West enabling Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian targets – The Economist
RT | August 27, 2023
Ukraine relies on Western intelligence and satellite surveillance to guide its drones toward targets within Russia, The Economist reported on Sunday. The report backs up Moscow’s claims that the West is complicit in these “terrorist” strikes.
Russia’s extensive air defense and electronic warfare capacity mean that Ukrainian drone operators often need outside help to hit targets deep inside Russia, The Economist reported, citing anonymous sources within Ukraine’s multiple drone programs. This assistance includes “intelligence (often from Western partners) about radars, electronic warfare, and air-defense assets,” the report stated.
Feedback on the success of a strike is compiled from satellites, the report noted. Ukraine has only a single surveillance satellite, meaning that any imagery collected in between its 15 daily orbits is likely provided by Western satellites.
While Ukraine often attempts to hit military targets within Russia, many of its strikes are focused on civilian infrastructure and residential areas. In the most recent incident, a small drone slammed into an apartment block in the city of Kursk, shattering windows but leaving nobody injured. Successive waves of drone attacks have targeted Moscow’s central business district in recent weeks, and although the strikes on the capital have not killed anyone, an attack on the border region of Belgorod earlier this week left three people dead.
Moscow has previously accused Ukraine’s Western backers of complicity in these “terrorist strikes.” Speaking after a small drone hit the Kremlin in May, government spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated: “We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kiev but in Washington.” Moscow has also accused British and American special forces of assisting Kiev’s recent missile attacks on the Crimean Bridge.
According to Peskov, Moscow views the attacks as “acts of desperation,” carried out to compensate for Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield. The strikes are viewed similarly in the West, the New York Times reported on Friday. Citing US officials, the newspaper said that the drone operations are intended “to bolster the morale of Ukraine’s population and troops,” and show that Kiev “can strike back” amid its failing counteroffensive.
Revisiting the Biden Legal Position on Masks
Brownstone Institute | August 26, 2023
Last year, it seemed that masks were gone for good. US District Judge Kathryn Kimball held that Biden’s national mask mandate on airplanes was “illegal.” Airlines and airports immediately revoked their mask requirements. Flight attendants sang in celebration, passengers cheered, and companies welcomed the change in policy.
While Americans rejoiced, the Biden Administration worked behind the scenes to ensure that it could reimplement mask mandates at any time, in any place, for any reason.
The humiliation exercise never had a scientific basis. Existing air filtration systems made the threat of viral transmission on aircraft negligible. Studies found that there was “no direct evidence” of Covid-19 being transmitted aboard aircraft.
Despite the data, President Biden issued nationwide mask mandates in his first hours in office. His administration appealed Judge Kimball’s decision last April. “Our focus here was seeing what power we had to preserve,” explained White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
The case was dismissed as moot because the court found, “there is not a grain of evidence that the CDC has any plans to promulgate an identical mandate.”
Recent news suggests that prediction may have been wrong. The Covid regime appears to be revamping for a resurgence of mandates and potential lockdowns. CNN ran a headline Wednesday urging readers to “break out the masks against Covid.” The federal government has entered into Covid-related contracts with consultants and medical equipment providers to enforce “safety protocols” beginning in the next two months.
The return of Covid hysteria begs the question: what “power” did Jen Psaki and the White House want to preserve? Their legal briefs appealing Judge Kimball’s decision offer clues.
In court, the Biden Administration argued that mask mandates should be permissible even if there is no evidence to support them. Further, government lawyers wrote that these mandates should be permissible to any extent that bureaucrats deem necessary, even if the risk of Covid is nonexistent.
That is not hyperbole. Opponents of the mandates argued that the government should have “controlled trials” to provide evidence of efficacy and potential negative side effects before implementing universal masking.
The Biden Administration responded that the government did not need to provide any evidence or rational basis for its orders. Instead, “the CDC’s determination that there was good cause” should be sufficient. Government edicts should not be subject to judicial scrutiny, according to the government’s brief.
Further, there should be no limit to that authority, according to the Biden Administration. “It was equally permissible for the CDC,” the brief argued, “to make the masking requirement applicable to all passengers… regardless of whether there is any indication that the plane is diseased or dirtied.”
