I grew up in a very pro-military family. For a long time, I believed that criticizing military action was hateful to the soldiers themselves because it would demoralize troops and strengthen the enemy’s morale.
Soldiers facing danger overseas do deserve support. But they also deserve well-thought-out missions. They deserve a public that holds policymakers accountable for their actions. Those of us past fighting age have an absolute responsibility to call bullsh*t where we see it.
We who grew up surrounded by World War II stories were raised with the belief that battles were very clear and that there were hard and fast lines between the “good guys” and the “bad guys.”
But that began to change for me in the early 2000s when my best friend came back from her first tour of duty in Iraq. She was in construction and so traveled throughout Iraq and saw many villages and had many, many encounters.
Readers probably remember that liberals were regularly denouncing our efforts in Iraq as Bush’s war crimes, while conservatives were insisting that we were liberating the Iraqi people. So naturally, I was curious to hear what my trusted friend had to say. I wanted to know who was right, Fox or CNN.
My friend just shrugged and told me both sides were kind of right and both sides were kind of wrong. It really just depended on each individual village. American leadership was making assumptions about the “Iraqi people” as though they were a homogeneous group, when in reality, ideological battles were occurring at the village level. And who in Washington, D.C., can know the ins and outs of each Iraqi village?
Ukraine is different than Iraq, but not as much as you think.
The Ukrainian situation is different, but not as different as some might think. While Russia certainly was the aggressor, pro-Russian groups have existed within Ukraine for decades. If you read Anne Applebaum’s book Red Famine, you will learn how, after deliberately starving the ethnic Ukrainians, Stalin shipped Russians as well as ethnic minorities within the Soviet Union (Kazakhs, for example) into the hollowed-out country to repopulate it. Ukraine, after all, does have the best farmland in the world, and it is not only being used by ethnic Ukrainians.
Trying to find perfectly accurate battlefield information is impossible and a waste of time for anyone who is not a military commander. So, for those of us with loved ones in the military, what are we supposed to do as we watch these battles play out, as we watch our own stockpiles of military supplies depleted? Do we just take legacy media at their word?
Of course not. Daisy just wrote a fantastic article about what a waste of time that is. Sometimes, the best the rest of us can do is to try and follow money trails. Who is benefiting from this? Are we helping the Ukrainian people? Who are we sending over there to represent the United States?
This is an exhaustive subject, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
Let’s just look at who is getting financially involved with Ukraine.
We know that arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Raytheon told investors that the war was going to be good for business. We also know that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, the world’s largest asset manager, has made a deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to rebuild Ukraine.
We’ve written before about Ukraine’s new “government in a smartphone.” This has been profitable for tech companies, obviously, but it’s been an interesting trial run for the American groups like USAID, who financially supported its development.
Oh, and the Clintons are getting in on it.
The Clintons have just announced that they are getting involved. Last week, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) launched the Ukraine Action Network. This is the brainchild of Hillary Clinton and Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska. This Action Network seeks to coordinate efforts from prior CGI participants to send humanitarian aid to Ukraine; they also want to keep Ukraine in the spotlight, because American support for intervention in Ukraine is fading fast, and they know it.
So, what kind of aid does Hillary have in mind for the Ukrainians?
Well, CGI is excited about technology for schoolchildren. Orlando Bloom is raising $20 million for 50,000 laptops. I think he should shop around a little more if he thinks that’s the best deal he can get…
But this actually just proves my point. There are some big-hearted people working within charities to change lives. But there are always wasted resources, too. It’s hard to provide any kind of oversight within disaster zones.
Which CGI is well aware of.
As of June 2022, this charity enjoyed a B+ grade, as issued by CharityWatch. 76% of the money sent to them was spent on actual programs relative to their overhead expenses. That’s not too bad, right?
Let’s look back at the Clinton Global Initiative in Haiti.
