By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 04.11.2022
Last month, the White House expressed concerns that Trump Republicans could jeopardize future military and economic assistance to Ukraine after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy promised to stop writing “blank checks” to Kiev if the GOP wins back control of the House in the midterms.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has vowed that US aid to Ukraine will drop to nothing if her party takes Congress on Tuesday.
“Democrats have ripped our border wide open. But the only border they care about is Ukraine, not America’s southern border. Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first,” Greene said at a “Save America” Trump rally in Sioux City, Iowa on Friday.
The congresswoman accused President Joe Biden and the Democrats of ignoring domestic problems, including the economy, inflation, crime, and the fentanyl crisis, of “putting America last,” and “destroying every single thread of democracy in the process.”
Greene promised that the GOP would open corruption investigations, impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and President Joe Biden, and “defund all the horrific policies the Democrats have passed over the past two years,” including plans to increase the size of the IRS, vaccine mandates, and political actors inside the Department of Justice and the FBI.
“In order to truly make a commitment to America, Republicans are going to have to be the new Republican Party. We can no longer be the party of Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Dick Cheney, George Bush and Mitt Romney, or any other sellout, weak Republican brand that just holds hands with Democrats and serves the globalist agenda that is the enemy of us all,” Greene said.
Greene, 48, has been an outspoken critic inside the Republican Party of Washington’s economic and military aid to Kiev. Earlier this year, she attacked the $40 billion Ukraine Spending Bill, citing the nation’s shortage of baby formula. “40 billion dollars, but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies,” the lawmaker said on the House floor in May.
Greene condemned the bill’s approval of “an unknown amount of money to the CIA” and other boondoggle assistance. “If this is claiming that it’s about saving lives, let’s be real. Then we would care about war-torn countries like Ethiopia. So that’s a bunch of hypocrisy,” she said.
57 mostly pro-Trump House Republicans and 11 GOP senators voted against Ukraine assistance earlier this year, citing fears of escalating tensions with Russia and a range of domestic issues. According to an NPR primary election tracker estimate, over nine in ten of the 200+ Trump-endorsed candidates running for the House, Senate, and top state offices won their GOP primaries earlier this year, oftentimes knocking out Republicans with a traditional, neoconservative stance on foreign policy, and those rejecting the former president’s claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.
On Friday, Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,050-page report citing whistleblower testimony outlining alleged politicization of the FBI and the DoJ, with the document expected to serve as a “road map” for congressional probes against Biden and the Democrats, should the GOP take Congress on Tuesday.
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | NOVEMBER 2, 2022
Very innocuously, the Biden Administration has ‘sensitised’ the world opinion that American troops are indeed present on Ukrainian soil in Russia’s immediate neighbourhood. Washington made a “soft landing” with an unnamed senior Pentagon official making the disclosure to the Associated Press and the Washington Post.
The official gave an ingenious explanation that the US troops “have recently begun doing onsite inspections to ensure” that Ukraine is “properly accounting” for the Western weapons it received. He claimed that this was part of a broader US campaign, announced last week by the State Department, “meant to make sure that weapons provided to Ukraine don’t end up in the hands of Russian troops, their proxies or other extremist groups.”
In effect, though, President Biden is eating his own word not to have ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine under any circumstances. There is always the real danger that the clutch of Americans on tour in Ukraine may come under fire from the Russian forces. In fact, the US deployment comes against the backdrop of intense Russian missile and drone attacks currently on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.
Plainly put, wittingly or unwittingly, the US is going up the escalation ladder. So far, the US intervention involved deployment of military advisors to the Ukrainian military command, supply of intelligence in real time, planning and execution of operations against Russian forces and allowing American mercenaries to do the fighting, apart from steady supply of tens of billions of dollars worth weaponry.
The qualitative difference now is that the proxy war may turn into a hot war between the NATO and Russia. The Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated today at a joint board meeting of the Russian and Belarusian defence ministries that the number of NATO forces in Eastern and Central Europe had risen by two and a half times since February and might increase further in the near future.
Shoigu underscored that Moscow understands fully well that the West is pursuing a concerted strategy to destroy Russia’s economy and military potential, making it impossible for the country to pursue an independent foreign policy.
He flagged that NATO’s new strategic concept suggested moving from containing Russia “through forward presence” to creating “a full-scale system of collective defence on the eastern flank,” with the bloc’s non-regional members deploying troops to the Baltic countries, Eastern and Central Europe, and new multinational battalion tactical groups being formed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.
It may not be a coincidence that Washington acknowledged the presence of its military personnel in Ukraine at a point when the Russians have alleged the participation of British intelligence in the recent sabotage act on the Nord Stream pipelines and the drone strikes on Saturday at the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol. There are grey areas in the so-called special relationship between the US and the UK.
The US-UK calculus has been to get the Russians bogged down in a quagmire in Ukraine and to incite an insurrection within Russia opposing ‘Putin’s war.’ But it has miserably failed. The US sees that over 300,000 trained ex-military personnel from Russia are being deployed to Ukraine for launching a major offensive to end the war in the coming 3-4 months.
That is to say, the roof is coming down on the entire edifice of lies and deceptive propaganda that formed the western narrative on Ukraine. The defeat in Ukraine could have disastrous consequences for the US’ image and credibility as a superpower not only in Europe but on the global stage, undermine its leadership of the transatlantic alliance and even disable NATO.
The Biden Administration made a terrible mistake in assuming that the war would lead to a regime change in Russia ensuing from the collapse of the Russian economy under the weight of western sanctions. On the contrary, even the IMF admits that the Russian economy has stabilised.
The indicators show that the Russian economy will be registering growth by next year. The comparison with the western economies that are sinking into high inflation and recession is far too glaring to be missed by the world audience.
