Biden’s actions regarding the Nord Stream have revealed his real attitude towards Germany and NATO, Hersh suggests.
The United States’ decision to blow up the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines may have a detrimental effect on NATO’s unity, warned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh who earlier this month delivered an exposé on the sabotage.
In an exclusive interview with one Canadian digital media outlet, Hersh argued that Biden “committed a great mistake” by destroying the pipelines that provided Germany with much-needed natural gas.
“He’s told Germany and NATO ‘When push comes to shove, I’ll throw you over the wall. You can be cold, I don’t care. If you’re not giving enough money to Ukraine, screw you’,” the journalist said.
He added that “the question now is who’s going to be the first country to leave NATO?”
Hersh also argued that Biden is “lying now to push us into war,” comparing his actions to those of the 36th US President Lyndon B. Johnson who used a bogus attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext for entering the Vietnam War in 1964.
Earlier in February, Hersh accused the United States’ leadership of orchestrating the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines in late September 2022.
Citing sources familiar with the planning of this operation, Hersh claimed that US Navy divers planted explosive charges on the pipelines during summer 2022 under the cover of a NATO military exercise in the Baltic Sea. The explosives were then reportedly detonated remotely three months later so as to avoid casting suspicion on the perpetrators.
Meanwhile, Germany now mulls the possibility of using the pipes left over from the Nord Stream 2 construction – currently stored at Germany’s Rugen island – to build a pipeline for transporting liquefied natural gas from a yet-to-be-built LNG terminal, German media has reported.
This situation, however, is complicated by the sanctions imposed by the US and the EU against Russia amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, since the pipes belong to Russian energy giant Gazprom, one of the sanctioned entities.
February 25, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | European Union, Germany, NATO, United States |
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Three years ago few of us knew the impending storm that was brewing; one that would upend the very fabric of global democracy, destroy whole communities, businesses and families and cause a vast number of children and adolescents to become unmoored and disengage from society, among many other deleterious outcomes.
Perhaps most chilling of all has been the sinister turn in those three years of what was once seemingly a force for good, “public health;” which changed into a punitive and authoritarian entity that wilfully engages in iatrogenesis and the disenfranchisement of those skeptical of the medical-industrial complex through widespread and draconian vaccine mandates.
In retrospect, America in February of 2020 seems like a libertarian, innocent age compared to our current one. We did not live under the shadow of possible nuclear holocaust. Everyday life was devoid of the nanny-state elements of our current age. Many of us had gone through life never quite knowing what the destructive power of a government run amok looked like.
Now we know.
Not only do we once again live under the imminent threat of atomic annihilation, as our global “leaders” continue to play out a 21st-century version of Dr. Strangelove, but Covid offered an opportunity to further militarize and subordinate society. For let’s call lockdowns what they were: martial law.
Moreover, the government and the security state during the last few years has proved itself to be in the service of only a tiny sliver of shadowy and in some cases invisible elites and “experts” whose actions have, in America most especially, been held to little accountability. In the face of lockdowns, which happened to be the most universally undemocratic and destructive event of my lifetime, regular citizens were held in contempt and with little more agency than the serfs of the Middle Ages. Some of us were made completely irrelevant and “non-essential.”
Yet, amongst this wreckage and horror, many skeptical people, who once believed in benevolent leaders, have been freed from the flawed faith in “good” government. In this freedom lie several important lessons for how to move forward into a (hopefully) less totalitarian future.
Lesson #1: We need to hold the medical-industrial complex accountable.
My skepticism about the medical-industrial complex felt inchoate and somehow unfounded pre-Covid. Sure, I knew I’d be given a lecture at every doctor’s appointment about how I needed to schedule colonoscopies (in my early 40s!), buy new medicines, get blood work done, no questions about my holistic well-being, diet, etc. It didn’t matter which doctor I saw, they were all like that. There was always a feeling that these big buildings and office parks that housed the machinery of the medical industrial complex were, like consolidated public schools or prisons, quite anti-human. But I still . . . believed, more or less.
What the Covid mania revealed is that much of the medical-industrial complex, like the military-industrial complex, is part of a system of hierarchical relationships that only truly benefits those in power. The beneficiaries being Big Pharma, massive corporate health systems, wealthy physicians and even a security state/biodefense apparatus that sees vast swaths of the global population as dots on a chart to be manipulated, vaccinated and medicalized.
Even worse, iatrogenesis – the massive health harms caused by Covid medical interventions – generates unseemly and massive profits, again for a tiny segment of individuals with unfathomable power and wealth (Bill Gates is the prime example). This sinister complex relies on sickness, not health to make their profits. I believe this is one reason why Covid was so intensely medicalized and why we all became pawns of the vaccine industry, instead of public health pursuing more holistic attempts for better outcomes for people with Covid.
None of us has to take this lying down, though. Health consumers can take back their rights through the great work of organizations such as the Children’s Defense Fund and No College Mandates, two groups with writers affiliated with Brownstone Institute.
Lesson #2: The “real” American left is not MSNBC and has perhaps vanished entirely
The American liberal-left is a coalition that has deteriorated so far as to be unrecognizable, filled with purity tests, blind obedience to secret service agencies like the FBI, the CIA and shadow organizations in the military like DARPA, with authoritarian leaders who constantly virtue signal and who will censor and cancel those they do not agree with.
For many years, since the late Obama years particularly, I’ve felt more and more out of place within the cultural ideology of the American left, which has placed identity politics above economic fairness, and in many instances is entirely unrecognizable from the “left” of old.
Covid remains the demarcation point–when I and millions of others abandoned the movement entirely.
Nothing about being a cheerleader for lockdowns represented traditional leftist values. In fact, I would argue that the natural place for the American left was to viciously oppose lockdowns, because they so deleteriously affected the working class, working poor, and minorities. And yet the silence on the left in the mid-part of 2020, much to my horror, soon became derision and then full scale hatred toward those of us who proclaimed our opposition to lockdowns, even with reasoned analysis or proposals such as the Great Barrington Declaration.
That we were brutally censored and that all protestations ended up falling on deaf ears was such an alienating experience, many of us who at one time proclaimed to be “of the left” have abandoned the project entirely, and most especially the political party that was supposed to represent us in America, the Democrats. We have emerged politically homeless; some having even established alliances within the welcoming arms of the libertarian and conservative movements.
This begs the question that many of us have pondered: what is the political left now? And what has it always been?
It certainly does not resemble the George Orwell version, which had so much influence on me as a college student. The spirit of the left contained in “The Road to Wigan Pier,” for instance, feels like a world gone by, infused as it was with a healthy skepticism, admiration and reverence for the working classes, and the mutually supportive ideas of liberty and egalitarianism. Such humility and nuance have almost wholly disappeared from our current rendition of “leftism.”
Some of us have even wondered (and indeed Orwell pondered the same thing): does leftism, if unchecked, always loop into something horrendous, the inevitable conclusion not being utopia but the graveyards of Cheong Ek or tendentious, censorious authoritarianism?
Does dialectical materialism only go down one road in the end, and that toward Stalinism or fascism?
Yet, despite the loneliness of becoming a dissenter within one’s old political home, the complete destruction of what used to be “left” and in some instances “right” political spheres is in itself freeing. Many of us are carving out new political identities and in some cases new political parties and alliances are forming. This outcome will ultimately be very healthy for the future of democracy.
Lesson #3: We have proof that “experts” are often wrong.
A healthy skepticism of the “experts” and elites has always been a hallmark of American life, especially out here in the provinces where I reside. Yet, as Christopher Lasch pointed out in Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy – the last book he published and maybe most prescient – many American elites and professional “experts” have now completely abandoned their advisory roles to become de facto rulers in themselves, worshiped in almost a religious sense by a segment of completely secularized, well-to-do liberals. These elites, however, mostly hold contempt toward the working and middle class. This has been happening for quite some time (Lasch’s book was published in 1996).
The most egregious recent example of this worship and the power of the 21st century technocrat is embodied by the former Director of NIAID, Anthony Fauci, who was the public face of the disastrous Covid response for nearly three full years. The myopic reverence for this man is dangerous on many levels, but it also showcases a grave weakness of modern humanity; many of us will give up even the most basic freedoms because we blindly trust a technocratic “savior” who just may have all the wrong data or simply be a mendacious, cunning bureaucrat.
Yet, before Covid many of us, including myself, trusted unelected bureaucrats like Fauci far too often with little questioning of their motives. Lockdowns showed their hand and tipped the balance toward egregious authoritarianism. Unelected administrative-state actors should not have any ability to create policy by fiat, and groups such as the NCLA are fighting many of the unconstitutional edicts pushed forward by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH as part of the Covid response.
Lesson #4: The technology that was supposed to lessen inequality actually increases societal rifts.
