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‘Austria has paid enough!’ – Austria’s anti-sanctions FPÖ party tables motion to stop funding Ukraine

By Denes Albert | Remix News | October 09, 2023

The Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which is currently the most popular party in Austria according to the latest polling, has tabled a motion demanding Austria withdraw funding of Ukraine given what it says are the billions of euros already gifted from Brussels.

The motion was rejected by all parties except the FPÖ.

“The EU must finally stop throwing billions of member states’ money out the window,” said MP Petra Steger, FPÖ spokesperson for its European policy, while speaking to the Austrian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

“We say: Enough is enough. Austria has paid enough! Our job is to represent the interests of Austrian taxpayers. So, we are campaigning to put an end to this irresponsible policy at the expense of net contributor states and to suspend contributions until we are assured that our money is being used in a contractual and responsible manner and this huge waste is stopped,” Steger said after the meeting. The MP said that the EU institutions have lost all common sense when it comes to budgetary policy, with one budgetary excess following another in a totally irresponsible manner.

The conservative party has long argued against the EU’s sanctions regime against Russia, saying it has not hurt the Russian war effort and led to severe economic hardship for both Austria and Europe at large.

Austria will pay €3.6 billion in membership fees to Brussels this year, which includes contributions to the European Peace Facility to buy arms for Ukraine, as well as money for the Turkey Refugee Facility.

“As a result, Austrian citizens have been sending billions of euros to the EU institutions for years, and the EU institutions have been rewarding them with climate madness and the highest inflation since 1952. From the ban on internal combustion engines to absurd vaccine contracts and billions of euros in gifts to the Zelensky regime, the EU institutions are not acting in the interests of the Austrians. They are distributing the money they collect according to their ‘moral’ compass, instead of addressing the real concerns of Europeans,” said Steger.

FPÖ MEP Harald Vilimsky also said that Ukraine cannot join the European Union, and the Austrian government should stand by this position tooth and nail, as the consequences of Ukraine’s accession would be very serious. He stated that Ukraine’s accession to the EU, which Brussels is now pushing through wittingly or unwittingly, should be rejected for a number of reasons, one of which is the dramatic impact it would have on the EU budget.

“According to press reports, the EU commission is now modeling the consequences on the example of the current financial framework 2021-2027. According to this, Ukraine alone would receive €186 billion. If the six Western Balkan states plus Georgia and Moldova are included as additional accession countries, they would receive a total of €257 billion. Put simply, this means that Ukraine alone would need around 15 percent of the total EU budget,” Vilimsky said.

He added that in the area of agricultural subsidies, too, the Ukrainians could claim almost a third of the budget. In addition, Ukraine should receive €61 billion from the EU’s cohesion fund, as its GDP per capita is on a par with Algeria or Sri Lanka — about a tenth of the EU average.

October 9, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian operation puts Netanyahu between rock and hard place: Ex-diplomat

By Alireza Hashemi | Press TV | October 9, 2023

The military operation by the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has placed the embattled Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu in a dilemma of whether to save his own political future or the illegitimate regime itself, says a former Iranian diplomat.

In an interview with the Press TV website, Abolfazl Zohrevand, a former Iranian ambassador to Afghanistan and Italy, said the Al-Aqsa Storm (also known as Al-Aqsa Flood) operation has put Netanyahu and his far-right cabinet between a rock and a hard place.

Hamas stunned the regime in Tel Aviv with a multi-pronged attack early Saturday, launching thousands of missiles into the occupied territories within a span of 20 minutes and at the same time launching a ground attack against Israeli settlements and military bases near the coastal strip.

The Israeli death toll is staggering, with some reports putting it at above 1,000, besides hundreds of others – soldiers and settlers – who are held as prisoners of war by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Zohrevand said the Israeli regime can opt for a very tough response to the Palestinian resistance operation but such a response might lead to an existential threat to the regime.

“Israel can’t do much to punish the Palestinians through air strikes. Such strikes usually fail to hit Hamas’s underground infrastructure and only leave high civilian casualties,” he stated.

“Netanyahu has to start a ground invasion of Gaza, like what he did recently with the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank,” the former diplomat said, referring to the July Israeli raid into the Jenin camp.

However, he hastened to add that such an operation could end in a humiliating defeat for the regime.

“If Israel decides to engage in a major operation, we should expect weeks-long clashes in the region. Israel isn’t made for long battles. Also, its military is not well prepared as the whole regime is in a state of chaos. The fact that it was caught completely off guard by the operation is a testimony to this,” Zohrevand stressed in a conversation with the Press TV website.