It’s not difficult to discern what we might call the Biden Doctrine of administrative rule-making. It means that the agencies can order whatever they want, whether or not there is any plausible basis in law or whether or not there is any rational basis for it at all. It is a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy.
Cyberattack on Strategic Culture Foundation… Now available at new url
SCF | August 25, 2023
The Strategic Culture Foundation’s online journal was this week hit by a massive cyberattack. The assault resulted in the forum being shut down on its regular internet site. Readers who normally access the journal were informed that the site was no longer available.
The online journal has safely migrated to strategic-culture.su and, in addition, we continue to post articles via SCF’s Telegram channel in order to exercise our inalienable right to freedom of speech.
The SCF online journal has been up to now accessed via the “.org” domain. The domain is operated by an organization called Public Interest Registry (PIC) based in the United States. PIC proclaims to be a “trusted” non-profit company “dedicated to the integrity of the internet” and free speech.
The outrageous action to obliterate SCF is a sign of the sinister times. There can be little doubt that the sabotage was carried out by state agencies: those of the United States and its NATO allies. This should not be seen as some kind of petty hacking by cyber vandals, but rather as cyber-warfare at the state level.
This is not the first time that this journal has been subjected to cyberattack. In recent years, SCF’s publishing business has been forced offline on several occasions by malicious attacks. The latest incident this week seems to have been the most serious endeavor to eliminate our publishing forum.
For over 12 years, Strategic Culture Foundation has been publishing articles by authors from all over the world. The forum has earned widespread acclaim for providing a diverse range of intelligent commentary and analysis on international politics. It has gained respect among many readers from a worldwide audience for its open-minded perspectives on geopolitics. In particular, we have provided in-depth critical reporting and analysis of how the United States government and its Western allies have systematically abused international law and the United Nations Charter in their unlawful pursuit of strategic interests in various parts of the globe, from Asia to Africa, and from the Middle East to Latin America.
As the United States and its NATO partners have become increasingly reckless and lawless over recent years in their imperialist depredations, the SCF forum has likewise becstraome increasingly critical. Consequently, the attacks on our journal have apparently intensified.
The U.S. State Department three years ago smeared our journal as a Kremlin propaganda outlet. The U.S. authorities have vilified writers for SCF as “Kremlin agents” even though our writers are based in different parts of the world and have nothing to do with the Russian government.
Subsequently, all our American-based authors were approached in person by U.S. state security agents knocking on their doors and threatened with prosecution and massive financial penalties if they did not stop publishing articles with SCF. All of our former American colleagues were compelled to break off what had been fruitful relations of intellectual exchange.
None of this unprecedented harassment prevented us from continuing to exercise our right to free speech and critical thinking.
However, since the U.S.-led NATO proxy war against Russia escalated with armed conflict in Ukraine 18 months ago, the SCF site has come under intensifying cyberattack.
This proves that Washington and its Western allies are indeed waging a determined proxy war. As the old adage goes: the first casualty of war is the truth.
We have provided trenchant commentary and analysis on the conflict in Ukraine. Our writers have exposed the bigger picture of geopolitical motives behind the confrontation including: NATO’s decades-long expansionism, the desire by Washington to maintain its global hegemony, the U.S. strategic need to exert control over its European vassals, Washington’s objective to displace Russia as an energy provider to Europe, the paramount importance of militarism to Western capitalism, and the imperative objective for the West to thwart the emergence of a multipolar world as advocated by Russia, China and many other nations associating with the BRICS and the Global South.
As the stakes grow higher for Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine so too has the West’s desperation to shut down all critical voices that undermine the West’s bogus posturing as a “defender of democracy”.
Russia-based media have been heavily censored by the United States and European Union. It has become increasingly difficult for an international audience to access Russian media and, more significantly, any media that publishes critical voices and thinking about Western policies.
The internet domains controlled by U.S. companies have shut down many American and European-based alternative media simply on the grounds that such alternative media provide an intelligent and informed critical analysis of the policies of Western governments. Sometimes the censorship is not so overt, conducted by algorithms that relegate accessibility for readers.
Critical thinking and truth-telling are intolerable for liars and despots, which the Western regimes are increasingly devolving into, absolutely discarding their pretensions of virtue, democracy, legality and integrity. The charade of “Western liberal democracy” is increasingly threadbare as Western states become ever more warmongering, authoritarian, dictatorships of economic austerity and elitist, unaccountable rule. In a word, fascist. The Western powers’ full-on association with the Nazi regime in Ukraine is entirely consistent with their own political degeneration.