The modern worship of technology has created an undemocratic information ecosystem rife with inequity, which helped smooth the way for authoritarian and coercive lockdown policies. In fact, with the aforementioned DARPA heavily involved in the Covid response and Big Tech gaining nearly unfettered power during the pandemic, technology’s tentacles are lodged in every classroom, courthouse and boardroom across the country. It seems likely that the architecture for future lockdowns is now firmly in place.
We should never, at any moment moving forward, accept this as our future. The Western world imitated China’s brutal, authoritarian lockdowns because digital technology facilitated it. These policies would have been impossible as little as 25 years ago.
And in the end it was all a sham.
Millions still had to keep the sewers clear, emergency services running, the lights on and our grocery stores stocked. Working class people, many of whom were rightly skeptical of the Covid vaccine, and who subsequently lost their jobs because of the illegal vaccine mandates, were completely ignored by the laptop class who were able to work from home. In the midst of receiving endless curbside deliveries, virtue signaling on social media about “anti-vaxxers,” and sidelining those who actually had to leave their homes and work for a living, Big Tech only fueled the culture wars and ultimately hurt the working class.
Lesson #5: The most meaningful things are still the most meaningful things.
If we cannot trust the experts, the government, the global order, or technology, who can we trust? This is perhaps the most important question of all, and one that has been asked from time immemorial. In intense readings of Leo Tolstoy’s non-fiction work during this strange and awful time, especially Patriotism and Government and The Kingdom of God is Within You, I’ve come to realize that in the very act of trusting monolithic institutions or the state in general, we are looking for all the wrong answers and even perhaps asking the wrong questions.
For, like all of the material world, institutions are fallible and crumble. The right questions are much larger and far more personal, and the answers are immutable and have been there forever.
Outside the bounds of our fallible institutions, the most important answers to nearly every question are to be found in authentic feelings of love and belonging. Love for your family, or the little plot of land and house that you own, or the tiny farming community that you live in, the church you belong to, or the group of kind-hearted and supportive friends and writers, like those who have found one another in Brownstone Institute and other grassroots communities.
Faceless federal institutions and their representatives do not deserve our love, nor in most cases do they deserve even admiration or respect. They are the products of very flawed, uncaring systems and are ultimately artificial creations of a flawed humankind.
Despite the anguish and pain we have all felt–and the divisions the last three years of authoritarianism have created–don’t let the elites and their petty politics divide your friendships and family. Love is still the ultimate answer.
Seth Smith is an avid outdoorsman and public librarian based in Missouri.
February 25, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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The final report on the Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act amid last year’s country-wide trucker protests against Covid-19 vaccine mandates is in, and it’s largely a roadmap for greater government control.
Former Canadian Liberal Party top advisor turned justice, Paul Rouleau, has issued the Public Order Emergency Commission’s report, which concludes that the government was indeed justified in using the measure, which included the ability to block bank accounts of not just the protesters but also those who donated to them. There are reasonable limits to free expression, Rouleau points out.
I guess this guy hasn’t been around downtown Vancouver during the Stanley Cup playoffs when the Vancouver Canucks lose a critical game. The unrest that broke out in 1994 and 2011 left hundreds injured and millions worth of property damage, but no federal emergency was declared. And let’s face it – the rioters’ lives were impacted a lot less by the results of the playoffs than by Trudeau’s Covid jab mandates. Guess it was just shrugged off as angry hockey fans who would ultimately calm down once the catalyst – the loss – dissipated. No threat to those in power and their forays into authoritarianism.
The head of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services (CSIS), David Vigneault, underscored during the inquiry that he didn’t consider the Freedom Convoy to be a threat. “Mr. Vigneault stated that at no point did the service assess that the protests in Ottawa or elsewhere [those referred to as the “Freedom Convoy” and related protests and blockades in January-February 2022] constituted a threat to security of Canada as defined by section 2 of the CSIS Act and that CSIS cannot investigate actively constituting lawful protest,” according to an inquiry document. But Rouleau insists that the protests were “unlawful”, referencing the term several times in the report.
Rouleau also says that blocking participants’ bank accounts based on lists provided by the federal police to banking institutions was a tactic used by Trudeau’s government to entice protesters to desist. “The asset-freezing regime had two main purposes: first, discouraging people from remaining at the site of unlawful protests; and second, preventing further financial support from reaching convoy protests,” reads the report. “Seeking to prevent any funds from supporting the illegal protests was, in my view, a reasonable measure in the circumstances,” Rouleau concluded, while praising the “overall effectiveness” of the “powerful tool” in “bringing the emergency to a safe and speedy resolution”.
Great, just what we need – a newly rubber-stamped tool for government to “discourage participation and incentivize protesters to leave,” as Rouleau puts it. He adds, “I am satisfied that it played a meaningful role in shrinking the footprint of the protests, and in doing so, made a meaningful contribution to resolving the Public Order Emergency.” Sounds like Rouleau and the asset freeze should just get a room already and leave the rest of us to lament another nail being hammered into the coffin of Western democracy.
Incidentally, CSIS Director Vigneault also told the inquiry that there were no foreign actors engaged in funding the protests, running contrary to suggestions in the Canadian state-backed press that Russia could be behind the movement. This includes former Bank of Canada and Bank of England chief Mark Carney’s now debunked suggestion that “Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed, and addressed.”
Another striking aspect of the Rouleau report is his focus on “disinformation” as a contributing factor to the protests. “During the COVID-19 Pandemic, foreign state actors had significant success spreading false information about COVID-19, public health measures, and vaccines, done as a means to sow mistrust in democratic governments,” Rouleau wrote, disregarding the military-grade propaganda operation ran by the government itself. The Canadian military deployed tools honed during the war in Afghanistan to influence and shape public opinion around Covid – a fact that had already been widely publicized by Convoy protesters when they took to the streets.
Rouleau’s implication that the establishment was the voice of truth and science during the pandemic and that contradictory information could only be fake news risks opening the door to greater control and censorship of both online and traditional media in favor of establishment narratives. In whitewashing Trudeau’s authoritarian overreach, the final verdict on this crackdown effectively encourages more of the same.
February 25, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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In retrospect, it was surprisingly easy. Here are some of the key features that explain what happened to our world.
For almost three years I’ve been researching Covid topics. Based on this deep dive, I feel qualified to offer opinions on the question of how all the events of the last three years actually materialized.
Stated differently, how did all of this madness actually happen?
I quickly identified several big themes or pivotal events that help explain how so many nonsensical and harmful policies became a reality.
Readers can identify other features that that were important in getting us to where we are today. As always, feedback is appreciated and welcome.
Note: “They” = public health officials, establishment authority figures and leaders, myriad vested interests who were all “on the same page” when it comes to Covid policies and narratives.
They sold fear … hard, incessantly, shamelessly, brazenly, unapologetically.
In short, hyper fear of a novel (and “deadly”) virus was THE prerequisite for everything that followed. So how was this mass fear/panic actually produced?
The groundwork must have begun many months and years before the “Wuhan outbreak.”
Multiple “table top” exercises (like Event 201) were conducted to lay the groundwork for what would follow.
All the key “stakeholders” were recruited to participate in these events, often organized by groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Politicians, bureaucrats, key media members, physicians, scientists, and representatives of all they key agencies and key organizations were recruited and then participated in these exercises.
Main-Takeaway: Advance “buy in” had already been achieved regarding the key premises of these table-top planning exercises. An event like Covid-19 had already been predicted and this was the blueprint for dealing with this … if you were going to be a part of the enlightened group that was going to help save the world.
Significantly, no participants ever questioned any of the assumptions built-in to these exercises and when Covid was announced nobody wanted to challenge any of the responses.
Appeals to authority, groupthink, wanting to support the “current thing” (to protect your status and career advancement opportunities) helped ensure that no significant dissenting voices would come forward to thwart or block the agreed-upon course of action.
Logistical and legislative actions had already been implemented to ensure nothing or no one could block the response. “Emergency orders” of bureaucrats trumped the need for legislative votes, which were not even required to implement policies that turned the world upside down.
It now seems that the Department of Defense played a larger role (than most realized) in making the key decisions.
Still, Fauci, Birx (a former military doctor), and Collins played a large role in orchestrating policy and getting the president to go along with their recommendations.
At some point, China’s response – locking down parts of their country – was endorsed as the bold and effective solution that should be used everywhere. The outbreak in northern Italy helped create more fear.
I’ve written many articles about “early spread.” However, one of the key planks explaining how what happened in America actually happened was the wide-spread belief that “late spread” of this virus was occurring.
That is, the virus had not yet spread through America (and other countries) and thus it was wise and proactive to implement draconian lockdowns and non-pharmaceutical interventions to slow or stop the spread of the virus. The public was told that that they could “flatten the curve” with just two weeks of inconvenience.
Significantly, nobody in official capacity or the mainstream press ever questioned whether the virus may have already spread throughout much of the country or the world (even though case of Influenza like Illness were rampant in many sections of the country/world).
Organizers of the response, per their table top exercises and research, knew that physicians were among the “most trusted” people in the world. Officials quickly got all the leading medical associations to sign off on the grave threat.
