“Interestingly, a footnote in the first sentence did recognize that $2 billion of the $3 billion of Marshall Plan loans made to West Germany was forgiven in 1953, while most other European nations received direct grants rather than loans from the program and therefore didn’t have to worry about repayment.“
“As the report goes on to document, any pre-existing federal commitment to debt repayment began to quickly erode during the George H.W. Bush Administration.“
Last night’s Republican debate was a farce from beginning to end.
The first laugh line of the evening was Fox Business personality Stuart Varney having a difficult time getting through the name of his co-host Ilia Calderón.
The debate’s conclusion ended in a similarly awkward moment for the moderators, with candidates rebelling against an attempt to turn the debate into a political game of Survivor.
Fox News actually tried to get the candidates to play Survivor and write down who they would “vote off the island.”
In between, the politicians on stage attempted to deliver carefully planned one-liners designed to demonstrate more personality than what comes naturally to them. In particular, while there is plenty to laugh at Mike Pence about, his attempted joke was not one of them.
Mike Pence absolutely bombs with the debate crowd with this joke:
“Look, I do sagree with something Tim Scott just said. Joe Biden does not belong on a picket line. He belongs on the unemployment line.” pic.twitter.com/iXHM5HIddi— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 28, 2023
The most comedic line of the night belonged to South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Scott, whose ten-year career in the Senate has left him with no argument for his candidacy beyond latent Republican desires for diversity on the ticket, dutifully stood up to defend the increasingly unpopular bipartisan financial aid lawmakers have provided Ukraine. In response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stating that he would reject further US financial support for the Ukrainian effort, Scott contended that 90% of the assistance is a loan that will be paid off.
Dissension arises over the proper response to the Ukraine war
It is difficult to know whether or not Senator Scott actually believes this; most of what is said on a political debate stage should not be taken at face value. Even if we put aside the question of his 90% figure, which is significantly inflated from the percentage of financial aid that is currently considered a loan, a sincere belief that Ukraine will be expected to actually pay back war-time loans shows a disconnect with the way the modern American empire operates.
Which brings me back to the US goal in Ukraine. It is destruction, and not the creative kind. Ukraine completely destroyed as a free state, to be used as a dead thorn with which to poke Moscow.
US state media – the NYT, WP, NPR, and the main TV news corporations – cautiously broaches topics they refused to touch a year ago. We are learning that Nazi and racist ideologies are popular in Ukraine. We now know the US state department, with German and other EU and NATO assistance, schemed against Russia when they signed on the Minsk agreement in 2014, a noble lie in the neocon fashion. We know, from mainstream media that the so-called Ukraine spring counteroffensive has begun, after much US and NATO urging, and is failing at every turn, at a great cost.
We are now allowed to see glimpses of the dwindling Ukrainian population, and with it, their economy. Indirectly, we understand that there is a growing desperation in Kiev – for money, for weapons, for NATO and EU membership. The actions of the Ukrainian army and its leadership, attacking Moscow with drones, raids into Belarus, attempts to cause nuclear contamination in Eastern Europe though attacks and sabotage of their own Ukrainian nuclear power stations and major dams are being noted. While I believe Seymour Hersh on who did Nordstream, the convenient story of a heroic team of Uke divers doing the job had a valid purpose, to provide the Ukrainian voter with a ray of hope and heroism.
The casual observer of this war, 17 months in, notes physical and emotional exhaustion, and political desperation. The orgasmic excitement expressed by US death cult in Washington the last Saturday in June was revealing. Not of their various “goals” in Ukraine, or their fanatical Russia-hate – but that their long dry spell is beginning to make even neocons desperate for a bit of “good news.”
Neocon war is unpopular, ugly, venal. Worst of all, it is unsuccessful – meaning instead of ending in triumph and celebration, it persists as a confusing, contradictory and costly problem multiplier. We’ve seen this before. Neocons are the Dylan Mulvaneys of American politics, albeit with less sincerity and self-awareness. When it’s your influence that has destroyed the effectiveness of and any residual honor in US foreign policy for the past 70 years, as well as bankrupting the nation – the writing is on the wall.
Or it should be. We’d probably be better off having our country led by a beer company. Even Anheuser-Busch’s crippled instincts would not have led to the present situation in eastern Europe.
Biden is planning to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, and yes, they are indiscriminate, horrific, outlawed in 120 countries, and immoral – but – wait for it – the decision to use them is entirely Ukraine’s. Biden and Blinken and Nuland and Sullivan, and half the Senate and half the Congress – well, they don’t have a thing to do with “Ukraine’s decisions.”
Unless Kiev or a European ally, or NATO member wants to see about ending hostilities, making peace, making Ukraine a safe place for Ukrainians to live – well that’s strictly verboten, forbidden by Washington, cannot happen, is not allowed.
We apparently have a shit ton of MK-20s in the Pentagon “warehouse.” Where else are we going to use them?
So, the question is: Aren’t we blaming China for policies that were pushed through by powerful corporations and their plutocrat bosses?
It certainly looks that way. And, if that is the case, then we can assume that Washington’s drive to war is not fueled by anxiety over which country’s economy will be bigger than the others, but by the Chinese government’s resistence to the political meddling and machinations of foreign oligarchs.
