MCViewPoint

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Posts Tagged ‘Ukraine’

Don’t Spare the Billions

Posted by M. C. on February 26, 2024

Joe Biden has created a tsunami of inflation with his giveaways to black voters, his open-ended support of Israel’s far right government and now billions more spending.  It’s been a financial disaster.  Donald Trump understands. After all, it was he who ended the stupid, pointless war in Afghanistan.

By Eric S. Margolis

When I was a boy growing up in New York City I was taught – and re-taught – to always save half of my weekly allowance and never spend more than I had in savings.

Too bad Joe Biden was not taught this useful Presbyterian virtue.  Recently, Biden’s government has sought $106 billion in the latest aid for arms for Israel and Ukraine, the biggest expenditure since the Vietnam War.  This while the bills for the incredibly foolish war in Afghanistan keep coming in, to date $2 trillion.

Now, the US in high-fever pre-election time, is lavishing billions upon Israel.  Most of the world is trying to get Israel out of its lethal rampage in Gaza, but the US and its failing colonial partner, Great Britain, continue to wave the banner of empire. Britain, as hardly anyone has noticed, has been bombing Yemen for the past 14 years, supplying warplanes, bombs and mercenary pilots and technicians.

President Biden is growing desperate as the election draws closer.  Polls show him way behind Donald Trump.  Both Trump and Biden are too old for the job of president.  In my old-fashioned view, only military veterans should be allowed to run for high office.

Meanwhile, Biden is splashing around tens of millions on schemes for blacks, who have become his electoral mainstay.  Jewish voters who ardently back Israel are said to provide a large proportion of the Democratic party’s finances. They are advocating deeper US involvement in the Gaza Conflict and even more money for Israel, already the largest recipient of US cash.

Pandering to Israel is standard pre-election behavior. In the old days elections were always marked by huge cash grants and the latest US weapons lavished on Israel.  And money on the ‘three I’s,’ Israel, Italy and Ireland.

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Destroyed Ukraine Is Testing Ground For The Military-Industrial Complex

Posted by M. C. on February 2, 2024

The Ron Paul Liberty Report

With an estimated half a million Ukrainian soldiers dead, there is one “bright spot” in the US proxy war with Russia: the US military -industrial complex has used the war as a live-fire testing ground for the latest weapons. As Politico reports, a batch of “Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs” will soon be tested in Ukraine. The US military has not even received these weapons.

Look out for even more civilian casualties.

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What Would Happen If the US Stopped Supporting Ukraine?

Posted by M. C. on December 7, 2023

That brings us back to the original question. What would happen if the United States stopped supporting Ukraine? We already know. Ukraine and Russia would work toward a deal. It won’t go as well for Ukraine as it did almost two years ago when they were stronger. But it’s not a path to fear. Because the alternative is that the White House gets its way and this brutal, unnecessary war carries on. And that’s so much worse.

Connor O’Keeffe

https://mises.org/wire/what-would-happen-if-us-stopped-supporting-ukraine

Over the weekend, border-policy negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans fell apart. The talks were meant to firm up Republican support for the president’s massive $105 billion military support proposal ahead of Wednesday’s vote by including additional funds for border security in the spending package. Now, with no imminent approval of further aid to Ukraine, hawks in government and the media are trying to stoke panic about what will happen if Kyiv is cut off from US support.

In a letter to Congress Monday, White House budget director Shalanda Young told Congress the funds will dry up by the end of the year:

I want to be clear: without congressional action, by the end of the year we will run out of resources to procure more weapons and equipment for Ukraine and to provide equipment from U.S. military stocks. There is no magical pot of funding available to meet this moment. We are out of money—and nearly out of time.

Young goes on to forecast disaster for Ukraine if more money isn’t allocated. But is that really accurate? Are the Ukrainian people doomed if Washington stops funding the war?

If we’re going to understand what might happen in the absence of US involvement in Ukraine, we must first understand Washington’s actual effect on the war, the true nature of which has been laid out brilliantly in a series of recent columns by Ted Snider.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began with a bombardment of cruise missiles on February 24, 2022. Later that day, infantry and armored divisions rolled in from Russia, Belarus, and Crimea while paratroopers dropped in around the capital city of Kyiv.