Once the physicians groups were on board, the guidance or marketing became “listen to your physicians.”
The vast majority of leading scientists also quickly came on board … perhaps because they knew going against Anthony Fauci would jeopardize their future research grants.
No one in the mainstream press ever questioned the doomsday scenarios and indeed actively promoted the “this-must-be-done” narrative.
Censorship and cancellation of dissenting voices slowly and then rapidly became a priority. All social media, Big Tech companies and legacy media companies implemented “misinformation” guidelines that had rarely if ever been utilized.
Seeding, funding and establishing “misinformation” experts had actually begun months or years earlier. Almost all at once, these disinformation gurus sprung into action, further muzzling any significant “push back” against the authorized narrative.
I think a key event, rarely mentioned or remembered, was the decision of the Ivy League to cancel its conference basketball tournament in early March. The Ivy League is supposedly a repository of the brightest minds in the world. Once the Ivy League did this, the NBA and other organizations (The PGA cancelled a big golf tournament after one round) quickly followed. The dominoes started to fall and the momentum was set in motion.
Lesson: Be wary of the actions of the Ivy League or elite colleges.
The federal government actually could not compel any citizen, state or city to comply with its “guidance” but this didn’t matter as governors and mayors almost all at once implemented their own, more specific, lockdown orders. Or: They simply followed the federal “guidance.”
In retrospect, it’s quite fascinating that almost 100 percent of state and local officials “signed off” on such draconian mandates. It’s also worth noting that Gov. Ron DeSantis, the one prominent politician who did challenge the narrative, became a political superstar almost overnight.
To make it more likely that hospitals and medical clinics signed off on the various treatment guidelines and protocols, the federal government came up with numerous financial incentives (payouts) to get the hospitals and doctors to go along with their program. So hospitals received extra money for treating a Covid patients or if someone was placed on a ventilator.
Congress enacted emergency funding to mollify many groups that might otherwise have suffered economic damages. New money was printed out of thin air. State governments were compensated for implementing the federal program.
Media organizations began to receive advertising funding for promoting Covid safety and, later promoting the vaccines.
Mandatory masking was ordered, which further promoted the requisite fear of the virus.
All big companies signed off on the proposals even while many of their smaller competitors were put out of business, which was fine with the big guys.
Somehow the churches put up no resistance. No meaningful organization put up any resistance.
How did the organizers get virtually 100-percent compliance from all key stakeholders? The answer is found in psychological and sociological reasons: Nobody in a “leadership” role wanted to be a contrarian as this would be dangerous to their careers.
“We are all in this together” was the implied or explicit message. This was a great event in history (like fighting WWII) and the only way to defeat the “enemy” (the virus) was for all citizens to act together … and do what the experts said must be done. In other words, comply.
The fear was ramped up to a new level thanks to 40 to 45-cycle PCR tests suddenly flooding the market (as well as mandatory testing).
The media daily reported “new cases” and “new deaths,” most of which probably weren’t caused by this novel coronavirus.
It was rarely if ever mentioned that the average age of death of a Covid victim was around 82 – which is at or beyond the average life expectancy.
Anyone who questioned the narrative was met with a rejoinder that “XXX,000” people have already died. Unspoken was the fact very few people personally knew one person under the age of 60 who had died, and these official deaths “from” Covid were massively inflated.
In late March 2020 through April 2020 massive spikes of deaths in certain cities like New York City, New Orleans and Detroit received massive media coverage.
Receiving virtually no media attention was the hundreds of other hospitals that were almost ghost towns.
The lockdowns lasted many months (even years) in some states … not “two weeks.”
Nobody questioned why the check-out girls at the “essential” super markets were not becoming casualties of Covid even though they came in close contact with hundreds of customers every day and touched every item the customer had put in their buggies.
At some point, the narrative (pushed by the experts) became that the only thing that would stop or end this pandemic was mass vaccination … so people just had to hold on until Pfizer and Moderna saved the world and ended the pandemic.
The vaccines arrived in “warp speed” and the world got a non-stop dose of this is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” stories.
People were fired for not getting vaccinated or pressured into getting vaccinated (although after the non-stop fear campaign, 75 percent of the country was rushing to their pharmacy to get their shots). Plus, all the medical experts recommended this and everyone trusted their doctors.
At some point, officials no longer needed to pressure the public into “fighting Covid.” Citizens took up the charge themselves. America became an “us against them” society – and the skeptics were the mangy dog “thems.”
When people continued to get sick or infected after vaccination, the narrative became the shots lowered the likelihood you’d have a “severe case.”
The fact the vaccines did not work as advertised actually didn’t damper enthusiasm for the vaccines at all. The Covid vaccines became the only product in world history that was a colossal bust – but still generated record sales and demand.
A spike in “all-cause” deaths began days, weeks or months after the roll-out of the vaccines, but these spikes in deaths were either not reported or were blamed on Covid. Never mentioned was that the vaccines were supposed to make Covid deaths an impossibility.
The “narrative” that the vaccines were “safe and effective” – probably repeated a billion times – was never challenged by anyone in official capacity. In many states and cities, the lockdowns and restrictions were never challenged.
In a nutshell, Project Massive Fear worked.
All the key stakeholders “bought in.” Even if some people eventually realized some of the narratives may have been dubious or false, they’d already risked their reputations and careers by zealously pushing or endorsing these narratives … so they weren’t going to suddenly admit they might have been wrong.
In retrospect, how “they” made all the madness happen was surprisingly easy.
February 25, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Immediately after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, key players in the coalition supporting Ukraine, as well as transatlantic financial institutions and think tanks, were already discussing the governance and financing of Ukraine’s reconstruction. They invariably framed it as a historic opportunity for the country: like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Ukraine would become a beacon of freedom, democracy and rule-of-law, a testimonial for Build Back Better, a “green and digital economy” success story; the country would leapfrog several stages of economic and governmental development and its economic growth would replicate Germany’s post-war boom. Unsurprisingly, the more recent and far less inspiring examples of Western-led ‘reconstruction’ in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan didn’t earn mention.
The speed with which fantastical narratives of recovery and reconstruction were churned out shouldn’t surprise anyone because they had been concocted years earlier as part of several ‘reform plans’ for Ukraine. One could say they are hardwired into the overall strategy of this proxy war against Russia as they are aimed at securing political, military and financial support for Ukraine to prolong the war rather than an incentive to negotiate peace. All those who produce these narratives are directly or indirectly linked to governments that are involved both in the destruction of Ukraine and the Ukrainization of Europe, a process designed to fully control, militarize and loot the Old World.
Paying lip service to the idea of reconstruction is also the best way to distract attention from one’s investment in the business of war. For example, JPMorgan Investment Management owns more than $2.5 billion worth of Raytheon stocks and more than $1.3 billion worth of Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics securities, as of February 15. As long as Ukraine keeps consuming U.S. military products, the rising profits for arms companies – satisfies investment funds. And rich corruption in the U.S., EU and Ukraine. As long as Ukraine is of any interest in terms of consumption of U.S. military products, there will be no peace on its territory.
There is little doubt that Ukraine will need rebuilding once the war eventually ends, but ‘destruction’ and ‘reconstruction’ mean different things to different people.
For instance, there is strong disagreement as to what constitutes ‘destruction’, when the ‘destruction’ of Ukraine started and who should be blamed for it.
Those who have been following Ukrainian affairs without ideological prejudice, and with a modicum of intellectual honesty, know that at the time of the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine was an economic powerhouse, the third industrial power of the Soviet Union after Russia and Belarus, and its breadbasket. The Soviet republic had aerospace, automobile and machine tool industries, well-developed mining, metallurgical and agricultural sectors, nuclear, oil refining and petrochemical plants, tourism and commercial infrastructures and the largest shipbuilding center in the USSR.
Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine’s GDP has lagged behind the level it reached in Soviet times, industry declined, and the population decreased by about 14.5 million people in 30 years due to emigration and the lowest birth rate in Europe. Ukraine has also become the third largest IMF debtor and Europe’s poorest country. These negative records cannot be blamed solely on Ukraine’s systemic and staggering corruption: the corrupt networks bleeding Ukraine are truly transnational. If the best way to rob a bank is to own one, then the best way to plunder a country is to control its elites. Which is exactly what Western kleptocratic networks have been doing for decades with the help of their local facilitators and enablers.
Ukraine was targeted by two U.S.-funded color revolutions that led to regime change and civil war, was wrestled away from its largest economic partner, Russia; its history was erased and rewritten while an artificial identity was manufactured and imposed on its population; neoliberal prescriptions destroyed its economic and social fabric and led to a neocolonial form of governance.
Though Ukraine joined Europe’s nefarious Eastern Partnership in 2009 and has been teeming with Western NGOs, economic and political advisers since its independence, the country’s indentured servitude and captivity to Western interests was cemented after the last Ukrainian government to object to the IMF’s harsh conditions – including steep budget cuts and a 40-percent increase in natural-gas bills – was overthrown by a U.S.-sponsored coup in 2014.
