“Operation Thermostat”: Energy rationing & the pivot from Ukraine to climate?
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | April 22, 2022
Italy is officially becoming the first country to start rationing energy after cutting their supply of Russian gas and oil.
From next month, until at least March 2023, public buildings across the nation will be banned from running air conditioning at lower than 25 degrees, or heating higher than 19 degrees.
The plan, termed “Operation Thermostat” in the press, is being sold as a way for ordinary people to show “solidarity” with the people of Ukraine, with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi saying:
Do we want to have peace or do we want to have the air conditioning on?”
I’m not exactly sure how adjusting your thermostat is going to achieve ‘peace’, but hey we’re living in the age of sentimental manipulation over reason, so – just believe.
For example, the Guardian is illustrating the story with pro-peace artwork allegedly done by Italian schoolchildren (in English, for some reason).
There’s no talk yet of this kind of energy-rationing rule extending to private businesses or homes, but a marker has been set down. Expect other nations to follow suit.
After that of course will come the opinion pieces asking questions like “we rationed gas to fight Putin, why not climate change?”, and headlines saying that “Europe-wide gas rationing was good for the planet” or something similar.
… Oh wait, it’s already happening.
Honestly, when I originally wrote the above paragraph I had no idea the Wall Street Journal had published this opinion piece for Earth Day, headlined:
This Earth Day, We Could Be Helping the Environment—and Ukraine”
It argues that rationing energy to fight Putin is just like digging for victory to fight Hitler, and – just as I predicted – would also be good for the planet:
During the Second World War, victory demanded more oil […] In the wars dominating the globe today — Putin’s land grab in Ukraine, and the global land grab caused by rising sea levels and spreading deserts — victory demands getting off fossil fuels as fast as we possibly can.
It even hints at a quasi-lockdown – this time for the sake of beating Putin and combating climate change:
Everyone who can work from home could continue to do so, at least on, say, Mondays, knocking a day off the national commute. Carpools could be organized, taking special advantage of the fact that there are now two million electric cars on the road. More bike paths could be made available, and, when air-conditioning season begins, Americans could turn their thermostats up a degree.
Remember lockdowns were marketed as planet-saving almost from the moment they were put in place, despite it making almost zero sense. The agenda was pretty obvious right from the start.
It’s interesting that “operation thermostat” should be announced on April 22nd – Earth Day – despite having zero to do with climate change. It’s also noteworthy that climate protests groups have piggy-backed on the idea to call for an EU-wide boycott of Russia’s fossil fuels.
We already know they planned a “pivot from covid to climate”, and moves like this mean they can easily “pivot from Ukraine to climate” too.
Sanctions against Russia will slow global economic growth, hurt vulnerable nations – minister
Samizdat | April 22, 2022
The accelerating inflation in most developed nations has come as a result of the irresponsible actions of Western financial authorities during the pandemic, worsened by a sanctions campaign against Moscow, according to Russia’s Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov.
“The scale of inflationary pressure is unprecedented in the context of recent decades,” the minister said, speaking at a plenary meeting of the International Monetary and Finance Committee of the IMF.
“This is the result of the irresponsible actions of the financial authorities of Western countries, from which the whole world suffers, and above all the most vulnerable countries with a low level of income,” he added.
According to Siluanov, the latest sanctions imposed by the West on Russia are exacerbating the situation.
“Dynamics of the accelerated energy transition is also pushing up energy prices, worsening the problems of poverty, food security, energy availability,” the minister said.
The US and its allies have introduced unprecedented economic penalties on Russia in response to the military operation in Ukraine. In less than two months, the country became the subject of over 6,000 different targeted restrictions. Russia is a major global exporter of all types of commodities, including energy and grain.
Using War to Assault Freedom
By Judge Andrew Napolitano | April 20, 2022
Most judges and lawyers agree that the war on drugs in the past 50 years has seriously diminished the right to privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.
Now a small group of legal academics is arguing that the war in Ukraine should be used to diminish property rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.
