This interpretation of events speculating that COAS Bajwa approved of an American drone flying through Pakistani airspace to assassinate the Al Qaeda chief in neighboring Afghanistan as part of his efforts to secure the Biden Administration’s support for an IMF loan is arguably much more believable that the one speculating that Russia approved the deployment of at least one US attack drone on the territory of its Kyrgyz mutual defense ally despite its rival presently waging an unprecedented proxy war against it in Ukraine.
Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was assassinated last weekend by America in a drone strike that reportedly targeted his safehouse in the Afghan capital of Kabul, prompting speculation about how exactly it carried out this attack when it doesn’t have any regional bases on record. Dawn, the largest and oldest English-language newspaper in Pakistan, published a piece that referred to uncited American reports to claim that “Drone that hit Ayman al Zawahiri flew from Kyrgyzstan”. This aligns with what a Pakistani government source familiar with the development told the Express Tribune, another one of their country’s reputable outlets, with respect to Islamabad supposedly having “no role of any sort”.
That interpretation of events lacks credibility, though. Kyrgyzstan is a Russian mutual defense ally through the CSTO and hasn’t hosted US forces since 2014. Furthermore, the official Kremlin website reported on 20 December 2011 during the bloc’s Collective Security Council meeting between its heads of state that “The leaders agreed by consensus that the deployment of military infrastructure on the territory of CSTO member states by non-members of the CSTO is possible only with the obligatory coordination of this issue with all CSTO members.” Moscow, meanwhile, has opposed the Pentagon’s reported plans to deploy forces in its regional allies’ territory since its evacuation from Afghanistan.
It’s therefore literally a conspiracy theory to claim that the American drone attack that assassinated Zawahiri in Afghanistan came from CSTO member Kyrgyzstan’s territory since this would have had to be approved by Russia in advance yet all reports on the topic prove that Moscow has consistently been against its proxy war rival deploying any military forces on the territory of its allies. With this in mind, it’s much more likely that the drone flew through Pakistani airspace from an American base in the Gulf exactly as many had speculated for obvious reasons despite Islamabad indirectly denying this through the government source that reportedly spoke to the Express Tribune as was earlier cited.
Should that have been the case, then it would suggest that the Pakistani military once again did a favor for its American allies by approving overflight through their country’s airspace, perhaps in exchange for some shadowy quid pro quo that hasn’t yet been revealed but might be connected to Chief Of Army Staff (COAS) Bajwa’s reported efforts to gin up economic support after everything crashed following the extremely unpopularpost-modern coup against former Prime Minister Khan. The man who many believe to be the country’s de facto leader nowadays reportedly just sought help from the US for an IMF loan and also reportedly just approached Pakistan’s Emirati and Saudi allies for assistance too.
This interpretation of events speculating that COAS Bajwa approved of an American drone flying through Pakistani airspace to assassinate the Al Qaeda chief in neighboring Afghanistan as part of his efforts to secure the Biden Administration’s support for an IMF loan is arguably much more believable that the one speculating that Russia approved the deployment of at least one US attack drone on the territory of its Kyrgyz mutual defense ally despite its rival presently waging an unprecedented proxy war against it in Ukraine. It’s of course everyone’s right to believe whatever they want, but the first-mentioned interpretation is credible while the second is indisputably a conspiracy theory.
Democracy is easily defined by most, but to America it means any country that subverts its own national interests to those of the U.S.
Henry Kissinger once famously said, “To be an enemy to America can be dangerous, but to be a friend can be lethal.” The aged but far from venerable Kissinger’s words have never been truer than they are today. America has a habit of redefining words to suit its own purposes. What the word “friend” means to America is interpreted differently by other nations. Of course friend is not the only word that means something different to America than it does to everyone else. Democracy is easily defined by most, but to America it means any country that subverts its own national interests to those of the U.S. The recent Summit of the Americas held in Los Angeles hosted a number of notable Latin America statesmen. There were however many notable absentees, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the latter two are undeniably democracies but by virtue of their independent government policies they were not welcome at the American-hosted summit. According to America’s twisted version of democracy, only right-wing, neo-liberal, America-friendly countries can qualify as legitimate democratic governments, and by extension “friends.”
The days when America can dictate and bully Latin American nations are over. Though not as intended by the hosts, there was much unity and friendship in evidence at the Summit. The head of Mexico’s socialist Government Manuel Lopez Obrador refused to attend in protest at the exclusion of the three absent nations, a lower-level official was sent in his stead. The heads of state of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador also declined the invitation citing the same reason. This principled and courageous stance came with the understanding that they would be positioning themselves as American enemies, but they did it anyway. After two hundred years under the imperialist Monroe doctrine they will no longer tolerate being considered America’s backyard. The message from Latin America was clear, “we don’t need your version of friendship, and we will take our chances as your enemy.”
Although unstated, one of the main U.S. objectives at the Summit was to dissuade further Latin American engagement with China. The problem for America is that “south of the border” they prefer the Chinese version of friendship. That entails actually listening to the needs of their “friends”, something America is lamentably bad at. All the Latin countries are struggling with burdensome IMF debt and many are seriously close to default. They need investment in their economies and their infrastructure. China offers both without the internal interference in the nations’ domestic affairs. Respect for sovereignty and self-determination is what Latin Americans having been fighting for since the Spanish conquest more than 400 years ago. For the first time in centuries countries can see how that can now be achieved, and China is a big part of that scenario. America only offers co-operation on security, Latin America has security concerns but most of that concern is directed at America. The tone deaf empire needs to understand that Latin America has a new, much better friend.
The message the U.S. got from the Summit was a clear continent-wide rejection of American policies and its attempts to create an anti-China block. We can assume that American officials are getting used to such rejection by now. Attempts to create an anti-China alliance in Asia have also failed miserably, for many of the same reasons. No Asian country sees China as a threat, they see it as a regional leader whose economic miracle has concurrently raised the economies of its neighbours. The U.S. attempts to create security concerns where they don’t exist has gained zero traction among Southeast Asian nations. With the exception of the occupied nations of South Korea and Japan, China’s relationships with its Asian neighbours are excellent. “Malaysian Prime Minister Ismail Jaakob said that “When Americans come to Asia they only want to talk about security, we have no pressing security concerns, when Asian nations get together we talk about trade, any problems can be resolved through negotiation and diplomacy”. The main security concern among Asian nations is the talk of the need for an Asian NATO. The recent U.S. attempts to place missiles aimed at China in six Asian countries unsurprisingly found no takers. If America was listening (doubtful), they would have heard that it is neither needed nor wanted in a region that just wants to do business. American friendship in Asia means making any enemy of China, and none consider that worth the price.
Another of America’s enemies, Russia has defied all attempts to destroy its economy and has rebounded to have the world’s strongest currency. The transparent motivations behind the Ukraine conflict have many nations quietly cheering Russia on in their fight against the common enemy, the Empire. The sanctions designed to destroy Russia found little support outside the usual suspects in the NATO clique. With the world facing catastrophic shortages of food, energy and capital it is increasingly Russia and China that countries are turning to for help.
While America’s enemies continue to enjoy much goodwill, how are America’s friends doing? Not so good. By joining in the absurd Anti-China Covid rhetoric spurred by Trump, Australia, Canada and Britain have committed economic suicide by alienating a valuable trade partner, just to please America. American friends in Europe will suffer through horrific food and energy shortages together with rapidly increasing inflation, all largely a result of the Ukraine provocation. Not forgetting the instigation of an unnecessary and dangerous war in their neighbourhood, a war that no one but America (NATO) wanted. And of course the Ukraine itself, goaded into a disastrous war against a much stronger foe, now finds itself facing defeat and destruction. All attempts by the hapless Zelensky at a negotiated peace are blocked by the West. Not while there are some Ukrainians still alive apparently. Despite the encouraging words of his American masters, the disposable Zelensky finds himself very much alone. The once prosperous post-Soviet Ukraine has turned into a bankrupt, burned-out shell of its former self. Zelensky may well retreat to his $45mil in Miami when it is all over, but the unfortunate Ukrainian people will suffer the consequences of American friendship for generations to come.
If America has its way, its “friends” in Taiwan will soon suffer the same fate as the Ukraine. Despite all attempts to provoke China into an action that would draw International outrage, and presumably sanctions, China has demonstrated considerable restraint. It understands the game being played and absent a foolish Declaration of Independence from Taiwan, it is unlikely to be drawn in. South Korea and Japan have been occupied nations since 1944. The American presence is overwhelmingly objected to by the citizens, yet they owe fealty to America. In the event of a China conflict, their U.S. bases would likely be the first targets in any China response. Yet both nations declined American requests to host China facing missiles in their countries.
The loss of American influence has accelerated tremendously in recent months, and it came at a bad time. America needs friends more than ever now and it is finding them increasingly hard to come by. Even long time “friends” and supplicants like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are shunning America’s call to produce more oil. Biden couldn’t even get MBS to take his phone call. Shamelessly they also turned to Venezuela to ask for oil, unsurprisingly they found no friends or solutions there either.
Returning to Henry Kissinger, by his definition, being a friend or enemy of America can be equally dangerous. “America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests”
Those that consider themselves American “friends” should heed his words.
But credit where it is due, the U.S. is indeed inspiring a new spirit of friendship and co-operation among the nations of the world. Economic and security blocs of like-minded countries are expanding in Central Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. All of these blocs are anti-imperialist in nature, and by definition anti-American. More than a century of American imperialism is coming to a rapid end.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY (Scheerpost) — The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.
The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.
We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.
Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.
There were three restraints to the avarice and bloodlust of the permanent war economy that no longer exist. The first was the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, led by politicians such as Senator George McGovern, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Senator J. William Fulbright, who wrote The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. The self-identified progressives, a pitiful minority, in Congress today, from Barbara Lee, who was the single vote in the House and the Senate opposing a broad, open-ended authorization allowing the president to wage war in Afghanistan or anywhere else, to Ilhan Omar now dutifully line up to fund the latest proxy war. The second restraint was an independent media and academia, including journalists such as I.F Stone and Neil Sheehan along with scholars such as Seymour Melman, author of The Permanent War Economy and Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. Third, and perhaps most important, was an organized anti-war movement, led by religious leaders such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Phil and Dan Berrigan as well as groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They understood that unchecked militarism was a fatal disease.
None of these opposition forces, which did not reverse the permanent war economy but curbed its excesses, now exist. The two ruling parties have been bought by corporations, especially military contractors. The press is anemic and obsequious to the war industry. Propagandists for permanent war, largely from right-wing think tanks lavishly funded by the war industry, along with former military and intelligence officials, are exclusively quoted or interviewed as military experts. NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired a segment May 13 where officials from Center for a New American Security (CNAS) simulated what a war with China over Taiwan might look like. The co-founder of CNAS, Michèle Flournoy, who appeared in the “Meet the Press” war games segment and was considered by Biden to run the Pentagon, wrote in 2020 in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. needs to develop “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.”
The handful of anti-militarists and critics of empire from the left, such as Noam Chomsky, and the right, such as Ron Paul, have been declared persona non grata by a compliant media. The liberal class has retreated into boutique activism where issues of class, capitalism and militarism are jettisoned for “cancel culture,” multiculturalism and identity politics. Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. There is little hope, I fear, of rolling back or restraining the disasters being orchestrated on a national and global level. The neoconservatives and liberal interventionists chant in unison for war. Biden has appointed these war mongers, whose attitude to nuclear war is terrifyingly cavalier, to run the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the State Department.
Since all we do is war, all proposed solutions are military. This military adventurism accelerates the decline, as the defeat in Vietnam and the squandering of $8 trillion in the futile wars in the Middle East illustrate. War and sanctions, it is believed, will cripple Russia, rich in gas and natural resources. War, or the threat of war, will curb the growing economic and military clout of China.
These are demented and dangerous fantasies, perpetrated by a ruling class that has severed itself from reality. No longer able to salvage their own society and economy, they seek to destroy those of their global competitors, especially Russia and China. Once the militarists cripple Russia, the plan goes, they will focus military aggression on the Indo-Pacific, dominating what Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, referring to the Pacific, called “the American Sea.”
You cannot talk about war without talking about markets. The U.S., whose growth rate has fallen to below 2 percent, while China’s growth rate is 8.1 percent, has turned to military aggression to bolster its sagging economy. If the U.S. can sever Russian gas supplies to Europe, it will force Europeans to buy from the United States. U.S. firms, at the same time, would be happy to replace the Chinese Communist Party, even if they must do it through the threat of war, to open unfettered access to Chinese markets. War, if it did break out with China, would devastate the Chinese, American, and global economies, destroying free trade between countries as in World War I. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
Washington is desperately trying to build military and economic alliances to ward off a rising China, whose economy is expected by 2028 to overtake that of the United States, according to the UK’s Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The White House has said Biden’s current visit to Asia is about sending a “powerful message” to Beijing and others about what the world could look like if democracies “stand together to shape the rules of the road.” The Biden administration has invited South Korea and Japan to attend the NATO summit in Madrid.
But fewer and fewer nations, even among European allies, are willing to be dominated by the United States. Washington’s veneer of democracy and supposed respect for human rights and civil liberties is so badly tarnished as to be irrecoverable. Its economic decline, with China’s manufacturing 70 percent higher than that of the U.S., is irreversible. War is a desperate Hail Mary, one employed by dying empires throughout history with catastrophic consequences. “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Thucydides noted in the History of the Peloponnesian War.
A key component to the sustenance of the permanent war state was the creation of the All-Volunteer Force. Without conscripts, the burden of fighting wars falls to the poor, the working class, and military families. This All-Volunteer Force allows the children of the middle class, who led the Vietnam anti-war movement, to avoid service. It protects the military from internal revolts, carried out by troops during the Vietnam War, which jeopardized the cohesion of the armed forces.
The All-Volunteer Force, by limiting the pool of available troops, also makes the global ambitions of the militarists impossible. Desperate to maintain or increase troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military instituted the stop-loss policy that arbitrarily extended active-duty contracts. Its slang term was the backdoor draft. The effort to bolster the number of troops by hiring private military contractors, as well, had a negligible effect. Increased troop levels would not have won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but the tiny percentage of those willing to serve in the military (only 7 percent of the U.S. population are veterans) is an unacknowledged Achilles heel for the militarists.
“As a consequence, the problem of too much war and too few soldiers eludes serious scrutiny,” writes historian and retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich in After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. “Expectations of technology bridging that gap provide an excuse to avoid asking the most fundamental questions: Does the United States possess the military wherewithal to oblige adversaries to endorse its claim of being history’s indispensable nation? And if the answer is no, as the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest, wouldn’t it make sense for Washington to temper its ambitions accordingly?”