Suffice to say, the US and its allies have run out of sanctions to hit Russia. The Russian leadership, on the other hand, is consolidating by pushing ahead with the shift to a multipolar world order and a de-dollarised international financial system. If these processes proceed further, it will dent the status of the American dollar as “world currency.”
Fundamentally, it is the capitalist system itself which is responsible for this crisis. We are currently suffering under the effect of the longest and deepest crisis the system has known since the redivision of the world that took place in World War II. The imperialist western powers are once again preparing for war to redivide the world in the hopes of getting out of their crisis, much as they prepared prior to World War II.
The big question is what Russia’s response is going to be. It is all but certain that Moscow hasn’t been caught by surprise at the revelation in Washington regarding the presence of US troops in Ukraine. It is highly unlikely that Russia will resort to knee-jerk reaction.
The so-called ‘counter-offensive’ by Ukraine has fizzled out. It made no significant territorial gains or gained any breakthrough. But it suffered heavy casualties in the thousands and huge losses in military equipment. Russia has gained the upper hand and it is conscious of that. All along the frontline, that is becoming evident.
On the other hand, the fact remains that neither the US and Britain nor their NATO allies are in a position to fight a continental war. Therefore, it will be entirely up to the American troops moving around in the steppes of Ukraine to stay out of trouble and keep their body and soul together in such harsh winter conditions without electricity, heating or a decent body wash. Who knows, the Pentagon may even work out a ‘deconfliction’ mechanism with Moscow!
That said, seriously, the auditing of US weaponry on Ukrainian soil per se is not a bad thing at all. Ukraine is a notoriously corrupt country, after all. There is real danger that the weapons supplied by the US may reach Europe and turn that beautiful manicured garden into a jungle (like Ukraine or America) — to borrow the colourful metaphor used recently by Josep Borrell, EU’s foreign policy chief.
Samizdat – November 2, 2022
The number of NATO forces stationed close to Russia’s western borders has reached more than 30,000, the country’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday.
He stated that the US-led military bloc had augmented units in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Balkans and Baltic states.
“The contingent has grown in size by two and a half times to more than 30,000 people since February, and may grow more in the nearest future,” Shoigu said during a joint ministerial session with military officials from Belarus.
He said that such a concentration of Western forces poses a threat not only to Moscow, but to Belarus, Russia’s ally.
The defense of both countries is a “priority task” of the Union State of the Russian Federation and Belarus, he stated.
The West’s ultimate goal in its confrontation with Russia is to “destroy its economy, military potential, and to deprive it of the ability to conduct independent foreign policy,” Shoigu said.
In response to Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, NATO enhanced military units and weapon stockpiles in the east as a “deterrence” measure. The bloc described Russia as “the most significant and direct threat” to peace and security in its chief strategic document, which was updated in June.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at the time that the bloc’s rapid-response force would increase sevenfold to over 300,000. The bloc also agreed to establish four new battalion-size battlegroups in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, in addition to those in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Russia and Belarus announced the creation of a joint military force last month, which was said to include several thousand Russian troops. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko linked the move to tensions with the West. The first trains carrying Russian soldiers arrived in Belarus on October 15.
According to the Belarusian Defense Ministry, up to 9,000 Russian soldiers and around 170 tanks will be deployed in the country. The first trains carrying Russian soldiers arrived in Belarus on October 15.
In his speech on Wednesday, Shoigu said that the alliance with Minsk is especially important amid the “growing tensions across the world,” and the standoff with the West. He added that Russian and Belarusian units are training together, while the two states are conducting joint military planning as part of the new force.
By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | November 1, 2022
The U.S. military has in recent times been making a big show of its “wokeness,” not only by changing the names of institutions to comply with the demands of race activists who wish to expunge from history all traces of the Confederacy, but also in its affirmation and encouragement of persons who lead alternative lifestyles. For nearly twenty years, beginning in 1993, the military maintained a “don’t ask, don’t tell,” policy on homosexuality. Since 2011, however, openly gay persons have been permitted to serve in the armed forces.
Given this context, some were surprised to learn that the Department of Defense has explicitly specified that transgender women must register for the Selective Service, while transgender men need not. The official website states:
Selective Service bases the registration requirement on gender assigned at birth and not on gender identity or on gender reassignment. Individuals who are born male and changed their gender to female are still required to register. Individuals who are born female and changed their gender to male are not required to register.
Through the Selective Service and Training Act, registration of men was first required in 1940 so as to make it possible for the government to locate potential soldiers in the event of a military draft. The law was amended as the Elston Act (aka the Selective Service Act) in 1948, and is still in place nearly seventy-five years later. There has been no draft called since the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, from 1964 to 1973, but the option remains open to the war-making authority, the executive branch of the government, at the pinnacle of which stands the politician who managed to be elected as president. Since 1940, males eighteen years of age have been required by law to register with the Selective Service; females have not.
Traditionalists (and students of biology) stand firm in their belief that the possession of a Y chromosome in every cell of one’s body properly identifies a human being as a biological male, whatever his lifestyle choices and preferences may be, and whatever surgical changes he may undertake to remove or alter body parts. Laypersons who in the era of “woke” dare to make such claims, what seems to many to be a matter of common sense, have been known to be denounced as TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) by angry mobs online. Will the U.S. military now be subjected to similar barrages of anger?