Here is the backstory.
The Fourth Amendment was written to guarantee that the government may only search and seize persons, houses, papers and effects pursuant to a search warrant issued by a judge after the presentation under oath of evidence demonstrating that the place to be searched more likely than not contains evidence of crime. And the warrant itself must specifically describe the place to be searched and the person or thing to be seized.
These requirements — the work of James Madison, who was the scrivener of the Constitution in 1787 and the author of the Bill of Rights in 1791 — were intended to have two effects.
The first effect was to uphold the quintessentially American right to be left alone. The second was to compel the government to focus its law enforcement personnel and assets on crimes for which there is probable cause, not fishing expeditions or hunches.
Madison’s language prohibited absolutely the use of general warrants, a favorite tool of the British government against the colonists. General warrants were based on whatever the government wanted or claimed it needed.
The colonists were tormented by, and driven to revolution over, general warrants, as they authorized British agents to search wherever they wished and seize whatever they found. Surely, the dreadful colonial experience with general warrants was a driving force behind the wording and ratification of the Fourth Amendment.
Sadly, during the war on drugs, prosecutors and police persuaded judges to craft “emergency” exceptions to the Fourth Amendment. These included allowing police to look for whatever they wanted in cars and homes, and using the CIA for warrantless surveillance, lest the drugs supposedly being sought be destroyed before capture.
The effect of this was to destroy a fundamental liberty in deference to easing police work; that’s the definition of a police state. The courts effectively ruled that somehow the Constitution prefers liberty — rather than evidence of crimes — to be destroyed.
The Fifth Amendment protects the life, liberty and property of all persons from destruction or aggression by the government without due process of law. Due process requires a jury trial at which the government must prove fault.
Thus, property cannot be seized temporarily or taken permanently without either a search warrant or a jury trial.
Now back to the war in Ukraine.
I have argued in this column and elsewhere that the Biden administration sanctions imposed on Russian and American persons and businesses are profoundly unconstitutional because they are imposed by executive fiat rather than by legislation and because the sanctions constitute either the seizure of property without a warrant or the taking of property without due process.
When the feds seize a yacht from a person whom they claim may have financed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, they are doing so in direct violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
Similarly, when they freeze Russian assets in American banks, they engage in a seizure, and seizures can only constitutionally be done with a search warrant based on probable cause of crime.
As well, when the feds interfere with contract rights by prohibiting compliance with lawful contracts, that, too, implicates due process and can only be done constitutionally after a jury verdict in the government’s favor, at a trial at which the feds have proved fault.
As if to anticipate these constitutional roadblocks to its interference with free commercial choices, Congress enacted the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and the Magnitsky Act of 2016. These constitutional monstrosities purport to give the president the power to declare persons and entities to be violators of human rights and, by that mere executive declaration alone, to punish them without trial.
These laws turn the Fourth and Fifth Amendments on their heads by punishing first and engaging in a perverse variant of due process later. How perverse? These laws require that if you want your seized property back, you must prove that you are not a human rights violator.
As if to run even further away from constitutional norms, a group of legal academics began arguing last week that the property seized from Russians is not really owned by human beings, but by the Russian government. And, this crazy argument goes, since the Russian government is not a person, there is no warrant or due process requirement; therefore, the feds can convert the assets they have seized and frozen to their own use.
To these academics — who reject property ownership as a moral right and exalt government aggression as a moral good — the argument devolves around the meaning of the word “person.” The Fourth and Fifth Amendments protect every “person” and all “people,” not just Americans.
And in American jurisprudence, “person” means both human beings and artificial persons — corporations and governments capable of owning property. Property ownership is defined by the right to use, alienate and exclude. Only persons can exercise those rights.
Madison and his colleagues clearly sought to protect property rights from government aggression, no matter the legal status of the owner. We know this from the judicial opinions involving foreign property that preceded and followed the ratification of the Fifth Amendment. If this were not so, then nothing could prevent the feds from seizing and converting the property of states or local governments or international religious institutions to federal use.