But the CGI has been around for a while. Part of the Clinton Foundation, created a few years after President Bill Clinton left office, the Institute enjoyed huge growth for a few years, then disbanded in 2016, fearing there would be a conflict of interest with Hillary’s presidential run. And after Hillary’s failure in 2016, donations to the Clinton Foundation plummeted.
It’s understandable that donors would lose faith in an organization after a failed political run. But this wasn’t the only reason people were starting to dissociate themselves from the Clintons. After the disastrous Haiti earthquake in 2010, details emerged about the Clintons’ supposed “charity” down there that made them look anything but charitable.
To sum up very briefly, the Clintons had been stirring the pot in Haiti for years. During his presidency, Bill Clinton launched agricultural “reforms” that made Haitians far more dependent on American food and put down a military coup. When, in 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck, the Clintons were well-positioned to help the country rebuild.
They planned to do this by slashing regulations to attract foreign capital, then later taxing Haitians to pay it back. So, first of all, this isn’t really “aid.” It’s just letting foreign investors take advantage of the chaos. But they didn’t even build the giant port that was supposed to revitalize Haiti’s economy. The U.S. government sank tens of millions of dollars into a port project that just never materialized.
And, these financial shenanigans may have been some of the less horrible things that happened in Haiti after the earthquake. In 2022, the American pastor Corrigan Clay, who operated charities in Haiti and adopted Haitian orphans, was arrested for child sex abuse.
Corrigan Clay had been personally visited by Bill Clinton, and promoted by Oprah Winfrey and Kim Kardashian.
While mainstream sources still insist that the Clintons really did help Haiti, too many scandals emerged that were too hard to hide. For a few years, it looked like the Clinton Foundation had lost its influence.
And then came the invasion of Ukraine.
Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Which, incidentally, even NATO Chairman Jens Stoltenberg admits was provoked by the expansion of NATO.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The Clintons announced they were reopening the CGI in March 2022.
And it looks like their taste in friends has not gotten any less weird. Hillary Clinton and Olena Zelenska are obviously quite close, and Volodymyr Zelensky has just made a spectacularly bizarre choice as Ukraine’s new ambassador, performance artist Marina Abramovic.
Abramovic is featured on the U.S. State Department’s art website. On the State Department website there is a very charming farmhouse picture of Abramovic.
But this is hardly typical of her work. You may recall her from the “spirit cooking” scandal during Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential race. You can read about her exhibits in which she allowed herself to be mutilated here. Or look at photos of her current exhibit in London, where you have to squeeze between nude models to enter the exhibit. You can get a nice curation of images here. She repeatedly has had to insist publicly that she’s not actually a Satanist.
Whether or not Abramovic worships Satan is almost beside the point. I don’t have a problem with performance artists as long as only adults are exposed to graphic material.
But Zelensky specifically asked Abramovic to help rebuild Ukrainian schools to help the children. I wouldn’t want this lady near my kids. I can’t imagine the average Ukrainian wants her anywhere near their children, either.
Who are we really helping, when we drag out wars like this, and allow people like the Clintons and Abramovic to be instrumental in rebuilding?
Will our involvement with Ukraine cause war with Russia?
As of right now, no one is publicly talking about American soldiers going to Ukraine, but that could change overnight. We have had people working clandestinely in the region for a long time. Again, Jens Stoltenberg admitted that NATO was aggravating Putin, and the U.S. has been part of that.
NATO is not invincible, and if we go to war with Russia, losing is within the realm of possibility. I have had people close to me die in combat. I have had other people close to me come back from war profoundly changed. The American public in general, is blissfully unaware of what war does to people, but most people who have had friends and family in combat know that it is something our politicians have a responsibility to avoid until absolutely necessary.
Is our involvement in regional wars regarding old ethnic hatreds absolutely necessary?
Russia is not the good guy here. But I can’t pretend that the side on which the Clintons stand is good, either. There are lots of Ukrainians in the media saying that they want to keep fighting, but it’s hard to know how accurate any of that reporting is. Truth is, after all, the first casualty in war.
