader Kim Jong-un said on Thursday. Pyongyang will soon launch its first-ever reconnaissance spacecraft, Kim Yo-jong promised.
On Wednesday, North Korea confirmed that its rocket carrying military satellite Malligyong-1 crashed into the Yellow Sea due to a malfunction of the second-stage engine.
The development was criticized by Washington and its allies in South Korea and Japan. US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the attempted launch by Pyongyang was a reason for “major concern,” even if it failed. “Kim Jong-un and his scientists and engineers, they work and they improve and they adapt. And they continue to develop military capabilities that are a threat not only on the peninsula but to the region,” he explained.
Kirby’s colleague Adam Hodge suggested that “the door has not closed on diplomacy but Pyongyang must immediately cease its provocative actions and instead choose engagement.”
In her statement, cited by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Kim Yo-jong argued that “if the DPRK’s (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) satellite launch should be particularly censured, the US and all other countries, which have already launched thousands of satellites, should be denounced. This is nothing, but sophism of self-contradiction.”
“The far-fetched logic that only the DPRK should not be allowed to do so… though other countries are doing so, is clearly a gangster-like and wrong one of seriously violating the DPRK’s right to use space and illegally oppressing it,” she said.
A UN Security Council resolution forbids Pyongyang from using ballistic missile technology for any purposes, including space launches.
Kim’s sister, who is a senior figure in North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, insisted that “it is certain that the DPRK’s military reconnaissance satellite will be correctly put in space orbit in the near future and start its mission.”
As for the US calls for negotiations, she said the authorities in Pyongyang “do not feel the necessity of dialogue with the US.” North Korea will continue its “counteraction in a more offensive attitude so that they should not but realize that they will have nothing to benefit from the extension of the hostile policy toward the DPRK,” Kim Yo-jong added.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite | Korea, United States |
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The North Atlantic alliance began military drills hosted by Finland just miles from the Russian border. An American defense official said the war games show the bloc’s commitment to the newest member of NATO.
US Army Major-General Gregory Anderson said on Tuesday, “We are here, we are committed. The US Army is here training with our newest NATO ally to build that capability, to help defend Finland if anything happened.”
About 7,500 NATO soldiers are participating in the exercises – dubbed “Northern Forest 23.” The drills are taking place just a two-hour drive from the Russian border in northern Finland and will run from May 27 to June 2. Reuters described the war games as “Finland’s biggest modern-time land force drill above the Arctic Circle.”
A Finnish Army press release detailed the multiple weapons systems allies will deploy for drills.” The equipment of the international forces will include, among others, Warrior infantry fighting vehicles [from the UK], MLRS rocket launcher systems [from the US and UK] and CV90 infantry fighting vehicles [from Sweden and Norway],” the statement said.
Helsinki is NATO’s newest member. When Finland became a member of the North Atlantic alliance, it doubled the bloc’s border with Russia. At over 800 miles, Helsinki has a longer border with Moscow than any other member of NATO.
Tensions between Brussels and Moscow have soared due to the alliance’s support for Kiev. However, the confrontation between Russia and the West has spread to other regions of Europe as well. Washington has increased its military presence in the Arctic as a show of force eyeing Moscow.
Last week, the USS Gerald Ford – the world’s largest aircraft carrier – made a port call in Norway. The Ford is the first American aircraft carrier to visit Oslo after six decades.
The warship will now travel into the Arctic Circle to conduct war games. A spokesperson for Oslo said, “This visit is an important signal of the close bilateral relationship between the US and Norway and a signal of the credibility of collective defense and deterrence.”
The Russian embassy in Norway denounced the Ford’s maneuvers as unnecessary. “There are no questions in the (Arctic) north that require a military solution, nor topics where outside intervention is needed,” the embassy posted on Facebook.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Russophobia | Finland, NATO, Norway |
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Please note: this article was pulled down offline from Forbes. I will let you draw your own conclusions as to why. Factually, there was no justification for it.
This list could be closer to 50 but let’s just stick to a handful of them. I literally live in this business every day, and I’m just so confused.
1. In a world that is apparently getting both warmer and colder because of global warming, how is it that we can increasingly rely on non-dispatchable (i.e., intermittent, usually unavailable), weather-dependent electricity from wind and solar plants to displace, not just supplement, dispatchable (i.e., baseload, almost always available) coal, gas, and nuclear power? In other words, if our weather is becoming less predictable, how is it that a consuming economy like ours can, or should even try, predictably rely on weather-dependent resources? ERCOT exemplifies this: the Texas grid operator has around 31,000 MW of wind capacity but goes into winter expecting only 6,000 MW (just 20%) of wind farms to be available to generate electricity. Again, in the marketplace, the “alternatives” you keep hearing about are proving to be far more supplemental than alternative.