On 10 December, 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych stated that the conditions set by the IMF for loan approval were unacceptable: “I had a conversation with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who told me that the issue of the IMF loan has almost been solved, but I told him that if the conditions remained we did not need such loans“. He then broke off negotiations with the IMF and turned to Russia for financial assistance. It was the sensible thing to do, but cost him dearly. You can’t break the shackles of IMF debt with impunity, this lender of last resort not only imposes its usual shock therapy of austerity, deregulation, and privatization so that the vultures can swoop in, it also furthers and protects U.S. interests.
If those who destroyed a country are allowed to be involved in its reconstruction, then reconstruction will inevitably be just a point on the continuum of conquest, occupation and looting, but with better optics. Destruction produces that blank slate that has always been colonialism’s seductive promise, on that slate you can write your own rules: “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace”. Tacitus knew both the reality and the spin of Roman imperialism.
One can only wonder if those who talk about ‘reconstruction’, ‘recovery’, ‘reform’, ‘rules-based order’, ‘reset’ or whatever buzzword is fashionable at the moment are aware of the brutal reality or truly believe their own spin. In any case they promise a future utopia worth killing and dying for.
The capitalist, imperialist West has created its own eschatology, embedded in both the environmental and technological discourses. Thirty years ago, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, had cautioned an audience in Prague, whose newborn democracy was teeming with promise and perils, about the difference between eschatology – understanding and belief in the “end,” i.e., eternal life – and utopia. Belief in the latter, which he defined simply as “the hope of a better world in the future,” had taken the place of eternal life across the West. Man’s hubris replaces eschatology with a self-made utopia which intends to fulfill man’s hopes. Constantly allured by newer technocratic abilities, the utopians end up sharing Tantalus’ fate, and are condemned to live in Hades, tormented with the sight of something desired but out of reach, teased by arousing expectations that are inevitably disappointed.
The more secular-minded may remember what Karl Marx wrote about the destructive (and self-destructive) tendencies inherent to capitalism. It’s by causing large-scale loss that it enables new wealth to be created. Wars and economic crises serve the purpose as they allow capitalism to start a new cycle of wealth creation for an ever-shrinking class of owners.
But the neoliberal capitalist system is fast running out of creative schemes to forestall its collapse and the old ones no longer deliver the desired results because they are predicated on rules and conditions set by the U.S., and the transnational institutions it controls. As U.S. power wanes, the global oligarchy that depends on it is faced with the choice of defending that power at any cost and against all odds, or seeking an arrangement with emerging powers, an option that would not only reduce its sway and outrageous profits, but also accelerate U.S. decline. Since World War II, U.S. influence over the global economy and military power have been intertwined and losing one would precipitate the loss of the other. The engine of world economic growth has moved to Asia, with China in a leading position, and the U.S. has chosen to tighten the grip on its vassals, double down on its hegemonic ambitions and indulge in grandiose, and dangerous, fantasies rather than accept the emergence of a multipolar reality. Since fantasies cannot deliver real growth, let alone prosperity, the Empire invests a considerable part of its resources in colonizing minds and policing narratives. The job of those who are simultaneously planning ‘destruction’ and ‘reconstruction’ is to reduce the cognitive dissonance between the present misery and picture-perfect manifestos of a bright future.
Selling a war requires all hands on deck, and that’s why think tanks and marketing specialists have been involved from the early stages. They churn out narratives that help shape the discursive space, engineer a perception of global support for Ukraine, provide talking points, and versions of the truth, to both politicians and the media. They have to motivate Ukrainians to keep fighting and European vassals to keep funding the war and arming Ukraine, no matter the cost to their economy.
If those who attended recovery conferences never talked about peace is also because the possibility of peace negotiations with Russia has been performatively and normatively excluded from the Western discourse. The last time Western leaders claimed they wanted peace in Ukraine, they were lying. As we now know, the Minsk Agreements were signed by Angela Merkel and François Holland only to win time for Kiev to prepare for war.
The EU was so committed to peace that in a truly Orwellian fashion, in 2021 established the European Peace Facility (EPF) to bankroll military operations, provide military equipment and training to unnamed “EU partners” – Ukraine couldn’t be openly mentioned yet. The fund, worth €5 billion, was financed outside the budget, for a period of seven years.
When in October 2022 Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bizarre decree prohibiting talks with the current Russian leadership he simply formalized something that had already become a dogma among his allies. Six months earlier, in April, Boris Johnson went to Kiev to pressure Zelensky to cut off peace negotiations with Russia, because the two sides appeared to have made some tenuous progress during talks in Istanbul. In March Denis Kireev, a member of the Ukraine delegation who had taken part in the February peace talks in Belarus, was shot dead by his country’s security service. Israeli PM Naftali Bennet, who had also attempted to mediate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, revealed how the Anglo-Americans, with Boris Johnson in the role of chief bully again, blocked his efforts.
Peace advocates, including Roger Waters, Pink Floyd’s former frontman, were added to the infamous Myrotvorets online [assassination] database. Those who profit from war and want to see Russia weakened would stop at nothing to prevent peace talks. While Europeans are grappling with the ever growing cost of an American proxy war in their continent, they need a compensatory fantasy to support the absurd notion that a peace settlement in Ukraine would threaten their security and not be in their best interests. Narratives of reconstruction, seamlessly woven into delusions of Ukraine’s victory from the start, allow the transnational party of war to present itself as a force for good and a driver of future growth.
The reconstruction marketeers have aggressively tried to occupy the moral high ground by evicting the peacemakers and to do so they had to bolster the argument that war couldn’t be prevented nor stopped.
In March 2022, less than a month since Russian troops had crossed the Ukrainian border, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), one of the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex’s favorite think tanks, published a bizarre article titled “Rebuilding Ukraine after the War”. Its author compared the destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure to a “natural” disaster such as the hurricane that destroyed Puerto Rico in 2017 and argued that reconstruction would provide an opportunity “to improve on the past”, paving the way for a radiant future, a techno-utopia as orderly, clean and green as an architectural rendition.
Framing war as a “natural disaster”, as opposed to a man-made one, would allow those who militarized Ukraine and sabotaged all peace agreements, to pre-empt any serious discussion about the causes of, and possible solutions to this conflict. If the war in Ukraine was as sudden and inevitable as a hurricane then it would be pointless to seek an explanation for it other than “Putin is mad/bloodthirsty/evil…” or “Russia is an imperialist country”.
The ensuing devastation was also framed as the result of Russian forces’ congenital appetite for wanton destruction – in the West Nazi tropes are back in fashion and Russian soldiers can be described as “barbaric Asiatic hordes” with total impunity. Western media ensured that their public would never hear about the role played in the destruction of residential districts by Ukrainian nationalists who set up firing positions, deploy armored vehicles, conceal artillery pieces and MLRS in densely populated areas and use civilians as human shields. Hardly natural. Even less natural was the outbreak of this war, unless you consider NATO’s expansion and U.S. geopolitical goals as part of a divine plan. Mind you, some do and call it “manifest destiny”.
CSIS put forward arguments and plans that would later be expanded at conferences about Ukraine reconstruction. “Thinking about recovery means envisioning a post-conflict future, and that links to the twin messages of hope and the necessity to keep fighting.” The twin messages, constantly amplified by Western-controlled media, are mainly addressed to those who need to be reassured that they stand to benefit from the escalation of this conflict, regardless of the huge losses they are currently incurring. And that includes a multitude of stakeholders, both in NATO countries and in Ukraine.
There have been several antecedents to recent conferences in which representatives of Western governments, financial institutions and corporations discussed ways to keep Ukraine fighting “to the last man” while baiting it with promises of reforms and reconstruction, but one stands out as a direct progenitor. It had all the hallmarks of a British influence operation.
On July 6, 2017 the UK Foreign Office headed by Boris Johnson organized and hosted the first Ukraine Reform Conference in London. Ukrainians, notorious “friends of UK/raine” such as Christya Freeland and other rabid Anglophile Russophobes, many hailing from the Baltics, would outnumber less invested participants, expose them to their extremist views in order to facilitate their radicalization and recruitment. The power of conformity, suggestibility and normative social influence would ensure that participants who had previously held moderate views would gravitate towards the extremist opinion of the majority.
The alleged purpose of this conference was to seek political and financial support for Ukraine’s 2020 Reform Plan, a neoliberal roadmap designed to create a more profitable and less unpredictable environment for Western corporate interests while priming the Ukrainian population and army for war. This medium-term Reform Plan defined the main objectives and areas of the Ukrainian Government activity for 2017-2020 and formed the basis for the strategic plans of ministries and other executive bodies. It was predicated on privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation, judicial reform, amendments to the labor law, land market reforms, decentralization, forced de-Russification, patriotic education, transformation of the armed forces into a “modern and effective army in line with NATO standards” by increasing its military spending to 6% of GDP, integration into the European political, economic and legal space. In short, this was a roadmap for the complete hijacking of Ukraine’s economic, political, and social institutions, the demolition of what stood in its way, and further militarization of the country.
