Is there anyone sane left on the planet who seriously believes that US/NATO support for Ukraine is motivated by a concern for self-determination?
If there is anyone who believes that NATO,
i.e. US support for Ukraine and its supply of advanced weaponry
to the Zelensky regime, is on account of its support for that country’s self-determination,
then I can only suggest that they consult a psychiatrist.
How can the United States, which launched a war
of aggression against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 and which supports Israel’s
war crimes against the Palestinians, be seriously concerned with the principle
of self-determination?
To those who have any doubts about what is
happening and the threat it poses to the survival of humanity, I recommend that
you watch the video below of a speech by Max Blumenthall of the Grayzone, which was targeted
by Paul Mason on behalf of British Intelligence. I’m not sure how Max managed to address them
but the video is well worth watching.
Below the video I have included a transcript of
the speech. Please watch and share.
To those who don’t understand the background to
what is happening in Ukraine or the possible consequences of provoking a nuclear
war, I recommend the two following videos of talks and interviews with John
Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at Chicago University and a member
of the realist school of thought.
Tony Greenstein
Max Blumenthal addresses UN
Security Council on Ukraine aid
Thank you to Wyatt Reed, Alex Rubinstein and
Anya Parampil for helping me prepare this presentation. Wyatt has first hand
experience with the subject as a journalist whose hotel in Donetsk was targeted
with a US-made howitzer by the Ukrainian military in October 2022. He was
100 meters away when the strike hit, and was nearly killed.
My friend, the civil rights activist Randy
Credico, is also here with me today. He was in Donetsk more recently, and
was able to witness regular HIMARS attacks by the Ukrainian military on
civilian targets.
I’m here not only as a journalist
with over 20 years of experience covering politics and conflict on several
continents, but as an American dragooned by my own government into funding a
proxy war that has become a threat to regional and international stability at
the expense of the welfare of my fellow countrymen and women.
The West's neo-Nazi friends in Ukraine who are also fighting for freedom!
This June 28, as emergency crews
worked to clean up yet another toxic train derailment in the United States,
this time on the Montana River, that further exposed our nation’s chronically
underfunded infrastructure and its threats to our health, the Pentagon
announced plans to send an additional $500 million worth of
military aid to Ukraine.
The development came as Ukraine’s
army enters the third week of a vaunted counter-offensive that CNN describes as
“not meeting expectations,”
and which even Volodymyr Zelensky says is “going slower than desired.”
As Ukraine’s military failed to
breach Russia’s primary defense line, CNN reported that by June 12, Kiev
quote “lost” 16 US-made armored
vehicles sent to the country.
So what did the Pentagon do? It
simply passed that bill down to average US taxpayers like myself, charging us
another $325 million to replace
Ukraine’s squandered military stock. There was zero effort to consult the US
public’s position on the matter; and the vast majority of Americans likely did
not even know the exchange took place.
The US policy I just described —
which sees Washington prioritize unrestrained funding for a proxy war with a
nuclear power in a foreign land while our own domestic infrastructure falls
apart before our eyes — exposes a disturbing dynamic at the heart of the
Ukraine conflict: an international Ponzi scheme that enables Western elites to
seize hard earned wealth out of the hands of average US citizens and funnel itI
into the coffers of a foreign government that even the Western-sponsored Transparency
International ranks as one of the most corrupt in Europe.
The US government has yet to conduct
an official audit of its funding for Ukraine. The American public has no idea
where their tax dollars have gone.
That is why this week, The Grayzone
published an independent audit of US
tax dollar allocation to Ukraine throughout fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Our
investigation was led by Heather Kaiser, a former military intelligence officer
and veteran of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
We found a $4.48 million payment
from the US Social Security Admin to the Kiev government.
We found $4.5 billion worth of
payments from the United States Agency for International Development to pay off
Ukraine’s sovereign debt, much of which is owned by the global investment firm
BlackRock.
That alone amounts to $30 taken from
every single US citizen at a time when 4 in 10 Americans are
unable to afford a $400 emergency.
We found tax dollars earmarked for
Ukraine padding the budgets of a television station in Toronto, a pro-NATO
think tank in Poland, and, believe it or not, rural farmers in Kenya.
We found tens of millions to private
equity firms, including one in the Republic of Georgia, as well as a million
dollar payment to a single private entrepreneur in Kiev.
