Parody of a Statesman: Antony Blinken, Secretary of War
By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | July 8, 2024
For Halloween last year, the United States’ highest ranked diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dressed his son and daughter up as Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian flag, respectively. At a White House event on that day, Blinken’s children were photographed soliciting candy from President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Zelensky himself had been doing his usual media circuit, appearing progressively more desperate to extract a fresh supply of “candy” from U.S. taxpayers by way of their nonrepresentative elected officials, most of whom, it would seem, have little if any interest in what their voting constituents have to say. In one poignant performance, the embattled Ukrainian commander-in-chief and former professional dancer lamented that the crisis in Israel was drawing attention away from Ukraine. In another widely disseminated video clip, Zelensky implored the audience that, if they could not give him more money, then they should at least extend him some credit, which he promised Ukraine would pay back.
It seemed as though the end was nigh for Zelensky, who was looking more and more like would-have-been Venezuelan “president” Juan Guaidó. When, during one of the primary debates, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy characterized Zelensky as a “Nazi” and a “comedian in cargo pants,” he boldly articulated an impolite sentiment shared by at least some of the people who have grown weary of seeing the Ukrainian president parade around in mud-green garb and hobnobbing with the likes of Sean Penn, Greta Thunberg, Ursula von der Leyen, and every politician under the sun on the military-industrial complex gravy train. And yet, Zelensky clings on to power, having canceled what was supposed to be the 2024 presidential election with the full blessing of both halves of the War Party duopoly.
In a more recent performance, on May 14, 2024, Secretary Blinken belted out Neil Young’s ballad, “Rockin’ in the Free World,” at a basement bar in Kiev. Blinken displayed his prowess on the electric guitar while doing his best to demonstrate that he personally relates to the people of Ukraine, who have endured uncertainty regarding their future and prospects for a return to any semblance of normal life since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. Dead people have obviously lost all of their freedom, so Blinken’s audience comprised a select group among the survivors savoring their tenuous existence, and the fact that they are not currently being pursued, as many unfortunate draft dodgers are, by the conscription police—at least not for now. The government of Ukraine has lowered the requirements for and lifted restrictions on the military conscription of unwilling citizens, while postponing the presidential election indefinitely, on the grounds that “We are at war.” Martial law remains in place, with Ukrainians living in what is tantamount to a dictatorship under Zelensky, notwithstanding Blinken’s heartfelt crooning about freedom and democracy.
Before becoming secretary of state, while an advisor to Biden’s campaign, Antony Blinken appears to have earned the esteem of whoever would come to run the Biden administration by setting in motion the composition of the now-discredited letter signed by fifty-one members of the “intelligence community” expressing doubts about the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop. The computer in question, discovered before the 2020 election, contained a surprising array of photos of Hunter and, more importantly, what looked to be texts documenting shady backroom deals between foreign governments—Ukraine and China—and the Biden family. The FBI eventually acknowledged that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop were genuine, not a “Trump campaign product,” as Nina Jankowicz, later slated to be Biden’s czarina of the Disinformation Governance Board, had so colorfully characterized it prior to the 2020 election. Ironically, the Steele dossier which served as the basis for allegations of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign had itself been a Clinton campaign product.
In the light of this history, Blinken’s appointment as secretary of state can be viewed as his reward for helping to maintain the markedly anti-Russia bias of U.S. citizens, including politicians, stoked for years by the media through the now-debunked Russiagate narrative, and which inclines self-styled liberals to support the prolongation rather than the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.
Under ordinary circumstances, when two nation states are in conflict, the less powerful of the two tends to be more receptive to attempts to resolve the matter through peaceful negotiation, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent proposal, which was immediately and categorically rejected in a knee-jerk response by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, of all people. In the case of Ukraine, which has been artificially bolstered through a seemingly endless infusion of arms by the U.S. military behemoth, the war has no foreseeable limit—beyond the sacrifice of every able-bodied person in the land. (The case bears similarities to the artificial maintenance of the current U.S. president as head of state through the infusion of pharmaceutical products, even as rigor mortis appears to be setting in.) Reality in fact imposes limits, and they will be reached, sooner or later.
Those Ukrainians who comprehend the qualitative power disparity between nations in possession of nuclear warheads and those devoid of such means, have declined to volunteer to serve in the U.S.-maintained meatgrinder war, which is precisely why a policy of forced conscription was imposed. What good is a quasi-infinite supply of weapons, if no one is willing to fire them? Alas, any Ukrainian who has had enough of media-darling Zelensky’s panhandling from every wealthy nation on the planet is out of luck, for he remains in power, martial law firmly in place, and has indicated that he will stay there for so long as “it” takes, whatever his overlords construe that to mean.
It’s not just the U.S. government funding the war in which Ukrainian citizens are being chewed up and spit out by the insatiable war machine as military industry profits soar. NATO officials have naturally seized the opportunity to justify the existence of their institution, the source of their gainful employment, just as they have been scrambling to do since the fall of the Berlin Wall: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine—there’s always something for NATO to destroy! That the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established to counteract the danger of a communist takeover of the world by the now non-existent USSR is brushed aside as somehow irrelevant by its ardent supporters and beneficiaries alike.
As the world becomes progressively more bellicose, following the infelicitous example of the U.S. military state, stentorian calls to shore up and consolidate military capacities have been heard from figures such as European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyden, with similar jingoistic rhetoric issued also by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. On its face, this is a puzzling development, given the twenty-year catastrophe better known as the Global War on Terror, which in no way served democracy or freedom, but instead destroyed and/or severely degraded the lives of millions of human beings. In keeping with the United States’ muscular but myopic and amnesiac approach to foreign policy, leaders of the European Union agreed in February 2024 to provide yet another $54 billion of “aid” to Ukraine, with NATO throwing in another $40 billion more recently. There’s a lot of profit at stake, and all of the usual suspects want their piece of the pie, no matter how many hapless Ukrainians will have to die. That European, British and American leaders have no interest in resolving the conflict is nowhere better illustrated than by the “Summit on Peace in Ukraine,” held in Switzerland, in June 2024, to which Russia, one of the two parties to the dispute, was not invited.
Barring nuclear holocaust, the dispute between Ukraine and Russia can only end at a negotiation table, an outcome which any competent diplomat would have worked relentlessly from the beginning to realize rather than frustrate. Instead, Antony Blinken spends his time making public appearances and issuing one-sentence slogans for spam distribution across social media platforms in an effort to appease the citizens footing the bill for the human misery and massacre to which his failure as a diplomat has led. Unable or unwilling to process the obvious implications of a war between a nuclear power and a nonnuclear power (spoiler alert: the former will win, if only through a Pyrrhic victory), Blinken daftly persists in pretending that democracy is at stake, even as Ukrainians are enslaved to fight the U.S. proxy war. The thousands of young Ukrainian men being sacrificed are just the price that must be paid. Freedom is free, but weapons are not.
It should come as no surprise that the same “diplomat” talks out of both sides of his mouth in claiming to sympathize with both the Israeli government and the Palestinians, as though furnishing some of the very weapons being used to murder thousands of civilians is easily counterbalanced with promoting the “humanitarian” treatment of those being incessantly terrorized, so long as the survivors of razed neighborhoods are provided with a bit of food and water now and then. The Blinken-Biden approach to this vexed conflict can be summed up in a piece of commonsense folk wisdom: “If you try to be all things to everyone, you’ll end by being nothing to anyone.”
Notwithstanding the frankly frightening recent public appearances of “the leader of the free world” (at the G7 meetings and elsewhere, including the disastrous debate), President Biden’s progressively deteriorating poll numbers over the course of the past several months have probably had something to do with his repeated assertion that there would be no “pause” or “ceasefire” in Israel. From the protests on campuses all over the United States, it has become clear that the antiwar left has reawakened, after eight years of slumber under Barack Obama, to abandon Biden. From the beginning, Biden materially supported Israel’s modus operandi of firing missiles at schools and mosques, homes, hospitals, and refugee camps, in an ardent quest to “Finish Hamas,” even as they embedded themselves among nonviolent civilians. When four Israeli hostages were rescued on June 8, 2024, Biden & Co. celebrated the news while downplaying, when not entirely omitting, the unsavory truth that two hundred Palestinians were killed in the process. Some people are more equal than others.