“On the other hand, Palestinians are prepared for such an invasion and they hold the upper hand as Gaza is their home. Palestinians are now sending a message that enough is enough. They’re highly motivated to fight the regime. So the odds for Israel’s success are not high.”

He said the Israeli military action would put the existence of the regime at risk.

“This war can easily spread to the West Bank and other regions. Also, there’s a real possibility that the regime might face a major operation by Lebanon’s Hezbollah. It’s really hard for the regime to handle two fronts. I personally believe the regime won’t start such an operation,” Zohrevand said.

Hamas has already said the operation will be extended to the West Bank.

The Lebanese movement Hezbollah has also staged attacks in solidarity with Palestinians, firing artillery shells and guided missiles at Israeli positions in the occupied Shebaa farms on Sunday.

The former Iranian diplomat noted that Netanyahu might want to accept mediation efforts by Turkey or Egypt and halt its ongoing operation, but that will put his political future in real danger.

“If he decides to stop the Israeli operation, his cabinet won’t last long as it is filled with extremist elements that came to power on a promise of crushing Palestinian resistance and annexing all the Palestinian lands once and forever,” he remarked.

“For Netanyahu, it boils down to a decision whether to save the regime or save his own cabinet or save the regime. He’s in a no-win situation.”

October 9, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine: Why defeat is inevitable, Part 1

TCW Defending Freedom | October 9, 2023

Earlier this year, advertisements for memorial services appeared in Ukrainian towns. People were implored to ‘remember the 400,000’ men who would never return from the battlefields in the east. This statistic, believed to have been leaked mistakenly from a Ukrainian state database, was never meant to be released into the public domain. Indeed, Ukraine’s casualty toll is a guarded secret of Zelensky’s government, withheld from his citizenry and Western allies alike. The posters were removed immediately by local officials, who denied the startling claim.

Many Western experts argue that the figure is accurate. It is corroborated by forensic analyses of cemeteries, as well as knowledge of widespread losses among Ukrainian units and the recruitment of vast reserves. Moreover, evidence from satellite imagery is increasingly being used to reveal the extent of battlefield devastation. Prior to Kiev’s utterly catastrophic offensive of early June, it was assessed that between 300,000 and 350,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died. The offensive, in its turn, is assessed to have incurred more than 1,000 Ukrainian casualties per day for significant periods of the four-month campaign, many of whom have been killed. This, very quickly, has amounted to a staggering human toll, the true extent of which has been elided by mainstream Western reportage.

The offensive has focused the minds of Western policy-makers. It has failed, not partially, but totally. Its purpose was to punch through the immense Russian defensive line and drive wedges deep into the territory seized by Moscow last year. As I argued in July,  it was militarily and logically absurd to presume that such an outcome could be achieved. So it has proved: to date its defining achievement has been a temporary breach of a single layer of the Russian defensive system in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. The Russian defensive line itself, built over months while the Ukrainian army was sucked into a pointless, life-sapping defeat in the town of Bakhmut, has not once been penetrated.

This should not surprise the Western officials who planned and financed this campaign. Zelensky cautioned in May, only three weeks before the offensive was launched, that his forces needed more time, weaponry, ammunition and manpower before an attack could succeed against a Russian line of such strength. His warnings have been borne out in a summer of blood. The combat brigades of the Ukrainian army, many of which began the offensive with depleted stocks of men and equipment, have been disintegrated and engulfed by the manifold overmatches of the Russian military. Even the most prized Ukrainian brigades, equipped with modern Nato tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery, and frequently accompanied by foreign advisers, have been stopped dead long before the main Russian line.

There are five core reasons for this terrible defeat:

1.    Russia possesses overwhelming superiority in numbers. There are close to 800,000 men in and behind the main defensive line. Furthermore, Putin holds 300,000 troops in immediate reserve. By contrast, due to death and wounding, and vast emigration from a population less than a third the size of Russia’s, Ukraine ran out of men to recruit months ago. Kiev would be incapable of building a defensive position of this length and depth, let alone manning and defending it. As the historian Niall Ferguson observed recently: ‘Wars of attrition do not favour the smaller combatant. It is hard to see how many more offensives Ukraine is capable of mounting between now and 2032 – or indeed between now and this time next year.’ Ferguson is understating the case: we will simply not see a Ukrainian offensive of this scale again. Kiev’s human resources are all but exhausted.