This question, as Bacevich points out, is “anathema.” The military strategists work from the supposition that the coming wars won’t look anything like past wars. They invest in imaginary theories of future wars that ignore the lessons of the past, ensuring more fiascos.
The political class is as self-deluded as the generals. It refuses to accept the emergence of a multi-polar world and the palpable decline of American power. It speaks in the outdated language of American exceptionalism and triumphalism, believing it has the right to impose its will as the leader of the “free world.” In his 1992 Defense Planning Guidance memorandum, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued that the U.S. must ensure no rival superpower again arises. The U.S. should project its military strength to dominate a unipolar world in perpetuity. On February 19, 1998, on NBC’s “TodayShow”, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave the Democratic version of this doctrine of unipolarity. “If we have to use force it is because we are Americans; we are the indispensable nation,” she said. “We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future.”
This demented vision of unrivaled U.S. global supremacy, not to mention unrivaled goodness and virtue, blinds the establishment Republicans and Democrats. The military strikes they casually used to assert the doctrine of unipolarity, especially in the Middle East, swiftly spawned jihadist terror and prolonged warfare. None of them saw it coming until the hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center twin towers. That they cling to this absurd hallucination is the triumph of hope over experience.
There is a deep loathing among the public for these elitist Ivy League architects of American imperialism. Imperialism was tolerated when it was able to project power abroad and produce rising living standards at home. It was tolerated when it restrained itself to covert interventions in countries such as Iran, Guatemala, and Indonesia. It went off the rails in Vietnam. The military defeats that followed accompanied a steady decline in living standards, wage stagnation, a crumbling infrastructure and eventually a series of economic policies and trade deals, orchestrated by the same ruling class, which deindustrialized and impoverished the country.
The establishment oligarchs, now united in the Democratic Party, distrust Donald Trump. He commits the heresy of questioning the sanctity of the American empire. Trump derided the invasion of Iraq as a “big, fat mistake.” He promised “to keep us out of endless war.” Trump was repeatedly questioned about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. Putin was “a killer,” one interviewer told him. “There are a lot of killers,” Trump retorted. “You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump dared to speak a truth that was to be forever unspoken, the militarists had sold out the American people.
Noam Chomsky took some heat for pointing out, correctly, that Trumpis the “one statesman” who has laid out a “sensible” proposition to resolve the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The proposed solution included “facilitating negotiations instead of undermining them and moving toward establishing some kind of accommodation in Europe…in which there are no military alliances but just mutual accommodation.”
Trump is too unfocused and mercurial to offer serious policy solutions. He did set a timetable to withdraw from Afghanistan, but he also ratcheted up the economic war against Venezuela and reinstituted crushing sanctions against Cuba and Iran, which the Obama administration had ended. He increased the military budget. He apparently flirted with carrying out a missile strike on Mexico to “destroy the drug labs.” But he acknowledges a distaste for imperial mismanagement that resonates with the public, one that has every right to loath the smug mandarins that plunge us into one war after another. Trump lies like he breathes. But so do they.
The 57 Republicans who refused to support the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, along with many of the 19 bills that included an earlier $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine, come out of the kooky conspiratorial world of Trump. They, like Trump, repeat this heresy. They too are attacked and censored. But the longer Biden and the ruling class continue to pour resources into war at our expense, the more these proto fascists, already set to wipe out Democratic gains in the House and the Senate this fall, will be ascendant. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during the debate on the aid package to Ukraine, which most members were not given time to closely examine, said: “$40 billion dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies.”
“An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added. “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”
Democrat Jamie Raskin immediately attacked Greene for parroting the propaganda of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Greene, like Trump, spoke a truth that resonates with a beleaguered public. The opposition to permanent war should have come from the tiny progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which unfortunately sold out to the craven Democratic Party leadership to save their political careers. Greene is demented, but Raskin and the Democrats peddle their own brand of lunacy. We are going to pay a very steep price for this burlesque.
Everybody is behaving like crazy ants seeking Information on the Web(1), junkies that are looking for Battle Maps, Strategical and Tactical Analysis, Political speeches and statements, Videos of combat footage between the contenders, rocket and aerial Bombings, a little bit of gore here and there…
But… I would like to write some words about the Hidden Losses of this War. Losses so heavy to bear that if this were to happen in any of the countries in the zone A, they would need years (alas Decades!) of hard work, psychological help, post-traumatic-stress-disorder medication, and a lot of caresses on the back to recover from.
Because no matter what, for Russia, these losses would affect the future generations of Russians in a much more profound way that all the destruction and casualties of WWII… All this, of course, according to the actual politically correct, woke-friendly, gender fluid, non-racist, liberal way of thinking that is actually predicated and practiced in the countries of Zone A.
What am I writing about?
Russian Influencers CRY(2) about the closing of their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts.
After President VVP signed and implemented his “Article 207.3” of the Criminal Code of Russia against the dissemination of false information, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have left (or have been blocked and forbidden) the Russian Federation. After the Tit for Tat measures following the closure of RT, Sputnik News, and other Russian Media outlets in some Western Countries. CNN, BBC, DW, and other MSM(3) News Broadcasters have to leave the country or face the consequences.
Some of the most known Russian Influencers on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter(4) are complaining that they have lost their well-earned income sources. They are complaining that they wouldn’t be able to help millions of adolescents and young people that are absolutely dependent on their opinion, about which nail lacquer, makeup, or fashion trends to follow just to mention a couple of vitally important aspects of their lives. Some others were complaining that they wouldn’t be able to buy Louis Vuitton, Dolce & Gabana, Salvatore Ferragano, Gucci, or Lipton Candies anymore. Whatever these candies are, they are so incredibly exclusive that you have to be one of the members of “la crème de la crème” to get one, because it is the first time I hear these candies Exist. Some of them (Influencers) also pointed out that this closure will cause a lot of people to lose their jobs and the devastating impact that this will have on the Russian economy(5).
Recent estimates, after an analysis of this problem based on open sources by Bellingcat, the CIA, the US State Department, The Pentagon, the NSA, and some of the most renowned Think Tanks in Washington (6) are saying that these Job losses might be equivalent to the number of Moderate Rebels trained by the US and their Proxies to fight in Syria against the Assad Tyrannical Regime(7).
If you add to the loss of such Mainstream Media Outlets the fact that some of the most famous brands and products of Restauration and Fast Food companies are ceasing their activity and leaving the Russian Federation. Such as McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Starbucks, Heinz Ketchup, Doritos, Lipton, Candies(8), and many others… we can say without a doubt that the Russian Federation Citizens will be, after a couple of months, the most healthy, centered, self-reliable and well informed human beings of the entire World. As I said, it will affect the future generations of Russians for the years to come.
Ha! A hit from which they will never recover, that is why Russia is doomed.
Thank God(9), the People in Zone A, do not have to suffer such nuisances, difficulties, and inconveniences.
God Bless our beloved leaders.
F(unny) MAN
References
If you are reading this, I have to inform you that you are one of those Junkies.
This is absolutely unacceptable for the Zone A, this grade of cruelty is infuriating. The degree of unfairness, political incorrectness, misogynism and racism that this Influencers have to suffer can be perfectly considered a CASUS BELLI for an intervention of NATOstani countries in Ukraine
One of the acceptations of MSM is: Mainstream Media. In this case Manure, Shite and Muck is a better definition if applied to such Outlets.
I don’t want to name them, there is quite a couple dozen, just make some research in google. But you should know that Viewer discretion is advised, due to the crudeness of the Instagram images, Facebook videos, and Twitter statements that you might find.
Please refer to Reference (7)
BCR Institute (Bottom Cellar Rats Institute), SMB (Scratch My Back, I will scratch yours later), CMICPC (Crap Military Industrial Complex Porn Center), BNL Institute (go Brandon, Neocons and Libertards Institute)
5… yes, that is, 5… only 5. After Billions of Dollars of taxpayer’s money invested. They could send only 5 Moderate rebels to the Fight in Syria.
I still don’t know, what the Hell Lipton Candies are, I tried to find them on the internet, somewhere, to no avail… but I have to say in my defense that I haven’t found my mind yet, after the Paragraph 3 of the last Essay.
GOD the major deity in the Pantheon of Zone A, A.K.A “Gold, Oil & Diamonds“
The Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union and China just agreed to design the mechanism for an independent financial and monetary system that would bypass dollar transactions.
Russia says half its gold assets were frozen – is this for real or a slick play by Moscow?
Photo Credit: The Cradle
It was a long time coming, but finally some key lineaments of the multipolar world’s new foundations are being revealed.
On Friday, after a videoconference meeting, the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China agreed to design the mechanism for an independent international monetary and financial system. The EAEU consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia, is establishing free trade deals with other Eurasian nations, and is progressively interconnecting with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
For all practical purposes, the idea comes from Sergei Glazyev, Russia’s foremost independent economist, a former adviser to President Vladimir Putin and the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Commission, the regulatory body of the EAEU.
Glazyev’s central role in devising the new Russian and Eurasian economic/financial strategy has been examined here. He saw the western financial squeeze on Moscow coming light-years before others.
Quite diplomatically, Glazyev attributed the fruition of the idea to “the common challenges and risks associated with the global economic slowdown and restrictive measures against the EAEU states and China.”
Translation: as China is as much a Eurasian power as Russia, and they need to coordinate their strategies to bypass the US unipolar system.
The Eurasian system will be based on “a new international currency,” most probably with the yuan as reference, calculated as an index of the national currencies of the participating countries, as well as commodity prices. The first draft will be already discussed by the end of the month.
The Eurasian system is bound to become a serious alternative to the US dollar, as the EAEU may attract not only nations that have joined BRI (Kazakhstan, for instance, is a member of both) but also the leading players in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as well as ASEAN. West Asian actors – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon – will be inevitably interested.
In the medium to long term, the spread of the new system will translate into the weakening of the Bretton Woods system, which even serious US market players/strategists admit is rotten from the inside. The US dollar and imperial hegemony are facing stormy seas.
Show me that frozen gold
Meanwhile, Russia has a serious problem to tackle. This past weekend, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov confirmed that half of Russia’s gold and foreign reserves have been frozen by unilateral sanctions. It boggles the mind that Russian financial experts have placed a great deal of the nation’s wealth where it can be easily accessed – and even confiscated – by the ‘Empire of Lies’ (copyright Putin).
At first, it was not exactly clear what Siluanov had meant. How could the Central Bank’s Elvira Nabiulina and her team let half of foreign reserves and even gold be stored in Western banks and/or vaults? Or is this some sneaky diversionist tactic by Siluanov?
Hudson was quite frank: “When I first heard the word ‘frozen,’ I thought that this meant that Russia was not going to expend its precious gold reserves on supporting the ruble, trying to fight against a Soros-style raid from the west. But now the word ‘frozen’ seems to have meant that Russia had sent it abroad, outside of its control.”
“It looks like at least as of last June, all Russian gold was kept in Russia itself. At the same time, it would have been natural to have kept securities and bank deposits in the United States and Britain, because that is where most intervention in world foreign exchange markets occurs,” Hudson added.
Essentially, it’s all still up in the air: “My first reading assumed that Russia must be doing something smart. If it was smart to move gold abroad, perhaps it was doing what other central banks do: ‘lend” it to speculators, for an interest payment or fee. Until Russia tells the world where its gold was put, and why, we can’t fathom it. Was it in the Bank of England – even after England confiscated Venezuela’s gold? Was it in the New York Fed – even after the Fed confiscated Afghanistan’s reserves?”
So far, there has been no extra clarification either from Siluanov or Nabiulina. Scenarios swirl about a string of deportations to northern Siberia for national treason. Hudson adds important elements to the puzzle:
“If [the reserves] are frozen, why is Russia paying interest on its foreign debt falling due? It can direct the “freezer’ to pay, to shift the blame for default. It can talk about Chase Manhattan’s freezing of Iran’s bank account from which Iran sought to pay interest on its dollar-denominated debt. It can insist that any payments by NATO countries be settled in advance by physical gold. Or it can land paratroopers on the Bank of England, and recover gold – sort of like Goldfinger at Fort Knox. What is important is for Russia to explain what happened and how it was attacked, as a warning to other countries.”
As a clincher, Hudson could not but wink at Glazyev: “Maybe Russia should appoint a non-pro-westerner at the Central Bank.”
The petrodollar game-changer
It’s tempting to read into Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s words at the diplomatic summit in Antalya last Thursday as a veiled admission that Moscow may not have been totally prepared for the heavy financial artillery deployed by the Americans:
“We will solve the problem – and the solution will be to no longer depend on our western partners, be it governments or companies that are acting as tools of western political aggression against Russia instead of pursuing the interests of their businesses. We will make sure that we never again find ourselves in a similar situation and that neither some Uncle Sam nor anybody else can make decisions aimed at destroying our economy. We will find a way to eliminate this dependence. We should have done it long ago.”
So, ‘long ago’ starts now. And one of its planks will be the Eurasian financial system. Meanwhile, ‘the market’ (as in, the American speculative casino) has ‘judged’ (according to its self-made oracles) that Russian gold reserves – the ones that stayed in Russia – cannot support the ruble.
That’s not the issue – on several levels. The self-made oracles, brainwashed for decades, believe that the Hegemon dictates what ‘the market’ does. That’s mere propaganda. The crucial fact is that in the new, emerging paradigm, NATO nations amount to at best 15 percent of the world’s population. Russia won’t be forced to practice autarky because it does not need to: most of the world – as we’ve seen represented in the hefty non-sanctioning nation list – is ready to do business with Moscow.
Iran has shown how to do it. Persian Gulf traders confirmed to The Cradle that Iran is selling no less than 3 million barrels of oil a day even now, with no signed JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement, currently under negotiation in Vienna). Oil is re-labeled, smuggled, and transferred from tankers in the dead of night.
Another example: the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), a huge refiner, just bought 3 million barrels of Russian Urals from trader Vitol for delivery in May. There are no sanctions on Russian oil – at least not yet.
Washington’s reductionist, Mackinderesque plan is to manipulate Ukraine as a disposable pawn to go scorched-earth on Russia, and then hit China. Essentially, divide-and-rule to smash not only one but two peer competitors in Eurasia who are advancing in lockstep as comprehensive strategic partners.
As Hudson sees it: “China is in the cross-hairs, and what happened to Russia is a dress rehearsal for what can happen to China. Best to break sooner than later under these conditions. Because the leverage is highest now.”
All the blather about “crashing Russian markets,” ending foreign investment, destroying the ruble, a “full trade embargo,” expelling Russia from “the community of nations,” and so forth – that’s for the zombified galleries. Iran has been dealing with the same thing for four decades, and survived.
