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Ukraine violates Chemical Weapons Convention – Russian MoD

RT | July 9, 2024

Russia has found evidence that Ukraine has violated the Chemical Weapons Convention, a top military commander stated on Monday.

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who leads Russia’s chemical and biological defense forces, said that the engineering troops discovered a laboratory that was apparently used to produce hydrogen cyanide – an extremely dangerous and highly toxic agent that had been used as a chemical weapon during World War I.

The facility is located near Avdeevka, a fortified Donbass town liberated by Russia in February, the general said. The improvised laboratory itself was found inside a partially destroyed building in an industrial area, which also had a chemical processing plant. The facility had a rotary evaporator and several chemical reactors. Protective clothes, including US-made gas masks and Polish hazmat suits, were found on the site.

According to Kirillov, the samples taken from the facility and analyzed in Russian military laboratories contained traces of sulfuric acid and sodium cyanide, which can be used to produce hydrogen cyanide. Traces of cyanide anions – poisonous chemical compounds of the cyano group – were on multiple equipment, the general said.

The evidence “clearly shows that the laboratory was used to manufacture poisonous substances,” Kirillov stated. According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s estimates, the facility was capable of producing at least three kilograms of chemical agents per day if operated by just two or three people. Hydrogen cyanide can kill a person if they inhale just 70 to 80 milligrams of the agent.

During his briefing, Kirillov noted hydrogen cyanide is among the Chemical Weapons Convention’s so-called “Schedule 3 chemicals” – agents with large-scale industrial uses that have the potential of being used for chemical warfare. He added that, in May 2024, civilians in the Avdeevka region showed symptoms consistent with the hydrogen cyanide poisoning after Ukrainian military drones dropped bombs in the area. Another case was reported in Russia’s Belgorod Region, where Ukrainian ammunition fragments were found that had traces of hydrogen cyanide, Kirillov said.

Kirillov also cited a Ukrainian POW, whom he identified as Sergey Batyr, as confirming that laboratories that stored chemical agents were also used to make kamikaze drones.

In March 2022, Russia accused Ukraine of running a secret biological weapons program with the help of the US. Kiev has denied having biological weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. The Pentagon has described Russia’s claims as “absurd” and “laughable.”

July 9, 2024 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Civil War in Donbass 10 Years On

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By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | July 8, 2024

July 1st marked the 10th anniversary of a brutal resumption of hostilities in the Donbass civil war. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it passed without comment in the Western media. On June 20th 2014, far-right Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a ceasefire in Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation”. Launched two months prior following vast protests, and violent clashes between Russian-speaking pro-federal activists and authorities throughout eastern Ukraine, the intended lightning strike routing of internal opposition to the Maidan government quickly became an unwinnable quagmire.

Ukrainian forces were consistently beaten back by well-organised and determined rebel forces, hailing from the breakaway “People’s Republics” in Donetsk and Lugansk. Resultantly, Poroshenko outlined a peace plan intended to compel the separatists to put down their arms, during the ceasefire. They refused to do so, prompting the President to order an even more savage crackdown. This too was a counterproductive failure, with the rebels inflicting a series of embarrassing defeats on Western-sponsored government forces. Kiev was ultimately forced to accept the terms of the first Minsk Accords.

Anti-Maidan protesters gather in front of the occupied Donetsk Oblast regional administration building, April 2014

This agreement, like its successor, did not provide for secession or independence for the breakaway republics, but their full autonomy within Ukraine. Russia was named as a mediator, not party, in the conflict. Kiev was to resolve its dispute with rebel leaders directly. Successive Ukrainian governments consistently refused to do so, however. Instead, officials endlessly stonewalled, while pressuring Moscow to formally designate itself a party to the civil war.

No wonder – had Russia accepted, Kiev’s claims that its savage assault on the civilian population of Donbass was in fact a response to invasion by its giant neighbour would’ve been legitimised. In turn, all-out Western proxy war in eastern Ukraine, of the kind that erupted in February 2022, could’ve been precipitated. Which, it is increasingly clear, was the plan all along.

‘Grassroots Movement’

In the days prior to the April 2014 launch of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” in Donbass, notorious war hawk Samantha Power, now USAID chief, openly spoke on ABC of “tell-tale signs of Moscow’s involvement” in the unrest. “It’s professional, coordinated. Nothing grassroots about it,” she alleged. Such framing gave Ukrainian officials, their foreign backers, and the mainstream media licence to brand the brutal operation a legitimate response to a fully-fledged, if unacknowledged, “invasion” by Russia. It is referred to as such in many quarters today.

Yet, at every stage of the Donbass conflict, there were unambiguous indications that the Ukrainian government’s claims of widespread Russian involvement – endorsed by Western governments, militaries, intelligence agencies, pundits and journalists – were fraudulent. One need look no further than the findings of a 2019 report published by the George Soros-funded International Crisis Group (ICG), Rebels Without A Cause. Completely unremarked upon in the mainstream, its headline conclusions are stark:

“The conflict in eastern Ukraine started as a grassroots movement… Demonstrations were led by local citizens claiming to represent the region’s Russian-speaking majority.”

ICG noted that Russian leaders were from the start publicly and privately sympathetic to Russian-speakers in Donbass. Nonetheless, they issued no “clear guidance” to businessmen, government advisers or the domestic population on whether – and how – they would be officially supported by Moscow in their dispute with the Maidan government. Hence, many Russian irregulars, encouraged by “what they regarded as the government’s tacit approval, made their way to Ukraine.”

Per ICG, it was only after the conflict started that the Russian government formalised a relationship with the Donbass rebels, although the Kremlin quickly changed tack on what they should do. A Ukrainian fighter told the organisation that he “began hearing calls for restraint in rebel efforts to take control of eastern Ukrainian towns and cities” in late April 2014. However, “the separatist movement in Donbass was determined to move ahead.”

Due to this lack of control, and repeated calls for direct intervention in the conflict from the rebels, Russia replaced the Donetsk and Lugansk rebel leadership with hand-picked figures, who took an explicitly defensive posture. But the Kremlin was ultimately “beholden” to the breakaway republics, not vice versa. It could not even reliably order the rebels to stop fighting. A Lugansk paramilitary told ICG:

“What do you do with 40,000 people who believe that, once they put down their arms, they will all be shot or arrested? Of course, they are going to fight to the death.”

Elsewhere, the report cited data provided by “Ukrainian nationalist fighters”, which showed rebel casualties to date were “overwhelmingly” Ukrainian citizens. This was at odds with the pronouncements of government officials, who invariably referred to them as “Russian mercenaries” or “occupiers”. More widely, figures within Poroshenko’s administration had routinely claimed Donbass was wholly populated by Russians and Russia-sympathisers.

