How America will Profit from War in Europe
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – NEO – 16.03.2022
When the US President Joe Biden announced, on March 8, his decision to ban imports of Russian oil and gas to the US, he opened up a potential business opportunity for the US LNG gas business to expand further into Europe and beyond. While Biden’s decision does not automatically apply to Europe, given how Europe is mindlessly following the US in its footsteps at the expense of its own strategic autonomy, there was/is no denying that most European nations will follow suit the US decision. Indeed, this was Biden’s intention when he said that this decision was made in “close consultation with our Allies and our partners around the world, particularly in Europe … to keep all NATO and all of the EU and our allies totally united.” But this is not just about unity; it is about business, making money and keeping Europe under exclusive US control.
For quite a long time, the US has been making efforts to prevent Europe from asserting too much autonomy in the international arena as a player in itself. Europe decided to refuse to follow the US decision to scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Until recently, it had differences with the US over NATO, with the French President Macron even calling the organisation “brain dead.”
But things are fast changing to the US advantage. By deliberately pushing for NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and by denying Russia any reasonable security guarantees, the US set the stage for the present crisis, which has now not only ‘united’ the EU under the US leadership, but many NATO members – in particular, Germany – have decided to increase their defense budget by at least 100 billion Euros.
What the US President Trump was unable to do through table-talks, the Biden administration has achieved through generating an actual war/ crisis in Eastern Europe. Other than NATO members, non-NATO members like Sweden, too, have decided to increase their budget, with public opinion in Sweden swinging for the fits time in favour of NATO membership in the wake of the on-going crisis. Where will this defense spending go?
There is no denying that no European county will be buying weapon systems from Russia or China, but mainly from the US military industrial complex. (NATO does not have its own force; “NATO forces” refer to multinational forces from NATO member countries, who in turn contribute both personnel and equipment to the organisation for “collective defense.”) A highly expected sale will involve F-35 fighter jets. It is, therefore, not surprising to see two major US military industrial groups, Lockheed and Raytheon, have seen their market shares rising up by 16 per cent and 3 per cent since the start of the war in Ukraine, respectively.
Apart from this massive increase in defense production, a clear indication of war in Europe being a business opportunity for the US is the field of energy export to Europe. The US decision to impose a ban on energy exports from Russia is symbolic insofar as the US is not a large buyer of Russian oil and gas. The imposition of the ban is, however, aimed at luring European markets to the US. The US, in short, is eyeing capturing the European market on a long-term basis.
As it stands, US LNG exporters are already appearing to be the big winners as gas prices in Europe hit all-time high. Major US exporters like Cheniere Energy Inc are among the top beneficiaries, as they have been able to sign long-term delas to sell LNG to Europe in very recent months. The present crisis has only made their task a lot easier and much more profitable at the same time.
This is happening at a time when the US LNG exports are expected to reach 11.4 billion cubic feet per day in 2022, accounting roughly for 22 per cent of the expected global LNG demands next year. The number of cargos of LNG shipped from the US to Europe, only in the first two months of 2022, has reached a record high of 164, as compared to the previous record of 125 in 2020. This trend is likely to continue – and even intensify – amidst European nations’ claims to reduce their dependence on Russian natural gas.
Supplying the US LNG to Europe is also part of a US plan-in-the-making to globalise its exports. As a recent report in the Washington-based think-tank, Centre for Strategic and International Studies – which receives funding from the US government – the US export of LNG to Europe for the next 20 years could provide the foundation for the export of US LNG to Asia, which is the largest market for LNG. Expansion of US LNG gas supply lines to Asia would also mean a direct territorial expansion of the US global influence.
The New York Times’ advocacy of a yet another “trans-Atlantic Pact” between the US and Europe reflects essentially how the path for increasing Europe’s dependency on the US is being laid. The EU/NATO already largely depends on the US for its security, which is one reason why there was, until recently, a growing demand from within Europe to enhance its own strategic autonomy by developing weapons systems “independently of the US.”
