EXPOSING CAPITALISM'S MULTITUDE OF VICES AND INCURABLE PROBLEMS
Eric Zuesse
As usual, the US, still drunk on its imperial exceptionalist image, refuses to believe it cannot successfully prop up a corrupt, inept, and utterly criminal regime ad infinitum.
April 29th is a typical day in the news:
A good example of its news is that the anonymous great independent investigative journalist “Moon of Alabama” headlined “Ukraine Doubling Down” and reported that America and its allies are becoming depressed about the increasing military success of Russia against Ukraine, and that,
The typical U.S. reaction to losing is to double down.
This can be done financially:
Jack Detsch @JackDetsch - 19:25 UTC · Apr 28, 2022
DATA: A cumulative total of U.S. military aid to Ukraine since Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.
February 25: $350m
March 12: $550m
March 16: $1.35b
April 1: $1.65b
April 5: $1.75b
April 13: $2.55b
April 21: $3.35b
April 24: $3.67b
April 28: $14.67b (if approved by Congress)
Most of the above sums will go to the U.S. arms industry to deliver weapons for which Ukraine has little use or which never will reach the frontline. The rest will be pilfered by Ukrainian oligarchs.
That financial doubling down will not be very effective.
He offered reasons why it wouldn’t be.
The Foreign Policy magazine reporter Detsch’s figures shown there totaled $15.52B committed and another $14.67B still awaiting passage, for a likely grand total of $30.19B thus far being allocated in April. These funds will come from future U.S. taxpayers. But more will come from future Ukrainian taxpayers:
Russia’s RT News bannered “Russia explains what US lend-lease really means for Ukraine” and reported that,
Lend-lease isn’t free, and generations of Ukrainians are going to pay for the weapons that’ll be supplied by Washington to Kiev under the program, Vyacheslav Volodin, Russian State Duma speaker, has said.
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives approved the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act,” which makes it easier for Washington to send weapons to Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia. However, those deliveries are conditioned on Kiev having to pay for the “return of and reimbursement and repayment for defense articles loaned or leased.” The lend-lease bill, which now only needs Joe Biden’s signature, is separate from the White House’s ongoing efforts to arm the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with weapons from the Pentagon’s stockpiles. ... Many future generations of Ukrainian citizens are going to pay” for the weapons, ammo and food supplies delivered by Washington.
Read more Biden seeks $33 billion more for Ukraine
By agreeing to the land-lease scheme, “Zelensky is leading the country into a debt pit,” the parliament speaker insisted.
In other words: only America’s arms-makers such as Lockheed Martin will profit from these expenditures, and the taxpayers of both America and Ukraine will lose from them. Do the U.S. President and virtually all members of the U.S. Congress represent the interests of firms such as Lockheed Martin or instead represent the interests of the American people?
Also on the 29th, RT headlined “US government is running out of cash for Ukraine”, and reported that,
The US government needs Congress to approve its $33 billion request as soon as possible because it only has $250 million remaining from the previous package of assistance for Ukraine, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said.
US President Joe Biden signed the request on Thursday. He admitted that $33 billion “is not cheap” but claimed that “caving to aggression is going to be more costly.”
When America committed its coup that in 1953 overthrew Iran’s democratically elected and very popular leader Mohammed Mossadegh and replaced him with the U.S.-imposed regime that ended when that U.S.-imposed regime became democratically overthrown in a 1979 revolution, was that 1953 U.S. coup “aggression” against Iran?
When America committed its coup that in February 2014 overthrew Ukraine’s unpopular but democratically elected leader Viktor Yanukovych, and replaced him with the U.S.-imposed regime that immediately replaced its generals and started an ethnic-cleansing campaign to get rid of the residents in the areas of Ukraine that had voted the heaviest (such as 90% in Ukraine’s far-eastern Donbass) for the leader whom Obama had just overthrown, was that U.S. coup “aggression” against Ukraine? It started Ukraine’s civil war. It certainly was aggression against them. Russia has been responding to that coup ever since. Finally, Russia actually invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Was that a defensive action by Russia, or was it instead aggression against Ukraine; and, if it was aggression against Ukraine, then how would the U.S. Government respond if instead of America having installed an anti-Russian regime next door to Russia, Russia had installed an anti-U.S. regime next to America in, say, Mexico? (Certainly, Americans have no authentic national-security interest in Ukraine, no more than Russians have any national-security interest in Mexico. So: why did America grab Ukraine in 2014? Was it in order ultimately to become able to conquer Russia, or was it instead ONLY in order to further-enrich the billionaires who control firms such as Lockheed Martin?)
Therefore: was what Joe Biden said, that “caving to aggression is going to be more costly” to Russia, actually promising that America’s aggressions against Russia will be increasing? If so, then why will they be increasing? What national-security interest do Americans actually have in Ukraine? Russians obviously have a national-security interest in their next-door neighbor, but Americans? We don’t. Is this actually theft from both the American people and from the Ukrainian people, which is being perpetrated by the very few people who actually DO control the American Government?
These are some of the things that are not reported (and questions that are never raised) in U.S.-and-allied mainstream ‘news’-media, but that can instead be found outside them — such as in THIS news-medium.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.[/su_panel] 
^3000US citizens have no real political representation.