Despite the military’s “woke” rhetoric regarding race and critical race theory, and its accommodating policies toward homosexual persons, it does look as though the Department of Defense has boldly affirmed the reality of biological sex, through its explicit assertion that a biological male is and always will be a biological male, even if he chooses to pump his body with estrogen, have his genitals surgically removed, wear makeup and don miniskirts. I include the latter two attributes because of the many trans-caricatures of femininity currently on display, as exemplified by Dylan Mulvaney, a twenty-five-year-old trans-activist who on day 222 of claiming “womanhood” was granted an interview with President Biden. Many of the very public, and often melodramatic, displays of transgenderism found not only on TikTok but also in commercial advertisements reduce women to the ditzy, superficial, and degrading stereotypes of decades past. If we are to believe transwomen such as Dylan Mulvaney, the “gentler sex” spends the bulk of their creative energy and time in endeavors such as painting their nails and shopping for new clothes.
In this somewhat astonishing cultural development, men who transition are thus allowed to indulge in outright misogyny, by overtly ridiculing women through conducting themselves in ways reminiscent of and entirely analogous to the racist portrayal of African Americans by white persons in blackface. Transwomen have also been permitted to compete alongside biological females in sports, with the predictable outcome that girls and women are being denied what would otherwise be their opportunity for success in athletics, and as a result do not enjoy the recognition, awards and scholarships which some of them surely deserve for their prowess.
Whatever sins of sexism transwomen may be permitted, they will not, the Pentagon has made clear, be able to evade the military draft. Yes, despite the reigning insanity on the transgender issue, propelled forward by misogynistic ad campaigns by companies such as ULTA, the U.S. military’s Selective Service registration policy is holding the line: a female is and always will be a biological female, even if she chooses to have some of the muscle in her leg transformed into a prosthetic penis, undergo a double mastectomy, and suffuse her body with testosterone in order to bulk up her muscles, lower her voice, and be able to grow a beard. The military powers that be have sided with traditionalists in asserting that, no matter how many surgeries they may undergo, “transmen are not really men,” and “transwomen are not really women,” because the former lack Y chromosomes, while the latter do not.
The Selective Service statement may look like a “gotcha” to those keen on calling a halt to the biology-denying madness. But just as earlier efforts to appear “feminist” arguably betrayed only the Pentagon’s concern to increase flagging enrollment, I strongly suspect that this bold proclamation of the reality of biological sex is part of a broader effort to force Selective Service registration upon every person, whether or not they possess a Y chromosome. By broaching the question of biological sex at all, the reignited debate about the requirement upon men, but not women, will likely be used to provoke lawmakers to “update” the requirement. It is obviously to the Pentagon’s advantage—and indeed, I am suggesting, it is their intent—to double the number of persons required to register and thus be prepared for future conscription in one of the many wars brewing on the horizon. Perversely enough, it will be yet another show of “wokeness” when the administration begins to insist that fairness and equity require that all persons, no matter their gender, be treated the same. In other words, the Pentagon is laying the groundwork for this sort of argument:
If biological males are required to register for Selective Service, then, because biological females are of equal value and worth to males, they, too, should be required to register. To hold any other position would be to claim that the sexes are not equal, to deny that females have the same worth and value as do males.
Lawmakers seem unlikely to abolish the Selective Service requirement for the same reason that they rubber stamp every single new military budget, prioritizing war over all other things. Indeed, Republican and Democratic lawmakers may disagree on every other possible allocation of taxpayers’ funds, but they form a united, virtually impenetrable front, the War Party duopoly, in supporting any and every initiative characterized, however implausibly, as a matter of national defense.
The Selective Service registration requirement has remained in place for so many decades because it is facilely depicted as a matter of necessary preparedness for the eventuality of conflicts such as World War II. But because every military intervention abroad is portrayed as a matter of defense—even the ongoing border dispute between Ukraine and Russia has been cast as a necessary defense of “democracy”—there is little reason to believe that lawmakers would agree to abolish the Selective Service registration requirement when it comes time to decide whether or not to include females alongside males. Instead, so-called liberals will be seduced by pseudo-feminist and “woke” rhetoric to insist much more enthusiastically than their “based” colleagues that the requirement be expanded, not abolished. Such unwitting dupes will no doubt be enlisted to help disseminate the Pentagon propaganda line according to which the affirmation of equality of all persons mandates that everyone of military age be required to register.
The Pentagon has been plagued by dwindling voluntary enlistments ever since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. A series of atrocities committed by troops and private contractors throughout the “Global War on Terror” no doubt exacerbated the problem, by progressively chipping away whatever illusions of nobility prospective enlistees may have formerly associated with soldiering. Evidence that the recruitment crisis remains pressing in 2022 includes tweets from the Selective Service Twitter account (@SSS_gov), such as the one from October 7, in which parents are informed that even if they have only one son, he must register for the Selective Service.
On its face, this seems a bizarre announcement to make out of the blue. Except that it is not out of the blue, for all of these ploys are, again, plausibly part of the Pentagon’s gambit to increase the number of persons available for the wars which they are actively planning and fomenting, whether with Russia, China, Iran, the interminable “Global War on Terror” throughout the Middle East and Africa, or—why not?—yet another deadly meddling effort in Haiti.
As evidence of the ultimate aim of the Selective Service transgender policy, some of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recent proclamations have been telling:
While I am encouraged to see a decrease in the suicide rate in our Active Component, we recognize we have more work to do. Every death by suicide is a tragedy that impacts our people, our military units, and our readiness.
Patriotism knows no gender, and neither does courage. Men and women hear the same call to serve our great country, and American women have always, always answered.