The conference also served other purposes. The main proponents of Anglo-American eastward expansion, who are deeply invested in Ukraine, after the election of Donald Trump couldn’t fully rely on the U.S. government to further their agenda: Trump’s “America First” foreign policy had strained relations with NATO allies and frozen military aid to Ukraine – arms sales were ok, freebies not so much. London was more than eager to pick up the mantle and ensure Ukraine stayed the course and remained on top of the transatlantic agenda. By taking the lead in coordinating and strategizing support for Ukraine, the UK government also saw an opportunity to strengthen British influence especially at a time when Brexit negotiations had just started and London feared losing its leverage in Europe. British elites were determined to put their country “at the beginning of the line” in the looting of Ukraine’s assets while salivating at the prospect of looting Russian assets too.
The gambit seemed to pay off: the following years attendance at the annual conference grew, including a larger number of representatives from the United States, NATO, OECD, G7 and European countries, OSCE, Council of Europe, IMF, European Investment Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the World Bank.
After Russia’s intervention in 2022, the “Ukraine Reform Conference” (URC) was quickly renamed “Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC). The continuity is striking: acronym, logo and corporate image remained exactly the same when in July 2022, the conference was held in Lugano, Switzerland.
Unsurprisingly, the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano turned out to be little more than a PR stunt, featured a few squabbles among participants competing for their share in any future spoils of war, and provided an opportunity for Ukraine’s prime minister Denys Shmygal, supported by Liz Truss, to advocate the seizure of frozen Russian assets to fund his country’s reconstruction project. Shmygal’s call sent shivers down the spine of Swiss authorities, because not only would the confiscation of these assets violate and thus undermine international legal rules, it would also deal a mortal blow to Switzerland’s banking industry.
Brookings, the U.S. think tank that was deeply involved in the design and implementation of the original Marshall Plan for the post-war redevelopment of Western Europe, had to admit that the Lugano conference “was a missed opportunity because the donor countries did not come prepared with any agreement on coordination mechanisms, a division of labor, or necessary funding levels. In addition, the United States was not represented by officials with seniority commensurate to the European representation.”
A similar criticism was expressed by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, another U.S. think tank. GMF asserted that the European Commission has “neither the necessary political nor the financial heft” to lead reconstruction. And it advised against creating a new agency or centralized trust fund. Instead, it suggested that the G7 and Ukraine together appoint “an American of global stature” as recovery coordinator “because only the United States will be able to bring together the needed global coalition and forge consensus among Ukraine’s partners.”
The Anglo-Americans who need the EU to fund the war and masochistically support their geopolitical plans were disappointed that the richest EU countries would not cough up the amount of money they expected because in this scam Germany, France and Italy are the designated suckers. The con artists invest in the fraudulent scheme to give it an appearance of legitimacy and win the suckers’ confidence.
If Ukraine is the bait, Europe is the big fish and this crime syndicate would stop at nothing to achieve its goals: persuasion tactics can be escalated to involve some serious arm-twisting, as the Nord Stream sabotage clearly showed.
For all their pledges to help Ukraine “recover”, those who took part in “Recovery and Reconstruction” conferences seemed bound by an oath to never advocate for peace negotiations with Russia. Wouldn’t peace be a necessary condition for recovery? Well, it depends on what we mean by recovery. The main purpose of these conferences is to raise funds for Ukraine’s war chest, build a larger consensus on the seizure of Russian frozen assets, and instill enough hopes of a better future to convince Ukrainians and their partners that they should keep fighting regardless of the devastating human and economic losses they are incurring.
The London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) clearly spelled out this strategy in its Macroeconomics Policies for Wartime Ukraine, which outlined policies to “put the Ukrainian economy on a sustainable trajectory for the duration of the war”. The same policy became a dogma in Davos, where the WEF evil wizards agreed and emphasized the need to start reconstruction while the destruction is still ongoing, as that would drive Ukrainian refugees back home, that is to a place described as the “hell of war” in the same paragraph. “We have a moral obligation to nurture hope for these people and to help them stay strong as they go through the hell of war. Doing so will also encourage Ukrainian refugees to return to their homeland.” The cherry on the cake is the cynical reference to “inclusivity”, because no disability should exempt Ukrainians from contributing to war efforts, they too are called upon to fill positions vacated by the dead and those at the front. “Inclusivity is particularly important. Thousands of Ukrainians have already received long-lasting injuries (…) many of them will need to continue their life and work with disabilities.”
People, military and financial aid are all needed to ensure Ukraine retains enough strength not to collapse while it performs its designated role of proxy. That said, broadcasting donors’ pledges and the promise of foreign investments also serve a strategic purpose: it sends a message that Western countries form a compact bloc that will stick together no matter the cost, and to other nations that there are benefits to alignment with this bloc. All wishful thinking, of course.
With Ukrainian GDP expected to fall by more than 45%, budget expenditures doubling due to increased military spending as well as business and humanitarian support, budget deficit projected to reach more than USD 45 billion by the end of 2022 why would international investors be interested in what is de facto a failed state that is still at war?
Disaster capitalism feeds on shock, and war is the ultimate shock treatment. The privatization of profit and socialization of losses is its mantra and a heavily indebted country on its knees can’t prevent the outright sale of its assets. Rebuilding is never the primary purpose, it’s about reshaping everything. If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask a deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. After all, war-ravaged countries are in a state of limited sovereignty and any aid money that might pour in is often put in a trust fund, managed by foreign entities. The promise of Ukraine’s reconstruction by a parallel government made up of a familiar cast of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, foreign governments, international aid agencies and financial institutions would certainly make the prospect of Private-Public Partnership (PPP) attractive. But all this is predicated on Ukraine winning the war and remaining under Western control.
Betting on Ukraine’s victory is a high-odds bet, a very risky bet even for the regular gamblers of the vast casino known as the Western financial system. Yes, debt can be repackaged by lenders into creative securities backed by some pie-in-the sky and sold to global investors, a scam that would make the subprime mortgage crisis pale in comparison. Problem is, there isn’t as much liquidity around in Borrel’s European garden, nor in Biden’s land of the free for that matter. Prices and the cost of money have risen sharply, the market sentiment has slumped, recession is looming in Western countries whose financial system is broken beyond repair, but Western leaders, financiers and business moguls delude themselves they can simply talk up the global economy and resort to their old tricks. Their “everything is fine” message, as witnessed in Davos, is nothing more than one of those “confidence-boosting” exercises their minions practice in front of the mirror.
Attracting foreign investments is far from easy, as the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance has candidly admitted, though he believes that a PPP with BlackRock “can help raise capital even against the background of a bad investment reputation in the past (…) Obviously, private investors in the West will show much more trust in projects or a fund in which a world-renowned company plays some role. Even if it is consulting support. (…) Since investors often have a herd instinct, the option of creating a BlackRock investment fund to accumulate funds from private investors and finance Ukrainian projects is considered optimal”.
Officially, BlackRock’s cooperation with the Ukrainian government was formalized in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which was signed in November 2022. Since then other Wall Street banksters have jumped on the bandwagon. This February, JP Morgan, the U.S.’s largest bank, also signed a MoU with Volodymyr Zelensky with the eye on attracting private capital for a new investment fund seeded with $20 billion to $30 billion in private capital. Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s CEO, called the consequences of the conflict in Ukraine “an inflection point for the Western world for a hundred years.”
Well, the decline of U.S. hegemony and the financial, corporate elites that feed on it (the “inflection point”, as Dimon called it) started well before February 2022. The end of U.S.-European domination of world capitalism is upon us as the center of gravity of the global economy shifts to China and the world is moving toward political multipolarity. Western elites are aware that the fraudulent, unequal system they owe their power to is cracking up, and the West’s mother-of-all financial bubbles is about to explode. All their hare-brained schemes are designed to increase debt, and therefore the enslavement of an ever-greater portion of humanity and have increased instability in the system. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Green New Deal were supposed to pave the way for “resetting and reshaping” the world, through the application of new digital technologies for a more regimented, technocratic and authoritarian control over the global population. But it has not gone as anticipated. Instead, the pandemic accelerated all the contradictions and crisis tendencies of financial capitalism. Ukraine, the greatest rock’n’roll swindle of all times might prove to be one hare-brained scheme too far.
For years the Fed, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank have been printing money, but unbacked fiat currency is a Ponzi Scheme built on treachery and lies: its expansion is financed by the transfer of wealth from everyone for the supposed benefit of everyone… till it all ends in tears for most. Those who have made their fortunes by placing bets on the future, buying or selling options and all sorts of other recondite financial inventions might be lured by the promise of high returns, but many investors will join the pyramid scheme simply because their assets are managed by BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs etc. When the scheme finally collapses, they will be ruined, just like Ukraine.