Historical poetic justice, as Lavrov intimated, now happens to rule that Russia and Iran are about to sign a very important agreement, which may likely be an equivalent of the Iran-China strategic partnership. The three main nodes of Eurasia integration are perfecting their interaction on the go, and sooner rather than later, may be utilizing a new, independent monetary and financial system.
But there’s more poetic justice on the way, revolving around the ultimate game-changer. And it came much sooner than we all thought.
Saudi Arabia is considering accepting Chinese yuan – and not US dollars – for selling oil to China. Translation: Beijing told Riyadh this is the new groove. The end of the petrodollar is at hand – and that is the certified nail in the coffin of the indispensable Hegemon.
Meanwhile, there’s a mystery to be solved: where is that frozen Russian gold?
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
هي ليست حرب أوكرانيا بل حرب أوروبا، فالصراع الروسي الأميركي يدور حول موقع أوروبا في الخريطة العالمية الجديدة، ومن غير المعقول أن تكون روسيا على أبواب إعلان آسيا خالية من الوجود الأميركي بينما أميركا تمسك بكل أوروبا في قبضتها، والحرب على أوروبا كانت حرباً من طرف واحد خاضها الأميركيون طوال ثلاثين عاماً، فتقدموا الى الحدود الروسية بلا تردد، سمحوا بولادة الاتحاد الأوروبي من بوابة حرب يوغوسلافيا، فالاتحاد الذي منعوا قيامه في أيام وجود الاتحاد السوفياتي منذ عام 1964 كي لا يتحول إلى قوة مستقلة، أفرجوا عنه بعد تفكك الاتحاد السوفياتي عام 1994 ليكون آلتهم القانونية لوراثته واستقطاب الدول الأوروبية الشرقية كمرحلة تمهيدية لضمها إلى حلف الناتو. والمعادلة بسيطة وهي أن أوروبا الغربية ستتحمل أكلاف الدول الأوروبية الشرقية الفقيرة، وزحف سكانها وأياديهم العاملة الرخيصة نحو الغرب وسلعهم الزراعية المنافسة، والوعد الأميركي لأوروبا هو تطويق روسيا وإلزامها بتأمين تدفق الغاز تحت شروط تفرضها واشنطن، كميات وأسعاراً، بما يتناسب ويتلاقى مع نتائج الزحف الذي بدأ نحو آسيا من قبل أميركا منذ عام 2000 وحربي أفغانستان والعراق لتطويق الصين، ووضع سقف لنموّها الاقتصادي وكميات وأسعار استهلاكها للطاقة، لتعوض أوروبا كل أكلافها على فقراء الاتحاد الأوروبي، وتحكم سيطرتها على الأسواق الآسيوية، دون مزاحمة صينية، ودون تحكم روسي بأسعار ومصادر الطاقة، وعندما لم يعد من أمل لإنعاش حروب أميركا الآسيوية، خصوصاً بعد الفشل في الحرب على سورية التي تحولت الى حرب أميركية روسية مباشرة، وبعد الانسحاب من افغانستان الذي تحول الى خيبة أوروبية كبرى، وصعود إيران التي تحولت الى مأزق أميركي أوروبي مشترك، وضع الأميركيون أوكرانيا كعنوان للحرب التي ستعيد أوروبا الى بيت الطاعة مجدداً، وستتيح جمع الطاقات الأميركية الأوروبية في حرب مشتركة تحت العنوان نفسه، محاصرة روسيا وإضعافها، وصولاً لإملاء الشروط عليها.
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الحرب على روسيا لم تتوقف وفقاً لقراءة الرئيس الروسي فلاديمير بوتين، فعام 1990 انتهت الحرب الباردة من طرف واحد هو الطرف الروسي بينما بقيت مستمرة من الطرف الأميركي، والهدف تفتيت وحدة روسيا وتحويلها الى أشلاء ممزقة ضعيفة وعاجزة، وفق نظرية قوامها أن روسيا لا بد أن تقوم يوماً ما وتستعيد عافيتها وتعود للبحث عن مستقبل يشبه ماضيها، وطالما لديها الجغرافيا والموارد والسكان والجيش، كعناصر لهذا النهوض فهي خطر على الهيمنة الأميركية على العالم؛ ولذلك خاضت روسيا اختبارات عديدة لرسم سيناريو المواجهة لقطع الطريق على الحلقة الأخيرة من هذه الحرب التي بدأت مؤشراتها بالظهور، من بوابة قيام أوكرانيا بشن حرب لاستعادة دونباس، والبدء بفتح جبهة شبه جزيرة القرم، ولأن روسيا تفهم الشيفرة الأميركية وأميركا تفهم الشيفرة الروسية، لم يكن هناك التباس حول أن أوكرانيا، روسيا الثانية بالنسبة للغرب بحجم مساحتها وسكانها وتاريخها ومواردها وجيشها، هي رأس الحربة، من خارج حلف الناتو، منعاً للتورط في حرب مباشرة. والنظر الى حجم وسرعة الإجراءات المتبادلة التي اتخذتها دول الغرب من جهة وروسيا من جهة أخرى، يبدو واضحاً أن الخطط كانت جاهزة لكل الفرضيات على طرفي الصراع، باعتبار ما يجري آخر الحروب، وأم الحروب، والحرب الفاصلة.
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بالنسبة لروسيا كانت كل الاختبارات التي تلت حرب أوكرانيا الأولى عام 2014، محور تجميع ودراسة لرسم السيناريوات والخطط، ولذلك توقفت موسكو عند حدود ضمّ شبه جزيرة القرم وأبقت وضع دونباس معلقاً، خشية أن يشكل نقطة الضعف التي تفجّر الحرب قبل ان تكون مستعدة لكل احتمالاتها، وكانت كلمة السر المفهومة من الطرفين الروسي والغربي، أن إعلان الاعتراف بجمهوريتي دونباس يعني إعلان الحرب، وأهم ما تحققت منه روسيا هو خشية أميركا وأوروبا من المواجهة العسكرية المباشرة وسعيهما لتفاديها، ورهانهما على العقوبات الاقتصادية والمالية المشددة كضربة قاضية تعادل حرباً نووية، لذلك تركزت خطة روسيا على كسب الوقت في احتواء أعلى درجات العقوبات المالية، عبر مراكمة مخزون احتياطي مالي يكفيها لسنتين، لا تطاله العقوبات، وترصد كل محاولة لتخزين احتياطات اوروبية تحرّر أسواق أوروبا من الارتهان للغاز والنفط الروسيين، وضبط أسواق النفط والغاز على حافة التوازن بين العرض والطلب، بحيث يؤدي أي تأزم إلى جنون السوق، بحيث تنتقل معركة تداعيات العقوبات إلى أوروبا، وتتحوّل التداعيات بنتائجها الى مصدر لزيادة العائدات الروسية النقدية السائلة. وإذا سارت هذه الجبهة كما يجب فتصبح إطالة أمد الحرب خطة روسية، لأن موسكو لا تريد تكرار تجربة الأميركيين في العراق، لا لجهة بسط احتلال أجنبي يصبح عرضة لحرب استنزاف، ولا لجهة بناء حكم مؤيد يعجز عن انتزاع ثقة الشعب، والحرب يجب أن تبقى نافذة مواربة مفتوحة لحل سياسي دولي شامل تكون أميركا وأوروبا شريكتين فيه.
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يستغرب الروس الحديث عن معيار السرعة لقياس نجاح عمليتهم العسكرية، وينقلون عن الرئيس فلاديمير بوتين قوله، لماذا العجلة؟.. فالوقت معنا!
Everybody and his goat are talking about the Ukraine. Why not me? You might ask, But Fred, what do you know about it? To which I would respond, Look, this is journalism. You don’t need to know anything, just wing it, preferably using words you can spell. Admittedly this is more of a limitation than it used to be. Anyway, here goes:
Why did Russia invade the Ukraine? Contrary to American media, the invasion was not unprovoked. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, America has been pushing NATO, which is a US sepoy operation, ever closer to Russian borders in what, to anyone who took fifth-grade geography, is an obvious program of military encirclement. Of the five countries other than Russia littoral to the Black Sea, three, Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria, are now in NATO. America has been moving toward bringing in the Ukraine and Georgia. After Georgia would have come Azerbaijan, putting American forces on the Caspian with access to Iran and Kazakhstan. This is calculated aggression over the long term, obvious to the—what? Ten percent? Fifteen percent?—of Americans who know what the Caucasus is.
Putin has said, over and over, that Russia could not allow hostile military forces on its border any more than the US would allow Chinese military bases in Mexico and China or missile forces in Cuba. Washington kept pushing. Russia said, no more. In short, America brought on the war.
Among people who follow such things, there are two ways of looking at the invasion. First, that Washington thought Putin was bluffing, and he wasn’t. Second, that America intentionally forced Russia to choose between allowing NATO into the Ukraine, a major success for Washington’s world empire; or fighting, also a success for Washington as it would cause the results it has caused.
From the latter understanding, America pulled off, at least at first glance, an astonishing geopolitical victory over Russia. Nordstream II blocked, crippling sanctions placed on Russia, many of its banks kicked out of SWIFT, economic integration of Europe and Asia slowed or reversed, Germany to spend 113 billion on rearming (largely meaning buying American costume-jewelry weaponry), Europe forced to buy expensive American LNG, and Europe made dependent on America for energy. All this in a few days without loss of a single American soldier. This presumably at least in part engineered by Virginia Newland who, though she looks like a fireplug with leprosy, seems effectively Machiavellian.
Next victim, China. Divide and conquer. Or at least that’s the theory. At the same time reinstate the JCPOA and use economic baubles to try to pry Iran away from Beijing.
Here we need some context. Everything Washington does internationally aims at maintaining America’s largely military near-hegemony over the world. This involves several elements:
First, military dominance. This includes the many hundreds of bases around the world, naval supremacy, and the huge military expenditure. Thy latter will be maintained at any cost to domestic needs, and apparently it is going to be increased.
Second, control of the world’s supply of energy. Washington is trying to starve Venezuela, with its vast reserves of petroleum, into submission. Submission means letting American-dominated oil majors exploit the country’s oil. Washington is doing the same with Iran and its enormous reserves. It has troops in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has confiscated Syria’s oil lands, crushed Libya, and so on. Keeping the European vassals from buying more Russian gas through Nordstream II is part of this energy control and an important part.
Third, and crucial, keep Eurasia—note the “EU”—from coalescing into a vast continent-spanning trade zone, which is exactly what China contemplates in its BRI, Belt and Road initiative. This is too much subject for a few paragraphs, but some thoughts: China is a manufacturing juggernaut in explosive growth. Economic power is the basis of all power. China has the advantage of inner lines of communication: it can build rail, fiber optics, highway,s and pipelines in Asia, where America has little access. China has money because it has a for-profit economy, and America doesn’t. The pull of China’s gigantic market and manufactures was beginning to loosen America’s control of Europe. Eurasian integration had to be stopped.
Fourth, the dollar. Washington controls the dollar, the IMF, SWIFT, and in general the international financial system. It uses this control brutally as a weapon to impose sanctions, crippling the economies of such countries as Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and now Russia. Seeing this intimidates other countries. Washington may have gone too often to this well. Having made England, its chief bootlicker, confiscate Venezuela’s gold reserves, and now freezing Russia’s reserves, Washington has served notice that no country is secure from this treatment. Here I speculate freely, but this may prove America’s worst mistake since 1619 as it may greatly accelerate the search for other payment systems—CIPS from China, SPFS from Russia, and the upcoming digital yuan. Washington, methinks, is betting the farm.
So much for the world. Meanwhile, America seems to be sinking into irreversible decadence that muss eventually—I would say soon—affect its international position. As the world’s economic and, laggingly, technological center of gravity moves east to Asia, an internally collapsing America will be less able to maintain the empire. Consider:
Washington’s printing of money, equivalent to the debasing of the coinage characteristic of failing societies, has resulted in high inflation and a potentially catastrophic national debt. This will cause political perturbation as voters seek to find which of the two essentially identical parties will not behave like the other one. Unrest will grow. Trust abroad in the dollar will decrease.
America suffers from a massive and growing trade deficit, largely with China, about which nothing can be done, certainly not soon, because America no longer makes things it needs. Manufacturing cannot be brought back, excep perhaps in niche markets like semiconductors, because the US no longer has the necessary engineers and trained work force, and American labor costs more than Chinese, so reshoring would increase inflation. The importation of cheap Chinese products keeps inflation down,.
The heavy flow of national wealth into Wall Street and the military in addition to offshoring has led to real poverty in Appalachia, the Rust Belt, and the rural Deep South. This has produced some 100,000 opioid deaths annually in despairing populations. Simultaneously large and growing homeless aggregations appear in LA, Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, St. Louis, on and on, estimated at 60,000 in LA and 50,000 in New York, making the subways dangerous. Bush world conditions presumably do not make for political stability, as neither does the governmental inattention to them.
Crime is out of control, not a sign of a healthy polity. Some 700 homicides annually in Chicago, 300 in Baltimore, and similar numbers elsewhere are now routine, almost all of the killers and killed being black. To countries like Japan and South Korea this must seem barbaric. The situation is not First World.
America’s racial problem is grave. The southern border is open, the southwestern states either majority Latino or soon to be. This is not as bad as it could be as the races seem to get along, but it imposes heavy economic and other costs. At the same time across the country cities have huge black ghettos with appalling semiliteracy, no prospects for the young, all of this apparently irremediable. Racial attacks on whites and Asians grow in number and so, almost everywhere, do racial killings, mostly by blacks. Governments at all levels fear blacks who they know will burn cities if provoked, which leads tax bases to flee from cities, making things worse.
This adds to potentially explosive resentment. There is a substantial White Nationalist movement, that wants no non-whites in America (a bit late for this), Republican Chambers of Commerce, that want more illegal Latinos for the cheap labor but won’t say so, and the high-tech sector, which wants more East Asian and Indian immigrants on which America, with a failing educational system, increasingly depends.
Overall, government is weak, unable to prevent crime, riots, and looting. Washington does not control, but is controlled, being a storefront operation for special interests. Elections do not change policy but only the division of the spoils. Presidents perform their three essential duties, protecting Wall Street, Israel, and the military budget, but not much else.
Schooling is being dumbed down in stark contrast with China. Excellence everywhere is discouraged in the name of equity. Native white talent dwindles in the elite schools, from high-end high schools through CalTech, as Asian majorities predominate. Measures of talent, such as SATs and Medcats, are dropped or downplayed. English grammar and arithmetic are dropped as racist. None of this seems likely to improve America’s future competitiveness.
Finally, the media are controlled. This allows Washington freedom of action abroad as enough of the public will believe anything they are told by television (The Russians are coming, the Chinese are coming, the Iranians are coming, the Guatemalans….) Internally censorship may keep the lid on, for now anyway, by keeping enough of the population from knowing what is going on. By preventing discussion of problems, or their mention, it assures that nothing will be done. I suspect this is having the effect of winding a spring.
