June 30, 2023 - Jim Fetzer
13:11
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| I now give the floor to Mr. Max Blumenthal. | |
| Thank you and I thank Alex Rubenstein and Wyatt Reed for helping me prepare this address. | |
| Wyatt Reed is a journalistic colleague of mine who in October 2022 happened to be in Donetsk when his hotel was shelled by the Ukrainian military with a Apparently US made howitzer nearly killing him. | |
| He was 100 meters away. | |
| I'm also here with my friend, the civil rights activist, Randy Credico, who is more recently in Donetsk and witnessed regular HIMARS attacks on civilian targets. | |
| I am here not only as a journalist who spent over 20 years writing books, I'm also here as an American taxpayer who has been dragooned into funding a proxy war that has become a threat to regional and international stability at the expense of my countrymen and women. | |
| This June, just June 28th, as emergency crews worked to clean up yet another toxic train derailment in the United States, this time on the Montana River, further exposing 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 counteroffensive that CNN describes as, quote, 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 on June 12th that Kiev had lost, quote, lost 16 U.S.-made armored vehicles sent to the country. | |
| So what did the Pentagon do? | |
| It simply passed that bill down to average U.S. | |
| 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. | |
| This policy that I'm describing to you, which sees Washington prioritize unrestrained funding for a proxy war with a nuclear power in a foreign land, while our 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 from the hands of average US citizens and funnel it into the coffers of a foreign government that even Transparency International ranks as consistently one of the most corrupt in Europe. | |
| The U.S. | |
| government has yet to conduct an official audit of its funding for Ukraine. | |
| The American public has no idea where their tax dollars are going. | |
| And that's why this week, we at the Grayzone published an independent audit of U.S. | |
| tax dollar allocation to Ukraine throughout the fiscal years 2022 and 2023. | |
| Our investigation was led by Heather Kaiser, a former military intelligence officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. | |
| We found, among many bizarre payments, a $4.5 million payment from the U.S. Social Security Administration to the Kiev government. | |
| We found $4.5 billion worth of payments from the U.S. Agency for International Development to pay off Ukraine's sovereign debt, much of which is owned by the global investment firm BlackRock. | |
| That amounts to $30 taken from every U.S. | |
| citizen at a time when 4 in 10 Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency. | |
| We found tax dollars earmarked for Ukraine patting the budgets of a television station in Toronto, a pro-NATO think tank in Poland, and believe it or not, even 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 none other than Tom Tillis, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, previously lambasted for its, quote, 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 30% of aid was reaching the front lines. | |
| 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, quote, "We can expect an influx of weapons in Europe and beyond, and that criminals are now, as we speak, focusing on them." This May, a group of anti-Kremlin Russian exiles 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, quote, White King and includes numerous open admirers of Adolf Hitler, described as neo-Nazis in U.S. mainstream media, the Western weaponization of this militia against Russian forces and Russian civilians has not prompted any outcry from the Western weaponization of this militia against Russian forces and Russian | |
| 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, quote, 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 cannot track the weapons it's shipping to Ukraine, it knows that it is escalating a proxy war against the world's largest nuclear power and daring it to respond in kind. | |
| We know this because back in 2014, and this timeline is so important, that's when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the war started following a US-backed coup d'etat. | |
| President Barack Obama rejected demands from Kiev to send lethal offensive weaponry because, as the Wall Street Journal put it, he had a quote, long-standing concern that arming Ukraine would provoke Moscow into Further escalation that would drag Washington into a proxy war. | |
| When Donald Trump entered office in 2017, he attempted to hold the line on Barack Obama's policy, but was soon branded a Russian puppet by the Beltway Press Corps and the Democratic Party for refusing to send Raytheon's Javelin missiles to the Ukrainian military. | |
| His reluctance to send the Javelins became a central theme of his impeachment, and he predictably relented. | |
| As U.S.-made offensive weaponry began to reach the front lines of the Donbass, the collective West exploited the Minsk Accords to, quote, give Ukraine time to arm up, as the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel put it. | |
| In January 2022, the U.S. | |
| announced a $200 million arms package to Ukraine. | |
| Follow the timeline. | |
| 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 pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk. | |
| Five days later, Russia invaded Ukraine. | |
| And since then, the U.S. | |
| and its allies have been scurrying up the escalation ladder at every opportunity. | |
| Quote, 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, referring to shoulder-mounted rockets. | |
| Joe Biden himself said in March 2022, the idea that we're going to 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 the time Ukraine received HIMARS, Lockheed made HIMARS systems for the U.S. | |
| 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 Khovka Dam to see if the Dnipro's water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings, as the Washington Post reported. | |
| Three weeks ago, the Khovka 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 this attack, but has produced no evidence. | |
| Around this time, Ukraine also baselessly accused Russia of planning a provocation at the Zaporozhye 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 U.S. | |
| military action, much like the one set down in Syria, which, as a former U.S. | |
| diplomat commented to journalist Charles Glass, was an open invitation to a false flag. | |
| Will we see another Douma deception, but this time in Zaporozhye? | |
| This time with nuclear consequences? | |
| Why are we doing this? | |
| Why are we tempting nuclear annihilation by flooding Ukraine with advanced weapons and sabotaging negotiations at every turn? | |
| We've been told by people like Senator Dick Durbin that Ukraine is literally in a battle for freedom and democracy itself, and therefore anyone who opposes military aid to Ukraine opposes the very defense of democracy, according to this logic. | |
| So where's the democracy in Vladimir Zelensky's decision to ban opposition parties? | |
| To criminalize the media outlets of his legitimate political opponents? | |
| To jail his top political rival and his deputies? | |
| To raid Orthodox churches and jail clergymen? | |
| Where is the democracy in the Ukrainian government's imprisonment of Gonzalo Lira, an American citizen, simply for challenging the official narrative of Ukraine's war? | |
| And where is the democracy in Zelensky's recent decision to suspend elections in 2024 on the grounds that martial law has been declared? | |
| The answer is that Ukrainian democracy It's harder to find these days than that country's commander-in-chief, Valery Zelensky. | |
| Senator Lindsey Graham has offered a much more grim and more 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. | |
| I repeat, the Russians are dying. | |
| It's the best money we've ever spent. | |
| And Graham has also said that Americans are ready to fight this war down 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, quote, it looks like the 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 benefiting from the second highest level of military spending since World War II. | |
| These are the real winners of the Ukraine proxy war. | |
| Not average Ukrainians or Americans or Russians. | |
| The winners, or Europeans for that matter, 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 in the arms industry. | |
| Blinken's former partners at WestExec 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 an ex-partner of Pine Island Capital Investment. | |
| ...which collaborates with WestExec, and which Blinken himself has advised. | |
| Meanwhile, the current U.S. | |
| ambassador to this body, the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is listed as a senior counsel at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a self-described commercial diplomacy firm that also finesses government contracts for the intelligence and arms sector, and which was founded by Madeleine Albright, infamously known for her comments that the deaths by sanctions of half a million Iraqi children were worth it. | |
| So while military-age Ukrainian men are ripped off the 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 aid to Ukraine. | |
| So in closing, when the United States, my country, a permanent member of this council, has fallen under the control of a bipartisan regime which seeks to perpetuate a proxy war for as long as it takes, in the words of Joe Biden, which considers diplomacy synonymous with unilateral coercive measures to, quote, turn the ruble to rubble, as Biden pledged which considers diplomacy synonymous with unilateral coercive measures to, quote, turn the ruble to rubble, as Biden pledged to do, whose leadership subverts negotiations in order to pursue profit while refusing to properly |
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