War is the health of the state and the graveyard of liberty. The drug war was a disaster for freedom. The war in Ukraine will be so as well, only if we permit it.
COPYRIGHT 2022 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
Lavrov responds to nuclear weapons claim
Samizdat | April 19, 2022
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has rejected claims that Moscow could resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.Lavrov was questioned on the issue during an extensive interview with India Today in Moscow on Tuesday.
When the journalist mentioned that “President Zelensky said that Russia plans to use tactical weapons,” the foreign minister didn’t even let her finish the question. “He says many things,” Lavrov said.
He reminded that Russia had never mentioned the use of nuclear weapons as an option during its military operation in the neighboring country, and the Ukrainian leader was the only one to speak about this.
Lavrov reiterated the notion that “there could be no winners in a nuclear war,” and assured that Russia would only rely on conventional weapons in Ukraine.
Zelensky claimed that Moscow could use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine during his interview with CNN on Friday.
‘Greece seizes Russian oil tankers’
Samizdat | April 19, 2022
Greece seized a Russian oil tanker in the Aegean Sea on Tuesday as part of European Union sanctions imposed on Moscow over the war in Ukraine, Kathimerini daily has reported.
According to the newspaper, the Russian-flagged Pegas ship, with 19 crew members on board, was seized on April 19 near the coastal city of Karystos on the southern coast of the island of Evia.“It has been seized as part of EU sanctions,” a shipping ministry official was quoted as saying.
A coastguard spokeswoman told AFP that the seizure order concerned the ship itself and would not affect its cargo.
Greek media had reported earlier that the vessel faced engine trouble and was being escorted by a tugboat towards the Peloponnese, but was forced to moor at Karystos due to poor weather.
According to the Maritime Bulletin portal, another Russian tanker, VF Tanker 2, was detained earlier near Euboea due to EU sanctions. The vessel reportedly left the port of Piraeus on April 17, bound for Russian Kavkaz port in the Black Sea, but for some unknown reason ended up in Karystos Bay.
The European Union, of which Greece is a member, has adopted a wide range of sanctions against Moscow. They include import and export bans for a wide array of goods, as well as an embargo on access to EU ports by Russian-flagged ships. Russian oil aboard those ships has not been sanctioned.
‘Germany investigates Russia supporters’
Samizdat | April 18, 2022
Since February 24, authorities across multiple German regions have launched more than 140 investigations into acts seen as endorsements of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND) reported on Monday, citing regional internal and justice ministers.
In the majority of cases, those suspected had displayed the letter ‘Z’, the ubiquitous marking on Russian equipment in Ukraine that has become a sign of support for Moscow’s offensive. In Saxony-Anhalt, for instance, 17 out of 19 such cases revolve around the letter, while in the city-state of Hamburg, 16 out of 17 probes were launched for that reason.
In a number of German regions, the ‘Z’ symbol has been deemed off limits since late February. A spokesperson for Saxony-Anhalt’s interior ministry told RND that “display of this symbol in public in connection with the Russian aggressive war leads to the launch of an investigation,” if the authorities construe the letter as an endorsement of Moscow’s actions.
German authorities invoke Section 140 of the country’s criminal code, according to which people endorsing the criminal acts of others can face a fine or even up to three years behind bars.
The outlet notes that the total number of probes into Russian sympathizers launched across Germany since late February is likely higher than the cited 140, given that not all regions are keeping a tally of these specific instances. Bavaria is a case in point; however, its Justice Minister Georg Eisenreich hastened to assure the journalists that just because the region was not singling out such investigations did not mean that this kind of behavior was going unchecked by the authorities. He pointed out that while “freedom of expression is cherished in our constitution,” with everyone having the right to express their opinion in Germany, this “freedom of expression, however, ends where criminal law begins.” Eisenreich added that the Bavarian authorities would not brook it “when crimes against international law are endorsed.”