The U.S. military recently announced that it will pay for the travel of female troops who wish to terminate a pregnancy but are not located in a state where (post-Dodd) abortions are legal and therefore can be undertaken safely. It may sound cynical to suggest that females who carry their pregnancies to term, too, diminish the number of active troops, but in view of the scandalous epidemic of military rapes and sexual abuse endured by female enlistees in all branches of the armed forces in recent decades (see The Invisible War, a 2013 documentary film directed by Kirby Dick), it is not at all an implausible explanation for the accommodating stance of the DoD toward women seeking abortions.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s exuberant pro-war tweets regularly appear in my Twitter feed, and other users may have noticed in recent months an upsurge in the appearance of tweets from accounts not being followed. Significantly, these are not paid advertisements, but texts which are prioritized for dissemination and are all connected to the government in some way. Along with Austin, examples include NATO administrators, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Samantha Power (of USAID, which is well known to be a CIA front), among other figure heads, up to and including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the president himself, Joe Biden. War is the media topic of the day, but during the COVID crisis, I recall having been “treated” to a non-stop stream of tweets by vaccine entrepreneur Bill Gates—until I muted him.
Any number of less well known propagandists now appear to be paid specifically to promote war, and their slogans and exhortations also pop up in “the latest tweets” more frequently than even paid advertising. Meanwhile, accounts known to promote “dangerous” antiwar messages are shadowbanned, with tweets not even included in the feeds of their very own followers. (Anecdotally, I have determined from the analytics bar that Twitter allows my own tweets to appear in the feed of twenty-two persons.) Accounts with an antiwar “bias,” as the Disinformation Governance Board might characterize it, are capped so as to limit the number of followers. And of course anyone with an antiwar blog or website needs only to attempt to locate its articles through Google search to see how difficult they are to find.
All of this is to say that the government has commandeered social media as a vehicle for the promotion of its own propaganda. Governments have always attempted to control the narrative, but this trend has become especially glaring in the years since the ratification of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, which lifted restrictions against propagandizing U.S. citizens by the government itself using (what else?) taxpayers’ own money to do so. In fact, that the U.S. government has exerted influence over Twitter is not all that surprising, given what we already knew about Facebook and YouTube.
The purchase of Twitter by self-proclaimed free speech champion Elon Musk may or may not improve the situation. It is worth remembering the recent report that the U.S. government intended to investigate Musk, which appeared shortly after he made the “mistake” of suggesting that the Ukraine-Russia conflict should be settled through negotiation. Musk has been providing internet access to the Ukrainian government through his Starlink company, but he crossed the MIC line when he dared to opine that negotiation might be preferable to nuclear holocaust. If Musk’s takeover of Twitter was greenlighted by the U.S. government, then it may well have been as a result of some sort of accommodation on his part.
In any case, regardless of what happens to Twitter, the Pentagon’s propaganda machine is so vast and powerful that self-styled liberals have already been swindled into supporting the allocation of massive funding to a border dispute—over a line drawn thirty years ago by a small committee of men—between a non-nuclear and a nuclear power. This infusion of billions of dollars into the conflict between Ukraine and Russia serves no purpose beyond lining the pockets of war profiteers, while diminishing rather than enhancing the security of those who foot the bill, by increasing the likelihood of a devastating conflict between two nuclear powers. It is striking that so-called progressives, who claim to care about the domestic problems currently faced by their constituents—the cost of healthcare, the housing and homelessness crisis, the drug overdose epidemic, elevated grocery and gas prices caused by inflation, etc.—have signed off on bills to print and dole out billions of dollars to Ukraine rather than address the pressing problems with which the nation itself is undeniably beset.
A recent letter by thirty lawmakers, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus led by Representative Pramila Jayapal, urged President Biden to pursue a negotiated solution to the Ukraine-Russia crisis and thus appeared to offer a glimmer of hope, albeit tardily. After six months of silence on the issue, it seemed that progressives were finally going to act as progressives, perhaps spurred on by the upcoming election and push back from voting constituents. To the great disappointment of sane people everywhere, however, the group abruptly withdrew the letter by the very next day, claiming (implausibly enough) both that it had been written months before and that it was sent out by a staffer in error. (It seems safe to say that prevarication is not Representative Jayapal’s forte.) One thing is clear: the saber-rattling Democratic Party no longer permits antiwar dissenters in its ranks, for it is obvious that someone was taken out to the woodshed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or one of her operatives.
These are troubling times for free thinkers and peace-loving people, and given the capture of both mainstream and social media by the military’s propaganda machine, it is sadly predictable how “progressive” congresspersons will vote when faced with the Selective Service registration issue. For if the choice is that either everyone or else no one must be prepared to defend the nation, we can expect self-styled human rights savvy progressive lawmakers to insist that the Selective Service requirement be expanded, not abolished. Indeed, the most vociferous supporters of expanding the Selective Service requirement will be found among the progressive “woke” camp, who will insist that the issue is a matter of human rights.
In truth, mandatory conscription is the very antithesis of upholding human rights, for draftees are the moral equivalent of slaves, and slaves are people from whom all rights have been stripped away. Any person, whether male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, is free to enlist in the military. The pertinent question, then, is whether it is fair for only men to be subject to enslavement by the government. But of course it is never “fair” to strip human beings of their freedom. The answer to the question is that no one, neither men nor women, should be transformed into slaves. Governments are erected and exist to serve the people. Any institution or administration which undermines or usurps the interests and rights of citizens should be defunded and disbanded, having transmogrified into the antithesis of what it purports to be. To borrow a term which has become popular in “woke” circles, a government which perpetrates such abuses of power should be cancelled.
Laurie Calhoun is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique, in addition to many essays and book chapters.
Samizdat – 01.11.2022
The US and its allies have earmarked nearly $100 billion in security and economic aid to Ukraine so far this year. Last month, the White House asked Congress for a $11.7 billion top-up. Where is this money going? Who’s benefiting from Western taxpayers’ generosity? And why are some US officials suddenly so concerned?
