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US Treasury Deficit Doubles as Biden Bankrolls Multiple Foreign Conflicts

By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 23.10.2023

The US is going further into the red with as it arms its client states for a series of conflicts. Sergio Rossi, professor of macroeconomics and monetary economics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, said the strategies to avoid a default would only prove to be a “time-bomb.”

US President Joe Biden’s appeal for cash to arm Ukraine and Israel could meet resistance from Congress thanks to the runaway federal budget.

Treasury department figures released late last week showed the government deficit had hit almost £1.7 trillion, up from £1.37 trillion a year earlier, a 23 percent increase in the public debt — although lower than the $2.78 trillion left by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

The news was worse than it sounded however. The 2022 deficit included the budget for Biden’s student loan repayment program, money that was never spent as the Supreme Court struck it down. The treasury then claimed those unspent public funds as a “saving” in 2023 — meaning the true deficit doubled from $1 trillion in 2022 to $2 trillion this year.

That news came a day before Biden asked Congress for a $106 billion emergency foreign military aid budget. The lion’s share, $61.4 billion, is earmarked for Washington’s proxy conflict with Russia in Ukraine, while another $14.3 billion is to arm Israel for its latest attempt to destroy the Hamas movement in the besieged Gaza Strip.

That request dwarfs the $77 billion in arms and cash gifted to the Kiev regime since the start of Russia’s de-Nazification operation in February 2022.

Economist Sergio Rossi told Sputnik that the mounting deficit would make it harder for Biden to persuade Congress to approve his $100 billion budget request for more arms to Ukraine and Israel “in light of the problematic economic situation and outlook for the US stakeholders, namely, households, firms, and a variety of financial institutions.”

“Usually, when the domestic economic situation worsens, these stakeholders and their political supporters reduce the volume of foreign aid, to focus on supporting their own national economy first of all,” Rossi said.

He said the funding the conflict in Ukraine — while preparing for a Pacific showdown with China over Taiwan — had already put too much strain on Washington’s finances before the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a surprise attack into southern Israel.

“The US government cannot continue financing two military conflicts, particularly if the latter will continue without any foreseeable peaceful agreement before long,” Rossi stressed. “There are already signs that the political consensus for such a financial support is diminishing across the US economy, notably where both the labour and the product markets are in a difficult situation for a number of middle-class workers and several small or medium-sized firms.”

The state of the US economy was “worrying,” he said, and the outlook for the next two years was “even worse,” thanks to “global macroeconomic issues related to different geopolitical problems.”

The “mushroom” of ensuing inflation has badly affected consumer purchasing power. “As a result, firms’ investment is discouraged, both because of this inflationary pressure and the Fed’s repeated increases in the policy rates of interest.”

“The US economy is even closer to a recession than it was one year ago,” Rossi warned, although “there is no potential risk of a default of the US federal government.”

He pointed out that Congress could simply raise the public debt ceiling and the US Federal Reserve could buy up government bonds as an effective loan.

“This, however, is a time bomb that eventually can burst, particularly once some viable and credible alternative to the US dollar will emerge across the global economy,” Rossi said. “The BRICS community could provide such an alternative in a not-too-distant future.”

October 23, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

German MP announces formation of new anti-establishment party

RT | October 23, 2023

Germany will have a new left-wing political grouping in 2024 after prominent Left Party MP Sahra Wagenknecht announced the formation of her own party. Its platform will include the normalization of relations with Russia and a peace-oriented foreign policy.

Wagenknecht broke the news during a press conference in Berlin on Monday, saying she and fellow Left Party defectors had “decided to establish a new party.” Explaining the need for a new political force, she argued that things “can’t continue like this” or Germans “will probably not recognize our country in ten years.”

The politician plans for the new party to run candidates in regional elections in the eastern regions of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, as well as in the European Parliament election next year.

A fresh poll commissioned by Bild am Sonntag indicated that some 27% of Germans would not rule out voting for Wagenknecht’s new political force.

Until the party’s official formation at the start of 2024, Wagenknecht and nine other Bundestag colleagues who resigned from the Left Party said they wished to keep their current seats. Party leadership has, however, already indicated that the defectors could lose their mandates much earlier. In September, Wagenknecht hinted at her plans to branch out, claiming that many Germans felt that none of the existing political forces represented their views.

Not long after that, the “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – for reason and justice” was registered with the aim of laying the groundwork for the establishment of a new party. The politician clarified that the Left Party had, in her opinion, become increasingly irrelevant. She also blasted Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government on Monday as the “worst government in the history of the federal republic.”

Wagenknecht said she would seek to preserve Germany’s “economic strengths” as well as work toward more social justice. With respect to foreign policy, Berlin should switch to diplomacy rather than weapons deliveries when dealing with conflicts, the politician insisted.