Is there anything we can do about this?
Don’t accept the simplest answer. It’s rarely the case. Understand that since the repeal of the Smith-Mundt Act, our government is legally allowed to propagandize us, and wars have always been fertile grounds for propaganda. And they’ve been extremely busy silencing alternative voices that ask questions and draw different conclusions.
I think having this in the public eye helps. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. As bad as events got in Haiti, some arrests were made, and the Clinton Foundation lost money. Scrutinizing their actions in Ukraine can’t hurt.
What do you think about the Clintons being involved with Ukraine? Do you think there’s something to be gained for them or that this is out of the goodness of their hearts? As an American, do you think we should be sending financial aid to Ukraine? Do you think we should be involved in their war? Why or why not?
Let’s discuss it in the comments section.
About Marie Hawthorne
A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her.
Things are a lot more complex than they appear at first.
The so-called “collapse of the Soviet Union” was for the eyes, but the hidden hand behind the magician was that the soviets (communists) were still running the show behind the scenes. They left their puppets behind in power in the “former” slave states in eastern Europe and Asia. But Poland broke free. In 2014 Ukraine broke free. The Russian invasion of Ukraine started in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea and eastern “Russian speaking” eastern Ukraine. The Russians hoped their limited invasion would collapse the weak Ukrainian government, but it didn’t. Then in 2022 the Russian Blitzkrieg was supposed to finish off the Ukrainian resistance, well, it’s still going on.
Let’s look at other pieces of the puzzle. Is Zelensky who he portrays himself? He as joined Ukraine to the WEF (a communist front beholden to Moscow and Beijing, otherwise known as “controlled opposition” pretending to oppose communism). He knows that NATO has only limited supplies yet he demands that we empty our stores to support him. Does it look as if he is trying to set up NATO to be completely unable to fight once the Russians move?
What about Russia itself? They have the capability to train and arm a million soldiers every three months. We found during the Iraqi wars that we could move our soldiers in days, but it took months to get all the supplies to the front, so likewise the Russians could have millions of troops ready in Siberia where we don’t see them while allowing the troops on the front in Ukraine get chewed up. Are they giving us false hope that they are weaker than they really are?
Don’t forget that the Russian and Chinese governments think that they can win a world war using nuclear weapons. They have been planning a war against the U.S. for years, including invasion behind “shock and awe” of an initial nuclear attack.
There are more pieces to the puzzle, I think this is enough to get started.
Don’t trust Trump. He acts like controlled opposition to Moscow and Beijing. Biden is their puppet.
As for the Clintons, don’t touch them with a ten-foot pole. The Haitians hate her for the rape of their country following the earthquake.
Beautiful summation!
Your analysis is incomplete! China and Russia once they saw the blowback of the weaponized dollar and sanctions saw the opportunity to PR BRICS into BRICS+ which is 11 world world size economies and decided that there was a bigger win win to be had in the fight against the unipolar order with the multipolar alternative.
This economic master stroke is what makes a quagmire Ukraine war palatable and even profitable. Im hoping BRICS not only puts Z’s head on a pike and turns Ukraine into the rump state it deserves to be but also hastens the death of petrodollar!!!
Ric,
I believe you got it right.
The question I keep asking is what does a post US/West uni-polar world to a multi-polar world with the BRICS 11 (and there are other countries that are either interested in joining, or have signed on for “observer” status) with their own banking system, undermining the petrodollar and dollar as reserve currency?
I have read lots of references to the fall of Rome and the Weimar Republic. But they did not have things like direct deposit, nearly instant bank transfers, electronic banking etc.
I could see and we are seeing de-dollarization happening over many years.
Or, we wake up one morning and the dollar is worthless.
That Trump comment was out of left field, but I agree with the rest.
Everything the Clintons do is to benefit them, not the people they are supposedly trying to help. They gotta look good, but what they do comes back to bite them.