2.    Russia possesses roughly eight times the artillery capacity of Ukraine. Following the initial battlefield failings of early 2022, the Kremlin reorganised its artillery into entire brigades, allowing immense firepower to be concentrated against Ukrainian forces. The West, meanwhile, has been unable from the start to provide Kiev with enough artillery pieces or ammunition. Estonian officials complained recently that Russia produces seven times as much ammunition as Western arms manufacturers. Importantly, Moscow’s military-industrial base is held beyond the Ural Mountains, out of Ukrainian missile range. Consequently, Kiev’s troops have been launched into formidable Russian defences without adequate support and have been repelled by terrible barrages.

3.    Russian aerial and satellite assets enable the constant surveillance of almost all Ukrainian troops. Moscow has launched a series of further satellites this year, deepening its targeting capabilities. Once found, men and vehicles fall prey to precision missiles, artillery strikes and armed drones. Major combat groupings advance to battle in full view of Moscow’s forces, resulting in untenable attrition from the air before troops even reach the enemy’s lines.

4.    The 25km-deep ‘security zone’ in front of the Russian line is a vast labyrinth of minefields and complex booby-trapped trench systems. This terrible quagmire has proved impassable to Western-provided vehicles, forcing soldiers to dismount and pick a path through the carnage on foot with almost no protection. Critically, Western senior officers and advisers who have helped Ukraine to plan this campaign have themselves no experience in attacking defences of this magnitude and sophistication. The campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, grim as they were, have not prepared senior officers for the scale or the intractable complexity of modern conventional warfare. The Cold War era, in which vast conventional operations were routinely planned and exercised, is a distant memory for the modern Western military. Indeed, this obvious void in knowledge and experience has been a ratcheting source of tension between Ukrainian and Western officials.

5.    Crucially, Russia has air superiority. This is the decisive factor in modern warfare. Moscow possesses 4,200 aircraft, while Kiev can employ only 310. Although fixed-wing aircraft have been used cautiously due to the threat from Western-provided air-defence systems, the Russian drone capability has surged over recent months. The skies above advancing Ukrainian troops are aswarm with predatory air assets. Footage shows Russian attack helicopters and the new lethal ZALA Lancet drones destroying US Bradley fighting vehicles and German Leopard tanks that have become lodged in minefields. By contrast, Russian electronic warfare assets are jamming and disabling 10,000 Ukrainian drones per month, many of which are merely small Chinese commercial craft that have been retrofitted for pseudo-military use. Not only does Moscow have overwhelming superiority of numbers in the air – it has a widespread technological advantage over Kiev’s forces too.

The point is not that the Russian military is invincible: it has its well-documented weaknesses and discontents. Yet the irrefutable, implacable fact is that, by every military metric, Russia is tremendously more powerful than Ukraine in this war. That is not a moral opinion: it is demonstrably and objectively true.

In fact history tells us that we ought to have expected this. Moscow’s juggernaut-like resurgence in Ukraine is but the latest iteration of a centuries-old pattern in Russian warfare. One invader after another, from King Charles XII of Sweden in 1707 to Napoleon in 1812 to Hitler in 1941, has discovered that, whilst the Russian nation appears initially to disintegrate against the aggressor, it eventually springs forth in a terrible torrent of attritional power and resolve.

In his brilliant essay Have We Forgotten the Russian Way of War? the eminent American classicist Victor Davis Hanson explains that the Russian army undergoes this same transformation when it is on the offensive outside its own borders. The Finnish-Russian ‘Winter War’ of 1939-40 is usually referenced as an example of Finnish heroism against Moscow’s numerically superior, clumsy and badly led force. Yet the outcome was a grinding Russian victory in spite of 400,000 casualties.

We are seeing this quintessentially Russian way of war again in eastern Ukraine. The initial weeks of incompetence and blunder so evident in the early spring of 2022 are long gone. There is now a massive and resolute force entrenched along a vast frontage, bolstered with immense support in materiel and modern weaponry.

The critical first step in ending this war, and alleviating the inconceivable human suffering it has wreaked, lies in our honest acknowledgement that Ukraine and its Western backers are losing terribly.

Indeed, as will be explored in the next essay of this series, even the neoconservative ultra-hawks who have willed this war on from the very start are now admitting that a Ukrainian – and thus Western – defeat is well within view. The true extent and meaning of that defeat will be felt not just in Kiev, but in the great capitals of the West.

You can read more of the writer’s work on his substack. 

October 9, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Iron Dome’s ‘Inefficiency’ Revealed by Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Escalation – Expert

By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 08.10.2023

The massive attack launched by Hamas militants against Israel on October 7 was accompanied by a series of rocket launches, many of which managed to bypass Israeli defenses and hit their targets.

Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. That said, it apparently failed to completely negate the Palestinian rocket barrage on Saturday.

Commenting on this failure, Russian military historian and Museum of Air Defense Forces’ Director Yuri Knutov pointed out that while Iron Dome is a very advanced and sophisticated air defense system, it has drawbacks that can be exploited by any enemy.

For one, a single Iron Dome battery can protect a relatively small area (about 150 square kilometers).

Secondly, Knutov noted, Iron Dome is extremely effective when dealing with a small number of incoming targets all of which approach from the same direction.

“In case of a more intensive barrage, involving at least about 100 rockets, the Iron Dome usually fails to do its job and up to 90 percent of the rockets bypasses it and strike the intended targets,” he claimed.

The historian also observed that Hamas militants deliberately launched mass rocket salvos from different directions, apparently in order to overwhelm the Israeli Iron Dome defenses.

“When it (an Iron Dome system) intercepts the first salvo, when it is dealing with those rockets, it is unable to deal with the second salvo that was fired practically a minute after the first one. And so the rockets from the second, third and fourth salvos reach their targets practically unopposed,” he said, arguing that this tactic essentially capitalizes on Iron Dome’s “inefficiency.”

Furthermore, a single Iron Dome interceptor missile costs at least $20,000 while Palestinian jury-rigged rockets – the threat Iron Dome systems usually have to deal with – cost only about $2,000-$3,000 apiece, Knutov added.

Knutov did, however, praise the Iron Dome’s radar unit capabilities and the interceptor missiles this air defense system uses, describing both of them as quite “interesting.”

He also noted that Iron Dome can determine whether an incoming missile poses a threat to a populated area or a military facility and refrain from wasting ammo on a projectile that would otherwise crash in a deserted area.

What Does Iron Dome Do?

Iron Dome is an Israeli-made air defense system designed to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles and artillery shells fired from distances of 4 to 70 kilometers.

Developed during the late 2000s by Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the Iron Dome was first deployed in 2011 and has since been actively used by IDF to counter rocket strikes conducted by Palestinian militants.

An Iron Dome battery typically consists of several launcher units (the payload of each consists of 20 interceptor missiles), a radar unit and a control unit.

Israeli Intelligence Services’ Failure & Merkava Fiasco

According to Knutov, the fact that Hamas militants managed to prepare thousands of rockets for this attack in secret, not to mention train all those militant squads that launched incursions into Israeli territory on October 7, effectively means that Israel’s intelligence agencies failed to do their job properly.

Meanwhile, Hamas militants displayed what looks like special operations tactics, with teams of militants using paragliders and executing amphibious landings in order to bypass Israeli forces and storm Israeli military bases, Knutov said.

He also described reports about an Israeli Merkava main battle tank, “which was portrayed as the best tank of in the world and which was equipped with Trophy active protection system and with dynamic protection,” being disabled by a Palestinian militant armed with a fairly antiquated anti-tank weapon as surprising.

“The first tank was taken out with an old RPG-7 grenade launcher loaded with a shaped charge that punched straight through the tank’s frontal armor,” he said.

The fact that neither the vaunted Trophy system nor Merkava’s armor and dynamic protection managed to save the tank from destruction essentially means that all of them are not as good as advertised, to put it mildly, Knutov suggested.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

War as an “Investment”

The Bizarre Business-Speak of Mass Killing

By Bill Astore | Bracing Views | October 3, 2023

Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great “investment” for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don’t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression “making a killing” on the “market.”

To Gordon Gekko’s infamous “greed is good” speech we must now add “war is good.” That war is “right.” That it “works”—at least for America, allegedly.

War as an “investment” truly symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of conventional discourse in the U.S. political mainstream. Instead of war being a calamity, a catastrophe, a realm of death and destruction, dare I say even a mortal sin of grievous evil, we’re told that instead it’s an investment that’s paying dividends, especially in that growth stock known as Ukraine.

We can’t let MAGA Republicans stop the Ukraine “investment,” can we? Not when it’s paying such great dividends

Even body counts and truck counts from the Vietnam War era are being brought back to show what a great “investment” the Ukraine War has been for the U.S. In her latest, Caitlin Johnstone cites war-lover Max Boot for his advocacy of the Russia-Ukraine War as a continuing investment opportunity for the U.S., including the use of body and truck counts as a measure of progress:

“Russia has lost an estimated 120,000 soldiers and 170,000 to 180,000 have been injured,” [Max] Boot writes [in a Washington Post op-ed]. “Russia has also lost an estimated 2,329 tanks, 2,817 infantry fighting vehicles, 2,868 trucks and jeeps, 354 armored personnel carriers, 538 self-propelled artillery vehicles, 310 towed artillery pieces, 92 fixed-wing aircraft and 106 helicopters.”