February 24, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | China, European Union, NATO, Russia, UK, Ukraine, United States |
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Sanctions were meant to deliver a swift and devastating blow to the Russian economy, one that would take years to recover from. Much to the dismay of Western politicians, however, not only did Russia survive the sanctions storm, but it has the potential to emerge even stronger than before.
During a speech in Poland last year, US President Joe Biden boasted that sanctions had reduced the Russian ruble to “rubble” and confidently predicted that the Russian economy was on “track to be cut in half.” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire went even further, declaring that the West would bring about Russia’s economic “collapse.”
“We are waging total economic and financial war on Russia,” he told a French broadcaster last March. “The economic and financial balance of power is totally in favor of the European Union, which is in the process of discovering its own economic power.”
Despite these loud promises, the Russian economy contracted by a mere 2.5 % last year – a decline considerably smaller than those experienced during the 1998 financial crisis (5.3%) and the 2008 Great Recession (7.9%). In a report published last month, the International Monetary Fund forecast that Russian economic growth would outpace that of Germany and the United Kingdom in 2023.
Nor did sanctions succeed in turning Russia into a global pariah. A recent report by the University of St.Gallen in Switzerland found that only 8.5% of European and G7 companies had divested from Russia between February and November 2022. At the same time, Russia’s trade turnover with non-Western economic powers such as China, India, Turkey, and Indonesia soared.
Earlier this month, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was forced to admit that the West’s sanctions strategy was not going according to plan. “It is true that the Russian economy has not collapsed and that the GDP is not what has been forecast, and it is true that last year it got extraordinarily high revenues that came from oil and gas,” he said during a speech at the European Parliament plenary session.
How was Russia able to overcome an unprecedented sanctions blitzkrieg? To answer that question, Sputnik News spoke with economists and Russian businesspeople in industries ranging from agriculture to information technologies. They told us that Western sanctions were headed for failure from the very beginning because they were built on a distorted view of the Russian economy.
Our interlocutors emphasized that although sanctions undoubtedly created economic challenges for Russia in the short and medium term, they also presented a powerful opportunity to revive domestic industry and scientific potential, as well as establish new partnerships with Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American, and African economies.
Failed Strategy
In the weeks and months following the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the US and the EU rolled out some of the most expansive sanctions packages in recent memory. Western governments pressured the SWIFT global payment system into expelling several of Russia’s largest banks, barred Russian ships and airplanes from entering their ports and airspace, and imposed export controls aimed at restricting Russia’s access to various advanced technologies and key production components.
Although this sanctions barrage initially caused the Russian ruble to dip in value and inflation to spike, the shock-effect proved to be short lived. Within weeks, the ruble recovered all of its pre-conflict value and then some. Likewise, inflation reached a peak rate of 17.8% in April 2022 and then began to steadily decline, hitting 11.8% in January 2023 (a rate less than many countries in central and eastern Europe). Contrary to the expectations of many Western economists, Russia’s unemployment rate not only did not increase, but actually hit a post-Soviet record low of 3.7% in December 2022.
Despite the new financial and logistical restrictions against Russian exporters, foreign trade contacts also remained strong. Russia’s current account surplus – which measures the difference between a country’s trade outflows and inflows – reached a record high of $227.4 billion last year, an 86% increase from 2021.
Why did such unprecedented sanctions deliver such unimpressive results? Jacques Sapir, an economist at the Paris-based School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, told Sputnik that the main reason was because they were based on false premises about the size and resilience of the Russian economy. A large part of the problem, he explained, was that American and European policymakers were looking at the wrong statistics.
The main metric used in the West to measure the Russian economy is nominal gross domestic product (GDP), which is calculated by simply converting its value in rubles into US dollars. Sapir argued that nominal GDP underestimated the strength of the Russian economy because it failed to account for purchasing power parity (PPP), which adjusts for differences in costs across countries. He noted that whereas Russia’s nominal GDP was comparable to Spain’s, its GDP based on PPP was roughly the same level as Germany’s.
Another key factor was the fact that the Russian economy was far less based on services than its Western counterparts. Sapir explained that although services could serve as an important source of economic growth during peacetime, they inevitably took a backseat to the manufacturing and commodities sectors during times of geopolitical turmoil. He noted that Russia still maintained a sizable industrial base and was a leading global supplier of natural gas, oil, rare earth metals, and agricultural products.
“Russia has a very specific place in the world markets and, therefore, attempting to isolate such a country would inevitably lead to an international economic catastrophe,” he said. “Unsurprisingly, a lot of countries would never agree to join efforts aimed at isolating Russia because they need trade with Russia.”
Sapir also said that the West underestimated Russia’s ability to find alternative suppliers for various types of machinery and key components used in production. He noted that although Russian imports fell substantially during the second quarter of 2022, they rebounded during the third and fourth quarters. “Russia is now importing more or less the same quantity of products that it was importing by the end of 2021,” he said.
This relatively quick recovery was due to Russia reorienting its trade flows from Europe to Asia, especially China, Sapir explained. Another important factor was that Russian companies had become fairly adept at circumventing Western sanctions with the help of counterparts in third-party countries. As a result, many European and American goods were still finding their way into the Russian market.
Rebirth of Industry
Sanctions have the potential to become a blessing in disguise for Russia, according to Konstantin Babkin, president of the Rostelmash, one of Russia’s largest agricultural equipment manufacturers.
Decades of economic integration with the West had caused Russia to sacrifice some of the industrial potential it inherited from the Soviet Union, Babkin argued. Instead of manufacturing airplanes and trucks from start to finish as it once did, Russia began to import such complex machinery from the West.
The Western sanctions imposed last year have created an urgent need for Russia to rebuild its industrial base. During a speech before the Federal Assembly on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia needed to reorient its economy from selling raw materials to the West to developing its own advanced technologies and equipment.
Babkin told Sputnik that Russia possessed all the necessary conditions to support an industrial revival — immense natural resource wealth, vast swathes of available land, a market of 150 million people, and strong scientific institutions capable of training the next generation of innovators.
The main thing needed to translate Russia’s economic potential into reality is strong government support for domestic manufacturers, he said. Some of the policy measures Babkin recommended include lower interest rates and taxes, as well as new tariffs.
“Many countries have already reached the physical or spatial limits of their development – there are no more markets left to conquer, no more fields left to sow, no more opportunities for expansion. That’s why much of the modern world is experiencing such a crisis” he said. “Russia is one of the few countries, perhaps even the only country, that has plenty of room to develop further. We can grow many times over if we rely on our resources, ourselves, and our civilization.”
Sources: Public data, vedomosti.ru, forbes.ru, cbr.ru
Some Russian companies are already moving to fill newly-created niches in the domestic market. Last November, the Russian manufacturing sector experienced its largest expansion in over five years, according to a business survey by the S&P Global financial analytics firm. A surge in domestic demand was the primary driving force behind the increased output and employment.
Babkin noted that after the West imposed sanctions against Russia in 2014 over the reunification of Crimea, the share of Russian-made agricultural equipment on the domestic market jumped from 25% to 65%. He argued that the current round of sanctions could provide a similar impetus to resurrect Russian aircraft and automobile production.
“Today, the priority task in civil aviation is to launch the serial production of fully Russian-made passenger aircraft, without any foreign components, as quickly as possible” the United Air Corporation, a Russian aerospace company that is part of the Rostec state corporation, told Sputnik. The company explained that the decision of Western airliner giants Boeing and Airbus to exit the Russian market last year was forcing domestic manufacturers to not only step up aircraft production, but also start making their own engines and other key components.
For its part, the United Air Corporation plans on manufacturing 500 aircraft by 2030 to help replace Russia’s existing fleet of foreign planes, which will be gradually retired. One of its most promising projects is the MC-21, a next-generation passenger aircraft that is already in production. The main advantage of the MC-21 is its cutting-edge composite wing, which provides the plane with superior aerodynamics.
Technological Sovereignty
One of the central objectives of Western sanctions is to suffocate Russian technological innovation. When Biden unveiled the first Ukraine-related sanctions package last year, he promised that the US and its allies would impair Russia’s “ability to compete in a high-tech 21st century economy.” The technological aspect of sanctions has only become more important since then. Although Western politicians now admit that sanctions have failed to collapse the Russian economy, they still express hope that technological restrictions will stunt Russia’s progress in the long run.
That is an assumption challenged by many Russian scientists and entrepreneurs. Evgeny Nikolaev is a project manager at Health Test, a Russian company that is working to develop a machine-learning program that will help doctors to diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease in patients during the earliest stages of its development. The technology, which has no foreign analogues, is currently undergoing clinical tests at a Moscow hospital, after which it will be distributed to other medical institutions in the Russian capital.
Nikolaev said that Western sanctions have not had any meaningful impact on the project’s development, noting that all the “necessary reagents and consumables could be replaced with domestic ones or obtained through parallel importation.” At the same time, he emphasized that Russian scientists did not need foreign sponsorships in order to make breakthroughs. He noted that government institutions such as the Moscow Department of Health and the Moscow Innovation Cluster were offering the project significant support in terms of product development and practical application.