Where is all of this leading?
Biden is playing as if this were 1960 and the US enjoyed rock solid military and economic superiority and the population were firmly behind him. This is the world he remembers, being an aging cold warrior. He seems to believe that he consequently can do what he pleases with no repercussions for America. This may be true, or true enough. Perhaps he believes that Russia will collapse in domestic rebellion or simply surrender to the US. It is not how I would bet.
But—and this is sheer speculation—it is not clear what would happen if Russia cut off gas and petroleum and wheat and such things as neon gas from Europe. The West is accustomed to bombing remote countries, not to going without. Would Russia collapse under privation before Europe decided it wanted to trade with Moscow after all?
If Biden and the hawks decide to play hardball with China, they may realize that America is an economic dependency of Beijing. If—again, very hypothetically—China cut off all trade with America, the US economy would die instantly. Almost everything on American shelves is made in China. An American public already very unhappy would explode, which it is on the point of doing for various reasons. Reflect on the Floyd riots. China would be hurt, but it has other markets and a nationalistic population more united than the American.
Them’s my thoughts, probably worth what you pay for them.
Though American public opinion is cliche-filled with phrases and slogans of democracy, it seems that the American Dream fades into nothing but an echo of the media network and their propaganda.
Russian Reset
The relationship of the ordinary American citizen with politics is strange. It is based primarily on the principle of giving to Caesar what is for Caesar so long as he delivers upon the bright promises of individual liberty and human rights which would undoubtedly assuage many destructive foreign policy blunders around the world such as Iraq or Afghanistan being just two amongst many others.
And when I talk to people from the other side of the world about international politics or even American politics in the world, the simple facts may seem shocking to many of them. Perhaps the most prominent of these issues is US-Russia relations. While Russia can influence any current conflict in its regions or say, Central Asia, the China Sea, the extent of Russian influence continues to arrive in US politics and is certainly confirmed by the policies of the current US administration.
Though American public opinion is cliche-filled with phrases and slogans of democracy, it seems that the American Dream fades into nothing but an echo of the media network and their propaganda. However, from the local perspective, we see the world from the heart of the conflict where it is easier to see the true reality.
What is now very obvious and very surprising is that the American public does not read between the lines of obvious media propaganda. Mainstream news sources in the US continue to propagate a coming escalation hyped up by news cycles that an American-Russian conflict is imminent and bravely has a responsibility to respond to Putin accordingly. These media outlets claim Russian interference happened through Donald Trump being compromised by the Russian bear. The strange irony is that those who are issuing these rumors are the same ones who have in recent history championed a reset of the US-Russian relationship.
Looking back, it is a true statement that a reset did happen, but it was the Russians who we know have reset America through the Biden administration & his predecessors. In fact, although it seemed a diplomatic joke, Hillary Clinton officially admitted in her memoir entitled “Hard Choices” that she and Obama’s administration were the owners of an American project to reset the Russian relationship, indicating that she gifted the Russian Foreign Minister a now-infamous red button with the word RESET. At the time, it seemed symbolic and somewhat hopeful or that the reset button in her meeting with Sergey Levrov was a kind of diplomatic joke, but now we know it was regarding what we currently see in US-Russia relations and what she already declared in her memoir! Putin was able to rebrand & sit with the Americans on a world stage; a monumental achievement by Russia to the United States since the Cold War. Putin stepped away from power for years, leaving the chair to one of his associates, President Medvedev, branded to the Americans as an easy-going person. It was under Medvedev the system was reset affording Putin the keys to everything from computers to secret emails.
As Hillary Clinton stated in his memoirs, “President Obama and I believed in 2009 that we could achieve key American national interests with Russia, by adopting an approach based on three elements: finding specific areas of cooperation where our interests converged, maintaining a consistent position where our interests differ, and continuous engagement with the Russian people themselves, this approach became known as the ‘Russia Reset’.”
The first area of cooperation was the establishment of a high-tech corridor in Russia, similar to Silicon Valley in the United States, even suggesting a visit to the proposed site for America to inspect, and that is what happened in 2010. Skolkovo was established in 2010, and it is the most important technological project in the world. This was followed by cooperation in facilitating the supply process for American forces in Afghanistan. This directly led to Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization.
But in her memoir, Clinton admits in a very nonchalant, pseudo-diplomatic manner that it was all indeed a hoax. On how they were defrauded by the Russians, Clinton describes, “I have been bitterly disappointed by those who expected the reset approach to usher in a new era between the United States and Russia based on goodwill.”
We note her own words as if it absolves her for being the godmother of the project since its inception. This very strange reset pioneered by Hillary Clinton helped Russia advance & develop its technology projects and expand in Central Asia and enter the Crimea in exchange for allowing American forces to cross their territory. These arrangements were made with the executive assistance of William Burns, who was working during the Obama administration as an Ambassador of the United States of America to Russia. He previously served as the United States Deputy Secretary of State from 2011 to 2014. Today, Mr. Burns is Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Biden who adopts the same worldviews as Obama himself.
This security breach in US intelligence confirms that all American threats to Russia are only a deflection away from President Biden and his Democratic failed policies which gave us Morsi. Burns himself had previously participated in the fake Russia reset. Rather, he said at the Munich Security Conference, “It is time to press the reset button and reconsider the many areas.” We can work with Russia and we have to work together, which is interesting because this was Trump’s diplomatic call to Russia.
Skolkovo is technology Russian interference is tech-based Hillary lied about Russia then she is likely lying about the MB influences in the states.
American politics today
The recently damming report called The Durham Report proved Hillary is a liar and she paid for tech information while accusing Russia & Trump only a few years after she initiated Skolkovo. It is an ironic reset, unlike we expected.
Durham’s filing states that Joffe tasked a small group of university researchers to mine internet data to establish “an inference” and “narrative” tying Trump to Russia. Durham said that in doing so, Joffe “was seeking to please certain ‘VIPs’.” According to Durham, Joffe identified these VIPs as individuals at Sussmann’s law firm, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.
Special counsel John Durham, who is probing the origins of the counterintelligence investigation against Donald Trump’s campaign, filed late Thursday a response to former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann’s motion to strike six paragraphs from Durham’s case against him. Sussmann filed a motion (pdf) on Feb. 14 to strike six paragraphs that comprise the “Factual Background” section in Durham’s filing on Feb. 11. Durham’s filing alleged that Trump’s residences and the White House were spied on by a tech executive aligned with the Democratic Party, who is identified in reports as Rodney Joffe.
The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.
As crazy as it may sound to some, Russia embodies my principles much more than the three governments associated with my triple identity. I can’t in good conscience support the American, Polish, and Ukrainian interpretations of this crisis since they’re based on false claims aimed at gaslighting the public into misperceiving Russia as the ‘aggressor’ when it’s really the US and its NATO allies like Poland that are exploiting Ukraine as a platform from which to attack Russia in the future.
The US-led Western Mainstream Media is waging an intense information warfare campaign against Russia’s ongoing special operation in Ukraine. One of the top narratives right now is that Americans, Poles, and Ukrainians don’t support Russia for whatever reason it is that they claim, usually one that’s predicated on false pretexts and due to the propaganda that they’ve been fed from their respective governments. While acknowledging that perhaps there’s some truth to that claim since everyone is of course entitled to their own views regardless of whether they’re based on facts or not, there’s a notable exception to this narrative, and that’s me personally.
I’m an American-Pole whose surname has Ukrainian ancestry and I very proudly stand with Russia. That’s because I’m keenly aware of the reality behind what’s happening as I’m also a Moscow-based political analyst who closely follows my host country’s foreign policy and have been doing so for most of my life actually even before I moved here in August 2013. I read President Putin’s “Expanded Meeting With The Defense Ministry Board” from 21 December, his “Security Council Meeting” and address to the Russian people from 21 February when he recognizedtheDonbassRepublics as independent states, and his early Thursday morning address to the Russian people announcing his special operation in Ukraine.
From the objectively existing and easily verifiable facts that the Russian leader shared, I’m confident that “President Putin Didn’t Spark World War III, He Just Averted It!” The US and NATO were secretly establishing diverse military infrastructure in neighboring Ukraine – including air, land, and sea bases – for the purpose of advancing their grand strategic goal of neutralizing Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities. That would have placed the country in a perpetual position of nuclear blackmail vis-à-vis the US had it succeeded, but President Putin preemptively thwarted that scenario by commencing Russia’s ongoing special operation in Ukraine. I’m also very well aware of the immediate humanitarian motivations behind this campaign, too.
The indigenous Russian people of Donbass have been blockaded and bombed by Kiev for eight years already. Their lives have remained in peril this entire time, and if there’s one constructive critique about President Putin that even his most vehement supporters here all share in my experience over the years interacting with countless Russians from all echelons of society, it’s that he didn’t do enough to protect them. Instead, the Russian leader patiently opted for a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian Civil War, hoping to resolve this very sensitive issue through political means instead of the military ones that he had at his disposal this entire time. After reading his article from last summer “On The Historical Unity Of Russians And Ukrainians”, I now know how much he sincerely cares about those fraternal people.
The last thing that President Putin wanted to do was inadvertently add fuel to the US’ infowar fire for further dividing Russians and Ukrainians in order to ultimately rule them both. He wisely knew that launching a humanitarian intervention at the onset of this crisis nearly a decade ago wouldn’t have been properly understood by the Ukrainian population at large that had been largely brainwashed by their Western-backed ultra-nationalist (fascist) “perception managers” into wrongly regarding Russia as “imperialist”. That’s not to say that all Ukrainians believed those lies, but just that plenty of them did or at least were very susceptible to it around the time that the “EuroMaidan” coup succeeded.
Immediately intervening would have fed into the false optics of so-called “Russian aggression” allegedly initiated to restore ousted President Yanukovich to power, which wasn’t Moscow’s intentions in either the soft power or political senses. Being as sensitive to the Ukrainian peoples’ concerns (including those that they’ve falsely come to believe due to foreign-backed propaganda campaigns emphasizing fascist narratives) as he is due to his expertise in understanding these fraternal people, President Putin patiently sought a diplomatic solution to the Donbass conflict over the past eight years. He truly didn’t want to do anything that could feed the US’ infowar campaign.
As time went on, though, he became increasingly pessimistic about the prospects of the Minsk Accords succeeding since Ukraine’s US-backed post-coup fascist authorities showed no sincere will to implement their international legal obligations that were endorsed by the UNSC in a relevant resolution passed in 2015. President Putin might also have thought that the Ukrainian people themselves would successfully reform their country’s power structure through peaceful political means but must have become despondent upon realizing the seemingly irreversible authoritarian trajectory that the country entered into in recent years following President Zelensky’s rise to power.
As Ukraine became nothing more than a US puppet state controlled by its overseer’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”), President Putin realized that he could only resolve this crisis by dealing directly with America. That explains his proactive diplomatic outreaches to former US President Trump and incumbent President Biden, though both were for naught, which is attributable to the subversive influence of that country’s anti-Russian “deep state” faction. His last-ditch attempt at diplomacy came in December when he shared his country’s security guarantee requests with the US and NATO.
These called for legally binding agreements halting NATO’s eastward expansion, the removal of strike weapons from Russia’s borders, and a return to the continental military status quo enshrined in the now-defunct 1997 Russian-NATO Founding Act. Regrettably, the West didn’t sincerely negotiate with Russia, nor did it take that country’s security guarantee requests seriously. Realizing that war between them was unavoidable due to Russian intelligence’s confident assessment to that end as revealed by President Putin early Thursday morning and recalling how eerily similar the build-up to that scenario is to Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, President Putin felt compelled to take decisive action without delay.
Everyone’s entitled to their own views, but to me as a person who regards peace as the highest goal that all countries should strive towards, I feel morally obligated to support Russia’s preemptive move to avert World War III through its ongoing special operation in Ukraine. Like many, I would have preferred for there to be a diplomatic resolution to this undeclared US-provoked missile crisis in Europe but knew that it’s better for there to be a limited proxy conflict between Russia and NATO in Ukraine right now than to wait for a direct one between them sometime later down the line when it would obviously be much more deadly for everyone involved.
There are those who claim that all military actions are “aggressive” and that’s their personal right to think so, but sometimes military means must be employed for peaceful ends, especially when a country risks having its nuclear second-strike capabilities eventually neutralized and thus subsequently placed in a perpetual position of nuclear blackmail. If Russia would have “peacefully” submitted to the US like its critics wish happened, then there’s no doubt that this multiethnic federation would have then been dismantled through the most militant means possible after the West resumed its support of terrorist-separatist movements like those that it previously backed during the Chechen Conflict.
The amount of death and destruction that would have inevitably followed the Yugoslav-like “Balkanization” of the Russian Federation would have been many orders of magnitude greater than the impressively minimal collateral damage that’s thus far occurred throughout the course of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine. That’s not even to say what would have come afterwards with respect to China upon Russia’s “Balkanization”. America would then have assuredly turned its sights towards it in attempting to replicate the exact same sequence that would have then earlier succeeded against Russia.
The nuclear second-strike capabilities of the People’s Republic would have been neutralized, after which multidimensional HybridWars would have been unleashed against it for “Balkanizing” this civilization-state of around 1.4 billion people. The horrors of World War II would have paled in comparison to the evils that the US would have been bound to unleash in such a terrifying scenario. By preemptively putting a stop to these genocidal plans for restoring the US’ declining unipolar hegemony over the plaent, President Putin quite literally saved billions of lives in the process.
I’m fiercely proud of my identity as an American-Pole with Ukrainian ancestry and believe that everyone should be proud of who they are too, but our ethnicities and nationalities don’t predetermine our political beliefs, nor should they ever. Thinking otherwise is literally fascist because it presupposes that political beliefs are transmitted through blood, which isn’t true. Those who thought such carried out the genocides of World War II on that false ethno-racial basis, believing as they wrongly did that doing so would “rid the world of the evils” supposedly associated with people of a given identity such as Jews, Slavs (including Poles such as myself), Roma, and many others.
There is no way that I as a fiercely proud Pole could ever accept someone demanding that I hold one or another political view on the basis of my ethnicity when our ancestors fought, suffered, and were even literally genocided by Nazi Germany due to our resistance to those debunked fascist ideas. In fact, an estimated 17-25% of the Polish population was exterminated during World War II. As an American citizen, I’m also very fiercely proud of our constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech that grants me the right to express my opinions about whatever it may be, including contrarian ones that contrast with my own government’s interpretation of events. Those who want to deny me that are thus un-American.