“The Russian armed forces have been devastated, thereby reducing the risk to front-line NATO states such as Poland and the Baltic republics that the United States is treaty-bound to protect,” Boot continues. “And all of that has been accomplished without having to put a single U.S. soldier at risk on the front lines.”

“That’s an incredible investment,” gloats Boot.

At no time in his masturbatory gushing about how many Russians this war has helped kill does Boot make any mention of the immense toll this deliberately provoked and completely unnecessary war has taken on Ukrainian lives. Their deaths and dismemberments and displacement are the largest price being paid into this “investment” by far, but Boot doesn’t deem them worthy of even a footnote.

We’ve been seeing this “investment” line being promoted with increasing frequency by US empire managers and their apologists. In an article published in the Connecticut Post last month, Senator Richard Blumenthal assured Americans that “we’re getting our money’s worth on our Ukraine investment.” A few days prior to that Senator Mitt Romney had described the proxy war as “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done,” because “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money… a weakened Russia is a good thing.” In December Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that funding the proxy war is “a direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin’s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies and contest our core interests.” Last November the imperial war machine-funded think tank Center for European Policy Analysis published a report arguing that “US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment.”

Imagine the vacuity, the bankruptcy, the venality, the sinfulness of writing about war and killing as “an absolutely incredible investment.” And what is our ROI, our return on investment? A lot of dead and wounded Russians and Ukrainians, a devastated and poisoned landscape, millions of war refugees, and an increasing likelihood of a wider war that could possibly go nuclear. ROI, indeed.

War is many things, but it is not an “investment.” People who talk and write like this have no moral center. They are soulless. They are automatons of war.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Biden has ‘creative ideas’ to keep Ukraine cash flowing – Politico

RT | October 8, 2023

The Biden administration is looking for “creative” ways to secure further military aid for Ukraine amid mounting opposition at home, POLITICO has reported. Meanwhile, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper claimed that the White House is considering the possibility of a mega aid package to the tune of $100 billion.

In its article on Friday, POLITICO quoted President Joe Biden hinting on Wednesday that “there is another means by which we may be able to find funding” for Kiev. According to the media outlet, the US leadership is considering using the State Department’s foreign military financing program. Under this, grants or loans are provided to partner countries to purchase weapons and defense equipment.

Another possible scenario presumably on the table has been floated by Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen. The scheme envisages a three-way swap in which Poland would get America’s Iron Dome systems and send some of its own air defenses to Ukraine, POLITICO said. Israel, a co-producer of the system, which has veto authority over transfers, has previously refused to supply it directly to Ukraine despite Kiev’s repeated requests, the article explained.

The media outlet quoted the US lawmaker arguing that “Poland may be able to deploy its Patriot systems to Ukraine, where we’ve already deployed Patriot systems.”

The article concluded that the sheer fact that the Biden administration is apparently being forced to resort to such unconventional workarounds points to the fact that support for further military aid for Ukraine is waning among American lawmakers.

Representative Michael McCaul told reporters that “it’s going to be even harder now with [Speaker] McCarthy gone,” adding that supporters of aid for Kiev in the US Congress are “running out of time.”

Meanwhile on Saturday, The Telegraph, citing anonymous sources, reported that the Biden administration was considering a potential “one-and-done” Ukraine aid package totaling as much as $100 billion. The idea is presumably aimed at avoiding the requirement for multiple funding approvals from Congress until after the 2024 presidential election.

Last week, US House lawmakers passed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown, with new allocations for Ukraine conspicuously absent from it. This came as a growing number of Republicans in the House had been calling into question Biden’s generous aid for Kiev.

Congress has already approved four rounds of Ukraine funding, totaling about $113 billion.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Americans get poorer as Washington throws cash at Ukraine and migrants

By Robert Bridge | RT | October 8, 2023

As Uncle Sam continues to pump billions of dollars into Kiev’s flagging fight against Russia and provide tempting handouts to illegal migrants, why is the average American worker forced to live paycheck to paycheck?

Here’s a question that most people have considered at least once in their lives, and probably a lot recently: How much annual income would you need to feel financially secure? For the average American, the magic number comes out to be $233,000 a year, according to a survey by Bankrate.