In the case of SCF, the West’s censorship has degenerated to the level of outright sabotage of our forum.
Here it is appropriate to pay special tribute to Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of Wikileaks. He has paid for his truth-telling about the crimes of the U.S. empire and its vassals with the loss of his personal freedom, incarcerated for years in solitary confinement in a British dungeon on wholly fabricated spying allegations.
At such a perilous time in history when all-out war between nuclear powers is a dreadful danger, the world’s public needs more than ever open access to information and understanding of what are the causes of conflict. Western corporate media have increasingly shown themselves to be nothing but propaganda tools that promote risible pro-war narratives, such as the West “defending Ukraine from Russian aggression”. The Western media are misleading the public with false propaganda that distorts and conceals the real causes of conflict. Thus, making all-out catastrophic war a real danger.
Nevertheless, despite this propaganda onslaught and execrable dereliction of journalistic duty, the international public and the Western public, in particular, have shown an admirably healthy resistance and skepticism towards the Western media and their so-called governments. What is becoming more apparent is the toxic propaganda and the hypocrisy of Western governments and their servile media. This public resistance is fatally undermining the authority of Washington and its NATO allies.
This is reflected in growing public awareness and criticism around the world but in particular in the United States and across Europe leveled at the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine. People are increasingly critical of how the Western powers are reprehensibly fueling the war with endless weapons while the Western public’s own social and economic needs are unconscionably neglected.
So-called leaders like America’s Joe Biden are ridiculed as decrepit clowns while European non-entities like Germany’s Olaf Scholz and France’s Emmanuel Macron are routinely booed in public.
Strategic Culture Foundation has empowered Western public knowledge and critical thinking through its open forum of intelligent and independent articles.
That is why it has become essential, from the point of view of the Western regimes, to shut us down with a vengeance. This, in turn, only exposes all the more the hypocrisy of Western states who claim to respect free speech and democracy.
It needs to be more widely appreciated what is going on at this time. The Western states, under the sway of ruling elites and corporate propaganda services, are at war. Not just against Russia, China and other dissenting nations. They are at war against their own public who are growing increasingly discontented and angered by the despotism that is the real, inherent condition of Western rulers and their bankrupt capitalist system.
Truth may be an early casualty of war. But that casualty can be repaired with more supportive truth and time. What might be said to be the last casualty of war are liars and their despotism.
And they can’t be repaired – when the damage to their deception is finally done.
Top UK Journalist Isabel Oakeshott Gloated Over The US’ Role In Imran Khan’s Deposal
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 27, 2023
The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) narrative about former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s scandalous deposal in April 2022 has hitherto been that it supposedly represented a completely independent and purely democratic exercise that was entirely free of foreign influence. These analyses here and here argue that it was actually a US-backed post-modern coup carried out as punishment for his multipolar foreign policy, which readers can learn more about by reviewing the preceding pieces.
The details are beyond the scope of the present piece, however, which focuses on how the MSM’s narrative has abruptly shifted in light of the provocative op-ed published by top UK journalist Isabel Oakeshott for the Telegraph. In her article titled “Imran Khan isn’t a martyr for freedom. He’s a friend of the West’s worst enemies”, she breaks ranks with her peers after being triggered by a recent video about IK’s plight in prison that includes footage of his meeting with President Putin in February 2022.
Here’s her initial reaction to that from the article:
“But hang on a minute! Who’s that lurking in the video? Do I spy an image of Khan gladhanding Vladimir Putin, even as the Russian president rained bombs on Ukraine? Of all the many pictures his spin doctors could have selected of their man on the world stage, they chose this one, as well as an image of their leader meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. What a blunder – and what a disturbing insight into Khan’s new allegiances, now he has left his colourful playboy past behind.”
She then gloated over the US’ role in his deposal:
“A sensational report by The Intercept claims that a leaked Pakistani government document shows his deposal was actively encouraged by the US State Department. No wonder! As the West united to support Ukraine, what was he doing gravitating towards the Kremlin? While his supporters wring their hands over his plight, others may be relieved that this complex character no longer has his finger on a nuclear button.”