One Ukrainian minister was quoted in the report as saying he felt “absolutely no pity” about the extremely harsh conditions suffered by Donbass civilians, due to the “legal, political, economic and ideological barriers isolating Ukrainian citizens in rebel-held territories” constructed by Kiev. This included enforcing a crippling blockade on the region in 2017, which created a “humanitarian crisis”, and left the population unable to claim pensions and welfare payments, among other gruelling hardships.

Several Donbass inhabitants interviewed by ICG expressed nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Most felt “under attack” by Kiev. A pensioner in Lugansk, whose “non-combatant son” was killed by a Ukrainian sniper, asked how Poroshenko could claim the territory was “a crucial part” of Ukraine: “then why did they kill so many of us?”

‘Worst Option’

In conclusion, ICG declared the situation in Donbass “ought not to be narrowly defined as a matter of Russian occupation,” while criticising Kiev’s “tendency to conflate” the Kremlin with the rebels. The organisation expressed optimism newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky could “peacefully reunify with the rebel-held territories,” and “[engage] the alienated east.” Given present day events, its report’s conclusions were eerily prescient:

“For Zelensky, the worst option… would be to try to forcibly retake the territories, as an all-out offensive would likely provoke a military response from Moscow and a bloodbath in Donbass. It could even lead Moscow… to recognise the statelets’ independence. The large-scale military option is mainly advocated by nationalists, not members of Ukraine’s political establishment. But some prominent mainstream politicians refuse to rule it out.”

Zelensky did initially try to resolve the Donbass conflict through diplomatic means. In October 2019, he moved to hold a referendum on “special status” for the breakaway republics in a federalized Ukraine, while personally meeting with representatives of Azov Battalion, begging them to lay down their arms and accept the compromise. Mockingly rebuffed and threatened by the Neo-Nazi group’s leaders, while rocked by nationalist protests against the proposed plebiscite in Kiev, the plans were dropped. So then the President picked the “worst option”.

In March 2021, Zelensky issued a decree, outlining a “strategy for the de-occupation and reintegration” of “temporarily occupied territory.” Falsely characterising Crimea and the Donbass as “occupied by the armed forces of the aggressor state,” it sketched a clear blueprint for a hot war to recapture both territories. Immediately, Ukrainian forces began to mass in the south and east of the country in preparation.

This activity inevitably spooked the Kremlin, leading to a huge military buildup on its border with Ukraine, and extensive wargame exercises, plotting scenarios including encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Donbass, and blocking Kiev’s Black Sea access. Suddenly, the Western mainstream became awash with warnings of imminent Russian invasion, and British and US surveillance flights in the region surged. Media reporting either neglected to mention or outright denied this was explicitly triggered by Kiev’s escalation.

Things quietened down thereafter, although the situation on-the-ground remained tense. In October that year, a Ukrainian drone struck rebel positions in Donbass. Moscow, and German officials, charged that the attack violated Minsk, while Zelensky’s then-right hand man Oleksiy Arestovych denied this was the case. He had by this time openly stated on many occasions war with Russia was Kiev’s price for joining the EU and NATO.

Fast forward four months, and at the start of February 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his commitment to Minsk. He claimed Zelensky provided personal assurances its terms would be fulfilled. Yet, on February 11th, talks between representatives of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine collapsed without tangible results, after nine hours. Kiev rejected demands for “direct dialogue” with the rebels, insisting – yet again – Moscow formally designate itself a party to the conflict.

Then, as documented in multiple contemporary eyewitness reports from OSCE observers, mass Ukrainian artillery shelling of Donbass erupted. On February 15th, unnerved representatives of the Duma, led by the influential Communist Party, formally requested the Kremlin to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Vladimir Putin initially refused, reiterating his commitment to Minsk. The shelling intensified. A February 19th OSCE report recorded 591 ceasefire violations over the past 24 hours, including 553 explosions in rebel-held areas.

Civilians were harmed in these attacks, and civilian structures, including schools, targeted deliberately. Meanwhile, that same day, Donetsk rebels claimed to have thwarted two planned sabotage attacks by Polish-speaking operatives on ammonia and oil reservoirs on their territory. Perhaps not coincidentally, in January 2022 it was revealed the CIA had since 2015 been training a secret paramilitary army in Ukraine to carry out precisely such strikes, in the event of Russian invasion.

So it was on February 21st, the Kremlin formally accepted the Duma’s request from a week earlier, recognising Donetsk and Lugansk as independent republics. And now here we are.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Poland to shoot down Russian missiles – Zelensky

RT | July 8, 2024

A newly signed pact between Warsaw and Kiev contains provisions that would allow Poland to shoot down Russian missiles and drones in Ukrainian airspace, Vladimir Zelensky has said.

Zelensky spoke in Warsaw on Monday, after signing the security deal with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The government in Kiev has been making bilateral pacts with NATO member states over the past several months, in lieu of formally joining the US-led bloc.

The agreement “provides for the development of a mechanism [for Poland] to shoot down Russian missiles and drones fired in the airspace of Ukraine in the direction of Poland,” Zelensky said, according to Ukrainian media.

He added that Warsaw and Kiev “will work together to work out how we can quickly implement this point” of the deal.

Tusk confirmed the existence of the provision but said it merely “indicates the need for talks on this matter,” according to Polish media.

“We need clear cooperation within NATO here, because such actions require joint NATO responsibility,” the Polish PM added, explaining that it would be in the interest of both Poland and Ukraine to get a “stamp” of international solidarity first.

“We will include other NATO allies in this conversation. So we treat the matter seriously as open, but not yet finalized,” Tusk said, according to Poland’s RMF24 Radio.

Zelensky has been asking NATO to shoot down incoming Russian missiles for several months already. He has compared it to what the US and UK did for Israel in mid-April, during an Iranian reprisal bombardment, and argued that it would not directly involve the bloc in the conflict.

“NATO will not become part of the conflict,” the bloc’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, replied at the time. “There are no plans to send NATO troops to Ukraine or to extend NATO’s air-defense shield to Ukraine,” he added.

While US and EU officials shot down Zelensky’s comparison with Israel, they agreed to other things he asked for, from additional Patriot missile launchers and rockets to permitting Ukraine to use the weapons they supplied to strike deep into Russian territory.

During his visit to Warsaw, Zelensky also announced that Poland would raise, train and equip a ‘Ukrainian Legion’, made up of volunteers. “Every Ukrainian citizen who decides to join the legion will be able to sign a contract with the Ukrainian armed forces,” he added.

Tusk did not comment on the legion business, but said that every word in the security pact meant something and that it’s about “practical mutual commitments, not empty promises.”

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia Hits Ukrainian Military Targets in Retaliation, Labels Kiev’s Civilian Strike Claims as False

Sputnik – 08.07.2024

The Kiev regime’s provocative statements about alleged Russian strikes on civilian targets are related to the NATO summit and the pursuit of further funding, the Russian Ministry of Defense has said.

