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Background

Most Americans oppose Congress authorizing additional funding to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, as the public splits over whether the US has already done enough to assist Ukraine.

Overall, 55% say the US Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine vs. 45% who say Congress should authorize such funding. And 51% say that the US has already done enough to help Ukraine while 48% say it should do more. A poll conducted in the early days of the Russian invasion in late February 2022 found 62% who felt the US should have been doing more.

Partisan divisions have widened since that poll, too, with most Democrats and Republicans now on opposing sides of questions on the US role in Ukraine.

And, all these come as American people are unhappy with a worsening economic situation. Earlier this week, the American rating agency Fitch downgraded the US government’s triple-A credit rating by one notch, putting it at double-A plus. The agency cited expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years as well as high and growing general government debt burden.

PressTV: Any comments?

Peter Koenig (PK): It is about time the American public wakes up to this scam of biblical proportions. Unfortunately, in Europe the awakening appears slower, because opposition is not made as public as in the US. Censorship in Europe has reached record proportions. We are way beyond George Orwell’s 1984.

However, similar inquiries made in secret with people in Europe would yield similar results – or even stronger against putting more tax-payers’ money into a bottomless, corrupt rathole, called Ukraine.

In the US, Republicans see apparently much clearer through the scam than so-called Democrats – Dems — do. By scam is meant a last-ditch US attempt to weaken Russia to the point of a “regime change”, to a regime à la Yeltsin, so that Russia’s wealth of natural resources would become open for privatization and foreign / US exploitation; last ditch – means, before this wannabe empire disappears from the horizon of importance.

In the US, Dems are indoctrinated by Globalism. Though, adherents to the Democratic Party in States like California and New York, would hardly admit that their originally noble socially-inclined points of view, as in helping those in need, have been gradually highjacked in the last at least 2 to 3 decades by an incessant well-funded globalist propaganda.

This is a worldwide western trend. In Europe – same happens with left leaning people and political parties. What was left, is now globalist; what was right is now anti-globalist, defending national sovereignty and personal freedom. They apparently have seen through the scams of the elite.

The traditional western world party system – left vs.  right – has disappeared. It is now simply globalists vs. anti-globalists.

And the western NATO provoked and incited Ukraine war is, next to the covid crime and the fake narrative on “climate change”, the worst crime the west is getting away with, because westerners are gullible to false media reports. And why is that so?

Because they love their comfort.

Going against the official narrative may risk their comfortable life, as they fear being exposed to ever more dictatorial regimes, if they do not obey.

But, quietly in their closed quarters and in their minds, in the US and in Europe, they have long discovered that money and ship-loads full of arms to Ukraine does not resolve the “problem” – that the war was not winnable, never was – against a mighty Russia.

Americans also recognize that there is an enormous poverty growing in the US. Countless homeless people are dotting the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, and other major US cities. US unemployment is rampant, despite official “statistics” to the contrary.

Plus, US infrastructure is breaking down in warp speed. In many cases roads, bridges and railroads have become extremely dangerous to human life.

All these are good reasons, why and how US tax money could be spent to much better use at home.

Up to now we are talking about an estimated US-dollars 150-plus billion sent in the form of weaponry and “budgetary” transfers to Ukraine. And this within about 18 months, since February 2022.

Compare this with about US$ 38.4 billion unemployment benefits paid in the same 18 months, from February 2022, when the NATO war against Russia began, to June 2023. The US$ 150-plus billion, represent almost four times more than paid US unemployment benefits in the same period. See this.

If you add to the US$ 150 billion another, say US$ 60 – 70 billion-equivalent from Europe’s spending in weaponry and “gifts”, or officially “budgetary transfers”, you get a total of about 215 billion dollars equivalent put down the bottomless black Ukrainian abyss.

This is not only a ridiculous but an economy-killing amount.

In addition, literally 70% of all the weaponry that the west sends to Ukraine ends up on the black market, instead of at the front. This was already reported a while ago by BBC, CNN, and other mainstream media.

So, US and European governments know it, but continue doing it – why?

Because they may want to supply the black market with sophisticated NATO weaponry.

Most of these arms end up in what the west calls “terrorist groups” – precisely what the west wants, because terrorist activities, violent protests and the like, as we have witnessed in France and other countries in the past few months, they are not random. They are planned. They are justification for increasing militarization and dictatorship in the west.

In recent vicious protests in France, NATO weapons have been spotted and reported, but to no avail, not picked up by the mainstream.

PressTV: The US Fitch Rating Agency recently down-graded the US credit rating from AAA to AA-plus. Yet, the useless spending on Ukraine continues, against all common senses, and against US economic interests.

PK: Fitch Rating Inc. is a US-UK credit rating agency. Agency Fitch, or any rating agency, would only make a US rating decision in complete accord with, or even by mandate from the US government, in tune with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Even though in this case Treasury Secretary Yellen complained officially, she might as well have been the initiator of the down-rating.

A lower rating gives the US more leeway or flexibility with potentially controversial policy decisions, i.e., increasing base interest rates again later this year … and more. Yet, most economists know that the FED’s raising the base-rate does more harm to the economy, brings more enterprises to their knees, and transfers their assets to Big Capital, i.e., BlackRock style financial behemoths, than lowering interests, so that business and production enterprises could pick up steam and catch up with what they lost during the covid times.

Of course, the same applies to Europe, and to most countries of capitalist economies. The convenient excuse of fighting inflation, does not stand its ground. Never did.

And that is known to the politicians and their economic advisers.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

Featured image is from Treason.news