Oakeshott is entitled to her opinion, but it surprised many that a leading UK journalist would break the MSM’s narrative on this ultra-sensitive issue in an op-ed for one of the West’s leading outlets. It’s also curious that the Telegraph didn’t include the typical disclaimer that their contributors’ views don’t necessarily reflect their own. Considering this, the message being conveyed is that they – and elements of the Western elite by extrapolation – are proud of the US’ most successful regime change in years.
The silver lining is that anyone who tries to gaslight by claiming that it’s a so-called “conspiracy theory” to allege US involvement in IK’s deposal is now discredited since those who they’re attacking can simply point to how top UK journalist Oakeshott gloated over this in the Telegraph. Without realizing it, she just dealt a powerful blow to Western soft power by exposing the hypocrisy of its “rules-based order”, which in this context lends credence to many Pakistanis’ claims that their government is illegitimate.
Conflict in Ukraine Reveals EU Leaders’ Subordination to Washington: Ex-Italian PM
Al-Manar | August 27, 2023
NATO’s strategy for the conflict in Ukraine, based on military supplies and the logic of escalation, has failed, while the crisis itself has exposed the EU’s inability to show leadership and underlined its subordination to the US. Giuseppe Conte, former Prime Minister of Italy, now the leader of the Five Star Movement opposition political party, expressed this opinion on Saturday.
“The strategy pursued so far in NATO, based on constant military supplies to Ukraine and the logic of escalation, did not lead to a military defeat for Russia: there was no defeat of the Russian army in Bakhmut, there was no collapse [of] its military units, there was no retreat during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The economic and financial sanctions imposed on Russia did not lead to its bankruptcy and did not bring down its economy,” Conte wrote on his Facebook page.
“The isolation of Russia has by no means become a reality. On the contrary, the 15th summit of the BRICS group has just ended with a concrete prospect of its further expansion in 2024, which will cover 45% of the world’s population and 38.2% of world GDP,” Conte went on.
According to Conte, “the conflict in the heart of old Europe has revealed the inability of the European Union to develop an effective common strategy and show independent political and economic leadership, highlighting, on the contrary, the subordination of [European] rulers to the United States.” As the former Italian prime minister noted, his party has always “been convinced of the fallacy of the desire to inflict a military defeat on the Russian Federation.”
Conte has repeatedly called for the start of peace talks on Ukraine. In particular, he said that he was in favor of a “breakthrough in the negotiation process” with the participation of the Vatican and “all other players in the international community.” The former prime minister noted that he “would not leave” President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky “the right to decide how, when and under what conditions to sit down at the negotiating table.”
The Five Star Movement has long opposed sending weapons to Ukraine. This position indirectly caused it to leave the previous ruling coalition, which led to the fall of the previous government of Mario Draghi in the summer of 2022.
Google buries websites of Trump, RFK Jr, Republican challengers
RT | August 26, 2023
Google is suppressing the 2024 campaign websites of all serious challengers to Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden, a report from the Media Research Center claimed on Thursday.
Searching the web for ‘presidential campaign websites’ using Google returned results that did not include a single Republican candidate on the first page the day before the first Republican primary debate of the 2024 season, according to the MRC.
Not even former US President Donald Trump, who is polling neck-and-neck with Biden, appeared in the first few pages of results, the media watchdog observed.
Nor did Democratic challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the chief threat to Biden’s candidacy from within his own party, appear in the results at all, even though a recent poll had him at nearly 20% in a matchup against Biden.
Indeed, the only non-Biden Democrat to feature on the first page was lifestyle guru Marianne Williamson, who has never polled above the low single digits.
However, the websites of prominent Democrats who are not running for president in 2024, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, were more prominently featured at 29th, 12th, and 9th place in the results, respectively.
“Google has erased every threat to Joe Biden,” MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider said on Thursday, recalling how Google had “pulled out all the stops to put Hillary Clinton in the White House” and “has continued to interfere in our elections ever since.”
As of Saturday, the phenomenon appeared to have actually worsened. While Biden’s site was the fourth listed on the search engine and Williamson’s the fifth, Sanders remained at 12th, while Clinton had actually moved up to 13th.
Former Vice President Mike Pence’s site was the highest-ranked Republican in a search run on Saturday morning – though even his page was listed several places behind an Atlantic article informing the casual browser that 1996 Republican candidate and now-deceased former Senator Bob Dole’s campaign website “is still online.”