Days later, as the shock and confusion of the initial offensive began to dissipate, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky attempted to set up indirect talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Zelensky called then–Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett and asked him to contact Putin and to serve as a mediator. Bennett agreed.

Over the next week, Bennett had a series of phone calls with Putin before traveling to Moscow and Berlin to help organize diplomatic communication channels. His effort culminated in a March 10 meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers in Turkey.

In the series of talks that followed, Bennett described both sides as making “huge concessions” in pursuit of a ceasefire.

But Kyiv’s Western backers were resistant to the truce. At a special summit on March 24, NATO decided not to support or approve the peace negotiations. Still, Zelensky and Putin kept at it. And on March 29, the two sides reached an agreement.

According to a draft unsealed this past June, Russia had agreed to pull its forces back to prewar boundaries. In exchange, Ukraine had agreed it would not seek NATO membership.

So why didn’t it happen? Well, it may have started to. In early April, Russia withdrew its forces from northern Ukraine, around Kyiv—an action Putin later said was related to the Istanbul agreement.

But then, according to Bennett, former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, and the leader of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks, David Arakhamia, the West pressured Zelensky to abandon negotiations and fight.

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Ukraine Another Historic U.S. War Failure a la Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and More

Posted by M. C. on December 5, 2023

Editorial

The war-indebted U.S. empire is faltering towards its historic and final demise. Every empire has its day in the sun.

In 1945 and subsequent years, Nazi war criminals in Ukraine were recruited to serve Uncle Sam. It was typical treachery. Despite all the Hollywood glamour about defeating Nazi Germany, the U.S. redeployed the Third Reich war machine for its postwar imperial designs. Fittingly, eight decades on, the same territory now spells the end of the American empire.

The U.S.-led NATO alliance held its first NATO-Ukraine Council meeting this week in Brussels. As usual, the cliched promises of supporting the Kiev regime to the end were trotted out by all and sundry.

In truth, these NATO events for Ukraine, and more generally, are becoming yawn fests.

The whole sordid charade is only postponing the reality that the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is a debacle for the Western powers. This is not something to gloat over. It is a tragedy and an abomination.

Up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, as well as tens of thousands of Russian military personnel. Total casualty figures are no doubt in the millions. In addition, millions of civilians have been displaced as refugees in Russia and throughout Europe. Hundreds of billions of dollars and euros have been raided from Western taxpayers to fund this bloody fiasco. Not only that but international tensions have been heightened between nuclear powers at a perilous pitch not seen since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 at the depth of the Cold War.

Washington needs to come to its senses and negotiate a peaceful settlement on Moscow’s terms. It’s as simple and as blunt as that. This is what could have been achieved before the conflict erupted in February 2022 when Moscow was offering a negotiable security treaty. The West rejected those terms out of hand back then. Now it will have to accept. Primarily, the conditions are that there will be no further NATO enlargement around Russia’s borders and in particular there will be no inclusion of Ukraine in the American-led bellicose military bloc.

Attending the NATO summit this week was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken along with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and the foreign ministers of the other 30 NATO member states. Kuleba declared with delusional disconnect: “We are pretty much becoming a de facto NATO army.” He may be somewhat correct that Ukraine has been used as a proxy force for NATO, but it is a spent and decimated one.

Blinken seemed to be concerned with papering over cracks appearing in various media reports indicating that the U.S. is surreptitiously telling the Kiev regime to cut its losses and make a sort of peace deal with Russia. Blinken’s bravado rhetoric is akin to empty U.S. promises previously made to Afghanistan and countless other proxy regimes over the decades before Washington ignominiously pulls the plug and does a runner.

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Ex NATO Chief’s Latest Hair Brain Plan for Ukraine? Can’t Make This S*** Up

Posted by M. C. on December 1, 2023

NATO’s 75th birthday is coming around soon, with celebrations planned for July of next year in Washington. Yet the organisation has a bit of a problem with the party and celebrations.

Martin Jay

Rasmussen seems to think he has a plan with giving Ukraine a token NATO membership, overlooking the somewhat incongruous fact that it was the threat of Ukraine becoming a NATO member which kicked things off the first place.