Further, good wind and solar spots are finite, based on geography, so new builds, naturally, will be forced into areas that are less windy and less sunny, lowering their already very low 35% capacity factors. And because they devour immense swaths of land, interrupting a whole host of things, that Renewable Rejection Database is mounting very quickly. If wind, solar, and electric cars too are as effective and low-cost as so many keep promising us, there would obviously be no need for government subsidies for broad adoption. Yet, there is, gigantically so. Huge amounts of taxpayer money going into this, what I call “the holy climate panacea triad,” are vulnerable to changing politics and bound to become politically untenable at some point: “Ford Is Losing $66,446 On Every EV It Sells.” Our limited financial resources are obviously very precious, so these NEVER CONSIDERED and wasted opportunity costs forcing wind, solar, and electric cars into the energy complex are truly catastrophic. Schools investing in electric buses over STEM? The $200 Billion Electric School Bus Bust. How can any of this be justified? I’m so utterly confused.
2. Climate change is a global issue, so how is it that we can claim climate benefits for unilateral climate policy. For example, U.S. gasoline cars constitute just 3% of global CO2 emissions, so how will getting rid of them impact climate change? But this dose of real science doesn’t stop California leaders, a state responsible for just 1% of global CO2 emissions, from telling us that energy policy in the nine-county region of Northern California alone is “responsible for protecting air quality and the global climate in the nine-county Bay Area.” No wonder then that a Biden administration official was incoherent when asked how $50 trillion in climate spending in the U.S. will lower any global temperature rise. Indeed, despite the Sierra Club in 2014 promising us that “China’s Thirst for Coal Is Drying Up,” the Chinese Communist Party approved two coal plants a week in 2022. But, don’t worry guys, China promises to be net-zero by 2060. On climate, you don’t matter nearly as much as some want you to think.
So, it becomes very obvious very quickly that no energy policy in northern California has any relevance in terms of changing the climate. The region could literally disappear and there would be no discernable impact on climate change. Even our climate czar John Kerry, loving the CO2-devouring life in a private jet and $250 million, has been forced to admit that the U.S. could even go to zero emissions and it would make no material impact on climate change. Talk about all pain, no gain. The real science is that incremental global emissions are “not here but over there” U.S. CO2 emissions are in structural decline regardless of what policies we pass (save 2021 and the rebound from Covid-19’s devastation in 2020). So, where is the climate benefit for Americans when it comes to U.S. climate policy? Because we’re continuously told to “believe science,” any positive answer to that question can only be deemed as anti-science. In fact, common sense and science itself tell us that unilateral climate policy can actually be really bad for climate change because it encourages carbon leakage (e.g., climate policy in the U.S. increases costs and just pushes a manufacturing firm to re-locate to coal-devouring China).
3. Back to electric vehicles. Even green-tinted but surely practical Bloomberg admits that more than 85% of Americans can’t afford an electric car, since they are well more than double the price of oil-based cars. How can a product bring racial justice for Black Americans when the vast majority of them can’t afford it? Worse then, huge and growing subsidies for electric cars are a “reverse Robin Hood,” taking money from poor taxpayers to give to the rich ones that are, actually, in the market to buy an electric car. Forcing electric equipment over natural gas? Sorry but “gas is four to six times cheaper than electricity.” Battery costs might be much higher than expected: 1) rising global demand, 2) rising costs and unavailability of their raw materials, 3) mining complications and environmental damage, and 4) China flexing its muscles since it controls the supply chains and uses hoarding as political leverage (see Covid-19 and medical supplies). Reality check, unlike what we keep hearing about “green energy,” no technology continues to decline in cost in perpetuity: “EV battery costs could spike 22% by 2026 as raw material shortages drag on.”
And this one I’m really confused on. President Biden promotes his climate agenda as a way to create jobs. Besides lacking in economic literacy (i.e., jobs are costs not benefits), the truth is that electric cars, for instance, entail far less jobs because they, for one thing, have far less moving parts. And there’s all kinds of evidence that electric car life-cycle emissions could be way worse than advertised, mostly because of the massive amounts of mining required to make them. We all know about child labor and your electric car, but even pro-EV outlets are being forced to report on the mounting problems from mining, the latest on how bauxite for the aluminum needed is destroying the Amazon. And about our President’s we’ll need oil for “another decade” claim? The U.S. Department of Energy just modeled that our oil demand will actually slightly INCREASE, not decline, to over 21.1 million b/d by 2050. Reality check: planes, industry (petrochemicals), heavy trucking, and sheer Energy Inertia will have oil dominating way longer than you’re being told.