Antony Blinken has appeared occasionally to issue sincere acknowledgments of the humanity of the Palestinian people from one side of his mouth, while insisting on the right of Israel to self-defense from the other, as though slaughtering thousands of children has made anyone safe. The circus acts of such pseudo-diplomats would be amusing, if they were not so pathetic—and if the consequences for real, live, sentient human beings were not so devastating. All of foreign policy is not, as figures such as Blinken appear to believe, merely a matter of theater. No, the worst part of all of the shameless performances and photo-ops is that they entirely ignore the human reality of the wars being prolonged and provoked by the U.S. military state, as though bombing victims were mere fictions, and the soldiers coerced to fight were the currency of elites to expend.
The peace plan for Gaza recently drawn up by the Biden administration (certainly not Biden himself, who often appears to be unaware of where he is) could have been proposed back in October 2023, and, conjoined with a firm refusal to arm the killers, might well have saved the lives of some 40,000 persons—nearly half of which have been children—and prevented the wounding of many times more Palestinians. The U.S. government instead continues to condone Israel’s decision to follow the post-9/11 template of annihilating multiple times the number of the criminals sought, dismissing all of the innocent victims as “collateral damage.”
Blinken’s atrocious failures in the Ukraine and Israel conflicts notwithstanding, I confess to have experienced a tinge of sympathy for him the day he was caught on film wincing as President Biden answered a reporter’s question about his previous characterization of Chinese president Xi Jinping. Biden replied, in an unedited and brash—dare I say?—Trump-like fashion, “Look, he is. He is a dictator…” Mind you, this proclamation occurred immediately subsequent to what had been billed Biden’s “historic” White House meeting with the Chinese leader, supposedly intended to ease tensions between the two nations.
Surely, given the diminished mental acuity of his boss, Blinken’s job is extraordinarily difficult to execute, as is that of Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is constantly in the position of concocting extemporaneous word salad responses to incisive questions posed by White House journalists. (The press secretary dismissed some of the recent videoclips showcasing a zombie-like Biden on the world’s stage as “cheap fakes”.) But Blinken’s willingness to serve not as a diplomat but as a promoter of endless war, his refusal to work diligently toward peaceful solutions to conflict, is inexcusable.
Blinken apologists may counter that every previous secretary of state during his lifetime, too, served not the cause of diplomacy and peace but the war machine. In other words, Blinken has dutifully adopted some of his most prominent predecessors as mentors.
While serving as the CIA director under President Trump, Mike Pompeo reportedly went so far as to pursue the murder of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, denounced as a traitor and a spy, for exposing the ignoble comportment, including war crimes, of the U.S. government. Pompeo’s reward? Appointment as secretary of state, in which position Pompeo aggressively pushed for war with Iran.
Under President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton persuaded her boss to bomb Libya, chanting, “Gaddafi must go!” beforehand, and later cackling “We came, we saw, he died!” when the Libyan president was sodomized with a bayonet and murdered by an angry mob. Libya, which once boasted the best education and healthcare systems in Africa, is today a failed state, a place where people have been literally enslaved. With regard to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Secretary Clinton reportedly inquired during a November 23, 2010, meeting over which she presided, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”
Moving a bit further back, Condoleezza Rice had already served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who initiated the forever wars in the Middle East with his Operation Desert Storm. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Bush Sr. bragged that he had “kicked” the “Vietnam syndrome”; that is, the disinclination of Americans to become embroiled in foreign wars in the years following the U.S. military’s retreat from Saigon. Rice came later to serve as national security advisor to President George W. Bush, during which tenure she went on a war-marketing blitz media circuit in which she repeatedly intoned, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Rice was rewarded for her war promotion efforts with an appointment as secretary of state.
Under President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright rallied to make the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo happen. In a conversation with General Colin Powell (relayed in his memoir), Albright once asked, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?”
Under President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed caution about invading Iraq when the idea was first proposed by Cheney & Co. But Powell abruptly changed his tune (for reasons which remain unclear to this day) and ended up being one of the most vocal supporters of the ill-fated 2003 invasion. Powell’s most notorious moment, and for which he has earned a place in the annals of history, was his attempt to persuade the UN General Assembly to support the second U.S. war on Iraq. In his presentation, Powell laid out all of the pretexts later debunked as bogus: the imminent threats of Saddam Hussein’s “mobile chemical labs” and the purchase of “yellow cake” from Niger, supposedly demonstrating the existence of a robust WMD program, among other ersatz evidence buttressing the claim that war had become a last resort. When it became clear that the United Nations would not support the invasion, Powell withdrew his resolution, and the war proceeded unimpeded, at which point Powell and others pivoted to insist that the war was permitted under previous U.N. resolutions allegedly violated by Saddam Hussein.
Last, but certainly not least, we would be remiss to omit the case of Henry Kissinger, the godfather of all warmongering secretaries of state, who served under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first as national security advisor and then as secretary of state. Kissinger’s savage foreign policies for southeast Asia culminated in the deaths of millions of human beings, not only in Vietnam, but also in Laos and Cambodia, the societies of which have not to this day recovered from what was done to them by the United States government in the name of democracy. Among those sacrificed were some 57,000 U.S. soldiers and the many veterans who returned home but whose lives were wrecked by their harrowing experiences in Vietnam.
Never one to insist on causation where correlation will suffice, I nonetheless feel compelled to observe that nearly all of these secretaries of state have derived a good part, if not all, of their personal wealth from having served on the boards of, or even established, defense-contracting and consulting firms. In Blinken’s case, in 2017, after a stint as deputy secretary of state (having previously served as deputy national security advisor, also under Obama), he and Michèle Flournoy, among other former employees of the federal government, launched WestExec Advisors, from which he derived $1.2 million. Blinken (along with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin) has also been a partner of private equity firm Pine Islands, which has invested heavily in military industries. When The New York Times, in an ever-more rare moment of critical journalism, dared to publish an editorial questioning Blinken’s seeming conflicts of interest, this was brushed aside by members of the War Party, who proceeded to approve his appointment as secretary of state.
Perhaps, then, in view of the long series of war promoters who have served as “top diplomat” for the United States, rather than take Antony Blinken to task, singling him out for criticism, the official title of his position should simply be emended from secretary of state to secretary of war, so as to reflect the reality of what such persons actually do.
How the Israeli Army Benefits from US Tax Law
Tax exemptions that support war crimes are not “charitable”
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 5, 2024
The United States tax code allows exemptions from federal taxes for certain categories of nonprofit organizations or groups that frequently serve either an educational or charitable purpose. Such organizations are categorized as 501(c)(3) and exempt from Federal income taxes while the donors who contribute to their support can deduct the total donations up to the limits imposed by their own overall tax liability. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recognizes more than 30 types of nonprofit organizations but only those that qualify for 501(c)(3) status can say that donations made to them are tax deductible.
Most of the organizations that may be eligible for 501(c)(3) designation “fall into one of three categories: charitable organizations, churches and religious organizations, and private foundations. A group must operate exclusively for one of certain purposes to be considered a charitable organization by the IRS: charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, or preventing cruelty to children or animals.” The IRS further defines “charitable” activities as “relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; advancement of religion; advancement of education or science; erecting or maintaining public buildings, monuments, or works; lessening the burdens of government; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”
A 501(c)(3) organization is also “forbidden from using its activities to influence legislation in a substantial way, including participating in any campaign activities to support or deny any particular political candidate. It’s also typically not permitted to engage in political lobbying.” A private foundation is typically “held by an individual, a family, or a corporation and it obtains most of its income from a relatively small group of donors. Private foundations are subject to stricter rules and regulations than public charities. A public charity is a nonprofit organization that receives a substantial portion of its income or revenue from the general public or the government.”
It is worth considering how a 501(c)(3) is supposed to work when one examines how the numerous organizations that constitute the Israel Lobby in the United States have attained that status, which enables them to avoid US taxes while also attracting donors through tax deductions in spite of the fact that they lobby heavily, which ignores US laws, and exist to support and empower a foreign government that is engaged in a genocide. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), regarded as the wealthiest and most politically powerful of the Lobby groups, even boasts about its lobbying ability as well as the amazing success of its associated PAC in endorsing favorable to Israel political candidates. The heavily politically engaged Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the pro-Iran war Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are likewise 501(c)(3). Smaller foundations such as the Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation, founded by the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, are likewise 501(c)(3) and engaged in supporting illegal settlement development in Israeli occupied Palestine.