Earlier this month, rallies in support of Russia were held in several cities across Germany. The majority of participants were either immigrants from the former Soviet Union or their children, but there were also German supporters of the Kremlin’s military operation present at the events. The demonstrators denounced the perceived rise of Russophobia in Germany.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
Boris Johnson Supports Ukraine to the Detriment of the Brits
By Valery Kulikov – New Eastern Outlook – 15.04.2022
A highly sensationalist article by Bloomberg clearly shows that the British government left more than 5 million Britons without support in the current crisis in implementing its pronounced Russophobic policy!
As the publication emphasizes, a significant part of the British population feels the consequences of the cost of living crisis especially strongly, and this is due more to politics than to the economy. An increase in electricity bills and in the cost of food and loan rates has already become a difficult test for all the British without exception. Thus, since April 1, gas and electricity prices alone have increased by 54%! Prices for fruits and vegetables in Britain may soon rise by a third, which is already creating problems and a shortage of products on the shelves of British stores. At the same time, warehouses are already running out of sunflower oil, which jeopardizes the production of traditionally beloved British dishes, writes Daily Mail.
New statistics shows that food inflation in Britain has already increased by 5.3% year-on-year. The Bank of England warned last week that the incomes of many Britons will experience an “historic” shock after inflation jumped to a 30-year high last month, has already reached 6.2%, and, according to forecasts, may rise to 8% this spring, notes Daily Mail.
The independent Food Aid Network, which consists of more than 550 food banks from all over Britain, has sent a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, writes The Independent, with a demand to take urgent measures, since the number of requests for help has increased enormously in recent weeks. This is due to high electricity bills, rising food prices and health insurance. For this very reason, many families are barely surviving, and in some food banks the number of requests has doubled since the end of 2021. Some food banks have already had to reduce the amount of food they provide.
Britain is witnessing the biggest decline in living standards since the 1950s, and many British families in such conditions have to wonder, “how to survive further”?
“Fuel poverty” has affected 88% of the British population, Sky News reports. As the British told the TV channel, against the background of rising energy prices, they are forced to go to bed earlier or take buses and trains all day to keep warm. At the same time, the country predicts that as energy prices continue to rise, it will be even more difficult for families already living on the brink.
However, instead of providing effective assistance to the residents of the kingdom and reducing unnecessary spending, at the expense of the British taxpayers, on “settling in and helping Ukraine,” the British government continues to take not just a wait-and-see stance, but one overtly contradicting the interests of its own people. Against this background, the “decision”, covered by The Sun, of the British company Octopus Energy to distribute blankets with electric heating to financially struggling customers in order to “help them survive a sharp rise in heating prices,” is perceived as a cruel joke on the impoverished Britons. This company did not even stop to think about how the British will pay bills for the use of electric blankets when they do not have enough money to pay for heating their homes! Do not forget that in early April, energy prices in the United Kingdom jumped by 54% due to a strong rise in wholesale gas prices. The rates increase has hit millions of households across the kingdom. Now the energy bill for the country’s residents will increase by an average of 700 pounds per year.
The results of a survey conducted by the National Statistical Service indicate that residents of the United Kingdom have to seriously reduce spending. More than half of respondents stated that they save on “non-essential” goods, 34% – on gas or electricity, and 31% – on food and essential goods.
On March 28, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, speaking before the British Parliament, said that although rising costs have been hitting people across Europe in recent weeks, no major economy leaves its unemployed population in such a vulnerable position. There are 5.3 million people in Britain today who could work but depend solely on state aid, and more and more Britons are forced to resort to the services of food banks and apply for short-term cash loans at high interest rates. This number of disadvantaged Britons is approximately equal to the number of all residents of Scotland and accounts for a tenth of people of working age in the United Kingdom.
