US Treasury Deficit Doubles as Biden Bankrolls Multiple Foreign Conflicts
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 23.10.2023
The US is going further into the red with as it arms its client states for a series of conflicts. Sergio Rossi, professor of macroeconomics and monetary economics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, said the strategies to avoid a default would only prove to be a “time-bomb.”
US President Joe Biden’s appeal for cash to arm Ukraine and Israel could meet resistance from Congress thanks to the runaway federal budget.
Treasury department figures released late last week showed the government deficit had hit almost £1.7 trillion, up from £1.37 trillion a year earlier, a 23 percent increase in the public debt — although lower than the $2.78 trillion left by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
The news was worse than it sounded however. The 2022 deficit included the budget for Biden’s student loan repayment program, money that was never spent as the Supreme Court struck it down. The treasury then claimed those unspent public funds as a “saving” in 2023 — meaning the true deficit doubled from $1 trillion in 2022 to $2 trillion this year.
That news came a day before Biden asked Congress for a $106 billion emergency foreign military aid budget. The lion’s share, $61.4 billion, is earmarked for Washington’s proxy conflict with Russia in Ukraine, while another $14.3 billion is to arm Israel for its latest attempt to destroy the Hamas movement in the besieged Gaza Strip.
That request dwarfs the $77 billion in arms and cash gifted to the Kiev regime since the start of Russia’s de-Nazification operation in February 2022.
Economist Sergio Rossi told Sputnik that the mounting deficit would make it harder for Biden to persuade Congress to approve his $100 billion budget request for more arms to Ukraine and Israel “in light of the problematic economic situation and outlook for the US stakeholders, namely, households, firms, and a variety of financial institutions.”
“Usually, when the domestic economic situation worsens, these stakeholders and their political supporters reduce the volume of foreign aid, to focus on supporting their own national economy first of all,” Rossi said.
He said the funding the conflict in Ukraine — while preparing for a Pacific showdown with China over Taiwan — had already put too much strain on Washington’s finances before the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a surprise attack into southern Israel.
“The US government cannot continue financing two military conflicts, particularly if the latter will continue without any foreseeable peaceful agreement before long,” Rossi stressed. “There are already signs that the political consensus for such a financial support is diminishing across the US economy, notably where both the labour and the product markets are in a difficult situation for a number of middle-class workers and several small or medium-sized firms.”
The state of the US economy was “worrying,” he said, and the outlook for the next two years was “even worse,” thanks to “global macroeconomic issues related to different geopolitical problems.”
The “mushroom” of ensuing inflation has badly affected consumer purchasing power. “As a result, firms’ investment is discouraged, both because of this inflationary pressure and the Fed’s repeated increases in the policy rates of interest.”
“The US economy is even closer to a recession than it was one year ago,” Rossi warned, although “there is no potential risk of a default of the US federal government.”
He pointed out that Congress could simply raise the public debt ceiling and the US Federal Reserve could buy up government bonds as an effective loan.
“This, however, is a time bomb that eventually can burst, particularly once some viable and credible alternative to the US dollar will emerge across the global economy,” Rossi said. “The BRICS community could provide such an alternative in a not-too-distant future.”
The Damage Israel Does
Constitutional rights and genuine national interests are ignored as governments surrender to Jewish power
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 23, 2023
There are numerous one-liners like “wag-the-dog” that constitute a long running joke about how Israel exploits Jewish power in the United States to limit and control Washington’s options in foreign policy as well as in many other aspects of international interaction. This has been accomplished by a cleverly executed neoconservative takeover of the foreign policy instruments of both major parties based on a series of nonexistent “threats” coupled with media control and billions of dollars in political donations that have bought the numerous politicians willing to be bought, which clearly constitutes a majority of Congress.
President Joe Biden and those who surround him are all about Israel and many of them are Jewish. His Secretary of the Treasury Janice Yellen claims that the US “can afford” two wars simultaneously and the Chuck Schumer led Senate has voted unanimously 97-0 pledging full and unconditional support for the Jewish state. Biden’s somewhat pathetic fifteen-minute speech last week justifying throwing another $105 billion of deficit spending at Ukraine and Israel could have been written by a neocon scribe in its attempt to demonstrate that the US is threatened by developments in those two countries. It is not, even Biden knows that, and his assertions were as hollow as the rhetoric used to support the false premise. My favorite argument being made by the president was that “American leadership holds the world together….and is necessary to keep freedom alive in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe… Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.” As it turns out, Biden was wrong on every point. Opinion polls suggest that the world overwhelmingly sees the United States as the most disruptive and dangerous nation on the planet, so Biden’s unwillingness or inability to discern that he is presiding over the death throes of America’s global leadership is particularly troubling. And Joe even fails to realize that Russia is more democratic by most measures than is Ukraine, which is consistently rated as the most corrupt country in the world, while Israel is not a democracy at all unless one is a Jew.
Biden was certainly motivated to speak to the American public in prime time, only the second time he has done so, by his overriding concern to express and obtain absolutely total support for Israel no matter what it does. He is willing to lie, cheat and steal for Israel. In the wake of the devastating October 17th blast at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, a Christian-run medical complex in central Gaza City, which killed at least 500 people and injured hundreds more, he immediately jumped on the protect-Israel bandwagon and declared that Israel had not done it, which is far from being demonstrated and is being hotly disputed by eyewitnesses and forensic specialists. Ukraine is a secondary issue but it too is a war supported overwhelmingly by international Jewry for various reasons, most notably visceral hatred of Russia.