The 501(c)(3) status enables many Jewish and Israel-oriented groups to obtain large sums of money which are then used politically to enabled the corruption of the political process in the United States to the benefit of both Israel and domestic Jewish-favored issues. And being non-profit most definitely does not mean that anyone is going broke or working out of shabby offices in some dank suburb. AIPAC reported in excess of $90 million in earnings since Israel has been at war in Gaza, plus ADL $105 million in 1922, and FDD $18 million in earnings in the same year. The chief executives of the three organizations are, respectively Howard Kohr, Jonathan Greenblatt, and Mark Dubowitz. They earned $1,055,000, $993,000, and $771,000 respectively in 2021-2022.
This all means in practice that there is a steady cash flow from the United States to Israel that far exceeds the $3.8 billion plus special appropriations annually that President Barack Obama foolishly guaranteed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2016 in a bid to maintain Jewish donor and media support for Hillary Clinton’s election. Grant Smith, who heads the “Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP)”, has estimated that the annual total going to Israel far exceeds $10 billion and, which does not include other freebies like US government co-development and production projects and disbursements like the $14 billion gift from President Joe Biden to Israel in April to help pay for and arm that nation’s extermination of the Gazans.
Israel and the Jewish community also get an enormous free ride from some state governments. Smith has described how one such board that he has identified in Virginia is a unique example of a state’s economic policies being manipulated by a dedicated Israeli fifth column in government. It is named the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB).
The VIAB is actually part of the Virginia state government. It is funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia and is able to access funds from other government agencies to support Israeli businesses. It is staffed by Israelis and American Jews drawn from what has been described as the “Israel advocacy ecosystem” and is self-administered, appointing its own members and officers. Only Virginia has such a group actually sitting within the government itself though other states have similar advisory or “trade” commissions. VIAB is able to make secret preferential agreements, to arrange special concessions on taxes and to establish start-up subsidies for Israeli businesses. Israeli business projects have been, as a result, regularly funded using Virginia state resources with little accountability. It has been estimated that the cash flow in favor of Israel from Virginia alone has exceeded $500 million annually.
Smith has reported how VIAB is not just an economic mechanism. Its charter states that it was “created to foster closer economic integration between the United States and Israel while supporting the Israeli government’s policy agenda.” Smith also has observed that “VIAB is a pilot for how Israel can quietly obtain taxpayer funding and official status for networked entities that advance Israel from within key state governments.” The board grew significantly under Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe’s administration (2014-2018). McAuliffe, regarded by many as the Clintons’ “bag man,” has received what are regarded as generous out-of-state campaign contributions from actively pro-Israeli billionaires Haim Saban and J.B. Pritzker, who are both affiliated with the Democratic Party.
Terry McAuliffe as governor met regularly in off-the-record “no press allowed” sessions with several Israel advocacy groups and spoke frequently about “the Virginia Advisory Board and its successes.” That was, of course, a self-serving lie by one of the slimiest of the Clinton unindicted criminals. In short, the VIAB is little more than a mechanism set up to carry out licensed robbery of Virginia state resources to benefit Israel. As a side benefit to us Virginians, its reckless activities have led to numerous zoning and environmental violations.
Judging by all of the above, one would reasonably have to accept that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg, that there are many “non-profit” federal tax-exempt foundations and other boards and organizations that exist in the United States to benefit Israel. That said, however, there are a couple of pro-Israel 501(c)(3) “charitable” foundations that boggle the mind for their openly stated mission. They consist of several organizations that have been established and exploited to support the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which, as noted above, are currently engaged in carrying out what is widely recognized to be a genocide in Gaza as well as persecution of Palestinians on parts of the illegally occupied West Bank. They are perhaps deserving of some special attention.
The best known and largest of the Israeli army focused “charities” is the “Friends of the Israel Defense Forces” (FIDF) which stages annual rallies and gatherings both in Los Angeles and New York to raise money for those brave warriors who are nearly every day bombing hospitals and schools and killing many thousands of children. The gatherings are well attended by the usual celebrities and politicians and widely reported in the accommodating media. The group, based in New York City, boasts of how it works directly with the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Friends of IDF raised a record $60 million at a Los Angeles gala in 2018. Major Donald Trump financial supporters Miriam and Sheldon Adelson donated $10 million, matched by Israeli-American Hollywood figure Haim Saban and his wife, Cheryl.
FIDF claims to be the only 501(c)(3) certified IDF fund raiser in the US, but there is at least one other organization that has been in the news recently. It is “The Association for Israel’s Soldiers” which also goes by “The Friends of LIBI” and “LIBI USA”, which is a volunteer outfit based in Brighton, Massachusetts. It actually also claims to be part of Israel’s Ministry of Defense and its job is to cover expenses that are not part of the Israeli government budget. As money is fungible, that frees up money for more warlike purposes. But that description inevitably makes one wonder how an element of the Israeli government is able to collect tax exempt money that is also deductible as federal income taxes donations which are apparently repatriated from the US to Israel without any “charitable” or “educational” function intruding in America?
It does not require any particular brilliance to realize that both politically and economically Israel is not treated like everyone else by governments at various levels in the United States. At risk of being repetitive, how is it possible that organizations that are committed to supporting war crimes and even genocide by a foreign nation are allowed to have tax breaks that enable them to collect more money to corrupt the system that feeds them? How is it possible that the foreign army carrying out the war crimes is also allowed to benefit directly from the exemption from taxation? Those are questions that need to be answered!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The Bankers War in Ukraine – Part Seventeen of The Anglo-American War on Russia
Tales of the American Empire | July 4, 2024
Western corporate media and our corporate sponsored political leaders proclaim the war in Ukraine is about stopping Russian aggression. As this series has explained, this war was an American neocon effort to ignite a proxy war in Ukraine to destabilize and fragment Russia into smaller states that western corporations can control. This has failed horribly as Russia became stronger and more united than before war began. Even worse, the effort backfired after Russian efforts to make peace were rejected. Russia determined that it must conquer all of Ukraine to expel foreign troublemakers and protect itself, so its armies are slowly conquering all of Ukraine.
This has caused panic in the west since it had already taken control of Ukraine and began to exploit its vast resources. When war began, more farmland and factories were snatched up by western vulture capitalists at deep discounts as Ukrainian’s economy shut down and millions of Ukrainians fled aboard. Ukraine owes the west $300 billion that it can never repay unless it sells state assets, which is what the west wants. If Russia wins, none of this may be repaid and banks and governments will be forced to write off massive loans.
This explains the panic among western leaders who declare that Ukraine cannot be allowed to lose the war. Some now proclaim that NATO troops must be sent. Most citizens say that Ukraine is not worth World War III nor the death of hundreds of thousands of NATO soldiers, but their lords will lose billions of dollars!
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“All Wars are Bankers Wars”; YouTube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfEB…
Related Tale: “The Genocide Called World War I”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psXYM…
“Disaster Capitalists Ready to Descend on Ukraine”; Jeremy Kuzmarov; Covert Action; January 31, 2024; https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024…
“Zelensky to sell Ukraine off to BlackRock, Goldman Sachs”; The Grayzone; January 30, 2023; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y32lO…
Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Trump Goes Full RFK Jr., Targets Chronic Childhood Illness, Big Pharma As Campaign Pledge
By Jefferey Jaxen | July 3, 2024
In a recent video, former President Donald Trump signaled he would establish a “special presidential commission of independent minds” to determine what is causing the increase in chronic illness.
“This conversation is long overdue… it’s time to ask what’s going on” stated Trump.
Many involved in this space demanding investigation and justice for years, and even decades, have seen several opportunities pass by to ask ‘what’s going on’ with little change ever occurring.
Meanwhile, one of the major pillars of RFK Jr.’s 2024 campaign is to investigate chronic illness in children – a message that he has been consistent on through his career.
With the Democratic party currently engulfed in uncertainty, the unofficial RFK Jr. – Trump alliance found on this topic is hopeful for several reasons. It increases the percentage that something will actually get changed as more attention begins to focus on this topic. It puts Big Pharma on notice while upping the chances whoever is the next president is will carve out a space to aggressively approach chronic childhood illness by any means necessary.