As for the Ukrainian angle of my identity, I fully support President Putin’s treatise on our historical unity with our fraternal Russian brothers. I’m obviously aware of various Polish and Ukrainian narratives about our peoples’ relations with Russia across the centuries and understand why my co-ethnics might feel a certain way, but I don’t believe that the problems of the past should stain the promise of our future. Reconciliation is an importance principle in my life and I believe that all of our people should focus more on working together with Russia than on obsessing over our supposed differences. I also don’t believe it’s fair to blame the Russian Federation for what the USSR and Imperial Russia did.
All that I want is for the three most prominent parts of my identity – American, Polish, and Ukrainian – to pragmatically cooperate with Russia in the interests of peace, prosperity, and stability. We all gain much more by working together than feuding. The US shouldn’t have sought to use Ukraine as an impending platform from which to attack Russia with the rest of NATO, including Poland, sometime in the coming future. Russia has legitimate national security red lines that must be respected. The failure to do so prompted it to decisively react to the imminent threat that the US-led West poses to it from Ukraine. I’m personally very thankful that President Putin commenced his special operation there.
I can’t imagine what would have happened in the next few years had he not done so and the US eventually succeeded in neutralizing Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities. World War III would likely have broken out with time as NATO’s tanks rolled over the Russian border from Ukraine, the US intercepted most Russian missiles launched in self-defense at America, and Moscow was thus forced to nuke the most massive invasion army since Hitler while still on its territory out of sheer desperation. This could even have been preceded by the Hybrid War-driven “Balkanization” of Russia that was earlier explained. Countless people would have died, and that’s not even considering those in China afterwards.
It’s for these reasons why I as an American-Pole with Ukrainian ancestry have nothing but pride in standing with Russia during its ongoing special operation. As crazy as it may sound to some, Russia embodies my principles much more than the three governments associated with my triple identity. I can’t in good conscience support the American, Polish, and Ukrainian interpretations of this crisis since they’re based on false claims aimed at gaslighting the public into misperceiving Russia as the “aggressor” when it’s really the US and its NATO allies like Poland that are exploiting Ukraine as a platform from which to attack Russia in the future. In all sincerity, I’m truly thankful for Russia’s operation.
إمكانية تجدّد الحرب الأهلية في الولايات المتحدة أضحت مادة متداولة على منابر المؤسّسات الإعلامية الأميركية المتنوّعة، بعد أن كانت محصورة على نطاق ضيّق بين أوساط ما يسمّى اليسار أو بقايا أنماط التيارات اليسارية المتعددة. النخب السياسية والاقتصادية الأميركية النافذة عبّرت عن مخاوفها عبر صحيفة «نيويورك تايمز»، 18 كانون الثاني/ يناير 2022 ، وكذلك عبّر معهد كارنيغي للدراسات والأبحاث، 16 أيلول/ سبتمبر ، 2021، إضافة إلى مؤسسات أخرى مرموقة.
الحدث الأبرز في اللحظة الراهنة كان انضمام النخب المالية والمصرفية حديثاً إلى إثارة المسألة بصورة أوضح وتوصيف أشدّ قسوة، عبر تعليقات رئيس أكبر مجموعة مالية في سوق المضاربات، راي داليو، 10 شباط/ فبراير الحالي، الذي حذّر على صفحته الإلكترونية من نضوج عوامل نشوب حرب أهلية أميركية، أبرزها «تركيز مصادر الثروة في أيدي النخب المالية، وتوسّع الفجوة الفاصلة في معدلات المداخيل»، إضافة إلى «ارتفاع منسوب التطرف والصراع بين اليمين واليسار» في معادلة تسوية صفرية. المؤسّسة العسكرية أيضاً شاركت في حملة التحذير والإعداد لمواجهة أنماط متعددة من الصراعات المسلحة. ونشرت صحيفة «واشنطن بوست» مقالاً مذيّلاً بتوقيع 3 من كبار جنرالات سلاح الجيش المتقاعدين، ذوي خبرة عسكرية لا تقلّ عن 30 عاماً لكل منهم، بعنوان «المؤسّسة العسكرية يجب أن تستعدّ الآن لعصيان مدني في 2024»، موسم الانتخابات الرئاسية المقبلة (17 كانون الأول/ ديسمبر 2021).
وجاء في تحذير القادة العسكريين من تبلور انقسامات حادة في الانتخابات الرئاسية أنّه «قد يتّبع البعض أوامر صادرة عن القائد الأعلى الحقيقي للقوات المسلحة، بينما قد يتّجه الآخرون نحو (المرشح) الخاسر ترامب». أمام هذه الحالة المرئية، ليس مستبعداً رؤية «تصدّع في القوات العسكرية، قد يؤدي إلى نشوب حرب أهلية».
جدير بالذكر ما خبره المشهد السياسي الأميركي من حالة استقطاب حاد منذ فوز الرئيس السابق دونالد ترامب، ولا تزال فصولها تتمدّد ومفاعيلها تتجذّر، نظراً إلى طرقه وتراً حساساً من العنصرية الكامنة والنزعة الشعبوية المتجدّدة.
في هذا الصدد، من المفيد المرور على رؤى نخب الأجهزة الاستخبارية لما يتوفر لديها من معلومات حقيقية شاملة ونصائح «واقعية» لصنّاع القرار. وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية، «سي أي آي»، تموّل مجموعة بحثية تُعرَف باسم «فريق عمل عدم الاستقرار السياسي»، مهمّتها إنشاء قاعدة بيانات شاملة للبنى المعنية بالصراعات السياسية الداخلية، كمؤشّر على «انهيار السلطة المركزية، والتنبّؤ بأمكنة اندلاع الصراعات».
وأبرزت صحيفة «نيويورك تايمز»، 18 كانون الثاني/ يناير 2022، العضو البارز في المجموعة، السيدة باربرا وولتر، عقب إصدارها كتاباً بعنوان « كيف تبدأ الحروب الأهلية»، بتسليطها الضوء على 3 عوامل، تقارب فيه اندلاع صراع داخلي بقيادة مجموعات عنصرية، تحاكي نموذجي «إيرلندا الشمالية أو حرب الغوار في كولومبيا»، محوره اعتماد العنف السياسي لتهديد الأمن العام.
عوامل اندلاع حرب أهلية، بحسب وولتر، هي: انتقال السلطة إلى نموذج حكم ديموقراطي أو نظام حكم استبدادي؛ الاصطفاف الشعبوي أو الفئوي، وهو الأخطر؛ تضعضع المكانة الاجتماعية لمجموعة ما، وما يرافقه من خسارتها لنفوذها السياسي.
في المحصّلة، تؤكد وولتر، التي أمضت 3 عقود في خدمة المؤسّسة الأمنية، أنّ المجتمع الأميركي يسير بسرعة نحو «اصطفاف شعبوي وحكم استبدادي يقترب من مرحلة اندلاع العصيان المدني». وتضيف أنّ تضافر تلك العوامل يعني أنّ أميركا «أقرب إلى مرحلة اندلاع حرب أهلية بقدر أعلى ممّا يعتقد بعضنا».
دراسة معهد «بروكينغز»، السالفة الذكر، تؤكّد سوداوية خلاصات السيدة وولتر. وقد أشار المعهد إلى نتائج استطلاع شامل للرأي، نُشر في 4 شباط/ فبراير 2021، تفيد بأنّ أغلبية معتبرة من الأميركيين، 46%، يعتقدون بنشوب حرب أهلية، مقابل 11% ممن ليس لديهم رأي محدد، ومقابل 43% لا يؤيّدون نشوبها. وأضاف أنّ النسبة السوداوية ترتفع بين أوساط الجيل الناشيء إلى 53%. كما أن للتقسيم السكاني الجغرافي، بين الشمال والجنوب، دلالة أكبر بتأييد نحو 49% من مواطني الولايات الجنوبية لنشوب حرب أهلية، مقابل 39% من سكان ولايات الساحل الشرقي «ليبرالية التوجه» لا يؤيّدونها، بشكل عام.
المشهد السياسي الأميركي، بحسب «بروكينغز»، بالغ التعقيد ويشهد «حروباً حدودية» بين الولايات، أرضيتها المساحة الضيقة بين «حقوق الولايات كما تراها حكوماتها المحلية، وصلاحيات الدولة المركزية»، أبرزها سنّ الأولى تشريعات تعارض القوانين الفيدرالية السارية وتناقضها، مثل حق المرأة في الإجهاض، الذي تنقلب عليه تدريجياً المحكمة العليا بفعل ميزان القوى الراهن بين تيّاري الحزب الديموقراطي، الأقلية، والجمهوري الذي ينعم بالأغلبية.
كما أنّ التباين الحادّ بين المناطق الريفية، وهي الأغلبية جغرافياً، والمدينية، الموسومة بمعظمها بالميل نحو التيار الليبرالي، سيتفاقم مجدّداً عند أولى تباشير المواجهات. وشهد بعض ولايات الساحل الغربي، مثل كولورادو وولايات جبال الروكي، سلسلة مواجهات مع القوى الأمنية المركزية، تتعاظم حدّتها باضطراد.
إحدى ميّزات «المواجهة المقبلة»، بحسب إجماع معظم الخبراء الأميركيين، أنّ الولايات الجنوبية وفي جبال الروكي، التي كانت تعاني من شحّ في مصادر التصنيع والموارد المالية إبان الحرب الأهلية، قبل نحو 150 عاماً، لم تعد تعاني من ضعف اقتصادي منذ مساعي التحديث والتصنيع التي اعتمدتها الحكومة المركزية منذ بداية عقد الستينيات في القرن الماضي.
وتنظر الدولة المركزية بقلق إلى ولاية كبيرة مثل تكساس، المستقلة بمواردها النفطية ومداخيلها المرتفعة نسبياً، ونزعاتها المتجدّدة نحو الانفصال عن الحكومة المركزية، رغم الإدراك العام أنّ ذلك الهدف لن يتحقق في المستقبل القريب، لكنه يبقى عنصر تهديد يزداد زخماً مع تفاقم الأزمة الاقتصادية العامة وترهّل الحكومة الفيدرالية في تقديم خدماتها العامة، باستثناء قطاع الأمن، لتلك المناطق التي يعتبرها كثيرون «مناطق نائية»، لكنها حبلى بالأحداث.
أوجزت دراسة معهد «كارنيغي»، السابقة الذكر، بعض التحديات للحكومة المركزية باعتبار أنّ «سمّية المناخ السياسي الراهن تعقّد مساعي تفاوض الفريقين (الديموقراطي والجمهوري) بشأن قضايا مهمة لكلّ منهما، وتدفع بمنسوب الغضب لدى العامة إلى أعلى مدياته ضدّ الحكومة الفيدرالية التي يسودها نظام المنتصر يحصد كلّ الجوائز».
بيد أنّ النخب السياسية لا تزال منقسمة بشأن اندلاع حرب أهلية من عدمه، والتعامل معها بدوافع رغبوية وفئوية من قبل الطرفين: الليبراليون يستبعدون الحرب، والمحافظون لا يؤيّدونها علناً، بل يسعون لإنضاج الظروف المؤدّية إلى انحسار خيارات الطرف المقابل.
الطرف الأول يتسلّح بالمؤسسات الدستورية، وأبرزها المؤسّسة العسكرية، والثاني لديه ميليشيات مسلحة لا تتبع قيادة مركزية، وهي منتشرة في أكثر من ولاية، ليس في وسعها إشعال معركة طويلة الأمد، كما تشير معظم التقديرات. كما أنّ ضبابية الانقسام، بين الشمال والجنوب في الوصفة الأهلية السابقة، تعقّد حسابات تلك الميليشيات وداعميها، في ظلّ انقسام مديني/ ريفي بصورة أدقّ. كما أنّ وفرة السلاح الفردي (434 مليون قطعة سلاح، 19% منها تقريبا أسلحة رشاشة) لدى الأميركيين تشكّل أرضية خصبة لاندلاع العنف.
المحصّلة العامة للمشهد الأميركي تشير إلى أزمة بنيوية في النظام الساسي، وما شهده من أحداث دامية إبان «غزوة الكابيتول»، 6 كانون الثاني/ يناير 2021، لم يكن معزولاً عن سياق الانقسام العام والاصطفافات الحادة، إضافة إلى رصد ظاهرة ارتفاع موجة تهديدات أعضاء الكونغرس بنحو 107% منذ ذلك الحين، والتي شملت أيضاً موظفي الدوائر الانتخابية.
التحدّي الماثل أمام المؤسّسة السياسية فريد من نوعه، بمقاييس العصر الراهن. إذ استطاعت المؤسّسة تجاوز تحديات حروبها المتتالية منذ هزيمتها في فيتنام، والأزمة الاجتماعية العامة خلال احتجاجات متتالية طبعت عقدي الستينيات والسبعينيات من القرن الماضي. لكن فقدان الثقة العامة بالمؤسّسة يتعاظم بشكل متدرّج، وهو الأخطر على مستقبلها.
تضافر عوامل الانقسام السياسي، وإعادة رسم خطوط الدوائر الانتخابية لمفاضلة الحزب الجمهوري، وربما ارتفاع معدلات حوادث الإرهاب الداخلي والمصادمات المسلحة «الموسمية»، يعزّزها جميعاً تدنّي الأوضاع الاقتصادية وتنامي معدلات البطالة واتساع هوّة المداخيل، ستبقى حاضرة في المشهد اليومي، لكنّها تحت سيطرة الدولة المركزية، التي لا تزال تعتبر نشوب حرب أهلية «خطاً أحمر».
Russia underlines that it has moved from having normal relations with the United States a long time ago in light of the most recent round of heightened tensions between Moscow and Washington.
“Business as usual” in relations with the United States will no longer work, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Friday.
“No, we stopped doing business as usual with them a long time ago. This is already a non-existent concept,” Zakharova told Russian Channel One.
Relations have been extremely tense between Russia and the United States in light of Moscow’s special military operation in Donbass against Ukraine’s aggression on Donetsk and Lugansk.
The West has failed to impose on Moscow the idea that they are exclusive and that Russia is a colony, she said.
In relations with the United States and the West, Russia has approached the line, after which there is a point of no return, Zakharova underscored.
“We proceed from our own interests and security interests, including doing what is beneficial to us as a country, as a people. We defend ourselves, we offered to do it together, we had a dialogue and offered a lot within the framework of collective security,” the Russian diplomat added.
She asserted that Russia moved on to the next stage when its demands were not fulfilled: “What are our guarantees, given that you do not offer collective creativity. When they blocked this option as well, we began to proceed from our pressing interests.”
Zakharova stressed that Russia’s actions were not its choice, reminding that Moscow always took action based on dialogue. However, “When these options were closed one by one by the Anglo-Saxons, we began to act differently.”
The Russian diplomat explained that Russia acting in a different manner was not due to threats, “But the question is that we come to that line after which the point of no return begins.”