As the Ukrainian security crisis enters its ninth month and the seemingly bottomless pit of Western military and economic support for Kiev continues to expand, some US media and lawmakers have expressed growing weariness about the prospect of shoveling even more cash into the conflict in the weeks and months to come.
On Monday, the editors of Bloomberg, the New York-based financial and business media empire, sent a signal to America’s business community through a rare collective editorial requesting more “transparency” from the Biden administration about where American aid to Ukraine is going.
“The scale of the aid effort is unprecedented. In just seven months, the US has provided Ukraine with nearly double what it gave all of Western Europe on an annual basis during the Marshall Plan in real terms. Support for Ukraine’s military this year equals what the US provided Israel, Egypt and Afghanistan combined in 2020,” the business outlet stressed, calculating that Washington’s support accounts for $60 billion, or two thirds of all Western support for Kiev this year.
At least $27.5 billion of that is for military needs, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy’s Ukraine Support Tracker.
Pointing out that Kiev hasn’t exactly been a paragon of good governance and anti-corruption, even before the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, Bloomberg made the unprecedented admission that there’s “the possibility, however slight, that US-made weaponry could fall into the wrong hands or be sold to actors outside Ukraine.” Accordingly, the outlet asked Washington to appoint a special watchdog on Ukraine aid, similar to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction created in 2008.
The effectiveness of such an appointment would be questionable at best, and futile at worst. Last year, Brown University’s Costs of War project calculated that the United States spent over $2 trillion in Afghanistan, equivalent to over $300 million per day for 20 straight years. Still, the effort to turn the war-torn West Asian nation into a model of Western-style governance and democracy collapsed like a house of cards in August 2021, when the Taliban* smashed the country’s NATO-trained army in ten days as US and allied forces evacuated. The inspector general’s appointment seems to have done little in stopping or even stemming the largess of spending on the war in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, even the mere admission that US arms could destabilize the situation and cause a spike in weapons flows to international black markets and criminal groups is significant, as it echoes concerns that Russian officials from the president to the foreign and defense ministries have been expressing for many months.
“This is not a question only of small arms; there are risks of more powerful weapons falling into the hands of criminals, including man-portable air defense systems and high precision weapons,” President Vladimir Putin said at a recent meeting with regional security officials.
Last month, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, whose party appears poised to take the House and possibly the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections, expressed opposition to giving Ukraine a never-ending “blank check” of American aid as ordinary Americans suffer the consequences of a recession. President Biden admitted that he was “worried” about McCarthy’s rhetoric, accusing the GOP of not “getting” that Washington’s assistance to Kiev wasn’t about Ukraine, but about Eastern Europe, NATO, and “really serious, serious consequential outcomes.”
As domestic weapons stocks show signs of running low and amid US media reports citing behind-the-scenes grumbling from the military and government over the issue continue to mount, it bears repeating the question about where Western arms support for Ukraine is actually going.
Where are the Weapons Zelensky?
It turns out the White House and the Pentagon don’t actually know where the aid goes, with sources telling US media back in April that the Pentagon has “zero” clue where most of the arms end up after they drop into the “big black hole” of the conflict. This is especially the case with small and compact arms like Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger man-portable air defense missiles, which can’t be tracked via satellites and “with nobody on the ground” to keep a lookout.
From time to time, moments of clarity poke through the fog of war.
On Sunday, Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation reported that weapons sent to Ukraine had somehow found their way into the hands of local motorcycle gangs, as well as criminal groups in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Earlier this year, Sputnik Arabic plunged into the seedy recesses of the so-called dark web, finding a Ukraine-based arms dealer willing to ship US-made M4 assault rifles to the conflict zone in Yemen via Poland and Portugal, for a fee.
Separately, in August, a major US television network posted and then quietly scrubbed an investigative feature which revealed that as little as “30 percent” of the Western military aid sent to Ukraine was actually reaching the frontline.
Some Western-dominated regional and international security cooperation agencies have also given an indication (mostly underreported by the mainstream media) on the danger of sending weapons to Kiev.
Europol, the European Union criminal policing agency subordinated to Brussels, continues to resist admitting the scale of the weapons smuggling problem, assuring in July that it is “working with Ukrainian officials to mitigate the threat of arms trafficking into the European Union” and that it has “full confidence” in Kiev’s “measures to monitor and track these firearms.”
However, Interpol, Europol’s older and more respected cousin, has urged the international community to brace for weapons that have been sent to Ukraine ending up in criminal hands. Agency secretary general Juergen Stock warned in June that “the high availability of weapons during the current conflict will result in the proliferation in illicit arms in the post-conflict phase.” Criminal groups are already preparing. “This will come, I have no doubts,” Stock said.
Given the scale of the Ukrainian crisis, and the shady nature of criminal weapons smugglers’ activities to begin with, the real extent and scope of illicit arms smuggling operations, and just how far up the totem pole of Ukrainian and Western administrative power it goes, has yet to be revealed, and probably won’t be revealed, until years or even decades from now.
During the 1980s Soviet War in Afghanistan, the Central Intelligence Agency ran ‘Operation Cyclone’, a drugs and weapons running operation which armed the Afghan Mujahedeen with over $3 billion in US- and European-made weaponry, including Stinger missiles and other sophisticated equipment.
In the decades that followed, Washington discovered how difficult it is to recover these arms from the Afghan ‘freedom fighters’, who eventually morphed into the Taliban, and fought a two decade-long war against the US and NATO occupation, including using weapons sent in the 1980s. In the meantime, Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who served as one of the Arab commanders in Afghanistan in the 1980s, wound up declaring a holy war against the US, with Washington ultimately fingering his terrorist group for the deaths of over 3,000 Americans on 9/11 and in other attacks.