The Russian military conducted coordinated strikes using long-range precision weapons on Ukrainian military-industrial targets and air bases on Monday in retaliation for Kiev’s attempts to damage Russian energy and economic facilities, the Russian Defense Ministry has stated.

“This morning, in response to the Kiev regime’s attempts to damage Russian energy and economic facilities, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation conducted a coordinated strike with long-range precision weapons on Ukrainian military-industrial targets and air bases. The strike objectives have been achieved, and the designated targets have been hit,” the military department stated in its report.

Commenting on the Ukrainian claims of an intentional Russian strike on civilian targets, the ministry said they are a blatant lie, adding that the destruction was caused by a falling Ukrainian air defense missile.

“Claims by Kiev representatives about an alleged intentional Russian missile strike on civilian objects are completely untrue,” the statement said.

It was noted that numerous published photos and videos from Kiev clearly confirm that the destruction resulted from a falling Ukrainian air defense missile launched from within the city.

“We particularly emphasize that similar hysterics from the Kiev regime have been occurring for years, especially before each NATO summit. The goal of such provocations is to secure further funding for the Kiev regime and to continue the war to the last Ukrainian,” the Russian Defense Ministry highlighted.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Parody of a Statesman: Antony Blinken, Secretary of War

By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | July 8, 2024

For Halloween last year, the United States’ highest ranked diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dressed his son and daughter up as Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian flag, respectively. At a White House event on that day, Blinken’s children were photographed soliciting candy from President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, Zelensky himself had been doing his usual media circuit, appearing progressively more desperate to extract a fresh supply of “candy” from U.S. taxpayers by way of their nonrepresentative elected officials, most of whom, it would seem, have little if any interest in what their voting constituents have to say. In one poignant performance, the embattled Ukrainian commander-in-chief and former professional dancer lamented that the crisis in Israel was drawing attention away from Ukraine. In another widely disseminated video clip, Zelensky implored the audience that, if they could not give him more money, then they should at least extend him some credit, which he promised Ukraine would pay back.

It seemed as though the end was nigh for Zelensky, who was looking more and more like would-have-been Venezuelan “president” Juan Guaidó. When, during one of the primary debates, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy characterized Zelensky as a “Nazi” and a “comedian in cargo pants,” he boldly articulated an impolite sentiment shared by at least some of the people who have grown weary of seeing the Ukrainian president parade around in mud-green garb and hobnobbing with the likes of Sean Penn, Greta Thunberg, Ursula von der Leyen, and every politician under the sun on the military-industrial complex gravy train. And yet, Zelensky clings on to power, having canceled what was supposed to be the 2024 presidential election with the full blessing of both halves of the War Party duopoly.

In a more recent performance, on May 14, 2024, Secretary Blinken belted out Neil Young’s ballad, “Rockin’ in the Free World,” at a basement bar in Kiev. Blinken displayed his prowess on the electric guitar while doing his best to demonstrate that he personally relates to the people of Ukraine, who have endured uncertainty regarding their future and prospects for a return to any semblance of normal life since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. Dead people have obviously lost all of their freedom, so Blinken’s audience comprised a select group among the survivors savoring their tenuous existence, and the fact that they are not currently being pursued, as many unfortunate draft dodgers are, by the conscription police—at least not for now. The government of Ukraine has lowered the requirements for and lifted restrictions on the military conscription of unwilling citizens, while postponing the presidential election indefinitely, on the grounds that “We are at war.” Martial law remains in place, with Ukrainians living in what is tantamount to a dictatorship under Zelensky, notwithstanding Blinken’s heartfelt crooning about freedom and democracy.

Before becoming secretary of state, while an advisor to Biden’s campaign, Antony Blinken appears to have earned the esteem of whoever would come to run the Biden administration by setting in motion the composition of the now-discredited letter signed by fifty-one members of the “intelligence community” expressing doubts about the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop. The computer in question, discovered before the 2020 election, contained a surprising array of photos of Hunter and, more importantly, what looked to be texts documenting shady backroom deals between foreign governments—Ukraine and China—and the Biden family. The FBI eventually acknowledged that the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop were genuine, not a “Trump campaign product,” as Nina Jankowicz, later slated to be Biden’s czarina of the Disinformation Governance Board, had so colorfully characterized it prior to the 2020 election. Ironically, the Steele dossier which served as the basis for allegations of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign had itself been a Clinton campaign product.

In the light of this history, Blinken’s appointment as secretary of state can be viewed as his reward for helping to maintain the markedly anti-Russia bias of U.S. citizens, including politicians, stoked for years by the media through the now-debunked Russiagate narrative, and which inclines self-styled liberals to support the prolongation rather than the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.

Under ordinary circumstances, when two nation states are in conflict, the less powerful of the two tends to be more receptive to attempts to resolve the matter through peaceful negotiation, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent proposal, which was immediately and categorically rejected in a knee-jerk response by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, of all people. In the case of Ukraine, which has been artificially bolstered through a seemingly endless infusion of arms by the U.S. military behemoth, the war has no foreseeable limit—beyond the sacrifice of every able-bodied person in the land. (The case bears similarities to the artificial maintenance of the current U.S. president as head of state through the infusion of pharmaceutical products, even as rigor mortis appears to be setting in.) Reality in fact imposes limits, and they will be reached, sooner or later.

Those Ukrainians who comprehend the qualitative power disparity between nations in possession of nuclear warheads and those devoid of such means, have declined to volunteer to serve in the U.S.-maintained meatgrinder war, which is precisely why a policy of forced conscription was imposed. What good is a quasi-infinite supply of weapons, if no one is willing to fire them? Alas, any Ukrainian who has had enough of media-darling Zelensky’s panhandling from every wealthy nation on the planet is out of luck, for he remains in power, martial law firmly in place, and has indicated that he will stay there for so long as “it” takes, whatever his overlords construe that to mean.

It’s not just the U.S. government funding the war in which Ukrainian citizens are being chewed up and spit out by the insatiable war machine as military industry profits soar. NATO officials have naturally seized the opportunity to justify the existence of their institution, the source of their gainful employment, just as they have been scrambling to do since the fall of the Berlin Wall: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine—there’s always something for NATO to destroy! That the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established to counteract the danger of a communist takeover of the world by the now non-existent USSR is brushed aside as somehow irrelevant by its ardent supporters and beneficiaries alike.

As the world becomes progressively more bellicose, following the infelicitous example of the U.S. military state, stentorian calls to shore up and consolidate military capacities have been heard from figures such as European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyden, with similar jingoistic rhetoric issued also by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron. On its face, this is a puzzling development, given the twenty-year catastrophe better known as the Global War on Terror, which in no way served democracy or freedom, but instead destroyed and/or severely degraded the lives of millions of human beings. In keeping with the United States’ muscular but myopic and amnesiac approach to foreign policy, leaders of the European Union agreed in February 2024 to provide yet another $54 billion of “aid” to Ukraine, with NATO throwing in another $40 billion more recently. There’s a lot of profit at stake, and all of the usual suspects want their piece of the pie, no matter how many hapless Ukrainians will have to die. That European, British and American leaders have no interest in resolving the conflict is nowhere better illustrated than by the “Summit on Peace in Ukraine,” held in Switzerland, in June 2024, to which Russia, one of the two parties to the dispute, was not invited.

