This is an old story but it fell again on the laps of the Leonisky gods today. So here we go:

US President Joe Biden has pushed back against criticism that excessive government spending on his watch has contributed to the US inflation crisis, furiously denying that he has been fiscally reckless and blaming Republicans for obstructing him from curbing runaway prices. 

“I don’t want to hear any more of these lies about reckless spending,” Biden shouted on Tuesday at the AFL-CIO’s convention in Philadelphia. “We’re changing people’s lives.”

The president argued that in contrast to his predecessor, Donald Trump, he has reduced federal budget deficits. In fact, he claimed to have achieved the largest deficit cut on record, a targeted $1.6 trillion in the government’s current fiscal year after paring $350 billion in his first budget.

June 7 was a bad day for Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the Organisation of American States (OAS). During the ninth Summit of the Americas, a young man declared to him what he is: an assassin and puppet of the White House, instigator of the coup in Bolivia. He said that Almagro cannot come to give lessons on democracy when his hands are stained with blood.

The president's opponents have repeatedly questioned his ability to serve as POTUS amid repeated gaffes, slips on the stairs and even entire statements that the White House was forced to walk back - including some that may have triggered armed conflicts with other countries.

New White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre has laughed off a question from the CNN anchor regarding President Joe Biden's ability to serve beyond 2024.

The question came amid a New York Times report that other Democrat leaders are concerned about Biden’s age and ability to finish a potential second term. Any second Biden term would see him reach 86 by the end.

The war in Ukraine has been characterised by misinformation almost from the very beginning. The Western media has shown an amazing capacity for selective memory. Accounts of the war almost always commence with the Russian intervention in the Donbass in February 2022. It is as though the events in the preceding seven years never happened, at least if one relied upon the Western selection as being in any way a representation of actual events.

Let us look at the beginning of this war which began in fact in 2014 with an American inspired coup against the legitimately elected government of Ukraine. There is no question about American involvement in the events of 2014 from day one. No less a figure than Victoria Nuland has openly boasted upon her intervention in Ukraine being largely instrumental in the violent overthrow of the government.

Anyone who has spent any time in Washington and who has been reasonably engaged in watching the fiasco playing out there might agree that the most powerful foreign lobby is that of Israel, backed up as it is by a vast domestic network that exists to protect and nourish the Jewish state. Indeed, it is the domestic element of the lobby that gives it strength, supported as it is by extravagantly well-funded think tanks and a media that is Jewish dominated when it comes to developments in the Middle East.

No counterespionage service however well organised and however efficient, can hope to prevent all espionage, but it can keep its controlling finger on all espionage and be ready to strike at it at any moment.

Ahead of the U.K. Home Secretary’s decision on whether to extradite Julian Assange to the United States, a group of more than 300 doctors representing 35 countries have told Priti Patel that approving his extradition would be “medically and ethically unacceptable”.

In an open letter sent to the Home Secretary on Friday June 10, and copied to British Prime Minster Boris Johnson, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland, the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, the doctors draw attention to the fact that Assange suffered a “mini stroke” in October 2021. They note:

ATHENS (Sputnik) - Members of the Greek community in Mariupol have shared their first-person accounts of the atrocities committed by the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in the city, including the killings of civilians, threats and robbery, the Estia newspaper reported on Sunday.

The newspaper cites the testimony of Natalia Papakitsa, the chairman of the Greek society of the village of Sartana near Mariupol, who was held hostage for 33 days along with dozens of other civilians in the basement of one of the houses.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has vowed to “liberate” the Russian territory of Crimea and the independent republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR). He was speaking just hours after reports of the Ukrainian military shelling residential buildings, a marketplace and a maternity hospital in the center of Donetsk.

“We will come to all our cities, to all our villages, which do not yet have our flag,” Zelensky boasted in a video address on Monday night, claiming that his army will defeat its Russian opponents in eastern Ukraine and recapture the cities of Mariupol, Kherson and Melitopol from Russian and DPR and LPR forces.

German arms giant Rheinmetall unveiled its new main battle tank at the major weapons exhibition in Paris on Monday. The vehicle comes under the ‘Panther’ nickname in an apparent nod to Nazi Germany’s iconic PzKpfw V medium tank.

The new tank boasts a new 130mm gun and is marketed as having“optimized sensor-to-shooter links,”heavily relying on digital systems to control the battlefield. While closely resembling the Leopard 2 family main battle tanks in its appearance, the Panther is a “radically new” tank “concept not constrained by yesterday’s technology,” Rheinmetall insists.

“It is the first main battle tank entirely developed by Rheinmetall,” the company’s CEO, Armin Papperger, said during the unveiling ceremony, insisting the machine would become a “game changer on the future battlefield.”

Switzerland lies at the heart of Europe. It is closely connected with its neighbouring states, the other European states and the European organisations – since time immemorial and of its own accord, not because an office in Brussels demands it.

Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world.

Thousands of nuclear arms had been left on Ukrainian soil by Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But in the years that followed, Ukraine made the decision to completely denuclearize.

In exchange, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia would guarantee Ukraine's security in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.

Now, that agreement is front and center again.

Mariana Budjeryn of Harvard University spoke with All Things Considered about the legacy of the Budapest Memorandum and its impact today.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

A new document was recently extracted from British archives. It is dated 6 March 1991 and comes from a file on the negotiations between the United Kingdom, Germany and France. It slightly precedes the “Wolfowitz doctrine”, which marked the penetration of the Straussians into the upper echelons of the US administration.

THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C. 

MODERATOR:  Good morning, and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center.  My name’s Bill Martin, and I’ll be the moderator.  And now it is my distinct pleasure to welcome our distinguished briefer, Assistant Secretary Karen Donfried.  She’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.  Assistant Secretary Donfried will discuss U.S. policy on Russia and Ukraine, and the big picture of our relationship with Europe as the NATO Summit approaches.