Charles III NEW REGIME - ABOLITION OF THE RIGHT TO DEMOCRATICALLY PROTEST

 

13 May - Free Palestine - if you care be there.

 

Seymour Hersh on widespread fraud in Ukraine by Zelensky and Co.

 The Ukraine government, headed by Volodymyr Zelensky, has been using American taxpayers’ funds to pay dearly for the vitally needed diesel fuel that is keeping the Ukrainian army on the move in its war with Russia. It is unknown how much the Zelensky government is paying per gallon for the fuel, but the Pentagon was paying as much as $400 per gallon to transport gasoline from a port in Pakistan, via truck or parachute, into Afghanistan during the decades-long American war there.

What also is unknown is that Zelensky has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments. One estimate by analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency put the embezzled funds at $400 million last year, at least; another expert compared the level of corruption in Kiev as approaching that of the Afghan war, “although there will be no professional audit reports emerging from the Ukraine.”

“Zelensky’s been buying discount diesel from the Russians,” one knowledgeable American intelligence official told me. “And who’s paying for the gas and oil? We are. Putin and his oligarchs are making millions” on it.

Many government ministries in Kiev have been literally “competing,” I was told, to set up front companies for export contracts for weapons and ammunition with private arms dealers around the world, all of which provide kickbacks. Many of those companies are in Poland and Czechia, but others are thought to exist in the Persian Gulf and Israel. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are others in places like the Cayman Islands and Panama, and there are lots of Americans involved,” an American expert on international trade told me. 

The issue of corruption was directly raised with Zelensky in a meeting last January in Kiev with CIA Director William Burns. His message to the Ukrainian president, I was told by an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting, was out of a 1950s mob movie. The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because “he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.” 

Burns also presented Zelensky with a list of thirty-five generals and senior officials whose corruption was known to the CIA and others in the American government. Zelensky responded to the American pressure ten days later by publicly dismissing ten of the most ostentatious officials on the list and doing little else. “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official told me.

Realism.

 

Jeffrey St. Claire succinct and destructive on Israels serial apartheid elections.

 The big winner in Israel’s elections was Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the ultra-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, who is set to be the next Homeland Security Minister. As a lawyer Ben Gvir defended Israeli nationalist terrorists in the courts, threatened the late PM Rabin before he was assassinated by a rightwing Zionist, and has been convicted 8 times for incitement and related felonies. In his victory speech, Ben Givr vowed: “It is time that we will be back the owners of this land, it is time that our kids will feel safe to walk around the streets.”

+ Still it’s unlikely that the Israeli elections will change much. It will continue on pretty much the same thuggish, defiant, unrepentant course set by Ariel Sharon. Governments come and go with greater frequency now but the oppressive Zionist imperative remains. What will have to change is the rationale of the US for supporting such a brutal regime that flaunts human rights and international law with the impunity of an NYPD street cop. It no longer has the hollow liberalism as represented by Yair Lapid to hide behind. The violent racism that was once implicit is now explicit. At most, it will give the Biden administration the chance to issue a few entirely performative press releases remonstrating against some atrocity before approving the next Israeli aid package.

+ 2,747,943: number of Palestinians living in the West Bank.

+ 0: number of Palestinians living in the West Bank who were permitted to vote in the Israeli elections.

+ 687: the number of houses and buildings Israel has demolished in the West Bank this year.

+ Thomas Friedman took to his usual pasture in the NYT to graze over the re-election of Netanyahu and concluded that the “Israel We Knew is Gone.” Who’s this “we” you’re talking about, Friedman? And what “Israel”? The Israel of Sabra and Shatila? The Israel that ran over Rachel Corrie? The Israel of phosphorus bombs in Gaza? The Israel of an Apartheid Wall? The Israel that shot Linda Abu Akleh in the head? History ain’t changed.

Extract from his weekend Counterpunch throwaway Roaming Charges goodie.

Israeli Apartheid and breaking of UN Resolutions

 + 2,747,943: number of Palestinians living in the West Bank.

+ 0: number of Palestinians living in the West Bank who were permitted to vote in the Israeli elections.

+ 687: the number of houses and buildings Israel has demolished in the West Bank this year.

I’m thankful to Jeffrey St. Claire from Counterpunch for the abbé.

King Charles III - By George That’s A big Un! - The New Cary On Up The Camilla - 🙌