What Zakharova is referring to is the West’s decline in responding to Moscow’s proposals on security guarantees on NATO’s eastward expansion, and the Kremlin’s special operation in Donbass regarding its concerns over the federation’s security.
العملية العسكرية الروسية في أوكرانيا ليست الأولى من نوعها. فقبل ذلك، قامت موسكو بالتدخل في بلدانٍ مجاورة لها، ضد وجود الولايات المتحدة والناتو وتأثيرهما فيها.
لا تتوانى روسيا عن حماية حدودها ومجالها الحيوي أمام أي مخاطر تواجهها
“هل يجب علينا أن ننظر، مكتوفي الأيدي وغير مبالين، إلى مختلف النزاعات الداخلية في بعض الدول، وإلى فظائع الأنظمة الاستبدادية والطغاة وانتشار أسلحة الدمار الشامل؟ هل نستطيع النظر مكتوفي الأيدي إلى ما يجري؟ سأحاول الإجابة عن هذا السؤال، بالطبع، لا ينبغي لنا النظر مكتوفي الأيدي”.
(الرئيس الروسي فلاديمير بوتين في مؤتمر ميونيخ، في الـ10 من شباط/فبراير 2007)
تضمّن هذا الخطاب الشهير للرئيس الروسي، فلاديمير بوتين، آنذاك، انتقاداتٍ لاذعةً للولايات المتّحدة، ودول الغرب، وخصوصاً دول حلف شمال الأطلسي، التي “تسعى لتمدد الحلف نحو حدود روسيا، على الرغم من الوعود التي قدّمها الناتو سابقاً إلى موسكو”، وفق بوتين.
بمقارنة خطاب بوتين قبل 15 عاماً، مع خطابه الذي ألقاه قبيل بدء العملية العسكرية الروسية في دونباس، والذّي أكّد خلاله أنّ المواجهة بين روسيا والقوى القومية المتطرفة في أوكرانيا “لا مفر منها”، وأنّه “لن يسمح لأوكرانيا بامتلاك أسلحة نووية”، نرى أنّ روسيا ما زالت متمسكّةً بموقفها في مواجهة أي تهديدٍ أو تأثيرٍ للولايات المتحدة وحلف الناتو، وخصوصاً في البلدان الواقعة عند حدودها، ولاسيما أنّ هذه ليست المرّة الأولى التي تتدخّل فيها موسكو، أمنياً أو سياسياً، في بلدان مجاورة لها، في وقت لم تتراجع واشنطن ودول الناتو أيضاً عن تطويق روسيا.
التدخل العسكري الروسي في جورجيا
في السابع من آب/أغسطس 2008، اندلع نزاعٌ مسلّح في جمهورية أوسيتيا الجنوبية، المعترف بها جزئياً في جنوبي القوقاز، وذلك بعد أن شنّت جورجيا هجوماً عنيفاً على عاصمة أوسيتيا الجنوبية، تسخينفالي، وحاولت فرض السيطرة على الجمهورية باعتبارها جزءاً من أراضيها.
بعدها بيومٍ واحد، في الثامن من آب/أغسطس، أعلن الرئيس الروسي آنذاك، ديمتري مدفيديف، إطلاق “عملية عسكرية لتطبيق السلام” في منطقة النزاع – في أوسيتيا وأبخازيا على البحر الأسود -، اختُتمت في الـ12 من آب/أغسطس، بطرد القوات الجورجية من أراضي أوسيتيا الجنوبية وجمهورية أبخازيا، المعترف بها جزئياً أيضاً، وسيطرة الجيش الروسي على عدد من البلدات والمدن الجورجية، وأيضاً باعتراف موسكو بهما دولتين مستقلتين.
حينذاك، تعهّد الرئيس الروسي، ديمتري مدفيديف، “احترام حياة المواطنين الروس وكرامتهم أينما وُجدوا”، إذ إنّ أوسيتيا وأبخازيا، يتكلّم معظم السكان فيهما الروسية، ويحملون جواز سفرٍ روسياً. بعد ذلك، قام مدفيديف، في الـ16 من آب/أغسطس، مع رئيسي أوسيتيا الجنوبية وأبخازيا والرئيس الجورجي، ميخائيل ساكاشفيلي، بالتوقيع على خطة لتسوية النزاع.
وبشأن سبب قيام جورجيا بهذه الخطوة ضدّ أوسيتيا الجنوبية، أوضح فلاديمير بوتين، الذي كان رئيساً للوزراء آنذاك، أن “مستشارين عسكريين أميركيين شاركوا في الصراع الذي اندلع في جورجيا”، مشيراً إلى أنّ “روسيا وجدت علامات على أن مواطنيين أميركيين كانوا في منطقة العمليات العسكرية في البلاد”.
يُشار إلى أنّ هذه الأحداث اندلعت بعد أشهرٍ قليلة من تعهّد حلف “الناتو” رسمياً، في قمة بوخارست، في نيسان/أبريل 2008، منحَ كل من جورجيا وأوكرانيا العضوية فيه، عندما “تتوافقان مع معايير الحلف”.
استعادة روسيا شبه جزيرة القرم
بعد أحداث جورجيا بعدة أعوام، أُطيح الرئيس الأوكراني، الحليف لروسيا، فيكتور يانوكوفيتش، في الـ21 من شباط/فبراير 2014، عقب موجة احتجاجات شهدتها العاصمة كييف، عُرفت بحركة “الميدان الأوروبي”، بسبب تعليق الأخير التوقيع على اتفاقية شراكة تجارية مع الاتحاد الأوروبي.
إلا أنّ هناك مَن رفض هذه التحركات ووصفها بـ”الانقلاب”، وبدأت احتجاجات في المناطق الشرقية والجنوبية من أوكرانيا، طلباً لعلاقات أوثق بروسيا، بينما تعدَّدت التظاهرات في شبه جزيرة القرم من أجل فكّ الارتباط بأوكرانيا والالتحاق بالاتحاد الروسي.
لم تغضّ روسيا الطرف عن طلب مواطني القرم، بل سارعت إلى تنفيذه، لتعلن انضمام الإقليم إلى أراضيها في الـ18 من آذار/مارس بعد أن قامت قوات موالية لها بالسيطرة على شبه الجزيرة، وعقب استفتاء أجرته القرم، أيّد 96% من المشاركين فيه هذا الانضمام.
روسيا تدعم لوكاشينكو في احتجاجات عام 2020
أمّا في بيلاروسيا، فقامت روسيا بدعم الرئيس البيلاروسي ألكسندر لوكاشنكو، في مواجهته للاحتجاجات غير المسبوقة، التي نددت بإعادة انتخابه في التاسع من آب/أغسطس 2020، وذلك عن طريق إقرارها بشرعية الانتخابات الرئاسية في البلاد، مبديةًً استعدادها لتقديم المساعدة العسكرية أو غيرها من المساعدات لتطبيق القانون، على لسان رئيسها فلاديمير بوتين.
وذكرت صحيفة “نيويورك تايمز”، في تقرير تعليقاً على كلام الرئيس الروسي، أن تحذير بوتين من أن روسيا يمكن أن تتدخل لاستعادة النظام، يشير إلى “الدعم الكامل للوكاشينكو بقدر أقل من إرساله رسالة إلى الغرب، مفادها: إذا واصلتَ الضغط على بيلاروسيا، فسيكون لديك أوكرانيا أخرى بين يديك”.
حينها، اتهم لوكاشينكو الدول الغربية بالتدخل المباشر في الوضع في البلاد. أمّا وزير الدفاع الروسي، سيرغي شويغو، فوصف الاحتجاجات التي شهدتها البلاد بـ “الثورة الملوَّنة” التي تقدّم الولايات المتحدة مساعدةً تقنية إليها، عبر تأجيج التوترات، مؤكّداً أنّه كان للثورة الملونة عدة أهداف، من بينها “تعطيل تكامل دولة الاتحاد مع روسيا، وتخريب العلاقات بين موسكو ومينسك”.
يُذكَر أن تلك الاحتجاجات حدثت في وقت كان حلف شمال الأطلسي يعمل على تحسين بنيته التحتية العسكرية، وتخزين المواد والوسائل التقنية والأسلحة والمعدات العسكرية بالقرب من حدود الاتحاد الروسي.
إدخال قوات حفظ السلام الروسية لكازاخستان
على الخطى نفسها، سارت روسيا في كازاخستان، التي شهدت في مطلع العام الحالي موجة احتجاجات بدأت بمطالب اقتصادية، تحولت إلى اشتباكات عنيفة بين المتظاهرين وقوات الأمن في عدد من المدن، بينها ألما آتا كبرى مدن البلاد.
قامت موسكو، مع تصاعد الاحتجاجات في كازاخستان، بإدخال قوات حفظ السلام الروسية، العاملة ضمن مهمة منظمة معاهدة الأمن الجماعي، للبلاد، تلبيةً لطلبٍ من الرئيس الكازاخي، جومارت توكاييف، من أجل تنفيذ المهمات الموكلة إليها بشأن حماية المنشآت الحيوية والبنية التحتية الرئيسة هناك.
وخرجت قوات حفظ السلام الروسية بعدها بأسبوع عقب انتهاء مهماتها، وإعلان السلطات إنهاء عملية “مكافحة الإرهاب” في ألما آتا ومنطقتين في جنوبي البلاد، الأمر الذي وصفه توكاييف بأنّه “نجاة من عملية انقلاب”.
وتبيّن بعد ذلك أنّ “المظاهرات في كازاخستان مُعَدّة مسبقاً لزعزعة استقرار الوضع في البلاد، وأن منظّميها تلقوا دعماً من الخارج”، وفق رئيس اللجنة التنفيذية لرابطة الدول المستقلة، سيرغي ليبيديف. وهو ما تدخّلت روسيا ودول منظمة الأمن الجماعي، بحسب بوتين، من أجل إيقافه.
وبحسب الرئيس البيلاروسي، ألكسندر لوكاشنكو، فإنّ التدخّل حدث لأنّه “لا يمكن التخلي عن كازاخستان كهدية، مثل أوكرانيا، إلى أميركا وحلف شمال الأطلسي”.
اتّخذت روسيا، منذ زمن، قرار مواجهة الأحادية الأميركية، ووضعٍ حدّ لتوسّع الناتو، وهي من أجل ذلك لا تتوانى عن حماية حدودها ومجالها الحيوي أمام أي مخاطر تواجهها، إن كان من خلال تشكيل التحالفات العسكرية والسياسية، مثل معاهدة الأمن الجماعي، أو توقيع المعاهدات الأمنية مع جيرانها من الدول، مثل الاتفاقية التي تمّ الإعلان عنها مؤخراً بين روسيا وأذربيجان، أو من خلال العمليات العسكرية كالتي تحدث الآن في أوكرانيا، وحدثت سابقاً في عدد من الدول.
The head of the executive council of Hezbollah, Hashem Safieddine, highlights the importance of the resistance’s military capabilities and its advancement.
The head of the Hezbollah Executive Council, Hashim Safi Al-Din
The future is for the resistance and the new deterrence equations imposed by the Hassan UAV, Hezbollah Executive Council Chief Sayyed Hashem Safieddine said Saturday.
During a ceremony in Nabatieh, South Lebanon, Safieddine stressed that the resistance is imposing new deterrence equations while under the most furious modern-day attacks.
“What’s to come will be even greater, and it will leave the Israelis stunned before the capabilities of the resistance,” he declared.
“If the Americans want to comfort the Israeli enemy and ease its concerns through economically and financially pressuring Lebanon and imposing a siege on it, our UAV yesterday made the Israelis grow more concerned,” Sayyed Safi Al-Din underlined.
The strongmen of the United States, he highlighted, are dreaming of having advanced posts, “But the day will come when they find that all their money went with the wind and lose their value,” adding that “those who challenge Hezbollah will lose.”
“The United States, through its embassies and allies, is spending money to sabotage Lebanon through its organizations [set up] to demonize Hezbollah,” he stressed.
He also revealed that Hezbollah spent $6 million over the past four years to renovate residential homes in Bekaa and the South.
“The resistance, its supporters, and its popular base are strong and unwavering, and we are accomplishing our goals at all levels,” the official told a ceremony in Southern Lebanon.
“For the resistance to grow through confrontation and development, it must be vigilant toward arms, their advancement, types, preparation, and training for everything related to military affairs.
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon announced Friday launching a UAV, Hassan, into the occupied Palestinian territories.
The resistance reported that the UAV went on a recon mission that lasted for 40 minutes and covered 70 km in occupied Palestine, adding that it returned “unharmed despite the Israeli occupation’s repeated attempts to down it.”
NATO Turkey has accelerated its war crimes against Syria, while the NATO junta is holding its war meeting on Russia and Ukraine, at the United Nations. Madman Erdogan has launched a two-prong attack on Syria, obviously knowing that the eyes of humanity are now glued to the rabid dogs of war now salivating over Russia.
On Thursday, NATO Erdogan occupation forces launched a series of artillery bombings against the village of Khirbet Bakr, southwest of Tal Abyad city, in the governate of al Raqqa. Several homes were damaged, and an undisclosed number of indigenous Syrians fled their homes. Like invasion and occupation, ethnic cleansing is a war crime, a crime against humanity.
Please note that Tal Abyad falls within the annexation map that Madman Erdogan showed to UNGA in 2019, a map of land theft that the NATO klansmen bleated was a ‘security zone.’
Madman Erdogan’s annexation map received tacit approval by the UN NATO klan at the General Assembly meeting in September 2019.
At approximately the same time NATO Erdogan’s troops were bombing and ethnic cleansing Khirbet Bakr, his terrorist militias were engaging in another round of fratricide in the city of Al-Bab, Aleppo governate, Syria. Al-Bab, Syria, has been under NATO Erdogan occupation since December 2016, ignored by the UN junta sworn to uphold the noble Charter.
Military occupation with terrorists blowing each other up, is also part of the war crime of ethnic cleansing, as indigenous Syrian flee to safer parts of their homeland.
NATO fratricide in Erdogan occupied Al-Bab, Syria.
As there has been little or no news regarding the war crimes of Israel against Syria, as the war crimes of Obama, Trump, and Biden against Syria have been legitimized by NATO propagandists, as the United Nations allows the murderous junta to besmirch the noble principles of its Charter, as these demonic, supremacists, mobsters have demonstrated that Arab lives do not matter beyond being maligned, and exterminated, this Syria News journalist has no expectation of Thursday’s war crimes to even cause a blurb in the news.
We shall, therefore, move this report to the sudden howling of these rabid dogs of war, and touch upon just some of the hypocrisy of these drooling, rabid dogs, their double standards, and their mass genocide that theyOrwellianly refer to as democracy.
We must turn to our friends, the maps, and also remind our readers that NATO is an acronym for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. First, however, we are obligated to remind our readers of a few, somewhat consequential things.