She has been a vocal critic of Scholz’s policies toward Moscow over the Ukraine conflict, arguing that the current approach risks leading to a global, and potentially nuclear conflict. Berlin, according to Wagenknecht, should assume the role of a peacemaker.

Commenting previously on the EU’s anti-Russia sanctions, the politician has repeatedly claimed that the punitive measures are doing more harm to the German economy than to the Russian one, and thus should be lifted.

Wagenknecht is also a prominent critic of the European Union’s “elite project” and NATO, and argues for more independence for national states.

October 23, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Chinese Businessmen Literally Laughing at West’s Anti-Russian Sanctions

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 21.10.2023

Chinese businessmen are literally laughing at the West’s sanctions packages against Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has revealed.

Citing a media report from Friday indicating that the 12th package of EU sanctions may include a Lithuania-proposed ban on the export of European-made nails, tacks, drawing pins, sewing and knitting needles, radiators, and other odds and ends to Russia, Zakharova said that judging by past experience, she can hardly fathom how Russia’s Chinese partners will react to the news.

“A year ago I was at a meeting with representatives of Chinese business circles in Moscow. We were talking, and suddenly a message popped up on my phone with news that the US had adopted yet another sanctions package banning the supply of elevators and related equipment to Russia. According to the sanctions’ authors, this measure would ‘paralyze the construction industry in Russia.’ When I read this news to my Chinese colleagues, they burst out in Homeric laughter. They literally howled and roared with laughter,” Zakharova recalled in a Telegram post on Saturday.

“After the ‘sanctions hara-kiri’ of the Japanese automobile industry on the Russian market, the most incredible dream of Chinese automotive manufacturers came true. Within six months, they confirmed the veracity of the saying ‘nature abhors a vacuum’,” the spokeswoman added.

“It’s scary to imagine what kind of hysteria will begin among Chinese manufacturers of knitting needles and buttons if they learn about this Lithuanian plan to ‘destroy Russian industrial capabilities.’ Where will Lithuania put its wares if such a decision is made? I don’t know, they could put the inscription ‘to spite Russia’ on their highway made of buttons, nails, sewing and knitting needles,” Zakharova summed up.

Russian-Chinese trade has hit back-to-back-to-back record highs in recent years, reaching the equivalent of over $176 billion by the end of the third quarter of the current year. The Asian industrial giant has taken to importing record quantities of Russian energy and other natural resources, and has helped fill the gap left by European and Japanese finished goods manufacturers after their exodus from Russia in 2022.

Speaking with Chinese media ahead of his visit to the Belt and Road Initiative forum earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin reported a “32 percent growth” in Russia-China trade turnover over the past year, and said that “there is every reason to believe that we will reach the $200 billion mark” by the end of 2023.

The reorientation of trade from Europe to China, India and other countries in the developing world has helped Russia weather the storm of Western sanctions and trade restrictions, with the country’s GDP growth expected to reach up to 2.5 percent in 2023 after contracting by 2.1 percent a year earlier.

October 21, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Senators Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin Play Musical Chairs

One arch interventionist replaces another to lead the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 10, 2023

Many Americans have come to accept that corruption and lying is the name of the game in Washington and, increasingly, at both state and local levels of government, in part because lying and stealing by those who run the country has become virtually consequence free. To cite only one example, the current ruinously expensive war against Russia began when the US and other NATO powers lied to Mikhael Gorbachev about their intentions regarding expansion of the “defensive” alliance into Eastern Europe. They then lied again in 2014 with the Minsk Accords, which were supposed to give some measure of autonomy to the Russian ethnic regions of Ukraine in the Donbas, an apparent concession that served as cover for arming and training the Ukrainian Army. Finally, the US and its friends arranged for regime change in Ukraine in 2014 to replace the friendly-to-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych with a pro-western candidate selected by the fanatical State Department neocon Victoria Nuland, who boasted how Washington had spent $5 billion to bring about the flip in government. That move warned Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding what was going on so he quickly annexed Russian ethnic majority Crimea, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based.

Driving all the US led aggression against Russia is the neocon foreign policy embraced by most of the two major political parties which demands that the United States have military superiority over all competitors everywhere around the world where it has interests or allies. That has meant by one count something like 1,000 foreign military bases. By way of comparison, Russia has only one overseas base, in Syria. And the maintenance of all those bases as well as the network of installations inside the US costs lots of money which fattens defense contractors and also winds up in the pockets of aspiring politicians while increasing the national debt to unsustainable levels. And it is no surprise to learn that when generals and admirals retire from active service, 80% of them wind up employed by contractors to lobby their former colleagues on the latest weapons systems that are so urgently required to maintain supremacy.

