We are bankrupt. So that’s $33 billion on the cuff. Couple of comments:
$33 billion MORE to secure Ukraine’s border but not a nickel for our American border to staunch the current, ongoing, invasion of our country!
How much are the Europeans spending? Ukraine is, first and foremost, a European problem. They should be contributing more to the “fight Russia” effort than America. Sure we should help. But the European contribution to the Ukraine war effort should be greater than our own. So is it? Let’s look behind the curtain:
So we see once again it is the American taxpayer, and the already bankrupt USA itself, that is being hosed.
I’m gonna repeat myself: we should be contributing to this war effort. But Ukraine is in Europe. It is the Europeans who should be in the lead on this, not us.
If the day ever comes that Russia tries to take over one of the Godforsaken countries in Central or South America, the USA needs to stand tall and take the lead in opposing any such takeover in our hemisphere. Ukraine is not in our hemisphere!! And I’m sick and tired of the European cheapskates shirking their responsibilities and duties.
Sounds like some young, perhaps foolish guy doing what he thought was right. Except for this part…
The 22-year-old was working with a private military contracting company when he was killed on Monday. The company had sent him to Ukraine, and he was being paid while he was fighting there
on Friday, his uncle said the family did not know the name of the company and had not been contacted by any contractor after his death.
So really the correct headline would be
“US is sending marines to kill Russians in Ukraine under the guise of hiring them as mercenaries for a private, government-paid contractor”
Constellis is what Blackwater is calling themselves these days. And you wonder why the Russian diplomats are saying stuff like “world war 3 has already started when the US sent their own military men and hardware to attack us”. I’m sure they don’t care about whatever formalities Biden is using to avoid getting a declaration of war.
Of course their great pilot legend was made up. So were most of the claims for how much Russian hardware was lost.
On 30 April, the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said that in the war so far Russia had lost 190 planes and 155 helicopters. But independent military analysts Oryx reckon the Russian losses to be 26 planes and 39 helicopters, as well as 48 drones (UAVs).
I saw posts referencing the “Ghost of Kyiv” in the first few days of the invasion, and it was obvious from the post and the comments that it was just a video game character. There were also a few stories in the news that mentioned it. Nobody really thought it was real.
The nearly $650 million in payments were made in dollars to a London branch of Citigroup Inc. that processes payments on behalf of bondholders, Russia’s finance ministry said Friday. The payments came from bank accounts that were not subject to direct sanctions and didn’t require authorization from the U.S. Treasury
8 years ago today, setting the stage for where we are now.
The Ukraine Nazis burned down a building, killing nearly 50 pro-Russian supporters in the aftermath of the 2014 coup in Ukraine. The police did nothing and the fire department showed up half an hour late.
This wasn’t the first example I’d heard about where independent and in particular, anti-war media coverage was being targeted for censorship, deplatforming, having their funding sources shut down, etc.
Paypoo is a bitch to everyone, and everyone should know that. Nothing new here. Though I thought they no longer use the “6 months suspension of funds” practice. Didn’t they get in legal trouble for that?
There’s a lot in this article, including mineral rights and domestic oil stuff that you might be interested in. Here was the Russian piece -
the Russia-Ukraine situation. A couple of things about that, particularly about the sanctions. First, Russia, among the developed nations—if you want to look at it that way— Russia is the only country with a balanced budget. I know it’s hard to believe, but they really do, they have a balanced budget. They have 81 million ounces of gold in the vault, and they can produce plenty more, because the government controls the land that has the gold in it. That’s one example of why they’re autarkic, in the sense that they don’t really import anything they need; they just import things that they want. That could be Disney films, or it could be dolls, but if need be, they can live without it.
What they do have, for example – and this might be surprising if you don’t already know it – is fertilizer. Russia accounts for about 35 percent of global nitrogen-based fertilizer production. So, when various nations declared sanctions against Russia, it was not well-noted that Russia also declared sanctions on the countries that were sanctioning them. Russia’s not exporting any agricultural nitrogen-based fertilizers to those countries. That’s a very big problem for agricultural commodities, because in another 30 days we’re coming into the planting season and we’re going to need fertilizer.
Thank you, xerty, for posting. That is a remarkably valuable piece. I have saved it.
Look at fertilizer prices; they’re up big, because people will be ordering it right now. You can order it, but it’s expensive and is likely to get more expensive, unless this problem can be solved. So, whether we have a recession or not, I think we’re going to have inflation; this is just one more inflationary factor. And we might have a recession just because of the inflationary shock. It’s possible. So, commodities are in very, very good stead and that’s just the way it is right now.
It’s really too extensive for me to summarize, but I can comment:
Sheldon Whitehouse is, straight up, a fool.
The USA is a very large, magnificent country. It is a pity we are being led by people from our very smallest, and least significant or important, states.
Those states produce people with small minds, envious of our greatness and anxious to bring the rest of America to heel and down to their level.
America will never realize her full potential until those small state jackasses are overcome.
But Sheldon Whitehouse in particular pins the pomposity meter so wildly that it becomes irreparable. And he so well represents the people of his diminutive, unimportant state.
Look, so long as such Democrats are running things, it’s pretty clear from that writing we have no chance whatsoever.
Finally, discussion in there of the asinine “ESG movement” sent chills down my spine. This is another concept emanating from the same general location, New England. The fact of anyone taking it seriously is just beyond belief. So destructive!! And that is entirely by design!!
Rendering unlawful the knowing or intentional possession of proceeds directly obtained from “corrupt dealings” with the Russian government.
Allowing for extended pursuit of money laundering prosecutions (and post-conviction forfeitures) based on foreign offences by extending the statute of limitations from 5 to 10 years.
Which all may sound good, but a 10 year statute of limitations would inconveniently include millions paid to Hunter Biden back in 2014, and those are only the payoffs we know about.
From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Biden White House has repeatedly announced large and seemingly random amounts of money that it intends to send to fuel the war in Ukraine.
one could argue that the U.S. government entered this war and rapidly escalated its involvement without this critical question — which should be fundamental to any policy decision of the U.S. government — being asked at all.
One need not be a conspiracy theorist to marvel at the great fortune of this industry, having lost their primary weapons market just eight months ago when the U.S. war in Afghanistan finally ended, only to now be gifted with an even greater and more lucrative opportunity to sell their weapons by virtue of the protracted and always-escalating U.S. role in Ukraine. Raytheon, the primary manufacturer of Javelins along with Lockheed, has been particularly fortunate that its large stockpile, no longer needed for Afghanistan, is now being ordered in larger-than-ever quantities by its former Board member, now running the Pentagon, for shipment to Ukraine
One would usually expect the American left , or whatever passes it for these days, to be indignant about the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars for weapons while ordinary Americans suffer. But the American left, such that it exists, is barely visible when it comes to debates over the war in Ukraine