To bring the ’99 percent’ back down to Earth, the US Census Bureau released some sobering data that dashed those elusive six-digit dreams. Inflation-adjusted median household income fell to $74,580 in 2022 – a 2.3% decline from the 2021 average of $76,330. This marks the third-straight annual decrease since the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020, taking a wrecking ball to the heart of the economy.

The bad news doesn’t end there for US consumers, who are now struggling with the consequences of a foreign conflict in a distant land and a wide-open border. Those factors have prompted the cost of living to surge higher than it has in over four decades amid runaway inflation. In June 2022, the year-over-year inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, hit a jaw-dropping 9.1%, the highest it’s been since the administration of former President Ronald Reagan.

A significant reason for the increase in inflation happened on March 3, 2022, when President Joe Biden signed an executive order to ban the import of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas, and coal to the US. This decision has had disastrous results for the local economy. Since Biden’s inauguration, the cost of gasoline alone had jumped at one point by 100% (as of September 27, the average price of regular gas was $3.832 per gallon, according to the AAA, while gas prices were an average of $2.3 per gallon when Biden entered office), forcing just about everything else to skyrocket, including the number of poor people.

The poverty rate in the US exploded last year, the first increase in 13 years, according to the Census Bureau. In 2022, the rate was 12.4%, up 4.6 percentage points from 2021, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), a method for tallying government welfare programs and tax credits designed to assist low-income families.

Meanwhile, the Expectations Index, determined by consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions, sunk to 73.7 in September. That follows a drop to 83.3 in August. The worrisome part is that an Expectations Index below 80 generally indicates an impending recession.

An economic tragedy is already quietly happening for millions of American consumers who are now living paycheck to paycheck precariously and who have been forced to use the payment method of last resort to make ends meet: the almighty credit card, with its exorbitant interest fees. On this score, the US economy has broken yet another record, although not in a way that could be considered something to cheer about.

“US credit card debt rose by $45 billion to $1.03 trillion in the second quarter from the first quarter, a 4.6% quarterly increase,” The Street reported. “It’s the first time in US history that household credit card balances topped the $1 trillion mark as the number of credit card accounts expanded by 5.48 million to 578.35 million in the quarter.” When consumer debt suddenly equals the amount the US spends on its military-industrial complex, you know there’s a problem.

Clearly, the US has some serious domestic issues that need to be resolved, but instead, it would rather fund a totally senseless proxy war against a nuclear power halfway around the world.

Washington has given Ukraine close to $100 billion in aid, with more in the pipeline, since Moscow launched its military operation in February 2022. The cash, however, has not only been used to fund Ukraine’s military. Billions of dollars have subsidized participants of the Ukrainian economy, like farmers and small business owners, market players whose counterparts in the US desperately need help, too. A recent study conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations shows that more than $30 billion – around 40% of total US aid to Ukraine as of July 31 – has been financial or humanitarian assistance that is not directly connected to military support. Military funding comes out to around $50 billion.

As if that were not enough, the Biden administration continues to welcome illegal migrants at a price that is more than what is being spent fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Yes, you read that right; the annual cost of providing care for the millions of illegal migrants entering the US is $150.7 billion, according to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers (FAIR).

In August, US Border Patrol recorded 232,972 migrant encounters along the southwestern border, a jump from 183,494 in July. The number of crossings for September is predicted to be higher than the previous month.

So here we have two concurrent events – a disastrous military conflict in Ukraine and a leaky US border – that are sucking away precious funds from the American taxpayer. It’s important to note that the king’s ransom that is being handed over to support these deranged Democratic agendas will never be returned, not in our lifetime. Instead, it will just be added to the unsustainable US national debt load, which is currently at $33 trillion, according to the US Debt Clock. That is an astronomical sum of money that we or future generations will someday be forced to deal with, and probably sooner rather than later.

What American citizen could possibly believe that any of this government funding has been a good investment for the American people? Well, they’re representatives in Washington, DC, for one. In May, ‘conservative’ US Senator Lindsey Graham, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev, pronounced joyfully that “the Russians are dying” and aid to Ukraine is “the best money we’ve ever spent.” Aside from discounting the chances that such an “investment” could have towards unleashing World War III, Graham never thought for a second that such funds could have gone far at rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, like that non-existent wall on the US-Mexico border. It would have been a wonderful work program for the US economy.

In short, it’s just another day in the discombobulated American empire, which, much like its ancient Roman precursor, could learn the lesson of overexpansion and overspending in the most brutal way imaginable – with its total and complete dissolution.