The recent exposure of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey’s apparent tendency to accept bribes in exchange for various kinds of favorable treatment and protection was a particularly lurid tale in part because much of the loot consisted of $480,000 in cash stuffed into jacket pockets, closets and in a safe, along with 13 gold bars, two of them marked as 1 Kilogram in weight to the value of more than $100,000. In the garage was an upscale $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible that was a gift to Menendez’s then girlfriend, who had wrecked her own vehicle in an accident in which she had struck and killed a pedestrian. The car came from one of the New Jersey businessmen currently involved in the corruption and bribery investigation and no one can quite explain how an accident in which someone had died was never properly investigated by police. Menendez had allegedly helped the businessman by arranging to block a criminal investigation into his company’s activities.

Menendez is indeed a powerful senator even though there is more than a whiff of suspicion surrounding him and his activities. A Cuban American who is prominent in the Hispanic caucus, he was regarded as a political hardliner from his bully pulpit as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2015, Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges but the jury was unable to reach a verdict, and the case was dropped in 2018. In April 2018, the United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics “severely admonished” Menendez for accepting gifts from donor Salomon Melgen without obtaining committee approval, for failing to disclose certain gifts, and for using his position as a senator to advance Melgen’s interests. This time around, however, the evidence for wrongdoing is much more compelling and it even involves a foreign country, Egypt, so he has resigned his chairmanship but has refused to leave the Senate. He claims he is innocent, of course and continues to promote Biden’s view of the world, to include identifying the “core American foreign policy values” as “democracy, human rights, and the rule of law” even though it does not apply to him. And, of course, as a Cuban that worldview includes perpetual hostility to Havana and all its works, including its links to Russia.

Bob Menendez is up for reelection in 2024, but opinion polls taken just after the reports of his corruption surfaced indicate that he has no chance of winning against several Democrats who will challenge him. He will certainly receive some favorable press and significant campaign donations as he’s long been linked to Jewish lobbying groups like AIPAC and is closely aligned with Israel on foreign policy issues to include opposing in 2015 the President Barack Obama nuclear deal with Iran, asserting falsely that Iran is already working on a nuclear weapon. In March 2017, Menendez co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.270), which sought to make it “a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.” More important perhaps, Menendez has twice advanced legislation through his committee supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, so the White House will presumably do everything it can to protect him, but only up to a certain point.

Menendez has been replaced by Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, who will not be running for re-election in 2024. Cardin, who is Jewish, is a strong and consistent supporter of Israel, like Menendez, and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin of Russia. He was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution expressing objection to the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories as a violation of international law. Cardin warned that “Congress will take action against efforts at the UN, or beyond, that use Resolution 2334 to target Israel.” Cardin also voted with Republicans to support President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He declared that the time that “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel and the location of the US Embassy should reflect this fact.” Cardin and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, like Menendez, were strong supporters of the proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act in late 2018, described above, and they also called for a sanctions mechanism to punish international organizations that seek to boycott Israel or its illegal settlements.

Oddly, Cardin has sometimes been credited with being a “human rights advocate,” a label which the Palestinians and others might object to. The claim is based on his authorship of US legislation referred to as the Magnitsky Act. According to Cardin and his allies in Washington, Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer hired by Bill Browder head of Hermitage Capital Management Fund, an Anglo-American investment fund operating in Moscow, to investigate the apparent diversion of as much as $230 million in taxes due to the Russian government. Hermitage was a hedge fund that was focused on “investing” in Russia, taking advantage initially of the extremely corrupt loans-for-shares scheme under Boris Yeltsin, and then continuing to profit greatly during the early years of Vladimir Putin’s ascendancy. The loans-for-shares scheme that made Browder his initial fortune has been correctly characterized as the epitome of corruption, an arrangement whereby foreign investors worked with local oligarchs to strip the former Soviet economy of its assets paying pennies on each dollar of value. Along the way, Browder was reportedly involved in making false representations on official documents and bribery. Nevertheless, by 2005 Hermitage was the largest foreign investor in Russia.

Magnitsky allegedly became a whistleblower after discovering that the missing money had been stolen by the police, organized crime figures and other government officials. After he went to the authorities to complain he was unjustly imprisoned for eleven months. When he refused to recant he was both beaten and denied medical treatment to coerce him into cooperating, resulting in his death in jail at age 37 in November 2009. He has become something of a hero for those who have decried official corruption in Russia.

The Magnitsky case is of particular importance because both the European Union and the United States have initiated sanctions against the Russian officials and entities that were allegedly involved. In the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by a Russia-phobic Cardin and signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, the US asserted its willingness to punish foreign governments for violations of human rights. Russia reacted angrily, noting that the actions taken by its government internally, notably the operation of its domestic judiciary, were being subjected to outside interference. It reciprocated with sanctions against US officials as well as by increasing pressure on foreign non-governmental pro-democracy groups operating in Russia. Tension between Moscow and Washington increased considerably as a result and Congress subsequently passed the so-called Global Magnitsky Act as part of the defense appropriation bill in 2016. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama in December. It expanded the use of sanctions and other punitive measures against regimes guilty of egregious human rights abuses though it has never been applied to US friends like Saudi Arabia and Israel. It has been used to punish China and Cuba. It was also sponsored by Senator Cardin and was clearly primarily intended to intimidate Russia.