Nevertheless, the control by the Israel Lobby aside, one is at a loss to understand the actual rationale behind the recent trips to Israel in the wake of the Gaza uprising made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and “they beheaded the babies” Joe Biden since the United States has no genuine national interest that compels it to get involved in either war, even less so in Gaza where Israel has been indisputably the source of nearly all the trouble. Lest anyone be confused over what signal was being sent, two US aircraft carrier strike groups were also dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranean together with orders to prepare to deploy 2,000 Marines, suggesting that Washington was itself preparing for war. And the Muslim world, convulsed by what it is seeing happen to Gaza, is also heeding a call to arms. As of last Friday there have been seven separate drone and rocket attacks on US military bases in Iraq and Syria. Journalist Caitlin Johnstone has neatly summarized the legitimate rage on the ground in Palestine that the White House and Congress make no attempt to appreciate: “The status quo in Israel has been one of continually escalating violence, tyranny and abuse for generations… Stand on someone’s face for long enough and one day it will surprise you if he eventually bites your foot. You might even feel like you were the victim, because that’s just what you’d gotten used to.”
Blinken, citing his ancestors and the holocaust, presented himself as a Jew to his Israeli audience, which meant that no further justification was required as he totally rolled over to comply with the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interpretation of what had taken place on October 7th. Reports suggest that Blinken had initially sensibly supported a cease-fire on social media just after the Hamas attack, writing that he would be “encourage[ing] Turkey’s advocacy for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages by Hamas immediately.” Presumably under pressure from Biden and the Israel Lobby, he then deleted that and wrote, “Israel has the right to defend itself, rescue any hostages, and protect its citizens.” The State Department got the message and circulated instructions to staffers to not use the terms “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm” in regard to the Gaza/Israel situation, giving Netanyahu a free hand to do whatever he would choose to do.
Blinken was thus converted to fully support massive and indiscriminate Israeli retaliation against the civilian population, a war crime, and his reward was being stiffed by the Saudi Crown Prince, forced to wait in attendance all night before being allowed a short and non-productive audience. Biden outdid his colleague in being completely stonewalled by Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi and Palestinian heads of state and government, which leads to the question “What did Biden seek to achieve apart from demonstrating that the United States was owned by Israel which is committing a war crime by its collective punishment of Gaza? Did he think the Arab and Muslim states would react positively to a developing massacre of the Gazans, which he specifically supported?”
So why were Biden and Blinken so willfully ignorant as to be unable to appreciate that they were bearing a message that could only succeed in infuriating their hosts? Israel, after all, is by law a Jewish state which not only does not provide equal rights to the non-Jewish citizens and residents, it also has a government that has senior officials and some leading religious figures describing Palestinian Arabs as something less than human or even “animals” and who, in some cases, openly consider it perfectly acceptable to exterminate them. It is the same government with a different cast of characters that has been stealing, killing and inflicting a host of war crimes and crimes against humanity on its captive and largely helpless Palestinian Christian and Muslim minority for the past 76 years.
Biden’s nice package of $105 billion, which will likely sail through Congress because it is “for Israel,” will include $14 billion for Netanyahu to buy some new heavy ordnance to exterminate the Palestinians, which guarantees that the Muslim world will hate the United States for the foreseeable future. The money is also funding the war in Ukraine for the next year and arming Taiwan with some shiny new weapons to ward off China. Ironically, a new CBS/YouGov poll finds that most Americans don’t want the US providing Israel with weapons and supplies in this war, but, of course ordinary voters are never asked their opinion when the White House chooses to demonstrate “American exceptionalism” towards the country that it loves beyond all others. Oh, and the bill will also include some cash to “fortify” America’s Mexican border, a sweetener that runs completely contrary to what Biden has been doing for the past three years. All this will be piled on to the United States government debt which, at just short of $33 trillion, is considered to be unsustainable and weighs in at $350,230 for every American family. And it is all being done for no good reason whatsoever in terms of genuine American interests, and probably illegally too as proxy wars run by the Executive Branch would seem to go against the Constitution’s separation of powers as well as the time constraints in the War Powers Act of 1973. Congressman Michael McCaul from Texas, the Israel firster fanatic who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is currently pushing legislation that would provide an in-advance authorization to go to war on Iran and on Lebanon if Hezbollah were to come in to support the Gazans when Netanyahu starts his potentially genocidal ground attack. Another Congressional clown, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is already calling for an attack on Iran under the presumption that it assisted the Gazans.
Fortunately for all of us who care for such issues as life and death, some cracks are appearing in the wall surrounding total subservience to Israel and its interest. Some even suspect that the “US-based Middle East system,” which mandates blind support for Israel, has become so abusive that the public is becoming reluctant to support it. Indeed, public opinion polls suggest that support for the Palestinians is increasing while that for Israel is growing weaker as atrocities against the Arabs multiply with Israel new ultra-conservative government. The resignation letter of senior State Department official Josh Paul, who recently quit over the Biden administration’s position on the Gaza War, makes for interesting reading. Paul described the Hamas attack as a “monstrosity of monstrosities” but continued: “This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy and bureaucratic inertia. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security nor peace, The fact is that blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”
Paul was responding to the latest arms package being rushed through congress for Israel, which he described as “shortsighted, destructive and unjust,” and the US veto early last week of a Russian proposal in the UN Security Council to call for a ceasefire. The US permanent representative to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield submitted the veto and then erupted with “By failing to condemn Hamas, Russia is giving cover to a terrorist group that brutalizes innocent civilians. It is outrageous, it is hypocritical, and it is indefensible.” She is the hypocrite in that she obviously does not recognize or does not care that Israel’s record is far worse than Russia’s in “brutalizing innocent civilians” for the past 76 years.