We don't live in a democracy. And our freedom is disappearing fast.
I don't want to be ruled by hypocrites, whores, and war criminals.
What about you? Time to push back against the corporate oligarchy.
And its multitude of minions and lackeys.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
NOTE: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
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7 comments
The US has a serious ‘National Security Interest’ in Russia. The whole US financialized system depends on collateral for its debt based system. And what entity is sitting on trillions of ‘collateral’, but Russia? Unless the US gets its hands on those resources, it’s financial system will collapse. But what’s worse is that Russia is planning a gold and resourced back currency, which will show the US/Euro/Pound system to be nothing but printed monopoly money. Which currency has more legitimacy will determine who is super power. So while Lockheed Martin’s profits are frosting on the cake, whether the US survives as a financial entity very much depends on bringing down Russia and getting control of its resources, same goes for manufacturing powerhouse, China.
“same goes for manufacturing powerhouse, China.” What does that even mean? Does it mean that China is a natural-resources powerhouse like Russia? Does it instead mean that the manufacturing powerhouse China needs to conquer China? Your entire comment is so ambiguous that it wastes readers’ time and effort even to consider it. For example, if “Lockheed Martin’s profits are frosting on the cake,” then does it make any difference to you if mainly billionaires are eating that “frosting,” while all of America’s taxpayers are eating (the rest of) that “cake”? What is the point of your comment; and why do you think that “The US has a serious ‘National Security Interest’ in Russia,” other than the fact that only Russia is yet competitive with America as a nuclear superpower?
Your basic assumption seems to be that the limitless greed of America’s billionaires constitute an interest — or maybe even the ONLY interest — that is or should be served by ‘America’s’ “National Security Interest.” I believe that it instead constitutes NO proper part of that. And that if it is assumed to BE a proper part of that, then that assumption itself serves ONLY the interests of America’s billionaires. Consequently, both as a matter of fact, and as a matter of ethics, I don’t agree with your comment (to the limited extent that its intended meaning is comprehensible at all).
Like with the Mossadegh affair in Iran in 1953, when the real reason was control over the oilfields in Iran, just so there is a rich plum waiting to be conquered, namely Russia with its oil and gas reserves, not to speak of other ores that are valuable in today’s mechanized world. The whole history of the attacks on the Donbas, then that of maybe joining NATO and the possibility of nuclear arming the Kyiv regime was to provoke Russia into the present Ukraine operations. With the ultimate goal of weakening Russia to the point that there is a repeat of the Brezhnev regime whereby the Russian nation was plundered by the Western interests. That is the true motive of the present proxy war between the US and Russia, and even Ukraine itself with its wheatfields would be a good investment, all worth hopefully the billions now being spent on Ukraine.
Meanwhile in order to prevent riots in the US, because its government is preparing the nation for a necessary lowering of its living standards, fake climate change concerns are used to prepare the public for the coming deprivations. Curbing the carbon emissions by switching cars to electricity is a false nose operation because electricity causes more carbon emissions than if gasoline remained a primary energy source. Artificial methods like inflation which cuts out by automatic competition all less well financed production and thus narrows the field for larger concerns with higher profits and a recession which will adapt the public to reduced financial expectancies, both are planned for a more fiercely competitive and aggressively leaner nation. Too late unfortunately because a recession will not affect the East as much as it will do the West, because their industries are more advanced and less burdened by exploitation of the workers.
PS
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/29/uktr-a29.html
As NATO starts threatening Russia even more with Britain leading the pack, a
retaliation against Western Europe may well be in the offing if it becomes for
Russia an existential question. Nasty business !
But ever since Obama’s coup in Ukraine in 2014 it HAS BEEN AND IS “an existential question” for Russia. And ever since 7 January 2022 when both America and NATO officially rejected even the validity of that concern of Russia’s, we are already IN WW III. Both America and NATO then implicitly rejected Russia’s most fundamental national-security concern, and all of the UK/U.S. empire’s ‘news’-media since have refused to report that fact. So: we are already IN World War III, though not YET in the nuclear phase of it. What is Russia waiting for? How much longer WILL they wait?
Indeed. I expressed myself badly as this has been a major problem for Russia since 2014 (and actually well beforehand). What I should have written is ” an increased existential question “. Russia has been since Kyiv was its capital a major attraction for a colonializing Europe, with unending national horizons and a large orthodox peasantry and when Europe industrialized, it became a potential source for raw materials. That rich and mostly unexplored land was for Western Europe and later the US the mirror image of themselves, mysterious and full of promises for extreme riches. Peter the Great tried to protect Russia by forcing Western culture and values on it so that it would be less seen as an easy victim and even now the fact is not accepted that Russia won WWII, of which this WWIII is an extension, because that would integrate it as a major nation, a primus inter pares. It is isolated from what is conceived (by itself) as real Western civilization (a fate shared with China), despite its cultural and artistic international excellence. All this aside from its communist history, which was for the Western capitalist states of no great importance as long as the center of gravity remained with them, but now that is shifting. It is doubtful that Russia will revert to a nuclear response, but it has an advanced weaponry that can wreak havoc on Western Europe. Surely it must realize that and know that the US may not engage.