Despite presidential candidates dipping their toes into this conversation, it has been parents who have carried the torch for decades seeking answers and raising awareness to the increasing chronic illness and disease that have plagued their children.
Ten days before Trump took office in 2017, he met with RFK Jr. to discuss forming a commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity to which he would lead.
“The President-elect is exploring the possibility of forming a committee on Autism, which affects so many families; however no decision have been made at this time,” his transition team said in a statement provided to The New York Times. “The President-elect looks forward to continuing the discussion about all aspects of Autism with many groups and individuals.”
For reasons still unknown to this day, the Trump team decided not to green-light the commission which may have proven useful going into the early stages of COVID vaccine development.
Why look at vaccine safety and it’s link to chronic illness?
A formal exchange between attorneys at the Informed Consent Action Network and US Health and Human Services in 2018 states:
“… the increase in HHS’s childhood vaccine schedule over the last 30 years from 8 vaccine injections to 50 vaccine injections (plus 2 injections during pregnancy) has occurred in lockstep with the increase in the rate of autoimmune, developmental and neurological disorders in children from 12.8% to 54%. HHS has no explanation for why U.S. children today are plagued with a chronic disease and disability epidemic.”
Meanwhile, safety review periods in clinical trials for vaccines are too short, often days or weeks, to detect most chronic health conditions further hamstringing an entire body of health and research.
Why is this a campaign issue?
The economic burden of America’s chronic illness problem began to get much-needed attention with a 2018 report from the Milken Institute estimating $1.1T in direct costs and $3.7T [in indirect costs].
The COVID response torpedoed the mainstreaming and critical mobilization of the medical and research communities into the burden of chronic disease, especially among children. Closed off was this investigative avenue to the funding and national effort needed to address this problem.
One only needs to look at how the dominant culture went to war with the benefits of vitamin D, sunlight, and fresh air during the COVID response to see the lengths those from corporate media to heads of regulatory agencies will go to silence simple, lifesaving information when it protects power, control and pharmaceutical product lines.
Yet it’s not all about the shots.
An article from Politico titled, How Washington Keeps America Sick and Fat states, “the federal government has devoted only a tiny fraction of its research dollars to nutrition… Studying the relationship between diet and health is such an afterthought that Washington doesn’t even bother tracking the total amount spent each year.“
After reviewing the federal budget documents, Politico found, “the National Institutes of Health and the Agriculture Department — the two agencies that fund the majority of government-backed nutrition science — share of research dollars devoted to nutrition has stayed largely flat for at least three decades, and pales in comparison to many other areas of research.“
Pharma outspends all other industries in lobbying. Meanwhile, there is no major lobbying force behind boosting nutritional research funding. America’s sick-care, pharmaceutical product-based ‘health’ paradigm appears rooted, driven, and amplified by the lobbying efforts of corporate interests.
Profit-driven industry is happy to let accurate and beneficial information about nutrition and the harms of their products die on the vine of public awareness. Channeling their efforts more into protecting their products from much-deserved bad press and the outing of known harms into the public conversation.
For American children to thrive, these malevolent, corporate-influence cartel networks, wherever they operate within the medical, nutrition, agriculture, or environmental sectors must be splintered in a thousand pieces and scattered to the winds. Political alliances in efforts to better this situation is a much needed step forward.
Boeing, Boeing, Gone
By Bill Buppert | The Libertarian Institute | July 2, 2024
There is nothing new here but the corruption is deep at Boeing:
“It comes after an unnamed parts supplier uncovered small holes in the material from corrosion, The New York Slimes reported. The FAA is looking into both the long and short-term implications for the aircraft equipped with the faulty parts. It’s not clear how many planes have used components made from the fake titanium.”
Metal behaves differently at altitude and underwater.
Fake metallurgy.
No maintenance workers at the airline that received these fake airplanes verified and validated metallurgy.
The chaos avalanche of the competency crisis continues.
If it’s a Boeing product: fire the CEO for cause, ground all aircraft and require all maintenance crew to wear a body-cam.
Does anyone remember a manufacturer of metals for submarines who was found to have faked testing for 32 years?
32 years.
The culprit, Elaine Marie Thomas, was sentenced to two and a half years and $50,000 in fines.
Two and a half years.
And no one checked her work. No one in quality control verified and validated her findings, even occasionally.
32 years.
This is not a serious nation.
Email me at cgpodcast@pm.me
Israel Lobby Cash Dominates and Perverts American Elections
Where is the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 when you really need it?
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 28, 2024
Once upon a time the United States of America was a constitutional republic that was by design constructed with checks and balances to limit corruption and constrain the ability of any branch of government to initiate certain potentially harmful actions, like going to war, which required approval by both Congress and the Executive Branch. Of course, that was 261 years ago and things change over time. Today’s America, what claims to be both a democracy and the issuer plus enforcer of international rules and norms, is arguably one of the most corrupt as well as most disliked countries on earth, with a political system that is exceptionally vulnerable to those who have deep pockets and a willingness to spend freely to obtain favors from the professional politicians and bureaucrats who now proliferate throughout the system.
If one measures the consequences arising from all the corruption, there is no better example than the heavily lopsided relationship with Israel, which has been produced through the infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars coming primarily from Jewish billionaire and corporate sources. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson famously gifted Donald Trump with $100 million and in return received what he demanded, i.e. a United States decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and a recognition that Jerusalem would be recognized as the country’s capital, which was illegal under international law. Additionally, Trump’s team headed by Israeli apologist Ambassador David Friedman, brought about the recognition of the Jewish state’s annexation of the occupied formerly Syrian Golan Heights, also an illegal concession, and the de facto granting of a free hand to Israel for dealing with the Palestinians as it sees fit, which is playing out currently. Trump also was in the business of canceling a nuclear monitoring agreement with Iran, which was very much in the US interest, and the assassination senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Qassim Soleimani, a war crime.
The heavily pro-Israel policies have not developed in the US because of some actual affinity between the two nations but rather because of great dollops of Jewish money liberally applied to politicians and journalists to create a myth of an actual beneficial alliance between the two to produce a narrative that the US public would be inclined to accept. In this massive coordinated effort by what is euphemistically referred to as the Israel Lobby there is no more active entity than the basically illegal American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its conjoined AIPAC-Political Action Committee, which delivers the cash and also the intimidation of political candidates who do not embrace the Jewish state with enthusiasm. Such dissidents are marked for removal through the surfacing of opposing prospective candidates who are particularly well-funded and sure to receive exceptionally favorable press. In the current round of primaries just concluded, AIPAC-Pac has boasted that it has achieved 100% success as “an AIPAC-endorsed candidate has won in every district (224 races) where an endorsee was on the ballot. All 90 AIPAC-backed Democrats who have had their primary races in 2024 have won. These Democrats are strong pro-Israel voices. 134 AIPAC-backed Republicans have [also]won their elections. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.”
How does it work? As international lawyer John Whitbeck has described the process “the primary reasons why virtually all members of the US Congress prioritize the desires of the Israeli government over the interests of the American people are money and fear — and particularly the fear of all the money that Israel-Firsters will devote to ending your political career, most notably through primary elections, if you manifest anything less than unconditional support and/or abject subservience to Israel.” In the most recent primary in New York state, AIPAC boasts over having devoted a record $15 million, a record amount spent on a primary election, to delivering exemplary punishment to end the political career of Representative Jamaal Bowman, a rare progressive in Congress who has been an outspoken critic of Israeli apartheid and genocide. Among other damnation of Bowman’s record, he was inevitably accused of “antisemitism.” Only a single such example every few years has proven to be enough to keep virtually all members of Congress in line. One might ask former Congressmen like Cynthia McKinney and others in a long line who felt the wrath of AIPAC and its sister organizations. That would include now deceased Senators William Fulbright, Charles Percy and James Abourezk and Congressmen Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey and Jim Traficant.
It has recently been revealed that nearly all congressional candidates are routinely and openly approached by AIPAC representatives who ask in advance their views on Israel. If they are cooperative, sometimes requiring a written statement of intent, they are given a pass and can count on financial support and favorable media. If they are not, they are marked for removal. And one can even sympathize with members of Congress who are self-defined careerists in politics, as, again per Whitbeck, “what is the point, when all around you are groveling flat-out- prone in subservience to Israel, in raising your head on a matter of principle? Your head will simply be cut off, and nothing will change for the better as a result of your sacrifice. There is really no rational choice but to faithfully follow the orders of your ‘AIPAC babysitter.’” The “babysitter” is an AIPAC endorsed staffer placed in nearly every congressional office to monitor and report on Israel issues, a development which has recently been revealed by Congressman Tom Massie while being interviewed by Tucker Carlson.