There are also other reports of general “discomfort” and dismay among civil servants over what is happening vis-à-vis the US role in Gaza out of concern for Israel not being urged to show restraint and the White House lack of any genuine concern over the developing humanitarian crisis. It also appears that several of the few Muslim federal government officials have been removed from positions having anything to do with Middle East policy. The US media likewise has been transferring many of its Muslim journalists who were on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East for fear that they will actually try to tell the truth about what is going on and who is doing what to whom.
On a next to last final note, it has often been noted that the first victim of war is truth. The US government in its various guises has been lashing out at social media and other sites that have been making available material that can be construed as favorable to Gaza. So far, they have been less than successful, but the efforts persist and could lead to legislation. Also, there have been the usual claims regarding “antisemitism” which can be exploited in “hate crimes” prosecutions as well as the existing legislation in 35 states that protect Israel with potential criminal and civil penalties as well denial of jobs and services to applicants who are critics of the Jewish state’s behavior. In Israel itself, al-Jazeera journalists have now been detained and expelled as a consequence of legislation criminalizing the activity of journalists who report “facts” that are not approved by the Israeli government.
But some of the most bizarre lashing out by the Israel lobby and its friends is taking place in the United States. In Florida the state Attorney General has told prosecutors to “exercise zero tolerance” when dealing with the “anti-Jewish hate crimes” engaged in by college students who have been demonstrating in support of the Gazans. At Harvard, major donors who are mostly Jewish have cut off donations to the university due to its tolerance of pro-Gazan student demonstrators. A so called “conservative group” Accuracy in Media headed by one Adam Guillette, who is Jewish, has led the response to a coalition of more than 30 Harvard student groups that posted an open letter on the night of the Hamas attack, citing Israel as “entirely responsible” for the violence that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians. The letter was posted on social media and did not include the names of the individual students in the groups. But within days, students connected to those groups were being identified together with their personal information, all of which was posted online. Families back home were threatened while presumed Harvard alumni businessmen and executives demanded a list of the student names to ban their hiring. And a truck with a digital billboard paid for by Accuracy in Media circled Harvard Square, flashing student photos and names, under the headline, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” The students now have to deal with “people’s lives being ruined, people’s careers being ruined, people’s fellowships being ruined” because they opposed a certainly controversial war being fought. Guillette said his organization’s next move, which has already started, is to create online domains using the students’ first and last names to create sites identifying them as antisemites. Guillette boasted that “I think it’s incredibly important for people to know who the antisemites are on their campus and in their community.”
And on a final note, if you have wondered where the money is coming from to fund Israel’s wars and crimes beyond what Joe Biden and his buddies are willing to hand them, there is an interesting story out of Georgia. Republican Governor Brian Kemp has ordered his state treasurer to use tax revenues to purchase $10 million in Israel Bonds. The bonehead then issued a statement: “Israel is one of Georgia’s strongest allies and greatest friends, and our support for its people as they endure horrific attacks from terrorists is unwavering. Purchasing these bonds is just the latest expression of that support.” It is not clear if the purchase is completely legal and someone should have advised the governor that buying Israel bonds is in the nature of a gift as they lack liquidity and are generally regarded as a terrible investment. So it is a rip-off of the Georgia taxpayer. I wonder if anyone will notice!
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.
Kremlin responds to Biden’s ‘new world order’ pledge
RT | October 23, 2023
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday that Russia agrees with US President Joe Biden’s comment made last week that the current global order has lost steam. However, he added that the outcome may not align with the White House’s expectations.
“The world indeed needs a new order, based on absolutely new principles,” the Russian official claimed.
According to Peskov, the new arrangement should be based on “international laws, not [arbitrary] rules” and devoid of attempts “to concentrate all mechanisms of global governance in the hands of a single nation.” He believes that Moscow differs significantly on this point.
“Whatever new world order the US envisions, it means an American-centric world order. A world revolving around the US. This will not be anymore,” Peskov added.
Biden delivered his comments about an impending shift during a speech at a fundraising event in Washington last Friday. The US president highlighted his successful effort in uniting Japan and South Korea to support Ukraine against Russia as an exemplar of his administration’s unifying endeavors.
Tokyo and Seoul agreed to do this “because they understand if they remain silent, they may be next,” Biden claimed, suggesting that Washington can “unite the world in ways that it never has been” if it is “bold enough.”
“We were in a post-war period for 50 years where it worked pretty damn well, but that’s sort of run out of steam,” Biden mused. “It needs … a new world order in a sense.”
This reality can be achieved, the president said, because “we’re the United States of America, for God’s sake” and there has “never been a thing we’ve set our mind to [that] we haven’t been able to accomplish.”
“Name me one crisis we ever got into where we haven’t come out stronger in America. Name me one. Name me one where we went in and didn’t come out stronger,” he challenged the audience.