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | | Leave a comment

US Deploying Carrier Strike Group to Eastern Mediterranean Amid Hamas Attacks – Pentagon

Sputnik – 08.10.2023

WASHINGTON – The United States is deploying the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean to bolster US regional deterrence efforts in response to the Hamas attack on Israel, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Sunday.

“I have directed the movement of the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean. This includes the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60), as well as the Arleigh-Burke-class guided missile destroyers USS Thomas Hudner (DDG 116), USS Ramage (DDG 61), USS Carney (DDG 64), and USS Roosevelt (DDG 80),” Austin said in a statement.

The United States maintains ready forces globally to further reinforce this deterrence posture if required, the US defense chief also said.

The US will be rapidly providing the Israel Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions, which will begin arriving in the coming days, Austin added.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Biden plots stopgap funding for Ukraine aid’

RT | October 6, 2023

US President Joe Biden’s administration has reportedly set its sights on a State Department grant program to keep weapons and financial aid flowing to Ukraine, while waiting for divided Republican lawmakers to approve more spending to help Kiev fight Russian forces.

One of the stopgap-funding sources under consideration is a fund that provides grants or loans to US allies to buy weapons, Politico reported on Thursday, citing two unidentified government officials with knowledge of Biden’s plans. The president acknowledged on Wednesday that he was worried about a possible disruption to Ukraine aid amid congressional chaos, but he suggested that he might find another way to keep the funding going, at least temporarily, without getting a new spending bill passed.

Washington’s continued support for Ukraine was thrown into doubt last week, when Republicans stripped Biden’s $24 billion aid request out of a spending bill that averted a government shutdown for 45 days. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was voted out of his leadership position on Tuesday, the first such ouster in US history, reportedly after conservative Republicans heard that he had promised Biden a separate Ukraine funding bill.

The State Department, the Pentagon and Biden himself have warned this week that any disruption to aid could have devastating consequences for Ukraine on the battlefield. Republicans have become increasingly critical of Biden’s Ukraine strategy as public support for funding the bloody conflict wanes. Congress has already approved four rounds of Ukraine funding, totaling about $113 billion.

Biden administration officials have privately admitted that only weeks remain before a potential lapse in US funding to Kiev. The State Department grant program had about $650 million remaining as of September 21. Lawmakers originally allotted $4.6 billion for the program, which was designed to provide military grants and financing to Ukraine and other allies affected by the conflict with Russia.

However, even if the administration uses the financing authority to purchase weapons, it will still need approval from Congress to authorize additional funding for Ukraine, a US official told Politico. A Pentagon official said the White House also would need approval from lawmakers to redirect other defense spending to Kiev.

The Pentagon warned last week that it had exhausted “nearly all available security-assistance funding for Ukraine.” About $1.6 billion in funding remains to replace US weapons that were sent to the Ukrainians.

October 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Europe worried that US support for Ukraine waning

By Ahmed Adel | October 6, 2023

Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren made a shocking statement at the Warsaw Security Forum by emphasising the strategic importance of arming Ukraine as a cost-effective means of containing Russia when responding to questions about the sustainability of US and allied support for Kiev given the political turbulence in Washington.

“Of course, supporting Ukraine is a very cheap way to make sure that Russia with this regime is not a threat to the NATO alliance. And it’s vital to continue that support,” she said. “It is very much in our interest to support Ukraine, because they are fighting this war, we are not fighting it.”

Responding to the shocking admittance that NATO only views Ukraine as a “very cheap way” to contain Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on October 5 that Ukrainians would soon “stop liking” how they are seen and used by the West.

“[The West does not hide its intention to fight to the last Ukrainian and continues to use Ukraine] as cheap soldiers,” the spokesman said when commenting on Ollongren’s recent statement that it was vital to continue to support Ukraine. “[Soon, Ukrainians will begin to hear such statements] in a different light for themselves” and “they will stop liking it.”

Mentioning developments “overseas,” referring to the US, Ollongren said it is “worrying and also I think we have to address that worry.”

“We cannot pretend that we’ll just wait and see how the American elections are going,” she said before highlighting that if Washington’s support for Ukraine falls, that would be “substantial.”

Her concern about the situation in the US comes as a survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, published on October 4, found that 47% of Americans believe the US should support Ukraine for as long as necessary, a drop from 58% in July 2022; support for providing economic and military assistance to Ukraine has dropped from 78% in March 2022 to 61% in September 2023; and, support for sending US troops to Ukraine dropped from 36% in March 2022 to 26% in September 2023.

According to the survey, “There have been dips in support, which is not surprising given that both the length of the conflict and the extent of the US financial contribution have likely exceeded Americans’ initial expectations.”