So how do we limit the ability of Israel to corrupt America’s political system to such an extent that many now believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu controls US foreign policy while his domestic lobby creatures at the same time influence as well many other aspects of how the government operates at state and national levels? And why do I refer to the actions of AIPAC and other groups as illegal? Israel is able to act with impunity because of the undeniable powerful influence of its domestic US lobby coupled with its skill at being able to hide what it is up to. The Lobby also has a free hand because the federal government does not enforce its own laws when it comes to the illegally nuclear armed Jewish state. AIPAC, not to mention groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), are actually acting as directed agents of the Israeli government and therefore subject to the terms of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 which requires organizations that take foreign direction regarding their activities to open up their books and records to scrutiny. It also requires some transparency vis-à-vis their contacts and relationships with the Israeli Embassy and the country’s Foreign Ministry and intelligence and security agencies.
The Act is usually referred to as FARA and was originally intended to monitor groups acting on behalf of the German and Italian governments prior to World War 2. It has since been used to limit the activity of Russian and other entities that have operated in the US but has never been applied against Israel, in itself yet another indication of the power of the Israel Lobby and its ability to suppress any exposure of its activities. Journalist and lawyer Isaiah Kenen had founded the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (AZCPA) as a lobbying division of the American Zionist Council in 1953 but it soon separated from AZC and became AIPAC in 1954. Kenen, an actual lobbyist for the Israeli government, had earlier worked for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. AIPAC is today generally considered the most powerful and wealthiest Israeli lobby in the United States. President John F. Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy understood the threat that it represented and sought to compel both AZC and AIPAC to register under FARA but JFK was assassinated shortly thereafter, which have led many to believe that the killing was a Mossad job. Registration under FARA would have inter alia blocked any funding of US political parties and politicians by those groups acting in support of Israeli interests. It would with one stroke take away much of Israel’s ability to corrupt America’s political system in its favor.
In comments to my articles I am often asked what can we ordinary Americans do to bring the Israeli influencers in this country under control. Well, after recognizing that there is a problem, a partial answer is there by enforcing FARA. One needs to put pressure on individual congressmen and the White House through the media to register AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups. Corrupting money is the key to their power and if the spigot of cash is shut off to the politicians and parties their influence will be greatly diminished. And don’t be surprised if there will be many politicians who are privately ashamed at what has been going on who will suddenly become supporters of control over the Jewish groups. The Lobby has been bad for America and not even particularly good for Israel as “sacrosanct” US support for Israel, as Joe Biden puts it, has freed folks like Netanyahu to engage in very dangerous enterprises for his own country as in Gaza and also against its neighbors and for so-called allies like the US. Time to put an end to the status quo.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Robert Hur Emerges as the Clear Winner in the Presidential Debate
By Jonathan Turley | June 28, 2024
The presidential debate last night was chilling to watch as President Joe Biden clearly struggled to retain his focus and, at points, seemed hopelessly confused. The winner was clear: Special Counsel Robert Hur. For months, Democrats in Congress and the media have attacked Hur for his report that the president came across as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur concluded that prosecuting Biden would be difficult because a jury would view him as a sympathetic figure of a man with declining mental capabilities. That was evident last night and the question is whether a man who was too diminished to be a criminal defendant can still be a president for four more years.
Hur laid out evidence that President Biden had unlawfully retained and mishandled classified evidence for decades. However, he also concluded that “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” He found that “it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
What has followed is the usual pile-on in the media with legal analysts, press, and pundits denouncing Hur for his findings.
Hur likely does not anticipate any apologies even as commentators on CNN and MSNBC admit that there are now unavoidable questions of Biden’s ability to be the nominee.
Democrats have repeatedly insisted that Hur did not find Biden diminished and that he actually was impressed by his memory and mental acuity. Hur contradicted that in his own testimony before Congress.
Indeed, the denial campaign took on a bizarre character, particularly when Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) insisted that Hur “exonerated” Biden. Hur pushed back: “I need to go back and make sure that I take note of a word that you used, ‘exoneration.’ That is not a word that is used in my report and that is not a part of my task as a prosecutor.”
Jayapal shot back, “You exonerated him.”
Hur responded, “I did not exonerate him. That word does not appear in the report.”
The debate also further undermines the ridiculous effort of the Biden Administration to continue to withhold the audiotape of the Hur interview as privileged (despite saying that the transcript is not privileged).
The debate showed not only what Hur saw but why the Justice Department is making a clearly laughable privilege claim to delay any release of the audiotape until after the election.
Ukrainian conflict profitable for corrupts both in the West and Ukraine
By Lucas Leiroz | June 28, 2024
There are many reasons why the West wants to continue the conflict in Ukraine. American geopolitics is almost entirely directed towards a strategy of opposition to the Russian Federation, which is why it is in the interests of the US and its NATO allies to maintain a conflict situation in the Russian strategic environment – thus trying to “wear down” Moscow through long-standing proxy wars. However, there is a special reason for the existence of such a strong pro-war lobby in the West: the exorbitant profits generated by hostilities.
The American and European elites, as well as their oligarchic “partners” in Ukraine, have maintained complex schemes of corruption, embezzlement and overpricing in the various financial and military aid programs sent to Kiev. Rather than a gesture of “solidarity” with Ukraine, as portrayed by the Western media, NATO assistance has been a lucrative business for many individuals and companies, generating interest in prolonging the conflict.
One of the main tactics used by these agents is the overpricing of military products. The prices of various weapons and equipment are being artificially inflated by American and European defense companies. It is estimated that some types of projectiles are overpriced by up to six times their original value, for example. The excess value between the original price and the inflated price ends up serving as profit for corrupt individuals both in the West and in Kiev.
Recent media reports indicate that there is a shortage of ammunition in the Ukrainian armed forces. Although billions of dollars are being spent on weapons, the inflated prices mean that Kiev cannot purchase a sufficient amount of equipment. Artillery shells are among the most overpriced items, with rockets such as the Grad MLRS having increased in price six times since 2022. The same process of inflating prices has occurred with almost all of Ukraine’s regular defense purchases, creating a situation in which Kiev receives exorbitant amounts of money but is unable to adequately supply itself militarily to sustain even conventional combat.
Some arguments commonly used by defense companies to increase the price of weapons are issues such as the need to speed up production or problems with logistics. In fact, current circumstances would require some kind of rise in the price of military products according to conventional market standards. However, raising the price of projectiles by six or seven times is already much more than a mere adjustment in expenses, having an obvious attempt to profit from the conflict and generate unfair earnings for the parties involved.
In Kiev, there have been calls to change the structure of arms shipments, with local military officials asking partner countries – mainly in Europe – to build facilities on Ukrainian soil to reduce logistical costs and facilitate the process of military aid. Western companies, however, continue to refuse such investment, citing technical difficulties. Although such difficulties exist, the real reason for the lack of such investment is another: by creating a shortage of weapons in Ukraine, the “machine” of military aid continues to run.
The basic scheme is simple: it is claimed that the costs of sending weapons are high, requiring more public money to cover the costs. Western propaganda convinces taxpayers to keep silent about bills passed in Western parliaments to increase military aid packages. Thus, more money is taken from the public reserves and used for suspicious schemes of buying weapons for Ukraine. Ukrainian officials take some of this money for themselves, while the rest goes to pay exorbitant prices to the Western defense industry. Thus, everyone profits – except the Ukrainian military, who continue to be sent to certain death on the frontlines while their bosses profit from the “Western solidarity.”
Long ago, the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, formally accused the US of profiting from the conflict. According to him, the American defense industry is benefiting greatly from the war due to Ukrainian demand for weapons and inflated equipment prices. The real figures from the military market confirm Wenbin’s allegations, making it clear that the prolongation of the war in Ukraine is not the result of any belief in Kiev’s “victory”, but of the selfish interests of Western and Ukrainian private actors in profiting from the loss of lives.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
Ukraine’s highly unpopular military conscription produces ‘ghost soldiers’ and widespread corruption
By Dmitri Kovalevich | Al Mayadeen | June 27, 2024
The end of June marked one month since Ukraine adopted a new law on military conscription that significantly limits the rights of Ukrainians. During this time, Ukrainian media has been full of reports, daily and even hourly, of ‘kidnappings’, as many Ukrainians put it, by military conscription officers from the streets and neighborhoods of the country of military-age men (25 and older) deemed fit for battle. Fighting between enlistment officers and civilians resisting their work is increasing, as is the publicizing of it all in Ukraine media.
