Tag: perpetual war

Rand Paul Warns Biden Is A “National Security Risk” Because He Is “In Cognitive Decline”

Following Joe Biden’s unscripted blurting out that Vladimir Putin ‘cannot remain in power’, and another bizarre appearance Monday where he appeared to rely on cue cards, Senator Rand Paul warned that it is becoming a “national security risk”.

Appearing on Fox News, Paul noted “A lot of times when you’re around somebody who’s in cognitive decline, you find yourself trying to help them with a sentence, trying to help them complete it… but we shouldn’t have to do that for the commander-in-chief.”

Paul continued, “And, it is actually a national security risk because he’s sending signals that no one in their right mind would want to send to Russia at this point. We aren’t trying to replace Putin in Russia. We aren’t trying to have regime change. We’re not sending troops into Ukraine, and we’re not going to respond in kind with chemical weapons.”

The Senator urged that Biden “lives in an alternate universe” where he blurts out whatever he pleases then claims then way it was perceived isn’t accurate.

“So I guess you’re supposed to look the other way. But even the left-wing media is noticing these gaffes,” Paul asserted.

“I do think that it is a real problem, and there’s a humorous angle to this. But it’s really not funny because we’re worried about what he’s saying, precipitating or escalating the conflict in Ukraine into a world war. That’s very serious,” Paul further emphasised.

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Prophetic RAND Corp. Report: “Destabilize and Undermine” Russia. Recommended “Provocative Actions”

A “prophetic” RAND Corporation report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” published in 2019 declares the stated goal of American policymakers is “to undermine Russia just as the US subversively destabilized the former Soviet Union during the Cold War,” and predicts to the letter the crisis unfolding in Ukraine. RAND Corporation is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.

While designating Russia as an “intractable adversary,” the report notes that “Russia has deep seated anxieties” about Western interference and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be “a vulnerability to exploit.”

The RAND report lists several “provocative measures” to insidiously “destabilize and undermine” Russia. Some of the steps include: repositioning bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets; deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia; increasing US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas (Black Sea); holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders; and withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Almost all the provocative actions recommended in the RAND report have practically been implemented by the successive Obama, Trump and Biden administrations since the 2014 Maidan coup, toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and consequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.

The US Air Force has flown B-52 strategic bombers and RC-135 reconnaissance planes over eastern Ukraine in months before the invasion, as part of its effort to deter Russia. To stiffen Ukraine’s ability to resist, the United States and NATO dispatched teams of military advisers in months before the invasion to survey air defenses, logistics, communications and other essentials.

Besides deploying 15,000 additional troops in Eastern Europe last month, total number of US troops in Europe is now expected to reach 100,000. “We have 130 jets at high alert. Over 200 ships from the high north to the Mediterranean, and thousands of additional troops in the region,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN on March 9.

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‘War is a Racket’: Biden Using Ukraine Crisis to Ram Through Record-Breaking Military Budget

Rebuffing progressive lawmakers’ calls for Pentagon spending cuts, President Joe Biden on Monday is set to unveil a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year that includes a record $813.3 billion in funds for the U.S. military apparatus, a $31 billion increase from the current level.

“We’re being robbed of resources to feed the endless hunger of the military-industrial complex.”

The president’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget request, which must be approved by Congress, is expected to contain $773 billion for the Pentagon alone as well as billions in funding for the Energy Department’s maintenance of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The New York Times reported Monday that Biden’s funding request for the Pentagon—the only federal agency that has not passed an independent audit—will “include $4.1 billion to conduct research and develop defense capabilities, nearly $5 billion for a space-based missile warning system to detect global threats, and nearly $2 billion for a missile defense interceptor.”

According to Bloomberg, the White House is urging Congress to approve $145.9 billion for procurement, funding that will allow the military to purchase “61 F-35 jet fighters from Lockheed Martin Corp., fewer than previously planned, as well as… the B-21 bomber from Northrop Grumman Corp. and two Virginia-class submarines from General Dynamics Corp. and Huntington Ingalls Industries Corp.”

The president’s latest budget proposal will land on Capitol Hill amid Russia’s deadly invasion of Ukraine, which has thus far proven to be a major boon for the U.S. weapons industry as the Biden administration pours arms into the besieged country.

“The hawks in Washington want to jack up the military budget and use Ukraine as an excuse,” William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, argued in a recent interview on Democracy Now!, noting that Biden’s new military budget request amounts to $100 billion more than was spent at the height of the Cold War.

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Re-Visiting Russiagate In Light Of The Ukraine War

It’s hard to believe that the last president spent his term pouring weapons into Ukraine, shredding treaties with Russia and ramping up cold war escalations against Moscow which helped lead us directly to the extraordinarily dangerous situation we now find ourselves in, and yet mainstream liberals spent his entire administration screaming that he was a Kremlin puppet.

A lot of anti-empire commentary is rightly going into criticizing how the Obama administration paved the way to this conflict in Ukraine with its role in the 2014 coup and support for Kyiv’s war against Donbass separatists. But what’s getting lost in all this, largely because Trumpites have been using their mainstream numbers to loudly amplify criticisms of the role of the Obama and Biden administrations in this mess, is what happened between those two presidencies which was just as crucial in getting us here.

Though it’s been scrubbed from mainstream liberal history, it was actually the Trump administration that began the US policy of arming Ukraine in the first place. Obama had refused forceful demands from neocons and liberal hawks to do so because he feared it would provoke an attack by Russia.

In a 2015 article titled “Defying Obama, Many in Congress Press to Arm Ukraine“, The New York Times reported that “So far, the Obama administration has refused to provide lethal aid, fearing that it would only escalate the bloodshed and give President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a pretext for further incursions.”

It wasn’t until the Trump presidency that those weapons began pouring into Ukraine, and boy howdy are we looking at some “further incursions” now. This change occurred either because Trump was a fully willing participant in the agenda to ramp up aggressions against Moscow, or because he was politically pressured into playing along with that agenda by the collusion narrative which had its origins at every step in the US intelligence cartel, or because of some combination of the two.

In all the world-shaping news stories we’ve been experiencing lately, it’s easy to forget how the narrative that the Kremlin had infiltrated the highest levels of the US government dominated news coverage and political discourse for years on end. But in light of the fact that today’s major headlines now revolve around that exact same foreign government, this fact is probably worth revisiting.

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Ukrainian Soldiers Film Themselves Calling Up Mothers of Russian Soldiers Killed in Action And Mocking Them

Footage posted to Twitter shows what appears to be Ukrainian soldiers calling up the mothers of dead Russian soldiers killed in action and mocking them over their loss.

Yes, really.

“Pro-Ukraine accounts on Twitter translated the videos and celebrated the heinous acts with glee,” writes Chris Menahan.

A translation of the exchange reveals that the soldier tells the mother “this fucking moron is no more,” informing her that all that was left of him was “his ass and a leg.”

The Ukrainian appeared to be using the phone that belonged to the dead Russian to call his mother.

An alleged neo-nazi Azov Battalion member named Ivan Zaliznyak uploaded the video and five others to his Telegram channel.

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