All the money going to Ukraine is suspicious in my opinion. It is seemingly benefiting someone and many other people as well. Ukraine is known for corruption. It is no secret. Many US politicians are in on it, past and present.
You think Ukraine is corrupt? Well, from where did they get their corruption? They got it from Moscow. Russian corruption is far worse. Russian corruption is part of the reason the Russian Blitzkrieg in 2022 failed. The people in Ukraine at Burisma Oil who bribed the Bidens were working on behalf of Moscow. But Russian corruption doesn’t excuse Ukrainian corruption.
The Clinton Foundation and Marina Abromovic “helping” in the same place suggest terrible things for a very vulnerable group of people.
Wherever there is a chance to grift, Bill and Hill will be there mouthing platitudes and only padding their bank balances.
The statement “While Russia certainly was the aggressor, …” is a profound falsehood. Ethnic Russians in the ‘breakaway Oblasts” were brutalized, shelled, murdered, denied their language, denied political participation, and underwent literal extermination by Ukraine Armed Forces from 2014 until Russia intervened with their SMO to stop the carnage. Estimates vary, but claims of between 10-20K civilian deaths in those Oblasts (by Ukrainians) were documented over 7 years. There were multiple opportunities to put an end to the conflict, and to give Russia the security guarantees they requested, not the least of which were the Minsk Accords, which the “West” and Ukraine refused to honor and later acknowledged as having been a ruse. Well written article, as usual, but at least get your history and facts right.
I got it from both Russian and Ukrainian sources that the fighters in eastern Ukraine oblasts starting in 2014 were Russian regular army. Many civilians were caught in the crossfire. The Malaysian airliner that was shot down over eastern Ukraine was a false flag operation by Russia that went wrong, the wrong plane was shot down.
Russia clearly is the aggressor.
It is the War of NATO aggression. NATO had no legitimate reason to exist after the dissolution of the USSR. But the West wanted war. The USA has military bases all over the world, projecting power everywhere, because everything is America’s business. You WILL do as America tells you…that’s what “our democracy” is all about.
My father was ex military Naval CID black ops. Where you are wrong is that it is America’s job to police the world it isn’t. Let Europe fight it’s own wars. The Americans rightfully had it with fighting wars in Europe after WW1. They rightfully wanted no part of WW2. That is why FDR cut off the oil supply to Japan (an act of war) and let them hit Pearl Harbor. That changed sentiment enough for the Americans to go and the bankers that had loaned money to Britain to be assured of repayment. They made that happen. My father is now deceased and when he was in the military there was quite a bit of reason to believe America was a force for good in the world. That façade is gone – it’s about obscene corporate profits. Those damn Neo Con war pigs are disciples of Trotsky that damn commie.
There was zero reason for the United States to be in Iraq – oh the Christians had to run for their lives. In fact everywhere the American military goes – the Christians flee. All for peace and democracy. I talked to those military thugs in Iraq they were under no illusion they knew it was about oil. There are no hero’s zero. W/out a shred of conscience of what they did to those poor people. Iraqi’s also had to purchase Monsanto Sterile seeds. All those thugs had to say was I know it was about oil they told me to, it was easier to get laid over there. They are now just thugs, zero. When Uncle Sam sends you to murder people w/the military’s to steal their oil and you know it – you are just a thief and a murderer there are no hero’s. I suspect when they have to explain it to Jesus it may not go as well as they think. With all the respect they deserve zero. American’s are stuck paying for all that also. The assumption we should police the world is where you went wrong. There have been tribal wars in Europe for centuries, let them fight it out it’s not our problem. We don’t need to be in NATO.
America can’t even guard it’s own rear flank. We now have China and Russia overthrowing governments and they are horrid in S. America and the Caribbean, Canada is a mess also.
Get the hell out of Nato and take care of here.