These initiatives are unlikely to develop any time soon, and even if they do develop, they will have no impact on Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy. It will only add to the US-led trans-Atlantic alliance.
It is important to understand that until very recently, Europe was seeking autonomy from the US, not from Russia. By manufacturing a crisis in Europe and by forcing the European nations to confront a war in their own continent, the US has been able to bring a sea-change in the European political discourse from seeking autonomy from Washington to reducing ‘dependence’ on Russia. From the US perspective, therefore, the war is already a major strategic victory – a victory that the European elite is either completely unaware of, or has been forced to shut its eyes to.
Russian Kids Being Bullied and Abused Over Their Nationality
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | March 16, 2022
Human Rights Organization Save the Children reports that Russian children in Danish schools are being bullied and abused because of their nationality.
After being approached by multiple parents complaining about their kids facing harassment merely for being Russian, Save the Children has embarked on an effort to approach schools and institutions in a bid to raise awareness about the issue.
“We can see that it is a big problem. They are afraid of being dropped off at school in the morning and claim to have a stomach ache,” senior adviser at Save the Children Jon Kristian Lange told Danish broadcaster TV2.
The situation bears hallmarks of the early days of the COVID pandemic, when Asian people faced similar abuse, although in that instance the media reported on it, whereas the press is largely silent or even complicit in the current wave of Russophobia.
According to Lola Møldrup Hansen, a teacher at Bankagerskolen in the town of Horsens, Russian kids are being mobbed, taunted and branded ‘Russian spies.’
Supervisor Vibeke Stensgaard said the hate was creating a negative environment for young children who feel they are under threat.
Lange also highlighted the new trend of online abuse targeting Russians.
“One of the things that needs to be focused on is this strange ridicule online of being Russian, such as dancing ugly like a Russian or memes where people look evil like a Russian,” he said.
As we highlighted earlier, deranged but prominent voices in Ukraine are now brazenly calling for the genocide of Russian children.
The legacy media and cultural institutions are entirely responsible for the wave of Russophobia that has swept the world since the start of the war in Ukraine.
[The vitriol has been stoked partly by public officials, such as US Representative Eric Swalwell (D-California), who suggested that all Russian students attending American colleges should be expelled from the country.]
Ordinary Russians who have absolutely nothing to do with the Putin government are being roundly demonized by the very same entities that constantly virtue signal about the need to not blame entire races or religions for the actions of a relative few. Unless those people are white Europeans of course, then it’s open season.
Firefox removes Yandex search, will auto-switch affected users to Google
By Rick Findlay | Reclaim The Net | March 15, 2022
Mozilla has pushed a new release of its Firefox browser with one notable change; it will no longer have Yandex, the Russian search engine, and Mail.ru as options.
“Yandex and Mail.ru have been removed as optional search providers in the drop-down search menu in Firefox,” Mozilla said.
“If you previously installed a customized version of Firefox with Yandex or Mail.ru, offered through partner distribution channels, this release removes those customizations, including add-ons and default bookmarks. Where applicable, your browser will revert to default settings, as offered by Mozilla.
“All other releases of Firefox remain unaffected by the change.”
Users affected by the changes will have their search engine automatically switched to the Google default – by which Google allegedly pays Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars for the privilege.
“After careful consideration, we are suspending the use of Yandex Search in Firefox due to credible reports of search results displaying a prevalence of state-sponsored content, which is contrary to the principles of Mozilla,” a Mozilla spokesperson said.
“This means for the time being Yandex Search will not be the default search experience (or a default search option) for users in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. In the meantime, we are pointing people to Google.com.”
RT America’s Demise is a Loss for Free Speech and Diversity of Information
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | March 12, 2022
The United States government is busy banning and sanctioning virtually all things Russian. Meanwhile, big money media and social media are nearly uniformly proclaiming anti-Russia sentiment and working hard to limit Americans’ exposure of contrary information.