Barring nuclear holocaust, the dispute between Ukraine and Russia can only end at a negotiation table, an outcome which any competent diplomat would have worked relentlessly from the beginning to realize rather than frustrate. Instead, Antony Blinken spends his time making public appearances and issuing one-sentence slogans for spam distribution across social media platforms in an effort to appease the citizens footing the bill for the human misery and massacre to which his failure as a diplomat has led. Unable or unwilling to process the obvious implications of a war between a nuclear power and a nonnuclear power (spoiler alert: the former will win, if only through a Pyrrhic victory), Blinken daftly persists in pretending that democracy is at stake, even as Ukrainians are enslaved to fight the U.S. proxy war. The thousands of young Ukrainian men being sacrificed are just the price that must be paid. Freedom is free, but weapons are not.

It should come as no surprise that the same “diplomat” talks out of both sides of his mouth in claiming to sympathize with both the Israeli government and the Palestinians, as though furnishing some of the very weapons being used to murder thousands of civilians is easily counterbalanced with promoting the “humanitarian” treatment of those being incessantly terrorized, so long as the survivors of razed neighborhoods are provided with a bit of food and water now and then. The Blinken-Biden approach to this vexed conflict can be summed up in a piece of commonsense folk wisdom: “If you try to be all things to everyone, you’ll end by being nothing to anyone.”

Notwithstanding the frankly frightening recent public appearances of “the leader of the free world” (at the G7 meetings and elsewhere, including the disastrous debate), President Biden’s progressively deteriorating poll numbers over the course of the past several months have probably had something to do with his repeated assertion that there would be no “pause” or “ceasefire” in Israel. From the protests on campuses all over the United States, it has become clear that the antiwar left has reawakened, after eight years of slumber under Barack Obama, to abandon Biden. From the beginning, Biden materially supported Israel’s modus operandi of firing missiles at schools and mosques, homes, hospitals, and refugee camps, in an ardent quest to “Finish Hamas,” even as they embedded themselves among nonviolent civilians. When four Israeli hostages were rescued on June 8, 2024, Biden & Co. celebrated the news while downplaying, when not entirely omitting, the unsavory truth that two hundred Palestinians were killed in the process. Some people are more equal than others.

Antony Blinken has appeared occasionally to issue sincere acknowledgments of the humanity of the Palestinian people from one side of his mouth, while insisting on the right of Israel to self-defense from the other, as though slaughtering thousands of children has made anyone safe. The circus acts of such pseudo-diplomats would be amusing, if they were not so pathetic—and if the consequences for real, live, sentient human beings were not so devastating. All of foreign policy is not, as figures such as Blinken appear to believe, merely a matter of theater. No, the worst part of all of the shameless performances and photo-ops is that they entirely ignore the human reality of the wars being prolonged and provoked by the U.S. military state, as though bombing victims were mere fictions, and the soldiers coerced to fight were the currency of elites to expend.

The peace plan for Gaza recently drawn up by the Biden administration (certainly not Biden himself, who often appears to be unaware of where he is) could have been proposed back in October 2023, and, conjoined with a firm refusal to arm the killers, might well have saved the lives of some 40,000 persons—nearly half of which have been children—and prevented the wounding of many times more Palestinians. The U.S. government instead continues to condone Israel’s decision to follow the post-9/11 template of annihilating multiple times the number of the criminals sought, dismissing all of the innocent victims as “collateral damage.”

Blinken’s atrocious failures in the Ukraine and Israel conflicts notwithstanding, I confess to have experienced a tinge of sympathy for him the day he was caught on film wincing as President Biden answered a reporter’s question about his previous characterization of Chinese president Xi Jinping. Biden replied, in an unedited and brash—dare I say?—Trump-like fashion, “Look, he is. He is a dictator…” Mind you, this proclamation occurred immediately subsequent to what had been billed Biden’s “historic” White House meeting with the Chinese leader, supposedly intended to ease tensions between the two nations.

Surely, given the diminished mental acuity of his boss, Blinken’s job is extraordinarily difficult to execute, as is that of Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is constantly in the position of concocting extemporaneous word salad responses to incisive questions posed by White House journalists. (The press secretary dismissed some of the recent videoclips showcasing a zombie-like Biden on the world’s stage as “cheap fakes”.) But Blinken’s willingness to serve not as a diplomat but as a promoter of endless war, his refusal to work diligently toward peaceful solutions to conflict, is inexcusable.

Blinken apologists may counter that every previous secretary of state during his lifetime, too, served not the cause of diplomacy and peace but the war machine. In other words, Blinken has dutifully adopted some of his most prominent predecessors as mentors.

While serving as the CIA director under President Trump, Mike Pompeo reportedly went so far as to pursue the murder of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, denounced as a traitor and a spy, for exposing the ignoble comportment, including war crimes, of the U.S. government. Pompeo’s reward? Appointment as secretary of state, in which position Pompeo aggressively pushed for war with Iran.

Under President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton persuaded her boss to bomb Libya, chanting, “Gaddafi must go!” beforehand, and later cackling “We came, we saw, he died!” when the Libyan president was sodomized with a bayonet and murdered by an angry mob. Libya, which once boasted the best education and healthcare systems in Africa, is today a failed state, a place where people have been literally enslaved. With regard to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Secretary Clinton reportedly inquired during a November 23, 2010, meeting over which she presided, “Can’t we just drone this guy?”

Moving a bit further back, Condoleezza Rice had already served in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, who initiated the forever wars in the Middle East with his Operation Desert Storm. In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, Bush Sr. bragged that he had “kicked” the “Vietnam syndrome”; that is, the disinclination of Americans to become embroiled in foreign wars in the years following the U.S. military’s retreat from Saigon. Rice came later to serve as national security advisor to President George W. Bush, during which tenure she went on a war-marketing blitz media circuit in which she repeatedly intoned, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Rice was rewarded for her war promotion efforts with an appointment as secretary of state.

Under President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright rallied to make the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo happen. In a conversation with General Colin Powell (relayed in his memoir), Albright once asked, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?”