The tit-for-tat that has severely damaged relations with Russia is based on the standard narrative embraced by many regarding who Magnitsky was and what he did, but is it true? Many now believe that there was indeed a huge fraud related to Russian taxes but that it was not carried out by corrupt officials. Instead, it was deliberately ordered and engineered by Browder with Magnitsky, who was an accountant not a lawyer, personally developing and implementing the scheme used to carry out the deception.

To be sure, Browder and his international legal team have presented what they regard as evidence in the case. But while it might be that Browder and Magnitsky have been the victims of a corrupt and venal state, it just might be the other way around. To cite only one example, much of the case against the Russian authorities is derived from English language translations of relevant documents provided by Browder himself. The actual documents in Russian sometimes say something quite different.

So there we go again. As the wheel turns in Washington nothing really changes. Benjamin Cardin as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs will promote the same policies of unrelenting hostility towards countries like Russia and China as did his recently resigned predecessor Bob Menendez. And as fighting between Israel and Gaza has just broken out, you can count on how the United States will line up even as hundreds of Palestinian children die as a powerful Israel pummels and pounds and largely civilian population in Gaza. Those are the sorts of things that American citizens can count on these days, unfortunately.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

October 10, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Heinous Choreography of Village Massacre as Zelensky Begs for More Weapons at EU Summit

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 8, 2023

The horrific missile strike on a Ukrainian village in which 52 people, including a young boy, were killed in a cafe was widely reported by Western media with strident condemnations of a Russian “war crime”.

All the American and European media reports relied solely on Ukrainian security sources for their immediate attribution of the massacre to Russian forces. It was claimed that a Russian Iskander missile hit the village of Hroza (Groza).

Russia did not make any comment on the specific accusations, simply repeating that its military does not deliberately target civilian centers.

The carnage on Thursday, October 5, occurred at the very same time that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was addressing a summit in Granada in Spain attended by European Union leaders. Zelensky referred to the missile strike in highly emotive language, condemning it as “Russian genocidal aggression”. EU leaders joined in the denunciation of Russia.

The BBC quoted Zelensky as saying the act “couldn’t even be called a beastly act – because it would be an insult to beasts”.

The purpose of Zelensky’s attendance in Granada was to make a renewed appeal for European NATO members to supply more air defence systems to Ukraine. It was reported that Spain pledged to send the U.S.-made HAWK system to Ukraine.

Zelensky also told European leaders that the political turmoil in the United States over the abrupt Congressional cutting off of financial aid to Ukraine was a “dangerous situation”.

The Biden White House referred to the missile strike on the village of Hroza as a reminder to U.S. lawmakers why continued military aid to Ukraine is essential.

As several Western media reports acknowledged, the targeted village with a population of around 300 did not have any military or tactical value. It is located around 17 miles (27 kms) from the front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces in the Kharkiv region.

The victims of the explosion were attending a funeral for a Ukrainian soldier. If Russia fired a missile it would have been for a depraved reason, as the Western media and politicians like Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak were quick to allege.

On the other hand, cynical as it might seem, for the Kiev regime there was a big incentive to stealthily carry out the missile strike against its territory for the propaganda value of blaming Russia. The timing comes at a crucial moment when the Kiev regime is “freaking out” over the possible long-term cutting off of military aid by the U.S. and its NATO partners.

Such a false-flag provocation carried out by the Kiev regime has precedent, albeit not reported by the Western media.

Last month, on September 6, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kiev with an additional $1 billion in military and financial aid. Hours before Blinken arrived, the city of Konstantinovka (Kostiantynivka) was hit by a missile killing 17 people. The city is located in territory under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

That atrocity was similarly condemned as “Russian terrorism” by Ukrainian President Zelensky while he was hosting Blinken in the capital.

Like the attack on Hroza last week, the one on Konstantinovka was immediately blamed on Russia and reported widely as such by Western media.

It turned out, however, that the missile that hit Konstantinovka was not fired by Russian forces. A follow-up report by the New York Times on September 18 found that the warhead had been fired from AFU positions. The NY Times described it as an “errant missile” that slammed into a busy marketplace by mistake. Nevertheless, despite the evidence, the Kiev regime continues to blame Russia for the crime.

There is good reason to conclude that the missile atrocity on September 6 was not “an error” but rather was deliberately staged by the Kiev regime as a false-flag provocation to highlight the visit by the senior American diplomat, Antony Blinken, and the need for his weapons gifting.

For those who don’t rely on the Western media for their information, it is well-documented that the NeoNazi Kiev regime has a foul habit of staging massacres for propaganda. The Bucha massacre last March was one such macabre event. This was when several civilians were found executed, their bodies strewn on streets, supposedly after Russian forces retreated from the city. All Western media blamed the apparent executions on Russia and continue to do so. But the freshness of the corpses found days after Russian troops pulled out of Bucha proves that the killings were done by others, probably Kiev agents.