In this context, it is little surprise that last week RT America, with its connection to the government of Russia, ceased broadcasting. The silencing of the news organization arises from a Russia scare relentlessly fueled in America and several other countries in recent years that reached its highest manic level in the last few weeks.
The departure of RT America from television is a loss for free speech and diversity of information. And that loss comes within a larger scary progression in America — continual increasing of the muting of voices challenging narratives, such as the coronavirus scare of the last two years and the ascendant Russia scare, that are used to expand government power.
RT America has been a go-to place for news and commentary different from what is found at cable television stations such as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Flipping the channel to RT, one would likely find a different topic being discussed than at those other stations, or the same topic being discussed but with the inclusion of different perspectives or additional important information. RT America thus helped Americans become more knowledgeable about what was happening in the world and helped them overcome tunnel vision approaches often presented elsewhere.
A big step in the suppression of RT America came in 2017 when the United States government required it to register as a foreign agent with the US Department of Justice. Writing then at Consortium News, investigative reporter Robert Parry explained the apparent chilling motive of silencing alternative views and controlling information that was behind imposing this requirement:
The U.S. government’s real beef with RT seems to be that it allows on air some Americans who have been blacklisted from the mainstream media – including highly credentialed former U.S. intelligence analysts and well-informed American journalists – because they have challenged various Official Narratives.
In other words, Americans are not supposed to hear the other side of the story on important international conflicts, such as the proxy war in Syria or the civil war in Ukraine or Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Only the State Department’s versions of those events are permitted even when those versions are themselves propagandistic if not outright false.
Five years later, the hammer came down with full force on RT America.
Goodbye, RT America. Americans will be worse off without you.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.
EU bans search engines and social platforms from “reproducing” content from sanctioned Russian media
A wide-sweeping censorship order
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 11, 2022
They trained for this day for a long time; particularly by quashing online dissent during the two years of Covid hell, and now the big day is here: once considered an aspirational beacon of democracy, the EU is deploying some of the most egregious-to-date acts of censorship and suppression of free speech and access to information – certainly, at least, for a Western democracy.
And once considered an innovative and exciting company that brings knowledge to the people, and along the way “do no evil” – Google – and its ilk – will be there to help make it happen.
What spurred the European Commission to act this way is the war in Ukraine, and the desire to completely silence the Russian side, by preventing citizens living in EU member countries from being able to see or hear any content other than that approved and pushed by Brussels.
The question of why this is necessary – does the EU really fear people across Europe will believe Russia? Or is this being done to set a precedent that could be “useful” in so many situations down the line?
One can only speculate (until that is banned by decree, too), but what is clear is that the EU thought the price to pay by using hard censorship and authoritarian tactics and thus undermining the very tenets of the bloc is somehow the price worth paying.
And this is what the EU has done. After first banning two Russian media outlets, RT and Sputnik, from broadcasting (which RT is challenging in court), the EU has now gone to Google to make sure that any content produced by these media companies is purged from the search engine, while social media posts “reproducing” it must get deleted.
When RT and Sputnik got banned, there was some push-back from speech advocates in Europe, but those behind the decision vigorously defended it – if at times giving away how fully aware they are of the way their actions are perceived – namely, as Orwellian.
EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell (who has been “on fire” these last weeks – he just proposed imposing sanctions on people labeled as spreading misinformation) told members of the European Parliament that the EU in fact “doesn’t have ministers of truth” and dismissed the Russian outlets as not being independent media (as if all media broadcasting in the EU is “independent” and not affiliated with different states.)
He went a step further, accusing them of being “Kremlin’s weapons.” At the same time, another commissioner revealed that the plan is to keep trying to “reach the Russian people and provide them with (EU’s ) information” – effectively saying that the EU hopes to do exactly what it says it is preventing Russia from doing.
There is an email submitted to the Lumen database on March 4, sent by the European Commission and containing a government removal request. Citing a previously adopted regulation to ban RT and Sputnik, the request states that the prohibition the EU intends to impose is to be “very broad and comprehensive.”
