tyb
Anon has mentioned the Max Bluementhal testimony at the u.n the last couple of days.
have managed to find the full script.
will post to this post.
o7
----
repost first,
MAX BLUEMENTHAL FULL SPEECH VIDEO AT U.N
https://youtu.be/Ddc1ix_9MII
FULL SCRIPT TO MAX BLUEMENTHAL STATEMENT AT U.N
‘Why are we tempting nuclear annihilation?’ Watch Max Blumenthal address UN Security Council
MAX BLUMENTHAL·JUNE 29, 2023
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/06/29/nuclear-annihilation-max-blumenthal-security-council/
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.
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.
CONTINUED
CONTINUED
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.
CONTINUED
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.
Continued
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.
Thank you.
END
>>19184616, >>19184574, >>19184592, >>19184603, >>19184604 Max Bluementhal Full speech video and script.
for incoming baker or note taker.
fair point.
but twitter is unexcessible to any anon who does not want to give over private info.
plus no one can now view posts without logging in, so twitter has become a echo chamber for elon the clown and their assets.
it is no longer the public square.
nonetheless it may be trending to those who are still there.
still needs source.
smelling error
>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.
THE UKRAINE FUNDS AUDIT BY HEATHER KAISER
All aboard the gravy train: an independent audit of US funding for Ukraine
HEATHER KAISER, ANYA PARAMPIL AND MAX BLUMENTHAL·JUNE 27, 2023
In the absence of official scrutiny of Washington’s spending spree on Ukraine, The Grayzone conducted an independent audit of US funding for the country. We discovered a series of wasteful, highly unusual expenditures the Biden administration has yet to explain.
During a recent discussion with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Power, touted her organization’s push to guarantee transparency for US taxpayer funds sent to Ukraine.
“We are involved in funding efforts at ensuring judicial integrity, which is intrinsically important to building Ukraine’s democracy and its integration plans to get into Europe,” Power declared, adding USAID’s work in Ukraine was “also really important in terms of assuring the taxpayer, the American taxpayer, that they’re resources are well spent.”
Even a year into the war, Ukraine continues to build out Diia – an e-government app that gives citizens access to more than 120 gov services.
I spoke with @NickKristof about @USAID’s support of this groundbreaking app that plays such an important role in transparent government. pic.twitter.com/pZTCZYaZHN
— Samantha Power (@PowerUSAID) February 24, 2023
While innocuous on the surface, Power’s comments revealed a great deception the US government is currently waging against the American public. In the roughly 16 months since Russia’s February 2022 escalation of the Ukraine conflict, the US government has approved several multi-billion dollar spending packages to sustain the Kiev military’s fight against Moscow.
Though many Americans likely believe that US dollars allocated for Ukraine are spent directly on supplies for the war effort, the lead author of this report, Heather Kaiser, conducted a thorough review of Washington’s budget for the 2022 and 2023 fiscal year and discovered that is far from the case.
US taxpayers may be shocked to learn that as their families grappled with fears of Social Security’s looming insolvency, the Social Security Administration in Washington sent $4.48 million to the Kiev government in 2022 and 2023 alone. In another example of bizarre spending, USAID paid off $4.5 billion worth of Ukraine’s sovereign debt through payments made to the World Bank — all while Congress went to loggerheads over America’s ballooning national debt. (Western financial interests including BlackRock Inc. are among the largest holders of Ukrainian government bonds.)
Though it is nearly impossible to calculate the total sum of US tax dollars sent to Kiev, Kaiser was able to perform an independent audit of Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine through a careful search of open source data available on the US government’s official spending tracker.
Kaiser reviewed all the funding allocations in which Ukraine was listed as the “Place of Performance” for fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Additionally, she discovered supplementary funds were sent to Kiev by listing Ukraine as the “justification” for spending, rather than the location where the money was physically sent.
Calculating the total dollar amount that the US has given to Ukraine is incredibly challenging for multitude of reasons: there is a lag in reporting expenditures; covert money given by the CIA (Title 50 Covert Action) won’t be publicly disclosed; and direct military assistance in the form of military equipment is not calculated in the same manner as raw cash. The Pentagon recently admitted to an accounting error revised up to 6.2 billion dollars. Despite this, Kaiser submitted a request to the Department of Treasury asking them to disclose the total dollar amount of US taxpayer support for Ukraine. Treasury has not responded at the time of publication.
Though Kaiser was able to search through pages of reported spending, the US government has yet to conduct an official audit of its funding for Ukraine. What’s more, there is currently no limit to how much Washington can send to Kiev.
In the absence of dedicated official scrutiny of Washington’s spending in Ukraine, The Grayzone has produced an independent audit of US tax dollar allocation in the country.
Among the many troubling contracts we discovered was a $4.25 million payment from the Pentagon to a military diving contractor that a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has described as a “fraudulent company.” The US government asserts the payment covered the company’s delivery of explosives equipment to Ukraine.
So how exactly was that money put to use? And why has Congress so far refused to implement any program to track these shady weapons deals?