Against the background of the lack of financial assistance from the government to the catastrophically impoverished Britons, the inhabitants of the kingdom were perplexed at learning the results of the recent trip of the British Prime Minister to Kiev, where he arrived with a new package of financial and military assistance to this country. In particular, Boris Johnson said that Britain would supply Ukraine with an additional 120 armored vehicles and anti-ship complexes. In addition, Kiev will receive new loan guarantees from Britain worth USD 500 million through the World Bank, while the British Prime Minister expressed readiness to help in the restoration of Kiev and the Kiev region after the end of the Russian military operation.
This is causing new anti-government protests among Britons who are outraged by the sharp rise in the cost of living over the past couple of months and the failed government policies. Protest demonstrations took place across the country, including in Belfast, where the rally participants demanded that the government allocate an additional thousand pounds to each family in Northern Ireland to help the population reduce the rising costs of fuel and food. Similar actions took place in dozens of other cities across the kingdom. British households are telling the government that they are experiencing more blows to their finances amid an unprecedented crisis caused by the rising cost of living.
“The residents of Britain are facing difficult times due to anti-Russian sanctions, but the country’s authorities, apparently, do not realize the threat,” was the conclusion of retired General Jonathan Shaw made on the pages of The Independent. He is convinced that the Johnson government’s Russophobic policy of banning, in particular, imports of wheat and oil, will hit the standard of living of the population, which will become “much worse.” Shaw believes that many people in Britain, like the government, have “the wrong mentality” about the severity of the consequences of the “new cold war” with Russia.
Recall that in early March, the British government announced its intention to stop importing oil and petroleum products from Russia. After that, the cost of gasoline and diesel fuel at British gas stations went up sharply, breaking several records along the way.
Considering how much attention Boris Johnson pays to the sanctions policy against Russia, it is surprising how this Titanic still manages to stay afloat despite the widespread negative attitude towards it. At the same time, his criticism is growing every day, in proportion to the rate of decline in the standard of living of the population and the resolution of the issue of Scotland’s independence referendum.
In principle, it is already obvious to everyone today that the era of economic liberalism in its former form has come to an end. In fact, the current Western political elites openly follow the path of forming an ultratotalitarian supersystem, supranational hyperfascism, in which the former values of capitalism, free market and political freedoms of citizens have almost entirely lost their value. And the “welfare state” that the collective West was so proud of is already a thing of the past. And by trying to unleash an even more Russophobic sanctions policy, the rulers of Britain and some other parts of the West only accelerate the change of political power in their states.
A picture is worth a thousand words, inflation was ready to go
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | April 13, 2022
A post on what is maybe the most obvious thing in the world but most can’t see, ignore or don’t want to talk about.
M1 money supply in the US since the ‘60s. It’s amazing how M1 money supply predicts Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increases six fold, two years early.
Grrrrrr, I’m so angry that Putin has caused all this inflation. Sorry, I forgot to take my ‘triggered’ pills, I’m so easily triggered these days. As Neil points out below, the area highlighted in red should read Trump/Biden.
The inevitable, and only just beginning, conclusion.
Never stop telling the people that overreacted on Covid that their shrieking has caused today’s pain. Otherwise, it will just happen all over again. They selfishly got caught up in thinking about their own mortality without thinking about the complexity of the situation and the consequences that follow.
Government loans were necessary to support low income workers who were being denied a living by the wealthy laptop class but the economy should never have shut down in the first place. Moreover, much of the printed money was fraudulently taken by the wealthy who know how to game the system. I personally have heard many stories of loans being taken out to buy second homes or other assets and this is just the small scale stuff.
And if your argument is “it was necessary to save lives” then predominantly the lives that you saved were the elderly who you trapped and scared witless in their homes or care home rooms. They eventually died anyway, because that is life and what happens when you are old, but instead of happily enjoying those extra 6 months you gave them, they were forced to be alone with maybe the occasional zoom call if they were lucky.
As I’m typing I’m thinking back to a conversation I had with a doctor friend in early March 2020. He asked me if I was worried about dying from the virus. I said that I was more worried about what this is all going to do to the economy to which he replied that I need to get my priorities right.