During Biden’s term in office, the US ended a two-decade military engagement in Afghanistan, the longest in its history. Among other things, the campaign cost the lives of 2,448 US military service members and 3,846 US contractors, according to the Brown University Costs of War project.
The US had spent hundreds of billions of dollars on security and reconstruction efforts, which were mired with graft and waste, according to the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
The Taliban militant group toppled the US-backed government in Kabul before the pullout was completed.
EU wants to increase Ukraine aid by €50 billion despite corruption concerns
MAGYAR NEMZET | October 17, 2023
The European Union plans to set up a fund called the Ukraine Facility, under which a new credit line for Ukraine would be opened in the amount of €50 billion for the period 2024-2027, but there are growing concerns about corruption.
The facility would provide assistance to Ukraine in three pillars. The first pillar would provide financial assistance to Ukraine, the second would support and finance investment, and under the third pillar, Brussels would help Ukraine plan the reforms needed to join the European Union. A specific feature of the Ukraine Facility is that frozen Russian assets would be confiscated and incorporated into the assistance model.
However, support for Ukraine remains a divisive issue in Brussels. Although the EU is keen to continue providing aid to a country at war, it is undeniable that Ukraine features sky-high levels of corruption and the “rule of law” fell far short of EU standards even before the war broke out, let alone during it. This came to the fore in Strasbourg during Monday’s plenary session when the Ukraine Facility was debated.
MEPs Michael Gahler and Eider Gardiazabal Rubial, the proponents of the report, said that the €50 billion credit line is a significant commitment by the European Union. They argued that Ukraine needs to improve corruption rates, the independence of its judiciary, the fight against oligarchs, and the fight against organized crime, but these efforts can be successful if complemented by the private sector.
Due to the corruption situation, several MEPs also expressed concerns about whether EU funds will go where they are supposed to. Roman Haider of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) complained that while sanctions are not working and the European economy has failed, it is worth considering whether it is worth investing another €50 billion in Ukraine, a country that is corrupt at all levels.
At the end of the agenda point, Johannes Hahn, commissioner for budget and administrative affairs of the European Commission, spoke on behalf of the commission, reminding the critical voices that “we Europeans must clearly support Ukraine.”
The politician also said that so far €80 billion in aid had been made available to Ukraine in various forms, including military assistance, and that the EU would support Ukraine as long as it needed it.
Selling Your Soul, And Your Country
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of the State of New Jersey, has been charged with bribery offenses. September 27th 2023, New York.
By Dan McKnight | The Libertarian Institute | October 16, 2023
What is treason?
The U.S. Constitution defines “Treason against the United States” as “only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
“Enemies” is a high bar, and ought to be—the penalty for treason is death, after all.
But there is a level below explicit treason, a betrayal of public trust and revelation of disreputable character in the service of a foreign government.
Examples of this go all the way back to the founding of our country. Edmund Randolph of Virginia was the first U.S. Attorney General, and George Washington’s second Secretary of State.
This was during the height of the French Revolution and the subsequent terror, when international relations were fraught for our newly independent country and our first administration needed to walk a fine line between the European empires.
But Randolph leaked the private conversations of Washington’s cabinet meetings to the French government, told them that the U.S. was a hostile power, and expressed contempt for his own country’s leadership.
When his communications were intercepted, and Washington confronted him in front of the entire cabinet, Edmund Randolph resigned on the spot and slinked away.
More than two hundred years later, snakes like him continue to fill our highest offices.
Senator Bob Menendez has represented New Jersey since 2006, and for a decade has been the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In Washington DC he’s been one of the most powerful and influential members of the War Party. He’s used his position to ensure our government takes a hard line across the board against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Russia, with no potential for detente or rapprochement.
Bob Menendez is also thoroughly corrupt.
Federal prosecutors have indicted Senator Menendez and brought forward hard evidence that he has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from New Jersey businessmen acting in tandem with the government of Egypt.
Menendez passed on information about U.S. embassy staffing in Cairo to the Egyptian government, and ghostwrote a letter for Egyptian lobbyists “to convince other U.S. senators to release a hold on $300 million in aid to Egypt.”
Egypt is ruled by a military dictator, the self-styled “Field Marshal” Abdul Fattah el-Sisi, and has one of the worst human rights records in the region. Egypt has also been the recipient of many billions of dollars in American largesse in the form of foreign aid and weapon sales.
Investigators found $480,000 in cash in Menendez’s New Hersey home and more than $100,000 in gold bars. After returning from a trip to Egypt in October 2021, Menendez’s Google search history contained the query, “how much is one kilo of gold worth.”
Apparently enough to buy a U.S. senator with all the bells and whistles.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida quipped, “We are devaluing American money so rapidly that in America today, you can’t even bribe Democrat senators with cash alone. You need to bring gold bars to get the job done, just so the bribes hold value.”
Edmund Randolph breached public trust with no evidence of monetary gain. When confronted, he resigned without another word.
On the other hand, Bob Menendez has refused all demands that he resign, and he plans to continue to collect a paycheck drawn from U.S. taxpayers until the expiration of his term in January 2025 (assuming he loses reelection). He turned his back on his country for no better reason than dreams of money and power.
We have marked him for what he is.
Former Ukrainian Official Says Counter Offensive Is a ‘Disaster’
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 15, 2023
A former adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says the summer counteroffensive has failed. He went on to say Kiev will never achieve its war aims of recapturing the Crimean Peninsula and restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders.