Another probable false flag was the missile strike on a railway station in the city of Kramatorsk on April 8, 2022, that killed 63 people. Again, Russia was roundly blamed and condemned by Western media and politicians taking their cue from Ukrainian official sources. In that incident, the missile was later identified as a Tochka-U not in regular use by Russian forces, but more likely used by the AFU.

The Kramatorsk atrocity came on the day that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was visiting Kiev, condemning it as “despicable” and vowing tens of billions more Euros in support for the Kiev regime.

The Ukraine war has become an obscene racket for profiteering by the U.S. and European military industries, their lobbyists and most of the Western politicians they have close sponsorship links to, like Blinken and Von der Leyen. It is also a money-spinner for the corrupt Kiev regime whose President Zelensky and other cronies have made up to $400 million in skimming off aid, as reported by Seymour Hersh citing Pentagon sources. This rampant corruption was why the Kiev regime sacked most of its defence officials last month in a desperate attempt to appear as if it were cleaning up the graft.

Western public fatigue and disgust with the war racket are growing and imperilling the continuation of the colossal scam. False-flag atrocities are a logical, heinous way to keep the racket on track.

October 8, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | 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

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

Netherlands sued for stopping ship deliveries to Russia

RT | October 4, 2023

The largest Dutch shipbuilder is seeking compensation from the government for damage caused by the sanctions on Russia, which have prevented it from honoring a number of contracts.

The ongoing legal battle, which started in May with a suit filed by Damen Shipyards Group at the district court in Rotterdam, was revealed by Bloomberg on Tuesday. Company spokesman Rick van de Weg later confirmed the pending proceedings to other media outlets.

Damen is a 90-year-old Gorinchem-based family-owned business which builds various types of vessels, from warships to luxury yachts. Days before the hostilities in Ukraine erupted in February last year, the company delivered a dredger to Russia for duty in the Arctic, according to Bloomberg.

Sanctions banning most business transactions with Russia, which the EU imposed in retaliation for the conflict, have prevented Damen from fulfilling its obligations under several contracts. It has also suspended its engineering branch in the country.

The Western sanctions supposed to cripple the Russian economy and force Moscow to concede defeat in Ukraine have not been as efficient as their architects had hoped.

The G7 oil price cap, a mechanism intended to force Russia to sell crude at or below $60 per barrel, does not appear to be working, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted last week. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak stated on Tuesday that the impossibility of enforcing the price cap was apparent to Moscow from the start.

The EU’s decision to decouple from cheap Russian gas undermined the competitiveness of its heavy industries, in some cases forcing energy-intensive manufacturing to shut down.

Nevertheless, Germany is likely still consuming natural gas originating in Russia, Uniper CEO Michael Lewis said last week. The German wholesaler buys liquified natural gas in the open market and cannot be certain about where it comes from, he explained.

October 4, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

EU Incites Ukrainian Conflict and Stigmatizes Peace Talks – Hungarian Foreign Minister

Sputnik – 03.10.2023

BUDAPEST – The world outside Europe does not share its position on the Ukraine conflict and does not understand European double standards applied to conflicts in other parts of the planet, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.

“I can say that the world outside Europe is already really looking forward to the end of this war, because they do not understand many things. They do not understand, for example, how it can be that when a war is not in Europe, the European Union, looking down with fantastic moral superiority, calls on the parties to peace, advocates negotiations and an immediate end to violence. However, when there is a war in Europe, the European Union incites the conflict and supplies weapons, and anyone who talks about peace is immediately stigmatized,” Szijjarto said in an interview on Monday.

He also said that other countries do not understand why Europe “has made this conflict global” and why people living in Asia, Africa and Latin America have to pay for it due to growing inflation, energy prices and unstable food supplies.

Szijjarto added that Hungary’s position on the issue is treated with “great respect” outside the EU, which he was witnessing more than once during the UN General Assembly.

Hungary has consistently opposed sanctions on Russian energy resources and sending weapons to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. The Hungarian parliament issued a decree banning the supply of weapons to Ukraine from the country’s territory. Szijjarto explained that Budapest seeks to secure the western Ukrainian region of Zakarpatye, where ethnic Hungarians live, since the supply of weapons through its territory would become a military target for Russia. The country’s leadership has repeatedly emphasized that Hungary stands for the earliest possible start of peace negotiations.