Under President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed caution about invading Iraq when the idea was first proposed by Cheney & Co. But Powell abruptly changed his tune (for reasons which remain unclear to this day) and ended up being one of the most vocal supporters of the ill-fated 2003 invasion. Powell’s most notorious moment, and for which he has earned a place in the annals of history, was his attempt to persuade the UN General Assembly to support the second U.S. war on Iraq. In his presentation, Powell laid out all of the pretexts later debunked as bogus: the imminent threats of Saddam Hussein’s “mobile chemical labs” and the purchase of “yellow cake” from Niger, supposedly demonstrating the existence of a robust WMD program, among other ersatz evidence buttressing the claim that war had become a last resort. When it became clear that the United Nations would not support the invasion, Powell withdrew his resolution, and the war proceeded unimpeded, at which point Powell and others pivoted to insist that the war was permitted under previous U.N. resolutions allegedly violated by Saddam Hussein.

Last, but certainly not least, we would be remiss to omit the case of Henry Kissinger, the godfather of all warmongering secretaries of state, who served under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first as national security advisor and then as secretary of state. Kissinger’s savage foreign policies for southeast Asia culminated in the deaths of millions of human beings, not only in Vietnam, but also in Laos and Cambodia, the societies of which have not to this day recovered from what was done to them by the United States government in the name of democracy. Among those sacrificed were some 57,000 U.S. soldiers and the many veterans who returned home but whose lives were wrecked by their harrowing experiences in Vietnam.

Never one to insist on causation where correlation will suffice, I nonetheless feel compelled to observe that nearly all of these secretaries of state have derived a good part, if not all, of their personal wealth from having served on the boards of, or even established, defense-contracting and consulting firms. In Blinken’s case, in 2017, after a stint as deputy secretary of state (having previously served as deputy national security advisor, also under Obama), he and Michèle Flournoy, among other former employees of the federal government, launched WestExec Advisors, from which he derived $1.2 million. Blinken (along with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin) has also been a partner of private equity firm Pine Islands, which has invested heavily in military industries. When The New York Times, in an ever-more rare moment of critical journalism, dared to publish an editorial questioning Blinken’s seeming conflicts of interest, this was brushed aside by members of the War Party, who proceeded to approve his appointment as secretary of state.

Perhaps, then, in view of the long series of war promoters who have served as “top diplomat” for the United States, rather than take Antony Blinken to task, singling him out for criticism, the official title of his position should simply be emended from secretary of state to secretary of war, so as to reflect the reality of what such persons actually do.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

“Our” Man in Israel

By Ted O’Keefe | The Occidental Observer | July 7, 2024

The issue of dual loyalty is an ancient one. As noted in a previous TOO article,

[Stephen] Walt points out that [Dennis] Ross has a long involvement with pro-Israel activist organizations, such as being director of WINEP [Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank headquartered in Washington, DC].

But Ross’s ties to Israel are even deeper than that. Until his appointment as Middle East envoy in the Obama Administration, from 2002–2009 Ross was Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. This organization has assumed the role of long term planning for the Jewish people, not only in Israel but also the Diaspora. The JPPPI is an independent think tank that reports to the Israeli government and has close ties with other Jewish organizations. Its mission is “to promote the thriving of the Jewish people via professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry. JPPPI’s work is based on deep commitment to the future of the Jewish people with Israel as its core state.”

The JPPPI’s report Facing Tomorrow 2008 is interesting because it focuses on the threat of Iran and but also because it sees people like Stephen Walt as a threat to Israel:

The Jewish people must, as the highest priority, develop an appropriate response to the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and to global stability as a whole. While there is no ambiguity about the need to do so in Israel, it is necessary to mobilize Jewish opinion around the world as well. The American Jewish community cannot be intimidated either by a post Iraq syndrome in the United States, or by the false and pernicious allegations of Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, or former President Carter.

In other words, Jews around the world are encouraged to mobilize to combat the threat to Israel represented by Iran. The assumption is that Jews have common interests as Jews no matter what country they happen to live in. Dennis Ross is doing his best to promote exactly this view within the Obama administration.

One might think that such a view would leave Jews in the Diaspora open to the charge of disloyalty, but the problem is easily finessed: Jews in the Diaspora are told to frame Israel’s concerns about Iran as a global threat, not simply as a threat to Israel.

Of course, that’s what we are seeing now. But we needn’t be naïve. Jews like Dennis Ross are clearly far more loyal to Israel than to the US. Speaking as a psychologist, they wouldn’t be able to see a conflict of interest between the US and Israel if it was staring them in the face. Indeed, as Gore Vidal said of Norman Podhoretz, they are unregistered agents of a foreign government.

In a sane society, there would be a huge groundswell of public opposition to Ross’s appointment–as there has been for a number of Obama’s appointments. But that won’t happen.

Since there has been no groundswell of media or public opposition to pro-Israel operatives like Ross at the highest levels of the U.S. government, it’s not surprising that the practice continues. Amos Hochstein is a good contemporary example. Israel and the powerful Lebanon-based Shiite Hezbollah militia are on the brink of open warfare, conflict that could trigger U.S. intervention and escalate to a regional or even a world war. To date these dangers have attracted little notice from the American mass media, ever eager to divert and dissemble from the direr consequences of the Washington regime’s one-sided support for Israel. Small wonder, then, that the media should evince the same reluctance in investigating the shadowy past and dubious allegiance of Hochstein, the emissary the U.S. recently dispatched to “mediate” between Hezbollah and Israel. The following is a brief foray into the workings of the Israel Lobby in the Biden Administration, as well as a primer on the perks of being Jewish in America.

Hochstein’s importance

To be sure, media reports have not slighted Hochstein’s great influence in the Biden White House or his meteoric career. He has been described as “one of President Biden’s closest confidantes [who] has worked with him for many years,” while another Washington insider calls Hochstein “the person who bridges State, Treasury, the White House and Energy”

Fittingly, one of Hochstein’s titles is “Special Presidential Coordinator.”

Yet the media have underplayed, and often ignored, a key fact about Hochstein in his role as an impartial arbiter between Hezbollah and Israel: his birth, youth, and military service in Israel.

Beyond those bare facts about his origins, Hochstein has been remarkably unforthcoming about his life before he arrived in the United States in 1974. While nearly every successful denizen of the D.C. is eager to brandish Ivy League/Seven Sisters (or the equivalent) educational credentials, one may scour the internet (including his page on the usually resume-rich LinkedIn job-hunting site) without finding anything about Hochstein’s education, college or secondary.

Just as murky are the circumstances by which Adam Hochstein, a 21-year-old immigrant with unknown credentials, became a congressional staffer within a year of his arrival in this country, working for Rep. Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) who, like Hochstein, is a Jew.

Despite his youth and inexperience, Hochstein carried out important assignments for Gejdenson. Not yet 25, he traveled to North Korea in 1997 to report on its economic and military situation; still in his twenties, he undertook negotiations with the Iraqi government (against the advice of the U.S. State Department) aimed at “resettling” thousands of Palestinians there in exchange for loosening some of the crippling sanctions then in force there.