Samizdat – October 31, 2022
The Russian military closed the so-called “grain corridor” used to ship Ukrainian agriculture products through the Black Sea on Monday. The move was provoked by the actions of Ukraine, which used the route to launch attacks on Russia, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
“Any navigation through the security corridor designated under the Black Sea [grain shipment] initiative would be halted until the situation around the Ukrainian … terrorist attack on the military and civilian vessels in Sevastopol is cleared,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry also said that Kiev should specifically commit not to use the corridor for military purposes. At the same time, it maintained that Russia does not withdraw from the deal but only suspends it for an indefinite period of time.
Earlier on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia was ready to compensate for the missing Ukrainian grain exports to the poorer nations from its own stocks. He also warned that the grain deal has become “much more risky, dangerous” now since Russia cannot guarantee maritime security in the waters of the designated grain corridor.
Russia is “still in contact” with other parties, including the UN and Türkiye, Peskov said, adding, however, that Moscow was not ready to be talked into resuming its participation in the deal.
A dozen ships carrying Ukrainian grain were cleared to leave Turkish ports earlier on Monday. The Joint Coordination Centre (JCC) in Istanbul agreed on a plan to inspect a further 40 ships, despite Moscow’s decision to suspend the deal. It is unclear whether it will follow on its plan now.
Samizdat – October 31, 2022
A US carrier strike group, led by new supercarrier USS Gerald Ford, is expected to anchor near Portsmouth in southern England in mid-November, the UK Defense Journal reported on Sunday.
The exact date of the flotilla’s arrival, which includes seven other warships, has not been announced publicly, the outlet noted. Releasing such data now “might not be the best idea from a security point of view,” it added.
Some of the American vessels will dock at the Royal Navy’s Portsmouth naval base, while the USS Gerald Ford will have to anchor outside, at the roadstead in the Spithead area, due to its size, according to the outlet.
The 333-meter carrier reportedly hosts some 90 planes and helicopters, including the fifth-generation F-35C fighter-bombers.
The USS Gerald Ford, commissioned by the US Navy in 2017, is the first ship of the similarly named Ford class, and is the largest aircraft carrier in the world.
It began its maiden ‘service-retained’ deployment on October 4, departing from Norfolk, Virginia. The vessel visited its first international port on Friday, arriving in Halifax, Canada.
According to the US Navy, the USS Gerald Ford has been conducting multinational maritime exercises in the Atlantic Ocean with such NATO allies as Canada, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.
After leaving Halifax, the supercarrier is set to continue “conducting training and operations alongside NATO Allies and partners to enhance integration for future operations and demonstrate the US Navy’s commitment to a peaceful, stable and conflict-free Atlantic region,” it added.
The commander of the carrier strike group, Rear Admiral Greg Huffman, described the deployment as “an opportunity to further advance the operational capabilities of the Ford and demonstrate the advantages that Ford and Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8 bring to the future of naval aviation, to the region and to our allies and partners.”
If reports of the US flotilla heading to British shores are confirmed, it will become the second American carrier strike group in European waters.
The USS George Bush and its supporting vessels are currently in the Adriatic Sea after taking part in NATO’s Neptune Strike defense and deterrence exercise in the Mediterranean between October 14 and 28.
When asked by Sky News if the USS George Bush strike group was prepared to fight Russia if such an order were given by Washington, its commander Rear Admiral Dennis Velez said: “this ship, this strike group, our allies: we are ready for anything. We demonstrate that every day.”
Samizdat | October 29, 2022
An unsuccessful Ukrainian attack on the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea early on Saturday involved nine aerial and seven naval drones, Russia’s defense ministry has said.
The “terrorist attack,” which targeted the vessels of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and civilian ships docked in the city began around 4.20am local time, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
It added that the Russian Navy ships had been involved in providing security for the “grain corridor,” which was set up to allow exports of Ukrainian food products from the Black Sea ports in line with a deal reached between Moscow and Kiev with UN and Turkish mediation in the summer.
All of the incoming drones were shot down by Russian warships and naval aviation in the bay of Sevastopol, the ministry said.
According to the statement, the attack resulted in minor damage to the trawler vessel ‘Ivan Golubets’ and to the net boom barrier in the bay.
“The preparation of this terrorist act and training of the military personnel of the Ukrainian 73rd Special Center for Maritime Operations had been carried out under the supervision of the British experts, based in the city of Ochakov in Ukraine’s Nikolaev Region,” the ministry said.
Information obtained by the Russian military suggests that the same unit of the Royal Navy took part in planning, supplying and carrying out the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea on September 26, the statement read.
Earlier on Saturday, Governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev said it was the largest Ukrainian drone attack on the city since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February.
Located in Crimea, which became part of Russia after a referendum in 2014, Sevastopol has been designated as a federal city by Moscow due to its strategic importance and status as the base of Russia’s Black Fleet. The key port has frequently been the target of drone attacks by Ukraine during the conflict.
In July, six people were injured after a UAV crashed into the Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters in Sevastopol. The attack took place on Russia’s Navy Day and led to the cancellation of celebrations in the city. Another UAV hit the roof of the HQ in August, but failed to cause any significant damage.
Samizdat – 28.10.2022
Russia and China will continue to jointly address the North Korea issue. The main cause of tensions on the Korean Peninsula is the pressure exerted on the DPRK and the show of force by South Korea and the United States.
Russia remains committed to a joint plan with China for a Korean settlement.
“We will adhere to the agreed position on this issue”, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club.