Even pro-war, Western newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post can no longer hide from their readers the story of citizen resistance to conscription in Ukraine, as they have been doing for years.
Tension in Ukraine over forced conscription is growing daily. The Ukrainian military is promoting (and enforcing through conscription) its idea that justice demands that all Ukrainian men submit to the horrors of war, just as its soldiers have done for more than two years in direct confrontation with the Russian armed forces and in direct confrontation with the self-defense forces in Donbass for eight years before that. The Kiev regime launched a civil war against the people of Donbass (today the Russian Federation republics of Donetsk and Lugansk) in the spring of 2014, seeking to crush the deep-going opposition there to the far-right paramilitary coup of February 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s elected president and legislature.
In response to the conscription terror unfolding daily in the streets and neighborhoods of the country, Ukrainian military vehicles are now being set on fire every day in various cities. Local residents believe the targeted vehicles to be transporting military enlistment officers, not ordinary soldiers. One result is that rank-and-file military personnel are increasingly placing notices on their transport vehicles reading ‘Not military recruiters’. As they conduct their work, lone military enlistment officers are coming under attack far to the rear of the front lines, even in western Ukraine.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Skeptic‘ comments on the confrontations, writing, “People do not understand who, exactly, is appearing before them in uniform: is it a simple military man, or is it military enlistment officer? The forced conscription being carried out by the authorities at the hands of military recruiters leads people to take illegal actions. Along with simple efforts to avoid the conscription officers, people are increasingly fighting back with their bare hands when cornered, risking their lives or their freedom in order to do everything possible to avoid going to the war front and suffering the fate of so many before them who have lost their lives or their health.
“The number of disabled people in Ukraine now exceeds three million, and their number is growing by more than 30,000 people every month through the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU),” the Skeptic channel writes.
On June 11, Ukrainians were stirred by media broadcasting a mass brawl in the city of Odessa between ambulance drivers and the military enlistment officers who were trying to conscript one of them. Dozens of ambulance drivers from all over the city came to the aid of their colleague, at which point several civilian vigilantes joined with the recruiters in beating the ambulance drivers with baseball bats.
According to a report in the widely-read, Ukraine media outlet Strana, the vigilantes were members of voluntary police assistance squads. These have been established since 2022. Private security companies often enroll their employees in such units. In fact, these are paramilitary formations dedicated to assisting military enlistment officers and police to seize eligible conscripts. A ‘bonus’ for the members of such vigilante groups is that they are accorded protection against conscription.
The Strana report explains, “In addition, cooperation with military enlistment officers and the police gives the members of the ‘assistance detachments’ many ways for illegal earnings. For example, they often act as intermediaries in giving bribes to the enlistment officers – naturally, for a certain percentage. There are also schemes to issue, for a fee, taxi cab passes for nighttime travel [which is supposed to be forbidden]. The struggle for such financial flows periodically causes serious clashes between the ‘assistance detachments’ in Odessa.”
The terror inflicted by military recruiters against civilians is dictated not so much by the desire for ‘justice’ on the military front [equality in military service] as by common corruption. ‘Failures’ to issue conscription notices and erasing of computerized conscription data on Ukrainians liable for military service can cost several thousand dollars. Even some children of military commissars are involved in such illegal business in order to avoid service. In mid-June, for example, the son of the head of one of the military enlistment offices in the Vinnytsia region was detained after he was found to be arranging travel abroad for men seeking to escape the country at prices approaching the equivalent of US$20,000. During searches of the son’s premises, authorities found conscription notices and copies of passports of more than a dozen men of the age of military service, plus a lot of cash, including US dollars. He is now facing a possible jail sentence of eight years and the loss of his personal property. It is illegal for men of military age to leave Ukraine unless they have special permission (care of a frail elder, for example).
Ukrainians also know that military recruiters are choosing not to patrol and raid certain vacation spots or shopping locations frequented by wealthy Ukrainians. One restaurant owner told Strana on condition of anonymity, that this is happening largely due to large bribes. A restaurant owner in Odessa told the publication, “Each chain of shopping malls negotiates independently with military recruiters; not directly but through the mediation of the regional governing administration. Naturally, for large payoffs. I can’t tell you the amount of payment for the ‘security zone’, but the sums start from 5-10 thousand dollars and more, per month, depending on the size of the shopping center and its popularity.”
“Each network of shopping and entertainment centers negotiates independently with the military registration and enlistment offices, but not directly. They negotiate through mediation by the regional city administration. Naturally, for large payoffs I cannot say what is the exact fee for protection in a ‘security zone’, but the amounts start at 5,000 to 10,000 [U$] each month, depending on the size of the shopping complex and its popularity.”
Despite all the uproar taking place in Ukraine over conscription, the results on the front line are barely visible, writes a correspondent on Telegram from the ‘Kholodnyi Yar ‘unit of the AFU. “This is partly due to the fact that newly conscripted soldiers are merely replacing the dead and wounded. Corruption and fictitious servicemen who exist only on paper are partly to blame.”
The ‘First War News’ Telegram channel writes on June 18, “In Donetsk region, the accountant of one of the military units along with two other unit members organized a scheme to enter fictitious data about the participation of soldiers in combat operations in order to collect the bonuses for direct military action for all three participants in the scheme.”
A similar scheme operated in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led occupation of the country from 2001-2012. Al Jazeera reported back in 2021 why the Afghan army that was built up painstakingly for years by the occupation forces fell apart so quickly. Its report explained, “First, there was widespread corruption in Afghanistan’s defense and interior ministries, where funds, ammunition, and food deliveries were stolen before reaching the soldiers on the ground… Furthermore, some commanders embezzled money by submitting fund requests for the salaries of ‘ghost soldiers’; that is, soldiers who had never actually signed up for the military. As all this was happening, the soldiers of the Afghan comprador army were left unpaid and frequently denied for months at a time permission to visit their families on leave.
Unsurprisingly, the Afghan armed forces under Western tutelage had one of the highest desertion and casualty rates of armies in the world. One estimate placed the army’s monthly attrition rate at 5,000, while the monthly recruitment rate was 300 to 500.
The Ukrainian telegram channel ‘Kartel’ describes how similar schemes are taking place in the AFU. “The simplest schemes are those involving ghost soldiers. Fictitious recruits are enrolled and sent to the frontline and the salaries and bonuses go into the commanders’ pockets. Secondly, commanders record of non-existent ‘destruction’ of enemy equipment in order to earn bonuses. Thirdly, they sell places in the rear and in reserve units, and fourthly, they sell vacations and sick leaves to soldiers”.
The underground Ukrainian Marxist organization Workers’ Front of Ukraine (WFU) wrote on Telegram on June 13 about the corruption that has permeated much of the AFU. “If you want to be dismissed, you must pay up. If you are found guilty of a crime or misdemeanor, you must pay up. If you don’t want any trouble, you must pay up. Tens of millions of hryvnias are leaking out of the state budget through payments to so-called ‘gray souls’ [ghost soldier] schemes, for which the military unit receives allowances.
“The alcohol trade is also blossoming. If you are caught drinking too much vodka sold to you by your officers, you are fined, further boosting corrupt earnings. And so on. In one of the buildings of the ‘second headquarters’ a mining farm has been organized, the electricity bills of which are covered by our taxes.”
The Ukrainian Telegram channel ‘Resident‘ writes on June 17 that, in essence, the ever-tightening law on military conscription is transforming military recruiters into a new economic elite, and a deeply corrupt elite at that. The already tense atmosphere in Ukrainian society due to conscription is being aggravated by all the reports of corruption and bribery. And despite the corruption scandals, military enlistment officers actually remain quite untouchable in Ukraine. They have become the unspoken and unassigned decision-makers of the fates of tens, hundreds of thousands of human beings in Ukraine. They are assigned the power to manage this diminishing number of potential military recruits, and they are managing this ‘resource’ in their own, personal interest.