Well before 9/11, Hochstein advocated acting against Iraq for harboring “weapons of mass destruction” in a press release issued by Congressman Gejdenson, and soon afterward he was serving as senior advisor to a senator and a governor. Like many members of the permanent government, Hochstein has used hiatuses between his party’s dominance to work in lobbying and industries close to government, in his case capitalizing on energy policy expertise that he seems to have acquired with no expertise in the field. He’s evidently done well, at some point becoming a partner in two D.C. restaurants and a movie theater.

Under Obama, Hochstein (without known diplomatic training or experience) rapidly climbed the ladder at the State Department to become America’s chief energy negotiator, deeply involved in efforts to block Russian natural gas from Europe and to facilitate Israeli access to energy.

During the Trump presidency, Hochstein served on the board of Ukraine’s natural gas company, Naftogaz.

Hochstein’s knowledge of the ins and outs of Ukraine’s shady corrupt energy industry is evidently considerable. In his testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives, Hunter Biden stated that Hochstein had advised him merely to be “very careful” in serving on the board of the notoriously corrupt Burisma corporation.

Hochstein also seems to have had a role in the “whistle blowing” that led to Trump’s first impeachment resulting from a phone call interpreted by Democrats as pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden family corruption in Ukraine, and to have been advising Zelensky before his election.

It’s also interesting that there is a lack of definitive information on Hochstein’s current citizenship:

According to one report, a State Department source has claimed that he is “not a dual national,” but refused to state if he has renounced his Israeli citizenship, and in fact gave no [details as to Hochstein’s American citizenship.] So the question raised, unanswered— Hochstein’s citizenship is evidently a “carefully guarded secret.” Not acknowledging Hochstein’s Israeli citizenship would be useful because, for example, in Lebanon, where Hochstein has been involved as an American negotiator on the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah, “it is normally illegal for an Israeli” to visit Lebanon.

Even Hezbollah at the time did not comment on the mediator’s nationality or military past, with leader Hassan Nasrallah saying they will “not express an opinion or position related to the demarcation of borders”.

Given all this, it’s hard to disagree with this quote originally from Ha’aretz:

… the American brokerage farce, whose players are almost all American Jews, some of them former or future Israelis. If the United States is a side in the conflict, then it should say so and conduct the negotiation as though Israel is its protégé. And if it really wants to be an honest broker, then come on – Amos Hochstein?…

July 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine asks West for submarines

RT | July 7, 2024

Ukraine needs Western submarines to bolster its military capabilities in the Black Sea, Navy chief Admiral Aleksey Neizhpapa, has said.

He argued that deploying underwater craft could strategically improve Ukraine’s positions across the Black Sea during the conflict with Russia.

“We are thinking about it, submarines are necessary for us, they should be part of the navy,” Neizhpapa said in an interview with journalist Natalya Moseychuk, posted on her YouTube channel on Saturday.

The head of the Ukrainian navy added that the country does not need large submarines, as “they are useless in the Black Sea.”

“Locating only near Odessa means having nothing, we should look further, spread the fleet throughout the Black Sea and use its entire area,” he said, expressing hope that Ukraine would turn “from a coastal state into a maritime power.”

Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted in February 2022, Western states have supplied vast quantities of weapons to Kiev, while denying direct involvement in the hostilities. However, with the fighting well into its third year, there have been numerous reports of dwindling support, with delays in arms and ammunition deliveries.

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg that US weapons were taking too long to reach the country, despite Congress approving a $61 billion assistance package in April.

NATO diplomats told the agency that the US-led military bloc had agreed to provide at least €40 billion ($43 billion) in military aid for Ukraine per year, without specifying how long the aid would continue.

July 7, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Zelensky owes Orban an explanation

By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 5, 2024

Instead of an improvement in bilateral relations, the recent meeting between Vladimir Zelensky and Viktor Orban only intensified tensions between both countries. The Hungarian Prime Minister’s visit to Kiev appears to have been a kind of ultimatum for the Ukrainian regime to stop its irresponsible actions and accept a peace negotiation. Given Zelensky’s insistence on war, Hungary is expected to take increasingly tough actions to boycott military support for Ukraine within the Western organizations in which it is part (NATO and EU).

Orban made a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital and presented Zelensky with a peace proposal, the central element of which was the establishment of an immediate ceasefire, enabling the resumption of negotiations between the parties. On the same day, the Ukrainian authorities rejected the Hungarian proposal, remaining firm in their desire to continue the war to the last consequences. Orban has repeatedly clarified that the West wants war with Russia, which will not benefit Europe at all and could lead to a major continental conflict. Zelensky and the entire Kiev Junta, however, are not aligned with European interests, preferring to obey American orders directly.

Orban’s words in Kiev can be seen as a genuine call for peace – while also sounding like a final warning. The Hungarian leader often tried to prevent the advance of Western military support to Ukraine, thus aiming to promote a de-escalation of the conflict. Due to its dissident stance in the EU, Hungary has suffered economic blackmail, boycotts and even attempts at color revolution. The country appears to be a target for NATO and EU strategists, even though it is a member of both groups.

The reasons why Hungary tries to de-escalate the war are many and go beyond the interest of avoiding a continental war. Orban is a conservative leader who has as one of his main political agendas the defense of Christianity and traditional values – a topic on which he sympathizes with the Russian Federation and is in total disagreement with Ukrainian woke Nazism. The West’s promotion of an anti-traditional cultural agenda has created significant tensions between Hungary and its partners, making the country actually isolated from other NATO and EU members.

One of the most important points for Orban’s skepticism towards Kiev, however, is the ethnic persecution promoted against Hungarian citizens in the western regions of Ukraine, mainly in Transcarpathia. Cities with an ethnic Hungarian majority have suffered from racist policies in a similar way to what Russians in Donbass have suffered since 2014. Just as the Russian language has been banned from being taught in schools and used in official documents, the Hungarian language is also being banned, affecting the ethnic and cultural identity of thousands of Hungarians.

One of the most shocking practices of the Kiev regime is the ethnic instrumentalization of forced recruitment policies. The Ukrainian armed forces constantly forcibly capture non-Ukrainian ethnic citizens from the country’s streets, sending them to the front lines without proper training, making death a mere matter of time. Ethnic Russians and Hungarians have been constantly recruited to certain death at the front, with local authorities trying to “spare” Ukrainian soldiers as much as possible.

During the Battle of Artymovsk (known in Ukraine as “Bakhmut”), several reports emerged from local observers denouncing the forced recruitment of hundreds of Hungarians from Transcarpathia. The battle became known as the “meat grinder”, due to the high rate of casualties among Ukrainian troops during clashes with the Russian private military company Wagner Group. Apparently, Kiev used the “meat grinder” as a tool to accelerate the process of ethnic cleansing in Transcarpathia, sending ethnic Hungarian citizens to certain death.