In an X post on Saturday, Oleksiy Arestovych, a former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, said Kiev made “made a number of mistakes” during the summer counteroffensive. He continued, explaining that Ukraine has gained no territory since the end of February. Arestovych described the situation on the battlefield as a “disaster.” He noted that Ukraine wasted “so many lives and resources” and lost a “strategic position in the world.”
Aresrovych argued, as Western officials have, that Ukraine suffered a major defeat in Bakhmut, causing Kiev to lack the troops and equipment needed for the offensive. He went on to write that this mistake created a second mistake.
The former aide believes Zelensky has now compounded the error in Bakhmut by failing to establish more defensive lines. Throughout the summer, Ukrainian troops were sent into entrenched Russian defensive positions in southern Ukraine. Kiev suffered heavy losses, and morale among Ukrainians has dipped.
In the post, he placed the blame on Zelensky. “The decision to redirect military efforts and build strategic-scale defense lines and areas could not be made by the military leadership (this is above its level of responsibility) but only political,” he wrote.
Arestovych went on to blast Zelensky for making a series of mistakes, and he said Kiev would be unable to reach its war goals. “Behind the strategic mistakes in the field loom strategic mistakes in public administration, foreign and domestic policy – corruption, the real prospect of reducing aid to Ukraine, tightening the screws within the country, the destruction of relations with its closest neighbors – these are all direct results of non-military decisions made, or the right political decisions not made.” He continued, “[The Zelensky administration doesn’t] even want to tell the people the truth – there will be no borders in 1991, and there will be no Crimea in the near future, but there will be defense, blood, sweat, tears.”
He assesses that the war has now entered a stalemate phase. However, Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow’s forces are gaining territory. “Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast,” he said on Sunday. “This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Avdiivka.”
Aresrovych made the post as he is under investigation for making comments that promote violence against women. He denied the allegations.
MEPs call for change of EU policy on Ukraine
RT | October 12, 2023
Ukrainian lives are being sacrificed by the “totally corrupt” elite in Kiev to which the EU recklessly sends billions of euros, several members of the European Parliament said at an event on Wednesday hosted by the think-tank Voice of Europe.
“We must stop this tragicomedy for Europe, for Ukraine and for Russia. We must try to find a path to prosperity again, and the first step is peace,” MEP Thierry Mariani of the French National Rally (RN) party argued at the roundtable, held in the central hall of the European Parliament in Brussels.
“Ukraine must remain a bridge” between Russia and Europe, Mariani added. He also pointed out that the current conflict has roots in 2013, when the EU tried to push Kiev to renounce a free trade deal with Russia and sign the Association Agreement with Brussels. This led to the Maidan demonstrations and the February 2014 coup.
Maximilian Kra of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) said he had traveled around Ukraine, describing it as “a beautiful country with very decent people.”
“I’m afraid that these decent people of Ukraine are now being sacrificed for the interests of the Kiev elite,” who own millions in real estate in southern France, Kra said. He also voiced fears that the US may ask the EU to foot the bill for the Ukraine conflict, now that Washington’s attention has been preoccupied by Israel.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. And I can tell you that this is already happening. Because Germany has already promised $1 billion to Ukraine, while the US will allocate only $200 million,” he said.
Marcel de Graaff of the Dutch Forum for Democracy (FvD) argued that Ukraine needs to make peace with Russia as soon as possible.
“I speak very directly because they have already lost. They are now sacrificing people up to 70 years old at the front. They no longer have reserves. They are losing right now,” said de Graaf.
He also described Ukraine as “the most corrupt country in the world,” now being given “tens of billions of euros” by the West. “I heard that [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s mother-in-law bought a villa in Egypt for several million dollars, and we are still wondering where our money is going. This is a totally corrupt civilization,” de Graaf added.
One major problem, according to the Dutch MEP, is that all trust has been lost between Russia and the West after the revelations by former German and French leaders that the Minsk Agreements were a ploy to buy Kiev time to prepare for war.
Kra brought up that Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk had presented the German Bundestag a “smart” peace plan based on Minsk II, a proposal that would have seen the rebel republics of Donetsk and Lugansk rejoin Ukraine with broad autonomy.
“At the time, no one knew that Minsk II was a fake, as Merkel later stated,” Kra added, referring to former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s December 2022 admission.
Henri Malos, president of Voice of Europe and host of the roundtable, also lamented the demise of the Minsk Agreements, which he said offered security and sovereignty for both Russia and Ukraine.
Senators Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin Play Musical Chairs
One arch interventionist replaces another to lead the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 10, 2023
Many Americans have come to accept that corruption and lying is the name of the game in Washington and, increasingly, at both state and local levels of government, in part because lying and stealing by those who run the country has become virtually consequence free. To cite only one example, the current ruinously expensive war against Russia began when the US and other NATO powers lied to Mikhael Gorbachev about their intentions regarding expansion of the “defensive” alliance into Eastern Europe. They then lied again in 2014 with the Minsk Accords, which were supposed to give some measure of autonomy to the Russian ethnic regions of Ukraine in the Donbas, an apparent concession that served as cover for arming and training the Ukrainian Army. Finally, the US and its friends arranged for regime change in Ukraine in 2014 to replace the friendly-to-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych with a pro-western candidate selected by the fanatical State Department neocon Victoria Nuland, who boasted how Washington had spent $5 billion to bring about the flip in government. That move warned Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding what was going on so he quickly annexed Russian ethnic majority Crimea, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based.