Unfortunately, the “justification” for contracts like these often consists of just a brief paragraph — or worse, a single sentence. Little little information is available that documents precisely how the funds were spent down to the dollar and item.
CONTINUED
Beneficiaries of USAID’s Ukraine aid: Polish NATO lobbyists, a private equity firm, rural Kenyans, a TV station in Toronto
USAID awarded $21.8 billion to Ukraine throughout fiscal years 2022 and 2023, roughly 41 percent of the 53.4 billion it spent during that period. Mysteriously, a portion of USAID funding earmarked for Kiev was sent to Kenya and Ethiopia via other agencies, with the award description stating projects in Africa were “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine supplemental funds.”
USAID sent $4.5 billion to Ukraine via the World Bank to pay off Kiev’s debt and fund various social programs, including government pensions. USAID made a total of $21 billion worth of direct payments to the World Bank in fiscal years 2022 and 2023 (9.1 Billion and 11.9 Billion, respectively), more money than all of the funding Washington sent to the bank between fiscal years 2008 and 2021 combined. The $4.5 billion allocated for Ukraine funded programs directed by the bank’s International Development Association and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
USAID has supplied $20 million to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” since February 2020. Recipients include a Polish think tank called the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, a Toronto-based Ukrainian TV channel, a collection of Ukrainian “anti-corruption” organizations, and other groups listed in the screenshot below. These awards were issued on top of $26 million worth of funds USAID sent these groups between 2016 and the February 2022 war escalation.
USAID allocated $500,000 for the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in 2023 to fund a program dedicated to “advanc[ing] U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting economic growth, agriculture and trade; global health; and democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance” in Ukraine. The funds were earmarked “to strengthen the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV) initiative in implementing international advocacy campaigns to keep high levels of international solidarity with Ukraine.
USAID’s support arrived on top of a $74,788 subaward the State Department granted to the Casimir Pulaski Foundation in June 2022 to “build capacity and policy formulating capabilities of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV) and assisting Ukrainian civil society based in Poland.
According to their own so-called “Peace Manifesto,” the ICUV’s top priority is to admit Ukraine into NATO, a move that former US diplomats from George Kennan to Jack Matlock to Henry Kissinger and even current CIA director William Burns have described as a major provocation against Russia.
USAID sent $3 million to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2022 “to improve health outcomes in drought affected areas in Ethiopia.” The description stated, “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine Supplemental Funds.”
USAID sent 30.9 million to Chemonics International, Inc. for the “Ukraine confidence building initiative (UCBI).” A private, for-profit aid contractor, Chemonics was founded by a businessman who said he launched the company to “have my own CIA.” The Grayzone has documented Chemonics’ role in delivering US government funding and supplies to the Syrian White Helmets, which served as the propaganda wing of the Al Qaeda-tied armed opposition. Chemonics previously reaped a massive windfall from the US occupation of Afghanistan, raking in as much as $600 mllion from USAID.
USAID sent $20.7 million to PACT, INC. for “USAID Ukraine’s public health system recovery and resilience activity and will strengthen the Government of Ukraine (GOU) capacity to address COVID-19 and other public health threats, sustain health services during a crisis, and protect the health of all Ukrainians including vulnerable and marginalized populations. According to its 2022 impact statement [PDF], “In Ukraine, Pact’s work empowers citizens to push for transparent and democratic governance, advances gender equality and human rights for women and girls, and accelerates efforts to achieve HIV epidemic control.” The contractor’s work contributed to “172 people increas[ing] their net income,” according to Pact.
USAID sent $25 million to Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV, a “leading private equity firm in emerging Europe, via the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), “to back high-growth tech and export-oriented [Small and Medium Sized Enterprises] succeeding globally, based on platforms in Ukraine and Moldova.”
USAID sent 7.6 million to UNICEF IDA for emergency nutrition response in ASALs (Arid and Semi-Arid Lands) in Kenya. The description stated, “partially funded with response funds and Ukraine Supplemental Funds”
USAID sent $1.2 million to University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc. located in Atlanta, GA to “support humanitarian information management through geographic information systems, data analytics and visualizations”. Ukraine was listed as the place of performance.
The Pentagon sponsors diving contractor with “history of fraud” to send mysterious explosives to Ukraine
The Department of Homeland Security sent 5.48 million to Gravois Aluminum Boats LLC on June 8, 2021 for the following purpose: “PROCUREMENT OF TWO 38-FOOT FULL CABIN RESPONSE BOATS, FOUR 38-FOOT CENTER CONSOLE RESPONSE BOATS, TRAILERS, SPARE PARTS, AND TRAINING AS REQUIRED UNDER FMS LOA DB-P-LCL FOR THE COUNTRY OF UKRAINE.”
The Department of Defense has transferred 4.75 Million to Atlantic Diving Supply, Inc. as of February 3, 2023 for “PRO SAPPER AND EOD EQUIPMENT [CONTRACTING SQUADRON] UKRAINE” and “Marine lifesaving and Diving Equipment.”
Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) and sapper equipment is exclusively used to blow things up or clean up explosives. And Atlantic Diving Supply is a military contractor originally founded to provide tactical gear to Navy SEAL divers.