A similar argument was advanced by Valentin Makarov, president of the Russian Software Developers Association (RUSSOFT). He told Sputnik that Russia had two advantages it could rely on to keep innovating despite Western sanctions. The first was Russia’s strong scientific education, which has a legacy of excellence dating back to the Czarist-period. Additionally, Makarov argued that Russia was well positioned to build new technological partnerships with non-Western economies such as China and India.
Ironically enough, sanctions had provided Russian software and cybersecurity systems with an opportunity to show their resilience in the face of unprecedented external pressure.
“Following the start of the special military operation, we saw a manifold increase in cyber attacks against Russian systems, a ban on the use of foreign software, and the termination of support licenses for this software,“ he said. “Despite everything that happened, Russian systems continued to work as before. It turned out that giant American corporations, which dominate the global information technologies, cannot destroy the operation of these Russian systems. This showed everybody that Russia has the capacity for technological sovereignty.”
According to Makarov, the world was on the brink of a new technological order – one centered on artificial intelligence and cyber-physical systems. Instead of remaining a junior partner in the Western-led technological ecosystem, Russia needed to seize the initiative and develop its own ambitious, revolutionary projects in coordination with its allies.
One promising idea, Makarov said, was for Russia to spearhead the creation of a new Eurasian digital financial payment system. Such an initiative would not only facilitate greater regional trade, but also shield its members from Western sanctions and other forms of economic pressure.
“We cannot become leaders in the new technological order by continuing to sell oil and gas to the world market and then using those profits to buy technological systems developed by other countries,” he said. “If we do not focus on developing our own systems, in cooperation with partners from friendly countries of course, then that means we will again be dependent on someone else. Russia has a huge number of specialists capable of creating new technologies that will change the world, so we must take advantage of that.”
February 24, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | China, European Union, France, India, Russia |
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https://www.bitchute.com/video/MdhlKZRWTMtc/
And then they turned this place into a cheesy Route 66 park, museum and gift shop that barely mentions WHY the place is even a park now *to begin with*…
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February 24, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Human rights, United States |
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The Indian public interest advocate, Prashant Bhushan, lights the path forward.
An old friend who loves India once told me it is the only country in which he’d met what he called an “enlightened man.” His understanding of “enlightenment” was influenced by the German philologist, Max Mueller’s translation of the Sanskrit word, Bodhi (German: Erwachen or Erleuchtung) which translates into English as “awaken” or “enlightenment.” While most of us—with our myriad desires, attachments, and fears—blunder through life, he who possesses Bodhi sees through all of the illusions and deceptions.
My friend was convinced that an enlightened man is instantly recognizable as such, because his enlightenment gives him extraordinary calm, cheerfulness, and courage. At the time I heard this, years ago, I figured my friend was just one of many westerners who have romanticized India. But then, at a conference in Delhi on February 7, I met the great Indian lawyer and public interest advocate, Prashant Bhushan.
As he was one of many people I met at the conference, I didn’t initially realize that he is a world-renowned jurist who recently persuaded the Indian Supreme Court to strike down India’s vaccine mandates as unconstitutional. The only detail I caught in our introduction was that he was a medical freedom advocate. I sat next to him on stage with Drs. McCullough and Malhotra. Before the audience was seated and the formal introductions began, I asked him about the origin of the Indian Constitution.
He had the most friendly and elegant way of speaking with great erudition and not a hint of pedantry. And though a relatively small and slightly built man, he seemed to exude an inner strength. After we spoke for a while, Dr. McCullough leaned over to me and said, “It’s not every day you get to meet a guy who argues a case before the Supreme Court and wins.”
“What?” I asked, not entirely believing my ears.
“Yeah!” McCullough said. “Prashant took on the vaccine syndicate in India and won.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “What a man!”
During lunch I Googled him and read his Wikipedia entry, which tells of his extraordinary career as public interest advocate for human rights, environmental protection, constitutional protection, and government accountability, performing most of his work pro bono. In a world of selfish greed and corruption, Mr. Bhushan is one of those rare, enlightened souls who really can lead mankind out of the dark.
The Hindu Times published a report on his argument before the Indian Supreme Court. It seems to me that his reasoning and his victory serve as a beacon of hope for everyone who cares about classical liberal principles and constitutional protections.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, India |
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New lawsuits have been filed against an array of Community Medical Centres in California over their covid care protocol…
Gilead’s Remdesivir is a drug that has received a lot of criticism, and rightly so.
Prior to the pandemic, the World Health Organisation rejected its use due to poor trial studies abroad. NIAID-sponsored trials had likewise documented troubling issues. Reported adverse events were significant:
In short, a plethora of studies indicated it had potentially bizarre and fatal effects depending on the patient’s health. Patients who had a multi-organ impairment, for example, exhibited detrimental impacts on their renal function after the drug was administered. The FDA, nonetheless, granted its use under Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) when a study showed it reduced COVID hospitalisation duration by 4 days.
From that point on, Remdesivir became part of every COVID-19 protocol across the country. Reports from 2020 have since revealed that if a vulnerable patient (aged 65 and over) came into a medical centre and tested positive, Remdesivir was the treatment most likely to be offered. That patient would then be placed or declared in the ICU as an inpatient.
Here is where the story turns very sinister.
According to local sources in California, hospitals that took on inpatient complex cases could charge up to 144x more than an outpatient case. As soon as they treated these patients within their facilities, they could apply for reimbursement from Medicare. In other words, there was a clear financial incentive for hospitals to “over-treat” patients to maximise profits.
With these reports now circulating, 14 Californian residents living in the Fresno area have filed lawsuits against various medical centres. These include Community Regional Medical Center, Clovis Community Medical Center, and St. Agnes Medical Center.
One plaintiff’s claim about a medical centre’s covid protocol is particularly reprehensible:
“A patient comes to the hospital often for problem unrelated to COVID-19. They are told they have COVID-19 or ‘COVID pneumonia’. They are immediately separated from their loved ones, and usually declared to be in ICU, even though they are often just placed in room. They are told that the deadly Remdesivir is the only available and safe treatment. They are usually told that if they leave the Hospital against ‘medical advice’ they will void their insurance. They are placed on BiPap machine at high rate, making it difficult for them to breathe. Their hands are often tied down so they can‘t take the BiPap machine off their face. After their hands are tied down, and sometimes before, [a] psychiatrist comes to the room and determines that they are ‘agitated.’ This results in the protocol patient being placed on morphine or something similar. Sedating the patient makes it more difficult for them to communicate and more difficult for them to fight the effects of Remdesivir especially as it relates to their ability to breathe….”
All the lawsuits are being funded by the Arizona-based medical advocacy nonprofit Truth For Health Foundation. The organisation is run by Elizabeth Lee Vliet MD. Currently, the three aforementioned lawsuits will return to court for case management in January.
Note: These claims do not concern ‘End-Of-Life Care Protocols’. They concern COVID care protocols in general. We’ve seen similar claims made in the UK regarding Midazolam but again this concerned ‘End-Of-Life’ care. These lawsuits could well lift the thickly-blackened veil (for the wider masses) on the medical industry’s capacity to treat patients like cattle.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, Gilead, Human rights, remdesivir, United States |
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Despite investing hundreds of billions of dollars via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, dozens of trains in the US continue to derail every year, resulting in massive damage to people and the environment.
“I’ve seen the pictures of the bubbling in the water. I’ve seen the pictures of the dead animals. I wouldn’t drink that water, would you?” Michael Barasch, a 9/11 Ground Zero victims’ attorney, told American media.
The lawyer warned of an impending mass outbreak of cancer in the affected population as a result of the massive derailment of a train transporting chemicals in Ohio. He also urged not to be swayed by claims of government agencies that there is no danger, advising them to fight for their rights and protect themselves. One of the components carried by the ill-fated train, vinyl chloride, has previously been linked to the development of various cancerous tumors.
“This is an explosion of cancers waiting to happen. And you won’t see it for years — sometimes 5, 10, 20 years. This is scary stuff,” Michael Barasch, the attorney said.
A train derailment near the town of East Palestine, Ohio, on February 3 caused massive pollution, as the train was carrying hazardous chemicals. For some three weeks now, the Department of Transportation’s leadership, headed by Pete Buttigieg, has been criticized in the media for failing to act . On February 21, the head of the department said he plans to visit the site of the tragedy, but has so far not given a specific date for the trip, although he regularly appears at a variety of public events.
The train was carrying about 1.1 million pounds of vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, isobutylene, and other highly hazardous chemicals. Lawyer Michael Barasch, who has helped thousands of 9/11 victims get medical treatment, criticized claims by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the water was drinkable and the air in the area was safe.