Driving all the US led aggression against Russia is the neocon foreign policy embraced by most of the two major political parties which demands that the United States have military superiority over all competitors everywhere around the world where it has interests or allies. That has meant by one count something like 1,000 foreign military bases. By way of comparison, Russia has only one overseas base, in Syria. And the maintenance of all those bases as well as the network of installations inside the US costs lots of money which fattens defense contractors and also winds up in the pockets of aspiring politicians while increasing the national debt to unsustainable levels. And it is no surprise to learn that when generals and admirals retire from active service, 80% of them wind up employed by contractors to lobby their former colleagues on the latest weapons systems that are so urgently required to maintain supremacy.
The recent exposure of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey’s apparent tendency to accept bribes in exchange for various kinds of favorable treatment and protection was a particularly lurid tale in part because much of the loot consisted of $480,000 in cash stuffed into jacket pockets, closets and in a safe, along with 13 gold bars, two of them marked as 1 Kilogram in weight to the value of more than $100,000. In the garage was an upscale $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible that was a gift to Menendez’s then girlfriend, who had wrecked her own vehicle in an accident in which she had struck and killed a pedestrian. The car came from one of the New Jersey businessmen currently involved in the corruption and bribery investigation and no one can quite explain how an accident in which someone had died was never properly investigated by police. Menendez had allegedly helped the businessman by arranging to block a criminal investigation into his company’s activities.
Menendez is indeed a powerful senator even though there is more than a whiff of suspicion surrounding him and his activities. A Cuban American who is prominent in the Hispanic caucus, he was regarded as a political hardliner from his bully pulpit as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2015, Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges but the jury was unable to reach a verdict, and the case was dropped in 2018. In April 2018, the United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics “severely admonished” Menendez for accepting gifts from donor Salomon Melgen without obtaining committee approval, for failing to disclose certain gifts, and for using his position as a senator to advance Melgen’s interests. This time around, however, the evidence for wrongdoing is much more compelling and it even involves a foreign country, Egypt, so he has resigned his chairmanship but has refused to leave the Senate. He claims he is innocent, of course and continues to promote Biden’s view of the world, to include identifying the “core American foreign policy values” as “democracy, human rights, and the rule of law” even though it does not apply to him. And, of course, as a Cuban that worldview includes perpetual hostility to Havana and all its works, including its links to Russia.
Bob Menendez is up for reelection in 2024, but opinion polls taken just after the reports of his corruption surfaced indicate that he has no chance of winning against several Democrats who will challenge him. He will certainly receive some favorable press and significant campaign donations as he’s long been linked to Jewish lobbying groups like AIPAC and is closely aligned with Israel on foreign policy issues to include opposing in 2015 the President Barack Obama nuclear deal with Iran, asserting falsely that Iran is already working on a nuclear weapon. In March 2017, Menendez co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.270), which sought to make it “a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.” More important perhaps, Menendez has twice advanced legislation through his committee supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, so the White House will presumably do everything it can to protect him, but only up to a certain point.
Menendez has been replaced by Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, who will not be running for re-election in 2024. Cardin, who is Jewish, is a strong and consistent supporter of Israel, like Menendez, and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin of Russia. He was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution expressing objection to the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories as a violation of international law. Cardin warned that “Congress will take action against efforts at the UN, or beyond, that use Resolution 2334 to target Israel.” Cardin also voted with Republicans to support President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He declared that the time that “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel and the location of the US Embassy should reflect this fact.” Cardin and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, like Menendez, were strong supporters of the proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act in late 2018, described above, and they also called for a sanctions mechanism to punish international organizations that seek to boycott Israel or its illegal settlements.
Oddly, Cardin has sometimes been credited with being a “human rights advocate,” a label which the Palestinians and others might object to. The claim is based on his authorship of US legislation referred to as the Magnitsky Act. According to Cardin and his allies in Washington, Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer hired by Bill Browder head of Hermitage Capital Management Fund, an Anglo-American investment fund operating in Moscow, to investigate the apparent diversion of as much as $230 million in taxes due to the Russian government. Hermitage was a hedge fund that was focused on “investing” in Russia, taking advantage initially of the extremely corrupt loans-for-shares scheme under Boris Yeltsin, and then continuing to profit greatly during the early years of Vladimir Putin’s ascendancy. The loans-for-shares scheme that made Browder his initial fortune has been correctly characterized as the epitome of corruption, an arrangement whereby foreign investors worked with local oligarchs to strip the former Soviet economy of its assets paying pennies on each dollar of value. Along the way, Browder was reportedly involved in making false representations on official documents and bribery. Nevertheless, by 2005 Hermitage was the largest foreign investor in Russia.
Magnitsky allegedly became a whistleblower after discovering that the missing money had been stolen by the police, organized crime figures and other government officials. After he went to the authorities to complain he was unjustly imprisoned for eleven months. When he refused to recant he was both beaten and denied medical treatment to coerce him into cooperating, resulting in his death in jail at age 37 in November 2009. He has become something of a hero for those who have decried official corruption in Russia.