When a company like this is tasked with a highly specific delivery of explosives gear to any foreign nation, including Ukraine, it should prompt questions about the mission, particularly when US intelligence is blaming Ukraine’s military for attacking the Nord Stream pipelines without the knowledge of President Volodymyr Zelensky. (The payment date does not necessarily correlate with the date of delivery from the vendor; in other words, the equipment could have been delivered at a prior date.)
Luke Hillier, the founder of Atlantic Diving Supply, paid a $20 million settlement in 2019 to resolve charges that he defrauded the Pentagon by falsely claiming his company was a small business. Atlantic Diving is consistently listed as one of the top 25 largest military contractors in the country.
THREAD: A controversial "small business" just won a $33B DoD contact, despite what a senator calls "a known history of fraud." A new @POGOwatchdog investigation into Atlantic Diving Supply, Inc. https://t.co/kinpwb7O9l with @schwellenbach @adamzagorin
— Jason Paladino (@jason_paladino) February 18, 2021
In 2021, Hillier raked in a massive $33 billion contract under the same program, prompting fresh accusations of fraud. This pattern of malfeasance prompted a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to bluntly denounce Atlantic Diving as a “fraudulent company.”
Hillier currently owns a $13 million mega-yacht in the Cayman Islands, $24 million worth of beachfront property in Hawaii, and two Bahamas-based companies with murky operations, according to the Project on Government Oversight.
The Department of Defense has paid 4.9 Million to BAE Systems GCS International as of September 12, 2022 for “UKRAINE LCS LW 155 SPARES” and “guns over 155mm through 200mm”. In Navy terminology, LCS means “Littoral Combat Ship,” while LW refers to the lightweight gun. And “155 SPARES” refers to the gun mounted on the ship’s main battery off the bow.
So what is the exact purpose of the LCS LW 155mm gun spares, why were they given to Ukraine, and where are they now? Is there a tracking mechanism in place to know where they are and how they’re being used?
Washington funnels cash to a private equity firm, Georgian finance corporation, a ‘private entrepreneur’ via Ukraine aid
US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) sent $25 million to Horizon Capital Growth Fund IV, a “leading private equity firm in emerging Europe, “to back high-growth tech and export-oriented [Small and Medium Sized Enterprises] succeeding globally, based on platforms in Ukraine and Moldova.”
US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) sent $1.5 million to the Gazelle Fund LP, another private equity firm, to relocate Ukrainian businesses to Georgia. Georgia does not border Ukraine, nor is it a primary location for Ukrainian refugee resettlement.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent $882,291 to a single individual described as an “private entrepreneur” in exchange for “overseas technical assistance program support services.” The private entrepreneur listed, Igor Lavreniuk, serves as the Program Coordinator for USAID’s Competitive Markets Program according to his LinkedIn.
The National Science Foundation sent 1.3 million to University of Illinois for faculty and curricular development in remote sensing. The place of performance is listed as Ukraine.
The Department of State has paid 8.3 million to Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to help “refugees from Ukraine meet their essential needs during initial displacement.” According to SpendingUS.gov, Catholic Relief Services is listed as having received a total of 657 million from the State Department in 2021, 5.7 billion since 2008 and 670 million during the last 12 months.
Sponsoring “democracy” at Americans’ expense
Along with the blowback from their government’s gratuitous sanctions policy against Russia and other official enemies, Americans are feeling the impact of this overseas spending spree at grocery stores, gas stations, and everywhere in between. Meanwhile, rising generations are not only struggling with historic inflation, but concerns that Medicare and Social Security will be insolvent in the near future.
Washington and Europe have insisted that the flood of aid to Ukraine is essential to defending democracy against the existential threat of an authoritarian Russia. This framing is designed to shut down all debate by casting anyone who questions the ballooning price tag as fundamentally anti-American — if you are against funding the West’s proxy war with a nuclear power, you oppose the very ideals that define our nation.
Yet our inspection of US government spending in Ukraine demonstrates that Washington has prioritized its supposed fight for “democracy” abroad over the well-being of the American people.
As the war drags on, lawmakers like Sen. Lindsey Graham have marketed military aid to Ukraine in increasingly grim terms. As the senator boasted during a recent trip to Kiev, “The Russians are dying…it’s the best money we’ve ever spent.” Meanwhile, Congress has rejected any mechanism that would guarantee transparency on the billions sent to Kiev, and shunned a war powers debate over the US military’s presence on the Ukrainian battlefield.
President Joseph Biden, for his part, has pledged that official Washington will support Kiev “as long as it takes.” As the potential for blowback grows from Western pressure to push Ukraine into NATO, and a nuclear-armed Moscow is backed into an existential fight for its survival, while economic powers including China gradually decouple from the Western financial system, Americans can only wonder how much will this war cost them when it is finally over.
END
>>19185152, >>19185156, >>19185173, >>19185190, >>19185226, >>19185232, >>19185244 THE UKRAINE FUNDS AUDIT BY HEATHER KAISER - the grayzone