Hungary has repeatedly denounced the Kiev Junta’s racist policies against Hungarians who are under Ukrainian jurisdiction. The inaction of international organizations – mainly NATO and the EU, of which Hungary is a part – has only increased Hungarian impatience. Kiev has not changed its practices. Zelensky also did not use the last meeting with Orban to give him an “explanation” – if that is even possible – or at least promise to change his policies. So, given the certainty that Kiev will continue the war and the extermination of Hungarians, perhaps Orban’s peace proposal will become a true ultimatum.

Without any goodwill on Ukraine’s part, Orban now has no alternative but to actually do everything he can to thwart Kiev’s plans. It is possible that he will harden his positions within NATO and the EU, vetoing pro-Ukraine proposals even under economic blackmail. More than that, Orban could even launch a policy of seeking strategic partnerships with emerging countries, and discussions about leaving NATO and the EU will inevitably begin to advance on the Hungarian domestic scenario.

It is also necessary to remember that since 2022 there have been rumors that Hungary might eventually intervene militarily in Ukraine to stop ethnic cleansing in Transcarpathia. Even though these rumors have no proof so far, with Ukrainian insistence, it is possible that at some point there will be internal pressure in Hungary for these rumors to become reality.

Hungary is realizing, before all NATO and EU members, that membership in these organizations is a real trap. Orban does not seem willing to accept that his country become a victim of a continental war initiated by Ukraine, nor does he want to continue seeing his Hungarian compatriots dying in hostilities with Russia. He will certainly do everything possible to make the Hungarian future different from the Ukrainian one.

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Bankers War in Ukraine – Part Seventeen of The Anglo-American War on Russia

Tales of the American Empire | July 4, 2024

Western corporate media and our corporate sponsored political leaders proclaim the war in Ukraine is about stopping Russian aggression. As this series has explained, this war was an American neocon effort to ignite a proxy war in Ukraine to destabilize and fragment Russia into smaller states that western corporations can control. This has failed horribly as Russia became stronger and more united than before war began. Even worse, the effort backfired after Russian efforts to make peace were rejected. Russia determined that it must conquer all of Ukraine to expel foreign troublemakers and protect itself, so its armies are slowly conquering all of Ukraine.

This has caused panic in the west since it had already taken control of Ukraine and began to exploit its vast resources. When war began, more farmland and factories were snatched up by western vulture capitalists at deep discounts as Ukrainian’s economy shut down and millions of Ukrainians fled aboard. Ukraine owes the west $300 billion that it can never repay unless it sells state assets, which is what the west wants. If Russia wins, none of this may be repaid and banks and governments will be forced to write off massive loans.

This explains the panic among western leaders who declare that Ukraine cannot be allowed to lose the war. Some now proclaim that NATO troops must be sent. Most citizens say that Ukraine is not worth World War III nor the death of hundreds of thousands of NATO soldiers, but their lords will lose billions of dollars!

________________________________

“All Wars are Bankers Wars”; YouTube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfEB…

Related Tale: “The Genocide Called World War I”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psXYM…

“Disaster Capitalists Ready to Descend on Ukraine”; Jeremy Kuzmarov; Covert Action; January 31, 2024; https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024…

“Zelensky to sell Ukraine off to BlackRock, Goldman Sachs”; The Grayzone; January 30, 2023; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y32lO…

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

July 5, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Is stopping World War Three the Donald’s ‘trump card’ for winning the White House?

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 4, 2024

Donald Trump seems to have hit on a winning plan for returning to the White House – by convincing voters he is the candidate to prevent World War Three.

The Republican candidate is lately pitching the importance of ending “the horrible war” in Ukraine to prevent the United States from sliding toward a nuclear conflagration with Russia.

Trump is slamming Democrat rival Joe Biden for fueling the conflict by recklessly supplying U.S. weapons that are provoking Russia and risking the start of World War Three. That’s true enough.

After Biden’s disastrous TV debate with Trump last week, the polls are showing Trump slightly pulling ahead. The Democrat campaign is in panic mode after the incumbent president’s shaky performance confirmed public misgivings about his deteriorating mental health.

Still, however, Trump has not capitalized on taking a decisive lead in the polls. The Republican is at most a couple of points ahead of Biden –  even after the latter’s slow-motion car-crash TV debate.

Trump could pick up a lot of ballots among large numbers of undecided voters and propel his return to the White House by posing as the “anti-war candidate”.

At election rallies, the former president is touting his supposed ability to bring an immediate end to the war in Ukraine. Trump is saying he would cut off military aid to Ukraine and call on the Kiev regime to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump is boasting that he could broker an immediate peace deal if he wins the election in November and implement a settlement even before his inauguration in the Oval Office in January 2025. Thereby preventing World War Three between the nuclear-armed U.S. and Russia.

That might seem like a sound campaign plan. A large majority of Americans – some 70 percent – want their government to find a diplomatic solution to the two-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine. This reflects public opposition to the perception of another endless American war and the growing apprehension over an escalation in the conflict between nuclear powers.

Astutely, Trump is tapping into those legitimate concerns.

On the other hand, Biden’s administration is pushing ahead with military support for the Kiev regime in a way that seems insanely reckless. This week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced another $2.3 billion in military aid to Ukraine. Biden has said he will support Ukraine for as long as it takes and shows no sign of backing away from military confrontation. The president has approved the supply of longer-range missiles to Ukraine and given his permission to strike Russia.

The issue of war and peace – and without exaggeration the issue of world peace and survival of the planet – could be the one that wins the White House for Trump.

Biden does not have a reverse gear when it comes to his policy of supporting Ukraine in a futile war that it is losing badly and only provoking Russia.

Such madness is bound to be a vote loser and yet Biden and his administration appear to have no way back from the abyss. Combined with Biden’s appalling policy of supporting Israel – especially for younger American voters who would normally lean toward a Democrat – Trump could exploit the anxiety over Ukraine to his electoral advantage.

It’s not just about the danger of an all-out war with Russia. The American public is rightly incensed by the vast amounts of taxpayer money – over $100 billion at least – being shelled out for a corrupt regime in Kiev while so much public need is neglected at home.

The trouble is Trump’s lack of credibility. Ordinarily, a presidential candidate declaring his opposition to starting World War Three would be a clear winning platform, one would think.

Recall the first time Trump ran for the White House back in 2016 when he promised all sorts of splendid things about making America great again by stopping endless U.S. wars around the world and putting an end to “American carnage” at home.

Trump did not deliver then despite all his braggadocio about “draining the swamp”. During his presidency, Trump broke the taboo of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine. In 2018, he approved sending $47 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles to the Kiev regime while it was attacking the ethnic Russian population in the former Ukrainian territory of Donbass. That military backing of the Kiev regime led to the current conflict after Moscow intervened in February 2022 to stop the merciless killing of the Russian population.