The Russia-China action plan is based on the principle of reciprocal steps by the United States and the DPRK. These steps could be taken by the United States without damaging its reputation, and on the same basis by DPRK leaders. Moscow and Beijing believe that success in the settlement can only be achieved on the basis of reciprocal movement: action after action, step by step, gradually, and consistently.
At the same time, Moscow and Beijing have repeatedly warned that the formula, according to which North Korea must first completely get rid of its nuclear missile program and only then it will be possible to think about lifting sanctions on the DPRK and ensuring its economic development, is absolutely unsustainable.
“Our roadmap, which we proposed together with China, was that first we should build confidence through mutual meetings, and then we should take some tangible measures, including the suspension of military exercises, tests, and missile launches, and then proceed to negotiations,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier, presenting a joint Russia-China plan for a Korean settlement.
The plan was put forward to the two Koreas, the United States, and Japan in the fall of 2019 after three meetings between the US and DPRK leaders in Singapore, Hanoi, and the demilitarized zone in Panmunjom ended inconclusively. These meetings were held on June 12, 2018, February 27-28, 2019, and June 30, 2019, respectively.
When answering experts’ questions at the Valdai Discussion Club related to the Korea issue, Vladimir Putin said that the unwillingness to talk and the absolutely boorish attitude to North Korea’s interests, including in the sphere of security, has led to the DPRK nuclear issue. In an interview with Sputnik, Alexander Zhebin, director of the Center for Korean Studies and member of the Russian Political Science Association, commented on the Russian president’s statements as follows:
“Vladimir Putin was referring to the boorish behavior of the United States, because the US and the DPRK had an agreement at Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore that Pyongyang would not launch long-range missiles that could reach American territory, and would not test nuclear weapons. The Americans would respond to this, as recorded in the Singapore declaration, by building a new relationship. Instead, the Americans continued to impose more and more sanctions against the DPRK, which means that they have not fulfilled their part of the commitments.”
According to Alexander Zhebin, the US behaves arrogantly towards the DPRK in the UN Security Council as well:
“Each UN Security Council resolution that imposed sanctions on the DPRK stipulated that positive steps by the DPRK to reduce nuclear missile activity must be accompanied by reciprocal steps by those who imposed sanctions and lead to their partial lifting. This has not happened. On the contrary, no matter what the DPRK has done, the US has kept imposing new sanctions, both by Trump and then by Biden.”
Today, instead of negotiations, the US and South Korea are working on scenarios for destroying the top political leadership of the DPRK and the country’s control centers.
“On the one hand, the Americans say they are ready to negotiate with the DPRK at any time, anywhere, and without any conditions. However, at the same time, they have imposed unprecedentedly harsh sanctions on the DPRK and do not intend to lift them. On the contrary, they are obstructing all attempts by China and Russia to reduce the sanctions burden and start a dialog process. In fact, the invitation to negotiations is just talk. Under that guise, the US is implementing a longstanding plan according to which, eventually, the DPRK, under the weight of economic sanctions, will not survive, thus forcing Kim Jong-un to surrender.
They are not hiding the fact that large-scale military exercises carried out by the US and South Korea are used to practice the elimination of the DPRK’s top political leadership and the country’s control centers. The scale of the recent maneuvers is simply off the chart. 240 American and South Korean aircraft, including the latest F-35 stealth fighters, have been deployed off the coast of North Korea. This cannot but cause serious concern to the DPRK leadership, since everything is happening near its borders. The DPRK is very much concerned about its security,” Alexander Zhebin stressed.
The DPRK’s missile launches are a response to US and South Korean military drills, which constantly press Pyongyang to demonstrate its power, Jin Xiangdong, a researcher at Xiamen University’s School of International Relations, said in an interview with Sputnik :
“Since coming to power, the new South Korean government has conducted a series of military exercises near the Korean Peninsula. The DPRK has responded by launching ballistic missiles. The main problem with the situation on the peninsula is that the new South Korean government is constantly putting pressure on North Korea and demonstrating its power. China’s position on the Korean Peninsula issue is consistent and clear. China defends the maintenance of peace and stability on the peninsula, denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, and the resolution of issues through dialog and consultations. Meanwhile, in general, the solution to the Korean Peninsula problem is still complicated.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the South Korean Armed Forces said that North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan on Friday. The launches took place on the last day of South Korea’s Hoguk military exercises, which began on October 17. These maneuvers featured a large-scale amphibious landing exercise near the city of Pohang on the coast of the Sea of Japan.
On October 31, the Republic of Korea and the United States will launch large-scale joint air exercises. The high intensity and scale of the drills provoke growing tensions in Northeast Asia. The US threatening to give a strong response to a possible nuclear test by the DPRK has aggravated the situation.
Samizdat | October 28, 2022
The Pentagon revealed on Thursday in its long-awaited National Defense Strategy (NDS) report that given the growing national security threats posed against the US and its allies, Washington must leave the door open to such options as a nuclear first strike and use of nuclear weapons to prevent non-nuclear attacks. That conclusion was approved by the White House after the Pentagon’s thorough review of “no first use” and “sole purpose” nuclear policies.
“Those approaches would result in an unacceptable level of risk, in light of the range of non-nuclear capabilities being developed and fielded by competitors that could inflict strategic-level damage to the United States and its allies and partners,” the NDS said. “Some allies and partners are particularly vulnerable to attacks with non-nuclear means that could produce devastating effects.”
Biden pledged while running for president in 2020 that he would work to narrow the potential uses of America’s nuclear weaponry. “The sole purpose of the US nuclear arsenal should be deterring — and if necessary, retaliating against — a nuclear attack. As president, I will work to put that belief into practice, in consultation with our allies and military.”
