In his famous anti-Vietnam War speech, the late senator from South Dakota George McGovern told fellow Congressional leaders, "This chamber reeks of blood." On Saturday, journalist Max Blumenthal opened a hard-hitting talk at the Ron Paul Institute's "Which Way America...?" conference in D.C. by quoting those words, but applied them to the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Blumenthal said that in Ukraine, Washington continues "wasting the lives and bodies of over 150,000 men, and that's according to the Pentagon." Citing recent studies on the immense numbers of Ukrainians who have lost limbs after a year-and-a-half of fighting (which could be surpassing WWI rates), he said the true Ukraine casualty count could be closer to 500,000 - which marks a monumental tragedy and disaster.
The GrayZone journalist then said of today's Congress that "this chamber" not only "reeks of blood" but.. "they have wasted Ukrainian society on the mantle of anti-Russia hysteria" - as lawmakers in lockstep with the Biden administration continue to sink billions into Kiev.
Beltway liberal elites, Blumenthal asserted, still think Russia must be punished given they see Moscow as having brought the "bad orange man" to power in 2016. This is a big ideological aspect to what motivates the hawks, he said.
Further, Blumenthal explained that what's happening here is that the US ruling class has "militarized the culture wars while depicting Ukraine as the 'woke side' vs. Russia as backwards and oppressive."
But more importantly, the real "victors" are the major US defense contractors and their appendages like the K street neocon lobbying firms. Blumenthal highlighted that these, and the Biden administration, are operating with the bigger vision in mind of turning Ukraine into Europe's "big Israel".
By this is meant a permanently militarized 'Spartan' wartime state, which is funded and weaponized by Washington in perpetuity, and possesses all the latest cutting edge Western defense tech. But like with the state of things long evident inside Israel (in particular oppression of both Palestinians and Israeli political dissenters), democracy must be eroded at home for this to happen. Still, the defense tech peddlers in the military-industrial complex will 'win' no matter how much Ukrainian society and its people are sacrificed.
"In order to defend democracy in Ukraine, democracy must be curtailed at home," Blumenthal emphasized, drawing lessons from current examples of oppression of free speech in the West, particularly related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
He noted here that his own investigative media outlet, The GrayZone, has had the bulk of its funding frozen by the popular platform GoFundMe. The outlet explained days ago [emphasis ZH]:
By this point, we had raised over $90,000 from over 1100 contributors. The generous contributions from our audience were accompanied by hundreds of messages of effusive support for our factual journalism holding imperial power to account.
And now, Gofundme is holding the donations hostage, refusing to transfer them to us, while failing to inform donors that it has effectively seized their money. The for-profit site has similarly refused to explain its freezing of their donations, issuing nothing more than a vague allusion – “some external concerns” – to pressure from powerful outside forces.
Gofundme’s financial sabotage follows the de facto sanctions imposed by Venmo and Paypal on our managing editor, Wyatt Reed, after he reported on the Ukrainian military’s targeting of civilians from the separatist side of the Donbas region.
Again, this is why Blumenthal could draw on recent personal experience in telling the Ron Paul conference audience that "democracy must be curtailed" in America in order to keep unlimited taxpayer dollars flowing into the Zelensky government's coffers.
Blumenthal continued... but "now Russia has no incentive to negotiate" given they have the clear military momentum amid a failing Ukraine counteroffensive. The US and UK likely had a window of opportunity in the initial months of the war to more easily open up serious diplomatic peace negotiations, but this was actively thwarted.
"We cannot have peace negotiations while war is being incentivized [by Washington interests] to this point," he continued while also referencing neocons like Bill Kristol, who has been leading a charge to silence any dissenting views from among Republican nominees and politicians on Ukraine.
"These operatives need constant opportunities" which a permanent proxy war in Europe enables, Blumenthal continued - just like with the constant and historic billions in aid flowing to Israel, which serves to cyclically fuel the accompanying global reach and outsized influence of the Israel lobby.
On this question of whether negotiations are possible even from Kiev's perspective, Zero Hedge asked Blumenthal what he thinks would happen in the unlikely scenario that Zelensky himself suddenly pursued peace talks with the Russians. Blumenthal responded as follows:
"If Zelensky were to pursue peace talks now before he's re-elected... due to the kind of social forces that have been unleashed by Maidan, he will face a far-right Nazi insurgency in his own country, and he will become public enemy number one among some of the most violent and militarized forces.
...Which is why he went and met with Andriy Biletsky, the founder of Azov. Zelensky was elected on a platform of peace by 73% of the population because you still had the ethnic Russian population participating in Ukrainian society. They have been completely driven out and the constituency he's working with is completely different now."
Below: Last month, Ukrainian President Zelensky held court with one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in modern Ukrainian history, Azov Battalion founder Andriy Biletsky.
Turning Ukraine into "a big Israel" will involve long-term funding to shape and place "America's unsinkable aircraft carrier not in the Middle East but in Europe," Blumenthal said.
But as Ukrainians continue to be slaughtered, it won't be a happy situation for a country to become a "big Israel", Blumenthal concluded.
Former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro (from 2011 to 2017) is helping to push this Ukraine as "big Israel" concept forward, Blumenthal pointed out.
A partial list of key elements of Shapiro's road map for Ukraine was previously published by The Atlantic Council as follows: