As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags on, Pres. Joe Biden has found a new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons they need to defend their country.

As the Republican Party’s blockade of aid to Ukraine drags into its fourth month, the U.S. government under Pres. Joe Biden has found a clever new way to give Ukraine’s forces the weapons and ammunition they need to defend their country.

It is, in essence, an American version of Germany’s circular weapons trade—the so-called Ringtausch. The United States is gifting older surplus weapons to Greece with the understanding that Greece donates to Ukraine some of its own surplus weapons.

Greek media broke the news last week. According to the newspaper Kathimerini and other media, the Biden administration offered the Greek government three 87-foot Protector-class patrol boats, two Lockheed Martin C-130H airlifters, 10 Allison T56 turboprop engines for Lockheed P-3 patrol planes plus 60 M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and a consignment of transport trucks.

All this hardware is U.S. military surplus—and is available to Greece, free of charge, under a U.S. legal authority called “excess defense articles.” Federal law allows an American president to declare military systems surplus to need, assign them a value—potentially zero dollars—and give them away on the condition that the recipient transport them.

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
    2·
    8 months ago

    It’s almost comical to see “leftists” scream about the lies that Trump and GOP tell - but if you suggest there was a diplomatic solution they explode immediately lol. War propaganda is working incredibly well these days and any pacifist notion is attacked as subversive and downvoted. Vast majority of millennials and gen Z are just as brainwashed and are murderous war mongers the boomers were.

    PS: I’m really missing a fitting word for this. They are not fascists and nationalists or imperialists is too weak. War mongers sounds a bit lame too.

      • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
        1·
        8 months ago

        You mean they don’t know about the left being pro peace? Or that they are overcompensating because they do know?

        There is a documentary by Adam Curtis about how the rhetoric in geopolitics changed to good vs evil, not just Reagan but all the third way leftists. A very successful PR / brainwashing campaign.

        But ever since Ukraine started this has massively changed on reddit which is supposedly “leftist”. Presumably the “science and technology of propaganda” is improving. If the Irak and Afghanistan happened today, there wouldn’t be any major opposition to it online. There wasn’t any in mainstream media either at the time, but back then the internet actually was less… warmongery?

          • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
            2·
            8 months ago

            Yeah definitely there is PR push. All the mainstream articles are written in a way that maximizes these viewpoints. I don’t know where exactly it comes from but besides military industrial complex there is still oil and extraction of resources and general empire stuff there are a lot of business interest tied to maintaining hegemony.

            For Ukraine specifically I also speculate that it’s because Ukraine is a breadbasket. With climate change, food prices are going to become unstable so having control of that region is not just good business, for the empire it’s an important strategic goal. West-Ukraine will mostly be owned by EU and US because of the incredible debt.

            The other goal here is that we’ll see like a billion climate refugees in a few decades which will lead to wars. And Russia has tons of borders that could be corridors. So it’s good to destabilize and isolate Russia in advance of these climate wars so that the worst chaos isn’t happening in Europe. Similar with China. They’d want to encircle their geopolitical rivals so they don’t have that much room to maneuver.

            This is all speculation and I’m really not sure if “they” think this strategically. But Nato baiting Ukraine was imho a definite trap to “force” Russia into this conflict. Fuck Stoltenberg for example. Not that I don’t blame Russia!

              • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
                1·
                8 months ago

                If you haven’t, read Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”. Just as applicable today, just the science on how to manipulate people got more advanced. Newspapers are full of bias, and it made me feel isolated until I understood the mechanisms (see propaganda model) of why this is so. But I’m at a bit of a loss too why reddit has been “taken over” this rabidly. Pacifist notions are now buried in “controversial”.

                And 43, wow. I would have thought that as long as the US and Europe are pumping weapons into Ukraine the war will keep going.