When people reach the ripe old age of 75, there is usually a tendency to slow down and take things easier; often there’s a lack of cohesion, sentences often aren’t completed, delusion and incompetence become more noticeable if not plain idiocy on a scale not previously seen. In some cases, relatives might even talk of assisted suicide to put the old bugger out of his misery, with some even as going as far to talk about being “brain dead”.

NATO’s 75th birthday is coming around soon, with celebrations planned for July of next year in Washington. Yet the organisation has a bit of a problem with the party and celebrations. What’s there to celebrate with Ukraine more or less a war that even die-hard Republicans in America admit is a war which cannot be won? 75 years old, NATO is looking more and more like an outdated institution which, if anything, is going to fall on its sword at some point when the world wakes up and realises what a con it is.

But the old git has to be kept alive at all costs, largely to keep up appearances for new members and also to protect the reputations of western leaders who have staked theirs on the war in Ukraine being a righteous win.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen is a lucky man. The former NATO chief is fortunate enough to actually not look as stupid as he really is and is at a period in his so-called career where he can say patently idiotic things and it doesn’t matter. But his latest idea – to give Ukraine some kind of token, half-cocked NATO membership – is braindead nonsense on a whole new scale which we haven’t seen before.

NATO Neanderthals are desperate to find a solution in Ukraine so they can have their party in July and not look completely stupid while they watch the fireworks and do the idiotic arms-crossed hand shakes. You know the sort of thing.

Ukraine has to be fixed. The war has to be presented to a gullible western audience as victory, sort of, to NATO. Given that the whole thing is over and the Ukrainian army is such a shower of shite, one wonders how NATO folk are going to pull off such a stunt.

Rasmussen seems to think he has a plan with giving Ukraine a token NATO membership, overlooking the somewhat incongruous fact that it was the threat of Ukraine becoming a NATO member which kicked things off the first place. His thinking – don’t laugh – is that if Ukraine was in NATO then Russia would be too afraid to attack it. That is to say, Russia, which controls about a third of the country in the east would be reluctant to attack the western part currently under control of Ukrainian army. And this move would show Russia that Ukraine can join NATO. According to the Guardian, the “former secretary general says partial membership would warn Russia it cannot stop Ukraine joining the alliance”.

It seems an incredibly juvenile gesture, but the logic behind the thinking is fatally flawed for at least four key reasons, in my view.

  1. The idea just writes off all of the territory that Russia has taken and expects Zelensky to swallow this, despite the Ukrainian president stating on many occasions this is not negotiable.
  2. Russia would not be afraid to strike western Ukraine simply because the country was sort of in NATO. The bigger worry here is the escalation from NATO would put it under the spotlight to retaliate, which it wouldn’t.
  3. NATO membership comes with a few rules, namely only democracies get to join the club. NATO does not do state building and so allowing one of the most corrupt countries in the world into its elite club might lower the bar for other countries like Bosnia or Georgia who are candidate members. It can’t take in gangsters and not expect its public image to slip even further.
  4. Allowing Ukraine in, takes away a key – if not the only – bargaining chip the west has, which is to guarantee to Putin that Ukraine won’t join NATO. With Ukraine in NATO and representing an even bigger threat, it raises the stakes even higher and gives Russia no real reason not to invade.

Like absolutely everything that NATO and the Biden administration has done since day one of the Russian invasion, this is yet another gross miscalculation on the part of NATO elites. Are they banking on Joe Biden not even knowing which country he is in, being unable to even say one word through his rapidly developing senility by the time July comes around? Or that Zelensky himself is the real problem as he wouldn’t ever accept giving up the Donbas or Crimea and so therefore has to be replaced?

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Uranium Particles From Ukraine Detected in Europe Raising Health Issues

Posted by M. C. on November 20, 2023

Sonja van den Ende

The western elites in all their stupidity preach the danger of climate change and ignore the danger of depleted uranium.

In conclusion, we can say that the elites of Europe and the West currently in power in all their stupidity preach the danger of climate change and ignore the danger of depleted uranium, dismissing it as not dangerous to public health, while scientists prove that it can be.

In March 2023 the UK and in September 2023, the US, delivered shells filled with depleted uranium to Ukraine, or maybe they delivered it before already, we don’t know, usually when they announce something it already happened!