On Trump’s recent bragging about how he would quickly end the war in Ukraine, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, dismissed it as empty “subjective” talk. That’s a diplomatic way of saying Trump hasn’t a clue about resolving the conflict.

Trump is all about the expedient winning of votes, not about winning genuine peace. The only way to create a peaceful resolution in Ukraine and elsewhere is for the U.S.-led NATO military bloc to scale back from Russia’s borders and eventually disband in conformity with international law. NATO is a self-appointed war machine to serve Western imperialist power and one that is in flagrant violation of the UN Charter and the upholding of international law. NATO exists to enforce U.S. power unilaterally without any respect for international law – despite the American and European rhetoric about “rules-based order”.

The war in Ukraine is but one symptom of the United States as a failing and frustrated imperialist power. Washington’s hostility towards Russia is consonant with its relentless belligerence towards China and its support for Israel’s genocide in a desperate bid to control the Middle East. Trump is on board with U.S. imperialist power projection against China and slavishly supporting the Israeli regime. His talk about criticizing NATO expenditures is just carping to get Europeans to pay more for the American protection racket. The only thing different from Biden is a superficial matter of style and a seemingly more reasonable view of the conflict in Ukraine.

Posing as a candidate to avert World War Three over Ukraine might be enough to get Trump back to the White House. It might work as an electioneering ploy. But it won’t change a damn thing about stopping U.S. imperialist violence and the constant threat to world peace that Washington and its NATO war machine engender. The Donald’s “trump card” for peace in Ukraine is another worthless deuce.

July 4, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

‘Doing Everything to Reelect Biden’: Duped Hillary Clinton Spills Cringy Details to Prankster Duo

By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 03.07.2024

After conning British Foreign Secretary David Cameron into divulging that Ukraine won’t be invited to join NATO at the alliance’s next summit, the Russian prankster duo of Vovan and Lexus have successfully duped Hillary Clinton.

Despite her crushing defeat to Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential elections, Hillary Clinton has adamantly refused to be put out to pasture or written off from big politics. Hence, her current bid to dabble in the ongoing proxy conflict in Ukraine.

It comes as no surprise that the former US Secretary of State eagerly accepted the offer to speak with ‘former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’. Little did she realize that she was divulging her political game regarding the US and Ukraine to the well-known Russian prankster duo, Vovan (Vladimir Kuznetsov) and Lexus (Alexey Stolyarov).

Clinton jumped right into the conversation, assuring ‘Poroshenko’ that US aid has been positioned to reach Ukraine “very quickly”.

At this point, her conversational partner lamented over another looming “threat”, in the face of presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who could “give us some problems” if elected, since he “hates Ukraine”, she piped up:

“You’re right. It is terrible. And I am doing everything I can to reelect President Biden. And I am very hopeful that that will be the outcome in November.”

Clinton took a swipe at Trump, calling him a “very dangerous candidate,” and said he would be “bad for the United States, as well as for the rest of the world, including Ukraine.”

But despite Joe Biden’s disastrous first debate against his main opponent, Clinton is confident that Trump will lose. Moreover, she appeared to indicate that Biden’s path to a second term should be paved with the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers. She assured that Washington would be “giving you the means you need to support yourself to try to not only hold the line but engage in an offensive. And then obviously many of us in this country will do everything we can to reelect President Biden.”

“The more that Ukraine could continue to demonstrate its resilience and its resolve and do what you’re doing on the battlefield, do what you’re doing in a very strong message to the rest of the world, […] go forward as best you can… the rest of us will do everything we can to continue supporting you, and to support President Biden,” reiterated Hillary Clinton.

Hillary also wholeheartedly “supports” Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations, saying that “We are working very hard to persuade the Germans and the Americans to move on this. I don’t know what the final decision will be, but as you say, Rasmussen and Yermak, and others, are working very hard.” This was a reference to former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who have been spearheading a working group to gain support for Kiev’s NATO bid across the alliance.

Clinton emphasized that “everyone has a stake in making sure that you are successful in pushing the Russians out as far as you can.”

‘Porshenko’ bantered at this point that “dictators didn’t learn their lesson after Gaddafi,” in a reference to the former Libyan leader ousted and killed in the wake of NATO’s bombardment of the North African country in 2011. During that time, as Barack Obama’s foreign policy chief, Hillary Clinton, she was the public figure of the project and had cackled with laughter during a TV interview after rebel forces backed by NATO had captured and brutally killed Muammar Gaddafi. Clinton famously quipped, “We came, we saw, he died!”

“Yeah, I think that’s true,” replied Clinton to the Poroshenko imposter.

Turning the conversation back to the “main threat” namely, Trump, the pranksters warned that “he will ask for money back, and it will be a disaster,” as he “wants to end the conflict on Russia’s terms.”

“He’s a very bad guy, as I know personally from having to run against him,” reiterated Hillary Clinton, and applauded an offer of help from the Ukrainian side to dig up some new dirt on Trump.

“Well, anything you can do to attack him, I’m all for it. Because he’s a very dangerous man,” reiterated Clinton.

She eagerly rounded off the conversation with “Slava, Ukraina” (“Glory to Ukraine”), a wartime fascist salute originally adopted by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), an infamous nationalist militant group that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, and now widely used by Ukrainian paramilitary groups, promoted by the Kiev regime.

July 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russian nuclear power plant workers injured in Ukrainian attack – officials

RT | July 3, 2024

A Ukrainian attack on a substation used by the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant has injured eight employees of the facility, officials reported on Wednesday.

Kiev allegedly launched three quadcopter-type kamikaze drones at the Raduga facility in Energodar, the city hosting Europe’s largest nuclear power station. The injured workers were part of a crew that was repairing the damage caused by a previous Ukrainian attack, the statement claimed. At least one worker is said to be in a serious condition.

The initial strike on the Raduga substation happened two weeks ago and was confirmed by a monitoring mission of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog. Another site called Luch was hit in a separate strike.

Neither station is critical for the work of the nuclear power plant, but its secondary facilities depend on them for power supplies. The strike on Wednesday once again disrupted the grid after both Raduga transformers were damaged.

The IAEA has declined to attribute the attacks on substations in Energodar, but its chief, Rafael Grossi, has stressed that “whoever is behind this, it must stop.”

“Drone usage against the plant and its vicinity is becoming increasingly more frequent. This is completely unacceptable and it runs counter to the safety pillars and concrete principles which have been accepted unanimously,” the official said.

Last week, a reported Ukrainian artillery strike destroyed one of the automatic radiation monitoring posts near the nuclear site.

Energodar is located in Zaporozhye Region, which became part of Russia following a referendum in 2022. The power plant is operated by Russian personnel, although Kiev still claims sovereignty over the area.

Moscow has criticized the US and its allies for failing to pressure Ukraine to stop the military attacks on the plant, which pose the threat of a major environmental disaster.

July 3, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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