In earlier times, Ukrainians paid bribes to officials for any old certificate or license. They would pay bribes for the right to receive medical care from doctors or even for a necessary conveyance in an ambulance. They would pay bribes to the police to avoid a fine for a traffic violation. Now they are paying bribes for the simple act of walking down the street, working, shopping, getting married, or adopting a child–all in order not to end up in a bombed-out foxhole at the frontline.
Recently, fugitive conscription evaders have begun to stage mass breakthroughs in large groups through the Transcarpathia region in western Ukraine and across the border. The region is Ukraine’s gateway westward into the European Union.
On June 9, 32 people traveling in a transport truck bearing fake military license plates broke through the border to Hungary. The truck was full of fugitives and simply drove off-road at top speed into the neighboring territory. The truck was tracked down by Hungarian border guards and soon after, the fugitives surrendered to the Hungarian authorities near the village of Barabash. Local residents claimed in comments to local media that the fugitives were various Ukraine law enforcement officers who were facing assignments to the war front.
Ukrainian soldiers and officers are also, increasingly, complaining about the ineffective military tactics of their high command. The soldiers are reduced to fighting for every house and every scrap of forested land, even in the most unfavorable situations. This is due to the extreme pressure on military authorities to demonstrate ‘effectiveness’ to the U.S. and NATO military leadership in order for Ukraine may continue receiving military funding and weapons from them.
Ukrainian battalion commander Ivan Mateyko stated in an interview with the Focus newsmagazine that military units are being severely punished for abandoning their positions. For the sake of its public relations, the AFU does not withdraw people even from the last, surrounded house in a village so that the village may still be said by superior officers to be under ‘Ukrainian’ control. “Losing a military position is punished, even when you are holding the last house in a village because as long as you are in that house, the village is considered ours. It doesn’t matter how many people die for the sake of holding that house. It doesn’t matter that that house has been surrounded for a week, cannot safely receive supplies, and cannot safely evacuate the wounded and dead,” he said.
According to Mateyko, when the situation is a stalemate and there are not enough soldiers to mount an adequate defense, commanders decide to indiscriminately send everyone into battle. He believes that commanders are sending people to their deaths in such circumstances out of fear of losing their positions or fear of being penalized.
Alexei Arestovich, a former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine (2020-2023) and a far-right ideologue, notes that the AFU is not learning anything new from its experiences in battle. He compares this to the army of the Soviet Union in Crimea during World War Two. He writes on Telegram, “They tried different methods, from mechanical to moral and psychological from 1941 onward. [Nazi Germany occupied Crimea, after bitter struggle, from late 1941 until liberation in 1944.] By 1943-1944, they had learned to fight. The difference between the Red Army of 1941 compared to the Red Army of 1944 is the difference between heaven and earth. They tried, tried, and tried again. After 30 unsuccessful attempts, the 31st attempt would succeed.”
Arestovich asks, “How does Ukraine’s army today compare? Our valiant armed forces do not want to learn, nothing happens. I am looking at this and asking myself, ‘During two and a half years of struggle against our original [sic] enemy, what changes have occurred in the armed forces? Even organizational changes, reflecting accumulated experience? This army has long been driven by inertia and is simply wearing itself out without trying to make sense of events, without trying to draw any conclusions.”
A leader of the neo-Nazi paramilitary battalion ‘Azov’, Dmytro Kukharchuk, believes that Kiev is losing its war. He believes the Russian Federation has no need at all to sue for peace as it is in a much more favorable position. “Yes, we are losing this war now. It’s obvious. We are losing territories, we are losing the best people. Many people say: ‘Everything is going fine and soon we will conclude a peace treaty with Russia.’ But the main question is, why does the Russian Federation need to negotiate peace?” According to him, the strategy of a creeping offensive (war of attrition) which the Russian army has chosen is serving it very well, while the consequences for Ukraine are not only unpleasant, they are critical.
Notwithstanding these words, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a quite specific proposal for peace in mid-June. It would require the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, renunciation by Kiev of Ukraine’s specious claim over Crimea, and renunciation by Kiev of present or future NATO membership.
The U.S. administration and then Ukraine quickly rejected this proposal, as if on cue. The key stumbling block is not so much control of the regions presently under Russia’s control, but future NATO membership for Ukraine. NATO is using Ukraine as a proxy force in this war and toward the goal of NATO membership.
Former Ukrainian journalist and today a political exile, Rostyslav Ishchenko, comments on June 18: “Russia has declared the need to create a unified security system in Eurasia, without the participation of non-Eurasian states. For the first time, albeit indirectly, Moscow has raised the issue of NATO’s liquidation, since without the U.S. military presence in Europe, the bloc loses its meaning and the USA becomes a non-Eurasian power.”
For his part, NATO head Jens Stoltenberg is promising that Ukraine will join NATO as soon as it defeats Russia, which is to say ‘never’. Despite the grim military situation facing the Ukraine regime, Western leaders are instructing Kiev to refrain from any negotiations with Russia.
Oleh Soskin, a former adviser to Leonid Kuchma (the second, post-Soviet Ukraine president from 1995 to 2004 and today a political analyst) has recently written on Telegram that the West is quite satisfied with the killing of Ukrainian citizens at the hands of the country’s capitalist elite. “They are all very satisfied with the fact that this Zelensky, A.Yermak [head of the Office of the President of Ukraine], D.Arahamiya [head of the legislature faction of Zelensky’s political machine], R.Stefanchuk [speaker of the legislature] and, naturally, D. Shmygal [prime minister since 2020] are very good at using Ukrainians as weapons and cannon fodder.”
Indeed, the Ukraine regime is acquiring yet more funding and weapons from the West and sending yet more Ukrainians to their deaths in order to please the elites of the NATO countries.
From time to time, I personally witness clashes taking place between civilians and Ukrainian military enlistment officers. I have witnessed outraged women trying to wrestle their sons and husbands out of the clutches of military conscriptors. “Let Zelensky go to the trenches!,” they shout. “Let him send his own children off to war! Let Biden himself fight the Russians!” Needless to say, this sharp, civilian erosion of support for Kiev’s and NATO’s war does not bode well for either.
Journalism under fire: Jailed for exposing Jordan
The Cradle | June 24, 2024
In Jordan, failing at self-censorship can land you in jail. Literally.
Freelance journalist Hiba Abu Taha, a passionate pro-resistance Jordanian of Palestinian origin, refused to self-censor. On 11 June, the Magistrate Court in Amman sentenced her to a harsh one-year prison term for violating the kingdom’s controversial Cybercrimes Law introduced last year.
This was due to an article she wrote for Lebanese news site, Annasher, criticizing “Jordan’s role in defending the enemy entity.” The article was published on 22 April, eight days after Jordanian, US, British, and French aircraft intercepted Iranian drones and rockets over Jordanian airspace heading towards Israeli targets.
However, Abu Taha was arrested on 13 May after Annasher published her investigative report on 28 April titled “Partners in extermination: Jordanian capital owners involved in Gaza genocide.” The timing of her arrest gave the impression that she was detained for exposing Jordanian companies transporting exports to Israel – a land corridor that government officials went out of their way to publicly deny amid growing popular outrage at Amman’s continued ties with Tel Aviv while it commits the Gaza genocide.
It is widely believed that her nearly 2,000-word investigative report, supported by a 15-minute video of evidence she gathered undercover, was the real reason for the journalist’s indictment.
Exposing government deception on Israeli trade routes
In her report, Abu Taha accused Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh and other officials of concealing the use of Jordan as a land route for UAE and Bahraini exports via Saudi Arabia to Israel to break the Yemeni Ansarallah blockade in the Red and Arabian Seas.
She cites transport and clearance company employees in Amman and Aqaba about their services to transport goods through the northern Sheikh Hussein Bridge or the southern Wadi Araba crossing. She went on to expose the names of the Jordanian companies and their influential owners, who have shown no qualms about doing business as usual with the occupation state as it commits unprecedented war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Abu Taha also identifies influential company owners acting as agents for Israeli or Israel-bound shipping companies. Resorting to official documents, she writes that Jordanian exports to Israel increased from $123 million in 2022 to $143 million in 2023, with a record monthly high of $17 million in December 2023, a month after Yemen began targeting Israeli-owned and Israel-bound cargo ships.