Depleted uranium can be used to reinforce armour-plating on tanks but is favoured for weapons because of its extreme density and ability to pierce conventional tank armour. These types of shells sharpen on impact, which further increases their ability to bore through armour, and they ignite after contact.

In September 2023 after the delivery of these shells filled with depleted uranium, the Russian Ministry of Defence stated that it carried out strikes on warehouses where Ukrainian troops stored these depleted uranium shells and UK-made long-range Storm-shadow missiles.

“Last night, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a group strike with high-precision long-range air-based weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles at the storage sites of Storm-shadow cruise missiles and depleted uranium ammunition,” the ministry said in a statement back in September 2023.

Although the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Rafael Grossi, said that there is no danger to public health in using depleted uranium, the Washington Post and other so-called quality newspapers however, said that there is a real danger to public health. The UK was the first to start deliveries of depleted uranium shells and long-range Storm-shadow missiles to Ukraine in March 2023, also ammunition with depleted uranium for the British tank Challenger 2. The US announced on 6 September 2023, that it would send depleted uranium ammunition and cluster bombs to Ukraine.

In May 2023, information emerged about a powerful explosion in one of the warehouses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near the city of Khmelnitsky in western Ukraine. Most likely due to a rocket attack by the Russian forces, a warehouse for British uranium-filled grenades was hit. According to some reports, another warehouse containing depleted uranium ammunition was also hit by Russia in the Ternopil region.

This caused panic among the residents of Western Ukraine, but also in the borderlands of Ukraine like Poland. In the Ukrainian media information emerged about an increase in the level of gamma radiation after the destruction of both storage sites. Scientists said a fairly small dose of gamma radiation came from the depleted uranium in the ammunition; a large increase indicates the destruction of a very large number of munitions with depleted uranium, thereby increasing the level of radioactive material in the air.

In recent days, British scientist Dr. Christopher Busby, scientific secretary of the European Radiation Risk Committee, came up with more revelations, studies and reported an increase in the concentration of uranium particles in the air in the south-east of the UK. But he previously published an abstract/paper called: “Uraniumweapons being employed in Ukraine have significantly increased Uranium levels in the air in the UK”.

He begins his research paper with the following text:

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Zelensky Complains War In Gaza Is “Taking Away The Focus” From Ukraine

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2023

Is “focus” how Zelensky translates “dollars”?

It must be disconcerting for a stand up comedian NOT to be the center of attention.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/zelensky-complains-war-gaza-taking-away-focus-ukraine

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

He really spoke the words out loud… Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that the war in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas is “taking away the focus” from the Ukraine conflict

He made the remarks in a press conference in Kiev while standing alongside EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, at a moment headlines have turned negative on the prospect of ever being able to beat back the Russians. “Of course, it’s clear that the war in the Middle East, this conflict, is taking away the focus,” Zelensky said in the surprisingly blunt admission.

He began his remarks by commenting on the front line situation, which hasn’t changed significantly in many months. “Time has passed, people are tired… But this is not a stalemate,” he said.

“No one among our partners is pressuring us to sit down with Russia, talk to it, and give it something,” he added, after reports have in the last days emerged that Washington is exploring possible concessions to the Russians behind the scenes. 

Zelensky claimed that it’s “Russia’s goal” to take global focus away from the Ukraine war. “We have already been in very difficult situations when there was almost no focus on Ukraine,” he said, before adding, “I am absolutely sure we will overcome this challenge.”

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German Defense Chief Says Public Must Get Used To Possibility Of ‘War In Europe’

Posted by M. C. on November 1, 2023

So Germany is ready to fight for a neo-nazi led military, commanded by a washed up, corrupt stand up comedian. In theory where any NATO member goes, so do US sons and daughters.

Germany must really like US money and/or are afraid the money will stop if they don’t obey.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/german-defense-chief-says-public-must-get-used-possibility-war-europe

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

Starting last month, top Ukrainian officials began pushing an alarmist narrative that “world war 3 has already begun” – as the head Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Aleksey Danilov had claimed in early September. The words were spoken after it became clear that Ukraine’s military was losing, and now Time magazine has confirmed the military doesn’t have the manpower to fight off the Russians. Naturally, Kiev must find new ways to draw in more direct support of key European powers.