This all comes against the backdrop of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, in place since November 2021, which has been touted by President Joe Biden as one of the most ambitious infrastructure renewal projects in US history. Designed among other things to renew rail infrastructure with billions of dollars in investment, thousands of train accidents continue to occur in the US every year, including more than a dozen major accidents in the past year.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular | United States |
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It was 21 years ago this month that I was flown in the belly of a US cargo plane, hooded, blindfolded, gagged and chained in an orange jumpsuit, for over 40 hours. I didn’t know where I was being taken, or why.
My journey into the unknown started when I was sold to the CIA as an “Egyptian Al-Qaida general” in 2001 after the US invaded Afghanistan. I was 18 years old, and I am from Yemen. After I was imprisoned for around three months in a black site in Afghanistan, I was taken to Kandahar military prison, an airbase that served as a transit station to the unknown. I wasn’t the only one being held there.
When a huge cargo plane landed in Kandahar three weeks later, we all knew that some of us would disappear. Without being able to see, hear or speak, we were dragged to the first plane blindfolded, and then chained to the floor. It was a journey of pain and suffering. When the plane eventually landed, we hoped it would be the end to our suffering. It wasn’t. It was only the beginning of a longer, more brutal journey.
Soldiers never seem to get tired of the beating and shouting. When the second flight ended, it was still not the end of the journey. The US marines snatched and dragged me onto a bus, and then onto a ferry. Where was I going? The first clue came from the sea, which was the first friend who welcomed me. A marine shouted in English and an Arab marine translated: “You are under the control of the US marines!” They continued to shout and physically assault us for the rest of the way.
The ferry eventually docked and a bus took us on the final leg of the journey. We were disembarked by being snatched, one after another. I was forced to sit on my knees for hours. The duct tape over my mouth blocked my screams. Every cell in my body was screaming but no one could hear my cries. They could see the pain, and I felt like maybe their twisted humanity was screaming back, too.
After going through the processing station —where we experienced humiliation and degradation over and over again — soldiers dragged my naked body over sharp gravel to a cage where an IRF (Immediate Reaction Force) team piled on top of me and started removing the chains violently; then the hood, goggles, earmuffs and the duct tape. Soldiers shouted into my ears, “DETAINEE 441! STOP RESISTING!” Resisting? I was barely breathing. Without knowing it, what they did at that moment was introduce the word “resist” into my mental landscape. That’s what I needed to do; I just had no idea how.
At night, it took a while for my sight to come back, but it was still blurry. All I could see was an ocean of orange figures caged just like me, all I could hear were rattling chains, slamming doors, soldiers shouting in their loudest voice, “SHUT THE F**K UP, DON’T LOOK AT ME, LOOK DOWN, NO TALKING!” The dogs barking in the near distance sounded less aggressive than them. The barking never stopped. As in never. It sounded as though they were protesting at the inhumane treatment in their own way.
On my first morning in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp — for that is where I was — I took a long look around me. I found myself caged in a rose chain-link cage where even animals wouldn’t survive. There were many others there too. I could see swollen faces with bruises, black eyes, shaved heads and faces, split lips and bleeding wounds. We all looked the same. It was like a signature that the soldiers wanted to leave on us all. US President George W. Bush and his administration needed to prove that they were “winning” the “War on Terror”, so they called us the worst of the worst.
We were dragged to this unknown place from different parts of the world; some of us were sold for a bounty and some were handed over to the CIA by their own governments. It was the first time in history that such a thing was done: there we were; 800 men and children — yes, children — from 50 nationalities, speaking over 20 different languages, having different mindsets and cultures, snatched and flown to a dark hole hidden from the rest of the world. This American prison camp wasn’t even in America.
Everything was taken from us, and we became just orange figures with numbers printed on a bracelet locked on our wrists. Our captors stripped us of our freedom and imprisoned our bodies and wanted to control us and deny our humanity, but they failed to understand that what really makes us unique individuals are characteristics such as our names, values, relations, morals, beliefs, ethics, emotions, memories, language, knowledge, experiences, talents, feelings, dreams, nationalities and, of course, our innate distinctive humanity. These were part of another DNA, and a survival kit which the US government didn’t want to know about. They thought that they could control our bodies and freedom, but they would never control our hearts and souls.
Yes, we were isolated and disconnected from our families and the rest of the world, but even in America’s dark hole, life won. We created our own world. Yes, we were tortured and abused, but we also sang, danced, resisted and survived. Also, we soon found other generous guests at Guantanamo who came to visit us regularly, who challenged the US restrictions and never had CIA clearance to visit. They came to share our meals, to listen to us, and to tell us that everything will be okay. We became friends and families with the iguanas, cats, birds and banana rats.
Guantanamo started with a selection of Muslims from around the world, but it kept changing, evolving and growing. We lived through Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta, Camp 5, Camp 6, Camp Echo and others. We went through the torture programmes and abuse by interrogators, psychologists and a whole host of camp staff. We went on hunger strike to protest against the torture and injustice, only to be tortured more. We lived through all the years of Guantanamo: we lived through its Dark Age, its Golden Age, and back again to the Dark Age. With each year we grew older and our imprisonment only settled into us more deeply. Our captors got more creative in developing torture techniques to break us and to try to turn us into something we were not.
To survive through the darkness in that dark hole, we only had each other and whatever makes us human beings. We were fathers, husbands, brothers and sons from different parts of the world. Some of us were teachers, doctors, soldiers, commanders, journalists, lawyers, tribal elders, mafia men, poets and professors; and some were spies. We had no shared life before Guantanamo, nothing in common. At first, we started introducing ourselves to each other, and getting to know each other. I wish our captives had taken time to get to know who we really were as well, instead of just needing to prove that we were hardened terrorists.
The cycle of hardship and the torture we endured forged strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship that helped us to survive. We started developing a new shared life and a new “us” at Guantanamo. Our brains started constructing new memories, relations, knowledge and experiences, but everything related back to and was based on Guantanamo life. Sharing our knowledge, experience and culture with each other created a beautiful Guantanamo where we sang songs in different languages, danced dances from different cultures, and laughed and cried together. After years, we grew together and became part of each other’s lives and memories. Guantanamo became part of us and part of our life. Guantanamo kept growing, evolving and changing, feeding on our lives and humanity. With it, we grew old too.
We weren’t the only victims of Guantanamo: all Americans and America’s values and justice system were as well. There were many Americans who came to work in the detention camp, and they became victims too when they refused to abandon their humanity and treat us badly. Some took a stand against the system and were imprisoned; others were fired or demoted. We fought for them as much as we fought for each other because they were humans and victims too, regardless of their nationality or which side they were on. Injustice has no boundaries, colour or nationality. As we were living in Guantanamo, we didn’t want anyone else to experience it.
Through the Dark Age of 2002-2010, we protested and carried out hunger strikes for years. We fought back as much as we could; we learned from each other and taught each other. In Guantanamo’s Golden Age we learned English and art; we painted and we made ships, cabinets, trees, all from remnants of trash and leftover cardboard.
In Guantanamo, I grew up, from a young boy to a caged man. My world was Guantanamo and it’s where half of my life was taken, where days, months and years were the same.
Then after around 15 years, I was forced to leave Guantanamo the way that I was taken there, hooded and chained. When they came to tell me about my release, they told me, “You have no choice.” I made peace with Guantanamo in Guantanamo and made the decision that it wouldn’t change me; it’s part of me and of who I am.
The whole world agrees that Guantanamo is a stain on our humanity and one of the biggest human right violations of the 21st century. There are those who tortured and abused us at Guantanamo who are still bragging about their time there and their work. Their humanity was the first real victim of that place.
Despite all these reflections, though, Guantanamo hasn’t left us yet. Even today, there are 34 men still in Guantanamo, 20 of whom have been cleared for release. There are many calls for the closure of America’s black hole detention centre. For us, closing Guantanamo does not only mean shutting down the facility, but also there being full accountability for the US government for what happened there: acknowledgment of the cruel and inhumane treatment, a full and unreserved apology, and reparations for the victims.
Guantanamo symbolises oppression, injustice, torture and lawlessness. In this way, Guantanamo is now everywhere, and I can say — in the strangest of ironies — that even though we were prisoners of the US destructive “War on Terror”, the United States is and always has been a prisoner of its own violence. Guantanamo is yet another chapter of this violence and one whose legacy will live on long after the prison is closed. The United State of America itself is Guantanamo’s greatest captive.
February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Guantanamo, Human rights, United States |
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By Igor Chudov | February 22, 2023
According to Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum, ongoing global warming threatens to destroy humanity. Methane, coming from the belches and farts of cows, is a greenhouse gas (GHG). So, cows are a problem!
Fortunately, Bill Gates has a solution for us, explained in this video. We need to stop growing cattle and switch to lab-grown synthetic beef.
Bill Gates made sizable investments in “synthetic meat” manufacturers, expecting to turn a nice profit.
The World Economic Forum expects we will eat “synthetic meat” in 16 years.
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February 23, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular, Video |
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