What do soldiers that know exactly why they are and do that to those people really deserve? American’s need to get over the illusion that our military is not a bunch of thugs and criminals. They just lost an F-35 fighter jet. They’re going to get us killed.
My father would have went Rambo long ago.. he was really good at that and I don’t think those buried bodies would be found by these incompetent’s, corrupt little pricks
He refused to murder innocent people just because the Gov told him to. He told them to kiss his a**.. Everyone I plugged (killed ) they had it coming no I don’t feel guilty. My father was sent on missions he was never in an active war. The head of a drug cartel much innocent blood my father sent them to their graves. He got everyone they sent him after’
These people are not my father – The respect they deserve none.
I’m glad my father is passed and has not lived to see the den of demons this place has become.
The assumption we are to police the world is where you go wrong. We are broke and cannot afford it.
Vickie
Beautiful. And God Bless your Father.
Imagine that.
People taking advantage of a ugly situation.
The ones I really like watching are the “I Stand With Ukraine!”
But they wont join the military. Nor their kids. Nope. They sit back and virtue signal but wont join the fight themselves. No, better to let all the poor kids, the minority kids do the fighting and dying. Not me or my little Johnny.
As I have mention in other posts, the physical war in the Ukraine is just one part of a much larger fight. The pivot from the US/West lead uni-polar world to a multi-polar world.
We lost that fight.
All empires come to an end at some point. I felt the US was on the decline for the past few decades. I think it started with creation of The Fed, followed by Nixon’s closing of the gold window. But the Ukraine war has accelerated it to the point we are seeing it unfold before our very eyes. De-dollarization is real and happening. What happens when all those dollars start to come back to the US? Some say inflation and possible hyper-inflation that will make the past two years look like the good times. Thing is, with this shift from the US/West uni-polar world to the multi-polar one, is too big to be stopped. Too much has been put into motion, no one be it Democrat or Republican can stop it.
What does it look like when the world starts saying the quiet part out loud: The US is bankrupt.
Haiti in spite of all its problems was not only food independent, in one regard, with the entire northwestern part of the country, Latibonit, under cultivation with rice. They were producing enough rice to supply their own needs plus they had excess for export and much needed foreign exchange. Then along came the Clintons to help them. By bringing in and flooding the market with vast quantities of cheap rice from big government subsidized, Arkansas rice fields, thus putting the Haitian rice farmers out of business and idling thousands of Haitian rice paddy workers.
Story is that in exchange for big donations to the Clinton Foundation, Arkansas farmers got a monopoly in becoming the sole exporters of rice to Haiti. There were daily protest demonstrations by Haitians outside Hillary’s campaign office during the entire 2016 presidential campaign. Many Americans thought that meant they were for Trump. But no, it only meant that they were anti-Clinton.
Then there was the Caracol Industrial Park in the north, east of Okap. Clinton had become so unpopular by then that he made this a joint effort with George W Bush. They had about 400 families evicted from their land and promised compensation that has yet to materialize. Construction was financed by the US government (meaning US taxpayers) and the Inter-American Development Bank to the tune of $300 million. The displaced farmers were promised well paying jobs working for businesses at the park. Were Haitians hired to help build the park? No, apparently some companies connected to none other than Bill Clinton. The US government promised to build a power plant and a new port so raw materials could be brought in and finished products out. After sinking $10 million, the port project was abandoned. All those good jobs? The park is empty except for a Korean apparel manufacturer that pays Haitians seamstresses $5 a day. Then this past February the Korean company announced that they were laying off half their workers, cutting the number down from 7000 to 3500.
Maybe Haitians would be better off without all this help. Better off without invasions of UN peacekeepers contaminating the water supply with cholera. Where did I see UN peacekeepers? At high end beach resorts and fancy restaurants. Then there is the sending in of US Marines to overthrow governments, which has been going on regularly since 1915, in order to install a puppet that obeys orders from Washington.
The latest – Just now the UN with Washington’s assistance is planning to send in a multinational military force led by Kenya to help Haiti some more.