Americas Hyper-Financialized Economic System Is No Match for China’s Government-Directed Investment Model. Regrettably, China’s Explosive Growth Is Pushing a Desperate Washington Closer to War.
Ukraine is the first flashpoint in a great power struggle between the United States and China. After years of shifting its industries to low-wage locations around the world, the US finds itself steadliy losing market-share to a faster-growing and more resourceful China. By most estimates, China’s economy will overtake the United States by 2035 at which point, Beijing will be in a much better position to shape international trade relations in a way that promotes its own interests. With growth, comes power, and that rule will certainly apply to China as well. China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse that sits at the very epicenter of the most populous and fastest growing region in the world. It is for that reason that the United States has initiated a series of provocations on the island of Taiwan and in the South China Sea. The US has abandoned all hope of prevailing over China through conventional free market competition. Instead, the US plans to engage China militarily in a desperate attempt to drain its resources, garner broader support for economic sanctions and isolate isolate China from its regional trading partners. It is a risky and disruptive plan that could backfire spectacularly, but Washington is moving forward regardless. US foreign policy mandarins and their globalist allies will not accept an outcome in which China is the world’s biggest and most powerful economy. This is from an article at China Macro Economy:
Although the pace of China’s economic rise has slowed in recent years, it appears on track to end the United States’ lengthy run as the world’s largest economy by around 2035, according to the latest projection by economists at Goldman Sachs.
The new estimate is 10 years later than the investment bank had predicted in 2011. But economists Kevin Daly and Tadas Gedminas said that potential growth in China still remains significantly higher than in the US.
“China has already closed most of the gap with US GDP,” they said in a report published on Tuesday, adding that China’s gross domestic product has risen from 12 per cent of the US’ in 2000 to a little under 80 per cent.
China’s annual economic growth will be around 4 per cent from 2024 to 2029, compared with 1.9 per cent in the US, according to the report, which projects what the global economy will look like through 2075….
The US dollar’s exceptional strength over the past 10 years is another reason for the 10-year revision in when China’s economy will become No 1, Daly added… But the US dollar’s strength versus the Chinese yuan is likely to diminish over the coming decade, providing more ground for China to overtake the US, according to the report.
Naturally, the financialization of the US economy has greatly impacted America’s prospects for the future. The rise of Wall Street has led to a myriad of debt-leveraging scams that have enriched a handfull of wealthy bankers while diverting trillions in capital to unproductive activities. At the same time, the absence of any coherent industrial policy has triggered the flight of tens of thousands of businesses and factories that relocated to countries that offer an endless supply of low-wage labor. The problem, of course, is that mounting policy errors eventually lead to a drop-off in productivity which allows other, more ambitious countries to fill the void. In short, the Chinese Miracle is largely attributable to financialization and the short-sighted policies that allowed US corporations to move their industries elsewhere rather than provide incentives for them to stay in America. Bottom line: China’s economy is overtaking the US and there is nothing short of nuclear war that can reverse that situation.
In recent weeks, there has been a steady uptick in negative coverage of China in the media along with the predictable attacks on President Xi Jinping. Americans have seen this show many times before and should have a clear understanding of what it means. The demonization of foreign leaders is always the first step towards war. The media led the charge against Saddam, Qaddafi, Milosevic, Putin and countless others. Now China’s Jinping is in the imperial crosshairs. The names change, but the process remains the same. Already, the provocations, sanctions and slanders have begun to pile-up even while brainwashed Americans are led by-the-nose to another bloody conflict.
If there is a war between the two countries, the economic fallout is likely to be catastrophic. Consider, for a minute, how many American and European companies would be severely impacted by a US-China conflict. Here’s an excerpt from an article at Registration China:
By the end of 2020, a total of 1,040,480 foreign companies were registered in Mainland China, the Official data was provided by the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM)…. According to the official data, China had established a total of 961,000 Foreign-Invested Enterprises (FIE) until the end of 2018, with the actual use of foreign capital of US $2.1 trillion…. The results show that the number of foreign-invested enterprises is keep on increasing in 2021… (“How many Foreign Companies in China?”, GWBMA
1 million foreign-owned companies in China? That is simply astonishing.
While more oversight could increase accountability for the tens of billions being sent to Ukraine, it could also be used to justify more US involvement in the war.
More oversight? How about any oversight. The Pentagram doesn’t do oversight.
Congressional negotiators have been at odds over the final numbers of the spending bill, but Schumer said that he expects a deal will be reached soon. The White House has asked Congress to authorize $37.7 billion in Ukraine aid, which would bring total US spending on the war to about $105 billion.
Congress could authorize more funding for Ukraine than Biden requested, as they did before, but at this point, it’s not clear what the final number will be. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who opposes arming Ukraine, said the new aid should be put to a separate vote.
“This is wrong. We should have a separate vote on additional Ukraine funding. Most of my constituents do NOT wish to have their money sent to Ukraine, especially not without oversight or an audit,” Massie wrote on Twitter.
Massie joined Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in sponsoring a bill that would require an audit of all the funds the US has authorized for Ukraine. The resolution was voted down by the Democrat-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, but it received support from mainstream Republicans, and Greene said she will reintroduce the legislation when the GOP takes over the House.
MCViewPoint 