4. How on Earth could anybody expect those in Africa and the other horrifically poor nations to “get off fossil fuels” when the rich countries haven’t come close to doing it. Germany and California, the world’s two greenest governments, are still overwhelming fossil fuel-based and overwhelmingly dependent on imports (dangerously so in Germany’s case). This comes despite decades of huge subsidies, scores of mandates, deploying the best engineering expertise, and having low population growth and thus low incremental energy needs, all giving them a huge advantage in “going green.” The energy stat to remember most? No U.S. state will ever “try to go green” like California has over the past 20 years, yet oil and gas still supply 70% of the state’s energy, even above the national average of 65%.
Germany and California have shown us what these climate policies bring: Germany has the highest electricity prices in the world; and California’s are the highest in the continental U.S. and soaring out of control (Figure). How the heck can we push for “deep electrification” to fight climate change if we are going to follow policies that surge the price of electricity, while also lowering grid reliability? And rich Westerners, spare us the judgments, demands, and hypocrisy on climate change: Germany thrives on a GDP per capita per year of $51,200, compared to a horrifically sad $2,260 for India.
5. But, perhaps I’m most confused about the whole air quality thing. The obsession over it gets attached to all energy policies. But there’s clearly a strawman to the “we need cleaner air now” demand. First, the air quality conversation in the U.S. reminds me of Voltaire’s “the perfect is the enemy of good.” Americans seem completely unaware how drastically our air quality has improved. Check data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), our criteria pollutants have been plummeting over the past many decades. The risks seem exaggerated. Let’s just take Los Angeles, which for a big city notoriously has the worst air quality in the country. Tell me, please, if air quality is such a problem and such a health concern for Americans, why is it that Angelinos have a life expectancy of 82 years, a hearty three years above the national average. Just think of all the coal that China has devoured since 2000 (I figure around 70 billion tonnes), yet the country’s life expectancy, apparently shockingly to so many, is up a very impressive six years to nearly 78 since then. Maybe it’s because Chinese GDP per capita per year has skyrocketed nearly 9-fold to over $18,500. Even for rising asthma rates in the U.S., smoking is way down, coal usage is way down, and criteria pollutants are way down. So what gives?
“Better air quality and environment” are not free, as attaining government standards cost businesses hundreds of billions of dollars per year. These costs are ultimately paid by Americans in the form of higher prices, lower wages, and less choices. And at some point, the cost of the regulation to achieve better air outweighs its benefit. We’ve won on water too: the water in your toilet is cleaner than what the vast majority of humans on Earth drink. For every time that we hear “environmental justice” we need to say “economic justice” 100 times. In this country for all Americans, Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos make 30% less money than Whites and Asians. Too many politicians focus on the endless pursuit of “better air quality” and other abstract, seemingly impossible to measure benefits because they have no clue on the real ways to help communities of color and other low-income Americans: help them get a better education, help them get a better job, and help them make more money. Career politicians love bottomless, money-devouring pits the most: “America’s $100 billion climate change flop.” And although its entire existence is based on never being able to declare victory (imagine a football game with no time and no keeping score), EPA should consider that it’s wealth that matters most for health equity.
But, that’s not its business, is it?
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | United States |
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Four months after The Guardian and other European media outlets revealed the world’s leading carbon credit certifier sold worthless offsets to major corporations, the head of Washington-based Verra has stepped down.
“I am writing to let you know that after nearly 15 fantastic years as the CEO of Verra, I have decided to step down,” Verra’s CEO, David Antonioli, wrote in a LinkedIn post last week. He’s leaving the role after dominating the multi-billion dollar carbon offset market for years and certifying over a billion dollars in credits through its verified carbon standard (VCS).
Antonioli expressed gratitude towards the current and past employees and was proud of Verra’s accomplishments as the world’s leading standard-setter for climate action and sustainable development. He did not give a reason for his abrupt departure.
Antonioli’s exit comes four months after The Guardian, German weekly Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, revealed a damning report on how Verra approved tens of millions of dollars of worthless offsets to Disney, Shell, Gucci, and other big corporations.
The report found Verrra issued “phantom credits” to major corporations that don’t represent genuine carbon reductions. Some corporations purchased these fraudulent credits and labeled their products as “carbon neutral.”
Days after The Guardian’s report in January, Antonioli rejected the findings, calling them “outlandish claims” and heavily defended Verra’s certification of carbon credits. But after all that, Antonioli is still stepping down.
Meanwhile, “Some firms are moving away from offsetting-based environmental claims, such as Gucci, which has removed a carbon neutrality claim from its website that heavily relied on Verra’s carbon credits,” The Guardian said.
Diego Saez Gil, the CEO of Pachama, a carbon offsetting firm, said Verra should update its programs to improve the company’s integrity. He told The Guardian :
“This is a pivotal moment for carbon markets. In order to scale the critical funding required for carbon sequestration at a planetary scale, we must ensure integrity, transparency, and real benefits for local communities and biodiversity. A new generation of innovative players is collaborating with standard bodies, academics, corporates, and communities, creating a new era of carbon markets that gives me hope.”