Wi manman! Mwen kwè, sa ase pou yon jou!
that works out to 400usd per laptop. not sure they get much cheaper?
Well done again Marie for a very insightful article, thank you for opening these topics! Also all comments from people, so insightful to the mindset of our world, not only the US.
As far as I remember, the most fertile country of the world was Zimbabwe, not Ukraine.. but the UK ensured this ended by knighting a Jesuit terrorist Mugabe while their own countrymen were shot dead and had to flee their homes and country while the so called “liberators” ate steak off live cows in the fields! UK (and the world) turned a blind eye..
Abramovic is like Blavatsky and Alice Bailey (Satanists who wrote our school curriculum) and therefore the paedophile Clintons support her. Bill is a great example of his Hippocratic BJ endeavours as a model for the US, Hillary is not far off the track either.
Unfortunately, no matter what one hopes for as a better world, the US is no better than Russia in their endeavours or track records to secure their hidden agenda.. all governments and politicians of this world today are run and brainwashed by the WEF, and I wonder who the WEF are run by?
There is a meme that went around a while back about the Clintons:
The caption /
I don’t know anyone who has 57 friends who have commited suicide.
CGI got what it could from Haiti. Now onto Ukraine. So many war orphans. Adrenochrome anyone?…
Of course the Clintons have joined the grift. I pray for the people of Ukraine, who just like us, are pawns of corrupt government and greedy elites. If any readers can’t see the problem then search more for the truth.
Can I please offer a different perspective about Russias goals in Eastern Ukraine? Russia never intended to go into all of Ukraine. Russia has been clear about its reasons for this incursion and I have to side with Russia on this one.
1. What Ukraine is to Russia Mexico is to the US; Both places are run by gangsters and the cartels.
2. Russia’s GDP is smaller than the state of Texas.
3. Russia is outnumbered by NATO/US by 3-1.
4. Russia 144 million population v.s. European nations nearly 300 million
5. Putin does not have the economy, military or population to reform the USSR and Putin knows this.
6. Maybe Russia is honest about dealing with Russian speaking provinces and how they were horribly by Kiev’s regime. Is it possible that Russia was sick of the 14.000 dead Russians in Ukraine at the hands of Zelensky?
7. I believe Russia is correct, Ukraine is run by criminals and I respect Putin middle finger to the West.
Russian propagandists have said that they plan a greater Russia that stretches from Vladivostok to Lisbon. If you look at your map, doesn’t that include all of Ukraine?
Russia itself is ruled by gangsters and cartels, and serves as the model for all the corruption in eastern Europe.
NATO has unilaterally disarmed. Only three countries in NATO have kept up their weapons, tiny Estonia, Poland and the U.S. How much of a fight can NATO do? Especially after sending all their weapons to Ukraine?
From where do you get the 14,000 Russians killed? Do you count all the Russian soldiers who were killed in battle since the Russian invasion started in 2014 (before Zelensky)?
I saw a photo of a billboard in Siberia that said “Alaska is ours” (yes, I can read a little Russian). Does that sound to you as it sounds to me, that Putin plans to take on the U.S.?
Since when is a communist honest? Lying is all they know.
Shouldn’t you keep all this in mind when looking at what’s happening?
The Clintons are more evil than most people can comprehend.
I have been to the Island of Hispaniola. On one side is the Dominican Republic, abundant & well run. The other side is Haiti, where more than 30 presidents have been overthrown or assassinated.
“Here, when you put things in order, you die.”
Guess which side of the island the Clintons have been ‘helping’?
To answer your question, there is no goodness in the Clinton’s heart(s). It is questionable if they even have a heart.
if the Clinton’s are involved it is to provide cover to the money laundering operations and the other corruption that Ukraine and US politicians are hand-in-hand enjoying.
I was hoping the Clintons were already dead! Maybe only wishful thinking, I guess!