She notes that despite court evidence “recognizing the existence of the land bridge” as well as video footage and pictures of the movement of trucks at the Sheikh Hussein border crossing, Khasawneh insisted that:
The land bridge is a figment of imagination with no truth on the ground … The number of trucks entering and leaving Jordan for the entity has decreased, and what is being raised is nothing but self-flagellation.
Abu Taha details her exchange with government spokesman Muhannad Mubaidin, who fires back at “those accusing Jordan” of providing a land bridge for Israel as “shameful.”
She writes that he “initially tried to deny the government’s role” in this regard and “even tried to point the finger at West Bank merchants as deceiving their colleagues in Jordan by telling them that the exports are for the Arabs.”
When confronted with the facts she found, Mubaidin immediately referred to the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel and stressed that the government would not ban trade with the Zionist state because “such a decision is a populist one that appeases a certain party or faction.”
Meanwhile, Trade Ministry Spokesman Yanal Barmawi told Abu Taha that he was unaware of the “export issue” and that “the private sector would know.” She writes that official denials and blaming the private sector, which cannot operate without government approval, “confirms that the authorities are trying to contain the Jordanian street.”
Opinion prosecution
Despite the rigor of her investigative report, Abu Taha was prosecuted for her 22 April opinion piece. Nidal Mansour, co-founder of the Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ), noted that Abu Taha was convicted under the restrictive Cybercrimes Law, which was enacted shortly before 7 October 2023.
The Media Commission, a government-controlled regulatory body, filed a complaint against her, accusing her of “inciting sedition and discord among members of the community,” “threatening community peace,” “inciting violence,” and “spreading false news” through electronic media.
Abu Taha’s article accused Jordan of “treason,” among other derogatory terms, for intercepting Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel and giving the US, British, and French military forces a free hand in the country to defend the occupation state.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) quotes Media Commissioner Bashir al-Momani as saying that Abu Taha’s article contained “serious insults against Jordanian state institutions, incitement to the state’s positions, and stirring up discord among the components of the people,” which he added “necessitated her prosecution.”
According to a CDFJ statement, Abu Taha was convicted under Articles 15 and 17 of the 40-article Cybercrime Law of August 2023. Article 15 stipulates:
Whoever intentionally sends, resends, or publishes data or information through an information network, information technology, information system, website, or social media platforms that includes fake news targeting the national security and community peace, or defames, slanders, or contempt [sic] any person shall be imprisoned for a period of not less than three months or a fine of not less than 5,000 dinars and no more than 20,000 dinars, or both penalties.
Article 15 also gives the prosecutor the right to take legal action “without the need to file a complaint or claim a personal right if it is directed at one of the authorities in the state, official bodies, or public administrations,” which means that Abu Taha could have still been punished even if the Media Commission had not filed a complaint.
The court also invoked Article 17 to hand her a one-year sentence. It states that:
Whoever intentionally uses an information network, information technology, information system, website, or social media platform to spread what is likely to stir up racism or sedition, targets social peace, incites hatred, calls for or justifies violence, or insults religions, shall be punished by imprisonment from one to three years or a fine of no less than 5,000 dinars and no more than 20,000 dinars, or both penalties.
Draconian laws and legal challenges
Abu Taha’s opinion piece in Annasher undoubtedly lacked the self-censorship that Amman has successfully induced by imposing a series of restrictive press and media laws over the decades.
Mansour tells The Cradle that the press and publication laws have become more draconian with the evolution of information technology, beginning with restrictive laws on the independent weekly press back in the 1990s, to online news sites in the early 2000s, and social media with the most recent “fluid” Cybercrime Law that could effectively stifle any form of free speech on these platforms.
He notes that Abu Taha’s lawyer, Rami Odatallah, appointed by the leftist Jordanian Popular Unity Party (an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), is more experienced in defending political activists than journalists.
Abu Taha is not a member of the political party. Still, it stood by her ordeal and denounced her arrest and sentencing, demanding her release and other activists that had been “harassed and arrested” for supporting the resistance against Israel online or on the street.
Mansour reveals that the CDFJ plans to hire a lawyer specialized in the Cybercrime Law to appeal her sentence, which his organization described as “deeply concerning” and called for “abolishing imprisonment in cases related to publication and freedom of expression in accordance with international human rights standards.”
Abu Taha’s arrest and sentencing drew attention to Jordan’s crackdown on both journalists and rightfully enraged activists by using the Cybercrime Law. … Full article
Debt Disaster: Why Global South Increasingly Sidelines the US Dollar
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 22.06.2024
Soaring US national debt may translate into a real disaster when supercharged by internal political fighting or de-dollarization among top emerging economies, US observers warn.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that the US national debt will hit $50.7 trillion by 2034, but the true figure “surely will be much bigger,” wrote William Pesek, an award-winning journalist and author, for the Asia Times.
The CBO projected on June 18 that US debt would reach 122 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2034, far surpassing the nation’s record-high public debt-to-GDP ratio of 106 percent in the aftermath of World War II. The watchdog also expects that interest costs for maintaining the debt will climb to $892 billion in 2024 (from $352 billion in 2021).
Pesek named defense funding, social safety net outlays and tax cuts unmatched by revenue increases as being the major drivers behind the debt growth, adding that they would become even costlier in the future.
He also quotes Goldman Sachs economists as predicting that the US debt-to-GDP ratio will hit 130 percent by 2034, i.e. 8 percentage points higher than the CBO estimates. Judging by the present dynamics, it could be far higher than that, according to the journalist.
The Wall Street Journal’s Gerald F. Seib appears to share Pesek’s concerns: “Over the centuries and across the globe, nations and empires that blithely piled up debt have, sooner or later, met unhappy ends.”
The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage echoes his counterparts in referring to the spending spree under the Trump and Biden administrations, which included huge tax cuts, various social programs and increasing defense expenditures.
“[Most recently], besides the annual appropriations, lawmakers approved a $95 billion foreign aid bill to support Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and make investments in the US industrial base, and Biden announced plans to forgive billions of dollars in student loans,” the correspondent noted.
When it comes to Ukraine, Congress has approved nearly $175 billion of funding and military assistance to support the Kiev regime and allied nations since 2022, as per the Committee for the Responsible Federal Budget. This spending has been repeatedly questioned by some US lawmakers, who referred to Kiev’s corruption, non-transparency and military failures. To complicate matters further, American lawmakers are complaining about US primary defense contractors tremendously overcharging the US government.
Meanwhile, Ukraine funding constitutes a fraction of the US growing military spending that rose by 2.3 percent from 2022 to reach $916 billion in 2023, or 68 percent of total NATO military spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). These expenditures only add to America’s bloated national debt.
According to Pesek, “this slow-motion economic disaster” related to Washington’s inability to balance its spending “could be sped up by political squabbling or by de-dollarization efforts among top emerging markets.”
He particularly refers to Biden’s economic policies and protectionist measures which are not making the US economy more resilient. According to the journalist, the White House’s latest 100 percent tariffs on China-made electric vehicles have hurt “global faith in the dollar or US Treasury securities” (of which the People’s Republic holds around $700 billion).
He warns that Global South countries are “viewing the US less and less as an adult in the room when it comes to economic and geopolitical affairs.”
“The most obvious example of disillusionment over US fiscal excesses is the pivot away from the US dollar,” Pesek notes, adding that there is no sign that the US government is ready to overhaul its economic approach.
“Nor is it safe to bet on the US debt only rising to $50 trillion a decade from now. As the real figure exceeds even the worst expectations, global markets could be in a world of hurt. And Washington will make it easy for Global South nations hoping to sideline the dollar,” he concludes.
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From the Archives
Fourteen Incredible Facts About 9/11
By Kevin Ryan | Dig Within | August 8, 2015
… What is known about 9/11 is that there are many incredible facts that continue to be ignored by the government and the mainstream media. Here are fourteen.
- An outline of what was to become the 9/11 Commission Report was produced before the investigation began. The outline was kept secret from the Commission’s staff and appears to have determined the outcome of the investigation.
- The 9/11 Commission claimed sixty-three (63) times in its Report that it could find “no evidence” related to important aspects of the crimes.
- One person, Shayna Steiger, issued 12 visas to the alleged hijackers in Saudi Arabia. Steiger issued some of the visas without interviewing the applicants and fought with another employee at the embassy who tried to prevent her lax approach.
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