Our audit also revealed the
Pentagon’s $4.5 million contract with a company called “Atlantic Diving Supply”
to provide Ukraine with unspecified explosives equipment. This is a notoriously
corrupt company that Thom Tillis, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, previously lambasted for its “history of fraud.”
Yet once again, Congress has failed
to ensure these shady payments and massive arms deals are properly tracked.
In fact, much of the military and
humanitarian aid shipped to Ukraine has simply vanished. Last year, CBS News quoted the director of a
pro-Zelensky non-profit in Ukraine who reported that only around 30% of aid was
reaching the front lines in Ukraine.
The embezzlement of funds and
supplies is at least as troubling as the potential consequences of the illicit
transfer and sales of military-grade weapons. Last June, the head of Interpol warned that the massive
transfers of arms into Ukraine means “we can expect an influx of weapons in
Europe and beyond,” and that “criminals are even now, as we speak, focusing on
them.”
This May, a group of anti-Kremlin
Russian neo-Nazis outfitted with gear supplied by the Ukrainian government,
was hailed by Western politicians for carrying out terrorist attacks in Russian
territory using American-made
Humvees. Although the group, the so-called “Russian
Volunteer Corps,” is led by a man who calls himself the “White King” and
includes numerous open admirers of Adolf Hitler, the Western weaponization of
this militia against Russian forces has not prompted any outcry from Congress.
And while the Biden administration
has promised that it’s keeping tabs on the weapons sent, a State Department
cable leaked last December conceded that “kinetic
activity and active combat between Ukrainian and Russian forces create an
environment in which standard verification measures are sometimes impracticable
or impossible.”
The Biden administration not only
knows that it can not track the weapons it is shipping to Ukraine, it knows it
is escalating a proxy war against the world’s largest nuclear power, and is
daring it to respond in kind.
We know they know this because back
in 2014, President Barack Obama rejected demands to send lethal offensive
weaponry to Kiev because, as the Wall Street Journal put it, he had a
“long-standing concern that arming Ukraine would provoke Moscow into a further
escalation that could drag Washington into a proxy war.”
When Donald Trump entered office in
2017, he attempted to hold the line on Obama’s policy, but was soon branded
a Russian puppet by the Washington press corps and Democratic Party for
refusing to send Raytheon’s Javelin missiles to the Ukrainian military. Trump’s
reluctance to send the Javelins became part of the basis for his impeachment.
He unsurprisingly relented.
As the US-made offensive weaponry
began to reach the front lines of the Donbas, the collective West exploited the
Minsk Accords to “give Ukraine time” to arm up, as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel
put it.
In January 2022, the US announced a $200 million arms package
to Ukraine. By the 18th of February, observers from the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe reported a doubling in ceasefire
violations, with OSCE maps showing the overwhelming majority of targeted sites
on the side of the pro-Russian separatist population in Donetsk and Lugansk.
Five days later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
And since then, the US and its
allies have been scurrying up the escalation ladder at every opportunity.
“Things we couldn’t give in January
because it was escalatory were given in February,” a former State Department
official complained after meeting
with Ukrainian counterparts. “And things we couldn’t give in February we can in
April. That has been the distinct pattern, starting with, for crying out loud,
Stingers,” they said, referring to shoulder mounted missiles.
President Joe Biden himself said in
March 2022, “The idea that we’re gonna send in offensive equipment and have
planes and tanks… don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III.”
Just over a year later, Biden
changed his tune, backing a plan to provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine,
and after pressuring Germany to send in the tanks he once feared would provoke
World War III.
It would only take two months from
receiving HIMARs systems from the US for the Ukrainian military to begin
targeting critical infrastructure, using them to strike the Antonovsky
Bridge over the Dnipro river, and again, two months later in a test strike on
the Kakhovka Dam “to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to
stymie Russian crossings,” as the Washington Post reported.
Three weeks ago, the Kakhovka Dam
was destroyed, triggering a major environmental catastrophe that caused mass
flooding and contamination of the local water supply. Ukraine, of course,
blames Russia for the attack, but has produced no evidence.
Around this time, Ukraine also
baselessly accused Russia of planning
a provocation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. This triggered a resolution by
Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal (no relation to me) calling for
NATO to intervene directly in Ukraine and attack Russia if such an incident
occurred.
The move by Blumenthal and Graham
thus established a de facto red line for initiating US military action, much
like the one set down in Syria which, as a former US diplomat commented to journalist
Charles Glass, “was an open invitation to a false flag.”
Will we see another Douma deception,
but this time in Zaporizhzhia?