Western Dissent from US/NATO Policy on Ukraine is Small, Yet the Censorship Campaign is Extreme
Preventing us from asking who benefits from a protracted proxy war, and who pays the price, is paramount. A closed propaganda system achieves that.
By Glenn Greenwald | April 13, 2022
If one wishes to be exposed to news, information or perspective that contravenes the prevailing US/NATO view on the war in Ukraine, a rigorous search is required. And there is no guarantee that search will succeed. That is because the state/corporate censorship regime that has been imposed in the West with regard to this war is stunningly aggressive, rapid and comprehensive.
On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the internet. In early March, barely a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the twenty-seven nation European Union — citing “disinformation” and “public order and security” — officially banned the Russian state-news outlets RT and Sputnik from being heard anywhere in Europe. In what Reuters called “an unprecedented move,” all television and online platforms were barred by force of law from airing content from those two outlets. Even prior to that censorship order from the state, Facebook and Google were already banning those outlets, and Twitter immediately announced they would as well, in compliance with the new EU law.
But what was “unprecedented” just six weeks ago has now become commonplace, even normalized. Any platform devoted to offering inconvenient-to-NATO news or alternative perspectives is guaranteed a very short lifespan. Less than two weeks after the EU’s decree, Google announced that it was voluntarily banning all Russian-affiliated media worldwide, meaning Americans and all other non-Europeans were now blocked from viewing those channels on YouTube if they wished to. As so often happens with Big Tech censorship, much of the pressure on Google to more aggressively censor content about the war in Ukraine came from its own workforce: “Workers across Google had been urging YouTube to take additional punitive measures against Russian channels.”
So prolific and fast-moving is this censorship regime that it is virtually impossible to count how many platforms, agencies and individuals have been banished for the crime of expressing views deemed “pro-Russian.” On Tuesday, Twitter, with no explanation as usual, suddenly banned one of the most informative, reliable and careful dissident accounts, named “Russians With Attitude.” Created in late 2020 by two English-speaking Russians, the account exploded in popularity since the start of the war, from roughly 20,000 followers before the invasion to more than 125,000 followers at the time Twitter banned it. An accompanying podcast with the same name also exploded in popularity and, at least as of now, can still be heard on Patreon.
What makes this outburst of Western censorship so notable — and what is at least partially driving it — is that there is a clear, demonstrable hunger in the West for news and information that is banished by Western news sources, ones which loyally and unquestioningly mimic claims from the U.S. government, NATO, and Ukrainian officials. As The Washington Post acknowledged when reporting Big Tech’s “unprecedented” banning of RT, Sputnik and other Russian sources of news: “In the first four days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, viewership of more than a dozen Russian state-backed propaganda channels on YouTube spiked to unusually high levels.”
Note that this censorship regime is completely one-sided and, as usual, entirely aligned with U.S. foreign policy. Western news outlets and social media platforms have been flooded with pro-Ukrainian propaganda and outright lies from the start of the war. A New York Times article from early March put it very delicately in its headline: “Fact and Mythmaking Blend in Ukraine’s Information War.” Axios was similarly understated in recognizing this fact: “Ukraine misinformation is spreading — and not just from Russia.” Members of the U.S. Congress have gleefully spread fabrications that went viral to millions of people, with no action from censorship-happy Silicon Valley corporations. That is not a surprise: all participants in war use disinformation and propaganda to manipulate public opinion in their favor, and that certainly includes all direct and proxy-war belligerents in the war in Ukraine.
Yet there is little to no censorship — either by Western states or by Silicon Valley monopolies — of pro-Ukrainian disinformation, propaganda and lies. The censorship goes only in one direction: to silence any voices deemed “pro-Russian,” regardless of whether they spread disinformation. The “Russians With Attitude” Twitter account became popular in part because they sometimes criticized Russia, in part because they were more careful with facts and viral claims that most U.S. corporate media outlets, and in part because there is such a paucity of outlets that are willing to offer any information that undercuts what the U.S. Government and NATO want you to believe about the war.
