by David Stockman on Ron Paul Institute
The spectacle in the US Capitol Building Wednesday night was downright retch-worthy. And we are not actually referring to the detestable little warmongering clown who preened at the podium in a sweatshirt and cargo pants, offering endless lies and hideously false promises about why American taxpayers and consumers are being bled to death in a pointless and unnecessary war.
No, we are referring to the pathetic gaggle of Representatives and Senators who applauded relentlessly and uproariously in response to the casuistry of the tinny poseur who stood before them, albeit one who should have never been granted that august platform in the first place.
After all, the mountebank who leads the rapidly decaying remnant of a nation that was never built to last anyway has been able to bring the world to the brink of economic catastrophe and even nuclear war for one reason alone: Namely, because the bipartisan duopoly on Capitol Hill has shoveled gargantuan sums of money into Ukraine and Washington’s proxy war on Russia with mindless negligence.
And on that score the numbers tell you all you need to know. To date, Washington has authorized $65 billion of economic and military aid, with other NATO nations throwing-in $32 billion additional. On top of that, the pending Omnibus Abomination will authorize $45 billion more, which Zelensky has already implied is not nearly enough.
Still, that’s $142 billion and counting, which in turn has no possibility of enabling the Ukrainian victory that Zelensky promised. And that’s also 91% of Ukraine’s 2020 prewar GDP of $156 billion, and an order of magnitude more than the under $100 billion GDP that is left before Russia’s impending winter offensive finishes it off completely.
Stated differently, these war-besotted fools are enabling the absolute destruction of the cities, towns, villages, countryside and economy of what was the world’s 30th largest polity, even as its soldiers and citizens on both sides of the front lines are being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands.
Yet contrary to Zelensky’s deceitful rhetoric there is nothing at stake of importance to either humanity or the security of the “free world” or most especially the safety and liberty of the American homeland. Absolutely nothing at all – and that includes all of the War Party’s cant, robotically repeated by Zelensky last night, about the rule of law, the sovereignty of borders and the freedom of the peoples of Ukraine and their neighbors.
As we have repeatedly documented, this is not a Russian invasion but a civil war in the “borderlands” territory (i.e. “Ukraine” in Russian) that prior to the communist tyranny of the Soviet Union was always a vassal and sometimes integral part of greater Russia. The present civil war, in fact, was instigated in 2014 by the illegitimate government installed in Kiev after Washington’s coup d’etat against the duly elected and Russian-friendly president.
This Washington managed “regime change”, in turn, set the regions of the artificial state of Ukraine against each other based on long-standing differences of language, religion, ethnicity and economics, among others. And when the Russian speaking populations of Crimea, the Donbas and the Black Sea coastal areas sought separation owing to fears of repression by the Ukrainian nationalist and neo-Nazi politicians who took control of the government in Kiev, the latter brought the bloody violence of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including the overtly neo-Nazi Azov Brigade, down upon them.
That is to say, the Kiev instigated civil war against the Russian speaking populations of the east and south had been raging for eight years before Putin finally responded to their pleas for overt military assistance; and also after upwards of 14,000 separatist military and civilian personal had been killed by Kiev’s violent onslaught against what was purported to be its own population.
It also came 14 years after Putin had insisted (at the 2007 Munich Security Conference) that Ukrainian ascension to NATO and the emplacement of nuclear missiles within minutes from Moscow was a red line that could not be crossed, yet which action was virtually certain by February 2020.
Finally, the “invasion” also came after 10 days of massively stepped-up Ukrainian artillery attacks on the Donbas, which by every signal of military action and logistics implied that a Kiev “invasion” of the separatist republics was imminent.
In short, “partition” of what had been the tyrannical Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine, an entity that had never existed until it was brought to life at the end of gun barrels by Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, had always been the end game. It was the clumsy hegemonist neocons of Washington who finally catalyzed the split-up after 2014 owing to their own profound ignorance of the region’s history.
Indeed, the die was caste during the last legitimate election in 2010, when the Russian-friendly candidate, Yanukovych, won the national election by a hair, on the back of 60-90% margins in the east and south (blue areas of the map) against the Ukrainian nationalist candidate, Tymoshenko, who won the less economically prosperous areas of the center and west by similar 60-90% margins (red areas).
Tucker Carlson on the members of Congress who “clapped like seals”
via the Daily Telegraph NZ:
Members of Congress who declined to stand and applaud on cue for Ukraine’s tinpot dictator have been branded as ‘traitors’
Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to Congress on Wednesday night was a “North Korea-style act” in which US lawmakers were expected to stand and clap for the Ukrainian president or be branded as traitors, Representative Matt Gaetz has claimed.
Gaetz (Florida) was among several Republicans, including Representatives Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Lauren Boebert (Colorado), who were called out by Newsweek and other media outlets for remaining seated while other lawmakers gave Zelensky multiple standing ovations. GOP Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and others who didn’t attend the Ukrainian leader’s latest appeal for additional aid to fight Russia were also criticized.
“When we say you shouldn’t send endless amounts of money to this place where we’re exacerbating death and conflict, it’s like we’re traitors to the movement because Lauren Boebert and I didn’t stand up in some sort of North Korea-style performance,” Gaetz said on Thursday night in a Fox News interview.
Historian and NBC News contributor Michael Beschloss was among the media figures who condemned those who weren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about Zelensky’s visit to Washington. He demanded to know “exactly why” some members of Congress refused to clap. “I’d like to know why that was for two reasons,” he said on MSNBC. “Number one: You’re a public servant, we’re allowed to know those things. You’re supposed to tell us if you’re serving in Congress what the reason was. Do you love Putin, or are you just opposed to democracy, or is there something else?”
On Thursday, the Senate passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that included nearly $45 billion in new funding for Ukraine. Congress has now approved about $100 billion for US assistance to Ukraine since Russia launched its military offensive against Kiev in February.
Gaetz speculated that congressional leaders saw Zelensky’s visit to Washington as “air cover” for an “indefensible” spending bill. “I feel no compunction to go out and applaud some foreign leader from a historically corrupt country who is begging for more than the $100 billion that the Congress has already set to send them.”
Hawley told reporters that he didn’t attend the speech “because I didn’t want to be part of a photo op, asking for more money from the United States government when they haven’t given us a single piece of accounting on anything they’ve spent.”
Firstly seeing such a spectacle, one is reminded of the ancient Greek saying “that those whom the gods wish to destroy first make mad”. Most of the western leaders are showing degeneracy and madness at this time.
Secondly what sort of citizens of a country such as Ukraine allowed without any protest, their government to kill around 14,000 of their people, as happened from 2014 to February 2022?