In December 2013, Victoria Nuland bragged that the US taxpayer had spent five billion bipartisan dollars to fund the Nazimaidan Coup in Ukraine. We must also note that. Nazimaidan is no hyperbole, and wherever John McCain appeared to preach about democracy, the ensuing mass death and destruction suggested he was the Emissary of Beelzebub.
Senator John McCain. Al-Qaeda & NATO Representative in US. Senate, illegally in Libya with ‘protesters.’
US Senator John McCain with Syrian FSA commander & Nusra supporter Salim Idris and terrorists responsible for kidn
McCain was “honored” to meet Nazimaidan icon reputed to hate Jews.
Nazimaidan freedom fighters, 2014
Kiev Rabbi Moshe Reuven Asman warned the Nazimaidans were plotting a pogram against the Jewish community
McCain’s Nazimaidan pal, Oleh Tyahybok. CNN had no complaints over his Hitler salute.
An actual “Sieg Heil,” not a flip off gesture of contempt..
stepan bandera nazi
Here is the map showing the location of the North Atlantic:
This map of the North Atlantic shows the original geography of NATO.
As war — or warmongering — is no longer the basis of Westerners’ knowledge of geography, we also include a map showing the border of Russia and Ukraine, followed by a map showing the distance between the US and Ukraine.
NATO complaints of Russian military near the border ignores Russia being in Russia.
We ask our readers to note and compare the distance between Russia and Ukraine, and the distance between the US and Ukraine.
No amount of NATO saber-rattling can put the US on the border with Ukraine.
US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin, is especially in dire need of a map; he actually claimed that Russian troops were encroaching on “NATO’s doorstep.“
Defense Sec. Austin claimed Russia is at NATO’s doorstep.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrogantly made a similar demand, that Russia send “its troops, tanks, and planes back to their barracks and hangars,” forcing Deputy Representative Dmitry Polyanskiy to remind the US of the NATO-Russia Founding Act. Were cooler heads prevailing in 2014, when NATO wrote that “immediate concerns about the Euro-Atlantic architecture are justified – Moscow has long stated its opposition to NATO and its enlargement, and even its desire to attempt to roll back NATO’s influence if the opportunity presents itself” — or were these just diplomatic mouth noises to bide time?
If US and NATO have no plans to attack Russia then they can clearly demonstrate that by returning their troops and military infrastructure to the positions corresponding to the moment when NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed in 1997 and abandoning admission of our neighbors https://t.co/CTWb3MvoKL
NATO leaders and assorted stenographers continue to throw shade on Crimea; at every opportunity, the lying thugs continue to claim that this country was “annexed” –a word meaning preceded by occupation and military conquest— by Russia, despite the fact that the country held a democratic vote to decide to become part of the Federation.
Here, yet again, we note the imperial double standards in both word, and action: Turkey’s attempt to annex part of the Syrian Arab Republic is wrongfully called ‘safety’, and a legitimate vote is wrongfully called ‘annexation.’
March 2014, Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation. NATO persists in calling the vote, an “annexation.”
Similarly, these rabid dogs of war — along with their dutiful, underling stenographers — keep to two definitions of the false flag, one of which defames and diminishes those using it, and the other as another bludgeon for pimping acts of military aggression. We consider that the Gulf of Tonkin ‘incident’ was the cover story for the US to begin its slow genocide campaign in Vietnam. We also consider that the lies of the British al Qaeda operative whose medical license was revoked in the UK, offered the false flag of Syrians murdered by terrorists in Khan Sheikhoun, for the Trump regime to legitimize his war criminal bombing of the SAR.
This Syrian child was one of the dozens kidnapped, poisoned for the cameras, and degraded into the false flag operation used by NATO US to bomb Syria for al Qaeda terrorists.
Remember this child? Stripped naked, pummeled with a power hose, poisoned in snuff porn which showed painful agonal breathing. One of dozens murdered by al Qaeda 4 April 2017.
Since 2016, we have been told that the false flag is the rantings of paranoid conspiracy lunatics — until 14 January, when Jen Psaki abruptly announced, without a shred of evidence, that Russia is busy at work “has prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in Ukraine. The operatives are trained in urban warfare and using explosives to conduct acts of sabotage.”
The false flag & imperial NATO double standards.
The false flag & imperial NATO double standards.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has been pummeling the war drums against the Russian Federation, pimping the lie of imminent invasion, though it is NATO countries that are sending in their troops, and massive amounts of military equipment (as usual, at the expense of the taxpayer, besieged by inflation nearing Weimar, suffering both food and housing insecurity).
Despite war pimping being part of Stoltenberg’s job description, one might wonder if his passion for it could be a form of rage sublimation against the sadism of the aging process.
NATO Gen. Jens Stoltenberg.
This abrupt crisis is not new; shorter-lived hysterical outbursts have been erupting since before 2016.
every year since at least 2016 there has been a 'prediction' that #Russia would invade #Ukraine. they even said it twice in 2021….spring & fall.
so…we can only assume by #US#UK#NATO actions they will pull a MIHOP…'made it happen on purpose' by aggression on #Donbass.
This report would be incomplete without a look at President Joe Biden’s statements — no matter what anyone may think of his cognitive abilities.
Biden has been a NATO war pimp since his days in the US Senate. He was part of the 57% of the Democrats who supported the Bush/Cheneyac/Halliburton killing machine which destroyed the sovereignty of Iraq, butchered upwards of four million, and caused massive birth defects from the illicit use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium in the bombings of Fallujah.
Though Biden changed the lying reasons for his support of this genocide — non-existent WMDs, ‘evil Arab dictator,’ Iraqis yearning to breathe free — he never relented in his deadly faux piety, and practically threw himself laurels as he gave the keynote speech at the University of Delaware Commencement.
Missing marbles or not, POTUS’ statement in support of “sovereignty and territorial” integrity is especially evil. His illegal troops have breached the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, where they slaughter Syrians, engage in collective punishment and forced displacement, murder and kidnap Syrians during criminal airdrops, train other terrorists in how to murder more Syrians, loot Syrian oil, starve Syrians by stealing their grain, and outright bombs Syrians within their sovereign homeland.
The US is the largest contributor to NATO.
Biden projecting NATO’s threats onto the Russian Federation.
Biden projecting NATO’s threats onto the Russian Federation.
Here is a visual reminder of unindicted war criminal Biden on nations having the right to sovereignty, the right to territorial integrity:
NATO respect for sovereignty — American illegals in Syria.
NATO Turkey continues to occupy and bomb Syria. NATO US continues to bomb Syria, lead armed insurrectionist terrorists, and loot Syrian raw materials.
The fascist dictum, might makes right, currently is being applied by NATO, in its threats to the Russian Federation.
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Okay, this will be a short bulletpoint reminder of how I see the Russian position and options in response to the Ukronazis attack.
First, a few key assumptions:
Russia does not want to invade/liberate the Ukraine
Russia would prefer not to get openly involved in the LDNR
The best outcome for Russia would be for the LDNR to be able to hold without overt Russian support
Throughout this entire battle, Russia will always prefer to do less than to do more.
Next, here is a summary of how I expect Russia to act in the next couple of days:
Event
Consequence
Russian option
Ukronazi shelling but not ground attack
Civilian casualties and infrastructure destruction
Let the LDNR handle it while reporting about this at home
Ukronazis attempt to move ground forces across the LOC
Risk to the LDNR defenses
Ideally, Russia would only use “indirect” means such as counter-battery fire, strikes on advancing Ukronazi forces, EW.
Ukronazis forces break through the LDNR defenses
Potential existential risk to the LDNR
Imposition of a no-fly zone, sustained artillery/rocket attacks on Ukie forces
Full scale Ukronazi attack
Existential threat to the LDNR
Russia moves her forces into the LDNR and stops it all.
Notice that in all the scenarios above, Russia does not initiate a fullscale attack on the Ukraine.
Why?
Because the decision to launch a fullscale attack on the Ukronazi state would be based not on events along the LOC (line of contact) but upon a much “bigger picture” of what the West might, or might not do, in the Ukraine and the rest of Europe.
In other words, the problem of the LDNR is separate from the much greater problem of the future security arrangement of Europe.
Also, another much needed reminder: when does it makes sense to negotiate with your enemies?
Not when you “trust” them.
Not when you hope to “convince” them.
Not when you hope to “show a peaceful face” to the general public.
No, it makes sense to negotiate with your enemy when:
You hope to achieve more by negotiations then by using military force.
Time is on your side.
When you need to buy more time (for whatever reasons).
The US and its EU colonies have been predicting a Russian intervention for months now. That intervention has not happened (yet) and this is driving the leaders of the West into total despair. This is good for Russia and that is how she wants to keep the situation for as long as possible.
I am personally convinced that the only way to solve both the specific LDNR option and to create a new security architecture in Europe will have to be achieved by Russian unilateral military operation: the folks in the West need yet another military defeat to come back to their senses (they need one about every century or so). If the Russians also see that as inevitable, they still have two things they need to do first:
To delay an open intervention as much as possible in order to subvert the western narrative
To engage in what could be called the “psychological preparation of the theater of operations” which, in plain English, to create such a level of anger in the LDNR and also inside Russia that the public opinion will DEMAND an intervention.
There WILL be real negative economic and political repercussions for Russia when she intervenes. Thus it is vital for Putin and the government to create such a political dynamic inside Russia that the Russian people will not only support an intervention, but DEMAND one. Then, when the western “sanctions from hell” are imposed, the people will not blame Putin for the very real price Russia will have to pay to prevail.
Right now, you could say that the Russian bear has been awoken by all the noise, it has come out of its lair and is just looking. Just that has the entire West in a state of total panic.
Good.
But when that bear will actually attack will not be decided by anyone but that bear.
The Ukies have declared on numerous occasions that they will not implement the Minsk Agreements. That is very good.
Now their attack on the LDNR seems to show that the Ukies now want to provoke a Russian response. This is also very good, as the level of public outrage on the RuNet and even on Russian TV has gone through the roof. The Russian PSYOP preparation of the battlefield is progressing in the right direction.
As for the LDNR defenses, they seem to be holding, but the real, major, Ukie ground offensive has not begun yet!
That is the next thing we need to look for: a Ukie ground attack. Specifically, we don’t need to worry primarily about the initiation of that coming Ukie attack, but what it yields in the first 4-6 hours or so. Once the Ukies are fully committed, then they become a legitimate target for counter-strikes.
So this is The Big Question now: will the LDNR defenses hold?
==>>So this is the key thing to observe is this: is the LOC moving and, if yes, how far and how fast?<<==
My personal guess is that yes, they will, which will leave only two options to the Ukronazis:
Give up
Launch a massive, full-scale attack
The latter is much more likely than the former.
And, in the meantime, the pain dial for the West is slowly turning up pretty much on all fronts.
So for Russia it makes sense to let that process take as long as possible before deciding to interrupt it and overtly intervene.
I hear one argument: what about the innocent civilians murdered in the LDNR?
What about them?
Does anybody seriously think that a Russian intervention will result in less casualties than what is currently taking place?
The horrible truth is that loss of life will happen no matter how the situation evolves. So the only real choice is not “save civilians or let them die” the choice is “make sure that every civilian death counts”. Sound cynical? It is, but that is the reality of real warfare (as opposed to the Hollywood & Tom Clancy nonsense folks in the West are brainwashed with since birth).
So, to all those who are constantly demanding that Russia intervene *now* and who don’t understand why Lavrov agreed to meet with Blinken, I will say this: do not project your own emotions and reactions unto Putin or, if you prefer, the “Russian bear”. The Russians did not create the biggest country on earth and defeated all their enemies by being naive or by being unable to calculate when/how to react against a foreign aggression.
If you think that you know better, good for you, just don’t expect Putin to act the way you would in the same situation.
Lastly, there is something morally repugnant in the attitude of those who see warfare as anything but the weapon of last resort. Christ said “blessed are the peacemakers” not “blessed are the warmakers”. Yes, as I said, I believe that Russia will have to intervene, openly and directly. But I also believe that Putin will wait as much as possible. That is not only operationally wise, it is morally correct.
Andrei
ADDENDUM: I remember how the western media said that the city of Sarajevo was “intensively shelled” by the Serbs. Utter nonsense! These folks simply don’t understand modern warfare. When a shell lands every few minutes or so this is NOT any “intense artillery fire”. Now, when an area the size of one, or even several, football field instantly goes up in flames, that is a serious artillery strike. What we see as of right now in the LDNR is what could be called “disturbing fire”. When the Ukies used de-mining vehicles yesterday that could be part of a preparation for a ground assault. This has NOT happened YET. As for a ground assault, so far the Ukies have only sent in special forces and, apparently, they got detected, took casualties, and had to retreat.
All this is way below the threshold at which Russia will have to intervene.
Kiev’s prospects for joining NATO were never very good, and they have become even poorer amid the current security crisis between NATO and Russia, former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers has said.
“The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO has never been very strong, and after this crisis is probably even less strong than it was before,” Sawers said, speaking at a virtual event hosted by the Atlantic Council, a DC-based think tank.
“There was no prospect of Ukraine actually joining NATO. We would be incorporating into NATO a preexisting conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and NATO would never have done that,” Sawers added, speaking in a separate interview with the BBC.
The former spy suggested that Kiev could instead opt for “some form of neutral status between Russia and NATO,” like Austria did after World War II.
Sawers believes that getting to a pro-neutrality policy would be difficult for Kiev, and claims that Russia might try to “meddle” in its neighbour’s affairs. “I think more likely we’ll find [Vladimir] Putin going ahead with continued meddling inside Ukraine,” he said.
Sawers is the latest former Western official to mention a neutrality status for Kiev as a means for defusing the Russia-NATO security crisis. Last month, retired US Army Lt. Gen. Dell Dailey called on Washington to take on a strategy of “equilibrium,” rather than the traditional “containment,” toward Russia, and urged for NATO to keep Ukraine and Georgia out of the bloc.
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for a referendum on possible NATO membership to be held before adding it as a priority to the country’s constitution. Zelensky also called on Germany and France to “do more” to bring Ukraine closer to joining the alliance.
On Wednesday, Moscow called on Kiev to proclaim “neutral, non-bloc status” if NATO refuses to publicly reject the country’s membership bid.
Ukraine’s Back and Forth on Relations With NATO
The idea of a bloc-neutral Ukraine is not new, and constituted the de facto foreign policy of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Kuchma’s “multivector” strategy, ostensibly designed to balance eastern and western interests, was supported by Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin. This balance was upset with the victory of the Orange Revolution, a Western-backed soft coup in Kiev, which brought pro-NATO and pro-EU president Viktor Yushchenko to power in 2005. Yushchenko lost the 2010 election, and was succeeded by Viktor Yanukovych, a centrist who, like Kuchma, sought a non-bloc status for Ukraine. Yanukovych was overthrown in a second Western-backed colour revolution in 2014 after attempting to back out of an EU association agreement in favour of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union.