Their crime, like the crime of so many other banished accounts, was not disinformation but skepticism about the US/NATO propaganda campaign. Put another way, it is not “disinformation” but rather viewpoint-error that is targeted for silencing. One can spread as many lies and as much disinformation as one wants provided that it is designed to advance the NATO agenda in Ukraine (just as one is free to spread disinformation provided that its purpose is to strengthen the Democratic Party, which wields its majoritarian power in Washington to demand greater censorship and commands the support of most of Silicon Valley). But what one cannot do is question the NATO/Ukrainian propaganda framework without running a very substantial risk of banishment.
It is unsurprising that Silicon Valley monopolies exercise their censorship power in full alignment with the foreign policy interests of the U.S. Government. Many of the key tech monopolies — such as Google and Amazon — routinely seek and obtain highly lucrative contracts with the U.S. security state, including both the CIA and NSA. Their top executives enjoy very close relationships with top Democratic Party officials. And Congressional Democrats have repeatedly hauled tech executives before their various Committees to explicitly threaten them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more in accordance with the policy goals and political interests of that party.
But one question lingers: why is there so much urgency about silencing the small pockets of dissenting voices about the war in Ukraine? This war has united the establishment wings of both parties and virtually the entire corporate media with a lockstep consensus not seen since the days and weeks after the 9/11 attack. One can count on both hands the number of prominent political and media figures who have been willing to dissent even minimally from that bipartisan Washington consensus — dissent that instantly provokes vilification in the form of attacks on one’s patriotism and loyalties. Why is there such fear of allowing these isolated and demonized voices to be heard at all?
The answer seems clear. The benefits from this war for multiple key Washington power centers cannot be overstated. The billions of dollars in aid and weapons being sent by the U.S. to Ukraine are flying so fast and with such seeming randomness that it is difficult to track. “Biden approves $350 million in military aid for Ukraine,” Reuters said on February 26; “Biden announces $800 million in military aid for Ukraine,” announced The New York Times on March 16; on March 30, NBC’s headline read: “Ukraine to receive additional $500 million in aid from U.S., Biden announces”; on Tuesday, Reuters announced: “U.S. to announce $750 million more in weapons for Ukraine, officials say.” By design, these gigantic numbers have long ago lost any meaning and provoke barely a peep of questioning let alone objection.
It is not a mystery who is benefiting from this orgy of military spending. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that “the Pentagon will host leaders from the top eight U.S. weapons manufacturers on Wednesday to discuss the industry’s capacity to meet Ukraine’s weapons needs if the war with Russia lasts years.” Among those participating in this meeting about the need to increase weapons manufacturing to feed the proxy war in Ukraine is Raytheon, which is fortunate to have retired General Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary, a position to which he ascended from the Raytheon Board of Directors. It is virtually impossible to imagine an event more favorable to the weapons manufacturer industry than this war in Ukraine:
Demand for weapons has shot up after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24 spurred U.S. and allied weapons transfers to Ukraine. Resupplying as well as planning for a longer war is expected to be discussed at the meeting, the sources told Reuters on condition of anonymity. . .
Resupplying as well as planning for a longer war is expected to be discussed at the meeting. . . The White House said last week that it has provided more than $1.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the invasion, including over 5,000 Javelins and more than 1,400 Stingers.
This permanent power faction is far from the only one to be reaping benefits from the war in Ukraine and to have its fortunes depend upon prolonging the war as long as possible. The union of the U.S. security state, Democratic Party neocons, and their media allies has not been riding this high since the glory days of 2002. One of MSNBC’s most vocal DNC boosters, Chris Hayes, gushed that the war in Ukraine has revitalized faith and trust in the CIA and intelligence community more than any event in recent memory — deservedly so, he said: “The last few weeks have been like the Iraq War in reverse for US intelligence.” One can barely read a mainstream newspaper or watch a corporate news outlet without seeing the nation’s most bloodthirsty warmongering band of neocons — David Frum, Bill Kristol, Liz Cheney, Wesley Clark, Anne Applebaum, Adam Kinzinger — being celebrated as wise experts and heroic warriors for freedom.