“If somebody thinks that World War III hasn’t started then it’s a huge mistake. It has already begun. It had been underway in a hybrid period for some time and has now entered an active phase,” Danilov said before the Kiev Security Forum at the time (early Sept). More than a month later, some European leaders have begun to echo the same warning.

Significantly, this week Germany Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said in a media interview that German residents must start getting used to the idea of the specter of war in Europe

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Yellen Says the US Can Afford to Fund Wars in Gaza and Ukraine

Posted by M. C. on October 17, 2023

The administration may also request funds to spend on arming Taiwan

““America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel’s military needs and we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia,” Yellen said.

And Ukraine, and Taiwan using inflationary, debt increasing printed money. Is Yellen really that stupid?

antiwar.com

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen insisted on Monday that the US could “certainly” afford to fund the war in Ukraine and Israel’s onslaught on Gaza as the White House is looking for more military aid for both conflicts.

Yellen’s comments came a day after President Biden said the US could fund both wars. “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history — not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense,” he said on 60 Minutes.

Yellen said the House needs to elect a new speaker so the new funding could be authorized. “We do need to come up with funds, both for Israel and for Ukraine. This is a priority,” she said. “It’s really up to the House to find, seat a speaker and to put us in a position where legislation can be passed.”

The White House has also discussed the possibility of rolling funding to arm Taiwan into the potential spending package. But Yellen did not mention Taiwan, and other Biden administration officials have made clear this week that Ukraine and Israel are the priority.

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Ukraine Vs Israel: Can The West Arm Both?

Posted by M. C. on October 16, 2023

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Ukraine war was meant to be easier; the isolation and economic unraveling of its Russian adversary, was a cinch.

Like the man said, “the plan doesn’t last after the first shot is fired.” Was there a “plan”?

Like someone else recently said, “pretty soon the IRS will have a greater ammo stockpile than the military.” Likely true if you add in the USPS ammo stockpile.

We are arming the world and people on both sides are using US taxpayer supplied weapons.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-vs-israel-can-west-arm-both

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

Saturday, Oct 14, 2023 – 09:00 PM

Authored by William Van Wagenen via The Cradle,

Just three days after the Hamas-led Palestinian resistance launched an unprecedented military offensive against Israeli military posts and settlements by land, sea, and air, Israeli officials began begging their US sponsors for additional weapons. Politico reported this week that according to a senior Pentagon official, “The Biden administration is surging weapons to Israel, rapidly sending air defenses and munitions in response to Israeli officials’ urgent requests for aid.”

“Planes have already taken off,” the senior official told reporters. Amidst this escalating crisis for the occupation state, it’s worth pondering a crucial question: Can the US sustain a commitment to two significant existential conflicts involving vital allies in separate geographies simultaneously? 

The answer is likely no. Washington has already devoted over $100 billion in military aid to Ukraine to fight Russia, while facing a national debt spiraling out of control and spiking inflation.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The Ukraine war was meant to be easier; the isolation and economic unraveling of its Russian adversary, was a cinch. Instead, 18 months on, the US is struggling to support Ukraine in a bloody war of attrition. Worse yet, Kiev’s well-publicized spring offensive that was meant to flip those odds has come to naught in the face of Russia’s overwhelming advantage in artillery and advanced missiles. 

AFP/Getty Images

Little territory has changed hands since Russian forces withdrew from Kharkiv and Kherson in late 2022, but the Ukrainian army has since been decimated by Russian artillery in theatres such as Bakhmut. 

“We think that Ukrainians have lost somewhere between 300 to 350 thousand dead, maybe more, hundreds of thousands of wounded,” retired US Colonel Douglas Macgregor bluntly stated in August. “These attacks have utterly bled Ukraine white.”

This grim reality has given rise to what the BBC has described as “Ukraine’s army of amputees.” In the first half of this year alone, some 15,000 soldiers joined their ranks, surpassing the total amputees the UK produced over six years during World War II.

While Ukraine faces a severe manpower shortage, western powers find themselves faced with a dearth of available weaponry to send to Kiev. Admiral Rob Bauer, NATO’s highest-ranking military official, candidly admitted on October 3rd, “The bottom of the barrel is now visible” concerning the west’s ammunition stockpile.

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