Kennedy has been widely disparaged by the media establishment and online factcheckers for his work on vaccine safety. He sued Google earlier this month for violating his First Amendment rights, arguing its subsidiary YouTube had blocked his content on orders from the Biden administration.
Trump also sued Google in 2021 for infringing on his free speech after he was deplatformed from YouTube along with most other mainstream social media platforms following the January 6 Capitol riot.
Over a dozen government agencies were found to be issuing content-based censorship orders to social media platforms last year in Missouri v. Biden, leading a judge to issue a restraining order forbidding the administration from contacting the platforms.
Biden administration sought control over TikTok
RT | August 26, 2023
The Biden administration sought to gain control over nearly every aspect of the inner workings of social media behemoth TikTok as part of negotiations allowing its continued operation in the US, according to a draft agreement obtained by Forbes last week.
The agreement, which runs to nearly 100 pages, would reportedly give the White House a level of control over the Chinese-owned platform even greater than that which it was found last year to be exercising over US-based competitors like Facebook and Twitter, allowing government officials to not only monitor and influence the conversation on the platform but also to interfere in the day-to-day operations of TikTok in the US.
Government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense would have full authority to examine TikTok’s servers, equipment, records, facilities, and other properties, according to the draft. They could also block changes to the app’s US terms of service, privacy policy, and moderation policies and veto the hiring of any individual involved in data security for the US.
The agreement would also force TikTok and its parent company ByteDance to submit to outside audits, assessments, code inspections, and cybersecurity checks by supposedly independent entities chosen by the US government. The company would be required to foot the bill for these intrusions.
The platform’s US staff could even have been required to exclude ByteDance’s executives from security-related decisions, instead deferring to an executive security committee whose actions would also be concealed from ByteDance. This committee’s primary responsibility would be maintaining US national security first and TikTok’s profitability second.
The draft seen by Forbes, dated last summer, is the product of months of exchanges between ByteDance and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which oversees foreign involvement in business deals that could potentially impact national security and has been investigating ByteDance for four years.
TikTok has repeatedly been threatened with a blanket ban or forced sale of its US assets to an American competitor as both President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump claimed the platform is used by Beijing for information warfare.
CFIUS renewed the call for a ban or sale in March after the DOJ launched an investigation into ByteDance employees using TikTok to spy on American journalists. A spokesperson for ByteDance confirmed the surveillance but attributed it to rogue employees who have since been fired.
TikTok has over 150 million American users spending 90 minutes or more on the platform. While the company pledged in 2021 to isolate US user data on servers owned by tech giant Oracle to assuage spying concerns, Biden prohibited its use by federal employees in December and dozens of state and city governments have followed suit.
California Church Fined For Defying Covid Lockdowns Sues County For Tracking Worshipers Without Their Knowledge
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 26, 2023
A church in California punished during Covid lockdowns with a fine of $1.2 million is now suing over geofencing-based surveillance of its members.
The church, Calvary Chapel San Jose, along with Pastor Mike McClure, allege in the federal lawsuit filed this week that Santa Clara County engaged in warrantless and invasive surveillance, using the geofencing method and thus abusing location data harvested from the worshipers’ phones.
The filing is based on claims that both First Amendment related to free speech, and the Fourth Amendment, meant to protect against unlawful searches, were violated by the county as it resorted to spying via geofencing.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a group that filed the lawsuit, specified that the county turned to SafeGraph data company in order to carry out this activity, and accuses the officials behind the scheme as engaging in tracking of residents not only without appropriate warrants and in an invasive manner, but also keeping this activity a secret from the public.
“This type of expansive geofencing operation is not only an invasion of privacy but represents a terrifying precedent if allowed to go unaddressed,” the complaint states. “As it stands, Defendants assert that, as long as they call it research, any level of government can target and spy on any individual or group at any time for any duration.”
It is further alleged that the operation lasted more than a year, “with seemingly no oversight, boundaries, or limitations.” The implication of this is that those targeted by this controversial, dragnet-style surveillance weren’t safe from it anywhere – be it the prayer room or the bathroom.
Those behind the lawsuit also reject the arguments that the defendants have apparently chosen to go with, namely, that the whole operation was done for the sake of “research,” and is therefore justified.