This war has been very good indeed for the permanent Washington political and media class. And although it was taboo for weeks to say so, it is now beyond clear that the only goal that the U.S. and its allies have when it comes to the war in Ukraine is to keep it dragging on for as long as possible. Not only are there no serious American diplomatic efforts to end the war, but the goal is to ensure that does not happen. They are now saying that explicitly, and it is not hard to understand why.
The benefits from endless quagmire in Ukraine are as immense as they are obvious. The military budget skyrockets. Punishment is imposed on the arch-nemesis of the Democratic Party — Russia and Putin — while they are bogged down in a war from which Ukrainians suffer most. The citizenry unites behind their leaders and is distracted.
Russia will find buyers for its oil – Putin
Samizdat | April 13, 2022
Russia can easily redirect exports of its vast energy resources away from the West to countries that really need them, while increasing domestic energy consumption, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
“When it comes to Russian oil, gas and coal, we will be able to increase their consumption on the domestic market and stimulate the deep processing of raw materials,” Putin said speaking at a meeting on the development of the Russian Arctic.
“We will also increase the supply of energy resources to other regions of the world where they are really needed,” he added.
The statement comes amid the latest ban on Russian oil imports imposed by the US, Canada, Britain and Australia in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. The ban on energy imports was part of broader anti-Russian sanctions that are aimed at cutting the country’s economy off from the global trade and financial system.
Putin attributed the current energy crunch in Europe to the refusal by countries to “cooperate with Russia normally, thus, hitting millions of Europeans.”
“Of course we are also facing problems but this opens up new opportunities,” he said.
Putin added that “hostile countries” had destroyed supply chains in Russia’s Arctic regions and some nations were not fulfilling their contractual obligations, creating issues for Moscow.
On Wednesday, Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said Moscow was ready to sell oil and oil products to “friendly nations” as traditional importers are shunning Russian energy supplies, forcing the country to reduce crude production.
Washington warns against ‘preserving’ ties with Moscow
Samizdat | April 13, 2022
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will issue a stark warning to countries “sitting on the fence” when it comes to sanctions against Russia in a speech to be delivered on Wednesday, saying that such “short-sighted” policies would not go unnoticed.
In a speech at an Atlantic Council event amid Moscow’s ongoing military offensive in Ukraine, Yellen will say that the US government remains fully committed to pushing Russia “further towards economic, financial, and strategic isolation,” according to an excerpt quoted by the media.
“And let’s be clear, the unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we’ve put in place,” Yellen will say.
In her opinion, the measures being imposed on Russia by the US and its allies are necessary because the future of the international order, “both for peaceful security and economic prosperity,” is now at stake. However, she will emphasize that some countries are still “sitting on the fence, perhaps seeing an opportunity to gain by preserving their relationship with Russia and backfilling the void left by others.”
Such behavior, the US Treasury Secretary will stress, is “short-sighted.”
The warning comes two days after US President Joe Biden called on India, which has not introduced sanctions against Moscow, not to increase its energy imports from Russia. In a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Biden offered assistance in the search for other sources of energy supply, explaining that it is not in India’s interests to increase its dependence on Russia.
Another big international player – China – has also been the subject of US criticism for its ‘neutral’ position on the Ukrainian conflict. Last month, the US administration went even further by warning Beijing of “the implications and consequences” which would follow if China decided to provide any material support for Russia.
There are also increasing tensions in the EU. Hungary and Poland, which were staunch allies prior to the conflict in Ukraine, had moved away from each other even before current events due to their very different relationships with Russia.
The events of the past six weeks have apparently driven them even further apart, with Warsaw announcing that it would freeze bilateral relations until Hungary aligns itself with Kiev. The European Commission also warned Hungary against fulfilling Moscow’s request and paying for the Russian gas in rubles, saying it would violate the sanctions regime.
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The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
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