Why are we doing this? Why are we
tempting nuclear annihilation by flooding Ukraine with advanced weapons and
sabotaging negotiations at every turn?
We have been told by people like
Sen. Dick Durbin that Ukraine is “literally in a battle for freedom and
democracy themselves,” and we must therefore supply it with weapons “for as
long as it takes,” as President Biden said. Anyone who opposes
military aid to Ukraine opposes the defense of democracy, according to this
logic.
So where is the democracy in
Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision
to ban opposition parties, criminalize the media outlets of his legitimate
political opponents, to jail
his top political rival, round up his top deputies, raid Orthodox
Churches and arrest clergymen?
Where is the democracy in the
Ukrainian government’s imprisonment
of Gonzalo Lira, a US citizen, for questioning the official narrative of
their war effort?
And where is the democracy in
Zelensky’s recent decision to suspend
elections in 2024 on the grounds that martial law has been declared? Well,
it seems that Ukraine’s democracy is harder to find these days than its
military’s suddenly
inconspicuous commander-in-chief, Valeriy Zaluzhny.
Senator Graham has
offered a much more grim – and on-the-mark – rationale for supplying Ukraine
with billions in weapons. As the
senator boasted during a recent
visit with Zelensky in Kiev, “The Russians are dying…it’s the best money we’ve
ever spent.”
Graham, we should remember, has also
said that we, the US, must fight this war to the last Ukrainian. While official
casualty numbers are strictly classified, we must worry that Ukraine is well on
its way to fulfilling the senator’s ghoulish fantasies.
As a Ukrainian
soldier complained this month to Vice News, we don’t know
what Zelensky’s “plans are, but it
looks like extermination of its own population — like of the combat-ready and
working-age population. That’s it.”
Indeed, military cemeteries in
Ukraine are expanding almost as rapidly as the Northern Virginia McMansions and
beachfront estates of executives from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and assorted
Beltway contractors benefitting from the second highest level of military spending
since World War Two.
These are the real winners of the
Ukraine proxy war. Not average Ukrainians or Americans. Or Russians or even
Western Europeans.
The winners are people like
Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who spent his time between the Obama and Biden
administrations launching a consulting firm called WestExec advisors which
secured lucrative government contracts for intelligence firms and the arms
industry. Blinken’s former partners at WestExec advisors include Director of
National Intelligence Avril Haines, CIA deputy director David Cohen, former White
House press secretary Jen Psaki, and almost a dozen current and former members
of Biden’s national security team.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, for
his part, is a former and possibly future
board member of Raytheon, and ex-partner of the Pine
Island Capital investment firm that collaborates with WestExec and which Blinken
has advised.
Meanwhile, the current US ambassador
to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, is listed as a senior counsel at the Albright Stonebridge
Group, a self-described “commercial diplomacy firm” that also
finesses contracts for the intelligence sector and arms industry. This firm was
founded by the late Madeleine Albright, who infamously declared that the deaths
of half-a-million Iraqi children under the US sanctions regime was “worth it.”
So while middle-aged Ukrainian men
are ripped off streets
by military police and sent to the front lines, the financially and politically
connected architects of this proxy war are planning to walk through the
revolving door to reap unimaginable profits once their time in the Biden
administration is over.
For them, a negotiated settlement to
this territorial dispute means an end to the cash cow of close to $150 billion
in US aid to Ukraine.
When the United States, a permanent
member of this council, has fallen under the control of a government which
seeks to perpetuate a proxy war for “as long as it takes,” which considers
diplomacy synonymous with unilateral coercive measures to “turn the ruble to
rubble,” as Biden has pledged to do; whose leadership subverts negotiations in
order to pursue profit while refusing to properly inform its own citizens what
they are paying for, and which pushes the sons and brothers of its supposed
Ukrainian partners out onto a killing field in order to bludgeon a geopolitical
rival; when both Zelensky and members of the US Congress are calling for preemptive
strikes on Russia which contravene the spirit of Article 51 of the UN
charter, this council must take action to enforce that charter.
Articles 33 – 38 of Chapter VI of that Charter are clear that the
security council must use its authority to guarantee a pacific settlement of
dispute, particularly when it threatens international security. That should not
only apply to Russia and Ukraine. This council has an obligation to strictly
monitor and restrain the US and the illegal military formation known as NATO.
John Mearsheimer: The West is playing Russian
roulette
“Why is Ukraine the West’s fault”