But, argues Advocates for Faith & Freedom, accepting such logic would mean that there would be no real limits to how government entities at any level could use geofencing to track either groups or individuals. This lack of boundaries means that the spying could go on against anyone and for any amount of time – and potentially be used against opponents.
“This is not just un-American; it is downright Orwellian,” stated Advocates for Faith & Freedom.
Santa Clara County, meanwhile, had nothing to add to its previous comments on the matter, well before the lawsuit was filed. Back in March, the county reacted to a report about tracking of worshipers written by journalist David Zweig.
Ex-Ukrainian chief prosecutor claims Biden took bribes
RT | August 26, 2023
Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has claimed that Joe Biden, while serving as US vice president, received a bribe from a Ukrainian energy company in exchange for helping to get him fired in 2016.
In an interview with Fox News released on Friday, Shokin said that Biden pressured then-Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko to fire him over his investigation into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden, the incumbent US president’s son, served at the time.
The ex-prosecutor argued that both Poroshenko and Joe Biden understood that if he had been allowed to continue his probe into Burisma, it could have provided “the facts about the corrupt activities” by Hunter Biden, Devon Archer – another American executive with Burisma – and other people involved.
However, Poroshenko offered a different version of events, insisting that Shokin was fired because of his failure to fight corruption in Ukraine.
Shokin said that he had a “firm personal conviction” that both Joe and Hunter Biden had their palms greased in connection with the Burisma case. “They were being bribed. And the fact that Joe Biden gave away $1 billion in US money in exchange for my dismissal, my firing – isn’t that alone a case of corruption?” he asked.
The ex-official was referring to a 2018 interview in which Joe Biden boasted that in 2015 he threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from Poroshenko unless Shokin was let go. “Well, son of a b***h, he got fired,” Biden said.
However, White House spokesperson Ian Sams dismissed Shokin’s claims, chiding Fox News for “giving a platform for these lies to a former Ukrainian prosecutor general whose office his own deputy called ‘a hotbed of corruption.’”
The allegations of quid pro quo involving Joe and Hunter Biden were raised by Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley in June, when they released a bombshell FBI informant file. According to the document, a “highly credible” confidential source was allegedly told by Burisma owner Nikolay Zlochevsky that Joe and Hunter Biden received $5 million each to use their political influence in Kiev.
US lawmakers rail against more Ukraine aid
RT | August 26, 2023
At least two US lawmakers have objected to earmarking additional funds to support Ukraine, arguing that Washington has failed to articulate a clear strategy in the conflict, Politico reported on Friday, citing a draft letter.
Earlier this month, US President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve an additional $24 billion in security, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Kiev despite growing skepticism among Republicans about further support for the embattled country.
Politico obtained a draft copy of a letter compiled by Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and addressed to Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young. It is dated September 5 and has been left unsigned as the Republican duo is attempting to gain the support of other lawmakers, according to Politico.
The letter chides the Biden administration for failing to provide Congress with a detailed account of US government-wide expenditures related to the Ukraine conflict.
The lawmakers also stressed that the need for a cross-cutting report on the matter had become even more pressing after the Pentagon recently acknowledged a $6.2 billion “accounting error” in Ukraine aid.
While White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan argued that the error did not suggest a lack of oversight of Ukraine assistance, the admission galvanized calls among Republicans to audit the aid. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that Americans “ha[d] no idea where all this money is going.”
Vance and Roy pointed out that Biden’s assertion that the US would back Ukraine “as long as it takes” implies “an open-ended commitment to supporting the war in Ukraine of an indeterminate nature,” arguing that both the American public and Congress have been left in the dark as to the administration’s ultimate goal.
“What is our strategy, and what is the president’s exit plan?” the lawmakers asked, stressing that it would be “an absurd abdication” of congressional responsibility to approve the $24 billion aid package until these questions are answered.
“For these reasons, and others, we oppose the additional expenditure for the war in Ukraine included in your supplemental request,” they concluded.
Since the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, the US has provided Kiev with more than $113 billion, a significant portion of which is military assistance. Russia has repeatedly warned Washington and its allies that weapons deliveries would only prolong the hostilities but fail to change the outcome.