The US and its allies have spent decades and billions of dollars seeking to pull Ukraine into the West’s orbit. In 2014, then-Obama-era assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland (who now serves as undersecretary of state in the Biden administration) openly bragged about how the US had spent $5 billion to “promote democracy” in Ukraine since 1991 and the Soviet collapse.
It remains unclear whether Ukraine even could join the Western bloc under existing membership rules, which state that nations “which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means.” Eastern Ukraine remains bogged down in years-long civil conflict between the Kiev government and separatist forces refusing to accept the outcome of the 2014 coup. Kiev also continues to lay claim to Crimea – the Black Sea peninsula which held a referendum in March 2014 to break off from Ukraine and rejoin Russia.
Russia has expressed grave concerns regarding the prospects of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, calling on the West to halt the bloc’s continued push east, and recalling Washington’s broken promises from 1990 not to expand the alliance beyond the eastern borders of a reunified Germany after the end of the Cold War.
The Russian Embassy in Washington advised the US to stop hyping up the possibility of a war between Russia and Ukraine urging it to end the constant “hysteria” against Moscow.
It further suggested that the rhetoric from American officials is making the situation worse.
The embassy’s comment, published to Facebook on Wednesday, signals a rare moment of unity with Kiev, which has also pleaded with Washington to stop pushing the narrative of impending war. Just one day before, a senior member of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ruling party also accused the US of “hysteria.”
According to the Russian Embassy, Washington is “fueling journalists’ militarist rage.” The statement came in response to a CNN interview with Ned Price, the spokesman of the US State Department, when he accused Moscow of spreading disinformation on the situation in Ukraine.
“It is obvious that the flywheel of the anti-Russian hysteria spinned [sic] in the United States does not allow American colleagues to look at things objectively. Self-hypnosis about the inevitability of the Russian attack persists,” the statement said, urging the State Department to focus on truly important issues of diplomatic settlement of the intra-Ukrainian conflict.
The statement by the Russian diplomatic mission echoes a similar one made on Monday by David Arakhamia, the parliamentary faction leader of Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party. Arakhamia appeared on Ukrainian national TV with harsh criticism of American mainstream media regarding their coverage of an alleged Russian invasion.
The member of Kiev’s ruling political party accused CNN, Bloomberg, and WSJ of spreading “fake news.”
“We have to study [their publications] because these are the elements of a hybrid war,” the senior politician said, adding that Ukraine was being used as a token for negotiations of new security architecture in Europe, causing the country to lose from $2 billion to $3 billion per month due to artificially created panic.
ستبقى طويلا تداعيات وترددات كلام الأمين العام لحزب الله السيد حسن نصرالله عن تحويل آلاف الصواريخ التي تمتلكها المقاومة الى صواريخ دقيقة داخل لبنان، وعن تصنيع الطائرات المسيّرة في ورشات المقاومة اللبنانية وامتلاك فائض منها جعله يقول، مَن يريد أن يشتري فليقدّم طلباً، وعن تفعيل شبكة صواريخ الدفاع الجوي جزئياً بما يخصّ الطائرات المسيّرة، وهذه الترددات والتداعيات على المشهد الإسرائيلي تتصل بمستقبل فرص الحرب وفرضيّاتها. فالتوازن الذي تنشئه هذه الثلاثية يصيب كل منظومة الضوابط التي رسمها الإسرائيليون لنظرية الحرب، ويظهر هشاشتها. فالحديث عن متابعة الجيش الإسرائيلي لعدد مخزون المقاومة من الصواريخ الدقيقة كعامل مقرّر في الحرب يصبح مزحة سخيفة أمام إعلان السيد نصرالله، خصوصاً أن الركن الثاني في ثلاثية نصرالله هو إصراره على القول في كل من مفردات الثلاثية، تحويل (الصواريخ الى دقيقة) وتصنيع (الطائرات المسيّرة) وتفعيل (جزئي لشبكات الدفاع الجويّ)، أنها منجزة منذ سنوات، وهذه صفعة لركن إسرائيلي مقابل هو الحديث عن المتابعة، فعن أية متابعة يتحدثون وهم غافلون عما يجري منذ سنوات، ثم بعد الصفعة يميناً وأختها يساراً، صفعة بقفا اليد ثالثة، أن الأميركي والإسرائيلي يعلمان ذلك، وهذا أحد مبرّرات الكشف عنه، اذن هو يفضحهم أنهم يكذبون، بمعادلاتهم، ومتابعاتهم وإعلاناتهم.
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في الاستراتيجية حسم السيد نصرالله مصير فرضية الحرب الإسرائيلية، فمقاومة تمتلك آلاف الصواريخ الدقيقة وآلاف المسيّرات وشبكات دفاع جويّ قابلة للتفعيل الكليّ، هي مقاومة خارج نطاق قدرة أية حرب إسرائيلية على النيل منها، بل إن الحرب هنا تصير قراراً إسرائيلياً بالانتحار، حيث يقدم رأس الكيان على طبق من ذهب للمقاومة، لكن ما لا يجب ان يغيب انه في السياسة، لن تكون تداعيات إعلانات السيد نصرالله أقل من وقعها في الاستراتيجية، ففي السياسة بنى الإسرائيليون خطاباً عسكرياً وسياسياً ملأوا فيه فراغ عجزهم عن خوض الحرب بمعادلة قوامها، تقديم الغارات على سورية كبديل قائم على تظهير خداع بصريّ عنوانه مواصلة استعراضات القوة كعلامة مزدوجة على التفوّق وامتلاك زمام المبادرة، تحت شعار أن هذه الغارات تمنع تعزيز ترسانة المقاومة بالمزيد من الأسلحة الكاسرة للتوازن، وهي مزيد من الصواريخ الدقيقة، ومزيد من الطائرات المسيّرة، وفرصة نقل شبكة دفاع جوي قابلة للتفعيل، وبالتالي القول إن لدى جيش الكيان خطة قيد التنفيذ للتهيئة للحرب عنوانها السير بخطى حثيثة لإضعاف قدرات المقاومة عبر البوابة السورية، وفجأة تجد قيادة الكيان أنها تفقد هذا النص كله، فالصواريخ الدقيقة والطائرات المسيّرة وشبكات الدفاع الجوي، ومنذ سنوات، لا تعتمد على العبور من سورية، ومعادلاتها منذ سنوات قائمة ومقيمة في لبنان، وأنتم تعرفون ذلك، فماذا عساكم تجدون عنواناً جاذباً لتبرير عراضات القوة بالغارات على سورية. وهل هذا كمين استراتيجي رسمه السيد نصرالله للهدف البديل الذي سيُجبر الإسرائيليين على اختياره لهذه الغارات، التي بقيت شكلاً وحيداً حصرياً يصعب الاستغناء عنه للنشاط العسكري الممكن لجيش الاحتلال، والتي يحتاجها الإسرائيليون ولا يستطيعون ترك الفراغ القاتل يخلفها، والتي لن تجد هدفا بديلا يبررها سوى فتح دفاتر الحديث عن توازنات جبهة الجولان؟ فهل سيأتي الإسرائيليون بأقدامهم الى طرح مستقبلها بديلاً، وقد أرسل لهم الإعلام الحربي إشارة رجال الثلج في المقاومة، كتعبير عن رمزيّة ثلاثية جبل الشيخ ومزارع شبعا والجولان، و«إسرائيل” قد وضعت بين يدي المقاومة هدية ذهبية بربط مصير الجولان ومزارع شبعا، وهم اليوم بين خياري وقف الغارات التي فقدت مبرراتها أو تصنيع هدف بديل لها، ويبدو كلام السيد نصرالله إعلاناً بأن المقاومة مستعدة لكليهما؟
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في المقلب الأميركي إصابة بالغة يوقعها السيد نصرالله بالأهداف الاستراتيجية التي بنيت على السعي لسقف ملكية المقاومة لعدد محدد من الصواريخ الدقيقة، وقد تعبوا في الماضي في الحديث عن سعي لوقف التصنيع، والسيد يأتيهم اليوم بمصطلح بديل هو التحويل، وقد اكتمل، وعن تصنيع آخر، ويكشف لهم محدودية رهانهم على لعبة المجتمع المدني والانتخابات ويتهمهم بمحاولة تأجيلها، ويستدعيهم للمضي في المنازلة الانتخابية، بالتوازي مع “لا” قوية لدعواتكم الملحة لاتصال مباشر، لكن ربما تصلكم الأجوبة مشفرة على ما كنتم ترغبون بطرحه على الطاولة في الاتصال المطلوب المرفوض، سقف للصواريخ مقابل عرض للترسيم مثلاً، فجاءكم الجواب انتهى الأمر والصواريخ الدقيقة باتت بالآلاف، فماذا عساكم تفعلون بينما في السياسة يسقط السيد نصرالله الخطاب الأميركي الموازي للخطاب الإسرائيلي، المبنيين معاً على سردية بناء قوة المقاومة عبر استجرار السلاح النوعي عبر سورية، حيث تتكامل الغارات الإسرائيلية تحت عنوان لا استقرار لسورية ما لم تتوقف عمليات نقل السلاح لحزب الله، مع الضغوط الأميركية لفرض بند مراقبة الحدود اللبنانية السورية كشرط لاستقرار سورية ولبنان؟ فيقول السيد إن لا وظيفة باقية للحدود مع سورية في سردية سلاح المقاومة، فما هو بديلكم؟ وهنا ربما يفتح للأميركيين أيضاً باباً خلفياً للتراجع إذا أحسنوا التقاطه كجواب افتراضي على الاتصال المطلوب المرفوض، وهو صرف النظر عن ربط استقرار سورية بنمو مقدرات المقاومة ومعادلة توزان الردع مع “إسرائيل”. فالأمر انتهى، وان انزلق الأميركيون الى اختراع هدف بديل للضغط في ملف الحدود اللبنانية السورية، ولم يقوموا بحذفها من أجندتهم ربما يذهبون بأقدامهم الى كمين لا مصلحة لهم بالمخاطرة في اكتشافه عبر الاصطفاف وراء الإسرائيلي في هدف جديد عنوانه الجولان، والطريق الذي فتحه السيد سالك، سقطت الأهداف كما في أفغانستان فسارعوا للرحيل من سورية.
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المقاومة التي تعلن أن زمام المبادرة العسكرية بات بيدها، تظهر عبر خطاب السيد أن المبادرة الاستراتيجية والمبادرة السياسية باتتا بيديها أيضاً.
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The Russian troops that took part in defense exercises in Belarus and Crimea are now returning to their barracks, contradicting widely circulated reports that Russia is about to invade Ukraine. Although Moscow repeatedly stressed that troop mobilizations were for defense exercises, a weak and unverified intelligence leak disseminated across Western media claimed that Russia would invade Ukraine on February 16.
Doubling down on the weak leak about the imminent invasion, Western media even missed the sarcasm of Ukrainian President Volodimyr Zelensky when he referred to the report. Not realizing Zelensky’s irony, Western media reported his “confirmation” about Russia’s February 16 invasion day.
When being interviewed by Die Welt, Russia’s ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov sarcastically said:
“Wars in Europe rarely start on a Wednesday.” For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on February 15, “Do we want this [war] or not? Of course not.”
After weeks of propagating about an inevitable Russian invasion of Ukraine, news of troops being demobilized from the border region with the end of exercises disappointed even the most eager war mongers. It was hoped that the Russian invasion narrative would at least provide justification for harsher economic sanctions.
Yet, despite the withdrawal of Russian troops following the end of the exercises, US President Joe Biden is attempting to maintain the invasion narrative. Biden said he would “give […] diplomacy every chance,” but provocatively added that Russian forces remain “very much in a threatening position” and that “an invasion remains distinctly possible.”
With Biden seemingly unrelenting on letting go of the imminent invasion narrative, the situation surrounding Ukraine still remains dangerous and volatile despite Russian troops demobilizing. Ukraine, without intervention from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), continues to deploy its armed forces along the Line of Contact with Donbass. So long as the Ukrainian military threatens to reignite the war in Donbass, whether there is a Russian troop presence on the border or not, the West will maintain a narrative that Moscow is the aggressor.
None-the-less, Zelensky is left with little choice but to continue on this path. Time magazine reporter Simon Shuster, tweeted on February 14:
“Source close to Zelensky told me the US first warned his team of a Russian invasion last fall, putting the chances at 80%. The Ukrainians didn’t buy it, but they saw an opportunity – ‘more aid, more attention’ — and played along. Now they have regrets. Too much attention.”
Yet, Western thinkers, such as Professor Jorge Guira in writing for The Conversation, are attempting to twist the narrative and argue that “it’s possible this whole tense affair may be a bluff to weaken the Ukrainian economy and sow European discord.” This argument ignores the near daily statements from Moscow that stressed there were no plans of invading Ukraine. However, now it is claimed that this whole crisis was manufactured by Russia to target Ukraine’s economy and create division within the EU.
This line of thinking not only disregards Russia’s continued statements that it has no intentions of invading Ukraine, but also ignores that there are no such divisions in the EU, with only the three minnow Baltic states and Poland breaking consensus. These four countries hardly represent the 27-member bloc, or its two most important countries – France and Germany.
As has already been heavily scrutinised, the Ukrainian economy is actually the biggest loser because of the incursion narrative which Kiev helped concoct and promote. With the unintended and unforeseen economic consequences of the Russian invasion allegations, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on February 15 “a sovereign loan guarantee to Ukraine” of up $1 billion to support the country’s economic reform agenda and continued engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“This offer – combined with the strong partnership between Ukraine, the IMF, other international financial institutions, the G7 and other bilateral donors – will bolster Ukraine’s ability to ensure economic stability, growth, and prosperity for its people in the face of Russia’s destabilizing behavior,” Blinken said.
In turn, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter “another call with Blinken. We keep actively coordinating efforts to protect Ukraine. Grateful to the US for the decision to provide Ukraine with macro-financial assistance.”
Zelensky allowed the Russian invasion scenario to get out of hand, and what turned into a short-sighted opportunity to get more military aid from the West is now one that has economically indebted Ukraine to the US and under more IMF control. Kiev’s hostilities with Moscow will see it lose billions in transit fees when the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is activated, and now its propagation of an imminent Russian invasion sees foreign businesspeople, companies and diplomats flee the country.
None-the-less, even with Russian troops demobilizing after finishing their defense exercises, it appears that the imminent incursion assertions will be maintained, especially as Ukraine continues to provocatively deploy troops to the border of Donbass, with the OSCE remaining silent.
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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 