“Americans express less confidence now than in previous surveys that Ukraine is doing better than Russia on the battlefield. Now only 14 percent of Americans say Ukraine has the advantage in the war, compared with 26 percent in November 2022,” the Chicago Council on Global Affairs report added.

US President Joe Biden has long been confident that Congress would continue to provide billions of dollars in support to Ukraine, even as the situation becomes increasingly tense in a divided Washington. The last agreement was only to avoid a collapse of the American government. However, it should not last long as it became clear how unpredictable Washington can be in its negotiations to support Ukraine as it continues encountering serious difficulties.

To avoid the collapse of the government, on September 30, a decision to leave Ukraine out of the budget was made, demonstrating that the situation is not only delicate but there is also great pressure from critics of the support given by Biden to Kiev. The challenge now, especially for the Europeans, is that a politically polarised America extends to foreign policy.

Despite all the domestic financial problems, the US continues to allocate huge funds to Ukraine. Since February 2022, Kiev has received more than $110 billion from Washington. This means that the “very cheap way” to fight Russia is turning out to be very expensive, as demonstrated by the fact that the government of the world’s greatest superpower almost shut down.

The removal of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from the US Congress only worsens the already troubled process of Washington’s military and financial aid for Ukraine as its counteroffensive against Russia grinds on with little change to the frontlines. This is significant because, without a Speaker, the House cannot pass legislation, throwing Washington’s military backing for Kiev into doubt since it could be another week or more before a successor is elected.

Although Ukraine is not a “very cheap way” for NATO to fight Russia, the statement by Ollongren provides a fascinating insight into how the Atlantic bloc views the beleaguered Eastern European country – nothing more than an expendable proxy weaponised against its far larger and more powerful neighbour.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

October 6, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

“Not About Nato” | “Never About NATO” | “Nothing to Do With NATO” | UKRAINE WAR

Matt Orfalea | October 2, 2023

We were told the Ukraine War is “Not About NATO,” was “Never About NATO”, and has “Nothing to do with NATO”. Until now…

https://www.racket.news/p/matt-orfale…

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October 6, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s backers blinded by Russia hate – top analyst

RT | October 5, 2023

Kiev’s globalist and neo-conservative supporters in the West are so driven by their hatred of Russia that they completely disregard the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who are dying in a futile effort to defeat Moscow’s forces, US public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has argued.

Sachs, an award-winning economist who advised the Russian and Ukrainian governments following the breakup of the Soviet Union, made his comments in an interview posted on Thursday by US podcast host Andrew Napolitano. Asked how the US and its NATO allies can ignore the catastrophic destruction of Ukraine while prolonging the conflict and making false claims of battlefield successes, Sachs said they are “blinded” by their hatred of Russia.

“They are not counting the Ukrainian dead,” the analyst said. “They have lied to the public all along about the military situation . . . . They want so much to fight Russia and have someone else do the fighting and the dying that they want another massive recruitment of the remaining Ukrainian young men that can be grabbed off the streets and be thrown into the killing fields.”

More than 83,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed during a Donbass counteroffensive that began in June, according to an estimate released by the Russian Defense Ministry last month. Despite knowing that the Ukrainians have no chance of making major gains on the battlefield amid Russia’s air superiority and artillery dominance, Kiev’s benefactors have shown a “grotesque” disregard for the heavy casualties, Sachs said. He argued that the UK, in particular, has championed the counteroffensive because of London’s centuries-long and deeply embedded desire to crush Russia.

Sachs, now a UN adviser and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, has argued that NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe helped trigger the current crisis. He said Washington and its allies missed many opportunities to avoid the current conflict, then kept it going by discouraging Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky from finalizing a peace deal with Russia in March 2022.

Responding to claims by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that critics of Washington’s Ukraine policy are “siding with” Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sachs argued that he’s showing concern for the Ukrainian people. “I don’t want Ukraine to be completely destroyed by these neocons, by their fantasy world, by their desire to throw Ukrainians by the hundreds of thousands to their deaths,” he said. He added, “This isn’t siding with Putin or siding with anybody. This is trying to protect Ukraine from American zealots.”

Sachs claimed that US President Joe Biden must reach out to Putin to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, which would involve ruling out adding Ukraine to NATO, as well as addressing Russia’s legitimate security concerns. “We have stoked so much provocation in this, so much anxiety, overthrowing governments, starting multiple wars, pushing NATO enlargement, abandoning nuclear agreements, and then saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t want to negotiate,’” the analyst said.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

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