The job of internet search services like Google here is to index results with any possible content that the EU has deemed to be “misinformation and propaganda,” as well as websites throughout the world, and delist them.
“It follows from the foregoing that by virtue of the regulation, providers of internet search services must make sure that any link to the internet sites of RT and Sputnik and any content of RT and Sputnik, including short textual descriptions, visual elements, and links to corresponding websites do not appear in the search results delivered to users located in the EU,” the EU notice sent to Google reads.
Social-media-wise, the EU wants posts made by individuals who “reproduce” RT and Sputnik content to be deleted. A reference is made repeatedly to “proportionality” – i.e., between restrictive policies and people’s right to freedom of speech.
“Pursuant to the freedom of speech, media have the right to report objectively on current events and to form their opinions thereon. The freedom of speech also entails that users have the right to receive objective information on current events,” writes the EU, but then adds: “At the same time, the right to free speech can be restricted for legitimate public interests in a proportionate manner.”
At the end of the day, little of this has to do with the current war in the East of Europe. More likely it’s another instance of the authorities using a crisis to slip through dangerous policies that would in normal circumstances receive much more pushback. And once they know they can do it, there is a real danger they will keep doing it any time dissenting voices of various kinds need to be silent.
YouTube to demonetize all Russian users, ban ‘state media’
Google-owned video platform expanding its bans from Europe to worldwide
RT | March 11, 2022
YouTube, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced on Friday it would block access to “Russian state media” channels across the globe and block all monetization on its platform inside Russia, citing the conflict in Ukraine.
The video-sharing platform wants to remove content “denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events,” as it goes against its Community Guidelines, YouTube said in a statement on Friday, specifically referring to content “about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy.”
Having blocked RT and Sputnik in the European Union – at the request of EU governments – on March 1, YouTube announced on Friday it was expanding this censorship to the entire planet, and including all channels “associated with Russian state-funded media.”
The change is “effective immediately,” YouTube said, adding that its systems may take a little while to process it.
YouTube ads have already been “paused” in Russia, but the platform is now extending this to “all of the ways to monetize on our platform” in the country, presumably affecting super-chats and sponsorships as well.
German Anaesthesiologists: “We will not treat Russian and Belarusian citizens. Our solidarity is with the Ukrainian people!”
eugyppius – March 11, 2022
Remember Ortrud Steinlein, director of the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität Clinic for Human Genetics? She’s the one who declared that, “due to the serious violation of international law by the autocrat Putin, who is obviously mentally disturbed,” she would be “refusing to treat Russian patients.”
Well, that wasn’t an isolated case. It now looks like various Munich physicians got together and worked out this informal sanctions regime among themselves. A few days ago a similar announcement from a private Munich clinic came to light, dating from around the same time and bearing exactly the same message (only in more inflammatory terms):
Munich, 4 March 2022
Dear Colleagues:
We strongly condemn the invasion of the Russian army with the help of the Belarusian government. Russia is not only attacking Ukraine militarily without any justification – this country also threatens Europe, this country threatens our freedom and democracy.
Therefore, from now on and until further notice, we will not treat Russian and Belarusian citizens.
You can save yourself the trouble of registering.
There will be no exceptions, just as Covid-19 and Mr Putin make no exceptions.
In case of doubt, we will dismiss the patients on the day of surgery.
This also applies to patients who have already registered.
Our solidarity is with the Ukrainian people and our measures are the consequences of the military invasion of the Russian army!
After an uproar, the clinic posted a bright-red apology on their website (and also on Facebook):
The reaction to our letter has greatly affected us and made us think. Our intention was to express sympathy with the Ukrainian people and, as other companies have done, to cut business ties with Russia and send a message of support. This idea was not thought through in its entirety at the time. Some have justly criticised the force of our letter, and we accept this criticism in full. Far be it from us to discriminate or exclude patients on the basis of their origin. We apologise for creating this impression. We will continue to treat Russian and Belarusian patients without hesitation.