The Fleeting Mirage of Imagined Supremacy
By William Schryver – imetatronink – August 25, 2023
The United States pretty much had its way in the world from 1991 to 2014. But now the empire’s strength is severely depleted and fatally overextended, whereas the military and industrial capacity of its increasingly allied adversaries is ascendant, and in aggregate, greatly exceeds that of the empire and its compliant vassals.
Perhaps most importantly, the ability of the US to inflict severe economic and financial damage on countries who defy “the rules-based international order” has been rendered effectively impotent by the collaborative countermeasures developed and resolutely employed by Russia, China, Iran, India, Brazil … the list goes on, and is lengthening at an accelerating pace.
And, even as US sanctions power has dramatically waned, its capability to maintain a potent military presence in dozens of strategic “hot spots” around the world has become illusory. Yes, the American military ostentatiously maintains many hundreds of bases dotting the planet, but that simply underscores the extreme degree to which US military power is diluted.
The purported ability of the US military to “project power anywhere on the globe at a moment’s notice” is a meaningless fantasy in the context of anything more than launching a few dozen cruise missiles at a target in a country that lacks the capacity to shoot back.
This is the incontrovertible mathematical reality: to assemble a force sufficient to wage war against Russia, China, or Iran would require the US to effectively abandon every major military base on the planet.
Were they permitted, without opposing interdiction, to concentrate a million combat effectives (they wouldn’t be, of course), it would require at least a full year to stage such a force in the theater of operations.
A “combined-arms” force adequate to make war against Russia, China, or Iran would necessarily constitute the greatest concentration of American military power since the Second World War, with the longest and most vulnerable supply lines ever seen in the history of warfare — choke-points that would be potently contested by what almost certainly would be the combined naval and long-range strike-missile capabilities of Russia, China, and Iran.
But, for the sake of argument, let us imagine a fully equipped American combined-arms force could be miraculously materialized in eastern Europe, or the South China Sea, or the Persian Gulf.
As multitudes of observant and discerning military officers and analysts around the world have now come to see: the US could only sustain high-intensity industrial-scale warfare for 6 – 8 weeks, at most, until severe losses, munitions exhaustion, and broad-spectrum logistical breakdowns compelled them to cease operations.
This reality was little recognized and poorly understood prior to February 2022. But the war in Ukraine has exposed key US military shortcomings and vulnerabilities, and revealed the shocking logistical and industrial debility of what many across the globe still imagined to be “The Greatest Military in Human History” and the peerless industrial production might of the legendary “Arsenal of Democracy”.
By unfounded reputation, and “on paper”, as they say, the United States appears to possess the most powerful military on the planet. But there is a vast difference between perceived power and the actual ability to project power and sustain power against the adversaries the US military must now face and defeat in order to prevent or even meaningfully delay the end of American global hegemony.
Featured Video
The Failed Air War Over Vietnam
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Europe’s mounting social chaos… chickens coming home to roost for proxy war against Russia
- US-Russia Diesel Deal Becomes Massive Defeat for Ukraine
- Hormuz and the Looming Economic Catastrophe
- Dhubab offensive, media blitz and the rapid unraveling of Saudi-backed coalition’s new gambit
- Putin Conveys to Trump Iran’s Vision on Possible Conflict Resolution – Kremlin
- The Search for Truth: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination One Year Later
- ‘Harsh reality’: Iran says France seeks monopoly on power and intimidation, not peace for all
- When Will This White House Madness End?
- Huckabee aide goes to ‘unusual lengths’ to portray ‘Israel’ positively
- Trump Announces Diesel Supply Deal With Putin Following Phone Call
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli forces kill another child in Gaza – Daily Update
- Gaza ceasefire exists in name only, say more than 100 organizations
- Nearly 2 Million in Gaza Need Urgent Shelter Assistance as Winter Looms: IOM Chief Warns
- Suppressing Palestinian resistance: US charity under fire for AI monitoring of Gaza classrooms
- Thousands Are Held in Israeli Torture Camps. This Is What Happens Inside
- Israel puts Gaza’s sick, injured, newborn in peril – Daily Update
- Report claimed Mark Levin used by Israeli government to influence Trump
- Over 2,000 Gazans have died awaiting medical evacuation amid Israel’s continued siege
- How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel
- 5 Palestinians Die from Israeli Strikes in Gaza as Relentless Attacks Continue
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