October 3, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

American Meddling Failed To Prevent Robert Fico’s Victory In The Latest Slovak Elections

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | OCTOBER 1, 2023

The “Direction-Social Democracy” (SMER) party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico emerged victorious after Slovakia’s latest elections on Saturday in spite of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warning before the vote that the US will go to any lengths to prevent that outcome. Nobody should have been surprised by that since CNN’s reporting made it obvious that Washington wanted him to lose. Here are three of their articles fearmongering about his democratically driven return to office:

* “A NATO country could soon have a pro-Russian leader”

* “With Kremlin apologist leading the polls, Slovakia vote threatens country’s support for Ukraine”

* “Pro-Russian politician wins Slovakia’s parliamentary election”

The reason why America meddled in this election is because it fears both the substance and symbolism of a hitherto stalwart NATO vassal defecting from the bloc’s anti-Russian proxy war coalition. Fico previously condemned the West’s role in provoking and perpetuating this conflict exactly as neighboring Hungarian leader Viktor Orban has done since the get-go. Just like him, Fico is also against arming Ukraine and could prevent others’ weapons from transiting across his country as well.

He’ll still need to form a governing coalition in order to make good on his promises, but few doubt that he’ll be able to. Assuming that’ll happen, then Slovakia will join Hungary in creating a center of anti-war gravity in the heart of both the EU and NATO, which complements Poland’s newly cautious stance towards this proxy conflict brought about by its dispute with Ukraine. These three could then form an influential force if the latter’s ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party wins re-election on 15 October.

Poland remains much more committed to this conflict than Hungary and post-election Slovakia, but there’s also no denying that the Polish people are incredibly offended at Ukraine’s ungratefulness. A critical mass of them might therefore vote for the anti-establishment Confederation party to protest PiS’ prior appeasement of Kiev up until recently despite that regime’s glorification of those who genocided Poles. If enough do so, then PiS might be compelled to form a coalition government with Confederation.

In that case, Poland might move closer towards Hungary and Slovakia’s position, which could inspire average Europeans to follow these countries’ lead during their own upcoming elections. The demonstration effect that was set into motion by Slovakia and which might soon manifest itself in Poland is therefore regarded by the US as a strategic challenge for good reason. That doesn’t justify its failed meddling in the latest Slovak elections, but simply places its motives into the appropriate context.

The fact that the CIA still failed to prevent Fico’s re-election dispels three popular myths, first and foremost that agency’s omnipotence. The second is foreign voters’ alleged inability to defy the American government’s will, the false perception of which has been exploited to suppress anti-establishment turnout. And finally, the Ukrainian Conflict is truly unpopular in some countries despite the media’s claims to the contrary and its crazed efforts to artificially manufacture support for this proxy war there.

With these symbolic outcomes in mind as well as the substantive changes to Slovak policy that are likely to follow its latest election, not to mention their possible impact on Poland in the coming future and the rest of Europe after that, the failure of America’s meddling campaign is a major development. It’s premature to describe it as a game-changer, but it still suggests a potentially impending inflection point in the Ukrainian Conflict, provided of course that the CIA doesn’t successfully sabotage related trends.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Have you heard dis information?

MEDIA LIES: Hunter Biden Laptop is “Russian Disinformation”!

Matt Orfalea | September 2022
Extra bonus:

October 1, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

‘Ukraine has a terrorist government’: A new force wants the EU to change its stance

By Bradley Blankenship | RT | September 30, 2023

On September 16, around 10,000 protesters descended on Prague’s Wenceslas Square to demand a change to their government’s foreign policy. These protests were led by a group called Pravo Respekt Odbornost (Law Respect Expertise; PRO), which the Western mainstream media describes as pro-Russian and anti-Western.

Jindrich Rajchl, a Czech attorney inspired by the political lines of American conservatives Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, is the leader of the group. While some may see Rajchl’s movement as completely out of touch with the country’s traditional politics, he believes that he’s tapped into something much more critical to Prague’s national mythos: rejecting foreign domination.

PRO and its supporters see the current Czech government as traitors who are controlled primarily from Washington and Brussels. And even though the political environment in the country has been turbulent over the past several years, a situation which the current goverment was meant to resolve, Rajchl and PRO believe that a national-conservative platform is the only thing that will rein in out-of-control excesses emanating from foreign powers.

Political situation in the Czech Republic

The current Czech government is led by a three-party center-right coalition called SPOLU (‘Together’), which is composed of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), and TOP 09. These also have an agreement with the Pirate Party and the Mayors and Independents. It rode into power on a strong pro-Western, anti-corruption platform after the 2021 parliamentary elections.

That election was, first and foremost, a referendum on the leadership of former prime minister Andrej Babis, who held this post from 2017 until his eventual defeat, and served before that as finance minister from 2014. He was the spitting image of the prototypical Eastern European ‘oligarch’ before seeking public office, and is one of Europe’s richest people, according to Forbes, with an estimated net worth of $3.7 billion.