The Magnitsky case is of particular importance because both the European Union and the United States have initiated sanctions against the Russian officials and entities that were allegedly involved. In the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by a Russia-phobic Cardin and signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, the US asserted its willingness to punish foreign governments for violations of human rights. Russia reacted angrily, noting that the actions taken by its government internally, notably the operation of its domestic judiciary, were being subjected to outside interference. It reciprocated with sanctions against US officials as well as by increasing pressure on foreign non-governmental pro-democracy groups operating in Russia. Tension between Moscow and Washington increased considerably as a result and Congress subsequently passed the so-called Global Magnitsky Act as part of the defense appropriation bill in 2016. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama in December. It expanded the use of sanctions and other punitive measures against regimes guilty of egregious human rights abuses though it has never been applied to US friends like Saudi Arabia and Israel. It has been used to punish China and Cuba. It was also sponsored by Senator Cardin and was clearly primarily intended to intimidate Russia.
The tit-for-tat that has severely damaged relations with Russia is based on the standard narrative embraced by many regarding who Magnitsky was and what he did, but is it true? Many now believe that there was indeed a huge fraud related to Russian taxes but that it was not carried out by corrupt officials. Instead, it was deliberately ordered and engineered by Browder with Magnitsky, who was an accountant not a lawyer, personally developing and implementing the scheme used to carry out the deception.
To be sure, Browder and his international legal team have presented what they regard as evidence in the case. But while it might be that Browder and Magnitsky have been the victims of a corrupt and venal state, it just might be the other way around. To cite only one example, much of the case against the Russian authorities is derived from English language translations of relevant documents provided by Browder himself. The actual documents in Russian sometimes say something quite different.
So there we go again. As the wheel turns in Washington nothing really changes. Benjamin Cardin as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs will promote the same policies of unrelenting hostility towards countries like Russia and China as did his recently resigned predecessor Bob Menendez. And as fighting between Israel and Gaza has just broken out, you can count on how the United States will line up even as hundreds of Palestinian children die as a powerful Israel pummels and pounds and largely civilian population in Gaza. Those are the sorts of things that American citizens can count on these days, unfortunately.
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.
NZ doctors avoided Covid jabs while insisting the public had them
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | October 5, 2023
The New Zealand Ministry of Health granted vaccine exemptions to hundreds among its key staff whilst hypocritically insisting that the public be vaccinated.
An Official Information Act (OIA) request to the ministry dated August 2, 2023 asked the following question:
‘According to the legislation at the time in 2021, there were operational exemptions available for those who were not getting vaccinated against Covid-19. How many requests were received? How many were approved by the ministry?’
Matt Hannant, Interim Director, Prevention, National Public Health Service, replied:
‘From 13 November 2021 to 26 September 2022, a total of 478 applications for Significant Service Disruption exemption (SSD) were received. 103 applications were granted, covering approximately 11,005 workers. Please note that it is not possible to provide the exact number of workers that were covered by SSDs. This is because it was possible for an organisation to submit an application to cover more than one worker.’
So exactly how many Ministry of Health staff and associated contractors benefited from the vaccine exemptions? I have made inquiries and found some staff prepared to leak information. One source has told me that 95 consultants in the Dunedin region alone benefited from vaccine exemptions. Another source has pointed to a group of doctors working in Northland who arranged among themselves to remain unvaccinated. The total appears to run to hundreds and possibly more.
It seems that those granted exemptions were restrained by gagging orders so that they could not tell anyone that they had been granted exemptions: it was a secretive process that the Ministry of Health was anxious to hide from the public.
In any case, any doctor advising a patient that mRNA Covid vaccination might be risky faced disciplinary action, and many were suspended.
So medical staff allowed themselves to be manipulated into a position whereby, if they were unvaccinated themselves, they were still required to advise their patients to vaccinate, a recipe for widespread hypocrisy in the health service.
This process was certainly approved by Dr Ashley Bloomfield (then chief executive of the Ministry of Health) who gained considerable notoriety by refusing vaccine exemptions to those among the public severely injured by their first jab, insisting that they continue with a vaccination schedule. Given Dr Bloomfield’s close working relationship with Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins (then Health Minister, now Prime Minister) it is quite likely that they approved it. The opposition leaders were also likely kept in the loop.
The criteria for granting exemptions apparently entailed an assessment concerning how vital staff were to the working of the health service. In other words, senior figures and those holding key surgical positions could insist that they remain unvaccinated and continue to be allowed to work. Meanwhile unvaccinated nurses, for example, could not gain exemptions and lost their positions.
If senior staff who wished to remain unvaccinated had spoken out publicly, the issue of Covid vaccine safety might have been given a public airing. Instead the Ministry of Health and the government kept a lid on all and any discussion. It did so through liaison with mainstream and social media outlets to censor content and through tight control of staff.
Senior medical staff who chose to remain unvaccinated may have been aware of a 2019 paper in Frontiers in Oncology journal entitled Gene Therapy Leaves a Vicious Cycle which reported:
‘Gene therapy has been caught in a vicious cycle for nearly two decades owing to immune response, insertional mutagenesis, viral tropism, off-target activity, unwanted clinical outcomes (ranging from illness to death of participants in clinical trials), and patchy regulations.’
As someone who has analysed social data over the last fifty years, I do sympathise with the doctors who opted for caution. That would be a normal reaction to new medications. It takes years to assess safety. So how unsafe is the mRNA Covid vaccine? Extremely unsafe, as shown by the 2023 excess death data across OECD nations.