Despite having previously purchased “worthless” carbon offsets, companies such as JPMorgan, Disney, and BlackRock continue their ESG commitments. In particular, JPMorgan pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase credits for carbon removal.
Insiders have spoken up about the murky ESG industry. Take, for example, an insider who told Bloomberg in 2021 that TotalEnergies SE orchestrated a “carbon-neutral” liquified natural gas shipment with China National Offshore Oil Corp on math that was “guesswork” and involved lots of “googling.”
Recall Elon Musk tweeted one year ago, “ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”
As we noted earlier this year, “Carbon Credits Are The Biggest Scam Since Indulgences… How You Can Avoid Being Fleeced.”
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | ESG |
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By Drago Bosnic | June 1, 2023
After years of belligerent moves aimed at undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity virtually everywhere, be it Hong Kong, Xinjiang, South/East Sea China or Taiwan, the United States is showing no signs of ever stopping with its aggression against Beijing. As if billions of dollars worth of weapons earmarked for China’s breakaway island province weren’t bad enough, including at least 400 anti-ship missiles and the latest F-16 Block 70/72 fighter jets, reports now indicate that Taipei and Washington DC are in talks about Taiwan gaining the protection of the US nuclear umbrella in a similar manner to Japan and South Korea.
According to RealClearDefense, citing local sources, Taiwanese foreign minister Joseph Wu announced that the island is in talks with Washington DC about possibly being brought under the US nuclear umbrella. RealClearDefense warns that the move would likely be seen by Beijing as a clear escalation and would likely greatly increase the potential for a future war with China. This assessment can only be considered an understatement, as the Asian giant is essentially guaranteed to respond directly to such escalation. Being under the American nuclear umbrella entails several key changes that would be absolutely unacceptable to China and would certainly provoke an adequate reaction.
The Taipei Times reported that local defense experts find this a “positive for Taiwan”. On May 23, Institute for National Defense and Security research fellow Su Tzu-yun stated:
“Taiwan’s national security doctrine explicitly rejects the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, despite the nation facing the threat of such weapons being used against it. The extension of an ally’s nuclear umbrella over Taiwan would be significantly beneficial to Taiwan’s security.”
The nuclear umbrella is a deterrence policy stemming from the (First) Cold War and entails a nuclear power to guarantee the usage of its nuclear weapons to retaliate if its ally was exposed to a nuclear attack by any third party. This also includes the option of hosting US nuclear weapons, as was the case with countries such as South Korea between 1958 and 1991. Taipei’s Foreign Minister Wu made the comments about this possibility during a session with the Legislative Yuan (Taiwanese parliament). However, he declined to give any details about the talks and whether Taipei itself had asked the US to bring the island under its nuclear umbrella or if the initiative came from Washington DC.
“Regarding the discussion of this issue with the United States, it is not suitable for me to make it public here,” Wu said, as reported by The South China Morning Post.
Most US allies and satellite states/vassals are under the protection of its nuclear umbrella, including Japan, South Korea and every member of NATO, with nearly half a dozen member states (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey) even having nuclear sharing programs with Washington DC. As previously mentioned, giving the same or similar guarantees to China’s breakaway island province would require the US to use thermonuclear weapons in case of hostilities between Beijing and Taipei. It should be understood that in case Washington DC goes ahead with such an agreement, the question of Taiwan would become much more than just an issue of respecting Chinese sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law.
As per the (rather correct) assessment of The South China Morning Post, this idea is “an unthinkable prospect” for Beijing. Indeed, such a move would further internationalize the Taiwan dispute, as well as accelerate the potential formation of “Asia-Pacific NATO”, while jeopardizing China’s strategic security. Although the US has encountered significant hurdles with attempts to form yet another iteration of the North Atlantic geopolitical monstrosity, the belligerent thalassocracy likely believes that including Taiwan in its global nuclear umbrella would push others in the region to be more accepting of the idea of an “Asia-Pacific NATO”. How likely this is to work is up for debate, however, what it would surely cause is a dramatic surge in the potential for escalation and yet another step toward a world-ending thermonuclear conflict.
Although there is still hope that cooler heads might prevail in the Pentagon, the sheer number of warhawks in the US establishment makes the prospects of such escalation all the more possible and no less disturbing, particularly as top US generals are openly talking about the “inevitable war with China”. Such belligerence has already pushed China and Russia to further strengthen their already close ties in all aspects, be it economic, military, scientific, etc. The troubled Biden administration has already vowed to send troops and intervene if hostilities between China and its breakaway island province were to happen, which in itself was a borderline declaration of war. However, by including Taiwan in its nuclear umbrella, the question of war between Beijing and Washington DC would become “when” instead of “if”.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
June 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | China, NATO, United States |
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