Throughout his entire tenure as prime minister, allegations of impropriety dogged him, sparking widespread mobilization within civil society. He was caught up in an EU subsidy fraud case, for which he was charged criminally and investigated by Brussels; he allegedly forcibly disappeared his own son; and he was mentioned in the Pandora Papers. It is against the backdrop of this intense public scrutiny for Babis and his left-wing coalition, which was composed of his center-left populist ANO (‘Yes’) party and the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD), with a tentative agreement with the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), that the Czech left was obliterated.

Babis’ alleged corruption was tied not only to his person but also to left-wing politics and its basic positions in general. While Babis was a moderate on foreign policy and supported French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for ‘strategic autonomy,’ the PM was instead cast as pro-China and pro-Russia for not buying all-in to Brussels’ political agenda. Likewise, the junior parties of the coalition – the CSSD and KSCM – were so damaged by their affiliation with Babis that neither qualified for any seats in the current Chamber of Deputies, and CSSD has only one senator, marking the first time that both houses of parliament have been without a communist party representative.

This strong mandate for the pro-Western Czech right is led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala, the leader of the very party that helped impose Washington’s ‘shock therapy’ on Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic during the 1990s. It has been given carte blanche to buy into Washington’s imperial project in Ukraine – and in the Czech Republic itself.

The current Czech parliament ratified a new defense treaty with the United States that will make it easier for Washington to deploy troops on Czech soil – a move that critics see as a violation of Czech sovereignty. Defense Minister Jana Cernochova and the ruling coalition have even expressed a desire to host a US military base in their country. Given the Czech Republic’s experience with foreign occupiers, including Nazi Germany during the Second World War and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, such a move would betray the country’s fundamental ideals.

With the death of the left comes an opportunity for the right

Enter a Czech lawyer named Jindrich Rajchl, who leads the emerging political party, PRO. The views of Rajchl and his party, in contrast to the positions of the ruling coalition, may seem out of step with the country’s typical view. For example, here’s what he said at September’s rally:

“We made another step today to move out of the way the rock that is the government of Mr. [Prime Minister Petr] Fiala,” Rajchl told demonstrators.

“They are agents of foreign powers, people who fulfill orders, ordinary puppets. And I do not want a puppet government anymore,” he said, calling on Prague to veto Ukraine’s inclusion in NATO.

PRO’s position – a national-conservative-based populist backlash against the decadence of Western liberalism – seems to be a welcome alternative to many disaffected Czechs, many of whom saw Fiala and his Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the party of the country’s first president, Vaclav Havel, as a return to normalcy.

They also want to broadly slash spending on social services, such as education, and pass the burden onto students. For example, PRO wishes to see university tuition introduced – which, to be sure, would be far less than in places such as the United States.

While PRO is an up-and-coming group and has yet to participate in an election, Rajchl told RT in a profile published in May that he is optimistic about his party’s odds. According to internal polling, he said his party was just over the minimum 5% threshold needed to enter parliament in the 2025 election. That means that, if the elections were held then, Rajchl would be an MP, a position he hopes to wield to form an alliance with other parties, such as the right-wing party Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) or potentially Andrej Babis’ ANO, which is topping polls. Politico’s latest tracker, however, has PRO at only 2% – below the threshold – and ANO on top with 34%.

But Rajchl hopes to run for the European Parliament in June 2024, primarily so he can take on Brussels directly.

Economy or war?

The economic situation in the Czech Republic may give PRO a chance for success. In the years following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, prominent international credit agencies like Moody’s have downgraded the Czech Republic’s credit rating due to substantial budget deficits. Before this development, the Czech Republic boasted one of Europe’s, if not the world’s, most favorable public finance outlooks.

Inflation has rocked the Czech economy for several years. According to the Czech Statistical Office, Czechs spent 14% more last year than the year before but, in real terms, spending fell by over 1%. Energy prices were primarily responsible, soaring by 15.5% while fuel increased by 33.5%.

The general outlook for the working class has also been abysmal – and policymakers have done little to support them. Analysis by PAQ Research published in December 2022, based on data from the Czech Statistical Office (CSU), projected that up to 30% of Czech households would fall into poverty this year. Despite this forecast, the ruling coalition still moved forward with an austerity package that would have an outsized effect on average people.

A current austerity initiative making its way through the Czech Republic is set to reduce spending by roughly 94 billion Czech crowns ($4.4 billion) in 2024, followed by an additional 150 billion in 2025 ($6.9 billion). This plan aims to achieve these cuts through various measures, including raising the retirement age, slightly increasing corporate and real estate taxes, and augmenting the current alcohol tax. Furthermore, it will entail workforce reductions within the public sector or corresponding wage adjustments, and it will also significantly raise taxes on the middle class, students, parents, and others.

Numerous experts have shared their views in the media, suggesting that the government’s adoption of an austerity plan became an unavoidable necessity. But unions and opposition political parties have staunchly disagreed, spawning massive protests over the past year.