The most highly Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are in order Portugal, Chile, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Spain and Australia. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is 91 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 12 per cent above the five-year historical average.
The least Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Switzerland. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is just 63 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 0 per cent compared to the five-year historical average. In other words, they have averaged a normal death rate.
Anyone who suggests that the death rate among the unvaccinated is higher than the vaccinated is running against the tide of evidence. This view doesn’t fit with the international data.
The standard way to resolve this inconsistency would be to refer to prospective studies which assemble two matched groups, vaccinate one group and leave the other unvaccinated and measure what happens over a significantly long period. In the normal course of vaccine approval this would have been done for around ten years prior to approval. No one has done this.
In the Pfizer trial the unvaccinated control group were all vaccinated after a few months, ensuring that long-term comparative outcomes are unavailable. In any case, during those few months more people died in the vaccine group than the unvaccinated control group. There are also many studies differentiating the outcomes of the vaccinated and unvaccinated that we have reported including journal citations.
How concerning is the excess death problem? According to the OECD there were 1.2 million excess deaths in 2022 among their member countries, with a combined population of 1.2 billion: one excess death in every 1,000 people.
Now it is becoming accepted that both Covid and Covid vaccination began their lives in a biotech lab, it doesn’t seem to much matter what proportion of excess deaths are due to Covid and what to Covid vaccination, but for the record in 2022 there were approximately 200,000 deaths ‘with Covid’ in the OECD. In summary, OECD excess deaths not attributable to Covid were one million in 2022 alone. This probably extends to a few millions worldwide, about the same as the annual deaths during World War one.
You can see why it is so important for those involved in creating Covid policy and enforcing mandates to make sure that everyone continues to believe that more unvaccinated die than vaccinated because otherwise their narrative that Covid policy is saving millions of lives completely falls apart.
In this light we can now assess the motivations of those still poking fun at the vaccine injured or accusing the ‘vaccine hesitant’ of seeking to undermine the government. For example the New Zealand Disinformation Project, funded by the Prime Minister’s Office, in common with many politicians, have described vaccine injury as a conspiracy theory. They are trying to hide their own mistakes which have undermined the health of the nation.
For the last couple of years the Hatchard Report has had a simple lament: ‘No one in authority seems prepared to ask why excess deaths are occurring at an unprecedented rate’. Deaths are in fact a very stable part of life. In a normal year there are no excess deaths. Insurance actuaries calculate how many of us will die and when with great accuracy, and set life insurance premiums accordingly. Right now, actuaries must be having sleepless nights because something has gone terribly wrong that has not happened at any other time during the last 100 years outside war and conflict zones: a great many people are falling ill and dying when they should be alive and well.
The Ministry of Health has been hiding these disturbing facts while quietly and hypocritically acknowledging their staff have a right to avoid these risks. They have not just gaslighted the public, they have recklessly put the public’s lives at great risk. This has broken families and communities, pitting one against another. It has caused tragedies affecting families across the nation, while the Ministry of Health and the government are going through tortuous and secret processes in order to conceal what is happening. Moreover they have plans to continue to roll out more experimental vaccines.
Featured Video
First Photographs Ever Taken of Iran [1848-1858] + Persepolis, Old World
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
A Palantir Manifesto
By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2026
Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s book, The Technological Republic, is a clarion call for Silicon Valley to abandon its consumer trinkets and rush headlong into the arms of the military-industrial complex. According to Karp, America’s future depends on wielding hard power through technology—arming soldiers, AI-weaponry, and mass surveillance systems—rather than on the “soft” influence demonstrated by free markets and liberty-first principles. The book claims that “the survival of the American experiment depends on the technological revitalization of the military-industrial complex” and urges the country’s engineering talent to focus on national defense. Karp and his co-author, Nicholas Zamiska, argue that tech bros should “grow up” and start killing America’s enemies before they kill us. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The Surveillance Accountability Act Demands Warrants for Data
- #FreeYousofAzizi: Petition launched to seek release of Iranian academic, anti-war activist detained in US
- The First Photographs Ever Taken of Iran [1848-1858] by Colonel Luigi Pesce + Persepolis, Old World
- Confusion, delusion, and how Israel drives the Iran War
- After the ceasefire illusion: Why Gaza’s “Day After” still has no buyer?
- Shifting to Guerilla Warfare, Hezbollah Delivers Massive Blows to Israel
- Wired for War: Israel’s Black Cube and the infiltration of Europe
- Monitoring group finds UK media guilty of ‘systematic’ dehumanization of Palestinians
- Al-Akhbar’s Amal Khalil assassinated by Israel, left to die under rubble
- US naval blockade has disrupted but ‘not broken’ Iran’s oil exports: Kpler
- If Americans Knew
- Meet the Top “Content” Producers Linked to Canary Mission
- Lebanese Journalist Amal Khalil Bombed and Left to Die by Israel
- Israel Moves to Re-establish Ganim Colony In Jenin
- Two Iranian Women in ICE Detention Are Not, In Fact, Related to Qasem Soleimani, Documents Show
- “The shooting was not in the air”: Testimonies from the Flour Massacre
- Israel chases down, kills Lebanese journalist, massacres 5 in Gaza, all during “ceasefires” – Daily Update
- Gaza’s unseen casualties: A surge in stillbirths and birth defects
- ‘Day of Ordinary Terror’: Israeli Attack on West Bank School Kills Man, Child
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 