As a sign of our solidarity, we are donating 10,000.00 Euros to Doctors Without Borders to support their mission in Ukraine.
Wonder of wonders, their aversion to treating Russians didn’t run that deep after all. As soon as it earned them derision, and failed to gain them any virtue points, they were happy to go back to anaesthetising Russians along with everybody else.
Of course, these three lunatics mention Corona in the course of justifying their lunacy. As I said earlier, Corona has politicised the medical profession, and we are seeing what happens when doctors start to think they have special political responsibilities. And all of those deep philosophical debates we had, about the freedom that doctors enjoy to refuse to treat the unvaccinated, are now bearing fruit.
JOHN KIRIAKOU: I Work for Sputnik News
By John Kiriakou | Consortium News | March 9, 2022
I work for Sputnik News. There. I said it. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed. I’m also not a Russian propagandist, despite what you may have read in the “mainstream” media. Sputnik approached me in 2017 and offered me a job as a radio talk show host. I turned them down. Friends told me that it would be a mistake working for the Russian Bear. They said that I would attract attention from the government, maybe even the FBI. Did I really want to do that?
About eight months passed, and Sputnik offered me a job again. Having just been released from prison after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, nobody was beating a path to my door to offer me a job, and I was newly separated from my wife. So I went in for an interview. The network’s editor-in-chief said that he wanted to offer me my own talk show. I said that I was interested, but that I had to have complete editorial freedom. “Done,” was the reply. I said that I wanted to be able to talk about anything I wanted, to be able to criticize anybody I wanted, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Done,” the editor-in-chief said again. I asked if he would be willing to put it in writing in my contract. He did, and I began working at Sputnik in August 2017.
For the first two-and-a-half years, I cohosted a show with Brian Becker, a well-known progressive activist and the co-founder of the ANSWER Coalition. I have deep respect for Brian, who sits to my left, politically, and the show, Loud & Clear, was a hit.
I later cohosted a show with Lee Stranahan, a conservative populist/libertarian and former journalist with Breitbart. We agreed on almost nothing in the year we worked together. And like me, Lee was never told that he had to say something or not say something or to take a certain political position. We were free to speak our minds. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve cohosted a mainstream progressive show with Michelle Witte, an accomplished and very intelligent news professional. I thoroughly enjoy going to work every day. I honestly don’t even see it as work because it’s so much fun.
But to hear The Washington Post tell it (or The New Republic, or the Center for Strategic and International Studies) I’m a dangerous propagandist for Vladimir Putin. The truth is that anybody who says that is either a propagandist himself or simply has never listened to my show.
I first realized that there were people out there who didn’t like or appreciate alternative viewpoints in 2018, when I received an email from a journalist from The New Republic. (She was actually a wedding photographer who worked as a freelance journalist.) She said that she wanted to do a story about my new career at Sputnik. I declined, saying that I wasn’t interesting in being “the story.” She responded, “Look, this story is getting written with you or without you.” I gave her an interview to try to soften the blow, but the result was “The Spy Who Became a Russian Propagandist.”
‘Weakening Our Democracy’
The same thing happened again shortly after The New Republic article was published. In early 2020, CBS News apparently realized that Sputnik was being broadcast on a small station in Kansas City. They listened to my show Loud & Clear and, reacting specifically to a segment that I used to do every Thursday called “Criminal Injustice,” said that I was “weakening our democracy.” How was I accomplishing that incredible feat? I was talking about how the United Nations had declared that the practice of solitary confinement in American prisons is a form of torture. And I advocated for Julian Assange.
A report later in 2020 from the neo-liberal Center for Strategic and International Studies was more direct. It said,
“Sputnik’s weekly segment Criminal Injustice on its Loud & Clear podcast similarly portrays itself as bringing attention to justice being denied to citizens, mixing legitimate grievances with distorted information. Russia’s goal for these programs is not to make the US legal system more just; it is to tell an unrelenting one-sided story to get Americans to believe the system is as corrupt and broken as the legal system in Russia. Putin’s hope is that Americans will give up on democratic institutions, the way so much of his own population has come to accept the corruption in Russia.”