At the same time, the Fiala goverment has sent weapons and aid hand over fist to Ukraine. In February alone, the goverment approved one weapons shipment worth an estimated 10 billion crowns ($430.74 million). The total amount of aid sent to Ukraine is believed to be around 20 billion crowns ($861.55 million), which constitutes a significant portion of the amount the government wants to cut with its austerity plan.

PRO is tying the Czech Republic’s economic and financial woes to Ukraine aid, and believes that out-of-control spending is hurting the country.

Ukrainian bone of contention

To elaborate on these topics and more, RT caught up with Rajchl again to learn more about PRO’s foreign policy agenda, following the aforementioned profile on him from May. A few developments have happened in Europe since the last conversation, including a public falling out between Poland and Ukraine over grain. Warsaw has unilaterally blocked agricultural imports from Kiev, which had flooded the European market and, Polish leaders say, hurt local farmers. This occurred after an EU-wide ban expired.

When asked about the latest spat between Ukraine and Poland, Rajchl said he shares the same views; however, he insisted that he had always held this position.

“I’ve been saying this since last year: In the end, it’s about the black hole that’s taking European and US money, and there’s huge corruption. The money isn’t used to help the Ukrainian oligarchs. And everyone has understood that the policy of President Zelensky is failing. I’m glad that the Polish government finally found this out. I hope the Czech government will too, but I don’t think they will. They put all their political capital into helping Ukraine and if they admitted that they were wrong, they would be recalled and would have to resign,” Rajchl said.

He added: “The Ukrainian government is a terrorist government. [With regard to] the rocket that crossed into Poland, it’s clear that this was a Ukrainian rocket – not a Russian rocket. Zelensky blamed Russia from the very beginning, although he knew from the very beginning it was his own rocket. He fired the rocket against the EU as a false-flag operation to blame Putin and get more help from the West, which is a form of blackmail. This regime is a criminal regime, Zelensky is a terrorist and should be tried at The Hague.”

Indeed, just after Rajchl’s conversation with RT, Polish investigators reportedly reached the conclusion that the rockets that hit the Polish border village of Przewodow must have been of Ukrainian origin, according to a Polish media report.

What else do they believe in?

Last year, at the height of Europe’s inflation crisis, PRO held a similar rally that attracted tens of thousands of people. During those protests, the group blasted the inflation that was crippling the working class and demanded the government’s resignation. Today, according to the latest Morning Consult tracker of world leaders, Fiala’s government has a dismal 20% approval rating.

Commenting on this, Rajchl said, “It’s a well-deserved place because he’s the worst leader in the world right now, of all of the leaders I know. He doesn’t care about his own people. The economic situation is mostly contributing to this; Fiala is not doing anything to help the Czech people, and they know it. He’s just taking orders from the EU, from the US, from Kiev, but he’s not doing anything for ordinary Czech people.”

The PRO leader also pointed out the absurdity of Czech officials calling on Europe and the West to prepare for nuclear conflict with Russia. “We don’t need to prepare [for this]; we need to do everything in our power to avoid nuclear conflict with anybody in the world.”

“I don’t want to have any enemies in the world. I am reminded of a speech by John F. Kennedy, when he said, ‘We don’t want to have Pax Americana that is forced by American weapons.’ We need to change the perception of the world so that there won’t be friends and foes, but simply neighbors that are just living on the same planet. I don’t see Russia as a threat; I believe the much bigger threat is the Western powers that are dragging us into this stupid conflict,” Rajchl said about his feelings regarding Russia.

The organizer’s position of establishing equal partnerships and being against hegemony sounded similar to the words of some world leaders at the latest BRICS summit in South Africa. Rajchl said he would be open to seeing Prague join BRICS+, perhaps becoming the first EU member state to be incorporated into that emerging bloc.

In his profile for RT in May, he stressed that he was not anti-American or anti-NATO. However, the protest had a much more radical rhetorical angle this time around. Rajchl stressed that he was not against Washington but rather the current leadership of President Joe Biden.

“I believe Donald Trump is the right leader for the United States,” he said, “Biden is just a puppet. There are people behind the current pushing for war, pushing for the woke agenda, the LGBTQ, the Green New Deal, and all these crazy agendas that are poisoning the world and the minds of our children, which I see as the biggest threat to the world and Europe,” he said.

“The woke agenda,” Rajchl stressed, “is the biggest threat to Western civilization. Look at the United States: Its cities are full of people addicted to fentanyl. Western Europe is full of migrants from Muslim countries, which threatens our security.”

The lawyer-turned-politician plans to run for the European Parliament in the country’s upcoming election in June 2024. Rajchl said he wants to “explore and research all of the things that happened during Covid” because his movement is convinced that there were “a lot of crimes that have been committed by members of the European Commission,” and he also wants to form a “national-conservative platform” to stand up against Brussels’ overreach. While not specific on the numbers, the organizer said he was optimistic about his odds of securing an MEP seat, according to internal polling.

September 30, 2023 Posted by | Economics, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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