The decision to instead reject limits on use of nuclear weapons comes amid rising tensions with Russia and China. Beijing is investing heavily in expansion and modernization of its nuclear capabilities, the Pentagon said. “By the 2030s, the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.”
Washington won’t use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, according to the NDS report. “For all other states, there remains a narrow range of contingencies in which US nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring attacks that have a strategic effect against the United States or its allies and partners.”
The report labeled China as the No. 1 national security threat against the US, despite rising tensions with Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said China is “the only competitor out there with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the power to do so.”
The US remains the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons against another country – the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945.
By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – 27.10.2022
The US, Japan, and South Korea vowed an “unparalleled” response to a potential seventh nuclear test by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). However, the countries’ officials did not clarify precisely what measures they would take.
“This deterrence through threat of punishment by Washington and its allies is unlikely to succeed,” said Dr. Zhang Baohui, director of the Center for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. “Pyongyang follows its own strategic logic when deciding whether to pursue new tests. A rise in tensions on the peninsula will only heighten North Korea’s insecurity, motivating it to continue to pursue the nuclear option.”
The US and its Asian allies reportedly fear that Pyongyang could be planning a nuclear bomb test for the first time since 2017. However, they have yet to provide details backing their concerns. Meanwhile, the US and South Korea have stepped up joint military drills in the region over the past several months.
Earlier, President Donald Trump’s White House tried to facilitate dialogue between Seoul and Pyongyang. These efforts were halted by President Joe Biden, who announced in May 2021 that he would not give DPRK leader Kim Jong-un “recognition” as the “legitimate” head of the state unless the latter denuclearized the country. Washington’s shift under Biden did not go unnoticed by the DPRK, and was followed by eight missile tests by Pyongyang in 2021.
The number of missile tests carried out by North Korea rose steeply in 2022, as Yoon Suk-yeol won the presidency in South Korea in March and declared Communist Pyongyang the “main enemy” of Seoul. Furthermore, the new South Korean president has openly flirted with the idea of a preemptive strike against his country’s northern neighbor.
In August 2022, Washington and Seoul kicked off their largest military exercises since 2018, with Yoon vowing to further boost “deterrence” against the DPRK. Earlier this month, Seoul also launched the 12-day Hoguk exercise with the participation of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and the US military. The Hoguk drills will last until October 28.
Almost simultaneously, South Korea joined a US-led multinational exercise on cyber operations called Cyber Flag for the first time. According to the South Korean Defense Ministry, 18 personnel from the South Korean military are participating in the exercise, held from October 24 to 28 and which involves 25 countries.
Beijing has repeatedly warned Washington and Seoul against provoking Pyongyang and igniting instability on the Korean Peninsula. “All parties concerned should focus on the overall situation of peace and stability on the peninsula and prevent the situation from escalating,” Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, told the international body on October 5. Geng highlighted that the recent bolstering of the US military alliance in the Asia-Pacific region has only increased the risk of military confrontation.
“Historical experience shows that dialogue and consultation are the only correct way to resolve the Korean Peninsula issue,” the Chinese official stressed.
Diplomatic Logjam Between North and South
However, if Pyongyang decides to conduct a seventh nuclear test, there is little if anything that the US and its Asian allies can do to prevent it, according to Zhang.
“Frankly, I don’t see what the three can do with North Korea’s seventh nuclear test,” the Chinese scholar said. “It is already under very systematic sanctions by the United Nations and it is hard to imagine that the US, South Korea, and Japan could pursue additional meaningful sanctions against Pyongyang. Current sanctions were adopted due to China and Russia’s support in 2017. Now, the strategic landscape has completely changed and it is now impossible to expect China and Russia supporting new sanction measures.”
The US and its Asian allies are likely to take a series of measures in response to the DPRK’s potential nuclear test, according to Michael Madden, nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center, leading contributing analyst to 38 North, and director and founder of NK Leadership Watch.
“The ‘unparalleled response’ line comes from remarks made by the Republic of Korea [South Korea] 1st Vice Foreign Minister following interactions with officials from the US and Japan,” said Madden. “The primary response will be an increase in military exercises in and around the Korean Peninsula.”
For its part, the US might also move certain military assets into the area as a warning to the DPRK, according to the analyst.
“There has already been a loose plan to continue some exercises and drills through the middle of November, albeit on a small scale,” he said. “In the event of the seventh nuclear test, the scope and equipment of those exercises will probably be expanded. From the ROK we might also see them scrap some of the agreements they made with the DPRK during the Moon Administration. The Yoon Administration has called attention to the North violating the 2018 inter-Korea military agreement so a seventh nuclear test raises the probability that both Koreas will discard that agreement.”
For its part, the North could launch or attempt to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and additionally carry out intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) drills, according to Madden.
“The North could very well declare itself on a wartime footing which they had done in 2013. If there are additional military exercises from the US, ROK and/or Japan, it is highly probable the DPRK will respond with their own drills and exercises. Of course, all of this activity would be an escalation,” the US analyst projected.
According to Madden, the unfolding situation “is a bit of a diplomatic logjam” between the South and North, as Pyongyang has already announced that it will not negotiate its nuclear weapons program or inventory, while the US, South Korea, and Japan urge it to denuclearize.
However, the analyst did not rule out that South and North Korea could have a meeting or interaction to reduce tensions if military engagement between the two escalates at the border. Another de-escalation scenario could involve another country, like China or Russia, brokering something between the two sides.
“In the current context of the re-rise of tension, a diplomatic option no longer exists,” argued Zhang. “The only viable alternative, as some have suggested in the US, is to accept North Korea’s nuclear status. That would remove a source of conflict between the US and North Korea simply by recognizing and accepting the status quo. However, Washington should not be expected to pursue this option.”
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More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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