Wow! I had no idea that I had that much influence, that I was that cynical in my creation of Criminal Injustice, or that I had strategized with Vladimir Putin to weaken democratic institutions. If only I could monetize it! The truth is that, after spending 23 months in prison, I have a first-hand view of just how harsh and corrupt our “democratic institutions” are.
So I decided that every Thursday I would interview two friends of mine: Paul Wright, the executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and the editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines; and Kevin Gosztola, an outstanding journalist at Shadowproof.com who focuses on criminal-justice issues. They have nothing whatsoever to do with Russian “propaganda.” They just care about human rights — far more so than does the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Things have gotten tough for Sputnik over the past two weeks. Our sister outlet, the television news network RT America, was forced off the air permanently a week ago. And there are calls from members of Congress, the National Association of Broadcasters, and neoliberal think tanks around Washington for the government to do the same to Sputnik.
They may well succeed. But their complaint that Sputnik pushes “the Russian view” doesn’t carry any weight. So what if it does? BBC carries the British view. DW carries the German view. Al Jazeera carries the Qatari view. Do we ban all of them because Washington objects to a story line? And then do we sit back while the Russians ban CNN, Fox, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, all of which are available in Russia? It’s a slippery slope.
In any case, I would be glad to go on CNN, Fox and MSNBC to talk about my areas of interest, but they have never invited me. Sputnik has given me that platform. If the Washington swells don’t like it, that’s tough luck for them.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
Chicago Students Try to Cancel Professor Who Predicted Ukraine Crisis
By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | March 10, 2022
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is the man who, way back in 2015, said the following:
The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked … What we’re doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We’re encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they ultimately will become part of the West … And of course the Ukrainians are playing along with this, and the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians and instead want to pursue a hardline policy. Well as I said to you before, if they do that their country is going to get wrecked.
Quite a prophetic remark, you might say. Indeed, predicting that Ukraine would “get wrecked” seven years in advance would seem to suggest that Mearsheimer has a good understanding – that he’s worth listening to. (Note: Mearsheimer did not think Russia would launch a full-scale invasion, so he wasn’t 100% right.)
With the Ukraine crisis still dominating the headlines, Mearsheimer must be the golden boy of his department, right? Actually, no. A group of students recently circulated a letter denouncing him for “propagating Putinism” and claiming his actions are “extremely detrimental for our country”.
The students take issue with several statements from Mearsheimer’s 2015 lecture (which is the source of the quotation above). For example, they characterise his use of the word “coup” to describe the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych as “ideological rather than academic”. (They prefer the more heroic-sounding “revolution”.)
The students end their missive by demanding “public disclosure” of all Russian funding received by Professor Mearsheimer, as well as a “statement from the university community at large that it does not condone anti-Ukraine ideology on campus”. They also claim that, if left unaddressed, the problem could “tarnish the reputation of our beloved University”.
I haven’t been able to find any articles suggesting that the university took action in response to the letter. So the students’ campaign appears to have failed. Good.
And it’s of course absurd to suggest that Mearsheimer holds an “anti-Ukraine ideology”. Indeed, much of his 2015 lecture (which the students probably just skimmed through while searching for ‘incriminating’ statements) is concerned with how to prevent Ukraine from “getting wrecked”.
As I noted in a previous post, Mearsheimer’s proposal comprised three elements: ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine; funding an economic rescue plan, together with Russia and the IMF; and insisting that Ukraine respect minority rights, especially minority language rights.
It seems plausible that if we’d followed this proposal, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are today, with Russian troops advancing on Kiev, and the West powerless to intervene for fear of sparking World War III. From what I see, Mearsheimer is a far better friend to Ukraine than the people who dismissed his warnings.

